Arcana III, the Empress. Our Unknown Friend points out that she symbolizes the realm of sacred or divine magic, which is embodied in the formula that the subtle rules -- or is prior to -- the dense, and all this implies.
"Magic" is a loaded word, but UF has a very specific coonotation in mind. First, he notes that the only legitimate magic is that which is "authorized from above." And the only legitimate aim of magic is liberation in order to ascend. And the only legitimate accomplice to this climb involves a combination of the two wills: divine and human, or what we might call (↓) and (↑).
Thus, real magic results from our alignment with the divine will in order to ascend toward greater freedom, which is always grounded in truth. A new power is re-created through the harmonious attunement of divine and human wills.
Elsewhere UF quotes Peladin, who spoke of the application of the strengthened human will to accelerate the evolution of the living forces of Nature. This is accomplished through the science of love.
And remember from the previous card, that love is the essence of unity, or the free unification of twoness in oneness, even while preserving the twoness. "Sacred magic is the power of love, born of the union in love of divine will and human will." Freedom, love, magic, will, ascent, evolution, multiplicity, truth, harmony, generativity, oneness... all of these are interrelated in surprising ways.
"This is the aim of sacred magic; it is nothing other than to give the freedom to see, to hear, to walk, to live, to follow an ideal and to be truly oneself -- i.e., to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the ability to walk to the lame, life to the dead, good news or ideals to the poor, and free will to those who are possessed by evil spirits."
I won't bore you with some of the touching letters Bob has received, testifying to the reality of this magic. But he has been blogging about this stuff for many years, and there are now people -- one doesn't want to exaggerate the numbers, but probably in the high single figures -- who couldn't "see" God, but now can; people who couldn't hear, but now do; or people who couldn't walk the walk, but now dance the sacred coondance.
But thankfully, not one of these people would attribute it to Bob. Well, maybe one person, but we haven't heard from him since the restraining order. The point is, they all "get it" -- that the magic results from aligning (↑) and (↓).
Each person will move through the spooktrum in his own way, from spiritual touch, to hearing, to synthesis and comprehension, then projection and vision. No one else can touch or hear or comprehend for you. Each has to be your own, so they will naturally be inflected through the particulars of your own personality.
Even Jesus -- who was a mode of the universal -- was nevertheless a human personality. True, he was "everyone," but he was nevertheless someone. This is what distinguishes him from merely mythological figures that are purely archetypal and therefore conventional.
UF then goes into a very important passage on the inevitable obstacles along the path, one of which is none other than the mind parasites of which Bob speaks in the book. If the object of sacred magic is liberation in order to ascend, then anything that intrudes upon or prevents this process is more or less parasitic.
Well no, that's not quite correct. In fact, it's not correct at all. Earth is not to be confused with heaven. We are not meant to live non-friction lives, for it is precisely these obstacles -- so long as they do not escape certain parameters -- that present the opportunity for growth and transcendence.
In other words there are "legitimate" obstacles, tests and trials that work within the Cosmic Law, and illegitimate ones that may look satanic, but are actually mostly manmade.
For example, the legions of liberal losers occupying various cities across the nation are really just hordes of unwashed air-do-smells who have failed their various spiritual tests.
For this is what losers do: they project their failure on to some external demon of their own creation. But this hardly means they are "powerless." Rather, through their coordinated wacktivity, they bring about a very real loser power that allows them to get what they want without deserving it.
You might say that a kind of black magic results from the alignment of the human will with the forces of darkness and descent. A liberal victim is always rewarded with illegitimate power, otherwise no one would cast himself as one. And this power is ultimately grounded in someone else's existential guilt.
UF makes the critical point that the Adversary never deprives anyone of his freedom. That is not his style, but more importantly, it is not his role. He's not some sort of street thug or community organizer. No: "Temptation is [his] only weapon and this presupposes the freedom of he who is tempted."
But one can obviously squander one's freedom, to the point that one is essentially "possessed" by the demon that one has co-created with the Adversary. As UF describes it, "One engenders an elemental being and one subsequently becomes the slave of one's own creation."
Look at the flack Herman Cain has taken for helpfully explaining to fellow blacks how this works in practice -- that so many are slaves to a dysfunctional ideology that casts them as permanent property of the white liberals who have the power rescue them. Stray from the plantation, as Cain has done, and you realize that the fugitive slave laws are still in force.
UF observes that mind parasites "have been discovered by contemporary psychiatrists and are recognized as real -- i.e., as 'parasitic psychic organisms' independent of the conscious human will and tending to subjugate it."
As such, "One need not fear the devil, but rather the perverse tendencies in oneself! For those perverse human tendencies can deprive us of our freedom and enslave us. Worse still, they can avail themselves of our imagination and inventive faculties and lead us to creations which can become the scourge of mankind."
Let's pause here for a little more red meat for the base. Liberalism is obviously about freedom. But the founders always understood this in the manner outlined above, as spiritual freedom, i.e., the freedom to ascend. For example, in the words of John Adams,
“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.... We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.... Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.... We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.”
The Democratic party has long since abandoned the classical liberalism of America's founders for an illiberal leftism that is not just its political opposite, but its very negation. It is a collusion of man and his own lower nature in order to bring about hell on earth. Instead of a vertical (natural) freedom conferred by God and protected by the state, it promulgates an unnatural freedom granted by the state.
But just as the state cannot create wealth but only appropriate it by force, it cannot grant real freedom, since that freedom is a priori and intrinsically spiritual. And by attacking and undermining religion itself, the left participates in the creation of a new kind of man-beast hybrid whose narcissistic freedom is for his own sake. It is not even horizontal freedom, but merely the freedom to fall further beneath himself.
It is remarkable that the change chumps and hope fiends of the irreligious secular left -- precisely because they are irreligious -- collectively created the pseudo-religious fantasy of Obama, a shape-shifting cipher and compulsively lyin' Hawaiian who represents the quintessence of soothing hypnosis and oily seduction, the favorite methods of the Adversary. For he is the inverted image of the Empress.
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Sorry to go OT... I've missed out on most of this week - and feeling it, ugh - been occupied with the occupiers. Do me a favor, have a look at my post from late this morning (very different from original last night), Occupy your own street!
"...The only way we can get within striking distance of the real battlefield, is from the inside - and that can only be accomplished by getting our friends, relatives and neighbors, to ask some key questions themselves - they have to fight the battle, our job is only to supply them with the ammunition to do so, and that can only be done by getting them to ask themselves the questions that will expose the enemy to the truth in their own mindsEdit
..."
, and pass it around if you think it's worthwhile. I think if we lose hold of these question, there will be no (political) battles left to win.
(And I mean 'political' ideas not in the way of parties, but in the sense of your relation to your neighborhood)
It is remarkable that the change chumps and hope fiends of the irreligious secular left -- precisely because they are irreligious -- collectively created the pseudo-religious fantasy of Obama, a shape-shifting cipher and compulsively lyin' Hawaiian who represents the quintessence of soothing hypnosis and oily seduction, the favorite methods of the Adversary. For he is the inverted image of the Empress.
Prager was talking just a bit ago about the California representative who stated that anyone opposed to Obama doesn't love this country, isn't a patriot, and hates jobs and the economy. So she has this projection which demonizes anyone who doesn't share her views, which she feels justified in stating publicly and from her position of elected authority. A loser extraordinaire, and sadly she does have power to back that up.
Speaking of the occupiers, they're converging on Phoenix this weekend. I drove DH into town this morning, and already a few are wandering around. *sigh*
"The Democratic party ... is a collusion of man and his own lower nature in order to bring about hell on earth."
This reminds me of a statement by William Rusher, that his main dislike of the Democrats was that they intentionally "mined ignorance."
Oh, and regarding that coondance you mentioned: I'm not given to jigs all that much, owing to the irregular beat of my own drummer -- but fer sure my "eyesight" and "hearing" have improved of late, and I give much of the credit to the salve you dispense hereabouts. So, thanks for that!
A fascinating Post, Mr. Godwin. In your blogging career you may not yet be credited with a direct conversion (atheist/agnostic to believer).
However, you have set the groundwork or mortared the bricks for at least 20 people and are therefore credited with 2 complete conversion equivalents (CCE's).
Not a small feat, considering a life-time CCE score of 1-2 is exceptional even for a priest or preacher.
You are a gladiator, locked in combat with a fell adversary, and the Emperor is well pleased. Thumbs up.
Walt!
It's a marvelous night for a coondance...
Julie -
I agree. A balmy 54 degrees, even as I write.
But, a cautionary tale: in an old Herb Caen column -- himself, a major "miner of ignorance" -- from days past, I read about a man who had been arrested in Sausalito, down by the Bay, for making "obscene gestures" towards the water. The police later determined he was doing tai chi.
So, as we dance in the nighttime, we must remember the old adage, "Location/location."
Ha - that is hilarious! Well, he probably didn't think so, but from a safe distance I sure do...
Speaking of powerful losers, fall holidays are "insensitive".
To some, I'm fairly certain the only acceptable holidays anymore are Labor Day and Martin Luther King Day.
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