Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Rule of Love and the Science of Magic

Letter III, the Empress. For Tomberg she symbolizes the realm of sacred or divine magic, which is embodied in the formula that the subtle rules the dense, and all this implies.

One could translight this as "the subtle causes the dense," so long as we don't confuse horizontal and vertical causes, i.e., scientific/material and spiritual/psychic.

As we know, there are four causes -- or four "be-causes," as it were. Every event has all four, but in any given event, one may stand out more. For example, one person falls from a window because he was defenestrated. The defenestrator is the efficient cause of the event.

Another person falls because he wants to commit suicide. Death -- or cessation of suffering -- is the final cause. Similar event, but very different causes, the second more subtle than the first. Free will itself is a subtle cause that by definition eludes the gross instruments of science. Science will never "locate" it because it cannot be located. Rather, it is nonlocal per se, indivisible from the soul. Might as well try to measure the beauty of a sunset with calipers.

"Magic" is a loaded word, but Tomberg has a very specific connotation 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 like to designate (↓) 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. Here again, note that we are talking about final causes: God has a "purpose," as do we. Ultimately it is the same purpose, because, as the saying goes, our will does not rest until it rests in God. Then it's the cosmic sabbath, and everybody's happy.

Elsewhere Tomberg quotes a fellow named 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. Love perfects our nature, so here again we have a case of the subtle -- love -- ruling the dense (although some of us are more dense than others).

Recall from the previous card (the Priestess) that love is the essence of unity, or of 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 and surpassing ways.

Yes, "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."

Forgive the self-reference, but the B'ob has received many communications testifying to the reality of this magic. 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 digits -- 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 to our everlasting relief, not a single one of these readers 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 (↓). No creepy cult of personality for us. We are not leftists.

Each person will navigate the the vertical terrain 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. This is not so much eccentrism -- which means "outside the circle" -- as "essentrism" -- which I just rewordgitated, and means "inhabiting your own little space inside the sphere." Probably not a keeper, though.

Even Jesus -- who was a mode of the universal -- was nevertheless a human personality. True, he was "everyone," but he was quite obviously someone. This is what distinguishes him from merely mythological figures who are purely archetypal and therefore conventional. Jesus has a distinct personality that you just couldn't make up. Definitely an essentric.

Tomberg 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 b•••(•)•••k. 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, dragging us down and stealing our launch monkey.

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 (and often self-imposed via mind parasites).

For example, the legions of liberal losers who have transfered agency to the state have failed the test. Yes, one can always retake the exam at any time, but relatively few choose to do so once they have become spiritually entangled with the Machine, i.e., another prick in the wall. 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 political wacktivity, they conjur a very real loser power that allows them to get what they want without deserving it. So long as they do not question the machine, they are permitted to coast in the machine.

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.

Tomberg 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 shiftless community organizer, or crude Chicago pol (but I repeat myself). 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 Tomberg describes it, "One engenders an elemental being and one subsequently becomes the slave of one's own creation."

Look at the fiendly fire Herman Cain took 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 to save them. Stray from the plantation, as Cain did, and you realize that the fugitive slave laws are still in force, and that the black conservatives have no rights that the white liberal is bound to respect.

Next on the left's hitlist? Ben Carson, because the life of a single child is not worth the death of millions more from the sanctified practice of abortion.

Tomberg 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."

I can personally attest to the truth of this statement. How? Back off, man: I'm a psychologist.

Tomberg continues: "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 state meat for the base. Liberalism is obviously about freedom. But the founders always understood this in the manner outlined above, as the slack magic of 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 (naturally supernatural) freedom conferred by God and protected by the state, it promulgates an unnaturally natural (for man) 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 lowbrow hybrid whose narcissistic freedom is for his own sake. It is not even horizontal freedom, but merely the freedom to fall further beneath himself. And it results in the dense -- including dense people such as the Obamas -- presuming to rule the subtle.

It is remarkable that these 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 and perverted image of the Empress.

10 comments:

mushroom said...

The thing about the devil necessarily playing by the rules is one of the most enlightening things I've semi-grasped in a long time. When I saw the implications, I literally said a bad word out-loud. I've doing this to myself, and it all makes sense.

mushroom said...

Loser power -- This is not confined to the political realm. I know people (too well) who have cultivated physical infirmities for years the way a power-lifter cultivates muscle. Mighty is their loser fu.

Gagdad Bob said...

For you California readers out there, an excellent five part series on what liberals have done to our once great state. It is a model for Obama's depredations.

julie said...

Apropos the quote heading the comment box, an atheist proposes a temple. What I find amusing is that it sounds like a genuinely lovely idea... which would only serve to illustrate the glory of god. To the extent that any such structure succeeds in its mission, leaving out "the God-bit" would be an exercise in futility.

Tony said...

Tomberg has some trenchant things to say about the art of Renaissance humanists, calling it merely "ceremonial magic"

invisible Nature was also forgotten. Visible Nature was concentrated upon alone, with the aim of subjugating it to the human will

maybe the best example is Mannerist art like this or this

these are self-consciously "artistic" works, deliberately distorting natural and traditional forms, engaged with art as a closed, formal system of style

Tomberg goes further and says industrial science .. is the continuation of the ceremonial magic of the humanists, stripped of its occult element

but if we stay within the art world, the description fits the ceremonial magic of postmodern pop starlets

in Tomberg's words, they are the continuation of sacred magic, but deprived of its gnostic and mystical element

very proper to a world of baubles and bubbles

I once had a disagreement with a very public artist -- he insisted the world today was fundamentally Baroque, and I argued (much to his delight) that it was profoundly Mannerist

idle talk, all of it

julie said...

heh - I never thought of it that way, but I'd have to agree with your assessment. It's been far too long since my art history days, but the Mannerist examples here remind me of a modern artist whose work I saw back in 2000 or '01, who painted modern models in a Mannerist style. It was like Mannerism squared.

I'm also reminded of the Akhenaten period in ancient Egypt; makes me wonder if there isn't perhaps a cultural similarity...

James said...

Bob,

Great post. I've got to get more of God's love into my life.

Tony said...

Schuon is really insightful on all this

stylization per se isn't the problem -- the icons of the Orthodox are highly stylized -- it's the obvious desire of the artist to refer only to other art -- the resolutely horizontal, not vertical, vision

it's very easy to get comfortable with the horizontal -- but when a great artist comes in and suddenly introduces the vertical, I get this extraordinary and immediate sense of being suspended between worlds, as if experience were suddenly and fully three-dimensional

Pärt's music does this to me, as does Penderecki's -- they've produced the biggest sense of spatial and spiritual volume -- but it can happen anywhere, anytime, from anyone

know nuttin' about the Akhenatens -- were they late? Mannerists fed upon prior production and fashioned expensive recherché things for the connoisseurs

DeAnn said...

Love perfects our nature, so here again we have a case of the subtle -- love -- ruling the dense (although some of us are more dense than others).

I thought this was to be the best of it, but the entire post rocked for me ... thanks.

julie said...

Akhenaten was a renegade pharaoh. He was married to Nefertiti, and basically declared himself God. He established his own form of stylization, breaking away from the rigid traditional artistic stylization that had lasted, with very few changes, for centuries. After he died (or was killed), the old ways were gradually brought back.

Worth Googling, both for the history and the images. Apparently, he may have been influenced by the Jews.

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