Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Jay Kinney, formerly a regular on the WELL, has returned to discuss his
new anthology, _The Inner West: An Introduction to the Hidden Wisdom of
the West_ (Tarcher/Penguin). Jay has had a multi-faceted career as
cartoonist, illustrator, writer, editor, and publisher. He founded Anarchy
Comics and was publisher and editor in chief of Gnosis Magazine
(http://www.lumen.org/) for 14 years. He co-authored _Hidden Wisdom: A
Guide to the Western Inner Traditions_ (Penguin/Arkana, 1999), in addition
to this new anthology. Jay lives in San Francisco with his wife Dixie and
two crazed cats.  His web site (http://www.jaykinney.com/), also known as
Jay Kinney's Clinick of Cultural Collision, where he writes "Astute
patients will note the juxtaposition in the Clinic environment of links
and value systems that would seem to be mutually exclusive. According to
the Doctor's philosophy of cultural collision, mental health in the
diabolical here and now requires the ability to witness and digest jarring
contradictions while maintaining personal equilibrium. The Web (much like
the "real" world) provides entree to a host of shockingly dissimilar
ideas, sights, and sounds. The observation of such a mix of opinions and
behaviors with a properly detached state of mind can lead to the expansion
of tolerance or, at least, an awareness of the diversity of human
endeavor. Those who cannot develop this are apparently left with little
recourse but to try and burn their shoes, or incarcerate those whose names
look funny and were born in the wrong countries."  The real purpose of
this discussion is to test that whole mental health thing.

Bobby Lilly is leading the discussion. Bobby was a member of the San
Francisco based Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce (FACT) in the early
80's and in July of 1986 became a founding member of San Franciscans
Against Censorship Together (SF-ACT), a Bay Area grassroots organization
created in response to the censorious Meese Commission Report on
Pornography. As chairperson over the ten years of it's existence, she
helped transform SF-ACT into a statewide organization known as
Californians Against Censorship Together (CAL-ACT), which worked with
several promoinent national organizations. A long-term feminist and
activist with her background in the labor movement, new left politics and
the women's movement, she was committed to political, social and economic
equality of the sexes but questioned orthodox feminist tenets regarding
objectification and sexual expression. She writes: "At least, that is who
I was, before my life was shattered by circumstances and events that threw
me far outside of what I'd thought of for almost twenty years as "my
life." Beginning in 97, illness and a pervasive mental confusion that
lasted for years due to severe hypothyroidism and eventually, significant
personal losses left me lost, alone in a mental fog while life moved on
outside the limbo in which I existed.  But, in that solitary "prison" the
universe began to speak to me and I knew I was not alone.  It gave me
something to hold on to when I had nothing else and, during that time
apart, I learned to see my connection to "all" material reality in a way I
still have not found words to adequately describe."  Bobby also has a
passion for digital photography (images at
http://www.sonic.net/~bobbyl/index.html).
  

    
Jay,

Thank you for the opportunity to read your latest book "The Inner
West".  I found it eye-opening to say the least.  I've read some of the
names of the people and organizations covered in it but never had any
idea of what they were really all about.  That information alone is
priceless.  It alters my understanding of our common Western history in
ways I'm still trying to take in fully.  Thank you so much for it.  My
first question to you is relatively prgmatic since I want to know how
you would describe the difference between this book and "Hidden Wisdom:
A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions" which you co-authored
sometime back with Richard Smoley?
  

    
Jay, I also have a great curiosity about your personal beliefs and how
they fit into your search for knowledge in such esoteric arenas.  I
found it fascinating to learn from about your history with comic books
and Gnosis magazine and had to wonder what the connections or
disjunctures were for you to make such leaps in your career/life path? 

To me, it seems this book and "Hidden Wisdom" were logical extension
of the path you've been following but the world of "Young Lust" seems
somehow far away from where you appear to be today?  
  

    
And, last but not least, getting personal about it all ;-), I have to
admit I'm really curious about why you decided to choose me to lead
this discussion?  Granted, you found a post of mine in another
discussion to be interesting.....but to allow me this pivotal role when
I was a stranger to you makes me very curious about that choice. 
  

    
Bobby, you've got some good questions there, which I appreciate, so
let me take them in order. You asked:

"I want to know how you would describe the difference between this
book and "Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions" which
you co-authored sometime back with Richard Smoley?"

I think of the two books as complimentary. "Hidden Wisdom" was
Richard's and my overview of the different facets of the wisdom
traditions in the West. It was our attempt to summarize them in direct,
accessible language that any literate reader could understand.

"The Inner West" brings together articles on the same subject areas by
18 authors who are among the best writers in the field. Nearly all of
the articles originally appeared in GNOSIS, the journal I published,
and they delve more deeply into their specific subjects than Richard
and I were able to do in "Hidden Wisdom."

Nevertheless, both books work on their own, and if you enjoy one of
them, you'll likely enjoy the other.

I'll tackle your next question in my next posting.
  

    
Bobby, you asked:

"I found it fascinating to learn [...] about your history with comic
books and Gnosis magazine and had to wonder what the connections or
disjunctures were for you to make such leaps in your career/life
path?"

I suppose that to most people there would seem to be a great gap
between my early work in underground comix and my later work focusing
on esoteric, occult, and mystical traditions. But to me they aren't
mutually exclusive.

One of my main interests for the last 35 years has been the creation
or discovery of alternatives to mainstream culture. This interest of
mine may have been strengthened by my growing up in Ohio and Illinois
in relatively conservative communities. Since I felt that I didn't
quite fit in there, I was always looking for new possibilities or
viable alternatives. 

Underground comix were one expression of that and the cartoonist scene
in San Francisco at the beginning of the '70s was what pulled me out
here to California. The work I was doing in that field caught the eye
of Stewart Brand, who invited me to do work for CoEvolution Quarterly
and the Whole Earth Catalogs, and that connection evolved to the point
where I eventually became an editor of CQ. Again, the emphasis was on
fostering alternatives.

By the mid-80s I was feeling the urge to start a magazine about
Western esoteric spiritual traditions. This was a subject that I had
always been interested in. (I edited a one-shot comic, Occult
Laff-Parade, in 1973, for example.) The Whole Earth crew were very
supportive of this and allowed me to continue with paying work for CQ 
(and its successor, Whole Earth Review) while I put out the first few
issues of GNOSIS. 

I view the Western esoteric spiritual traditions as important
alternative ways of relating to life as a whole. They don't involve
having to sign up to a set of religious beliefs on someone else's
say-so. If you are willing to dig beneath the surface, they include
ways of _experiencing_ reality in new and more profound ways.

Both GNOSIS and my two books have been dedicated to sharing
information about those ways with interested readers. 
  

    
Bobby, you further observed:

"To me, it seems this book ["The Inner West"] and "Hidden Wisdom" were
logical extension of the path you've been following but the world of
'Young Lust' seems somehow far away from where you appear to be today?"

I can hardly argue with that. Bill Griffith (of 'Zippy' fame) and I
started "Young Lust" comics as a parody of romance comics when I was
only 19 and still in art school (1970). I was living in a co-ed
dormitory and camping out in my girlfriend's room while drawing my main
story in the first issue of YL. 

Suddenly, here we are 34 years later, and "Young Lust" does seem
"somehow far away" as you put it. But I think that that distance is
mainly one of time. I don't believe that an interest in spirituality
rules out having a sense of humor or an appreciation of bawdiness. One
of my big gripes with mainstream or conventional religion is that it
too often succumbs to a puritanical moralism that can be life-deadening
instead of enlivening. 
  

    
Finally, Bobby, you noted:

"I have to admit I'm really curious about why you decided to choose me
to lead this discussion?  Granted, you found a post of mine in another
discussion to be interesting.....but to allow me this pivotal role
when
I was a stranger to you makes me very curious about that choice."

Oh, just chalk it up to my masculine intuition. <g> I often go on
gut-feelings about people and your postings in the inkwell.vue
interview with John Shirley led me to believe that you might enjoy "The
Inner West" and be a good person to dialog with. It's that simple,
really...
  

    
You wrote, "I suppose that to most people there would seem to be a
great gap between my early work in underground comix and my later work
focusing on esoteric, occult, and mystical traditions. But to me they
aren't mutually exclusive."  But, their relationship to the creative
process itself is very different, at least in my mind.  With your
comix, you were an artist directly involved in the act of creation and
with the magazine you step back from that process to become an editor
who is working with the creation efforts of others.  

As someone who is trying to bring out the "artist" in myself these
days, I have a great curiosity about the WHY you seem to have moved
away from that "hands on" connection with the creative process - or is
that drive to create still there - just not as exposed to the world as
before?  
  

    
Well, let's look at it this way. What does an artist do? He or she
imagines something and then tries to express that on paper or canvas or
whatever. (That, of course, is a gross generalization; some artists
start with no preconceived idea or image and proceed to see what
unfolds in the moment of creation.) In editing a magazine or a book, I
had a certain vision of what I wanted and found writers and designers
who could work together to materialize that vision. 

I moved away from doing comix for a whole complex of reasons, which
mainly boiled down to: it was no longer enjoyable to me. In fact, for a
couple of decades I didn't even draw very much. Unlike some
cartoonists who *must* draw or for whom drawing comes easy, I always
found drawing to be hard work. And given that the markets that were
available were paying poorly, I turned my attention to writing and
editing. In the comix field I had written and edited as much as I had
drawn...so this was just shifting the dynamic slightly.

And, I should mention, I've been getting back into drawing more
recently. I did a two-page strip this Spring that will appear in a
cartoon history of the Wobblies (IWW) and am currently doing a series
of 18 alchemical emblems in color.
  

    
You wrote, "I view the Western esoteric spiritual traditions as
important alternative ways of relating to life as a whole. They don't
involve having to sign up to a set of religious beliefs on someone
else's say-so. If you are willing to dig beneath the surface, they
include ways of _experiencing_ reality in new and more profound ways." 


Can you expound on that statement a bit, both in the abstract and from
personal experience?  Both your book and posts here so far, have not
touched on your "personal" set of beliefs.  Yet, given your deep
interest in such arenas, they must be there, right?  How do "YOU"
"KNOW" that there are new and more profound ways to experience reality?
 And, can you talk about your own spiritual quest?  
  

    
I suppose that if I were totally "on message" about my book, I'd note
that I discuss some of my personal experiences in the introduction to
_The Inner West_ and then urge everyone to buy the book. <g> And truth
be told, I was reluctant to even discuss them in the introduction,
because spiritual teachers of mine have generally discouraged blabbing
about one's inner experiences. As long as you keep those experiences to
yourself, you can still hold them in a space of "maybe, maybe not" or
"was that really what I think it was?" And maintaining the tension of
this doubt helps to keep the experiences "alive" as points of inquiry.

The problem with discussing inner experiences with others or in print
is that rendering them into words tends to freeze them in one
interpretation and it makes them become anecdotes rather than living 
inner moments. So, I'm going to wiggle out of getting too specific, if
I may.

Suffice it to say that various experiences, ranging from early
psychoactive episodes to lucid "dreams" to meditative states have led
me to conclude that there is a higher intelligence underlying the
universe as a whole; that our individual consciousness is, in some
fashion, a localized fragment of a vaster consciousness; and that there
are traditions and methodologies - both in the East and the West -
that facilitate one's capacity to realize this.

This is, in many ways, the stuff of religion, but I think that most
religions don't do it justice. In many cases those individuals who
discovered this capacity of "knowing" greater realities were persecuted
by the reigning religions as heretics or worse. Especially in the West
this led to the wisdom traditions leading an underground existence,
where they were stigmatized as "occult" or 'hogwash."

One of the main intentions of GNOSIS, when I was publishing it, and of
the books I've been involved with since then, has been to help rescue
these traditions from obscurity and make them more available to people
in a time when religions as such are increasingly in the sway of
fundamentalism.    
  

    
Each of the traditions in your book seemed to have their own set of
rules and laws and practices and some were mutually exclusive.  But
there were parts of each that resonated with me and matched my own
inner experiences.  My experiences with such realms came from
attempting to cope with illness and the resulting mental and physical
stresses to my system.  I suspect that the "KNOWING" that I arrived at
may be similar to some of the conclusions you've reached from your own
experiences and I can empathize with you not wanting to get specific
about them.  

From childhood on I've thought of myself as a "doubting Thomas" and
call myself an agnostic.  It was very strange to find inside myself
what I did.  The basic conclusion I drew that we/the universe are all
connected is not easily described or talked about.  Words just get in
my way and no matter how I try to talk about it,  I seem able to only
touch on some tangential aspects of the actual experiences.

In  97 or 98 there were reports of experiments that found a "God spot"
in the brain that when excited produced religious experiences and the
explanations and discussion about what it meant were fascinating.  I've
often wondered if that is what I had tapped into.  I know I could give
very different explanations for my own experiences but have chosen NOT
to try to explain just accept the sense of connection that I've been
left with and focus on HOW I live my life in this world/at this time.  


I liked reading in the introductory statement what you said about the
web: "The observation of such a mix of opinions and behaviors with a
properly detached state of mind can lead to the expansion of tolerance
or, at least, an awareness of the diversity of human endeavor. and also
added in that "The real purpose of this discussion is to test that
whole mental health thing."  And, maybe that's what your book is all
about too.
  

    
I tend to think of "agnostic" and "gnostic" as two sides of the same
coin. I, too, used to call myself an agnostic, by which I meant that I
could honestly say I didn't know if there was a God or not, but I was
open to the possibility. (This is different from some definitions of
"agnostic" which seem to say that one _can't_ know.) 

A "gnostic" on the other hand would say that one _can_ know (or
experience) the Ultimate Reality or God. Between my own reading and my
own experiences (such as they are) I'd align myself with a "gnostic"
outlook at this point. 

The interesting thing is that for both atheists and conventional
believers, these distinctions are largely gibberish. The atheist would
contend that there *is* no God to know (or not know) in the first
place. And the believer would likely say that belief (and a very
specific and "correct" belief, at that) needs to precede any possible
experience of the holy spirit or the divine or whatever.

As for the "God spot" question, our understanding of the relationship
between our consciousness and our physical bodies is still at a
rudimentary level. Physical conditions can affect our consciousness and
vice versa. Fasting, for instance, can have a powerful effect. 

The line "The real purpose of this discussion is to test that
whole mental health thing" was actually Jon L's. <g> But I won't
dispute it. The often unspoken question in the background of any
discussion of inner experiences (many of which are quite ambiguous or
hard to interpret) is "Am I nuts or what?" I believe that one has to be
able to live with a high degree of ongoing uncertainty when working on
one's inner life. And that fact may be why so many people prefer to
opt for clear-cut beliefs that they can cling to as anchors or
foundations. 
  

    
Until a few years ago, calling myself agnostic was my way of saying
that I did NOT "know" if there was a God (a creator and intervenor who
listens to our prayers) or not.  These days my questioning is different
and my concept of the possibilities of what a "GOD" might be is very
different from that kindly father who watches over me and shepherds me
through this "vale of tears".  For, even though I know that we are all
part of the conscious universe, I know my understanding is limited by
my need to see things simply and my need to always choose one option or
another as I pass thru time and space.  I could say I am God and that
you are God or we are all part of "God" BUT that god does not watch
over and protect "me" and I still have no understanding as to whether
or not there is some "ultimate reality" that lies beyond that
understanding.  There is a vague sense that the "universe has been
created more than once (or has created itself) and perhaps this is what
the "big bang" is really all about but there is no sense of the why or
actual how of it all.  

In my mind, we are all connected but the question remains as to
whether there is a "GOD" beyond that which I think of as the conscious
universe which created all that is and directs the play in which we all
act out our parts or if there is no play, no director, merely a
dreamer passing thru a solitary eternity and that the ultimate reality
is merely the sum of all choices, all events all dimensions and dreams
that the conscious universe is aware of it all though we are only able
to see thru the limited foci of time and space and material reality.  

There are times I wonder about the certainty of my "knowing" and
wonder if I've just managed to convince myself because I "want" there
to be something out there beyond the here and now and the thoughts in
my own brain which is all I can experience.  Ultimately, I have to rely
on myself and am the one to determine what path I take.  And the one
foundation that has carried me through from childhood to now is the
Golden Rule.  I try to treat others as I wish to be treated and take
the time to try to understand their reasons for what they do and why
they are how they are.  All I can affect is the here and now and it is
in the way I treat those other sparks of the universal consciousness
that counts from day to day and and shapes all of our tomorrows.

All the different belief systems in your book touch on various
explanations and offer ways to "know" but none ring totally true
(primarily because they are so "detailed") though all seem to see
different facets from my perspective. But, the historical development
of each of them and their impact on Western culture whether we are
aware of that history or not, is what has made us who we are.  Reading
your book helps me understand how we moved from age to age and I can
both honor and weep for those who were martyred for their beliefs
through the ages since they all seemed to share parts of the "truth" I
know.  

I haven't read the book, but from what the press tells me the popular
"Da Vinci Code" touches on part of that history.  Different critics,
however, seem to vary widely as to how well it really presents a
"hidden" history and how much is mere fiction.  How well to you think
your book does that job (or your earlier overview) and how does that
novel stack up to your understanding of that history?
  

    
(NOTE: Offsite readers can have questions and/or comments added to the
conversation by sending them to <inkwell-hosts@well.com> )
  

    
Bobby noted about _The Da Vinci Code_: "Different critics,
however, seem to vary widely as to how well it really presents a
'hidden' history and how much is mere fiction.  How well to you think
your book does that job (or your earlier overview) and how does that
novel stack up to your understanding of that history?"

I consider _The Da Vinci Code_ to be a rippin' yarn that maintains a
fast pace and does a pretty good job of mixing various esoteric
traditions and teachings into a big fictional stew. Most of its
components are plucked from three or four highly speculative
"non-fiction" books: _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_; _The Templar
Revelation_; and Margaret Starbird's books. 

_The Da Vinci Code_ concocts a "hidden history" that is sort of
charming, but which intersects with reality only occasionally. In a
certain sense, _The Inner West_ is an antidote or corrective to _The Da
Vinci Code_ because my book presents what amounts to the *real* hidden
history. Things like Hermeticism, alchemy, Gnosticism, and so on have
had a much larger impact on history than most people realize and in
many cases there is still valuable and helpful material within their
teachings that can inspire people today. _The Inner West_'s purpose is
to share that history and provide an overview, so that if the reader is
intrigued by any of these subjects, he or she will get a good head
start in pursuing it further.  
  

    

Hi, Jay!  I'd love to hear some short definitions of these main threads
you have traced. What is their relation to the above-ground traditions of
institutional western Christianity and other dominant theologies?

Also, there's a resurgence in Kabbalah these days.  How does that Jewish
tradition tie in with these others?
  

    
Jay, 
Perhaps in answering Gail's questions, you could give us some sense of
the historical scope of your book? I'd love to see a sketchy time-line
of the various groups and personalities in it.  The articles, although
presenting a good overview of each, did not leave me feeling
chronologically grounded in the overall subject and I wanted a better
overall sense of this inner history.  Is that something "Hidden
Wisdom", your earlier book with Richard Smoley does?

And, in line with Gail's question on Kabbalah, I have to admit that I
initially found the split you made between Eastern and Western
religions surprising.  I do not normally think of Islam or the Jewish
faith as particularly "Western" so was surprised when I first leafed
through the book to find articles touching on both Jewish mysticism and
Sufism as well as Christianity.  Needless to say, I would enjoy having
you address the reasoning behind both the title and the scope of the
book. 
  

    
Okay. To answer Bobby's last question first, Western and Eastern are
relative terms and not always easily defined. In the book I use
"Western" or "the West" to refer to Western culture and civilization,
that is the web of history, influences, values, and understandings that
distinguish both Europe and the Americas in contrast to "the East." In
making this distinction I wasn't saying one was better than the other
or that never the twain shall meet. On the contrary, the East and West
are penetrating each other ongoingly and the similarities may soon be
greater than the differences.

But, for instance, in terms of religion, I view the West as an arena
in which the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -
all descended in some sense from Abraham as the seminal monotheistic
believer) have had the greatest influence and impact. Those three
faiths share a certain set of assumptions and are basically (in my
opinion at least) acknowledging the same God. 

The mystics of those three faiths also often have more in common than
not. (But this can be true of mystics of any faith, East or West.
Shortly before his death, the modern-era Christian mystic, Thomas
Merton, was especially taken with the kinship between Christian monks
and Buddhist monks. And, interestingly enough, Merton was also quite
intrigued with the mystics of Islam, the Sufis.)

Perhaps we might look at this East-West issue this way: Each world
religion as it developed from its inception interacted with its
surrounding culture. Each religion evolved its particular vocabulary
and entered into a reciprocal relationship with its host culture,
establishing morals, socially-binding practices, and so on. At the same
time, the religions tended to develop blind spots and imbalances that
stood in the way of their truly serving everyone or being useful to
everyone.

The traditions that we examine in _The Inner West_ in many cases
developed as a counterbalance to the reigning exoteric mainstream
religions. They were either mystical traditions that were largely
hidden within the depths of the religions *or* counter-traditions (such
as Gnosticism) that performed a kind of critique of, and
deconditioning from, the exoteric religions. And it is precisely
because these inner traditions developed in the same Western cultural
matrix that we live in that they *sometimes* have a better chance of
engaging our interest and speaking to us than traditions from
elsewhere.   

I'll say more later, but the wife is yelling from the living roon,
"hey, where'd you go? There's a ball game on!" so I'm taking a break
for a bit. ;-)
  

    
In a recent book about science and mythmaking, I ran across the Eastern
Orthodox mystic tradition preserved in the Philokalia
(http://www.digiserve.com/mystic/Christian/Philokalia/), which was
explicated as a narrative of the universe of equal validity to, and with
interesting contrasts to, the scientific narrative. Is that tradition
treated in your book?
  

    
Andrew, the Eastern Orthodox mystical tradition is touched on briefly
in the article on Christian mysticism in _The Inner West_. Another
excellent and quite readable book which discusses it more is Richard
Smoley's _Inner Christianity_ from Shambhala Books. And Robin Amis's _A
Different Christianity_ from SUNY Press goes into further discussion
as well. 
  

    
To return to an earlier thread, Bobby had wondered about a time-line
of the subjects and people covered in _The Inner West_. Over the years,
as I've researched these traditions, I've formed a mental time-line
that works in my mind as if it were a long strip of butcher paper
running down the walls of a lengthy hallway. And I also have an
animated sequence (again in my mind) of streams of ideas flowing out
from the Mediterranean basin, across Europe, and so on. 

Basically, I'd locate the key ideas of Western inner traditions as
deriving from Ancient Egypt and Greece (the mystery schools,
Pythagoreanism, Platonism); these in turn influencing the Neoplatonism
of the early Christian Era and the Gnosticism of that era. However,
both Neoplatonism and Gnosticism died out within a few centuries. Then,
in a different but related set of currents, I see the mystical
traditions within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam flowing down through
the centuries from the inception of those religions up to the present.
Meanwhile, I think of the resurfacing of Gnostic ideas in the Cathars
and Bogomils of medieval Europe, who weren't allowed to survive. And
then in the Renaissance you had the revival of Hermetic and Neoplatonic
concepts, the introduction of Jewish Kabbalah into Christendom, and
much interest in Alchemy and Theurgy (Magic). A case can also be made
for some cross-fertilization between Christian, Jewish and Islamic
mysticism in Spain during the period of Moorish rule. In the late
Renaissance you have the creation of the Rosicrucian myth and ideal
which was followed by the Masonic myth and ideal at the start of the
Enlightenment. And this is followed by the Occult Revival in England
and France in the 19th century, which starred such personalities as
Madame Blavatsky. And meanwhile, in parallel to all this, you had
certain pagan and folk traditions that eluded the Inquistion and handed
down their own bits of wisdom.

So, we are basically looking at a span of over two millenia, with a
number of different streams sometimes being halted, sometimes
re-emerging, wending their way to the present.

I hope that helps and doesn't muddy the waters further! 
  

    
(Just want to mention that folks who are not members of the WELL can still 
ask questions and post comments by sending them to 
inkwell-hosts@well.com. The hosts of this discussion will post asap after 
we receive an email.)
  

    
Gail wrote: "I'd love to hear some short definitions of these main
threads you have traced. What is their relation to the above-ground
traditions of institutional western Christianity and other dominant
theologies?"

Many of these threads (such as Hermeticism, Alchemy, Magic, and
Gnosticism) are often looked at as old, antiquated, and superseded ways
of thinking about the world. For instance, Hermeticism works with a
cosmology where there are four main elements (earth, air, fire, and
water) and a dynamic relationship between humans on earth (seen as a
microcosm) and a higher realm of stars, planets, and gods (see as the
macrocosm). 

Now, on the face of it, this would appear to have almost nothing to do
with our present understanding of the world. The four elements are
unrecognized by science and any notion of a micro/macrocosmic
distinction just doesn't click with the present understanding of
things. *However*, I would argue that this is a matter of apples and
oranges. Hermeticism begins to be much more interesting and relevant if
we think of it as a set of metaphors with which to approach our own
unconscious psyche and to map out our subjective relationship to the
greater whole of life. 

Carl Jung, the great psychologist, drew much of his inspiration from
Hermetic, Alchemical, and Gnostic sources, and developed an approach to
psychology that incorporated many of their metaphors. I view Jung as a
crucial figure in recovering the heritage of the Inner West and
reintroducing it into intellectual and spiritual circles. 

Another example: Alchemy, which builds upon the Hermetic worldview, is
commonly now thought of as a early failed version of chemistry which
concentrated on the hopeless task of turning lead into gold. Yes, there
was some of that in its day, but it also served as a meditative
approach where what was being transmuted was one's own consciousness.

As for what these traditions' relation was to the "above-ground
traditions of institutional western Christianity," I'd say that it was
usually at loggerheads, although the conflicts were often minimized by
the Inner West practitioners keeping a low profile. The Church was a
powerful political and cultural institution up until the 19th century
when its power began to decline, and one didn't want to go too far in
challenging its theology and worldview. Wariness of the Church is one
of the main reasons that, for instance, the alchemists developed
elaborate metaphors and codes to express themselves. Teasing out the
meaning of their writings and visual emblems is one of the intriguing
challenges of reinvestigating alchemy.   
  

    
Gail also wondered: "...there's a resurgence in Kabbalah these days. 
How does that Jewish tradition tie in with these others?"

A couple ways. First, the resurgence in Kabbalah is part and parcel of
people rediscovering deep teachings within their own heritages that
they'd not previously appreciated. (Although in the case of Madonna and
her reputed interest in Kabbalah, it wasn't precisely her own heritage
because I believe she was raised Catholic not Jewish.) Most of us who
came of age in the 60s or later spent many years feeling alienated from
our own roots. One of the messages of _The Inner West_ is that those
roots are broader, deeper, and far more fascinating than many of us
every realized. So, it is an invitation to cut loose from some of that
alienation and reconnect.

Second, although Kabbalah was traditionally a Jewish mystical teaching
that was largely enclosed within the Jewish community, it did begin to
leak out into the broader Christian world during the Renaissance. At
that time, the Hermetic and Neoplatonic teachings were also being
revived and these all began to overlap and influence each other. The
Renaissance was, in many ways, the flowering of the Inner West. This is
discussed in the book, for those who wish to know more about it.