The knowledge of ourselves is not only an incitement to seek after God, but likewise a considerable assistance towards finding him. On the other hand, it is plain that no man can arrive at the true knowledge of himself, without having first contemplated the divine character, and then descended to the consideration of his own.
—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, 47 [emphasis mine].
Archive for the Category » Quotes «
Friday, 02 January 2009 at 11:54 PM | Author: bishop
Category: Philosophy, Quotes, Religion
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Thursday, 01 January 2009 at 8:33 PM | Author: bishop
The rules for the meme: Take the first line from the first post of every month for the last year, and post them together as a kind of cross-section of what you were blogging about during the year. Remember to link to all the posts you are excerpting.
So, for 2008, here we go …
January
Random Thoughts About Crowley’s Commentaries
If one takes a strict fundamentalist approach to the subject, then all of Crowley’s commentaries, by definition, are uninspired and outside the Class A designation and therefore (much to the same fundamentalist’s disappointment) capable of being ignored, overlooked, and set aside from any comprehension of the Law.
February
Absolute Power
Lord Acton provided us with one of the most well-known quotes in regard to leaders and power: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
March
Examining Arjuna’s Dharma
I’ll take what HUZZAHs I can. ;))
April
WorldLit: What A Girl Wants
What a girl wants/ What a girl needs/ Whatever makes me happy sets you free—It is the crooning of the pop icon Christina Aguilera that nailed it straight out of Chaucer and an entire generation of young people missed it head on.
May
[blank due to personal circumstances]
June
[blank due to personal circumstances]
July
Emergent Thelema
There is little doubt Crowley saw a future for the Law of Thelema where it would be taught as any other course in an academic environment if not indeed the pedagogic foundation of a new institutionalized academia.
August
Preconditions of a Thelemic Worldview
While I personally think this is a horrible way to start a study, it is an unfortunate necessity when it comes to any serious thelemic topic of discussion.
September
Cultural Studies: Alien Culture
["The Day the Cisco Kid Shot John Wayne"] did not stick out to me as much as the other.
October
Repost—Lies and Truth: The Grand Painting
… the secret is not Truth in Death, but Truth in Life.
November
Busy Saturday General Update
It’s been a whirlwind of a day already.
December
In Another Dream, My Love
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
Category: Quotes, Writing
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Saturday, 27 December 2008 at 10:52 PM | Author: bishop
Step back for a moment and see the bigger picture of what’s actually being said here.
And then go re-examine Thelema in a different light.
The idea of a synthesis between theology and philosophy has led to the dream of a “Christian philosophy.” The term is ambiguous. It can mean a philosophy whose existential basis is historical Christianity. In this sense all modern philosophy is Christian, even if it is humanistic, atheistic, and intentionally anti-Christian. No philosopher living within Western Christian culture can deny his dependence on it, as no Greek philosopher could have hidden his dependence on an Apollonian-Dionysian culture, even if he was a radical critic of the gods of Homer. The modern vision of reality and its philosophical analysis is different from that of pre-Christian times, whether one is or is not existentially determined by the God of Mount Zion and the Christ of Mount Golgotha. Reality is encountered differently; experience has different dimensions and directions than in the cultural climate of Greece. No one is able to jump out of this “magic” circle. Nietzsche, who tried to do so, announced the coming of the Anti-Christ. But the Anti-Christ is dependent on the Christ against whom he arises. The early Greeks, for whose culture Nietzsche was longing, did not have to fight the Christ; indeed, they unconsciously prepared his coming by elaborating the questions to which he gave the answer and the categories in which the answer could be expressed. Modern philosophy is not pagan. Atheism and anti-Christianity are not pagan. They are anti-Christian in Christian terms. The scars of the Christian tradition cannot be erased; they are a character indelebilis. Even the paganism of naziism was not really a relapse to paganism (just as bestiality is not a relapse to the beast).
—From: Paul Tillich. Systematic Theology (Part I). p.27-28.
Category: Philosophy, Quotes, Religion
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Wednesday, 17 December 2008 at 11:15 AM | Author: bishop
I guess it just goes to show that sometimes I should just listen to myself.
There comes a time when one realizes that the demons of the night are the lovers of a lifetime.
There is no escaping the love of Evil or the love for Her.
—Vita Pontifex[1], “Ars Tenebrarum”
innervox
- life of bishop, bishop. 2006. [↩]
Category: Family, Quotes
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Friday, 12 December 2008 at 1:11 AM | Author: bishop
Sustained trauma eventually teaches the attitude of the knife—chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: “Now it’s complete because it’s ended here.”[1]
innervox
- With apologies to Frank Herbert. [↩]
Category: Family, Love, Quotes
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Thursday, 30 October 2008 at 2:10 PM | Author: bishop
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
—Oscar Wilde
Category: Life, Quotes
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Monday, 13 October 2008 at 8:06 AM | Author: bishop
The Earthseed quotes are at an end. I find it interesting that there is a certain synchronicity in having gone through all these just at this moment in my life. The central message of Earthseed—however fictional it may be—is that God is Change. What better way to see the universe and to reveal divinity than to see what is apparent all around us. Why would we be any different?
On the way to work this morning I was thinking back through many of the different quotes and putting them into perspective. I was suddenly struck with a thought that hit with such clarity.
Our Holy Book says, “a feast for life and a greater feast for death!” (AL 2.41). There is much life to be feasted after, to be sure. But we usually interpret these as physical life and physical death. We even have ceremonies for an individual’s “Greater Feast.” Certainly this is part of it, of course. But I think that there is something more here.
God is Change. Change is Death. We see this principle in the Death card of the Major Arcana. Death is rarely indicative of a “real” death but of natural change in the course of life. Resistance to Change is usually fatal in some way, either physical or psychological or some other. But Change cannot actually be resisted in the first place. It will happen. It does happen regardless of our desires.
In any case, I hope you enjoyed the Earthseed material. I couldn’t find it anywhere else on the web in a complete form, but now there is one resource at least. It’ll have to go through the category link to get them all in once place, but that’s the breaks. Maybe someday I’ll create a page for them broken down by year or something.
Category: Quotes
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Sunday, 12 October 2008 at 8:30 AM | Author: bishop
To survive,
Let the past
Teach you—
Past customs,
Struggles,
Leaders and thinkers.
Let
These
Help you.
Let them inspire you,
Warn you,
Give you strength.
But beware:
God is Change.
Past is past.
What was
Cannot
Come again.
To survive,
Know the past.
Let it touch you.
Then let
The past
Go.
—Earthseed: The Books of the Living
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Saturday, 11 October 2008 at 8:30 AM | Author: bishop
Are you Earthseed?
Do you believe?
Belief will not save you.
Only actions
Guided and shaped
By belief and knowledge
Will save you.
Belief
Initiates and guides action—
Or it does nothing.
—Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Category: Quotes
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Friday, 10 October 2008 at 8:30 AM | Author: bishop
All religions are ultimately cargo cults.
Adherents perform required rituals, follow
specific rules, and expect to be supernaturally
gifted with desired rewards—long life,
honor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth,
victory over opponents, immortality after
death, any desired rewards.
Earthseed offers its own rewards—room
for small groups of people to begin new lives and
new ways of life with new opportunities, new
wealth, new concepts of wealth, new challenges to
grow and to learn and to decide what to become.
Earthseed is the dawning adulthood
of the human species. It offers the only
true immortality. It enables seeds of the
Earth to become the seeds of new life, new
communities of new earths. The Destiny of
Earthseed is to take root among the stars, and
there, again, to grow, to learn, and to fly.
—Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Category: Quotes
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Thursday, 09 October 2008 at 8:30 AM | Author: bishop
Beware:
All too often,
We say
What we hear others say.
We think
What we’re told that we think.
We see
What we’re permitted to see.
Worse!
We see what we’re told that we see.
Repetition and pride are the keys to this.
To hear and to see
Even an obvious lie
Again
And again and again
May be to say it,
Almost by reflex
Then to defend it
Because we’ve said it
And at least to embrace it
Because we’ve defended it
And because we cannot admit
That we’ve embraced and defended
An obvious lie.
Thus, without thought,
Without intent,
We make
Mere echoes
Of ourselves—
And we say
What we hear others say.
—Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Category: Quotes
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Wednesday, 08 October 2008 at 8:30 AM | Author: bishop
All prayers are to Self
And, in one way or another,
All prayers are answered.
Pray,
But beware.
Your desires,
Whether or not you achieve them
Will determine who you become.
—Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Category: Quotes
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Tuesday, 07 October 2008 at 8:30 AM | Author: bishop
The Destiny of Earthseed
Is to take root among the stars.
It is to live and to thrive
On new earths.
It is to become new beings
And to consider new questions.
It is to leap into the heavens
Again and again.
It is to explore the vastness
Of heaven.
It is to explore the vastness
Of ourselves.
—Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Category: Quotes
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