tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post3093227579188661480..comments2023-10-17T20:50:15.495-07:00Comments on Groupname for Grapejuice: On the Forgotten Art of Turning Into a Tree znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-25093993918236982072016-05-04T02:47:03.546-07:002016-05-04T02:47:03.546-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.heronbonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13993372516590150498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-5695624233067932412015-05-07T08:06:38.012-07:002015-05-07T08:06:38.012-07:00Schiller emphasized the antagonistic relationship ...Schiller emphasized the antagonistic relationship between official religion and mystery cults. He explained polytheism not as a strategic function, necessary for civil society and political order, but as a consequence of natural depravation. In Schiller’s opinion, secrecy was a later development, which was necessary to protect the political order from a possibly dangerous truth and to protect the truth from vulgar abuse and misunderstanding.<br />Schiller took the Saitic formula [from the Temple of the Veiled Isis (Nature) at Sais], ‘I am all that is, that was, and that shall be,’ to be the negation of a name and the proclamation of an anonymous god. Moses went through all the stages of initiation (which Schiller estimates took some 20 years) until he was brought to contemplate the anonymous Nature in its ineffable sublimity.<br />In transcending the realm of human cognition, this unknowable deity would become increasingly identified with the sublimity of ‘Nature’. In the same year (1790), Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft appeared. In it he mentions in a footnote the veiled image at Sais and its inscription as the highest expression of the sublime:<br />Perhaps nothing more sublime was ever said or no sublime thought ever expressed than the famous inscription on the temple of Isis (mother nature): ‘I am all this is and that shall be, and no mortal has lifted my veil…’ [These words] inspire beforehand the apprentice when he was about to lead into the temple with a holy awe, which should dispose his mind to serious attention.’<br />Nature cannot be looked directly in the face, but can only be studied a posteriori. During Schiller’s time, nature was often represented as a young woman in the figure of Isis, not with a veil covering her face but wearing a veil that is dragging behind like a sail to convey the swiftness of her motion. A philosopher with a lantern is studying her footprints from afar. The motif of the veiled image and its unveiling appear often on the title pages of scientific and alchemistic books.<br />It was this sublime and abstract God that Moses had come to accept in the course of his Egyptian initiation and that he had dared – at least partly – to reveal this God to his people. <br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIrw6fwoyeMAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-81553283729042773862015-04-14T20:37:56.513-07:002015-04-14T20:37:56.513-07:00The honey of the self is Brahman. The priest needs...The honey of the self is Brahman. The priest needs the gods. Noon sense me thinks. Respectfully, DennisDennis/87https://www.blogger.com/profile/03703473570098929681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-45555016163584666082015-04-09T07:54:35.248-07:002015-04-09T07:54:35.248-07:00Excerpted from Jan Assmann’s Moses the Egyptian:
T...Excerpted from Jan Assmann’s Moses the Egyptian:<br />The common assumption was that the Egyptians invented their hieroglyphs solely ‘to express the mysteries of their religion and theology, so they might be concealed from the prophane vulgar.’<br />Hieroglyphic writing was generally held to be an epiphenomenon of mystery, invented to protect the truth from abuse and misunderstanding, and vulgarization, and to protect the political institutions from truths that would shatter their foundations. The origin of hieroglyphic writing was inextricably linked with the rise of the ‘twofold philosophy’ which distinguished between popular beliefs and esoteric religion. Natural religion in its primitive state of original monotheism had no need for writing. Writing became necessary only with the development of a state or ‘political society’ (assumed to have first occurred in Egypt), when the people began to deify their first kings and lawgivers.<br />Religion then began to split into the politically supportive but fundamentally fictitious beliefs of the people and the knowledge of the priests, which was potentially destructive. It was then that the priests had to invent a code for transmitting their dangerous wisdom. Hieroglyphics was the ‘veil’ which they wrapped around their tradition in order to protect both the state and the truth.<br /><br />Warburton’s objection to this theory was simple and reasonable. He looked into the origins of other writing systems and found that no original writing was ever invented for the sole purpose of secrecy. Cryptography was always a secondary invention based on existing primary writing systems. The natural functions of writing were related to memorization and communication, but not to arcanization.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-58930129695507490592015-04-03T15:45:53.397-07:002015-04-03T15:45:53.397-07:00This is anon again from the previous Frazer/Guenon...This is anon again from the previous Frazer/Guenon remarks. Outstanding post. I'm still saturating in the key insight of how you articulate that gradual separation of spirit and matter, or "The Fall". Blake has never made more sense to me in the way you incorporate him here. Will definitely have to read the two Calasso references you cite as well. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com