The World as Power

[Nefastos]

In the Star of Azazel, we see a human soul threefold, consisting of:

1) Higher Intelligence (called manas)
2) Sense of Unity (called buddhi)
3) True Will (called âtma)

People with Mission - whatever it is - are the people with Will. Their âtma is active.

This "highest" of principles is also extremely destructive because of its great power, if it's not brought in contact with living unity with the whole with the means of buddhi. That kind of âtmic overuse we see in religious or ideological martyrs & terrorists. It's extremely Nietzschean way of seeing the world. Also, very (one-eyedly) Satanic, for He was "the highest of God's angels".

But Nietzsche, as far as I know, thought of human beings only. In magic the same Will is the attribute for the whole cosmos. I heartily recommend Sir John Woodroffe's book The World As Power if one wants to delve deep in this occult view point of world's energetical consistence. I would dare to say that this kind of thinking might be the point of uniting many contradictions: East & West, theory & practice, philosophy & magic.

Under this topic we can, if you are interested, talk about this will-power aspect of being. I remember brother Wyrmfang saying repeatedly that Nietzschean philosophy is likely the greatest challenger to our theistic Satanism. I'm inclined to think so too. And if we wider the circle just a little, I'd say that in all ideologies it's this same kind of problem: Is the manas (human mind) united only with âtma (idealism per se), or does it embrace buddhi (sense of manifold unity, compassion) as well?

I'm sorry to make this start so large-scale, but taking this theme to pieces just didn't seem right.

[Insanus]

Nietzsche, Nihilism & Satanism. What could be more romantic, heh.

I'd still call it "buddhic underuse" rather than "âtmic overuse" in martyrs & terrorists because the problem with "pure" nietzschean view turns out to be (IMO) that we cannot completely get rid of buddhi, we can't just cut it off. As long as we see something as "good" & something as "evil" there is some Love or Hate in us. Being "beyond Good & Evil" doesn't really mean anything if we consider good and evil just man-made illusions which do not exist in reality.
Then it's just some kind of tautology "I don't believe that non-existant things exist" and the übermensch would be just "beyond something that never existed". Much like Alex the Average Atheist brags with pride how he is somehow better than others because he doesn't believe in fairy tales written 2000 years ago. Um, yeah, congrats.

Okay, slave-moral blah blah...but you know what I mean. "Beyond good and evil" -if we really deny every possible "good" and every possible "evil"-, pretty much has to mean "beyond emotions", but then again, we can't cut them off either. We can try & start the downward spiral if, instead of tautology, we insist to lie: "I don't believe that existing things exist". We can close our eyes & block them feelings into subconscious, claiming "we're not letting emotions blur our intellect" but that's not very übermensch-like now is it, not facing them?
If we absolutely want to deny Love & emotion, obviously they still exist as motivations anyway & ta-dah: we're possessed, the subconscious emotional trauma being the motivation of our actions. And also, of course, the thing polluting the purity of our work towards the ideal.

True nietzschean thinker is therefore looking for love, because that's the only way to truly get "beyond emotion". And if we truly learn to love there is no more relevant questions about good and evil. I think so. If that makes any sense, the problem is how much easier and faster it seems to "leave" emotion and devote one's self to some ideal or "mission".

Have you noticed foo example how common it is to express one's devotion saying "I'd die for x"? Hmm? I'd die for my country, I'd die for my beloved, I'd die for greater good, world would be a better place if x% of people died..."That's the thing I'd die for". To die for something is the solution to the problem of existence. I wonder if that's the reasoning for suicide, even though it's often times expressed in negative form "I have nothing left to live for". The real source of misery is actually that one has everything to live for, but nothing left to DIE for. It's the BEGINNING of life, not it's end, and the new individuality is the horror. Babies cry when they're separated from their mother's womb. Darkness is pure light. Et cetera. Our "willingness to die" is in the end, wanting to love, or go "beyond emotion" The flaw is not "too much devotion", but too materialistic view, especially concerning death: that is, concerning love.
It's a twisted version of silence. You don't "keep silence", but you "shut the fuck up". There's a difference anyone can notice.

And it makes harder, not easier to succeed in the "Mission", whatever it is, because, again, those petty human emotions control us when we deny them. "Cold intellect", for example, doesn't mean a thing if we don't appreciate it with our emotions whatever the reason for such appreciation might be. Negative (or subconscious) emotion is latent love.

Okay, MAYBE, and that's just maybe for real, there are some people who can really have such an iron-grip on their hearts and truly just not care about anything but "the mission", but those people are still lame, kind of in the same way "the Heavenly Man" is. And I personally don't even believe in such a possibility...Take this with a mountain of salt, but maybe it could be said those people would be in "elemental possession" if those emotion-denying people would be in "emotional/astral possession".

Great topic by the way. It really is "large-scale" to say the least.

[Nefastos]

Your post reminded me again of Dostoyevsky, in several places. I think one might see his whole work as answer to Nietzschean thinking. (I wrote & then erased "Nietzschean philosophy", for I don't actually see Nietzsche's thinking "wisdom-loving" but "will-loving" kind of thought.)

True nietzschean thinker is therefore looking for love, because that's the only way to truly get "beyond emotion".

Compare to Raskolnikov. He starts with Nietzschean philosophy, cold aggression based on sympathy & fueling itself from that divine core "as one would suck his own blood in the desert". But in the end he finds personal, not only ideological love with an actual woman, and that contact with the real, prostituted humanity melts the pride.

Have you noticed foo example how common it is to express one's devotion saying "I'd die for x"? Hmm?

Again, Dostoyevsky made a great point when saying that it's extremely easy to die for something, compared to living for something. To give one's life is a moment of heroics, often having itself praised afterwards (what a great incentive) - but to make a constant sacrifice, to strive with one's imperfections daily, to hold to some ideal with decades' work: that's heroics on a different level.

I'd still call it "buddhic underuse" rather than "âtmic overuse"

&

The flaw is not "too much devotion", but too materialistic view, especially concerning death: that is, concerning love.

Yes, exactly. But whenever one of the three aspect of the soul gets overtly dominant, that is a sign it has actually lost its "spirit" and become a "force", i.e. fallen & become a materialist shadow of itself. The higher triad of the soul can only be as strong as its weakest presentation, and what is added to that, spills forth and becomes a great danger. In the chalice it is wine & sustenance, overleaking it becomes blood and the stain.

In every process of the soul, be it on the path of ascension or the path of descension, there is this flow between the higher & the lower trinities present. It's the direction of that flow that matters. On the path of perdition, buddhi (and âtma, and manas) is realized and then used as the fuel for personal ideology. One would still feel greatly empowered & being in contact with great powers while draining one's own soul's fluids like a spider first captivates & then sucks dry a butterfly. If it wasn't like so, there wouldn't be anything fascinating in the downward path. But there is, the Abyss calls. It's not its own voice, though, but the echoed voice of true ideals gone twisted; and that's the vicious circle of astralism. It is as fiction tells us, every one (whose soul is) killed by the undead becomes one himself.

Okay, MAYBE, and that's just maybe for real, there are some people who can really have such an iron-grip on their hearts and truly just not care about anything but "the mission", but those people are still lame, kind of in the same way "the Heavenly Man" is.

Yes, lame as the demons are: then there is no freedom, there are only the currents. Neither is there meaning in the end, because so hard has been the pull of the primal forces (and willingness to give oneself to them), that all that's living has been uprooted. So there is no point in doing anything, but that doing cannot cease either. As retarded as it might sound to some who have not thought the whole process over very seriously, there's no going around the principle of love-unity-harmony. That annoying childish thing is so persistent that without it there is no thing, not even a way to non-being. For whatever is created, can't really reverse the process.

[Nefastos]

But! Dear late Fyodor got me digressed once again. Back to the power of will.

A bit of theology here:

The Christian legends goes that Lucifer, who originally was the greatest, fell because of his pride. But the problem is, of course, that the omniscient God must have known that Lucifer would fall if he'd be given those kinds of attributes which he had, pride included.

Whose is the Will of man, or of angel? If it wasn't the Will of the whole, how could it be at all? It couldn't. So there's no sin but God's, no will but God's. Everything is God, and "free will" is just a divine attribute that bears the mark of Satan.

In this kind of Luciferian theology, human being is once again practically alone with his choices, because the moral choice is always his. The world is constantly "in the making" (by Wills slowly realizing themselves), never a status quo.

In magic - and in the long run, I believe everything can be seen as magic - there are just different Wills molding cosmos inside them. There's no limit to Will but other wills. Or, to say it with other words, the harmony between monads of One Will. This is the ultimate world mandala, the one full picture.

[Jiva]

True nietzschean thinker is therefore looking for love, because that's the only way to truly get "beyond emotion". And if we truly learn to love there is no more relevant questions about good and evil. I think so. If that makes any sense, the problem is how much easier and faster it seems to "leave" emotion and devote one's self to some ideal or "mission".

This is how I view Nietzschean thinking: looking beyond Kāma to Buddhi, to put it in Theosophical terms (or at least how I understand them). Almost everyone I've ever talked to about Nietzsche has seen his philosophy as very negative, whereas I have completely the opposite opinion. I think one of the reasons for this is that people often view his work as the finished article, when in fact it's not. A book like Thus Spake Zarathustra is in many ways similar to Jung's Red Book; work has been accomplished, but not all. In fact, I seem to remember both end in or around a tower/mountain with a certain degree of indecision.

An obvious criticism of Nietzsche is his general opinion of women and neglect of the feminine, which is of course relevant to his overstating of the masculine will and neglect of the feminine wisdom. Apropos to this, I'm fairly sure there aren't any female characters in Zarathustra. In my opinion, an interesting parallel of this is Tolkien's The Hobbit (which lacks any female character), which was of course followed by the Lord of the Rings (Galadriel, Eowyn etc.). Zarathustra could be viewed as Nietzsche's Hobbit, he just never wrote a Lord of the Rings.

[Nefastos]

Almost everyone I've ever talked to about Nietzsche has seen his philosophy as very negative, whereas I have completely the opposite opinion.

Had I this same kind of history, I think I'd end up praising Nietzsche, who indeed was a genius. But in Satanist &c. circles in Finland I have found Nietzsche's legacy both extremely applauded & equally depressing.

I think one of the reasons for this is that people often view his work as the finished article, when in fact it's not. A book like Thus Spake Zarathustra is in many ways similar to Jung's Red Book; work has been accomplished, but not all. In fact, I seem to remember both end in or around a tower/mountain with a certain degree of indecision.

This is very good point!

Still I feel that if the authors themselves haven't got in the end with their thoughts, it's a duty for their admirers to make the bridge ready. As with Blavatsky: even with her many terrific talents, she had some sinisterly blind points which I, as her "apprentice", have been trying to fix: by first adopting the world view given, & then improving it. ("What pride", let the Theosophists say.)

Much more important that is with our own statements. Not to forget them, not to cover them, but to build on them & fix them. That is the way the nature works, and so that's the way of the hermetic philosopher.

An obvious criticism of Nietzsche is his general opinion of women and neglect of the feminine, which is of course relevant to his overstating of the masculine will and neglect of the feminine wisdom.

...Cf. Christianity, that Nietzsche so ardently hated...

Apropos to this, I'm fairly sure there aren't any female characters in Zarathustra. In my opinion, an interesting parallel of this is Tolkien's The Hobbit (which lacks any female character), which was of course followed by the Lord of the Rings (Galadriel, Eowyn etc.). Zarathustra could be viewed as Nietzsche's Hobbit, he just never wrote a Lord of the Rings.

From this day on I will always see Zarathustra as a halfling, leaving the world of fools without a handkerchief!

By the way, the Dragon at the end of the journey is the oldest & most wide spread symbol of "the world as power", methinks. It's the all-encompassing âtma that has become material both in good & in bad. A terrible power that eats heroes like Nietzsche.

[Fomalhaut]

In the Star of Azazel, we see a human soul threefold, consisting of:

1) Higher Intelligence (called manas)
2) Sense of Unity (called buddhi)
3) True Will (called âtma)

People with Mission - whatever it is - are the people with Will. Their âtma is active.

In my humble opinion, when a person is born, all of them (âtma - buddhi - manas) are active in him / her. However, surrounding environment such as family, culture, etc, have great impact on the human being (I do not mean physical effect only but mainly spiritual and psychological). Thus, one of those three are becoming more active during the person's life. Or other two of those three are becoming less active.

I think that all three principles are connected and related to each other. I wonder, how can a person without a Mission ever exist? Being in a void is one of the most dangerous malediction for a human being. But in order to achieve the Mission, one's manas and buddhi should be as equally active as his/her âtma.

[nevermore218]

In the Star of Azazel, we see a human soul threefold, consisting of:

1) Higher Intelligence (called manas)
2) Sense of Unity (called buddhi)
3) True Will (called âtma)

People with Mission - whatever it is - are the people with Will. Their âtma is active.

In my humble opinion, when a person is born, all of them (âtma - buddhi - manas) are active in him / her. However, surrounding environment such as family, culture, etc, have great impact on the human being (I do not mean physical effect only but mainly spiritual and psychological). Thus, one of those three are becoming more active during the person's life. Or other two of those three are becoming less active.

I think that all three principles are connected and related to each other. I wonder, how can a person without a Mission ever exist? Being in a void is one of the most dangerous malediction for a human being. But in order to achieve the Mission, one's manas and buddhi should be as equally active as his/her âtma.

What if someone doesn't exactly know what their mission is? Maybe those same factors (family, culture, etc) have suppressed a person's desire to ever even consider having one?

[Fomalhaut]

What if someone doesn't exactly know what their mission is? Maybe those same factors (family, culture, etc) have suppressed a person's desire to ever even consider having one?

Good point, that was what I was trying to tell in my post.

[Nefastos]

I think that all three principles are connected and related to each other. I wonder, how can a person without a Mission ever exist? Being in a void is one of the most dangerous malediction for a human being. But in order to achieve the Mission, one's manas and buddhi should be as equally active as his/her âtma.

Precisely, if we see the world as power, then everyone does have a mission, because existence is teleological in a way it's always action that is directed by & in something. It's just if one can't find his "dharma" (mission) he will nevertheless be part of some other entity's mission. (Like a cultural or some other shared or artificial one, as nevermore218 suggested.) Idle hands are the devil's workshop kind of thing.

In my humble opinion, when a person is born, all of them (âtma - buddhi - manas) are active in him / her. However, surrounding environment such as family, culture, etc, have great impact on the human being (I do not mean physical effect only but mainly spiritual and psychological).

If by "person" you mean the soul, then I agree; but if by "person" you mean the present incarnation, I see this a bit differently. One of my books, the Ages of Man, focused on this particular thing. Its motto was from Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus, and was about this how the logos of God is given as a ray when the child is born, but it does not incarnate into us instantly but rather gradually.

So, I see that the A-B-M or the Will-Love-Reason triad is in our soul as active, but in our bodily personality only as a potency. It is in our "aura", but it is not yet in our concrete brain, and must be struggled with to actualize; and this is done mostly in three seven year periods which make up the youth & young adulthood of a human being (manas in age 14-21, buddhi in age 21-28, âtma in age 28-35).

In that way, the physical is woven together with psychological in a way they become almost as one. One's physical age determines in which way his brain is developing, what are its emphases, and what is the most interesting method of accumulating spiritual development.