The “Know Thyself” Maxim

[Dona]

There’s a phrase that is constantly repeated in the magical world: Know thyself Is it a metaphor? What books can genuinely help with this kind of self-knowledge?

 

[hollowglasd]

according to google its an ancient greek saying. that was inscribed on the temple of apollo . and came down to us by way of socrates and plato
meaning to know ones limit. mortality
i didnt know the above history but knew it was in plato.
to me its the flip side of to thine own self be true.

 

[Jsinclair]

Interpreted Biblically : Go f**k yourself.

Couldn't resist.

But to answer the incredibly subjective second part of your question : The Autobiography of a Yogi ; Introductory and practical Gnostic studies, such as those written by Tau Malachi ; assuming that the historicity of Freemasonry is as it purports itself to be (the modern culmination of the ancient Mystery Schools, per hollowglasd's factually correct answer) - download the Five Points of Freemasonry collection in the book shares sub-forum ; or one could be very brave and delve into the Dianetics and Scientology materials (but avoid the actual Church like the plague) - absolutely everything in their canon is available for free online. Link provided upon request.

 

[Firetree]

There’s a phrase that is constantly repeated in the magical world: Know thyself Is it a metaphor? What books can genuinely help with this kind of self-knowledge?

I see it as a prime magical reality / first step and the absolute essence and distillation of hermeticism - the 'prime directive '.

You are lost otherwise in your own delusions .

I suggest starting at a basic broad foundation something similar to ;

Anthropology is the scientific and humanistic study of humanity , It explores human biology, evolutionary history, society, language, and culture across past and present times. The word comes from the Greek words anthropos (human) and logos (study)

and particularly ( my 'specialty' ) ;

Cultural Anthropology: Studies living human societies, traditions, beliefs, and behaviors.

Then focus on your own 'cultural dressing ' . Then get more personal ; 'Introduction to Psychology '

Then focus on your own psychology , upbringing , influences ... in short , what built your personna ( personna is the operative 'you' it is' whatever you birthed with + all later external and environmental influences .

After that you can move to the magical ; things like , natal astrology , your reincarnation streams and 'themes' etc

There is some advice in Magick about this '

Liber Thisharb ;

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MWT 37 ;

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)

MTP ; aka LIber Abba Part 3, Ch 7 'Of Clairvoyance and the Body of Light ' ;

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[Rynnshng]

There’s a phrase that is constantly repeated in the magical world: Know thyself Is it a metaphor? What books can genuinely help with this kind of self-knowledge?

The Corpus Themeticum of the Temple of THEM. But be careful, the occult don't actually mean it when they say 'Know Thyself'. Just as the ONA don't really mean it when they say 'presence chaos'. Or the IOT when they claim 'everything is permitted'.

 

[Morell]

There’s a phrase that is constantly repeated in the magical world: Know thyself Is it a metaphor? What books can genuinely help with this kind of self-knowledge?

It is both metaphor and literal thing. The funny thing about my statement is that literal meaning is still based on your understanding of words, so change understanding and literal meaning changes too.

I think that this quote is both the goal and the guide, advising you to look within yourself and find out who you are within. This is hard and long term task, yet very much worth it. In the occult it belongs among fundamentals, I believe. When you do magic, you work with your mind. Not knowing your mind in that matter is a problem. Not knowing your limits is a problem. Not knowing if you trully beleive something is a problem. Not knowing how and if you truly dedicate to something is a problem...

In short knowing yourself allows you to effectively work with yourself and to change yourself, transform and evolve, safely.

My recommendation:
Books on introspection
Books on meditation

 

[Eldros]

Hermann Hesse - Demian or Siddhartha -- Contrary to only accepting the identity formed by family, society, and inherited moral beliefs, Demian analyzes the difficult way of being entirely oneself.
It's about letting go of standards placed on us and understanding who we are under them.
And I believe Plato also writes about this; I think it was in one of his thirty - plus dialogues. Not sure which one of them, though.

 

[HoldAll]

Franz Bardon's soul mirror exercise in his Initiation into Hermetics (in Step 1) is a good start where you basically group your all your character traits according to the four classical elements. However, it's best to go about introspection in a dispassionate way, without beating yourself up about your bad habits or feeling inordinately proud of your virtues, and to take a good look at yourself while remaining calm and impartial, like a clinical psychologist. Any unnecessary drama generated by your discoveries can leave you fixated and blinkered, mesmerised by any Big Issues and unable to see the bigger picture.

Another approach would be shadow work where you scrutinise yourself for any 'dark', repressed, or unacknowledged aspects of your identity and try to re-integrate them.

One very intriguing system is the Buddhist Abhidhamma with its

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. You could use these lists as an aid when you you're unable to think of anything more while filling out Bardon's soul mirror. I think it's fascinating because it features both psychological root causes and their results, faculties as well as emotions in an intricate interplay. Most people don't even realise to which extent they're the product of their likes & dislikes. Just imagine how dramatically your identity would change if you loved something that isn't even on your list of likes and dislikes, or hated some other completely different things.

I think many self-help books unwittingly promote snowflakey self-pitying narcissism by making their readers feel special because of their own Big Issues, thus making it even harder for them to let go. It's better to take a more comprehensive approach and see any Big Issue as part of the whole, also investigating how you routinely react to it, over-/underestimate it, live and cope with it in various ways, how it impacts on other aspects of your personality, etc. And if, as a result of your soul mirror or shadow work, you find yourself feeling ashamed, guilty, or conceited, you can analyse these emotions as well, find out where they're coming from, on which occasions they arise, etc.

Knowing yourself will help you to understand yourself better and dispel any illusions about yourself you might harbour. If anything, it can give you a more complete and detailed idea of your strengths and weaknesses, or of your emotional buttons others will inadvertently push when communicating with you.

 

[Dona]

Franz Bardon's soul mirror exercise in his Initiation into Hermetics (in Step 1) is a good start where you basically group your all your character traits according to the four classical elements. However, it's best to go about introspection in a dispassionate way, without beating yourself up about your bad habits or feeling inordinately proud of your virtues, and to take a good look at yourself while remaining calm and impartial, like a clinical psychologist. Any unnecessary drama generated by your discoveries can leave you fixated and blinkered, mesmerised by any Big Issues and unable to see the bigger picture.

Another approach would be shadow work where you scrutinise yourself for any 'dark', repressed, or unacknowledged aspects of your identity and try to re-integrate them.

One very intriguing system is the Buddhist Abhidhamma with its

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. You could use these lists as an aid when you you're unable to think of anything more while filling out Bardon's soul mirror. I think it's fascinating because it features both psychological root causes and their results, faculties as well as emotions in an intricate interplay. Most people don't even realise to which extent they're the product of their likes & dislikes. Just imagine how dramatically your identity would change if you loved something that isn't even on your list of likes and dislikes, or hated some other completely different things.

I think many self-help books unwittingly promote snowflakey self-pitying narcissism by making their readers feel special because of their own Big Issues, thus making it even harder for them to let go. It's better to take a more comprehensive approach and see any Big Issue as part of the whole, also investigating how you routinely react to it, over-/underestimate it, live and cope with it in various ways, how it impacts on other aspects of your personality, etc. And if, as a result of your soul mirror or shadow work, you find yourself feeling ashamed, guilty, or conceited, you can analyse these emotions as well, find out where they're coming from, on which occasions they arise, etc.

Knowing yourself will help you to understand yourself better and dispel any illusions about yourself you might harbour. If anything, it can give you a more complete and detailed idea of your strengths and weaknesses, or of your emotional buttons others will inadvertently push when communicating with you.

I understand self-knowledge psychologically to some extent: knowing my personality, values, emotional patterns, unconscious motives, conditioning, cognitive biases, limitations, desires, and my place within society and culture.
But I suspect that in some magical and initiatory traditions, Know Thyself means something deeper than psychological self-awareness. Does it refer to discovering one's “true nature,” spiritual nature, relationship to the divine, or one's proper place in the cosmos?
I'm asking because I'm genuinely struggling with this question myself.
I'm strongly attracted to theurgy, mystery traditions, purification, self-mastery, and the idea of becoming a more balanced and integrated person. At the same time, I'm also fascinated by practical/“low” magic and its emphasis on actually influencing circumstances, protection, divination, binding, etc.
I don't feel that I have a fixed or clearly defined self, and I don't know whether this ambivalence indicates that I haven't understood myself yet—or whether I'm unnecessarily trying to force myself into a single magical identity.
At a deeper level, what I seem to value most is knowledge, autonomy, human dignity, liberation from coercion and ignorance, and helping people develop their own agency and potential. I'm strongly opposed to people using religious, economic, social, physical, or institutional power to dominate or exploit others.
So my question is:
When magical traditions tell us to “know thyself,” what exactly are we supposed to discover? Is it psychological self-knowledge, our values and character, our unconscious/shadow, a metaphysical or spiritual nature, our relationship to the divine—or something else entirely?
And perhaps more importantly:
How does one actually investigate this rather than simply adopting an occult identity or convincing oneself that one has discovered a “true self”?
I'm particularly interested in serious historical, philosophical, or traditional perspectives rather than purely New Age interpretations.

 

[HoldAll]

I understand self-knowledge psychologically to some extent: knowing my personality, values, emotional patterns, unconscious motives, conditioning, cognitive biases, limitations, desires, and my place within society and culture.
But I suspect that in some magical and initiatory traditions, Know Thyself means something deeper than psychological self-awareness. Does it refer to discovering one's “true nature,” spiritual nature, relationship to the divine, or one's proper place in the cosmos?
I'm asking because I'm genuinely struggling with this question myself.
I'm strongly attracted to theurgy, mystery traditions, purification, self-mastery, and the idea of becoming a more balanced and integrated person. At the same time, I'm also fascinated by practical/“low” magic and its emphasis on actually influencing circumstances, protection, divination, binding, etc.
I don't feel that I have a fixed or clearly defined self, and I don't know whether this ambivalence indicates that I haven't understood myself yet—or whether I'm unnecessarily trying to force myself into a single magical identity.
At a deeper level, what I seem to value most is knowledge, autonomy, human dignity, liberation from coercion and ignorance, and helping people develop their own agency and potential. I'm strongly opposed to people using religious, economic, social, physical, or institutional power to dominate or exploit others.
So my question is:
When magical traditions tell us to “know thyself,” what exactly are we supposed to discover? Is it psychological self-knowledge, our values and character, our unconscious/shadow, a metaphysical or spiritual nature, our relationship to the divine—or something else entirely?
And perhaps more importantly:
How does one actually investigate this rather than simply adopting an occult identity or convincing oneself that one has discovered a “true self”?
I'm particularly interested in serious historical, philosophical, or traditional perspectives rather than purely New Age interpretations.

I'm currently very intrigued by the Buddhist concept of

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

- what if nobody was at home behind the superficialities of personality, no fixed identity to speak of? Looking for your true self opens the narcissism trap even wider, in my opinion, but if there was no fixed, permanent self anyway... no point in searching for something that isn't there anyway, right? I have to dig deeper here, I don't claim to have understood that idea yet.

 

[pointwithinacircle]

I have found that my magical practice has noticeably enlarged my understanding of myself. Some of what I have discovered about myself has come in the form of skills and abilities that I did not know I had, and some has come in the form of an awareness of the roadblocks that I need to overcome in order to progress. Both are useful information. so to me, at this stage of my development, to ‘know thyself’ means to figure out where I am, where I want to be, and to apply that knowledge toward creating real change in my self.

This is my first post so I hope it conforms to the guidelines.

 

[Lord Talve]

Also everthing is permitted word started by me

 

[FraterFraxinus]

Honsetly, fuck books, you just have to get rid of perception filters and look within while trying to avoid all programmed preconceptions.
There kind of are definitive answers to that but those are kind of subordinate to the glasses of the believesystem youre wearing at the time of asking that question.
You can go full meta though.
At the end you really have to figure it out for yourself, books might help but they can also just increase confusion.
Take care and good luck!

 

[Robert Ramsay]

From what I've read on this forum, in occult terms, this "know thyself" is connected with shadow work, where you try to bring out and come to terms with aspects of yourself that you normally avoid.

Or in more normal terms, being brutally honest with yourself about yourself. As the saying goes "The hardest task we face is not fooling ourselves."

 

[ahathoor]

The way I understand it is that it's less a specific thing you should know (one's limits or mortality were mentioned, or one's inner lies and the shape of one's psyche), and a long-term "homework" when searching for answers; notably, answers is what people generally went to a temple of Apollo for.

There are answers out there, sure. But the real answers are within you. Know thyself, never stop looking.

 

[Konsciencia]

It's not a metaphor what it is referring to, is to know who you really and truly are.

 

[pointwithinacircle]

It's not a metaphor what it is referring to, is to know who you really and truly are.

Agreed! The problem for me was that when I began this path I thought I knew who I was. What I have discovered through my studies is that there is whole part of myself that I never knew existed. In fact, if had asked me when I started this path I would have insisted that it was impossible for those parts to exist. But when I searched for them, there they were. To me “know thyself” doesn’t mean that I have found the answer, it means yesterday was a revelation and if I pay attention there is a good chance that today will be one too.

 

[Firetree]

I understand self-knowledge psychologically to some extent: knowing my personality, values, emotional patterns, unconscious motives, conditioning, cognitive biases, limitations, desires, and my place within society and culture.
But I suspect that in some magical and initiatory traditions, Know Thyself means something deeper than psychological self-awareness. Does it refer to discovering one's “true nature,” spiritual nature, relationship to the divine, or one's proper place in the cosmos?
I'm asking because I'm genuinely struggling with this question myself.

Most certainly ! Both the overall human species and your particular part in it . You can investigate that in ' Crowley's ' concept of 'The True Will ' . But it's not 'his' concept , it is ancient and forms of it exist in the ancient Zoroastrian concept of 'Khvarenah', most unfortunately this is one of the major spiritual principles that has lost over time , which is a great loss to the tradition and Crowley seems to only person that tried to incorporate it into the development of the person / psyche ( well, and me too ) . Going back to Zoroastrianism it has also suffered accretion and mixed up with all sorts of things .

Its good to have a 'map ' of the basic human purpose ( something like the Tree of Life ) and your own individual one . A standard map can be used at first and as you grow and learn you can refine adapt and make the microcosmic version your own .

One of the better Zoroastrian sources explains it so ;

Extract :

Khvarenah​

• ...
• The khvarenah is the archetype of the person one can grow to if allowed to grow to the limit of her or his capacity in grace, that is, in keeping with the
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  and thereby in keeping with Divine purpose. In the Avesta, the khvarenah is frequently described as 'Mazda-datem', i.e. God-given or God-gifted.
• The khvarenah is also a person's higher calling - their meaning in life ...own-work or own-purpose (in keeping with Divine purpose i.e. the higher calling)].
• Every human being is endowed with natural talents that can be harnessed and developed to achieve one's highest potential or one's higher calling [sometimes thought of as one's latent destiny in life]. Alternatively, through choice, these talents can be employed to achieve base ambitions.
• A
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  - a brilliant, positive, constructive, and beneficent spirit - allows a person to perceive their higher calling.
• An
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  - a gloomy, negative, destructive, and harmful spirit - leaves a person vulnerable to base ambitions.
• A spenta mainyu enables a person to choose
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  , the path of goodness, and pursue her or his calling without expectation of reward.
• The khvarenah is specific to a person and is different for each person.
• ...
• When all human beings realize their calling or full potential in grace, the world will attain
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  &
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  - the ultimate and ideal future existence, a heaven on earth. ...
• While to some extent, a person's lot in life is determined by birth and circumstance, a person can find her or his latent khvarenah or calling by envisioning the person one aspires to become in grace, and then taking steps to realize the khvarenah despite daunting obstacles and adversity.
• To loose oneself is to loose one's khvarenah.
• ...

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^ this page also gives one of those 'macroscopic maps ; how spirit, soul, spiritual components ad spiritual quest interact

( Zoroastrianism gave birth to magick .... via ' Magi ' )

In short YOU incarnated for a special purpose , a special mission, you are here to offer and work and show your unique perspective ad output , Expressing that brings joy , if you are lucky enough to have a job that is your 'true Will ' / Khvarenah it is like doing the thing you love most to do AND you get paid for it ! It doesnt matter what it is , in this field all are equal. It postulates each has our own 'genius ' (in both senses of the word ;

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)

'Every Man and Every Woman is a Star ' ... with their own orbit purpose and destiny .

otherwise one is sorta wandering through life not knowing why you are here or what you should be doing

I'm strongly attracted to theurgy, mystery traditions, purification, self-mastery, and the idea of becoming a more balanced and integrated person. At the same time, I'm also fascinated by practical/“low” magic and its emphasis on actually influencing circumstances, protection, divination, binding, etc.
I don't feel that I have a fixed or clearly defined self, and I don't know whether this ambivalence indicates that I haven't understood myself yet—or whether I'm unnecessarily trying to force myself into a single magical identity.

Ha ! Most people that think they have a clearly defied self are most likely to follow some instilled or adopted idea , at best we have 'operational seves ' that serve everyday purposes . Its a topic I have explored in great depth and written about else where , with others with similar views going in ; the Bhuddhists , the vedantists , The Tibbetan Buddhists , Psycholoigists ....

My view is we operate through a schemata of operative 'selves' ... who conducts all this ? The 'Magician ' of course

At a deeper level, what I seem to value most is knowledge, autonomy, human dignity, liberation from coercion and ignorance, and helping people develop their own agency and potential. I'm strongly opposed to people using religious, economic, social, physical, or institutional power to dominate or exploit others.
So my question is:
When magical traditions tell us to “know thyself,” what exactly are we supposed to discover? Is it psychological self-knowledge, our values and character, our unconscious/shadow, a metaphysical or spiritual nature, our relationship to the divine—or something else entirely?

Yes . because we are not simple constructs ... all of those things are relevant .

And perhaps more importantly:
How does one actually investigate this rather than simply adopting an occult identity or convincing oneself that one has discovered a “true self”?
I'm particularly interested in serious historical, philosophical, or traditional perspectives rather than purely New Age interpretations.

I have now made two posts for you about that .

Persevere , ask , know, enquirer , I think you have a good attitude about it and hopefully doors will open . I can open some if you like and introduce you to discussions and view points and topics , Shoot me a PM if interested .

Post automatically merged: Today at 5:25 AM

I'm currently very intrigued by the Buddhist concept of

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- what if nobody was at home behind the superficialities of personality, no fixed identity to speak of? Looking for your true self opens the narcissism trap even wider, in my opinion, but if there was no fixed, permanent self anyway... no point in searching for something that isn't there anyway, right? I have to dig deeper here, I don't claim to have understood that idea yet.

Ahhh , but the 'onion' is in the 'rings ' not the 'nothing' in the center . It can get complex , as I said I have been deeply involved elsewhere discussing such concepts , the Buddhist perspectives are well represented .