Hermetic Will

The hermetic will is the name the Seba lineage uses for the distinctively hermetic-alchemical mode of willing: not the Cartesian rational volition that elects among possibilities by weighing reasons, but the participatory-imaginative will by which the operator of the opus cooperates with the transformations of the materia — aligning the inner disposition with the outer work so that the two develop together.

The [[corpus-hermeticum|Corpus Hermeticum]] articulates it in the idiom of nous and boulē (will) conjoined; the alchemical tradition demands from the operator both labor manuum (the work of the hands) and oratio (the prayer of the heart) as inseparable conditions of the work. Ibn ʿArabī’s [[himma-as-creative-imagination|himma]] and Corbin’s creative imagination of the heart are the Sufi articulations of a parallel structure. For the Jungian reading, the hermetic will is what active-imagination requires of the ego: not passive reception and not active construction but the participatory engagement that lets the imaginal process unfold through the operator’s attention. See imaginatio-vera.

Relationships

• corpus-hermeticum
• himma-as-creative-imagination
• creative-imagination