Dec 28, 2023·edited Dec 28, 2023Liked by The Druid Stares Back
Fascinating piece. I think the purification of the Imagination is the better half of spiritual life.
I recall Rudolf Steiner saying how the inflamed agitated imaginations of magicians often tend to a loss of a sense of reality and, ultimately, to suicide.
"And then the problem that disquieted Agrippa of Nettesheim, author of the classic work on magic, De Occulta Philosophia: How could it be that the author of this book in which one finds a multitude of things based on authentic experience, how could it be that he, the enthusiastic adept, became the sceptic disenchanted with life who wrote De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum ('On the Uncertainty and the Vanity of the Sciences'), which was written during his last years of life?
The answer to this question is that Agrippa had built a 'tower of Babel' which was later blasted by a 'thunderbolt from above'. It was higher reality which made all the 'sciences of the supernatural'—to which he had devoted the best years of his life—appear vain to him. The tower was shaken, but the way of heaven was opened. He was free to begin again, i.e. in a condition to enter upon the way of growth." - Meditations on the Tarot, pg 487
We become whatever we fixate on. As Shankara suggests: rajas destroys tamas, and sattva destroys rajas and tamas -- therefore, pursue sattva!
"I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber."
A wonderful final part to the trilogy. And so enriching. Thank you.
I have been researching systemic corruption in catholic church and banking. The perversion of the natural-magical creation process is there. I didn't realise it was a magical process in the first place. My construct is 'life process' and 'lethic life process' - the natural and distorted creation principle.
What you call the dark realm of imagination is what I call 'the dome'. It is the whore, the fornicated divine feminine in service of the 'prism', the distorted technologised masculine. The dome is in full action in the Catholic church case study, but still plays a role in the more praetorian 'prism' banking case study. The only way the dome-prism can continue to work, as you have theorised, is an increasing loss of consciousness/participation, outsourced to the machine.
I agree, Sophiology is its antidote, perhaps she is found in Barfields 'Final Participation'?
Thank you again for your wonderful Sophiological creations.
Just one more idea popped in my head- have a look at the tattoos on Levi's symbol of Baphomet. Solve Coagula.
The 'substance' of the life process, and the lethic life process, of natural and dark magic.
Tear apart, put together (but interesting use of Latin verbs- solvo like water untangling a knot, coagula forced together in a tribe that doesn't fit). In our nominalised world, we can't tell the difference between a 'creation' process that damns and one that saves.
I thank our ancestors for the generous etymologies they've gifted us. And pray that we never forget how to unlock their treasures.
Brilliant - love this quote - “Contemplation alone remains incapable of enchantment because no one who is self-directed is subject to enchantment: for he is one, and that which he contemplates is himself, and his reason is not deluded, but he makes what he ought and makes his own life and work.”
Wow, I'm enchanted by your writing. Never thought about the world through the lenses that you describe, from the perspective of the ideas that you introduce
Politics is the magic of mass deception. This has been known since at least the Middle Ages. The methods are well established and are being adapted to technology. But the principles (as you suggest) are neither new or secret. Fooling people into doing your bidding is not persuasion. Yet it is the former that is practiced as an expedient because persuasion does not work and fooling people becomes coercion and the black arts of torture and murder.
Fascinating piece. I think the purification of the Imagination is the better half of spiritual life.
I recall Rudolf Steiner saying how the inflamed agitated imaginations of magicians often tend to a loss of a sense of reality and, ultimately, to suicide.
"And then the problem that disquieted Agrippa of Nettesheim, author of the classic work on magic, De Occulta Philosophia: How could it be that the author of this book in which one finds a multitude of things based on authentic experience, how could it be that he, the enthusiastic adept, became the sceptic disenchanted with life who wrote De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum ('On the Uncertainty and the Vanity of the Sciences'), which was written during his last years of life?
The answer to this question is that Agrippa had built a 'tower of Babel' which was later blasted by a 'thunderbolt from above'. It was higher reality which made all the 'sciences of the supernatural'—to which he had devoted the best years of his life—appear vain to him. The tower was shaken, but the way of heaven was opened. He was free to begin again, i.e. in a condition to enter upon the way of growth." - Meditations on the Tarot, pg 487
We become whatever we fixate on. As Shankara suggests: rajas destroys tamas, and sattva destroys rajas and tamas -- therefore, pursue sattva!
"I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber."
A wonderful final part to the trilogy. And so enriching. Thank you.
I have been researching systemic corruption in catholic church and banking. The perversion of the natural-magical creation process is there. I didn't realise it was a magical process in the first place. My construct is 'life process' and 'lethic life process' - the natural and distorted creation principle.
What you call the dark realm of imagination is what I call 'the dome'. It is the whore, the fornicated divine feminine in service of the 'prism', the distorted technologised masculine. The dome is in full action in the Catholic church case study, but still plays a role in the more praetorian 'prism' banking case study. The only way the dome-prism can continue to work, as you have theorised, is an increasing loss of consciousness/participation, outsourced to the machine.
I agree, Sophiology is its antidote, perhaps she is found in Barfields 'Final Participation'?
Thank you again for your wonderful Sophiological creations.
We definitely need to talk.
Just one more idea popped in my head- have a look at the tattoos on Levi's symbol of Baphomet. Solve Coagula.
The 'substance' of the life process, and the lethic life process, of natural and dark magic.
Tear apart, put together (but interesting use of Latin verbs- solvo like water untangling a knot, coagula forced together in a tribe that doesn't fit). In our nominalised world, we can't tell the difference between a 'creation' process that damns and one that saves.
I thank our ancestors for the generous etymologies they've gifted us. And pray that we never forget how to unlock their treasures.
Brilliant - love this quote - “Contemplation alone remains incapable of enchantment because no one who is self-directed is subject to enchantment: for he is one, and that which he contemplates is himself, and his reason is not deluded, but he makes what he ought and makes his own life and work.”
Wow, I'm enchanted by your writing. Never thought about the world through the lenses that you describe, from the perspective of the ideas that you introduce
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. Blessings
Politics is the magic of mass deception. This has been known since at least the Middle Ages. The methods are well established and are being adapted to technology. But the principles (as you suggest) are neither new or secret. Fooling people into doing your bidding is not persuasion. Yet it is the former that is practiced as an expedient because persuasion does not work and fooling people becomes coercion and the black arts of torture and murder.