Faith, Superstition and the Unknown Visitor

[obnoxion]

In my original post I was forming a chain of analogies, where the similarity of folkmagic such as collecting seven different kinds of flowers in the midsummernight, throwing them over your shoulder and looking into a well to see your future spouse; and the highest spiritual achievements, like samadhi-states; and the simple ways of life, like long-suffering and kindness to strangers.

I consider these different things forming a unified striving, a sort of energized passivity, a method that seeks to recognize the unity of all, not by constantly affirming the state of duality by seeking to escape from one state to another. Instead, it consists in alert aknowledging and accepting of the unexpected in both the familiar and the unfamiliar in the constant present. I don't know how easy it was to make such deduction from my original post...

[Smaragd]

Today while grocery shopping I thought about your tantric approach sod obnoxion and how in that direction, to me at least, it seems to be about the complete surrender to Will. From distance it almost looks like the sounds of ones own Will are forgotten ie. the dangerous grounds where altruistic action silences the reasons (reasoning?) behind suffering. This interesting look on Will relates to the topic at hand as the superstitious opening of the door will be shut down if ones relationship to the Will is cold gripping and controlling instead of fluid and somewhat, mm... should I say ambivalent.

[obnoxion]

Today while grocery shopping I thought about your tantric approach sod obnoxion and how in that direction, to me at least, it seems to be about the complete surrender to Will. From distance it almost looks like the sounds of ones own Will are forgotten ie. the dangerous grounds where altruistic action silences the reasons (reasoning?) behind suffering. This interesting look on Will relates to the topic at hand as the superstitious opening of the door will be shut down if ones relationship to the Will is cold gripping and controlling instead of fluid and somewhat, mm... should I say ambivalent.

I feel there is really little surrender involved, though your description is in a way so accurate that I have often used it myself. It is rather like this: In Jungian terms, the mandala is the Self, but also the great anthropomorphic gods, like Christ. I was recently reading some case studies of Jungian therapies, and some of the life-changing confrontations with the Self. These happened mostly in dreams. But this got me thinking that these little concerns of mine - my grocery store concerns - are beautiful and important, but at the same time they represent the very periphery of the Self. And so Abhinavagupta's thought seemed obviously right - that this grocery store self is the object, and the Self is the subject. And it is to this Self that the Tantric Solipsism refers to.

Like Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, I too feel that folklore is essentialy a system of methaphysics. I would say that it is the living and fluid metaphysics of the solipsistic Self. One can find the idea that sticks and stones can teach metaphysics from such varied systems as Christianity, Zen Buddhism and Quimbanda. And I think that the inclusion of the so-called low magic in one great spiritual synthesis - like Goetic grimoires in our system, or sinister tantras like the Brahmayamala in Abhinavagupta's Tantraaloka - makes these metaphysics vital in a way that very few metaphysical systems are.

[Nefastos]

folklore is essentialy a system of methaphysics. I would say that it is the living and fluid metaphysics of the solipsistic Self. [...] Goetic grimoires in our system

I think I am getting close to a small "heureka" here, the point where our Yang-Yin or Black-White circles rotate to become each other's heart points. The laya-point in the middle of both seems to be solipsism, where the subject-object is taken as one one which projection. It is only the matter of which one is "projection", and as we already see from world solipsism, the whole question collapses into itself when we are at this magic point.

Grimoires, especially ones like Grand Grimoire (which is anything but grand & must have been a big disappointment to Julian Sand's father once assembled) are indeed the link between these realities of folklore and metaphysics, or the two kinds of magic: psychological & cosmological, so to say, or "lower" and "higher", or even "black" and "white".

As well as a solipsist, I am an escapist. But to me, tormented by my mind like a good Westerner, my mind offers a prison not easily escaped. It is not enough to escape by imagination only, by seeing naval battles in the lichen stains on the cell wall: the cell itself must be merged into the greater whole of being. Be it the Plato's cave, in the shadows the guards' essence must be realized, and finally, when thus learnt & reached, they can be called to let me go. This, I think, is the great work of the karcist. But instead of being accomplished by studying the physical situation (which is, after all, ultimately unreal by itself) it is done by learning the secret interaction processes of the dimensions yet unknown to us. How do the bodies unseen bend, to produce the shadows so and so? This, I think, is the "white" aspect of the "black" imagination working, be it grimoirian or any other. It is not enough to target our psychology, but instead, the Real must be considered, even though we cannot fathom it - yet. Meditate something that you cannot fathom, like the nature of Dhyan Chohans (gods), was Blavatsky's advice for occult meditation.

I am currently reading Italo Calvino's fascinating collection of Italian Folktales, and just learned about Corpo-senza-l'anima, an Italian version of the Slavic Kashei the Deathless, one of my great loves. This Ligurian necromancer's soul lives in an egg, which is inside an eagle, which is inside a dog, which is inside a lion. But simply shattering the phylactery egg is not enough, it must be broken at his brow for to help the "Body Without Soul" (his name) to finally die.

I think you at some point mentioned how, according to a Moslim proverb, the one without a master gets Satan as his master. I wonder if this is what has happened, and is still happening, with the so called folk tales or fairy tales. Fairy tales: tales told by fairies, to teach us in their own twilight language. If our mind is not filled with kama-manasic logical thinking, we can be inspired by these masters of psychologico-energetical truths, maybe even learn to interpret them & live accordingly, all the way up to the last initiations. At one point, I prognosticate, the Jungian idea of the aspects of the self telling us things in a dream, by dream language, will be opened to a more coherent world view of the spirit world where not only our own, but many different spirits - conscious but inhuman energetics - speak to us. Very stealthily C.G. himself let ajar the door to interpretation that the "collective subconsious" holds in itself conscious entities not necessarily bound by our human brain to make them exist.

[obnoxion]

I think I am getting close to a small "heureka" here, the point where our Yang-Yin or Black-White circles rotate to become each other's heart points. The laya-point in the middle of both seems to be solipsism, where the subject-object is taken as one one which projection. It is only the matter of which one is "projection", and as we already see from world solipsism, the whole question collapses into itself when we are at this magic point.

Yes, I am sure of it!

As well as a solipsist, I am an escapist.

This, I think, is the "white" aspect of the "black" imagination working, be it grimoirian or any other. It is not enough to target our psychology, but instead, the Real must be considered, even though we cannot fathom it - yet. Meditate something that you cannot fathom, like the nature of Dhyan Chohans (gods), was Blavatsky's advice for occult meditation.

I suppose the little difference is that whereas you are an escapist, I am quite mundane. So in my magical realism, the realism part of it is almost of the "American Splendour"-variety, though optimistic.

I think you at some point mentioned how, according to a Moslim proverb, the one without a master gets Satan as his master. I wonder if this is what has happened, and is still happening, with the so called folk tales or fairy tales. Fairy tales: tales told by fairies, to teach us in their own twilight language. If our mind is not filled with kama-manasic logical thinking, we can be inspired by these masters of psychologico-energetical truths, maybe even learn to interpret them & live accordingly, all the way up to the last initiations. At one point, I prognosticate, the Jungian idea of the aspects of the self telling us things in a dream, by dream language, will be opened to a more coherent world view of the spirit world where not only our own, but many different spirits - conscious but inhuman energetics - speak to us. Very stealthily C.G. himself let ajar the door to interpretation that the "collective subconsious" holds in itself conscious entities not necessarily bound by our human brain to make them exist.

This is the gist of it, beautifully and accurately put.
Thank you for giving these ephemeral thought such a lucid form!