Religion

Notes from the Margins of Collective Evolution

Now, the wheel is the alchemical hieroglyph of the time necessary for the coction of the philosophical matter, and consequently of the coction itself. The sustained, constant and equal fire, which the artist maintains night and day in the course of this operation, is for this reason called the fire of the wheel. Moreover, in addition to the heat necessary for the liquefaction of the philosophers’ stone, a second agent is needed as well, called the secret or philosophic fire. It is this latter fire, sustained by ordinary heat, which makes the wheel turn and produces the various phenomena which the artist observes in his vessel:

I recommend you to go by this road and no other.
Only take notice of the tracks of my wheel,
And, in order to give an equal heat overall,
Do not rise or descend too soon to heaven or earth.
For in rising too high you will be burnt by heaven,
And in descending too low you will be destroyed by earth.
But if your course remains set in the middle
The route will be plainer and the way more sure.

(De Nuysement, Poeme philosophic de la Verite de la Phisique Mineralle in Traittez de L’Harmonie et Constitution generalle du Vray Se/. Paris, Pgrier et Buisard, 1620 and 1621, p. 254. Cited in Fulcanelli’s Le Mystere des Cathédrales, p. 50)

Robert Mariani’s recent post was very exciting to read, especially when he acknowledges the animalistic mechanics of decision making and pleasure seeking as requiring some evaluative (a word I prefer to “moral”) standard with substantial independence from, if not supervening influence on, the social system in order for that system to ascend any status more dignified than an orgiastic ebb and flow of raw energy.

It is not my intention here to lay out a predictive or a prescriptive program for “exit,” much less articulate one “direction” among many, which movements will have to “pick” if they are to be successful. Let me state here that progress is dead unless something living abides in it, something continues. That said, sometime in the past millennium (opinions differ wildly as to exactly when), the vehicle of history became fully automated, and the majority of institutional energy since has been drawn with increasing rapidity and increasingly refined exclusivity into inquiring how, exactly, we can make this thing go faster.

Whether corrective attempts to accelerate, sustain, or slow the progress of time, the process of keeping the universe from falling apart at the seams has never been “walkaway safe.” By this very same token, attempts to secure the dignity of this sacred undertaking have brought the whole process embarrassingly close to an absolute halt many, many times throughout history. Attempts to preserve Tradition have, all to often underestimated the natural resilience of secret knowledge.

The propositional integrity of Traditional forms has always rested in their wholeness, their comprehensive grasp on all the imitations they propitiate in profane orders. As such, any divisive sophistry doing business in thoughtless excretions and regurgitations which merely describe virtue (themselves in fact mere adumbrations of these forms) necessarily falls short of any edifying potential.

Any conflicts which arise between different aspiring receivers of tradition reflects poorly on the characters of these individuals, who must then examine and scrutinize themselves to a degree which may surpass the actual scholastic demands of intellecting the forms. Cultures of critique (specifically Hebraic currents for which I feel a special affinity) have always arisen in a desire to maintain the sanctity of the Traditional contents of the customary forms (a neat little inverse analogy), the inner meanings which do not change the way outer appearances do. Tradition itself is immune to critique in the very same sense that “hot” is immune to “cold;” substance may fluctuate between the essential poles of Tradition and the critical self-awareness which enables it either to reject vain customs and the claims of duplicitous individuals, or to reject itself. But neither quality can “become” the other any more than the color red can “become” the color blue.

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The priest in the civil religion

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Chaser:

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While some have argued that Christianity is the national faith, and others that church and synagogue celebrate only the generalized religion of “the American Way of Life,” few have realized that there actually exists alongside of and rather clearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and well-institutionalized civil religion in America. This article argues not only that there is such a thing, but also that this religion-or perhaps better, this religious dimension-has its own seriousness and integrity and requires the same care in understanding that any other religion does.

— Robert Bellah, Civil Religion in America

“Without Gods, no oaths may stand,” is the substance one of Aristophenes’ arguments — a false one perhaps — against Socrates, immortalized in his satirical play “The Clouds.” The Masons, though perhaps not believing Aristophenes’ accusation itself did understand his point. The point being, that when men with no interest in helping you agree to help you, if you expect them to keep their promise, there must be something that binds them to it. The Romans and Greeks very explicitly believed in the social technology of religion — even if they held in contempt various aspects of it.

Atheists do spend some time in apology against this point, since it would seem to them perhaps to be a ‘cheap argument’ like Pascal’s Wager is considered to be. The gist is that we religious folks are shoehorning religious superstition in on the technicality that without it, contracts that cannot be backed up with force become impossible. The arguments against this are numerous; personal anecdotes, kinds of agreements between kin, etc. However even Atheists would acknowledge that the principle of outside force — a third party of some sort — is necessary to ensure vows are fulfilled. Arguing one’s own personal nobility or praxis of kingroups is not a solution to the problem of a polyglot nation needing to ensure plundering is not routine.

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Elliot Rodger’s OMG chronicles

We’re about two weeks out from the Isla Vista massacre, and salacious round-ups of available social media information have given way to thoughtful columns about what it all means.

One of the most striking things about Elliot Rodger’s mental state, in his manifesto and elsewhere, is his insistence that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he was “a drop-dead gorgeous, fabulous, stylish, exotic gem among thousands of rocks.”

As many have noted, this and other details seem to indicate a privileged cast of mind taken to the extreme, which is why his rampage made for the perfect ‘teachable moment’ to a media increasingly devoted to narratives about patriarchy and white supremacy — Rodger was simply a malignant version of the latent biases within all of us; his violence an individualized form of the structural oppression embedded in all corners of our society, and so on.

The truth seems somewhat more complicated — the boy really did have a pedigree; one that, like so many others, decayed. The image above is one of Elliot Rodger’s grandfather’s many famous photographs.

George Rodger’s definitive posthumous collection is called Humanity or Inhumanity, covering his many years of work, including most famously his photographs of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. If his work resides in the tension between those things, it seems to have been resolved in his grandson’s only artistic creation two generations later, with Elliot’s realization of “just how brutal and twisted humanity is as a species.”

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The Egregore, an introduction

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Chaser:

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UF makes the subtle point that one cannot engender a positive egregore, or collective mind parasite. This is related to the principle that the mind parasite is an effect of “congealed” or “coagulated” psychic energy. As a result, it always “enfolds,” whereas the good radiates. The former is an inward, contracting movement, whereas the latter is an expansive, radiant movement.

— Robert Godwin, One Cosmos

In the Hugo award winning comic Digger, there is a god called ‘The Black Mother.’ The Black Mother is not an actual god per se, that is to say, she is not part of that world’s mythos which predates history and whose mysterious ministrations call forth the dedication and belief of pious souls. Rather, she is the imaginary perversion of the mother of a god (who in the story seems to have been a real person) called ‘The Good Man,’ a Christ-figure in that world.

Suffering children who prayed for deliverance and did not receive it created an explanation for this in their devotion and fear of this Black Mother, who through their fear and hatred actually took root somehow in the souls of these children, one of whom is an integral part of the story.

In the world where we are made to operate we desire the good; therefore we try to understand our well-intentioned mistakes in terms of the good, if not because we are afraid of condemnation at least because we have no knowledge of how to seek the good outside of our own feelings. The soul asks per Nietzsche, if what I do is not good, then who is left to correct me? If the world will not correct me, and I am pleased with what I do, and there is no longer a god to correct me, and I no longer feel shame about it, then what I do must be good.

The concept of the ‘radiation’ of the good is essential to understanding what an egregore is and how it could be in any way real at all. (And why this phenomenon is seemingly asymmetrical) There are some among us that believe, as the Gnostics did from time to time, that through thoughts they could change the world directly. A lot of quasi-science is based on these concepts, where it is thought that good thoughts attract the good and evil thoughts, the evil. Extrapolation on this idea comes to concepts such as using breathing techniques to become a god, to use mantras to bring good fortune, and so forth. Underlying it is an assumption about the universe, namely: that it is in reality nothing more than pure thought, and strong thought makes reality, while weak thought is made by reality.

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For the greater good — mine.

The rise of modernity has brought with it a moral shift from the universal laws of good and evil to the taste-based judgment of individuals. Our world grows ever more dizzying with the complexity of the threads of modern contingency, and individuals feel ever more alienated from the happenings around them. The plight of a neighbor is no longer as present in mind, since actions are more divorced from knowable results and meaning. For better or worse, the low-level functions of human beings will naturally lead down the easy path of enjoyment and aversion to non-enjoyment, outside of a moral system dictating that there is a correct way to behave. Of course, people still have ideas of  right and wrong. If you ask any given person living in a coastal urban area about what is a good thing for a person to do in life, the results won’t be that startling. Much like the Simpsons after season 10, the concept of “doing the right thing” has been quietly replaced by an impostor with the same name and appearance, aping the mannerisms of the original with middling success. Helping others will probably come out as part of our urban sophisticate’s answer, and everything still seems pretty normal.

When examined, this answer leads to to this conclusion: being a “good person” is a desirable trait because it feels good. Things are getting a little odd in this world of morals – but they’re about to get a whole lot stranger. We are told that being a happy person is the moral imperative. Follow your dreams! Find true love! Have a fulfilling career! See the world! This is definitely an incredible deal — these are all gratifying things that you already wanted to do, and it gives you the added bonus of making a good person. Of course, her moral prescriptions for living the life of a good person don’t even require thinking about right and wrong, meaning you don’t need a moral system to guide you to such behavior. The less easy truth is that while such things are certainly not bad things to want, they aren’t the final boss of moral goodness, either. In the mind of people like our friend, who is actually an intelligent and kind hypothetical person, the moral imperative to do what is objectively right, whether we would otherwise like to or not, has been replaced by the wholly redundant moral imperative to stimulate the enjoyment-seeking and novelty-seeking firmware that is our animal nature.

This modern doctrine’s Achilles’ heel made manifest is the fact that a system of right and wrong based on the feelings of people necessarily inherits the pride, prejudice, and desire for self-gratification that are inherent to the feelings of people. Even assuming the moral conclusions drawn from this relative system are the same as an objective one, the execution is different. As soon an opportunity arises demanding the right thing to be done, a moral relativist will, by the rules inherent to such a system, falter as soon as his egotism or prejudice are challenged. Of course, moral objectivists are prone to the very same human frailty, but not because of the very rules of their moral system. If we are to believe that we ourselves are moral lawgivers, then we are just self-canonized saints in the Church of Me. All experiences start and end with the individual, and absent of a meaning beyond our limits, the unexperienced experience of other beings is beyond our limits. We are the alpha and the omega of our own existence, bounded in a nutshell and counting ourselves kings of infinite space.

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