As we move from the first to the second half of Yeats’s programmatic essay “Per Amica Silentia Lunae,” we leave the territory of poetry and the arts and plunge headlong into the second of Yeats’s lifelong passions, the realm of occultism. More specifically, he sets out in a single vivid paragraph the central theme of his own magical explorations, which proceeded to unfold after his time into one of the principal projects of twentieth century Western occultism: the finding of common ground between the occult traditions of educated culture and the popular beliefs and folk culture of everyday people.
That’s become so much of a commonplace in occult circles these days that it can be difficult to grasp just how much of a break with the past it was when Eliphas Lévi tentatively suggested such a quest for common ground in his Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, or when Yeats flung himself into that quest with all his passionate energy half a century later. The occultists of the Renaissance, by contrast, distanced themselves as far from folk magic as they could possibly get. This was partly because folk magic in those days was generally called “witchcraft” and could get you burned at the stake, but the rejection of folk magical traditions by Renaissance magi had a theoretical basis as well.
Renaissance mages believed that they had inherited a body of teaching, the prisca sapientia or original wisdom, which had been passed down by saints and scholars since the creation of the world. The sages of Egypt, Chaldea, India, and Greece all played roles in the “golden chain” that united the occult student of Renaissance Europe with the wisdom teachings of the distant past. To some extent this was simply pseudohistorical handwaving, but there was a social reality behind it. Renaissance occultism was a thoroughly intellectual system, literate, numerate, and philosophically based, and those who studied it had to prepare themselves with a solid training that embraced most of the branches of formal knowledge then available. Peasants? The thought that they could know anything serious about magic would have been dismissed as absurd by the Renaissance magi if anyone had thought to suggest it to them.
That was one of the things Lévi challenged when, in his writings, he used the simplest and (by intellectuals) most despised forms of folk magic and traditional religious observance from the French countryside as examples of competent magical practice. Yeats, for his part, flung the old notion down and danced on it. For him, the prisca sapientia was to be found precisely where no Renaissance occultist would have looked for it, in the commonplaces of human thought, where the abstract considerations of scholars are far away and the realities of life are very close. The same concept guided C.G. Jung in his development of the concept of the collective unconscious, which Yeats very neatly describes under a different set of terminology in the opening paragraph of this half of his essay.
Profoundly Jungian, too, is the method of accessing the Unseen that Yeats presents here as “evocation.” Jung named it “active imagination;” in the Golden Dawn, it was called “scrying in the spirit vision,” and formed one of the core methods of practice. To my knowledge, at least, neither Jung nor the other adepts of the Golden Dawn recognized, as Yeats certainly did, the deep interconnections between this form of imaginative work and artistic and poetic creativity. Most writers I know use some form of this, whether or not they have any form of occult training; I certainly do. It’s by opening up that link with the deeper imagination that characters in a novel I’m writing take on a life of their own, and phrases, paragraphs, and whole pages come spilling out, astonishing me by the clarity of their prose and the unexpectedness of the connections they make between ideas I hadn’t linked together.
This was the central practice of the magical order Yeats had tried to found in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Castle of Heroes, which I discussed in a post several years ago. That project has a strange, phantasmal existence in the world of Yeats scholarship today. Rituals, instructional papers, and a great many notes on the esoteric work that was intended to bring the order into being survive in Yeats’s papers; they contain passages of vivid and powerful prose, and offer remarkable glimpses into Yeats’s thoughts at a time when he was working on some of the most iconic of his early verse; yet at a time when scholars are very nearly writing heavily footnoted essays on George’s laundry lists, the Castle of Heroes papers are all but untouched. Outside of an obscure if capable doctoral dissertation from the 1970s, they remain unedited, unpublished, and rarely mentioned outside of pro forma references by biographers.
The Castle of Heroes project, by the way, is what Yeats was discussing in the second section of “Anima Hominis,” where he discusses mythological images gathered up in fragments by several minds. Yeats and the other participants in the project used the methods of evocation he discusses here to try to unfold the deeper dimensions of Irish myth and legend, and the Castle of Heroes documents show the process by which the resulting visions fit neatly together to provide the necessary symbolism for a system of Irish ceremonial occultism. The sense that work of this kind can sometimes make contact with the efforts of other minds in the past is one that many other operative occultists have encountered. (I have had similar experiences with some of my projects, most strikingly The Celtic Golden Dawn.) Whether it reflects a historical reality or not, it gave Yeats confidence in his occult work and shaped a variety of his prose and poetic works.
The implications for Yeats’s own understanding of occult philosophy, however, are what matter for our present purpose. To him, as to many other occultists of past and present, two distinct factors shaped the way that the individual imagination seemed to be able to tap into something that transcends the merely personal. The first of these factors was the existence of the anima mundi, the soul, mind, or imagination of the world itself, which is said to form the background of all individual consciousness and also provides the medium through which thoughts pass from mind to mind. C.G. Jung’s ideas are again relevant here, for Yeats’s concept of the imagination of nature and Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious differ only in the labels used and the audience—literary in one case, scientific in the other—to which these two very similar contemporary thinkers addressed their works.
(It is by no means impossible, for that matter, that Yeats and Jung influenced each other directly in this matter among others. Jung’s writings were much discussed in the British occult scene during the years when the Yeatses were most heavily involved in the Stella Matutina—habitués of that scene such as Dion Fortune reference Jung admiringly quite often in their writings. Nor was Jung himself a stranger to the occult scene, or to Yeats; his private library contained a copy of the privately printed 1925 edition of A Vision. Scholarship on Jung has shied away from the thought that he might have been influenced by Yeats, but then Jung’s deep and lifelong involvement in the occult community is just as unwelcome to today’s Jung scholarship as Yeats’s equivalent commitments were to Yeats scholars until very, very recently.)
Yet the anima mundi is not the only factor at work in Yeats’s vision—or, for that matter, in his Vision. There were also individual minds whose thoughts mingled with those of the mind of nature, and some of those individuals had once had human bodies. They were, in Yeats’s own metaphor, mariners who sailed the seas of the anima mundi and knew all its shores. The belief that such beings existed and could be contacted was very common in the occult community of Yeats’s day; those of my readers who know their way around the literature of Spiritualism and Theosophy will find many equivalent discussions.
That belief fell out of favor over the course of the twentieth century, largely because too many bunco artists and an even larger number of gullible fools claimed to speak for such beings, and most of the pronouncements they made on behalf of the Unseen turned out to be impressively fallible. Nonetheless the concept itself is by no means absurd. If human personalities are capable of surviving the death of the material body, in whatever form or by whatever means, it makes sense that some souls of unusual strength or wisdom or blessedness might still be within reach of the living. The traditional Christian notion of the mediatorial power of saints, to name only one example, is the same concept as Yeats’s, passed through a different theological filter.
Folk belief and folk magic, too, make ample room for such interactions between the living and the dead. The “knowledgeable man” of the little coastal village of Spiddal in County Galway—his title was pronounced “cunning man” in rural England at the same time, and “wizard” (which derives from “wise” the way “drunkard” derives from “drunk”) half a dozen centuries earlier—is a classic type. He got his supernatural knowledge from his sister’s ghost the way that many Catholic mystics get theirs from a saint, and both these echo the way that shamans get their knowledge from spirits, some of whom are believed to have been human, while others are not. The differences among these varied traditions are important, but so are the similarities.
One difference Yeats puts at center stage in much of his discussion in this half of the essay has to do with the embodiment, or lack of same, of these wise mariners of the anima mundi. Religious traditions strongly influenced by abstract philosophy tend to assume that the soul in the state after death is bare, and very often claim that in life nothing exists but the soul and the material body. Occult teachings and folk tradition both reject this notion. The ghostly sister of the wizard of Spiddal was so thoroughly embodied that her hair grew grayer with each passing year, though the body she had could doubtless pass through walls in proper ghost-fashion. Occultists in Yeats’s time worked out detailed taxonomies of the layers or phases of subtle body uniting the animal form with pure consciousness and will; old-fashioned occultists still study these.
The anima mundi and the human subtle body, furthermore, are not entirely separate. Yeats refers to the raw material of both as “animal spirits”—a term he borrowed from the Cambridge Platonists of the seventeenth century, one of the philosophical schools he studied closely. (The ignorance of philosophy he claimed in various points of A Vision was simply another of Yeats’s masks, and should not be taken too literally; he was well versed in philosophy, though not in the schools popular during his time.) These “animal spirits” are also the “ectoplasm” of the nineteenth-century séance room, a weightless and luminous substance that was frequently witnessed and sometimes even photographed, though today’s channelers seem to have lost the trick of producing it.
Yet the souls of individual human beings are not the only things we experience that have subtle forms of this same kind. Yeats argues that our thoughts and desires, especially those that we never allow to earth out in action in the material world, also take on ghostly forms drawn from the same animal spirits that flow through us and through the anima mundi. These can become deeply problematic for the individual, especially when they are allowed to sink out of waking consciousness into the subtle body. There they grow and spread, putting down roots into strange soil and bearing stranger fruit.
To Yeats, all our normal mental activity consists either of following the twisting stems of these “parasitic vegetables,” as he calls them, or planting new seeds, intentionally or otherwise, from which more such thought-plants will sprout. It is only in certain states of clarity and insight, which have to be learned and mastered either in incarnate existence or after death, that the stems can be pruned and straightened, the unwanted plants torn up by the roots and reduced to compost, the desirable plants given ample room to flourish. Whether living or dead, the soul can gradually extract itself from the thicket that it has created around itself, but this is never a quick or an easy process.
Until it does so, however, these vegetable growths keep proliferating unchecked. Yeats suggests that they can grow across the boundary between the living and the dead. Rupert Sheldrake gained fame in some circles and notoriety in others a few decades back by suggesting, and offering experiments that seem to prove, that human and animal behavior respond to subtle patterning forces that are not subject to space or time. He called these forces “morphogenetic fields”—a typical sort of formulation for our epoch, in which metaphors from physics are so fashionable.
Such metaphors were almost as fashionable in the alternative culture of Yeats’s time, but he rejected them root and branch. For him, every genuine reality belonged to some person: in words he quoted from Blake, “God only acts or is in existing beings or men.” What guides young birds in building nests for the first time, for Yeats, is not “instinct” (whatever that intentionally vague word might mean) or the action of impersonal morphogenetic fields, but the dreams of dead but wholly individual birds dwelling in their own memories of nest-building during life. In the same way, living and dead human beings influence each other in complex ways; many of us have seen, for example, how often the two sides of a quarrel, each convinced that every word from their mouths is their own, are merely following the track of some quarrel of the dead.
Yet the dead, in Yeats’s view, can take a more active role than this. They cannot innovate, nor can they choose—those capacities are reserved for the living—but they live in their memories and can act through those. The Spiddal knowledgeable man’s ghostly sister is not simply an abstract force but a person, who can communicate with her living brother and give him magic powers; in the same way, Yeats suggests (and the folklore of all lands joins him in this) that the dead mother really can manifest to her child, even to the extent of setting a cradle rocking. The living and the dead remain thoroughly entangled with each other, until one or both unties the knot that binds them together.
The alternative to this state of entanglement, and the means by which the knot can be untied, is what Yeats calls “the condition of fire.” Behind that phrase lies the whole history of occult philosophy, in which the four elements play such an important role, and a half-concealed structure of ideas. The parasitic vegetables, embodied as they are in the passions, belong to water, and the sensory experiences in which they put down their roots belong to earth. Their antithesis is the condition of fire, where all is unity, harmony, and rest, and between this and the realms of passion and sense lies the realm of memory inhabited by the spirits of the dead, corresponding to air. It’s a familiar elemental sequence to anyone with a background in occultism, and we will see it again in A Vision.
The condition of fire is not the goal or end of the process Yeats sets out in this essay, however. It is one pole of a cycle through which souls pass, rising from the world of the senses to the condition of fire and then returning to the world of the senses again. Only in the material world, the world of earth with all its bitterness and pain, is the soul capable of freedom and choice, and yet freedom and choice are always and only exercised in response to promptings that descend from the condition of fire. It is the Daemon, who is at once the adversary and the guardian spirit of the individual soul, who brings those promptings through, and in every case it confronts the soul with whatever challenge is most difficult among those that are not actually impossible.
Here again Yeats draws on his Cabalistic training to make sense of the interplay of soul and Daemon. The soul in its wanderings follows the winding path of the serpent up the Tree of Life, which is also the route full of twists and turns through which the parasitic vegetables of thought and passion twine. The Daemon in its actions sends its influence down the zigzag pattern of the flaming sword or lightning flash. Only when the soul itself seeks the condition of fire—by refusing to hate, as Yeats suggests—does the path of the arrow up the Middle Pillar of the Tree open up.
As noted earlier in this sequence of essays, Yeats at the time he wrote “Per Amica Silentia Lunae” believed that the Daemon of each living person was the soul of someone who was between lives. He changed his views later on, but not completely. Among the things that got edited out of both published versions of A Vision were the names and biographical identities of the spirits that communicated the system to George. Many of these, according to their own ghostly testimony, were spirits of dead human beings.
Thus the role assigned to the dead in “Per Amica Silentia Lunae” never quite vanished from the completed system. The result is a certain ambiguity—how much of what comes to any one individual soul from the Unseen is the product of that soul’s Daemon, and how much is the work of the dead working out their own destinies in the condition of air? This never really becomes clear, and of course it may be that the complexity of human life is best explained by some such tangled relationship among different and potentially competing influences.
A similar ambiguity surrounds the question of whether the cycle Yeats has traced out here has an endpoint, and if so, what it is. In the developed myth of A Vision, the soul moves back and forth between two poles in an entire concatenation of cycles. The ordinary cycle of individual life and death is one of these, but this takes its place in a larger cycle of between 28 and 36 incarnations. In this larger cycle, the simple alternation between terrestrial existence and the condition of fire is doubled; there are two different states of complete immersion in the terrestrial realm of struggle and choice, and two equally distinct states of contemplation and rest.
In the later system, there is also a way out of the whole process, though the cycle of incarnations must be trodden many times before it comes within reach. In the fully developed cosmology of A Vision, there is a condition of the soul where the oppositions are resolved at last. One reference in “Per Amica Silentia Lunae” hints at this resolution, the quote from Thomas Aquinas about souls that have “entered upon the eternal possession of themselves in one single moment.” That hint will be taken up in detail in a later post.
Assignment: With “Per Amica Silentia Lunae” as necessary background, we can now proceed to the heart of A Vision. Those who are following along with this little adventure will want to turn to Book I, “The Great Wheel,” and read the first section, “The Principal Symbol.” Reading it more than once will be wise, as our text covers a great deal very, very quickly.
“To Yeats, all our normal mental activity consists either of following the twisting stems of these “parasitic vegetables,” as he calls them, or planting new seeds, intentionally or otherwise, from which more such thought-plants will sprout. It is only in certain states of clarity and insight, which have to be learned and mastered either in incarnate existence or after death, that the stems can be pruned and straightened, the unwanted plants torn up by the roots and reduced to compost, the desirable plants given ample room to flourish. ”
While the language is different, this is about three-quarters of the historical teaching of the Buddha, as best I can tell. (Most of the rest he would most likely not have agreed with or if he did, though not applicable to what he was teaching. He was very clear that he knew many things he did not teach, because he was teaching the end of suffering and did not want students sidetracked.)
A brief aside: I am a devotee of Carl Jung, and I love talking about his involvement in occultism! Of course, I am an oddball by the standards of most modern-day Jungians. I don’t imagine many of them have his statue and a relic on their altar so they can offer worship to the divine Jung!
Your post here is an interesting example of synchronicity for me. Just last night, I performed a special ritual involving my guardian spirit (aka tamanous, though I now shy away from the term because of concerns about ‘cultural appropriation’). This spirit was a human being I knew when they were alive, and is now in the afterlife. The ritual unexpectedly resulted in a near-physical manifestation of the ‘ghost’. What few lingering doubts I might have still had about the reality of spiritual powers was completely dissolved last night. It is comforting to know that my experience is in line with some of the greatest Western occultists.
I can’t help but see ideas like Averroe’s unity of the intellect, Jung’s collective unconscious, anima mundi and anima hominis, Whiteheadian objective and subjective immortality, and even Nahuatl philosophical concepts, as trying to describe a very similar reality (if not the same thing, filtered through at times quite different cultural lenses and maybe focusing on different aspects).
What an interesting world we inhabit!
Very interesting…Did Yeats address the fact that humans have auras, which some of us can see under the right conditions, in which your brain is not censoring the visual input? The first time for me was when I attended a lecture in a large hall at Omega by a famous Buddhist practitioner…I slipped into a light trance and suddenly, the blue aura of a young Indian woman 2 rows in front of me jumped out…Days later, at an unrelated course given by Dr. Weiss, attended by 150 people from all over the world, the same young woman sat down next to me….She said she was 21, but the blue aura indicated she was a rather advanced soul….
At this page is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current to 9/11). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Mole End find help and insight in overcoming their vulnerable narcissism.
May HippieVikings’s baby HV, who was born safely but has had some breathing concerns, be filled with good health and strength.
May Trubujah’s best friend Pat’s teenage daughter Devin, who has a mysterious condition which doctors are so far baffled by necessitating that she remain in a wheelchair, be healed of her condition; may the underlying cause come to light so that treatment may begin.
May Mary’s sister have her auto-immune conditions sent into remission, may her eyes remain healthy, and may she heal in body, mind, and spirit.
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May Jack H’s friend Sheima, a Sudanese refugee in the UK, find a favourable resolution regarding her right to stay in the UK, which has been imperiled over a technicality. (8/30)
May 5 year old Max be blessed and protected during his parents’ contentious divorce; may events work out in a manner most conducive to Max’s healthy development over the long term.
May Patrick’s mother Christine’s vital energy be strengthened so she can make a full recovery from the hysterectomy and follow-up issues and resume normal life.
May MindWind’s father be completely healed of his spinal, blood, and cardio infections; may his continual and immense back pain be lifted, and may he be strengthened to bear what cannot be lifted.
May J Guadalupe Villarruel Zúñiga, father of CRPatiño’s friend Jair, who suffers from terminal kidney and liver damage, continue to respond favorably to treatment; may he also remain in as good health as possible, beat doctors’ prognosis, and enjoy with his wife and children plenty of love, good times and a future full of blessings.
May DJ’s newborn granddaughter Marishka and daughter Taylor be blessed, healed, and protected from danger, and may their situation work out in the best way possible for both of them.
May 12 year old Sebastian Greco of Rhode Island, who recently suffered a head injury, make a prompt and complete recovery with no lasting problems.
May Marko’s newborn son Noah, who has been in the hospital for a cold, and Noah’s mother Viktoria, who is recovering from her c-section, both be blessed with good health, strength, endurance, and protection, and may they swiftly they make a full recovery.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis‘s fistula heal, may his body have the strength to fight off infections, may his kidneys strengthen, and may his empty nose syndrome abate, so that he may have a full and healthy life ahead of him.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Jack H.’s father John continue to heal from his ailments, including alcohol dependency and breathing difficulties, as much as Providence allows, to be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Audrey’s friend’s daughter Katie, who died in a tragic accident June 2nd, orphaning her two children, be blessed and aided in her soul’s onward journey; and may her family be comforted.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Pierre and Julie conceive a healthy baby together. May the conception, pregnancy, birth, and recovery all be healthy and smooth for baby and for Julie.
May SLClaire’s honorary daughter Beth, who is undergoing dialysis for kidney disease, be blessed, and may her kidneys be restored to full functioning.
May 1Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties; may she quickly be able to resume a normal life, and the cancer not return.
May Kallianeira’s partner Patrick, who passed away on May 7th, be blessed and aided in his soul’s onward journey. And may Kallianeira be soothed and strengthened to successfully cope in the face of this sudden loss.
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer.
(Healing work is also welcome. Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe)
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
I’m reminded once again of Blake’s dead brother coming to him in a dream and teaching him the infernal method of printing.
Also, on the weedy side of things, I’m thinking of popular fiction stories and ghost lore about addicts and alcoholics and smokers being driven in their addiction further by these spirits who want to drink through the material bodies of others. As alcohol continues to wear down a persons aura and astral barriers, I would think there is truth to this and they become more susceptible. Some of the divier bars seem to have such an unwholesome aura about them, and I’m not just saying that in prudish way.
Lots to think about here.
Ian, it’s entirely possible that some of that idea of Yeats’s was shaped by Buddhism — in his day, the Theosophical Society was one of the few places you could get English translations of Buddhist writings, and not all of them were hopelessly garbled.
Brenainn, “spirit guide” is another term for the same concept, much used by Western occultists. I think you’re right that a great many teachings describe a common world — I think of the concept of the life force (qi, prana, ether, od, etc., etc.) as one of the most obvious examples of this, but far from the only one.
Pyrrhus, I don’t think he mentioned that, because he himself didn’t have the gift of clairvoyant vision. Good to hear that you’ve begun to open up that natural and helpful human capacity!
Quin, thank you for this as always.
Justin, two very good examples. Yes, I’ve felt some very sleazy energies in the worse sort of bars, too, and the presence of ghosts craving one more drink probably plays a large role in that.
As a writer (if only of fanfiction), I can confirm that the best part of writing (aside from research) is when the characters start dictating the story, and you’re just transcribing the scene that’s unfolding in your mind’s eye. So much easier than trying to pluck words from the ether all by yourself! I had long suspected that Jungian Active Imagination and Lucid Dreaming and Astral Travel may be different words for the same (or very similar) phenomenon. Nice to know that Writing A Story and scrying in the spirit vision belong to that very special club, too.
It begs the question of how ‘real’ those worlds and the people in it are that we writers witness when we’re creating (or receiving) a story. I’ve always been of the opinion that they’re not independently real, but aspects of myself, but now I wonder…
Hello JMG and kommentariat: After having a heavy diet on economics and politics in the past days, I’m pleased to rest and relax me with your current post, John. Thank you…
JMG
I know that this is beside the point of this essay here. But people here in my town are really scared will there be a war or not. This stupid provocation by the Ukrainians had put people in a mad frenzy. I think I will go for a walk….
“Rupert Sheldrake gained fame in some circles and notoriety in others a few decades back by suggesting, and offering experiments that seem to prove, that human and animal behavior respond to subtle patterning forces that are not subject to space or time. He called these forces “morphogenetic fields”—a typical sort of formulation for our epoch, in which metaphors from physics are so fashionable.”
I’m glad you’ve remember this unorthodox scientist; his theories are very interesting. However, it’s true that the map isn’t the territory, so we can be careful for not confusing metaphors with realities that are being described woth these metaphors.
(Off topic) Wer #9: I see things in your country are getting hotter with the fake Russian drone attack. It was very clear for me that attack had been a Kiev regime provocation to get Poland and NATO more involved in the current war, in spite of MSM in my country repeating like parrots the official lies, cough cough, news about it. Well, we’ll see what’s going to happen next days; I hope this madness finishes like the other Ukrainian false flag attacks.
How much class snobbery was involved with the Renaissance mages’ refusal to learn from peasants, on top of the theoretical justification?
“There were also individual minds whose thoughts mingled with those of the mind of nature, and some of those individuals had once had human bodies.”
I’m not quite sure what that means, but it triggered a recent memory. Sometimes I leave my urban district for a short bus trip to a nearby village, just for a change of scenery and a walk. I go straight to this large public rectangular field. It would take me around 20 minutes to do a brisk walk around the perimeter, but I like to have a leisurely stroll, watching the very few strollers or dog walkers and sometimes having a chat with them.
I went there one early afternoon on a sunny day in late July this year. I was rather disappointed to see that this time the large field was empty of humans, when it usually has a handful of visitors. When I eventually came to, say, the bottom extent of the rectangle, close to finishing my walk, I’d got about third of the length along when I suddenly noticed a young woman ahead, maybe in her mid-20s, lying on a blanket, dozing and in bare feet, enjoying the sun. Lying next to her was a baby of probably 9 months at most. They were both occasionally moving about slightly as they dozed. I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed them before. Then I looked up, and right up at the top of the field, about a quarter of the length in, sitting in a relaxed posture on a wooden bench, was a smiling man of around 30 with specs and a beard, in smart casual clothes. I was surprised that I’d never noticed him before either. Anyway, I was very pleased to see some people at last, enlivening the scene for me a bit.
I walked past the sleeping woman and child, on my way to the exit at the far corner. I was just surprised that she had no pram or pushchair with her, as it was a longish way to the exit, and she’d have to carry the baby all that way. After about 10 or 20 seconds I stood and looked back, intending to take a last look at them before I left. But there was nobody there. The man at the top of the field was nowhere to be seen either. In the short time that I’d looked away, they wouldn’t have had time to reach the relevant exits, even if they’d run. I’d seen perfectly normal, solid flesh-and-blood people in modern clothes, in broad daylight, and now they weren’t there any more. I couldn’t figure it out. But I was puzzled, not spooked, and there was no eerie atmosphere or anything like that. After leaving the field, I kept looking back, but there was nobody there.
I’ve had lots of thoughts since then. Was the man related to the woman? Is it at all possible that they were “ghosts” ? If they’d been wearing, say, Victorian clothes, I might have thought so, but that’s something I don’t believe in, anyway. It occurs to me that I’d been disappointed to see no people there at first, but then the field later provided a scene for me that dispelled my disappointment. Well, I don’t know what you make of that, Mr. Greer, and whether you consider it off-topic at all.
Thank you for putting some focus on my big ah-ha of the week when I realized I was having so much trouble with Yeats because I’m reading a formative text a century later and after growing up with the assumptions of Jung, the value of folklore and the synthetic position between the educated mage and the wisdom of the countryside. Some reflection on my own practice is in order to see where my own theoretical basis developed.
Athaia, agreed! All my best fiction happened that way — not the slow slog of trying to work things out, but the moments when whole scenes come flowing into my mind intact, or when characters start telling me their stories and I just hand them beers and take notes. Since I also practice a lot of active imagination aka scrying in the spirit vision, Yeats’s recognition of the identity of these processes made instant sense to me. As for your question, I’m not sure it’s even possible to answer that — do we even know the boundaries of this thing we each call “myself,” or even if there are boundaries?
Chuaquin, you’re welcome. I’m sorry to say the pace of events doesn’t seem to be letting up much.
Wer, we just had another political assassination over here — Charlie Kirk, one of the leading figures of the populist conservative movement, was shot dead at a rally in Utah by a sniper on a nearby roof — so I think I’ll do the same thing.
Chuaquin, I’ve read most of Sheldrake’s work, and been interested to see how closely his ideas parallel those of Dion Fortune!
Kfish, oh, a vast amount. Class distinctions were far more potent in the Renaissance than they are today, and class snobbery was considered a virtue — and not just for the upper classes!
Zemi, this sort of thing happens far, far more often than most people realize. Phantasmal presences in modern clothing are nearly as common as the ghosts of the dead. What causes them? I’ll let you know if I ever find out. As for ghosts, please just keep in mind that their reality does not depend on whether you believe in them or not…
Rhydlyd, you’re most welcome. It’s always struck me as rather refreshing that our ideas will seem just as dated and odd in a century.
I am having a hard time with the Yeats reading assignments. I am still battling through the Dogma and ritual of High Magic (several years late). Would you consider the Yeat’s tome sequential with the Lévi and the Fortune ones? Or these 3 master pieces can be absorbed in any order? As a very recent initiate I feel like I should study them in the order you have presented them but the valuable live feedback from the commentariat seems to me where some of the magic of comprehension happens for me.
1. I’m confused about what Daemon is, how would you describe it. As he describes it, it sounds quite terrifying to me! Is it like Jungs ‘shadow’? ?
2. Does Yeats sees it as something to be embraced or resisted, or somehow both?
3. Am I right in understanding that whilst those on artist and hero paths must wrest with it to somehow find peace with it, those on the straight saintly path resist it til their desire for it ceases, which somehow has the same end of self-knowledge or wholeness, but quicker?
I hope these questions aren’t too dumb, I find when I read the text some parts I understand with startling clarity and other bits are like wading throygh treacle
Anima Mundi has several passages that remind me of the chapter of the Cosmic Doctrine I’m meditating on currently–the polarization of the individuality and personality–though now that I go to post I’ve lost exactly which lines. I’m having, as usual, a tough time grasping Fortune in all her detail, but when she says the individuality and personality cooperate to produce the third thing, I wonder if this is the new personality that Yeats hints at when he encounters the daemon. Or is it when they “re-polarize” to create an expression? Different system, I reckon but do you read any common ground between them?
In another synchronicity (two in a day on one text means pay attention) I was also listening to “Animal Poem” by Anna Tivel and found several lines and themes that reminded me of Anima Mundi and so would like to share the lyrics. Specifically, the oppositions she creates, the mention of a place where understanding touches vapor, like the place where those memories we can touch flow into the anima mundi, and of course love or the ridding of hatred as a potential path, though one she admits is fraught with difficulty. And I think Yeats in this work would approve of the line, “You leave the truth you stole for someone after.”
Animal Poem
Courage is a tired mom, milk crate and a cardboard sign
Trying to find a story for her daughter
This is how the world exists, let me spin it for you kid
In a way that’s easier to swallow
Everyone is in a play, characters in constant pain
Reaching for a way to taste some beauty
You can be someone who loves, or you can be somebody else
That’s all there is, you breathe, then you’re not breathing
Lit up real neon bulb, everything is human love
Everywhere you look there might be meaning
Chaos is an ancient art, you can cut the world you want
Out of any s*** that you’ve been given
I don’t know and tell me more, is a poem that never fails
Spoken in the language of a lover
You can be someone who moves, and tries to move somebody else
That’s all there is, you die in broken laughter
None of it is really fair, born into the atmosphere
Breathing gold or stealing when you’re hungry
Everyone you come upon, holds a picture in their mind
Ask them and they might just show you something
Magpie on the dying grass, looking for a diamond
Or some trash to build a temporary altar
Everything’s a turning wheel, it comes around, you’re born, you feel
You leave the truth you stole for someone after
High up silver howling bird, looking down to see the world
Spinning out into the vast forever
Flying is a faithful dance, animals suspended
At the place where understanding touches vapor
Sorry and i’m listening, is a poem that’s always been
Beautiful enough to kill the darkness
You can be someone who loves, or you can be somebody else
I tell you kid, the first one is the hardest
Hi John Michael,
Yup, advise and guide, but with no will, that being not their lot. 😉
Like the garden metaphor particularly.
Cheers
Chris
Hello John Michael,
Do you think that the “parasitic vegetables” can grow onto other people and influence their lives?
I was given up for adoption at birth in the closed adoption state of New Mexico. A closed adoption means that neither the birth parents nor the adopting parents know anything about each other.
At age 39 I located and met my birth father. My birth mother was located, chose not to reply, but I did learn some things about her.
The syncronicities between my life and my birth parents’ lives are harrowing. To give one of many examples, fifteen months worth of teenage actions that I took using neither thought nor planning brought me into a series of life changing events at a house near my birth father’s childhood home.
After reflecting on the lives of all my parents, I started INTENTIONALLY dividing my life from their lives. The result of this ongoing process is a personal clarity and freedom that lifts great weight from my shoulders.
Do the parasidic vegetables grow onto new hosts and create fasle images of the self?
Live from the NE border of Yugambeh Country,
Christine Clifford
Rashakor #16.
I’m also having trouble with Yeats and I’ve got my husband, who read it 55 years ago in college, to help me. In fact, I’m using his copy from those days. He says he read it when his mind was restlessly prowling to read that stuff; there were the residuals from the beatniks, and the psychedelics being explored. Of course, he had the facile mind of a person in his 20s then, not the much slower mind of a 69 year old woman.
And I am also slogging along reading Levi, trying to get a clue. What inspired me to go ahead and tackle it again was the Nancy Druid series. (Sorry JMG, I just love referring to the Moravic series thusly!)
As for Dion Fortune, I’m relieved to read that Rupert Sheldrake parallels her thinking, because I did read him about 15 years ago and I could follow him. Maybe part of the problem is the older style of English?
So here I am, in your good company, slogging along, trying to understand some hard stuff! May we sooner or later be able to dance the ideas with grace and ease!
Annette Simard
RE: Charlie Kirk
Apparently a few days ago Jezebel published an article where they claimed to have paid witches to curse Charlie Kirk:
https://www.jezebel.com/we-paid-some-etsy-witches-to-curse-charlie-kirk
Hi JMG – here’s a headline from the internet by The Western Journal – “Leftist Media Outlet Bragged about paying witches to ‘Curse Charlie Kirk’ two days before his death. The far left outlet Jezebel published a story on Sept 8 that they had paid Etsy witches to hex Charlie Kirk. Now that he has been murdered, I wonder what the extent of the blowback will be.
Zemi,
It’s probably the local nature spirits answering your prayers. It’s as you say, the field provided you a scene.
Rashakor, there’s no sequence in these three books. They’re all difficult, and A Vision may be the most challenging of the lot; by all means take them in whatever order works for you.
Free Rain, Yeats changed his mind over time about what the Daemon is. In “Per Amica Silentia Lunae,” he thought it was your spirit guide, a soul once living who guides and teaches you; in A Vision, he came to see it as your higher self, the real self you have that endures beyond the limits of a single life. How you deal with it differs depending on what path you choose — the hero embraces and wrestles with it, the poet seeks it and flees from it, the saint refuses it and so experiences it. None of your questions are dumb, btw — this is very difficult stuff.
Kyle, there’s a great deal of common ground between A Vision and the Cosmic Doctrine — no surprises there, since both Yeats and Fortune were trained in the same system of magic. I hadn’t encountered Tivel’s poem before — that’s really lovely.
Chris, bingo. We’re the ones stuck with the burden of choice.
Christine, they certainly can do so, especially when there’s a blood tie. Yours is a more dramatic example than most, but I think most of us can track such things twining through our family lines.
Annette, please don’t apologize — I find that term for the series hilarious!
Anon and Dana, that doesn’t surprise me at all. The Neopagan movement is on its way down a very dark path; I don’t imagine it’s occurred to any of them that they’re working hard at recreating conditions in which witches will once again be burnt at the stake.
JMG, I haven’t worked through your offering yet, but some of the comments brought a memory back. For a while I tutored math and physics in a college. I quickly became friends with a fellow physicist. I the inventor, he the theoretician. We made a good pair.
He was from India. I am a retired Presbyterian pastor, he was very knowledgeable in various religions, knowing more about Christianity than many Christians. We were both active with non physical intelligences.
I was working on a model for a solar powered steam engine, it worked fine, but, like many such engines, the valves were not optimal for efficiency. Mi friend and I spent a lot of time on the problem of a more efficient system, it was elusive.
One night he told friends he wasn’t feeling well and went to bed . During the night he released his soul. I was not surprised at his ability to do that, but I and other friends were devastated.
Some days later in my work shop I was working on the engine’s valves when a picture entered my mind, full blown. Usually it takes a while, not this time, and I knew it meant, pay attention. I listened. The perfect valve appeared, simple, elegant.
Immediately my friend’s energy filled my workshop and I knew where it had come from.
A few days later the engine was chugging away beautifully .
JMG # 15: It’s amazing to find coincidences between an occultist like Fortune and a scientist like Sheldrake, although of course unorthodox scientist. I’ll take it in consideration, thank you for your comment about this topic. I must read more books about this two authors…
John and kommentarists: I’ve read an American politician was killed. You said he had been cursed before his assasination. I only can tell you I mourn and condemn this crime. Terrorism is always a bad thing, in my country we know too much about this topic.
Archdruid,
I can tell you myself and others have been pointing out where Paganism’s current direction will lead. The response is mostly laughing reacts and comments that it’s all to fight the bad guys.
They really think they are Dumbledore’s Divergent Fellowship of the Rebel Mocking Jay at this point.
Charlie Kirk, dead by an assassin’s bullet. I admired him. It was the way he said things, not what he said: “the way,” not “the what.” This is as big as RFK’s killing in 1968 when I was a teen.
I saw the announcement on Wiki.
I am so sad.
💨🤯💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Someone has written something about ghostly presences. Do you think children “invisible friends” are related to this phenomena?
In relation to the incredibly mistimed Jezebel article about witches cursing Charlie Kirk (as also cited by Anon and Dana):
It seems that masses of the mainstream centre-left have been solidified into a strange mental dead end. They’ve spent all of the last 10 years miserably losing and have now managed, through their stupidity, to bring about the reelection of an incredibly effective agent of the opposition into power.
Despite this, one of their main mental reactions remains as something similar to “I, as a black transabled feminist, think the president is a Trumpkin”. What is this about? That they are stuck in childish and delusional frames of mind is not surprising. What is surprising that after 10 years of miserable defeat, they think that childish jocular contempt at the right can actually achieve something. Whether it’s calling the president an Orange Hitler or sending witches to curse them, they seem to think this nonsense is somehow effective.
What is this about? Is this how political factions always cope with defeat? Or is this some part of the social liberal psyche going completely haywire? My own guess is that in their ascendant phase, the current social liberals used humor and irony to win in the culture, and this is some kind of comically deformed and degenerate descendant of that mental attitude.
>in A Vision, he came to see it as your higher self, the real self you have that endures beyond the limits of a single life
If that’s true, then it’s you. Why would you fight yourself, whoever you are? Wouldn’t the logical choice be to unify?
—
re: Charlie Kirk
Laura Loomer said something interesting, that the killer will never be found, because it was a state actor of some sort. I’m inclined to think along such lines unless the evidence refutes it.
Hi John Michael,
Funny you mention that about bars, but the most horrendous vibe I pick up on is at places where people gamble en masse. I’ve only stepped inside such places out of curiosity a couple of times over the long years (and mostly at other peoples insistence), and it genuinely rattles me. There’s some dark stuff going in there in the ethereal background which freaks me out. Best avoided.
Do you ever pick up on such vibes in places?
Will can be a burden at times, but oh well.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Northwind,
Thanks for the comment last week. Knowing thyself may be of some assistance. My mum had some issues too, it happens.
Cheers
Chris
Michael, that’s a classic example! Thank you for sharing it.
Chuaquin, the only thing I found amazing about it was that it took the scientists so long to notice something so obvious!
Rusty, I know. I suppose it was inevitable that a movement so heavily influenced by trashy fantasy novels would end up as a sort of twisted LARP, in which people excuse their descent into evil and self-inflicted defeat by insisting that they’re acting out the plot line from trashy fantasy novels.
Northwind, so am I.
Chuaquin, very possibly, yes. Young children are still much more open to the Unseen than their elders.
Sarhaddon, no, it’s not how most political factions cope with defeat; some of them, unlike the current crop, manage to hold on to some dignity. I think it’s the product of generations of liberal fixation on unearned self-esteem, like the deformed and dysfunctional offshoots of New Thought that Barbara Ehrenreich discussed in her book Bright-Sided. At this point, liberals have so immensely overinflated a sense of entitlement that they really do think that calling somebody childish names will accomplish something or other.
Other Owen, in Martinism we like to say this to new initiates: “We do not ask you who you are, because if you knew that, we would have nothing more to teach you. What we ask you instead is what you think you are.” The personality is always at odds with the real self; if it wasn’t, we’d all be enlightened.
Chris, oh dear gods, yes. I’ve been to Las Vegas all of twice; both times I was there to speak at an alchemical conference — yes, I relished the irony too. The conferences took place at an off-the-strip casino hotel, where (of course) you had to pass through the gambling floor to get from the hotel rooms to the meeting rooms, and (of course) the second time, you had to play at least one round on a slot machine to activate the card that gave you 20% off the price of all your meals. It was while I was walking through there, watching the people crouched in front of the machines, caught up in a motionless frenzy of frustrated greed, that the Christian concept of Hell first made sense to me.
I activated the card, too. I found a cheap machine, fed the minimum into it, played until I’d made a couple of bucks, then cashed out and never went back. I’m quite sure the machines are rigged to give you a small early payout to get you sucked in; in my case, it means that I went to Vegas and made a profit of $2.25. But then gambling, to me, is perhaps the most boring of all human activities, and the atmosphere of the casino floor was vile beyond belief.
Other Owen #33:
“re: Charlie Kirk
Laura Loomer said something interesting, that the killer will never be found, because it was a state actor of some sort. I’m inclined to think along such lines unless the evidence refutes it.”
We’ll see it…I wish you were wrong, but unfortunately, I’ve had in a certain sense the same insight, although I live outside the U.S. There’s a very dark and dirty sensation about this political murder.
JMG # 36: Thanks for your comments about my comment and my question. I’ll take note on it!
“fixation on unearned self-esteem”
How does one earn self-esteem?
OMG!
I read that jezebel article. I think someone messed with her curses.
she wrote this
“After placing my first spell, “MAKE EVERYONE HATE HIM,” I was left with more questions than answers. How long would it take to kick in? Should I have splurged for a pricier spell to make it work faster? Shortly after, the witch messaged me trying to upsell me a $50 “spell booster.” When I asked what it did, she explained it would “amplify the energetic support” of the main spell, or else I could let it unfold “in its natural timing.” I decided to trust the witch’s will.
For the “POWERFUL HEX SPELL,” I had to provide Kirk’s date of birth for “accuracy.” The witch performed the hex, but her response was unsettling: “I just completed your spell, and it was successful. You will see the first results within 2–3 weeks. However, I did notice disturbances… negative energy not only from you, but projected at you. Likely from toxic family members, co-workers, or new acquaintances.” ”
Apparently there she bought a third curse but did not describe its name or effect. It seems to me that this is backfiring in the most disturbing TSW way. I actually feel sorry for these women but their actions have consequences. Jezebel is now just starting to experience the HATE and POWERFUL HEX they aimed at someone else.
How much better off would Jezebel be if she paid money to bless her causes and asked for the wisdom and the guidance needed to actually do good in the world?
@Dennis Michael Sawyers #24 – Quite possibly so. The other alternative I considered was a brief time slip. I guess anybody wearing standard clothes from around 1980 to the present day would have fitted the bill.
Alternatively, it could have been some techno-geek pranking me by projecting a holographic display in front of me, filming my reactions, and then uploading the video to YouTube, just for the fun of it. I’m sure YOU would never play a trick like that on anybody, Dennis – now, would you? 😉
Just reading your Wednesday post today as I was frozen with the shame of being a human yesterday after horrific, sad event in Utah.
Your essay has brought me comfort as your insights on our occulted sapientia have (somewhat) revitalized my faith that there might be a glimmer of hope for humanity though my head still hangs in shame (like Adam and Eve).
Also , interesting always how concepts are languaged differently. As per my personal quest finding links between Yoga and magic, I was struck by way of “pruning parasitic vegetables of thought and passion” is similarly presented in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras.
His second chapter opens with Kriyā yoga practices for controlling the kleshas.
The kleshas are the “weeds” of ignorance, pride, hate, greed and extreme clinging to material life. Kriyā yoga practice is three-fold: austerity ( “condition of fire”?), study and worship.
Thomas Aquinas quote reminded me of an esoteric definition of the yoga state of samādhi as enstasy, centering in oneself, perfect balance of subjective and objective experience.
Lastly, I seem to remember a Colombo episode (of all things😂) where the Irish poet character talks of how folklore says that each person has THREE parts to their souls: their own destiny soul, the dna soul from their parents, and the soul of a deceased ancestor … much to think about!
Thank you JMG always
Jill C Yogaandthetarot
Here are a few ghost / apparition songs for everyone:
Shirley Collins sings the traditonal “One Night As I Lay On My Bed” with R.J. Stewart accompanying her on plucked psaltery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-ef2qLB1xU&list=RDm-ef2qLB1xU&start_radio=1&ab_channel=ThePsychedelicGarden
Here is a new song by Sunny War called “Ghosts”
https://sunnywar.bandcamp.com/track/ghosts
“Sunny War, also known as Sydney Ward, found inspiration for her latest album, Armageddon In A Summer Dress, while living in her late father’s 100-year-old house in Chattanooga, TN. She initially thought the house was haunted. Eerie sounds and visions led her to write the song “Ghosts.” However, she later discovered that hallucinations were caused by gas leaks, shifting her understanding of those experiences but not her artistic focus. [The album] Armageddon In A Summer Dress explores themes of memory, loss, and the ghosts of past selves.” [ All those ‘weeds’ in the mind / ancestry/]
Her song with Steve Ignorant, Walking Contradiction is also well worth checking out.
And here are two versions of The Unquiet Grave. One is by prog-folk band Gryphon, the other is by Shirley Collins just with her banjo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L–qiD1Nzgo&list=RDL–qiD1Nzgo&start_radio=1&ab_channel=Gryphon-Topic
I like Shirley’s version best, but then again, she’s one of my very favorite singers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcIwKf2-POE&list=RDxcIwKf2-POE&start_radio=1&ab_channel=ShirleyElizabethCollins-Topic
” More specifically, he sets out in a single vivid paragraph the central theme of his own magical explorations, which proceeded to unfold after his time into one of the principal projects of twentieth century Western occultism: the finding of common ground between the occult traditions of educated culture and the popular beliefs and folk culture of everyday people.”
I’m looking for that “vivid paragraph” and I can’t seem to identify it. Anyone? Thank you!
This came from a very strange meditation session, but last month you said that the path of the Saint involved renouncing everything except for the Mask, which is the opposite of the Self. This Path leads to immense power over the world, but only as long as the Saint refuses to use it. This means that the cost of the Path of the Saint is constant temptation. It follows then that abandoning the Path cannot lead to immediate doom, because if it did, there would be no temptation to ever use the power.
A Saint then must be able to, in theory, abandon the Path and enjoy a brief moment of immense power, at the cost of “losing his soul” in the future. This immediately made me think of Faustian bargains, and from here I realized that this could describe the modern Western World. It is thus not a coincidence that something as hyper rational/skeptical as the scientific method would have emerged in Renaissance Europe, which is one of the most credulous and emotional societies in human history. Western society could be seen, in some senses, as a society following the Path of the Saint.
European society renounced everything except for the Mask of a hyper rational, skeptical materialist, and gained immense power over the world. The catch is that they did all of this in a very real sense by accident: the vast army of scientists who they created and trained never aimed at anything concrete and practical: their sole goal was to make sense of the world, and it jump-started an industrial revolution, because it turned out that much of what they were discovering and thinking about had unexpected practical value.
Exactly when they lost their way remains an open question, but it was no latter than the systematic effort at chemical weapons during World War I. Exactly as the above meditation predicted, this works well for a time, but it also quite quickly undercut the very source of the power that was being used. Science as a means to get ahead of engineering is less useful for inventing new things, as it turns out, than science for the sake of science.
(offtopic) on Charlie Kirk:
He was assassinated at my school. If my day had gone differently I could have been right there at the time it happened. It’s very surreal. Stuff like this doesn’t happen here.
I do not agree with Charlie’s politics. But he did not deserve to be slaughtered like an animal. Everyone needs to stop with the political rage and we need to rethink how we talk and think about our political opponents. Such a tragedy.
How much does someone saying “I’m a witch and I can hex someone for a fee” count as “the neopagan community?” When I paid attention to ADF and the various people they associated with on the internet, they were careful to dismiss such things as “meaningless nastiness” or “not one of us”. Were there or are there others who don’t do this? Is this type of dismissiveness a good or bad, or sufficient or insufficient, tactic for dissociation with people who want to usurp your group image or reputation? What else do you recommend? What do you recommend avoiding?
One more song to chill out to, for any aspiring Nancy Druids out there, “Oak Knower” an instrumental by Sally Anne Morgan, banjo, guitar…
https://sallyannemorgan.bandcamp.com/track/oak-knower
One of the greats of contemporary folk music.
Jill C #42: It’s a surprise to me that you found that little pearl (the three souls) in a Colombo episode…I must reconsidere my usual scorn for pop culture products (although I confess I’ve being watching a few TV shows with a guilty pleasure in spite of consider them as mere enterteinment). Thank you for your apportation!
I, too, think that there isn’t necessarily a fixed sequence of the three texts to recommend, except that Eliphas Lėvi is the easier of the three texts, but some of his ideas are dated, like it can happen to the ideas of intellectual pioniers.
And I am, too, a bit astonished over all the fuss that’s currently made about the Russian drones which drifted off from Belarus to Poland due to effects of electronic warfare.
From Section III of the second half of the essay:
“From tradition and perception, one thought of one’s own life as symbolised by earth, the place of heterogeneous things, the images as mirrored in water and the images themselves one could divine but as air; and beyond it all there was, I felt confident, certain aims and governing loves, the fire that makes all simple. Yet the images themselves were fourfold, and one judged their meaning in part from the predominance of one out of the four
elements, or that of the fifth element, the veil hiding another four, a bird born out of the fire.”
This has me a little confused. In the quote above Yeats mentions the four elements, to include “the fire that makes all simple”. I’m not sure that he means this as “the condition of fire” mentioned in this Ecosophia post or only as one of the four elements.
Yeats goes on to mention that the images could be judged in two ways which I take to mean that the interpretation would involve finding the central theme of a series of images (i.e. predominate element) or a fifth element, a phoenix which I believe is the “condition of fire”. So for this bit, one could judge a series of images based upon the mix and preponderance of the elements and continue on what would be his future Great Wheel or choose to enter a condition of fire and move on.
Finally, entering the condition of fire doesn’t mean one is done as the bird born out of fire, is itself a veil hiding another four elements which I guess are on the next stage.
I remember in the past John Michael Greer talking about how society alternates between pop culture spirituality and pop culture politics, and how we are now leaving the era of pop culture spirituality and entering the era of pop culture politics. And one of the signs of the end of the era of pop culture spirituality is that practitioners start practicing demonology and hexing and cursing other people, like what we see in the Jezebel article from a few days ago.
@ Rusty re: Rebel Mocking Jay and the neo pagan witches
…. and Ironically if theyd actually taken time to read the book rather than just watch the film, they would have seen the extent to which Katniss, with her rebellious energy and influencer status, was actually just being used as a pawn by the next lot of power hungry despots and just how truly harrowing and messy the whole thing is for her and everyone, they might have thought a bit more about the whole thing!
About A Vision and per amica silentia lunae
Following on from last comment, and Other Owen 33… tbamks JMG that makes it clearer, but still the Higher Self or Daemon neceasarily a ‘good’ thing? Sometimes eg when Yeats talks about the path of love, and Daemon as our ‘destiny’ it seems so, and other times when he talks of it seems like something I wouldn’t really want to meet in a dark alley of the mind! He even calls it our enemy.. how do you reconcile this? Is it our enemy because we make it so? Or is it that it contains both negative and positive aspects?
I plan to reread and copy out the bits referring to the higher self/daemon so far, but wanted to ask before the heat went out this thread!
Anonymous, by overcoming challenges and accomplishing things. Real self-esteem is a reflection of actual achievements, not an arbitrary conviction that you’re the bestest thing evah just because you happen to be turning free oxygen into carbon dioxide at the moment.
Dobbs, exactly. As it is, like every other practitioner of evil magic, she’ll get what she asked for instead of what she wanted.
Jill, I’d forgotten about the kleshas! That’s more than likely where Yeats got the phrase he used. He helped produce one of the first good translations of the Upanishads into English, you know, and knew his way around Hindu literature.
Justin, thanks for these. Good to hear RJ on his psaltery!
Goldenhawk, er, it’s the first paragraph in the second part of the essay, as I said. In case you have trouble finding it, here it is:
“I have always sought to bring my mind close to the mind of Indian and Japanese poets, old women in Connaught, mediums in Soho, lay brothers whom I imagine dreaming in some mediaeval monastery the dreams of their village, learned authors who refer all to antiquity; to immerse it in the general mind where that mind is scarce separable from what we have begun to call ‘the subconscious’; to liberate it from all that comes of councils and committees, from the world as it is seen from universities or from populous towns; and that I might so believe I have murmured evocations and frequented mediums, delighted in all that displayed great problems through sensuous images, or exciting phrases, accepting from abstract schools but a few technical words that are so old they seem but broken architraves fallen amid bramble and grass, and have put myself to school where all things are seen: A Tenedo Tacitae per Amica Silentia Lunae. At one time I thought to prove my conclusions by quoting from diaries where I have recorded certain strange events the moment they happened, but now I have changed my mind—I will but say like the Arab boy that became Vizier: ‘O brother, I have taken stock in the desert sand and of the sayings of antiquity.'”
William, hmm! That makes an uncomfortable amount of sense.
Nephite, granted.
Chicory, I used to do Neopagan events fairly often back when I was the head of AODA. I remember all too well how hexing and cursing turned from something Neopagans disavowed, often heatedly, to something that Neopagans — including many of the same people! — did, and praised. I talked about that in some detail here:
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-flight-to-the-fringes-and-what-waits-there/
ADF was decidedly behind the times as that happened, which is to their credit. As for what to avoid, pay close attention to any group’s attitude toward evil magic and the worship of demons. If they’re in favor of it, run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit.
Scotty, excellent. These are fine themes for meditation!
Mark, bingo. This is one of the transitional stages as the Neopagan scene, and the left generally, embraces its own marginalization.
Free Rain, the Daemon isn’t good and it isn’t evil. It simply is, and it’s also inescapable. We’ll discuss more of this as the sequence of posts continue.
Justin Patrick Moore # 43 and 48: I’ve enjoyed the songs you’ve linked. Thanks a lot!
To be honest, JMG, I’ve found this series on Yeat’s A Vision to be a really hard slog and therefore have not commented previously. It’s not the slightly antiquated language (not an issue with me – I am comfortable reading anything in English from Chaucer to the present), but more so the occult concepts and images which are unfamiliar to me. I kinda feel like an Arts student sitting in a 4th year Chemical Engineering lecture. However, whenever there are overlaps with Hindu mysticism or folklore (two of my great passions), I have something to latch onto. And this is one such post!
It is interesting to see how Yeats defines and describes anima mundi: I was unfamiliar with the term until 2010 when I read a book on geomancy by one JMG and it is something which I have focused on, and addressed, every day since. As for interacting with ghosts – my goodness! I grew up in the oldest city of Upper Canada where to this day half of the houses were constructed in the 19th century. And so many of them (as well as adjacent parks and parkettes) have been haunted for a very long time. Having a mother who was known in the community to be “fey” and therefore was invited to get a feel of a lot of houses meant that I grew up with a lot of real-life ghost stories!
Zemi’s story about the field (#13) reminded me of a true story that is not “ghosty” but more along the line of “high strangeness”. When I was a youth, I was friends with a fellow who had grown up in Singapore. In his high school years, my friend was fond of going for hikes in the forests and hills of neighbouring Malaysia. The native Malays who live there have many “superstitions”, one of which is that in one particular forest one should not urinate against trees as the forest spirits do not like it. On one occasion while hiking in this forest he felt the urge and forgot this taboo and relieved himself against a tree and then proceeded his solo hike. After some time, he encountered an opening in the forest and was surprised to find a clearing in the middle of which was a traditional Malay hut which was very much inhabited by traditionally-clad Malays. My friend went over to them, and they proceeded to hold him captive in the hut for several hours, after which time they released him. Some months later, he went again to the same part of the same forest (but this time making sure not to urinate against a tree) and never found either the clearing or hut. It was if they had never existed.
Lastly, I will mention that the assassination of Charlie Kirk was a gut-punch to me. I didn’t really know him, but my son has been enamoured by Charlie’s approach of rational discourse and respectful debates with persons who hold opposite views to him, and so I feel a great loss to the spirit of free speech in this part of the world. My hope is that Charlie’s martyrdom will inspire thousands of youths to regularly exercise their 2nd amendment right in the same way that he did and revive the seemingly lost art of respectful debate (as opposed to screeching and hissing and insisting that the other party must submit to one’s views and beliefs no matter how absurd they are). And regarding the Jezebel article about witches being paid to curse Charlie – well, wouldn’t you know, it has now been pulled from Jezebel’s website siting lawyers’ advice and saying that “this witch thing was just satire, folks” (no, I’m not falling for that). I find it interesting that the name that Charlie chose for his organization was Turning Point, because what happened on the afternoon of September 10, 2025 is, I believe, a major turning point socially/politically in the US of A and maybe even beyond.
JMG,
Misleadingly enough, Animal Poem is a song and Anna Tivel is a folksinger. Her music is worth checking out for those who like literary lyrics.
The original Jezebel article can be found archived here:
https://archive.ph/x3RWd
>Free Rain, the Daemon isn’t good and it isn’t evil. It simply is, and it’s also inescapable
Well, at least while it’s running. If it crashes, it needs something else to restart it. Some people would call systemd evil. Oh for the simpler days of init and inetd
I dunno, wherever you go, there you are.
Off topic. Charlie Kirk,
Ron I think you are right about his death being a turning point. His death was like an earthquake with many aftershocks. The ground still hasn’t stopped moving. The young men I work with are very upset and seeing countless people on the left celebrating his death on social media has hardened their hearts.That is dangerous.
I commented on a couple of posts last weekend about the state of the astral plane and how bad it was. I don’t think we are done with the evil yet. It might not be a bad idea to be prepared and vigilant.
Kevin Andersen
I wonder, JMG, if the tendency in our culture (USA) to bury the dead, and then essentially just walk away as if they no longer have anything to do with us, is part of our predicament today. Long ago, a therapist I worked with said that in resolving/cleaning up our personal problems, we enable our ancestors to free themselves just a little bit (or a lot) more. Largely, I suspect, because some of those personal problems are generational patterns that get passed along, rather than dealt with responsibly.
As to the hex aficionados, the notion that they are gathering the kindling for their own deaths by fire is a whole new level of sobering if one recalls that unlike in the Middle Ages, we are so very easy to track. Online screeds may live as long as the internet, and beyond. The people putting this hatred into the public domain will be so very easy to round up. Brrr.
OtterGirl
@Ron M #57:
> The native Malays who live there have many “superstitions”, one of which is that in one particular forest one should not urinate against trees as the forest spirits do not like it.
We have the same superstition in the Philippines, being geographically and culturally adjacent to the Malays of course. The local variant is that it’s not _entirely_ wrong to relieve yourself against a tree in the forest, but if you absolutely need to do so one should call out “tabi-tabi po”, which more or less translates to “excuse me, please” to alert the local spirits. Or that you should say the same if you’re generally venturing out into the forest in the evening, when they’re considered to be most active.
I heard a funny story once about a certain very prominent upper-class Filipino man who relieved himself at a tree in Vietnam. I have no idea if the Vietnamese have a similar superstition, but when he did this a dog came out of nowhere and bit him in the leg! This was in the early 90’s when Vietnam was rather quite undeveloped, so he had to be airlifted back to Manila in a hurry to get treatment.
> And regarding the Jezebel article about witches being paid to curse Charlie – well, wouldn’t you know, it has now been pulled from Jezebel’s website siting lawyers’ advice and saying that “this witch thing was just satire, folks” (no, I’m not falling for that).
As a millennial who was raised in a somewhat vaguely liberal milieu , I can totally see how they could call it satire. When I was young, there was this attitude of you-can-be-what-you-want-to-be, you-do-you, nothing-really-matters-as-long-as-you’re-not-harming-anyone. And so, there was (and continues to be) a lot of unseriousness regarding how people go about things. Back in college, I wrote a paper for geography class about “significant places”, turned up the sarcasm 110% (called my hometown “The Place No One Cares About”) and got top marks for that presentation! I even know people who’ve adopted “Hakuna Matata” as a personal motto, completely missing the fact that the song is about the immaturity of adolescence and that Simba wasn’t supposed to remain there and instead needed to pursue his greater destiny of being the king. The ironic humor that’s all over the Internet and entertainment media in the past two decades or so comes out of this attitude.
Of course, unserious does not mean inconsequential, and when this attitude spills over to very consequential realities like sex, politics, religion/magic, and so on, Bad Stuff starts to happen very soon. People have “casual” sex, never mind the STIs and unwanted pregnancy, and are puzzled to find themselves *emotionally attached* to the person they just shared a bed with. Or they engage in violent rhetoric, or in black magic, and then someone gets badly hurt or killed… and, uh, we were just joking… right guys, heheheh… heh?
OK – this is spooky. I just watched a video of Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou discussing the assassination of Charlie Kirk and early on (3:18 of the video), Alexander recites lines from W.B. Yeats’s poem The Second Coming, saying that it best describes the world right now:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Given that this week’s post is about Yeats, when I heard the lines being recited, I got goosebumps.
For those who are interested in the video it is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMQwODvgr2c
@Other Owen,
“Well, at least while it’s running. If it crashes, it needs something else to restart it. Some people would call systemd evil. Oh for the simpler days of init and inetd”
That, my man, is why I run Devuan 🙂
I wonder how many folks here know or care what we’re talking about…
Since it has already been mentioned, reading the Jezebel article leaves me with a feeling of dread: the goal was to shut up Charlie Kirk, and were told it would be done within two-three weeks. Well he’s dead, which means he won’t be talking much anymore, so…. I wonder if the Etsy witches provided. It seems like enough of a coincidence that I have to wonder if they might have actually been competent enough for this. Either way, I think the likelihood of witch burnings in the near future just went up a lot, because I’m pretty sure others with more hostile views towards magic are having the same thoughts…..
Ron, I know it’s hard going. Yeats is a brilliant author, but he’s also a much more serious thinker than many of his academic fans realize — the thing that throws them off, of course, is that his thought is shaped by profoundly unfashionable traditions such as Hermeticism, Cabala, and Neoplatonism. I’m glad to hear that the old concept of the anima mundi is helpful to you! As for Charlie Kirk, I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion of the impact of his assassination on young people — he apparently was far more popular among youth, even those left of center, than most people realized. Those who had him killed may have made a tremendous mistake, one that will cost them bitterly.
(I note also that the self-weaponized autists who have been the populist Right’s secret weapon since 2016 have swung into action in a big way, identifying and doxxing everyone who posted those despicable social media posts exulting over Kirk’s murder, and making sure their employers know all about it. Firings have already taken place, and there will be more. Trust the ‘pedes to go for the jugular.)
Finally, with regard to Jezebel, I’m delighted to hear that they still have the capacity to feel shame. I don’t think it’s going to save them, but it’s a welcome sign that the last frail scraps of decency haven’t quite finished departing from them.
Kyle, she may be a musician, and she may sing her poems, but if that piece is anything to go by she’s also quite a talented poet. Not all people who write lyrics can say that.
Anon, thanks for this.
Other Owen, er, I’m sure this makes some kind of sense to those who know their way around the squamous, rugose mysteries of computer science.
Ottergirl, two very good points. Yes, a lack of respect for the dead is one of the serious causes of our predicament — the goodwill of the dead is a powerful force, and we’ve gone out of our way to neglect it (and them). Your therapist was smart. As for the evil witches casting curses at the people they hate, I know. The Right these days is very well equipped with capable autists who are insanely good at tracking things down online — I’ve seen some achievements of theirs that, even though I’m also autistic, astound me. I am very worried that practitioners of occultism in some parts of this country are at risk of getting caught up in what looks increasingly like an inevitable blowback.
William, I know. Evil magic can be effective, if it’s not met by equally effective countermeasures, and I’m sorry to say (as current events demonstrate) that religious faith on its own isn’t enough to do the trick. I’ve been trying to get the countermeasures out there, and into the hands of those who are willing to use them (very much including Christians), but it’s a tough job in the face of so much ignorance and blind hatred. Still, one does what one can.
@Ron M #57: Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, an English anthropologist, spent some time with a Malay tribe in the early 1950s. For some reason he wanted to nail up a sign on a nearby tree, and as soon as he did so, he was struck by what felt like a powerful electric shock. He was racked with pain and had to crawl back to his hut. He lay there in agony, unable to walk, until the chief, realising that he hadn’t seen him for a while, eventually visited him.
Evans-Pritchard explained to the chief what had happened. “You shouldn’t have done that!” said the chief. He explained that he’d offended the MuMu, the spirits who lived in that tree. He must therefore return to the tree immediately and apologise to the MuMu. The Englishman was in such pain that, with great difficulty, he reluctantly crawled back to the tree. He wrote that he hated himself for doing it, but he actually apologised to the MuMu. He was then absolutely astonished when his agony instantly disappeared, and he was back to his normal pain-free self.
Evans-Pritchard later fathered Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who is currently international business editor of the Daily Telegraph. As it happens, I have a male cousin a few years older than me who was born in Malaya in the 1950s, while his sister was born in Singapore a few years later. Their father (my uncle) was a corporal in the British army.
“Some people would call systemd evil. Oh for the simpler days of init and inetd
I wonder how many folks here know or care what we’re talking about…”
Just barely and Linux is my main machine and a server. 🤔
Linux can be the ultimate computer game, even more so if you use the KDE Plasma desktop.
The only reason the arcana of the fstab file is easier than Levi is that the former has a quicker trial and error cycle. 😉
To explain what The Other Owen and sgage are referring to, in Unix-like operating systems, like Linux, “daemon” is the term for a system process that runs in the background. As its name hints at, “systemd” is the de facto “system daemon” that controls the spawning and terminating of those background processes. It replaced some older daemons called init and inetd, and did so in a particularly obnoxious and incompatible way — basically the open source equivalent of Microsoft’s “embrace and extend” strategy, and some Linux distributions, like Devuan, have decided to stick to the older programs.
But as evil as systemd is, it pales in comparison to Wayland. Several major distributions a few years back decided to ditch the working-but-flawed X11 windowing system (the thing that is why you can see pictures and click them with a mouse instead of typing commands) in favor of a half-dozen barely-functional implementations of of the Wayland protocol, going so far as to essentially shut down all development of the last remaining X11 server implementation and borderline libeling a maintainer who decided to fork it and keep developing it himself.
Hopefully you will never need to know about any of this, but just in case you end up switching to Linux, I recommend Linux Mint, which still uses X11 by default. Wayland is more-or-less fine now but not to where I can honestly recommend it.
Also, since discussion of Kirk’s assassination seems to be allowed at least for the moment, I’ll just ask what I wanted to ask yesterday:
How screwed are we?
On the witches cursing Charlie Kirk: since we are still in the Age of Reason and the laptop class still exists, any persecution of witches will not be officially sanctioned and any examples would be used by leftists in jokes about how backward religious people supposedly are. Hopefully, the authorities don’t come to believe that the witches “cursing” is code for them hiring assassins…
“I am very worried that practitioners of occultism in some parts of this country are at risk of getting caught up in what looks increasingly like an inevitable blowback.”
What parts of the country are not at risk of this inevitable blowback?
I did not know Charlie Kirk until I read the news. This prompted me to read more about his views.
I found myself in opposition to most of his views, despite being a committed Christian.
The only view I share partial agreement with him on is being pro-life. In my case, being pro-life includes providing for the children born, not just preventing abortion.
I wish he were still alive. I would enjoy a debate with him.
Ron #57:
Your story about Singapore guy in Malaysian forest breaking that local taboo, and apparently being punished later for ir, is IMHO very weird. We as Westerners, haven’t this kind of taboos anymore, but indeed we have (or we’ve been imposed) some other taboos, like the woke thing…
More about forests taboos. Some years ago I met a Venezolan exiled young man, who had been born and had lived his childhood and teenager year in a town near the Andes mountain. In his zone there was some forest in the mountains. He told me local people near his town mountains up, like sheperds and woodcutters, believed really in a kind of forests etherean ward, who watched attently the people when they entered into the woods. When this spiritual ward was upset with undesirable visitors, an eerie whistling could be heard by people in the forest as warning…and local people said you must run for your life out of the forest…
It’s probably this legend is from before the spanish colonization times, maybe it’s from the indigenous people that there were living in the Andes. I guess it.
About Charles Kirk political murder: Well, I’ve already written before that I don’t like ideological violence, whatever origin it has. Today I’ve watched some media videos with Kirk in action, and I see of course he was a Right Wing Populist, so I don’t like very much his speeches. However, political crime’s always a bad thing. I can remember José Antonio Primo de Rivera terms “dialectics with fists and guns”, which is indeed a Fascist attitude, but it’s shared de facto by some bloodthirsty Leftism. It’s a pity for democracy when people ends arguing with words and let speak the pistols mouths…because killing in the name of ideological reasons always is a totalitarian trend. A murder is always a murder.
I’ve read before that indeed, some Left morons (I can´t name them in other terms) have been celebrating online Kirk death. This news reminds me the darker years of terrorism in my country (’80s and ’90s), when ETA terrorists killed a policeman or a politican, their secessionist and far left supporters cheerleadered them and toasted its crimes in the Basque Country. It’s always a bad business this thing, because there’s always a karmic and factic blowback after these attitudes. I see black clouds in the American politics horizon…
—————————————————————————————————————————
(Slightly off topic?) I want to tell you about another topic, less unpleasant than things I’ve written before, but I think it could interest you, John and kommentariat. I often met with one of my nephews. He’s 8 years old now, and he looks like to me a very sensitive and extroverted kid, very eager for learning new things. However, he’s been refusing all this year to go to Catholics classes to be prepared for his First Communion. This negative could apparentely be understood as a early Atheism, but I think he doesn’t fit in that dress: some months ago my nephew told me that he thinks after dying, he doesn’t want to go to Heaven he’ll return to be born again. So, he’s until now, a believer in reincarnation…He’s so funny!
Complex stuff. I may be hopelessly out of my depth here.
“Only in the material world, the world of earth with all its bitterness and pain, is the soul capable of freedom and choice, and yet freedom and choice are always and only exercised in response to promptings that descend from the condition of fire.”
I find this a little perplexing. Is this suggesting that we don’t have free will, as such? Or that we only have free will in human form but as guided in our choices from the dead? I may be wrong, but there does seem to be a difference between this approach and the metaphors set out in the Cosmic Doctrine, in particular the influence of the dead on the living. I don’t recall Fortune mentioning anything like that.
“Only when the soul itself seeks the condition of fire—by refusing to hate, as Yeats suggests—does the path of the arrow up the Middle Pillar of the Tree open up.”
Would “love” mean the same thing, in the Christian sense, i.e. by loving all beings? In turn, opening up the path.
I look forward to reading about how the “oppositions are resolved at last” in due course.
Kind regards Averagejoe
Mr. Greer wrote: “All my best fiction happened that way — the moments when whole scenes come flowing into my mind intact, or when characters start telling me their stories and I just hand them beers and take notes.”
Sounds like a predecessor to that recent modern app that you don’t want us to talk about, Mr. Greer. It also reminds me of an old British advert: “I’m only here for the beer!” Are you not worried that you could be encouraging alcoholism in your characters? Plus you’re probably paying them less than the New Jersey minimum wage. OK, I won’t snitch, but it can’t be good for your karma, you know. 😉
@Justin Patrick Moore:
I liked Sally Anne Morgan’s album enough that I ended up buying it. Thanks for the link to some great new (for me) music!
>Finally, with regard to Jezebel, I’m delighted to hear that they still have the capacity to feel shame
Don’t conflate shame with self preservation.
>Those who had him killed may have made a tremendous mistake
It would be very very interesting to know exactly, without error, who it was and whoever else was behind it. We still don’t know who was assisting Retardy Oswald to shoot the ear off of Trump, for instance. And. He. Had. Help. I suspect they’ll pin this on *somebody*, if for no other reason than to make all of us go away and stop bugging them. Or, they’ll pin it on somebody and that somebody will up and die, before anyone can ask him any inconvenient questions. If that happens, I’m really really going to start thinking STATE ACTOR in all caps.
As far as mistakes go, I could see this cascading into a tsunami of errors. In any case, prepare for unforeseen consequences.
About the Dead and Charlie Kirk,
I watched Real America Voice channel, which has as one of their commentators – Charlie Kirk. The commentators had just received news of his death, and openly wept. Steve Bannon among them. Then they prayed, as most of them are Roman Catholic, the prayers were more in that vein. I believe that Kirk was Catholic. They were overflowing with love and grief. Only one man, Eric Bolling, was not praying. He did not know Kirk but was open about his feelings. He said, “I don’t feel any Christian charity. I just feel mad.” As the day went on, you could almost feel the spirit of Kirk hovering over his friends as they exhibited grief in public. I felt as though some sort of magic was happening between the living and the Dead.
The next day, I was reading my daily blogs. I had to turn off social media since every Pagan that I knew was rejoicing in Kirk’s murder. They blamed him for his own death, saying that he got what he deserved. He sent out hate and received it. (The Threefold Law, I suppose.) I now have to trim my Pagan friends, yet again.
Then came the panic about the Jezebel cursing. All about a new burning of witches, etc. I thought, well, as you sow, shall you reap. You were saying you were the Resistance, and that cursing and hexing in the name of justice was the way to achieve justice. Now the pigeons have come home to roost.
I believe that the Conservatives had the proper response of love. The Pagans had the reflex response of hate. I wonder if the spirit of Kirk will haunt them. As for me, I was always taught that if you have nothing good to say about the dead, don’t say anything. I was shocked at the outpouring of hate and blame from the Pagan corner.
Sadly gotten behind on my reading this week, should catch up in a couple days. On a side note I just wanted to let you know JMG, that archive.org has a free pdf version of the translation of Eliphas Levi’s The Doctrine of High Magic that you helped translate and when I saw it I just wanted to make you aware since I doubt you approve(and rightly so!)
JMG “I’ve been trying to get the countermeasures out there”
It almost seems like a catch-22 situation – don’t say anything or enough and people have nothing to work with; say too much and it could increase the odds of monkey-wrenching and narrow potentials.
Maybe too off topic and better for another time, but one of the most unsettling methods of trying to protect oneself from outside influences that I ever heard was someone teaching sealing one’s energy as “zip it up and throw away the key’. Maybe it’s me, but emphasising throwing away the key to one’s own energy system (literally making a throwing movement) came across as an act of gross stupidity.
Sometimes I idly wonder where this person imagined they were throwing the key to… creating a shell that is as brittle as its contents and casting the key to this shell to the universe in general left me backing away slowly as my jaw bounced on the ground. But perhaps I missed something…
JMG: One reference in “Per Amica Silentia Lunae” hints at this resolution, the quote from Thomas Aquinas about souls that have “entered upon the eternal possession of themselves in one single moment.”
That certainly hints at a very much more interesting approach to these matters than, if you’ll excuse the term, the increasingly dubious and devilish ‘new age wank’ spaffed all over the internet.
It’s never too late to begin or change for sure, but I really wonder if at this point, most folks have already picked their direction of journey – it’s almost like watching humanity cleave itself in polarities to the extent that worlds are overlapping.
Perhaps suggest psychic self defence again as a 5th Wednesday post, but on the other hand, beyond the basics and given the potential [sub]nature of the internet, much might be better left unsaid? i.e. there comes a point when what is in your pack is what you’ve got to work with and the time for acquiring new kit has passed.
Excellent post. I’m in the early stages of practicing occultism, and I am at the point where I have begun to recognize the ‘parasitic vegetables’. It was a distressing experience. I recognize that parts of myself are not actually ‘me’ but are actually just deep habits I’ve formed, but I’m not quite to the point where I can untangle myself from all of them.
If I may make another off-topic post about Charlie Kirk: I am much older than his target audience, but I am very upset by his murder. I enjoyed watching his debates, not because I agreed with every point (his being an evangelical Christian and my being a devotional Polytheist made that impossible), but because he constantly pointed out the weak spots in my personal philosophy. What is the source and goal of ethics if you are not Christian? Are there such things as innate human rights and if so, where do they come from? etc. (I have SO much reading to do!!!). His loss is a tragedy not only for his fellow conservatives, but for the progressives that could have used him as a gadfly to clarify their own thinking…which desperately needs it.
(More about Kirk murder). Maybe you’ll will have heard or seen in MSM or alternative media last news about supposed Kirk murderer. He seems to be a young white man, according official sources, and the information available in my country. Well, we could bet if police’s going to arrest him alive or he would end dead…I’d like to say too, if you don’t my my mild cynism, that we are going to be told by official sources the shooter was “no doubt” a nuts lonely wolf (cough cough).
The Other Owen #79: You’ve written about “hypotetical” aid to the Kirk murderer by an State Actor. I agree with you on that possible explanation beyond official blah blah blah, only if we adopt that explanation as work hypothesis, and not as absolute truth by now.
For those discussing Malaysia. Ron #57 and Chaquin #76
I am Malaysian. It is a little superstition (from my childhood) to say “Please move aside, I am going to pee” in the vernacular before peeing in gardens or on trees. This is to avoid offending the territorial spirit. Not everyone does it today.
Siliconguy, I knew it was some kind of eldritch sorcery! “Fstab” sounds like something you do with a dagger bearing strange inscriptions on the blade…
Slithy, thanks for this. I’m postponing the transition to Linux as long as I can, but may need to know this eventually. As for your question, it really depends on the nature of the reaction from the populist Right. So far that’s been very reassuring — Trump talking about RICO charges against George Soros and a flurry of liberals out of jobs because their employers got informed about their hate-filled rants about Kirk’s murder seems to have headed off the wave of efficient anti-Left violence I feared. If the populist Right can maintain that self-control in the face of Left provocations, and the Left keeps making it easy for Trump to crack down on them, we may squeak through this without civil war.
Patrick, I’m not talking about officially sanctioned persecutions. I’m talking about mob violence with a high body count: for example, the houses of known witches being firebombed in the middle of the night by their own neighbors, who are terrified because they think they’ve been cursed. That’s the sort of thing that happens when people publicly practice evil magic, you know.
Anon, that’s a good question to which I don’t yet have a firm answer.
Felix, and he would have enjoyed having the debate. Unlike the people who whooped with joy at his murder, he believed in friendly conversation among people with differing views.
Chuaquin, thanks for all of this. If I were in that forest and heard an eerie whistling, I’d take it very seriously!
Averagejoe, in Yeats’s view we have free will while incarnate — out of the body we’re in something like a dream state, with the same sharp limits that state has. The Daimon can present us with challenges, and in fact that’s what it constantly does, but it’s wholly up to us how we respond to those. As for love, that’s certainly one way to do it, but it’s not the only way. Serene calm will also do it.
Zemi, oh, I gladly offer tea to characters who don’t drink beer (and sometimes to those who do — Owen Merrill liked a good strong cup of tea). It’s been mostly tea the last couple of years, since Ariel Moravec tried alcohol all of once, at a party with high school friends, and loathed it. As for minimum wage, good heavens, all my characters are self-supporting; Owen worked as a schoolteacher in a parochial school, for example, and Ariel gets a modest salary along with room and board as an employee of her grandfather’s private investigation firm. You’d be out of luck if you tried snitching to the New Jersey authorities, what’s more, because only one of the main characters in my published fiction lived in New Jersey, and she moved to Arkham, MA years ago!
Other Owen, it certainly looked like a professional hit to me, though they now have a plausible suspect in custody. I’ll reserve judgment until the facts, or whatever passes for those, become public.
Neptunesdolphins, I know. It says quite a bit about the abyss of evil into which the Neopagan scene has collapsed that so many of its inmates are gloating so publicly about the cold-blooded murder of a man whose only crime was disagreeing with their ideas. I’m old enough to recall when most Neopagans gave at least lip service to the Wiccan Rede and the threefold law of return. Today’s Pagans may have forgotten about those…but the gods have not.
JD, I know. If I send a takedown request, they’ll remove that copy but it’ll be back up within days. Archive.org is in the business of enabling book piracy, and until the laws get changed to treat them like anybody else who fences stolen property, there’s not much I can do about it.
Earthworm, ugh. Yeah, backing away was a good response. One of the great things about banishing rituals and the better end of hoodoo workings is that they overcome evil magic by making your own energy clean and strong, not by raising barriers that will block welcome as well as unwelcome influences. As for psychic self-defense as a 5th Wednesday topic, by all means suggest it! There’s a lot that I can say without giving advantages to people who practice evil magic.
Nephite, I remember the feeling well! Keep at it — sustained effort will clear them away, and the experience of being able to recognize the difference between yourself and your habits of thought and feeling is hugely valuable.
Sister Crow, I’m pretty sure that’s why they killed him. The last thing they want is to examine their own thoughts, since that would require them to face up to their own moral state and their own condition of privilege.
Chuaquin, I’m quite sure we’ll be told that he was yet another lone nutjob. No, I don’t believe that either.
FBI Director Kash Patel said “To my friend, Charlie Kirk. Rest now, brother. We have the watch, and I’ll see you in Valhalla.”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/09/12/kash-patel-to-charlie-kirk-rest-now-brother-we-have-the-watch-and-ill-see-you-in-valhalla/
Isn’t Charlie Kirk a Christian? I don’t think Kirk believes in Valhalla.
I checked the infamous Witches vs. Patriarchy subreddit and a post celebrating Kirk’s murder & the Jezebel article hasn’t yet been removed, nor have new comments been disabled on it, though new posts on that topic apparently aren’t being allowed through.
JMG “…they overcome evil magic by making your own energy clean and strong, not by raising barriers that will block welcome as well as unwelcome influences.”
Yeah, fear based barriers seem like a total non-starter because it is the equivalent of handing over a ‘key’ – like a software ‘backdoor’ – locking trouble inside that an operator could exploit.
JMG “As for psychic self-defense as a 5th Wednesday topic, by all means suggest it! There’s a lot that I can say without giving advantages to people who practice evil magic.”
Looking at the calendar, the next one is near the end of October – perhaps a good time… halloween and fear etc. I have recollections that you did discuss psychic hygiene one time, but a practical refresher would be most timely!
>How screwed are we?
Every so often I ask myself, “Self, is it time to leave?” I’m asking that a lot more recently. JMG thinks some fearless leader will rise up to unite us all, I’m claiming it’s all going to blow apart, because it’s not very well put together.
Maybe some repressive dystopian system can hold it all together for a while longer, but if the Soviet Union is any guide, that’s not enough.
Anon, neither does Patel. It was an odd thing to say.
Patrick, no surprises there.
Earthworm, exactly — you defend yourself against evil magic the same way Dion Fortune defended Britain against evil magic, by formulating the positive strongly and joyously, not by obsessing about what you don’t want. Yes, I’ve talked about it before, but people tend to lose track!
Other Owen, no, that’s not what I said. Please don’t put fake words in my mouth.
re: Valhalla
I’ve gotten the impression over the past several years that Valhalla now plays a role in contemporary military and law enforcement culture comparable to Fiddler’s Green.
>only if we adopt that explanation as work hypothesis
If you notice, I wrapped everything in conditionals. Looks like they’ve pinned it on someone and he’s still alive. Notice how quick they got rid of Retardy Oswald? So either he’s a nutjob or he’s being framed for it. Which one is it, I wonder?
If he had help, I wouldn’t want to be them right now. They’d be almost as nervous as an Epstein Client would be.
Valhalla is heaven with beer and mead.
As for the rifle shot, according to my reloading manual a 30-06 firing a 150 grain bullet at 2700 feet per second is pretty reasonable. If sighted in at the traditional 100 yards then at 200 yards it would have a 4 inch drop.
A professional would have allowed for that. A less practiced shooter mostly raised on video games would likely forget that or not realize it in the first place. So if he was aiming for the showy head shot and didn’t correct for distance the shot could easily end up in the neck.
In a rarity the news media correctly classified the 30-06 as a high power rifle. It delivers twice the energy of the 5.56X45 used in the M-16. The 30-06 is more than enough to kill an elk and as many Japanese ghosts will attest it could shoot through a palm log bunker and still kill the soldier inside.
>Other Owen, no, that’s not what I said. Please don’t put fake words in my mouth.
Sorry. What do you think is most likely to happen though?
@The Other Owen
“Maybe some repressive dystopian system can hold it all together for a while longer, but if the Soviet Union is any guide, that’s not enough.”
I think you’re imagining too few alternatives here. Was the Roman empire under Augustus a repressive dystopian system? Would dissolving the union so the states can make new ones count as blowing apart? China underwent several civil wars but always managed to come back together into a single polity.
@JMG
Speaking of ancient Rome, a thought occurs to me: Charlie Kirk was apparently a dear friend of JD Vance’s. The day Kirk was shot, Vance wrote a moving post in remembrance of him, and yesterday he accompanied Kirk’s casket to the plane to take it home for burial.
I think some people were expecting Vance to be our Hillbilly Augustus to follow the Orange Julius, but what if he’s our Marc Antony?
Anonymous #91 re Kash Patel’s comment addressing Charlie Kirk (“I’ll see you in Valhalla”):
I thought this was a metaphor: a wish from one warrior to another that they might meet again someday.
I’m disheartened by the number of people gleefully celebrating his death: I’d understand if he had been a child abuser/cold-blooded murderer or something, but he was just a guy who engaged people in respectful discussions about controversial topics. I’d disagree with him on a lot of things, but what’s with all the hyperbole about how he was a fascist, misogynist, etc.? Do people ever stop to think “what exactly is a fascist, anyway?” or look up the word in the dictionary to see if it even applies? Maybe it’s generational: I’m a late baby boomer, and I can remember being challenged by teachers and classmates when I said things like that (“what does that mean?”)
I keep telling myself “The world’s nuts, it’s always been nuts – all I can do is keep my own corner of it as sane as possible.” I hope that’s the case, and that the current craziness only looks as bad as it does because it’s magnified by social media.
Apparently some local moron posted an ad asking for magic to make a church burn down during services. At this point I find myself asking if at least some of these morons are trying for suicide by Christian….
The whole “witches vs patriarchy” subreddit is a bad idea imo. Maybe the witches should stop putting all their energy into fighting patriarchy and instead put their energy into creating a better alternative to patriarchy.
I’ll vote for psychic self defense topic for fifth wed in advance. I’ve benefited from previous advice but certainly will not shun more! Thanks for unpacking Years. What an interesting figure. I got to see his diary in Dublin with some drawings. I even got a picture if I can find it.
JMG, thank you for the book club. I’m hanging by my fingernails, finding the text very difficult. The concept that I’ve found the most helpful so far is “parasitic vegetables”. Weeding them out and planting new seeds is a highly visual and concrete metaphor, putting the work on oneself in a whole new light.
An off-topic question: Do you see any analogies between the murders of Brian Thomson (CEO of UnitedHealthcare) and Charlie Kirk? Are they both an expression of the same phenomenon? Almost a year has passed, and the world around us is getting “curiouser and curiouser”.
Felix Cheah # 89:
Hello, thank you for your comment. It’s always interesting to learn more about differents beliefs around the world.
One of the things I thought might happen after Kirk’s murder was that he would become an MLK figure for the Right. However, a lot of leftists think that he is going to become MAGA’s Horst Wessel.
And of course that made me realize that MLK is the progressive Left’s Horst Wessel!
JMG # 90:
“I’ll reserve judgment until the facts, or whatever passes for those, become public.”
I see you’re a prudent man, John. Really, the last thing we want in the US and the rest of Western world is the fast spreading of conspiracy theories by freaks without conection with real facts. We’ve had too many BS these days with the bloodythirst Leftists and reckless Neopagans rejoicing for a terrorist act…
For me Patel’s Valhalla comment, while odd for a public official to say, came across as heartfelt and poetic. I was touched. We live in interesting times as old assumed patterns shift and change.
This evening (local time) I’ve gone with a friend to drink a coffee in a bar, and we’ve seen there was the most read newspaper of my town, for the customers lecture. So we’ve started to read it together. In “International” pages, of course, a long article about Kirk violent death.
Before telling you what the spanish journalist wrote about this sad topic, I’m going to say the context. This newspaper is clearly Conservative in its editorial line and general articles and opinion topics. They’ve been attacking nowadays spanish woke government (day after day) since minute 1 since they started ruling my country, and praising Right Wing opposition, and even flirting with Far Right in some topics. Of course, they share the fatal European consensus on the known Narratives like COVID vaccines (Big Pharma mouthpieces) and Ukraine war (NATO mouthpieces).
Well, now you have known what trend has this newspaper, I must tell you I was surprised when I started reading the article about the terrorist act against Kirk. Of course, the journalist didn’t rejoiced the crime openly, but it seemed to me that he was blaming Trump and the own Kirk for his murder. More or less half of the article was about how bad is Trump (without calling him overtly as a Fascist, but nearly to it) and how provocative and irrational was Charlie Kirk, and “epic” efforts to cancel him at Universities. The journalist seemed to suggest the reader that Kirk had been searching for his own destruction.
My conclusion after finishing reading it: the article could have been written by an American Liberal/”Democrat” trying to excuse his/her own fault in promoting the political tension in the US, and blaming the “bad guys” 100%. It was slighty disturbing reading this “Democrat” propaganda in a supposedly “Conservative” newspaper.
Strange, don’t you think?
>I think you’re imagining too few alternatives here. Was the Roman empire under Augustus a repressive dystopian system
No but the Roman Empire closer to its end was, pretty much. It was so bad, the barbarians’ simpler tyranny was preferable.
Like all repressive regimes the problem ultimately is getting people to do things. Getting them not to do things never becomes the issue. They think they can solve this with robots and AI but then who fixes them when they break, that is if they can get them to work at all?
I’m not American, but I saw the Charlie Kirk assassination and thought it seemed like a pretty bad sign. Sad but not surprised. I didn’t know about the Jezebel and cursing connection until I came here, though. I hope that nobody loses their heads too badly, and that this is a low point and not harbringer of more political violence.
May all of us stay safe from those who would use physical violence to force their opinions onto others.
I wish I could say that I thought my home turf would be safe from this sort of thing. But this year there’s been family members threatened while going for a walk because they’re LBTQ, and someone in their riding shutting down an in person political debate by threatening the conservative candidate. And of course, there’s more than threats in the news.
By the way, I’ve already started fielding lengthy comments by people who’ve never posted here before, trying to insist (in flat contradiction to the known facts) that Charlie Kirk’s murderer must have been a right-winger. Clearly the beast is good and scared, and orders have gone out accordingly to its paid trolls.
Slithy, so noted. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, as Heathenry has caught on so strongly here.
Siliconguy, likewise, so noted. Yeah, I’ve done target shooting with a 30-’06 deer rifle: a good solid weapon with ample range.
Other Owen, thank you. At this point I expect the elite replacement cycle to continue at full throttle. The Democrats have made a lethal mistake by supporting the murder of a very popular figure, and it’s blowing up in their faces. There’s a website — http://www.charliesmurderers.com — assembling a database of nearly 20,000 people who posted vile things online cheering Kirk’s murder, and a good many of those people are going to wish they had never been born; the firings have already started. Since the assassin was apparently an Antifa member, the possibility that Antifa will formally be declared a terrorist organization is being discussed publicly. Even Stephen King, who as usual was a complete douchebag about the subject, is frantically backpedaling at this point — my guess is his publisher got him on the phone and screamed at him for an hour or so. The optics on this are so bad, and the public reaction so strong, that it’s entirely possible at this point that the GOP will sweep the 2026 midterms, break the back of the Democratic party machine, and lay off huge swaths of the permanent bureaucracy. We’ll have to see, but it’s looking surprisingly promising just now.
Slithy, maybe, but Vance has also solidified his place as Trump’s successor — everyone is going to remember him helping to carry the casket to Air Force Two. His chance of being president from 2029 to 2037 is, I think, very high indeed.
Yavanna, nothing terrifies tyrants more than free and open conversation. I think it really is as simple as that.
William, that’s all too likely at this point.
Anon, exactly. Exactly.
Celadon, bring it up in October!
Inna, I’m not sure. I don’t know enough about Thomson’s murderer to have an opinion.
Logan, ouch — but you’re not wrong.
Chuaquin, at this point a conspiracy theory that catches fire could plunge this whole country into civil war. I can’t do much to prevent that, but a little prudence seems like a useful investment.
BeardTree, thank you for this.
Chuaquin, doesn’t surprise me at all. Europeans like to say that American leftists are pretty far to the right; I’d point out in response that European conservatives are pretty far to the left. It’s part of the growing divergence across the Atlantic.
Anon today, thanks for this. Agreed!
Hi JMG,
With regards to active imagination, I often visit a famous designer who has long passed. I visit him in his studio and we talk. He always seems pleased to see me. I think I got this idea years ago from Napoleon Hill. He called it his Roundtable.
Recently, after being stumped with a design idea, I visited him. Within a few minutes, a solution to the problem flashed in my head. It was such a novel and elegant take.
I doubt that the designer is really there, because I think that we shed our bodies/personalities after we die. Maybe I’m talking to my daimon or higher self. Or perhaps I’m communicating with the soul of this famous designer which could be inhabiting a different body right now. Our soul contains our previous lives, so maybe I’m having a telepathic conversation.
Earlier today: watching the river as I often do, for interesting birds, weather, signs of the times… I see a man alone in a canoe, sitting rigidly upright, not holding a paddle, not the slightest body movement, drifting slowly with the current. I continue watching for several minutes as the canoe passes my dock and gently noses into the reeds at the riverbank a few yards farther downstream, coming to a stop. I expect the canoeist to react at that point, but he stays rigid and motionless in the craft. I go running out to the dock to see if he’s in some kind of distress, like a stroke or seizure. Before calling out to him from the dock, I take one more close look, and from this angle I can now see his hands moving in his lap, and reflections off glass there. He’s using his phone. He never sees me, but a few minutes later he finally picks up his paddle and moves on.
The realization that another entity I hadn’t accounted for was present changed the event from alarmingly strange to completely routine and understandable. (And eventually back to alarmingly strange, on further reflection. I don’t think it would have seemed any more out of place to me if the guy had been wearing a full suit of early Renaissance plate armor). Which seems oddly relevant to this week’s topic, among discussion of different types of daemon, parasitic thought vegetables, scrying, and the Anima Mundi.
JMG # 113:
I agree with your opinion about the growing divergence across the Atlantic in political views between the USA and Europe. However, I’ve been feeling a contradictory trend here in Spain: Mild Conservatives accept de facto woke faux consensus while apparently play to denounce it; and since Far Right came into national scene, some “mild” Conservatives are hardening a lot their public speech, for “hijacking” some of Vox party potential voters (far right party). Maybe it’s time for Chaos everywhere you look…
“in the commonplaces of human thought, where the abstract considerations of scholars are far away and the realities of life are very close.”
What might be termed impulsive magic or spontaneous Magic… When humans use magic without text-based Theory, Without well-Defined systems, when magic Sprouts from your own unique biology in a specific moment to address a particular challenge this could be considred its authentic primordial form. Abstract forms are attempts to refine and simulate. Frustrations are born of deviations plans gone awry. So it follows that original magic personal to a specific person is born of necessity.
Charlie Kirk didn’t have any formal college education and his magic was authentic.
I went down to my local brewpub for a beer this afternoon. One of the bartenders was wearing a sports jersey with the name Robinson on the back. Coincidence? I mentioned that it might be in bad taste. No reply.
I’d take a President Vance between 2029 and 2037. The white identitarians hate JD Vance because he married Usha and the white identitarians regard his marriage as a betrayal against “the white race”. We might see the white identitarians marginalized politically for another 40 years if they continue to be against JD Vance in the future.
“It’s by opening up that link with the deeper imagination that characters in a novel I’m writing take on a life of their own”
I’ve been pondering lately about why so much new science fiction feels so hollow and plastic. Essentially any SF&F book I read that’s been published in the past five years has a feel to it, something akin to how Frontierland in the Disneyland feels compared to firsthand accounts of the mountain men. There’s something missing, something has been hollowed out.
This is regardless of whether the ideas in the book are old and stale, or if they’re shiny and new. None of it hits, compared with the pulp fiction of the mid-20th century.
I’ve been trying to figure out what’s missing and I think you may have hit on it exactly. Fewer and fewer modern authors, at least those getting published by the big outfits, have cultivated that connection to the deeper visionary experience, so it all ends up feeling lifeless.
JMG – not quite off topic but interesting nonetheless –
I finally finished THE KING IN ORANGE on a long plane ride out West. Very readable! It struck me that some of what you wrote about the occult influences of the populist fringe back then was prescient, yet today it feels strangely outdated – does anyone discuss the chans, or kek, or the alt-right anymore? Did they grow up? If you could update that part of your thesis in 2025 would you? I find it fascinating that the young man who was arrested for the Kirk murder carved edgy internet memes and game cheat codes into the bullet casings that were found, leading our FBI agents to conclude that it was “transgender ideology” or some such scapegoating garbage. (Heartbreaking. My trans friends are terrified and angry at this kind of political persecution. To a person they are not hateful nor are they mass murderers, no matter what the late Kirk implied.)
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for your story, and you’re made of sterner stuff than I, and respect for activating the discount card. Man, the atmosphere was overwhelming my senses, so I hightailed it out of there, and have never gone back. Best not to be involved. And yes, the irony was not lost on me with the conference.
And that was a lovely observation and turn of phrase for Mr Yeats: “where all things are seen” I’d rather hope that someone is taking the time to observe. It’s not too much to ask is it? I have a hunch that the poet physically experienced the weight of the past in ways we may not comprehend.
Cheers
Chris
I was thinking again about my field scenario (#13). What if I’d attempted to converse with the apparent humans? But the mother and child were dozing, and I would not have disturbed them, while the man was far distant from me . The scenario cleverly prevented me from speaking to them. If they were nature spirits, maybe they couldn’t speak anyway. (Cue an image of the “vegefied” Donald Sutherland in “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, pointing and shrieking). Were they actual apparitions, or had some entity projected images into my mind by some sort of hypnotism? But the phenomenon did me no harm, and I feel chuffed to have experienced a paranormal event.
I remember a documentary entitled “Psychic kids” in which a teenager claimed he’d attempted to stroke a friendly dog in a nearby field, but his hand went straight through it, so he assumed it was a spirit dog. Did I also see spirits? Or was this “the trickster element” in action? I’ll never know, but I feel entertainingly intrigued.
I want to thank you for allowing us to discuss the assassination despite it being a book club week. I can’t be the only one who is really nervous about how this will play out, and having a place to talk about it where the temperature can be kept low helps.
Hi JMG and all – Last week I ordered “Hauntings – dispelling the ghosts who run our lives” by James Hollis, a Jungian psychotherapist. I read the forward today when I got the book in the mail. He talks about W.B. Yeats and the Visions and Carl Jung. Synchronicity at work, again. Dana.
On the topic of the higher self and why we aren’t already unified with it, isn’t it pretty inhuman? At the scale it operates, with our lives being just a blip, doesn’t that give it a naturally pretty inhuman viewpoint? I ask because I’m not sure it’s possible, or wise, to fully integrate with the higher self while living, and the handful of cases I can think of where it has supposedly happened all seem inhuman to me. Not necessarily worse than human, but still not quite human.
I suppose this is probably worth meditating on, isn’t it?
(All of this becomes even weirder in the cases where non-human souls incarnate as humans; but I have no idea how common it is and right now that question seems to be a pretty big can of worms!)
Good heavens, the paid trolls are really working overtime today, and it’s all the same fake claim that the suspect arrested for Charlie Kirk’s assassination must be from the extreme right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many attempts at pushing the same fake story in this short a time. Longtime observers of internet manipulation may recall this document:
https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2017/08/21/the-gentlepersons-guide-to-forum-spies/
I consider all this a good sign, as it suggests that the corporate-bureaucratic state is in full panic mode, as public revulsion against it and its violent sock puppets rises toward tidal wave intensity.
Now, on to the discussion…
Jon, yeah, that was one of Hill’s techniques. It works, too.
Walt, relevant indeed — and a great story.
Chuaquin, maybe so!
Ian, it’s powerful stuff. It’s not something I can do — I need the crutch of learned systems — but it works.
Anonymous, here’s hoping!
Cliff, I think you’re quite right that that’s part of it, but there’s another factor: it’s fake. I don’t think most people still believe, in the heart of hearts, in the Tomorrowland future that SF pushes. They may insist at top volume that it’s sure to happen, but the flat dull emptiness of their writings show that deep down, they know it’s never going to be.
Aidawedo, the Chans are still very much in existence and attracting a new generation of autists. They’ve become more dispersed and harder to track as older ‘pedes learn more about operational security, but they’re still a very active presence online. The only reason you don’t hear about them is that the corporate media doesn’t want to talk about them any more. As for “scapegoating garbage,” er, there have been way too many transgender school shooters recently for that to wash. I’m well aware that there are plenty of trans people who are peaceful and just want to be left alone, but violent rhetoric and hate speech directed at those who disagree with trans ideology are very common in the trans community, and unless trans people who don’t share those attitudes speak out against them as publicly as possible, it’s inevitable — if unfortunate — that they’re going to be tarred with the same brush.
Chris, by all accounts Ireland’s a very easy place to feel the weight of the past.
Zemi, good question. There’s really no way to tell at this point.
Slithy, you’re welcome. That’s why I decided to let the conversation go that way.
Dana, hmm! Synchronicity indeed.
William, au contraire. The higher self can only learn and grow by projecting a portion of itself as a personality into incarnation. It’s more human than any of its personalities, because it embodies so many more aspects of human potential.
Regarding communication between the dead and the living, I have a personal experience to share (it is fairly common and not particularly profound). My father, at a ripe old age, developed cancer. By the time he went to hospital the cancer had metastasized to the point of being inoperable and had mere weeks left to live. At the time my children were small and so we did not tell them that “grandpa” was dying; rather, that he was sick and in hospital. My sisters held vigil at his bedside for his last few days. Early one morning I got a call from my eldest sister saying that Dad had died during the night. Some time shortly after that my son came downstairs and told us that in the night he had a vivid dream in which “grandpa” came to him and told him not to worry as he felt fine now. Only after a while we told him that “grandpa” had died overnight.
@Carlos (#63), Zemi (#68), Chaquin (#75 & 76), Felix (#89): thanks for sharing your stories and insights into the “forest spirits” phenomenon in SE Asia and elsewhere. I figured that my friend’s story would go over like a lead balloon. Truly fascinating stuff! As for Prof. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, I am always delighted to read accounts of know-it-all Westerners having to humble themselves before “local superstitions” because they are so painfully real. I guess they never took Hamlet (“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”) to heart!
It’s sad and upsetting to me having these bad news of Liberal and Pagan people in the Anglosphere celebrating and rejoicing a murder. I’ve been thinking about it, so I can tell you’ll in my country there’s a Penal Code. In our Penal Code, there’s an article dedicated to punish with imprisonment to people who speaks in support of terrorism. It’s been applied sometimes in the recent past here. It looks like the comments online rejoicing and celebrating Kirk death would fit easily in this legal definition, me think. You Americans, don’t you have a similar law against hate speeches? I know my legal system and yours one are quite different, but there should be a legal window to punish terrorism supporters if they can be identified adequately.
Anonymous, #103, re “Witches vs Patriarchy” subReddit–
Thank you for this light bulb over my head.
“Don’t obsess on what you hate, imagine what you could love.”
Well, when I wrote my first comment in this JMG post about Yeats (#8), I hoped to have some rest and relax here after last John post about Situationism and Marxism. However, due to actual sad news, I’ve commented again about politics…so relax and calm have evaporated here.
@JMG #127: “violent rhetoric and hate speech directed at those who disagree with trans ideology are very common in the trans community, and unless trans people who don’t share those attitudes speak out against them as publicly as possible, it’s inevitable — if unfortunate — that they’re going to be tarred with the same brush.”
Feels very akin to our concerns around how the broader occult community may be attacked in relation to the Jezebel & reddit witches’ curses. However, a difference I’ve noticed is that the violent rhetoric rarely comes from my actually trans friends, but instead largely from the female &/or queer (but AFAB) white “allies”. Ironic that the allies might end up driving the ill effects in some ways, though I suppose not uncommon, given how I typically feel about any group of people after talking to woke white folks vs how I feel after talking to the folks they’re theoretically upholding.
Re the book club topic: I’ve just read the next assignment, and now see clearly why we took the apparent digression. (Also interesting how “gyre” was apparently a well known word back then, but these days I only know it from the “widening gyre … center cannot hold” quote. Though probably that comment is more appropriate for next month’s book club post.)
Hey JMG
Just started reading “Anima Mundi”, and already by the second segment I noticed something interesting. He mentioned Goethe as saying that in order to receive literary inspiration, one must let your imagination show itself before trying to apply critical thinking to it. This seems to be identical to your writing advice, that one must write and edit separately since these two actions interfere with each other. Was this one of the sources of your advice?
I was going to wait until Magic Monday to post this as I considered the question / request below as a little off topic but with the recent heinous events the following JMG quote from this post is very much on topic:
“Yeats argues that our thoughts and desires, especially those that we never allow to earth out in action in the material world, also take on ghostly forms drawn from the same animal spirits that flow through us and through the anima mundi.”
I’d say grounding out thoughts and desires, especially negative ones, is a good part of mental hygiene. Because of recent events, I have more than my fair share of negative thoughts but this earthing out concept holds true for even mundane thoughts. Easy concept but hard to put into practice so the request is expand on this a little and maybe even suggest how to make “earthing out” our thoughts and desire part of our daily hygiene without becoming obsessive.
Step one is to recognize thoughts and concepts that should be addressed and not left to grow along emotional paths of their own choosing (e.g. one’s spirituality, religion, daily SOP and meditation help here). Once recognized take some sort of positive action in the material (e.g. Dion Fortune’s Magical Battle of Britain on one end of the spectrum to just taking a walk and getting fresh air on the other maybe?) . Despite that, I do think there is a danger to fall into an obsessional trap by trying to ground out each and every thought.
During its journey, our souls cannot help but to grow a garden of some type, there will be shrubbery and a lawn and a lot of it in a state of wild nature but the goal would be not to allow dark thickets of thorn bush to spread.
@JMG While thinking this over this morning, I had the thought that you may have consciously or subconsciously chose Hesus, Chief of the Tree Spirits, as the Druid Revival god to call upon during the SOP while invoking the water? That is, emotions, and the trees, nourished by the water, sending roots deep into the earth?
From the main post: “in every case [the Daemon] confronts the soul with whatever challenge is most difficult among those that are not actually impossible.”
I’ve just realized that’s closely related to a phrase in the evangelical Christian subculture I grew up in: “God won’t give you more than you can handle”. (I would previously have called that a bastardization of the source text, 1 Corinthians 10:13, but now I’m leaning toward calling it a folk reading.) And while my process of weighing & choosing which childhood bits to keep & which to drop is ongoing, that’s one of the bits I’d long ago thought was obviously droppable.
I wonder if there’s something that I’m missing between the two, beyond who’s doing the giving / confronting, that differentiates them much.
JMG, when voting opens for the next Fifth-Wednesday post, I’ll cast my vote for methods of psychic defense. We live in complicated times, with plenty of dark magic about. Besides, neophytes like me truly need all the help we can get. These days, all around the globe, keeping a low profile is simply not enough anymore.
I had not followed Charlie Kirk very closely so I was a bit surprised at the very religious tones in all the tributes to him I have been reading over the last 24 hours. This was of course obvious to anyone who followed him more closely than myself.
My question is, will this tragic event usher in a more muscular and militant christianity? The left has been insulting nearly all forms of christianity ( except perhaps the unitarians) for the last two decades. This started for political reasons as the right solidified around evangelicals and opposition to abortion. But in the last decade the gender wars seemed to just rub salt in to the wounds for no apparent political reason.
Now the shooter ( or those behind him) has given conservative ( religious and non-religious) America a Martyr . Where do you think this will go.
Ron M. #128:
I’m glad you like my story and the others stories about forest spirits. You are welcome!
Thank you for telling us your experience when your father died. It seems to me in a certain sense beautiful, “dreaming with grandpa”.
Nobody should be killed for his/her public opinions, it doesn’t matter that person ideology or belief. I know it’s an apocryphal Voltaire quote, but I’ll write it here: “I don’t share what you say, but I will defend until death your right to say .”
Democracy means respect for political antagonists life, it’s basic.
A note before we begin. While I’m not going to stop putting through comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I’d like to ask people to begin moving the conversation back toward the actual subject of this week’s post. I’d also like to ask that the burgeoning conspiracy theories on that killing go somewhere else — it’s not as though there aren’t tens of thousands of places online where that sort of thing is welcome.
Ron, visits by people who have just died to their loved ones are far and away the most common form of ghostly experience. When my book Monsters first came out and I appeared on a series of radio talk shows to promote it, a huge number of the people who called in had ghostly experiences to recount, and something like three-quarters of them described visits by recently dead family members.
Chuaquin, nope. We have a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech, and it extends even to that. Mind you, people who say hateful things can be fired from their jobs, and quite a bit of this is happening just now, but there are no formal legal penalties.
Adara9, my experience with trans people is more mixed. Most of the trans people I’ve met just want to live their lives quietly — they’re not the ones splashing around death and rape threats against anyone who disagrees with their ideology — but there are exceptions, and some of those are pretty ugly. The problem is that next to nobody in the trans community will speak out against the violent ones, and since they won’t do this, they’re going to be seen as complicit. That applies very generally in society, to all points in the political landscape: if your ethnic, religious, or other subcultural group has a violent minority, and its other members won’t criticize them, everyone quite naturally assumes that the violent minority is just acting out what the others would do if they dared.
J.L.Mc12, no, I learned it from a talk by a science fiction editor I attended when I was in my teens, long before I’d read Goethe, or for that matter Yeats. I was later pleased to see the same advice in their writings.
Scotty, many thanks for this — it’s good advice, and it’s in an interesting bit of synchronicity with my meditation theme this morning, which was a passage from the Gnostic writings of Richard Duc de Palatine about learning to control and direct the mind, as an essential part of spiritual training. As for your question, the choice was quite deliberate, and rooted (if you’ll forgive the pun) in Druid Revival tradition. Water for Druids is the element of growth and learning as well as that of emotions; the salmon of wisdom swims in the sacred pool, from which the roots of the hazels of wisdom draw nourishment; and even in those days some scholars knew that the words “book” and “beech” (the tree) are cognates. In ecological terms, furthermore, trees are vertical streams of water; they draw up remarkable amounts of water from underground and release it into the atmosphere through their leaf pores. Where animals have closed circulatory systems, the circulatory systems of plants are open — water comes in through the roots and flows out through the leaves — so in this sense, too, they’re symbolic of water.
Adara, the main difference is that 1 Corinthians leaves out the other side of the implication. From Yeats’s perspective, the Daimon won’t give you more than you can handle, but it will always push right up to that line!
Bruno BL, you can post that when I call for topics three weeks from now.
Clay, that seems to be exactly what’s happening. Memes like this are popping up all over the populist Right’s end of the internet:
I tend to view quotes from pop culture with a bit of suspicion, but while we are on the discussion of the synchronicity of Kirk’s assassination and Yeats’ Anima Mundi; I can’t help but being reminded of Ben Kenobi line in Star Wars during his last encounter with Vader: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”.
Is this what the path of the Saint is? Kirk’s ghost unleashed upon the world.
JMG # 140:
I see Americans really love their freedom of speech, or at least the people who wrote this constitutional right. I can say about our penalized crime on speeches supporting terrorism, that it’s been since its instauration decades ago a very controversial topic for politicians, lawyers and judges. Who and what would be punished under the Law? Limits to freedom of speech are not clear, because here is a constitutional right too…So a lot of people accused of that crime have been declared innocent in trial, “because they didn’t want really to say that”, for example, or their words weren’t violent enough to be punished.
—————————————
I’m going to try obey you, John, so I’ll make an effort for writing about this post official topic, and not about Kirk murder. Well, if I have something interesting to say, of course.
Yes, the Mr. Rogers/Crusader Meme sums it up perfectly. I work at a homeschooling based public charter school with around 600 students. We have a broad range of viewpoints represented in the families. We have a good contingent of conservative Christians along with Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses. In general their approach is to live and let live and be good neighbors and live in peace. But if progressive types expect them to accept being denigrated second class citizens with lesser rights to exercise American freedoms, not going to happen. But are there riots and property destruction as there was after the death of George Floyd as a response to Kirk’s death. Nope.
“The point I was trying to make is how peaceful the left was. . . right before he got shot.” —Hunter Kozak, Question-Asker at Charlie Kirk Utah Event, Sept 10”
“What guides young birds in building nests for the first time, for Yeats, is not “instinct” (whatever that intentionally vague word might mean) or the action of impersonal morphogenetic fields, but the dreams of dead but wholly individual birds dwelling in their own memories of nest-building during life. In the same way, living and dead human beings influence each other in complex ways; many of us have seen, for example, how often the two sides of a quarrel, each convinced that every word from their mouths is their own, are merely following the track of some quarrel of the dead.”
This is very similar to the understanding of spirits of the dead that I learned by studying the work of Liu Ming, specifically his course on spirit possession. The full course is available online at the website of Da Yuan circle: https://www.dayuancircle.org/collections/2011-possession . The consistent theme is that habitual thoughts and behaviors are very often the activity of dead ancestors, who can be “resolved” through practice.
I listened to the class many years ago, and I thought you and others here might be interested in some of the notes I made at the time, as they closely parallel Yeats’s ideas here:
“…We have a feng and a shui dimension. The feng part is the yuan qi– the tendency to repeat what our ancestors did energetically.
.
Medieval Chinese medicine says, most of our pathological symptoms aren’t so bad. They’re flowers but they’re not the root. Pluck the flowers, you may still be watering the root. The root of all your illnesses are your ancestors… So you don’t want to harm them. You want to set them free.
The result [of setting your ancestors free] would be… Only the beneficent patterns would remain. Your grandfather was a violinist, your father was good with money. We want those patterns.
But… the way they died is inherited. Their deficiencies are inherited, the things they worried about are inherited…”
Again, involuntary habits of thought, and addictive behavior, are also seen as the work of ancestors. I find it fascinating that the images of flowers and roots is also found here. And Ming also noted that highly destructive patterns– having 20 cigarettes instead of 1– are the act of ancestor ghosts “attempting to qualify out as a demon.”
I made a slight mistake above: The notes I shared actually came from the 2012 class Conception to Death.
Another discussion of the same phenomenon is found in the Secret of the Golden Flower:
“”Ordinarily, once people let their eyes and ears pursue things, they get stirred up, only to stop when things are gone. This activity and rest are all subjects, but the sovereign ruler [that is, the mind] becomes their slave. This is ‘always living with ghosts.'”
If I remember rightly, the Golden Flower had just been translated around this time, with an introduction by Jung.
“there’s another factor: it’s fake”
I agree that’s a factor, but it doesn’t account for the fantasy genre. Nor does my enjoyment of, say, Jack Vance depend on the hope that one day we’ll all be jetting around the galaxy.
Maybe an example will help. One book I’m thinking of is A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne. It takes place in a medieval-ish world, but all of the characters talk like 21st century Americans, and think like 21st century Americans, and have the same bland, gray value scheme as modern coastal blue voters. The same goes for a number of other modern fantasies I’ve read.
Maybe one could say that the inability to believe in the Tomorrowland future comes hand-in-hand with an inability to imagine anything outside of 21st century American techno-hell.
@aidawedo: re: scapegoating.
Um. So today credible news sources are reporting that the Kirk shooter was living with a transgender ‘partner’. Add to this, the initial internet-sleuth sweeps turned up a couple of false positives while trying to ID the shooter: accounts of trans individuals, living in Utah, that seemed to have foreknowledge of the event.
I do not want scapegoating of trans, or retaliation taken out on innocent people, but I think scapegoating is the wrong word here. It seems likely there are some legitimate connections, that are not going to look good for the trans community. For those not on the side of violence: now might be a really excellent time to get out ahead of the backlash?
I dread violence, and my biggest fear here is that this might give the real, actual far-right (not the ‘far right’ that has somehow encompassed everything and everybody from run-of-the-mill liberals 10 years ago like Tim Pool and Joe Rogan to literally everything to the right of them) the seed for retaliatory violence to coalesce around. Nobody sane wants that. I am hoping, praying, that JMG is right, and that instead, this opens up a path for the current admin to purge the bureaucracies and schools, and take decisive legal action against groups like antifa as domestic terrorists, and to do it very publicly: this has a chance, at least, of heading off real, mass violence.
@Clay Dennis and JMG,
re: the impacts of the left’s treatment of Christians – having significant numbers of churches burned down in my country with the left seeming to have little problem with this, plus having churches shut for many months while liquor stores and restaurants were allowed to operate was a defining factor in my abruptly switching my voting habits from always left of center, to right of center. I initially intended this to be a one time thing, but I’m at three times and counting now ie. every single provincial and federal election, and unless the left here stops doing a long list of things that makes me mad I’m probably going to keep supporting the other side. Even though I have a list of things I’m unhappy with the right for, it’s less existential feeling right now.
So one that’s happening is that the left in Canada is alienating some Christians who used to be actively on their side into switching sides. However, a lot of the Christians I meet at church don’t seem to have reacted like this – or really reacted at all. It’s like they’re fine with everything, and haven’t noticed half of what’s happening anyway.
“William, au contraire. The higher self can only learn and grow by projecting a portion of itself as a personality into incarnation. It’s more human than any of its personalities, because it embodies so many more aspects of human potential.”
I am struggling to parse this, so I either need to meditate on it or I’m missing something. I’m struggling to grasp how something could be more human than a human being. I can see something being greater (and can think of many things which are!), are having more of the potentials that human beings could express than any individual human ever could (again, many things do that!) but more human? Since human beings are, at least to my mind, the measure of “humanness”, I cannot make sense of that.
JMG #140
Re the meme of the Mr. Nabors Christian vs the Burn It All Down Guy Holding a Cross:
the riposte to this comes immediately, from the “Animal Poem” posted by Kyle, #18:
…
You can be someone who loves, or you can be somebody else
I tell you kid, the first one is the hardest
Christians are undergoing a hard test and challenge right now.
Do they hold tight to the doctrine of love, or do they fall to the temptation of rage and destruction?
(To the meme-ster, the caption is wrong.
“The kind of ‘Christian’ I am being tempted to be.”
FIFY.)
@JMG, @Ron M
Regarding music and its connection to the world of occultism, I have this observation: in Hindustani (and Carnatic) classical music, the ragas are subjected to one more type of categorisation: that of timing. Tradition holds that certain ragas are meant to be sung/performed and/or heard only at night, some at dawn, some at afternoon, and so on, while those that remain are agnostic as far as timing is concerned. For example, ragas like Kalavati, Bhupali, Bageshree, Malkauns (among others) are specifically meant for the time around midnight. In my own experience, I’ve found that this tradition does have a point, as listening to raga Kalavati at midnight is VERY different in terms of both the “how pleasing is it to listen to” and the emotional aspects, from what it is for any other time of the day/night.
All this can be possibly explained away by neurology. But tradition also holds that the ragas and raginis are not just musical families; rather, they’re disembodied, supernatural living beings, with each raga/ragini being linked to its own “guardian spirit” (for lack of a better term), and that not all parts of the 24-hour day are equal in terms of “intensity of presence” for all ragas-raginis. Could this then explain the difference in experience? For example, could it be that the presence of the spirit linked to raga Kalavati being most intense around midnight plays a significant part in the very real difference in experience between listening to Kalavati at midnight vs. hearing it at around any other time period of the 24-hour day? Or maybe it’s a combination of both neurology and the occult aspects? I’d love to hear your take on this.
Steve T # 144:
“Medieval Chinese medicine says, most of our pathological symptoms aren’t so bad. They’re flowers but they’re not the root. Pluck the flowers, you may still be watering the root. The root of all your illnesses are your ancestors… So you don’t want to harm them. You want to set them free.”
I find fascinating this metaphore about illnesses and symptoms. The idea that the root of an illness are your ancestors looks like IMHO to the “Familiar Constellations” method, ideated by a former priest named Bert Hellinger. I wonder if yoy know this controverted therapy, so praised in alternative and New Age circles, but rejected by conventional psychological “wisdom”. In the “Constellations”, people work with ancestors, although I don’t know if they work it in literal sense or metaphorical.
@JMG
apologies for off-topic post, after you had requested a cessation of off-topic posts. I had not done reading the whole thread yet, and replied before I got to your request. Will take no offense if you choose to delete.
Rashakor, the path of the martyr is a supercharged version of the path of the saint. The martyr gives up everything, including his life, to be true to the mask. Its power is correspondingly heightened.
Chuaquin, it’s a central value of our culture. I know Europeans don’t understand that — and neither do our elite classes, shaped as they are by a European pseudomorphosis.
BeardTree, riots and property destruction are the acts of the weak, and also the weak-minded. It’s the acts of the strong that concern me.
Steve T, I’ve mentioned to you that I attended one of Liu Ming’s lectures, didn’t I? Sara’s acupuncturist in Ashland, OR was one of his students. I was impressed by his knowledge and insight.
Cliff, okay, that’s fair. Maybe the fake quality is an effect rather than a cause.
Pygmycory, I forget who it was who described a Communist as someone who sobs about his pain as he punches you in the face. It seems to be pretty common on the left these days — and yes, the flagrant hatred of religion and the burning of churches are part of that.
William, “more completely human than any individual human being can be” might explain it a little better. You, as an individual, can embody only a small part of human potential — for example, only one sex, only one ethnicity, only one set of life experiences, and so on. There are whole worlds of human experience you will never have, which are part of the wholeness of being human. The Daimon is not so limited.
Cicada Grove, I’m not saying I like it — quite the contrary, I know perfectly well where things like this have gone in the past. I’m saying that this is what I see happening.
Viduraawakened, I don’t have enough experience of music to have a meaningful opinion of that, but it’s fascinating.
Methylethyl, nah, I didn’t say “no off topic posts.” I just asked people to start moving the discussion back toward the theme of the post.
@William 149
@JMG
Presumably, our Higher Selves still know how to project a non-human animal personality, so presumably they can shift to inhuman modes of feeling and perceiving as easily as human modes. But trying to combine human modes of thoughts with animal modes of perceptions would be “learning” so I guess they can only attempt it by incarnating in a severely “neurodivergent” body/brain, if one is even availiable?
“Chuaquin, nope. We have a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech, and it extends even to that. Mind you, people who say hateful things can be fired from their jobs, and quite a bit of this is happening just now, but there are no formal legal penalties.”
Indeed. Bills of rights, constitutions, human rights, and so forth are imagined by many to be bulwarks of liberty. However, they only formally apply to governments and not private corporations or any other entity as this infamous comic illustrates.
https://xkcd.com/1357/
And of course, even governments can be quite “lax” in terms of how often they observe bills of rights. For example, few people know that the constitution of the Weimar Republic, which included freedoms of speech and religion, actually remained on the books throughout the Nazi period and even the four years of allied occupation!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Constitution#:~:text=The%20Constitution%20of%20the%20German,establishment%20of%20a%20state%20church.
Meanwhile, here is a line I love from the Constitution of North Korea!
“Citizens shall have freedom of speech, press, assembly, demonstration, and association. The state shall guarantee conditions for the free activities of democratic political parties and social organizations.”
-Article 67, Chapter VII
Of course, much of people’s day-to-day lives occur under “private governments” where the Bills of Rights that supposedly constrain the state are about as meaningful in practice as the constitutions of North Korea of Weimar Germany under the Nazis!
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691176512/private-government?srsltid=AfmBOop7kDVuFgfPFrfhpqZv9A0VoNYvgLNSJuWeApd3stlVh4RDMMqi
As Curtis Yarvin once said about the “elected representatives” who supposedly are in charge, “Is this more like Elizabeth I or more like Elizabeth II?”!
Something that hit me: until a few days ago, in the back of my mind, I’ve still just wanted to go back to the 90’s. I wanted things to settle back down so we could all go back to doing what we used to enjoy, together. But I don’t think I want that world anymore.
To choose a few examples: that was the world where Stephen King was a pop-culture icon. Where the New York Times was the paper of record and listening to NPR marked you as a person of culture and intelligence. Where people choosing not to go to college or to live in the small rural town where they grew up was somewhere between a tragedy and a travesty.
It’s hitting home what “elite replacement” means: it’s not just the names and faces that are going to change. Our entire way of life is about to lurch as dramatically as it did in the 1940’s and 1860’s. America in a not very many years is going to be a very different place than the one I grew up in. Paradoxically, I’m both more scared of the change than ever before, but also more willing to affirm it needs to happen.
Somewhat more on-topic: where did the idea of the “higher self,” and specifically the idea that it is somehow a wiser and more authentic version of ourselves, come from? Is it an adaptation of the Hindu notion of the Atman?
In your FAQ you list 4 categories of books that are compatible with each other within each group. Which one of these groups, if any, is the most compatible with A Vision?
I’ve enjoyed your dialogue with @William (#149) as its helped my own understanding (he says whilst could be completely misinterpreting it all). My question then, is does developing a relationship with the Daimon allow for some insight into how other human beings might live and what shapes their thoughts and behaviour, since the Daimon can have an understanding of what is outside your own potential? Is this how Yeats (in your last post) talks about writing characters that he could never be?
I went to a great bookshop in Cardiff today that had a giant Companion to Yeats, I’ll go back again tomorrow to find out who its by and whether its worth a gander, I also found Lilith by G. MacDonald, under your recommendation to read that after I’m done with Morris’ Well at the End of the World, which I’m enjoying a lot.
Lastly, to add to the dreams and dying discussion, I’ve wondered does it come the other way around too? Are there plenty of stories of dreams about those souls about to arrive in the world? I had a distinctively memorable dream about my brother’s partner holding a newborn baby with a pink glowing light, in the middle of a apocalyptic scene, two days later, they came around the house to announce they were pregnant.
I know its a 50/50 but she was born a girl, which might have been the pink light. I like to think its true even if there’s no legs in it.
@ Rashakor #141 & JMG #154 re: martyrs – as synchronicity would have it, just this morning I came across a post which describes Rudolph Steiner’s view on the subject (I believe that the post, by Gigi Young, is a paraphrasing rather than a verbatim quotation), which I have reproduced in full below:
Rudolph Steiner once spoke about martyrs saying… that when someone passes, if they are young and especially if they are rightly attuned, their etheric body, which is full of life-energy, becomes a substrate available to the angels.
This giving of one’s own life body to the angels of the spiritual hierarchies is what creates a martyr, or a true servant of God. It is not that the angels need our life force to exist, but rather that the angels can work more directly through a once living etheric body which creates an amplification of the angels’ power on Earth.
The spiritual science behind the martyr is that the life energy of a human being is stored in the etheric body and when someone passes, whatever life energy is left does not disappear; instead, it is absorbed back into the etheric world. The angels then may use that body to produce miracles and Christian activity on the Earth. Their activity will have a greater magnitude on humanity than a death under normal circumstances, or if there was no martyr at all. The martyr, often unknowingly, gives up their etheric body, their body of life, to powerful spiritual beings. And it is that act that can produce incredible shifts in the world.
Thus, with death can come a certain kind of spiritual life on Earth. The roses may take bloom. This is an unusual mystery , and one that is born out fully, and to it’s highest degree, in Christianity. This is why Christians glorify martyrs. It is not because we are some pathetic, depressed spiritual group, but rather because we understand that with death comes life. That only through the act of sacrifice can true love be known. And, that if someone gives their life for something greater than themselves, they are sure to produce miracles on Earth. It is spiritual law.
If the dark side knew this, they would never shed blood. They would never kill. Instead, they would remain silent. Ironically, it is their evil activity that draws in the highest angels, that produces their own exposure and failure. When their greed and malice brings destruction of a good man or woman, an angel of the highest magnitude appears in their stead. Let this be know to those who seek violence, and pray every soul know the love of God.
(Ron here – I’ll just add that I find much of what Steiner’s teachings in general resonate well with my conscience, but far from all of it. But this is one where I feel no “red flashing lights”, so to speak, if I allow for a broader polytheistic interpretation of his words. BTW, I have personally been in the presence a Christian martyr’s relics – the apostle Thomas (i.e., Doubting Thomas) in Chenai, India: and I can say with all honesty that after nearly 20 centuries, his bones still radiate great power and blessings.)
@Viduraawakened #151: since JMG passed on your question about ragas, I will pipe in. I am better versed in Carnatic music (which does not have a “preferred timing” for most ragas) than Hindustani music (which uses timing a lot for ragas and sometimes, to be honest, I find it rather odd). I believe that there is definitely a neurological aspect – imagine listening to raga Marwa upon rising in the morning; that would absolutely ruin one’s mood for the day! At the same time, I fully believe that each raga/ragini has an associated divinity and that just like there are appropriate days and times for invoking planetary energies, the same is true in terms of time-of-day for these divine embodiments of music. I am sure you are familiar with the story of Narad-ji being proud of his singing abilities until Sri Narayana takes him to another “loka” which is inhabited by damsels who all have twisted, deformed bodies and faces. Aghast at this sight, Narad-ji asks Narayana, “Lord, who has harmed these divine beings?” Narayana replies, “These are the ragas and raginis, dear Narad. And it is you who has twisted them by singing them improperly.” Narad is humbled thereby. If Brahma-putra Narad-ji twisted the ragas out of shape, perish the thought of how the ragas look what with the way a lot of people sing and perform them these days!
JMG said: In Martinism we like to say this to new initiates: “We do not ask you who you are, because if you knew that, we would have nothing more to teach you. What we ask you instead is what you think you are.”
Well, I am tickled pink! In the mystical Hindu teachings that I adhere to, it is said that we each are three persons: (1) the one who we think we are (the body), (2) the one who others think we are (the mind), and (3) the one we really are (the soul). The objective is to work through and eventually transcend the initial two kinds of identification and become absorbed in the third.
JMG,
Curious about something – at what point, in any, in the afterlife can one reclaim the agencies of will and innovation, creativity? In the upper Astral, the Mental Plane? Does one have to transcend the need for material incarnation – while being materially incarnated – before being able to exercise will-power again?
Thanks
Patrick, I have no idea.
David R, that’s true of every ideal, you know.
Slithy, I confess that I didn’t think much of the 1990s the first time around, either. But your mileage may vary! As for the notion of the higher self, it’s been around since very ancient times. The Greek Neoplatonists differentiated between levels of the self, for example.
Inna, what makes the categories of books compatible or incompatible with one another are the specific practices they teach. A Vision teaches no practices and is therefore neither compatible nor incompatible with them all — meaning, among other things, that whatever path you practice, you can certainly read it.
Toby, (1) when I achieve that I’ll let you know. (2) There are some stories like that, though not so many.
Ron, hmm! I wasn’t familiar with that bit of Steiner. It makes sense. As for the Martinist saying, well, of course — if you and I and a guy from Mumbai all look at a tree and describe what we see, odds are the descriptions will have a few things in common. 😉
Will, Yeats doesn’t discuss that. According to the teachings I work with, the capacity to will begins to surface between lives as the mental sheath develops, but it doesn’t become fully active until the soul has gone past the need for further material incarnation.
@#147 Methylethyl
It seems likely there are some legitimate connections, that are not going to look good for the trans community.
Guilt by association? This is terrifying. I am not going to belabor this out of respect for our host, but scapegoating really is a thing. Transgender ideology carved on bullets? Seriously? The “Leftists” were the first blamed. How about “It seems likely that there are some legitimate connections with the Groyper meme community, and things are not going to look good for Nick Fuentes.” I assume that “Bella Caio” is something that JMG knows about more than I do I could be wrong. Now back to on topic things.
@JMG, re: your responses to William in #127 and #154, I’m also struggling to wrap my head around the higher self concept. Your replies, though, made me think of an analogy. When I roleplay, I find that I put different aspects of myself into my characters (PCs, or, when running, prominent NPCs). This was unconscious at first, but I started noticing and analysing it eventually – I’ve found it helps me understand and play those characters better when their course of action would be otherwise unclear. Of course, sometimes this also helps me reflect on myself. It also helps me get at least some sort of understanding of those other versions of the human experience – I won’t pretend it’s very deep or accurate, but putting myself in those imaginary alternate partial myselves’ shoes still seems like a useful exercise.
I’ve also read that Chekhov put different parts of himself (his personality, his convictions, etc.) into different characters in his works, often opposed ones. I don’t know what he got out of it, though, other than great literature. But I suspect it may not be so uncommon among writers – Chekhov is just the one that comes to mind right now.
Am I off base or is the relationship between the higher self and its lower selves somewhat similar to the relationship between the author and the characters?
Regarding all the filtered comment spam about Charlie Kirk’s killer: I’m seeing similar comments all over the Internet about how he’s supposedly a right-wing extremist. It’s rather bizarre and looks like a mix of paid propaganda and (as the kids say) cope from distressed leftists who know what’s going down and are trying to wish the facts away.
Some notes on the afterlife, comparing Yeats’ view in Per Amica Silentia Lunae with Eliphas Levi’s and Dion Fortune’s teachings:
W.B. Yeats
“The dead, as the passionate necessity wears out, come into a measure of freedom and may turn the impulse of events, started while living, in some new direction, but they cannot originate except through the living..” Per Amica Silentia Lunae, IX
“The dead living in their memories, are, I am persuaded, the source of all that we call instinct, and it is their love and their desire, all unknowing, that make us drive beyond our reason, or in defiance of our interest it may be…..” Per Amica Silentia Lunae, XII
ELIPHAS LEVI – The dead may be reincarnated if their souls have not yet learned everything it needs to progress. An unbalanced soul may go to “hell” and “heaven” is “the vision of harmony realized”. Neither heaven or hell is the end state as a soul works its way back to the divine. Any communication with the dead is only communication with the reflections of the dead in the astral light.
From this, I take it that unlike Yeats’ view in which souls, through their memories, are actively involved with the material world , Levi’s view is that souls are mostly focused on their own journey toward the divine.
DION FORTUNE – Per the Cosmic Doctrine the soul is part of a great swarm, so not only is the soul evolving though material and spiritual incarnations but the swarm also evolves. Once evolved (e.g. Lords of Form and Lords of Mind) it seems a soul is not so much concerned with it’s own path towards the divine but works its way there through new roles and responsibilities, directly concerned with what I would describe as the “operation and maintenance ” of the universe.
This may not be the best comparison as I’ve compared Levi and Fortune’s big picture views versus Yeats’ more focused essay but my sense is that with Yeats the soul still has its own agenda it is concerned with in the afterlife but a soul as the source of instinct aligns it with Fortune’s swarms and evolved souls (Lords). Per Levi, the souls are more concerned with their own individual path back to the divine. Also, per Levi, unless the soul reincarnates it seems the soul does not have any contact with the material world.
Happy to be corrected if I misquoted any of the masters above.
Re: Prisca Sapientia.
In the ‘Essence of Zhentong’ Taranatha briefly describes the ancient Path of the Seers (Rishiyana).
‘However, the more sophisticated extremists meditate on the course impermanence of birth, ageing, sickness, death and so forth; they know the suffering of this life and of the desire realm; they affirm that course substances such as material forms lack a true reality; they decrease their attachments and know contentment; they develop kindness and compassion; they meditate on the equanimity of friends and enemies; and they relinquish the four roots (killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying). Since they have an excellent view, meditation and conduct their path leads to exalted states.’
@JMG, 140.
Thank you. Do you have a favorite quote or two, suitable for meditation, from Richard Duc de Palatine concerning the control and direction of one’s mind?
(Slightly off topic, or maybe not?)
You’ll have written about martyrs and saints in comments before mine, so I’ve reminded some days ago a new Saint has been canonized by Pope Leon XIV. His name, if you don’t know yet, is Carlo Acutis. He was an Italian teenager, whose Catholic activism as an “influencer” was early cut by a cancer, not very years ago. It’s interesting to see that apparently, the source of new saints hasn’t dried yet in the Catholic world, and they’re adapting to the “new” technologies.
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Speaking of saints, it seems to be a phenomenon not only limited to the Catholic Church. I met once some months ago a Moroccan man who told me in his country there was something simillar to our saints. The popular Muslim faithful often goes in pilgrimage to some famous graves, where a famous wise and good man was buried time ago. People who pray or touch the tomb obtains (according the believers) miraculous cures and favours from the dead men buried there. Of course, this “Islamic saints” have no statues in their shrines because Moslem religion forbids it, but the intention I think it’s simillar to Catholic saints, to a certain degree.
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Pygmycory # 148:
It’s sad to me reading what’s being happening to Christians and their temples in Canada. If Liberal/Leftism doesn’t condemn these churches fires, they become IMHO in accomplices of totalitarian Leftists in “their” side. I think too that State and Churches must be separated between each other, but I think in a real democracy you need respect for the others beliefs, which doesn’t include of course burning churches.
By the way, a lot of churches were burnt and rampaged when the 2nd Republic and the Spanish Civil War happened.
Some years ago a small bomb (but dangerous always) was detonated by a couple of Chilean Anarchists (sic) in a Catholic church in my town. By luck, there weren’t any victims between the faithful (there wasn’t religious services during the explosion), but they perpetred several damage in the church. Well, there’s here in my town a newspaper whose trend is Socialdemocrat (mild Liberal), but the editorial line and some journalists condemned the attack, although nearly all of them weren’t Christians. I think this is the attitude to show when atacks against religious groups are perpetred.
JMG,
I remember you telling me that you met him once, but I didn’t know you attended one of his talks. Fascinating guy. I recall one of his talks (heard online, I wasn’t there) where he described his initiation into the Ming family Taoist lineage. Apparently it involved being, effectively, stuffed with 100 ancestral ghosts and then being sent on a year-long retreat to process and keep from going insane! I imagine Sarah’s acupuncturist was more than usually effective.
I think it’s interesting to note that you can draw a line of connection between Liu Ming, Terrence McKenna, Alan Watts, Rupert Sheldrake, Pierre Grimes, and Joseph Campbell. I think we’re about to go through a process– sped along by the recent tragedy– of large-scale rejection of the intellectual legacy of the 20th century. I imagine, though, that when that legacy is re-examined in a generation or two these thinkers will be among those rehabilitated at least in part. In much the same way that the various strains of late 19th/early 20th century occultism have been re-considered following a period of rejection and forgetting.
Am I remembering correctly that Rudolph Steiner also spoke about the ways that the Dead make use of the living? It seems to me that the ambiguities you discussed that occur in Yeats’s work are found throughout all of the various esoteric traditions, at least those I’ve studied.
On the Kirk assassination… we’re clearly seeing the appearance of a martyr and the emergence of a guardian spirit in real time. I’ve been unable to listen to his widow’s recent speech– the entire affair has affected me more strongly than any new event since 9/11, which is itself quite telling– but I’ve seen discussions of it which included phrases like “spiritual presence” and “Holy Spirit” and notes that Kirk himself seemed to be speaking through her.
@JMG
Silly question: what is a ‘pede?
Assuming it’s a Chan-related bit of slang; haven’t encountered the term before. Feel free to make fun of me.
Slithy and JMG,
I think that what Slithy is saying is not that the 90’s were the greatest decade but that they were the last decade before the widespread adaption of cell phones, social media and the onlinification ( just made this one up) of everything.
I don’t think it was the greatest decade either, but when we look back on it from our situation now it seems like a golden era. Relations between men and women still seemed normal. The entire Woke hustle was not yet on the horizon and the music industry had not died ( for all practical purposes) yet.
But if you look back carefully you can see the little ripples in the water ( socially and psychically) that grew to become the hot mess we have now. The legal environment in the work place was beginning to change. The ethos of showmanship and grift over substance was ushered in by the Clintons. While it was less than perfect before, the medical industrial complex changed drastically for the worst in this decade. And probably most of all, this is when the entire spectrum of American Education took a drastic turn for the worst. From the gold stars for everyone grade school to “In Loco Parentis ” in college. It was the decade we began the infantilization of students.
So while the technology began changing then, the cultural zeitgeist also began to change. But like a party just before the keg runs dry, it seemed like the good times though dark shadows were coming.
Daniil, that strikes me as a very good metaphor.
Carlos, exactly. Kirk’s assassination is turning into a public relations nightmare for the left, which (despite its fondness for over-the-top nastiness and brutal violence directed at its enemies) has built its entire self-image on the notion that it’s more virtuous and compassionate than anybody else. The fact that so many people on the left (some 40,000 examples have now been uploaded to http://www.charliesmurderers.com) whooped with joy at the cold-blooded murder of a man whose only “crime” was saying things they dislike is turning into a self-inflicted disaster on the grand scale. Thus it’s no surprise that they’re scrambling around like a cat trying to cover up its droppings on a tile floor.
Scotty, this is all excellent fodder for meditation.
Tengu, that is to say, if you start with the right attitude, engage in systematic practice, and back it up with ethical behavior, yeah, you’re going to do well, no matter what theology you follow.
Scotty, not offhand. Richard was not the kind of writer that comes up with good sentences for meditation; as I work with his writings, I generally have to extract an idea and reframe it more clearly than he did. Of course he wasn’t a professional writer; he also wrote in white-hot states of inspiration, so his prose tends to ramble and he also gets minor facts wrong quite often. There’s still a great deal of value in his work, and I’ll probably write a book introducing his ideas to the world in the not too distant future.
Chuaquin, saints are common in most spiritual traditions. Buddhism has plenty, for example; the founder of the Buddhist denomination to which my Japanese stepfamily belongs, Kobo Daishi, is a widely revered Buddhist saint and is credited with many miracles. Since Buddhism is fine with images, here’s a statue of him:
Steve, I think you’re quite right that the dominant intellectual traditions of the 20th century are about to spend some serious time in the doghouse, but yes, that typically means that the rejected traditions of the same period will be reclaimed early. If an effort is made to get those rejected traditions some air time now, that might speed the process. I think you’re right about Steiner but don’t happen to recall the quote just now. As for Kirk, since his assassination, the organization he headed has received 30,000 requests to found new college and high school chapters; his death is likely to be as important and catalytic to the rising generation as the assassination of JFK was for the Boomers. I wonder just how long it’ll take the left to realize that the bullet that hit Kirk also dropped their entire movement in its tracks.
RaabSilco, yes, it’s Chan slang. It’s short for “centipede.” If I understand correctly — and any veterans of the First Meme War who happen to be reading this can correct me if I’m wrong — somebody made the mistake of using “centipede” as a slur for the young men who post on the Chans, implying that they live in their mom’s basements (as of course a good many of them do). In a fine bit of linguistic judo, they gleefully adopted the term for themselves, just as they’ve done with “retard” and several other even more colorful terms. It’s one of many ways in which they’ve demonstrated that they’re smarter than their opponents.
Clay, interesting. I remember it as a bleak, difficult time, with a thin veneer of forced cheerfulness and fake prosperity clumsily taped over the surface.
“It’s hitting home what “elite replacement” means: it’s not just the names and faces that are going to change.”
Speaking of that, “World’s first AI minister will eliminate corruption, says Albania’s PM”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2znzgwj3xo
“Diella, whose name means sun in Albanian, is unlikely to be the source of any unflattering leaks about the government. She will only be power-hungry in the sense of the electricity she consumes. And a damaging expenses scandal would appear to be out of the question.
In fact, corruption was uppermost in Rama’s mind when he made Diella part of his team as minister for public procurement.
Her role will be to ensure that Albania will become “a country where public tenders are 100% free of corruption”.
I think he may be overly optimistic, but he deserves credit for trying something new. Are there no honest people in Albania? Or does the system grind them up before they reach ministerial level? I’ve wondered the same thing about the US government too.
Another thought I had is that it’s possible for the Daemon to manifest to a personality as a ghost or as anything else. In my own life, I notice that the divine will often take me places where I need to be to develop and grow as a human being but will deceive me, or, more accurately, let me deceive myself, in order to take that path.
It’s only more recently where I will get indications that are more along the lines of, “This will be difficult but you need to do it,” and I think it is simply because I would have run away from the challenge before.
“f I understand correctly — and any veterans of the First Meme War who happen to be reading this can correct me if I’m wrong — somebody made the mistake of using “centipede” as a slur for the young men who post on the Chans, implying that they live in their mom’s basements (as of course a good many of them do).”
Not a veteran, but I did follow the meme campaign somewhat closely back in 2016 and I remember there was a series of fairly popular short Youtube videos celebrating Trump’s various memetic victories. The opening for the videos included the description of a centipede, probably taken from some nature documentary: “The centipede is a predator”. The implication being that Trump is an agile verbal predator and the people he keeps humiliating are his hapless prey.
So that’s what I thought ‘pede referred to. I haven’t encountered the insult, or the term ‘pede before now, but I wonder if it wasn’t a response to those videos, though with the added connotations you mention. Makes sense they would embrace it.
I feel like I should clarify my comment about the 90’s. Clay’s elaboration gets pretty close to what I mean but I should mention that nostalgia for the 90’s is combination of a Millennial nostalgia for our childhoods and also for the brief window of time after the fall of the Berlin Wall ending the Cold War but before 9/11 kicking off the Global War on Terror.
But for my point I could just as easily have chosen the 80’s, the 00’s, or even the 70’s because my point was mainly about our institutions and pop-culture values and how even those have now been spoiled, and some have been clearly revealed as never having been good to begin with.
Even as late as a few days ago, in the back of my mind my hope was that the left would snap out of the ideological trance it’s been in so we get back to at least having an extension or evolution of the shared culture and values we had in decades past. Not exactly the same but roughly continuous with it. But now I don’t even want that. It’s time to build something new and different.
JMG, you never liked the culture I’m talking about, and in hindsight your detest is quite justified! But for a lot of us, however passionately we could enumerate its problems, it was home, and really realizing that there’s no going back is somewhat jarring.
JMG:
That’s hilarious: thank you for the explanation.
One could accuse the Chan denizens of many things, but one thing of which they cannot be accused is lacking a sense of humor.
Based upon King in Orange, and your series on the Kek Wars, I’ve begun to think of the Chans as the internet equivalent of the Appalachians (*cough* Battle of Blair Mountain *cough*):
both are regions with a history of growing people whom it is unwise to underestimate or provoke.
@Chuaquin, it was scary, and there’s apparently continued to be arson attacks on churches at higher levels than pre-2021, though it has died down a lot and is generally not in the news. For me it combined with other stuff that had been bothering me for a while to act as a wakeup call that the left would defend everyone – except people of my religion or ethnicity, in which case it would a) be silent b) insist it wasn’t happening or wasn’t important or other people had it worse and in any cases we shouldn’t complain c) offer very half-hearted condemnations after the bad thing had been going on for quite a while all over the news or d) in some dishonorable cases cheer it on or participate.
Well, and disabled people from MAID (medically assisted suicide). They’re not getting defense from the left either, with the sole except of expansion to include mental health issues being enough by themselves to qualify. The NDP and Greens oppose that, while the Liberals and Bloq are actively pushing it. But the actually useful and forceful opposition to MAID expansion is being spearheaded by the conservatives. Another reason why I’m disenchanted with the left, as someone with health issues on disability who doesn’t fancy having myself or those I care about get suicide baited by authority figures if my health gets worse.
Seriously, the more I look into what is going on, the scarier the situation gets. It’s not just ‘abuses might happen’ its ‘they’re happening already and it is absolutely killing people who are not choosing this of their own free will right now’. And prosecutions of the responsible doctors and medical staff? Crickets! That’s all I hear.
JMG, you said “I wonder just how long it’ll take the left to realize that the bullet that hit Kirk also dropped their entire movement in its tracks.”
Are you serious? I guess I will answer my own question: You don’t ever say things you don’t mean or believe.
But could you please elaborate a bit? How do you see this unfold? Over here in England the media’s more or less moved on to other things, I guess in order to let the issue quietly lay itself to rest.
I’m just desperate for some good news!
@JMG
No issues, and thank you for your reply as always.
@Ron M
Thank you for your reply. Yes, I remember reading that story about Narad-muni – I read it quite a long time ago! I had a spiritual experience (is that the right term) with raga Malkauns that I had mentioned previously on Ecosophia – to cut a long story short, I was listening to a performance in raga Malkauns late at night (corresponding to the prahar of the raga), and post the completion of the performance, I was seized by a strong urge to go down, take the car and go to a small local Shiva temple; I didn’t go because it was too late at night to go out (given that you’re familiar with Indian metro cities, I’m sure you can understand why), but I think that given that I was listening to the performance in Malkauns at the correct prahar, there is a chance that the divinity associated with Malkauns (probably a gana of Shiva) played a role in me having had that strong urge, who knows? Just a thought.
Are there any Buddhist Charlie Kirk statues yet?
As I read through the post and subsequent comments I see different maps of reality with over laps and non over laps, a set of multiplied Venn diagrams. I of course have my own map based on the teachings I follow and my experience(s), with its own set of overlaps and non overlaps with other maps. It says “the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace” Romans 8:6 Sitting or standing I open myself as the old hymn says “hearts unfold like flowers before you” and the life fills me – the viriditas of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, the Spirit of God? or a label of your own choosing? “With you is the fountain of life, in your light we see light” Psalm 36:9.
Scotty #169:
Thanks for your notes on afterlife according several occultists. I recognize I’ve read E. Levi but not Dion Fortune or Yeats yet.
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JMG # 176:
OK, thanks for reminding me there are saints too in Buddhism and other religions. A good photo too…
It’s interesting IMHO that a fierce Monotheistic religion like Islam, has its own collection of saints. The Moroccan man told also to me that in his country, pilgrimage to dead wise and good men was popular between the folk Muslims, but hard Fundamentalists (supporters of the supposed orthodoxy) despised such as manifestations of folk religiosity.
Siliconguy, meaning that the ministry is actually in the hands of whoever feeds data to the LLM. Gotcha.
Dennis, Yeats would certainly agree with that.
Daniil, interesting. Centipedes certainly are predators — they get into my apartment now and again, and I always catch them and put them back in the basement, where they hunt, kill, and eat more objectionable insects — but I thought those videos were using the clip to celebrate a nickname that already existed.
Slithy, gotcha. As a member of a different generation, of course, my experience wasn’t yours.
RaabSilco, I saw something online a little while ago suggesting that the people on the Chans are very intelligent people LARPing as morons, while our university-trained experts are morons LARPing as very intelligent people. A case could be made!
Miow, the American left has built its entire public image for decades now around the claim that they’re the Good People, the compassionate, ethical, caring ones, and insisting that conservatives are none of these things. Now tens of thousands of them were all over social media cheering the cold-blooded murder of a man whose only offense was saying things they disagree with. They’ve just blown their side’s public image to smithereens. Millions of moderates, and millions more young people (many of whom liked and respected Kirk even if they disagreed with him), now have sufficient reason to see the left as America’s Khmer Rouge, a gang of bloodthirsty would-be tyrants who will gladly kill anyone they dislike. Meanwhile the conservative cause has a martyr, it also has a new and powerful spokesperson in Kirk’s widow, very large numbers of former moderates are rallying around conservative populism, and Washington DC is buzzing with claims that criminal-conspiracy charges are being prepared against major organizations and funding sources on the far left. The blowback from all this could leave the American left crippled for a generation.
That, finally, is why British media is ignoring all this — they’re terrified that the same thing could start happening on your side of the pond. Here in the US, corporate media is increasingly ignored by most people — viewership figures are at alltime lows and dropping. I wonder how many people in Britain actually get their news from the Beeb and its equivalents, and how many go to news aggregators less shackled to the system.
Anonymous, not that I know of, but I’ve seen some very impressive Christian devotional images.
BeardTree, of course. Language is babble; we use it because we have nothing better, and try to communicate using it, about realities that inevitably go beyond human words.
Chuaquin, it’s the same struggle you see in Protestant churches over veneration of saints. Me, I consider prayers to saints, pilgrimages to their graves, etc. to be very worthwhile activities — but then I’m a polytheist, so I don’t have to disbelieve in anybody’s gods (or saints).
Pygmycory # 182:
You tell me bad news about your country, I see it. I think (from my subjective point of view) that things aren’t so bad in Spain…Oh wait! Our populist woke government legalized “euthanasia” not much time ago, so the government here allows doctors to kill you if you aren’t smart enough. In theory our government has implemented a system for securing a voluntary death, but in practice…well this is nowadays a controversial topic between wokes cough cough “Progressives” and the Catholic Church.
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JMG#188:
Thank you for your answer, John, about saints worshipping and the Protestant attitude on them. Me, as an unorthodox Christian I consider myself, think in the Saints as behavior models more than intermediate with God, but I don’t despise folk religiosity towards Saints, if it doesn’t end in devotional excesses. You, as Polytheist, of course don’t find any problem in it; you yourself have said it. I understand your view.
Thank you for answering my question JMG. I dared not hope that something as positive as a large scale dawning realisation of what the real face of ‘the Left’ actually looks like could happen, maybe even a bit of introspection! I pray with all my heart that we as a society can build something good from this.
A data point for you about Britain: I subscribe to The Telegraph, which is supposed to be a fairly right leaning serious newspaper, mainly for the puzzles which I like to do every morning. The way they’ve been reporting various things, including Charlie’s assassination, and the recent protest march in London (at which Charlie’s face featured prominently in marks of respect) are being called out in the comments sections, and called out by the thousands. I’d say a good 99.9% of the comments are along the line that readers know that they’re being gaslit, that they see how misinformation is being spread, how events are reported in a biased fashion, how certain things are amplified, some distorted, some not reported at all. Around every third comment is by a subscriber announcing their intention to unsubscribe. A good majority extrapolate to other mainstream media, with the BBC being called out as the main propaganda machine of the establishment which in turn is recognised as woke and left-leaning. I’d say that the curtain hiding the Wizard has been well and truly torn away, and the cheating machine is visible for all to see. On the other hand, what I can’t understand is how, why, the media and politicians are so brazen? It’s like they insist and fully believe that people MUST believe night is day, black is white, two plus two equal five, just because they say it, like that scene from 1984 with Winston and O’Brien. Why are they being so brazen? They’re not even trying to be logical anymore, just one example: the insistence that Charlie’s killer was a right wing MAGA supporter. I don’t like referring to Orwell too much as that’s been distorted to death as well, but you know the slogans from The Party in 1984: ‘War is Peace’. ‘Love is Hate’. Seems to me these people CAN honestly in their hearts believe they’re the good people even while they feel entirely justified to kill people who disagree with them. How has this cognitive break in people been achieved? And what do we do about it? Charlie tried to engage in dialogue. And see where it got him.
On the “pede” meme:
When looking at that word, I immediately link it to its usage in French which describes an homosexual man. The modern use of it is itself a softening of the original meaning and is the same word in English: Pederast.
Linking it to a creepy crawly in the internet era makes it take a definite chthonic dimension.
JMG, and all others concerned about the Kirk shooting aftermath and consequences for the Democratic party: https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2015/08/the-last-refuge-of-incompetent.html
This essay could’ve been written yesterday instead of ten years ago.
Did my comment not go through? Or get caught in the spam-net? Or did I venture too far off-topic? First time that happened.
Anyway, I don’t think I’d want to roll it back to the 90s, even if I could. Sure, things were more optimistic then (I was a kid, but still got that sense), but all the problems of the present were there, just muted. You still had the vague malaise, the ennui, the ideological contradictions, the social dysfunctions, the drifting lack of meaning, it was all just much less obvious than it is now. I believe the Changer is at work, and sometimes you have to burn the deadwood so that new life can grow from the ashes.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and the Leftist ghouls rejoicing in murder, may well be the “shot heard ’round the world” of our times, especially with the magical effects of martyrdom.
To reiterate from my comment that vanished into the void — I recall a discussion during the summer, stating that there was some big wave or energy coming down through the planes, soon to manifest in the material world; this may well be related.
Miow, that doesn’t surprise me at all. The Torygraph is just as thoroughly in bed with the current ruling caste in Britain as the Grauniad, and thus just as addicted to cheap propaganda and gaslighting.
Rashakor, the irony is that “fag” was at one point another term the habitués of the Chans used laughingly for each other.
Bruno, yeah. I seem to hear Don McLean’s voice in the distance:
“They would not listen, they’re not listening still,
Perhaps they never will.”
I’m pleased to note, though, that while I was correct about the rise of the populist right, I was mistaken about their choice of tactics; they’ve succeeded in taking over the formal structures of government and are now deploying those against the corporate-bureaucratic state, instead of turning to violence to overthrow both. We may yet get through this without a civil war.
Xcalibur/djs, I didn’t see an earlier copy of this, so the internet may have eaten it. You may be right about the wave of energy coming down the planes; this feels transformative.
Speaking of “cope” post-Kirk’s assassination, here’s a gem of a headline from the Associated Press:
https://apnews.com/article/charlie-kirk-video-graphic-online-social-media-6cfd4dfde356b960aeea69c01ea3ec34
“Traditional news organizations were cautious in their midafternoon coverage of Charlie Kirk’s assassination Wednesday not to depict the moment he was shot, instead showing video of him tossing a hat to his audience moments before, and panicked onlookers scattering wildly in the moments after.”
Right. Traditional new organizations? Cautious? Huh. Okay. Whatever.
They’re right, though, that they’re losing grip. It’s only been, (checks calendar) nine years since Trump first got elected?
I’m pretty sure (not certain, as always with this chan stuff) the origin of “centipede” in its original slur form was not about basement habitats or any form of predatory behavior but as a reference to the members/components of a “human centipede” as depicted in several 2010’s low-budget cult horror movies by that title. That is to say, one whose digestive tract has been serially joined with another person’s, such that its, um, input apparatus is completely and permanently attached to someone else’s (ahem) output, and so on in a chain. Taste aside, it’s a rather vivid image for anyone who un-critically accepts dubious information from only one specific source, and passes it on to their own followers. The problem with tossing it as an insult is that statistically, the person calling it out is probably doing the same thing in a different chain.
Still, if reclaiming the insult in this case is a way of saying “yes, we do exactly that, and we’re proud of it,” well, at least being part of a human centipede, however willingly, is its own punishment.
Miow,
I’ve never once voted Republican. I find Christianity distasteful at best (given my childhood, this will probably be my feeling about it for the rest of my life), and I never met Charlie Kirk. Even so, I think it is insanely distasteful at best to do as several national and state officials here, and members of my family(!) have done and cheer on murdering someone for his views I now find myself doing something a week ago I would have said was impossible: I’m considering voting a straight Republican ticket come the midterms.
I don’t know if I will or not; but I know for sure I am not voting for any Democrat for a long, long time, if ever again. If even just a small percentage of the usual democratic voter base are like me, this runs a very real risk of killing the party.
JMG,
I confess that the higher self being more human than the incarnation just will not make sense to me. I don’t want to belabor this point any more than I already have, but it’s just not clicking for me.
The British have their own problems besides the lack of enthusiasm for war with Russia.
Peter Mandelson, tight buddy with the PM, was also in tight with Epstein. This was in a newly disclosed data dump and Mandelson had to step down.
MI6 moved to top of my list as likely deleters of Epstein. They were already near the top due to Prince Andrew.
About the 90’s, they started out really well for me, then Clinton decided my career field (mining and mineral processing) was unclean and used the EPA and control of Federal lands to kill it. My peak salary in that decade was 1994 and it took until 2004 to get back to that income.
@ JMG & Miow, “The American left has built its entire public image for decades now around the claim that they’re the Good People, the compassionate, ethical, caring ones, and insisting that conservatives are none of these things. Now tens of thousands of them were all over social media cheering the cold-blooded murder of a man whose only offense was saying things they disagree with. They’ve just blown their side’s public image to smithereens.” – “The blowback from all this could leave the American left crippled for a generation.”
You could be right but only time will tell. I think a lot of people, not all, on the left do genuinely have that image of “the good people” but not because they are two faced or nasty but because they are ignorant of some of the blow back of their actions and what others in their space are doing. Good intentions and the road to hell. Heck a lot of people on the left, right, center and uninterested are good people, but they are usually the ones not making much noise.
There was the old adage that online discussion is like a light bulb. Generates lots of heat but not much light.
I have generally found that whenever something like this happens, there are always thousands of people that celebrate in bad taste. Regardless of which side they are on. If 100,000 people do that, and it probably is 100’s of thousands, that is still less than 1% of those that would identify with associated views. Alas, the loudest always seem to be amplified the most and are out to agitate the most. Big part of this comes down to social media algorithms favoring those factors, but it is also the loudest exposing their beliefs of hatred or are just trying to be edgy. They are on social media for a reason, I do wonder how many would actually say this in person.
To completely undermine this argument. “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Oscar Wilde
But that messaging leads people end up with inflated yet also reductionist views of whole groups because of this nonsense. “All people on the left are Marxists!” – “All people on the right are Nazis!” etc. 99% of the time I ignore online comments, so much of it is just noise. For instance all of Reddit is now just leftist non-sense. A shadow of what it used to be. But as much as that happens, it doesn’t stop it from bleeding into the real world and that is were the rubber meets the road.
While I do see a lot folks on all sides trying to encourage calmness, I am not sure if that is being heard. This whole thing does have the feeling that the US is now down the rabbit hole and into wonderland, Kirk is the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of a generation. Not because Kirk was such a powerful figure, it is that he was not. That is what makes it so powerful in itself. That his views, many I don’t agree with, aren’t extreme. Not to under mine him, but to be such a middle of the road and sort of low profile commentator and yet be targeted like that is a very dark road to go down. If he can get targeted, who is next?
One good angle has been that ‘Channel 5’ on Youtube did an in-depth interview with the chap debating Kirk when he was shot, and he actually had one of the most balanced points of view on Kirk’s position even though he is much further left than most people. That Kirk could be debated, actual civil debate, not just someone shouting the world from his view. Alas, the actions of this week could have a sort of chilling effect on this and nothing good can come from that.
Getting back to the original essay.
“Carl Jung. Like Yeats, he was a lifelong occultist whose current fans don’t like talking about that awkward little fact.”
I do find that very funny, there are three different followers of Jung. The 80% that just take the psychology, the 15% that just take the occult and the 5% that know it is all linked together in a wonderfully marbled master class. That last group really know how to swing with Jung and everything he worked on. So I suspect Yeats is very similar.
Re: Daemons in Unix-like OSes, and elsewhere.
Many years ago, I had a trip to train 5-6 engineers in an Arabic-speaking country to maintain a Unix-based industrial product. The software architecture included “daemons” to perform intermittent tasks. One student admitted to being confused, which is not too surprising, since I don’t speak Arabic. “What is this daemon thing?” he asked. I said, “it’s a process that doesn’t do anything until a certain event is recognized. Then it wakes up, does some task, and goes back to sleep.” “But why do you call it a daemon?” “I guess it’s sort of like a djinn.” The class fell suddenly silent. After a pause, he said “… you know … about … djinn?!?” “No, not really… just from Aladdin and the lamp.” I backpedaled.
JMG, my apologies if you drew the graphic in #140!
I didn’t at all think it was your opinion; I thought you purloined it off someone’s feed and I wanted to amend -their- caption.
I do think the wave of employment retributions and the crackdown movements by the Administration may be letting off some of the steam of anger for the populist right. I also think that the appalled middle + the populist right significantly outnumber the Black Bloc, so any civil war would be short. BB may stick to sporadic guerilla attacks or just go run and hide under rocks.
However, the orientation and aims of US society are bound to turn to a new direction now. This is indeed a pivot point.
Thank you very much for hosting this discussion!
@ Lathechuck #201:
ROTFLMAO !
More seriously, I just went to see Erika Kirk’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nvJq1nN6Wo&t=966s
I will watch the rest of it tomorrow.
It’s already really moving, just a few minutes in.
But look at the comment thread. Holy wow. This event has rocked the world. People headed back to church after 15, 20, 30 years.
I double down on the last part of my previous comment.
(more off topic I’m afraid to warn you…)
Xcalibur #193 and some others:
I find curious the nostalgia that some people of my generation have with the 90s, even the ’80s (I’m in my ’50s years old). I like some music and fashion from that times, but I’m not fossilized with these “old good times”. Every time has good and bad things, me think (for example, in my country there’s not domestic terrorism anymore). Nowadays there’s good stuff too, between a mountain nof rubbish but it exists.
————————————————————————————————————-
Miow # 196:
Well, I didn’t know that origin of “pede” term. However, I watched “human Centipede” movie years ago and I wish I never had watched it, it was disgusting for me…
You’ve talked about Jung the psychologist and Jung the occultist. If you don’t mind, I’ll tell you, John and commentatiat, that I’m interested in Jungian psychotherapy; if it works really, for example, for treating addiction problems and traumas from the past. What do you think about this topic? Is it useful or useless?
>Kirk is the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of a generation
I wouldn’t go that far. But they turned him into a martyr. That, is becoming obvious to me. And similar to someone saying “Hey, let’s solve this problem by printing more money”, you should tap them on the shoulder and tell them that there are reasons why you don’t want to do that. Same deal with “Hey, let’s make this guy a martyr”. They’re about to relearn why you don’t want to do that. The hard way.
Shaking my head at all of this. What has surprised me is how many childish spiteful deceitful people there are out there. Maybe someone should be tapping me on the shoulder and saying “You shouldn’t be surprised”. But it is jarring to see someone who is 30 or 40 acting like they are 10. It makes me question whether I want to live amongst so many children. Are there countries out there where most people are adults? I’m being serious.
>Language is babble; we use it because we have nothing better, and try to communicate using it
Structured babble though. If there’s one thing that came out of all that LLM goofiness, it’s that there is a mathematical basis to language, it’s what makes those things work at all. If there wasn’t, they wouldn’t be feverishly building data centers like the world is about to end, emitting capital from all their orifices.
But like with Goedel, math has its limits.
>I remember it as a bleak, difficult time, with a thin veneer of forced cheerfulness and fake prosperity clumsily taped over the surface
People tend to recall the past with more fondness than they should. I remember snapshotting a point in time in the late 90s and told myself “One day, you will look back on this time as much as it sucked, and it will be the good old days”. And you nailed it characterizing the 90s. I would add something about how nothing was stable and everything was volatile.
Hi John Michael,
I get the distinct impression that there are also such energies at work down here along such lines.
Are we really truly at a turning point in the ages (early next year at least)?
Cheers
Chris
Excuse me if I’m writing again quite off topic in this post, but I see you’ll keep on saying a lot of things not related with John main topic in his actual post, ha ha…
About the ‘90s cult, it isn’t strange people in their ‘40s and ‘50s has fondness for their younger years. It’s very understable, although I don’t share all that nostalgia. However, I’ve found in Internet and in my town people in their ‘20s and teenagers who have fallen in love with ‘80s and ‘90s era pop culture. I don’t understand such as nostalgic attitude, because of course they didn’t live in those times. Why do you think these people have a lot of nostalgia for the times they didn,t live?
The phrase Nihilistic Accelerationism is suddenly appearing in various places. It seems to mean “just give up and burn it all down.”
A fancier version with fewer syllables than the classic
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
This time ’20s are roaring for a different reason.
Vote for psychic self-defense for 5th Wednesday:
it seems me and my daemon are playing a harder ball just since the eclipse. This morning thr sequence culminated/wrapped up with a dream where my now-locked-up person who knows me best came in the room with a bike and as it’s unweildy in the space he bumps into the table and says ‘oh no! Dont stand them up!’ about these curious metal objects which I had already indeed stood up on this table and they fall domino-like one into the other but they are immensely heavy and make a spectacular huge ringing which knocks me out and I fall unconscious to the floor under the table from where I struggle to remember what room my bed is in where am I so I can force myself to wake up into my body. Which I do. Earlier in the week, Wednesday night I think, I took substances in a combination to which I was unaccustomed and anyway I’d been away from any of it for a long time and my mind was hyperstimulated. Brain lighting with direct connection to voicebox.Then three days of feelings. It felt like revelation from my higher self holding multiple incarnations, not like someone else taking me over. Daemon-self not possession. But exhausting. Want to use the knowledge right. Working on it. Expect insight as we get further into Vision.
Meanwhile my data point on Charlie Kirk, the result via my son’s social media feed led him to an interview where the interviewee told Kirk to look up the ‘Dancing Israelis’ getting my son to the 9/11 truthers. Effects are pretty hard to predict from causes.
Re: Scotty #51
“Finally, entering the condition of fire doesn’t mean one is done as the bird born out of fire, is itself a veil hiding another four elements which I guess are on the next stage.”
Reminds me of a description of the wheel of zodiac at the point of Leo, where the spark of fire in Aries has found itself in an earth body in Taurus, begun grasping at concepts/information/thought getting an air body in Gemini, then developing water/feelings in cancer as a result of taking in the outside world and then FIFTH reentering the condition of Fire in Leo as a self, now with faculty and awareness of the four elements. This telling I’m taking roughly from the words of Tyler Penore.
Hi, Chinese Pure Land Buddhist here, I hope i’m not intruding.
I’m glad I found Buddhism because before I was a Buddhist I was a angry leftist who wished violent death on my enemies. As a Buddhist I now understand the bad karma that that leads too. I was horrified seeing how many leftists celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death. I did not like him, and I still don’t. But he still had Buddha nature and most certainly did not deserve to die. In front of his own family no less. I mourned his death, wishing violence on anyone is wrong. Namo Amituofo, may his next life be kind.
As to whether or not there would be Buddhist statues for Charlie Kirk, No? Putting aside any feeling one way or another toward the man, he wasn’t a teacher of the Dharma. I’ve never heard of any none Buddhist teacher being given such an honor.
Sorry I forgot to mention, the Buddhist communities I was a part of did not celebrate his death. We all were horrified by it and condemned it. I was very proud of my community.
@sgage @siliconguy, etc
>“Well, at least while it’s running. If it crashes, it needs something else to restart it. Some people would call systemd evil. Oh for the simpler days of init and inetd”
>That, my man, is why I run Devuan 🙂
>I wonder how many folks here know or care what we’re talking about…
Back when I worked at Intel I suspected something odd is happening because we had to steppings one for the CPUs and one for the MCP
A few year later some researcher revealed that ME runs another CPU inside the Intel CPU which runs a MINIX in Ring “-3” (root is ring 0).
https://old.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight/comments/7apoo1/intel_cpus_management_engine_runs_minix_on_ring_3/
I suspect that systemd being PID 1 and being in everything is just a way to map your Linux kernel entrypoint for this MINIX to make hole in the the Linux kernel security bigger than in the Emmental cheese
AMD also has an ARM CPU running inside the CPU
OTHER OWEN:
‘Shaking my head at all of this. What has surprised me is how many childish spiteful deceitful people there are out there. Maybe someone should be tapping me on the shoulder and saying “You shouldn’t be surprised”. But it is jarring to see someone who is 30 or 40 acting like they are 10. It makes me question whether I want to live amongst so many children. Are there countries out there where most people are adults? I’m being serious.’
California leads the way, Other Owen.
i’m still reeling.
erika
Chuaquin #205: “I’m interested in Jungian psychotherapy; if it works really, for example, for treating addiction problems and traumas from the past. What do you think about this topic? Is it useful or useless?”
If I may, I’ll offer my own perspective about Jungian psychoanalysis. I saw two Jungian psychoanalysts in my twenties, and they were awful: their “therapy” consisted of spouting off a bunch of Jungian jargon (“that’s the negative animus!” “that’s your shadow!”). Neither of these people were licensed to practice in my state – I strongly recommend that anyone considering psychotherapy check to ensure that the therapist is licensed, and that the license is in good standing.
I eventually found a clinical psychologist who really did help me. He was fully qualified and licensed, and while he was very familiar with Jung’s writings and used those insights, he didn’t use Jungian jargon. Instead, he encouraged me to talk about my feelings and experiences, and listened respectfully.
Just a cautionary tale that may be helpful.
@arcane archivist #216
The Management Engine. People have figured out how to disable it. It does make sense if you’re running a corporate fleet of desktops or a bunch of server blades and you don’t want to get up and walk down to where the machine actually is. But for a private individual, there’s no real upside to it and a whole lot of security hole downside to it. TBH, it’s also a security hole for the corporation as well, but at some point you have so many machines, it becomes impractical not to have something like it.
The big thing I really don’t like about either one, is they tell you it’s there but almost everything else about them is s00per sekrit. The people who figured out how to turn off the ME, figured it out on their own.
I suppose that makes AMD worse, because nobody yet that I know of has figured out how to disable their version of that ME. Although with AMD gaining popularity, eventually someone will.
I dunno. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were intentional security holes in all the chips, snuck in there by your favorite three letter. You know, extra special opcodes.
But who needs to get that sophisticated when you have Clownstrike, er Crowdstrike?
>California leads the way, Other Owen.
They used to. Now, I’m not so sure. Lynsi Snyder (heiress to In-n-out) is moving to Nashville. Oracle is in Austin. HP is in Houston. Adam Carolla said just as soon as his kids are graduated, he’s leaving. When did movies start getting made in Atlanta? I don’t know, but a growing chunk of them are.
Not sure the future lies in this country but I’m even more certain it doesn’t lie in CA any longer. I need to find the future, wherever and whatever it is.
@Alice #213,
Thank you for your insight. It’s one thing to read about one’s astrological progression and think of it “academically” but you have provided a nice, imaginative, path for meditation.
@sgage @siliconguy, @Arcane Activist.
“Back when I worked at Intel I suspected something odd is happening because we had to steppings one for the CPUs and one for the MCP” – “A few year later some researcher revealed that ME runs another CPU inside the Intel CPU which runs a MINIX in Ring “-3” (root is ring 0).” – “I suspect that systemd being PID 1 and being in everything is just a way to map your Linux kernel entrypoint for this MINIX to make hole in the the Linux kernel security bigger than in the Emmental cheese”
There is a reason why the fastest laptop in my house is a Core 2 Duo from 2009, it is the last Intel chip that doesn’t have the IME on it. Also have Libreboot firmware so that the entire source code for the system is visible. As for the SystemD link into Minix, someone I used to work with previously was involved with the NSA and they had planted all manner of back doors in both SystemD and Linux kernel, so if they are to be believed, your hunch is correct. This is where the concept of NOBUS comes in, Nobody But Us.
There are things like ME Cleaner that can remove most of this system but it isn’t a total wipe, the chips are designed to reset after 30 minutes if the IME isn’t running. Theoretically you could handle a chip reset with a stored jump variable on reset, this is how the 286 chip handled different memory spaces but that would need to be done a low level of the OS, I doubt it would ever be implimented.
As for the AMD PSP system, I was involved in discussions with AMD for a few months about liberating it into the Free/Libre software space. Turns out a lot of its software is purchased from 3rd parties and so they cannot release this code, they don’t even know themselves the full extent of what this software can do.
This is why I have sometimes wonder if blasting the computer age back to 1990 level technology could be a good thing. Make computers slow enough and with small enough memory that you cannot easily hide this stuff.
Yavanna # 218:
Thank you for your advice and telling us your experience about Junguian “therapists”. I’ll take on account what you’ve written about this topic. It’s always necessary the therapists are qualified and licenses, of course, I agree.
‘…so like a wheele, around they roam from old to new’. Spenser’s great Wheel of Rebirth 🙂
When East meets West in this way, I’m inexplicably happy. I hope to eventually gain some understanding of Western occultism in order to translate the Eastern traditions that I’ve studied. The difficulty is that I’ve absorbed so much of the East that I’ve become rather alienated from the West, and I now genuinely struggle to understand it. So my fifth Wednesday request in future months will be for a brief comparison between the concepts that underpin Western occultism and those of esoteric Buddhism.
Since I am a Romanian I haven’t commented on the death of Charlie Kirk, sitting on it a few days, I find evil the videos of “happiness” about his death, but the laughs are fake and strange it looks more like a trend or a mental virus.
I think one aspect that is accepted and is bad IMHO is the AI slop videos in e which he plays all kind of roles.
Speaking of AI of this someone made a good the analysis why the AI caught the western heavy financialized economies in a trap that they cannot know get out without hard landing:
https://xcancel.com/cirnosad/status/1967598082520154219
At this point the sooner this AI fails the better, before it goes metastatic, since it is extremely parasitic, some people in comments even said demonic/ archonic/ demiurgic,
US tech is a sinking ship, and a lot of people are leaving from big companies or from US althogether:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3325326/intel-chip-architect-su-fei-returns-china-after-20-years-us
The Spectacle is showing up in the below linked thread of talking points on the CK assassination. I am appalled by this act of political violence, even as I was not a fan at all of his views. Opposite of a fan in fact. I pasted below the bit from a blog that talked about how Kirk and other political influencers like him are in turn influencing the Spectacle, and how, because it is all part of a whole system, the system itself sick and the rot is spreading, the Spectacle then gets a grip on unhinged minds who are likely chronically online, and something like this occurs.
This does relate to the reading in question as well. The internet is planting all kinds of seeds whose vegetables are growing in minds. All the content people have access to is acting like fertilizer. Not all of those vegetables are ones you’d want to eat. Disengaging from the Spectacle can help. So can having some kind of spiritual tradition to practice.
The Situationists thought of boredom as a kind of social pathology. If you look at the terminally online, and those for whom politics has replaced spiritual devotion, hobbies, or engagement with communities-in-the-flesh, intense feedback loops are being created that reverberate back into the echo chambered Spectacle, leading to further disruptions.
One other comment on this, and mentioned in the thread below, is how this is giving the Rightward side of things the chance to embrace the cancel culture they once so abhorred by slamming down on anyone who holds to even a shred of ideas from the left, whether or not they are extreme ideas. Take this picture on X as an instance of that cancel culture swinging back in full force from the left to the right:
https://x.com/natwilsonturner/status/1966601711012696225
Meanwhile the Center does not hold. Is there a center anymore?
@Siliconguy mentioned accelerationism. That is in here too. Not that tech bro brand (there are many flavors) but the negationist burn it all down kind.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/09/influencer-apocalypse-charlie-kirk-911-dowd-klein-loomer-fuentes-groyper.html
“Yasha Lavine’s “The Spectacle Made Flesh” explains why Kirk’s death is sending such shockwaves through the elite of old-line media and the younger generation alike:
The hit did something I haven’t seen before. It spooked the political influencers. They are scared. Many of them spent last night issuing lengthy, serious statements on X about the gravity of the situation. Some of them are calling it a 9/11 event — a 9/11 for the influencer class.
Political assassinations are one thing. Killing a president, however horrible, was seen as within the rules of “the game.” But influencers? Political commentators? They were supposed to be a protected class. Their free speech was supposed to matter. It was supposed to be protected by “the rules.” Many of them see themselves in Charlie Kirk. And they are clearly afraid for their lives. The world — their world — has turned upside down. Nothing will be the same to them. And it’s not just the influencers on Charlie Kirk’s team. The liberal and left wings of the influencer class are panicking, too. If a righty influencer can be whacked, so can they. The rules have changed.
…
The political influencer is a relatively new phenomenon. Bigger and more numerous and more visible as a class than the talk radio guys and a lot more unhinged than the cable news personalities, they’ve risen to the top of the Spectacle — made possible by the monopolistic communications technologies that we all now inhabit. Many of them are completely self-made, talented, coming from “the people” with a gift for sensing what their people want to hear and projecting emotional connection. They are kings and queens of the Spectacle now — agitating the mass psychosis, exploiting the alienation, pain, and anger that’s surging through the population. They’ve been stirring the psychic oceans, working up surges and storms, and then riding these waves to fame and money and political power.
Throughout their short existence, they have been insulated from the psychic madness they’ve pumped into the Spectacle. They’ve been secure in their nice neighborhoods and big houses and elite institutions, certain that the people they’ve trapped with the Spectacle are too distracted, too enchanted, too zombified… But this Charlie Kirk assassination changed something for them. It’s dawning on them that the Spectacle is not just an abstract entity. They are realizing deep down inside that the Spectacle can be made flesh. And that flesh can be killed. And that this flesh can be theirs.”
Following up on my comment about not wanting to go back, In the last open post I mentioned that I had a desire to repeat this life and correct some mistakes. I think I’m cured of that now. I don’t want to do this again, and I can see much more clearly how many of the things I felt were holding me back (ex: growing up in a small rural town in the middle of nowhere) were really protecting from getting involved in some very bad crowds.
Onward to something different, in this life and the next.
Mocha # 226:
A good use of the Debordian term “Spectacle” to the current mess in the U.S. (And maybe in other parts of the world). I agree. Situationism isn’t dead yet, so it can be applied properly to this Chaos which we used to call “Western Culture”.
You wrote:
“The internet is planting all kinds of seeds whose vegetables are growing in minds. All the content people have access to is acting like fertilizer. Not all of those vegetables are ones you’d want to eat. Disengaging from the Spectacle can help. So can having some kind of spiritual tradition to practice.”
Good metaphore too. I’d like to add to this paragraph a quote from Jesus, who said: “By their fruits you will recognize them”(I hope to have translated correctly this phrase). There are fruits we cannot and we mustn’t eat…
Slithy Toves,
There’s also the butterfly effect for why I wouldn’t want to go back and relive my life. I don’t want to make changes to my life back in the 1990s or 2000s, that unbeknownist to me inadvertantly change the trajectory of the United States and cause it to implode into a civil war in the early 2020s with neo-Nazi white supremacist and far-left terrorists running around beheading people and bombing cities.
On the internet, video blogs or podcast clips, religion and politics become mere entertainment. The medium in which they are working is a weakness to their evangelism because it transmits within the confines of the medium. There may be dogma, tradition, and theology, but in these sermons to the siloed there is a lack of spiritual transcendence because their is no ritual, no sacrament. There may be talk of politics but not much or organizing or actual community. Perhaps only the dirty influence of the subnatural realm.
The influencer in turn is above deity and they become captured by their audience, so dare not deviate from a most successful formula.
Mocha Risible Citrine Shoggoth wrote:
“Disengaging from the Spectacle can help. So can having some kind of spiritual tradition to practice.”
Ecosophia is one of my touchstones, but even here the Spectacle penetrates.
Staying focused on Yeat’s “A Vision” and my related readings in world mythology and philosophy has been challenging. Many of his poems touch me “in the deep heart’s core,” but his system (like most such systems) seems abstract and cold. Trying to mathematically calculate the turning of the ages and assign types, tinctures and phases to every aspect of history and human behavior strikes me as a prime example of a grand gesture doomed to failure.
“We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower,
And the light proves that he is reading still.
He has found, after the manner of his kind,
Mere images; chosen this place to live in
Because, it may be, of the candle-light
From the far tower where Milton’s Platonist
Sat late, or Shelley’s visionary prince;
The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved,
An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil;
And now he seeks in book or manuscript
What he shall never find.”
A Vision (1937), “The Phases of the Moon”
My daily spiritual practice consists of meditation, preparing food, walks in Nature, watching birds, watering my garden, and maintaining a calm and orderly home. Perhaps like Yeats,
“He will buy perhaps some small old
house where like Ariosto he can dig his
garden, and think that in the return of birds
and leaves , or moon and sun, and in the evening
flight of the rooks he may discover
rhythm and pattern like those in sleep and
so never awake out of vision. Then he will
remember Wordsworth withering into eighty
years, honoured and empty-witted, and climb
to some waste room and find, forgotten there
by youth, some bitter crust.” (Per Amica Silentia Lunae)
Carlos, people are mocking the US corporate media unmercifully for that, and not without very good reason.
Walt, hmm! Okay, I hadn’t heard that, but it sounds plausible.
Michael, well, we’ll see. Usually such things pass without much in the way of reaction, but this time there’s quite a bit of very public revulsion, and a surprisingly large number of people publicly disavowing their Democratic allegiance. Oh, and conservative churches are crammed with new people. I think the latest round of ghoulish gloating by the left was just one straw too many for that particular camel. As for Jung, granted!
Cicada, no, I didn’t draw it, or modify it at all. I posted it as I found it.
Chuaquin, I have no idea. It’s not something I’ve looked into.
Other Owen, it’s the math that makes it just another form of babble. Mathematics is simply a formal way of setting out how one species of social primates habitually reasons; being wholly abstract, it has nothing to restrict it from spinning out into a very elegant, formal region of La-La Land. Thus AI utterances have more in common than most people like to think with statements such as “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” — an utterance that has the structure of language but doesn’t actually communicate anything. As for the data centers, why, yes — do the initials WPPSS mean anything to you? Frantic building programs are not a measure of long-term viability…
Chris, that’s certainly what the astrological tradition would suggest. Saturn conjunct Neptune at 0° Aries is the hinge of a door between world ages.
Chuaquin, I have no idea, as it’s not a habit I share.
Siliconguy, yeah, I think the blowback has just found its notional target. Unfortunately a label that abstract can be applied to just about anyone.
AliceEm, yeah, the goose-stepping brigade is trying to horn on this too. Sad.
Seeking, thanks for this. I’m glad to hear that you found a more constructive and positive path, and very glad to hear of your community’s reaction. May the merit from that action bless all beings.
Tengu, by all means bring that one up! My background in esoteric Buddhism is rather idiosyncratic, being mostly derived from Shingon Buddhism, but I’d be delighted to explore further.
Archivist, thank you for this! I just cut-and-pasted that entire discussion into a Word file. It strikes me as a very plausible vision for what will happen with LLMs.
Shoggoth, oddly enough, we’ll be discussing that tomorrow. As for the rise of cancel culture on the right, of course — and they’re doing it with all the glee of those who finally get the chance to turn on the people who did it to them. With regard to influencers, I wonder how soon they’re going to figure out that incitement to murder is not protected free speech and is in fact a federal crime in some cases. This just showed up on various conservative outlets:
Slithy, glad to hear it. That strikes me as a much more sensible attitude.
Good morning, Other Owen (who’s Original Owen?)
California leads the way in the metastatic madness:
All of the cackling demons you all are seeing celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death look like the people i deal with here in San Francisco and live among.
MKUltra, Laurel Canyon, Hollytown, Silicon Valley… I think California is is actually evil that festers spreads misery and ruins our culture.
It’s a lie here. I’m finally seeing and admitting it.
@Anonymous #229
Very good point! As often as I’ve wished in the past that I could just wake up and be young again, I’d immediately think about the various tragedies I’d have foreknowledge of and wouldn’t that give me a responsible to do something about it? Or would that trigger a butterfly effect so I just have to live my life knowing I could have possibly done something but didn’t out of fear? I definitely don’t want to be in that position!
@Other Owen
IMHO that is lame excuse on their part, they should have put it in Xeon CPUs that are for servers then, but it’s in everything including Atom and Celerons which will never make it in corporate equipment.
Also servers like HP has iLO, and other computers have similar solutions, you can make it at the level of motherboard with wake_up on LAN or other solutions.
I don’t think ME vulnerabilities were fixed but that specific was to an extent, and even for that fix there are people on both side that still say the ME cannot be disabled by that fix. They just hide it better now.
Imagine if all that silicon was used for cache and more cores, and this is a tax on the poor people that buy lower specs like many of bailouts and welfare for corporations, because the ME and other security drags down a lot the lower specs CPUs. But this is common to the Western world, like expensive housing, food and healthcare, and to an extent to the whole world.
Clownstrike could be the first company that burned themselves with AI. That major update clusterfrack they had a while ago is speculated that it happened because they used AI in smoke testing.
One think I would have loved to see is being able to use your old cell phone as a desktop, a kit could be available. At least some of them can be revived with a new battery and screen. IMHO, we will not have a hard crash without cellphones and PCs, but I think services and cloud and a lot of big datacenters will go the way of the Dodo. Lean servers on internet could survive, I first crashes could be technical then the following economical by just being expensive. Then holding too much carp on internet will become expensive.
@JMG
I just discovered that the ThreadReaderApp made a better format of the twitter/X threads, I could have posted that if I knew, but then I post it now in case someone needs to print it:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1967598082520154219.html
I did print it and read it again in the morning and made some notes on the margins. I could not help to notice the similarity between fracking and AI, both are a financial trap, so there is the equivalent of the Red Queen Syndrome found in fracking also in AI, to run faster and faster just to stay in place. Another interesting fact is that what sparked the cloud/datacenters/AI/crypto craziness was the excessive amount of Natural Gas that the frack wells brough once the oil fracking goes the wells become gasier and gasier and the poof, gone. Which somehow reflect the volatile nature of the whole affair. Tech is pron to excesses, .com bubble before that the Vaporware.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
Oh and, just like fracking it destroys the fields, the water, the people and the capital it uses.
IT fits a lot with catabolic collapse and to my mind it bring another aspect how a catabolic step downwards fueled an anabolic episode of a metastatic part of the system (the tech/financial sector).
>As for the data centers, why, yes — do the initials WPPSS mean anything to you? Frantic building programs are not a measure of long-term viability
Oh, I didn’t say it was a good idea what they’re doing. Like that random twitter guy was saying, there are limits to what these things can do. Inconvenient limits that the people flogging these services want to deny.
Let me consult my NI system, yup, she agrees. And wants some more scritches.
@JMG is not only the left behaves strangely these days about Kirk assassination, there is a “certain sacred mountain”ism, at least they know the law and they made a disclaimer after
https://x.com/RealCandaceO/status/1966938602690285767
Since Candace was pretty close to Charlie Kirk this tweet should not have happened.
IMO it rightly fuels a certain conspiracy theory that is making the top on social media right now.
So I think not only Left is making mistakes.
As for Bondi’s X post, doxxing and the like are definitely nasty. Actually illegal speech is nothing I would defend.
I still think the opposite of one bad idea is another, and I don’t see how the wholesale canceling of another side is going to do any good if the people didn’t commit actual crimes. Possibly it could stave off greater escalation, but so could holding a space for peace. Maybe some kind of olive branch can be extended between the two sides in the culture war at a later time. I certainly hope so.
In the comments on the Naked Capitalism post are some good words from IM doc and a few others talking about how much of the people celebrating this atrocity has to do with the state of peoples mental health. Included were some statements about people under 40 being desensitized to deaths and shootings because of all the ones they have grown knowing, and some experiencing, growing up post-Columbine, when these kind of things have acellerated. That, and exposure to the genocide in Gaza and ongoing other wars, has made people callous.
I think too they get cynical about this given some of Kirk’s quotes about the 2nd amendment. Then you have the mediated spectacle aspect of life online:
As IM Doc wrote, “We have now all seen the innumerable videos of our own kids but also all the others celebrating an assassination this week. This is largely being done by young people who have grown up with social media all their lives. As a primary care doctor, I have all of my life seen this kind of behavior in my office right in front of me, long before social media. You see people work things out in their minds – an internal dialog. They often work through very primal desires and directives. They are often afraid of them. It is not that they suppress things, it is that they give their brains quiet time to evaluate each and every input – long before they ever go public. This is called being a human. I am certain that was a lot of what I was seeing with my great-grandparents. They meditated. They did not have computers and social media. What we are seeing this week is an entire generation who has been robbed of this meditative behavior. They use social media instead. Their feral instinctual thoughts get put online before any internal deliberation is done. Now just imagine what this is all going to be like with AI telling them how they should feel with their inputs. There is a reason for the confession booth, the pastor’s office, the doctor’s office, the therapist. These types of things are found in every culture on Earth. What are we doing to ourselves?
It now turns out that this Utah kid was very likely radicalized into some very bad thoughts by both video games and online chat groups like Reddit. Place a 16 year old man, testosterone raging, in front of a computer and let him blow stuff up for hours, all the while having other young men rage in his earphones about how everything sucks, and what do you expect is going to happen? No meditation or thinking allowed. Just kill kill kill hate hate hate. I see these 20something young men every day of my life. I teach them in Sunday School. We have a national crisis. I really do not think we appreciate the level of the problems. We have spent so much time on lifting up everyone else, we totally forgot about our little boys.
I will reiterate again – in our world in the area we live are all kinds of families of tech executives. To the one, their children are not allowed anywhere around screens. Mine are only allowed on their computers if either parent is right there watching. They have a very specific research goal and that is all they are allowed to do. We have no video games in the house and neither kid will have a cell phone until they can pay for it and they are 18. We have immense negative peer pressure here with regard to screens. Screens are just not that important. But I know it is exactly the opposite in American cities.
What are the tech executives trying to tell us? I really think we should ask ourselves that question. What are we doing to ourselves and most importantly our kids?”
All of this makes my heart sick. But I also have compassion for everyone who has been driven to such extremes on either side of the aisle, and the kids who’ve been swimming in this kind of ick for so long they can’t see it as unhealthy.
I don’t want to punish them with glee any more than I do the Christian Nationalists whose world view I don’t care for. Somehow getting back to liberty and live and let live is what I would like to see.
“All major subgroups of Americans express less support for higher education today than they did 12 years ago. The initial decline — between 2013 and 2019 — in the percentage rating college as very important was steeper among 18- to 34-year-olds than among older adults. However, since then, the rates among older adults have plunged, so that now only about a third of all age groups say a college education is very important.”
https://news.gallup.com/poll/695003/perceived-importance-college-hits-new-low.aspx
Why am I not surprised. Take on a huge debt so you can be replaced by an AI? What a bad idea. The students that didn’t appear due to drop in the birth rate following the 2008 crash will fail to enroll next year when they don’t turn 18 so it’s not looking good for higher ed.
You know what the AI was not doing yesterday? Running the caulking gun. It’s that time of the year again. I doubt the AI will be much help at replacing the bad weather stripping either.
The idiot nerds built a machine that can replace them but not the rednecks they despise. Oops.
Well, John, I’m waiting impatient your tomorrow post…
Archivist,
Thank you for the xcancel article. Wow.
When it is time for 5th Wednesday topic selection, I will vote for Tengu’s request for a discussion of the relationship between the concepts that underpin Western occultism and those of esoteric Buddhism. I suspect that there are a fair number of us who had more ready access to esoteric Buddhism than to the deeper side of Western occultism. (Why that was the case is an interesting question in itself but off-topic.)
“Only when the soul itself seeks the condition of fire—by refusing to hate, as Yeats suggests—does the path of the arrow up the Middle Pillar of the Tree open up.”
My gratitude for having this safe space to contemplate deeper things. I don’t comment much here, and I’ve been strangely affected by Charlie Kirk’s murder, even though before now I had been completely unaware of him. It felt like something very dark was breaking through and the world was holding its breath. The conversations here were very helpful, as was the quote above. The images on the internet contrasting the burning cities of the BLM riots with the candlelight vigils for Charlie Kirk seem to show a counter magic going on., a use of fire to dispel the gathering dark. I hope this is so!
Thank you for the kind words, when your next open post comes up I will have to ask my burning questions. I will refrain now since I want to not derail the conversation.
Erika @233: Not all of California is as toxic as San Francisco. My wife and I live on the Central Coast near San Luis Obispo, and though there are more than a few DangerHairs, mouth muzzlers, and noseringers around here, there are also large numbers of quite reasonable folks young and old. Just a block or so from us, an old Purplehair has her 2nd-story balcony festooned with “Love is Love” & “Science Is Real” blahBlah etc. posters, along with a now-fading Ukrainian flag, but her neighbors ON BOTH SIDES have prominently-displayed American flags! Quite a delicious mix!
Wife and I were just in central Oregon & Northern Cal last week; same sort of vibe. Trump hats and nearby Dangerhairs, all quietly if reluctantly co-existing. Oregon in my youth was VERY conservative; not so much now, though it’s mostly larger cities like Portland that have gone Wokie. And who knows? That may change, due to the catalysis underway with Charlie Kirk as the catalyst. But SF? I have my doubts it can become reasonable anytime soon. Sorry.
Hugs to you Erika, and cheers to this marvelous commentariat which our host nourishes!
>One think I would have loved to see is being able to use your old cell phone as a desktop, a kit could be available
You can always get a Raspberry Pi variant. Uses the same CPU that all those phones use. Even comes in kit form, if that’s what you’re into. There are other weird computers out there still. Search for “Risc-V mini ITX” or “Arm mini ITX” or even “elbrus mini ITX”.
>You know what the AI was not doing yesterday? Running the caulking gun
Search for “figure 02 doing laundry”. Although it seems their competitors have also learned how to do that too. It’s not too much more of a jump to laying a bead of caulk, although it may be a while before that happens. Still prefer my NI system, no matter how useless it is.
Looks like the Exposing Charlie’s Murderers site is down.
https://www.muellershewrote.com/p/breaking-exclusive-the-charlies-murderers
I wonder if the astrological age affects the relative potency of different sorts of magic? For instance, would religious magic be more effective during an age ruled by Jupiter, and natural magic more effective in one ruled by Saturn? If so, I wonder if the legitimization of folk magic we see starting with Eliphas Levi has to do with the advent of the Aquarian Age. Of course, ornate ceremonial and astrological magic also seems likely to thrive in prosperous conditions, whereas in hard times the humbler aims and materials of natural and folk magic might be more suitable, which seems to match the Jovial vs. Saturnine shift. I also wonder if we could expect to see a further decrease in highly intellectual magical traditions and an increase in efficacy of natural/materially-based magic as we move from Aquarius (Air) to Capricorn (Earth), although both are ruled by Saturn. The time periods are so long and my historical knowledge so deplorably spotty that I find it hard to get a sense of whether there might be anything to this.
Regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk:
I suspect that the intuition that I spoke of here a couple days before he was shot was triggered by this event:
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/340551.html?thread=57009479#cmt57009479
For what it’s worth, my intuition is still tingling. Not on red alert, but it doesn’t feel like we’re out of the woods; more like banked coals that might slowly fade out, but could easily flare up if somebody decides to stir them or add tinder. I pray that things shake out more or less peacefully.
@JMG Sorry to bring it back but one last point on your comment “The American left has built its entire public image for decades now around the claim that they’re the Good People, the compassionate, ethical, caring ones, and insisting that conservatives are none of these things. ”
The last 3 years of the endless revelry of every attack on Russia combined with the cheering on of expanding military budgets in the Europe have done a good job of putting that idea to rest. From what I am seeing personally, it isn’t that all of people that identified as being on the left are showing their colours, more that most of them are just walking away from those that act like that. Either they are moving more conservative or are just not engaging as much as they used to. It feels like there is an ever growing middle that group that if motivated could make some real change, if that happens, hard to tell.
“When the Way governs the world, The proud stallions drag dung carriages. When the Way is lost to the world, War horses are bred outside the city. ” Chapter 46 Tao Te Ching
Two thoughts came to me:
The vegetables that put down roots into the earth they not only affect the one whose thoughts originally planted them but the roots are connected via the earth to the Anima Mundi which can then connect to other people’s subtle bodies. The material and physical constraints in this imagery holds true. One would not be affected (or only indirectly affected) by certain vegetables/thoughts unless one was fossicking in the garden when they grow.
Second thought is the spirits which inhabit the air (i.e. used to have material bodies) , even though they cannot innovate or choose, seem to be able to do enough choosing and innovating as when ,for example, they decide to influence human thought.
Question is if humans have their guardian spirit or Daemon as an adversary and guide during life what is the relationship after death? All these spirits influencing thought on the material plane via memory, where are their Daemons? Seems the reincarnation cycle will take longer if a soul decides to keep interacting with the material world, especially if the intent is negative.
>It now turns out that this Utah kid was very likely radicalized into some very bad thoughts by both video games and online chat groups like Reddit.
It’s time for some common sense Reddit control? Maybe we need to just ban Reddit outright? I’d love to see all those AI companies when they figure out that Reddit is down and they can’t train their models. Let’s do this, who’s with me? REDDIT CONTROL NOW.
I guess back in the 80s, everybody would’ve been blaming heavy metal music and drugs. Now it’s the internet and vidya. I guess in another 40 years it’ll be alcohol and country music?
I have a Bright Idea(tm), let’s go ahead and ban country music now, while we’re banning Reddit. For the children. And a more secure society.
@jennifer
Right before Trump got his ear shot, I felt the urge to listen to this – https://youtube.com/watch?v=2rpasa6EIRs
And right before all this happened I felt the urge to listen to this – https://youtube.com/watch?v=pdP9aGpiZ5w
@248 Jennifer Kobernik
During the Age of Aries, blood sacrifices of animals and humans were common religious practices. Aries is ruled by Mars. Maybe such practices were more effective during that age than thereafter?
@247 Orange Oblivious Gerbil
People need a safe, legal way to harness their anger & grief towards the worthy goal of ending far-left extremism, or they will find other, more dangerous outlets…judging by the militant right-wing Christian rhetoric I’m seeing online.
Jennifer Kobernick! wow… this was the day before Mr Kirk was shot:
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/340551.html?thread=57009479#cmt57009479
who’s Maxine???
talk about getting the news before it happens. this is the place to be.
(correction: 2 days before)
is this magic or was Maxine in on it?
you’ve gotta ask nowadays.
Erika (if I may), Original Owen is Owen Merrill, one of the two main characters of my series of tentacle novels The Weird of Hali. Other Owen started calling himself that when Owen Merrill came up in discussion.
Archivist, the comparison between LLMs and fracking strikes me as very cogent. More generally, a lot of what passes for drivers of economic growth these days has side effects far worse than the disease it’s supposed to treat. Hmm — where have I encountered that before?
Other Owen, your NI system has the right idea.
Archivist, of course. Lots of people are trying to spin this whole thing as fast as possible.
Shoggoth, I ain’t arguing. A pendulum set swinging reliably goes as far to one side as to the other, and some of the consequences of the crackdown on leftist hate speech will be lasting, and very unwelcome. Liberty and “live and let live”? I hope we can get back there someday.
Siliconguy, good. The sooner the appalling mess that passes for higher education today crashes and burns, the faster some more viable system for teaching adults can be evolved.
Chistia, I hope it’s so as well. Though I know part of motivates the right is pride — “we’re better than the left, that’s why we don’t burn things down” — the result is good.
Seeking, thank you — I’ll look forward to your questions. The next open post goes up on September 24.
Gerbil, yeah, I heard that. I imagine plenty of lawyers started hassling them.
Jennifer, I wish we knew enough about really ancient magic to hazard a guess about that.
Michael, here’s hoping!
Scotty, we’ll get to the after-death state and the role of Daimons in that in due time; Yeats wrote about it at great length.
Other Owen, sigh. I wish I could treat this as harmless satire.
Erika (if I may), Maxine is one of my longtime commenters; she lives on an island in British Columbia, gardens, and practices magic. I’d consider her one of the members of my commentariat least likely to get involved in an assassination plot — but one of those most likely to sense stuff coming down the planes.
by the way i just talked with my friend who lives in santa rosa and how bad it is in the suburbs. Bryan Allen, no i really do think California’s cursed and is evil. i forgot to add in stanford univ.
there’s a flat smile here which belies those demon faces you all are seeing, the demon faces i’d see when out in public and i told you all how i’d faint like a narcoleptic goat trying to figure out which conversation we’re having because they all look like the ghouls you all have been seeing lately.
but like missing the real surrealists as my true family (trickster? ha! it would’ve been on purpose so i couldn’t do worse than i already was on my own), i am horrified that i willingly came out here. i always say Philadelphia hocked me out of town like a pubic hair stuck in the back of its throat, and it was so true. i wanted to stay. i had it all. but not really. now i see my family would’ve killed me.
and i wouldn’t have met James. everything for James, so i agree with you Slithy. was it you who’d changed your mind about wanting a do-over? i say i want the nineties back but i want the technology. we were already shmucks but then but as my older friend and neighbor, Mary said, “these ARE the good old days!”
i want to go back to when we were beautiful because yeah, so many are ghouls now. even my beloved friend in santa rosa said she laughed when she heard Charlie Kirk die… and i said, “oh come on, not you too???” and she apologized and said it was something about how he said guns and dies by one and i said, “everything eventually becomes ironic because we eventually DIE of something. but he wasn’t about violence he was about TALKING. it’s not ‘ironic’ at all.”
and this after she ranted to me about having to pay $500 a month in property taxes while entitled homeless people take over the park across her street and tell her to suck “ducks” and people dump mattresses at her little cul de sac and she has ranted about their business being regulated to death and how stupid and easy they are to get around but they cost money and TIME in the first place and one bureaucrat wrote her up for something even though they were the most perfect company he’d seen in months just BECAUSE he had to write up SOMETHING.
and she hates Trump and all the tendrils off him. i do my part to bust on her. her girlfriend is even devouring mother extraordinaire and she said she only belittles her or complains. she wants to divide the house into a duplex because they have a 2.6% mortgage and can’t either one of them move because her girlfriend makes twice as much but blows it on VIP fakeful dead concerts and VIP festival tickets.
they’re going to therapy.
there’s a core sample of why California has lead the way in making Everyone miserable.
she feels trapped in 2.6% mortgage.
i feel trapped in the rent-controlled studio i got as a temporary thing in ’94… now i’m being tormented by my rich landlord up in DIAMOND Heights while me micromanages my hell here down in the Tortilla Flats by siccing my neighbors who want to sublet and have multiple rent-controlled apartments and buy homes with the profits.
this is ALL of the world now. we’re all whores. uber drivers and only fans. all except for Naomi Wolf and John MIchael Greer.
yeah, dear Bryan Allen… i really do think California is evil. calling it “Mordor” was cute in a rated PG kind of way. this is a snuff film.
it’s the faces, the lies that drives me and i think all of us mad. there are multiple levels of performance, and going (and losing) in court was ALL GHOULS to me in polite society. even the judge i’d wanted to make out with was a ghoul.
that’s why for me the saw, “when you get punched, all your plans go out the window.” that’s going out in san francisco for me. one of the neighbors who lied on me went OFF via text something foul.
no shame. there is no honor or shame. when they are called out they double triple and quadruple down. that’s why my landlord’s antics landed with me in jail and James half dead face down for 5 days, ending up in the ICU.
it’s not just they who were evil. it’s ALL OF THEM. that’s also why i had a hard time knowing who to complain about.. because the cops who went for such a story without thinking only a sociopath would ask a guy on his hands and knees to move a bicycle…
no one was THINKING. the hospital and the doctor who was dying to cut into his brain because he couldn’t just LIE there in a bed coming back from dehydration… the boy’s gotta EARN!
i had to perform like IMPROV before the masked surgeon and a half dozen masked administrators because i didn’t want them to cut into his brain again. he didn’t want it the first time and didn’t want a blood transfusion as he was trying to heal the cancer.
yeah, Bryan Allen… it IS evil here. the moments of beauty are equal in the balance and are what kept James here and … well, it’s pretty and i love the birds and my trees but it’s time to get ready to go. it’ll take the time it takes but i’m ready to not turn into a pillar of salt for something i don’t believe in.
it’s not healthy here. i concede it’s gorgeous but these people are like those demons screeching online. they’re barely bothering to hide it now.
Scotlyn’s still got me and with all that she JUST wrote me in the nick of time, i do think this place is high altitude training for whatever’s gotta come next to undermine this California Wet Dream that is like Alien creature acid spit that eats through EVERYTHING.
the morality that comes out of this place? California is a black hole where morality goes to DIE.
Sorry, Papa i took over here. figured tomorrow’s a new Eco Main and this can be like an errant fluff ball. And you know i cannot write ANY of this stuff on my own personal site. I left the big penis up on my substack on purpose. i’m getting ready for another round of court stuff and my landlord will be unnerved by a big black penis. this is my form of psych outs. i’m losing in court but i’m LEARNING… fast… i hope.
i have someone helping me on the side. he can’t do this for me/ conflict of interest. so i’ll be learning how to try and win on my own. i never win on my own in court or on the street. only with feral weirdos.
ghouls, remember?
so i don’t want to convey how their (my landlords’) evil is undermining me. having to gather evidence is reminding me of my childhood and how my sister would set me up so i’d end up getting the crap beat out of me when i was young, until she realized there were other family members and then after that, group and foster homes. i thought my sister was so sweet and loved me because out of nowhere she’d do something like get my highschool yearbook signed by everyone in my class because something she did had me in a group home in camden.
all my life i thought she loved me so much. but she did it because she felt GUILTY she’d caused me to miss school because i was hardly there. and i barely knew anyone in my class because of it. i tried to keep my reality secret even though everyone knew me because i was an artist.
but in California, they don’t even feel GUILTY about what they do or have done.
Charlie Sheen said (now that no one cares because kids are into transvetite furry animal sex) he had sex with hustlers and they’d take photos of his HIV drugs and hold him up for money. THAT’s California. And Sheen thought HE had to be the one to come clean.
It’s a black hole where morality goes to DIE. remember that. even you, Bryan Allen. as pretty as EVERYWHERE is…. ghouls. they will eat you and blame you for the indigestion. you yourself did not could not can not say otherwise, nestled between American flags or not.
erika lopez
san francisco “Mordor”
Papa I’m half kidding. That’s cool Maxine’s for real.
@Michael Gray
Interesting information, noted.
This work to leave this backdoors in PCs is old, a lot of people still remember when they released that old version of Windows with the NSA encryption key label.
Dear Miss Maxine, thank you for sharing what comes to you with the world. Now that Papa’s personally vouched for you specifically I will be sure to pay full attention from now on. Thank you.
—
Papa thank you for Other Owen answer. I’m usually shy about asking about the inside jokes around here like that’s what I get for being Johnny come lately and I wanna respect the insideness but it’s always better when I’m nosey and ask. Maybe I’m afraid of being ignored.
Good night
M. Gray # 249:
“The last 3 years of the endless revelry of every attack on Russia combined with the cheering on of expanding military budgets in the Europe have done a good job of putting that idea to rest. From what I am seeing personally, it isn’t that all of people that identified as being on the left are showing their colours, more that most of them are just walking away from those that act like that. Either they are moving more conservative or are just not engaging as much as they used to. ”
I’ve been seeing the same trend in my country since the Russo-Ukrainian war started, and “Socialists” (woke Liberals) joined cheerleading the warmongering fake consensus in Western Europe. It’s interesting that in Spain, for exemple, leftist vote has being dwindling since last elections slowly, and Far Right has grown at slow pace in the same period. By disgrace, the (Far) Right Wing here is equally Russophobic like the rest od “mild” parties. Decline on leftist vote can be blamed to several causes, of course, but one of them is the belicism of Socialdemocrats (another causes: for example, the feminist hatred against low class white straight men, the fake help to the poor, support of masive irrestricted immigration and so on); now, our beloved President Sánchez is trying to regain popularity sipporting the ProPalestine cause, which is being very popular here in the last times…
JMG: To Yeats, all our normal mental activity consists either of following the twisting stems of these “parasitic vegetables,” as he calls them…
From Samuel Johnson’s – The Vulture:
‘My child,’ said the mother, ‘this is a question which I cannot answer, though I am reckoned the most subtle bird of the mountain. When I was young, I used frequently to visit the aerie of an old vulture, who dwelt upon the Carpathian rocks; he had made many observations; he knew the places that afforded prey round his habitation, as far in every direction as the strongest wing can fly between the rising and setting of the summer sun; he had fed year after year on the entrails of men. His opinion was, that men had only the appearance of animal life, being really vegetables with a power of motion; and that as the boughs of an oak are dashed together by the storm, that swine may fatten upon the falling acorns, so men are, by some unaccountable power, driven one against another, till they lose their motion, that vultures may be fed.
“Liberty and “live and let live”? I hope we can get back there someday.”
I don’t see America getting there until it throws off the European Faustian pseudomorphosis. The will to power and forcing everybody else to share your beliefs that are so characteristic of Faustian civilization are at odds with the “live and let live” attitude that America idealizes.
>I think California is actually evil that festers spreads misery and ruins our culture
I don’t know if there’s actually a hero in this story. Only villains of various shades of grey.
Let’s say that CA was a lighter shade of grey in the past. But that time came and went, IMHO. And the “evil” is getting concentrated as more and more of the sane people get boiled off. Someday, you too will need to make a choice. Choices define us all. Sometimes the biggest choices you make aren’t obvious when you make them, it’s only in hindsight that you realize what you chose. I wonder if any of these 40 year old children realize what they are choosing? Probably not.
The biggest irony is the weather is so good out there that it really is a shame to be indoors all the time. Yet that was exactly how I spent all my time back then.
***OT delete if not OK***
Has anybody else on here had their am*zon account canceled recently?
This is one of very very few places on the internet that I have any political type comments attached to the same email I use for am*zon, and I’m trying to track down the source of the problem, as it’s clearly nothing to do with stuff I ordered, or the safety of my neighborhood (I live in an extraordinarily safe neighborhood, currently, where delivery trucks come and go all day long it seems). If this has happened to others here recently, that’d be a pretty good indicator.
(and yes, sheepishly, I KNOW I should have severed the account myself ages ago– just haven’t found anywhere else to get a handful of things)
methylethyl,
I use my email here and over at Amazon, and I still have my Amazon account. And I’ve written comments about politics here in the past.
@JMG
Do you have information on the 70’s era Castle of Heroes dissertation? I tried to search for it but can’t find.
Same with Yeats’ notes on the Castle of Heroes project. I’m guessing the dissertation will point to where they are held?
@Mark: thanks for the feedback.
@ Toby #160
“Lastly, to add to the dreams and dying discussion, I’ve wondered does it come the other way around too? Are there plenty of stories of dreams about those souls about to arrive in the world? I had a distinctively memorable dream about my brother’s partner holding a newborn baby with a pink glowing light, in the middle of a apocalyptic scene, two days later, they came around the house to announce they were pregnant.”
I am not at all psychically sensitive, in fact, I may be blind in many of my extra corporeal senses… Still, I have had one of each of these experiences in my life.
1. I had a sense (no words, nothing visual, just “presence”) of being visited by a friend who had been in hospital for three weeks, with no non-family visitors allowed… only to discover a few hours later that he had just died.
2. 1. I had a sense (no words, nothing visual, just “presence”) of being visited by “someone” who I didn’t know, on the night we conceived my firstborn. I had no doubt from that moment that I was pregnant, although it took a couple of weeks, or three, to confirm the fact with more standard tests.
In most respects, my perceptions are humdrum and everyday. But these two events, both of which took place during my “awake” times, and not during dreams) are both undescribable and unforgettable.
Almost more “real” than real… 🙂
Dear Methylethyl,
I also have my amzn acct and my stuff is out there enough to make my neighbors go crazy evil on me.
Scotlyn I ask you questions because you KNOW ME without even knowing me.