Quotations relevant to the Path

Rituals, spells, prayer, meditation and magical acts.
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Nefastos
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Nefastos »

This is a great quote, I agree with Žižek in all but terminology. For I think that "love" is not a word one should reserve to affection for one's personally closest beings.

Instead, "love" is the spiritual essence of unity within all - much more than that reactional emotion called love. In that deeper way, love is precisely the mending of that cosmic imbalance, for it helps the contradictory, separated, differentiated beings to mend back to the state of the uncreated. And that kind of love can be sought for, kindled, helped to blossom. It's not reactive, but active force in itself.

When we hear word "love" in television, for example, it almost always means its opposite. A film hero is ready to put whole nations in danger in order to rescue his "loved" one. Or, we often have mothers or fathers who "love" their children so they are ready to force upon them any kind of supposed help. Or one might have a pet one "loves" so much that it is kept of developing in accordance to its nature.

All such "loves" and many more like these are in desperate need of sublimation. What Žižek actually reprimands is this unsublimated, reactional kind of love.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Heith
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Heith »

“I believe . . . that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I'll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer's sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away. You probably don't appreciate letters like that, very much, do you, Narcissus? But I say: with them God wrote the world.”
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

The whole book is great, and brings together two very different approaches and the love for one another- the cool and analytic Narcissus and the passionate, artistic Goldmund. I find it speaks volumes of the way the brotherhood works.

This quote seems very Serpent aspect.
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Fatuus
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Fatuus »

Heith wrote:(...)
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
It's interesting to see, that obviously we both currently read the same book.
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Nefastos
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Nefastos »

That's a beautiful synchronism, your current work considered. I obviously should read this again, replacing Narcissus with "Frith" & Goldmund with "Heith". ;)
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Heith
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Heith »

Oh, I'm not reading it- but I was thinking how much I wanted to, as I miss this book and don't have it here with me. It's one of the most important books for me, ever. It gave some hope that there once was a person who understood exactly how things seem to me, and if there has been one Hesse, I thought, there must be others as well. This was a great consolation.

So I went online to read scraps of it. :)

EDIT: Spoiler alert:
The best part of "Narcissus and Goldmund" is at the end, when Goldmund is in great pain and dying, but on his deathbed he sees his mother (who in this has turned into the archetype Great Mother), floating over the world with her long hair flowing, and he says that she is tearing at his heart, and that is the pain he feels, she wants him to come home. But that there's great love in this, his mother's fingers clutching at his heart.

I don't remember the exact phrasing, but it was so good.
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Insanus
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Insanus »

Zengetsu, a Chinese master of the T'ang dynasty, wrote the following advice for his pupils:

Living in the world yet not forming attachments to the dust of the world is the way of a true Zen student.
When witnessing the good action of another encourage yourself to follow his example. Hearing of the mistaken action of another, advise yourself not to emulate it.
Even though alone in a dark room, be as if you were facing a noble guest. Express your feelings, but become no more expressive than your true nature.
Poverty is your teasure. Never exchange it for an easy life.
A person may appear a fool and yet not be one. He may only be guarding his wisdom carefully.
Virtues are the fruit of self-discipline and do not drop from heaven of themselves as does rain or snow.
Modesty is the foundation of all virtues. Let your neighbors discover you before you make yourself known to them.
A noble heart never forces itself forward. Its words are as rare gems, seldom displayed and of great value.
To a sincere student, every day is a fortunate day. Time passes but he never lags behind. Neither glory nor shame can move him.
Censure yourself, never another. Do not discuss right and wrong.
Some things, though right, were considered wrong for generations. Since the value of righteousness may be recognized after centuries, there is no need to crave an immediate appreciation.
Live with cause and leave results to the great law of the universe. Pass each day in peaceful contemplation.
Jumalan synnit ovat kourallinen hiekkaa ihmisen valtameressä
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Nefastos
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Nefastos »

Insanus wrote:Even though alone in a dark room, be as if you were facing a noble guest.


I'd like to read this in a context of another Buddhist group's practice of solitary retrite in a closed room without a source of light. Such a lonely dark meditation is known to bring one's demons to manifest as hallucinations before long.

So this makes one's demons his "noble guests", which is a very SOA practice. To see that we shouldn't bow down before devils nor fight against them, but listen what they have to say, neutrally and with respect.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Nefastos
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Nefastos »

"During the twenty-two years of confinement, although I could not remember the sixty-four gua (hexagrams), I fully comprehended the Tao of I, the essence of the I Ching, which holds that when events proceed to their extremes they give birth to their opposites."

- Alfred Huang: The Complete I Ching, Preface
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Nefastos
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Nefastos »

Besides of that extemely important notion of the opposites becoming each other, I chose the quotation above because in it I once again saw this multidimensional or poetic form of presentation, although unintended.

Taken archetypically:

The twenty-two years of imprisonment can be taken as the 22 Major Arcanae of a cosmic or human life cycle. They are the 22 problems given for man to solve, and to harmonize with each other.

Sixty-four hexagrams are the Keys (seals) given to man to open these mysteries. Later in his book Huang says how only the 36 of these hexagrams must be "befriended" (!), for by them we'll know the others too. This is the cube of six of which I've written so intensively in the Demons' Cube text, and which I see as the ultimate seal of magic power over goetic demons, i.e. the events of cosmic becoming: the seal of Metatron.

"Tao of I" is once again a delicious twist of language, for in here, the "I" is the Chinese term for Transformation. There is no outer connection to English Self or the Eye, but yet these words are complementary in the context.

I'm right now studying I Ching for the first time, for I want to be sure not to use the Right Hand Path Justice where I should be using the Left Hand Path Strength, namely, the more fluid & feminine way or Tao.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Nefastos
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

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"A fact little discussed by scholars concerning Blavatsky’s voluminous (close to 1,500 pages) and vastly influential The Secret Doctrine is that it contains passages of unembarrassed and explicit Satanism. The almost total neglect of these ideas is probably often due to a feeling that they are unimportant to Theosophy at large. It may also partly have something to do with scholars simply not knowing what to make of the matter."

- Per Faxneld: Blavatsky the Satanist: Luciferianism in Theosophy, and its Feminist Implications (Temenos vol.48, 2/2012)
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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