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May 03, 2007

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Along this topic, you may find the works of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme (New Cosmology), and Diarmuid O'Murchu quite intriquing and inspiring.

For more inspiration, see the works of Genesis Farm run by the Dominican Sisters in New Jersey. http://www.genesisfarm.org/

Bob

I am feeling marvelously iconoclastic today!

This post reminds me of the bane of Mab, in the story of Merlin:

“…The country and its people drown in blood. A dying woman begs Queen Mab to help end the bloodshed. At first, Mab demurs. "I can't. Too many people have forsaken the Old Ways ... I no longer have the power."
The woman pushes her to help. "Save us, and the people will come back to you, and the peace they lost when they forsook you." Mab, seeing her destiny, makes a commitment: "I will save them, and the Old Ways. I swear it!"
Mab informs her sister, the beautiful, fair-haired Lady of the Lake, of her momentous decision. "I'm going to create a leader for the people," she declares. "A powerful wizard who'll save Britain and bring back the people to us and the Old Ways."
The Lady of the Lake cautions her sister to be wary, that her task may drain what powers she still has. Mab, however, vows to fight on, telling her sister that if people stop believing in the old ways, Mab and her kind will cease to exist.
Mab conjures Merlin out of a dazzling array of colored crystals…”

There’s an ideal behind pro-instinctualism – an ideal that the regaining of instinct would lead people to live better. An over-reliance on intuition de-humanizes us, somehow, by robbing us of what I’ll call our “sacheheit.”

Ideals are not an enemy of the universe, or of the green-blue globe. Let’s take the simple example of the corrective lens. It is contra-evolutionary and defies natural selection. The ideal is that more people will have better vision for a longer time in life. Anyone who wears glasses is certainly grateful for that common ideal. But really, we don’t know what will happen to natural selection with the introduction of the corrective lens. Does it diminish the interplay of other senses? Does it allow more time for collective creation and invention?

I can imagine this letter from Hawaii being read 30,000 years ago in a smoked and greasy cave, by a large man draped in a dried and un-tanned hide. Why, he is asking, are we so fascinated by what these sharp tools will do, in some imagined future? You do not need them today, leave them aside. Worship of tools, making tools that make more tools, we are ignoring what is right in front of us.

I pine for an imaginary past, and my view through the narrow bandwidth gives onto a mirror. From where does the idea come, that instinct and intuition are out of balance? Maybe idealism?

A substition is defined as "something that is true, but hardly anyone believes in." One unpopular substition is that the ideals behind magic, as represented by eastern and western alchemists, have been left behind. Look at our technology: instant communication with anyone, anywhere; vehicles that defy gravity; teleportation at truly dangerous speeds; machines that cook food immediately. And we pay an enormous wage in resources for these things. Indeed, it seems that the manufacture of microprocessors is paid in the wage of our very souls.

Magic has not gone anywhere. Just look at the sorcerers of phishing! Aiwass certainly hears Haleakala calling. Uncle Aleister drools in jealousy!

... and Thelema shines under the Hawaiian moonlight.


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