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According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, esoteric means designed for or understood by the specially initiated alone, requiring or exhibiting knowledge restricted to a small group, difficult to understand, limited to a small circle, or a special, rare, or unusual interest.
According to ChatGPT, esoteric knowledge is typically shared within a specific group, such as practitioners of a spiritual tradition, academic scholars, or enthusiasts of niche subjects. It’s not usually accessible or relevant to the wider public.
Esoteric knowledge is often tied to a specific field or discipline, such as philosophy, mysticism, sciences, and arts.
Esoteric texts or teachings might explore abstract ideas that require deep study.
Esoteric practices include rituals, meditations, or symbolic interpretations designed to understand existence better.
Specific theories or techniques might be esoteric due to their technical complexity.
Esoteric teachings often involve multiple levels of meaning, with basic ideas accessible to beginners and deeper insights reserved for advanced students or initiates.
Accessing esoteric knowledge requires initiation, formal entry into a group, or rigorous study to develop the necessary understanding.
Esoteric knowledge operates in specialised or secretive circles, requiring interest, effort, or affiliation to be fully grasped. It can apply to spiritual, intellectual, or technical disciplines, emphasising depth and exclusivity.
One of the closest synonyms of esoteric is occult.
The word occult means secret, concealed or to hide something.
In medieval times, the word “occult” from the Latin occultus, meaning “hidden” or “secret”, referred to knowledge or phenomena that were considered mysterious, hidden, or beyond the understanding of ordinary people. It was often associated with Natural Philosophy and Magick, Astrology, Alchemy, mysticism and religion.
In modern times, the term “occult” is associated with esotericism, hidden spiritual practices and philosophies, focusing on individual enlightenment, mystical experiences, or uncovering universal truths.
In popular culture, the occult often refers to supernatural phenomena, such as ghosts, demons, witchcraft, and rituals related to the unseen world.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, occultism became a formalised movement encompassing practices like Theosophy, ceremonial magic such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and interest in ancient mystical systems such as Kabbalah or Hermeticism.
Due to religious and cultural influences, the term also acquired negative connotations, being linked with “dark” or forbidden practices such as Satanism or black magic.
Esoteric hides in plain sight, and Magick comes down to Algebra.
Allegedly, G_d created the world and all its components by adding up the letters of the divine alphabet. The letters translate into numbers.
Using these numbers requires specific (Magick) formulas.
The first two paintings of my Esoterica series focus on what I call the “G_d’s formula”.
The formula relies on three of the most significant numbers: 3, 4 and 12.
The Law of Three, as described by George Gurdjieff, states that three forces enter every manifestation, phenomenon, and event. They are called, but these are only words that represent but do not express their qualities, positive, negative and neutralising. They are also called active, passive – or reactive – and balancing. Most significantly, we should understand that nothing is static or passive in nature. Everything and every type of energy are active but manifest differently.
Therefore, I prefer to call these energies active, reactive and dual, names that reflect their nature more accurately.
These three forces manifest in everything. In many cases, we understand the need for two forces – that one force cannot create an action, that there is action and resistance.
In the Ptolemaic system, the genders are distributed arbitrarily among the Zodiac signs; one is considered male, and the other is female. Thus, Aries is masculine, Taurus is feminine, Geminin is masculine and so on.
In my opinion, the genders are represented by the so-called Qualities. The Fixed quality represents the feminine, the Cardinal is masculine, and the Mutable is androgynous.
While mathematics deals with odd and even numbers, Numerology distinguishes between positive, negative, neuter, or active, reactive, and neuter numbers.
Likewise, in Alchemy, we operate with the three primes or tria prima: Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt. While they have been (wrongly) identified as soul, spirit and body, they represent the three different types of energies that act on the matter.
These same energies have been identified in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as the three pillars and the Three Elements attributed to the three Mother Letters, Alef, Mem and Shin.
In science, the constituent particles of an atom are the electron, the proton and the neutron.
While three refers to the fundamental energies that animate everything in the universe, four refers to the material aspects of the universe.
The Law of Four has been lost, and its only surviving variation is the Hebrew formula known as Tetragrammaton.
The Tetragrammaton is the four-letter Hebrew theonym YHWH, the name of the national G_d of Israel.
The four letters, written and read from right to left, are Yod, He, Wav, and He. The scholarly consensus is that the original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton was Yahweh.
The four-letter name of G_d is reflected in the four-folded nature of the world.
In the Kabbalistic tradition, the four letters are associated with the Four Worlds: Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Assiah. While these are considered spiritual realms, according to the basic Hermetic principle “as above, so below,” the classical Four Elements represent their physical equivalent.
In DNA, there are four different bases: adenine (A) and guanine (G), which are the larger purines; respectively, Cytosine (C) and thymine (T), which are the smaller pyrimidines.
Four states of matter are observable in everyday life: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.
The Four Elements in Astrology are identified as Fire, Water, Air and Earth. These are associated with the four seasons: Fire with spring, Water with summer, Air with autumn and Earth with winter.
The equivalent of the Four Elements in Numerology is called Planes of Expression. These are Intuitive (Fire), Emotional (Water), Mental (Air) and Physical (Earth).
From an Alchemical point of view, we have four stages of the Alchemical work: Nigredo, Albedo, Citrinitas and Rubedo.
Gurdjieff stated that a human who has attained full development, an individual in the complete sense of the word, is aware or conscious of four bodies. He named these four bodies the physical or carnal body, natural or astral body, spiritual or mental body, and finally, the divine or causal body.
Gurdjieff also identified the four aspects or states of every substance: Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen.
Various mathematical formulas represent the fundamental universal laws.
For example, the formula for the law of seven is:
3+4=7
While the formula seems simple and transparent, it requires wisdom to understand its content and transpose theory to practice. Knowledge by itself does not give understanding.
Gurdjieff said that symbols were used to transmit ideas belonging to objective knowledge, including diagrams of the fundamental laws of the universe. They not only transmitted the knowledge itself but also showed the way to it. The study of symbols, their construction, and their meaning formed an essential part of the preparation for receiving objective knowledge, and it was in itself a test because a literal or formal understanding of symbols at once made it impossible to receive any further knowledge.
Gurdjieff’s enneagram expressed the Law of Seven – not the Law of Nine, as many misunderstood, misinterpreted and misused.
He said, “If two men who have been in different schools meet, they will draw the enneagram, and with its help, they will be able at once to establish which of them knows more and which, consequently, stands upon which step, that is to say, which is the elder, which is the teacher and which the pupil. The enneagram is the fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language, which has as many different meanings as there are levels of men”.
Everything beyond the Law of Nine has been lost, excluded or kept secret. Vague and inaccurate references were made to some of them, scattered pieces survived miraculously here and there, yet putting the puzzle together is more challenging than it seems.
Simplicity requires refinement. The esoteric work involves a profound understanding of the unseen and all those things out of reach for the vast majority.
The Law of Twelve is the formula for the divine creation and constitutes the fundament of the Unified Esoteric System and Tarot.
It is the highest law and the one that combines all the other.
3×4=12
Expressing these formulas artistically ensures the unaltered preservation and transmission of these laws. Gurdjieff called this method of preserving and transmitting esoteric knowledge “legomonism”.
“One of the most central of the ideas of objective knowledge,” Gurdjieff noted, “is the idea of the unity of everything, of unity in diversity. From ancient times, people who understood the content and the meaning of this idea and have seen in it the basis of objective knowledge have endeavoured to find a way of transmitting this idea in a form that is understandable to others. The successive transmission of the ideas of objective knowledge has always been a part of the task of those possessing this knowledge”.
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