What if the greatest magic was not the rituals we perform, but the words we use to explain the world?
In this rich and mind-bending episode of The Cult of You, I had the pleasure of speaking with Charles Stein, poet, Zen practitioner, and author of The Light of Hermes Trismegistus. His translation and interpretation of seven key Hermetic texts stand not merely as scholarly works, but as portals into the ancient and paradoxical mind of Being itself. What emerges in our conversation is not a book review in the traditional sense—but an unweaving of the metaphysical fabric that The Light of Hermes explores.
“The One beyond the One—ultimate being is not found in form but in the crack that dissolves it.”
Stein argues that most systems of philosophy—even magic—trap us within their ontologies. We project metaphors like “fire,” “water,” “earth,” or “mind” over the entire field of reality, mistaking the map for the territory. Parmenides, Plato, the Buddha—they all touch this truth: Being is not a thing. It has no image, no substance. Yet it is the condition for all appearance.
In Stein’s vision, Hermeticism is not just a doctrine of correspondences or magical attributes—it is a living, poetic system that undoes itself. He reveals how these ancient texts—especially when rendered in poetic language—operate less as teachings and more like koans. Their magic lies in disrupting habitual cognition. In this way, Hermeticism becomes a form of deconditioning, a dissolving of our beliefs in the reality of our own beliefs.
Much of the conversation centers on language as a magical force. Words do not only describe reality; they summon it. Stein shows how language, when used unconsciously, creates sorcery: the spell of illusion and identity. But through poetic ritual, sound magic, and barbarous words—language can also be used to dissolve identity.
The barbarous names found in magical traditions like the Chaldean Oracles, mantras in Hinduism, and sound poetry are explored not as nonsense syllables, but as vocal alchemy—phonetic keys that bypass the rational mind. These sounds, free from semantic meaning, resonate with deep structures of consciousness and sensation.
Drawing on Castaneda, Zen, alchemy, and Neoplatonism, Stein expands on the notion of the “sorcerer’s belief”—the ability to wield belief like a tool without becoming trapped by it. This leads to one of the most important themes of the podcast: ontological agnosticism. That is, the deep practice of not-knowing, or what Zen calls “no-mind.”
Stein doesn’t advocate abandoning language or systems, but rather seeing through them. The goal is not to replace one paradigm with another, but to stand at the threshold, to recognize language’s power while refusing its final authority. As he says: “You are not your ontology; you are the presence that precedes it.”
The conversation ends in a powerful discussion on alchemy as the spiritualization of matter. In contrast to Western rationalism’s urge to abstract, alchemy honors matter as sacred—not just metaphorically, but as the living body of spirit. In this, the highest and lowest converge: the ineffable One and primordial Matter are both formless, and therefore reflect each other.
This synthesis is not merely conceptual. Through poetry, art, and embodied practice, we return to Being—not as an idea, but as immediacy. “Familiarity itself,” Stein notes, “is the true experience of being.”
The Light of Hermes Trismegistus is more than a translation—it is a transmission. And this interview is its echo. Whether you are an occultist, a philosopher, a poet, or simply someone who feels there is more to reality than what appears, Stein’s work—and this conversation—offers a lucid map to the terrain beyond maps.
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