SIC MUNDUS CREATUS EST: HERMETIČKA SINTEZA, EZOTERIJSKI MONIZAM I MORFOLOGIJA PRAUZROKA U FILOZOFSKOM DJELU SLAVENA KNEŽEVIĆA
SIC MUNDUS CREATUS EST: HERMETIC SYNTHESIS, ESOTERIC MONISM AND THE MORPHOLOGY OF THE PRIMAL CAUSE IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORK OF SLAVEN KNEŽEVIĆ

Summary/Abstract: The article develops a systematic-analytic interpretation of Slaven Knežević's philosophical work The Primordial Cause: An outline for an introduction to the morphology of cosmology, evolution and theogony (2024), focusing on the reconstruction of the metaphysical architecture which the author builds at the intersection of Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, hermetic esoteric thought, Vedantic ontology, the Neoplatonic emanationist scheme, classical patristics and contemporary process metaphysics. The central interpretive thesis of the article is that Knežević's system does not represent an eclectic joining of different traditions but a structurally coherent esoteric monism with elements of process metaphysics, which can be decomposed through five mutually connected ontological axes: (1) the axis of the absolute and manifestation, through which a twofold cosmic movement runs from the infinitely ideal plane to the finite visible expression and from the noumenal to the phenomenal; (2) the axis of cognition, distinguishing intellectual understanding, contemplative cognition, and direct mystical experience of unio mystica; (3) the axis of polarity, articulating the transcendent–immanent relation through the hermetic principle “as above, so below”; (4) the axis of emanation, proceeding through the pre-primal triad of NON-GOD, the transition into “I AM” as the first self-conscious actualization, and further through the ABYSS and ten emanations to the World as the tenth emanation; and (5) the axis of modalities of the ether, through which the ether functions on three levels — as a quantum field, as the astral light of the hermetic tradition, and as the akasha of universal memory. The second original contribution of the article is the interpretive isolation of Knežević's concept of the higher impulse as the philosophically most original element of the system: the higher impulse is not identical either with the divine conception or with proto-matter, but is the primal cause itself in the most precise sense — the operator that converts potentiality into actuality and which in Knežević's formulation takes mathematical form through the coefficient of the unknown quantity x of creative and other forces. The third contribution is the placement of Knežević's system within contemporary debates on panpsychism, process metaphysics, naturalistic cosmogonies and renewed philosophy of religion, where the article shows that Knežević's esoteric monism can be read as a systematic attempt to integrate contemporary philosophical-scientific developments into a deeper esoteric-traditionalist framework that does not accede either to reductionist naturalism or to classical-theistic ontotheology.

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