What Is Esoteric Hermeneutics?

In episode 26 of the podcast we're going to introduce the idea of esoteric hermeneutics in a big way. Esoteric interpretation is the act of reading a text on the assumption that it has a secret inner meaning often expressed through symbols or other oblique ways of expression. The Greeks when they began to invent philosophy and to reflect on their traditional sources of wisdom and authority like the Homeric poems, ran into a problem. They seemed to depict the gods doing absurd or even evil things. So what do you do with the traditional myths? Do you just chuck them? Well the answer that most philosophers came up with was to read them esoterically.