Western Esotericism

Time is Emergent and One-dimensional in its surface flow, but its larger Extent is Both — finite for each cosmic age but embedded in larger cycles. Traversability is Cyclical at the macroscopic level (the Great Year, the alchemical opus, the wheel of incarnations) and Uni-directional within each cycle. Freedom is Non-Deterministic: 'astra inclinant, sed non necessitant' — the stars incline but do not compel — and the adept can re-direct or amplify cosmic influences by intelligent practice. Historical orientation is Cyclical: the esoteric tradition typically reads history as the alternation of golden ages and ages of obscuration.

Space is Emergent and articulated across multiple planes (sensible, imaginal or astral, intellectual, divine) — hence its dimensionality is best described as N rather than as the merely sensible Three. Its Extent is Both, since the sensible cosmos is finite while the intelligible and divine planes exceed all bounds. Curvature is Curved (spheres, sefirotic trees, planetary heavens) and Locality is Non-local: sympathies and correspondences link distant bodies, and ritual at one place can act on a sympathetic object elsewhere.

Matter is Emergent, three-dimensional, Finite and Conserved at the physical level, but Non-local in its causal relations because of the universal sympathies that pervade the cosmos. Alchemy treats matter not as the inert substrate of mechanical physics but as a living, ensouled substance capable of progressive purification; Paracelsus's iatrochemistry reads bodies and metals through the same cosmic typology. This is what most decisively distinguishes esoteric ontology from the mechanical philosophy that supplanted it in the seventeenth century.

The esoteric observer is a microcosm in which the macrocosm is reflected — the central claim of Renaissance Hermeticism, Kabbalah and Paracelsian medicine alike. Physicality is Both: the adept operates on the body, on the imaginative or astral level, and on the intellectual or spiritual level. Knowledge extent and retainment are Total in principle, available to the prepared initiate through the disciplined use of imagination, ritual, and contemplation; Faivre identifies the imagination as a real cognitive organ of mediation between sensible and intelligible worlds. Obs_time_instance and obs_space_instance are Multiple because the soul is held to participate in several planes of being at once and, in many strands, across several lives. Agency is Active and Plural — the path is one of personal initiation, not passive faith.

Energy is Emergent, Infinite, and Variable: the cosmos is suffused with subtle energies and sympathies (the 'astral light' of Levi, the prana of theosophised orientalism, the universal spirit of Paracelsus) that can be concentrated and directed by the will and imagination of the operator. Dispersibility is Reversible because the alchemical and magical project is precisely one of reversal — solve et coagula, the breaking-down and re-composition of substances, the ascent of the soul through the spheres, and the restoration of fallen nature to its prelapsarian condition.

Information is Substantival and Discrete because the cosmos is articulated by definite correspondences — between planets and metals, organs and herbs, sefirot and divine names, tarot trumps and Hebrew letters. These correspondences are conserved features of the cosmic order rather than human conventions, and the adept's task is to read them rightly. Personal-identity information is Conserved through the soul's ascent (and, in many strands, through reincarnation), and the initiatic transmission preserves a specific traditional content.