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the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

@thepalmerworm

Jun 7

🧵Operational Success🐍

The so-called “good (and ‘bad’) magic” (originating in Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and esoteric Renaissance mysticism) did not disappear with the rise of the Enlightenment. It was veiled, codified and rebranded under the ‘secular’ language of philosophy, arts, Science™️, psychology, and politics. It became the subterranean metaphysical engine of modernity’s intellectual architecture.

Despite their outward ideological disagreements, Enlightenment rationalism, Romantic idealism, existential revolt and postmodern deconstruction ALL operationalize the same metaphysical inversion; man as autonomous re-creator, using imagination, will and symbol to remake reality.

2/ Enlightenment Philosophy (Early Codification Stage)

Key Shift:
Truth is no longer discovered through participation in Logos; it is now produced by reason, method, and analysis. Reality is what the mind can structure, measure, or manipulate.

Key Figures:
Descartes begins the severance; knowledge begins in the thinking subject, not in being. Spinoza provides pantheistic remapping of divinity into systemized substance. Leibniz posits the world as an infinite set of pre-programmed monads; an abstracted theurgical cosmos.

Hermetic Operation:
The microcosm (mind) is the key to ordering or even generating the macrocosm (reality).

“Give me extension and movement and I will recreate The World” (Descartes)

3/ German Idealism🪄 (Full Magical Internalization)

Key Shift:
Mind no longer conforms to reality; reality conforms to mind.
The self is the primary ontological principle; truth emerges through its ‘dialectical’ movement.

Key Figures:
Kant positing his “Copernican Revolution” - the world is knowable only through the categories of the understanding. Noumenal reality is unknowable. Fichte proclaiming the ego posits the world; radical subjective voluntarism. Hegel enshrining History as the unfolding of Geist (Spirit) through self-alienation and return; a magical cosmology in dialectical drag.

Hermetic Operation:
Man becomes the (gnostic) vehicle of divine world-spirit, whose self-becoming constitutes reality. This is an abstracted ritual unfolding masked as ‘logic’, functioning as Epistemic Containment and Promethean/Luciferian hubris. But then this was the intellectual operating system of World Federation/League of Nations/UN UNESCO etc and while Theosophy seduced hearts, Kantian proceduralism seduced minds and operationalized protocols and systems. The secular “rational”face of the same deep manipulative magic.

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the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

@thepalmerworm

Jun 6

🧵
The “good magic” referenced here at the bottom of the extract shared by Michael and defended by Robert Fludd in his Tractatus and Apologia, is not benign or neutral, despite the term’s rhetorical spin. It is rooted in the Hermetic-Kabbalistic esoteric tradition, particularly aligned with the prisci theologi and the Corpus Hermeticum and we’re going to follow the trajectory of its animation through to the modern day.

2/ Fludd’s “good magic” refers to:

Hermetic Theurgy:

A practice of spiritual ascent and cosmic manipulation grounded in the belief that man can influence the divine and cosmic order through symbolic rites, visualizations, and invocations. Seen as “good” because it supposedly aligns with divine will or natural harmony.

Microcosm-Macrocosm Doctrine:

The human being is seen as a microcosm that mirrors the macrocosm (the universe). “Good magic” manipulates the microcosm to effect change in the macrocosm, or vice versa; a gnostic inversion of participation that makes man an operator rather than a recipient of divine order.

Hermes Trismegistus & Prisca Theologia:

Fludd invokes the authority of Hermes Trismegistus, the supposed ancient Egyptian sage, to claim an esoteric wisdom older and purer than Christianity. “Good magic” is seen as part of this pre-Christian or perennial wisdom, often conflated with alchemical, astrological and mystical techniques used to transform both the self and nature.

Operative Knowledge (Scientia Operativa):

A knowledge that transforms reality through will and imagination; not contemplation but transformation. This is magical idealism, where thought and word are seen as causative.

3/ Why It’s a Deceptive Category

Despite being framed as “good,” this “magic” severs participation in Logos and replaces it with symbolic manipulation. It invokes spirits or intelligences as operational powers (often without clear distinction between angelic and demonic). It treats salvation and transformation as a technical or psychic achievement, not a grace-bound participation in truth.

It is the same logic that undergirds:

Renaissance Hermeticism (Bruno, Ficino, Pico),
Rosicrucian mysticism
Lurianic Kabbalah (e.g., using symbolic ritual for cosmic repair)
and later occult revival movements, including Theosophy and Masonry.

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the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

@thepalmerworm

Jun 4

🧵Dialectical capture of moral language & hijacking of telos

In the classical (Thomistic, Aristotelian) tradition, telos refers to the intrinsic, intelligible end or purpose (fulfilment) of a being or act, grounded in objective reality and the nature of things as they are. Human beings, as rational moral agents, are capable of discerning the good; not as utility or outcome, but as that which fulfils their nature in alignment with the natural law. Telos is not something invented but discovered and conformed to. Requiring foundational metaphysical realism, philosophical moral objectivity and cultivation of moral agency, developed primarily through disciplined practise grounded in Faith. Over centuries this metaphysical telos has been gradually inverted, accelerated through Benthamite utilitarianism and Deweyan pragmatism, the concept of “good” was collapsed into the useful, then into the functional and finally into the adaptive. Telos became untethered from truth and redefined in terms of outcome, emotional effect, or social coherence. Now, in the AI-augmented constructivist era, telos is renamed “purpose”, now redefined as a programmable psychological alignment tool; a way of guiding collective behavior through a common “moral language” engineered not through metaphysics, but through data-driven models of emotion, affiliation and feedback.

This is where figures like Jonathan Haidt enter.

2/ Haidt’s Role:
Constructing the “Moral Grammar” of the New System

Jonathan Haidt’s work, particularly in The Righteous Mind and through the Moral Foundations Theory, claims to explain why people disagree morally, not by appealing to natural law or reason, but by analyzing evolved, adaptive moral intuitions across cultures.

His six “moral foundations” (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, liberty) are treated as neurologically wired heuristics that explain political and cultural affiliation. This moral model is:
Evolutionary (morality is adaptive for group survival)
Psychological (morality is intuitive and emotionally triggered)
Pluralistic (there is no one correct moral order),
Data-driven (measurable through large-scale digital behavior)

This system has become a moral API (a plug-in grammar) being actively embedded into AI systems, content algorithms, and behavioral governance frameworks under the guise of promoting “trustworthy AI,” “shared values,” or “moral balance.”

In this framework, moral agency is no longer rational, universal and rooted in being. It is adaptive, emotionally reactive, statistically profiled and socially engineered.

This is not the Aristotle/Aquinas realism requisite for individual moral agency; self governance. This is constructivist moral computation for assimilating into and adaptive compliance with AI governance. Data nodes in a ‘managed’ system.

3/ Why Conservatives and Traditionalists Are Being Fooled

Because this system uses traditional-sounding language; “virtue,” “moral foundations,” “binding values,” “trust,” “civility,” even “sacredness” - many conservatives and traditionalists are now desperate enough (post woke destabilization) to hear their worldview reflected in it. But it is a simulacrum, not a restoration.

What they are buying into is not a return to natural law, but a managerial behavioural model that mimics moral cohesion for the sake of stability, emotional containment and algorithmic predictability. This system does not treat persons as ends in themselves but as nodes in a feedback network whose “moral performance” can be calibrated for the sake of social ‘harmony’ or market function.

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the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

@thepalmerworm

Jun 2

🧵Metaphysical Collapse in Five Architectural Phases

Nominalism - The Foundational Severance

A grand neoclassical civic building representing formation of your individual given/endowed inner constitution. One foundation stone is being removed from the base corner. Here the corruption of inner constitution begins. The rest of the structure is intact, but the action is visibly critical. The removal of real universals. Nothing seems to fall………yet. The structure remains visually intact, dignified and serene, but the intentional removal of a single foundation stone has begun. This image quietly signals the metaphysical breach, with the consequences yet to manifest. The structure of reality appears stable. Yet beneath its elegant exterior, removal of that single foundational stone is the act (the denial of real universals) which severs the building’s contact with being (intelligible coherence and structural integrity) itself. No collapse has occurred yet, but the loss is irreversible. From here, all further instability follows.

2/Constructivism - Cracks in the Base and Inner Displacement

Same building (our inner constitution), but now cracks run up through the base and interior elements (like internal supports or flooring) are misaligned or warping. Slight leaning of the building may begin. Subtle instability; still standing, but compromised. With nature and universals gone, man begins to construct false meaning internally. The building no longer sits solidly on reality. The structure is still upright, but now bears the visible consequences of foundational severance: cracks rising from below, subtle leaning and internal distortion beginning to appear. With the foundation compromised, the building begins to fracture. No longer anchored in reality, meaning is now artificially reconstructed; misaligned, warped and unstable. The damage remains hidden to many, but the structure has lost its internal coherence. The illusion of order is becoming harder to maintain, forcing artificial reconstruction on an unstable base.

3/ Subjectivism - Wall and Frame Distortion

Walls are now bending inward or outward, windows are misaligned or broken, the structure seems visibly torqued. Small pieces of masonry have fallen off. A portion of a side column may be fractured or crumbling. Noticeable distortion; familiar forms are now bent. All meaning collapses inward into personal perspective. No reference point outside the self. The once-stable structure now shows visible bending, warped geometry and broken window frame; the collapse of shared truth into isolated perception - collapse into the Self. The structure warps under internal strain. Truth, no longer grounded in being, becomes whatever the subject projects. The walls bend, the frames no longer fit. Symmetry and proportion is lost. The world outside is now distorted by the inner lens and the building no longer knows how to hold itself together.

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the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

@thepalmerworm

May 29

🧵Why Glasses Are Not Enough; Why A Scalpel Is Necessary

In this image, The Abolition of Man sits beside two instruments; a pair of glasses and a scalpel. Most readers, educators and cultural commentators today reach for the glasses. They read C.S. Lewis to see more clearly. They admire his prose, nod at his moral courage and feel the weight of his defense of tradition, virtue and objective value. Through the lenses of nostalgia or literary admiration, they perceive him as a steward of the “great tradition.” The glasses improve their view; but not their discernment.

Yet glasses alone do not reveal infection.

They do not tell us where the corruption lies, how it spreads, or what must be cut out to prevent institutional death. Glasses enhance sight, but not diagnosis. They allow for perception, but not precision. They do not reveal the metaphysical surgery that must occur to restore the integrity of a soul, a culture, or a curriculum.

2/ This is why the scalpel is required

The scalpel is not sentimental. It does not flatter; it is the instrument of forensic clarity. The scalpel is for those who are not content with admiring tradition’s beauty; but are committed to excising the false traditions and the subtle corruptions. The lingering parasites of nominalism, subjectivism and romantic idealism that have wrapped themselves in the robes of “Classical Education.”

3/ The Modern Classical Educator Without the Scalpel

So many read Lewis, but cannot see the metaphysical realism beneath his terms, because they’ve been trained in Kantian or Cartesian dualism. Many teach virtue, but cannot defend its ontological status, because they’ve accepted a constructivist psychology masked in classical language. Very many can quote Plato or Aristotle, but cannot trace how the definitions of “form,” “nature,” or “order” have been inverted by Enlightenment and Romantic thought. So many praise the canon, but defend Rousseau, Locke, or even Nietzsche and others similarly, without grasping how their premises destroy the canon’s moral and metaphysical ground.

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the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

@thepalmerworm

May 23

🧵The Hollow Rhetoric of Constitutional Defence;
Why Metaphysical Realism, Not Sentiment, Sustains a Republic

In the face of America’s accelerating moral, civic, and institutional collapse, there has emerged a growing chorus of voices clamoring to “defend the Constitution.” These appeals, however sincere, are tragically hollow; because they are rooted not in the metaphysical foundations upon which the Constitution was built, but in nostalgia, tribal loyalty, or procedural formalism. Such appeals ring increasingly impotent in a society that no longer possesses the cognitive, moral, or spiritual architecture required to understand, let alone uphold, the very principles enshrined in the founding documents. Indeed, most of these appeals come from voices that either ignore or actively participate in the very theological, philosophical, and pedagogical systems that have dismantled the metaphysical conditions necessary for the Constitution to function.

2/
The Constitution was not crafted as a floating structure of legal mechanisms. It was conceived upon the granite of metaphysical realism; the conviction that truth is real and knowable, that law is discovered, not invented, and that reason is the participatory faculty by which man discerns the natural order. It presupposes a people formed in truth, habituated to virtue, and capable of recognizing moral order as something given, not constructed. It assumes a civic anthropology; a vision of man as rational, free and responsible, without which popular sovereignty collapses into chaos or is absorbed into tyranny. Yet today, in both religious and secular spheres, the dominant institutions reject this anthropology wholesale.

3/
Modern Protestant theology, particularly in its voluntarist, fideist, and revivalist expressions, has systematically severed reason from revelation, nature from grace, and being from law. It has replaced Natural Law with Divine Command theory, subordinated reality to will, and rendered the human person incapable of discerning the good apart from a moment of inward illumination or scriptural assertion. The Reformational doctrine of total depravity denies that reason can meaningfully grasp the moral order of nature, while the nominalism inherited from Ockham has left evangelical theology epistemically rootless, unable to affirm universals or intelligible order.

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More from @thepalmerworm

the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

the palmer worm 🌲mother, wife,choral conductor.

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