tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66005943618123285132024-03-13T21:22:01.610-07:00Groupname for Grapejuiceznorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.comBlogger115125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-8573144649955871972023-08-04T05:38:00.006-07:002023-12-28T19:54:13.030-08:00Strange and Blessed Fire 5: Mothernaked<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD5CtUnSaUQZOt7dYTpNteTTmB-vKpy_VGOpijk5H97yWYQDuxhydHPSR0722rAVWY5cKPbtWTK0TgXxVOteMcdP1EO_QDcE8NWjUsALoZnRdAOJlOJNTdw2Lalw3NZ2U1wf74a0C6i_XZzxMLzebqop2upChC18iC8m1RrTY9s4qUvA-VenGGlFtPBncs/s640/00_22_5400044.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD5CtUnSaUQZOt7dYTpNteTTmB-vKpy_VGOpijk5H97yWYQDuxhydHPSR0722rAVWY5cKPbtWTK0TgXxVOteMcdP1EO_QDcE8NWjUsALoZnRdAOJlOJNTdw2Lalw3NZ2U1wf74a0C6i_XZzxMLzebqop2upChC18iC8m1RrTY9s4qUvA-VenGGlFtPBncs/s16000/00_22_5400044.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><blockquote><p><span><b><br />While
Pico and Patrizzi might differ on Aristotle, their philosophies
incurred the common fate of condemnation by the Church. Yet neither was
intentionally unorthodox, and in this they differed from the most
notorious of the Renaissance Platonists, Giordano Bruno (1578-1600),
who, not content with </b></span><b>“</b><span><b>telescoping</b></span><b>”</b><span><b> Plotinus</b></span><b>’</b><span><b> three Hypostases into one
another, took the further step, which all ancient Neoplatonists had
resisted, of identifying the infinity of Matter with that of the One.</b></span></p><p><span>R.T. Wallis, <i>Neoplatonism</i>, p.172<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p><span></span></p><p></p><p>While
earlier Neoplatonists “telescoped” the Hypostases of the Psyche (soul),
Nous (higher mind or spirit), and the wholly transcendent One, holding
the first two as aspects of the last, Bruno came to view lower Matter as also
being entirely identical with the One. This idea represents both a radical
pantheism and an assertion of absolute transcendence. There is literally
nothing apart from God. </p><p>But neither is this the naive pantheism
of equating the known universe with deity. Matter, for Bruno, is not
this limited. While it is true that the actual world is in fact God, the
<i>potential</i> world is also God. </p><p>And <i>potentia</i> is infinite and eternal, as unbounded as the imagination (and there is an echo of this in the <i>rhizomatics </i>of
<span>Félix Guattari and </span>Gilles Deleuze). The Mother (matter and perception) is always united
with the Father/Spirit and imagination; the sensible is always fused with
the intelligible. <br /></p><p>Bruno’s philosophy is all of one piece. Just as there is no absolute physical centre to the universe<b>—</b>it is not geocentric and it is only locally heliocentric<b>—</b>and
there is no single exclusive incarnation at a particular time and
location but is instead distributed in entirety everywhere, there is
also no transcendent and unattainable One set apart from the world of
appearances. </p><p>Matter has always already been fully redeemed by the
One. This quite obviously involves a total inversion of perspective, a
view that contributed to getting Bruno burnt at the stake (his own Tree)
as a heretic. Interestingly, though, this inversion seems to have been
anticipated by the safely orthodox poet, Dante.</p><p>In Canto 28 of the <i>Paradiso</i>, Dante in ascent through the highest heavens with his beloved Beatrice, exclaims with great wonder:<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>And I to her: </b><b>“</b><b>If the world were arranged<br /> In the order which I see in yonder wheels,<br /> What’s set before me would have satisfied me; <br /><br />But in the world of sense we can perceive<br /> That evermore the circles are diviner<br /> As they are from the centre more remote<br /><br />Wherefore if my desire is to be ended<br /> In this miraculous and angelic temple,<br /> That has for confines only love and light,<br /><br />To hear behoves me still how the example<br /> And the exemplar go not in one fashion,<br /> Since for myself in vain I contemplate it.</b><b>”<br /><br /></b></blockquote><p></p><p>Dante
is amazed to behold that from this heavenly prospect, Earth was no
longer at the centre of the cosmos, as it was firmly positioned within
the geocentric paradigm of his era, but was in fact on the outer and
darkened peripheral of a Greater Cosmos or Trans-cosmos of increasing
light and glory in eternal dance around the Rose of the Empyrean.
Beatrice responds to his bewilderment:<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>On which account, if thou unto the virtue<br /> Apply thy measure, not to the appearance<br /> Of substances that unto thee seem round,<br /><br />Thou wilt behold a marvellous agreement,<br /> Of more to greater, and of less to smaller,<br /> In every heaven, with its Intelligence.</b><br /><br />Dante, <i>Paradiso</i>, Canto 28 lines 46-78, Longfellow trans.<br /><br /></blockquote><p></p><p>All
things have at once become divinely inverted, turned inside-out. It is
as if we have been unrolled from the centre of a torus or universal
doughnut, and have arrived at the outer rim to face the gaping maw of
the endless void, only to realize that this is only a new centre filled
with luminosity and grace. </p><p>It is once again fascinating that around six hundred years after Dante’s night journey William Blake
describes an incredibly similar stellar and <i>soular</i> inversion:<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p><b>The nature of infinity is this: That every thing has its<br />Own Vortex; and when once a traveller thro Eternity<br />Has passd that Vortex, he percieves it roll backward behind<br />His path, into a globe itself infolding; like a sun:<br />Or like a moon, or like a universe of starry majesty, <br />While he keeps onwards in his wondrous journey on the earth<br />Or like a human form, a friend with whom he liv’d benevolent.</b></p><p>William Blake, <i>Milton</i>, Book the First, 15, <i>Complete Writings</i>, p.497<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p>In
many of the Hellenistic traditions touched upon here, the path of the
soul both in celestial descent and ascent, is described as being
spiral- and vortice-like in movement. Here, Blake explains that this
motion is also toroidal; there is a rolling back at the edges and an
infolding into a new centre. </p><p>As with Dante and Bruno, both
universe and individual reverse the polarities of internal and external.
Blake goes on to say that after passing through this vortex of
perception, eternity is revealed within the apparently narrow confines
of lived daily experience; one’s limited world “<b>of five hundred acres square</b>.” <br /></p><p>Through
this vortex of eternity, Bruno’s explication of endless and centreless
suns and worlds is simultaneously and identically Blake’s teaching of “<b>the earth one infinite plane</b>.” The Multiverse is interchangeable with the Flat Earth. </p><p>And
from the same mindset, we would be wrong to consider this majestic
architecture or geometry as abstract, impersonal, alien or unfamiliar.
In fact, we are each perfectly ensouled and embodied within it at this
moment.<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>The body of man must be regarded as a holy temple, a shrine of the
Divine</b><b>—</b><b>the most marvellous House of God that exists, fairer far than
the fairest temple raised with hands. For this natural temple which the
Divine has wrought for the indwelling of His beloved sons, is a copy of
the Great Image, the Temple of the Universe in which the Son of God, the
Man, dwells.</b> <br /><br />G.R.S. Mead, “The Gnosis of the Mind,” <i>Echoes from the Gnosis</i>, p.19<br /><br /></blockquote><p></p><p>Mead
here is very much echoing Blake’s own conviction, but of course this
expresses an insight understood many thousands of years before both
writers. </p><p>The image or symbol through which perception is ignited by the imagination<b>—</b>through which Double Vision, in Blake’s term, is possessed<b>—</b>can
be described as the Word or Logos from a more intelligible viewpoint
but, closer to a material context, it is the human body itself. Yet this
fair temple of the body, although human in form, is not bound to the
merely human.<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>Each grain of Sand,<br />Every Stone on the Land,<br />Each rock & each hill,<br />Each herb & each tree, <br />Mountain, hill, earth & sea,<br />Cloud, Meteor & Star,<br />Are Men Seen Afar.</b><br /><br />William Blake, “To Thomas Butts,” <i>Complete Writings</i>, p.804-5<br /><br /></blockquote><p></p><p>This
inevitably gets derided as extreme Romantic “personification,”
as “pathetic fallacy,” from people who do not understand Blake and the
Romantics. The temple of the universe, in the form of the Divine Man, is
replicated in a sort of fractal entirety in every “part” of the
universe. Little men are everywhere. <br /><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIxPDqg2mf-M4qoAnFUqlM-2npDIM1tUQpKzWusfHHoe76bZ4yOJ2GohTVVcESx_0v1kUm74aHZz20Byo8Ak5UB1JpvkjjD1PyBU6IdlvuveRJQNNiV2U8Gbk6L6cFLc3WmQuwX96WXqa1NG2vDTJczOo5Kk-_wapRE1gPd1dC5nLY8c4cnVNEh_Zl73rI/s1000/1t3nzeqafcz81.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="714" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIxPDqg2mf-M4qoAnFUqlM-2npDIM1tUQpKzWusfHHoe76bZ4yOJ2GohTVVcESx_0v1kUm74aHZz20Byo8Ak5UB1JpvkjjD1PyBU6IdlvuveRJQNNiV2U8Gbk6L6cFLc3WmQuwX96WXqa1NG2vDTJczOo5Kk-_wapRE1gPd1dC5nLY8c4cnVNEh_Zl73rI/w457-h640/1t3nzeqafcz81.jpg" width="457" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>But it is likewise limited
to understand these human-formed figures as being exclusively male in
sex or gender. At the very least, they are androgynous, hermaphroditic
or, as I prefer to fantasize, each comprises “man” as a couple of
full-lotused, yab-yummy, ecstatic lovers<b>—male and female He created them—</b>gloriously grinding out the each and all in generation and regeneration. </p><p>But we also know from the Apocalypses of Ezekiel and John that these figures are fourfold:<b> </b>Leonine,
Taurean, Aquiline and Angelic; three-quarters bestial, whirling and
interlocking and illuminated UFO-like; great multi-eyed wheels within
wheels within wheels, rollicking and undulating in indescribable ways. </p><p>These are the <i>iynges</i> and <i>synoches</i> of the <i>Chaldean Oracles</i>, the Vishvarupa of the <i>Mahabharata</i>,
the Thrones and Seraphim of the Pseudo-Dionysian celestial hierarchy,
the sprites and nixies of rural pagan folklore, the etymological root
deities, each atom, every quark. </p><p>They are in truth our own
bodies “<b>seen afar</b>” and seen within. And they are the reflections of the
Word, just as the Word is a reflection and a refocusing of them.<br /><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">****<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b><br />But perhaps my readers will say: But this is the Christian Gnosis and
not the Gnosis of the Mind! My dear friends (if you would permit me, I
would reply), there is no Christian Gnosis and Trismegistic Gnosis;
there is but one Gnosis. If that Gnosis was for certain purposes either
associated with the name and the mystic person of the Great Teacher
known as Jesus of Nazareth, or handed on under the typical personality
of Great Hermes, it is not for us to keep the two streams apart in heart
and head in water-tight compartments. The two traditions mutually
interpret and complete one another. They are contemporaneous; they are
both part and parcel of the same Economy.</b> <br /><br />G.R.S. Mead, “The Gnosis of the Mind,” <i>Echoes from the Gnosis</i>, p.22<br /><br /></blockquote><p></p><p>Mead
necessarily reminds us at this point that it is upon categories and
typologies that we stumble. Jesus Christ remains the ultimate stumbling
block, for both believers and deniers. </p><p>For believers, Jesus is
exclusively expressed through the words and deeds of the
perfectly-human/perfectly-divine figure of the four gospels of the New
Testament and the biblical and extra-biblical orthodox commentaries on
these gospels. To suggest that there are other sources and commentaries
available for our upliftment is to utter heresy. </p><p>Such “orthodoxy”
involves the faith that the Canon was solely determined by existing
ecclesiastical and political authorities, and that true vision both
starts and ends with this established Canon. It is Christ-in-a-box and
all who remain open to past and present revelation will necessarily
stumble and trip over this particular obstacle.</p><p>But the deniers
are similarly blocked, tripped up by the flipside of the same dogma. The
orthodox position being evidently no secure centre, they deny the
possibility of all centres. “Christ” even “God” become hateful, shameful
words for them, tainted inexorably by Church excesses. </p><p>The history of vision is foolishly equated with the history of hypocrisy and corruption<b>—</b>Empire, Crusades, Inquisitions, witch-hunts, wars of religion, colonialism, slavery, fundamentalism. </p><p>But
in truth, vision has nothing to do with history. It is a glimpse, and
maybe longer than a glimpse, into eternity. Just as Nietzsche exclaimed
that there was really only one Christian<b>—</b>Christ Himself<b>—</b>Christianity does not exclusively own or contain its namesake. </p><p>As we’ve seen, the Manichaeans and other Gnostics<b>—</b>hell, even St. Augustine himself<b>—</b>believed
that Christ, the Luminous Jesus, was there at the beginning of time.
And, even within full orthodoxy as the Second Person of the Trinity, He
is exalted as being eternal, timeless, coming from before the beginning.
But for the same reason, He should not be considered as the exclusive
theological property of any one tradition or denomination. </p><p>Thus,
in understandable reaction to the intolerance and provincialism of the
orthodox churches, the deniers are impaled on the other horn of <i>limitation</i>. Yet instead, the centre is truly everywhere<b>—</b>in
space, in time, in thought, in perception. Christ has definite
teachings, which should be meditated deeply upon, but He is bound by no
churchly dogma.</p><p>For myself, and for many, many others, partially
and fully traumatized by what gets called “Christian fundamentalism,”
perhaps the most heinous doctrine promulgated is that of <i>eternal damnation</i>:
the belief that a soul of whatever cultural background will suffer
endless torment in Hell for the sole crime of not having faith in
official Christian dogma, and so not having her preexisting sins
forgiven. </p><p>This doctrine, while maybe temporarily enabling the
Church to gather wayward sheep back into its fold through sheer fear
alone, is enough to repulse anyone who values compassion as a virtue. </p><p>This was my own experience and one that is best told of Stephen Dedalus in <i>The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</i>.
How many millions have rejected Christ on the grounds that they falsely
thought that He advocated the endless fiery torture of nonbelievers?</p><p>But without wading into the centuries-long debate of “infernalism” vs. “universalism”<b>—</b>the counter-teaching that eventually all souls will be lovingly saved<b>—</b>it
is enough to assert that the former doctrine is not biblical; it is not
incontrovertibly taught in either the Old or the New Testaments, and it
was disputed by early Christians and by Church Fathers like Origen,
Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa. </p><p>Universalism, often
coupled with rejection of the nearly as pernicious doctrine of Original
Sin, persisted as a largely underground belief throughout the history of
the Church. It was a common creed of Christian mysticism and many of
the writers that float through these pages were more or less
universalists<b>—</b>Bruno, Blake, Steiner, Yeats, Mead, Upward, Dante(?), Law(?), Barfield(<i>??</i>). </p><p>The
one big exception here is St. Augustine himself who, based on his own
prejudices and his interpretation of occasionally mistranslated Latin
versions of the scriptures, was instrumental in solidifying and
codifying the doctrine of eternal damnation within the Church.</p><p>Even
C.S. Lewis, beloved of literalist Christians of all stripes, may have
been a closet universalist. At the very least he was an <b>inclusivist—</b>one who believes that good non-Christians could be saved after death. </p><p>The case of Emeth in <i>The Last Battle </i>is
often cited in the argument for Lewis’ inclusivism. Emeth was a
Calormen captain, an enemy of Narnia, who faithfully served the heathen
god Tash and who considered Aslan a false deity. But because of his
faith, his good works and character Emeth was saved by Aslan after his
death. Aslan explains this apparent incongruity:<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>Therefore
if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is
by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who
reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says
the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is
accepted.</b><br /><br />C.S. Lewis, <i>The Last Battle</i>, p.156<br /><br /></blockquote><p></p><p>In
other words, the Logos is not limited by language, or culture, or
religious tradition or even by world. It is the heart that would receive
the Logos that is paramount. And only a knock at the door is required.
<br /></p><p>But beyond this and other textual indications in his written
work that Lewis might have had quasi-universalist sympathies, there is
the fact that two of his biggest influences, the Scottish author George
MacDonald and the contemporary Indian Christian mystic, Sundar Singh,
who disappeared without a trace on a solo Himalayan pilgrimage, were
both outspoken universalists. </p><p>In any case, Christianity without
the scourge of the doctrine of eternal damnation at once frees itself
from the fear and control games of historical authorities and returns to
the message of universal love. </p><p>And, as Mead points out, the
early Gnostic traditions, Christian, Hermetic and otherwise, were
inseparable, interpenetrating, mutually illuminating, universal in
scope. Just as, within orthodox Christianity, the gospels and epistles
and revelation of the New Testament unlock and complete the law, wisdom,
histories, visions and prophecies of the Old Testament, the
non-canonical Gnostic scriptures take on the same hermeneutical and
exegetical role for the New Testament. </p><p>Reading the Old Testament
of the Bible, one realizes that the entirety of the New Testament is
essentially contained within it. It’s all there. But, in precisely the
same way, through the lens of the Gnostic scriptures<b>—</b>only
available in part for widespread study in the West for little over a
hundred years, with the Nag Hammadi translations released to the general
public only in the 1970s<b>—</b>a reader discovers the incredibly “Gnostic” quality of the canonical Bible. </p><p>An
encyclopedic, apocalyptic, psychedelic, wise, multi-dimensional, erotic
and endlessly uplifting masterpiece of literature is opened up. It is
incontestably the greatest books of books.</p><p>Nothing in the
Nag Hammadi scriptures is lacking from the Bible. Christ is on every
page of the Old Testament, just as the gnosis is found on every page of
the New. Our culture has, comparatively recently, been textually
empowered to discover that orthodoxy is in fact gnostic, just as gnosis
is orthodoxy. But it has been a long strange path to this realization,
much of it far from and in resistance to the citadels of temporal and
ecclesiastical control.<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>Christianity is a Greek mystery religion which developed logically step
by step out of those which came before it. After Jesus’ death, the next
great step was Paul; after that the <i>pagan</i> writer Plotinus</b><b>—</b><b>not the
Catholic/Christian Church; it was Neoplatonism which carried Jesus’ true
esoteric doctrines on, which before Jesus came out of the Orphic
mysteries and so on back, especially to Zagreus. That all this had to
encoded was because of the Roman-Jewish opposition to Greek mystery
cults, since several of those cults had conspired/were continually
conspiring to overthrow the tyranny of Rome. </b><br /><br />Philip K. Dick, <i>The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick</i>, p.83<br /><br /></blockquote><p></p><p>Philip K. Dick was an author of speculative fiction who early on was able to apply—to <i>make new</i>—the
insights of the recently translated Nag Hammadi Library to his own
profound and postmodern apocalypses. Yet it was not until 2011, with the
partial publication of his massive <i>Exegesis</i>, that the scope and depth of his own interpretive exploration was made clear. </p><p>If
the gnostic mysteries, as he explains, stretch back to Orpheus, to
Zagreus and further back to primeval mystical explosions and implosions
everywhere, then they also span forward, in a lineage that he sketches
out, to PKD himself (although Dick here does not mention the potent
Neoplatonic tradition—from Pseudo-Dionysius to St. Maximus the Confessor
to Eriugena to later mystics like Meister Eckhart, etc.<b>—</b>within Christianity itself). </p><p>The publication of the <i>Exegesis</i> is also the unearthing of the <i>homoplasmate</i>,
the Gnosis in human form, the Christ, the Word that bridges and infuses
Perception with the Imagination. Dick is also a priest of the order of
Melchizedek.</p><p>And as a true prophet, PKD is crying out in the
wilderness, on the margins of acceptable thought, against the Powers and
Principalities of this world: <span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc">Pharisaical</span></span> and Roman Imperial authority, and the tentacles of this Leviathan which also reach out to the present<b>—</b>Babylon, Rome, London, Washington. </p><p>It has always<b>—</b>on
through the early Christians and Gnostics, the Cathars, the
troubadours, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Levelers and Diggers
and anti-authoritarian revolutionaries everywhere<b>—</b>been a
spiritual and existential struggle of AMOR against ROMA. The Empire, <b>the
Black Iron Prison</b>, has never died but neither has the radical
Everlasting Gospel that has resisted it at every turn.<br /></p><p>ROMA
represents the partial vision, the Lesser Mystery confined to the
initiates of the elite, the monopolization of mystic potency trapped in
time and place. But the Word is AMOR and the full Mysteries have once
again been opened to everyone. Nothing has been held back. All will be
saved, final justice attained, through the Imagination.<br /><br /></p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the
liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of
Imagination.
Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable
Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our
Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no
more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel.</b></p><p>William Blake, <i>Jerusalem</i>, “<span>To the Christians,</span>”<span> <i>Complete Writings</i>, p.716-7<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p><span></span></p><p>Blake
not only extols with passion that the Christian Gospel is identical to
the freedom of the mind and body of the individual “<b>to exercise the Divine Arts of the Imagination</b>,” but he definitively and defiantly asserts that the Apostles knew and affirmed the same truth. </p><p>Far
from inventing or fantasizing his own quirky belief system, Blake is
saying that the Imagination is at the very core of Christianity. He is
in fact saying that Jesus <i>is</i> the Imagination and the fully perceived world<b>—</b>the world of double, triple, quadruple vision<b>—</b>is
also identical to this. When the doors of perception are cleansed by
Christ, then Christ, the eternal and infinite Word, becomes the sole
object of perception. <br /><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3kLIe8ZVHVK3mmso0ZSINf3cJQHPMdRsK2koXql5Miw1x5MJpqqDneSEPih3PpKzFMQ8JKZ5PeXv746BdwmT1Jjs23YrGLVk26gTcKa5xV-eLUsZPz4LvBM51eN4ZV7P8_5KJPoYp5sZpJ_D0Y1NrW4Uq7aNaqdk--a72zTx21Kvx6vLTh7V9EEHl5mct/s600/bsba410503200l.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="552" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3kLIe8ZVHVK3mmso0ZSINf3cJQHPMdRsK2koXql5Miw1x5MJpqqDneSEPih3PpKzFMQ8JKZ5PeXv746BdwmT1Jjs23YrGLVk26gTcKa5xV-eLUsZPz4LvBM51eN4ZV7P8_5KJPoYp5sZpJ_D0Y1NrW4Uq7aNaqdk--a72zTx21Kvx6vLTh7V9EEHl5mct/w589-h640/bsba410503200l.jpg" width="589" /></a></div><br />Nietzsche, smashing his hammer down upon
all that was resentful, false, hypocritical, twisted, life-denying,
non-creative in Western culture, was not that far from Blake. <p>The
God whose death Nietzsche’s Madman announced, was the the minimal
post-Enlightenment God of Deism, the Blind Clockmaker that wound up the
universe and let it slowly run down. This was the God who modern science
had made obsolete, irrelevant, disposable, and whose moral laws and
huffing and puffing had long since been ignored by Western
intellectuals. <br /></p><p>But if by this great death the horizon has
been erased, the centre unfixed, all secure categories blurred and
melted away, the poles of certainty plucked out of the ground and cast
without vessel or support into the <span>
Maelstrom and the Abyss, then once more Chaos, the ever-flowering
source of all potential, generation and surprise comes glaringly into view. </span></p><p><span>This is the Imagination of the I AM, the true Deity of which the modern Yaldabaoth, our own Demiurge, Blake</span>’<span>s Nobodaddy, is only a single small aspect and facet and personae of. Nietzsche</span>’<span>s
radical critique of existing Christianity directed a blast to the heart
of Platonic transcendentalism, which he rightly argued was the basis
for almost all European theology and philosophy, but a blast that did
not fire back to the pre-Socratic philosophers</span><b>—</b><span>Thales, Heraclitus, etc. <br /><br /></span></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>The
everlasting and exclusive coming-to-be, the impermanence of everything
actual, which constantly acts and comes-to-be but never is, as
Heraclitus teaches it, is a terrible, paralyzing thought. Its impact on
men can most nearly be likened to the sensation during an earthquake
when one loses one's familiar confidence in a firmly grounded earth. It
takes astonishing strength to transform this reaction into its
op posite, into sublimity and the feeling of blessed astonishment.
Heraclitus achieved this by means of an observation regarding the actual
process of all coming-to-be and passing away.</b> </span></p><p><span>Friedrich Nietzsche, <i>Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks</i>, p.54<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p><span>These
early Greek thinkers were hailed by Nietzsche for teaching of the
divine within that is not apart from this world, of the transcendent
within the immanent, of the potential within the actual. Nietzsche also
seems to have recognized a similar realization in the Christian
Dostoevsky, who he called </span>“<span><b>the only psychologist from whom I</b></span><span><b> had anything to learn</b></span>.”<span> (Friedrich Nietzsche, <i>Twilight of the Idols</i>, p.109)<i><br /></i></span></p><p><span>And I would argue, perhaps alongside several of those struck by Nietzsche</span><b>—</b><span>Yeats, Steiner, Joyce, etc.</span><b>—</b><span>that there is a definite lineage, stemming from the negative dialectics of Plato</span>’<span>s <i>Parmenides</i> (Plato's thought more fully described as representing a merger of Parmenides</span>’<span> monism of being with Heraclitus</span>’<span> monism of becoming),</span><span> which has run through the Neoplatonists, the Christian mystics and onward, and which also celebrates God in this world. </span></p><p><span>At times, this negative theology approaches the anti-metaphysical fourfold negation</span><b>—</b><span>neither A, nor not-A, nor both A and not-A, nor neither</span><b>—</b><span>of Nagarjuna, the first century </span>Mādhyamaka<span> Buddhist philosopher, himself in all likelihood indirectly influenced by Parmenidean-derived negative dialectics. </span></p><p><span>From negative theology</span><b>—</b><span>God is not this, not that, inexpressible by human language</span><b>—</b><span>to negative <i>a</i>theology</span><b>—</b><span>the radical negation that breaches the category of theology altogether, neither <i>theos</i> nor <i>logos</i></span><b>—</b><span>to the idea that all things, all objects of perception, substantial and mental, in Buddhist terms all <i>dharmas</i>, are ultimately unclassifiable, wondrous, utterly mysterious. </span></p><p><span>Here also is an entry point back to Bruno</span>’<span>s
equation of the One with Matter. All is empty. No single thing can be
untwined from the everything without the unravelling of all. Yet again,
this is no simple pantheism. This is not the equation of the actual with
God, but the identity of all that is potential, opening up at every
unhindered instant of perception, with the </span>“<span>mind</span>”<span> of the eternal I AM. </span></p><p><span>And if this <i>can</i> be expressed as a pantheism, then it also is a monotheism</span><b>—</b><span>it is singular</span><b>—</b><span><i>and</i> a polytheism</span><b>—</b><span>all gods, all spirits, reflect the rays of the Light</span><b>—</b><span><i>and</i> in a Buddhist manner also an atheism</span><b>—</b><span>the One is well beyond the limiting categories of existence and non-existence, truly more Zero than One.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span>**** <br /></span></p><p><span></span></p><p><span>So where does this take us? This is not the </span>“<span><b>absolute vacuum</b></span>”<span>
of modern nihilism that Hans Jonas warns against. Instead, as with the
Gnostics, the sparks of the One are witnessed in all things and
especially within the hearts of those witnessing. </span></p><p><span>Yet more in line with Plotinus than with those sects of extreme anti-cosmic, anti-psychic dualistic Gnostics</span><b>—</b><span>if this anti-material interpretation of their beliefs was ever in fact the complete and correct one</span><b>—</b><span>this beautiful universe and its truly angelic archons</span><b>—</b><span>not cosmic oppressors but the planetary guardians of the inner and outer spheres</span><b>—</b><span>are lauded, revered and worshiped as manifestations of the One. </span></p><p><span>The
extensions of the imagination through our tools and media are likewise,
as with McLuhan, affirmed but not without caution. Things are made idols
when we attempt to categorize them and set them apart from the One.
McLuhan</span>’<span>s own critique of
the Gnostics, greatly informed/misinformed by Eric Voegelin, was that
they represented the most damnable heresy</span><b>—</b><span>the conviction that humans can become gods, without and separated from God entirely. </span></p><p><span>It
may be that present-day transhumanists have in effect taken this
position, but this is not the thought of the original Gnostics of any
sect. In fact, the blasphemy of a lesser being arrogating ultimate
control and authority is precisely that which the Gnostics accused
Yaldabaoth, the blind and tyrannical Demiurge and chief enemy, of
committing. </span></p><p><span>From the
Gnostic perspective, the jealousy which the Demiurge and his fellow
Archons expressed when Adam and Eve partook of the Fruit of the Tree of
Good and Evil, was not the disappointment of the true Father about the
disobedience of his most beloved creatures, but the fear and envy of a
lesser deity about the imminent ascension of humanity to the One.</span></p><p><span>The Gnostic </span>“<span>inversion</span>”<b>—</b><span>really only a reinterpretation</span><b>—</b><span>of </span>“<span>orthodox</span>”<span> Christianity begins with this myth. But in fact gnosis</span><b>—</b><span>an intuitive thunderbolt of knowledge</span><b>—</b><span>is
not opposed to either reason or faith. The three are aspects of one
experience. Alexandria ring-dances with Athens and Jerusalem.<br /></span></p><p><span>The
judgemental and at times apparently genocidal Yahweh of the Old
Testament can either be rejected as a cosmic tyrant, as he largely was
by the Gnostics, or he can be understood as being but one aspect of the
Father, Justice as well as Mercy, as he is worshiped by orthodox Jews
and Christians alike. Or, as in the mystic reading, he can be taken as
something wholly beyond what is literally expressed or expressible. <br /></span></p><p><span>In
any case, sin, as taught by Nietzsche, is separation. A god, or an
angel, or a demon, or a human, who attempts to set themselves apart from
and above the One, maybe to deny its reality entirely, and to declare
themselves as the only and highest authority is the ultimate sin for
both good Christians and good Gnostics. </span></p><p><span>Contemporary
transhumanism, contemporary scientism, to the extent that it claims
this supremacy, is really plunging into the depths, to total idolatry,
to the </span>“<span><b>absolute vacuum</b></span>”<span> of nihilism, to a hell that is not forever but is very close to it.</span></p><p><span>Yet
Imagination, for Blake as for many of the others assembled here, is
<i>from</i> the One and <i>is</i> the One. Our poetic trinity is no heresy or
blasphemy. The Imagination is identical to the Father and the Word <i>is</i>
Christ, the Son. And Christ is the mediator, the focal point, the
lightning strike between higher Imagination and daily Perception. </span></p><p><span>Our perception is always already determined by the imagination; we are already Nietzsche</span>’<span>s great but largely unconscious artists, always already engaged in the operations of the</span><span> Primary Imagination. <br /><br /></span></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>The Good, as scripture testifies, produced everything and it is the ultimately perfect Cause. In it </b></span><b>“a<span>ll things hold together</span>”</b><span><b>
and are maintained and perserved as if in some mighty receptacle. All
things are returned to it as their own goal. All things desire it:
Everything with mind and reason seeks to know it, everything sentient
yearns to perceive it, everything lacking perception has a living and
instinctive longing for it, and everything lifeless and merely existent
turns, in its own fashion, for a share of it. </b></span></p><p><span>Pseudo-Dionysius, <i>The Divine Names</i>, <i>The Complete Works</i>, p.75 </span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"><span>****<br /></span></p><p><span>The movement away from both Barfield</span>’<span>s
non-dualistic yet unconscious and passive Original Participation and
from entirely dualistic Idolatry, involves the conscious and active
energising of Perception with the full force of the Imagination, and
this is accomplished by the Symbol, by the Word. </span></p><p><span>The
world is a spiraling dream locked into a fixed pattern by unconscious
idolatry and kept ever-wound by the highly aware necromancers and demons
of the dominant story and history. The only escape is the total
transformation of reality, that which is perceived and is taken as
something apart from the perceiver, through the imagination. </span></p><p><span>Perception</span><b>—</b><span>the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit</span><b>—</b><span>is
in Gnostic teaching the Mother of all things. And even in the Old
Testament, she is revered as Wisdom, as Hokmah, as Sophia, who was with
the Father from before the beginning. <br /><br /></span></p><p class="reg"></p><blockquote><p class="reg"><b>When he prepared the heavens, I <i>was</i>
there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he
established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the
deep: When
he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his
commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was
by him, <i>as</i> one brought up <i>with him</i>: and I was daily <i>his</i> delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights <i>were</i> with the sons of men.</b></p><p class="reg"><i>Proverbs </i>(8:27-31), <i>KJV<br /><br /></i></p></blockquote><p><span>The
Word, then, is also the renewed hierogamy, the Sacred Marriage of
Father and Mother. The sparks of the divine, lodged deeply in our
hearts, are the symbols, the Symbol, required to wed Imagination with
Perception.</span></p><p></p><p><span>Christ we may call this, or the sister and future wife of Christ, the </span>“<span>lower</span>”<span>
Sophia, or with any other name of the same power, of the same order of
magic, of the highest theurgy. Like Agrippa, it is hard for me to find a
more significant name, and like Dostoevsky, at this point I would stay
with the </span>“<span>mistake</span>”<span> even if it was <i>proved </i>to be wrong. </span></p><p><span>Ezra
Pound asserted that poetry is constructed with language that is charged with
the utmost meaning. The poet does this by consciously employing symbols,
the older and more archetypal the better according to Pound's friend
and mentor W.B. Yeats, and yet even more powerful if each symbol resonates
and reflects all others, feedbacking and amplifying upon one another, making
all ring and shine together at once. <br /><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUjY7tNmaW7x_rl4jGxKrNnW0p4Nmis4S8xXs1H9hpgEUsz322nNQ5m-DTDkLF0s6QRuaEY2y1fH7Of4pGHUKAbrwhinFe7S3XInAE3uYOmRDvKlHIIuIYNBwZz3UiKAZVg8-fIvfAsAUrbPdkIgI3er_nxeIdSH4cmBWDAR10xT-1pJAGEWYy5ZLOhShF/s1600/oe16_inhumaine-lherbier_c-lobster-films-en-1634691243.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUjY7tNmaW7x_rl4jGxKrNnW0p4Nmis4S8xXs1H9hpgEUsz322nNQ5m-DTDkLF0s6QRuaEY2y1fH7Of4pGHUKAbrwhinFe7S3XInAE3uYOmRDvKlHIIuIYNBwZz3UiKAZVg8-fIvfAsAUrbPdkIgI3er_nxeIdSH4cmBWDAR10xT-1pJAGEWYy5ZLOhShF/w640-h240/oe16_inhumaine-lherbier_c-lobster-films-en-1634691243.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p><span><br />This <b>forest of symbols</b>
(from Charles Baudelaire), this final correspondence, this synthesis and
synesthesia, is in fact the Eucatastrophe, the missing chapter, the
happy ending that is always occurring. The divine sparks or embers, </span><span>the dismembered flesh of Zagreus and Osiris, </span><span>present in all things, are symbols apprehended by the symbol-making mind. <br /><br /></span></p><blockquote><p><b>On this Psellus comments: </b><b>“</b><b>Each, therefore, diving into the ineffable
depths of his own nature, findeth the symbol of the All-Father.</b><b>”</b><b> </b><b>“</b><b>Uttering the word</b><b>”</b><b> is, mystically, bringing this <i>logos</i>, or light-spark, into activity. </b></p><p>G.R.S. Mead, “The Chaldean Oracles II”, <i>Echoes from the Gnosis</i>, p.367<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p><span>There is no need to </span>“<span>see</span>”<span>
differently in terms of physically altering the organs of sight. It is a
matter of learning to behold the living, breathing Symbol which finally
ties together the entire tapestry of sparks or symbols or <i>logoi </i>(formative principles) we are already composed within.<br /><br /></span></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>If
by reason and wisdom a person has come to understand that what exists
was brought out of non-being into being by God, if he intelligently
directs the soul's imagination to the infinite differences and variety
of things as they exist by nature and turns his questing eye with
understanding towards the intelligible model according to which things
have been made, would he not know that the one Logos is many <i>logoi</i>? </b></span></p><p><span>St. Maximus the Confessor, </span>“On the Beginning and End of Rational Creatures,” <i>On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ</i>, p.54<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"><span>**** <br /></span></p><p><span>Often I</span>’<span>ve noted that after reading <i>Finnegans Wake</i>, all books become the <i>Wake</i>.
All texts in fact become open-ended, multi-dimensional, eternal
generators of meaning, conscious and intelligent organisms. This is without a
doubt true. </span></p><p><span>And as I
read the Bible from creation to apocalypse over the last year, as well as the
translated Nag Hammadi texts and other extra-biblical scriptures, these
works also became the <i>Wake</i>. The Bible <i>is</i> the <i>Wake</i>. </span></p><p><span>But, even more powerfully, the reverse is also true</span><b>—</b><span>the Bible, becoming Wake-ified, likewise transforms all books into iterations and reflections of <i>itself</i></span><b>—</b><span>including the <i>Wake</i>. The entire gnostic/orthodox Trinity is right there in <i>Finnegans Wake</i></span><b>—</b><span>HCE is the demiurgic Imagination, ALP is the Mother, the Holy Spirit, Perception herself, the Spirit of the Earth.<br /><br /></span></p><p></p><blockquote><p> <b>First she let her hair fal and down it
flussed to her feet its teviots winding coils. Then, mothernaked, she
sampood herself with galawater and fraguant pistania mud, wupper and lauar,
from crown to sole. Next she greesed the groove of her keel, warthes and
wears and mole and itcher, with antifouling butterscatch and turfentide
and serpenthyme and with leafmould she ushered round prunella isles and
eslats dun, quincecunct, allover her little mary. Peeld gold of waxwork
her jellybelly and her grains of incense anguille bronze. And after
that she wove a garland for her hair. She pleated it. She plaited it.
Of meadowgrass and riverflags, the bulrush and waterweed, and of fallen
griefs of weeping willow. Then she made her bracelets and her anklets
and her armlets and a jetty amulet for necklace of clicking cobbles and
pattering pebbles and rumbledown rubble, richmond and rehr, of Irish rhunerhinerstones
and shellmarble bangles. That done, a dawk of smut to her airy ey, Annushka
Lutetiavitch Pufflovah</b><b>
. . . </b></p>James Joyce, <i>Finnegans Wake</i>, p.206-7 <br /><br /></blockquote><p></p><p><span>And
bringing these two parents of us all together, and driving them apart,
is their own only begotten, the rival yet conjoining twin Sons, Shem and
Shaun, the descending and ascending Word, and Issy, the younger flowing
reflection of the higher Sophia in her own cycles of ascent and
descent. </span></p><p><span>From here the </span>“<span>family</span>”<span>
or pantheon or emanations branch and rebranch out to more characters
or deities then are present even in the prophetic epics of Blake or in
the cosmogonical apocalypses of the later Gnostics. </span></p><p><span>And
in mock-kabbalism, all of this vast seething divine, heroic and human
multitude is boiled down to the Ain Soph, to groupname for grapejuice,
to the both majestic and cheeky <i>vesica piscis</i> of page 293: the true centre of the
book, both the womb of the Goddess and the unmistakable sign of her
Son, the Fisher of Men. The fish bladder is also a focusing lens.</span></p><p><span>Anyone
who plays around with poetry, with synchronicity, with symbols and with
correspondences long enough will come to realize that the materialist
explanation of reality is incredibly inadequate and eventually
deceptive. </span></p><p><span>Life is
far more like a dream than it is a machine and from this realization
quickly follows the awareness that this is the ticket out of history,
out of what Blake</span> condemned as “<span><b>natural religion</b></span>,”<span> out of the determinism of fate and towards the creative liberty of the I AM. </span></p><p><span>In any case, this has been my own trajectory. I have discovered that I have long been hunting for a </span>“<span>central</span>”<span> symbol or image that would unite, clarify and make radiant all things. Looking back, I</span>’<span>ve written of this several times in my journals. <br /><br /></span></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><span><b>We
desperately need a common, yet individually realized and arbitrary,
metaphor that will allow us to celebrate the ever-increasing individual
differences all around us, but at the same time enable us to experience
the sacredness and deep interconnection of all things</b></span><b>—</b><span><b>combined with the realization that each of these different parts are essential and equally play a role in the infinite. </b>(1993)<br /><b><br /><br />We
seek a symbol, an image, a sound, a philosophy, a song, to capture the
captureless, to represent that which cannot be represented; a single
point to focus our wills, a round door that opens onto the infinite, a
thought that leads to new thoughts and to further thoughts and then to
fully embrace thought itself, a crystal clear vision of the highest in
all things, a graphic epitome of the flow of love which squirms, twists,
vibrates and whirls within the swampy riot of nature. </b>(1999)<br /><br /></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span>And very recently I</span> have<span> learned that I already possess that which I</span>’<span>ve been seeking. A tradition that I</span>’<span>ve
turned from, both reluctantly like Odysseus and with eagerness and
rebellion like the Prodigal Son, has drawn me back, not through guilt or
any other moral compulsion, but through its own inexorable logic,
through a strange attraction: the downward reaching waterspout and the
upward swelling whirlpool mirroring each other in mutual yearning. </span></p><p><span>Yet
none of this could conceivably be mistaken for orthodoxy, for dogma,
for apology, for fundamentalism of any sort. Although, neither is it
intended as eclectic or syncretic heresy or the rejection of tradition. </span></p><p><span>Heresy,
more than the assertion of false beliefs, is yet another form of
idolatry. It is the claim that one distinctly possesses the <i>true</i>
doctrine, a kind of flipside fundamentalism, to the point where the idea
itself becomes primary, becomes deified. This also is not what is
happening here. </span></p><p><span>The present gimmick</span><b>—</b><span>Imagination-Word-Perception</span><b>—</b><span>is
a means and not an end and only valuable for as long as it is useful
and vital. Like all metaphors, if widespread, it will become </span><span>cliché</span><span> and
at that point it must be discarded as an inedible husk or shell. </span></p><p><span>This
is no grand synthesis. It is not an attempt at a One World Religion and
in fact it militates against any attempts at establishing this, against
any final global transhumanist idolatry.</span></p><p><span>In
a sense, it is a return to, a regeneration of, my own family tradition
which happens to be Pentecostalism. This is a tradition I once rejected
as embodying one of the worst literalizing and intolerant tendencies of
Protestant Christianity. I now realize that it cannot be adequately
summed up in this way, regardless of the many unsavoury forms that take
on its name, in either roots or essence. </span></p><p><span>The
modern roots of Pentecostalism, I discovered, are in the Azusa Street
Revival in San Francisco from 1906-15, a spontaneous outpouring of
enthusiasm that was open to everyone, that was interracial at a time
when segregation was the norm, that was disturbing of the status quo,
that was ecstatic and free. Pentecostalism did unfortunately, in its </span>“<span>white</span>”<span> branch at least, move away from these eminently radical roots, but its boundary-dissolving character remains.</span></p><p><span>And as for its essence</span><b>—</b><span>this entails the descent of the Spirit to the early Church (which as yet had no split between </span>“<span>gnostics</span>”<span> and </span>“<span>catholics</span>”<span>)
fifty days after the ascent of the Saviour, echoing the descent of the
Law with fire to Moses on Mount Sinai fifty days after Passover and
exodus from Egypt</span><span>. </span></p><p><span>But personally this goes far deeper. In </span>the <i>Bardo Thodol</i><span>, the departed </span>“<span>soul</span>”<span> spends a maximum of forty-nine days in the <i>bardo</i>
after death, the bardo also being the dream state. Forty-nine to fifty
years also represents the time of the orbit of Sirius B around Sirius A,
Sirius having become a potent symbol for myself and in the Neoplatonic
tradition the star is also linked to the spiralling descent of the
soul. </span></p><p><span>Richard
Strassman, in his pioneering research on DMT, asserted that the
pineal gland, endogenously producing DMT, is first observable in the foetal brain at 49/50 days after
conception, an observation that led him to dub DMT </span>“<span><b>the spirit molecule</b></span>.”<span> Finally, Thomas Pychon</span>’<span>s <i>The Crying of Lot 49</i> is also woven deeply into this symbolic forest; its </span>“<span><b>anarchist miracle</b></span>”<span> being none other, in my current estimation, than the Grand Miracle itself. </span></p><p><span>In any case, Pentecost is about descent and ascent, a recapituation of everything attained during the Mystery of Golgotha</span><b>—</b><span>glossolalia, the laying on of hands, the casting out of the demons of separation, the fruits of the Spirit, the <i>siddhis</i>, the inception of perception charged with imagination. Of it, I can affirm with Yeats:<br /><br /></span></p><blockquote><b>I was born in this faith, have lived in it, and shall die in it; my
Christ, a legitimate deduction from the Creed of St. Patrick as I think,
is that Unity of Being Dante compared to a perfectly proportioned human
body, Blakes’s </b><span><b>‘</b></span><b>Imagination,’ what the Upanishads have named </b><span><b>‘</b></span><b>Self’;
nor is this unity distant and therefore intellectually understandable,
but imminent, differing from man to man and age to age, taking upon
itself pain and ugliness, </b><span><b>‘</b></span><b>eye of newt, and toe of frog.’ </b><br /><br />W.B. Yeats, “A General Introduction for My Work,” in Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, p.21-2<br /><br /></blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWj-SgW6WjyEm-I7pOzwmcpx0yKJRfFjYbD-iRZ5kkfewoh-689CBW5TbQVuskIEVewm6e2ggGz9iFqsaKKU91sYidl25Jp5PidVN2EyaGOnKe3xeXmp2qt9VXjfq6BWjOoLjLzBCb4dS2pv6R3qd2JGB4Do25OkIMdtfFxSWziwf2a3PIZ71ROc8YosqH/s843/c76ec2_da2487d9e25c446883d51eecb93e1608.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="668" data-original-width="843" height="507" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWj-SgW6WjyEm-I7pOzwmcpx0yKJRfFjYbD-iRZ5kkfewoh-689CBW5TbQVuskIEVewm6e2ggGz9iFqsaKKU91sYidl25Jp5PidVN2EyaGOnKe3xeXmp2qt9VXjfq6BWjOoLjLzBCb4dS2pv6R3qd2JGB4Do25OkIMdtfFxSWziwf2a3PIZ71ROc8YosqH/w640-h507/c76ec2_da2487d9e25c446883d51eecb93e1608.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><br /></p><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-40516414729470118642023-08-04T05:37:00.008-07:002023-12-28T19:52:39.981-08:00Strange and Blessed Fire 4: Sow & Reap<div class="separator"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIzbgTPS2l1cFEjixpOcxD_EZ16DvFuIXPwd8_a9E7HC23J6PQgjrArmIhGYSP6M0a2r75U0t262TcNx-RawKezqlmhUI2u6VU-wGrUYohr3AGXwBZ8FfdrP3KuUjz29L8L7HDj0qDuNp0HEx6Z1DYGgLHDKE9DXTZDhepmsJyLd3efCPSp5qLezLgzbV_/s750/la-terra-tremma-ladjfklj-42344.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="750" height="493" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIzbgTPS2l1cFEjixpOcxD_EZ16DvFuIXPwd8_a9E7HC23J6PQgjrArmIhGYSP6M0a2r75U0t262TcNx-RawKezqlmhUI2u6VU-wGrUYohr3AGXwBZ8FfdrP3KuUjz29L8L7HDj0qDuNp0HEx6Z1DYGgLHDKE9DXTZDhepmsJyLd3efCPSp5qLezLgzbV_/w640-h493/la-terra-tremma-ladjfklj-42344.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>Owen
Barfield’s longtime friend and anti-materialist co-conspirator, C.S.
Lewis, made his own journey from reductive physicalism to something far
beyond. Lewis took great pains to ensure his readers and listeners that
his position was inarguably commensurate with Christian orthodoxy. </p><p>But as is evident in reading his intellectual autobiography, <i>Surprised By Joy</i>,
and his many other works both fictional and nonfictional, his own
imagination soared far beyond any limited expression of Christian
fundamentalism or literalism.<br /><br />In <i>Surprised By Joy</i>, Lewis
maps out his mental progression from atheist materialism to Christian
belief. Lewis came to understand that the materialist position is
inconsistent and incomplete. </p><p>We all, he realized, occasionally
have subjective and meaningful aesthetic and other experiences of a sort
that reductive behavioralism cannot adequately explain. Meaning does
not arise from any mechanism. We are not merely biological robots.</p><p>If
the materialist position fails to satisfy, one is compelled logically
to consider the idealist position that mind takes precedence over
matter. This is not the conviction that all matter is conscious, but
that all is mind. </p><p>Lewis quickly discovered, however, that
idealism, and especially the notion of the Absolute within German
philosophy, was too impersonal, too abstract. It also failed to contain
the full picture. Bernardo Kastrup would likely disagree, but this
unsatisfactorily abstract impersonalism highly corresponds with most
expressions of Kastrup’s own idea of the “<b>transcendent subjective</b>.”<br /><br />Lewis
turned next to the idealism of the Irish philosopher, George Berkeley.
This he found to be far more coherent than the philosophy of Hegel and
the German idealists precisely because it appeals to a personal God not
an inconceivably transcendent abstraction. But even in his
understanding of Berkeley, Lewis’ imagination began to move.</p><p>If,
as Berkeley asserted, all is the mind of God and He can be experienced
as a person then the distinction, which even Berkeley may have helped to
perpetuate, between the God of popular religion and the God of theology
begins to break down.<br /><br />At this point, Lewis was well on his way
to becoming a theist. And over a fourteen month period, culminating with
the famous Oxford stroll and conversation with his friend and mentor,
J.R.R. Tolkien, in September 1931, Lewis came to fully accept
Christianity.<br /></p><p>The Christian path understands Jesus Christ to
be the personal expression of God. Lewis realized that it, contrary to
fundamentalist arguments, is not the negation of other past or
contemporary religions and philosophies<b>—</b>classical Paganism especially<b>—</b>but their climax, the completion of the metaphor or the image, so to speak.</p><p>Christ’s
ministry on Earth is the fulfillment of the myriad multi-cultural Dying
God myths, so painstakingly recorded by James Frazer and other scholars
of religion, within history itself.<br /><br /></p><blockquote><b>The real clue had
been put into my hand by that hard-boiled Atheist when he said, “Rum
thing, all that about the Dying God. Seems to have really happened
once”: by him and by Barfield’s encouragement of a more respectful, if
not more delighted, attitude to Pagan myth. The question was no longer
to find the one simply true religion among a thousand religions simply
false. It was rather, “Where has religion reached its true maturity?
Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?”<br /><br />
. . . If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be
just like this [the Gospel]. And nothing else in all literature was just
like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in
another. But nothing was simply like it. And no person was like the
Person it depicted; as real as recognizable, through all that depth of
time, as Plato’s Socrates or Boswell’s Johnson, . . . yet also numinous,
lit by a light from beyond the world, a god. But if a god—we are no
longer polytheists—then not a god, but God. Here and here only in all
time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is
not “a religion,” nor “a philosophy.” It is the summing up and actuality
of them all.</b><br /><br />C.S. Lewis, <i>Surprised By Joy</i>, p.235-6<br /><br /></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: garamond;"></span></p><p>Christ
perfected, not destroyed Mosaic Law and his teaching is not at all
contrary to the Pre-Socratics, Plato or the Neoplatonists. In this way,
Lewis, like Augustine surprisingly, came to accept the idea of an
eternal Christianity which had its fullest and most obvious expression
in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.<br /><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMCBGLnzVzgbZmXhGBxxJ_MUB09dNE21oVRfvD7gJ2k2sVWxxiGMjMrGkcHKJIa_TbSwm-JBtUsCANusqQyhwp09-gcQYt5649V-1IPC8hiGjnApc9208GIf_DCwMHwAgPLtDe8iY12kNyIYLtmk5kZBjIW8BumIwQzMt5d-cFf49BLBa4gOmIzdBRIRQ3/s480/babes-in-toyland-monkey.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMCBGLnzVzgbZmXhGBxxJ_MUB09dNE21oVRfvD7gJ2k2sVWxxiGMjMrGkcHKJIa_TbSwm-JBtUsCANusqQyhwp09-gcQYt5649V-1IPC8hiGjnApc9208GIf_DCwMHwAgPLtDe8iY12kNyIYLtmk5kZBjIW8BumIwQzMt5d-cFf49BLBa4gOmIzdBRIRQ3/s16000/babes-in-toyland-monkey.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p></p><p><br />Far
from demonstrating that the Christian revelation is refuted by the near
universal presence of Dying God fables and myths, the relevance of the
Gospel is vastly strengthened by it being the crowning and fulfillment
of these ancient narratives. <br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p><b>Now as myth
transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of
Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying
god, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend
and imagination to the earth of history. It happens-at a particular
date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical
consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows
when or where, to a historical person crucified (it is all in order)
under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth:
that is the miracle. </b></p><p><span>C.S. Lewis,</span> “Myth Became Fact,”<span> <i>The Grand Miracle</i>, p.</span>41-2 <br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p>The
sacrifice of the first fruits of Spring in substitution of, and/or
substituted by, the sacrifice of the priest, king or scapegoat, was in
turn exemplified in the ultimate sacrifice <i>of </i>the One, within human form
and history, <i>to</i> the One beyond the cosmos. </p><p>Lewis points out,
however, that his friend Owen Barfield encouraged both a respectful and
delighted reception of these earlier pre-Christian myths, finding within
them the fertile soil of original participation. Just as these stories
were “redeemed” and made meaningful by the Incarnation, so the
Incarnation could only have the significance it contains, from a human
perspective, because of millennia of mythic preparation.</p><p>Through
the Word becoming Flesh, through death and resurrection, the annual
ritual killing of the plant-spirit within tribes across the Earth
becomes an act of the highest religious and philosophical importance. </p><p>And
contrariwise, the ministry of Christ should be accepted as being as
humble, as simple, as commonplace and yet as nourishing and necessary,
as the yearly harvest cycle. Every King-Kill, even of the King of Kings,
is the sow & reap dance of the vegetables.<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>The killing of the god, that is, of his human incarnation, is therefore
merely a necessary step to his revival or resurrection in a better form.
Far from being an extinction of the divine spirit, it is only the
beginning of a purer and stronger manifestation of it. If this
explanation holds good of the custom of killing divine kings and priests
in general, it is still more obviously applicable to the custom of
annually killing the representative of the tree-spirit or spirit of
vegetation in spring. For the decay of plant life in winter is readily
interpreted by primitive man as an enfeeblement of the spirit of
vegetation; the spirit has, he thinks, grown old and weak and must
therefore be renovated by being slain and brought to life in a younger
and fresher form. Thus the killing of the representative of the
tree-spirit in spring is regarded as a means to promote and quicken the
growth of vegetation.</b> <br /><br />Sir James Frazer, <i>The Golden Bough</i>, p.300-1<br /><br /></blockquote><p></p><p>In
this way, Christianity should not be threatened by Paganism, nor should
Paganism complain that Christianity is intrinsically (although it was
often unfortunately this historically) a co-option and colonization of
its own best tales. There is but one story. </p><p>And if even someone
as hard-nosed and intolerant as St. Augustine at times was, could insist
on a timeless Christianity, acknowledging the traces or divine sparks
of it as present within the wisdom of all lands, then can we not also
reverse the perspective and discover in the authentic Church the
wonderful timeless truths of the pagan imagination?</p><p>As the most
famous Inkling, J.R.R. Tolkien, celebrated, these insights can be
furthered and enriched through the study of fairy tales, themselves
narratives with roots in earliest human memory. </p><p>The joy of the fairy story comes finally with the turning, with the happy ending, with what Tolkien called the “<b>eucatastrophe</b>,”
the good catastrophe: the sudden and miraculous vanquishing of evil,
the winning of the treasure, the recovery of the kingdom, the glorious
wedding of the prince and princess, the Happily Ever After.</p><p>Tolkien
then asks us to imagine how much more our joy would become if we found
out that one particular fairy story, one that seemed to contain and
enact all the others, was indubitably true. This, he asserts, is the
Gospel, the good news, the good catastrophe or turning of history.<br /><br /></p><blockquote><b>It
is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one
would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be
“primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby
necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had
possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and
conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the
same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the “turn” in a
fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth.
(Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward:
the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe.
The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is
preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and
joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been
verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend
and History have met and fused. <br /></b><br />J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” <i>The Tolkien Reader</i>, p.89<br /><br /></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: garamond;"></span></p><p>“<b>Art has been verified</b>” and “<b>Legend and History have met and fused</b>.” Lewis elsewhere takes this idea of Tolkien’s, itself likely inspired in large part by Barfield, and <i>does </i>apply it to all art, all literature. </p><p>Not only is the Gospel <i>the</i> archetypal fairy story, not only is it the summary and climax of pagan myth within the historical record, but it, “<b>the Grand Miracle</b>,” is the lost or overlooked cornerstone or chapter to all of literature. </p><p>If, as the French poet <span>Stéphane Mallarmé</span>
not alone declared, all of literature really makes up one Book, then it
is evident, at least in the West and in parallel or subsequent
literature affected by the West, that the placement and importance of
the gospel is central to this Book. </p><p></p><p>This is certainly my own experience throughout these years of deeply exploring literature with “synchromystic” reading specs<b>—</b>the prose and poetry of the West either anticipates the Incarnation or it is a response, a repetition or an exegesis of it. </p><p>As
in the sutra and shastra tradition of India, the lineage of literature
is commentary upon commentary upon commentary upon scripture and
ultimately vision. This is not to say there was one and only one
dispensation and that every subsequent creative act was secondary and
derivative of this, but that every genuine work of the imagination
arises simultaneously with the Grand Miracle.<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p><b>Supposing you had before you a manuscript of some great work, either a symphony or a novel. There then comes to you a person, saying, “Here is a new bit of the manuscript that I found; it is the central passage of that symphony, or the central chapter of that novel. The text is incomplete without it. I have got the missing passage which is really the center of the whole work.” </b></p><p><b>The only thing you could do would be to put this new piece of the manuscript in that central position, and then see how it reflected on the whole of the rest of the work. If it constantly brought out new meanings from the whole of the rest of the work, if it made you notice things in the rest of the work which you had not noticed before, then I think you would decide that it was authentic. On the other hand, if it failed to do that, then, however attractive it was in itself, you would reject it. </b></p><p><b> . . . That is why I think this Grand Miracle is the missing chapter in this novel, the chapter on which the whole plot turns; that is why I believe that God really has dived down into the bottom of creation, and has come up bringing the whole redeemed nature on His shoulders. The miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on.</b><br /><br />C.S. Lewis, The Grand Miracle, p.56&61-2</p></blockquote><p><br />Northrop Frye is another author and visionary who teaches that literature is whole and of one cloth. The “words of power” revealed in Ancient Egyptian funerary texts like the famous <i>Papyrus of Ani</i> (<i>The Egyptian Book of the Dead</i>), resound in the Bible and are <i>made new</i> in the epics of modernism. </p><p>Frye's
colleague Marshall McLuhan, at least more famously, went further. Not
only are all texts part of this one book containing the “missing” but
crucial chapter, but so are all media, themselves extensions of our
nervous system and its linguistic expressions, just as all technology is
the extension of various parts and functions of the human body. </p><p>Our
text is also tech and in it, embedded and hardwired in the artificial
environment we all increasingly dwell within, is the very structure of
the Good News, the Mediator to the One, waiting for us to behold it and
with this beholding utterly transform and redeem this environment at an
instant. And the tale stretches as far back as it does forward.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsuvf8rpSVZJax5EFggmBeVM7JlB8YIlzrV4L3mHO_KXuG7_KEBqLFYPyiv0d9g6RINaW2ijz0v7_usZfKNuz_rJ7tUmNl8_473p2EQKRJ_PD5xL1Bvsu3tLLcvSRQ26pIL0rfT8zOv_P1oM904h7dhOHXGX2UzxZmPe6MvuWJiC3oo1T2F1Yj5IU9v5-E/s888/Vainamoinen-finland.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="511" data-original-width="888" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsuvf8rpSVZJax5EFggmBeVM7JlB8YIlzrV4L3mHO_KXuG7_KEBqLFYPyiv0d9g6RINaW2ijz0v7_usZfKNuz_rJ7tUmNl8_473p2EQKRJ_PD5xL1Bvsu3tLLcvSRQ26pIL0rfT8zOv_P1oM904h7dhOHXGX2UzxZmPe6MvuWJiC3oo1T2F1Yj5IU9v5-E/w640-h368/Vainamoinen-finland.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p style="text-align: center;">**** <br /></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>Of
this Divine Mystery the Christian gospel is a reflection in the heart
and mind of man. It is an old, old story, retold from generation unto
generation. Its words and signs are inherited from a primeval language, a
true catholic speech, whose grammar is being recovered in our days from
the tombs and dust of prehistoric peoples, from the daily life of
savage tribes, and from the tales that are still the bible of the
peasant and the child.</b></span></p><p><span>Allen Upward, <i>The Divine Mystery</i>, p.xxxv<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p>This “<b>old, old story</b>,”
rediscovered in, or maybe intentionally leaked out of, tombs and tribes
and tales in our own time, nonetheless did break through into
documented history for all to come to witness at a definite point and
for a definite purpose along the course of the evolution of human
consciousness. </p><p>According to Rudolf Steiner, this “<b>Mystery of Golgotha</b>,”
which occurred almost precisely at the midpoint between the birth of
Alexander the Great and the death of Emperor Julian the (so-called)
Apostate<b>—</b>thereby the centremark of Greco-Roman empire<b>—</b>enabled a
democratic initiation of all humanity into individuated consciousness,
even if for some centuries precise understanding of this event and its
initiation was mostly lacking.<br /><br /></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>Now
there is one period of time that has had to be left out in tracing this
evolution: the period between Alexander and Julian. In the middle of
this period fell the Mystery of Golgotha. Those to whom the Mystery of
Golgotha was brought did not receive it as men who understood the
Mysteries, otherwise they would have had quite different ideas of the
Christ Who lived in the man Jesus of Nazareth. </b></span></p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p><span><b>A few there were, a few contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha, who had
been initiated in the Mysteries, and these were still able to have such
ideas of Him. But by far the greater part of Western humanity had no
ideas with which to comprehend spiritually the Mystery of Golgotha.</b></span></p><p><span>Rudolf Steiner, <i>World History in the Light of Anthroposophy</i>, p.99<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p>All poetry aspires to mysticism. All Western mysticism is infused with the Mystery of Golgotha. <br /></p><p>Owen
Barfield, a follower of Steiner and in some respects both a popularizer
and rationalizer of Steiner’s ideas on the evolution of consciousness,
understands that the gospel of Christ was the key to collectively
advance from the passive non-duality of original participation to the
more liberating affirmation, involving duality within non-duality, of
final participation and thereby bypassing or escaping from history. </p><p>History
in its fully secular prose sense did not begin until it was tabulated
within the published histories of Herodotus in the 5th century BC. And
by then the Hebrew prophets had already valorized history as the setting
for the unveiling of the divine plan. Christ then, unlike his
predecessors<b>—</b>Krishna, Zoroaster, even the Buddha<b>—</b>lands within history <i>as </i>history. </p><p>There
may indeed be certain retroactive, as it were, evidence for the
historical reality of Siddhartha Gotama, but even so he lived during a
time that did not yet understand itself as being literal, progressive,
prosaic, <i>historical</i>. In contrast, in the thought of Steiner and Barfield
at least, Christ was the first and triumphal saviour of history, the
liberator from idolatry. <br /></p><p>From this vantage, Christ as the
emissary of the One descended and sacrificed Himself to forgive our sins
(i.e. artificial separation) and to provide a way or an archetype for us
to be like Himself both one (individual) and One (the All). </p><p>Instead,
as in the transitional phase of “idolatry,” of experiencing everything
that we perceive as being outside of and alienated from ourselves, we
would once again merge with the “objects” of perception, but this time
with our own subjectivity fully intact. </p><p>For only in this way, as
Coleridge also instructed, can a human individual truly create as the
Creator created us. And this involves charging perception with the
active imagination. <br /><br /></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><b>
. . . </b><b><span>Participation as an actual
experience is only to be won to-day by special exertion; that it is a
matter, not of theorizing, but of imagination in the genial or creative
sense. A systematic approach towards final participation may therefore
be expected to be an attempt to use imagination systematically.</span></b></p><p><b>
. . . </b><b><span>Therefore,
as imagination reaches the point of enhancing figuration itself,
hitherto unperceived parts of the whole field of the phenomenon
necessarily become perceptible. Moreover, this conscious participation
enhances perception not only of the present phenomena but also of the
memory-images derived from them.</span></b></p><p><span>Owen Barfield, <i>Saving The Appearances</i>, p.137-8<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p><span></span></p><p>Here,
Barfield provides the key to entire mystery and also its method; the
imagination is systematically employed to enhance “<b>figuration</b>” (the
process of perception). By actively employing the imagination,
redirecting it back into perception, the entire “<b>field of the
phenomenon</b>” alters. </p><p>What was once unnoticed by the senses can now
become apprehended, and this not only affects sensation in the present,
but retroactively, as it were, transforms the objects of memory as
well.</p><p>Yet this is not to suggest that one would be able to
suddenly “see” things which were always already there. This, after all,
would imply that there actually is a given, objective world “out there”
that reveals itself in a similar way that furniture flashes into sight
when a lamp is turned on in a dark room. But neither would one be
experiencing phenomena that are “not there,” mere figments of fancy.<br /><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDc_bXNCIs2bgSadFh4znGf6vm3lOYDfsjtvK-p4d03Eak_oPqvUR_fj_e7S0iEiQ2cfpUk1CosukJcC-kSjqMcZZEqGBOMBryxUuS0EOsai_ht_LjbKszq-Vdjytm2aQ6ISZc43SG-u1r7cMuvy-wSSZWLficXlchEO7U-hDNGjTy-mLDqioFu6jv12l/s620/1907_under_the_seas_001_hugo_2011.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="620" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDc_bXNCIs2bgSadFh4znGf6vm3lOYDfsjtvK-p4d03Eak_oPqvUR_fj_e7S0iEiQ2cfpUk1CosukJcC-kSjqMcZZEqGBOMBryxUuS0EOsai_ht_LjbKszq-Vdjytm2aQ6ISZc43SG-u1r7cMuvy-wSSZWLficXlchEO7U-hDNGjTy-mLDqioFu6jv12l/s16000/1907_under_the_seas_001_hugo_2011.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Whereas
both of these perspectives take the existence of an objective world for
granted, for Barfield the “objective” realm of “<b>particles</b>,” of the
indifferent interstellar void, has been bracketed off as being
practically meaningless to lived human experience. </p><p>Indeed, this
radical phenomenology is not all that different from philosophical
idealism. Mind is prior to and elevated from matter, and it is mind
which has been opened up and enhanced by the active application of the
imagination. </p><p>Repeating Nietzsche once more, we are already the
largely unconscious artists of all that we perceive; the further step
that Barfield is advocating is, in a way, simply that we make this
process conscious.</p><p>In our present historical and transitional
phase of “idolatry,” it is precisely this unconsciousness with regards
to perception that causes us to feel that there is an independent
world “out there,” separate from our senses, our relations, our desires,
our memories, our fantasies, our emotions, our bodily movements. </p><p>This
is not to say, however, that our own world(s) of experience does not
have its own habits, rules, customs, “laws,” consequences<b>—</b>if you
jump from the roof of a high building you would almost certainly land
with a horrible squish to the ground. But ultimately, none of these
patterns are fixed. Imagination is the overruling agency. It is a matter
of how powerfully, how consciously and intentionally, it is wielded.</p><p>This
thought is not original or unique with Barfield, or even to Steiner who
preceded him. Steiner himself was deeply impacted by his early and
profound study of Goethe and related figures within the German romantic
and idealist tradition (in addition to Nietzsche, who Steiner later
visited). And Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also influenced by his German
near-contemporaries, was admittedly an English source of Barfield’s
ideas, as the latter conveyed in <i>What Coleridge Thought</i>. </p><p>Coleridge famously explains in his <i>Biographia Literaria</i>, that while the Primary Imagination<b>—</b>the continual creation of the world through the process of normal human perception<b>—</b>repeats
what the infinite I AM originally achieved with the creation of the
cosmos, the Secondary Imagination furthers ordinary perception to the
conscious creation of poetry and art.<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p><b>The Imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The
primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of
all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the
eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. </b></p><p><b>The secondary
Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the
conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of
its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its
operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate:
or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events
it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even
as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. </b></p><p>Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Chapter XIII, <i>Biographia Literaria, The Major Works</i>, p.313<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p>Once
again the method is evident. Through perception, naturally but
unconsciously engaged in by everyone at every moment, we passively
reproduce or reenact creation, but through the imaginative enhancement
of perception our creations become infinitely meaningful works of art.
This enhanced perception ceases to be experienced as separate from us.
It is understood as being begotten by us.</p><p>The obvious question
that arises here is, how can this method be enacted? It is easy to speak
of supercharging perception with imaginative salience, but how is this
done? Clearly, there is a missing step; an essential angle of our
trinity is absent. The Word is the bridge from Imagination to
Perception.</p><p>The Word in an important sense is all words, all language, all technology<b>—</b>as McLuhan taught<b>—</b>that
extends from language. When we explore or spelunk, as Barfield did,
back through the etymological caverns of language, we discover that there
are gods behind and dwelling within each and every word. </p><p>The
study of etymology represents travel through time back to original
participation. Here, as in the schemata of Vico and Frye, all words
were “<b>words of power</b>;” no definite boundaries yet existed between words,
gods, things and the perceiving minds of men.</p><p>Yet it was also
through words that separation arose, that “idolatry” resulted. Perhaps
the first statement of separation is the I AM itself. It <i>is</i> the
Word. As the Spirit unified and identified itself as a single egoic
consciousness, humanity, reflecting this ultimate I AM, individuated
itself out into separate consciousnesses as well. </p><p>The Burning
Bush of the I AM revelation is the same Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil by which humanity fell through its awareness of duality and
separation. And thus arose the fear of the gods that the original human
couple might eat of the Tree of Eternal Life and “<b>become like us</b>,” possessing both the egoic I AM, dualistic consciousness, <i>and </i>the
conscious return to non-dual awareness of eternity. So this Tree is
also one. The way of descent is also the way of return ascent. </p><p>And
the Tree is also the Cross, both of wood and of light. It is the true
seat of the world and it is here where imagination and perception can
become consciously united again. But the Cross, the most basic
technology, symbol of death and liberation, is not primarily physical or
technological. It is not centred exclusively in time or space. It dwells
in our hearts. </p><p>As British mystic, William Law, an immense
influence on Blake and later Barfield and Lewis, and himself deeply
inspired and informed by the German mystic and shoemaker, Jacob Boehme,
teaches:<br /><br /></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>Though
God be everywhere present yet He is only present to thee in the deepest
and most central part of thy soul. Thy natural senses cannot possess
God, or unite thee to Him; nay, thy inward faculties of Understanding,
Will and Memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of His
habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth in thee, from whence
all these faculties come forth, as lines from a centre, or as branches
from the body of the tree. This depth is called the Centre, the Fund or
Bottom of the soul. This depth is the Unity, the Eternity, I had almost
said Infinity of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can
satisfy it, or give it any rest but the infinity of God.</b></span></p><span>William Law, <i>The Spirit of Prayer</i>, quoted in </span><span><i>Saving The Appearances</i>, p.158<br /><br /></span></blockquote><span></span><p></p><p>Within
the heart or the soul is found the Cross, the Word, the door which
opens both upwards to Spirit and downwards to Matter. Here again is the <i>cardiac synthesizer</i>, the little space of the Upanishad which is as great as the universe, the common sense. </p><p>From
the Creation to the Fall, then, is the long paleolithic trance of
prehistory and original participation, the far journey before the
opposites to the taste of the fruit of the first tree. And this was
followed by the nightmare of history, the idolatry of dualism spanning
from our exile from the Garden to final Apocalypse. </p><p>But between these extremes<b>—</b>at their very midpoint<b>—</b>is the turning, the Cross, which is the entry up to the second tree, ultimately experienced as being a <i>single</i> tree. At this turning, the joining of duality and non-duality has already been attained for those<b>—</b>Christian and otherwise<b>—</b>with
eyes to see and ears to hear and noses to smell. The Abyss of the Tree
of Life has been crossed and the Kingdom is spread across the land,
under the rock and within the split log. <br /><br />The sensory world is
synesthetically fashioned and coagulated at this locus and projected
outward, mistaken as a place apart. But to return to this depth, to this
decentred centre within us all, is to regain and restore Paradise, and
even more: to reach the final satisfaction of “<b>the infinity of God</b>.” <br /></p><p>As
we were lost at the Tree through the Word, by the Tree and the Word we
will also be restored, but this time perfected. It is a matter of
entirely inverting perception.</p><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgntLALhUDm6DXsLDulcEgfnq8vGjkUxyVyNAVGlbicT8k1KujACKPuFQp-eRTdDAY-oK_iJYksb-y2CtT8Ph95k0-mwle_kpmpjRllM-UM_2u6HqKjrO6jTOGOazEMv_lgfkvcbq52WRcXq67BNO6T8002aS50hm03sBDLmslZ7CXmFRi0UdEGn83Lbwb/s750/josef-vachal-cry-of-the-masses-1.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="519" data-original-width="750" height="443" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgntLALhUDm6DXsLDulcEgfnq8vGjkUxyVyNAVGlbicT8k1KujACKPuFQp-eRTdDAY-oK_iJYksb-y2CtT8Ph95k0-mwle_kpmpjRllM-UM_2u6HqKjrO6jTOGOazEMv_lgfkvcbq52WRcXq67BNO6T8002aS50hm03sBDLmslZ7CXmFRi0UdEGn83Lbwb/w640-h443/josef-vachal-cry-of-the-masses-1.webp" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-57940814868736990182023-08-04T05:37:00.007-07:002023-12-28T19:49:43.914-08:00Strange and Blessed Fire 3: Certain Poets<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9WJUIjdRJHdj9xsxV3u3jHC_oE6_BFZ-l58A06Ui1QVl0vfHhbR7e7c6hdHtQrqDCrTWvhIr_dhGnRq_WCqh4VMRoWBDwxldC6rA_RRpZ07WEnQwG1yMOFU9iHFvge6FFYs_VUuRFNWceGiZdzCA74TI7tdte5ZzBOay12kbGMlB2EKd2NwTH86sCUZo6/s1024/ParisOpera-1024x677.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="677" data-original-width="1024" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9WJUIjdRJHdj9xsxV3u3jHC_oE6_BFZ-l58A06Ui1QVl0vfHhbR7e7c6hdHtQrqDCrTWvhIr_dhGnRq_WCqh4VMRoWBDwxldC6rA_RRpZ07WEnQwG1yMOFU9iHFvge6FFYs_VUuRFNWceGiZdzCA74TI7tdte5ZzBOay12kbGMlB2EKd2NwTH86sCUZo6/w640-h423/ParisOpera-1024x677.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>In <i>The City of God</i>,
St. Augustine deconstructs the entire pantheon of Roman gods. He argues,
quite convincingly, that the gods are ineffective, immoral, unjust,
contradictory, overlapping in functions and thus redundant, irrelevant,
irrational, trivial, too abstract, introduced from abroad, solely the
inventions of poets, etc., etc.<br /></p><p>Yet all of these gods, as
represented within the various schools of pagan Hellenic philosophy,
came to be considered as facets of the One, and subsequently
psychological aspects of the soul. Augustine seems to dismiss this idea
and rejects the gods as being wholly demonic.</p><p>But the fact is, the One cannot be approached except through images<b>—</b>that is, through the imagination<b>—</b>and
of course the images generated by humans fall far short. The point, as
Fyodor Dostoevsky reiterated, is to keep refining the image, to make it
clearer and clearer, ever more perfect. For Dostoevsky, this image was
that of the Christ and the aim was to get closer and closer to it.<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p><b>It
is not enough to define morality as fidelity to one’s own convictions.
Even more one must endlessly stimulate within oneself the question: are
my convictions true? Only one verification of them exists—Christ. But
this is no longer philosophy it is faith, and this faith is a red color .
. . </b></p><p><b>I cannot recognize one who burns heretics as a moral
man, because I do not accept your thesis that morality is an agreement
with internal convictions. That is merely honesty (the Russian language
is rich), but not morality. I have one moral model and an ideal, Christ.
I ask: would he have burned heretics?—no. Well, that means the burning
of heretics is an immoral act . . . </b></p><p><b>Christ was
mistaken—it’s been proved! A scorching feeling tells me: better that I
remain with a mistake, with Christ, than with you . . .</b></p><p>Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1881 notebook entry, quoted in “Bakhtin’s Poetics of Dostoevsky and <span>‘</span>Dostoevsky’s Christian Declaration of Faith<span>’</span>” by Robert Louis Jackson<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p>As an image of the ideal that propels us forward, even if mistakenly, Jesus really is the Imagination, as Blake taught.</p><p>C.S. Lewis adds consideration of our inner conscience into the mix; our souls are eternal and with all of our choices<b>—</b>free will being granted explicitly<b>—</b>we
make our souls ever more angelic or ever more infernal. Heaven or hell
or somewhere in between is thus our own choice, like the mysterious
workings of karma. We daily transform our own souls and save or damn
ourselves accordingly.</p><p>The process of purifying our conscience or
soul is thus the same process as creating a more lucid image of the One.
Our souls naturally gravitate towards a central image, and the
conscience reflects the image as the image reflects the soul. This is an
ongoing, life-long process, as Dostoevsky recognized.</p><p>Lewis,
unlike Augustine, understood that the old gods could be used
as partial or entire images of the One, particular attributes of
eternity. Even Augustine admitted that the philosophers were able to
provide transcendent interpretations of the gods as sang by the poets.
But maybe, after all, the poets should be understood as being the
greater psychologists.<br /><br />The polytheistic experience of the gods is
fully immanental. It imbues all things with divine meaning and
presence. This is the excellence and strength of pagan polytheism. But
within each of these images of the lesser gods there is a potential
portal into the One. Meaning intensifies and deepens into the infinite,
and the bewildering and often contradictory flurry of gods and demigods
does not alter this. <br /><br />Yet the image of Christ could be the
clearest and strongest image of all, as it incorporates both myth and
history. It is intended as an image of the One <i>and</i> as the Perfect
Man. It is the consummation of both the ubiquitous and perennial Dying
God myths and of the Logos formulations of the philosophers.</p><p>St.
Augustine may have demonstrated that a <i>rational</i> polytheism is not really
tenable because of the inherent contradictions it incorporates, but the
gods are redeemable as both irrational and rational, psychological and
physiological aspects of the One. </p><p>From Parmenides and Empedocles
on through Plato, the Stoics and the Neoplatonists, this was in fact the
understanding. By dismissing the multitude of gods as evil demons, by
failing to acknowledge the potentially salvific function of sexuality,
the feminine, the body and nature herself, Augustine exposes his
Manichaean and dualist background.</p><p>Both in the Hellenistic period
and then more fully during the Renaissance, there nearly developed a
Hindu-like henotheistic theology of the West, which combined Christian
mysticism, Neoplatonism, the Kabbalah, southern and northern pagan
mythology, Hermeticism, Gnosticism etc., until it was almost entirely
stamped out by the reaction of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.</p><p>C.S.
Lewis, an author known<b>—</b>aside from the far more popular Narnia fantasies<b>—</b>for his
mainline Christian apologetics, was centrally aware of this great
synthesis of the Renaissance and celebrated it throughout his works.<br /><br /></p><p><span><b></b></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>I have called this system, as
Ficino himself calls it, ‘Platonic theology’, to distinguish it from
the Platonism on which lectures are given in a modern university. It is
not sufficiently distinguished even by the term ‘neo-Platonism’. It is a
deliberate syncretism based on the conviction that all the sages of
antiquity shared a common wisdom and that this wisdom can be reconciled
with Christianity. </b></span></p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p><span><b>If Plato alone had been in question the Florentines
would in fact have been attempting to ‘baptize’ him as Aquinas had
‘baptized’ Aristotle. But since for them Plato was merely the greatest
and most eloquent of the consenting sages, since Pythagoras, the
Hermetic Books, the Sibylline Books, the Orphic Books, Apuleius,
Plotinus, Psellus, Iamblichus, and the Cabbala all meant the same, their
task was hardly distinguishable from that of reconciling paganism,
Judaism, and Christianity in general.</b></span></p><span>C.S. Lewis, <i>English Literature In The Sixteenth Century</i>, Introduction<br /><br /></span></blockquote><span></span><p>Integral
to this Renaissance synthesis was the goal to draft or formulate, as
object or concept or both, a pan-comprehensive symbol that would
represent and contain all knowledge, all experience and light the way to
the One. John Dee's <b>monas hieroglyphica </b>and Giordano Bruno's
geometric memory wheels and sigils and so on were attempts at this, a
return to the pagan Hellenic or Alexandrian aim to unite the symbols of
disparate cultures and traditions into a coherent whole. </p><p>Echoes
of this quest can be found in the Romantic period, but now confined
within the arts alone, in which the imagination was reactivated and
reinvoked to understand nature and the self within subjective and
aesthetic experience. </p><p>Subsequent, more underground, waves of this
grand syncretic synthesis deepened with Symbolism, Modernism,
Surrealism and Postmodernism, becoming ever more subversive of both
Christian and Jewish orthodoxies, national governments and rigid
scientific materialism.</p><p>The accompanying resurgence of occultism
deeply shared this aim, but it hampered itself with its anti-Christian
severance from tradition. The extremely influential Inklings sought to
repair this breach by venturing outside and beyond the Classical world
into Norse and Celtic myth etc. and finding the <i>prisca theologia</i>, the “archetypal antecedents,” even here. <br /></p><p></p><p></p><p><span><b></b></span></p><p style="text-align: center;">****<br /></p><p>In
short, St. Augustine condemns paganism because its adherents worship
malign demons which they take to be the gods and goddesses of Greek and
Roman mythology (and that of other countries.)<br /></p><p>He is
especially against the pageants of the theatres where the
transgressions of the gods are reenacted to the delight of the people
and apparently to that of the gods themselves. Augustine abhors
the “abominations” that he has seen on stage (and used to cheer on
himself.)</p><p>Augustine examines the threefold division of theology
presented by Marcus Terentius Varro: the “fabulous” or mythical theology
of the theatres, invented or transcribed by the poets; the civil
theology of the temples, presided over by the priests; and the physical
or natural theology of the philosophers.</p><p>Augustine believed that
the first is shameful and should be outlawed, but the second is nearly
as bad or worse because the rites of the temple repeat, justify and
sanctify the first. Both are ineffective to help one achieve eternal or
even worldly good.</p><p>The third type, the natural theology of the
philosophers, Augustine finds to be most acceptable and closest to his
own (Catholic) attitude. He examines if this third type can help to win
eternal life.</p><p>Of the philosophers, Augustine affirms that Plato
and the Platonists “<b>approach nearest to us</b>” because they conclude that
the one God is the drafter of the first principles of nature and all
within it (metaphysics), that He is the light by which the doctrine of
truth is revealed and everything is made known (epistemology), and that
He is the Good by which things are accomplished and happiness in life is
achieved (ethics).<br /><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVSwhV-wiqEh6ClwHWfl0TiwxOqIKCiiUMBzXirt07j6MPZD8RAhlyw0su0CwP6i0_fmtHNmGn0Vc5egcHsBDfGfJ3p26NH1LSs7Kxp_MP6CMs5SXpkO6TSbDNzSHJup-5EFGda9ZYznRj8jM8KrneXKtVzMQSoLCqNPojZQ5cqCw_RLXIZd4jHh8HGtD0/s960/vistara_book_page_125-c.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="582" data-original-width="960" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVSwhV-wiqEh6ClwHWfl0TiwxOqIKCiiUMBzXirt07j6MPZD8RAhlyw0su0CwP6i0_fmtHNmGn0Vc5egcHsBDfGfJ3p26NH1LSs7Kxp_MP6CMs5SXpkO6TSbDNzSHJup-5EFGda9ZYznRj8jM8KrneXKtVzMQSoLCqNPojZQ5cqCw_RLXIZd4jHh8HGtD0/w640-h388/vistara_book_page_125-c.png" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>But beyond merely the Platonists, Augustine
confesses that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans have also held these true
positions and, astoundingly, he similarly accepts the wise people and
philosophers among all nations and lists <b>“Atlantics </b>[from Atlantis??]<b>, Libyans, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Gauls, Spaniards, or other nations.”<br /><br /></b></p><blockquote><b>Whatever
philosophers, therefore, thought concerning the supreme God, that He is
both the maker of all created things, the light by which things are
known, and the good in reference to which things are to be done; that we
have in Him the first principle of nature, the truth of doctrine, and
the happiness of life,—whether these philosophers may be more suitably
called Platonists, or whether they may give some other name to their
sect; whether, we say, that only the chief men of the Ionic school, such
as Plato himself, and they who have well understood him, have thought
thus; or whether we also include the Italic school, on account of
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and all who may have held like
opinions; and, lastly, whether also we include all who have been held
wise men and philosophers among all nations who are discovered to have
seen and taught this, be they Atlantics, Libyans, Egyptians, Indians,
Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Gauls, Spaniards, or of other
nations,—we prefer these to all other philosophers, and confess that
they approach nearest to us.</b><p>Saint Augustine, <i>The City of God</i>, Book VIII, 9, p.253-4<span style="font-family: garamond;"><br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: garamond;"></span></p><p>Augustine
then goes on to say that the reason why such diverse sages have all
nearly discovered the authentic path is best discovered in scripture. He
quotes Romans 1:19-20:<br /><br /></p><blockquote><b>Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God has manifested it to them. For His invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, also His eternal power and Godhead.</b><br /><br />Romans 1:19-20, quoted in Saint Augustine, <i>The City of God</i>, Book VIII, 10, p.254<br /><br /></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: garamond;"></span></p><p>This is essentially an affirmation of the perennial philosophy, of timeless theosophy<b>—</b>the ultimate heart of all traditions on Earth.<br /><br /></p><blockquote><b>In Him we live, and move, and have our being . . . as certain also of your own have said.</b><br /><br />Acts 17:28, from Saint Augustine, <i>The City of God</i>, Book VIII, 10, p.254<br /><br /></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: garamond;"></span></p><p></p><p>What
then sets Platonism, or the wider traditions, apart from Christianity?
Many of these traditions were earlier than Christ of course so naturally
they could not worship Jesus as Christ, but they do seem to prepare the
way for His coming mission. Yet they go astray according to Augustine,
even the illustrious Plato himself, because they allow for the worship of both
the gods and daemons or demons. </p><p>Augustine does largely accept
the Platonic categorization of these latter beings. Gods are rational
animals (animated) with immortal lives and “impassible” (non-passionate)
souls. Demons are rational, immortal yet passible (passionate or
changeable), and men are rational, mortal and passible. Demons were
taken by the Platonists as being the intermediaries between men and the
gods. This last item is the sticking point for Augustine.</p><p>For him,
demons are wholly malign (while the gods, understood in the proper
theological sense, are in fact the benign angels), so it would not be
possible for them to act as intermediaries as such. But here is the rub.
As there are good and bad (because passionate) men, could there not be good and
bad (because passionate) demons? Augustine’s entire distinct Christian theology
seems to hinge on this point.</p><p>Augustine feels that the crucial
flaw in Platonism is that it allows for the worship of and sacrifice to
gods and demons when it is fully aware that the highest principle is the
One, but at the same time it rejects the reality that this principle is
solely manifested on Earth with the Incarnation of Christ.</p><p>Augustine does not accept <i>theurgy</i>,
a type of “divine” magic advocated by particular Neoplatonists, because
it seeks boons and wisdom from entities lesser than God. The good gods
(or angels) in Augustine’s reckoning would decline any worship of
themselves because they would feel that all praise must be given to God
alone, and the bad gods (demons) are unfit to receive either worship or
sacrifice in the first place. <br /></p><p>The main reason Augustine
understands all demons as being intrinsically evil is because they have a
passionate soul (therefore they suffer emotionally like men) and yet as
they are immortal they cannot change their conditions as men can with
death, so they are eternally trapped by their own passions. There is no
chance for them to rise above their fallen state and as such they are
likely to be envious, spiteful, deceptive and ultimately evil. They are
clearly unworthy mediators between men and the gods.<br /><br />Christ is
the only possible mediator as He is mortal like men, yet He is able to
overcome death and is blessed even more than the angels, being the Son
of God. Therefore, given the Gospel, theurgy is useless at best and
demonic idolatry at worst. It is intrinsically an advanced tool of the
Devil’s deception.</p><p>Yet this still does not seem to rule out the
possibility of wise daemons, which are surely those that the Platonists
thought would be mediators. Just as a man could become wise in seeking
the One, why not the daemons? Their immortal lifespan would only
increase their wisdom. </p><p>There is certainly a high probability that
many demons would feel trapped in their position and go wrong, but it
is reasonable to conclude that others would make gaining wisdom their
highest priority. And if so, why not whole cultures of these good
demons?</p><p>The fairies and elves and other such liminal creatures, explored at
length by G.K. Chesterton, Tolkien, Lewis etc., and sang about in
mythologies and folktales across the globe and throughout history, are
an example of a class of potentially good demons/daemons.<br /><br />Augustine
decries the fact that in Greek and Roman paganism, demons and
gods/angels are worshiped when only God, the One, is deserving of
worship. But even Augustine acknowledges that within the Roman Catholic
Church, the saints receive prayers and reverence which are hard to
distinguish from worship. It seems, as is only natural, that there are
degrees to reverence, worship and sacrifice.</p><p>Augustine also
appears to manipulate scripture to his own advantage. In the Bible verse
quoted above, the saint omits the word “poets” to apparently better
make his case: “<b>In Him we live, and move and have our being, as certain of <i>your poets </i>have said</b>”
(Acts 17:28). As Augustine argued that the poets were singularly damned
for praising the gods, he seems loath to admit that the Bible
recognizes their wisdom.</p><p>In Ephesians 6:12 we read the following: “<b>For
we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places.</b>” <br /></p><p>To my knowledge, Augustine does not comment on this verse (at least in <i>The City of God</i>),
but it is necessary to understand what is meant by powers,
principalities and rulers in <i>high</i> places. These cannot be demons, as the
verse refers to beings that dwell beyond the the lunar sphere, whereas
demons are by station confined to the sublunar and aerial spheres and
below. </p><p>Not possibly demons, these entities dwelling in high
places can only be orders of angels! And in fact, in later Catholic
theology in succession from Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite, two of the
higher angelic orders in the celestial hierarchy are explicitly called
Principalities and Powers. What is going on here? </p><p>It appears that
this verse reveals a very close affinity to most sects of Gnosticism,
in which the angels of the cosmic spheres were thought of as being
oppressive Archons who actively hinder the soul’s attempted flight to
the One. If the demons have a possibly ambivalent role, is it likewise
possible that the angels may not be exclusively or by necessity “good”
either? A sobering thought.<br /><br />However, as we have seen, Neoplatonism, following from Plato in the <i>Timaeus </i>and
elsewhere, came to accept the world, the Demiurge and his Archons, as
being ultimately good, as being lesser emanations or representations of
the One itself. Creation is revealed or experienced as being emanatory
and this idea is thoroughly reconcilable with the general Platonic view of daemons. <br /></p><p>According
to this understanding, a movement upward through the spheres to the One
is a movement through subtler and subtler forms of matter, or less and
less dense forms of spirit. </p><p>Each “layer” or emanation thus
provides a link or transition to those above and below it. Gnostic and
Neoplatonic thinkers tended to excessively inflate these emanatory
layers, but the reasoning behind this inflation is very similar<b>—</b>an ontological “jump” between layers is too far without intermediary stepping stones. </p><p>Hence,
our earthly bodies require the mediation of the aerial bodies of the
daemons in order to reach the ever more aetherial “bodies” of the
angels/gods. All are indispensable links of the Golden Chain. And each
of these links can appear to either harm or help the ascending or
descending soul.<br /><br />Augustine, as a Christian, understandably sees
Christ as the only needed intermediary between Matter and Spirit, and
from this angle he overplays the harmful aspect of the aerial demons
while downplaying the potential hindering aspects of angels (or what
pagan considered to be gods).</p><p>But all this changes if the
Incarnation is accepted, like the imagination and like perception, as
being entirely diffuse throughout the world, as a decentralized centre
present in all things. </p><p>There is then less a movement from matter
and the flesh to pure spirit, then an epistemological shift from seeing
ourselves as being wholly separate from God and the rest of creation
(what contemporary analytical idealist philosopher, Bernarno Kastrup,
suitably calls “<b>dissociation</b>”) to the awareness of our actual and
eternal union with the mind of the One, Plotinus’ <i>henosis</i>.</p><p>In
our own era, and unlike Augustine’s time, a very reductive materialism
reigns supreme—to the point where this paradigm tints and taints the
day-to-day experience of hundreds of millions of individuals<b>—</b>each
convinced that his or her own consciousness is walled off in the skull,
forever separated from other human consciousnesses let alone any minds
extra-human (itself an even more ridiculed and verboten notion). </p><p>During
such a time, theurgy has almost revolutionary implications against the
materialist order. This is an order ruled over by its own fallen
iteration of the Powers and Principalities and their priesthood of
the scientific dictatorship. These rulers are wholly bent to contain all
souls, like they themselves are contained, below the sphere of the
Moon.<br /><br />Theurgy, in this revolutionary sense, is a step towards
Owen Barfield’s “final participation,” at once a venture towards full
epistemological <i>and </i>ontological liberation and a move fraught with intense and terrifying danger. </p><p>Counterfeits
and simulacra abound, alongside false revivals, counter-initiations,
strange fire, antichrists and imposters. Once the spell, or
counter-spell, of materialism is fully shattered then all the gods will
return. Signs and wonders, old men seeing visions, young men dreaming
dreams, the Day of the Lord cometh. </p><p>The surety of death being the
Big Sleep evaporates like the puff of smoke that it is, and the primal
nightmares of the underworld begin once again to bleed into our own. </p><p>In <span>René Guénon</span>’s term there is “<b>a breach in the wall</b>,”
and according to the psychedelic Apocalypse of Patmos, our guide for
the times, the Great Deceiver will be permitted to rule “<b>for a little while</b>.” More than ever, a living image of the unfixed centre is needed.<br /><br /></p><blockquote><b>At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;<br />Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,<br />But neither arrest nor movement.<br />And do not call it fixity,<br />Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,<br />Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,<br />There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. </b><p></p><p><b> </b>T.S. Eliot, <i>Four Quartets</i>, “Burnt Norton,” p.15-6<span style="font-family: garamond;"><br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWkSO6nmMvUANaa2feZiZPFzyjnZDZlPoV_q7IVn7MtpAoyvxDj4jTKqvKCPDK_4njqbcGstmf2IE9-jTKymXNUJ_ogQmEG8ReId8GOu_2bHJi_0ZddMSWsLIG8w0NsVoJh6ONC0nZGbCYJ-UpBwnPcXAaDifd4fe1EqYPpOAM0LvbdVkW_kXYAn42ZcXr/s3300/sun-and-new-moon-jousting.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2140" data-original-width="3300" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWkSO6nmMvUANaa2feZiZPFzyjnZDZlPoV_q7IVn7MtpAoyvxDj4jTKqvKCPDK_4njqbcGstmf2IE9-jTKymXNUJ_ogQmEG8ReId8GOu_2bHJi_0ZddMSWsLIG8w0NsVoJh6ONC0nZGbCYJ-UpBwnPcXAaDifd4fe1EqYPpOAM0LvbdVkW_kXYAn42ZcXr/w640-h416/sun-and-new-moon-jousting.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><blockquote><p><br /></p></blockquote><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-31544214077136764912023-08-04T05:37:00.001-07:002023-08-04T05:37:16.476-07:00Strange and Blessed Fire 2: Waterspouts and Whirlpools<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfKrLJXxyIEnfFAVT53BVXc6vIucdALBRYMnTxcOXkakWW4LDKm9OB0xszPNQwqLltuu7kEp9-O31aglGEE-AiQe-sah9PyW55RUR1FJvUYpDfowCROk7uwiEdh6I-CAPlsfDRMLCU6RMD11cfmPJWGJB5qKMMapum5Qgnx3YFfbxpnG4uZQy8RUkoNy6T/s513/J.R.R._Tolkien_-_Old_Man_Willow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="358" data-original-width="513" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfKrLJXxyIEnfFAVT53BVXc6vIucdALBRYMnTxcOXkakWW4LDKm9OB0xszPNQwqLltuu7kEp9-O31aglGEE-AiQe-sah9PyW55RUR1FJvUYpDfowCROk7uwiEdh6I-CAPlsfDRMLCU6RMD11cfmPJWGJB5qKMMapum5Qgnx3YFfbxpnG4uZQy8RUkoNy6T/s16000/J.R.R._Tolkien_-_Old_Man_Willow.jpg" /></a></div><br />German scholar Hans Jonas, in <i>The Gnostic Religion</i>,
asserts that Gnosticism
is similar to modern nihilism and existentialism in that all three see
humanity trapped in a hostile world. However, unlike Gnosticism, these
modern philosophies are at core inconsistent, especially in their claim
to express
difference within an indifferent world. Afterall, why should this notion
of
difference arise within a philosophical stance that entirely denies the
transcendent? <br /><p><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>There is no overlooking one cardinal difference between the gnostic and
the existentialist dualism: Gnostic man is thrown into an antagonistic,
anti-divine, and therefore anti-human nature, modern man into an
indifferent one. Only the latter case represents the absolute vacuum,
the really bottomless pit</b><b>
. . . </b><b> <br /><br />But this very difference, which
reveals the greater depth of modern nihilism, also challenges its
self-consistency. Gnostic dualism, fantastic as it was, was at least
self-consistent. The idea of a demonic nature against which the self is
pitted, makes sense. But what about an indifferent nature which
nevertheless contains in its midst that to which its own being does make
a difference? </b><br /><br />Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, p.338-9<br /><br /></blockquote><p></p>The
Gnostics, more coherently than the modern nihilists, thought humanity
possesses sparks of the divine light of the One, a light that the
Archons of this cosmos try to trap, suppress and make us ignorant of.
Here, Gnostic beliefs were really not that far from that of later theologians.<p></p><p>For
orthodox Christians of the medieval period, the Fall is sub-lunar, below
the sphere of the Moon, and condemning only the Earth and its elements. But for the
Gnostics, the Fall is sub-Empyrean or closer to their own terminology, <i>sub-Aeonic</i>; the entire cosmos is damned from the outset. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Jonas elsewhere explains that, emerging from later Gnosticism (Valentianism etc.), <i>gnosis </i>was
translated from a belief in the mythological ascent of the soul through
the seven planetary spheres to an internal or psychological ascent through
energy centres within the body.<br /><br /></p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>In a later stage of </b><b>“</b><b>gnostic</b><b>”</b><b> development (though no longer passing
under the name of Gnosticism) the external topology of the ascent
through the spheres, with the successive divesting of the soul of its
worldly envelopments and the regaining of its original acosmic nature,
could be </b><b>“</b><b>internalized</b><b>”</b><b> and find its analogue in a psychological
technique of inner transformations by which the self, <i>while still in the body</i>,
might attain the Absolute as an immanent, if temporary, condition: an
ascending scale of mental states replaces the stations of the mythical
itinerary: the dynamics of progressive spiritual self-transformation,
the spatial thrust through the heavenly spheres. </b></p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p><b>Thus could
transcendence itself be turned into immanence, the whole process become
spiritualized and put within the power and the orbit of the subject.
With this transposition of a mythological scheme into the inwardness of
the person, with the translation of its objective stages into subjective
phases of self-performable experience whose culmination has the form of
ecstasis, gnostic myth has passed into mysticism (Neoplatonic and
monastic), and in this new medium it lives on long after the
disappearance of the original mythological beliefs.</b></p><p>Hans Jonas, <i>The Gnostic Religion</i>, p.165-6<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p></p><p>This view of the “<b>spirtualized</b>”
or internalized process of the soul’s journey, adapted from Gnostic
cosmology, is taken on by Plotinus and the later Neoplatonists and
through them to the Christian mystics from Pseudo-Dionysius on, and to
the Jewish Kabbalists.</p><p>The earlier Gnostic myth of the cosmic flight, preceded in literature by the <i>Book of Enoch</i> and other early and marginalized scriptures, was, melding after the Asian
conquests of Alexander, itself based on a Hellenic rationalization of
Mesopotamian star magic.<br /><br /></p><blockquote><p><b>In the case
of the Babylonian religion, the success of this movement toward
abstraction is apparent in its later form as it emerged into the full
light of Hellenism. In a one-sided development of its original astral
features, the older cult was transformed into an abstract doctrine, the
reasoned system of <i>astrology</i>, which simply by the appeal of its
thought-content, presented in Greek form, became a powerful force in the
Hellenistic world of ideas.</b></p><p>Hans Jonas, <i>The Gnostic Religion</i>, p.165-6<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p></p><p>This
more recent internal mystical interpretation has obvious parallels with Indian traditions/teachings of the chakras, found also in Taoism and
elsewhere. Parallels can later be located in the Renaissance-era mysticism of
Teresa D’Avila’s <b>Interior Castle</b>, which may have been transmitted
through Spanish Islamic and/or Jewish mystical sources, both of which
had ties with sources much further East.<br /><br />Religion scholar, Weston Le Barre, explains in <i>Muelos, A Stone Age Superstition About Sexuality</i>
that belief in subtle physiological channels conducting spiritual and
consciousness-altering energy can be delineated back to the evident
Paleolithic veneration of skulls, bones and especially the
life-sustaining marrow that flows through them.<br /><br /></p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>If bones are the framework of life, more specifically it is the semen-like marrow (<i>muelos</i>) in the bones that is believed to be the source of semen. The skull, as the bone enclosing the most plentiful <i>muelos</i>-marrow
in the body (the brain), is therefore the major repository of the
generative life-stuff or semen. Consciousness and life are the same
stuff and thus have the same site. </b></p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p><b>The idea seems bizarre and contrived
to us only because we have forgotten the formative origins of our ideas.
Yet, as later discussion will establish, the concept of brain-<i>muelos</i> as the source of semen is everywhere inherent in European thinking, as well as in that of societies elsewhere.</b></p><p>Weston La Barre, <i>Muelos: A Stone Age Superstition About Sexuality</i>, p.3<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p><span><span data-dobid="hdw">Concomitantly</span></span>,
and turning to Mircea Eliade, shamanic cultures across the globe
believed in and practiced a kind of spiritual flight that transports the
shaman through the planets and the stars.<br /><br /></p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>For what the shaman can do today in <i>ecstasy </i>could, at the dawn of time, be done by all human beings <i>in concreto</i>;
they went up to heaven and came down again without recourse to trance.
Temporarily and for a limited number of persons</b><b>—</b><b>the shamans</b><b>—</b><b>ecstasy re-establishes the primordial condition of all mankind. </b></p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p><b>In this
respect, the mystical experience of the </b><b>“</b><b>primitives</b><b>”</b><b> is a return to
origins, a reversion to the mystical age of the lost paradise. For the
shaman in ecstasy, the bridge or the tree, the vine, the cord, and so on</b><b>—</b><b>which, <i>in illo tempore</i>, connected earth with heaven</b><b>—</b><b>once again, for the space of an instant, becomes a present reality.</b></p><p>Mircea Eliade, <i>Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy</i>, p.486<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p>Taken together, it is likely that these ideas were always linked in the minds of mystics and visionaries across the globe. </p><p>The
notion and experience of ascension through states of consciousness
associated with the movement of generative and creative energy
transmitted via the marrow and even more subtle physiological pathways
through junctures in the body (wheels, spirals, chakras), was
combined/identified with a mythic but physical journey through the
cosmic spheres. </p><p>States of mind were always corresponded with
other worlds/realms either above or below the Earth: Stars below and
chakras above and <i>muelos </i>circulating between.<br /></p><p>This
journey down through the underworld or across the sky, was certainly
inspired and provoked by observations of the Sun, the Moon and the
planets sinking below the Western horizon and rising in the East the next
morning. Psychedelic use undoubtedly played a role here as well.</p><p>The
underworld descent is evidenced in the cave art of the Paleolithic, and
much later in Egyptian mythology and books of the dead. And from here a
line can be followed to classical mystery schools/movements in Egypt,
Crete, Eleusis, Anatolia and subsequently with the Orphics, the
Pythagoreans, the Pre-Socratics (and notably Parmenides). This tradition
continues with Plato, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, Neoplatonism,
Christian mysticism, alchemy, the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry, occultism,
Theosophy and onward.</p><p>Bolstering this mostly Western esoteric
tradition are continual waves of non-Western influence: Egyptian,
Mesopotamian, Persian, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, African and, with later
colonial expansion, indigenous American. All of these waves well up
from primordial shamanism worldwide, transmitted through trading routes
of land and sea. </p><p>The dualistic tendency of Gnostic thought may
have resulted from the initial externalization of the ascension process.
The Archons of the spheres were seen as being tyrannical, as attempting
to prevent the soul from rising to the One. Both the cosmos of the
spheres and soul or psyche that traversed them, were thought of as
imprisoning the vital spirit. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFXezx8GlN62V2bZSqXU4IVbBBltDo45JG3r20oIpWxTiLOSKv7zlhHq4kW0gQwgIErI8WTtUriPY5yASHEux5XTAPNGPKu0lj-MtlLPry2IDIlsnuiTVMdZpz_aQ7wruSJwvguxEJzXf7Yedef1LjjJO-p5WhvvWHl_0HB2TwCmiPtvjuTZSit-dTp9NJ/s799/d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="799" height="498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFXezx8GlN62V2bZSqXU4IVbBBltDo45JG3r20oIpWxTiLOSKv7zlhHq4kW0gQwgIErI8WTtUriPY5yASHEux5XTAPNGPKu0lj-MtlLPry2IDIlsnuiTVMdZpz_aQ7wruSJwvguxEJzXf7Yedef1LjjJO-p5WhvvWHl_0HB2TwCmiPtvjuTZSit-dTp9NJ/w640-h498/d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.webp" width="640" /></a></div><br />Yet, as in later philosophical
developments, with the centres internalized, the body and its processes
could once again be praised. In contrast to the dualistic schools of
Gnosticism, in Hermeticism, in Neoplatonism, in Stoicism and in other
more pantheistic systems (including Valentianism) both the Demiurge and
his creation, the cosmos, were acclaimed. This was also the case in
medieval Judaic and Christian mysticism. <p></p><p>Plotinus fervently argued for this positive acceptance of the cosmos:<br /><br /></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>If
another cosmos better than this one actually exists, what it is? But if
a cosmos is necessary and there is no other cosmos, then our cosmos is
the one that preserves the imitation of the intelligible one. For the
entire earth is indeed filled with all kinds of living beings including
immortal ones, and everything up to heaven is full of them. Why are not
the heavenly bodies in lower spheres and the stars in the highest region
gods, given that they are transported in order and revolve around the
cosmos? Why wouldn</b></span><b>’</b><span><b>t they possess virtue? What could prevent them from acquiring virtue? <br /></b></span></p></blockquote><p> <span> </span><span> </span><span>Plotinus, </span>“<span>Against the Gnostics,</span>”<span> <i>The Enneads</i> (2.9), p.229<br /></span> <br /></p><p>But,
in another sense, there is no definite division between dualistic and
non-dualistic religions. Manichaeanism, commonly understood as being one
of the most dualistic traditions, also emphasizes the ability to
recover the beautiful and living sparks of original light present
latently in all things, thereby revealing its Buddhist ties. </p><p>“Non-dualistic” Buddhism, on the other hand, retains a dualistic split in its doctrine of the “<b>Two Truths</b>”<b>—</b>normal awareness and Buddha awareness, a split between <i>knowing</i> if not <i>being</i>.
Mystical and esoteric traditions within all religions tend to be
non-dualistic; the priestly and hierarchical aspects within religious institutions tend to be dualistic in theology but are non-dualistic at
core.</p><p>From the esoteric outlook, from the Second Truth, The Bible
is a continuous retelling of the story of the return of the soul
(Israel, Jerusalem, the Church, various female figures like Rahab,
Tamar, Mary Magdalene etc.) back to the Spirit, to the Father, to the
One.<br /><br /></p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>The demonic counterpart of the Bride who is Jerusalem and the spouse
of Christ is the Great Whore of Revelation 17 who is Babylon and Rome,
and is the mistress of Antichrist. The word </b><b>“</b><b>whoredom</b><b>”</b><b> in the Bible
usually refers to theological rather than sexual irregularity</b><b>
. . . </b><b> Thus
the forgiven harlot, who is taken back eventually into favor despite her
sins, is an intermediate bridal figure between the demonic Whore and
the apocalyptic Bride, and represents the redemption of man from sin.</b></p><p>Northrop Frye, <i>The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, </i>p.141<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p>The
soul is described in feminine terms and goes through the stages of
prostitution, redemption and marriage with the Son/Brother.</p><p>The
return to the Spirit is depicted as the union of Bride with Bridegroom
in the Bridal Chamber. This is the Tantric symbolism at the heart of
both the Old and New Testaments as well as in Greek mythology. Here is
the ascent through the spheres, the resurrection, the homecoming of the
exiled, and the ransom paid to free the imprisoned.<br /><br /></p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>Now it is fitting that the soul regenerate herself and become again
as she formerly was. The soul then moves of her own accord. And she
received the divine nature from the father for the rejuvenation, so that
she might be restored to the place where originally she had been. This
is the resurrection that is from the dead. This is the ransom from
captivity. This is the upward journey of ascent to heaven. This is the
way of ascent to the father.</b></p><p>“The Exegesis on the Soul,” <i>The Nag Hammadi Library in English</i>, p.196<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p></p><p>The
Whore of Babylon can thus become the pure bride of Jerusalem. Christ
came to redeem our souls for the the Father, the Spirit. “<b>No gods before me</b>” and “<b>ye of little faith</b>”
are both expressions of the fault of miring ourselves in the concerns
and distractions of the world and necessity and not directing everything
onto the One.</p><p>In all the traditions of the West<b>—</b>orthodox
or heretical, Jewish, Christian or pagan, in poetry or in prose, from
the ancient Mysteries to high modernist literature<b>—</b>the major
theme is of the soul’s return to the One, mostly through mediation of
the Word, the Logos, Son, Messiah, Sophia. Duality in return movement to
non-duality.</p><p style="text-align: center;">**** <br /></p><blockquote><p><span><b>Before the dynamic whirl known
to seamen as a waterspout shoots down its long finger-shaped sucker from
the clouds, the sea beneath can be seen forming a whirlpool as it were
in sympathy. In the same way the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ,
or, if that expression be objected to, the belief in his incarnation,
was preceded by the creation of an inchoate society, which that event
crystallised into the Christian Church. </b></span></p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p><span><b>It is usual and convenient to
distinguish these proto-Christians from the converts of Peter and Paul
by using the Hebrew word Messiah in place of its Greek equivalent
Christ. The first name looks forward to a Saviour who has yet to come,
the second looks back to one who has come.</b></span></p><p><span></span></p><p><span>Allen Upward, <i>The Divine Mystery</i>, p.277<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p><span></span></p><p></p><p>There
is the descent of the Holy Spirit from above, grace from the One. This
descends when “<b>a place is prepared</b>” in the heart. But this latter occurs
as an ascent, as a willingness to open one’s heart to the Spirit and
to the Logos. </p><p>This can be compared with the upward movement of
Kundalini from the base chakras to the heart. The heart is the location
where the two movements<b>—</b>from above and from below<b>—</b>meet. Eliade’s successor, Ioan Couliano derives the term “<b>cardiac synthesizer</b>” from Renaissance speculation on this matter. As he puts it in <i>Eros and Magic in the Renaissance</i>.<br /><br /></p><p><span><b></b></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>On the other hand, the body
opens up to the soul a window to the world through the five sensory
organs whose messages go to the same cardiac apparatus which now is
engaged in codifying them so that they may become comprehensible. Called
<i>phantasia </i>or inner sense, the sidereal spirit transforms messages from the five senses in <i>phantasms</i>
perceptible to the soul. For the soul cannot grasp anything that is not
converted into a sequence of phantasms; in short, it can understand
nothing without phantasms (<i>aneu phantasmatos</i>).</b></span></p><p><span>Ioan P. Couliano, <i>Eros and Magic in the Renaissance</i>, p.5<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p><b><span></span></b></p><blockquote><p><b><span>The
little space in the heart is as big as this great universe. The heavens
and the earth are there, the sun, the moon, and the stars, fire and
lightning and winds are there also; and all that exists now and all that
exists no longer: for the whole universe is in Him and He lives in our
heart. (</span><i>Chāndogya Upaniṣad</i><span>, VIII, 1)</span></b></p><p><span>Quoted in Ioan P. Couliano, <i>Eros and Magic in the Renaissance</i>, p.</span><span>133<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote><p>It
is at this site, at the seat of the Imagination, where the image of
the Logos is formed or maybe summoned by the individual. Mary’s willingness
to conceive Christ is the movement from below; the impregnating word of
the Angel of the Lord is the matching movement from above. <br /><br />This
is also the lapis, the Philosopher’s Stone, according to Jung’s view of
alchemy. It is the completed mandala of individuation, completed
but also <i>becoming</i> in Dostoevsky’s sense, not yet grasped.<br /><br /></p><p><span><b></b></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>The Christ-lapis parallel
vacillates between mere analogy and far-reaching identity, but in
general it is not thought out to its logical conclusion, so that the
dual focus remains. This is not surprising since even today most of us
have not got round to understanding Christ as the psychic reality of an
archetype, regardless of historicity. I do not doubt the historical
reality of Jesus of Nazareth, but the figure of the Son of Man and of
Christ the Redeemer has archetypal antecedents. It is these that form
the basis of the alchemical analogies.</b></span></p><span>C. G. Jung, <i>Mysterium Coniunctionis</i>, p.124<br /><br /></span></blockquote><p></p><p>This may be expressed as the site of conception, where bride and groom meet in the bridal
chamber, the synthesis of all planetary influences into the Sun, the
Vishvarupa of the <i>Mahabarata</i>, the culminating apex of all Biblical stories, Christ on the cross, the Buddha under the Bo tree, resurrection and nirvana.</p><p>None
of these of course can be reduced to or equated with any of the others.
Every instance here of break through is unique, singular, each in its
own way the defining apotheosis of its respective tradition. What makes
these events comparable at all is their level of mystical impact. </p><p>Each
attempts to encapsulate via language and narrative, through myth and
metaphor, through avatar and miracle, a point at which our world was
touched by the wholly Other. And, as such, they are times outside of
time. </p><p>Yet they are not apart or separate from one another. They happen all at once and, in a sense, <i>only</i> once. The singularity, by necessity, has happened, will happen and is happening. These, along with the Incarnation<b>—</b>its centre everywhere<b>—</b>are a few of its names. <br /></p><p>All
of this may appear to horribly stretch the bounds of the “right”
understanding of Christianity, but in fact it is a vista beheld at
the heart of Christian orthodoxy if its claims are fully investigated.
And, in any case, orthodoxy alone and without frills is more than
sufficient.</p><p>As ever, the “method<b></b>” here is loose metaphoric correspondence, intertextual misreading, and simultaneity. <br /><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8j4wU2MShNdagjKHDmZjWvDbBjDyUZX60A1w5WoWNI8Erf0VVTsY6Dc8sHKbLe2tFffMYbO4UFuECywq3botYgreX4T78bDl4VJTfVPLfOsqfLUjEr-MhybyEWIk6IhePX0pQF6DGXEF4euDPNF_7l1rLOdffBmg7TAgxEa1QzE5JM5vtQ6C6v-3TXdVj/s1422/2203_CR_Inferno.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1422" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8j4wU2MShNdagjKHDmZjWvDbBjDyUZX60A1w5WoWNI8Erf0VVTsY6Dc8sHKbLe2tFffMYbO4UFuECywq3botYgreX4T78bDl4VJTfVPLfOsqfLUjEr-MhybyEWIk6IhePX0pQF6DGXEF4euDPNF_7l1rLOdffBmg7TAgxEa1QzE5JM5vtQ6C6v-3TXdVj/w640-h360/2203_CR_Inferno.webp" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script></p><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-43153146951123988212023-08-04T05:36:00.003-07:002023-09-07T16:29:59.320-07:00Strange and Blessed Fire 1: The Entrusted Fiat<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_gxHa3N-wAEGEYuq0VymLLurf6t4cygoW6yLMTwlog8TaWOlQw60YlulwLq3uSh0USG1wDy4Dwj5DrhZllRI0VwJiOGd4QGi3rsEuLQYh_s_XtEz1FvZZSsZA1cZ0RZ501fxLBf8l4isZRP3m2Sq-I0PXJhgsZ-ZcSzK7tRyDUxlN6wSNfOdPfmIIEMVN/s940/LHOMME-%C3%80-LA-CAM%C3%89RA-002-1000009222-940x529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="940" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_gxHa3N-wAEGEYuq0VymLLurf6t4cygoW6yLMTwlog8TaWOlQw60YlulwLq3uSh0USG1wDy4Dwj5DrhZllRI0VwJiOGd4QGi3rsEuLQYh_s_XtEz1FvZZSsZA1cZ0RZ501fxLBf8l4isZRP3m2Sq-I0PXJhgsZ-ZcSzK7tRyDUxlN6wSNfOdPfmIIEMVN/w640-h360/LHOMME-%C3%80-LA-CAM%C3%89RA-002-1000009222-940x529.jpg" width="640" /></a></p><p></p><blockquote><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b><br />And as we trace the rise of successive communication channels or
links, from writing to movies and TV, it is borne in on us that in order
for their exterior artifice to be effective it must partake of the
character of that interior artifice by which in ordinary perception we
incarnate the exterior world. Because human perception is literally
incarnation. So that each of us must <i>poet</i> the world or fashion it
within us as our primary and constant mode of awareness. And the
mechanical or mass media of communication must at least parrot the world
in order to hold our attention.</b></p><p>Marshall McLuhan, “Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters,” <i>The Medium and the Light</i>, p.169 <br /> <br /></p></blockquote></blockquote><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is, God himself<br />
The Divine Body } <span style="font-size: 120%;"> ישע </span>Jesus we are his<br />
Members</b></p><p>William Blake, “<span>The Laocoön,</span>”<span> <i>Complete Writings</i>, p.776<br /><br /></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>Even in the midst of the most peculiar experiences we still act in
exactly the same way: we make up the greatest part of experience for
ourselves and are hardly ever compelled <i>not</i> to look upon any event as “inventors.</b><b>”</b><b> What all this adds up to is that basically from time immemorial we have been <i>accustomed to lie</i>.
Or to express the matter more virtuously and hypocritically, in short,
more pleasantly: we are much more the artist than we realize.</b></p><p><span>Friedrich Nietzsche, <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>, Part V, aphorism 192 <br /></span> <br /></p></blockquote></blockquote><p><span></span> Three slogans, mottoes, quotes, each already <span style="color: #2b00fe;">present</span> in these pages, interlock to form the Trinity of a poetic theology.</p><p>Slightly
paraphrased, these are from Nietzsche: We are all better artists than
we realize, i.e. perception itself is art, and with perception we create
the world internally and project it outwards.<br /></p><p>From Blake: Jesus the Imagination; Christ is the imagination and/or the imagination is Christ.</p><p>And from McLuhan: Perception is Incarnation<b>—</b>the
very process of perception incarnates spirit into matter and thus in
every split second the mission of Christ on Earth is modeled in
miniature through the senses of each individual; fashioned light has
evidently abolished pure chaos. </p><p>And when the three are combined,
when each element of the trinity rings in synergistic harmony with the
other two, everything shifts. The three sides of this figure are
Perception, Imagination and Christ, the Word.</p><p>Christ is perhaps the easiest entry point. In Christian orthodoxy and in Gnosticism and<b>—</b>using different terms<b>—</b>in
Neoplatonism, despite their many doctrinal, practical and political
antagonisms, all agree that “Christ” or “the Logos” or “the Mediator”
functions as a perfect union or interchange between Matter, containing
both form and substance, and Spirit transcending both and contained by
neither.</p><p>Blake saw this as being precisely the role of the
imagination: to give shape to divine vision. The faculty of the imagination,
which we all possess, was granted to humanity at the same instant that
we were created in the image of God. As the one who imagines, imagines a
creature who can also imagine. Like God, we have no limit to our
imagining.</p><p>For Blake, it is irrelevant if Jesus Christ is a
historical figure or not. Both time and existence, let alone history,
are categories that have very little meaning to the role of Christ. The
fallen state that Christ redeems us from is that which convinces us that
our imagination is not all-powerful.<br /> <br /></p><p><span><b></b></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>And Jesus said unto them,
Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as
a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence
to yonder place; and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible
unto you.</b></span></p><p><span><i>Matthew </i>17:20 (<i>KJV</i>)<br /></span> <br /></p></blockquote><p><span></span> </p><p></p><p>“<b>Ye of little faith</b>” is the central message of the New Testament, just as “<b>have no other gods before me</b>” is the perpetual mantra of the Old Testament. The two have a very similar aim. </p><p>Yahweh’s
warning to the twelve tribes of Israel to let nothing interfere or
block their faith in the absolute omnipotence of the Father (the One) is
a direct parallel, in collective rather than individual terms, to
Christ’s repeated admonition to his twelve disciples<b>—</b>who will head the twelve tribes in Heaven<b>—</b>to let nothing interfere with their faith that through Christ they can accomplish all things.</p><p>“<b>Single vision and Newton</b><b>’</b><b>s sleep</b>”
is one way that Blake famously describes how we cheat and deny the
imagination’s full dispensation. We succumb to “natural religion”
to “Deism” to the idea that the world is how it passively appears to the
senses. Barriers are erected: science, money, power, possessions, love
of people, love of country, nature, government, reason, knowledge, art,
music, lesser gods: all must be sacrificed to the One.</p><p>As the Word is the mediation between spirit and flesh, sensation and intellect, the senses<b>—</b>seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling<b>—</b>are media which congeal to form one sense: touch, the common sense, haptic synesthesia. This is the imagination, Jesus Himself.</p><p>It
takes away nothing from the Gospel that there are mythological and
historical prototypes of Jesus Christ, prior avatars and redeemers and
mediators and messiahs, <span><i>prisca theologia</i></span>.
Christ, as the Manichaeans asserted, is eternal. He was there in the
Garden as the Luminous Jesus. He was the Buddha, Zoroaster, Pythagoras,
even Adonis, Dionysus, Krishna.</p><p>Regardless of doctrinal classification<b>—</b>Catholic, Gnostic, Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Kabbalist<b>—</b>a figure of the intermediary appears: the Logos. We may as well call this the Christ.</p><p>Yet
as He is not confined to a particular time, He is not isolated to a
single place. This is the answer to one of Giordano Bruno’s central
critiques of Christianity. Just as there is no centre to the universe,
there is no single and central figuration of Christ. </p><p>This
teaching is illustrated in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia stories, in which the
Logos appears as the great lion, Aslan. Aslan is allegorical to us, but
Christ would be allegorical to the Narnians. Christ is a singular event,
but he is a singular event across all worlds and dimensions.<br /><br />But
the Logos also has a more microcosmic role. As every instant of
perception transforms and projects outward the raw, unorganized data of
the senses into a fully-formed, orderly and largely beautiful world, Christ transforms the chaos of matter into spirit.
Perception is Incarnation.</p><p>This in turn parallels and reenacts the
creation of the world from chaos. Chaos is transmuted into cosmos at
every moment of perception. Christ is one name of this process.</p><p>And,
as Nietzsche explained, perception is artistic in character. We can
merge this observation with Blake’s insight of Jesus the Imagination.
The more actively we incorporate imagination into the act of perception,
the more we embody Christ.</p><p>In addition, as Joseph Campbell
elucidates, the movement from sleep to wakefulness also parallels the
original act of creation and so the Incarnation.<br /> <br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>The cosmogonic cycle is to be understood as the passage of universal
consciousness from the deep sleep zone of the unmanifest, through dream,
to the full day of waking; then back again through dream to the
timeless dark. As in the actual experience of every living being, so in
the grandiose figure of the living cosmos: in the abyss of sleep the
energies are refreshed, in the work of the day they are exhausted; the
life of the universe runs down and must be renewed. </b><br /><br />Joseph Campbell, <i>The Hero with a Thousand Faces</i>, p.266<br /> <br /></blockquote><p></p><p>Therefore
the more active and imaginative our perception is, the more Christlike
it becomes. We move from single to double to even quadruple vision.<br /><br />As Plotinus wrote, the states or <i>hypostases</i>
of matter, psyche, nous and the One are really epistemological or
psychological states. Jesus the Imagination can be viewed as the medium
or pole that connects through these states. </p><p>The more actively we perceive<b>—</b>Jung’s active imagination<b>—</b>the “higher”
we advance towards pure Spirit; from the golden guinea Sun to the
Hallelujah choir of angels, to the Platonic Sun behind the Sun, to the
eternity that may open up at every “point” of time and space.</p><p>This
aware and active imagination may be called “Christ,” but it does not
need to be limited by a single term, much less an exclusive system of
thought or religion. To call it Buddha-mind works just as well. It can
even be expressed in secular or scientific terms. It could be be called a
vision of Pan or a hierophany of the Holy Ghost. </p><p>“Christ” might work as a
term because it is already supercharged with meaning like all great
poetry. As in Renaissance Neoplatonist Henry Cornelius Agrippa’s <i>Three Books of Occult Philosophy</i>, a text still highly respected and consulted by current occultists, the name of Christ is the highest magic. <br /> <br /></p><p><span><b></b></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>Hence at this time no favour can be drawn from the heavens, unless the authority, favour and consent of the name of <i>Jesu</i>
intervene; Hence the Hebrews and Cabalists most skilful in the Divine
names, can work nothing after Christ by those old names, as their
fathers have done long since; and now it is by experience confirmed,
that no devil nor power of Hell, which vex and trouble men, can resist
this name, but will they, will they, bow the knee and obey, when the
name <i>Jesu</i> by a due pronunciation is proposed to them to be
worshipped, and they fear not only the name but also the Cross, the seal
thereof; and not only the knees of earthly, heavenly, and hellish
creatures are bowed, but also Insensible things do reverence it, and all
tremble at his beck, when from a faithful heart and a true mouth the
name <i>Jesus</i> is pronounced, and pure hands imprint the salutiferous
sign of the Cross.</b></span></p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p><span><b> Neither truly doth Christ say in vain to his
Disciples, In my name they shall cast out Devils <i>&</i>c. unless
there were a certain virtue expressed in that name over devils and sick
folk, serpents, and persons, and tongues, and so forth, seeing the power
which his name hath, is both from the virtue of God the institutor, and
also from the virtue of him who is expressed by this name, and from a
power implanted in the very word. Hence it is that seeing every creature
fears and reverences the name of him who hath made it, sometimes even
wicked and ungodly men, if so be they believe the invocation of Divine
names of this kind, do bind devils, and operate certain other great
things.</b></span></p><p><span>Henry Cornelius Agrippa, <i>Three Books of Occult Philosophy</i>, Book III, Chapter XII, p.201<br /></span> <br /></p></blockquote><p><span></span></p><p></p><p>On the other hand, “Christ” may be too tainted with the bloody history
of the organized Church(es). We must be wary of the limitations of
connotation. <br /></p><p>In any case, reading the message of Agrippa's
ancient predecessor Plotinus, and in reverse order from Plotinus back
through the tradition to Plato himself, as epistemology and psychology
rather than as mere ontology renders visionary experience as immanent,
not transcendent. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrL3JN2FPnmPoO1ccRKdtEvm7maYdDQ4h22wxyEvzkRNZ7EFs00hyheyv9ankkAUVZ98turl4xFVYF5OAxo_3rF-VzsALQKBAFY58MkCB45jdAoujNYJc3V1DB3cBOUpI_qCgarQVXOqMUbm0YpwGM9zDvzVbUHPQ0OyrDZ7-TnQkAJ-8bV27pLAVrhzlF/s640/99c26-adventures-of-prince-achmed-lotte-reiniger-silent-film-animation-image-05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrL3JN2FPnmPoO1ccRKdtEvm7maYdDQ4h22wxyEvzkRNZ7EFs00hyheyv9ankkAUVZ98turl4xFVYF5OAxo_3rF-VzsALQKBAFY58MkCB45jdAoujNYJc3V1DB3cBOUpI_qCgarQVXOqMUbm0YpwGM9zDvzVbUHPQ0OyrDZ7-TnQkAJ-8bV27pLAVrhzlF/s16000/99c26-adventures-of-prince-achmed-lotte-reiniger-silent-film-animation-image-05.jpg" /></a></div><br />Nietzsche, the arch-critic of the false values
associated with transcendence, can reenter at this point. Nietzsche, as
we know, was no critic of Christ <i>as</i> Christ, but of the
otherworldly doctrines of priestly Christianity, derided by Madame
Blavatsky as “Churchianity,” which devalue and make meaningless the
Earth, the body and its desires, and the senses themselves. <p></p><p>But as these
false “higher” values have in turn become devalued by the empirical
explorations of modern science, a dangerous phase of nihilism has swept
over the West and by extension everywhere else. As official Christianity
had already disenchanted and desacralized <i>this</i> world, the actual lived world, when it itself became dethroned all deeper meaning evaporated. <br /> <br /></p><p><span><b></b></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>We have abolished the real world: what world is left? the apparent world perhaps?</b></span><b>
. . . </b><span><b> But no! <i>with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world!</i> (Mid-day; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; zenith of mankind; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)</b></span></p><p><span>Friedrich Nietzsche, <i>Twilight of the Idols</i>, p.51<br /></span> <br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p>Nietzsche’s
insights on the devaluation of values, may also be traced through the
historical understanding of meaning within language. Master literary
critic, Northrop Frye, maps out this evolution or devolution of language
employing, like Joyce in <i>Finnegans Wake</i>, the work of Giambattista Vico as guide and scaffolding.</p><p>To
Vico’s four phases or ages of human development, also related by Vico
to tropes of language, that of Gods, Heroes, People and the Ricorso,
Frye adds various correspondences of his own concerning the use of
language. <br /><br />Hence, in the age of the Gods, linguistic expression
is poetic, written language is hieroglyphic and the principal trope is
the metaphor. For the age of Heroes, these three correspond to the
allegorical, the hieratic (simplified and more monosemic priestly
hieroglyphs), and the metonym. For the third phase of the cycle, that of
the People, language is vulgar, demotic and most often used for mere
description.</p><p>In <i>The Great Code</i>, Frye greatly expands upon
these basic correspondences and I’ll stretch these ideas even further.
In the first phase, in the age of the Gods, there is a metaphoric
identity between subject and object. Puns have a power and words can
affect and alter the “outside” world. Poetry is definitely a magic. </p><p>At this “time” there was no separation between gods, spirits, men and animals. Even “inanimate” objects<b>—</b>trees, rocks, mountains, rivers, fire<b>—</b>were animated, contained <i>anima</i> or soul.</p><p>“<b>Words of power</b>”<b>—</b>hieroglyphs
of Ancient Egyptian religion, Inuit oral poetry about a time when
humans and animals could communicate to and transform into one another<b>—</b>testify
of the first phase. The mysterious and manifesting abilities of the
human mind were everywhere evident. Words spoken carelessly could have
strange and potentially terrible consequences. Things desired could
happen through the expression of words.</p><p>Evidence of the this first phase can be found in the earliest Mesopotamian verse, and in the Finnish epic <i>Kalevala </i>which,
according to modernist mage Allen Upward, although transcribed only in
the nineteenth century, reflects a pre-Homeric mythological
consciousness in which there was no distinction between gods, wizards
and bards.<br /> <br /></p><p><span><b></b></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>MAGIC WORDS<br /><br />In the very earliest time, <br />when both people and animals lived on earth, <br />a person could become an animal if he wanted to <br />and an animal could become a human being. <br />Sometimes they were people <br />and sometimes animals <br />and there was no difference. <br />All spoke the same language. <br />That was the time when words were like magic. <br />The human mind had mysterious powers. <br />A word spoken by chance <br />might have strange consequences. <br />It would suddenly come alive <br />and what people wanted to happen could happen — <br />all you had to do was say it. <br />Nobody can explain this: <br />That’s the way it was.</b></span></p><p><span>Nalungiaq, Netsilik Inuit poet, edited by Edward Field, <i>Shaking the Pumpkin</i>, p.45<br /></span> <br /></p></blockquote><p><b><span></span></b></p><blockquote><p><b><span>The
ancient poet did not sing for the mere love of singing: he knew nothing
about </span>“<span>Art for Art</span></b><b>’</b><b><span>s sake</span></b><b>”</b><b><span>. His object in singing appears to have been
intensely practical. The world was inhabited by countless hordes of
spirits, which were believed to be ever exercising themselves to
influence mankind. The spirits caused suffering; they slew their
victims; they brought misfortune; they were also the sources of good or </span>“<span>luck</span></b><b>”</b><b><span>. Man regarded spirits emotionally; he conjured them with
emotions; he warded off their attacks with emotion; and his emotions
were given rhythmical expression by means of metrical magical charms.</span></b></p><p><b><span>Poetic
imagery had originally a magical significance; if the ocean was
compared to a dragon, it was because it was supposed to be inhabited by a
storm-causing dragon; the wind whispered because a spirit whispered in
it.</span></b></p><p><span>Donald A. Mackenzie, <i>Myths of Babylonia and Assyria</i>, p.237 <br /></span> <br /></p></blockquote><p><span><b></b></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>Thus
it is that when man</b></span><b>’</b><span><b>s eyes are lifted up to behold the heavens he sees
the celestial gods in the shape of men. The Gods of mythology are unseen
and mightier Wizards performing similar wonders on a grander scale. The
divine epics and scriptures tell over again the old folktales; only the
part of the enchanter is taken by the God. The wizard has vanished from
the <i>Iliad</i>, vanished from the Hebrew chronicle of the world,
vanished from the literature of all the celestial religions, because he
has ascended into heaven and become Zeus and Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
The wizards of the Kalevala are the archetypes of the Elohim of Genesis.</b></span></p><p><span>Allen Upward, <i>The Divine Mystery</i>, p.37<br /></span> <br /></p></blockquote><p><span></span></p><p>Ezra
Pound, much impacted by Upward, <span style="color: #2b00fe;">wrote </span>of the very real metamorphoses
present in pre-Platonic Greek poetry. Frye found signs of the first
phase in the most ancient parts of the Bible. Owen Barfield, an Inkling
associate and inspirer of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and also a
devotee of Rudolf Steiner, taught of an early stage of “<b>original participation</b>,” a state of non-duality without individual personality, which can be readily compared to Frye’s first phase.<br /> <br /></p><p><span><b></b></span></p><blockquote><p><span><b>The essence of <i>original </i>participation is that there stands behind the phenomena, <i>and on the other side of them from me</i>,
a represented which is of the same nature as me. Whether it is called </b></span><b>“</b><span><b>mana</b></span><b>”</b><span><b>, or by the names of many gods and demons, or God the Father, or
the spirit world, it is of the same nature as the perceiving self,
inasmuch as it is not mechanical or accidental, but psychic and
voluntary.</b></span></p><p><span>Owen Barfield, <i>Saving the Appearances</i>, p.42<br /></span> <br /></p></blockquote><p><span></span></p><p>Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn initiate and author, Arthur Machen,
independently finds vestiges of this “participation” in fairy tales and
in <i>The Thousand and One Nights</i>.<br /> <br /></p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>“When man yielded,</b><b>”</b><b> he would say, “to the mysterious temptation
intimated by the figurative language of Holy Writ, the universe,
originally fluid and the servant of his spirit, became solid, and
crashed down upon him overwhelming him beneath its weight and its dead
mass.</b><b>”</b><b> I requested him to furnish me with more light on this remarkable
belief; and I found that in his opinion that which we now regard as
stubborn matter was, primally, to use his singular phraseology, the
Heavenly Chaos, a soft and ductile substance, which could be moulded by
the imagination of uncorrupted man into whatever forms he chose it to
assume. </b></p><p><b>“Strange as it may seem,</b><b>”</b><b> he added, </b>“<b>the wild inventions (as we
consider them) of the Arabian Tales give us some notion of the powers of
the <i>homo protoplastus</i>. The prosperous city becomes a lake, the carpet
transports us in an instant of time, or rather without time, from one
end of the earth to another, the palace rises at a word from
nothingness. Magic, we call all this, while we deride the possibility of
any such feats; but this magic of the East is but a confused and
fragmentary recollection of operations which were of the first nature of
man, and of the <i>fiat</i> which was then entrusted to him.</b><b>”</b></p><p>Arthur Machen, “N”, <i>The Great God Pan</i>, p.310<br /> <br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p></p><p>In
this first phase, therefore, words and things are interchangeable.
Words transform things and things can become words. In shorthand this
can be notated as w=t. </p><p>In Vico and Frye’s second phase, however,
words are greater than things. They become ideal and abstract, Platonic
forms, archetypes, symbols of the ideal. Metaphors continue as metonyms
(substitutions or representations), but they are allegorical. Words
represent higher states and logic becomes all important. </p><p>If in
the first phase the transcendent is interchangeable with the immanent,
then in the second phase the transcendent is the dominant focus. Words
are greater than things (w>t).<br /><br /></p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><b>The basis of expression here is moving from the metaphorical, with
its sense of identity of life or power or energy between man and nature
(“this is that</b><b>”</b><b>), to a relationship that is rather metonymic (</b><b>“</b><b>this is
put for that</b><b>”</b><b>). Specifically, words are </b><b>“</b><b>put for</b><b>”</b><b> thoughts, and are the
outward expressions of an inward reality. But this reality is not merely </b><b>“</b><b>inside</b><b>”</b><b>. Thoughts indicate the existence of a transcendent order </b><b>“</b><b>above,</b><b>”</b><b> which only thinking can communicate with and which only words
can express. Thus metonymic language is, or tends to become, analogical
language, a verbal imitation of a reality beyond itself that can be
conveyed most directly by words.</b></p><p>Northrop Frye, <i>The Great Code</i><i>: The Bible and Literature</i>, p.7-8<br /><br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p></p><p>As
the second phase fades and gives birth to the third, there is a total
flip and things become more significant than words. In this phase,
basically our own phase, words are only referents, although no longer to
transcendent ideals but to common abstractions or to things that are
empirically evident. Language is descriptive, rational, scientific,
prosaic. </p><p>Poetry, and the arts in general, is merely decorative,
sensual, nostalgic. It is not expected to have metamorphic power, and in
fact a poet who believes that his or her words could actually transform
physical reality risks being institutionalized. </p><p>Words have been
fully tamed. Their primal and god-sired etymologies have been forgotten.
This phase corresponds to what Barfield called “<b>idolatry</b>,” a
transitional phase comprising the entirety of history in which the
individual emerges in progressive separation and alienation from all
other beings and Being itself. </p><p>Each step within idolatry is
a step further into meaninglessness. An idol is a thing or a person or
an idea experienced as being isolated from the eternal. Duality. Waste
land. All is immanent and nothing is transcendent (w<t).</p><p>What
then is the Ricorso? I think there are some presigns of this returning
phase in our mo/pomo era. Poet William Carlos Williams’ assertion of “<b>no ideas but in things</b>” points towards this. Other hints can be found in phenomenology, in analytic psychology, in writing like <i>Finnegans Wake</i> and Jack Kerouac’s “sketching.” <br /></p><p>In
the return, the description of the third phase deepens to the point
where thought and language are understood as always being a part of the
describing process, perhaps analogous to the popular conception of the
observers’ co-dependence on the observed within quantum physics.</p><p>McLuhan’s
characterization of the electronic media would also seem to map onto
the Ricorso, but McLuhan’s own media analysis clearly reflects Frye’s
third phase, things over words, while Frye himself tends to assert words
over things. This second phase, fit into McLuhan’s own schematic, would
be dominated by the medium of print.<br /><br />Yet what would a <i>first</i> phase analysis look like? Would analysis <i>as</i> analysis even be possible at this stage? Any attempt would be less like analysis and more like magic. <br /><br />The
path back to the participation of the age of gods, which in Owen
Barfield’s less cyclical and more linear conception is called “<b>final participation</b>”—a
return to non-duality with the personality intact—for Barfield and
Steiner before him is revealed in the Incarnation and ministry of
Christ. Yet as emphasized previously, this essentially Christian
perspective need not be (but can be) restricted by orthodox formulations and dogma. <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7IrnyHn3FlCLGEJX_2YR2mUqgxVxfn2S-Mpp_NK2R1WCZDisbT61jp_27FCI3xX3tXY7gAldloxluQDZGkOtxJoLfqj1Iz15DnV9QiX3wE3tm6seJmki__tF5uQ1XnTNe50xfRTJIuTnrUFGJOItnj76mOqEHoVzdoTHVxA-b3yO1aHfMmNLxioF8ID_8/s640/dumbo-crows-laugh.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="337" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7IrnyHn3FlCLGEJX_2YR2mUqgxVxfn2S-Mpp_NK2R1WCZDisbT61jp_27FCI3xX3tXY7gAldloxluQDZGkOtxJoLfqj1Iz15DnV9QiX3wE3tm6seJmki__tF5uQ1XnTNe50xfRTJIuTnrUFGJOItnj76mOqEHoVzdoTHVxA-b3yO1aHfMmNLxioF8ID_8/s16000/dumbo-crows-laugh.webp" /></a></div><br /><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="moz-extension://73ceb21f-d675-400e-8682-ea04405148fa/js/app.js" type="text/javascript"></script>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-26420602254062587052021-06-28T00:26:00.002-07:002021-06-28T03:10:29.644-07:00One Eye Gone Black<p></p><p></p><p><img alt="https://hips.hearstapps.com/amv-prod-alt.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ATA063020keaton_img01.jpg?crop=1xw:0.6666666666666666xh;center,top&resize=1200:*" height="320" src="https://hips.hearstapps.com/amv-prod-alt.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ATA063020keaton_img01.jpg?crop=1xw:0.6666666666666666xh;center,top&resize=1200:*" width="640" /><br /><br /> </p><blockquote><b>The One and Simple is what Dorn called the unus mundus. This “one world” was the res simplex. For him the third and highest degree of conjunction was the union of the whole man with the unus mundus. By this he meant, as we have seen, the potential world of the first day of creation, when nothing was yet “in actu,” i.e., divided into two and many, but was still one. The creation of unity by a magical procedure meant the possibility of effecting a union with the world -- not with the world of multiplicity as we see it but with a potential world, the eternal Ground of all empirical being, just as the self is the ground and origin of the individual personality past, present, and future.<br /> </b><br /> -- <i>Mysterium Coniunctionis</i>, C. G. Jung (p. 543) <br /><br /> </blockquote><p>This passage did in my head when I first came across it. Jung, in his reading of the 16th cen. alchemist Gerhard Dorn, is shedding an entirely new light on the phenomenology of the mystical experience. The common understanding of the latter, and an understanding that I once shared, is that the mystical is an apprehension of the oneness of the perceiver with the objects of perception -- the division between subject and object breaks down and all is experienced as a non-dual unity. </p><p>In other words, either my sense of self expands to envelop all of the things I see and otherwise sense around me -- sunlight, sea, sailboat, conversation, page, pen, jet engine roar, breeze -- or I completely lose myself within them. Either way, through inflation or deflation of the ego, the barriers between me and my environment are erased.</p><p>What Dorn and Jung are implying, however, is something far more profound. The union of the self is not with what we witness in actuality -- "<b>in actu</b>" -- but with what the world was before it was actualized -- "<b>the potential world of the first day of creation</b>." </p><p>The individual experiencing "<b>the highest degree of conjunction</b>" attains union not with the actual but with the potential and the <i>virtual</i>. Nor is the self experiencing this the everyday present self, but instead the <i>potential self</i> containing the individual personality of past, present and future. The potential self perfectly mirrors the potential world.</p><p>Yet what was the world on the first day of Creation? It was as near to absolute chaos as can be conceived. It is pure <i>potentia</i>. It is a seed or an egg that contains the power to give birth to all things in any form imaginable. It is infinitely dense and concentrated creativity -- the <i><b>unus mundus</b></i> -- able to branch out and transform in any possible direction, in any manifestation. </p><p>The existing course and evolution of the universe is only one of a limitless number of paths it could have taken. The unus mundus in fact contains all possible past, present and future universes. And this is what we are asked by Dorn (and Jung) to conjoin with. How? </p><p></p><p>Obviously this is not a mere act of perception. Being aware of the divinity or <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2020/03/gobblydumped-simultaneity-crown-of.html" target="_blank">incarnation</a> of perception is paramount, but this alone is insufficient for the full conjunction. It is not enough, for example, to annihilate oneself in the movement, sound and shimmering colours of the waves as they loosely curl onto the sand. This is merely the actual. </p><p>Perception will take us this far, but to go further it needs to be actively coupled with the imagination. Perception always falls under the imagination -- we are all greater artists than we realize, as Nietzsche taught -- yet for the most part its imaginary function is passive, unconscious.</p><p>To arrive at the potential or the virtual aspect of the waves is to actively, consciously, travel via the imagination-charged or -ignited senses back from the surface waves to the sea, to the course of all water, and finally to that juncture where our self and our senses, arriving just at this moment, emerged from water. </p><p>This cannot be experienced by normal application of the senses. The imagination is required to "visualize" it, yet the complete conjunction cannot be limited to sight or the metaphors of sight. Synesthesia comes closest to describing it, but even this falls far short.</p><p>Blake recognized the above in envisioning the Sun as the Hallelujah choir of Angels. The process is certainly a species of double vision. It is perception charged with utmost sacred meaning and distillation. Blake employed his imagination and voyaged to a point where the Sun had not yet separated itself from the angels. And there are further junctures to discover, further back, further within. <br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><b>It would be necessary to return to the interior of scientific states of affairs or bodies in the process of being constituted, in order to penetrate into consistency, that is to say, into the sphere of the virtual, a sphere that is only actualized in them. It would be necessary to go back up the path that science descends, and at the very end of which logic sets up its camp.</b><br /> <br /> -- <i>What is Philosophy?</i>, Deleuze and Guattari (p.140) <br /><br /> </blockquote><p>I'd like to temporarily hallucinate that D&G are on the same track here. And I would bet that I am not far off. How is it possible to "<b>penetrate into consistency</b>," to dive "<b>into the sphere of the virtual?</b>" </p><p>They are describing a process within science or at least partially intelligible through the metaphors of science, but they could have just as aptly used the terms of "<b>magical procedure</b>" as did Jung and the alchemists, and in other places they did use such terms. But how to get there? </p><p>We must "<b>go back up the path that science descends</b>." Science deals in the actual, but we aim for the virtual and we must travel beyond the horizon, beyond the point wherever logic, let alone modern science, constructed its first makeshift bivouac in the wailing jungle. <br /><br /> </p><p><img alt="https://uploads1.wikiart.org/images/franz-marc/fighting-forms-1914.jpg!Large.jpg" height="448" src="https://uploads1.wikiart.org/images/franz-marc/fighting-forms-1914.jpg!Large.jpg" width="640" /><br /><br /> </p><p>It is a long, dark pathless journey to get there. This is easier to grasp in biological terms, in terms of the origins of the species. We've all seen the genealogical trees in which modern humans branch off from neanderthals, hominids diverge from the greater primates, mammals and birds take their respective courses. </p><p>What we are considering, though, is a reversal or even a regression, and not with the physical organism, but with awareness and inner vision. It involves a journey back through image, and maybe within the memory present in the nervous system, in cellular DNA, through twigs and branches and tubules and roots to earlier intersection points in which things had not yet specialized, speciated. </p><p>Yet this is not science, of course, however expressed. In practice it is more akin to the visualization <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-tracer-off-yer-gob.html" target="_blank">exercises</a> of Tibetan Buddhism -- seeing oneself as becoming a god, to a demon, to an animal, back to a human, and to then to view all of these forms as being fluid and finally void of separate identity. </p><p>It is correct to call this prior to science, prior to logic, prior to exclusive form. "<b>The sphere of the virtual</b>," therefore, does not designate a particular place or state, ontology or epistemology. Instead, it is ever-fluctuating capacity within every crossing of potential emergence. </p><p>Barriers can be overcome very rapidly. The movement here is at the speed of thought. Here, two things can exist as one identity. The most basic logical foundations are shattered, pulverized. <br /><br /> </p><p></p><blockquote><b>In other words, becoming-animal is an operation which cannot be
performed within the actual, by a transformation from a fully
constituted individual of one species to another of a different species.
But if
we move towards the virtual, towards those circles of convergence or
fields of individuation where there are still communications between
not-yet-actualized species, one can become ‘re-enveloped’ in another
field.<br />
</b><br />
-- <i>Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy</i>, Manuel Delanda (p. 215) <br /><br /> </blockquote><p>As Delanda interprets Deleuze, the operation is not actual, not the transformation from a separate individual of one species to a separate individual of another. Instead it requires convergence, melding, confluence. There would always be an option to stop, I suppose, or to get stuck in some dead end. Kafka's metamorphic departure to dung-beetlehood may be an example. </p><p>Move from one branch to the trunk and then out to the furthest twiggiest extents of another. But it must always be possible to venture further down, towards where all lines and fibres and categories come together. </p><p>The obvious comparison, and the study where all of these experiments were most advanced, is with alchemy. The <i>prima materia</i>, the philosopher's stone, chemical dissolution, are names of the site at which the process fully occurs. The chaos before creation. </p><p>One travels from the actual to the not-yet-actual; becoming woman, becoming wombat, becoming snake, becoming moss, becoming stone, becoming fire. Nor are the paths fixed. There is really no set hierarchy of being, no need to descend in stages from "higher" orders to "lower." These are not firmly determined. <br /><br /> </p><p></p><blockquote><b>Deleuze’s thought hearkens back, here, to the hermetic vision of Pico della Mirandola, who had described a humanity created not in keeping with a particular form, but as superadded to the cosmic orders. This parataxic position of humanity renders it capable of undergoing extreme ordeals, of traversing the entire chain of being, from mineral to angelic. The realization of human perfection, in this view, is possible only because there is no human essence, God having given Adam “no form, no fixed seat.” Being created <i>imago dei</i>, for Pico, is not to be a well-placed “rational animal” at the center of stable hierarchies. The human prerogative is to be capable, for good or ill, of identification with any level of existence. The medieval chain of being that had an “allegorical” power in late scholastic cosmology, assigning to each individual a place, is reenvisioned by Pico as symbolic in precisely the Deleuzian sense of forming a milieu of transformation, an imbricated series of powers of becoming.</b><br />
<br />
-- <i>The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal</i>, Joshua Ramey (p. 107) <br /><br /> </blockquote><p>Human essence, according to Pico during the Renaissance, is to have <i>no</i> essence. The exhaustive possibility of Hermetic transformation is affirmed. Two points here distinguish Pico from Deleuze, and even from later more pagan or pantheist thinkers of the Renaissance, notably Giordano Bruno.<br /> </p><p>For one, the idea of a single and linear chain of being began to become obsolete. The metaphor of a ever-branching and bifurcating tree is more accurate, but even that image eventually gives way to one of a twigwork or rootwork of intersecting and fluctuating channels and arteries, swapping nourishment and communication, with multiple shifting access points both above and below ground. </p><p>Nature, yet also supra-nature and super-nature, exists as one seething, cycling, <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/06/capsizing-polypus.html">protoplasmic</a> polypus. This, however, is not yet the Natural Religion which Blake identified and strongly criticized, not Newton's sleep of scientific materialism. Bruno's renaissance, which it could be argued that Deleuze is an heir and a rejuvenator of, is a renaissance of Ancient Egyptian cosmic <i>immanentism</i>. </p><p>Nature revealed by the senses is affirmed, celebrated and worshiped, but its full realm entirely transcends human understanding. Instead of either lopping off belief in the Spirit altogether -- as in scientific materialism -- as being non-empirical and therefore untenable, or structurally situating Spirit outside and transcendent of nature entirely, as it was considered for the classical and medieval proponents of the Chain of Being, Spirit was beheld as unentangledly bound and wed with Matter. </p><p>Yet Spirit was understood as being both immanent <i>and </i>transcendent. It is immanent because Spirit is wholly and everywhere present, but simultaneously transcendent because it totally baffles normal "rational" comprehension. For Bruno, and perhaps Deleuze, all matter is <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/12/what-is-material-world-and-is-it-dead.html">alive</a>, spiritual, holy. It is neither dead nor separated by a hierarchized cosmic gulf from the intellectual or spiritual realm. The chain becomes a rhizome. </p><p>And the second difference from Pico's view stems directly from the first. It is not only human individuals who were created in the image of God. And it is important to realize what "image of God" truly means. Obviously, God being incorporeal, this does not mean the physical image of God. Human beings do not resemble God in bodily form, although Blake believed that the whole universe was in the shape of man. </p><p>The human form is certainly sacred, sublime, but this is not the primary gift that we were bestowed upon by the Creator. The gift of the image of God is the gift of the <i>imagination</i> of God. As God, therefore, created the universe from his/her imagination so human individuals have been granted the ability to fathom, craft and fashion singular universes of their own. <br /><br /> </p><p><img alt="https://uploads5.wikiart.org/images/bernard-cohen/floris-1964.jpg!Large.jpg" src="https://uploads5.wikiart.org/images/bernard-cohen/floris-1964.jpg!Large.jpg" /><br /><br /> </p><p>The step beyond this that Bruno is making, and it is also a step back to the most primal convictions of the species -- convictions that even now "survive" -- is that this creative ability is not confined or limited to the scope of humanity. Intelligent and imaginative spirits and entities permeate every level of nature from "below" the atomic to beyond the stars. </p><p>Shaping power is everywhere conjoined with passionate love. At each "point" total metamorphosis is possible. The openings and portals into Faery are ubiquitous; as the alchemists taught, the stone can be found in the very dust of the streets. The fact that modern/pomo/popomo individuals do not acknowledge this is only a measure of the present lack of vision, of the blinders we have allowed to be placed upon our senses and our mind, of the realm of quantity, of our own crisis of faith. </p><p>Whereas once nearly every member of society was at least a latent shaman, highly conscious of his or her capacity to traverse between worlds and even to make new worlds, now even "poets" -- the direct though stunted spiritual descendants of the shamanic wonder-workers -- have reduced their own roles to that of entertainers, jugglers of words, slightly elevated political, social and cultural commentators. Yet that was not the original path and calling of the poet. <br /><br /> </p><blockquote><p>
<b>The poet, by an ulterior intellectual
perception, gives them power which makes their old use forgotten, and puts
eyes, and a tongue, into every dumb and inanimate object.[...]</b></p><p><b>For, through
that better perception, he stands one step nearer to things, and sees the
flowing or metamorphosis; perceives that thought is multiform -- that within
the form of every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into a higher
form; and, following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which express
that life, and so his speech flows with the flowing of nature. All the
facts of the animal economy, -- sex, nutriment, gestation, birth, growth -- are
symbols of the passage of the world into the soul of man, to suffer there
a change, and reappear a new and higher fact. He uses forms according to
the life, and not according to the form. This is true science.</b></p><p></p><p>-- "The Poet", Ralph Waldo Emerson (p. 456) <br /><br /> </p></blockquote><p>Emerson, dipping back into the well of Neoplatonic tradition opened by the early nineteenth century translations of the works of these neglected philosophers into English by Thomas Taylor, attempted to reclaim the magical staff and mantle of the old poets. </p><p>Emerson, as did other U.S. "Transcendentalists" like Henry David Thoreau, recognized that a transformation of perception by the imagination was required to see "<b>the flowing</b>" of nature, and that true poetry results when words and nature flow as a single movement. With this poetic perception nature ascends to the forms of the beautiful. </p><p>The poet is then reanimator and annalist. He or she reports back their findings to the community, but in a sense the poetry itself <i>is </i>that discovery. The words and images and rhythms and breath of the poem are doorways into the experience, portals which also allow reanimated spirits to once again have intercourse with our circadian world. </p><p>All "facts" of nature reenter the soul in this way and are redeemed and reenchanted by the retrieval of verse. Once again, this is not merely a process of identifying with the objects of the senses as they normally function. The subject-object breach is not truly welded together in this manner. As the subject becomes completely altered through perception charged with the imagination, so the object is also transformed entirely. </p><p>Discreet and static things cease to exist completely. Categories melt away. A fluid, heaving, winding, chirping medium in continual yet often blissful tumult is revealed. This is the "higher" state of phenomena. And, as with Dorn and Jung and Deleuze and Bruno, it involves a traversing back to the potential, not the "actual", shapes and expressions of beheld forms. </p><p>Emerson, through Taylor and the Neoplatonists, can be placed in the same tradition. And Emerson goes on to make clear that is not only "natural" things, "<b>the animal economy</b>," that can be transformed through poetic perception; things crafted by the human hand and mind can also be opened up into the eternal. </p><p>A busy city street corner, full of noise, traffic, grime, electricity, buying and selling and stress, can as much be the site of alchemical transmutation, as a breezy wooded <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2020/04/loam.html">hillside</a> on the first day of Spring. All is open to the poet's page. And if it is the poets who, in a forest or a shopping mall, momentarily lift the veil of Pan, what do they witness? How does the splendour of the unus mundus appear? It is as terrifying as it is beautiful. <br /><br /> </p><p></p><blockquote><b>"Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after
hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe
corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see
me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all
these things—yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to
the solid ground beneath our feet—I say that all these are but dreams
and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There
<i>is</i> a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond
these ‘chases in Arras, dreams in a career,’ beyond them all as beyond a
veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil;
but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very
night from before another’s eyes. You may think this all strange
nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what
lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan."
</b><br />
<br />
-- <i>The Great God Pan</i>, Arthur Machen, (p. 10) <br /><br /> </blockquote><p></p><p>This, from Machen's incredible story which has so influenced weird- and horror fiction writers from H.P. Lovecraft on, is pure Neoplatonism. Machen, once an initiate of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and friend of the ceremonial magician and Aleister Crowley <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/02/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">rival</a>, A.E. Waite, is here expressing this vision as terror which, as Machen later admitted based on knowledge gained from his own singular experiences, he might better describe as awe. </p><p>Pan, son of Hermes, inspires both wonder and panic. But Machen is making an extremely crucial point in this story, and in other of his stories; if this experience, the veil-lifting, is conducted from the perspective of reductive scientific materialism, from one who attempts to remain aloof and "objective", one whose ego remains closed and fortified, then there is bound to be a shattering and a disintegration. It is indeed an experience of becoming. <br /><br /> </p><p><img alt="https://artsdot.com/ADC/Art.nsf/O/8LJ8H3/$File/John-Martin-The-Fallen-Angels-Entering-Pandemonium-from-Paradise-Lost.JPG" height="528" src="https://artsdot.com/ADC/Art.nsf/O/8LJ8H3/$File/John-Martin-The-Fallen-Angels-Entering-Pandemonium-from-Paradise-Lost.JPG" width="640" /><br /><br /> </p><p>The Abyss <i>will </i>look back into you. The bearded visage of the gold goat god can peer out through every particle, but he longs for union, conjunction, intoxication, dissolution, orgasmic rapture. It is the tower of the ego-complex that will be struck down by the lightning bolts of unconscious upheaval and tempest. Analysis, moving away even from at least the public Jung, is impossible without destruction. </p><p><a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-general-impossibility-of-honey.html">Vivisection</a>, the modern paradigm, gives birth to a multitude of new monsters. It is the positivist attitude that awakens the dreaded Old Ones. Instead, the active imagination is necessary, but its action requires an apparently paradoxical surrender. </p><p>The "real" world beyond "<b>this glamour and this vision</b>" -- is at all times present and is really only terrifying when we attempt to shut it out from our apprehension and yet it inevitably bursts forth within uninvited moments. </p><p>Far and beyond anything else, what is most repressed will eventually surface in a violence that is proportionate to the force employed in its initial repression. Yet the active lifting of the veil of Pan involves poetic conjuration. <br /><br /> </p><p></p><blockquote><p><b>Here too was all the work by which man had been made repeated before my
eyes. I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from itself,
and then again reunited. Then I saw the body descend to the beasts
whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to the
depths, even to the abyss of all being. The principle of life, which
makes organism, always remained, while the outward form changed. […] I
watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. […] for one
instance I saw a Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will not
farther describe. But the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient
sculptures, and in paintings which survived beneath the lava, too foul
to be spoken of…as a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor
beast, was changed into human form, there came finally death.</b></p><p>-- <i>The Great God Pan</i>, Arthur Machen, (p. 50) <br /><br /> </p></blockquote><p></p><p>Here, at the climax of the story, we discover what exactly occurred to the unfortunate young woman who was connived into becoming the guinea pig for the experiment to lift the veil of Pan. </p><p>A doctor submits a proto-Lovecraftian <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/01/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">report</a> on her physical dissolution. A now familiar course of shifting and becoming is horrifically described. The form wavers and flickers and oozes from sex to sex, from human to all manner of beasts, to the "<b>abyss of being</b>," the primordial jelly of all forms, and back to human again before final demise. </p><p>The "<b>outward form</b>" is in perpetual change while "<b>the principle of life</b>" persists throughout. In fact what is being observed is the accelerated protean nature of Pan himself. This, with few reservations, could be called Emerson's "<b>flowing of nature</b>," or Pico's "<b>no form, no fixed seat</b>," or Deleuze and Guattari's "<b>consistency</b>" and "<b>sphere of the virtual</b>" or Jung's "<b>potential world of the first day of creation</b>," the unus mundus. </p><p>Like the primordial hill or mound, the spire of spunk, of the Egyptian creation myth, the act or revelation is reenacted everywhere. Nor is this moment confined to a single originary instant at the beginning of time. </p><p>Instead, as ordinary perception itself projects outward the Cosmos at every moment, transmuting the raw riot of sensory data in an unnoticed and perpetual outpouring, it is perennial as well as ubiquitous. The Stone is found in the dust of the streets. </p><p>Abstraction in especially 20th century art, music and literature is a direct attempt to represent and reproduce this return to the virtual. Chaos is the final subject of atonal classical music, free jazz, noise, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, modernist and postmodernist poetry.</p><p>Chaos, in this primary sense, does not mean total disorder but instead all potential forms of order. When resurrection through the dissolution of the Stone is accomplished, the world itself is redeemed. And as the Stone is perceivable everywhere, for those possessing double vision and beyond, the world in fact has already been redeemed. Spiritual creation and material procreation are variations of a single process. <br /><br /></p><p></p><p></p><blockquote><p><b>"When man yielded," he would say, "to the mysterious temptation
intimated by the figurative language of Holy Writ, the universe,
originally fluid and the servant of his spirit, became solid, and
crashed down upon him overwhelming him beneath its weight and its dead
mass." I requested him to furnish me with more light on this remarkable
belief; and I found that in his opinion that which we now regard as
stubborn matter was, primally, to use his singular phraseology, the
Heavenly Chaos, a soft and ductile substance, which could be moulded by
the imagination of uncorrupted man into whatever forms he chose it to
assume. </b></p><p><b>"Strange as it may seem," he added, "the wild inventions (as we
consider them) of the Arabian Tales give us some notion of the powers of
the <i>homo protoplastus</i>. The prosperous city becomes a lake, the carpet
transports us in an instant of time, or rather without time, from one
end of the earth to another, the palace rises at a word from
nothingness. Magic, we call all this, while we deride the possibility of
any such feats; but this magic of the East is but a confused and
fragmentary recollection of operations which were of the first nature of
man, and of the <i>fiat</i> which was then entrusted to him."</b></p><p>-- "N", Arthur Machen, (p. 310)<br /><br /> </p></blockquote><p>In his story "N" -- the title likely taken from "n-dimension," potentially unlimited dimensions -- Machen stretches the protean understanding out to an insight on the structure of the universe itself. Before the "Fall" the universe was "<b>originally fluid</b>" and the "<b>servant</b>" of the spirit of man. It was subject to that "<b>fiat which was then entrusted to him</b>." </p><p>The power to create whole worlds instantly with words alone -- "<b>Let there be Light...</b>" was our original gift. Imagination was once acknowledged as standing beyond all law and necessity and was rightfully experienced as being coupled with the substance of mater. Fairy tales and the Arabian Nights are textual survivals of this primary vision, a vision which is perpetuated in shamanic excursions, nocturnal dream-flight and the full expressions of poetry.<br /><br /> </p><p><img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Sunrise_at_Creation.jpg/1200px-Sunrise_at_Creation.jpg" height="428" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Sunrise_at_Creation.jpg/1200px-Sunrise_at_Creation.jpg" width="640" /></p>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-19909303085136242782021-01-31T18:20:00.003-08:002021-02-01T03:50:05.754-08:00'Moments of visionary enthusiasm' -- Eight questions for Znore <p> <img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigsFnWuq6IX0Bl6Qv8N25DOdYuNuCqmtHaUudef09ExDpYZ3DSrFI52kRarB7l88ehETvZKotQ3SKWuC6JIcWWEP6Zvaph4IW8AMcHWY68dfddQ8qCU8CzuK8v9EDaP9Pt-Lmce9cS5ig/s1600/portinari_shepards.jpg" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigsFnWuq6IX0Bl6Qv8N25DOdYuNuCqmtHaUudef09ExDpYZ3DSrFI52kRarB7l88ehETvZKotQ3SKWuC6JIcWWEP6Zvaph4IW8AMcHWY68dfddQ8qCU8CzuK8v9EDaP9Pt-Lmce9cS5ig/w640-h400/portinari_shepards.jpg" width="640" /></p><p></p><p>[<i>The following was first published on the RAWIllumination.net website on <a href="http://www.rawillumination.net/2021/01/moments-of-visionary-enthusiasm-eight.html" target="_blank">January 28, 2021</a>. A big thanks to Tom and all his readers.</i>] </p><p>Znore is the author of <i>Death Sweat of the Cluster</i> (pictured above), a collection of pieces selected from his blog, <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/">Groupname for Grapejuice.</a> </p><p>I <a href="http://www.rawillumination.net/2020/12/five-best-books-of-2020.html">enjoyed the book a great deal,</a> and
I thought it would be fun to ask Znore to take a few questions about
topics covered in the book. This is one of my favorite interviews that
I've published here.</p><p>If you like this interview, see<a href="http://www.rawillumination.net/2017/09/talking-with-znore-blogger-at-groupname.html"> my earlier interview with Znore.</a> </p><p><b>RAW
Illumination: When I read your <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Death-Sweat-Cluster-Groupname-Grapejuice/dp/B08L47RW3X" target="_blank">book</a>, it made me want to read or re-read
many of the books you mention, i.e. I plan to read the new translation
of "The Odyssey" by Emily Wilson and right now I am trying to read the
Bible from start to finish, something I've never done, even though I
read the New Testament when I was a teenager. I also plan to read more
James Joyce, and I just wonder if that's one of the reactions you were
hoping for.</b></p><p><b>Znore: </b>Yes, this is exactly a response I was hoping for. Umberto Eco wrote, to paraphrase, that <i>Finnegans Wake </i>is
the paradigm of his idea of the "open work". Essentially this means
that there is no fixed and final reading of the text, that it is
completely open to chance and novel interpretations, and that it
continually urges us to venture outside of itself into the entire field
and experience of literature and life in general. Riffing on this idea,
I've thought that in the wake of the <i>Wake</i> all books turn into the <i>Wake. </i>All texts become open works; they can all be read as if they are incorporated into the webwork of <i>Finnegans Wake</i>. And with Jacques Derrida -- another thinker who was profoundly affected by the <i>Wake, </i>who
said that it singularly did not need to be deconstructed because it is
deconstruction itself -- there arrives the idea that there is nothing
outside of the text, nothing in experience that cannot be "read". These
are ideas that I'm playing with, that I may be misreading but that is
also the point. Obviously I cannot rewrite the <i>Wake</i>, or even
approach it, but I can try to emulate this aspect of it. These essays,
now in my book, were written with the aspiration that they would inspire
readers to open other books, to view the opening of books and the
linking together of books as being a kind of adventure, and then to
further extend this process throughout all media and all moments of
perception. Not that humble! I'm happy if this book has provoked you and
other readers to read more.</p><p><b>RAW Illumination: I liked your
efforts to reclaim Ezra Pound's literary legacy, and I like your
approach, i.e. acknowledging his terrible prejudices and not trying to
excuse them, but also arguing that they don't invalidate his literary
work. The world seems increasingly polarized politically -- do you worry
that his reputation will fall? </b></p><p><b>Znore: </b>Ezra Pound is a
vitally important figure to consider at precisely this time. His
influence on poetry is enormous. And his influence on prose -- through
Hemingway and others, and through his literary criticism -- is just as
immense. And Pound, in his own time, tirelessly promoted other writers
and artists and brought them to the attention of the world. Modernism
without Pound would undoubtedly have had far less impact. On top of
this, Pound's own writing in the Cantos and his earlier poetry is not to
be missed. But -- Pound was also a fascist and an antisemite who
eventually prodded, on Rome radio during WW2, U.S. and other Allied
soldiers to support the Axis powers. Even though towards the end of his
life he renounced his former antisemitism, this part of Pound's work and
career should not be ignored. U.S. poet and reluctant Pound disciple,
Charles Olson likely put it best:</p><p><i>It is not enough to call him a fascist.</i></p><p><i>He
is a fascist, the worst kind, the intellectual fascist, this filthy
apologist and mouther of slogans which serve men of power. It was a
shame upon all writers when this man of words, this succubus, sold his
voice to the enemies of the people.</i></p><p>Second generation Beat poet, Ed Sanders, in his <i>Tales of Beatnik Glory</i>,
discusses the "Lb Q" or "Pound Question" that was on the minds of poets
in the late '50s and early '60s: Pound is a poetic genius but he's also
a complete reactionary; what can we do with him? Certainly his fascist
influence has continued to the present day through groups like the
CasaPound in Italy and followers of Eustace Mullins in the U.S. I don't
think Pound's reputation can be completely redeemed. Without going
extensively into it here, his fascist worldview is far too tied up with
his thoughts on economics and history, his spirituality and even his
poetics to entirely overlook it. Yet, especially by taking the
perspective of what Pound called "Eleusis" in his work, there is much
that is inspiring and beautiful in Pound also.</p><p>But I think the
main reason why Pound is so relevant today, is that he represents a kind
of archetype or figure from the interwar era: an avant-garde and
libertarian writer and artist who was somehow seduced by the worst kind
of political movement. And echoes of this process can be heard and felt
at this very moment. Just as Pound and other bohemian artists spiraled
towards fascism, too many bloggers, artists, occultists, creative people
have veered off in a reactionary direction over the past decade or
more. (Maybe in response to excessive political correctness, which also
had its parallels in Pound's day.) I've seen this happen in real time.
The life of Ezra Pound can act as a cautionary tale in this regard. </p><p><b>RAWIllumination: <a href="http://www.rawillumination.net/2021/01/william-blake-is-everywhere.html">As I wrote in my blog post today, </a>William
Blake apparently is a more influential writer than I realized, and you
write a lot about Blake in your book. What is it about Blake that would
particularly appeal to a Robert Anton Wilson fan?</b></p><p><b>Znore: </b>I think there are many points of contact between William Blake and Robert Anton Wilson. The character Blake Williams in
<i>Schrödinger's Cat </i>is an obvious hat tip, but there is a much
wider shared understanding of the two writers. Even if RAW was not
directly influenced by Blake -- which I'm sure he was -- he would have
been affected by the poet's worldview through writers, like Joyce and
Pound, who did deeply influence Wilson's thought. Aside from these
influences, though, is simply the immense and almost atmospheric
presence of Blake within the mid-20th century counterculture that RAW
played a vital part within: from Allen Ginsberg's 1948 "Blake Vision" in
Harlem, which set Ginsberg off on his career as poet-prophet, to Jim
Morrison & the Doors (of perception), to the constant ubiquity of
Blake within the pages of the underground press. </p><div dir="ltr"><div>Yet aside from this general influence, there are also quite specific overlappings of the ideas of the two. In <i>Jerusalem</i>,<i> </i>Blake
wrote that “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I
will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” This emphasis on
creating one's own system or set of beliefs and not getting "enslaved"
or ensnared by someone else's belief system (BS) is at the heart of
RAW's thought. A difference between the two might be that, in his
prophetic epics and related poetry, Blake <i>did</i> create a vast and
complex mythological/theological system, whereas Wilson, while he
explored and played with countless ideas and philosophies, was content
to take an ironic stance of "transcendental agnosticism" without
constructing his own elaborate system (although one could argue that he
approaches this in <i>Prometheus Rising</i>). </div><div><br /></div><div>What
brings the two even closer together, though, is Blake's insistence that
literal thought must be avoided altogether. The literal and historical
existence of Jesus Christ, for example, was irrelevant to Blake. The
thing that matters most is the mythological and symbolic significance of
Jesus and his mission. Wilson, on the other hand, was an agnostic, but
one that was entirely and quite uniquely open to mystical and visionary
experience. The ultimate stress for both writers is the vigilant
avoidance of moral dogmatism, be it priestly, governmental or
scientific. Blake would have called himself a "Christian," but his
Christianity was a non-dogmatic, visionary, life- and body-affirming
gospel of the Imagination that RAW would likely have found little to
disagree with:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I know of no other
Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body &
mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Blake's
affirmation of the desires and delights of the body -- to the point of
practicing sex magic, according to certain scholars -- would have also
appealed to RAW, as would Blake's insistence that "State Religion" is
"the source of all Cruelty," and that the real battle is the "mental
fight" between genuine and uncompromised visionaries of the imagination
and those that use their creative talents to help justify power. These
are just a few of the many points that unite Blake and RAW.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RAWIllumination: Where does the title of <i>Death Sweat of the Cluster </i>come from?</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Znore</b>: Well, one thing that the title does <i>not</i>
have anything to do with -- contrary to what some have guessed -- is
the "clusters" of the infected or of the fevered "death sweats" of
COVID-19. This book has been in the making since 2016 and the title was
chosen early on, so any connection of the title of the book, and its
publication in 2020, to the ongoing pandemic is purely a "coincidance".
In fact, the title is the opposite of anything morbid. And it is related
to your last question because it's taken directly from the final
sections of Blake's <i>The Four Zoas</i>. On one level, the "cluster" is
a cluster of grapes and the "death sweat" is the juice or wine. In this
way it is related to groupname for grapejuice. But on a deeper level,
this is also Blake's culminating vision of the apocalypse; the spilling
of the blood of tyrants and also the communion festival for the great
harvest of the ascending era. There's a kind of unsettling ambiguity in
this symbolism -- at once containing the end and the beginning, tragedy
and comedy, night and day -- that I try to probe and linger within
throughout the book.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RAWIllumination: I have started reading the entire Bible (partially influenced by your book) and it seems to me<i> Finnegans Wake</i>
is a kind of modernist Bible, in the sense that reading and
understanding Joyce is almost as fundamental to understanding modern
literature as reading the Bible has been to understanding older
literature for centuries. (At the end of <i>TSOG</i>, RAW remarks that Joyce invented the "New Yorker" story with <i>Dubliners</i>, invented multiple viewpoint novels with <i>Ulysses</i> and invented a new hologrammatic style with <i>Finnegans Wake.)</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b>Znore:</b> Yes, I would agree that Joyce and <i>Finnegans Wake </i>are pretty crucial to understanding modern literature. I notice traces and obvious winks to the <i>Wake </i>in
the works of Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, William
Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, William Gass, Jorge Borges,
Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallis, Mark Z. Danielewski and on and
on, whether this influence is acknowledged or not. It's actually quite
difficult to avoid the vortex. So in that sense <i>Finnegans Wake</i> has this parallel with the Bible. </div><div dir="ltr"><div><br /></div><div>The difference, of course, is that it would be very hard to base a religion -- at least a traditional one -- on <i>Finnegans Wake. </i>Like I said before, the <i>Wake </i>is
an entirely open book. It is impossible to give just one interpretation
of it. It resists any form of dogmatism, any ethical or moral
systematizing, completely. And it constantly demands that the reader
doubt its own seriousness. We are never really certain if the whole
thing might not simply be a colossal practical joke. This would seem to
be the exact opposite of what the Bible is. But is it? <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>In the book, I mention that Norman O. Brown (another influence on RAW) wrote that only after understanding the <i>Wake</i>,
could Westerners ever hope to grok the Koran. He meant that the Koran
itself is such a rich and "avant-garde" text that it requires a
heightened literacy to appreciate it. But could the same be said about
the Bible? In other words, is the Bible itself just as much of an open
work as the <i>Wake </i>is? Do we only now have the capacity to read it
as the open and multi-dimensional text that it truly is? Yet we must
always remember that kabbalists, poets and mystics of all sorts have for
centuries interpreted the biblical writings in non-reductive, creative
and esoteric readings. <i>Finnegans Wake</i>, in actively encouraging these types of readings, is merely a part of this deeper tradition. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>RAW is right to say that the <i>Wake </i>has a "hologrammatic style," but it should be remembered that this idea appears in Blake, -- "<span class="gmail-aCOpRe">to
see a World in a Grain of Sand" -- in the Hermetic writings -- "that
which is above is like to that which is below" -- and back to Plato's <i>Timaeus </i>and earlier. But the <i>Wake</i>,
maybe uniquely, captures these ideas in a "style", embodies the living
microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondence within its every page. And it not
only does this, but it transforms and enables one to read all other
books as this also. So if the <i>Wake </i>becomes the Bible, the Bible -- alive to this same tradition -- also becomes the <i>Wake.</i></span></div><div><span class="gmail-aCOpRe"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><b>RAWIllumination: I'm curious why you decided not to do an ebook of <i>Death Sweat of the Cluster. </i>Do you ever read ebooks, or do they seem like not "real" books to you?</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Znore:</b> The
main reason for not publishing an ebook is that almost all of this
material is still available -- as blog posts -- online. I wanted to
shift this writing into a different medium, a printed book. I wanted a
tactile object that could be touched, smelt and even tasted if desired.
In certain ways, the once dominant and totalizing medium of print has
somewhat surprisingly become, in McLuhan's sense, an anti-environment.
It at least has the potential to temporarily release the reader from the
current tyranny of networked screens. Blog posts, ebooks and even
audiobooks do not have the full ability to do this, in my experience, as
they remain more or less disposable or interchangeable files within the
neverending feed. Physical books, even if they were published and
distributed through these networks (as mine is unfortunately by Amazon),
can be set apart, and in reading them the reader can -- for a time --
be set apart as well. I'm not opposed to ebooks or audiobooks, but I
understand that they are certainly different sorts of media and that
their "message" changes accordingly. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>RAWIllumination: Do you have a favorite literary critic whom you read for pleasure or insight?</b></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Znore: </b>Ezra
Pound cautioned that readers should avoid critics who have not
published any notable creative work themselves. I get where Pound is
coming from -- there should be some proof that the critics really know
their business -- but I've also found that certain literary criticism
can be inspired and inspiring in itself. The work of Northrop Frye on
Blake I'd include in this, and Frye himself is a fascinating foil and
"rival" to his University of Toronto English department colleague,
Marshall McLuhan. In fact, McLuhan's work can be viewed as "extended"
literary criticism, and I certainly value his insights. Kathleen Raine,
an accomplished poet who would handily pass Pound's test, is an
excellent literary scholar of Blake, Yeats, Shelley, etc. I also enjoy
Marsha Keith Schuchard's work on Blake's possible sexual magic. Frances
Yates' many books on Renaissance esotericism -- though I'm not sure if
these can be classed as literary criticism -- are always exciting.</div><div><br /></div><div>In
general, I'm not that interested in criticism that tends to emphasize
the merely formal or stylistic elements of writing. Yet these elements
can be fascinating if they are related, as they often are, with the
visionary architecture of the work. I think what I'm looking for in lit
crit are "clues," explanations of signs, cyphers and symbols that I may
have overlooked, a kind of solidarity of enthusiasm with someone more
dedicated than myself; guides that make the way clearer and point
outside of the text to the greater and endless weaving of influences and
pulses that holds and runs through all lasting verse and prose.
Emerson, another inspired poet and critic, wrote that often critics are
too much concerned with the "material" side of literature -- what the
writer "does" over what he/she "says". In contrast, he states that poets
know that they are expressing themselves "adequately" when speaking
"somewhat wildly." </div><div><br /></div><div>This, even though far from
poetry, is essentially the "method" in <i>Death Sweat</i>. The book is not
meant to be academic literary criticism or even to resemble it. I have
too much respect for real criticism to pretend otherwise. So it's not
criticism and it's not journalism. It's loose, it's "wild" -- even silly
and embarrassing at times -- and it's primarily concerned with
burrowing into moments of visionary enthusiasm in books & films
& pop culture & current events & in my own experiences,
moments of "bust thru". It's a flawed and stumbling ode to that sort of
gibberish and doggerel which somehow captures a glimpse of the eternal.
And that's also the category of both lit and lit crit that I find most
attractive.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RAW Illumination: I am generally
up for reading difficult or demanding books and authors, but to tell
you the truth, whenever I read a passage from<i> Finnegans Wake</i>, I
am worried about actually being able to read it from start to finish.
What can you tell me (if you wish to) to assuage my anxiety?</b></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Znore:</b> Just
a short answer for this. I remember RAW somewhere saying that the <i>Wake</i>
should be read out loud, and if at all possible read with other people
while drinking Irish stout (weed would also do). I heartily agree. I
read <i>Finnegans Wake</i> as music, as a sort of unhinged free jazz
with Celtic instruments. If you read and listen to it as music, you will
quickly notice repeating or "rhyming" themes and motifs and eventually
these will take on meaning and then constellate into greater patterns of
meaning. Yet attaining the precise or "correct" meaning is secondary.
When Joyce was asked about the accuracy of the French translation of the
<i>Wake</i>, he replied that the sound was most important. As long as the
sound (in French or whatever) carried the reader along its "message"
had been successfully transmitted. Of course the many existing
guidebooks help, too. I think RAW also said that FW was the funniest and
sexiest book he'd ever read. I wouldn't argue with that either. Nothing
to be intimidated by!</div></div></div>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-6075450860023911032020-10-14T23:36:00.002-07:002020-10-16T17:23:46.784-07:00B(oo)k! : Death Sweat of the Cluster<p>
<b></b></p><blockquote><b></b><blockquote><b></b><blockquote><b></b><blockquote><b>Demeter, nurse and mother of my art,
Let me be <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2016/05/book.html">worthy</a> of thy Mysteries.
</b> --Aeschylus from <i>Frogs</i>, Aristophanes</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p><br /></p><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p> <img alt="http://www.conorwalton.com/images/new_images/new_rogerdepiles.jpg" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEjz1wOvUlBLIBr0xlQDR1PIaaOhnSq3oSnQzElvsYHs2I-l2UFi7HUiBwMhlrVCSPc-PI9SFacnB0jO3jhwa8y7LcceYDmd47v1UJ2JdrTb6DYVv7VjN65isxd7Fl-McfgD-rUXs8-DPOm6zr5OskEXtnn3pZ36Z51Q1F6fuXzSf3c=s0-d" /></p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p>It has arrived! Those who have been patient, my sincerest thanks. </p><p>27 essays taken from Groupname for Grapejuice from 2012 to 2015 plus one yet unseen introduction. Four hundred and two pages, seven major sections, their titles composing a Lovecraftian tale of seven lines. </p><p>Gorgeous original cover and interior art by Kaylee Pickinpaugh -- a new zodiac gyring out or spiraling into an interior empyrean of the Earth and transfiguring the whole text into a magic item. Endless curling details. Flanked by Moon and Sun, bridged at usura and Eleusis, shining throughout. Thoth and Pan.<br /></p><p>Editing and layout wizardry by Alan Abbadessa and Jason Barrera of Sync Book Press. A melange of fonts, formats and letter dimensions: start it anywhere, bibliomantic and aphoristic. A tactile object that's exactly the right smoothness, size and weight in one's hands.<br /></p><p>"But can a blog be a book?" No, it turns out. This is nothing like a blog. Even though the words may be (mostly) the same, the whole has become something else. Through a process beyond intention, these pieces gel together and achieve autonomy. </p><p>I was worried how relevant it would be. Yes, certain events, people, concerns have scrolled far down the feed, but now they've changed into symbols, ciphers of the dot-connection, aughts of the nought. I've tried to loom out a weavework between literature, other media and my own experiences, and the book has got all tangled up in the threading. I am in no sense still concerned.<br /></p><p>Now that this is finally out -- just in time for the revolution and the deluge -- I should have more moments to spend here. That's the hope. I tremendously appreciate everyone who has continued to read this blog, even in the fallow months. More to come! Questions or comments below are always the most fulfilling part of this. If you have any I promise this time I'll respond. Thanks for truly helping to make this come about. I'd have lost my will to go on with this ages ago if you weren't there.</p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b></b></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Death-Sweat-Cluster-Groupname-Grapejuice/dp/B08L47RW3X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=death+sweat+of+the+cluster&qid=1602742321&sr=8-1"><span style="font-size: large;"><b></b></span></a></p><blockquote style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Death-Sweat-Cluster-Groupname-Grapejuice/dp/B08L47RW3X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=death+sweat+of+the+cluster&qid=1602742321&sr=8-1"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Death Sweat of the Cluster: Selected Essays from Groupname for Grapejuice</b></span></a></blockquote><img class="image-stretch-vertical" height="640" id="igImage" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81U3vZs30rL.jpg" style="max-height: 1500px; max-width: 1000px;" width="427" /><p></p><p> <br /></p>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-68014784629876043772020-04-20T19:13:00.000-07:002020-04-20T19:13:16.317-07:00Loam<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml><o:DocumentProperties><o:Revision>1</o:Revision><o:Pages>1</o:Pages><o:Lines>1</o:Lines><o:Paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs></o:DocumentProperties></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml><o:OfficeDocumentSettings></o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml><w:WordDocument><w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel><w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery><w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>2</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery><w:DocumentKind>DocumentNotSpecified</w:DocumentKind><w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>7.8 磅</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing><w:PunctuationKerning></w:PunctuationKerning><w:View>Normal</w:View><w:Compatibility><w:DontGrowAutofit/><w:BalanceSingleByteDoubleByteWidth/><w:DoNotExpandShiftReturn/></w:Compatibility><w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom></w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml><w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true" DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99" LatentStyleCount="260" >
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Bullet" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Number" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Bullet 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Bullet 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Bullet 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Bullet 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Number 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Number 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Number 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Number 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Title" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Closing" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Signature" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Default Paragraph Font" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Body Text" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Body Text Indent" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Continue" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Continue 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Continue 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Continue 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Continue 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Message Header" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Subtitle" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Salutation" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Date" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Body Text First Indent" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Body Text First Indent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Note Heading" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Body Text 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Body Text 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Body Text Indent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Body Text Indent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Block Text" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Hyperlink" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="FollowedHyperlink" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Strong" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Emphasis" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Document Map" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Plain Text" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="E-mail Signature" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Normal (Web)" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Acronym" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Address" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Cite" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Code" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Definition" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Keyboard" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Preformatted" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Sample" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Typewriter" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="HTML Variable" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Normal Table" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="annotation subject" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="No List" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="1 / a / i" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="1 / 1.1 / 1.1.1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Article / Section" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Simple 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Simple 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Simple 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Classic 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Classic 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Classic 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Classic 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Colorful 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Colorful 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Colorful 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Columns 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Columns 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Columns 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Columns 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Columns 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Grid 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Grid 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Grid 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Grid 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Grid 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Grid 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Grid 7" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Grid 8" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table List 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table List 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table List 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table List 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table List 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table List 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table List 7" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table List 8" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table 3D effects 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table 3D effects 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table 3D effects 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Contemporary" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Elegant" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Professional" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Subtle 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Subtle 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Web 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Web 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Web 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Balloon Text" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Grid" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Theme" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Placeholder Text" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="No Spacing" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Shading" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light List" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Grid" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Dark List" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Shading" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful List" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Grid" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light List Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="List Paragraph" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Quote" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Intense Quote" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light List Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light List Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light List Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light List Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light List Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6" ></w:LsdException>
</w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">[<i>Incantation for the <a href="http://thesyncbook.com/?pagename=alwaysrecord&ep=208">4/11 Working</a></i>] </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Release the heart’s block</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Waterfall sings with all voices</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> That ever sounded</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Down to the sea, flat on the sand</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> The lowest heals</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Four mountains reveal themselves</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Drone the vowels</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Butterfly comes through love</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Blue marble, spiral shell, grey stone</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Fungal flight</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">A plug <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2019/04/legal-toadskin-void.html">between</a> juice fields</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Jazz-bird invitation to the valley</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">At this time of appearing</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> We are food and eaters of food</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">All the muck must emerge</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">A jungle shrine buries a city</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Burying even more ancient cities</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Half-absorbed in the lichen cross</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Beaten to shards, flakes, pulverized</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Wailing insane in the dirt</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">All is forgiven, all shame vanquished</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Descend into the pit</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> And wrestle away the keys</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The strong wind blows pestilence</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Across the land</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Invisible envoys of primal horror</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Kombu for iodine, red wine for strontium</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Coltrane for cobalt, Cecil for cesium</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Carnival of the fourth world</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Hooved and shaggy we drum</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> And play our pipes</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Wild willful twisting wobbling</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> In the womb</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> On Golgotha, on the sweet</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Skull of Adam</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Stuttering Thunder shocks</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Us awake again and the </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Snake beckons us to the Star</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Beech tree and Bedrock </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> And Her cry bursts my heart</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The landscape becomes alive in thought</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Slip <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/06/capsizing-polypus.html">through</a> the Western Gate</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Once things come and cross</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> The crown is dual</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Finally able to map </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> The adimensional mugwortery</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Of birdspeak greentongue twilightese</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Drawn into insect</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Rites of the setting sun</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">No rolling back of the sky</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The holy fool burns down his house</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Coyote still flails in the air</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Nomad’s way once more</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Contact through the still pool</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Of the mind</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The others come to see themselves</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Reflected</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">A guerrilla assault from the Moon</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The Zeroine breaks through at every instant</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Too dangerous now to open</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> The drunken gates</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Death throes of the bug machine</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Only gods and immortals may</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Leave through the South</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Two Cones wrapped </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Around one another</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The tent post, the smoke hole</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Animal wheel in dance </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Twelve snakes spiral into the poles </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Ascending and descending </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Through the phases of the Moon</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Thirteen -- the completion of</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> The sphere</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Architectonics</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Psychoshamanics</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Green snake crossing</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> On the steps</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">An invisible</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Grid overlaid on</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> The land and shining through</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> In words, notes, brush strokes</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The song begins in the branches</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Hooting from the East hill</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Mud union</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Green shine and shadow</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Silence the peripheral buzz</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Knotted in flesh</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Three mangy visitors at our back door</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Here is the weave and the code</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The moving world in a flash</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Paradise in the details</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Flickers of panic</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">A quest back to faith:</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> The seat of the common sense</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Pumping blood, radiating light</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Circulating the loom of images</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">The departure of the Starman:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> You’re not alone</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> In the woods between the worlds</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Great wellings of light</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Peak through holes</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> In the leaves</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Black slices into night</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Even as all around floats with</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> Petals and spores</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;">Cool black wet loam </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"> </span><img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Racoon_dog_face.jpg/1200px-Racoon_dog_face.jpg" height="478" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Racoon_dog_face.jpg/1200px-Racoon_dog_face.jpg" width="640" /></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0000pt;"></span>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-83706766014627946312020-03-31T23:43:00.002-07:002021-01-31T19:26:00.862-08:00Gobblydumped Simultaneity & the Crown of Creation<br />
<img alt="https://www.artmajeur.com/medias/standard/i/r/irisha-ve/artwork/10863817_dul11-ms.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="702" src="https://www.artmajeur.com/medias/standard/i/r/irisha-ve/artwork/10863817_dul11-ms.jpg" width="484" /> <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Menard has (perhaps unwittingly) enriched the slow and rudimentary art of reading by means of a new technique -- the technique of deliberate anachronism and fallacious attribution. That technique, requiring infinite patience and concentration, encourages us to read the <i>Odyssey</i> as though it came after the <i>Aeneid</i>, to read Mme. Henri Bachelier’s <i>Le jardin du Centaure</i> as though it were written by Mme. Henri Bachelier. This technique fills the calmest books with adventure. Attributing the <i>Imitatio Christi</i> to Louis Ferdinand </b><b>Céline or James Joyce -- is that not sufficient renovation of those faint spiritual admonitions? </b><br />
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-- “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Jorge Luis Borges </blockquote>
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Pierre Menard’s novel and radical technique for the art of reading, involving <b>deliberate anachronism</b> -- reading a work of literature as if it was published <i>after</i> the works it had itself influenced -- and <b>fallacious attribution</b> -- reading a work of literature as if it was penned by a different author entirely -- can itself be radicalized.<br />
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Not only can new and powerful insights be gained by reading <i>Gilgamesh</i>, for example, as if it was written by Nietzsche, or by reading the <i>Old Testament</i> as if it was influenced by the <i>Mabinogion</i>, but even more can be discovered if all texts everywhere and at all times were accepted as being written <i>simultaneously</i>.<br />
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By <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-short-note-on-method.html">applying</a> this method, Cervantes’ <i>Don Quixote</i> and Menard’s <i>Don Quixote</i> have been both written and released at the same time, as have been all other texts. Not anachronism but synchronism. The lines of influence are omnidirectional and omnipresent, converging and diverging at every point. And this simultaneity of textuality can only take place at the very present of reading. Indeed the act of reading creates all texts. And of course this includes the entirety of history: the whole of humanity’s written account of itself. This corresponds to Blake’s 6000 <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/07/year-one.html">years</a> of creation compressed into the pulsation of an artery.<br />
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The holy scriptures of every religion, every scientific treatise, every technical manual, every bit of back-of-the-envelope doodling, every pulp novel, every newspaper headline, every Shakespeare play, every song, every script, every poem, every toilet stall wall scrawling, in any language ever, all of it inter-reflects, flows in and out of each other, each line, word and letter functioning as fluctuating portals into the whole.<br />
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And, <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2015/08/meereschal-macmuhun-moon-child-me-1.html">riffing</a> on McLuhan, why should this be limited only to the medium of print? There is also the simultaneity of the electric and electronic media. All produced sounds and images coalesce and fracture, absorb and bounce off one another, swirl and dance together at once. Yet the media are only particular extensions of our nervous systems and senses. All technologies, all tools, all built things and environments, are also right here simultaneously, each extending different parts of our own physical form.<br />
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<img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Gray492.png" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Gray492.png" /> <br />
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We “read” them as we move our bodies within them. But as they are extensions of our own physical forms, these bodies, our bodies, are cells of a greater body that contains all people. We are healthy together. We are sick together. We are both sick and healthy. But no quarantine or isolation is absolute. The membranes between bodies are porous, permeable, undulating, occasionally vanishing. <br />
The tympanum vibrates on both sides. The margin may also be a centre. Nothing is prevented from leaking across.<br />
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From bat to shit to fly to pangolin to pandemic. Caravans, migrations, rats, coughs, panic. Delving too deep. Cutting across the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/02/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">kingdoms</a>. Fluidity of all categories. Seasickness in every cell. Supply chain disruptions. General schizophrenic blowouts. A concrescence of all symbols and species. Secrets of the ziggurats in the condensation patterns outside a stainless steel water cup. Biolab, cruise ship, death cult, ping pong club, school lunch, NASCAR race, taxi cab ride, rest home.<br />
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Fine meridians, too subtle to detect empirically, grant dispersion of disruption. Both internal and external dis-ease. No clear foundations, no firm conclusions, no possible predictability. The whale is just a whale. At this moment nothing is filtered out. The sunshine glares, almost blinds, eyes watching at every corner, shut down, barricaded, rock piles, shimmering, quavering, breaking at the edges. A virus is only barely biological and the coming plague will be even more ephemeral. A contagion of punning tricksters streaming from the volcanic fire.<br />
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As revealed in the most blasphemous of the Hermetic verses, the imagination is godlike. In Book 11 of the <i>Corpus Hermeticum</i>, initiates are advised to practice a visionary exercise. The faculty of the imagination already provides us with the power to transport our souls anywhere, to transform them into anything, to soar even beyond the cosmos. And all with the speed of thought. With this remarkable power we have the ability to begin to understand the mind of God, as only Like understands Like. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Grow to immeasurable size. Be free from every body, transcend all time. Become eternity and thus you will understand God. Suppose nothing to be impossible for yourself. Consider yourself immortal and able to understand everything: all arts, sciences and the nature of every living creature. Become higher than all heights and lower than all depths. Sense as one within yourself the entire creation: fire, water, the dry and the moist. Conceive yourself to be in all places at the same time: in earth, in the sea, in heaven; that you are not yet born, that you are within the womb, that you are young, old dead; that you are beyond death. Conceive all things at once: times, places, actions, qualities and quantities; then you can understand God. </b><br />
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-- <i>The Corpus Hermeticum</i>: Book 11, Verse 20 </blockquote>
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This passage makes clear that not only can we transmute ourselves into any form through the imagination, but through it we can do something that we cannot do with logic or reason alone. We can inhabit many places in a single instant, in fact all places. We can exist simultaneously at every position. We can encompass every contradiction, every opposite. We can be both A and Not-A. We can become impossible.<br />
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The soul, the psyche, is already <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/03/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">ubiquitous</a>, omnipresent and so potentially omniscient. Logical paradox is its playing ground. Even death is not a barrier. The field or vortex of simultaneity that opens up through Menard’s playful echo swallows up everything, conceivable and not.<br />
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<img alt="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/s3/tls/uploads/2019/11/p28-Weale.jpg" height="426" src="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/s3/tls/uploads/2019/11/p28-Weale.jpg" width="640" /><br />
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This virtue of the imagination, regardless if it is activated by external substances or if it arises “naturally” through purely internal faculties or techniques, is precisely why we are said to be “<b>created in the image of God</b>.” God has no fixed and apprehendable physical form so it is with the virtue of our minds that we resemble Him/Her/It. We were made in the image of the One who creates images, One who imagines. As Coleridge explains: <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (<i>as </i>objects) are essentially fixed and dead. </b><br />
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-- <i>Biographia Literaria</i>, Chapter XIII, Samuel Taylor Coleridge </blockquote>
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The primary imagination -- the infinite I AM within our own perceptual I am -- blurs almost seamlessly into the secondary. It is difficult to distinguish between the two. The second is an “echo” of the first, as Menard echoes Cervantes, yet still identical. The creative process repeats itself in a continuous pulse, circling back upon its “origin,” making it unclear where one creation ends and the other begins. A repetition which becomes a reenactment of the proto-cosmic “<b>Let There Be Light</b>.”<br />
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Yet Coleridge did contrast these two types from what he called “Fancy,” which is “<b>no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space</b>,” mixed and affected by sensory impressions and the words they are expressed by.<br />
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Fancy is simply a modification or a tweaking of the world as it is; a new world does not emerge. Most of what distracts or entertains us, including the NEWS, our entire “consensus reality,” is a product and example of Fancy. In Blake’s terms, it is the perceptual system that we are enslaved by. Yet it is only another facet of the I AM and subject to constant uncontrolled transformation and occasional dissolution, as is happening globally right now. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>I said the sense “stories about fairies” was too narrow. It is too narrow, even if we reject the diminutive size, for fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faerie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being. Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted. </b></blockquote>
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J.R.R. Tolkien, in his essay “On Fairy Stories,” is more sympathetic than Coleridge to Fancy, which Tolkien takes as a dismissive and diminutive form of the earlier and more commanding term “Fantasy.” Fantasy <i>is </i>created through the modification of simple words, through poetry itself, and it <i>does</i> involve a mere alteration of this world, “the Primary World,” which presently appears to our senses and is apprehended by our thought.<br />
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<img alt="https://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/news/research/features/150527-albatross-head.gif" src="https://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/news/research/features/150527-albatross-head.gif" /> <br />
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But one gets the sense, reading his essay, that what Tolkien has in mind is something quite different than what Coleridge devalued as Fancy. This is something that involves a far more active involvement of the imagination, something much closer to the primary or secondary imagination.<br />
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Yet in Tolkien’s terminology, a Secondary World branches off from the Primary World when it opens up, and/or is opened up, into “enchantment.” <i>Faerie</i> is his name -- the old name -- for this “realm or state,” (implying that it can be experienced externally and internally, or both simultaneously), and it is here where the folk and creatures of myth still dwell.<br />
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And in this Land, fairies of all sorts have not shrank, like Fancy, to shadowy or childish insignificance, but are life-sized, warm and breathing, beautiful and terrifying. They continue as <i>Fantasy</i>. But exotic beings are not the only things that inhabit Faerie. Our whole world might be contained within it, but it too becomes enchanted. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not matter by whom it is said to be practiced, fay or mortal, it remains distinct from the other two; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills. </b></blockquote>
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<b>Enchantment</b> is here contrasted with <b>Magic</b>, and the latter did <i>not</i> have a positive connotation for Tolkien. By enchantment we create, or at least stumble into, a Secondary World that is as realistic as anything we witness from day to day. Our senses are satisfied by it -- we do not doubt what we see -- and Tolkien wrote that we can enter into it “<b>bodily</b>,” with our physical form in tact. This is no longer just an imaginative or spiritual exercise, as it is in the Hermetic writings, but it is a voyage of exploration, a trip.<br />
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But enchantment, a chanting or singing of the world, is created solely for the sake of art, for the sake of beauty and wonder. It is an expression of power -- and it is highly powerful -- but it’s not a desire for the attainment of power over others. Enchantment is only effective if its intention of creation for the sake of creation is pure. If it is not pure it ceases to be enchantment and it passes over into magic.<br />
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<img alt="https://66.media.tumblr.com/1defae3c448a36d09364cb194fbc8553/tumblr_plj7r4pEgq1rbony5_1280.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="640" src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/1defae3c448a36d09364cb194fbc8553/tumblr_plj7r4pEgq1rbony5_1280.jpg" width="390" /><br />
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Magic, and we can think of Sauron or Saruman here, is the willed alteration of the Primary World in order to gain domination over others. It is a pretense, a simulation, a spell or a web to trap or confine. It is Fancy in its negative sense. It is the consensus reality, though by no means a consensus, that tries to claim primacy over the Primary World. It is as if Menard tried to erase all traces of Cervantes as the author of the <i>Quixote</i> and claimed that he himself was the original Master.<br />
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Evidently this world, the world of enchantment, and the world of magic, occasionally fade into one another. Direct doors from one world to the next may <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2019/02/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">open</a> up now and again, but more often, when something this singular does happen, one world just melds or drifts into another, like a cinematic montage or an anatomical overlay in an old medical text. You’re walking through the woods or down the street and suddenly the landscape shifts into Lothlorien or Mordor. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>And in fact fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplifications are made all the more luminous by their setting. For the story-maker who allows himself to be “free with” Nature can be her lover not her slave. It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; <span style="color: blue;">house</span> and fire; bread and wine.</b><br />
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-- “On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien </blockquote>
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Familiar objects, simple things and movements and shapes and colours, take on a potency which they always possessed but we never noticed before. They are <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2014/05/luminous-details.html">made</a> luminous.<br />
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And -- getting back to the initial technique or method -- on the road towards enchantment, or willingly letting oneself become enchanted, or even in the growing recognition of the current bonds of the dominant magic, we head towards the point of total simultaneity, towards the maximal compression of both novelty and meaning (though these two are inseparable by definition).<br />
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Things increasingly reflect off of other things. The web of correspondences is constricted as we spiral into the centre of mandalic integration. Salience attains ultimate density, though nothing ceases to move, nothing loses its unique spark. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>...Every person, place and thing in the chaosmos of Alle anyway connected with the gobblydumped turkery was moving and changing every part of the time...</b><br />
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-- <i>Finnegans Wake</i>, James Joyce, p. 118 </blockquote>
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This is, in fact, the anti-Borg. Perfected and rigid order -- the crystalline Cosmos -- is revealed as being incomplete and rather stale and boring compared with this speck or scintilla of total potency and potential. Cosmos enfolds out of Chaos, this last being the true Mother of All Things. Simultaneity is just another of her million names.<br />
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Cosmos is the realm of Magic, and the Primary World and the Primary Imagination is merely the first act -- as it is held to be by the Gnostics -- of simulative, malignant magic. Enchantment is the lost road which takes us through the original point of “Creation,” the Original Sin.<br />
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<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2a/60/16/2a60165c0d1cc19f04ee6564075abdef.jpg" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2a/60/16/2a60165c0d1cc19f04ee6564075abdef.jpg" /> <br />
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When we peek through this kaleidoscope, every shard of matter and psyche shakes and shimmies, refracts and resonates, rings out with all senses, falling respectively into shadow and back into light. This point (of the compass of Yahweh and Newton), being all points, opens up everywhere onto the First Time which is every time. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Through repetition of the cosmogonic act, concrete time, in which the construction takes place, is projected into mythical time, <i>in illo tempore</i> when the foundation of the world occurred. Thus the reality and the enduringness of a construction are assured not only by the the transformation of profane space into a transcendent space (the center) but also by the transformation of concrete time into mythical time. </b><br />
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-- <i>Cosmos and History</i>, Mircea Eliade </blockquote>
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As Eliade explains, “primitive” tribal societies orient their sense of time and space, of the entire world that they inhabit, on the perpetual or eternal ritual reenactment of the original and singular cosmogonic event: of the initial emergence of Cosmos from Chaos or, from another angle, their wedding rites.<br />
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The tribal perception of time is not linear, or even cyclical, but simultaneous. When tribal members are performing these rituals they arrive <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2016/02/old-thoughts-on-nightmare.html">back</a> <i>in illo tempore</i>, back in the “once upon a time” of undiluted fairy tales. The wholly transcendent time and space, the point of simultaneity, is fully experienced here on this Earth, which has become enchanted, mythical, in its deepest sense.<br />
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The questions of where or how this takes place is really unimportant. Whether the experience is internal/mental or external/physical is meaningless when it involves a realm or state in which all contraries are conjoined.<br />
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Historical civilizations, on the other hand, people who have entered history, people who have separated their Book -- all books -- from their world, took on a more and more detached view of time. Starting with the primal point of points, this image was widened into a wheel or a cycle, and then the ascent of this cycle was segmented and flattened into a separate line. Point to circle to line.<br />
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<img alt="https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/nasir-al-mulk-mosque-shiraz-iran-coverimage.jpg" height="356" src="https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/nasir-al-mulk-mosque-shiraz-iran-coverimage.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
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At first this line was envisioned to have a near vertical incline, along with the hope of some summit or transcendent end. But as history drifted from modernity to postmodernity and beyond, the line became virtually horizontal, flapping this way and that, randomly making its way to nowhere. The one line began to fray and disintegrate. This viral present.<br />
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But the old Book, or books, still promised a single point from which it all had emanated and into which it would all return. Yet the course through the stars to get back to this origin is illuminated by the imagination. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Between the world of pure spiritual Lights (<i>Luces victoriales</i>, the world of the ‘Mothers’ in the terminology of <i>Ishr</i></b><b><i><span class="st"><i>ā</i></span>q</i>) and the sensory universe, at the boundary of the ninth Sphere (the Sphere of Spheres) there open a <i>mundus imaginalis</i> which is a concrete spiritual world of archetype-Figures, apparitional Forms, Angels of species and of individuals; by philosophical dialectics its necessity is deduced and its plane situated; vision of it in actuality is vouchsafed to the visionary apperception of the active Imagination. </b><br />
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-- <i>The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism</i>, Henri Corbin </blockquote>
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The space/time sense of Sufism, which Corbin describes here, is cosmological and cyclical. Within this paradigm, one only approaches the primitive heights and depths of the eternal present when one does enter into the <i>mundus imaginalis</i>. We find it in the Ninth Sphere, beyond the Fixed Stars, but not yet within the ever-burning Empyrean of pure Spirit.<br />
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Intellectual archetypes take on a kind of flesh here. It is the realm of angels and daemons. Spirit swirls with Matter. This may be the Secondary Imagination. This may be the realm of Faerie. This may be the locus of <i>Finnegans Wake</i>.<br />
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The texts are all being conflated in my essay, badly misread and juxtaposed, because in simultaneity all is being ground together, all examined at once without contradiction. This is the Method, our post-Menard literary technique. We read to become free.<br />
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But when we have travelled through the kaleidoscopic <i>mundus imaginalis</i>, when we have plunged into the Inner Fire, we find that it is just(!) a prick back into Chaos. The world-system turns inside-out. The middle of the doughnut twists and enfolds out to the ring. Then once again we're at the centre of the Earth, at the lowest depth of Hell, at the tip of Satan’s erect cock.<br />
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<img alt="https://blueprintreview.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Journey-to-the-Center-of-the-Earth-1.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="356" src="https://blueprintreview.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Journey-to-the-Center-of-the-Earth-1.jpg" width="640" /><br />
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All is inverted and disoriented, and the intricate order of the crystalline concentric spheres, resounding with celestial harmonies, shatters in a second, and we’re back here typing, scrolling, turning pages, looking out onto our day. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Well, I wonder how any poet could be attracted to Jungianism. To me poets use symbols to be initial and in the universe. Jung uses them to be in a psyche and around a center. When we, from my generation, were looking into the universe, there wasn’t that apparent a center in time or space. Charles [Olson] had the same observation. But the distinction between a centered universe and a non-centered one never bothered him. He took the center to be wherever you are. Anyway, I am not a creature of the center. I am a creature of outside. </b><br />
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-- <i>Towards a New American Poetics</i>, Robert Duncan interview </blockquote>
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Robert Duncan <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2014/12/hermetic-anarchism-and-uddering-author-3.html">points</a> out that even Jung’s resolution of the question of where is the true centre, is too easy, to pat. “The centre can be found in the psyche.” But where is this? Jung teaches that the pysche contains both the consciousness and the unconscious, the light and its shadow, the Sun and the Moon. Yet Jung further explains that the unconscious has no discernible border; it blurs the individual and the collective. It may have no limit. In fact, the personal psyche or soul and the World Soul might be identical, and we find just this teaching within traditional societies from China to the Amazon.<br />
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So to reach this centre, to integrate or individuate, is to once again find God. And where is He? Duncan answers that the poets always insist on the particular, not the general or the archetypal. The tree in your backyard doesn’t <i>represent</i> the World Tree, it <i>is</i> It. The distinction might seem petty, but it really isn’t. One is a search for a Centre, although the spheres are no longer in the stars but within our mind, and the other is the acceptance that the centre is everywhere and/or nowhere.<br />
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Duncan’s heresy is greater than Jung's, and his fellow poet Charles Olson even more so because Olson could care less one way or the other. Heresy is orthodoxy is heresy. No-centre is the centre. But in any case the way is disorienting, nauseating, feverish, uncanny. These are symptoms of the disease. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>...I just kept reading both pieces over and over again, trying to detect at least one differing accent or letter, <u>wanting</u> to detect at least one differing accent or letter, getting almost desperate in that pursuit, only to repeatedly discover perfect similitude, though how can that be, right? If it were perfect it wouldn’t be similar it would be identical, and you know what? I’ve lost this sentence, I can’t finish it, don’t know how-- </b><br />
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<b>Here’s the point: the more I focused in on the words the farther I seemed from my room. No sense where either, until all of a sudden along the edges of my tongue, towards the back of my mouth, I started to taste something extremely bitter, almost metallic. I began to gag. </b><br />
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-- <i>House of Leaves</i>, Mark Z. Danielewski </blockquote>
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This is Johnny Truant in <i>House of Leaves</i> trying to make sense of old man Zampano’s "Navidson Record" manuscript in which Cervantes’ <i>Don Quixote</i> is quoted, followed by an identical quote from Pierre Menard. This gets us back on the track of the initial inquiry, and a return to the explanation of the technique or method. Johnny, who obviously hasn’t read Borges, cannot by any means understand how the two texts are in any way different.<br />
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<img alt="https://d38trduahtodj3.cloudfront.net/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=MyRiverDistrict&i=tree_planting.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="301" src="https://d38trduahtodj3.cloudfront.net/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=MyRiverDistrict&i=tree_planting.jpg" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
And he is right. They are identical. Except Menard’s book is an echo of Cervantes, and this changes its significance altogether. All of human history since the time of Cervantes is therefore contained, as shadow knowledge, in Menard’s work. This is Menard’s genius, but Johnny does not get it. Or maybe he does?<br />
<br />
Perhaps he is already reading from the point of view of simultaneity, where all texts appear at once, but he doesn’t know it yet. And this torments him. The lost centre he experiences attempts to return as a Shadow, as pure evil, as the Minotaur, and he experiences this as extreme physical and emotional suffering.<br />
<br />
In <i>House of Leaves</i>, every reference to the Minotaur and its story is typed in red and stroked out, under erasure. Zampano has stricken it from his manuscript, and it reappears only as a absence in Johnny’s edition. Yet it also appears as a real terrifying presence to both -- slash marks on Zampano’s wooden floor at the scene of his death, creeping in as a metallic taste and spiralling out into an unendurable nightmare of nausea and horror to Johnny.<br />
<br />
Just as Minos could not possibly have constructed a labyrinth big or complex enough to contain his aborted and malformed son, so the gaping centrepoint of all creation -- Chaos herself -- will necessarily arise to haunt and overwhelm any self-styled Creator: be he author, king or God. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>...Which is doubtless to recall that beyond the philosophical text there is not a blank, virgin, empty margin, but another text, a weave of differences or forces without any present center of reference (everything -- “history,” “politics,” “economy,” “sexuality,” etc. -- said not to be written in books: the worn-out expression with which we appear not to have finished stepping backward, in the most regressive argumentations and in the most apparently unforeseeable places); and also to recall that the <i>written</i> text of philosophy (this time in its books) overflows and cracks its meaning.</b><br />
<br />
-- “Tympan,” <i>Margins of Philosophy</i>, Jacques Derrida </blockquote>
<br />
This essay by Derrida is also quoted in the "Navidson Record," in the <i>House of Leaves</i>, and in the <span style="color: blue;">House</span> of <i>Livres</i>. <b>Tympan</b> is the tympanum, the eardrum, the vibrating membrane that allows us to apprehend sound. In a sense, this membrane is a margin, the border of a room or a body or a text. But as a border or limit it vibrates on both sides. Does it vibrate from within or without? This is impossible to determine. The sounds ripple in both directions.<br />
<br />
No text is thus perfectly contained, all is cracking and overflowing. A barrier can be crossed, one can move from one room of the labyrinth or <span style="color: blue;">house</span> <span style="background-color: blue;"></span>to another, but no <i>complete</i> structure can ever be mapped, no structure can ever be <i>completely</i> mapped. The textual categories, subjects or fields, which we overlay onto our “knowledge” with the hope of projecting a semblance of order, are themselves leaky, decentred, liable to suddenly morph one into the next.<br />
<br />
Where is the centre in this <b>Library of Babel</b>? Is it at the point of maximal meaning or at the point of total nonsense? Yet how can either be determined? Where is the nexus or Archimedean point, perhaps outside of the Cosmos, from which we can stand on solid ground and judge?<br />
<br />
And who are the Judges? Who are the Grand Conspirators? Who are these omniscient and omnipotent beings who can successfully plot all outcomes when, as we have seen, even the gods, even the Supreme Deity, delude themselves in thinking that they have mastered Chaos?<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://visitantesdelahistoria.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/borges-desmazieres4.jpg?w=302" src="https://visitantesdelahistoria.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/borges-desmazieres4.jpg?w=302" /><br />
<br />
A membrane, even a wall or fortress, is no hurdle for a virus. Neither is it limited by the categories of hoax or not hoax. It doesn’t care if it is believed in or not. It functions beyond the dichotomy of presence and absence. It is the suppressed centre/margin reappearing everywhere simultaneously, the Minotaur rampaging just beyond every corner, in our very lungs, exponentially replicating itself<br />
<br />
“<b>A weave of differences or forces without any present center of reference</b>.” And, paradoxically or not, the traces of this, this opening into Faerie, enchanted and/or magical, can be found in even the most common of nooks and crannies. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Under the step, toward the right, I saw an iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness. At first I thought it was spinning; then I realized that the movement was an illusion produced by the dizzying spectacles inside it. The Aleph was probably two or three centimeters in diameter, but universal space was contained inside it, with no diminution in size. Each thing (the glass surface of a mirror, let us say) was infinite things, because I could clearly see it from every point of the cosmos. I saw the populous sea, saw dawn and dusk, saw the multitudes of the Americas, saw a silvery spider-web at the center of a black pyramid, saw a broken labyrinth... saw the Alelph from everywhere at once, saw the earth in the Aleph, and the Aleph once more in the earth and the earth in the Aleph, saw my face and my viscera, saw your face, and I felt dizzy, and I wept, because my eyes had seen that secret hypothetical object whose name has been usurped by men but which no man has ever truly looked upon: the inconceivable universe. </b><br />
<br />
-- “The Aleph,” Jorge Luis Borges
--</blockquote>
<br />
In “The Aleph” Borges moves from an infinite Library of texts where a centre is impossible to discern to a common basement step where the entire universe is contained in a single Centre. And yet these “spaces” are the same.<br />
<br />
The Aleph is simultaneity; it is the <b>chaosmos of Alle</b>. It contains all movement and yet this is merely “<b>the illusion produced by the dizzying spectacles inside it</b>,” <b>the moving image of eternity</b>. It is the instant, the scintilla, of the creation of cosmos from chaos. It is “Aleph” because it is the start, the origin, <i>Keter</i> the Crown, but it is only this from our own linear time-based perspective, from our own tunnel visions.<br />
<br />
Ancient peoples re-witnessed this moment at the turnover of the grand cycles, archaic peoples, earlier and for longer still, were able to participate within it at nearly any point. It is in the grass, in the sparkle of sunlight on a pond, in the flash of a bird’s wing, at the birth of a child. For us, the timeline whipping like suddenly released reins, the Aleph’s shadow or glimmer reaches back to us from the End.<br />
<br />
This, Borges calls the Secret Hypothetical Object, McKenna the Hyperdimensional Object, Couliano the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/01/ideal-objects-delerium-and-other-pizza.html">Ideal</a> Object, Yeats the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/05/ichtheology-teeth.html">Second</a> Coming. It is now, at this singular moment in “history,” very much in view.<br />
<br />
It is both cellular and geopolitical, both biological and metaphysical, both singular and contagious. Again, the categories blur. All efforts to contain it, or to deny it, soon become it, are already enveloped by it. There is a widespread sense, finally, that it is starting to transform everything.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://www.damninteresting.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/11/bugear.jpg" src="https://www.damninteresting.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/11/bugear.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
And Borges, like the joker he is, does another number on us. We find out, later in the story, that there is <i>another</i> Aleph, at another inconspicuous location, but that this one might be a FALSE Aleph, an anti-Aleph as it were. <br />
<br />
But how would this latter be any different from the first? How would we ever begin to discern precisely how it <i>might</i> be different? And would it matter? Wouldn’t they <i>necessarily</i> be identical? If the Aleph contained all things wouldn’t it also contain the Anti-Aleph? And wouldn’t the opposite hold true as well? Or is one just the echo of the other, both caught in the weave of differences?<br />
<br />
Do the two represent two opposing sides of the universe, God and anti-God, totalitarian global bio-police state and decentralized jubilee of mutual aid and individual autonomy? Or in this effect caused only by the particular way that we look upon it, enfold it into ourselves? <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“Well,” said Don Quixote to himself, “man had as good preach to a stonewall, as to expect to persuade with entreaties such dregs of human kind to do a good and generous action. Two sage enchanters certainly clash in this adventure, and the one thwarts the other: one provided me a bark, the over overwhelmed me in it. Heaven send us better times! There is nothing but plotting and counter-plotting, undermining and countermining in this world. Well, I can do no more.”</b><br />
<br />
-- <i>Don Quixote</i>, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra </blockquote>
<br />
Of course there is deep significance in the fact that Borges followed Cervantes, Menard followed Borges, Zampano followed Menard, Truant followed Zampano, Danielewski followed Truant. And all arrived simultaneously.<br />
<br />
<i>Don Quixote</i>, the first novel, is also the first experimental, post-postmodern, avant-garde meta-novel. The history of literature starts at its end. It is already simultaneous. This wonderful book is already layered and doubled, already aware of itself at every point. Within it there is a real Don Quixote and a fake Don Quixote, and a real <i>Don Quixote</i> and a fake <i>Don Quixote</i>. The text appears as a main character and the main character is himself a text. It anticipates and summons up all of its future echoes.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://946e583539399c301dc7-100ffa5b52865b8ec92e09e9de9f4d02.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/31567/9792968.jpg" src="https://946e583539399c301dc7-100ffa5b52865b8ec92e09e9de9f4d02.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/31567/9792968.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
Menard is already in the book, and completely autonomous of Borges. <i>Finnegans Wake</i> is discovered here in its entirely, although written as “conventional” prose fiction. Through the lens of <i>Don Quixote</i>, all texts with/without margins and centres, become an adventure in which at least “two sage enchanters certainly clash.” Enchantment and magic, chaos and cosmos, anti-Aleph and Aleph, absence and presence, virus and no virus, Quixote and false Quixote, I AM and I am.<br />
<br />
Every conspiracy is at least double. Anything less belittles and profanes the adventure. The method embraces both sides of the contradiction. Its only object of study is the Secret Hypothetical Object, glittering and fascinating with all facets, in literature, on the news and in our <span style="color: blue;">house</span>.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“Influence” is the great <i>I Am</i> of literary discourse, and increasingly I find its aptest analogue in what the Kabbalah called the first <i>Sephirah</i>, the first attribute or name or emanative principle of God, <i>Keter</i> or the Supreme Crown. For <i>Keter</i>, like the infinite God, is at once <i>ayin</i> or “nothingness” and <i>ehyeh</i> or I AM, absolute absence and absolute presence. The first Kabbalistic emanation is thus a dialectical entity, and rhetorically begins as a simple irony. </b></blockquote>
<br />
Quite apparently, Harold Bloom, teacher of Danielewski, the latter himself a sound producer of a documentary on Derrida, is echoing Coleridge here.<br />
<br />
<i>Keter</i> is the first emanation, or imagination, of the I AM. All Influence (<i>influenza</i>) flows through this Crown (<i>corona</i>). The very last page of <i>House of Leaves</i> invokes <b>Yggdrasil</b>, the Norse World Tree, but in divergence from this mythology it states that “<b>Its roots must hold the sky</b>.”<br />
<br />
This tree is more accurately the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah, in which the “highest” sephirah, Keter, is said to be at the roots of the Tree. Its inversion is also a mirroring. The crown above reflects the crown <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/04/ichtheology-body.html">below</a>, <i>Malkuth</i> or <i>Shekinah</i>. And the Tree is multiple in some iterations of kabbalistic tradition. Malkuth becomes the Keter of another Tree, and Keter becomes the lowest sephirah of yet another Tree in an endless chain of creation and influence.<br />
<br />
Thus, the <b>Corona Influenza</b> is also ambiguous. Ease and blessings from “above,” disease and curses from “below.” Yet even this is too simplistic, too mired in duality. Every influence always has its shadow and its shining. Bloom translates this as literary influence and he is not as inclusive, as we are here, of “the current state of the world” as text.<br />
<br />
Our method blurs into the “schizophrenic:” our own failed rituals may alter the timeline of history. The influence, of previous authors and previous books, is both present and absent, like Keter’s own ironic influence. Each work, molded from Chaos, is just one in an infinite series, matrix fostering matrix fostering matrix and perhaps circling back around to some absent “original.”<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://michelelaird.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/fleurir.jpg" height="354" src="https://michelelaird.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/fleurir.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<br />
When was the first book written? When did the first emanation occur? This cannot be determined. Is God Himself only an echo of some prior God? What happens when we attempt to compress this series into a single point? Or “time” or “history” begins to do this for us? Then the Aleph, which is just another name for Keter, begins to come into view. This is the Corona Influenza, the crown of creation, a peek through the kaleidoscope into pure simultaneity. It is the road of poetry. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Strong poets <i>must</i> be mis-read; there are no <i>generous</i> errors to be made in apprehending them, any more than their own errors of reading are ever generous. Every strong poet caricatures tradition and every strong poet is then necessarily mis-read by the tradition he fosters. The strongest of poets are so severely mis-read that the generally accepted, broad interpretations of their work actually tend to be the exact opposites of what the poems truly are.</b><br />
<br />
--<i> Kabbalah and Criticism</i>, Harold Bloom </blockquote>
<br />
Absolute license is granted here, although by taking it Bloom may complain that he has also been misread. So be it. We must all become creative mis-readers. Our misreading, or misprision, must in fact become so egregious and extreme that we misread all things as being poetry to be misread.<br />
<br />
“Poetry” is likely too formal a term, too conditioned, too lawful. “Doggerel” might be what we need to aspire to. Only doggerel can describe the dancing lights and images of the Aleph. We are not poets. We <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/02/doggerelians.html">are</a> doggereliens. Every bit of text, every picture, every noise, every scent, every motion and emotion can be thrown into the mix.<br />
<br />
And the tradition implodes in on itself, compressed into a black hole in which linear progression, contact tracing, cause and effect, becomes meaningless yet all things take on infinite meaning. <i>Don Quixote</i> already does this. <i>Finnegans Wake</i> already does this. They are simultaneous books that are being written/read/<i>wreadten</i> right now.<br />
<br />
The anxiety of influence, and this is one of Danielewski’s main points, is anxiety for a lost centre. But we doggereliens, from the Sirius system, know already that there has never been a centre -- not in the psyche and not in the world -- and this simultaneously indicates that everywhere opens up onto the centre. But I am repeating myself, self... <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“Attention! A false Glimmung is active! Take emergency procedures under condition Three! Attention! A false Glimmung--” It boomed on and on. </b><br />
<br />
<b>The flailing, thrashing object which had risen from the sea was not Glimmung. </b><br />
<br />
-- <i>Galactic Pot-Healer</i>, Philip K. Dick </blockquote>
<br />
PKD describes GPH as one of his most Jungian books. In my opinion, this neglected Dick classic comes closest to delineating his whole theology, assuming that he ever possessed anything so boring as a stable and coherent theology.<br />
<br />
Glimmung, an immense, shapeshifting and often ironic creature is essentially the new god of <b>Plowman’s Planet</b>, the fifth <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2015/07/stopgap-dredge-up-from-journals-2-cult.html">planet</a> of the Sirius System. But Glimmung has a grand mission or quest to accomplish for which he recruits lonely and varied specialists from all over the galaxy. His desire is to raise the Cathedral of the aboriginal and neglected gods from the bottom of the planet's dark sea and to restore it on dry land. Yet, as always in the present exploration, everything is doubled, mirrored, conflicted.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXmTTkXQ5DxahoUyLUgnLMtS9CeBtxNEddycYerY8v1AvBha6dqB4c21VnRcDPzX4ef5n4eHLoG3H-skgtgfHdDiaNGMn7UMVQULIX6Y-yKPkiE9h_KsDGgs1uFtxPoGWDA17qXZcLU7tO/s1600/Dick+1968-01+-+Galactic+Pot-Healer.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXmTTkXQ5DxahoUyLUgnLMtS9CeBtxNEddycYerY8v1AvBha6dqB4c21VnRcDPzX4ef5n4eHLoG3H-skgtgfHdDiaNGMn7UMVQULIX6Y-yKPkiE9h_KsDGgs1uFtxPoGWDA17qXZcLU7tO/s640/Dick+1968-01+-+Galactic+Pot-Healer.jpg" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
Next to the cathedral on the sea bottom is a sinister black cathedral, and guarding this is the false or Black Glimmung. In the above scene, the Black Glimmung has seemingly defeated the actual Glimmung following an intense underwater battle. The unconscious, the shadow self, has emerged from the sea, as was intended, but it has overwhelmed all conscious control, overflowed all available hospital beds. It threatens total dissolution, complete erasure into nothingness.<br />
<br />
Dick often plunged into these dark waters and, like the shaman he is, was able to retrieve metaphors and stories from them, but he continually feared that he would be drowned during his dives. And this may have been what finally happened. All of his other books can be fruitfully reinterpreted through the lens of <i>Galactic Pot-Healer</i>. Even the distorted and alternate timeline of <i>The Man in the High Castle </i>is an expression of the Shadow.<br />
<br />
Jung, as Dick knew, would say that the Glimmung and the Black Glimmung are required to fuse together as a complete symbol in order to make the Self healthy and whole. But there is incredible danger on every step of this journey. We have no real idea what will rise from the bottom of the sea.<br />
<br />
And Jung, like Dick once more, is concerned not only with the wholeness of the individual, the soul, but with the wholeness of humanity, the World Soul. To integrate the world, following its cycles or Aions, its Shadow must emerge. Christ must meet, fight and ultimately meld into Antichrist. The Hyperdimensional Object is essentially the Incarnation of the <i>syzygy</i> -- or Gnostic conjoined hermaphroditic Twin, a thing PKD was obsessed by at the most personal level -- in this Aquarian Aion, the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.<br />
<br />
“2012” was a symbol of its <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-fall-of-twenty-twelve-epiphany.html">first</a> emergence, although it had long been foreshadowed. At this very moment it has gone viral, informationally and biologically. Everything can be projected onto it: plague, xenophobia, police state, paranoia, world government, mass uprising, illegal immigration, locust swarms, pollution, food riots, the world fever, no toilet paper to wipe our asses. All sacred sites shut down: the Kaaba, the Vatican Easter Mass, the shrines of Qom, the Wailing Wall, Bethlehem itself. The world centres are now unobtainable.<br />
<br />
All systems, political, economic, healthcare, social, psychological, ecological are at this very moment in free fall. No encompassing narrative is satisfactory. Did it arise from a biological weapons laboratory, an exotic wet market, a vaccine accident, a meteor, a media panic? From the Other -- the Chinese or the Americans or an endangered species? Is it a hoax, hysteria, prophecy, judgement, nightmare?<br />
<br />
It is chews up and spits out conspiracy theories just as fast as it devours any established narratives, the latter in recent years having already become as fractured as the former. Global terrorism seems so solid and understandable compared to this, almost nostalgic. Every witness has become a participant. Mental anxiety and panic, disrupting sleep and well-being, compromises our immune systems and invites in the “virus.” The world is flying and screaming towards oneness and the long-suppressed Shadow is bursting out from every crack. Aleph and false Aleph present and absent in each cell.<br />
<br />
The plunge or upswell or overflowing was inevitable. Our bodies and minds, extended to encompass the entire planet, have woven us all into a single fabric, a single individual containing multitudes. Nature has already accomplished this millions of years ago, of course, and Chaos has always been this, but it has taken a long hard time for us to make this a conscious and personal realization, to connect all of our stories together.<br />
<br />
And by no means has the swamp been drained yet. Even now, the Secret Hypothetical Object is just barely in view to some. A new Incarnation invades our dimension, a Beast and a Minotaur and a Starchild, but only a growing few <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/01/ideal-objects-delerium-and-other-pizza_26.html">recognize</a> its outline and echo. We don't know yet if it brings peace or a sword or both. We don't know yet if we are diving or drowning.<br />
<br />
But the method, the novel way of reading, of simultaneity, of epiphany beyond synchronicity, is our practice in attempting to see the entire symbol. To grasp it all at once. It is both adventure and a survival skill. A means and ritual to change the nature of time, and to heal the self and the world. A voyage through Faerie and the <i>mundus imaginalis</i> that lands us right back home, in this room at 1:28 in the afternoon.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7f/83/15/7f831560ccc69428685beaa5b27f856f.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="445" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7f/83/15/7f831560ccc69428685beaa5b27f856f.jpg" width="640" />znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-84568937059737996992020-01-19T01:49:00.000-08:002020-01-21T16:32:52.473-08:00Snatches of the Everlasting Gospel 3 <img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdNcpxZh71l2jCbTs7-nYBJmgvJTJrPf4wq2oyZ_7AbYvqESjZ94wqaJOKAPexY3gBRlHz2aFVqubZU16pxnLZA5Stldzuq27KqH_2v5OpMC9ltWVEBBELPOwk_wVMvEwZxgXxOpg8Cxg/s1600/B_Osma_145v.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdNcpxZh71l2jCbTs7-nYBJmgvJTJrPf4wq2oyZ_7AbYvqESjZ94wqaJOKAPexY3gBRlHz2aFVqubZU16pxnLZA5Stldzuq27KqH_2v5OpMC9ltWVEBBELPOwk_wVMvEwZxgXxOpg8Cxg/s640/B_Osma_145v.jpg" width="514" /><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2019/12/snatches-of-everlasting-gospel-2.html">The</a>
Albigensian communities of southern France were exterminated by armies
of Crusaders. But individual Cathars manage to escape from Proven</b><b>çe and
to carry their Bogomilism to every part of Europe. Apparently less
sectarian than many earlier or later radicals, the Manichean Cathars
form friendships and in time merge with Humiliati, Waldensians,
Joachites, Brethren of the Free Spirit and others with whom they share
the distinction of being hunted by the Inquisition. They do not merge
with Franciscans, recognizing these pseudo-resisters as kin to the
Inquisitorial Dominican police...</b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The radicals are
numerous, many are highly imaginative, their inspiration comes from
distant places and times, and they stimulate each other to rethink their
commitments and start all over again. They
are as varied as human beings can be. They nevertheless share some
large commitments, and it is these commitments that make them anathema
to ecclesiastical and lay authorities.</b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b></b>
<b>The radicals are
explicitly committed to freedom and to community. The very names they
give their informal groupings, names like Brethren of the Free Spirit,
announce both of these commitments. -- </b><i>Against His-story, Against
Leviathan!</i>, Fredy Perlman </blockquote>
<br />
Joseph<b> </b>Campbell in <i>Creative Mythology </i>points
out that in the 11th and 12th centuries there was a resurgence in the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-ship-of-sun-is-drawn-3-eleusis.html">veneration</a> for Love and Beauty across the Eurasian landmass. This ranged from
Japanese Buddhist courtly love depicted in Lady Murasaki's writing, to Taoist
inner physiological teachings in China, to Tantra and other Bhakti cults
in India, to hymns of praise for the Beloved in Sufism, to formulations
of the Shekinah in the Kabbalah, and to the troubadour movement and
the cult of the Dame in Provence.<br />
<br />
Alongside and somewhat in
coordination with these groups in Southern France were the much more
established Cathars or Albigensians, representing a true parallel or
counter-Church in Europe. The Cathars are usually regarded as a form of
gnostic-dualist Manicheanism, their roots extending back to the Bogomils and
to earlier Gnostic sects of southeastern Europe and the Near East.<br />
<br />
However,
certain researchers -- like Gabriele Rossetti on the Left and Ezra Pound
on the Right -- have speculated that the Cathars were a radical and
functioning survival of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In Albigensianism, the argument goes, the
esoteric and erotic fertility rites were perpetuated in Western Europe.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/4/2/104201605/cathars_orig.jpg" height="321" src="https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/4/2/104201605/cathars_orig.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
In
any case, the Cathars posed an existential threat to the official
Church's claim of universalism. Accordingly, they were nearly all
exterminated in the 1209 to 1229 crusade against them. The anarchist anti-historian Fredy
Perlman picks up the thread here precisely where it was dropped by the
sanctioned narrative. Many individual Cathars escaped these bloody assaults
and formed alliances with other, even more radical, heretical and
dissenting groups of that time. Of these one of the most revolutionary
groups was the Brethren of the Free Spirit.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Life Immediately Present </h3>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Viewed as historical documents,
they establish beyond all doubt that the ‘Free Spirit’ really was
exactly what it was said to be: a system of self-exaltation often
amounting to self-deification; a pursuit of a total emancipation which
in practice could result in antinomianism and particularly in
anarchic eroticism; often also a revolutionary social doctrine which
denounced the institution of private property and aimed at its
abolition. -- </b><i>The Pursuit of the Millennium</i>, Norman Cohn </blockquote>
<br />
Academic
historian Norman Cohn is no fan of the medieval antinomian and
communist groups that he writes about, and Perlman calls him reactionary
in his politics. But his distaste seems to keep his depiction of them
non-romanticized. The affirmation of "<b>total emancipation</b>" was real. Their doctrine was virtually Tantric, although of an entirely <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2014/06/schools-out-forever.html">divergent</a> point of origin.<br />
<br />
The <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/01/mating-orc-cycle.html">heresy</a> was as such: As
Christ had come and died and rose again for the sake of all
humanity, then all sins -- past, present and future -- were forever
forgiven and the Fall was reversed without a trace. All of nature
was redeemed by the Incarnation. The body was no longer blemished,
to be held in scorn, but to be celebrated as being holy along with all
of its desires. All authorities, all laws, all bounds had been
overthrown. Heaven had once again descended to Earth.<br />
<br />
The
secular and ecclesiastical centres of control were illegitimate, therefore, having
lost all divine justification for their rule. They could be dismissed
and ignored and resisted at every turn. The Free Spirits had reentered
the Garden, had been restored to sinless innocence, and had become like gods --
partakers of both the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
<i>and</i> the Tree of Life. There was no need to abolish God -- the misguided
aim of later revolutionaries -- because they, and all of Nature, were eternally at one with God.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/28/d8/d6/28d8d63c8ba1e37294ed02817dde07a4.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="380" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/28/d8/d6/28d8d63c8ba1e37294ed02817dde07a4.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
Like the Tantrics and
revolutionary Taoists, such as the Yellow Turbans and subsequent Taoist-inspired peasant revolts, the Free Spirits were not exactly anti-materialists --
Matter was not dead and fallen but instead was blessed and
spiritual. The wholly Transcendent had become wholly Immanent. Christ
had already wed Heaven and Earth. The Brethren of the Free Spirit were
merely those who had realized these things first and fully. It continues to be the
most radical heresy or revolutionary doctrine imaginable. The former
Situationist Raoul Vaneigem also celebrated these ideas:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>All
the supporters of the movement of the Free Spirit insisted that life
meant life immediately present. There was no hell, no resurrection, no
Last Judgment, no divine overseer, no secular power. They were not
interested in religious, philosophical or political quarrels; social
confrontation interested them only when it opened the door to absolute
emancipation. Realizing that God had been created in the image of their
alienation, they abandoned the great external, productive subject, whose
spirit signified servitude and tyranny, and made themselves earthly
gods in the ceaseless flux of a universal attraction they called love.
To pass, through love, from the frustrated nature of desire to the
untrammeled freedom of re-created nature -- this was the project they
shaped during those centuries shut off from the progress of history. --
</b><i>The Movement of the Free Spirit</i>, Raoul Vaneigem </blockquote>
<br />
They "<b>made themselves earthly gods in the ceaseless flux of a universal attraction they called love</b>."
And in this they carried forward a great idea that can be traced back
through the more liberated of the Christian mystics to the Neoplatonists
and their commentaries and meditations upon the doctrines of divine Eros
found in the <i>Phaedras </i>and the<i> Symposium</i>. These doctrines
are reflected in Gnosticism and earliest Christianity, doctrines which are
truly archaic and even Paleolithic in origin -- from the cosmic/chaotic Mother
and her consort/son Love.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Loomings </h3>
<br />
And stretching forward in history, the
Brethren of the Free Spirit and contemporary heretical groups, as
Vaneigem and others have traced, went on to engender and inspire
anti-authoritarian Reformation sects like the neo-Adamites and the
Moravians, the esoterically-focused Rosicrucians, the more radical of the
English revolutionaries like the Diggers and the Ranters -- who
explicitly named their antinomian beliefs "the Everlasting Gospel" --
and the socially radical Freemasonic fraternities at the time of
the American and French revolutions. Yet all of these groups
were conscious of a deeper tradition,
one that inspired visions of total liberation.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>However
bizarre it may appear to later revolutionaries and historians alike,
this Pythagorean passion seriously influenced the organizational
activities of the first revolutionaries. We have seen how the
Illuminists made the first halting efforts systematically to use the
forms of occult Masonry for ulterior conspiracy -- pointing the way to
Bonneville, Buonarroti, and the early professional revolutionaries. But
the wild profusion of exotic symbols and higher orders also fed a much
broader and more open impulse: the search for simple forms of nature to
serve as a touchstone for truth amidst the crumbling authority of tradition. -- </b><i>Fire in the Minds of Men</i>, James H. Billington </blockquote>
<br />
The
word "<b>Illuminists</b>" instantly rings warning bells in the brains of
millions in these addled and ignorant days, but in fact the Illuminati
were extreme foes of the Church and the monarchies that had kept the
population of Europe in feudal enslavement for centuries. Whatever
excesses they were involved in, to be condemned in themselves, they were
at least on the right track.<br />
<br />
Yet in contrast to the established
authorities of tradition that they and other revolutionary groups of
the that period opposed, they affirmed and identified with an underground
tradition, nicknamed the Everlasting Gospel here, which they tracked at
least as far back as the communal and anti-tyrannical Pythagorean and
Orphic brotherhoods. As they toiled to further crumble the existing
oppressive traditions, they sought to replace these with the oldest
revolutionary faith.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://www.andrewcollins.com/pics/fig.%2024.1.%20singing%20swan%20copy.jpg" src="https://www.andrewcollins.com/pics/fig.%2024.1.%20singing%20swan%20copy.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
As the devaluation of all values
continued apace, however, the authorities did something cunning and
diabolical. Knowing that their long stretch of duping the population
through strictly regimented orthodox Christianity and feudalism was fracturing, they
formed alliances and eventually fused with emergent bourgeois
capitalism and its associated ideology of scientific materialism.<br />
<br />
It
was far better for these authorities to have God removed entirely from the world, to
de-animate or de-soul the Earth, than to allow for the spread of an entirely
immanental Free Spirit-style affirmation of a decentralized yet
universal "Church" of pagan-Christian animistic pantheism.<br />
<br />
The
real Renaissance, in this regard, ended symbolically in 1600 with the
burning at the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-bitchs-shadow.html">stake</a> of arch-heretic Giordano Bruno in Rome. Soon after this execution came the devastating Thirty Years War and the expansion of the brutal
Counter-Reformation and Inquisition (with equivalent established
Protestant institutions), and the subsequent rise of the modern State, capitalism
and scientific materialism.<br />
<br />
The revolutionary groups of
the next two centuries, although still partially aware of their deeper
roots, were already becoming watered down through Deism and afterwards atheism. The so-called "Enlightenment" can be seen in one sense as a social and
spiritual reaction to the resurgent Hermeticism of the Renaissance.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Jesus I. Christ </h3>
<br />
Certain
visionaries of this later period, inspired by the political and social
revolutions of America and France, resisted this turn to Deism and
"Natural Religion." The most notable of these was the English poet and
artist, William Blake, a direct inheritor and re-activator of the
Everlasting Gospel, writing explicitly about the old tradition.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>If
it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the Philosophic &
Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand
still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again. --
</b>“There Is No Natural Religion,” William Blake </blockquote>
<br />
The "<b>same dull round</b>"
potentially means several things for Blake here. In its most basic
sense it means the quotidian dose of largely senseless toil and exertion
that most of us, under present economic and social conditions, suffer
perpetually. This includes the non-stop alienation of commuting,
working, consuming and worrying about the financial well-being of
ourselves and those we love. The serfdom of the daily grind, in other
words, is still as soul-deadening for us as it was for Blake and his
contemporaries.<br />
<br />
In a deeper sense, though, it refers to
the "natural religion" of rational philosophy and materialist science.
It is Blake who best articulated in poetry and prose and in the visual
arts how the so-called "Enlightenment" and its legacy was really a
<b>Disenchantment</b>; how "<b>single vision and Newton's sleep</b>" had
devalued the senses, debased the body and its desires, transformed
nature herself into a endless grey and smoky series of "<b>Satanic mills</b>," and in particular had suppressed and strangled the Imagination, which before had provided a spiraling staircase to the gods.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://steemitimages.com/p/2gsjgna1uruvUuS7ndh9YqVwYGPLVszbFLwwpAYXZpnTbRLbq3UA7hc1qcian5GX9zkvtpSAkX15Kz78T5Yz92bsUFiNsCTqEWVxoDye8ExHLE4W8N?format=match&mode=fit" class="transparent" height="479" src="https://steemitimages.com/p/2gsjgna1uruvUuS7ndh9YqVwYGPLVszbFLwwpAYXZpnTbRLbq3UA7hc1qcian5GX9zkvtpSAkX15Kz78T5Yz92bsUFiNsCTqEWVxoDye8ExHLE4W8N?format=match&mode=fit" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
Henceforth
only rationality and the experimental method of mechanistic science,
presided over by a new yet equally exclusive priesthood of scientists and technicians, would be
accepted as providing an effective path to Truth. "Art" became mere
entertainment, even in its most "radical" form now only reflecting the
nihilism of its culture, no longer a means of transcendence in
immanence.<br />
<br />
Blake attempted to break out of this prison of "<b>the ratio of all things</b>"
by creating his own mythology, in conscious continuance of Gnostic and
Hermetic myth, and succeeded in keeping the light of the Everlasting
Gospel from being extinguished in the 19th century, allowing it to keep burning in the 20th century and beyond.<br />
<br />
But the same dull
round also refers to the cycle of revolution, which Blake came to
call the "Orc" cycle. <b>Orc</b> is the young and fiery
<a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/01/riding-orc-cycle-1.html">spirit</a> of revolution who nonetheless, as he grows older and more
established, hardens his revolt into a new oppressive authority. Inescapably he
transforms into his arch-nemesis, <b>Urizen</b>. This is what Blake, a friend
of the revolutionary Thomas Paine and an associate with the anarchist writer William
Godwin and his early feminist wife Mary Wollstonecraft, witnessed
happening during the course of the American and French revolutions.<br />
<br />
The
same deadly and soul-smothering Order just returns again and
again, usually in an even more violent and insufferable form. The Orc cycle provides the clockwork mechanism for the entire nightmare of history, entirely in lockstep with "natural religion." King and priest, the Archons of Space and Time, are merely reproduced under different titles and dress. To cut through this cycle or round, however, something far deeper needs to occur. Revolution is not sufficient, it must lead to Revelation. Each revolt must provoke a revealing. But a revealing of what?<br />
<br />
All laws must be overthrown, without and within. The extermination of the national tyrants of this world is incomplete unless the shackles which bind our own imagination are shattered. For Blake, a very conscious torch bearer of the Everlasting Gospel (a term which critic A.L. Morton explains Blake consciously adopted from the communist radicals of the English Revolution, who in turn took it from the Bible), it is through Christ alone that this may be accomplished.<br />
<br />
Blake calls Christ, "<b>Jesus the Imagination</b>" and in his poem "The Everlasting Gospel" he writes that the highest teaching available is the personal forgiveness of sins. Through Jesus the Imagination, always fully present within our own imagination, we are able to both forgive others and to be forgiven. All codes, restrictions, hierarchies are, through this, split right through. They are negated, circumvented, ignored and the forgiving power of the Source attained directly.<br />
<br />
In this way, Blake is overtly invoking the Third Age of the Holy Spirit, pronounced by Joachim of Fiore, in which Christ's Incarnation and Resurrection has already liberated the entire world from Sin and Death so that all existing authorities have been made obsolete. As we have seen, this is also the central belief of the Brethren of the Free Spirit and their successors. Blake carries this medieval antinomian heresy forward, a heresy which becomes central to the Romantic era.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://sahajayogaencyclopedia.org/images/7/75/Joachim%2Bcircles.jpg" src="http://sahajayogaencyclopedia.org/images/7/75/Joachim%2Bcircles.jpg" height="263" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
And ultimately this heresy also implies that ending the "same dull round" can be equated with liberation from saṃsāra, the cosmic wheel of birth and rebirth, an Indian doctrine which Blake might have had some familiarity with. Though as in Mahayana Buddhism, where the final realization is that saṃsāra <i>is</i> nirvāṇa, Blake also held that the radical and imaginative alteration of perception is the key to the realization that this world, with its endless beauty and mystery, is already Paradise.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Pewless Church of Poetry</h3>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>From
Valentinus through the German Romantic poet Novalis, the French Romantic
Nerval, and the English William Blake, Gnosticism has been
indistinguishable from imaginative genius. I venture, after a lifetime’s
meditation upon Gnosticism, the judgment that it is pragmatically the
religion of literature. There are, of course, nonheretical Christian
poets of genius, from John Donne through Gerard Manley Hopkins on to the
neo-Christian T.S. Eliot. And yet the most ambitious poets in the
Romantic Western tradition, those who have made a religion of their own
poetry, have been Gnostics, Shelley and Victor Hugo on to William Butler Yeats and Rainer Maria Rilke. -- </b><i>Genius</i>, Harold Bloom</blockquote>
<br />
Harold Bloom -- another imperfect messenger; Hermes Quicksilver may take on any semblance or guise -- extends the line further ahead to Blake-inspired Romantic writers to the Modernists and beyond. Gnosticism is the secret <b>religion of literature</b>.<br />
<br />
There is of course no formal Gnostic religion. Even during its heyday in the Hellenic period there existed dozens of, at times, rival Gnostic sects but no single all-encompassing Church. The rites and doctrines of these sects differed from one another, but a defining similarity was the application of essentially Platonic/Neoplatonic philosophy to Jewish, Christian and creative-syncretic mythologies.<br />
<br />
"Gnosticism" has come to represent a spiritual ideology which is dualistic at core, one that reveres the purity of the Spirit and reviles the body, the Earth and the realm of Matter in general, to the extreme that the Creator God of this material universe is denied and denounced as a cosmic tyrant. Likewise, for the Gnostics, the authorities of the Church and State, deriving their power from this false God, were rejected as being illegitimate and worthy of derision. The Gnostics were the original an-Archon-ists, <i>anarchists</i>. "<b>No gods, no masters</b>" was their slogan long before it was anyone else's.<br />
<br />
But "Gnosticism," in its entirety, was not in fact a simple dualism. Certain Gnostic sects, resembling the later Free Spirits, believed that the sparks of the True God were to be found in this world, and especially within the hearts of human individuals.<br />
<br />
Accordingly, certain sects like the Orphites and Phibionites celebrated the senses and practiced a free eroticism. They were Gnostic in the most appropriate sense of possessing or seeking to possess <i>gnosis</i>, an intuitive and direct apprehension of Godhead, either as individuals or in small groups and in defiance of any priestly mediation.<br />
<br />
The authors mentioned by Bloom, and there are many, many others that might have been included, are "Gnostics" in exactly this sense. They may have been directly influenced by elements of the original Gnostic doctrines, as Blake certainly was, but they belonged to no formal Gnostic "Church," and adhered to no defined dogma. They are Gnostics because they experienced, or at least sought the experience of, gnosis. Once again this meshes entirely with the Everlasting Gospel.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9b/70/83/9b7083ddb0f87c441917dae8b4950f8c.jpg" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9b/70/83/9b7083ddb0f87c441917dae8b4950f8c.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
At this stage in the present essay, this "tradition" might appear to be so diffuse that it has ceased to have much use as a political concept, if it ever did. The figures that Bloom mentions could be placed, alternately, on the Left or the Right of the political spectrum. Yeats, for example, would be rejected in total by the Left. This is unfortunate. Yeats's politics are without a doubt unsavory, but the sparks of gnosis can be discovered throughout his work. And to find these sparks, to release them and to add to their brightness, is a revolutionary strategy of Everlasting Gospel.<br />
<br />
Why should the fascists get Yeats? Why should they get Jung or D.H. Lawrence or Nietzsche?<br />
Instead of rejecting <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/12/what-is-material-world-and-is-it-dead.html">certain</a> authors and artists completely because they hold reactionary values, why not adopt a strategy of revolutionary deconstruction, one that liberates the sparks, streams and shamanic traces that channel as far back as the original "primitive" communism of the Paleolithic.<br />
<br />
In other words, act to eliminate the dross of priestly obfuscation, bogus rites and dogmas, patriarchal domination, bigotry and class division that has, over centuries of State rule, encrusted itself on <i>our</i> tradition. The Everlasting Gospel was always, and continues to be, ecological, feminist, anti-authoritarian, antinomian, communist.<br />
<br />
But the great misfortune is that this cannot be simply said without the inclusion of yet another "disclaimer." It should go without saying that this tradition is not represented by either the current nationalist or the current globalist ruling-class ideologies. Nonetheless, all of the adjectives above have been twisted against us. Though we might attempt a rectification of names.<br />
<br />
"Ecological" means merely to be in dynamic balance with the other creatures of this planet and with the planet itself, not an advocacy of Agenda 21 nor Agenda 2030 nor Agenda 2061, no matter how paranoid and divisive these are designed to make us. "Feminist" means promoting an equal partnership between all sexes and genders, not a female version of the patriarchy. "Communist," again, means a stateless and classless society, not the gulag nor an extreme authoritarian capitalism overseen by a so-called Communist Party.<br />
<br />
<h3>
It's Good Enough For Me </h3>
<br />
According to the research of French anthropologist, Pierre Clastres, tribal societies, far from being innocent "noble savages" -- free from even the <i>notion </i>of a centralized State -- function in continual and even structural <i>resistance </i>to the formation of a State. They are in resistance to the privileging, to the monopolization of violence, of an elite group within their societies over the rest of their members.<br />
<br />
This they were able to accomplish and sustain for millennia because these societies actively broke up any accumulation of power, be it wielded by the chiefs, or the shamans, or the strongest hunters, etc. At all times the emphasis was on the need to release trapped flows, build-ups of <i>mana </i>and wealth of all kinds. The States of the ancient world that did form and persist, therefore, were in those societies that for various reasons anti-authoritarian vigilance had lapsed.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://s.hdnux.com/photos/04/61/46/1251736/3/920x920.jpg" height="500" src="https://s.hdnux.com/photos/04/61/46/1251736/3/920x920.jpg" width="640" /><br />
<br />
A similar type of resistance, however, can be waged at this moment within the arts. Once again, the sparks of the Everlasting Gospel can be liberated. Ezra Pound provides a good example. Pound's anti-Semitic, pro-fascist, pro-Nazi Rome radio broadcasts during WW2 are abhorrent and disgusting, and the whole of Pound's <i>ouvre</i> should be scoured and <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2014/05/luminous-details.html">scrutinized</a> to determine just where the rot set in. But to throw away Pound entirely, to leave him to Italian neo-fascists and U.S. alt-right followers of Eustace Mullins, is a huge mistake.<br />
<br />
Pound, all throughout his career and even in the darkest and most fetid craters within it, had a profound sense of the archaic tradition which he called <i>Eleusis</i>. This shines and rings out beautifully in much of his work, and subsequent generations of poets -- many members of which were/are firmly on the Left -- sensed this in Pound's writing. The best of Pound can be liberated from Pound. And so with all artists. <br />
<br />
Literature, and in the arts in general but especially within poetry, harbours one of the last remaining pockets of archaic animism. In poetry, in its opposition to modern utilitarianism and reductionism, each verse is still charged with meaning, is still conscious of the fact that every word emanates from a god, that etymology tells and retells the story of theogony.<br />
<br />
In poetry the old correspondences between language, animals, plants, mountains, rivers, winds, stars, seasons, stages of life, elemental spirits, demons and gods retain their potency within an open web of metaphoric circulation. Within it the primal systems of correspondence and magic are reanimated and reactivated through verbal rhythms, symbols and images.<br />
<br />
The <b>Book of Orpheus</b> adds on to itself slowly, almost <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/08/phases-of-loon.html">imperceptibly</a>, word by word, verse by verse. And it is these few words that shine, their sap running back through roots and rhizomes down into the deepest and blackest and most fertile loam of the Earth, that are solely meaningful. The life of the author, and his or her whole body of work, may be nearly irrelevant in comparison to a single image or metaphor, somehow providing a conduit for that which resounds both in the furthest depths and in the outermost spheres.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://catalog.lambertvillelibrary.org/texts/Irish/stephens/crock/resources/front.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" src="http://catalog.lambertvillelibrary.org/texts/Irish/stephens/crock/resources/front.jpg" height="640" width="413" /> <br />
<br />
By these words or Word, Spirit and Matter -- dynamically conjoined within primitive communism -- are reunified once again. The visionary goal of all religions, although actively outlawed by the dominant priesthoods, is already accomplished, yet most do not "read" with the hope or even the awareness of finding it.<br />
<br />
Through these flashes of recognition all ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies are bypassed and we are instantly transported back inside our own bodies to the dawn of the world and the mind. Reason may eventually take us, by a gradual and winding course, to the summit and threshold of the Earthly Paradise, but only through faith, synonymous with the imagination, can we be rocketed to the stars.<br />
<br />
This imaginary Book of Orpheus acts as an unofficial Bible of the panoriginal religion of the Earth, a "faith" that is tribal and decentralized but also fully universal. And this religion was once present within every ethnic grouping across the planet, from Japanese pre-imperial Ko-Shintō to Siberian shamanism to Old European heathenism to the "primitive" and psychedelic animism of Africa and indigenous Australia and Amazonia.<br />
<br />
<i>All things are full of gods</i>; and one feminine creative/procreative principle pervades throughout all of internal and external nature, a foundationless foundation that can be expressed by no fundamentalism. Words are no slaves to their "definitions." Verse is never truly sentenced to any fixed grammar. Neither is this the infamous One World Religion of active post-Bircher paranoia and paralysis. No control centre is possible within this jungle of spirits. It is by nature, <i>as </i>nature, uncontrollable and free.<br />
<br />
Yet what does any of this have to do with revolutionary praxis in a "concrete" sense? Why waste our time on mystical or poetic tradition at all instead of the "realistic" goal of social revolution? Once more, following Blake, revolution in order to be fully successful must become revelation.<br />
<br />
This tradition, when entirely shorn of its priestly accretions, exemplifies the radical values of liberty, equality, fraternity, sharing, the holding of all possessions in common, in fact the expansion or re-appropriation of the commons to include the entire cosmos. The creative imagination within this tradition is identical to solidarity, to compassion, to love.<br />
<br />
And while within technocratic capitalism, here in agreement with its orthodox Marxist critics, imaginative vision is either banned or marginalized or profitably exploited, for the Everlasting Gospel it becomes both democratized and all important. The generation of meaning becomes liberated and this, in turn, is the first and crucial step towards social revolution.<br />
<br />
The realm of Matter [and I should add, much of our dreaming as well] is saturated and overrun by Capital. The primitive/post-historical anarchist communist guerillas stage their attacks of sabotage, subversion and liberation from the one great remaining inexplicable wilderness of the Imagination. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the
everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to
every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour
of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth,
and the sea, and the fountains of <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2019/11/snatches-of-everlasting-gospel-1.html">waters</a>.</b><span class="p"><br /></span></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://biosciences.lbl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/shutterstock_331444775.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="480" src="https://biosciences.lbl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/shutterstock_331444775.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-13750178010608413452019-12-06T05:52:00.000-08:002019-12-06T05:52:30.127-08:00Snatches of the Everlasting Gospel 2<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>And we may add that the
Pseudo-Dionysius, whose works were the source of mediaeval Christiam
mysticism, and were held in greatest reverence by Thomas Aquinas, Tauler
and Meister Eckhart, were copied from the order of the divine
hierarchies as set forth by Plotinus, Jamblichus, and Proclus, who all,
through Plato and Pythagoras, based themselves on Orpheus. -- </b><i>Orpheus</i>, G.R.S. Mead</blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
<img alt="http://www.actingoutpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/CocteauTestament3.jpg" src="http://www.actingoutpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/CocteauTestament3.jpg" /> </h3>
<h3>
</h3>
<h3>
Verses of the Book </h3>
<br />
Mead,
once head of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society and the
personal secretary of Madame Blavatsky, traces out here a central strand
of the Everlasting Gospel. Esoteric or visionary influences stream from Orpheus to Pythagoras and Plato, to the so-called
Neoplatonic philosophers including Plotinus, Iamblichus and Proclus, and directly to the Christian mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius the
Aeropagite down to Meister Eckhart and his followers.<br />
<br />
While
some of these figures have been accepted by orthodox Christianity and
the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, all of these visionaries
have inspired more radical and counter-establishment movements as well.
This points to a certain ambiguity within the Everlasting Gospel.<br />
<br />
The
Orphic or Hermetic philosophy which underlies and informs much of this
tradition, is also often co-opted and utilized by dominant priesthoods
for the purpose of perpetuating and expanding State control. This
philosophy is employed by the ruling hierarchy simply because it works.<br />
<br />
It's
generally a mistake to assume a division between Christian orthodoxy,
or the Roman imperial cult which directly preceded it -- the line of
pontiffs or high priests stretching well back into pagan antiquity --
and occult heresy. Instead, the real split is between a kind of elite
Hermeticism and a democratic or even anarchic Hermeticism. The basic
principles are shared, but the elite position is to prevent the masses
from obtaining this wisdom, and then using the elites' own monopoly of knowledge
as a means of control.<br />
<br />
Yet democratic or anarchic
groups much more embody the Hermetic principles of the centre being
everywhere and all souls being equally cherished by Godhead. The
religious orthodoxy imposed by sanctioned priesthoods, the latter always an
essential plank of the apparatus of the State, is merely watered-down
exoteric <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2019/11/snatches-of-everlasting-gospel-1.html">fare</a> for the flock.<br />
<br />
Initiatory lineages with secret rites and lore,
carried on orally from master to disciple, can also be viewed as consisting of a part of the wider revolutionary tradition, with teachings
and practices kept hidden to avoid suppression. Although what Diodorus wrote about
the Eleusinian Mysteries should always be kept in mind; they made secret what was performed in the
open and for all in the rites of Minoan Crete. The "mysteries" did not always require secrecy and exclusivity. <br />
<br />
Minoan
Crete, in fact, is a key link between the earlier Neolithic and
Paleolithic Goddess worshiping cultures and the later mysteries of the
ancient world. Crete was one of the last cohesive partnership societies
in the Mediterranean region. Minoan Crete inherited the universal
Goddess religion of the archaic world, revolving around the mythology of
the Mother Goddess and her son/consort.<br />
<br />
In Crete and Greece
the myth of Dionysus echoed the story of Osiris/Horus and Isis in Egypt,
Tammuz in Mesopotamia, Shiva and the Earth Goddess in India, and
eventually Madonna and the Christ. The story of Orpheus, the son of the Muse Calliope and first poet, becomes central to the Orphic cult which
scholars agree was a kind of reformed Dionysianism, Orpheus possessing
elements of both Dionysus and Apollo.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8b/f7/67/8bf767baf4b4de27d3366b92c5c8f97a.jpg" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8b/f7/67/8bf767baf4b4de27d3366b92c5c8f97a.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
As Mead points
out above, Orpheus, once more representing the consort/son of the
Goddess, becomes the inspiration for all subsequent poetry and
philosophy. Orphic fraternities valued contemplation over worldly riches
and pursuits and held all goods in common. Orpheus appears as either the
teacher or the student of Hermes Trismegistus in later esoteric
genealogies, but the teachings attributed to the mythical sage certainly
went on to greatly influence the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato.<br />
<br />
The
Orphic, Pythagorean and even Christian mystical traditions are all
fundamentally subversive as they teach that individuals, living the Good
Life and studying and practicing together, can entirely bypass and even
shun the sanctioned priesthoods and seek out and find divine
inspiration without authorized "spiritual" mediation.<br />
<br />
Orpheus,
as the first poet, is also a key figure of inspiration for the Western
literary tradition. The French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé held that all
inspired literature made up a vast and timeless "Book of Orpheus,"
to which every truly creative writer contributes perhaps a few verses or
lines.<br />
<br />
We should keep in mind here, however, that what
is being called the Everlasting Gospel, despite the Biblical origin of
its name, is not exclusively a Christian or even a Western tradition.
The philosopher Algis Uždavinys points out, for instance, that while
Plato can be called the father of Western philosophy, he is also the
forebearer of Eastern-Byzantine and Islamic philosophy, and through these he indirectly helped to spawn other schools of thought
further to the East. And Plato, as the sage himself humbly and reverently admitted, was merely a conduit for much older sources of wisdom. <br />
<br />
The gospel is
universal as well as everlasting, <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/09/becomes-so-odious.html">comprising</a> of and celebrating the
marriage or hierogamy of Matter and Spirit across the Earth at all
of its changing phases, and steadfast in spite of the constant pressure of priestly co-option and State
suppression.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Jes Grewn </h3>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The VooDoo
tradition instructs that Moses learned the secrets of VooDoo from Jethro
and taught them to his followers. H.P. Blavatsky concurs: “The
fraternity of Free Masons was founded in Egypt and Moses communicated
the secret teaching to the Israelites, Jesus to the Apostles and thence it
found its way to the Knights Templar.”</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>... We learned
what we always suspected, that the Masonic mysteries were of a Blacker
origin than we thought and that this man [a Knights Templar Grand Master
in 1890] had in his possession a Black sacred Book and how they were
worried that we would find out and wouldn’t learn that the reason they
wanted us out of the mysteries was because they were our mysteries! --
</b><i>Mumbo Jumbo</i></blockquote>
<br />
Ismael
Reed reminds us of another dimension of the Everlasting Gospel and its
mysteries, which he terms "Jes Grew" in his incredible novel. Not
only does its roots extend further back than the triumph of patriarchy,
but likewise it precedes by centuries the white monopolization of the
secret rites; both patriarchy and whiteness being key elements of Evola's bogus
"Northern Light." The true tradition has always been open to all.<br />
<br />
As Uždavinys explains, the principal Neoplatonic sages -- Plotinus,
Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, etc. -- were natives of Egypt, the Near
East and Anatolia, and certainly not "European" in ancestry and or in the traditions they revered. And these traditions, in the estimation of the philosophers themselves, originated not in Greece or Rome but in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://musicrising.tulane.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/383/2018/05/Untitled-1-1341860262.png" class="transparent" src="https://musicrising.tulane.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/383/2018/05/Untitled-1-1341860262.png" /> <br />
<br />
The
secrets of VooDoo passed from the black priesthood of Egypt -- who in
turn, according to the accounts of Apollonius of Tyana and others,
obtained their wisdom from even older lineages in Ethiopia and India -- to
Moses and the Old Testament prophets, to the Essenes and to the earliest
iterations of the Kabbalah. From here they went on to provide the backbone of the
Western European esoteric tradition, transmitted through the Templars and
<a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2014/06/schools-out-forever.html">others</a>.<br />
<br />
Yet in a parallel transmission, the inner
teachings of VooDoo spread to the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of
Africa, where it was inadvertently transported by the European slave
trade to the Caribbean and the Americas.<br />
<br />
This esoteric transmission
was fused and infused with the West African music of slaves and the former enslaved, and began to bubble up in
ports of admixture and creative miscegenation like New Orleans. And with this subversive spread of Jes Grew through blues, jazz, calypso and other musical genres, arose the renewed rites of popular and ecstatic initiation of our era. The black mysteries
reemerge to bring light to the masses.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Mystic Levelling </h3>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Even the new religions which
were born from time to time -- always at epochs when the mutual-aid
principle was falling into decay in the theocracies and despotic States
of the East, or at the decline of the Roman Empire -- even the new
religions have affirmed that same principle. They found their first
supporters among the humble, in the lowest, downtrodden layers of
society, where the mutual-aid principle is the necessary foundation of
every-day life; and the new forms of union which were introduced in the
earliest Buddhist and Christian communities, in the Moravian
brotherhoods and so on, took the character of a return to the
best aspects of mutual aid in early tribal life. -- </b><i>Mutual Aid: A Factor
in Evolution</i>, Peter Kropotkin </blockquote>
<br />
None
of the religions began as orthodox dogma, formulated by and in the
exclusive domain of the priestly elite. Instead, as Kropotkin realized,
spiritual movements throughout history, be they of the followers of
"the Buddha" or of "the Christ" or of other less remembered sages, began as
revelations springing from the common people. Only after an initial
phase of popular enthusiasm and evangelical growth are these movements
"brought under control" and molded into institutions used to further
elite power.<br />
<br />
Before this occurs, however, these new
bursts into the beyond, blasts of awakening -- usually by a single individual
but at times by small groups -- attract disciples and fellow travellers
who almost invariably set up communities and sodalities based upon the
principles of mutual aid which are lacking in the wider society.<br />
<br />
And, as Kropotkin noticed, these movements of mutual aid always emerge "<b>among the humble, in the lowest, downtrodden layers of society</b>."
It is the socially marginalized and the economically deprived that have
the least to lose and the most to gain from new religious movements,
which often start off revolutionary in tone and substance.<br />
<br />
The
Everlasting Gospel, far from referring to any particular religion or
sect, represents this initial phase of revelatory and revolutionary explosion within
every religion. It passes as an undercurrent through the cracks of the established
faiths, an <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2015/04/generic-theography-as-slab-of-text.html">eruption</a> of mystical levelling and mutual aid, before once
again being driven underground in the face of State and priestly
suppression and/or co-option.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://blogimg.goo.ne.jp/user_image/48/16/306ad96804d7bb0ede9978a7771f4e7b.jpg" src="https://blogimg.goo.ne.jp/user_image/48/16/306ad96804d7bb0ede9978a7771f4e7b.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
The mystical or visionary realization that the individual,
the natural world and God -- however this is perceived or conceived --
are all one, also encompasses the idea that human society is a unity of mutual
aid, every member equal yet absolutely unique and precious in the eyes
of God.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Zeroing Out</h3>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>In spite of all sorts of
Brahmanical interpolations, grafting and handling, Tantra clearly
rejects the </b><b><i>varṇa</i> system and patriarchy and, in the field of religion,
all external formalities in regard to spiritual quest. These viewpoints
are in virtual opposition to the Smarta-</b><b><span class="st">Purāṇic</span> tradition, and that is
why the followers of this system have been condemned and various
attempts have been made to blacken the Tantric ideals. The traditions of</b><b><span class="st"><i> varṇāśrama</i></span> was always patronised by the ruling class, even by the
Buddhist, Muslim and British rulers who were theoretically opposed to
it. A critical student of religious history cannot fail to observe that
certain forms of religious systems, especially those which uphold and
justify a social system based on the principles of inequality and
oppression, have been given massive support by the ruling class in all
ages. -- </b><i>History of the Tantric Religion</i>, N.N. Bhattacharyya</blockquote>
<br />
Tantra
in India certainly fits the pattern Kropotkin identifies. Like early
Christianity, Buddhism and other religions it began as a movement of
mutual aid among the downtrodden and the marginalized against the caste
system and the patriarchal authorities. Bhattacharyya explains that
Tantra practitioners were opposed to the priesthood and ecclesiastical
hierarchy even of spiritual traditions, like Buddhism and Islam, which
had started as liberation movements themselves but became fully
absorbed by the system of control.<br />
<br />
Tantra, however, can
be understood as the resurfacing among the lower classes of the
primordial and universal Mother Goddess worship, stemming back to the
caves of the Paleolithic. Like <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/07/how-finnegans-wake-predicts-and.html">resurgent</a> Dionysianism in the West and
Taoism in China -- the three existing as a triple branching of an even
more archaic and worldwide shamanism -- Tantra is a direct extension of
the oldest human revelation.<br />
<br />
Tantra also restores an
emphasis on the Earth, the body and its sexuality, and the particularly
female mysteries. Before it, too, became incorporated into priestcraft --
although this was never wholly accomplished -- it was democratic and
egalitarian in form and doctrine. Its affirmation of the physical world
and the cycles of nature, including that of birth, death and
rebirth, would seem to put it at odds with both the Vedantic
philosophies of India and Platonism and Neoplatonism in the West.<br />
<br />
However,
Tantra, in its Buddhist or Hindu or Jain form, is not a base
materialism. Instead, it is a reemergence of an earlier affirmation of
the life cycle found in original Mother Goddess worship. Liberation is
not obtained by rejecting the Earth, the body and the spirals of birth
and rebirth. Instead Tantra returns to the radical affirmation of embodied
existence as spiritual greatness.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://mea.gov.in/images/Gods3.jpg" src="https://mea.gov.in/images/Gods3.jpg" /><br />
<br />
As Uždavinys teaches, the Neoplatonists revered <i>Parmenides </i>as expressing the highest truths of the Platonic dialogues. The <i>Parmenides </i>is
essentially a discursive meditation on the nature of the One. The late
Neoplatonist Proclus explains in his commentary on the dialogue, that
while the One absolutely transcends the categories of Being and
Non-Being, and all subsequent categories of thought, it is also the
originator and preserver of these. The One
participates in all things.<br />
<br />
Very similar metaphysical
speculation was occurring in India at around the same time. The great
Madhyamika (Middle Way school of Mahayana Buddhism) philosopher Nāgārjuna
grappled with the same ideas in the 2nd century. Unlike in the Hellenic
world, however, India embraced the concept that would eventually be symbolized by the number <i>Zero</i>.<br />
<br />
So while Plato and especially the much later Neoplatonists were scratching their heads
and stroking their beards about "the One that is not One" -- how to
account for the connection between the wholly transcendent One and the multiform
world it must have spawned -- Nāgārjuna was able to take it back beyond
the One to the "Zero," to <i>śūnya</i>, and to zeroness and emptiness, <i lang="sa-Latn" title="Sanskrit-language romanization">śūnyatā</i>.<br />
<br />
Śūnyatā not only shows that the "first principle" -- whatever that is -- is
beyond the categories of being and non-being, but
that all things, participating fully within it at all times, are likewise
beyond these categories, likewise empty of own-being. From this insight an
entire inversion of perspective can be gained. <i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>Nirvāṇa</i> -- the highest
apprehension of, and unity with, the so-called "One" -- is thus identical to <i>Saṃsāra</i> --
this present sub-lunar, ever-in-flux realm of life, death and rebirth. Both
are "terms" or "realms" or "perceptions" or "states of consciousness"
in which all categories are provisional, unfixed, and as transitory and
"empty" as anything held by the senses and experienced by the body. "The
One," or more accurately "The Zero," participates in matter because it
is entirely identifiable with matter. The seeming paradox of
transcendence yet participation is resolved.<br />
<br />
And this
is where things get really interesting. If the transcendent has become,
and truly always was, wholly immanent, if the Good, the True and the
Beautiful are present wherever and whenever people have eyes to see
them, then questions of philosophy become those of epistemology and not
ontology.<br />
<br />
There are not two principle worlds -- the higher transcending all matter
& embodied life and partially accessible only to rigid hierarchies of
gods, angels and priests -- but there are two or more ways of knowing;
"transcendent" modes of apprehension being just as <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/12/what-is-material-world-and-is-it-dead.html">accessible</a> as the
"ordinary" or mundane knowledge of the senses.<br />
<br />
Only the
doors of perception need to be cleansed, as Blake wrote much later, to
be able to behold the infinite. And this may be not that far off from
one important facet of Plato's teaching. In the <i>Symposium </i>we read that the Form of Beauty, which is
an entry point into the entire realm of the Forms, can be grasped
gradually through the conscious perception of particular instances or
persons of "erotic" (reflecting Eros) beauty. In other words, a
transformed perception of beautiful individuals can lead to an
apprehension of divine beauty in all things.<br />
<br />
A
priesthood is not needed for this. Strict dogma and rites are not
required, only effective techniques, and at times "simples" or
substances, are desired which can be passed down from visionary to visionary.
Spiritual insight has been
levelled. Anyone can participate, and indeed always has been participating, in the Zero. Every instant of perception
involves ourselves within it.<br />
<br />
And as spiritual insight
is levelled, democratized, so is social understanding. Each person has
the potential to become priest or priestess of his or her own church.
Just as it was the prophetess Diotima who initiated Socrates into the
erotic mysteries and the "madness" coupled with it, it was the archaic
insights of the primal Mother Goddess in India that brought alive the
philosophical breakthroughs of Nāgārjuna and others. <br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cf/fe/17/cffe172f5a99f45f8ad39627c5fa89af.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="468" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cf/fe/17/cffe172f5a99f45f8ad39627c5fa89af.jpg" width="640" /><br />
<br />znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-59932028905175840312019-11-30T18:10:00.000-08:002019-12-02T02:56:42.881-08:00Snatches of the Everlasting Gospel 1 <img alt="https://exhibitions.kelsey.lsa.umich.edu/jackal-gods-ancient-egypt/objects/blake.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="739" src="https://exhibitions.kelsey.lsa.umich.edu/jackal-gods-ancient-egypt/objects/blake.jpg" width="520" /><br />
<br />
Where have we landed? What moon rises? How tight the snare? How high
does the bile well up? One step more and the floor caves in. Gentle
creaking outwits the subtle approach of late compression. If we wager
that this System of fixity outlasts even the desire for complete
cessation, if every middle potential thwarts understanding, then what
hope remains?<br />
<br />
Mutually hostile national encampments. Barriers, lines,
tripwires, unblinking eyes, stomping rubber. No migration. No
inter-mixture. No permeation. The only other available offering is the
gulag made global. Choose yer police state: particular or universal,
whitewashed or rainbow-hued, assimilated or cosmopolitan, pure or
impure. This is the present straightjacket of expression, both arms tied around back for maximum immobility.<br />
<br />
And at each
extreme, and in every gradation between, corporate
entrenchment proceeds in snowballing descent. It somehow creeps beyond
or between both sides of the permitted fare. The most ethnically
homogenous states also have their iPhones and Starbucks. Corporate
monoculture has already colonized the minds of those living in the most
vigilant ethnostates. <br />
<br />
A third position has been snatched
from us. There is no beyond Left and Right. There is no beyond at all.
"Left" and "Right" are merely two poles of an immanent sphere. “Beyond Left and
Right” has become a recruiting slogan for seductive fascists in drag.
And it works. "The enemy is Globalism," bleat the red-pilled. “Leftists” --
they could be your neighbours or even your family members -- are far
easier to identify and confront than shadowy elites, and easier still to recognize than the
dynamic forces of an impersonal economic machine fueled by social
disparity and greed.<br />
<br />
And the resulting resurgent “populism” -- its ranks bloated by the
dispossessed -- becomes defined by this false "third position": Workers’ rights
but not for migrants. Social safeguards but only for the national and
racial in-group. Our military. Our borders. Our corporations. Our
tradition. Our race. If only we could clean our own rooms, eliminate the
filth and confusion and degeneracy, everything might turn out fine.<br />
<br />
Of
course, none of this is new -- modern history still drips with the gore
of past cleansings -- and it has always ever been a means to perpetuate
power in a different <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/04/just-typing-care-or-whack-rip-off.html">guise</a>. The most horrorshow hoodwink. Po-po-mo proto-brownshirtism for the beard-styling and sweater set.<br />
<br />
And
in the Left corner: a 98-pound weakling with a victim complex, a wraith
of the Vampire Castle, a puritanical doxxer and purger, a
self-marginalizing identity campaigner, ideological purity taking the
place of the racial or civilizational purity of their opponent, concerned
more with policing the ranks of allies than in confronting the enemy.<br />
<br />
Sanctioned thought progressively narrows and constricts. Even the
weapons of liberation from past counter-cultural or radical movements --
autonomic mysticism, psychedelics, drop-out and refusal lifestyles,
sexuality, paganism -- are rejected out of hand as being entirely
co-opted by the Right.<br />
<br />
And, in truth, this is occurring. The extreme
Right is ecstatic to appear edgy, funny, hip. If the Left sterilizes and
lobotomizes itself by shackling the imagination with reductionist
materialism, the Right will suavely waltz in and offer a whole
smorgasbord of spiritual and libidinal dainties. Wilhelm Reich becomes
relevant again: the Left has once more allowed fascism to appear sexy, even holy.
<br />
<br />
But this Left is the unfortunate corner in
which we find ourselves and must defend. It's all that's left. There is
no outside of the ring. Even the
spectators are on the inside. Either this or
nationalist/internationalist state/corporate hellworld.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/25/46/82/254682f96a04865b5219a3ac34ab504c.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="640" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/25/46/82/254682f96a04865b5219a3ac34ab504c.jpg" width="413" /><br />
<br />
And let’s not be confused by definitions.
The U.S. libertarian designation of the Left as collectivist and the
Right as individualist is entirely misleading, and likely intended to
mislead. The National Socialists were not socialists, largely successful propaganda aside;
their name was designed to deceive and seduce the disenfranchised and
desperate. Both the Nazis and the fascists, while implementing social
programs to benefit their chosen constituents, did nothing to halt
corporate capitalism. Instead, in these regimes the class structure of capitalism was exemplified.<br />
<br />
Capitalism is emphatically not the free
market -- a desire as utopian as genuine
communism and paradoxically perhaps having much in common with it --
instead it is the presently-existing economic system which employs state
privilege and
the monopoly of force in order to further empower and enrich both capital and
capitalists. It is really an extension, with cosmetic alterations, of the
past rule of aristocracies and monarchies.
Capitalism, though in varying degrees, is intrinsically authoritarian, by
definition.<br />
<br />
"Socialism," in the few times when it has grasped the reins the State, has also been authoritarian and pernicious, but this is precisely when it is <i>not </i>functioning as socialism. This is actually a perversion
of its nature. Trotsky rightly called this system "state capitalism." Actual socialism, with workers' control of production as its
aim, began as a libertarian movement of the underclasses, and in essence
it still is. Equality must always be coupled with liberty.<br />
<br />
Unlike
capitalism, it has no vested
interests to protect with State power (although the attainment of this
power <i>does </i>create vested interests, to disastrous and well-known
consequences). Socialism should be merely a transition to communism
which, even by strict Marxist definition, is a stateless and classless
society.<br />
<br />
Socialist and "communist" parties and sects
have attempted and continue to attempt to wield State power, through the
ballot or the bullet, in order to enact this transition. Yet the
anarchists have always -- from the get go -- rejected this as
necessarily leading to strategic and ethical catastrophe (as predicted and witnessed by Proudhon, Bakunin, Emma Goldman in Russia, etc.). Thus the
"Left" of this essay will be dedicated to the anarchist Left, other
comrades being for the present welcomed into the struggle despite their
greater or lesser delusions concerning the benign use of State power.<br />
<br />
In
truth,
all states now are “mixed economies”: corporate capitalist governments
that offer their populations certain benefits through taxation -- public
roads, libraries, schools, welfare, etc. -- present in proportion
to the strength of past and present social movements.<br />
<br />
The
Right, then, regardless if it advocates for an international "liberal"
capitalism -- capitalism with benefits -- or for a nationalist
conservative capitalism (and at times of crisis like now there is a genuine split
along these lines among the ruling class, trickling down to the
population), is always in defense of capitalism. The two branches amount
to the same state-corporate rule.<br />
<br />
The Left is, or
should be, something else entirely. It seeks for the total overthrow of
this system and desires for it to be replaced by a stateless and classless society or, better
still, <i>societies</i>. Yet to do this it needs to know its roots, running deep through the culture and in the human psyche, and to take back all that was
stolen during the long gory stomp of history. It needs to find its "tradition."<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>If
we have learned to associate ceremonial magic with right-wing politics
thanks to such figures as W B . Yeats and Aleister Crowley, we should
learn to be more careful in our categorical assumptions. The idea of
"tradition" was only hi-jacked by the Right in very recent times (and
thanks in part to such "traditionalists" as </b><b>Guénon, Evola, Jung, Eliade,
or T. S. Eliot) . Formerly the Left had its tradition as well, the
"Good Old Cause" that combined unmediated autonomy and unmediated
spirituality. While the traditionalist Right veers toward a dualism of
good and evil, spirit and body, hierarchy and separation, the Hermetic
Left emphasizes "ancient rights and customs"of freedom, equality, justice-and
bodily pleasure (e.g., Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell). The Left
is "radical monist", Saturnian and Dionysian; the Right is "Gnostic",
authoritarian and Apollonian. Naturally these terms and categories get,
mingled and confused, combined and recombined, in an excessive
exfoliation of the strangest hybrids and freaks. The Right has its
mystical revolutionaries, the Left has its Gnostic Dualists. But as
generalizations or ideal models I believe that the rival traditions can
be clearly distinguished. -- </b>"The Shamanic Trace"</blockquote>
<br />
This
passage by Peter Lamborn Wilson (and, as an initial aside, none of the quoted authors here are
free from controversy, nor are their ideas or actions accepted
entirely by me), from his essay “The Shamanic Trace,”
found in <i>Escape from the Nineteenth Century</i>, has been cited before in
this blog. I continue to find his delineation of a tradition of the
Hermetic Left to be compelling, and I’ve <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2014/09/hermetic-anarchism-and-othering-other-1.html">tweaked</a> this notion only a bit into “Hermetic Anarchism.” The idea of a radical or
even revolutionary tradition, emphasizing both freedom and equality, and
combining “<b>unmediated autonomy and unmediated spirituality</b>” is an attractive one.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://www.brh.org.uk/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ranters-1024x718.jpg" height="448" src="https://www.brh.org.uk/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ranters-1024x718.jpg" width="640" /><br />
<br />
The Right, as Wilson explains, currently dominates our
understanding of esoteric spirituality, and it is this perspective that
permeates art, literature and popular culture. This perspective is present throughout the work of an entire spectrum of 20th century thinkers and writers. It spans from the
self-named Traditionalists -- Guénon, Shuon and Evola and their
successors like Mircea Eliade and even Joseph Campbell -- to the
Modernists -- Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, W.B. Yeats etc. and
those that they have influenced like Marshall McLuhan -- to occultists
like Crowley and psychoanalysts like Carl Jung.<br />
<br />
All of these men are
deeply fascinating to me, their ideas appear constantly throughout this
blog, and yet they are all very conservative or even reactionary while
this blog attempts to be just the opposite. But the ideas all of these men contain, I believe, deeper and older and more emancipatory currents which have the potential to break the narrow bounds of their politics. <br />
<br />
The bulk of the “Left,”
though, refuses to engage with these figures and their concepts altogether
because it concludes, and understandably so, that their metaphysical
philosophies are inseparably coupled with their tainted politics. So in
<a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/01/ideal-objects-delerium-and-other-pizza.html">rejection</a> of all spiritual and metaphysical speculation and sentiment,
leftists generally favour a fairly reductive scientific materialism.<br />
<br />
Discussions of altered states of consciousness, mythology, tradition,
the occult, synchronicity and other psychic anomalies, archetypes,
non-physical entities, magic, etc. are largely dismissed as being
apolitical or denounced outright as being reactionary and quasi-fascist.
But as Wilson explains, it is relatively recently that the Right has
“<b>hi-jacked</b>” the idea of tradition and monopolized the discussion of the
above subjects, none of which are intrinsically abhorrent.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T03/T03082_9.jpg" height="640" src="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T03/T03082_9.jpg" width="633" /><br />
<br />
Yet an
older, ancient and even archaic, “tradition” has existed and still does
exist. It stretches back to the earliest Paleolithic, to the dawn of
modern humanity and maybe prior to that, to what Marx & Engels
called “<b>primitive communism</b>” -- the original stateless and classless
societies. But what the Marxists chose and choose not to emphasize, to
the detriment of the entire revolutionary project, is that in
addition to being anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian these
“primitive” tribal societies were, for tens of thousands of years, deeply spiritual:
animist, pantheist, non-dualist, shamanic, magical.<br />
<br />
And even towards the
end of the Neolithic, when these libertarian and egalitarian spiritual
antinomians began to be enslaved and eradicated through the emergence and expansion of
the ancient states and empires, their influence persisted throughout
history as a subversive and subterranean stream.<br />
<br />
The following does
not attempt to sketch out the entire history of this tradition -- which
William Blake, following the radical Diggers and Ranters of the English
Revolution, called “the Everlasting Gospel” -- as this needs to traced
out for every nation and culture on Earth, but instead offers a
scatter-shot sampling of radical spiritual movements and manifestations
across space and time, taken from multiple and promiscuous sources.<br />
<br />
Right traditionalists can be mined and plundered for concepts and rites
that they themselves have appropriated, but even when these are
“liberated” they pale in comparison to knowledge of the living
tradition, however loose, ephemerally connected and unorganized it may
be, of the Everlasting Gospel.<br />
<br />
<b>A Certain Propensity </b><br />
<br />
Julius Evola
is perhaps
an appropriate character to start with, especially because of the
increasing popularity of his ideas with alt-right and far right groups in recent
years. Evola hi-jacks the tradition by inverting
historical reality. We can therefore differentiate legitimate tradition
from reactionary fantasy by inverting Evola. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The
favourable climate and the natural plentiness eventually induced most
people to seek peace and rest and to cultivate the feeling of
contemplation and getting lost in nature, rather than an active pursuit
of affirmation and self-transcendence. Therefore, even in the order of
what can be affected to a certain degree by external factors, while the
Northern Light goes hand in hand, through solar and Uranian symbols,
with a virile ethos and a warrior spirituality consisting of a harsh
will to establish order and to dominate, conversely, in the Southern
traditions the predominance of the chthonic theme and of the pathos of
death and resurrection corresponds to a certain propensity to
promiscuity, escapism, a sense of abandonment, and a naturalistic
pantheism with sensual or mystical and contemplative overtones. --
</b><i>Revolt Against the Modern World</i></blockquote>
<br />
Evola's
distinction between the Northern and Southern traditions is misleading
from the outset. If harsh northern climates inevitably generate cultures
with "<b>a <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-dark-shamanic-origins-of-debt-and.html">harsh</a> will to establish order and to dominate</b>" then the relatively peaceful cultures and tribes of Arctic Canada and Siberia are difficult to account for.<br />
<br />
But
we all know what Evola really means, and he is quite overt about this.
He is referring to Germanic people, Aryan people, <i>White</i> people. It is
this race that possesses a "<b>virile ethos and a warrior spirituality</b>" and that is exclusively on "<b>an active pursuit of affirmation and self-transcendence</b>."
Evola is apparently unconcerned that his characterization of Germanic
tribes largely contradicts the early accounts by Tacitus and Julius
Caesar, both of whom commented on the high status of women within these
communal societies and their essential integration with the natural
environment.<br />
<br />
Anthropologists Marija Gimbutas and Riane
Eisler have argued, however, that an essential division existed between
older, more matriarchal and agricultural, "partnership" societies and
patriarchal, chariot-riding "dominator" societies, but the question
remains if the latter arose because of pressures from early imperial
states. Oppressive encroachment from Imperial Rome on the stateless
tribes to the North seems to have had the effect of causing these groups
to militarize in self-defense and then eventually to become expansive themselves.<br />
<br />
In
any case, in a choice between "dominator" and "partnership" societies,
it is obvious what the fascism-is-not-reactionary-enough Evola would
choose. It is the matriarchal, partnership Southern tradition which is
the source of cultural decadence and darkness, whereas the pure and
virile Light of reason and order shines only from the hallucinated
North.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1e/f4/c4/1ef4c44e546f00009765731b58d308ab.jpg" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1e/f4/c4/1ef4c44e546f00009765731b58d308ab.jpg" /><br />
<br />
However, it is not just a matter of flipping
Evola's terms and raising the South above the North. Just as his
depiction of the Northern tradition is for the most part fiction, his
sense of the Southern traditions is likewise skewed. Affirmation and
self-transcendence can be found, for example, in southern Buddhism, but
it is also true that the first imperial states were formed in the hotter
climes of Mesopotamia and Egypt.<br />
<br />
What Evola and his
recent fans invoke is a mythic justification of certain values, and an
elevation these to a "tradition." Yet, in doing so, he also by necessity
maps out a counter-tradition, with contrary values, which can be now
affirmed, reappropriated as it were. But, leaving Evola sputtering in
the dust, instead of this representing a lunar or Southern tradition
only, the affirmation can broadened to include essentially the archaic
tradition of those cultures, across the globe, that thrived for
millennia before the onset and onslaught of the State.<br />
<br />
The
values that Evola disparages can be celebrated: the seeking of peace
and rest, the reverence for nature and the feminine, contemplation of
the fertility cycle of birth, death and rebirth, sensual and mystical
pantheism, promiscuity and the ecstatic overcoming of all boundaries,
the emphasis on the sharing of possessions and social equality. All of
these are facets of the Everlasting Gospel.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Now the
animals rites of the caves were certainly instituted by the
Aurignacians, and the female images, though never present in these
sanctuaries, are as certainly an expression in the outside world of a
power which also had its place within -- hence the stylised wall
engravings and the inscribed and painted symbols. It seems reasonable to
imagine that the makers of those statuettes had also passed
beyond the stage of localised relationship with the archetypal beasts,
to the conception of a pervading principle, not in this case their own
creative power, but a life-substance through which that power could act,
conceived already in the human form of maternal fecundity. -- </b><i>The Gate
of Horn</i>, G.R. Levy</blockquote>
<br />
This movement in thought among peoples of the Upper Paleolithic from local animal rites to a conception of a more universal "<b>pervading principle</b>"
of maternal fertility and fecundity may represent the essential origins
of the Everlasting Gospel, although Gimbutas and others speculate that
Goddess worship may <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/06/mantis.html">have</a> gone back hundreds of thousands of years.
Certainly there is much evidence of the coupling of animal and woman
worship, with many of the earliest figurines and cave drawings being
hybrid animals and human females (with some male "shamanic" depictions
included).<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qYBHS9YQZvI/maxresdefault.jpg" height="360" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qYBHS9YQZvI/maxresdefault.jpg" width="640" /><br />
<br />
As Levy points out, the caves themselves
invoke the Goddess. Caves were the model of later temples worldwide, but
both temples and the primal caves take the form of the vulva and womb
of the Goddess. Celebrants were initiated within and emerged reborn. The
spiral or serpentine designs on the threshold or just within these
caverns indicate the creative and life-giving power of these portals
into the mysteries.<br />
<br />
If this is also the origin of
Evola's "Southern" tradition, then so be it. The whole cycle of life is
affirmed, all creatures viewed as being equal sons and daughters of the
Goddess. According to Gimbutas, this is humanity's oldest religion, its
most long-lasting -- pockets surviving to the present -- and its most
widespread, existing on all continents. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Marx and Engels confused spirit with
established religion -- as their doctrinaire followers continue to do --
because, as Western white males, they could not see the total paradigm
of ancient women’s original communism. Coming from this linear,
fragmenting, and reductive Western tradition -- which has historic roots
in the Judeo-Christian Bible as well as in Aristotelian-Platonic,
Greco-Roman hyper-rationality -- they could not comprehend the primal
holism of human experience on earth. As a result Marxism tends to
reinforce, rather than oppose, Western capitalism’s notorious strategy
of alienation. Marxist analysts generally are obsessed with isolating
economic/productive development from magical/religious/sexual
development. -- </b><i>The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of
the Earth</i>, Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor</blockquote>
<br />
Sjoo and Mor, inspired by the research of Gimbutas and others, contrast what they call "<b>ancient women's original communism</b>" with reductive Marxism. The statement that white males could not possibly see the "<b>total paradigm</b>"
of primitive communism, and the Everlasting Gospel arising from it, is
most certainly wrong. It's true that at least from the outset of
expansionist states patriarchy has been dominant, but as the archaic
partnership societies were egalitarian, men also participated in the "<b>primal holism</b>" that these authors describe.<br />
<br />
In
addition, ever since the emergence of patriarchy and the State,
certain men have also been at the forefront of resistance movements,
both social and intellectual, that have opposed oppression and
inequality. Even within Jewish sects and early Christianity, as <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/03/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">well</a> as
in Pythagorean and Platonic fraternities, the anti-authoritarian and
communist values of the Everlasting Gospel are reflected.<br />
<br />
Sjoo
and Mor are right, though, in their basic critique of Marxism. Marx, in
rejection of the idealism of Hegel -- himself deeply influenced by the
Hermetic tradition (yet unfortunately also a big fan of the State) --
postulated a strict dialectical materialism. All historical processes
are reduced in this philosophy to class conflict and material
production.<br />
<br />
The economic analysis of Marx and Engels is
crucial for understanding the development of capitalism and the
contradictions inherent within it, but by ignoring or even suppressing
the magical, religious and sexual currents of past communal or
revolutionary movements, Marxism does tend to contribute to the very
alienation it claims to struggle against. The Everlasting Gospel rejects
such alienation in total.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://www.2enero.com/hypnerotomachia/22/22.1y6.jpg" height="522" src="https://www.2enero.com/hypnerotomachia/22/22.1y6.jpg" width="640" />znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-18230410107493582222019-07-31T20:46:00.001-07:002019-07-31T20:46:59.957-07:00A Tracer Off Yer Gob<div class="comment-content" itemprop="text">
<img alt="https://sites.google.com/site/justsostoriesanimals/_/rsrc/1467125407812/how-the-camel-got-his-hump/camel-oasis-ii.jpg" src="https://sites.google.com/site/justsostoriesanimals/_/rsrc/1467125407812/how-the-camel-got-his-hump/camel-oasis-ii.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
The following stems from a May facebook conversation, initiated by writer Jasun Horsley, on the recent decision to decriminalize the use of magic mushrooms in Denver, Colorado. Horsley's position is that the decrimalization of psychedelics is not the <i>automatic</i> good<i> </i>that many in the "alternative" community deem it to be. His view of psychedelics, although he was a advocate of their use in the past, is now mostly negative. Several people challenged his perspective and I also weighed in.<br />
<br />
Jasun has <a href="https://auticulture.com/manufacturing-consent-to-a-counterfeit-spirituality-the-new-controlled-counterculture/">reproduced</a> the facebook discussion on his own site, where it continues. I find it to be a fascinating and important debate that includes not only psychedelics but many other topics dear to this blog. I present below my initial comment on facebook as it was reformatted by Horsley on his site, Jasun's response, and finally my subsequent thoughts which I have decided to release here at this time. I've added paragraph numbers to Jasun's piece, with corresponding numbers in my own reply, in order to make referencing easier. Here we go...<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://s3.amazonaws.com/photos.geni.com/p13/87/44/c0/e6/53444839c7d28683/iamblichus_large.jpg" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/photos.geni.com/p13/87/44/c0/e6/53444839c7d28683/iamblichus_large.jpg" /><br />
<b></b><br />
<br />
<b>From Znore at Faceborg:</b><br />
<blockquote>
Eating alters consciousness. Not eating alters
consciousness. Drinking water alters consciousness. Not drinking water
alters consciousness. Sleeping alters consciousness. Not sleeping alters
consciousness. Exercise alters consciousness. Sitting still alters
consciousness.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
My point here, as you know, is that there is no such state as pure
and pristine, “natural,” consciousness. “<b>Anything that alters the body
chemistry to alter consciousness is, by definition, distorting the
body’s natural frequency and transmission.</b>” All of these things and many
more do this, and all of them beyond a certain point will produce
intoxication. But even if we were austerely moderate in all things, we
would still exist in culture, would still communicate with language.
Both of these alter consciousness continually and profoundly. Culture
and language have both been shaped by the visionary experiences that
people have had for millennia. And the “traditional” religions are
founded on these experiences (the burning bush and Sinai for Moses, the
night journey and the transmission of the Koran for Mohammed, the desert
retreat and whatever the hell happened on and after the cross for
Christ). 40 days of fasting in the desert or five dried grams alone in
my room, which isn’t “storming heaven”? One person’s “psychic”
experience is another’s “spiritual” experience.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
I remember reading about a debate among Traditionalists at one point
concerning the question if Buddhism should be considered “traditional”
or actually heretical to Tradition. I think the problem that some had
with it was precisely because it does not accept an ultimate distinction
between the so-called mundane, psychic and spiritual realms or planes.
Each of these three, for it, is marked by emptiness and suffering. Each
interpenetrates the other at every point. Gods, demons and fairies are
as empty of their own separate being as animals or humans. Eventually
Buddhism gets accepted into the Traditionalist fold, but only after its
stance of radical immanence gets blunted or twisted into a belief system
in which spiritual transcendence is the ultimate goal — like a kind of
Advaita Vedanta with an even more turbo-charged negative theology. To
fit the Buddha into the Traditionalist script the myth of him being an
incarnation of Vishnu gets emphasized, as it is in the Upton interview
above. Safely Hinduized Buddhism. Not nirvana is samsara, but nirvana is
Objective Spiritual Reality.</blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://cdn.mysticmedusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Bee-Goddess-7th-Century-BC.jpg" height="400" src="https://cdn.mysticmedusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Bee-Goddess-7th-Century-BC.jpg" width="360" /></div>
<br />
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<cite class="fn" itemprop="name">Jasun</cite> </div>
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May 15, 2019 at 11:30 am </time>
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<div class="comment-content" itemprop="text">
<i><b>1)</b> I get that purity can be a delusional and dangerous pursuit, in
and of itself, even that it’s at the root of many dangerous delusions.
But surely postmodernist sophistry isn’t the best answer?</i><br />
<br />
<i>
</i><i><b>2)</b> To say one person’s psychic is another’s spiritual experience is to
negate and ignore, rather than refute, Upton’s proposition, that the
spiritual and the psychic realms are distinct, one being eternal and
absolute, the other being intersubjective and temporal. That doesn’t
mean we can’t have psychic experiences that provide glimpses of the
spiritual; hence I would say, some psychic experiences represent genuine
wisdom-insight into the eternal whereas others (and surely most) do
not. This is my experience: some of my experiences might, but most I now
know don’t, though I thought they did at the time. And the ones that
most seem to, these days, are the least “psychic” and the most visceral
or sensational (in literal sense), just as the ones I used to believe
but now don’t, were the most psychic and dramatic.</i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b>3)</b> In our podcast conversation, you expressed incomprehension over the
idea of disembodiment, suggesting that every experience we have is
embodied. I would say that I didn’t really understand what disembodiment
is, either, until I began to have experiences of its opposite, of
consciousness returning to the body, or arriving there for the first
time. These only began some years after I gave up intoxicants, which I
see as part of the reason for my body “waking up.”</i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b>4)</b> The body has an optimum state in any given moment; this is going to
relate not only to what we do with it, put in it, and what comes out of
it in that moment, but also in the immediate and even distant past
(starting with trauma-affect and corresponding toxins). Getting back to
the baseline of the body means detoxifying, and that means, not only
getting out the toxins still in there from years of abuse (of whatever
sort), but reducing the amount being put into it on a daily basis.</i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b>5)</b> Saying that everything alters conscious or is storming heaven—as if
the fact of a spectrum makes every point on the spectrum equal and
therefore the whole question irrelevant—smacks of sophistry. Would you
really want to have a conversation (or be married to) a total drunk? If
not, why not? Would you want to live on a diet of M & Ms and
Cheetos? If not, why not? If it’s all the same, why discern at all? And
if it’s not, why reject the possibility that sobriety—abstinence from
obvious and observable consciousness alterants—is a means to get back to
the body’s natural, toxin-free state?</i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b>6)</b> The main reason, as far as I can see, is because we like doing stuff
that alters our consciousness and don’t really care too much about the
cost for the body. And the more we do them, the less we are able to
refer to the body in a toxin-free state, the less we have to ever reckon
with that cost.</i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b>7) </b>For myself, that’s not an option anymore. I feel the same way about
talking to cannabis or entheogen users as I would assume you do about
talking to hopeless drunks. It is to less extreme a degree, sure, but
for more or less the same reason: I don’t feel there’s the same
opportunity for a genuine conversation-connection. Sometimes, this may
be wrong (you may have been stoned when we had our talk and it was a
good one; I know someone I did a podcast later admitted to have taken
LSD!). But I am OK with erring on the side of caution when drawing
boundaries around this, because I have to draw the line somewhere, and
because, in the past, I have erred on the other side. This is all part
of finding the necessary balance for myself. </i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b>8)</b> To compare fasting to entheogen-eating misses the point rather;
fasting is a means to detoxify the body and it can be dangerous, yes,
and when done in a gung-ho, heaven-storming manner (as can anything), it
can inflate the ego and harm the body. But as a basic practice to
compare it to drug-use (and assume it’s all about consciousness
alteration, per se) seems like a case of the hammer calling everything a nail.</i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b>9)</b> I would agree that Upton relies on knowledge-based metaphors
(spiritual jargon) that are therefore limited and limiting, but so do
you; and in the case of Upton, I feel a genuine wisdom transmission
reading and talking to him that is very rare, in my experience, and
leads me to put trust in his knowing, even if don’t especially trust the
knowledge set he is referring to (Islam, trad metaphysics, etc.), since
I don’t trust any knowledge base. </i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b>10)</b> My primary influence currently in this regard is my ongoing
association with Dave Oshana, who has very strict rules about not
working with people who use obvious consciousness alterants. This isn’t a
prejudice, as far as I can see, but seems based on an experiential
awareness that people who are still self-intoxicating aren’t ready for
an encounter with him, and because, at the same time, he is viscerally
aware of being affected by their levels of toxicity. In other words,
they won’t benefit to anything like the degree they might if clean, and
he will suffer from close contact with them much more than is necessary
or manageable. </i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b>11)</b> Though I relate and even feel the same way, I can’t or don’t take
such a hard line, because my own history (“karma”) seems to have
resulted in attracting people who have histories of intoxication and
addiction. But where I do draw the line is at working with people who
are still invested in defending their intoxication as a legitimate means
to get closer to reality, rather than something designed to delay a
full encounter with it. This sort of doublethink I find crazy-making and
I lack the patience to navigate that terrain. It suggests to me that
the person is too divorced from reality to even recognize the ways they
are perpetuating their dissociation. That’s a problem, clearly, whether I
am right or wrong, when it comes to communicating across such a divide.</i></div>
<br />
<img alt="https://media.gettyimages.com/videos/recreations-of-odysseus-on-his-ship-fighting-the-cyclops-with-his-video-id182303371?s=640x640" src="https://media.gettyimages.com/videos/recreations-of-odysseus-on-his-ship-fighting-the-cyclops-with-his-video-id182303371?s=640x640" /> <br />
<br />
<h3>
A Tracer </h3>
<br />
1) “<b>But surely postmodern sophistry isn’t the best answer.</b>” Nor is this kind of labeling the best rebuttal. I’ve noticed the accusation of “postmodern sophistry” or the like surprisingly often recently. Usually it is given in response, as you have done, to a perception that certain categories within a system of thought, or within an argument, are being attacked non-constructively, just for the hell of it. Nihilism for the sake of nihilism.<br />
<br />
I don’t think that this is actually the position of the sophists or the postmodernists, but I get the objection. My position is also different. I challenge categories not to leave a gaping void in their wake, but to hopefully show that the acceptance of categories, any categories, necessarily limits our understanding. This, by the way, also explains my dislike of “purity,” a dislike I’m glad to find we share.<br />
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I am influenced in this approach by Greek skepticism and by <span class="st">Nāgārjuna</span>, both of which tried to achieve insight by breaking down, showing the absurdity and/or interdependence of, arbitrary categories and classifications.<br />
<br />
2) “<b>Upton’s proposition, that the spiritual and the psychic are distinct...</b>” This distinction I <i>do</i> <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2019/02/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">challenge</a>. The distinction is historical and conditional. It accepts an Aristotelian, geocentric cosmology, which however is a powerful and often helpful myth of its own. But it’s a myth that divides the world in certain ways, like any other, and these divisions have ramifications for our understanding.<br />
<br />
It’s interesting that Dante, the poet who beautifully immortalized this cosmological framework, also took the different realms and spheres expressed in it as states of mind. The literal sense is only one intended way to read <i>The Divine Comedy</i>, and not the deepest. Hell, Purgatory and Paradise are primarily differences in knowing, not ontologically separate realms.<br />
<br />
And as subsequent poets -- like Ezra Pound -- point out, these states often penetrate one another, rapidly succeed one another, are experienced differently by different individuals simultaneously. The spiritual, the psychic, the astral, even the infernal, can all be experienced in this body, unintoxicated, at this moment. The experience <i>does </i>change depending on the experiencer and his or her changing states of mind.<br />
<br />
Many thinkers and cultures have accepted this. Bruno, in alignment with the Hermetic view, overturned the traditional cosmology by claiming that there are an infinity of worlds, each its own centre, each containing the all. In Tibetan Buddhism there is the <i>Chöd</i> ritual which has the aim to accept even the demonic as the highest expression of the self/non-self. Shamanism throughout the world is predicated on the idea of the interpenetration of worlds/states of consciousness.<br />
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3) “<b>You expressed incomprehension over the idea of disembodiment...</b>” For me, embodied existence means perceptual existence. The senses, like Blake said, are the inlets of the soul for this age. If there is perception, there is a soul/body (I more or less equate the soul and body).<br />
<br />
So-called “disembodied” experience still involves perception (and if it didn’t it would be no experience at all). This implies the senses and so a body (of some sort). But “disembodied” experiences often include a sensation of a long thin cord that is still attached to the present biological body. When this is cut the “body” dies and another body takes its place (or not?).<br />
<br />
But I wonder about your own position. On the one hand, you stress the importance of the body and are against disembodiment, but on the other hand you seem to be promoting a spiritual and transcendent experience beyond or outside of the body. I’m assuming that you’re talking about two different types of disembodiment?<br />
<br />
4) “<b>The body has an optimum state in any given moment.</b>” Possibly, but for what? How long does this last? An optimal state to receive a vision, for instance, might not be the optimal state to go to sleep or to run a marathon. The body/soul is in continual flux, and this is affected by sensations, memories, thoughts, emotions, culture, media... Which of these things are toxins? Which of these are produced by toxins? Which of these are beneficial for “spiritual” growth?<br />
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5) “<b>Saying that everything alters consciousness or is storming heaven -- as if the whole fact of a spectrum makes every point on the spectrum equal and therefore the whole question is irrelevant -- smacks of sophistry.</b>” I <i>do</i> think that everything alters consciousness -- all of the things listed above and more: food, water, sleep, other people, etc. -- but I didn’t say that everything storms heaven. Each point along the spectrum is different. <br />
<br />
Yet there isn’t so much of a spectrum (ranging from what start to what end?) as there is a network that flashes from node to node. Perception changes constantly. There is no pure state. Certain states, though, do break thru, are experienced as glimpses of eternity. I just don’t see these as being transcendent or apart from the physical/material. They allow us to witness what is perpetually present, in this body, on this Earth.<br />
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Are these glimpses more frequent or more profound in the absence of “toxins”? I don’t think this question makes sense. Are people subsiding on a diet of Cheetos and M&Ms barred from having a vision of God? I’ve had lucid conversations with drunks (and while drunk!) and plenty of deadening, soul-sucking interactions with the absolutely sober. And of course the reverse. Grace may fall on both the “sinner” and the “sinless.”<br />
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The aim of detoxification is surely not wrong, but this in itself is no guarantee for obtaining sanctity of vision. Strict ascetics are occasionally transformed into spiritual monsters, acidhead wastrels become saints. Ego reduction rather than ascetic practice seems to be the key factor. We can likely agree that abstemious holier-than-thou posturing is nothing new.<br />
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<img alt="https://www.thecannachronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/pasha-and-harem-port-said-egypt-1885-1.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="500" src="https://www.thecannachronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/pasha-and-harem-port-said-egypt-1885-1.jpg" width="640" /><br />
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6) We do like doing things that alter our consciousness. How could we not? This is like saying we like to <i>live</i>, as every moment of life involves the alteration of consciousness. But I think you mean abrupt alterations of consciousness. Rapid and extreme jerks from one state to another. Yes, many of us like that too. And yes, these alterations do affect the body. Always in a bad way? Never in a way that afterwards makes us healthier?<br />
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There is no perfectly toxin-free state of the body, as you appear to be saying, only relatively free (or differently intoxicated). We age because of toxins (entropic substances or forces outside of our physical body that disrupt its functions). Who doesn’t age? Who doesn’t die?<br />
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7) “<b>You may have been stoned when we had our talk and it was a good one...</b>” Hehe, did I sound stoned? I must not have had my tea. It’s difficult and expensive to procure weed here in Japan and the penalties are severe if you get caught with it. So I don’t have many opportunities to smoke a pile of it and I’m cautious when I do. These days, even when I possess it myself, I savour it and a little goes a long way. No, I could not do a podcast stoned. I wouldn’t want to try. Recently I get most high on books and the changing seasons. And yes it was a good talk!<br />
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8) “<b>To compare fasting to entheogen-eating misses the point rather...</b>” And you have missed mine. In my previous comment, I was not comparing general fasting with shroom-gobbling; I was specifically talking of Christ’s forty-day ordeal in the desert. This was undoubtedly a vision quest. This kind of extensive fasting has as its primary aim extreme consciousness alteration. My purpose for making this comparison is the obvious one of saying there are many roads to vision. Not all of them (any?) are particularly healthy for the physical body.<br />
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9) I’ve actually been quite influenced by Traditionalist thought (I think <span class="st">Guénon</span>’s critique of “<b>the reign of quantity</b>,” for instance, is crucially important). I’ve read <span class="st">Guénon</span>, Evola, Shuon and others, and through you I’ve become a little bit familiar with Upton. I wouldn’t criticize Upton or the rest for their use of “<b>spiritual jargon</b>.” That language is necessary for this field, and I use it without shame. But I am critical of certain ideas expressed by these writers.<br />
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Buddhism, in my opinion, should remain as a heresy to the Traditionalists if they are to be consistent. Unlike the traditions they revere (the Abrahamic faiths, orthodox Hinduism), Buddhism -- in most of its manifestations -- is not concerned with the transcendent. It does advocate the changing of consciousness (mostly through meditation), but it promotes this as a means to become more aware of existence in this body, in this world.<br />
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I think this is a very important difference, and this stress on immanence is also shared by Taoism, Confucianism, shamanism and other varied traditions. The central question is how to live well in this life, not a focus on the afterlife, union with the God outside of this world, etc. “Transcendent” experiences exist, and are sought after, but they are accepted as glimpses of our actual non-dual mutuality with all things.<br />
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And the point is to make these glimpses last longer and longer. Transcendence in radical immanence. God, existing or not, is synonymous with the world and our minds perceiving it. A pantheism without the <i>pan</i>, the <i>theos</i>, or the <i>ism. </i>The Buddha is not an avatar in this view -- or secondarily so -- but is one who has become aware and who provides a path for others to become aware.<br />
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Traditionalism, intended or not by its adherents, gets used these days by reactionary groups as a spiritual foundation for the politics of the latter. This is chiefly what I caution against. The cosmological hierarchies delineated by Traditionalism (whether or not these are held to literally exist by the religious traditions themselves), including the distinction between the “psychic” and the “spiritual,” can help to undergird and extend present and desired political and social hierarchies.<br />
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The recent popularity of Evola (and I’m aware that Traditionalists now try to distance themselves from Evola, but the positions of <span class="st">Guénon</span>, etc. are not really that different) among the alt-right and others even further to the right is an illustration of this. Evola’s spiritual hierarchy, like all hierarchies, has its winners and losers, and the losers of his system nicely correspond with those targeted by the far right: the global South, the darker races, the religions of the Mother, women, the fluid and boundary-dissolving in general.<br />
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To the extent that psychedelics tend to promote the stretching and dissolving of categorical boundaries (which in my experience they certainly do), they in turn threaten those individuals and groups whose power and influence depend on the maintenance of rigid social and intellectual hierarchies. This is not to say that psychedelics and other means of boundary dissolution are not used by particular power structures in order to ideologically destabilize rival power structures, but it is true that the use of these agents is subversive to concentrated power in general. They are two-edged swords at the very least.<br />
<br />
<span class="st">Guénon</span> writes of the widening cracks of the Great Wall, the latter a barrier protecting our psyches from the predatory entities of the astral realm. Psychedelics, according to the Traditionalists, would certainly widen these cracks, inviting possession and madness. Evola directly mentions psychedelics in this regard. But in late antiquity, the Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus had a similar warning for the unprepared:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>All those who are offensive and who awkwardly leap after divine mysteries in a disordered way are not able to associate with the Gods due to the slackness of their energy of deficiency of their power. And on account of certain defilements they are excluded from the presence of pure spirits but are joined to evil spirits and are filled by them with the worst possession. They become wicked and unholy and, being glutted with undisciplined pleasures and filled with evil, they affect habits foreign to the gods. </b>(Gregory Shaw trans.)</blockquote>
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Notice, though, that Iamblichus doesn’t totally write off exploration of these middle realms, and in fact it is only through this zone that we could ever hope to reach the Intelligible. Our experiences of the highest Spirit must be mediated by more corporeal emanations. But through theurgical practice and technique -- which might include the ingestion of “simples” -- the soul guided by reason and love could make the journey.<br />
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The Traditionalists argue that without enlightened initiation and guidance -- both extremely rare in this era -- this journey is essentially impossible. To undertake it haphazardly or ignorantly is to flirt with madness, death or getting irretrievably lost in the Bardo. Only the reestablishment of traditional priestly structures and hierarchies of initiation, and thus the reactionary politics required to reinstate these institutions, would make such a journey safe enough to attempt.<br />
<br />
But millions have and do attempt the journey. Very few are successful, but on the other hand, most are not ruined utterly. Most remain quasi-initiated, half-baked maybe, but altered in both positive and negative ways, as with most experiences.<br />
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The contrast to the metaphor of the widening cracks in the Great Wall is that of the gradual opening of the Doors of Perception, coming from Blake. Psychedelics <i>do</i>, at least occasionally, help to open these doors. This is really undeniable. The narrow chinks in the cavern of our sensory perception are widened. Although the doors can be traversed both ways, of course.<br />
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As we open and peer out, extending our experience of the world, mind beholding mind, things can and do enter in, but even in this benighted age we are not totally defenseless. Travel reports filter back. We find guides along the road, guides that maybe have only taken a few intrepid and reckless steps beyond our own and then retreat, but this news is sufficient to allow us to stumble forward in the dark. Pitfalls and traps and other potential dangers are marked. Rough maps are sketched out. We proceed not entirely blindly.<br />
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It’s hardly a storming of heaven. This isn’t a titanic assault on Olympus. If we’re being seduced and misled by counter-initiatory and counter-traditional powers then these are extremely inefficient. Were psychedelics designed and disseminated by these and lesser agencies to direct the course of culture in a predetermined way, as the absolutist just-so story now goes? But designed by who exactly?<br />
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It’s easier to make this case for synthetic chemical compounds like LSD, but what about mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca? Were all these agents of “intoxication” placed in the garden millennia ago to ensnare our psyches? Yet the most archaic accounts say the opposite -- these plants are the foods of the gods. And as they “intoxicate” so do other methods -- extreme fasting, sleep deprivation, other physical austerities and ordeals -- similarly unbalancing our “normal” physical state.<br />
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I don’t think that anyone could make the case that the CIA and other agencies haven’t attempted, and likely still attempt, to control the psychedelic experience. But did they succeed? This can be by no means unambiguously confirmed. In my opinion, based on my own experience and the reports of others, there is much more evidence that they failed in their quest, and perhaps spectacularly so. And how could they have succeeded? It would be akin to fully locking down the astral dream realm. I can’t imagine how even a single trip of mine could be controlled. All within is unexpected and unpredictable.<br />
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Yet the evidence given by the usual conspiracy-monger set is that the “degenerate” changes in society subsequent to the psychedelic revolution -- and the breakdown of traditional religions, feminism, the “gay agenda,” increased immigration and multiculturalism, “socialism” usually top the list -- is somehow proof that psychedelics effectively nudged culture towards the desired course.<br />
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But all of these things (and by no means are they necessarily evil in themselves) were well in the works before psychedelics became widespread, and for not a few users psychedelic experience led in the opposite direction -- back to traditional religion and conservative politics (Upton himself is a prime example, perhaps you are also).<br />
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In the old days, psychedelics were blamed for pushing young people towards godless communism. But personally my trips escorted me to a contrary path -- away from state communist agnosticism to a kind of anti-authoritarian pantheism. All part of the Agenda? From the Reign of Quantity to the dominion of the Anti-Christ? Maybe so!<br />
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But to try to wrap this up: I’m also very wary of psychedelics -- even pot -- and I never advocate doing them these days without prior warning. They often do lead people astray and more than occasionally disastrously so. Malign possession is a very real possibility, and there is always the potential that our experiences are being monitored and directed to some extent.<br />
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Yet grace is also present here. Boldness tends to be favoured by the gods. Real wisdom can be gained. The striving for purity and order and perfect predictability can be more dangerous than a leap into the unknown. And is it hard to see how no longer locking people up for desiring such a leap could be anything other than a good thing.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/30/article-2067920-0EFFEBFE00000578-500_634x415.jpg" src="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/30/article-2067920-0EFFEBFE00000578-500_634x415.jpg" /> znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-7004280072807661132019-05-31T19:32:00.000-07:002019-06-01T00:52:04.483-07:00Gordy Brown's Sparkling Peacock Feather Earrings<img alt="https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d2c5c993a60fed7fdd06343c52597eb4.webp" src="https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d2c5c993a60fed7fdd06343c52597eb4.webp" /> <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Who gave us the sponge to wipe away
the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained
this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now?
Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not
plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all
directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not
straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel
the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is
not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to
light lanterns in the morning?</b><br />
<br />
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Parable of the Madman" </blockquote>
<br />
Giordano Bruno's <b>infinite worlds</b> cosmology is <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-bitchs-shadow.html">neither</a> traditional geocentric Aristotelianism nor modern acosmic nihilism.<br />
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The Earth is centre among countless centres. Each planet capable of sentient life has a sun or suns. It has wandering stars of different number, and beyond is the abiding backdrop of the fixed stars. Each centre is structurally identical yet different in all details.<br />
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On "Earth" the same four elements -- earth-solid matter, water-liquid, air-gas, fire-volatile plasma -- would be constant. As would be the right, left, back, front, up, down positionality of almost any observer.<br />
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The Sun, or suns, would equate with the "heart," the chakras mirroring or projecting the planets in every system. All cosmologies are psychic. The wanderers would invariably "move" through the local band of the "zodiac."<br />
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<img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2CVlTFEDfcokxynU6rjZuhHFTRPeGkg6UUN3M7-s9jFxQMcdKkcY6GJPS5W3veJ6NONTbvcZpK38JS1eC5PiTk8M5mNRqeHlWEiSXJTerlUWkM0_hqhdqw_SQK5ayQZdBtlvwsU5GCT78/s1600/ts.gif" class="shrinkToFit" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2CVlTFEDfcokxynU6rjZuhHFTRPeGkg6UUN3M7-s9jFxQMcdKkcY6GJPS5W3veJ6NONTbvcZpK38JS1eC5PiTk8M5mNRqeHlWEiSXJTerlUWkM0_hqhdqw_SQK5ayQZdBtlvwsU5GCT78/s640/ts.gif" width="452" /><br />
<br />
Blake's Mundane Egg is universal; only the heart/sun as organ of imagination bridges Spirit and Matter. Christ, Apollo, Aslan, Frith are different masks of the redeemer for different worlds. C.S. Lewis' "discarded image" is once more taken up and adapted for each of the endless pools in <b>the Woods between the Worlds</b>.<br />
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Perhaps the inner wheels and lotuses always match the number and type of wanderer. Bodies themselves may be adapted in this way. Nearly endless variations of solar/microrbital clusters, constellations, chakric configurations, possible.<br />
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Yet beyond all, beyond "Saturn," through the surreal sphere of the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2015/07/stopgap-dredge-up-from-journals-2-cult.html">chief</a> of the decans, the portal of souls, is the Empyrean. Pure Spirit. Beyond substance and form.<br />
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Gods of the elements, of the wanderers, of the Sun, of the stars would have a myriad different names and appearances, as they do now. But the structure or story is the same. Infinite <i>and </i>meaningful. Groundless <i>and </i>home. Chaos <i>and </i>cosmos.<i> </i>The religion of the universe. Your eyes at the centre of it all. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>It is not impossible that our own Model will die a violent death,
ruthlessly smashed by an unprovoked assault of new facts–unprovoked as
the <i>nova</i> of 1572. But I think it is more likely to change when,
and because, far-reaching changes in the mental temper of our
descendants demand that it should. The new Model will not be set up
without evidence, but the evidence will turn up when the inner need for
it becomes sufficiently great. It will be true evidence. But nature
gives most of her evidence to the questions we ask her. Here, as in the
courts, the character of the evidence depends on the shape of the
examination, and a good-cross examiner can do wonders.</b><br />
<br />
-- C.S. Lewis, <i>The Discarded Image</i></blockquote>
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<img alt="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bruno/concentric.png" src="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bruno/concentric.png" />znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-14902503787808201882019-04-23T17:12:00.000-07:002019-05-07T14:06:13.057-07:00Authority Toad Void<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hans_Rapp/publication/271947797/figure/fig27/AS:392142854868999@1470505550570/Sycon-karajakense-A-drawing-of-spicules-and-longitudinal-section-of-Sycon-karajakense.png" class="transparent" height="303" src="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hans_Rapp/publication/271947797/figure/fig27/AS:392142854868999@1470505550570/Sycon-karajakense-A-drawing-of-spicules-and-longitudinal-section-of-Sycon-karajakense.png" width="400" /> <br />
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three years away</div>
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scorched by the orange tide</div>
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drawn by the flickering allure</div>
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caught by right angles</div>
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two angels</div>
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jolt and sprung</div>
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the slow walk through the forest</div>
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forgiveness and praise</div>
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spray sparkling fish landed</div>
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the wild refreshing as it is not</div>
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over-signified by the imagination</div>
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the social will is not imposed</div>
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or less so</div>
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myths can be generated</div>
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fresh visions had</div>
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the only real source of information</div>
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anything written that is not the </div>
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product of vision is blasphemy </div>
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against the holy ghost</div>
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unforgivable as it cheats the word</div>
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<a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/06/capsizing-polypus.html">devalues</a> symbols</div>
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numbers as counting only</div>
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tricks with counting</div>
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the wake as n-dimensional </div>
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crossword puzzle instead of</div>
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a cosmos of memory containing</div>
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the living all</div>
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hail saint frances!</div>
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lines to be traced</div>
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cusa-bruno-bohme-vico-swedenborg-</div>
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blake-yeats-joyce-boldereff</div>
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pound-olson-dorn-prynne-davis</div>
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yet absolute freedom if purely</div>
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tapped</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
tap and pat</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
ear and eye</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
ivory and horn<br />
all is still blessed!<br />
the road goes ever on<br />
do not defile with negative<br />
thought<br />
another unpardonable sin?<br />
place faith in the motion<br />
wherever it leads<br />
at no time did it abandon<br />
it can't be transcribed<br />
tho bits of it enter<br />
language<br />
the field and record of vision<br />
sea breathing each wave<br />
repetition welcomed<br />
there's no requirement for<br />
originality<br />
but to merely copy is murder<br />
dance it anew<br />
occult duel at the memorial<br />
sun earth moon occlusion<br />
chants and smirks<br />
what was released?<br />
shadows frighten<br />
a single word as epic<br />
of the human tribe<br />
image sound fragrance sigil<br />
antithetical-primary mini-cycles<br />
white snake twisting coiling around<br />
black twisting coiling into white<br />
concrete and barnacles<br />
butt filter pine needles<br />
juxtaposition miscegeny<br />
gratitude for every facet<br />
even those turning away from the light<br />
the sun is here! on my hand!<br />
overabundance gift of peace<br />
meant to be here<br />
no other place possible<br />
each angle of the rays unique<br />
across the day across the season<br />
the whole works hurtling out<br />
into space<br />
according to one reading<br />
each mythology a tree<br />
a root a rhizome<br />
like music<br />
different tempos pitches oscillations<br />
timbres genres moods listeners<br />
watchers gapers exhibiters seekers<br />
acts of will cockle-pickers<br />
sudden surprise<br />
papa sets in the south<br />
the mighty wig rises in the north<br />
front back left right<br />
descendant ancestor father mother<br />
the pole and axis of love and hate<br />
forgiveness and forgiving<br />
harp and dog<br />
staff<br />
sacred explosion<br />
spectre and emanation<br />
the holy mountain right in<br />
front of me!<br />
across the sea!<br />
calm tranquil warm gentle<br />
lacking nothing<br />
but how to cope with the<br />
over-determined?<br />
nature calls out of nature<br />
casts a summons down<br />
the beach<br />
foam rubber bum pad<br />
<a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/09/mask-and-phenomenon.html">toes</a> in the sand<br />
another sort of release<br />
birds or people on those rocks?<br />
beckoned!<br />
yet retreating<br />
the inspired passage of the bard<br />
soul and world soul<br />
in timaeus identity<br />
oxford london ljubljana trieste<br />
venice and dublin?<br />
the city also calls<br />
highest magic doppelganger<br />
the one always two<br />
-- do not spit in the temple!<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh89fhSmqbgrFqqiweka5tHywvLWIxHQ8TMbVpnQVhN-NyHlCYTJcyWo64hZ33sHvSyQinL-6I1cejjY5KdBeHluSPUNUlaEO8Liqop8aK79a6rzbRNWxBrHz5yRrJoaHfjMxyBBnn21kDp/s1600/sea-monster2-150dpi.jpg" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh89fhSmqbgrFqqiweka5tHywvLWIxHQ8TMbVpnQVhN-NyHlCYTJcyWo64hZ33sHvSyQinL-6I1cejjY5KdBeHluSPUNUlaEO8Liqop8aK79a6rzbRNWxBrHz5yRrJoaHfjMxyBBnn21kDp/s1600/sea-monster2-150dpi.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
</div>
znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-87640334996643319572019-02-28T19:05:00.000-08:002019-02-28T19:05:30.121-08:00Hyper-Carbolating the Furtive Gates of Becoming 4: Beyond<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>For just so long, her face a radiant smile,</b><br />
<b> was Beatrice silent, her eyes fixed</b><br />
<b> upon the Point whose light I could not bear.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>She said: "I tell you, without asking you,</b><br />
<b> what you would hear, for I see your desire</b><br />
<b> where every <i>where </i>and every <i>when </i>is centered.</b><br />
<br />
-- Canto XXIX, <i>Paradiso</i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/58b6f477969ff.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="485" src="https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/58b6f477969ff.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
Randolph Carter, in bewildering and immeasurable <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/01/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">passage</a> between horn and ivory, was led by the guardian -- the Master of Animals -- to the second and ultimate gate. He approached the pedestal-thrones of the Ancient Ones, sat with them and merged with their dreams and their silence. Soundlessly he was addressed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“The man of Truth is beyond good and evil,” intoned a voice that was not a voice. “The man of Truth has ridden to All-Is-One. The man of Truth has learnt that Illusion is the only reality, and that substance is an impostor.” </b></blockquote>
<br />
Entrance was imminent. Substance an impostor, illusion reality. This was no longer the intermediary world of the Earth’s extension, no longer the vesper realm of astral beings in constant transformation in some state between pure form and pure matter. All divisions, dichotomies, opposites would be resolved or negated here. This was to be the forward escape into indivisible Spirit, beyond both being and becoming.<br />
<br />
The silver key turned in Carter’s hand, and by instinct he performed the ritual movements necessary to open and then float through the Ultimate Gate.<br />
<br />
Several things happen at once as Carter crosses the threshold. He is swept up with “<b>godlike surges of deadly sweetness</b>” as he encounters sounds and sights that allow no comparison to anything found or imagined on Earth or in its region of space. Looking back, he is surprised to see not just one but a “<b>multiplicity of gates</b>,” and at some of these there “<b>clamoured Forms he strove not to remember.</b>”<br />
<br />
As with the First Gate, it seems, the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/02/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">portals</a> opening into the Ultimate are multiple and possibly present at many locations. Possession of the key and knowledge of the opening ritual -- along with the intent to enter -- are the crucial elements. And, presumably following many stages and orders of becomings, the entrants through this gate/these gates are in no way limited to the human. Other entities are also taking this journey; shamans, sorcerers, mystics, creative visionaries of unknown worlds also make the egress.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ytN5dv_Y23I/hqdefault.jpg" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ytN5dv_Y23I/hqdefault.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
But then a realization inspiring far greater terror than the witness of these hideous Forms struck Carter. He discovered that he himself was a <i>multiplicity</i>, not a unity. His very sense of self was threatened, a worse sensation than death as at least death is an event that happens to a particular individual. One can at least speak of “my death.” But here no thought of <i>my</i> or <i>mine</i> or even <i>I</i> is possible.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Even the First Gateway had taken something of stability from him, leaving him uncertain about his bodily form and about his relationship to the mistily defined objects around him, but it had not disturbed his sense of unity. He had still been Randolph Carter, a fixed point in the dimensional seething. Now, beyond the Ultimate Gateway, he realised in a moment of consuming fright that he was not one person, but many persons.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
All at once he was a boy in 1883, a man in 1928, a transformed being within the inner-gate astral extension of the Earth, a formless consciousness in the “<b>cosmic abyss</b>” beyond the second gate and, most horrifying, “<b>a limitless confusion of beings</b>” occupying places of “<b>infinite multiplicity and monstrous diversity.</b>” The recognition of his “self” being fully present in all of these manifestations simultaneously, tantamount to the knowledge that he really possessed no self at all, brought Carter to the brink of shattering insanity.<br />
<br />
<h3>
A Death Worse Than Birth</h3>
<br />
Deleuze and Guattari, in <i>A Thousand Plateaus</i>, pick up the thread of the story again at this point. They quote from the following section:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>There were “Carters” in settings belonging to every known and suspected age of earth’s history, and to remoter ages of earthly entity transcending knowledge, suspicion, and credibility. “Carters” of forms both human and non-human, vertebrate and invertebrate, conscious and mindless, animal and vegetable. And more, there were “Carters” having nothing in common with earthly life, but moving outrageously amidst backgrounds of other planets and systems and galaxies and cosmic continua. Spores of eternal life drifting from world to world, universe to universe, yet all equally himself...</b><br />
<br />
<b>No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of identity. Merging with nothingness is peaceful oblivion; but to be aware of existence and yet to know that one is no longer a definite being distinguished from other beings—that one no longer has a self—that is the nameless summit of agony and dread. </b></blockquote>
<br />
Using this as a <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/03/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">trip</a> report, Deleuze and Guattari map out a continuum that leads to the final and complete dissolution of the self. Part of this was traced in the course between the gates:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>On the near side, we encounter becomings-woman, becomings-child (becoming woman, more than any other becoming, possesses a special introductory power; it is not so much that women are witches, but that sorcery proceeds by way of this becoming-woman). On the far side, we find becomings-elementary, -cellular, -molecular, and even becomings-imperceptible. Toward what end does the witch’s broom lead? </b></blockquote>
<br />
From becoming-woman and becoming-child to becoming-animal to becoming-elemental and becoming-molecular and ultimately to becoming-imperceptible, to waves and particles that resist all classification. A progression or dissolution is described, one that incrementally erases all of the categories by which the self defines its own boundaries. It is no longer an adult male human subject. It is no longer human at all, nor mammal, nor animal, nor even constructed of cells and molecules.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://www.kyriakides.com/images/dante.jpeg" src="https://www.kyriakides.com/images/dante.jpeg" /> <br />
<br />
It -- if “it” it still be -- has become, elemental, sub-atomic, wholly intangible, holding no position in space or time and all such positions. Not the Universe become Self, but the Self lost in Universe. Yet this is no rapture of transcendent Oneness -- there is nothing left to become One. There are only wild fluctuations, spasms, flashes from bliss to horror, from the verge of grasping all knowledge and all power to the suffocating vertigo of the absolute vacuum.<br />
<br />
Fleeting, rippling glances through every set of eyes, sounds absorbed through every possible ear, screams from all mouths -- human, insect, demon, planet -- countless lifespans, cycles, cosmoses. Worse than death; constant birth, consciousness with no fixed address. Mind become minds, Body become bodies, and all disintegrating, manifesting, interpenetrating, swapping, cross-dressing, fertilizing, eradicating, burying.<br />
<br />
Though even at this very point of no point, even at this stage of intangibility masked as ceaseless variation of form, something external can be discerned, some “<b>sense of entity and the awful concept of combined localism, identity, and infinity.</b>” And, it seems, a choice is being offered.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://assets.mubi.com/images/cast_member/6624/image-w240.jpg?1335711068" src="https://assets.mubi.com/images/cast_member/6624/image-w240.jpg?1335711068" /> <br />
<br />
<h3>
Still Unrent </h3>
<br />
The entity -- “<b>perhaps that which certain secret cults on earth have whispered as YOG-SOTHOTH</b>” -- itself only “exists” as imperceptible waves, maybe particles, and communication also flows through these “<b>prodigious waves that smote and burned and thundered.</b>” A transmission of the intangible to the intangible.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>It was as though suns and worlds and universes had converged upon one point whose very position in space they had conspired to annihilate with an impact of resistless fury. But amidst the greater terror one lesser terror was diminished; for the searing waves appeared somehow to isolate the beyond-the-gate Carter from his infinity of duplicates—to restore, as it were, a certain amount of the illusion of identity. After a time the hearer began to translate the waves into speech-forms known to him, and his sense of horror and oppression waned. Fright became pure awe, and what had seemed blasphemously abnormal seemed now only ineffably majestic.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
Terrible is the messenger, but more horrifying still is the choice given to the being once called “Randolph Carter.”<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>I am ready to shew you the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast a feeble spirit. Yet before you gaze full at that last and first of secrets you may still wield a free choice, and return if you will through the two Gates with the Veil still unrent before your eyes.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
Apparently it is still possible to return from the land of the dead relatively unscathed. One can still drink from the waters of the Lethe and find sweet forgetting. By some final cosmic grace we can slumber untroubled and without memory of what we beheld beyond the Gates. A sort of divine electroshock treatment. De-anamnesis.<br />
<br />
Really? Does this happen? Perhaps it always happens. Perhaps after every death, during every deep dream, subsequent to every inadvertent slip into Faerie or the bardo (and these after all may only involve passage through the First Gate and not the Second and certainly not through the shimmering Veil) each of us chooses to forget and return, to take the blue pill. Perhaps the fact that we are alive and embodied and possessing of self proves that this is exactly what we have chosen.<br />
<br />
Otherwise we might, at this “moment,” <i>be</i> Randolph Carter, be waves about to accept the waves of Yog-Sothoth’s offer. But even Carter, who surely passed through, may not have entirely accepted. The Veil only barely obscures the Abyss.
But it is crucial first to understand, if such understanding is available, just where we arrive as we approach or step through the Second Gate. How is it distinct from the First, and how would we know that we have arrived at its sill?<br />
<br />
The messenger -- the Master of Animals or whatever -- might make this demarcation clearer. But what if we somehow arrived without the messenger? Or what if -- in a marrow-quivering piss shiver of Cartesian doubt and paranoia -- the messenger only wants to deceive? Certain signs may be at hand.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://media.mutualart.com/Images/2016_08/25/21/214926551/26c5923d-13c0-42b2-b187-d5536f61e1ad_570.Jpeg" src="https://media.mutualart.com/Images/2016_08/25/21/214926551/26c5923d-13c0-42b2-b187-d5536f61e1ad_570.Jpeg" /> <br />
<br />
While the astral realm allows for bilocation (the sense of self becomes divided between two (or more?) bodies) beyond the Second Gate the boundaries of the self are so stretched -- perhaps torn, perhaps erased -- that location itself becomes immaterial, position becomes superposition. Dennis McKenna announces this teaching three days following the Experiment at La Chorera:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>He said that one could see any point in
time by closing one's eyes, visualizing an eight, turning it on its side so that it
approximated the sign for infinity, and then mentally sliding the two closed rings over
each other to form a circle, shrinking the circle to a dot, and thinking the word "please"
and the target point in space-time.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
All points of space-time become immediately attainable upon request, making a mockery of the word “point.” The very geometry of being is transformed; Dennis’ experience “<b>had catapulted him to the edge of the Riemannian pseudosphere that is the universe, in which even parallel lines intersect.</b>”<br />
<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://wiki.nosdigitais.teia.org.br/images/thumb/b/b3/Gm.png/300px-Gm.png" class="transparent" src="http://wiki.nosdigitais.teia.org.br/images/thumb/b/b3/Gm.png/300px-Gm.png" /> <br />
<br />
This geometry of multiplicity and discontinuity is not only reflected in the impossible and cyclopean architecture and landscapes of Lovecraft’s stories, but is a prominent feature within the non(sense)-system of Deleuze and Guattari:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>In each model, the smooth actually seemed to pertain to a fundamental heterogeneity: felt or patchwork rather than weaving, rhythmic values rather than harmony-melody, Riemannian space rather than Euclidean space -- a continuous variation that exceeds any distribution of constants and variables, the freeing of a line that does not pass between two points, the formation of a plane that does not proceed by parallel and perpendicular lines.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
But where is this aspatial space, this atemporal time? Perception itself is both stage and character. It desires all possible worlds at once. The ultimate goal of art, science and philosophy, according to D&G in <i>What is Philosophy?</i>, is to “<b>tear open the firmament and plunge into chaos.</b>” And this, as precisely as it can be put, is what is beyond the final gate. Pure chaos. Infinite perceptual and formative potential.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Ghoul-Guarded Gateways </h3>
<br />
Carter may (although this may be disputed) have passed through, but did Lovecraft? Kenneth Grant, in examination of HPL’s letters and poetry, denies that he did. Only those who have gone beyond the perception of being an egocentric and separate individual, who transcend the dichotomy of good and evil, can cross the Abyss. From <i>Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Lovecraft, on the evidence of his poetry, drew back on the very brink of the Abyss. Unable to resolve his inner conflict, he was haunted by the shadows of the powers whose existence he strenuously denied in his letters. The latter reveal, unfortunately, a bigoted racialist and xenophobe, an irrational rationalist and self-contradictory materialist struggling helplessly in the mesh of his own self-engendered illusions...<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span></b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUso9DmJcZ6e8C_M9DWOgAFojxuEe-9jH5jyDaMMPT7LvEnbQndW01BB7CSCaxMnozPyjZxPO6la9PRXRbsgUrqtR06UHN6TZx2gNO7H-b8oobcyxy3c0xCLpxd10ueUb9MqnCzIDjM8Y/s1600/7_Lumi_re_d_t_1943_Jean_Gremillon.jpg" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUso9DmJcZ6e8C_M9DWOgAFojxuEe-9jH5jyDaMMPT7LvEnbQndW01BB7CSCaxMnozPyjZxPO6la9PRXRbsgUrqtR06UHN6TZx2gNO7H-b8oobcyxy3c0xCLpxd10ueUb9MqnCzIDjM8Y/s1600/7_Lumi_re_d_t_1943_Jean_Gremillon.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
Lovecraft, in the end convinced that the guides that would take him through the gate were evil, and unwilling and/or unable to perform the practices and rituals required, remained caught between the gates. As Grant repeats in <i>The Magical Revival</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>But Lovecraft seems not to have passed the final pylons of Initiation,
as evidenced by his stories, and particularly his poems, in which, at
the last dreadful encounter, he invariably recoiled, resolved <i>not to know</i>
what horror lay concealed behind the mask of his most critical
incarnation. He was haunted by his 'dweller on the threshold', failed to
resolve the enigma of his own particular sphinx, and, because of this,
no doubt, feared to use drugs in case his nightmare-vision swept him
beyond the point of no recall. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Understandably terrified of crossing the
Abyss, he forever recoiled on the brink, and spent his life in a vain
attempt to deny the potent Entities that moved him.</b> <b>Little wonder the tales he wrote are among the most hideous and powerful ever penned. </b> </blockquote>
<br />
And indeed it is in his poems where the potential shortfalls of Lovecraft’s vision is laid bare. The last two stanzas of "Nemesis":<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,</b><br />
<b>And great is the reach of its doom;</b><br />
<b>Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,</b><br />
<b>Nor can respite be found in the tomb:</b><br />
<b>Down the infinite aeons come</b><br />
<b>beating the wings of unmerciful gloom. </b> <br />
<br />
<b>Thro' the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,</b><br />
<b>Past the wan-moon'd abysses of night,</b><br />
<b>I have liv'd o'er my lives without number,</b><br />
<b>I have sounded all things with my sight;</b><br />
<b>And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak,</b><br />
<b>being driven to madness with fright. </b></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
And in the final sections of "The City":<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>I fann'd the faint ember</b><br />
<b>That glow'd in my mind,</b><br />
<b>And strove to remember</b><br />
<b>The aeons behind;</b><br />
<b>To rove thro' infinity freely, and visit the past unconfin'd. </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Then the horrible warning</b><br />
<b>Upon my soul sped</b><br />
<b>Like the ominous morning</b><br />
<b>That rises in red,</b><br />
<b>And in panic I flew from the knowledge of terrors forgotten and dead. </b></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="http://www.filmsharks.com/images_upload/prod_top_phpSN5lKD.jpg" src="http://www.filmsharks.com/images_upload/prod_top_phpSN5lKD.jpg" height="192" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
However, in "Azathoth," Lovecraft does seem to indicate that the author was not the stranger to Chaos that Grant claims he was. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me,</b><br />
<b>Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space,</b><br />
<b>Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,</b><br />
<b>But only Chaos, without form or place.</b><br />
<b>Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered </b><br />
<b>Things he had dreamed but could not understand,</b><br />
<b>While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and fluttered</b><br />
<b>In idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned. </b><br />
<br />
<b>They danced insanely to the high, thin whining</b><br />
<b>Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,</b><br />
<b>Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining</b><br />
<b>Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law.</b><br />
<b>"I am His Messenger," the daemon said,</b><br />
<b>As in contempt he struck his Master's head.</b></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
In "Azathoth," "Lovecraft" is neither driven to frightened madness nor panicked flight. Instead, as with Randolph Carter, he is a willing witness to timeless and formless chaos. The "<b>evidence of his poetry</b>" far from showing definitively that HPL flew in terror from the brink of the Abyss, remains ambiguous. Perhaps at different occasions Lovecraft both crossed and fled from the edge.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Post-Experiment Oblivion </h3>
<br />
In any case, however, it would appear that at least in one instance he made the crossing and this experience would certainly explain why his writing, especially the <i>Gates of the Silver Key</i>, is so convincing, so compelling. And yet it is clear from this that he also did return to a strange territory; a continuum, however paradoxical, has been partially mapped.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Lovecraft’s hero encounters strange animals, but he finally reaches the ultimate regions of a Continuum inhabited by unnameable waves and unfindable particles. Science fiction has gone through a whole evolution taking it from animal, vegetable, and mineral becomings to becomings of bacteria, viruses, molecules, and things imperceptible.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
D&G here depict this as the movement, almost impossible to plot, along a channel or a rhizome or a fiber through which forms shift into other forms and into eventual formlessness. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>A fiber stretches from a human to an animal, from a human or an animal to molecules, from molecules to particles, and so on to the imperceptible. Every fiber is a Universe fiber.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://ecstaticreality.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/vlcsnap-2016-05-11-23h11m36s42.png?w=800&h=450" height="225" src="https://ecstaticreality.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/vlcsnap-2016-05-11-23h11m36s42.png?w=800&h=450" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
Dennis McKenna, remanifesting from post-experiment oblivion, makes this journey in reverse from cosmic dispersal to particularized and individual existence locatable in time and space. From <i>True Hallucinations</i>:<b> </b><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>On the day before, he had seemed to be spread over so vast an amount of time and space that there was little to be identified out of the cosmic churning that he was undergoing. On that day, even to find our own galaxy in his mind had been impossible. On the second day, he awoke within the galaxy and his visions and fantasies remained within it....</b><br />
<br />
<b>The day after he reached the confines of the galaxy, he entered the solar system, condensing through its planets over several days until he identified only with Earth. Coalescing and condensing through the ecology of his home world, he came to think of himself as all humanity and was able to vividly relive all of its history. Later still, he became the embodiment of all members of our vast and peculiar Irish family...</b><br />
<br />
<b>After a good bit of lolling around in those environs he was finally resolved down into our immediate family and progressed from there to confront the question of whether he was Dennis or Terence. Finally and thankfully, he came to rest with realization that he was Dennis, returned from the universe of mind, restored and reborn, a shaman in the fullest sense of the word.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
And, as this passage makes explicit, the movement through the <b>Universe fiber</b> (which the British late modernist poet, J.H. Prynne, may have called "<b>the world tube</b>") past the first and second gates, to cosmic dissolution and back to discreet and discernible individuality, is also the path of the shaman. The highest shaman is not he or she that merely advances through the first gate to the Earth's astral extension, welcomed or terrified by the Master of Animals, but is one who attains and becomes the intangible. Shamanism and mysticism become synonymous at this stage.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71i2CMzAGHL._SX466_.jpg" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71i2CMzAGHL._SX466_.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
Yet also necessary is the return home. Without this return there is no confirmation, no communication, no compassion for the many that the seeker has left far behind. It would be as if, immediately after his awakening under the tree, the Buddha had heeded the tempting advice of Indra and his fellow gods, and had accepted that it was impossible to teach or even share what he had experienced and learned, and had allowed himself to enter into final nirvana.<br />
<br />
The shaman, like the bodhisattva, returns to aid others. And perhaps those entities that we encounter along the way -- the Master of Animals and Yog-Sothoth itself -- are former shamanic seekers who have stationed themselves beyond the successive gates in order to be guides to those few worthy to make the crossing, and to thwart and terrify those who are unready and apt to harm themselves and others.<br />
<br />
All demons, like the wrathful deities who guard either side of entrances to the temples of the East, are bodhisattvas in terrifying drag, causing doubt and even panic through ultimate compassion. Yog-Sothoth makes clear that Randolph Carter has been given a choice to proceed or to go back.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"Randolph Carter," IT seemed to say, "MY manifestations on your planet’s extension, the Ancient Ones, have sent you as one who would lately have returned to small lands of dreams which he had lost, yet who with greater freedom has risen to greater and nobler desires and curiosities...</b><br />
<br />
<b>Now with the passing of two Gates, you wish loftier things. You would not flee like a child from a scene disliked to a dream beloved, but plunge like a man into that last and inmost of secrets which lies behind all scenes and dreams."</b> </blockquote>
<br />
Yog-Sothoth tempts Carter with that which is most attractive to the occult student and seeker. Carter is being tested -- whereas in the recent past he would have been more than happy to return childishly to "<b>small lands of dreams,</b>" he has now resolved to "<b>plunge like a man</b>" into that mystery "<b>which lies behind all scenes and dreams.</b>" Or has he? One gets the sense, reading this, that this exact "choice" was once, at least, precisely offered to Lovecraft. And Yog-Sothoth explicitly frames this as a choice.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://www.scaruffi.com/director/herzog/herz7.jpg" src="https://www.scaruffi.com/director/herzog/herz7.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
<h3>
The Angle of the Dangle </h3>
<br />
To allow Carter to make an informed and truly free choice, however, Yog-Sothoth lays out exactly what is at stake, what it is -- insofar as it can be expressed -- that he is being called to experience, and just how beyond it is from anything witnessed in embodied existence.<b> </b><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>He was told how childish and limited is the notion of a tri-dimentional world, and what an infinity of directions there are besides the known directions of up-down, forward-backward, right-left. He was shewn the smallness and tinsel emptiness of the little gods of earth, with their petty, human interests and connexions -- their hatreds, rages, loves, and vanities; their craving for praise and sacrifice, and their demands for faith contrary to reason and Nature.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Third-dimensional manifestation is but a trifle, even fourth, fifth, <i>n</i>-dimensional realms are tiny and stifling. The gods themselves, Olympians and Titans, Devas and Asuras, Jehovah, Allah, the Ancient Ones, the Elder Gods, are deficient in ultimate power and wisdom. These deities also subsist on particular dimensional planes that fall short of the infinite and the eternal. Yog-Sothoth attempts to explain this to Carter:<b> </b><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>They [the waves] told him that every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some corresponding figure of one more dimension -- as a square is cut from a cube or a circle from a sphere. The cube and the sphere, of three dimensions, are thus cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions that men know only through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five dimensions, and so on up to the dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
Just as the fourth dimension is really inconceivable to three-dimensional beings like ourselves, the fifth dimension is entirely beyond the ken of potential fourth-dimensional beings and so on upward through the dimensions to infinity. But it is really the perspective of this infinity that Yog-Sothoth offers to Carter and, according to Grant, it is a perspective that, employing very similar metaphors, is invoked in Crowley's <i>Moonchild</i>.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://www.gzyaco.com/biology/camera/DVC/dvcimage/f-microscopy.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" src="http://www.gzyaco.com/biology/camera/DVC/dvcimage/f-microscopy.jpg" height="315" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
It is a perspective through which, as Deleuze and Guattari explain, although written in "<b>grandiose and simplified terms</b>" Lovecraft attempts "<b>to pronounce sorcery's final word.</b>" This final word of the sorcerer does not arrive from the vantage point of any particular dimension, but from all dimensions at once onto infinity. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Far from reducing the multiplicities’ number of dimensions to two, the plane of consistency cuts across them all, intersects them in order to bring into coexistence any number of multiplicities, with any number of dimensions. The plane of consistency is the intersection of all concrete forms. Therefore all becomings are written like sorcerers’ drawings on this plane of consistency, which is the ultimate Door providing a way out for them.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
This "<b>plane of consistency</b>" which cuts across all of the the dimensions is largely synonymous, differing only in nuance and context, to several related terms offered in <i>A Thousand Plateaus</i>, certain of which have been referred to in these essays. Enter the <b>hypersphere</b>. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Everything becomes imperceptible, everything is becoming-imperceptible on the plane of consistency, which is nevertheless precisely where the imperceptible is seen and heard. It is the Planomenon, or the Rhizosphere, the Criterium (and still other names, as the number of dimensions increases). At <i>n</i> dimensions, it is called the Hypersphere, the Mechanosphere.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
To enter the hypersphere, to take on its awareness, is to walk through the ultimate Door, the two gates and the veil enfolded into one another. From this perspective all being and becoming is meaningless. All occurs and does not. Every "when", every "where" -- though as necessarily three-dimensional terms these two designations are already wholly inadequate -- both happen simultaneously and do not "happen" at all.<b> </b><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Time, the waves went on, is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present and, future. Men think of time only because of what they call change, yet that too is an illusion. All that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously. </b></blockquote>
<br />
Temporal simultaneity, which in fact negates all possible conception of time, is not a state of awareness that can be plotted linearly. There is no time when there was no time. Nonetheless, perhaps there are periods or instances in human history or prehistory in which this realization was more widely held in broader social groups.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://www.speedmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/208id_20_325_w1600-e1538144562390.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="426" src="https://www.speedmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/208id_20_325_w1600-e1538144562390.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
Hans Peter Duerr in <i>Dreamtime</i> presents a case that at some mythical paleolithic stage tribal societies may have possessed the consciousness of the eternal as presence. The dreamtime they dwelt within, open to all manner of becomings, was essentially timeless. The categories had not yet been fixed.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>At one time, or better yet, in the origins, the two worlds were or are one. Humans danced and sang with the <i>mamae </i>and had joyous intercourse with wild animals and the trees of the primeval forest. This side and the beyond are fundamentally the same. The death of the enraptured ones, of the shamans is at the same time also their life. Death and life are one.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
This begins to arrive at the perspective or perception that Yog-Sothoth attempts to impart to Randolph Carter. It is the perception of the absolute origin and the absolute end, sorcery's final word. Yog-Sothoth, communicating we recall through waves to Carter who is now only waves himself, goes on to explain that individual or local consciousness is produced, in effect, through varying the angle by which a higher dimensional <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/01/ideal-objects-delerium-and-other-pizza.html">object</a> cuts through the experienced reality of any given dimension.<br />
<br />
Just as the flat shapes produced by cutting through a cone change depending on the angle of the cut -- be they a circle, ellipse, parabola, etc. -- so the conscious apprehension of the hypershere changes depending on the "angle" by which it is "cut" through. The vast multitude of beings, "<b>the feeble beings of the inner world,</b>" are confined to only one particular and respective "angle" of consciousness.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Potential Wizard Facets </h3>
<br />
Only few visionaries, perhaps those who have passed beyond the first gate but not yet the second, are able to change their assigned yet arbitrary angle of perception, through magic or psychedelics or ordeal or grace, but fewer still are those who "<b>command all angles.</b>" <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>After an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of few-dimensioned zones called change is merely a function of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with angles of cutting... so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. </b><br />
<br />
<b>To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change. But entities outside the Gates command all angles, and view the myriad parts of the cosmos in terms of fragmentary, change-involving perspective, or of the changeless totality beyond perspective, in accordance to their will. </b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="http://www.sfondidesktop.eu/images/arte-Mangiatori-di-patate.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" src="http://www.sfondidesktop.eu/images/arte-Mangiatori-di-patate.jpg" height="400" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
For those "<b>outside the gates,</b>" -- and we must remember that aside from Randolph Carter only eleven entities from Earth, and only five of these human, have ever reached this stage -- the experience of "individual" existence is nearly entirely altered. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside of dimensions. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Each local being -- son, father, grandfather, and so on -- and each stage of individual being -- infant, child, boy, young man, old man -- is merely one of the infinite phases of the same archetypal and eternal being, caused by the variation in the angle of the consciousness plane which cuts it. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all of his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, and eternal ‘Carter’ outside space and time -- phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the archetype in each case.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://www.americanscientist.org/sites/americanscientist.org/files/201285820389258-2012-09SilverF5.jpg" src="https://www.americanscientist.org/sites/americanscientist.org/files/201285820389258-2012-09SilverF5.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
This one fathomless "<b>archetypal and eternal being</b>" is precisely the hypersphere, the entire chaosmos of all dimensions, imbued temporarily with singular consciousness. The ultimate sorcerer is he or she who wields the consciousness, the perception, of the whole plane of consistency, of the hypersphere itself.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss -- formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING itself.... which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The gutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT. </b></blockquote>
<br />
It is the great wizards, artists and thinkers who become aware, at least for a time, that they are facets or cuttings of the supreme archetype, of the hypersphere, but this awareness only implies that other facets are always present. Every facet is a potential wizard facet.<br />
<br />
The "map" that Lovecraft is providing, through the adventures of Randolph Carter and his silver key, becomes superfluous at this juncture. Everything beyond the second gate, we now discover, is there <i>already </i>before it is even approached. For it is not the case that no dimensions, no worlds, no entities, no universe, exists beyond the second gate, but that all of these are present (and absent in and of themselves) <i>at once</i>.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Twiddle in the Middle </h3>
<br />
The last gate, in other words, does not lead to a "space" beyond all things, beyond all possible categories, but to a realization that everything is present. A different epistemology is grasped not a different ontology, a new knowing not a new being -- or better still the simultaneity, the inter-becoming, of both knowing and being. The second gate thus "enters" into that which is already <i>before</i> the second gate.<br />
<br />
And likewise, we are already, all of us, <i>beyond</i> the <i>first</i> gate. The world is never absent of magical becoming. We inhabit -- "we" meaning all entities, all universes -- the astral, the World Soul in which, as Yeats taught in <i>A Vision</i>, the extremes of pure matter and pure spirit, the extremities of the <i>antithetical</i> and <i>primary tinctures</i>, are inaccessible, logical contradictions, impossible poles that are always enveloped into the vast sphere of becoming.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i0.wp.com/media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/c7/a9/8cc7a941bd5b540b6e423ddc8450253a.jpg" height="450" src="https://i0.wp.com/media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/c7/a9/8cc7a941bd5b540b6e423ddc8450253a.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
This is the meaning of the still shocking revelation in Mahayana Buddhism that nirvana <i>is</i> samsara. But how could it be otherwise? Pure spirit is entirely interdependent on the realm of becoming; form and emptiness are interchangeable.<br />
<br />
The late Neoplatonic philosopher, Iamblichus, noted this in relation to the mathematical properties of the number two. One plus one is two, yet one multiplied by one is still one. These facts determine oneness: addition provides a higher number while multiplication results in an equivalence. With numbers greater than two, however, addition of the number with itself will equal a lesser number than that which results by multiplying the number with itself (3+3=6, 3x3=9, etc.). These are the properties of the many.<br />
<br />
However, with the number <b>two</b> the processes yield the same result (2+2=4, 2x2=4). Sum and product are identical. Duality is thus the boundary between unity and multiplicity. It is what allows any contact between spirit and matter, and it truly is the sphere in which all life occurs. Duality characterizes the World Soul, and as in duality all opposites in a sense cancel each other out, are entirely dependent upon one another, duality is paradoxically synonymous with non-duality.<br />
<br />
This is also the meaning of Crowley’s otherwise perplexing equation 0=2. Every event takes place between the poles, between the gates. The wizard is he or she who, while passing “beyond” the second gate, with mind, body and senses realizes that this “beyond” is really a “within.” The limits of the self have been erased and encompass, or are encompassed by, the world.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://cinebeats.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/figuresh.jpg?w=840" height="205" src="https://cinebeats.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/figuresh.jpg?w=840" width="640" /><br />
<br />
The portals to the ultimate are many because every instant of perception is a potential door. Identity is no longer fixed, or can be fixed at any point one desires. And this latter proved to be too much of a temptation for Randolph Carter.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>It occurred to him that, if those disclosures were literally true, he might bodily visit all those infinitely distant ages and parts of the universe which he had hitherto known only in dreams, could he but command the magic to change the angle of his consciousness-planer. And did not the Silver Key supply that magic? Had it not changed him from a man in 1928 to a boy in 1883, and then to something quite outside of time? Oddly, despite his present apparent absence of body, he knew that the Key was still with him.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
Carter then knew that the “<b>archetypal Entity</b>” could by altering the angle of the consciousness-plane transport him within the body of any lifeform from whatever time and place he desired. He realized that he could finally, and fully embodied, visit the exotic worlds of his dreams, and even live the lives of the bizarre and improbable creatures that inhabited them. In short, he would be able to become entirely Other and “<b>as at all crises in his life, sheer curiosity triumphed over everything else.</b>”<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>He felt that his archetypal ENTITY could at will send him bodily to any of these phases of bygone and distant life by changing his consciousness-plane, and despite the marvels he had undergone he burned for the further marvel of walking in the flesh through those grotesque and incredible scenes which visions of the night had fragmentarily brought him.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
Is this essentially what Kenneth Grant was getting at when he accused Lovecraft of forever recoiling on the brink, of being terrified to cross the Abyss? Was Lovecraft merely an explorer of dreamworlds rather than an embracer of cosmic chaos? Did the existential need for a sense of self prevent him from attaining full union/annihilation with the All?<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Kircher_oedipus_aegyptiacus_28_derceto.png/1024px-Kircher_oedipus_aegyptiacus_28_derceto.png" class="transparent" height="284" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Kircher_oedipus_aegyptiacus_28_derceto.png/1024px-Kircher_oedipus_aegyptiacus_28_derceto.png" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
Or, as Deleuze and Guattari seem to imply, did HPL understand that even this universal perspective is still a perspective and at this stage of awareness any angled slice of consciousness, any facet whatsoever is in fact the equal to the entire hypersphere? Did he understand that the perception of the particular is as great as the perception of the general and maybe more so, that the all is contained in the each? But, even if we allow this for Lovecraft, there seems to be a hitch.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Partly Squamous </h3>
<br />
Once a wizard wills to be a particular and embodied consciousness, once he travels down the universe fiber, through the world tube, through the rhizome, wherever and whenever and whoever he is and becomes, he must be sure of the symbols and rituals necessary to make any further shift in being. The silver key alone is insufficient.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The PRESENCE warned him to be sure of his symbols if he wished ever to return from the remote and alien world he had chosen, and he radiated back an impatient affirmation; confident that the Silver Key, which he felt was with him and which he knew had tilted both world and personal planes in throwing him back to 1883, contained those symbols which were meant. And now the BEING, grasping his impatience, signified Its readiness to accomplish the monstrous precipitation. The waves abruptly ceased, and there supervened a momentary stillness tense with nameless and dreadful expectancy.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
Carter’s impatience, propelled by his intense curiosity, nearly proved to be his undoing. In accordance to what he had willed he once more took on physical form. He became the clawed and snouted person of the wizard Zkauba of the planet Yaddith, his body “<b>rugose, partly squamous, and curiously articulated.</b>” Carter’s dreams of years before became reality. Two personalities dwelt and clashed within him: Zkauba being at first dominant, but Carter retaining a conscious though marginal presence.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://www.woreczko.pl/meteorites/features/Compendium/Plansza-1i.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" src="http://www.woreczko.pl/meteorites/features/Compendium/Plansza-1i.jpg" height="400" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
After countless years of this new existence -- including space voyages through twenty-eight galaxies and time travel into the past and future -- the Carter-facet discovered that the silver key alone was not enough to restore Carter to his original human form. To do so further information was required -- yet this was in the form of a spell inscribed on the parchment which Carter had left back in his car parked at the old homestead in Arkham! Horrors!<br />
<br />
What follows is a more or less conventional Lovecraftian tale of Carter devising a drug to suppress the Zkauba-facet, and a frantic and dangerous trip across space and time to the approximate point where Carter first ventured through the first gate. Needless to say, the mysterious Swami Chandraputra is finally revealed to be Carter himself disguising his hideous Yaddithian incarnation.<br />
<br />
Carter’s return to Earth and to his own spiritual and physical identity bears more than a passing resemblance to Dennis McKenna’s own journey back through the spheres to his familiar self, and also to Deleuze and Guattari’s account of the progression/dissolution along the universe fiber. Whether or not the shaman or the witch or the poet makes it “home,” it becomes clear that, in a sense, he or she has never really left.<br />
<br />
To command all the angles, to scramble the planes, to give the last word on sorcery, an adept of transformation and the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-dark-shamanic-origins-of-debt-and_10.html">siddhis</a> is accompanied at the highest stages with the knowledge that all points are one. The vulva pylons of archaic caves, the outermost branches and twigs of the World Tree, opening in vortex-portals onto the infinite, are thresholds and conduits present during even the most mundane of commuter peregrinations.<br />
<br />
The two gates fold onto one another; the material, the astral and the spiritual are palimpsests of a single vision; before, between and beyond are variations of a common becoming. The plane of consistency is visible everywhere. How many of those who we pass on the street, be they aware of it or not, are wizard beings from another star, time-travellers from the future or distant past, boddhisattvic guides through hidden doors, elfin tricksters, agents of cosmic subversion, shape-shifters, demons, bundles of imperceptibility?<br />
<br />
Reality -- our cycles within the World Soul -- retains its sense of continuity and order only because an “external” assertion of will is so relatively rare. Programmed inertia apparently persists. Things continue as they have been and all is mixed. The counter-initiation, the wardens of the liminal, the saints and the Frustrators all romp in these borderlands of duality/non-duality, these hinter-passages of perception. Some have the Silver Key, some may possess it at will, some never had need of it.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://thefacedesign.hu/editor_up/Joshua-Osborne-Alex-chinneck-its-nice-that-.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" src="http://thefacedesign.hu/editor_up/Joshua-Osborne-Alex-chinneck-its-nice-that-.jpg" height="640" width="424" /> znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-64454625941936397322018-12-31T20:16:00.000-08:002018-12-31T20:16:19.434-08:00A Swarming and A Singing <img alt="https://en.wahooart.com/Art.nsf/O/8LT4AG/$File/Paul-Klee-With-the-eagle.JPG" height="430" src="https://en.wahooart.com/Art.nsf/O/8LT4AG/$File/Paul-Klee-With-the-eagle.JPG" width="640" /><br />
<br />
2018 was kind of a low ebb for grapejuice. Robbed of time by <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-ship-of-sun-is-drawn-3-eleusis.html">usura</a> and other voluntary commitments and distractions, less was manifested than intended. In a way, though, the work continued on in a different form. The following are a series of podcast discussions, hosted by the good folks at Sync Book, in which I contribute a bit and try to extend and interweave the threads of several narrative strands often surfacing here in the blog.<br />
<br />
All of these talks revolve around either a book or film, but no boundaries are fixed and things tend to spin off. And if you listen closely you can follow a story from one to the next; themes, symbols and images repeat and modulate, encompassing ever more into the fold. Please enjoy.<br />
<br />
<i>The Crying of Lot 49</i>, Thomas Pynchon: <a href="http://thesyncbook.com/?pagename=42minutes&ep=297">Part 1</a> and <a href="http://thesyncbook.com/alwaysrecord/?ep=180">Part 2</a>.<br />
<br />
<i>Infinite Jest</i>, David Foster Wallace: <a href="http://thesyncbook.com/?pagename=42minutes&ep=308">Part 1</a> and <a href="http://thesyncbook.com/alwaysrecord/?ep=182">Part 2</a>.<br />
<br />
<i>Mrs Dalloway</i>, Virginia Woolf: <a href="http://thesyncbook.com/?pagename=42minutes&ep=312">Part 1</a> and <a href="http://thesyncbook.com/alwaysrecord/?ep=183">Part 2</a>.<br />
<br />
<i>Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle</i>, Vladimir Nabokov: <a href="http://thesyncbook.com/?pagename=42minutes&ep=320">Part 1</a>.<br />
<br />
<i>Lolita</i>, directed by Stanley Kubrick: <a href="http://thesyncbook.com/alwaysrecord/?ep=185">3 Parts</a>.<br />
<br />
The plan is to get more written this coming year -- it's always the plan. Stay focused, stay inspired, expand the glimpses and moments of wonder. Shuffle off melancholy at the door. Peace to you all. <br />
<br />
<img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWCQtHLuuNk7ynj2S9hOca9Tmm0ef3pyfNnjFTqw3c5vlQy9-70fvwVw7xoXF78QYuvMocmmuaS171xOCeeELmxzRbWlIWT9OoS2p3vOpKRAieh24wsX9BEZ1UDrbw-am8r3RHEql6-7HK/s1600/6454065045_331b50dc9a_z.jpg" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWCQtHLuuNk7ynj2S9hOca9Tmm0ef3pyfNnjFTqw3c5vlQy9-70fvwVw7xoXF78QYuvMocmmuaS171xOCeeELmxzRbWlIWT9OoS2p3vOpKRAieh24wsX9BEZ1UDrbw-am8r3RHEql6-7HK/s1600/6454065045_331b50dc9a_z.jpg" /> <br />
znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-27276360534453948572018-09-22T05:37:00.000-07:002018-09-22T15:13:20.798-07:00Mask And Phenomenon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghqrfQdKAX8A4o5duvnyBjM5umv2ACRKZjCMa5zCNsm9UciuCmlyfsgpEPzcwoloRmHG3gKQnjBc_mJF1hfSs0N5m8pbWepscb8rW_gdC2AE2s_B2no2inY2AiEbpzaKY0EBH1YdG34Gqx/s1600/CIMG0818.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghqrfQdKAX8A4o5duvnyBjM5umv2ACRKZjCMa5zCNsm9UciuCmlyfsgpEPzcwoloRmHG3gKQnjBc_mJF1hfSs0N5m8pbWepscb8rW_gdC2AE2s_B2no2inY2AiEbpzaKY0EBH1YdG34Gqx/s640/CIMG0818.JPG" width="640" /></a> <br />
<br />
<b>Metamorphosis of finitude.</b><br />
Even here mosquitoes bite;<br />
always prey as much as predator.<br />
<br />
Winged fleeting shadows,<br />
heaving brine <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/09/at-obelisk-of-on.html">soup</a>.<br />
Flutes of bone,<br />
notes ricocheting off cave walls.<br />
<br />
<b>You must only get through one day.</b><br />
<br />
Nullity and powerlessness.<br />
Reciprocity and conjugality.<br />
<b>Bright apophatic nothingness.</b><br />
<br />
Scouring the cemeteries for Shaun the Post.<br />
Jumped a wall, grave hopping,<br />
but didn't find him.<br />
Red rose placed on another.<br />
<br />
<b>The landscape thinks</b> <br />
<b>itself within me.</b><br />
<br />
Post-nasal, itchy, greasy-haired, fuzzy-toothed,<br />
cross-legged, eyelash follicle depletion.<br />
Every physical imperfection<br />
yet a magical circle has been drawn.<br />
<br />
Wonder and bedazzlement!<br />
<br />
<b>Miracles always</b><br />
<b>followed by unbelief.</b><br />
<br />
Slave labour bunker excavated<br />
for a private pebble<br />
beach<br />
<br />
<b> Babylon is too rude</b><br />
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<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVTdtZcVPVOQwD7FvjUNRK-odtFoExesJw0wa1tdbfJLaIE64zjbHKIsUkmzyPzSDY69AGiM8G1_a0dKQTwkyZWgcT4Js4trrArxdYPFUH0_KOkematz-0-UMJ3HXklDtyENXEVudC_WZe/s1600/CIMG0842.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVTdtZcVPVOQwD7FvjUNRK-odtFoExesJw0wa1tdbfJLaIE64zjbHKIsUkmzyPzSDY69AGiM8G1_a0dKQTwkyZWgcT4Js4trrArxdYPFUH0_KOkematz-0-UMJ3HXklDtyENXEVudC_WZe/s400/CIMG0842.JPG" width="400" /></a> <br />
<br />
Open to the abysmal<br />
character, Kora,<br />
to <b>the crevice between skeletal ribs.</b><br />
<br />
At the limit of reason, intuition. Already possessed<br />
by the mass? But no -- attained without reaching<br />
the summit first.<br />
And why is it necessary? <br />
Needed to properly give thanks,<br />
else like a child;<br />
receiving without knowing,<br />
innocence without wisdom,<br />
unable to truly return<br />
the gift.<br />
<br />
Jumping over one's<br />
own shadow:<br />
"<b>Ego sum qui sum</b>"<br />
<br />
Sound of small waves<br />
Prows cutting through water<br />
<br />
Go to the <b>Dogana point</b><br />
Bring yer own bottle,<br />
sit, drink and write<br />
sense or nonsense,<br />
Anything that rushes out.<br />
Invoke the masters<br />
without fear of pretension, in an<br />
attempt to make it sing again,<br />
ringing off the rim of<br />
the bathtub.<br />
<br />
<b>Each breath takes</b><br />
<b>us to the moment of</b><br />
<b>creation.</b><br />
<br />
Cracks, stains, mould,<br />
butts, caps, corks,<br />
ship masts, boat motor<br />
gurgles.<br />
<br />
For one evening me and<br />
my wine hold the<br />
responsibility of keeping<br />
the city afloat.<br />
<b>Wager with the adversary.</b><br />
Marco Polo to Dadu to<br />
do business with the Khan.<br />
Geologic ages compressed<br />
into <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/08/phases-of-loon.html">seconds</a>.<br />
<br />
Wine for cigar exchange<br />
and now a small torch<br />
between my fingers.<br />
<br />
<b>The incarnation must be</b><br />
<b>held in the body and in the mind,</b><br />
<b>in the senses and in the</b><br />
<b>breath</b><br />
<br />
Medium of star shine<br />
and street grime.<br />
<br />
The guerilla always puffs<br />
a cigar while on a jungle romp.<br />
<b>The edifice of the land.</b> <br />
Ash tapped in the crevice<br />
of the pier stones. <br />
<b>Phenomenology is a metallurgy.</b><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiimFbtLMGxU7KcNaFivw1fUSRibl2oypKVnijDFRZo_-YQLq0KDIptxHAY4juVYM38eFtI7UkahaAl0uS1CuwUn9nDXUwBKcpIXOaJcfJ7fBwyBTrMm-R3wE5xqeiMAADnLN1wS9EmhvjJ/s1600/CIMG0599.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiimFbtLMGxU7KcNaFivw1fUSRibl2oypKVnijDFRZo_-YQLq0KDIptxHAY4juVYM38eFtI7UkahaAl0uS1CuwUn9nDXUwBKcpIXOaJcfJ7fBwyBTrMm-R3wE5xqeiMAADnLN1wS9EmhvjJ/s400/CIMG0599.JPG" width="400" /></a> <br />
<br />
Quick puff succession.<br />
Forgetting vowels,<br />
the breath between stops, <br />
<b>impasse and the overcoming of impasse, </b><br />
<b> ongoing con-spiracy between God</b><br />
<b> and Man.</b><br />
<br />
A mad swamp of incomprehension,<br />
tension, and then words graced<br />
from somewhere above.<br />
<b> At this milieu,</b> at this<br />
middle, something<br />
sparks, smoke is produced,<br />
the world is fashioned,<br />
<b>breath, anima, ruah.</b><br />
Smoke drifts across<br />
the sparkling water,<br />
a line of lights,<br />
vaporous curl of letters.<br />
<br />
<b>"As one that would draw</b><br />
<b> thru the node of things"</b><br />
<br />
Cigar a baobab of ash.<br />
Toes free. <br />
Only the stars remain firm and clear.<br />
Not even these -- <br />
a flicker of the death of Heaven, <br />
like the improvisation<br />
of music, <b>forced amnesia,</b> <br />
a terrible disease that<br />
has no name.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTUswWhUgMV5ADZ7yYrf277x9Gy5xOC1T4dbNPJ5DgIcCefWD_OAcVNHqbp1SFOyezkoCynYjVQGU-1_xG2DoQEglj2GEUP3IEDhtGHbewcUhtPJlQQjSNTV2ndjubt90xvDEgy1BswxWa/s1600/CIMG0629.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTUswWhUgMV5ADZ7yYrf277x9Gy5xOC1T4dbNPJ5DgIcCefWD_OAcVNHqbp1SFOyezkoCynYjVQGU-1_xG2DoQEglj2GEUP3IEDhtGHbewcUhtPJlQQjSNTV2ndjubt90xvDEgy1BswxWa/s400/CIMG0629.JPG" width="400" /></a> <br />
<br />
<b>Floating on the azure air...</b><br />
<br />
Jubilee must be conscious, <br />
elegies of discarded empire,<br />
ignored accordions in the<br />
plaza, <b>body as the intersection of</b><br />
<b>the physical and spiritual worlds.</b><br />
<br />
The <i>Calypso</i> was the first ship I spotted;<br />
stranded on an island of seduction.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Christ changed the nature of category itself.</b></i><br />
<br />
<b>Thurn und Taxis</b><br />
<br />
Mars to my right,<br />
Venus already below the<br />
horizon and behind me,<br />
Neptune, on porpoise-back, straight ahead,<br />
rising and blessing from the sea. <br />
<br />
Interface of light, of water, of sound, of blood, of wine. <b>The door was open</b><br />
<b> and we rushed to the event.</b><br />
<br />
Committing the only sin<br />
of letting a single breath pass<br />
unawares. <br />
<br />
<b>There is no space that</b><br />
<b>needs completion,</b><br />
<b>every detail is already</b><br />
<b>drawn in.</b><br />
<br />
Even this solid rock is sinking.<br />
<br />
The deity moves<br />
through love, everyone incomparable, <b>neighbour encountered</b><br />
<b>in the rupture of </b><br />
<b>myself.</b><br />
<b> </b> <br />
Respirating, perceiving. <br />
<b>Not a hole in this world.</b> <br />
Fragmented, distorted, <br />
risk, paradox, ambivalence, precarious.<br />
<b> </b><br />
<b>Philosophy must trace the mystery which precedes being.</b><br />
<br />
Naiads, dryads, sylphs<br />
and undines assemble unseen beneath<br />
the stars and spheres. <br />
<b>Matter is not inert</b> <br />
<b>but moves.</b><br />
<br />
What a place to drown!<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz8WhFC6rFiYH9Nq9kob1GuXfpccoycYcHV9zU7dSGd8i49-V-hHXAcmXuYJ6chjeIq_UYIrOqmUnc2VXaSHoHedZJ0XDvG5IJwvK3xBlQmaYo1c5Hpk8nDteJ-jDZsJsP_FrTd0tpoOzM/s1600/CIMG0666.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz8WhFC6rFiYH9Nq9kob1GuXfpccoycYcHV9zU7dSGd8i49-V-hHXAcmXuYJ6chjeIq_UYIrOqmUnc2VXaSHoHedZJ0XDvG5IJwvK3xBlQmaYo1c5Hpk8nDteJ-jDZsJsP_FrTd0tpoOzM/s640/CIMG0666.JPG" width="640" /></a>znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-43866989713013426172018-08-30T05:23:00.000-07:002018-08-30T05:23:19.048-07:00Phases of the Loon<img alt="https://cdni.rt.com/files/2016.04/article/57202557c461881c728b457a.jpg" height="359" src="https://cdni.rt.com/files/2016.04/article/57202557c461881c728b457a.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Excuse please no boast </b><br />
<b> only the glory of </b><br />
<b> celebrating </b><br />
<br />
<b>the processes</b><br />
<b> of Earth </b><br />
<b> and man. </b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>-- The Maximus Poems</i>, Charles Olson </div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
Magma flow, glaciation, cellular mitosis, species extinction, tribal federations, the founding of cities, imperial overreach, the inscription of epics. Interpenetrating processes, differing in rate, rhythm and tone, converging on a single individual, a single town, a single planet. An intersection of geology and psychology on main street in a luminous flash of conception, then branching out, retreating down the back alleys.<br />
<br />
Yet none of these <a href="http://roupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2015/04/generic-theography-as-slab-of-text.html">sequences</a> advancing blindly. Each possessing a sort of wisdom, a wariness, an archaic animation, a god in a mask. Bound by no moral code, they revel with Dionysus; haunted, intoxicated, tearing flesh, ripping limbs, naked in the sunlight; creeping vines, braying jungle cats, praising, overwhelmed. An ecstatic chorus older than the bedrock.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>As the ancient song bubbled up opposite Regent’s Park Tube Station, still the earth seemed green and flowery; still, though it issued from so rude a mouth, a mere hole in the earth, muddy too, matted with root fibres and tangled grasses, still the old bubbling burbling song, soaking through the knotted roots of infinite ages, and skeletons and treasure, streamed away in rivulets over the pavement and all along the Marylebone Road, and down towards Euston, fertilising leaving a damp stain. </b><br />
<br />
<i>-- Mrs. Dalloway</i>, Virginia Woolf </blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://hedgespoken.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/baba-yaga_lubok1.jpg?w=775&h=607" height="312" src="https://hedgespoken.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/baba-yaga_lubok1.jpg?w=775&h=607" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
Music is the original expression of chthonic creation, all other arts extending from it. It plays and rills and riffs not in imitation of the Forms, but as immediate presentation of them, as if mocking their supposed primacy. Its courses flow through the elements; through media of water, flame, channels of sap and marrow, verse, cold architectures of steel and glass. Bubbling still -- right now -- in the imperial <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/09/at-obelisk-of-on.html">metropoles</a>. A beggar woman, a hag perched on the fence pole, a creature of the street, takes up the chant; vessel of ALP, spring of the Goddess, the passing voice of life itself.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The universe is a continuous medley of mental processes, or a single huge mind with different levels of activity going on in it at once. As awareness descends through these levels, it produces ever more thoughts so that the lower reaches of the mind are noisy and full of chaotic and disharmonious impulses bound together only by the illusory chain of causality; as it reascends, it produces at each higher level fewer, less object-oriented and fragmented thoughts, up to the objectless contemplation of the One. </b><br />
<br />
<i>-- The Shape of Ancient Thought</i>, Thomas McEvilley</blockquote>
<br />
And yet her song becomes distant, its tune indistinct, its words unclear, its listeners few. The song gets reduced to a concept. “Gets reduced,” but that is not how it was viewed by the wise of that era. Instead, it was “purified,” made transcendent, stripped of its contamination by the physical, the feminine, the <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-general-impossibility-of-honey.html">animal</a>, the non-intelligible, expression in time.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/62/b4/93/62b493589f31d9cc642f9c7d81fe413d--music-party.jpg" height="380" src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/62/b4/93/62b493589f31d9cc642f9c7d81fe413d--music-party.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
Crystalline, star-like abstraction. Mathematical purity, the suppression of dissonance, categories fixed, the notes unbending, a hierarchical gradation to absolute Spirit. A vast and austere beauty, eternal and perfect, free from the fluctuation and decomposition of phenomenon. All is a product of mind. The One is without objects, without any contact with Nature which at best is viewed as being an imperfect copy of Spirit, and at worst something wholly Evil.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Superficially seen, Plato was a playful dialectician, but deeply understood, he was an extremely religious man. In a certain sense, Platonic philosophy is in its essence a powerful synthesis of Greek shamanistic beliefs that have been systematized and spiritualized. </b><br />
<br />
<i>-- Out of This World</i>, I.P. Couliano </blockquote>
<br />
Several steps separate the Dionysian from the Platonic, the shamanic being one of these. The Apollonian healers and seers, the iatromantis figures like Aristeaus and Abaris, translated or responded to general Dionysian ecstasy by shaping it into something individual and internal.<br />
<br />
This course is reflected in Plato’s own life. Before becoming a disciple of Socrates, he was of a religious nature. He wrote tragic poetry which he burned after being initiated by his master, and later banished the poets from his ideal Republic. The archaic Dionysian, Orphic and shamanic musical vision of the unity of being/becoming was made intelligible, bound under the category of Reason.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>And we may add that the Pseudo-Dionysius, whose works were the source of mediaeval Christian mysticism, and were held in great reverence by Thomas Aquinas, Tauler and Meister Eckhart, were copied from the order of the divine hierarchies as set forth by Plotinus, Jamblichus, and Proclus, who all, through Plato and Pythagoras, based themselves on Orpheus. </b><br />
<br />
<i>-- Orpheus</i>, G.R.S. Mead </blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://www.jewelsforme.com/images/articles/meaning-zircon-facts-history.jpg" src="https://www.jewelsforme.com/images/articles/meaning-zircon-facts-history.jpg" /><br />
<br />
In this way, the original song of the Orphic book of nature was not entirely silenced. Its notes were transformed into text, its poetry had mostly become prosaic and rationalized, but its call could no more be stifled than starlight be extinguished. A mystical tradition persisted, at times meeting in secrecy and at times in open and honoured acceptance by the reigning religious and secular authorities. It largely ignored divisions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, of religious and political affiliations. Mystics of all lands and creeds were united by vision.<br />
<br />
There had been, within this broad tradition, a movement away from the total affirmation of the processes of life, a progress of emphasis on the embrace of Matter to the goal of the apprehension of pure Spirit, but certain seers (like Iamblichus/Jamblichus and others) were still able to catch glimpses of the primal ecstasy. Even in the writings of the most orthodox of these spiritual seekers, Thomas Aquinas most notably, the old inspired chorus can still be heard.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>At times I even feel moved to address all future prophets of mankind as follows: “Prophets! Dear, kind prophets! Leave us alone. Do not try to fan the flames of lofty sentiments in our souls; do not try to make us better than we are. For so long as we are bad, we limit ourselves to petty felonies; as we grow better, we kill. </b><br />
<br />
<b>“Try to understand, dear prophets, that it is neither perfidy nor cunning nor vice that forces us to rage like vengeful animals; it is our inborn feelings of humanity and justice: without nobility of the soul we should never know righteous indignation. And try to understand that our souls work like swings: the stronger the push up towards the nobility of the soul, the stronger the swoop down towards the fury of the beast...”</b><br />
<br />
<i>-- Novel with Cocaine</i>, M. Ageyev </blockquote>
<br />
The emphasis on spiritual purity and moral uprightness has taken its toll. Much of the nightmare of history during the last millennium emanates from fanatical responses to the words of the prophets of the pure: Nature has indeed fallen and with it the nature of man, but it can be made good and holy once more.<br />
<br />
Crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, religious wars, colonialism, genocide, racial supremacy, revolutionary reigns of terror, reactionary counter-suppression, totalitarian ideologies, scientific single vision, technological eschatology, commercial omnipresence all stem from the desire -- not wrong in itself -- for Truth without error and change, and for Spirit (however codified or designated) free of all impurity. But this leads to a split in the soul. What is whole is not necessarily perfect.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dbace5e4b07b7551afb34b/5afbbcbd352f53e72591a9d9/5afbc1c0758d463ef1a3ecc2/1526453138702/cropped_historiadeorumfa00mussa_0039.jpg?format=500w" height="400" src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dbace5e4b07b7551afb34b/5afbbcbd352f53e72591a9d9/5afbc1c0758d463ef1a3ecc2/1526453138702/cropped_historiadeorumfa00mussa_0039.jpg?format=500w" width="301" /> <br />
<br />
And so the soul swings, as it were, from nobility to the fury of that which is sub-bestial, monstrous, Satanic.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“...Up to now I have spoken only of local Satanic associations, but there are others, more extensive, which ravage the old world and the new, for Diabolism is quite up to date in one respect. It is highly centralized and very capably administered. There are committees, subcommittees, a sort of curia, which rules America and Europe, like the curia of a pope. </b><br />
<br />
<b>“The biggest of these societies founded as long ago as 1855 is the society of the Re-Theurgistes Optimates. Beneath an apparent unity it is divided into two camps, one aspiring to destroy the universe and reign over the ruins, the other thinking simply of imposing upon the world a demoniac cult of which it shall be high priest...”</b><br />
<br />
<span class="st"><i>-- Là</i>-<i>Bas</i></span>, J.K. Huysmans </blockquote>
<br />
The satanic perfectly mirrors the orthodox. Both exist as highly centralized hierarchies, each held in thrall by their own dogma which divides the cosmos into categories of the accepted and the unaccepted. They are virtually indistinguishable.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/melissa-mccracken-synesthesia-examples-1.jpg" height="487" src="https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/melissa-mccracken-synesthesia-examples-1.jpg" width="640" /><br />
<br />
<a href="https://mymodernmet.com/melissa-mccracken-synethesia-paintings/">Agents</a>, double agents, triple and quadruple agents, <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/10/retangling-spaghetti-theory-of_30.html">flip</a> back and forth across the border, employing identical methods and means, blurring the lines, provoking schisms, making words imprecise and ideas incoherent. Tradition and counter-tradition each calling the other black, a willingness on both sides to both conquer and destroy the world, each guilty of atrocity upon atrocity.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse always unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had found in the heart of the sun-splashed wood what many modern painters had found there. He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for the final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe. </b><br />
<br />
<i>-- The Man Who was Thursday</i>, G.K. Chesterton </blockquote>
<br />
Chesterton’s perceptive novel tells the tale of an anarchist terrorist cell that is wholly infiltrated by and composed of police agents, each convinced that the others are genuine violent revolutionaries. All anarchist violence is really state violence, all state violence is really anarchist violence. Shadow and sunlight, evil and good, can no longer be separated. All comes into question.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2010/07/24/1280027774_3448/539w.jpg" src="http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2010/07/24/1280027774_3448/539w.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
There is only the impressionistic dance of light and darkness -- only a play or a mirage, without bottom or foundation, universal nausea. A sort of chaotic music returns, the maenads reassemble, but there is no acceptance of the frenzy. Most try not to listen, stuff their ears against the siren song, but a few -- mainly unstable, outcast -- begin to be caught up in the dance.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“Purpose of life is unknown, and hence way to be is hidden from the eyes of living critters. Who can say if perhaps the schizophrenics are not correct? Mister, they take a brave journey. They turn from mere things, which one may handle and turn to practical use; they turn inward to meaning. There, the black-night-without-bottom lies, the pit. Who can say if they will return? And if so, what will they be like, having glimpsed meaning? I admire them.”</b><br />
<br />
<i>-- Martian Time-Slip</i>, Philip K. Dick </blockquote>
<br />
It makes sense that it would be the “mad” who would first make the plunge. They have the least to lose -- already shunned and sidelined by the civilization of light -- and they have made a commitment, or have been by circumstances forced, to rediscover meaning. This meaning can no longer be universal and consensual -- everyone has become a skeptic -- but instead is particular, fluctuating, ad hoc.<br />
<br />
Here alone -- with the mad, the drug user, the ignored artist, the socially despised -- is there the willingness to dive into the abyss and to attempt to surface with some answers from among the confused kaleidoscope of worldviews. Most do not <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/03/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">reemerge</a>. They attempt a sort of shamanism, but with total lack of support from their society, their would-be tribe.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://www.demonic.name/beelzebub/beelzebub.png" src="http://www.demonic.name/beelzebub/beelzebub.png" height="400" width="350" /><br />
<br />
The song is rediscovered, though there is the lingering drive to make sense of it. Even for the schizophrenic a rational -- in their own eyes -- grid must be overlaid upon the tumult of nature. And in this attempt to make rational sense, to privilege the abstractions of mind over completed embodied and ensouled experience, they suffer, they drown.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The prima materia of poetic emotion is a synesthetic chaos. A confused mixture of diverse emotions is first felt painfully in the body, like a swarming of multiple lives trying to escape. It is usually that uncomfortable feeling that forces the poet to take up the pen, be it as a vague and imperious need to exteriorize himself or in a less coarse fashion. </b><br />
<br />
-- “Clavicles for a Great Poetic Game,” <span class="st">René</span> Damaul </blockquote>
<br />
But for the very few that accept this synesthetic chaos in its own terms, in Her own terms, they may be blessed with creative enchantment. True poetry springs from this well, human imagination is found again, but not in concepts or ideals, not in anything that can be limited to the intelligible, but in the senses and emotions, in swarming life and in physical <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2018/06/capsizing-polypus.html">touch</a> and beauty.<br />
<br />
The eternal shines in the particular, the timeless in time, and all within the riotous details of perception. We return to the processes of the Earth, and to the inner processes of imagining and perceiving, and the bonfires are lit again. Prose becomes poetry, poetry song, and song is coupled with dance.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132988/original/image-20160803-12192-1r91qj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip" height="303" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132988/original/image-20160803-12192-1r91qj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip" width="640" />znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-67151041384537219912018-06-16T00:07:00.000-07:002018-06-16T00:07:29.234-07:00Capsizing the Polypus<i>(This piece was written for inclusion in a coming <a href="https://luisdejesus.com/exhib_dtl.php?sid=131">art exhibit</a> by Dennis Koch. The exhibition will open in Los Angeles on 6/23, and will also feature the Crypto-Kubrology <a href="https://twitter.com/cryptokubrology?lang=en">research</a> of Alex Fulton.)</i> <br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.redd.it/5z6m43uyesk01.gif" src="https://i.redd.it/5z6m43uyesk01.gif" /> <br />
<br />
It was Blake who <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/search?q=orc">prophesied</a> that the senses would once again combine and permeate the entire surface of the body. No longer would seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting be isolated to the head but would, like the sense of touch and synergized with it, be coextensive with the skin.<br />
<br />
This would not mean, however, that the skin would be covered with tiny eyes, ears, nostrils and tongues, but that it would be radically transformed into a synesthetic sensory medium in which one blended super-sense would perceive with the whole body -- ubiquitously and omnidirectionally -- all possible sensory data; at once an ever-changing kaleidocosm of blended colours, sounds, smells, tastes, textures and emotions.<br />
<br />
This synesthesia of enhanced touch, which Marshall McLuhan may have ultimately meant by the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-short-note-on-tactics.html"><i>haptic</i></a>, is not, according to Blake, an exotic and unrealizable fantasy, but is in fact the birthright of our physical form. This is the true nature of the human body: created in the image of God before the Fall.<br />
<br />
Nor was the body meant to be isolated -- <i>male and female He created them</i>. The body was made for communication, copulation, procreation, subsequent creation. All-sensing skin in blessed union with all-sensing skin. An unending shower of perceptual grace, in no way confined to what are now called the organs of reproduction or the genitalia, in every way exceeding or transcending the sexual. The same power that fires the Sun is generated by this coupling. And, as taught D.H. Lawrence, it is this power of <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/12/what-is-material-world-and-is-it-dead.html">life</a> which causes the Sun to burn and not the opposite. It is the apotheosis of the making of love.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/05/1c/a2/051ca23b38f6243208d5b66019b0391a.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="373" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/05/1c/a2/051ca23b38f6243208d5b66019b0391a.jpg" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
This urge, this snaking and riverine intensity, flows up from the lower extremities of the body, absorbed by channels of marrow and blood and breath, rising and recombining at various confluences, gathering at the heart -- “the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/01/ideal-objects-delerium-and-other-pizza.html">cardiac</a> synthesizer” -- where it is churned alchemically into pure imagination, spiraling up to the brain and beyond and then descending in circuit through contact of skin with skin. Perfected perception of the one in total sensory awareness of the perfected perception of the other. Instant manifestation of all percepts/concepts (there being no distinction between the two) as something indistinguishable from both imagination and love.<br />
<br />
McKenna spoke of telepathic cephalopods -- octopuses and other marine animals -- who communicate through the <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/05/ichtheology-teeth.html">rippling</a> and gyrating of patterned colours and lights on the surface of their bodies. Meaning is not something to be <i>heard</i> in communication with other individuals of one’s own species but <i>beheld</i>. And the same could also be true for our prelapsarian forms; not only perceiving and receiving but also emitting and transmitting dancing lights, colours, sounds and fragrances. Communication as sensual synesthetic simultaneity.<br />
<br />
Here, McKenna is less anthropocentric, less biblically oriented, than Blake, although he is much more concerned with being considered “scientific.” Blake could care less about literal and scientific “facts.” A thing is true if it is affirmed by poetic vision. In such a vision, the unified sensorium is reflecting upon itself. But, as in McKenna’s thought, there is no need to limit this to the human and still less to any one particular human story. Nature in each of her ever-transforming aspects consists of a myriad of organs of perception, each perceiving the other in a nearly infinite variety of designs and forms. And as human perception has fallen -- the senses isolated from one another -- one sense, notably sight, dominates the rest.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://discovermagazine.com/~/media/Images/Zen%20Photo/B/Bioluminescence%202/111.jpg" src="http://discovermagazine.com/~/media/Images/Zen%20Photo/B/Bioluminescence%202/111.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
Yet what is the Fall? What characterizes it? The Bible explains that it was brought about by sin, but that only begs the further question -- what is sin? Nietzsche’s answer is most <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2016/08/dig-ressions-and-sessions-of-greasy.html">lucid</a>: sin is separation. Separation of the senses from each other. Separation of human beings from the rest of nature. Separation of reason from desire. Separation of male from female. Separation of Man from God. Separation of subject from object, of self from other, of figure from ground, of mind from bodies, of bodies from their crafted extensions.<br />
<br />
And of these extensions language itself is most important, being the scaffolding of all subsequent technology. After the Fall -- and it matters little if this is expressed in mythological, psychological or biological terms, each of these being merely different stories within language -- language became split off from the things that it referred to. In effect, language as we have always known it and can presently conceive of it was born at this point.<br />
<br />
But in all of the ancient and archaic stories -- depicting in verse language’s own longing to cross the river Lethe and behold its real nature -- every Fall is followed by an eventual Redemption. Language will be redeemed. History will be redeemed. Nature will be redeemed. The senses will be redeemed. The multiform kaleidoscopic protoplasmic sensorium will be cleansed and become radiant.<br />
<br />
Within the Abrahamic religions, as in the progressive and evolutionary ideologies that spun off from these traditions, this moment of return is projected out into the future, into the “to come.” Yet time itself is a product of separation, of the Fall. Prior to the Fall there was no time. As the two terms, Fall and Redemption, are logically linked -- the one necessitating the other -- the existence of the Fall implies the existence of the Redemption. It <i>will</i> come. A timeless state <i>has</i> happened and a timeless state <i>will</i> happen again, and from the perspective of either, these two states are the same. For either, there really was no lapse into time. There was no Fall to begin with. In the timeless state -- <i>sub specie aeternitatis</i> -- nothing has fallen so there is no need for redemption.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://thumbs.mic.com/MmMwMDMwYTYwMiMvcHN0ZGFZUUxDa3lRY0h2S2pBdy05OE5JTDg0PS82NHg3ODM6MTQ3MngxNDY0LzgwMHg0NTAvZmlsdGVyczpmb3JtYXQoanBlZyk6cXVhbGl0eSg4MCkvaHR0cHM6Ly9zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tL3BvbGljeW1pYy1pbWFnZXMvMndqcmJ0bXZ3Zzl5cjZxamYwNmh6ZXBocWRyZXd2dzB3aXN3YzR3ZHlwb3ZmNjVueG40emZ2ZG5rdWVzemYyYy5qcGc.jpg" height="225" src="https://thumbs.mic.com/MmMwMDMwYTYwMiMvcHN0ZGFZUUxDa3lRY0h2S2pBdy05OE5JTDg0PS82NHg3ODM6MTQ3MngxNDY0LzgwMHg0NTAvZmlsdGVyczpmb3JtYXQoanBlZyk6cXVhbGl0eSg4MCkvaHR0cHM6Ly9zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tL3BvbGljeW1pYy1pbWFnZXMvMndqcmJ0bXZ3Zzl5cjZxamYwNmh6ZXBocWRyZXd2dzB3aXN3YzR3ZHlwb3ZmNjVueG40emZ2ZG5rdWVzemYyYy5qcGc.jpg" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
The coming of Christ, His Incarnation, has already negated all of history. The Buddha’s awakening under the Bo tree <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/01/what-moves-sun-and-other-stars.html">accomplished</a> the same. In fact, this mighty event occurs continually although it only really happens once. At every fraction of a second -- being a meaningless division of an illusory condition, time -- our perception paints a universe onto the void. Nature is perpetually incarnated. There is nothing to wake up to for we were never asleep. The perceived dreams and nightmares, and the cycles and patterns containing both, are all part of the mix.<br />
<br />
Hell, purgatory and heaven are equally present, a fluid palimpsest of worlds and dimensions. All stories become true, each a branch or a twig of some living and breathing and breeding Orphic saga of existence. The elves are here, as are angels and demons, as are subatomic particles and wave functions, as are the gandharvas and the duende, plants and animals and fungi, each moving at different rates, each arising and passing, each supplying food and inspiration for the others. And each also non-existent for exactly the same reasons. None are complete in themselves. None are apart or autonomous. All sins have been forgiven long ago.<br />
<br />
Already, then, the senses have been perfected and fused. The world of our perception -- the only world that we have access to -- is even now a sublime synesthesia. The psychedelic plants prove this. Consciousness is malleable. And the plants themselves are unnecessary. They, as with other techniques used to induce visionary experience, may tweak the mind into providing glimpses of the eternal, but it is a mistake to say that they, or even more reductively the chemicals contained in them, cause these experiences. They only remind us of what is already there.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3861/14578111599_a8e995bc39_b.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="400" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3861/14578111599_a8e995bc39_b.jpg" width="260" /><br />
<br />
Just as the body is not isolated from other bodies, there is no definite boundary to the mind. In his psychological studies, Jung could find no <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2013/08/137-tipkcoc.html">limit</a> to the unconscious. Even to call it a collective unconscious is to mislead. For what is it a collectivity of? Eventually Jung identified it with the classical idea of the World Soul or the Anima Mundi, which both Yeats and Joyce referred to as the Great <a href="https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-bitchs-shadow.html">Memory</a>. The Soul of the World, like each individual soul, is everything between the two impossible poles of pure matter and pure spirit.<br />
<br />
The body, alive and sensing and also "collective" -- Albion and Finn and Adam Kadmon are all names of it -- is also synonymous with this. All of matter may make up this body, all of nature certainly. And the composition of the World Soul-Body is also language. The word made flesh, the flesh made of words, of verse. And this is what is seen in every sight, is heard in every sound. It is combined and projected "outwards" with every sensory experience.<br />
<br />
The cycle of fall and redemption, a cycle found at every level of existence, is actually a cycle of forgetting and remembering afresh. The ancient art of memory, embedding the archaic systems of connection and correspondence which seethe in the heart of all magic, has for its end a general anamnesis, an awakening to the eternal.<br />
<br />
The Muses being the daughters of Memory -- a fact of myth that Blake curiously disputed -- means that the cycle of the imagination itself, of image-making, of secondary creation, of perception as incarnation, is exactly <i>this</i> cycle. And to be more precise there are endless cycles within cycles, occurring at different speeds and seasons, eddies in the World Soul, at different stages of dreaming and waking, each perceiving the others, all perceiving the all. Media extending language extending breath extending wind extending starlight extending love extending the generation of haptic images in the heart.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e2/b0/17/e2b0170ac9caefdfcaaa6f1d4d2dbdf1--plant-species-dragons-lair.jpg" src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e2/b0/17/e2b0170ac9caefdfcaaa6f1d4d2dbdf1--plant-species-dragons-lair.jpg" /> znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-11601922965406031652018-05-13T00:47:00.000-07:002018-05-13T00:47:51.574-07:00The Sycamore<img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Adolf_W%C3%B6lfli_Medizinische_Fakult%C3%A4t.jpg" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Adolf_W%C3%B6lfli_Medizinische_Fakult%C3%A4t.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
Formulating past broken nights of sanguine finabulators. Reckoning fish-weights accepting missives from embassies out past lawless half-breeds. Bleeding noses. Fell down from the beech tree. Ronny Totmann. Runny Titman. Did it to prove that I was lying when I said that it could never happen. It did happen. He made it happen. Sacrificed himself to devalue my word. What a turd. The toady of what’s-his-sneer. And then the even greater malignance of neighbour Adam. A singular event that stunted all growth. Tarnished all memories. Ass-stench and licorice-taste. Yet forgiven, perhaps, in a ceremony at the forest temple. Candy crushed. Howling. Demons devouring. Flies sucking blood. Full <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2013/12/retangling-spaghetti-theory-of_4.html">chod</a> action. His skull pounded and buried at Golgotha. Washed by the blood...<br />
<br />
General doubt. Cosmic Cartesian doubt, but without the rebirth. I think I am what? And that melts, decays, drifts away. Upon reflection no I is found. Yet there is reflection, perception, something flowing, something attempting to get a bead on...what? A flow spiraling around a flow. Poe’s <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2015/08/meereschal-macmuhun-moon-child-me-1.html">maelstrom</a>, the sudden flushed toilet of civilization. But in fact it is far more personal, more intimate, right under my nose, part of my breath. Breathing walls conjoined with disintegrating emotions, terrifying memories, <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2018/04/just-typing-care-or-whack-rip-off.html">armpit</a> sweat, bad posture. And then flights of near-ecstasy, almost a calm, almost an eye in the storm, almost a foothold on truth. Then another stumble, another blow to confidence.<br />
<br />
Fide. Faith. Fidel. Religion, ideology, science, fact, certainty, balance, reason, strength. All is vanity. And all this time I’m trying to suppress a fart. But then there’s that jasmine vine growing up and out from hell-knows-where among the banana trees with the promise that in May, for a couple of weeks with luck, there will be the fragrance of heaven on the breeze. And that beauty is also me/not-me.<br />
<br />
Sartre and Huxley were both on mescaline, but one went to hell and the other went to heaven. Haunting giant crabs versus the corduroy slacks of the gods. The nausea, I think (but not am), is the more interesting of the two states. <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2017/09/at-obelisk-of-on.html">Seasickness</a> on solid ground. Like the thousands of aftershocks which followed in the wake of 3/11. Another earthquake? Or is my inner-ear balance fucked? Or am I drunk again on this 400 yen Prince de Bao red wine that’s supposed to be a viable bulwark against radioactive strontium poisoning? Who says this? I don’t remember. Watch the street lights. Are they shaking or is that tremble coming from me? All is liquid, undulating. The only effective antidote against universal seasickness is to jump with a whoop into the sea and drown.<br />
<br />
Drowning with panic is drowning with the illusion of self still intact. But give up. Observe motion without analysis or struggle. Acceptance. The undertow takes the offering and deposits it smoothly almost peacefully within a few strokes of the shore. Sputtering and hacking on the rocky sand, but senses still aware, still alive. Praising what? Who knows, but there is something to praise. A mysterious thing to rejoice that is beyond all doubt, that escapes doubt, not because it is me, but because doubt itself comes from the same place as the jasmine vines & the beech tree & earthquakes & nausea & tears & memories. When it blooms everything is in question except that its scent, nearly of decay, will also quietly fade into the wind and be lost for a while.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://photos.wikimapia.org/p/00/00/13/72/20_big.jpg" src="http://photos.wikimapia.org/p/00/00/13/72/20_big.jpg" />znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-7574401500151055612018-04-01T01:28:00.000-07:002018-04-01T01:28:50.274-07:00Just Typing Care Or Whack Rip Off Interlude Practice<img alt="https://alexonfilm.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/thecage1.jpg?w=625" src="https://alexonfilm.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/thecage1.jpg?w=625" /> <br />
<br />
<a href="http://miracleinvasion.blogspot.jp/">Jumpstart:</a> invoke <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2017/12/what-is-material-world-and-is-it-dead.html">OAM</a>, kaggle waggle waggle, flop flop, ice in a
plastic cup, baritone moondance piano, finger drumming, smiles, paws,
beckoning, boring guitar solo, bus parking lot video, transformation
down in your soul, baby, German booms in the stairwell, rusted yellow
railing with cubic concret block stands, not German French, corner not
stairs, Waits? Nothing that good, red flag whitehawks on a tour, the
same chord over and over, canned drums, a side glance from the
fruit-slurping neighbour, Chip or Dale on her nails, can’t make sense of
the ratrace, now Italian? Feminine voices. A chair now occupied. Beard,
shaved sides. A whistle shrills. Sigh and a settle into heavy wooden
chairs, flowery maroon boulders, mix of English and Japanese, he’s full,
and some other tongue. Fingers tapping a plastic keyboard, like mine,
noe, misspelling, different stream of though, smaller in maroon and
flowers. Slightly weird. Cream parasol, black dress. Each to hir own
screen. LOCKER and the red arrow, taken again, grey fedora of soft
cloth, steady stream, always a new scene, white gloves crossed, now on
large plastic wheel, red cane, white masks, I’ll be waiting, striped
convexes, jazz slapping on the laptop keys, black plastic sun visor, a
yawn, a flake of eyebrow dandruff, shuffling, ahh..., tall red wooden
gate in the corner of the bus square, the Byrds? Up in the tree next to
the goat watering hole, mad on cactus, turn turn turn..., And a red
Turkish flag wrapped around the pole one third maybe fluttering, not
much wind, nose blowing, pollen, troll snot, roasted mutton, can’t see
the future, circles connected by blue lines, a map of time, rent a
cycle, the rent cycle, inescapable feudal poverty, sunglasses hanging by
an arm on a t-shirt neckline, a fluid natural gesture replicated
everywhere, I can’t do it, illiterate, deliberate, isolated, alienated,
puffy puke green coat rushing to avoid an omnibus, cheating? Reading
what is already written, typos allowed? Corrections? Revisions? Genius
never makes a mistake, which genius? Djinn? Let it (her?) speak through
the errors, blew an eyebrow hair off R, shake out the shoes, nice E, now
i7m behind, i seven am, 7AM, nice also at front, more mucus, love don’t
lrt me try, kind of magnet, more canes, only one, black, neighbours
leaves, raking? Breaking wind, stifled for now, WE, that is what
happens, checking again, n but why not? Next to the goat, a floater in
the moat, I’ve got more where that came from, perfectly placed short
snort, behind again, or not possible? Behinf what? New <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2018/02/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">assembling</a>, zip,
clinkle, noice eavsdrop, snort again now please, snort again now, whoop
whoop whoop, wooden legs heavy scrape the foolr, foolscape, any marks?
Check, jusasec... Nothing fake stone tile why all of the commas commies,
another nondescript with a mask, out the window, hand tired, recovering
from fall, release this mess? What mlhu! No nono! Cry cry pidgeons in
secerret hideouts between building, 5 dimensional coluor receptors, the
five skandhas according to haze, why get upset? Dude, slow waiting pace,
plaid scarf, back and forth, buzzer on wooden surface fart, red
bull hairy uniform junkie in sunglasses and another fucjing mask,,,
another tribe, reading glasses resting on the tip of a pink nose, long
white hairs surround a bald dome, another hage, <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2018/02/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">hag</a> on the fence’s edge,
tennis racket handle sticking out a the top of a backpack, sucum,
succour, find a sytyle, a hair crisis, drandruffy arroyo, quick exit,
slurp it back shove it in, another sits, jump a dog, a bundle of
flowers, 20 long years since Luang, sleeping tofddler in mother’s(?)
arms exit taxi, exueny, the high heel twirly locks set, generic hubcaps,
can’t afford to sleep, shoulder ache noew, old people everywhere, a
quartert baring int, trombones? No shamisen? Okinawa folk wood cane
waiting, a little hop a swaddle-de-daddle, Midnight as genius of course,
The Muse, Urania, The Cristian crisisian one, of astrology, no
astronomy, the stars, GOod Saturday, now down in Hell stealing the keys,
freeing those who wait, almost a glimpse down a..., should not have,
hanging from the tree, chocolates?fish tar, internal wandering begin not
begin, murmurmurmur, slapslap pittapitta sniff, janai, double
sunglasses lipstick, caps, hoods, small green plants clinging to the
corners, cough muted by an elbow pit, glasses perched on the patch
camera huge lensesss on gut, rs, rest, kek<a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2017/07/how-finnegans-wake-predicts-and.html">eke</a>kek, smirk at ? Point at?
Incapable of talk, fuzzy ones, sheepish, if you chose to die, concerning
the boundary, comma out right hand out, fuck a comma two crows nearly
in pigeon space, bruised spohie comma no why not earl gret egret regret
Tet white mouths elastic ears continue retinue; semi colon; half ;
comma:]3% kennedy was that? I was... Take your smokes off at the dor DOR
dearly and deadly orgone radishes, volume up gregariousness of the tung
tree Schtitt fell in love with a tree. So have i. Auto capital
correditect but only after perios perros and periods. Of war follwe
periods @ piece. Spaces also abritrarrry
freedukeyoudrewcineclub teoiouycget two light boxes of each pole,
disintegrating, shineforth, 45degreepointing tosidewalklenspointgoatee
gutsandsapporosondebenchtwoshare one can crackswhiskersfagreenplaschain
ban on backspace temp removed typooo gone muse finds another device
taking off coat best timecounting change glance asleep soundly on to p
of head cake eater movement of spoon to choco lips, lightsaber
orange/red shuffles over the lot just below vanished behind the wall,
risk a glimpse, lovely, purring slurps, cats have a rough tounge tree,
catch that or not? Snapping pen, now tuft hair has beer wife with rice
crackers? Ssss sounds, so nada, nanda, apologies for wiping, arrival,
out with the books, many archetypes, first pregnancy negative nancy
janai-oh! Yabai! Oh my! Itchy knee scabs, march the dangerous month,
over the handle bars just at the exact moment of a thought of home,
nemesis, hubris, green onions negi sticking out of mama bike basket, i’m
peeing!! The whistle is white. Changes the sound. Over a thousand of
nonsense now. Again bless yous. Covered baby head as bizarre
chest growth, blue band, crinkle shuffle, cookbook, late night drunk
Hamlet convo cat? No slightly goggle-eyed, baby you sacrifice, ankle
crack, placed helpless on the bench, confused or patient, directions,
routes of many colours, New york, a cane in both hands, more vertical
basket negi, private music, bag behind back, no clouds only a kite a
bird a hwak hawk i mean, objay still on bench commuter bike walked past
the ginkgo, got it! No red line, parents return, same sad slumping pose,
clop clop clop always look, the purpose? Small kid running with big
slab of circuitry, Honolua, grated manholes slippery when wet, real
release this? Old purple hair and slight smile, cup still empty, how can
they talk? Why can’t... Glowing 80s green, bobbing 5d p-picker struts
under the sign, read the last section, petering out, fuzzhead like S
spins the pole read then<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://rampages.us/sandysj/wp-content/uploads/sites/1720/2014/09/Rev.jpg" src="https://rampages.us/sandysj/wp-content/uploads/sites/1720/2014/09/Rev.jpg" /> znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-21653801455026175672018-03-04T18:55:00.000-08:002018-03-10T22:38:58.553-08:00Hyper-Carbolating the Furtive Gates of Becoming 3: Betwixt<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Our dreams are a second life. I have never been able to penetrate without a shudder those ivory or horned gates which separate us from the invisible world. The first moments of sleep are an image of death; a hazy torpor grips our thoughts and it becomes impossible for us to determine the exact instant when the "I," under another form, continues the task of existence. Little by little a vague underground cavern grows lighter... The spirit world opens before us.</b><br />
-- <i>Aurélia</i>, Gérard de Nerval</blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/March-hare.jpg" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/March-hare.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
Gilles Deleuze, in particular, had his own early but
explicit <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2018/02/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">connections</a> with the occult tradition, and this <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2018/01/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">influence</a>,
although suppressed by himself and his followers, can be traced
throughout the entire trajectory of his work. In an article entitled
“The Sonambulist and the Hermaphrodite: Deleuze and Johann de
Montereggio and Occultism,” Christian Kerslake tracks down the beginning
of this esoteric career. Kerslake’s essay begins:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>One
of Gilles Deleuze's first articles, published in 1946, was an
introduction to a new French edition of an arcane work of philosophy
bearing the title <i>Mathesis: or Studies on the Anarchy and Hierarchy of Knowledge</i>,
by one Dr Johann Malfatti de Montereggio. Deleuze was twenty-one when
he published his introduction to the French edition of Malfatti's <i>Mathesis</i>,
which was the first new edition for a hundred years. "Mathesis, Science
and Philosophy" is one of a group of five texts he published in the
period 1945-7, and which he subsequently repudiated and omitted from
French bibliographies of his work.</b></blockquote>
<br />
And the heavily occult nature of Malfatti’s book is absolutely evident:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>In <i>Anarchy and Hierarchy</i>
it is as if [German Romantic philosopher] Schelling's final theosophy
comes to completion in a hallucinatory Tantrism, in which the living
body of God, in its most complete self-development, itself appears in
hermaphroditic form in human sexuality, where the
coming-to-divine-consciousness becomes identical to the psychosexual
attainment, along Tantric lines, of spiritual "bisexuality". This
"system", uncovered by Malfatti, is said to form the basis for all
subsequent Eastern and Western esoteric thought, and now furnishes us
with the long-lost key to the ultimate system of medicine.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Not only, according to Joshua Ramey in <i>The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy
and Spiritual Ordeal</i>, did <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2016/10/barking-our-infernal-shins.html">Deleuze</a> write about the occult. He also
attended a salon at the residence of Marie-Madeleine Davy, “<b>a scholar of
medieval philosophy and passionate spiritist</b>,” in Paris where esoteric
ideas, among other radical subjects, were discussed by certain of the
glittering lights of French philosophy.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The
salons were the site of encounters between many leading French
intellectuals, such as Sartre and Bataille, as well as a very young
Gilles Deleuze. </b><br />
<br />
<b>The company also included a
number of French esotericists and devotees of occult philosophy, such as
Marcel Moré. Deleuze's work from this period reflects a profound
fascination with esoteric themes, inspired perhaps by Davy's own
conviction that a secret and subversive medieval tradition of
Neoplatonic thought contained a revolutionary gnosis waiting to be
rediscovered and redeployed in Europe. </b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNOovXWHE0JpX8g_fTDY0J0sNcacEb96cAvb-bWZRjIeygbfTEPyI3b4vhI9cjs9sSzFTlISizwOCVHHUnHeu8yaTjjGo0HBQL8xqvFNdkMTfbmEU2zusBCA7SCfbek-WFgvGYgMgW8eA/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/native_ceremonial_eagle_dancer.jpg" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNOovXWHE0JpX8g_fTDY0J0sNcacEb96cAvb-bWZRjIeygbfTEPyI3b4vhI9cjs9sSzFTlISizwOCVHHUnHeu8yaTjjGo0HBQL8xqvFNdkMTfbmEU2zusBCA7SCfbek-WFgvGYgMgW8eA/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/native_ceremonial_eagle_dancer.jpg" height="336" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
<h3>
Scrambling and Rambling </h3>
<br />
Kerslake argues, in his later <i>Deleuze and the Unconscious</i>, that well before such topics were quite openly explored
by D&G in the “Becoming Animal...” chapter/plateau (which Kerslake aptly calls “<b>a late modern occult treatise</b>”), they were
present in Deleuze’s <i>Bergsonism</i>. Kerslake quotes from near the close of
this text, which I’ll further condense here:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>It
could be said that in man, and only in man, the actual becomes adequate
to the visual. It could be said that man is capable of rediscovering
all the levels, all the degrees of expansion (détente) and contraction
that coexist in the virtual Whole... Even in his dreams he rediscovers
or prepares matter. And durations that are inferior to him are still
internal to him... man is capable of scrambling the planes, of going
beyond his own plane as his own condition, in order finally to express
naturing Nature.</b></blockquote>
<br />
This power to retreat into the virtual and to "<b><i>scramble the planes</i></b>" is
potentially active in all humans by apparent virtue of their being
human, but in practice it is only available to the sorcerer-shaman, to
the artist-poet, to the master dreamer. In short, it is available to
those who have passed beyond the first gate.<br />
<br />
Here the powers to
transform, to become other, to dissolve or shatter the one into the
many, to vary the speeds of existence, to travel instantly in time and
space, to expand and shrink the boundaries of the self, to superimpose
one place and moment upon others, are all at hand.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://img.viralnova.com/000/123/689/desktop-1425912128.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" src="http://img.viralnova.com/000/123/689/desktop-1425912128.jpg" height="640" width="448" /> <br />
<br />
The Master of Animals
is there to freely present them to anyone who possesses the key and who
knows the proper rites and intonations. The mystic, or more accurately
the sorcerer who is unbound to theology and priestly tradition, is a
singularity, a cosmic anarchist:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>He
or she is an unnatural figure, who no longer conforms to the
established laws of nature (that is, the laws of established nature). (<i>Deleuze and the Unconscious)</i></b></blockquote>
<br />
The controller of dreams, the artist/magician who comes to realize that
the portals to the astral extension are present everywhere, who
discovers that in fact there is no separation between the astral and the
physical for one who holds the silver key, soon realizes that the
“laws” of nature do not apply.<br />
<br />
The planes <i>can be</i> scrambled, the bounds
of the law can be endlessly stretched, forms can be altered, the only
imagined can be manifested in the light of day. Terence McKenna made
this exact realization in the confused and confusing wake of the
experiment at La Chorrera:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>I
have come to believe that under certain conditions the manipulative
power of consciousness moves beyond the body and into the world. The
world then obeys the will of consciousness to the degree that the
inertia of pre-existing physical laws can be overcome. This inertia is
overcome by consciousness determining the outcome of the normally
random, micro-physical events. Over time the deflection of micro-events
from randomness is cumulative so that eventually the effects of such
deflections is to shift the course of events in larger physical systems
as well. Apparently, when wanting wishes to come true, patience is
everything. (<i>True Hallucinations)</i></b></blockquote>
<br />
He goes on to explain that just as consciousness (in a way still unknown
to science) is able “<b>to direct the electrical flow in the central
nervous system</b>” of our bodies, given greater awareness it appears that
electrons and atoms beyond our mere physical boundaries can likewise be
manipulated.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb6sibF0Ma1ro0afro1_500.jpg" src="https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb6sibF0Ma1ro0afro1_500.jpg" /><br />
<br />
Within shamanic states of consciousness, in other words,
our personal boundaries -- the area within our willed control -- can be
enlarged, can encompass more and more of the “outside” environment. And
for McKenna, as in many shamanic and mystical traditions, the means by
which consciousness can expand in this manner is through<i> language</i>.<br />
<br />
The
sorcerer is revealed here as the original and ultimate <b>poet</b>. The
influence of Lovecraft on McKenna is obvious here, as Terence readily
admitted and Dennis concurred by affirming that the McKennas’
Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, also the name of Dennis’
autobiographical record of life with his brother, was taken directly
from Lovecraft.<br />
<br />
As in a Lovecraft story, the shaman-sorcerer descends to a space where
words fail, where the senses themselves must open and widen in order to
comprehend anything at all. In these spaces or states, the sorcerer must
discover the words to convey his or her experiences to the community,
in song or in writing or in other creative work, or risk insular madness
or even physical death.<br />
<br />
The sorcerer, as Kerslake reading Deleuze
points out, is “<b>the only successful madman</b>.” And there are many, mostly
unknown or forgotten or exiled, would-be sorcerers who have not
succeeded. The gate is easier to enter than it is to exit. Laws can
be stretched but often they do not contract to their usual and
comfortable limits.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://willeke73.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/72668_10151367293564139_1053320752_n.jpg" src="https://willeke73.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/72668_10151367293564139_1053320752_n.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
Lovecraft’s horror stories are often about those who
fail to navigate the vast realm between the gates. And there are many
fates worse than physical death. Where many fail -- and especially many
moderns fail -- is in taking things too literally.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Dissolving Borders of Self and Time </h3>
<br />
Hans Peter Duerr explains, in <i>Dreamtime</i>, that
whatever the shaman experiences it is a mistake to say that he or she
<i>objectively</i> becomes an animal. Instead, it is more accurate to suggest that
the dichotomies of objectivity and subjectivity, outer and inner, break
down at this point.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>What actually takes place is not that the shaman <i>turns into </i>an
animal, but rather that he has now experienced his "wild", his "animal
aspect". Not until that happens will he be a true shaman. For he cannot <i>know </i>his human side until he also becomes aware of what it is <i>not</i>. To put it differently, he needs to become estranged from it, to have <i>seen </i>it, that is, to have seen it from the <i>outside</i>.
After experiencing that, he is no longer what he once was. In pictorial
representations, he now appears as a human bird or a human with bird's
legs. </b></blockquote>
<br />
The successful animal-becoming, therefore, is a human-becoming. The
werewolves and the vampires are those who do not return, the damned. A similar thing
happens with the related phenomenon of magical flight. It would not be
possible to say that the sorcerer or the witch flies like a bird, at
least as we perceive bird-flight with our modern everyday consciousness,
but a type of flight <i>does</i> occur.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>It
not so much that we fly. What happens instead is that our ordinary "ego
boundaries" evaporate and so it is entirely possible that <i>we </i>suddenly encounter ourselves at places where our "everyday body", whose boundaries are no longer identical with our person, is <i>not </i>to be found. </b></blockquote>
<br />
The ego-defined boundaries of the self, which are identical to those
boundaries defined by our civilized culture, are at least temporarily
erased. The individual psyche and the collective psyche, known in the
past as the World Soul, temporarily become once again undivided.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e201538de673d5970b-pi" src="http://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e201538de673d5970b-pi" height="400" width="338" /><br />
<br />
And
this extension of the Earth, this astral plane, this psychic realm
between the material and the spiritual, between the gates, is precisely
the World Soul. The sudden erasure of boundaries can be experienced --
can be <i>known</i> -- as magical flight, as animal becoming, as telepathy or
telekinesis, as sexual and mystic ecstasy.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>...a <i>brujo </i>need
not be able to fly like a bird in order to arrive at a different place
within seconds, for it seems that a sorcerer can change the boundaries
of his person so much that he can be simultaneously within his everyday
body and <i>also </i>at another place, where his body is not. Something
like that may indeed be happening during divination and telepathy, for
the people involved do not seem to overcome distances the way
electromagnetic waves do. It does not appear to be a transmission as
assumed by most parapsychologists. We are apparently dealing more with a
"lifting of boundaries", in which there is a dissolution of barriers
developed during the processes of civilization and individuation. </b></blockquote>
<br />
Yet it is not only the boundaries of the self that lift. Throughout
history and in many lands, those individuals and groups who have passed
beyond the first gate have entered into the timeless. Or, in other
words, beyond this point time is no longer experienced as mere duration, measured by clocks or the sun,
but is identified with <i>eternity</i>.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://treeofvisions.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/vision-shaman.jpg" src="https://treeofvisions.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/vision-shaman.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
Across the world this breach into
eternity has been celebrated with processions and parades, with mad dance, with the
shattering of taboos, with the overturning of authority and the
inversion of social roles, with the expenditure and destruction of
property, with inebriation, with unbridled festivity, and with a riot of the
senses.<br />
<br />
And, very understandably, it is the marginalized, the
oppressed, the outcasts and <i>freeks</i> who were mostly likely to jump into
the fray, to stomp most wildly in the thick of the hairy ruckus.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>It
is easy to see how these "good witches", and also the werewolves or the
wild women of the Nomkubulwana, are related to those "great throngs of
women" who raged through the quiet of the night, the Couroi of Crete,
who danced over the meadows in the retinue of the Great Goddess, the
enraptured skin-clad maenads of the "Great Transformer", the nocturnal
hordes of the spirits of the dead of Artemis-Hecate, and the mad
"Bechler" women of the Slovenian Gail valley. </b></blockquote>
<br />
Witches, werewolves, maenads, spirits of the dead, the mad. With these
as the denizens of the midnight romps -- as in the cult of Cthulhu itself
-- it is easy to see how the existing authorities in the ancient and
medieval periods, and in “respectable” society in general, would attempt to
suppress or at least contain and rechannel these outbursts of truly
subversive energy. Festivals were therefore (mostly) permitted as useful
releases of steam, as acceptable (though temporary) penetrations of the
eternal.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>No matter how
great the differences between these groups of people, they were all
united by the common theme that "outside of time" they lost their normal
everyday aspect and became beings of the "outer" reality, of the
beyond, whether they turned into animals or hybrid creatures or whether
they reversed their social roles. They might roam bodily through the
land or only "in spirit", in ecstasy, with or without hallucinogenic
drugs.</b></blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
Mystery is for the Immature </h3>
<br />
With the onset of modernity, however, as more and more aspects of life
became colonized by the state and its micromanagement of the everyday,
the boundaries between time and eternity, between the real and the
imaginal, between the civilized and the wild, became thickened and more
rigid. The gates became harder and harder to find, and when they were
found and passed through there were fewer and fewer guides to point the
way home.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://www.shamanic.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Flying.Shaman.small_.jpg" src="http://www.shamanic.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Flying.Shaman.small_.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
With the wilderness being increasingly cleared, with the
territory being mapped and over-mapped, with the monitoring and coding
and stratification of everything, what was once “outside” retreated to
the “inside.” Communal ecstasies and potlatches became something inward and
alienated, branded as sickness, antisocial. Psychiatrists became the
police of the psyche.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Unfortunately,
it happens many times that psychiatrists of this sort are people who
equate the boundaries drawn by modern civilization between itself and
the wilderness with a dividing line between reality and illusion. As far
as they are concerned, the reaches beyond that border are mere
"projections", and the dissolution of the boundary indicates mental
illness. </b></blockquote>
<br />
The boundaries of the consensus, of the narrow spectrum of thought
accepted by civilization, are identical to the boundaries of the real.
Everything outside of these bounds/binds is nonsense, insanity,
unhealthy, impure. Yet for those still blessed or cursed by dreams and visions
of landscapes and beings beyond the borders, nothing within them
will ever wholly satisfy.<br />
<br />
Randolph Carter -- and likely Lovecraft, too,
despite his materialist claims -- was one of these few, and in <i>The
Silver Key</i> his melancholic disgust of the consensus is explained:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>They
had chained him down to things that are, and had then explained the
workings of those things till mystery had gone out of the world. When he
complained, and longed to escape into twilight realms where magic
moulded all the little vivid fragments and prized associations of his
mind into vistas of breathless expectancy and unquenchable delight, they
turned him instead toward the new-found prodigies of science, bidding
him find wonder in the atom’s vortex and mystery in the sky’s
dimensions. And when he had failed to find these boons in things whose
laws are known and measurable, they told him he lacked imagination, and
was immature because he preferred dream-illusions to the illusions of
our physical creation.</b></blockquote>
<br />
The illusions of the physical are the only accepted illusions. Fantasy
can be explored in art, but only if this art is self-conscious of its
separation from the real and confines itself within the authorized mores
and tastes of society. All else is dismissed as romantic, foolish and/or
destructive escapism. Even children, increasingly, are denied to right
to imagine.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://d3d00swyhr67nd.cloudfront.net/w944h944/LSE/LSE_SKAC_GA0929.jpg" height="416" src="https://d3d00swyhr67nd.cloudfront.net/w944h944/LSE/LSE_SKAC_GA0929.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
The eternal may have burst through in the past, or perhaps
will do so in the far distant future (but, the consensus bleats on, such
an event is very improbable as “natural laws” would be violated), but
it will not arrive today. The laws have been fixed. The gates are closed
and the keys have been lost.<br />
<br />
<h3>
No Place In Waking Life </h3>
<br />
All this indicates, even in the case of normally perceptive
scholars like Mircea Eliade, a total misunderstanding of where and when
this “dreamtime” is situated. As Duerr explains (quoting Eliade and
anthroplogists and psychoanalysts who hold a similar misconception):<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The concept of "dreamtime" does not refer to any time in the distant <i>past</i>
to which the Australians supposedly think they can be "called up",
"repeated" or "emulated", which "endures" or proceeds "parallel" to
ordinary time, or which could be "projected" upon the present. The
"dreamtime" is not past, present or future time: it has no "location"
whatever on the continuum of time.</b></blockquote>
<br />
It, the extension, the astral, the dreamtime, the realm of becoming, the
World Soul, does not fall within time. It is both fully absent and,
potentially, fully present. It is both underworld and off-world, in the
unconscious and in super-consciousness. It “occupies” the space between
the rigid categories and typologies of our defined and preassigned
reality.<br />
<br />
<br />
Kenneth Grant, in <i>The Magical Revival</i>, explains that this is also the
space of Lovecraft’s writing:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>H.P.
Lovecraft, in one of his tales of terror, alludes to certain entities
which have their being "not in the spaces known to us, <i>but between them</i>. They walk calm and primal, of no dimensions, and to us unseen." </b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://35zdx12spuu26slat31z8ucg-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/tumblr_m22rdjrznr1qbch85o1_500.jpg" src="https://35zdx12spuu26slat31z8ucg-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/tumblr_m22rdjrznr1qbch85o1_500.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
This was also the space that the McKenna brothers, by turning their organic
keys, blasted their way into in March of 1971. And in very similar
language to that used to describe what Carter beheld after stepping through the
first gate (“<b>It is full of those paradoxes, contradictions, and
anomalies which have no place in waking life..</b>”), Terence struggles to
make sense of what they had witnessed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Our
collective intelligence was not compromised, but what was compromised
was the ability of reason to give a coherent account of what was going
on, as paradox, coincidence, and general synchronistic strangeness began
to increase exponentially. Into the vacuum left by the collapse of
reason rushed a staggering array of exotic intuitions about why things
were as they were.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Terence McKenna’s thought gets unfortunately pegged to his prediction of
the singularity or <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2013/05/ichtheology-tail.html">concrescence</a> that would occur on December 21st of
2012. When this event failed to happen in an obvious and spectacular way (although I think
the jury is <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2017/01/ideal-objects-delerium-and-other-pizza.html">still out</a> on whether something <i>did</i> begin to ripple into
manifestation at that time) his wider perspective has been largely
neglected.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://itself.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/10_hermaphrodite_2.jpg" src="https://itself.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/10_hermaphrodite_2.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
The origins of 2012, though, were at La Chorrera. 2012, in a
very real sense, already took place then and there, and the date
essentially has become a symbol -- much like the Incarnation of Christ
-- of a singular event that could potentially happen at any “point”
within or between the space-time continuum.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Werewolves Become Vampires When They
Die </h3>
<br />
And there is the feeling,
reading these authors, that the space of the extension is really
coterminous with the world itself. Borrowing the terms of <i>A Thousand
Plateaus</i>, the becomings that characterize the entire plane of consistency
also move between the <i>strata</i> of the fixed and ordered. The plane of
consistency -- as well as all of the synonyms that D&G suggest for it,
including the Mechanosphere -- is yet another expression for the World
Soul.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Furthermore, if we
consider the plane of consistency we note that the most disparate of
things and signs move upon it: a semiotic fragment rubs shoulders with a
chemical interaction, an electron crashes into a language, a black hole
captures a genetic message, a crystallization produces a passion, the
wasp and the orchid cross a letter...</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b> <i>The
plane of consistency knows nothing of differences in level, orders of
magnitude, or distances. It knows nothing of the difference between the
artificial and the natural. It knows nothing of the distinction between
contents and expressions, or that between forms and formed substances</i>; these things exist only by means of and in relation to the strata.</b></blockquote>
<br />
All of this at once reflects and is reflected by the various becomings
participated in by the sorcerer roaming in the wild:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Thus
packs, or multiplicities, continually transform themselves into each
other, cross over into each other. Werewolves become vampires when they
die. This is not surprising, since becoming and multiplicity are the
same thing... the Wolf-Man's pack of wolves also becomes a swarm of
bees, and a field of anuses, and a collection of small holes and tiny
ulcerations (the theme of contagion): all these heterogeneous elements
compose "the" multiplicity of symbiosis and becoming.</b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://katiepology.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/mendicant-or-fakir.jpg?w=1400" class="shrinkToFit" height="640" src="https://katiepology.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/mendicant-or-fakir.jpg?w=1400" width="504" /> <br />
<br />
The world of the sorcerer, then, is precisely the physical world
apprehended through a wider range of perception, perception that has not
been blocked or limited by the various strata. The world is not wholly
transformed beyond the first gate, but our sense of it<i> is</i> entirely
changed. A new, in-between, realm opens up, one that has always been
there but has been little noticed. Henri Corbin, the French Islamic
scholar, <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2017/05/to-sea-ye-mystics.html">locates</a> this same understanding within esoteric Islam:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>We
observe immediately that we are no longer reduced to the dilemma of
thought and extension, to the schema of a cosmology and a gnoseology
limited to the empirical world and the world of abstract understanding.
Between the two is placed an intermediate world, which our authors
designate as <i>‘alam al-mithal</i>, the world of the Image, <i>mundus imaginalis</i>:
a world as ontologically real as the world of the senses and the world
of the intellect, a world that requires a faculty of perception
belonging to it, a faculty that is a cognitive function, a <i>noetic</i> value, as fully real as the faculties of sensory perception or intellectual intuition. </b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>This
faculty is the imaginative power, the one we must avoid confusing with
the imagination that modern man identifies with “fantasy” and that,
according to him, produces only the “imaginary.” Here we are, then,
simultaneously at the heart of our research and of our problem of
terminology.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Yet another synonym is introduced, then, with Corbin: the <b><i>mundus
imaginalis</i></b>. This, being a “realm” between the empirical and the abstract
or spiritual, exactly describes the World Soul and Corbin explicitly
makes this identity. Corbin also provides the key to enter this
threshold realm: the imagination or the “<b>imaginal</b>.” And with this we are
right back at the start. “<b>To think is always to follow the witch’s
flight</b>,” as Deleuze put it in <i>What is Philosophy?</i><br />
<br />
<h3>
Playing the Games of Satan </h3>
<br />
But words of caution are required. The astral or psychic realm that we’ve
entered into past the first gate is not the highest realm of the spirit.
Instead, it is a confusing place, a wonderful but often terrifying
place, a place full of angels and devils and all sorts of elementals,
nymphs, sprites and kobolds. It is very easy to get lost here forever.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/aquelarre-or-the-witches-sabbath-francisco-goya.jpg" height="199" src="https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/aquelarre-or-the-witches-sabbath-francisco-goya.jpg" width="640" /><br />
<br />
The Traditionalist, René Guénon, who like Corbin became enamoured by
esoteric Islam, writes of the fatal confusion between the psychic and
the spiritual in his masterwork, <i>The Reign of Quantity and the Sign of
the Times</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>This
confusion moreover appears in two contrary forms: in the first, the
spiritual is brought down to the level of the psychic, and this is what
happens more particularly in the kind of psychological explanations
already referred to; in the second, the psychic is on the other hand
mistaken for the spiritual; of this the most popular example is
spiritualism, but the other more complex forms of “neo-spiritualism” all
proceed from the very same error. </b></blockquote>
<br />
And this error is especially evident within shamanism, especially modern
interpretations of “shamanism,” and its power-obsessed shadow, <i>sorcery</i>.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The
magical part of "shamanism" doubtless has a vitality of quite a
different order, and that is why it is something really to be feared in
more than one respect; for the practically constant contact with
inferior psychic forces is as dangerous as could be, first for the
"shaman" himself, as is to be expected, but also from another point of
view of a much less narrowly "localized" interest.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Guénon approaches this with the utmost seriousness and warns, almost
curses, those who would lead others down this false path:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>It
is all too easy to see the gravity of the consequences of any such
state of affairs: anyone who propagates this confusion, whether
intentionally or otherwise and especially under present conditions, is
setting beings on the road to getting irremediably lost in the chaos of
the "intermediary world", and thereby, though often unconsciously,
playing the game of the "satanic" forces that rule over what has been
called the "counter-initiation".</b></blockquote>
<br />
The warning is stark and sobering. Nearly all of the figures mentioned
in these essays -- Lovecraft, McKenna, Deleuze and Guattari, Grant,
Duerr, etc. -- could be accused of propagating confusion according to Guénon’s
strict assessment.<br />
<br />
All of the above are explorers of the “<b>intermediary
world</b>" and several, Grant certainly and possibly Deleuze and Lovecraft,
are associated with occult orders such as the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, etc.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://horrorpediadotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/pdvd_025.jpg" height="360" src="https://horrorpediadotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/pdvd_025.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
These orders -- groups incidentally that Guénon was
also once an initiate of -- would be accused by Guénon and other
Traditionalists as being instruments of the “<b>pseudo-initiation</b>” or even the more openly subversive
“<b>counter-initiation</b>.” So how would the authors above defend themselves
against this damning criticism? Are they really Satanists?<br />
<br />
In the case of Deleuze and Guattari, -- despite their fervent talk of the
demonic, of animal-becomings, of unnatural participations and nuptials,
and of scrambling the planes and flying with the witches -- their own
warning echoes throughout <i>A Thousand Plateaus</i>. It is perhaps most clearly
expressed in the final plateau:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Every
undertaking of destratification (for example, going beyond the
organism, plunging into a becoming) must therefore observe concrete
rules of extreme caution: a too-sudden destratification may be suicidal,
or turn cancerous. In other words, it will sometimes end in chaos, the
void and destruction, and sometimes lock us back into the strata, which
become more rigid still, losing their degrees of diversity,
differentiation, and mobility.</b></blockquote>
<br />
All of this is playing with fire, dancing with chaos. And the other
authors above all have their own warnings and cautions. But do these
excuse them from Guénon’s curse? Maybe not. Maybe they are all agents of
the counter-initiation and/or its more prosaic sub-organizations. This has
certainly been <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2014/02/the-ship-of-sun-is-drawn-1.html">suggested</a> widely of Terence McKenna in quite recent years. <br />
<br />
<img alt="http://media.mlive.com/kzgazette_impact/photo/father-knows-best1-0jpg-07fded6b0e8cacaa.jpg" src="http://media.mlive.com/kzgazette_impact/photo/father-knows-best1-0jpg-07fded6b0e8cacaa.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
But, beyond the
first gate, which our whole culture may be stepping through, who does
not escape suspicion? We are all transforming, churning, splitting,
melding, becoming. The Traditionists vs. the Perennialists vs. the Neo-Traditionalists. Guénon in the 1940s cautioned that there were no authentic and traditional orders of initiation remaining in the West. Could this also be true of the East today? And how would we know one way or the other?<br />
<br />
The Traditionalists of the present may be as confused, as implicated,
as anyone else. Maybe they are also playing into an agenda that would prevent any rigorous exploration, any
unsanctioned expression, of the imagination at all? Or is this my own
satanic confusion and paranoia? The <i>mundus imaginalis</i> encompasses all of this.<br />
<br />
<h3>
To the Immediate </h3>
<br />
But
there still is hope of escape that does not lead back to the merely
material. The second gate! None of these authors stay anchored in the
astral. ‘Umr at-Tawil, the Master of Animals, leads us forward through
the shifting confusion and onward towards the ultimate gate beyond which
“<b>all dimensions dissolve in the absolute</b>.” We still hold the silver
key. Hyper-carbolation marches forth.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“I
am indeed that Most Ancient One,” said the Guide, “of whom you know. We
have awaited you—the Ancient Ones and I. You are welcome, even though
long delayed. You have the Key, and have unlocked the First Gate. Now
the Ultimate Gate is ready for your trial. If you fear, you need not
advance. You may still go back unharmed the way you came. But if you
choose to advance...”</b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://scottnassau.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/marc-chagall-moses-tablets1.jpg" src="https://scottnassau.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/marc-chagall-moses-tablets1.jpg" /> znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6600594361812328513.post-16446163002930058622018-02-28T00:06:00.000-08:002018-02-28T00:06:04.720-08:00Hyper-Carbolating the Furtive Gates of Becoming 2: Between<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Now she changed her shape</b><br />
<b>dared to become someone else.</b><br />
<b> She took up five scythes</b><br />
<b> six hoes past their prime:</b><br />
<b>she fashioned them into claws</b><br />
<b>fitted them to be her feet;</b><br />
<b>the shattered part of the craft</b><br />
<b> she put under her;</b><br />
<b>the sides she slapped into wings</b><br />
<b>the rudder to be her tail;</b><br />
<b>put a hundred men under a wing</b><br />
<b>a thousand at her tail tip --</b><br />
<b> the hundred swordsmen</b><br />
<b>the thousand fellows who shot.</b><br />
<b>And she spread her wings to fly </b><br />
<b>as an eagle lifted off...</b><br />
-- <i>The Kalevala</i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="Willard whyte casino" class="img-responsive img-thumbnail" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdY6DgAE92ZVTIX1XpZj9geI8RT2eRZgTi0mZ4IiVh7F7jPeIFYBY0-wK6F8TveIthq0_YdAE3fmDVawcXe4PY8teUNczy3dYxNkFvJciZihrXrQuPKBRNmB-G9eNRNDzCG-McGg9Ur_o/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/crispin.jpg" height="426" style="margin-bottom: 10px; width: 100%;" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
Swami Chandraputra/Dr. Challenger/znore (a quintessential unreliable
narrator) <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2018/01/hyper-carbolating-furtive-gates-of.html">continues</a> to tell his(?) dubious tale:<br />
<br />
In the back chamber of the cavern, the “<b>Snake-Den</b>,” Randolph Carter
approached the “<b>pylon</b>” gate and commenced the ritual that would open it:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Then he drew forth the Silver Key, and made motions and intonations whose source he could only dimly remember. Was anything forgotten? He knew only that he wished to cross the barrier to the untrammelled land of his dreams and the gulfs where all dimensions dissolve in the absolute.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Four things in particular stand out in this quote, and these four
indicate that Carter is explicitly conducting a form of magic that is
universally found throughout the cultures and ages of this world. To
open the gate Carter requires a key, ritual movement and arcane
intonations. These three elements are extremely important, but the
fourth is even more so: intent. His expressed desire and wish is to
cross into the realm of his dreams and then beyond this into the absolute.<br />
<br />
The order of Carter’s intentions here is at the crux of Lovecraft’s
whole creative project, and it has implications for all such journeys
over the <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2012/07/daat-night.html">threshold</a>. Carter’s primary concern, as we’ll find out, is to
bodily enter the lost kingdoms of his dreams. His desire to merge into
the infinite or eternal beyond both space and time is also a fundamental motivation, but is not the initial propelling force.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://xgfk15ssi.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/max-polla.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="400" src="https://xgfk15ssi.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/max-polla.jpg" width="348" /> <br />
<br />
Carter,
who is certainly Lovecraft, is driven by his dreams. It is the astral
“<b>extension</b>” of this world through the first gate that he is really
seeking, the origin and location of “dreams,” and not, at least in the
beginning, the inexplicable absolute that beckons behind the second.<br />
<br />
To
really understand Carter’s intentions requires going further back into
Lovecraft’s series of stories about Randolph Carter, and to show within these
how the mind of Lovecraft is directly reflected in that of his favourite
character.<br />
<br />
But before going there let’s return to the cow pastures at
the edge of the Colombian rain forest. This involves a leap, or an
overlay, of time from October 7, 1928 to March 4, 1971, and a magical
flight from Arkham to the Amazon.<br />
<br />
The efficacy of the Experiment at <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2012/12/the-fall-of-twenty-twelve-epiphany.html">La Chorrera</a> -- an ad hoc magical working couched in
pseudo-scientific terminology and methods -- was also dependent on the four
preconditions pinpointed above.<br />
<br />
The experiment itself was highly ritualized. The setting, time, motions, etc. were chosen not to conform with the scientific method, despite the lip service given to it, but according to synchronistic or magical correspondence. The crucial use of sound and vocal intonation -- supposedly activating "<b>electron spin resonance</b>" -- also finds a match in Carter's incantations. Finally, the ayahuasca plus psilocybin mushrooms together constituted the silver key.<br />
<br />
The stated intention of the experiment, however, appears to have been quite different. The exploration of the dream realm was never an expressed aim of the McKenna brothers. The intermediary dimension was not the primary destination. Instead, the goal was the creation of a alchemical hyper-object that was a fusion of both matter and spirit.<br />
<br />
This may turn out to be an important distinction as this exploration proceeds. However similar the Arkham and Amazon workings were structurally, Carter's/Lovecraft's intent was quite unique.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Homesick For Ethereal Lands</h3>
<br />
Yet Randolph Carter is not exactly H.P. Lovecraft. Carter is said to have
been fifty-four years old when he disappeared in 1928. At this time
Lovecraft would have been only twenty-seven, a difference of also 27 years. But it is in the
inner lives of the two men -- author and character -- and quite apart
from differences in age or other superficial considerations, where the
deep parallels become evident.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5nekKQAROog/WA9vMSEpVsI/AAAAAAAAIlE/zt5tm6TTZdYGM-J1DrLQntRcS7_QRt1DwCLcB/s1600/6b.jpg" height="432" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5nekKQAROog/WA9vMSEpVsI/AAAAAAAAIlE/zt5tm6TTZdYGM-J1DrLQntRcS7_QRt1DwCLcB/s640/6b.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
Carter, like Lovecraft, is a writer of
weird fiction and it is suspected in both cases that these stories are
not as fictional as they let on to be. From <i>Through the Gates of the
Silver Key</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>His career had been a strange and lonely one, and there were those who inferred from his curious novels many episodes more bizarre than any in his recorded history.</b></blockquote>
<br />
And many of these bizarre episodes occurred, for the two men, while
dreaming. In both his letters and in his poetry, which give the feeling
of direct autobiographical experience, Lovecraft extols the importance
of his dreams. According to his letters he was not a user of drugs or
psychedelic plants, as the McKenna brothers and many other inner
explorers certainly were and are, but he considered his dreams to be a far
superior key to these realms.<br />
<br />
The occultist Kenneth Grant quotes from
one such letter of Lovecraft’s in <i>The Magical Revival</i>, in which
Lovecraft is claiming not to need opium, as did Thomas de Quincey, in
order to achieve visions of other times and worlds.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>I never took opium, but if I can't beat him [de Quincey] for <i>dreams</i> for the age of three or four up, I am a dashed liar! Space, strange cities, weird landscapes, unknown monsters, hideous ceremonies, Oriental and Egyptian gorgeousness, and indefinable mysteries of life, death, and torment, were daily -- or rather nightly -- commonplaces to me before I was six years old. Today it is the same, save for a slightly increased <i>objectivity</i>. </b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://d2jv9003bew7ag.cloudfront.net/uploads/Christo-Coetzee-Bathrobe-Sign-detail-1956-photo-via-wikiart-555x312.jpg" src="https://d2jv9003bew7ag.cloudfront.net/uploads/Christo-Coetzee-Bathrobe-Sign-detail-1956-photo-via-wikiart-555x312.jpg" /><br />
<br />
At some stage, however, if we continue the comparison of Lovecraft with
Carter, it seems that HPL’s capacity to dream in this deeply visionary
manner did nearly dry up. Lovecraft wrote a whole series of stories
about the life and adventures of Randolph Carter, beginning with <i>The
Statement of Randolph Carter</i> in 1919 on up to <i>Through the Gates of the Silver Key</i> in
1932-3, but it is in the second last Carter story, <i>The Silver Key</i>, where the
process of alienation from dream is best described. This story begins:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams. Prior to that time he had made up for the prosiness of life by nightly excursions to strange and ancient cities beyond space, and lovely, unbelievable garden lands across ethereal seas; but as middle age hardened upon him he felt these liberties slipping away little by little, until at last he was cut off altogether.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Perhaps something similar happened to Lovecraft at some stage in his
adult life. Certainly there is a conflict evident in his writing, in
both his fiction and his letters, between the visionary awareness
arising from his dreams and his hard stance of scientific materialism
and skepticism. And at the age of thirty, at least in Carter’s life, the
latter had for the moment won out.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other. Custom had dinned into his ears a superstitious reverence for that which tangibly and physically exists, and had made him secretly ashamed to dwell in visions.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Although Carter strove to take an interest in scientific discoveries and
in the <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2016/04/a-short-note-on-tactics.html">materialist</a> culture of his peers, invariably he was
dissatisfied. Nothing compared to the incredible and extraordinary
scenes and adventures of his youthful dreams.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>He walked impassive through the cities of men, and sighed because no vista seemed fully real; because every flash of yellow sunlight on tall roofs and every glimpse of balustraded plazas in the first lamps of evening served only to remind him of dreams he had once known, and to make him homesick for ethereal lands he no longer knew how to find.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Science was too limited. Religion was a scam. Bohemian nonconformity was
even more contrived, and thus more unappealing, than traditional
conformity. Earthly travel was merely a mockery of the beautiful and
sublime places he used to visit in dreams. The Great War, likewise, was a
pale comparison in terms of excitement. His friends bored him with
their circumscribed imaginations.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Pc4J-gFmUumU9OjiFwyO-h2MC_eyWC2Vo9WChhP8M7Ck7UUg-YJ5sBWArZ_cXD0C0_sLIGE4zyL3ueEUSeZ4sBhG1tkwyq4L_-PzAwBsdW22r22WS1zeu-kE6ZyOZaImOjcDveioIS3t/s1600/Aztec.jpg" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Pc4J-gFmUumU9OjiFwyO-h2MC_eyWC2Vo9WChhP8M7Ck7UUg-YJ5sBWArZ_cXD0C0_sLIGE4zyL3ueEUSeZ4sBhG1tkwyq4L_-PzAwBsdW22r22WS1zeu-kE6ZyOZaImOjcDveioIS3t/s400/Aztec.jpg" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
Carter began to actively seek out the
bizarre and uncanny, but soon found that even popular occultism was too
commonplace for him. He delved deeper and weirder, to the very depths of
the esoteric and the arcane, becoming an expert in this lore. And in
this he did encounter supernatural and horrible things, as told in the
other Carter stories, but again these exploits fell far short of what he
had known in his dreams.<br />
<br />
Eventually, sick of his world-weariness, he
made vague plans to kill himself, yet even suicide required an energy
and interest that he no longer possessed or cared to possess. He wholly
retreated into memories of the dreams of his youth and, to his surprise,
he began to dream again. Then, as related in the last essay, his
grandfather appeared and told him where to find the silver key.<br />
<br />
And so
started the chain of events that led to his disappearance in October of
1928. The account of <i>The Silver Key</i> is really the account of Carter’s
associate Ward Phillips, who later attended the meeting concerning
Carter’s estate in New Orleans. At the end of<i> The Silver Key</i>, Phillips
presents his own theory of what may have happened:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>There is talk of apportioning Randolph Carter’s estate among his heirs, but I shall stand firmly against this course because I do not believe he is dead. There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine; and from what I know of Carter I think he has merely found a way to traverse these mazes. Whether or not he will ever come back, I cannot say. He wanted the lands of dream he had lost, and yearned for the days of his childhood. Then he found a key, and I somehow believe he was able to use it to strange advantage.</b></blockquote>
<br />
According to Phillips, Carter (and by extension Lovecraft himself) had
returned in body to realms that he had previously visited only in dream.
And this may have been the case. There is no indication in Phillips’
story, assuming that he wrote it as nonfiction, that Carter had anything
further or more profound in mind. And there is no talk of the second
gate.<br />
<br />
But Phillips, as insightful as he is, also gives no indication
that he has any idea of what really happened after Carter left from his
car with the silver key in hand. Four years later in New Orleans,
however, Swami Chandraputra did claim to possess such knowledge.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281/Philosophy%20of%20Magic/Paleolithic%20Art/eshleman.jpg" src="http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281/Philosophy%20of%20Magic/Paleolithic%20Art/eshleman.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
<h3>
The Limited Supply of Whirling Fancy </h3>
<br />
Thus, according to this account, Randolph Carter stepped beyond the first gate, well beyond our <b>“narrow,
rigid, objective world of limited causation and tri-dimensional logic</b>.”
Once inside, the inner cave and its arched gate neither existed nor
ceased to exist. He himself was simultaneously both the man of 1928 and
the boy of 1883. He had entered a “space” of contradiction and paradox.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>By the time the rite was over Carter knew that he was in no region whose place could be told by earth’s geographers, and in no age whose date history could fix. For the nature of what was happening was not wholly unfamiliar to him... A gate had been unlocked—not indeed the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from earth and time to that extension of earth which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.</b></blockquote>
<br />
The scenes that he witnessed, that he participated in, in this
“<b>extension of earth</b>” were both like his dreams yet very unlike them. All
was in flux, in a state of becoming. He was unsure of even his own
form.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>There floated before Carter a cloudy pageantry of shapes and scenes which he somehow linked with earth’s primal, aeon-forgotten past. Monstrous living things moved deliberately through vistas of fantastic handiwork that no sane dream ever held, and landscapes bore incredible vegetation and cliffs and mountains and masonry of no human pattern. There were cities under the sea, and denizens thereof; and towers in great deserts where globes and cylinders and nameless winged entities shot off into space or hurtled down out of space. All this Carter grasped, though the images bore no fixed relation to one another or to him. He himself had no stable form or position, but only such shifting hints of form and position as his whirling fancy supplied.</b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://treeofvisions.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/blog-tree-3.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="352" src="https://treeofvisions.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/blog-tree-3.jpg" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
The familiar places and landscapes of his dreams were nowhere to found.
Those places had names and definite outlines and borders. These new
places, in comparison, were entirely unknown and undefined, almost as if
it was from these primal locales of the imagination that all other
places, both in dream and in “reality,” emerged.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>He had wished to find the enchanted regions of his boyhood dreams, where galleys sail up the river Oukranos past the gilded spires of Thran, and elephant caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kled beyond forgotten palaces with veined ivory columns that sleep lovely and unbroken under the moon. Now, intoxicated with wider visions, he scarcely knew what he sought. </b></blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
Tales Told of Stone and Stem</h3>
<br />
Carter had entered the gate into the astral extension of the Earth
through a cave, and the cave has always been an entry portal for
shamanic initiation. Another traditional point of entry, though, is the
tree, and at La Chorrera it was after an ascent of the tree when the gate
opened.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Dennis's story was the classic description of a shamanic night journey. He said that he had gone to the chorro and had meditated in the mission cemetery we had visited before. He had begun to return to camp when he confronted a particularly large Inga tree near where the path skirted the edge of the mission. On impulse, he had climbed it, aware as he did that the ascent of the world tree is the central motif of the Siberian shamanic journey. As he climbed the tree, he felt the flickering polarities of many archetypes, and as he reached the highest point in his ascent, something that he called "the vortex" opened ahead of him — a swirling, enormous doorway into time.</b></blockquote>
<br />
And from within the treetop vortex, scenes from humanity’s ancient past,
of the pyramids and Stonehenge, and scenes from the even more archaic
past of distant worlds were visible. These scenes are strikingly similar to
what Carter beheld after passing beyond the first gate.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://cpb-us-east-1-juc1ugur1qwqqqo4.stackpathdns.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/8/15541/files/2014/09/tengrist-world-tree.jpg" src="https://cpb-us-east-1-juc1ugur1qwqqqo4.stackpathdns.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/8/15541/files/2014/09/tengrist-world-tree.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
The German anthropologist, Hans Peter Duerr, noted in his incredible
book, <i>Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary between Wilderness and
Civilization</i>, the sacred connection between the tree and the cave:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>At the cave of </b><b><span class="st">Hö</span>ll am Warscheneck one finds on the wall of the rock just past the crawl stone a small tree with a cross-shaped root. We are reminded how even much later the tree of the world, the <i>axis mundi</i>, guarded the entrance to the lower world. Representations of trees are seen quite often at entrances to caves. </b></blockquote>
<br />
It is at these points, at these sacred junctures indicated by caves and
trees, that a space/non-space of transition, of in-between-ness, of rapid
flux and transformation suddenly opens up. And from the earliest days
of the Paleolithic, shamanic initiations have been held at these
sites. The gates leading from this world to the next are found at these
feared and hallowed spots, and it is clear that the Snake-Den cavern on
the outskirts of Arkham was one of these.<br />
<br />
That Randolph Carter was undergoing shamanic initiation becomes obvious
with the news of his first encounter beyond the gate. His whirling
visions began to somewhat stabilize and he witnessed a circle of
towering stone pedestals. On each was seated an as yet indiscernible
form.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR4UvlZNTgQFnq4PVSMpKUgcSMy-Ap2HfSDMxUgrsZRTTPZNVsEMMCbSt2Rf1ud2ZCFI08ThnPhxW8oLn7I6ewQL4GsUMb77y7UVgsoFEsdNqvo8tdnVfs5-4y5waX35PtGnZVgFrdPPQ/s1600/DSC07193.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR4UvlZNTgQFnq4PVSMpKUgcSMy-Ap2HfSDMxUgrsZRTTPZNVsEMMCbSt2Rf1ud2ZCFI08ThnPhxW8oLn7I6ewQL4GsUMb77y7UVgsoFEsdNqvo8tdnVfs5-4y5waX35PtGnZVgFrdPPQ/s640/DSC07193.jpg" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
But hovering lower and just before the pedestals was a similar
form which began to communicate directly to Carter’s mind. Carter at
once knew the identity of this terrible figure, for his long occult
studies had prepared him well for this meeting. He recalled the words of
the “<b>monstrous</b>” <i>Necronomicon</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>...all these Blacknesses are lesser than HE Who guardeth the Gateway; HE Who will guide the rash one beyond all the worlds into the Abyss of unnamable Devourers. For HE is ’UMR AT-TAWIL, the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OF LIFE.</b></blockquote>
<br />
And sure enough this was the guard of the gateway, the lurker at the
threshold, the master of all transitions:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>For this Shape was nothing less than that which all the world has feared since Lomar rose out of the sea and the Winged Ones came to earth to teach the Elder Lore to man. It was indeed the frightful Guide and Guardian of the Gate -- ’Umr at-Tawil...</b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="http://caminoalsol.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/cropped-Ayahuasca-Plant.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" src="http://caminoalsol.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/cropped-Ayahuasca-Plant.jpg" height="224" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
But in worldwide shamanic lore this personage has yet another title, the
"<b>Master of Animals</b>". Duerr provides a fairly typical account of a
meeting with this intimidating presence deriving from the Desana Indians
of, appropriately enough, the rain forest of Colombia. The Desana are
avid users of ayahuasca.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The Desana Indians of the Vaupés river possibly possess a similar view of the world. After aspirating the hallucinogenic </b><b><i><span class="st"><i>vihó</i></span> </i>powder, the shaman climbs into a cave in the surrounding hills in order to meet with </b><b><i><span class="st"><i>Vihó</i></span>-mahsë</i>, the master of animals. With him, he exchanges animals for the souls of dead fellow tribesmen who then enter into the cave in order to maintain the balance of nature, as it were. </b></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
A principal function of the Master of Animals is to bestow upon the shaman
the power of becoming, and specifically the power of becoming <i>animal</i>.
The initiate, passing beyond the first gate and not yet arriving at --
or choosing not to approach -- the more formidable second gate receives
from the Master the ability, the <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2012/10/the-dark-shamanic-origins-of-debt-and_12.html"><i>siddhi</i></a>, to transform his or her own
physical form.<br />
<br />
<img alt="File:Horse Bit Cheekpiece, about 700 BC, Luristan, Iran, bronze - Cleveland Museum of Art - DSC08162.JPG" data-file-height="3240" data-file-width="4320" height="300" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Horse_Bit_Cheekpiece%2C_about_700_BC%2C_Luristan%2C_Iran%2C_bronze_-_Cleveland_Museum_of_Art_-_DSC08162.JPG/800px-Horse_Bit_Cheekpiece%2C_about_700_BC%2C_Luristan%2C_Iran%2C_bronze_-_Cleveland_Museum_of_Art_-_DSC08162.JPG" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
This ability, akin and in tandem with the mastery over
dreams, suffuses the threshold realm of the “extension,” which is often
also called in occultism the <i>astral plane</i>.<br />
<br />
The shaman or the sorcerer,
then, who passes beyond the first gate brings his or her knowledge of
the astral -- the knowledge that the world is composed of the stuff that
dreams are made of -- back into this physical plane. The sorcerer
demonstrates that the becomings of this world are not firmly fixed by
law but can, as in a lucid dream, be altered by will.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Echidnaing Thru the Interkingdoms </h3>
<br />
It is in three sub-sections, entitled “Memories of a Sorcerer,” of the
plateau “1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal,
Becoming-Imperceptible...,” that Deleuze and Guattari, in <i>A Thousand Plateaus</i>, return to their
discussion of Lovecraft. In the opening sentence of the first of these
sections the duo both characterize this variety of becoming and admit
their own roles in relation to it:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>A becoming-animal always involves a pack, a band, a population, a peopling, in short, a multiplicity. We sorcerers have always known that.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Each one of the protagonists under investigation here, each a possessor of
the silver key -- Lovecraft, the McKennas, Deleuze and Guattari -- are
revealing themselves as sorcerers. Each, it seems, has opened the gate
and crossed the threshold to the space/non-space of transition, of
in-between-ness, of rapid <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2016/03/the-four-machines-of-yoyodyne.html">flux</a> and transformation. And each is providing
clues, in his own fashion and capacity, of what this space is like.<br />
<br />
To D&G the becoming in question is always a becoming of
<i>multiplicity</i>. Animals always roam and howl in packs, and in the deepest
circles of the unconscious -- being simultaneously furthest out into the extension, the wilderness, the “dreamtime,” -- the animal is coupled
with the multiple.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://thetshirtco.com.au/image/cache/images/designs/Three-Wolf-Moon-Thumb-0-1-1-800x800.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="400" src="https://thetshirtco.com.au/image/cache/images/designs/Three-Wolf-Moon-Thumb-0-1-1-800x800.jpg" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
The sorcerous takes us to a level far deeper than the
single Oedipal animals or “<b>pets</b>” of Freud -- in no sense can they be
reduced to the Father or the Mother -- and deeper still than the
heraldic or “<b>State</b>” animals, the archetypal animals, of Jung. Instead,
these animals are manifold, swarming, shape-shifting, bewildering and,
in a word, <b><i>demonic</i></b>. The sorcerers, Deleuze and Guattari, quote
Lovecraft:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Lovecraft applies the term "Outsider" to this thing or entity, the Thing, which arrives and passes at the edge, which is linear yet multiple, "teeming, seething, swelling, foaming, spreading like an infectious disease, this nameless horror."</b></blockquote>
<br />
It is this “<b>nameless horror</b>,” which passes beyond the edge, into the
realm of dreams, into the astral, that the shaman-sorcerer inevitably
merges into. He or she becomes many, becomes demonic (or <i>daemonic</i> to
avoid the moral overtones of the prior), and the boundaries between
him or her (or him <i>and</i> her) begin to blur with other demonic beings.<br />
<br />
Each becomes less of what we think of as a thing, or a noun, and more
like a process, a verb. Thus, a wolfing, a lousing, a moosing, a
flamingoing. Past the gate, after initiation from the Master of Animals,
identity begins to break down. Boundaries are crossed.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://libidinalecology.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bacon-dog.jpg" height="329" src="https://libidinalecology.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bacon-dog.jpg" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
D&G speak of
“<b>interkingdoms</b>,” of strange participations with other species. Fluid,
many-sided, inter-penetrating, porous, furred, clawed, horned,
antennaed; wriggling, twitching, droning, chirping, screeching. And at
times an artist or a writer slips across unprepared, without intending
to do so. Fervent imagination alone provides the key.<br />
<br />
And for even the
most equipped, as Randolph Carter certainly was, the journey is entirely
dangerous, but for the unaware it is very often deadly:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>If the writer is a sorcerer, it is because writing is a becoming, writing is traversed by strange becomings that are not becomings-writer, but becomings-rat, becomings-insect, becomings-wolf, etc. We will have to explain why. Many suicides by writers are explained by these unnatural participations, these unnatural nuptials. Writers are sorcerers because they experience the animal as the only population before which they are responsible in principle.</b></blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
Throngs, Packs and Covens </h3>
<br />
The “<b>unnatural nuptials</b>” part of this is particularly unnerving. Sexual
energy is the primary energy of the astral. It is what fuels all dreams,
breaks down all barriers, and there is no force more powerful
(especially when it is fully sublimated as pure love -- but this still
lies beyond the second gate) or more fatal. Duerr comments on Paleolithic cave art:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The figures presumed to be shamans, such as the famous one of Lascaux, are sometimes represented with an erect penis... This maybe means that his flight into the other world was above all a sexual event. </b></blockquote>
<br />
The archaic significance of the cave and the tree becomes absolutely
unmistakable here. Layer after layer of animals, painted one upon the other for thousands of years in the darkest depths of primeval caves,
signified a force far more fundamental than mere “hunting magic.”<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://d2jv9003bew7ag.cloudfront.net/uploads/Jacob-Hoefnagel-Orpheus-Charming-The-Animals-1613-detail-865x577.jpg" height="426" src="https://d2jv9003bew7ag.cloudfront.net/uploads/Jacob-Hoefnagel-Orpheus-Charming-The-Animals-1613-detail-865x577.jpg" width="640" /><br />
<br />
The
womb of the Earth is the source and birthplace of all physical and
imaginative forms. The sorcerer, the artist, the would-be-creator,
worships and attempts to beget here, but he provides only a spark, only a
match to see in the dark, just as the boy Carter strikes in the
Snake-Den.<br />
<br />
He (and in this case always “he”) is but one of a series,
like Molly Bloom’s many -- actual or envisioned -- lovers, arriving in
humility and cast off later. The Creator is the ultimate <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2017/07/how-finnegans-wake-predicts-and.html">Cuck</a>. The real
creation has occurred long before, the song has already been sung. But
even to arrive here, one must pass over the threshold, become betwixt and
between, and here every boundary is erased.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Sorcerers have always held the anomalous position, at the edge of the fields or woods. They haunt the fringes. They are at the borderline of the village, or <i>between </i>villages. The important thing is their affinity with alliance, with the pact, which gives them a status opposed to that of filiation. The relation with the anomalous is one of alliance. The sorcerer has a relation of alliance with the demon as the power of the anomalous... the demon does not himself have the ability to procreate, he must adopt indirect means (for example, being the female succubus of a man and then becoming the male incubus of a woman, to whom he transmits the man's semen).</b></blockquote>
<br />
Yet this is by no means the occupation solely of men. On the contrary it
was women who performed this role of intermediary between the worlds
for far longer. It is the figure of the witch especially that is
exemplary here, and Duerr briefly outlines the part the witch plays in
history:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>As late as the Middle Ages, the witch was still the <i>hagazussa</i>, a being that sat on the <i>Hag</i>, the fence, which passed behind the gardens and separated the village from the wilderness. She was a being who participated in both worlds. As we might say today, she was semi-demonic. In time, however, she lost her double features and evolved more and more into a representation of what was being expelled from culture, only to return, distorted, in the night.</b> </blockquote>
<br />
And what followed, as we know, are the truly horrific witch hunts and
trials leading to the slaughter of millions of innocent women. This
mostly occurred not, as commonly supposed, in the Middle Ages, but in
the Renaissance and especially in the Reformation/Counter-Reformation
period when the assault on the imagination was at its most fierce.<br />
<br />
<img alt="http://www.contentwire.com/img/8YMgEHiaNRcvl85d.JPG" src="http://www.contentwire.com/img/8YMgEHiaNRcvl85d.JPG" /> <br />
<br />
Male
hermeticists, “heretics,” also suffered during this period and beyond
(most infamously Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake in Rome in 1600),
but they mostly fared far better than women. The hermetic/occult
tradition, to the extent that it survived, largely became dominated by
men, and the sexual current within it became deeply buried.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Pile On </h3>
<br />
This began
to change during the very late nineteenth century and into the early
twentieth. Kenneth Grant, in <i>Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God</i>,
explains how this new current (called the “<b>93 current</b>” by Croweyites)
was ushered in by <a href="http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.jp/2014/06/schools-out-forever.html">Crowley</a> and how he employed this in a similar way to
the sorcerers of the Old Stone Age:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The Scarlet Woman, as representative of Nuit, is the gateway to the Void. She is the magical embodiment of that stellar goddess whose metaphysical symbol is Infinite Space typified as the night-sky sewn with stars. She is the "yoni strewn with flowers" imaged in the Hymn to Kali, for the stars of Nuit and the flowers of the nubile virgin goddess are identical. Babalon -- literally the Gate of the Sun or solar-phallic energy -- is therefore the terrestrial formula of Nuit, and her vulva is the pylon through which the cosmic forces sweep into manifestation when the magical seals (mudras) have been opened. </b></blockquote>
<br />
The “<b>pylon</b>” that Grant mentions here must have been directly taken from
Lovecraft, a massive influence on Grant, and in the quote we see how the
gate is opened and the passage made.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i0.wp.com/emiliovavarella.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/animal-cinema-promotional-img4.jpg?fit=4800%2C2700" class="shrinkToFit" height="359" src="https://i0.wp.com/emiliovavarella.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/animal-cinema-promotional-img4.jpg?fit=4800%2C2700" width="640" /> <br />
<br />
Another occultist, a contemporary
of Crowley’s and the actual teacher of Grant, who applied these
techniques was Austin Osman Spare. Spare, a visual artist and ceremonial
magician, provided a working definition of sorcery. He is quoted by
Grant in <i>The Magical Revival</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Sorcery is a deliberate act of causing metamorphoses by the employment of elementals. It forges a link with the powers of middle nature, or the ether, the astrals of great trees and of animals of every kind. Will is our medium, Belief is the vehicle, and Desire is the force combining with the elemental. Cryptograms are our talismans and protectors. The will, or nervous energy, must be suppressed in order to create tension, and released only at the psychological moment.</b></blockquote>
<br />
For Spare, as with Crowley and Grant, this forged link with “<b>the powers
of the middle nature</b>,” dwelling in the intermediary astral plane or
Earth’s extension, was often explicitly sexual. But for Lovecraft --
Victorian as he essentially was -- the sexual element of these
“<b>unnatural nuptials</b>” was obscured if not wholly absent. The sexual, for
Lovecraft, was entirely sublimated to the imaginative.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/DgbMukNvabWEQipO8NCTPCemznRiDDXe5TBts9VyjsQwpnwSbGJNof7x2a3xdB6OGCA=h310" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/DgbMukNvabWEQipO8NCTPCemznRiDDXe5TBts9VyjsQwpnwSbGJNof7x2a3xdB6OGCA=h310" /> <br />
<br />
<h3>
Fictional Disguises </h3>
<br />
Yet regardless of
this apparent prudishness, and in spite of Lovecraft’s declared
skeptical materialism, Grant was fully convinced of Lovecraft’s occult
knowledge. Grant claimed (in <i>Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God</i>) that in fact Lovecraft’s varied and abundant occult experiences were
“<b>disguised as fiction</b>,” and in light of Lovecraft’s admitted "literary"
influences his esoteric affiliations become evident:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Lovecraft numbered Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood among his compères; this in itself is an admission of contact with dimensions outside those which Lovecraft accepted as scientifically permissible, for both Machen and Blackwood were at one time members of the Golden Dawn. The former was a close friend of Arthur Waite, whose effusions are too well known to need comment. Lovecraft deplored Machen's style, so it was not a literary influence that he acknowledged. What he really acknowledged was a magical influence that streamed, via the Golden Dawn and MacGregor Mathers, direct from the Draconian Tradition that in all its outward manifestations Lovecraft categorically denied and rejected.</b></blockquote>
<br />
In <i>The Magical Revival</i>, Grants devotes a couple of pages of direct,
side-by-side comparisons of the work of Lovecraft and Crowley, although
there is no evidence that the writer had any knowledge of the English
magician.<br />
<br />
Among the points listed in parallel are Lovecraft’s <i>Al Azif - The Book of the Arab</i> with Crowley’s <i>Al vel Legis - The Book of the
Law</i>, Yog-Sothoth with Sut-Thoth, and the deep dreaming of Cthulhu in
R’lyeh with the “Primal Sleep” of Crowley’s “<b>Great Ones of the Night of
Time</b>.”<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/58/7e/f1/587ef1d39a395789e731490cd4901af9--medieval-witch-witchcraft-history.jpg" height="400" src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/58/7e/f1/587ef1d39a395789e731490cd4901af9--medieval-witch-witchcraft-history.jpg" width="253" /> <br />
<br />
But in <i>Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God</i>, Grant explains that
the more fundamental similarity of the magical methodology of Lovecraft
with that of more open occultists like Crowley and Spare lies in his mastery of
dream control:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Crowley's Aiwass Current, Spare's Zos Kia Cultus and Lovecraft's Cthulhu Cult are different manifestations of an identical formula -- that of dream control. Each of these magicians lived their lives within the context of cosmic dream myths which, somehow, they relayed or transmitted to man from other dimensions. The formula of dream control is in a sense used by all creative artists, though few succeed in bringing human consciousness into such close<br />proximity with other spheres.</b></blockquote>
<br />
Grant further explains that the manner by which several magicians
transmitted their knowledge of these dreams realms, as shamans earlier
conveyed it to their tribe through song, was through fiction. This is
certainly the case with Machen, Blackwood and Lovecraft.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Fiction, as a vehicle, has often been used by occultists. Bulwer Lytton's <i>Zanoni </i>and <i>A Strange Story </i>have set many a person on the ultimate Quest. Ideas not acceptable to the everyday mind, limited by prejudice and spoiled by a "bread-winning" education, can be made to slip past the censor, and by means of the novel, the poem, the short story be effectually planted in soil that would otherwise reject or destroy them. Writers such as Arthur Machen, Brodie Innes, Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft are in this category.</b> (<i>Magical Revival</i>)</blockquote>
<br />
This, however, does not necessarily imply that such authors are
<i>conscious</i> transmitters of these ideas. Often it is the case that these
notions and images might slip by existing internal censors as well. An
author might be fully aware of the power of his or her work, but he or
she may have no idea to what extent this was granted from beyond, and
even of its true worth.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0e/c0/2d/0ec02d867927856072a669e22fbc953f--moomin-books-monster-illustration.jpg" src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0e/c0/2d/0ec02d867927856072a669e22fbc953f--moomin-books-monster-illustration.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
In fact, Grant argues that the less a writer is
aware of exactly where and how his or her work originated then the
greater that work is likely to be. Genius, in other words, is -- as in
its original meaning -- quite apart from ego.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>It is a well-known fact that few artists, even among the great, are capable of fully understanding the true nature and worth of their best work. The reason for this state of affairs is not so well known; it is because the artist is not responsible for his work. The degree of his achievement is in direct ratio to the degree of his absence when the work is performed.</b> (<i>Hidden God</i>)</blockquote>
<br />
From Lovecraft’s letters it seems that he also had this experience of
the unconscious transmission of genius. An essay by Patricia MacCormack,
“Lovecraft through Deleuzio-Guattarian Gates,” quotes one such letter
in which Lovecraft confesses the presence of “<b>some strange and perhaps
terrible mediation</b>”:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>I am not even certain how I am communicating this message. While I know I am speaking, I have a vague impression that some strange and perhaps terrible mediation will be needed to bear what I say to the points where I wish to be heard.</b></blockquote>
<br />
<img alt="https://iamyouasheisme.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/nightmare.jpg" src="https://iamyouasheisme.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/nightmare.jpg" /> <br />
<br />
Whether or not Lovecraft was an active shaman or sorcerer, a conscious
practitioner of dream control, and/or an actual initiate or affiliate of
esoteric orders like the Golden Dawn, his work has profoundly resonated
with subsequent inner explorers like the McKenna brothers and Deleuze
and Guattari.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>.../...</b></div>
znorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09870745426523284218noreply@blogger.com1