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Analogous Relations
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.

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The Scarlet Carnival
Thursday, 11 December 2008 at 8:04 AM | Author: bishop

I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the last several months. Websites are neat. Posted “papers” or essays are nifty. Webzines, for all their “coolness,” still aren’t measuring up to the street zines of the 80s and 90s. Even web-forums are sliding in both membership and relevance. But we live in a time when being connected to each other and to new information is a major, major social construct that has taken on new dimensions since even many of us were teenagers or young adults. Many a burgeoning occultist has never heard of a cassette tape (or, the gods have mercy, an 8-track tape) or that we used to use things called BBSs for early online communication[1]. And life without cell phones? What? Text messaging? Email?

And, I’m sorry, but a Wikipedia entry on the rise and fall of the 8-track just doesn’t cut it.

So the continuing question is how to make content relevant, timely, changing and yet constant. We see this problem with physical organizations too. The O.T.O. is a prime example—as always—of this lack of relevance in a modern world and the inability to provide content that is relevant, timely, changing and yet constant. There was a time when I would issue challenges to make Thelema applicable to the real world. To date, I still haven’t seen anything that takes the bull by the horns and runs with it. The reason? Either the authors are hyperlinked into the core of the O.T.O. code—and therefore practically worthless for anything practical—or they are still foaming at the mouth of their own self-importance[2]. And, of course, there is the rest of Occulture: if we spread enough tea leaves out, we can feed the world. Huh? Get a real job and feed your own kid first before worrying about whether or not the world is going to burn up in 2012.

Back in the old days—I absolutely love starting out sentences like that—in a barely post-We Are The World social void of hedonism and global babysitting, we sat around wondering when we could move Malkuth to Kether and still feel good enough at the end of the day to say we were still dark and spooky. As I get older, I realize that we have run around the mulberry bush too many times trying to figure out our ass from our head and never really grokking the nature of what is missing from our chosen and preferred religious and philosophical weltanschauung. We have raised a little generation of mental midgets who continue to believe—and belief is the key to it all, right?—that we can act any way we choose without consequence all because we can quote a little line from a little book and then call it a day.

But I digress—surprised? I’m not.

The question is about content. Keep in mind that I follow stats religiously and I don’t advertise this site anywhere. My readership is in the 150+ unique visitors per week range on a regular basis with an 85% return rate of a little over 300 regular visitors weekly. And that’s with my shitty personal life flying around here at the moment. Content, and regular content, is king. And, quite frankly, it doesn’t matter what it is so long as it captures attention[3].

So how do we—as socially responsible, promulgating, dedicated thelemites—spread a meme that is being destroyed by the lame dilettantism of an occulturally stunted generation? from our own occulturally stunted generation? I mean, seriously: if we wait on the youth of our loins to suddenly pop up and take the world by storm (and keep in mind that so many occultists/pagans/etc went the “I’m not bringing a child into this world because of overpopulation” route), then we are going to be long past even worm-food by the time we reach the bicentennial of this evolutionary shift in global weltanschauung.

The (Nascent) Scarlet Carnival

Blog carnivals apparently are not all the rage yet. I have to be relieved, I think. However, that said, they are popular in certain circles. I’ve been following the Christian Carnival for some time now and highly impressed by the breadth, width, and height to which some of these people have opened up.

But what is a blog carnival? I’m glad you asked.

The short answer is that it is a regularly produced link list that is centrally or diversely hosted on a blog or blogs.

Sounds boring. I know.

But in reality a blog carnival is a prepared set of links to specific blog articles within a particular theme (usually, at least, there is a theme to the particular carnival: random can be okay too sometimes) with or without some minor commentary/props/kudos/etc given to the author and article. It’s like a highway sign or maybe even more like a menu of selections to read.

It’s a great idea!

So here’s where I’m at right now. I want to spend the first couple of months of 2009 laying the foundation for the start of a thelemic blog carnival to run monthly starting with the first of the thelemic new year. Later, if it works out, it can move to biweekly or even weekly if the demand is there. But the first couple of months here I want to work on recruiting for the first two issues and plan out (and then start publicizing) the first six issue topics.

But I also need a partner in crime on this. My goal is to leapfrog this with at least two of us working on it. One will produce Month A while the other is developing Month B and so on. That gives each, basically, two months to gather[4], collate, and publish each issue. And then, after that, it would be a matter of getting various people to host each carnival (which is little more than a post/entry in someone’s blog). Beyond that, it’s all word of mouth.

I just think it would be a cool idea to start. And I’m going to start it. I think the potential topics are damn near unlimited[5].

Thoughts? Ideas? Criticisms? Motivations? I’m up for hearing them all at this point. Sound like a good idea to anyone else?

Anyone game to work with me on this?

innervox

  1. And, in fact, I met my mate on just such a thing. [↩]
  2. Before anyone points it out, I am guilty of this latter affliction as well. [↩]
  3. I do sometimes wonder if I ever proclaimed this whole personal crisis to be merely random chapters of a fiction novel I was writing if anyone would believe me or just feel massively let down. I mean, it’s not. But I’m just saying … it’s about content. [↩]
  4. After it gets off the ground, articles would have to be within a certain date range, but that’s all details to work out later. [↩]
  5. We could even do a fluffy-bunny humor issue. LOL! [↩]
Category: 4-Thoughtful Thursday, Thelema, Writing  | Tags: , ,  | Leave a Comment
Repost—Lies and Truth: The Grand Painting
Friday, 03 October 2008 at 4:15 PM | Author: bishop

… the secret is not Truth in Death, but Truth in Life. And I’ve only just begun to understand that. And that is something that magicians will rarely grasp in their fantasies of perfection in paradise, ultimate sacrifices and heroic longing through the veils of eternity. We live that Dream within a dream, that desperation that makes us human but, in our arrogance and pride, we call magick. We prefer the lies, the untruths, the comfortable silence that precedes the roar of Truth as it strips away the flesh of our fantasies and leaves our bones whistling in the winds of the storm. We prefer to be blind, for to have our eyes opened would mean the acknowledgment of our own humanity, our own frailness, our own impotence, our own self-delusions of grandeur and piety, our own ability to be free. And that’s just it isn’t it … Freedom. He walks with Truth, side by side, as She brandishes her sword at those who would remain in their ignorance and delusion, in the shackles of the past.

“… and the Truth shall set you free.”

Yet, freedom and truth doesn’t mean that we can escape the Artist or remove ourselves from the Grand Painting. It merely means that we can step back and see the brilliance of our place in the big picture. For good or bad or indifferent, there is a place for each of us, and every situation has merit for something or someone. You don’t have to understand it. You merely have to live it. But if you can figure out your color, and you can see the big picture, you can pretty much figure out where your place is in this incredible picture of the universe.

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Three Types of Magical Acts (A Christian View)
Saturday, 21 April 2007 at 11:50 AM | Author: bishop

A magical act presupposes an effect surpassing the normal power of the operator. This surplus power may be furnished by forces which are obedient to the operator, or by forces borrowed by him, or, lastly, by forces acting through the operator and which he obeys.

In the case of forces which are supplied to the operator by submission it is a matter of the operation of magic that we have designated as “personal or arbitrary”, i.e., an operation whose source of initiative, whose means and aim are found exclusively in the will and understanding of the personality of the operator. Such an operation can only make uses of forces lower than the operator. For one does not command Angels.* The operator here is alone and acts as a magical technician under his own responsibility and at his own risk and peril. One could also designate this type of magic as “Faustian”.

In the case of forces borrowed by the operator, it is a matter of an act of collective magic. It is the “magic chain” which renders the operator more powerful; it “lends” him the forces which he then makes use of for the operation. In this case the operator is aided by forces which are equal to him (and are not lower than him as in the case of Faustian magic). The power and the effect depend here on the number of people belonging to the chain. One could designate this type of magic as “collective”.†

Lastly, in the case of forces acting through the operator as intermediary and which he obeys, it is also a matter of a “chain”, but a vertical and qualitative (hierarchical) chain instead of a horizontal and quantitative chain, which latter is the case with collective magic. The operator here is alone in the horizontal sense, but he is not in the vertical sense: above him beings higher than him act with him and through him.‡ This type of magic presupposes the fact of being in conscious relationship with higher beings, i.e., assumes prior mystical and gnostic experience. We have designated this type of magic as “sacred magic”, because forces active in operations of this magic are superior to the operator. However, its historical name is “theurgy”.

The formulae expressing the fundamental attitude of the personal will corresponding to the three types of magic above are:

Fiat voluntas mea (Faustian magic);
Fiat voluntas nostra (collective magic);
Fiat voluntas TUA (sacred magic).

The first two forms of magic — Faustian and collective — [...] are based on the principle that the strong dominates the weak. It is a matter here of the power of compulsion.

With respect to the third form of magic — sacred magic — the method it makes use of is not the force of the will, but rather its purity.

Notes below are mine:


*Interesting in that the Enochian system of magick presumes a command over Angels, though allegedly the system was given to John Dee by an Angel. Though not being proficient in the system at all leaves me in a bad position to be criticizing it.
†While the author (a Catholic) would most likely consider the Catholic Mass to be part of the “theurgy” which composes the last paragraph, it seems to me to be more in line with a collective magic as described here. Indeed, after reading these particular definitions, I would very much change my opinion of the O.T.O. Gnostic Mass from a theurgical rite to a collective rite. There is probably a good deal of overlap in the two, I’m sure; but I think that the majority of the “magic(k)” of the Mass would be a result of this layer rather than one step “up”.
‡Interestingly enough, to me, part of the thelemic system that seems to escape most thelemites of my acquaintance is that there is a lack of hierarchy in Thelema. There is a superficial hierarchical manner of viewing things, of course, but the real meat of the system is holarchical. However, even with this change of primary view, there is no invalidation of the point being made here by the author.

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