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The term “Natural Law” has been hijacked and repurposed by esoteric, occult, and Hermetic traditions in ways that profoundly distort its classical meaning. Many well-meaning people today are confused because they hear the same words (“Natural Law”) but they are being used to mean entirely opposite things, with opposite consequences for truth, morality, liberty and personhood. Thank you to @ChartingLiberty for prompting this thread, sorry it’s a bit late!
Let’s perform a scalpel-precise forensic distinction between:
🏛️ Classical Natural Law (Aristotle → Aquinas)
vs.
🌀 Hermetic “Natural Law” (Gnostic / Occult / Esoteric)
2/ 🏛️Classical Natural Law ~ Rooted in Logos🔥
Source; Aristotle, developed and completed by Aquinas within realist metaphysics and Christian theology. Grounded in Logos; intelligible, moral order of the universe, reflecting eternal law in created things.
Key Principles:
Reality is real and knowable
Man has a nature (rational, moral, social)
That nature is ordered to an end (telos): truth, virtue, beatitude
Natural law = participation in eternal law via reason (Summa Theologica I-II, Q.91–94)
Morality = conformity to what is
Rights and duties = rooted in being, not will or assertion
Law is objective, discoverable by reason, and binding in conscience
Moral Order:
Objective good and evil
Conscience judges reality, not just emotion
Human law must conform to natural law (Aristotle/Aquinas)
Personal liberty = freedom to pursue the good
Implications:
You don’t invent morality; you recognize and conform to it
Self-governance = moral formation to align will with truth
All human persons share equal dignity because of shared endowed rational nature.
3/ 🌀Hermetic “Natural Law” ~ Rooted in Self as God
Hermetic texts (e.g., Corpus Hermeticum, Kybalion), revived in Renaissance Neoplatonism, Theosophy, occultism and gnostic, New Thought, pop culture reinterpretations connected to alchemy, astrology, “hidden wisdom,” secret initiations - much of which has been Intelligence Operations/Social Engineering with “guru”/Change agent actors/operatives.
Key Claims (often disguised in spiritual or mystical language):
🌀“As above, so below” – correspondence, not participation in Logos
🐍“The All is Mind” – idealism; reality is mental, not ontological. Codified as cademic default ‘Cogito’
🌀“Natural law” = system of energy dynamics or behavioural consequences (like karma)
🐍Good/evil = relative to consciousness or vibration
🐍Man is divine or becoming divine (self-deification) “Evolution” & Transformational Pedagogy
🐍Self is the source of law & truth (gnostic autonomy) Subjectivist/Constructivist Philosophy/Pedagogy
Moral Order:
🌀Subjective or functional (e.g., “don’t violate others’ free will”)
🐍Conscience = inner energy alignment or mystical gnosis
🐍Sin = ignorance of your own divinity
🐍Freedom = uncoerced self-expression or alignment with cosmic flow
Implications:
You don’t conform to truth; you manifest it🐍
There’s no fixed human nature; only evolutionary ascent🐍
Rights are based on consciousness or will; not being🐍
Hierarchies of “awakening” justify technocratic or spiritual control🐍
4/ Diagnostic Summary
5/
Aquinas:
Law is participation in divine order; freedom is obedience to truth.
Hermeticism:
Law is manipulation of hidden forces; freedom is assertion of Self.
There is a discernible point (not merely historical but philosophical) at which Neoplatonic forces subverted Aristotle/Aquinas’ classical Logos realism.
🏛️Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition begins with being and proceeds to knowledge through participation in the real.
🌀Neoplatonism begins with emanation from the One and leads to knowledge as recollection or ascent out of matter🔮
The two are ontologically and teleologically incompatible, predicated as they are, on opposing metaphysics, philosophy and theology. Your eyes may be glazing over with a sense of ‘what has all this got to do with my day to day real life’?
Everything - as it informs, animates and controls Education, Law, Governance and Institutional Policy and Practise.
It controls you
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The difference in metaphysical starting point is the root of the subversion and while tensions were always present, the full inversion of Logos by Neoplatonism did not consolidate until a series of historical/philosophical turning points:
7/ Key Points of Subversion
Plotinus (3rd century AD):
Founded Neoplatonism as a mystical ascent away from material being toward “The One” replacing participation in being with escape from being.
Subversion:
Being becomes a problem, not a good; creation is not celebrated but “overcome.” E.g. Currently animating “Gender sophistry”
Pseudo-Dionysius (5th–6th century AD):
Christianized Neoplatonism by cloaking it in theological language (veilcraft & polysemy). Introduced the via negativa (apophatic theology), hierarchical cosmology and mystical ascent.
Subversion:
Introduced ambiguity and set up a metaphysical dualism between God and world; contradicting Aquinas’ analogia entis (analogy of being).
John Scotus Eriugena (9th century)
Brought full Neoplatonic emanationism into Christian metaphysics. His synthesis blurred the Creator-creature distinction and this distinction is key for understanding the terms ‘self evident’, ‘inalienable’ and the endowed function of moral agency.
Subversion:
Eroded ontological realism; reality became a symbolic map of ascending divinity, not a world with stable natures and moral order. This is highly relevant for Popular Sovereignty and Self Governance.
8/ The Renaissance Hermetic Revival (15th century)
Ficino and Pico della Mirandola resurrected Neoplatonic and Hermetic texts, especially the Corpus Hermeticum. Their claim; that man could ascend through intellect and magic to divine status.
Subversion:
Directly undermined Aquinas’ doctrine of humility before a created order. Human will replaced divine Logos as the source of moral law.
Early Modern Philosophy (17th–18th centuries):
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant & Ferrier transformed metaphysics into ‘epistemology™️’. Focus shifted from being to knowing, from nature to representation.
Final Inversion:
Reality became a projection of mind. Logos was redefined as structure of consciousness, not divine order.
9/ Was it always happening?
On and off. The Aristotelian-Thomistic synthesis was an explicit bulwark against Neoplatonic-Gnostic tendencies. But
Neoplatonic ideas were always lurking in the margins of Christian theology. They became dominant when the focus shifted from ontology to epistemology, especially post-Kant and were weaponized by intelligence psychological warfare/social engineering, secret societies, esoteric cults and eventually secular technocracies.
The subversion was gradual🐢 and intentional🐺🐑, culminating in the metaphysical shift from participation in being (Logos) to projection from mind (gnosis). Aquinas was the high point of realism; what followed was a strategic and well financed (by the Houses of Finance controlling institutional funding strings) regression to the soft totalitarian system being installed and completed now - for which the ‘human’ (rational with moral agency) is an obstacle. The system requires post humanity; moldable ‘clay’ - adaptive nodes in the system of Algorithmic Governance.
Hermetic “Natural Law”🔮is perfect for this in the ‘decentralized’ networked states system.
Aristotle/Aquinas Classical Natural Law🏛️ remains the only bulwark against it.
The System counts on the People not recognizing the difference and not caring that there even are seismic differences which will determine their liberty and sovereignty both personally and nationally.
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“A thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect.”
But the Hermetic Principle of Polarity denies the fixity of identity, asserting that “A and not-A” can be two ends of a single scale. It collapses distinction into continuity, claiming all opposites are one in essence and redefines contradiction as apparent, not real. This is a direct metaphysical inversion of the LNC. It dissolves ontological clarity into psychological relativism and prepares the ground for:
Once the Principle of Polarity replaces LNC truth becomes mutable; nothing is absolutely true or false - just perspective.
Moral categories collapse; good and evil become two “poles” of the same energy. Discernment breaks down; everything is “both-and,” never “either-or.” Manipulators thrive; sophists, dialecticians and technocrats can redefine reality situationally.
2/ The Hermetic Principle of Polarity is the esoteric root of the subversion of the Law of Noncontradiction. It redefines contradiction as illusion and replaces being with process. From this root, entire philosophical, political and educational systems have been built to confuse, invert and ultimately control.
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3/
Étienne Gilson exposed the collapse of metaphysical realism and logic in modern philosophy.
Richard Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences warned that denial of the LNC would usher in tyranny and anti-humanism.
David Stove in The Plato Cult and Roger Scruton in multiple works criticized modern logic-twisting philosophies for subverting truth.
Eric Voegelin noted the Gnostic deformation of reason in totalitarian ideologies; often using contradiction as a tool of “second realities.”
Founder James Wilson, in early American constitutional thought, upheld the LNC as essential to Natural Law, explicitly rejecting legal pragmatism and dialectical confusion.
But these voices are rarely taught; because the academy has itself become a Sophistic factory.
🧵It’s taken me about 3 yrs of working steadily to unpack this metaphysically dense, rich statement. Hopefully it won’t take others as long. In this thread I’ll break it down a little:
What it means:
This refers not simply to Nietzsche’s declaration (“God is dead”) but to the gnostic metaphysical operation beneath it. Gnosticism posits that the material world is a prison (to be transcended) and the God of creation (as in Genesis) is either false or lower than a secret “true” god behind or beyond being. This premise is not atheism in the modern sense, it’s metaphysical revolt; Promethean/Luciferian - ‘Melkor’ in intent and operation.
Why it matters:
To say “God is dead” in this context means that the source of order, truth, teleology and being itself is no longer recognized as real. It’s a metaphysical strike, not just theological.
💡 Gnostic Death of God = Displacement of Logos
(the ordering principle of reality, reason and truth)
This is not simply a rejection of ‘Religion’, or one Faith or another, of Ideology or Identity. This is the rejection of the very means by how we know anything about ourselves, our world and our relationship to all else. Our very ability to articulate and embody shared reality with another human being and even to acknowledge reality individually ourselves.
This isn’t a nostalgic hankering for subjective idealistic meaning - this is the fundamental rejection of knowledge and the means of accessing and articulating that knowledge.
3/ ”…has a fundamental meaning to the sciences…”
What it means:
Modern science was born from the classical (Aristotelian–Thomistic) and Christian assumption that God’s universe is orderly, knowable and real because it is created by Logos.
But once the Gnostic premise (God is not real, or God is hostile to reason and order) takes over, science detaches from being. It becomes an exercise in technique, not truth and manipulation, not participation.
💡 Once truth is no longer rooted in being, science becomes a control mechanism, as we are witnessing.
🧵Sleight of hand; ‘Justified Belief’ - Epistemology™️ Veilcraft
“Wissenschftslehre” (Fichte) ➡️ “Epistemology” (Ferrier)🐍 blogodidact.blogspot.com/2023/10/episte… I first shared this superb article by @Van_Blogodidact over a year ago. Between then and now, working on the material for my book has deepened my understanding of how seismic this alchemical manoeuvre; the conjuring🪄of the term ‘Epistemology’ - and crucially, its institutionalization across domains and fields as default - was and continues to be, in its power to disable our cognitive defence against ideological subversion and possession. I’m still in the weeds of unpacking this deep magic (curse), the process by which it operates and how it undoes our orientation and navigation, dislocating our awareness and discernment from what is recognized, real and true; substituting instead what is imagined and constructed. I’ll unpack some of this in the thread below. Before continuing with that, I heartily recommend reading Van’s essay in full - several times - saving it and coming back to it repeatedly. You might want to ask why your own education has not taught you about this and what that omission serves.
2/ James Ferrier’s invention of the term “epistemology” in the 1850s marked a critical alchemical maneuver that operationalized Hermetic-Neoplatonic subversion within the heart of academic philosophy, in the Anglo-American tradition. This was not merely a lexical innovation, but a metaphysical severance with strategic implications:
What Ferrier Operationalized ~ The Alchemical Severance
Ferrier’s coinage of epistemology (“the science of knowing”) was not a neutral academic contribution. It was his Kantian-Reidian synthesis that used Reid’s surface realism to smuggle Kantian mediation and subjective idealism into Anglo-American discourse. Instead of recovering Reid’s ontological realism, Ferrier abstracted knowledge into a standalone discipline, divorced from metaphysical being (reality independent of the mind). Following Descartes & Fichte, Ferrier cast knowledge as a self-referential science, not a participation in Logos or divine order. He used the term “epistemology” to grant this abstraction institutional legitimacy. This shift was the gateway by which Hermetic principles (gnostic, emanationist, mind-over-matter, self-deifying) entered mainstream philosophy and science, masked as academic rigor.
3/ Hermetic Function ~ Why Ferrier’s Move Was Alchemical
Hermeticism thrives on the primacy of Mind over Nature, the plasticity of truth and the ascent of man toward divinity through gnosis. It requires a philosophical field in which:
🪄Knowledge precedes being (Kant’s transcendental turn);
🪄Reality is conditioned by consciousness (Cartesian legacy);
🪄Metaphysical realism is bypassed or labeled naïve.
Ferrier provided just such a field by detaching “knowledge” from reality and framing it as something to be studied in itself, rather than in union with what is. This hermetically sealed philosophy departments from ontological participation. Ferrier’s creation of ‘epistemology’ was the alchemical lever that made the Logos-to-gnosis inversion operational inside philosophy and science. It reframed truth from being a conformity to reality to a phenomenon of consciousness, which allowed Hermetic metaphysics to operate covertly under the guise of rational academic inquiry.
This wasn’t an accident. It was a precision-(German) engineered shift (camouflaged as intellectual progress) that (in operation) fractured the metaphysical foundation of liberty, law, education and self-governance.
David’s question is such a good one and so important that it really deserves a thread response:
🧵Locke’s Inadequacy; Severing Rights from Ontology
Locke is often celebrated for asserting that man has rights to “life, liberty and property.” But unlike Aristotle or Aquinas (or Founders Wilson, Witherspoon and others), Locke did not ground these rights in man’s nature as a rational teleological being. Instead, he treated rights as extensions of will and self-ownership. Locke emphasized contract and consent as the source of political legitimacy. He avoided invoking a universal moral order rooted in the Logos or Natural Law in any realist sense. CS Lewis wrote prolifically about the implications and consequences of this ‘avoidance’/ rejection/denial.
This makes Locke’s system nominalist at its root. It sees rights not as participation in eternal truth, but as designations based on agreements and language. It reduces moral claims to assertions of entitlement tied to personhood-as-will. So even “negative rights” (like the right to be left alone) are grounded in possessive individualism (constructs subject to flux), not in a coherent endowed metaphysical anthropology of man.
2/ The Risk of “Negative Rights”
Without Metaphysical Substance
Without rooting rights in what man is, “negative rights” are only as secure as the contract or social agreement upholding them. They can be reinterpreted by new legal authorities (as has happened). They have no necessary link to truth or goodness (pertaining to man’s ontology & teleology) only to morally relative pragmatic and utilitarian preference or assertion in relation to systems (and their ‘evolution’).
This is why you now see “negative rights” weaponized to protect things like:
The “right” to abortion
The “right” to euthanasia
The “right” to gender self-definition
None of these are grounded in human nature or purpose. They are grounded in subjective autonomy, just as Locke permitted.
3/ What Was Needed Instead; Natural Law & Final Cause
A robust defense of human liberty must be grounded in the nature of man as a rational, moral agent and the purpose (telos) of man to live in truth, embodying moral agency. This requires the participation of conscience in the moral order; not just will or contract. This is what Aquinas and later James Wilson defended. Wilson (as signer of both the Declaration and the Constitution) explicitly rejected Locke’s framework:
“The law of nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is superior in obligation to any other… it is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.”
(Founder James Wilson)
This kind of law is not chosen - it is recognized.
🧵“Government doesn’t grant rights. Rights preexist.
Government gets its powers from the people.”
Yes that’s correct - but what kind of being can possess rights prior to government? If we don’t answer this ontologically, the claim sounds like rhetoric, not reality and this is precisely how generations have given their agency away, by accepting and embracing constructivism, subjectivism, idealism and the many ‘Theories of Men’ which ontologically and teleologically deny the understanding of being from which pre existent rights arise.
Let’s remind ourselves of the hidden philosophical infrastructure that most modern people don’t have; because it’s been systematically removed from their formation over generations of intellectual subversion in academia and education:
2/ Rights Are Only Inalienable If They Are Ontological
That is; rights must be grounded in what man is by nature, not in what society, law, or consensus decides he is.
This requires upholding that human nature is real, not socially constructed and that this nature is ordered toward a purpose (telos) e.g., truth, moral agency and accountability. It requires the comprehension that the moral law is written into that nature, not imposed from outside.
If these metaphysical commitments are denied (as they are in all nominalist derived theory/philosophy, all Theory of Ideas philosophical genealogy; Cartesian, Kantian, Utilitarian, Behaviourist, Pragmatist, Progressive, Positivist, Postmodern (and Post Liberal‼️) then Rights are just desirable permissions, not moral truths that government is bound to respect.
3/ Most People Have Been Trained to Reject This Metaphysics
They’ve been taught Man is a biological organism, not a rational soul and that Moral law is a social construct or adaptive tool. Their programs of academic study have taught them that “Freedom” means autonomy, not the power to choose the good and that Knowledge is system-relative and procedural (Kant), not participation in truth (Aquinas). In this constructivist framework, it is nonsensical to say that someone has a right to life, liberty, or conscience prior to government. The very notion of “rights” is thought to be a legal artifact of social cooperation and contract.
So when people see messages like the one in the OP image, they may nod at the rhetorical level; but their deep foundational premises (often unrecognized) condition them to accept rights in practise as ‘flexible, negotiable and socially assigned’ in function.
🧵 “If you cite Magna Carta to justify the Declaration, you’ve already lost the argument about where rights come from.”
(Professor Daniel N Robinson)
Professor Robinson’s point is both philosophical and tactical. To reference Magna Carta is to frame liberty as a negotiated concession, not a natural truth. This invites the legal positivists, technocrats and managerial elites to revise or revoke rights at will; because if rights come from custom, then they can be changed by new customs.
The American Founding, by contrast, was the first political act in history to say:
“We do not ask. We declare. These rights were always ours.”
Let’s drill down on this in brief…….
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Professor Daniel N. Robinson was one of the few scholars with both the historical and metaphysical clarity to warn that citing the Magna Carta as a source or precursor to the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution is not only historically misleading, but philosophically and legally subversive to the American Founding’s actual principles.
Here’s why Robinson gave this warning and why it’s so important:
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Magna Carta was a feudal document; hierarchical not Popular
The Magna Carta (1215) was an agreement between King John and a group of rebellious noble barons to protect their own privileges from arbitrary royal overreach. It did not assert universal rights of the people, nor any notion of natural law as the basis of political legitimacy. The rights it secured were granted by the Crown‼️, not inherent in man.
“To cite Magna Carta is to suggest that rights are conferred from above by negotiation with power; not derived from nature and God.” (Daniel N Robinson)