Tools shape the user
Writing changed memory; print changed argument; feeds changed attention. Generative systems change composition and recall. The Hermetic frame keeps the reciprocal effect in view rather than treating tools as neutral.
Hermetic science and the technology of mind
Hermetic science formalised principles — mentalism, correspondence, cause and effect, vibration — that function as an early systems theory of mind and world. Robert Shumake's Hermetic and esoteric titles use those principles to examine how technologies of thought, including AI, alter the thinker: tools that shape attention and language eventually shape cognition itself.
From the library
Books on hermetic science & technology
Titles from Robert Shumake's catalogue that develop this material in full.
Hermetic WisdomAjarn Shaman Shu
The Divine Pymander
The Hermetic Wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus for Gnosis & Spiritual Awakening.
Details
Hermetic WisdomAjarn Shaman Shu
The Hermetic Code
The Seven Hermetic Principles for Manifestation, Mental Alchemy & Self-Mastery.
Details
African SpiritualityAjarn Shaman Shu
ASE in Action
Ritual Work, Ebo, and the Three Divination Systems of Ifa, Diloggun, and Obi in Santería, Candomblé, and Lucumí
Details
African SpiritualityAjarn Shaman Shu
African Reiki
Africa's Original Sacred Healing System — 26 Symbols from the Kongo to the Guarani Shamans of Ama Deus
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African SpiritualityAjarn Shaman Shu
BEFORE MECCA
The African Origins of Islam and the Arabic Language
DetailsDirect answers
Questions people ask
- What do Hermetic principles have to do with AI?
- They provide a vocabulary for reciprocal causation between mind and instrument — useful for analysing how a tool that writes and recalls for you changes how you think.
Continue
- Ancestral intelligence: the systems that predate artificial intelligence
- AI training data and the missing Black archive
- AI and consciousness: what contemplative traditions established first
- Wealth in the age of AI
- Attention and focus in the algorithmic age