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I wonder how important Newton's wild occult beliefs were to his discoveries.

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· Apr 30, 2021

I subscribe the Isaac Newton model of science where you're scrying through the ecstatic, agonizing angel dimension in order to divine the arcane patterns that God uses to carve this universe into itself

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Troy Winfrey

@twinfrey

Apr 30, 2021

The main problem here is that the question is inevitably framed in terms of post-Enlightenment scientism and empiricism, not a framing a serious alchemist of the period would have accepted or even understood. "Alchemy was pre-science" story dates ~1930s? as far as I can tell.

Could you say more?

So meditation, like prayer, is not experimental in the sense of chemistry. It's more experiential. Turning something into gold would show you a far more important process, spiritual transformation of your inmost essence. We think. They were deliberately obscure, a big part of it.

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

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@twinfrey

Fascinating, thank you

1:55 AM · May 1, 2021TweetDeck