The Teachings / Hermetic Dictionary

Automatism:

• This describes the automatic reactions that individuals have when faced with repeated circumstances.
• It describes the behavior of an individual who has been “conditioned” to react to a certain situation, whether emotional or physical.
• It has to do with one’s mental processes, which get activated without the participation of one’s will.

To Awaken:

• To awaken from the sleep that is created from sensorial stimuli.
• To be alert, conscious of yourself and your surroundings.
• The awakened state is a state of higher vigilance that permits one to see the world in a more objective and real manner.
• To be in the present moment.

To Comprehend:

• This describes the moment when a person becomes conscious of the profound and essential meaning of a term or action.
• It refers to action which is the result of having truly assumed the significance of something.
• It refers to knowledge that the individual has of himself or herself and /or of circumstances.
• To comprehend something, means to know the meaning of it in its essence which results in a kind of knowledge that is alive and usable.
• It is the highest form of knowledge.

To Be Conscious:

• Is to be the owner of your mind.
• To control one’s attention and direct it at will.
• To not be hypnotized by the environment in which one lives.
• To be in the here and now.

Consciousness:

• It is the ability the individual has to visualize and comprehend events that happen around and within him or her.
• It is the capacity to see reality as it is.
• To be able to store significance.
• It has to do with mental clarity.
• It is a faculty that comes from the spirit and permits one to comprehend.

Defect:

• Challenge.
• Defects are a source of energy when overcome.
• They provide the raw material to work and form yourself with.
• A defect is a quality that damages the soul.
• It is a deficiency that leads to a feeling of satisfaction when you overcome it.

Deprogramming:

• Has to do with dismantling mechanisms which induce the individual to always do the same thing without conscious intention.

Entropy:

• Disorder.
• Chaos, inoperativeness.
• A natural phenomenon that guarantees that the most probable event will place.
• A law that manifests on the physical plane and represents the degree of disorder of things.

Hermes Trimegistus:

• Philosopher from ancient Egypt and the founder of Hermetic Philosophy.

Hermeticism:

• Operative Philosophy and practice founded in ancient Egypt by Hermes Trimegistus.
• It operates within a person’s life; it is an attitude; it is a way of life.
• The Seven Hermetic Principals or Laws of Nature are the basis of it.

Identification:

• The phenomena of losing self-awareness.
• A temporary loss of the “I” when one projects one’s attention and thus loses control over it.
• When one becomes “identified” with a situation, becomes part of the action, and does not have the power to separate from it.
• To observe something and to stop being yourself to become one with the object being observed.

Internal Dialogue:

• Automatic internal voice that never stops talking.
• Thoughts that repeat themselves as fixed ideas.

Internal World:

• It is everything the individual feels and thinks – one’s impulses, goals, yearnings, fears, anguish and anxieties, and everything that drives or represses a person. It is what permits a person to do things or to stop doing them.

Level of Vigilance:

• It is the level of attention that an individual has on what one does, thinks, or feels.
• It is the capacity to see oneself while carrying out an action.

Limits:

• Emotional aspects or beliefs that stop someone from aspiring to a higher goal.
• Cognitive hurdles that hinder spiritual development.
• Unconscious internal boycott.

Mental Digestion:

• Mental activity that permits one to extract the “significance” of every experience, situation, and circumstance of our life.
• To assimilate, comprehend and capture the significance of things.
• To go into depth on the meaning of events and to translate that meaning to other situations or areas of life.
• It refers to the quintessence of knowledge and its incorporation into the being.

Morality:

• To act in accordance with the Laws of Nature.

Nature:

• Nature is like the Cosmos; Nature is universal intelligence; Nature is the feminine side of God.
• Nature is the material manifestation of God.

Negentropy:

• Order; saving of energy.

Program:

• It is the information that is engraved within a person; the program is something one cannot get away from unless one makes a super-effort.
• It manifests as conditioned behavior; the person positions himself or herself in a certain point or place.
• A series of unconscious mandates that govern our lives.

Quintessentialize:

• To obtain the essence of knowledge through a process of profound comprehension.
• To extract experience and lessons from one’s daily life and use them for one’s spiritual development.

Significance:

• The real reason behind things.
• The deep meaning of something.
• The essence of a concept or action.

Sleep:

• A deficient state of vigilance; the ordinary state of everyday existence of human beings.
• The state when one is hypnotized by environmental stimuli.
• Stupor and dulled attention that hinder the objective and impartial observance of one’s reality.

Sleepwalking:

• A low level of consciousness.
• A state of deficient vigilance.

Somnambulism:

• It is a mental, emotional, and corporeal attitude or state in which one usually lives one’s days.
• Literally, it is sleepwalking, except we are sleepwalking while we think we are awake.

Spirit:

• What one really is.
• One’s essence.
• What one can always take with one.
• The reason one was born.

Super-effort:

• A great effort that is willfully carried out, with a high level of awareness; an effort that the individual is not obliged to do but does it.
• It is an effort that is dedicated to a specific goal; it involves non mechanical and conscious actions.

Vigilance:

• It is the level of attention that an individual has about his or her actions, emotions or thoughts.
• It is the capacity that permits one to foresee the effects one’s actions will have.
• The moment where an individual’s senses are at maximum alertness.

Volitive "I":

• It is that part of oneself that permits one to go beyond one’s limits, one’s laziness, comfort, fears, or habits.
• It has to do with volition or willpower which permits one to advance beyond difficulties and obstacles.
• It is the axis of the psyche, created by a person through methodical and practical work, in order to establish a singular, unified director of one’s own internal world, and to be able to have continuity and permanence in time.

Willpower:

• Energy, strength, decision, commitment.
• It is a force or energy that permits one to do the things one wants to do.
• A conscious force directed at overcoming inertia and disorder.