If you're interested in the study of religion at all (at least as a human affectation), it can get pretty interesting to get into the Hermetic and Gnostic texts. Some of the traditions and proposed knowledge exists on a timeline parallel to popular history going back thousands of years. It's really quite something.
It combined with other mystic traditions ultimately informed the theosophical movement of the 19th and 20th century through to the magick of Aleister Crowley. His sex magick informs a lot of the modern incel, red-pill, and proud boy ideas that you must refrain from "spilling your seed"—that your reproductive emissions contain some of your essential energy. The result being that you have to abstain or otherwise be reduced to a plodding pile of unenlightened goo (to give the idea some imagery).
So it's especially interesting, and a little funny, how in spite of the larger mysticism having fallen out of popular favour as a way to understand the world, they still influence a great part of it in a variety of outcomes as a result of lingering practices and beliefs finding their way into new systems.
It combined with other mystic traditions ultimately informed the theosophical movement of the 19th and 20th century through to the magick of Aleister Crowley. His sex magick informs a lot of the modern incel, red-pill, and proud boy ideas that you must refrain from "spilling your seed"—that your reproductive emissions contain some of your essential energy. The result being that you have to abstain or otherwise be reduced to a plodding pile of unenlightened goo (to give the idea some imagery).
So it's especially interesting, and a little funny, how in spite of the larger mysticism having fallen out of popular favour as a way to understand the world, they still influence a great part of it in a variety of outcomes as a result of lingering practices and beliefs finding their way into new systems.