The Protestant Reformation is an interesting case in point. Quakers, shakers, etc. were all using shamanic techniques - there is some of this still going on today, snake-handling and speaking in tongues and such - to reach altered states of consciousness. Further to the anthropological point, such varieties of protestantism were, and still are, low status peasant religions. Further to the liminal chaos point, the Reformation unleashed vast bloodshed across Europe. It was Rolo who first brought this dynamic to my attention.
Once the energies are allowed in, they cannot be controlled - but, keeping them out deprives the social order of both the high as well as the low, making it rigid and closed. Surely there is some balance that can be struck?
Thinking back to the status issue, is it really true that the development is monotonically towards spiritualism being low status? Or is this an Abrahamic pathology? In the Hellenic world, the mysteries were very high status, as was the Oracle at Delphi.
To the last point - interesting question. Perhaps there might be some projection of modern Western history going on. The disruptive and anti-authoritarian nature of individual mystics, prophets etc. does make intuitive sense, though. Perhaps it is possible for a complex society to find ways to reconcile institutions, organization, hierarchy with disruptive mysticism? Catholicism at some point perhaps represented such an attempt, although conflict seems inevitable...
I think conflict will always be inevitable ... trying to eliminate it doesn't work, and only leads to tyranny of one form or another. If instead it's channeled and managed, the destruction can be turned to creative ends. Think of the forest fires in the Rocky mountains: by trying to prevent the fires, underbrush builds up and eventually you end up with a conflagration that destroys the whole forest, whereas left to its own devices there are many small fires ... which also turn out to be necessary for the trees to reproduce. Perhaps the church's attempt to stamp out mysticism, continued now by official science's insistence on materialism, only guarantees a particularly destructive form of irrationalism ... which indeed we're seeing now.
Apr 23, 2023·edited Apr 23, 2023Liked by L.P. Koch
A lot of the hyper-materialist stance is a front, as modern marketing/nudging/propaganda is a form of black magic, which now coming to fruition is going after children to separate them from nature to the point of butchery, while risking a world war no one wins.
Oh I really like your take on what is happening and take great comfort in your words that there are good powers at play also and it’s not all blackness and evil. I just saw a brand new statue erected in Denmark in front of former Women museum now renamed Gender museum of a naked man with all his “tackle” on display with breasts holding a nursing baby in his arms🤮. There are so many things wrong with this picture of this newly erected male statue with breasts portraying him nursing a baby, I find it quite disturbing to my “normal” sensibilities so your words bring much comfort Luc and I just happened to be reading them when my husband came across this picture and article so maybe i was meant to be given some comfort to my feelings of revulsion and despair so thank you!
Be comforted also in the sure knowledge that the madness currently holding such a death-grip on modern day society will be short lived, and that future generations will marvel and laugh at the ludicrousness of our age.
Oh what a nice message to receive this morning! I appreciate very much that you took the time to send it! Your words are so comforting re the insanity we’re living with just CAN’T last because it’s so… the first word that springs to mind is unnatural and the second word is perverse. Their push to try to normalize even pedophilia now is probably the most disturbing yet.. I can’t imagine much worse so I pray to God you’re right.
You're welcome... your comment touched me in such a way that I had to say something... and I chose to say what I truly believe... and I truly believe it because this world depends on it.
Thank you! It’s people like you that I need so much in my life right now because you give me something to hang onto and you give me hope as it is what you truly believe! Much appreciated and thank you again!
Hold on to the faith that ultimately everything will be ok... and that this madness can not prevail... it's critically important that you believe that, not only for your own peace of mind, but because it's what connects us and holds the sane world together... at least that's what I believe.
I had several of those experiences, utterly inexplicable in physical terms, like household objects moving all by themselves, and microsecond flashes of the future while walking first time into places where these things would happen. I reflected on this topic today, after reading your article, and this is what dawned on me. Many years ago, a naive teenager, I and my girlfriend were somehow persuaded to participate in a ouija board seance by the mother of my girlfriend, and her friend. She wanted to talk to her deceased husband, and at the end of the process it was absolutely clear to me that something was moving my hand, invisibly, from letter to letter, at great speed, making intelligible sentences. The ‘entity’ was not interested in talking to me. It is only today that i realised how banal the conversation was, no profound insights, no wisdom, no philosophical argument, no treasure maps, just talk about some practical or personal things that in the end was of no interest to me either. In hindsight, the only interesting place is here, among the living, where meaning is created, and the realm of the dead is where meaning does not change, nothing is created, but what once was aimlessly lingers. Nevertheless, there is something there that seems to allow for shortcuts in time and space, backdoors.
Very interesting account. From what I've heard, yes, most ouija board experiments don't produce anything useful, except that at least they can show that reality is much stranger, and bigger, than many modern philosophical positions would allow. There is some fascinating "channelled" material as well though. Stafford Betty has compiled some good ones in his books. But I would always take such accounts with a grain of salt, and at the end of the day, I agree with you: what counts is what is in front of us, it's where meaning lies--or at least the sort of meaning we can know and that is relevant for us. Countless "spiritual" people and mystics have fallen into the trap of denying or degrading the material world, i.e. reality, which strikes me as quite Faustian.
It’s uncanny sometimes that your writings just seem to appear when I’m having a hard time with something and your words and insights seemingly arrive just in time to calm my angst. I think I was meant to find you on Substack, your words are powerful in helping me fight off all of the negatives no matter what topics you are discussing. It’s a gift Luc, treasure it.
"Part of the explanation surely comes down to materialist ideology: the idea that everything in the universe is ultimately reducible to dead matter. Although this has nothing to do with science ..."
I think this stems partly from the dominance, in physics, of the assumption that Space is infinitely divisible - because it means there is nowhere for the non-material to exist. However, if one assumes that the fundamental structure of Space is quantised, it becomes quite easy to envisage non-material dimensions which might readily interact with the material world.
(I wrote, a couple of years ago, about how my own attempt to explore physics from first principles led me to take seriously many of the old stories that I'd previously dismissed as myth: https://malcolmramsay.substack.com/p/meta-physics)
Apr 24, 2023·edited Apr 24, 2023Liked by L.P. Koch
This leads me back to symmetry. I don't know in a provable way whether this is a (or "the") property of reality. But if it is, it opens the door to a dynamic universe in which all "rules" are subordinate to the will of agents who struggle to either maintain the balance or subvert it.
In either case, it seems likely that some of us would experience phenomena that doesn’t align with the typical rules of the game that the mean of the bell curve recognizes as "reality." The problem then becomes something like, "Who is crazy and who can see?" A very thorny problem, and maybe a reason that *some* intrepid people should investigate the unusual. But I agree that, if such a category exists, it's members should be careful beyond the usual definition of "careful."
Great essay! I suppose if the powers that be are more interested in maintaining control than they are in helping those they govern to lead better lives, then they would feel threatened by supernatural forces, as they are unable to understand or control them. What is truly bizarre is seeing the agents of chaos (Marxcissists) rejecting the supernatural as well; perhaps they wish to deny the existence of demons because they do not want to acknowledge, even to themselves, that demons are the ones actually leading the Marxcissist movement?
Well, there is a certain breed of New Age narcissists that kind of combines some of those traits (entitlement, subjectivism etc.) with a belief in the supernatural, so there can be a connection. But generally, yes, the "agents of chaos" are materialist in their philosophy, because while there are some elements of mysticism in some of the thought they inherited (Walter Benjamin, especially), this was mostly purged within the Frankfurt school, as it was from academia in general.
I encourage you to read Eliphas Levi, Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, translated by Greer and Mikituk. Greer is doing a chapter a month review, we are just now getting into the ritual of it.
It is well known in the magical community, some of the most effective practitioners are uneducated rural folk. Too much modern intellect can get in the way. But it takes intellect to be a true adept. Either way it pays to be intentional about it, lest one get drawn in unknowingly to darker, mass-movement energies.
on your statement about conservatives hating the disruption of the unknown: I beg to differ. Seems conservatives are more likely to be faith based. To me, believing in higher realms and unseen reality is the ability to have faith in things immaterial.
Luc! The Gospel today is the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. You and Jesus are on the same wavelength today. He comes across as frustrate d with folks whose minds are not sufficiently open to what He did.
The Protestant Reformation is an interesting case in point. Quakers, shakers, etc. were all using shamanic techniques - there is some of this still going on today, snake-handling and speaking in tongues and such - to reach altered states of consciousness. Further to the anthropological point, such varieties of protestantism were, and still are, low status peasant religions. Further to the liminal chaos point, the Reformation unleashed vast bloodshed across Europe. It was Rolo who first brought this dynamic to my attention.
Once the energies are allowed in, they cannot be controlled - but, keeping them out deprives the social order of both the high as well as the low, making it rigid and closed. Surely there is some balance that can be struck?
Thinking back to the status issue, is it really true that the development is monotonically towards spiritualism being low status? Or is this an Abrahamic pathology? In the Hellenic world, the mysteries were very high status, as was the Oracle at Delphi.
To the last point - interesting question. Perhaps there might be some projection of modern Western history going on. The disruptive and anti-authoritarian nature of individual mystics, prophets etc. does make intuitive sense, though. Perhaps it is possible for a complex society to find ways to reconcile institutions, organization, hierarchy with disruptive mysticism? Catholicism at some point perhaps represented such an attempt, although conflict seems inevitable...
I think conflict will always be inevitable ... trying to eliminate it doesn't work, and only leads to tyranny of one form or another. If instead it's channeled and managed, the destruction can be turned to creative ends. Think of the forest fires in the Rocky mountains: by trying to prevent the fires, underbrush builds up and eventually you end up with a conflagration that destroys the whole forest, whereas left to its own devices there are many small fires ... which also turn out to be necessary for the trees to reproduce. Perhaps the church's attempt to stamp out mysticism, continued now by official science's insistence on materialism, only guarantees a particularly destructive form of irrationalism ... which indeed we're seeing now.
A lot of the hyper-materialist stance is a front, as modern marketing/nudging/propaganda is a form of black magic, which now coming to fruition is going after children to separate them from nature to the point of butchery, while risking a world war no one wins.
Excellent metaphor!
Oh I really like your take on what is happening and take great comfort in your words that there are good powers at play also and it’s not all blackness and evil. I just saw a brand new statue erected in Denmark in front of former Women museum now renamed Gender museum of a naked man with all his “tackle” on display with breasts holding a nursing baby in his arms🤮. There are so many things wrong with this picture of this newly erected male statue with breasts portraying him nursing a baby, I find it quite disturbing to my “normal” sensibilities so your words bring much comfort Luc and I just happened to be reading them when my husband came across this picture and article so maybe i was meant to be given some comfort to my feelings of revulsion and despair so thank you!
Great to hear that it helped, Sonya!
Be comforted also in the sure knowledge that the madness currently holding such a death-grip on modern day society will be short lived, and that future generations will marvel and laugh at the ludicrousness of our age.
Oh what a nice message to receive this morning! I appreciate very much that you took the time to send it! Your words are so comforting re the insanity we’re living with just CAN’T last because it’s so… the first word that springs to mind is unnatural and the second word is perverse. Their push to try to normalize even pedophilia now is probably the most disturbing yet.. I can’t imagine much worse so I pray to God you’re right.
You're welcome... your comment touched me in such a way that I had to say something... and I chose to say what I truly believe... and I truly believe it because this world depends on it.
Thank you! It’s people like you that I need so much in my life right now because you give me something to hang onto and you give me hope as it is what you truly believe! Much appreciated and thank you again!
Hold on to the faith that ultimately everything will be ok... and that this madness can not prevail... it's critically important that you believe that, not only for your own peace of mind, but because it's what connects us and holds the sane world together... at least that's what I believe.
I had several of those experiences, utterly inexplicable in physical terms, like household objects moving all by themselves, and microsecond flashes of the future while walking first time into places where these things would happen. I reflected on this topic today, after reading your article, and this is what dawned on me. Many years ago, a naive teenager, I and my girlfriend were somehow persuaded to participate in a ouija board seance by the mother of my girlfriend, and her friend. She wanted to talk to her deceased husband, and at the end of the process it was absolutely clear to me that something was moving my hand, invisibly, from letter to letter, at great speed, making intelligible sentences. The ‘entity’ was not interested in talking to me. It is only today that i realised how banal the conversation was, no profound insights, no wisdom, no philosophical argument, no treasure maps, just talk about some practical or personal things that in the end was of no interest to me either. In hindsight, the only interesting place is here, among the living, where meaning is created, and the realm of the dead is where meaning does not change, nothing is created, but what once was aimlessly lingers. Nevertheless, there is something there that seems to allow for shortcuts in time and space, backdoors.
Very interesting account. From what I've heard, yes, most ouija board experiments don't produce anything useful, except that at least they can show that reality is much stranger, and bigger, than many modern philosophical positions would allow. There is some fascinating "channelled" material as well though. Stafford Betty has compiled some good ones in his books. But I would always take such accounts with a grain of salt, and at the end of the day, I agree with you: what counts is what is in front of us, it's where meaning lies--or at least the sort of meaning we can know and that is relevant for us. Countless "spiritual" people and mystics have fallen into the trap of denying or degrading the material world, i.e. reality, which strikes me as quite Faustian.
It’s uncanny sometimes that your writings just seem to appear when I’m having a hard time with something and your words and insights seemingly arrive just in time to calm my angst. I think I was meant to find you on Substack, your words are powerful in helping me fight off all of the negatives no matter what topics you are discussing. It’s a gift Luc, treasure it.
"Part of the explanation surely comes down to materialist ideology: the idea that everything in the universe is ultimately reducible to dead matter. Although this has nothing to do with science ..."
I think this stems partly from the dominance, in physics, of the assumption that Space is infinitely divisible - because it means there is nowhere for the non-material to exist. However, if one assumes that the fundamental structure of Space is quantised, it becomes quite easy to envisage non-material dimensions which might readily interact with the material world.
(I wrote, a couple of years ago, about how my own attempt to explore physics from first principles led me to take seriously many of the old stories that I'd previously dismissed as myth: https://malcolmramsay.substack.com/p/meta-physics)
This leads me back to symmetry. I don't know in a provable way whether this is a (or "the") property of reality. But if it is, it opens the door to a dynamic universe in which all "rules" are subordinate to the will of agents who struggle to either maintain the balance or subvert it.
In either case, it seems likely that some of us would experience phenomena that doesn’t align with the typical rules of the game that the mean of the bell curve recognizes as "reality." The problem then becomes something like, "Who is crazy and who can see?" A very thorny problem, and maybe a reason that *some* intrepid people should investigate the unusual. But I agree that, if such a category exists, it's members should be careful beyond the usual definition of "careful."
Great essay! I suppose if the powers that be are more interested in maintaining control than they are in helping those they govern to lead better lives, then they would feel threatened by supernatural forces, as they are unable to understand or control them. What is truly bizarre is seeing the agents of chaos (Marxcissists) rejecting the supernatural as well; perhaps they wish to deny the existence of demons because they do not want to acknowledge, even to themselves, that demons are the ones actually leading the Marxcissist movement?
Well, there is a certain breed of New Age narcissists that kind of combines some of those traits (entitlement, subjectivism etc.) with a belief in the supernatural, so there can be a connection. But generally, yes, the "agents of chaos" are materialist in their philosophy, because while there are some elements of mysticism in some of the thought they inherited (Walter Benjamin, especially), this was mostly purged within the Frankfurt school, as it was from academia in general.
I encourage you to read Eliphas Levi, Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, translated by Greer and Mikituk. Greer is doing a chapter a month review, we are just now getting into the ritual of it.
It is well known in the magical community, some of the most effective practitioners are uneducated rural folk. Too much modern intellect can get in the way. But it takes intellect to be a true adept. Either way it pays to be intentional about it, lest one get drawn in unknowingly to darker, mass-movement energies.
Fascinating
Fascinating
on your statement about conservatives hating the disruption of the unknown: I beg to differ. Seems conservatives are more likely to be faith based. To me, believing in higher realms and unseen reality is the ability to have faith in things immaterial.
I will be copying this in writing and sticking it by my vitamins where I will see it every single day! Yes I must keep the faith you are so right..
True words to live by every single day.
Thank you for this cause you absolutely made my day today.🤗
Sorry not more articulate.
Luc! The Gospel today is the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. You and Jesus are on the same wavelength today. He comes across as frustrate d with folks whose minds are not sufficiently open to what He did.