The gnostic space opera rides again…

I’m noticing a resurgence of interest these days in the whole counter-initiatory, gnostic paranoia, school of analysis out on the internets these days, and I suppose that’s natural when all the bleakest wet dreams of malthusians, libertarian psychotics and primitivists all appear to unfolding on schedule.

I can’t really point the finger, because I arguably played a major role in taking this stuff to another level. At least among left wing occultists, and spiritually minded social liberals. Let’s just call it the Jeff Wells school.

To me it’s just a bit of fun. Adds some color to the otherwise gut-wrenching parade of daily tragedies and cycling through the dukkha nanas of insight practice, so let us dance around a bit.

It’s important to remember that the core feature of gnosticism, at least the branch that concerns us here, is the predominance of dualistic themes of ignorance, and knowledge, evil and good, light and darkness, etc. The more modern re constructionist tendencies in the gnostic community tend more towards something that resembles mahayanna buddhism for Christians, only without the clear practice instructions, but that’s neither here nor there.

Historically gnosticism is absolutely and unequivocally an offshoot of the hellenistic philosophies. All you have to do is look at their terminology. “demiurgos” is straight out of platonism, for example. Their cosmology is likewise straight up neo-platonism, like most early Christianity. Modern scholarship leads us to believe that jesus himself was a hellenistic philosopher, not a judaic rabbi, or an independent flowering of some kind, so there’s no reason to think gnosticism is anything but another side branch of greek thought.

Where these derivations stray is that platonism doesn’t invest in dualism, which is basically a recipe for ideological trench warfare that goes nowhere. There is only the One, also known as the Good, and anything else is only absence of the good, or of oneness. There is no opposing force. Full stop.

So really the gnostic paranoid notion of evil, or the neo-traditionalist pattern of degeneration is only a perceptual phenomenon, not an actuality. Which is a safer and saner way of dealing with this stuff: as a perceptual filter, not an ontological reality.

To me, whether or not the most wildly depraved thing in the universe actually happens or not, is an open question. What isn’t open is whether or not people think that they happen, which in and of itself opens up some rather disturbing and interesting areas of inquiry. For instance: whether or not aliens actually exist, you have a profound number of people who really do think that aliens exist and interact with them, physically. That’s not a curiosity, it’s a psychic epidemic.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I thought I’d spend a little time on a more top-down view of this then you usually get, and march it down through a few layers until we get to the ground level.

So we start with the one, also known as the good.  What makes things one unto themselves, and thus provides for their existence. What provides for existence is the highest good and hence the two terms are considered the same. And because it is “The One”, not “A One”, when you talk about it in this way, there is no other, and hence the one encompasses everything. Hence, everything is good. Period. It is the principle of absolute unity and non-duality.

Now, here’s where we get into gnostic territory: at some point the One decides to make something. Because it is the only thing that exists, and because it is good, it can only make something good, and can only use itself as a model for that making. It thus generates a copy of itself that will be the ‘idea in the mind of god’ that will serve as the model for creation itself, also known as the Logos, or the Word. In every case  of a rational principle at work there must be intent, which requires a model for actions, or the ideal goal, thus the model must precede the copy, which in this case means the One must precede the logos, and the logos must precede the creation of the material universe.

But a funny thing happens when the one does this: because it possesses the quality known as Ousia, it is fully transparent to itself, it can turn on itself and know itself in all ways ( this is the analogous principle to mindfulness in humans) and thus can lend all of it’s features to the model, with a major and profound exception: Because as soon as there are two things, the creator and the creation, there is no longer “The One”, but rather two things that are “ones-unto-themselves”, so to that extent, neither one of them is any longer the perfect one, or likewise, the perfect good, at least when regarded in this way.

From the first perspective, nothing has actually changed, and “The One” is still the same, and indeed, the one lacks any qualities that would allow it to change in any way, as any change can only deviate from perfection. Complex eh?

So from our second perspective, there are now two things: the transcendant maker, also known as the demiurge, and the first creation, also known as the logos. Both are subordinate to the one, and can thus both be regarded as creations of the one.

So even here, at this early stage, there is no dualism, but a trinity. The One, the demiurge, and the logos. And every further step from the perfect one, no matter how perfect of a copy it is, can only be less and less a perfect good, because each new thing only introduces new division and new disunity. Just as when the one tries to reproduce itself and loses the quality of perfect oneness, because every copy can theoretically reproduce everything except that which makes a thing what is it is unto itself, every copy is slightly distorted from its model. Thus, the farther you go down this chain of perception, the less good there is.

This is where we get the illusion of evil.

to be continued…

Externalities

Some years ago, british columbia fell under the governance of the Canadian liberal party. And by ‘liberal’, let us be clear that this was not social liberalism, in any real sense, but economic neoliberalism, to be most accurate. 

  Anyway, they proceeded to implement their ‘agenda’ which consisted of slashing social programs, deregulating everything that wasn’t nailed down, and launching a general attack on the Canadian legacy of a socialized infrastructure. All this in the name of ‘balancing the budget’, which right there tells you everything you need to know about these people and their ideology.  

  ‘Balancing the budget’ can only become a primary concern in an environment where banking and financial interests have come to dictate what governments can do. This is monetarism, where the society revolves around the interests of the currency, rather than what most sane people have come to realize, which is that currency should revolve around the needs of society.  

  Moving right along, the end result of this has been a dramatic decline in the quality of life for most of us here, with the people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder taking the brunt, as social programs along with everything else, are slashed, privatized and deregulated.  In terms of the welfare system alone the number of people successfully using it has dropped between one quarter and one third. No one really knows where these people went, mostly because no one ever thought to keep track of what happens when you cut off the means of last resort for hundreds of thousands of people. It’s a stereotype that the welfare system is full of dole bums and drug addicts. There are those, to be sure, but there are also quite a few mentally ill, homeless, severely addicted, single mothers, sick and injured etc.  This sort of thing is the social manifestation of predatory financial activity, of which the whole world seems to be taking part. The ethos is pretty simple: maximize your profits, and dump your costs, be they social, physical, or economic into someone else’s lap. These costs are called externalities, and to the extent that this is done, you have raised your profit margin by ‘externalizing’ your costs to someone else.    Which is all fine, as long as you can get away from the aftermath of cutting a whole segment of your society loose.

  I guess the thinking must be that if you deny services to these unworthy people, they will go quietly die somewhere, presumably to compost in some convenient location, that won’t stink up anyone’s, oh let’s say… luxury hotel, or conference center.  I mean, even the nazis had to pay for poison gas and bulldozers to dig those ditches.

  So I guess it was a bit of a shock to find that this old hotel had an abandoned laundry tunnel under it, and while the ruling class were discussing the next round of tax cuts and ‘belt tightening’ for the populace over high tea, someone had found the entrance, and moved in. And once it got cold enough, they started lighting fires down there.  How poetic is that? Smoke rising up from under the feet of the rich, from the fires of the poor.   Wish I could still find the link, but wouldn’t you know it, it’s gone down the memory hole, in less than a day. I wonder why?

  …I got your ‘externalities’ right here, guys.

The Mosaic Effect 27: Pseudo-Tradition, Counter-Tradition, and the Sopranos

 

We seek another touchstone in the popular culture in order to discuss a pivotal idea in my work; the concept of transmission, both esoteric and not, and how this idea appears before an audience of millions, week in, week out.

   martial arts, buddhism, rene guenon, initiation, and the end of the world as mob drama

podcast page

Direct download: TME27-counter_tradition_pseudo_tradition_and_the_sopranos.mp3

You Can’t Land On A Fraction

Do you know what the man is saying? Do you? This is dialectics. It’s very simple dialectics. One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can’t travel in space, you can’t go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, with fractions. What are you going to land on, one quarter, three-eighths, what are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something — that’s dialectic physics, OK? Dialectic logic is there’s only love and hate, you either love somebody or you hate them

 Promise we’ll get back to systematic for the people next time. In the meanwhile, one last rant on the elections, the downfall of (overtly) fascist amerika, dialectics, taoism, infectious derangments, and how not to get hooked into the male orgasm curve of narrative.  And a big ol’ fuck you that I’ve been waiting a good long time to deliver.

direct download You_Cant_Land_On_A_Fraction.mp3

podcast page here

Introduction: You Can’t Get There From Here

   By popular demand, I’ve recorded a long overdue piece of introduction to myself and my work. Slightly meandering as is usual for me, but if you arrive here utterly baffled about this raving charicature and his work, then your pleas for surcease have been answered.

 for the sake of clarity:

direct download Introduction.mp3

and podcast page here

  On another note, I’ve successfully added myself to the podcast directory for itunes, amongst the sundry broadcasts dealing with fairies, fundamentalism and watered down practices of various stripes in the religion and spirituality category. searches for me by name, or for ‘magick’ the ‘occult’ and strangely enough ‘peak oil’ amongst others will send you my way.

  just look for the six of swords tarot card

 a little smaller than this, though.

It says ’science’ by the way…

  thanks for comin out, and have fun.

..and while you’re at it, if some of my fanatic legions who happen to use itunes could go write some reviews that would be swell. the conquest of the mediaspace continues on schedule.

The Light at the End

  as a lark, before we resume the practical stuff, we simultaneously do a halloween extravaganza, an election preview special, and an example of how to plunge oneself into a totally paranoid hellworld, where luciferians rule the earth.

 there’s some stuff about american politics, the metaphysics of light, half assed futurism, world war 3, the illuminati, and global macroeconomics.

  Don’t drink the kool-aid. at least no more than is somewhat fun for you…

  

The Mosaic Effect 23: having come to the end, change

In hopes of dispelling some of the futilty and fatalism in the current social mileu, we pause to consider the psychological shifts that need to happen both to embrace the future and to abandon it.

the pyramidal structure of life, energy politics, hysterical ridigity amongst our favorite political whipping boys ( that’s right, them again ) dieoff, dieback, retrenchment and the positive value of catastrophe.

And ultimately, how to walk the fine line between order and chaos and learn to love it. kind of like how i can be a buddhist in my mind, a taoist in my heart, and a thelemic heretic in the rest of it.

I got your ‘inevitablity’ right here….

The Mosaic Effect 22: …and the shadow exploded

 our somewhat belated september eleventh ‘memorial’ episode, which I had to debate even doing for some time, untill i found an angle that didn’t engage with the morally and intellectually degrading myth of ‘terrorism’ that’s being shoved down our throats.

  so: from another angle… shadow repression, prohibition, the submerged world of money, drugs, and unacceptable neccesities. nods to the work of webster tarpley, catherine austin fits, and mike ruppert, and the ever looming threat of paranoid implosion of our whole psychic and spiritual moorings as a society.

     step onto the ghost train, and take a tour of the underworld

The Mosaic Effect 21: The Sleep of Forgetting

   An extra long and extra wild foray into a wide range of disturbing topics, and plugging them all into a horizontaly and vertically integrated developmental model.

   Ritual abuse, occult crime, recovered memory, the hosanna church coverup, the franklin call-boy ring, project monarch, swarm logic, holistic understandings, and why the evolutionary process sometimes gives rise to assaults on the past and the future.

    settle down with your inner mind controlled sex slave and sort this muthafucka out.

The Mosaic Effect 20 1/2: Knots in the Spiral

  More of an appendment to our prior discussion than anything else, but filling in some necessary blanks in the SD model.

   Once you’ve listened to that skip over here and watch this superb george carlin clip ( thanks to deconsumption for this btw) and examine what he’s saying and how he’s received, in light of what we’ve been talking about. Who’s he talking about, and who’s he really talking to? His barely contained fury is a good barometer for where certain segments of society are headed.