Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Legion of Batboys: They're the Deiciders! (11.28.11)

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-But who is that on the other side of you?
--T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Meditations on the Tarot has a lengthy account of the nature of guardian angels. It's pretty straightupward, and I don't want to just rewordgitate what UF says. All I can really contribute to the deuscussion is that if you don't think you have a guardian angel, just fake it for awhile. There is no one lonelier than an angel with nothing to do. You might say they're a little... codependent.

As UF writes, "The Angel depends on man in his creative activity. If the human being does not ask for it, if he turns away from him, the Angel has no motive for creative activity. He can then fall into a state of consciousness where all his creative geniality remains in potential and does not manifest. It is a state of vegetation or 'twilight existence' comparable to sleep from the human point of view. An Angel who has nothing to exist for is a tragedy in the spiritual world."

I'm just going to reflect on whatever strikes my attention. I like this: "the formation of wings" depends upon "a current from above (↓) which moves to meet that from below (↑). Wings are formed only when the two currents -- that of human endeavor and that of grace -- meet and unite."

As such, all forms of radical secularism "can create only the wings of Icarus." One is immediately reminded of Novak's On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, in that the American Founders -- perhaps because they were listening to the counsel of their better angels -- got the formula exactly right for our extraordinary "national flight" of the past two centuries. (I might add that our prophetic Founders also "created" our national Archangel, but that's another storey in the hierarchy.)

Again, when I say that the left in general and Obama in particular are "anti-American," I do not mean it in an insulting or polemical way. Rather, I mean it in this precise way, in that they wish to proceed on one wing, which will obviously cause our national flight to grind to a halt and leave us taxiing on the runway (and then taxed for it to boot).

When the left belowviates about "separation of church and state," what they really mean is the violent dismemberment of one of our wings. It is equally like cutting off the thumb to spite our hand. The hand will remain, but it won't be able to grasp much, certainly nothing of the vertical. If you've ever wondered why the writing of the left is, if nothing else, so boring, tedious, and uninspirational, this is why.

True, the left can develop wings after a fashion. But we all recognize these wings for what they are, for they are "the wings of a bat, i.e., those of darkness which are organs by means of which one can plunge into the depths of darkness." Most contemporary art and literature is of this nature -- just the further erosion of eros and its replacement with the false gods of their agapelessness. These autists cannot soar upward but only can sink downward and confuse it with flight. The Waste Land comes to mind:

And bats with baby faces in the violet light / Whistled, and beat their wings / And crawled head downward down a blackened wall / And upside down in air were towers / Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours / And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

You can flap and flap your two vestigial left wings of hope and change, but you will simply turn in a tight little spiral. You'll never achieve vertical liftoff. Nor will you grow, for you are trying to subsist on your own byproducts. Our new dog tries to do that... coprophagia, it's called. But you know what? The left's post-election shit-eating grin won't even last until Inauguration Day.

Our "vastly enlarged perspectives of knowledge should open up fresh vistas of religious faith" (Eliot), not close off the frontier of unKnowing. Remember, human knowledge is like a little expanding circle amidst the sea of Being. Thus, the more we extend our boundaries, the greater the area that we do not know. Thank God we know so much less than our belighted medieval forebears! To put it another way, we have so much more to unKnow in the romp of a single laughtime.

Hmm, here's a coincidence. Russell Kirk writes that no Christian belief is "more neglected today... than the concept of guardian angels," which is "no less credible than many other dogmas which Eliot had learned to accept.... Imperfect though it may be, evidence for the existence of intermediary spiritual beings is no less intelligible than the proofs for various theories of natural science.... [F]or him, there was nothing repugnant or incredible in conceiving of tutelary beings of another order than human."

Hey, why not? Kirk mentions Yeats, "who believed that some great dead man watches over every passionate living man of talents." I believe this. I believe that through a kind of "passionate resonance," we may enter the interior mansion of a great person and steal a bit of their mojo.

As I have mentioned in the past, I certainly endeavored to do this in the writing of my book. Among others, I placed photographs of Teilhard de Chardin, Sri Aurobindo, James Joyce, and Alfred North Whitehead over my desk, so that I could look to them for a little cosmic inspiration (↓). Even if you only reduce it to a kind of right-brain or unconscious demonenon, it still works. You really do become what you venerate. Which again is why ideologies such as scientism and Darwinism are so spritually catastrophic. You actually start to believe that stuff and end up batshit crazy. Unreal.

Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
--Eliot

42 comments:

Warren said...

"I believe that through a kind of "passionate resonance," we may enter the interior mansion of a great person and steal a bit of their mojo."

Which is why the Church has the whole thing about patron saints, etc.

Warren said...

"Thus, the more we extend our boundaries, the greater the area that we do not know."

David Berlinski likes to make this point as well, in his excellent book "The Devil's Delusion".

robinstarfish said...

There is no one lonelier than an angel with nothing to do.

Hence the hundred-fold return when you do ring up your angel.

Russell Kirk writes that no Christian belief is "more neglected today... than the concept of guardian angels."

Not just neglected. Ridiculed. All the more reason to ask why.

*******

Contacting my angel, contacting my angel
She's the one, she's the one, that satisfies
Contacting my angel she's the one that satisfies
She's the one that I adore

Got a telepathic message from my baby
In a little village through the fog
Here comes my baby, I can tell, I can tell
By the way she walks
Said I've been on a journey up the mountain side
And I drank the water from the stream
It was pure, pure water and I got completely healed

I met a presence on the mountain side
And he looked so radiant and he was the
Youth of eternal summers
Like a sweet bird of youth in my soul
In my soul, in my soul, in my soul, in my soul
In my soul, in my soul. . .
-Van Morrison, Contacting My Angel

Warren said...

"and taxed for it to boot"

Best anti-Obama bumper sticker I've seen yet: "Don't Tax Me, Bro!"

walt said...

"You actually start to believe that stuff and end up batshit crazy."

When I look around, I'm thinking, "Either I am, or they are."

Thanks for the agreement as to which it is!

Anonymous said...

yes, when people start to believe in things other than the One, it's 'Avoda Zara' (usually translated as 'idol worship')

Here's the NY Times-liberal true colors. Fun!

http://www.nytimes-se.com/

Anonymous said...

>>Kirk mentions Yeats, "who believed that some great dead man watches over every passionate living man of talents." <<

Along with being open to the inspirational source emanating from presiding spirits, I think Yeats was also aware of a more specific dynamic that comes with this kind of spiritual openness - that of a "balancing of qualities" that comes through creativity.

For example, Yeats was a very emotional guy, sort of a sentimental heartbreak kid. His poetry, however, was stark, unemotional, wintry. Yeats believed that his discarnate, communing spirit was his temperamental opposite and that the communion between the two of them helped each to achieve a soul balance.

Whether one believes in this kind of communion between the incarnate and discarnate or not, it is true that artists often project their untapped inner qualities onto their work. That's why the artist and his/her creative work can often seem so at odds in terms of temperament. In any event, I think that's certainly a prime function of human creativity - through projection of our inner, less-developed qualities, we become more aware of them and then go on to consciously integrating them into our psyches. The search for Divine balance, in effect.

Anonymous said...

what will you do or say in eight years when Obama has clearly been an excellent president, our economy is corrected, the debt paid down and our position geo-politically is stable and creating peace instead of death?

Will you bury your head in the sand and deny the obvious or will you finally shake the scales from your eyes and admit that your view of reality is impoverished beyond measure?

Anonymous said...

If Obama "succeeds," he will only do so by advancing values that we find repellent and weakening the ones we cherish, so your question is moot.

But in the unlikely event that our debt is paid down and peace reigns on earth, I'll kiss his butt in the Macy's window.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

It's literally impossible for Obama to do that. It was impossible for Bush to do it as well.

Anyway, the metaphor of Paul is not the right one, you should be using Jonah.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

RE: Guardian Angels... the icons I always see include a sword.

Magnus Itland said...

On resonance.

When Jesus Christ fed a multitude with a few loaves and fishes, he wasn't just doing a magic trick to demonstrate his superpowers. Beside any other meanings, this miracle foreshadowed the resonance which would be essential in the Church.

In the realm of spirit, sharing does not diminish the source. (This is actually to some degree true in informatics as well, possibly a sign of the coming convergence.)

Gods continuing grace in sharing His nature with the saints does not in any way diminish his own divinity. In the same way, when saints become vehicles of grace, they are in no way diminished by it. So when the Lord hands one piece of bread to a disciple, that disciple hands several pieces of bread to the next, and so on, until a multitude has been fed.

For this reason along, God literally cannot lose. All that God has given of Himself is eternal. It can be lost to an individual or even a whole culture, but it cannot truly be undone. The gates of Dissipation will never hold power over these.

mushroom said...

These autists cannot soar upward but only can sink downward and confuse it with flight.

Or, as Woody said to Buzz Lightyear, "That's not flying. That's just falling with style."

mushroom said...

Magnuss said: The gates of Dissipation will never hold power over these.

I think that's a keeper.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

River Cocytus said...
RE: Guardian Angels... the icons I always see include a sword.


Aye, they can fight. You always want a guardian Angel watchin' your back.

Anonymous said...

But you know what? The left's post-election shit-eating grin won't even last until Inauguration Day.

Ho! They're gonna be pissed when they discover they're eatin' shit tofu.

jp said...

Petey writes:

"But in the unlikely event that our debt is paid down"

I'm not sure that is possible at this point.

We may have passed the "Soverign Debt Event Horizon."

October Budget Deficit at a Record

It's default or hyperinflate from here. Yeeee-ha!

The bad news is that consumer debt is even worse.

I wonder how long it will take Obama to realize this. I wonder if he cares.

Maybe the Democrats will use magical thinking.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

When the left belowviates about "separation of church and state," what they really mean is the violent dismemberment of one of our wings.

Belowviate is another keeper.

Anonymous said...

To put it another way, we have so much more to unKnow in the romp of a single laughtime.

Yes, instead of sittin' in the liebarry and learnin' 'bout guilt we don't even have.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"I believe that through a kind of "passionate resonance," we may enter the interior mansion of a great person and steal a bit of their mojo."

The opposite of a hangover. That's some good mojo. :^)

gumshoe said...

don't know if it interests you,Bob...
passed by this one at the bookstore today:

Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall by Louis Sahagun

http://tinyurl.com/6joluf


some seriously strange folk out
on the left coast in his day.
ahem.

i'd seen his name on several esoteric books in the past.
this one has his photograph...several,in fact.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

You can flap and flap your two vestigial left wings of hope and change, but you will simply turn in a tight little spiral. You'll never achieve vertical liftoff. Nor will you grow, for you are trying to subsist on your own byproducts.

Or dieproducts. No gnutrition in them bars.

NoMo said...

Speaking of guardian angels, the writer of Hebrews (1:14) says, "Are they (angels) not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?"

Sword? Sure. But I was thinking more along the lines of a Lightsaber! Now that's rendering service.

Anonymous said...

Codependence?

“I’d never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield—it’s worse than disgraceful. It’s reprehensible.”

Anonymous said...

Birds can only fly if they have both a left wing and a right wing. Or walk if they have a left and right leg.

And human being can only be truly sane when the left side of their bodies, their brains and their nervous systems (the sympathetic and parasympatheic) are in a state of balanced equanimity with their left side.

Rather than a fight to the death dominance of one side over the other. As if this "victory" is at all possible.

Everyones world-view, which is a projection of their culturally and childhood determined patterning of their brain and nervous system, is a combination of the left and the right, with one side usually more dominant than the other. Some are more right sided, some left sided.

Their politics altogether is thus mostly determined by this cultural patterning.

If you rightists had your way the world would be inhabited by half bodies only, with one leg, one arm, half a face with one eye, etc etc.

Perhaps we would have roads with only one side too---the right side.

What happens when you come to a no right hand turn traffic sign? Do you break out into a cold sweat and murderous rage?

You would have trouble if you lived in Australia where we all drive on the left side of the road.

Anonymous said...

Woof.

Van Harvey said...

JWM, I replied about the Mencius Moldbug post in the comments to my post you ref'd it at.

Van Harvey said...

ninny said "You would have trouble if you lived in Australia where we all drive on the left side of the road."

Driving on the wrong side of the road is the least of your worries, when you're doing it upside down to begin with.

Anonymous said...

Aaaaaaarghhh!

julie said...

Well that didn't take long. Ayers shows up on the talk circuit, bemoaning the unfair characterizations of himself ("I never actually said that I 'set bombs,' nor that I wished there were 'more bombs.' ... I killed no one, and I harmed no one, and I didn't regret for a minute resisting the murderous assault on Viet Nam with every ounce of my being."), and blaming Obama's distancing. How long before he gets a presidential pardon and a position of prominence in the new regime?

If the office of the POTUS has a guardian angel, he'll be either working some serious overtime or completely comatose for the forseeable future.

julie said...

*sigh*
It's late, and I haven't been drinking. That should read

"...and blaming Obama's distancing on the phone threats and hate e-mail he received during the campaign."

Anonymous said...

Birds can only fly if they have both a left wing and a right wing. Or walk if they have a left and right leg.

And human being can only be truly sane when the left side of their bodies, their brains and their nervous systems (the sympathetic and parasympatheic) are in a state of balanced equanimity with their left side.

Rather than a fight to the death dominance of one side over the other. As if this "victory" is at all possible.

Everyones world-view, which is a projection of their culturally and childhood determined patterning of their brain and nervous system, is a combination of the left and the right, with one side usually more dominant than the other. Some are more right sided, some left sided.

Their politics altogether is thus mostly determined by this cultural patterning.

If you rightists had your way the world would be inhabited by half bodies only, with one leg, one arm, half a face with one eye, etc etc.

Perhaps we would have roads with only one side too---the right side.

What happens when you come to a no right hand turn traffic sign? Do you break out into a cold sweat and murderous rage?

You would have trouble if you lived in Australia where we all drive on the left side of the road.

Anonymous said...

Of course, Billie da wienie never actually built and set those bombs hisself. No, no, that shitwork was for lowly acolyte dolts like Billie's best buddy Terry & Billie's girlfriend Diana. Billie was very very sad when Terry & Diana blew themselves up with that toy they were assembling.

Billie & the lovely Bernadine are just a regular American couple: married, two children.

Guilty as sin, free as a bird, it's a great country, huh Billie

Van Harvey said...

Julie said "...How long before he gets a presidential pardon and a position of prominence in the new regime?"

Bill Ayers, Secretary of Education.

I wish that were as outrageous a possibility as it is a thought.

Ray Ingles said...

It's good thing those leftists are the only ones with hysterical overblown worries about what their political opponents might do.

NoMo said...

Man, today’s post really got me thinking about angels. They appear almost 300 times in the Bible, usually as “angel of the Lord”. It is clear that they have always been greatly used by God to accomplish His will. My question is why?

Van Harvey said...

Feel better now Ray?

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Ray's gotta get his contrary on, at least once a day. T'aint healthy otherwise.

We'll see what happens with Bayers, that Dog. Woof, woof!

Anonymous said...

Ray's being quite rational, but rationality always takes a back seat to tribalism on all community blogs. It’s a human thing.

Van Harvey said...

aninnymouse said "It’s a human thing."

How would you know?

Anonymous said...

You know you’ve successfully disciplined yourself to love truth when you can play the devils advocate without much fuss or bother.

gumshoe said...

"We'll see what happens with Bayers, that Dog. Woof, woof!"
-river c.

man, could i see a whole
south park satire
of "O" and his entourage.

"Bayers" instead of "Butters".

maybe throw in julie's "Thriller"
exercise-yard dance routine for laughs.

they could use the decomissioned Gitmo for the stage.

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