Quotations relevant to the Path

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

Post by obnoxion »

"...The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man."

In every cry of every Man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.


- William Blake -
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Nefastos
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

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"According not every intelligence is attached to a god, but only the supreme intelligences which have the most unity..."
Proclus: The Elements of Theology, Proposition 111 commentary

"Since Synesius likens Hypatia's s lecturing to a religious ceremony, her classes must have had ingredients of ritual. In the close circle of her students she certainly did not confine herself to dry orations on philosophical truths and ideas. Synesius' letters reveal that her lectures were conducted in the form of dialogues on ethical and religious topics. Possibly, in order to achieve a state of awareness of the presence of god and spiritual perfection, they recited prayers and sang sacred hymns that exalted both their emotional and cognitive experience."
– Maria Dzielska: Hypatia of Alexandria, p.64

"Why have you been looking at the ground for so long, divine men? Look up, citizens of the heavenly country, denizens of the earth. Man is an earthly star enveloped in a cloud; but a star is a heavenly man. O soul, you are mighty if small things do not satisfy you..."
Marsilio Ficino: Knowledge and reverence of oneself are best of all (Meditation on the Souls, letter nr. 41)
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!"
obnoxion
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

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Othello is admirably jealous. But is it not perhaps an ancient error to imagine that it is at the moments when this passion, or others of equal violence, possesses us, that we live our truest lives? I have grown to believe that an old man, seated in his armchair, waiting patiently, with his lamp beside him; giving unconscious ear to all the eternal laws that reign about his house, interpreting, without comprehending, the silence of doors and windows and the quivering voice of the light, submitting with bent head to the presence of his soul and his destiny—an old man, who conceives not that all the powers of this world, like so many heedful servants, are mingling and keeping vigil in his room, who suspects not that the very sun itself is supporting in space the little table against which he leans, or that every star in heaven and every fiber of the soul are directly concerned in the movement of an eyelid that closes, or a thought that springs to birth—I have grown to believe that he, motionless as he is, does yet live in reality a deeper, more human, and more universal life than the lover who strangles his mistress, the captain who conquers in battle, or "the husband who avenges his honor."

- Maurice Maeterlinck -

Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949) is yet another French Symbolist writer I would love to read in the original language (to be exact, he was Flemish, but wrote in French). In this quote that I lifted straight from the Wikipedia, he projects on the old man much of my ideals for the meditative life and the poetic life, which both I've begun to see increasingly as one organic and unseparable whole.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Insanus
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

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obnoxion wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 9:59 am
Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949) is yet another French Symbolist writer I would love to read in the original language (to be exact, he was Flemish, but wrote in French). In this quote that I lifted straight from the Wikipedia, he projects on the old man much of my ideals for the meditative life and the poetic life, which both I've begun to see increasingly as one organic and unseparable whole.
Maeterlinck is also a favorite of mine.

Just yesterday I was thinking about the relationship between poetic and meditative attention. I have Been listening to Krishnamurti's speeches recently, on The possibility of psychological revolution in man, action not based on thought and all this. In attentive listening there's only The actual, in poetry there is some kind of guidance or tendency to color, or some added dimension as an echo. I don't know what to Make of IT. I feel like poetry is a step in a strange decadent mist of mystical nonsense, but on The other hand to not go there feels pretentious, too serious, almost frigidly cold.
I think I took The exact quote you posted from My copy of "köyhäin aarteet" to My old diary.
In lodge Abraxas' latest two meetings I've wanted to talk about logos, specifically speech. I think it's a very common occurence that when people really want to talk, to Express deeply, The words get stuck in their throat The second they get to The point. A very uncomfortable silence occurs, a break. I think everyone knows when IT happens. Maybe on these spots one has to give in to poetry if he cannot Express silently. Something new is coming and IT IS clearly forbidden to talk about IT directly.

Sorry for The weird Capital letters. My phone updated some strange autocorrect that seems to like to emphasize.
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obnoxion
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

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Insanus wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 1:26 pm
obnoxion wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 9:59 am
Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949) is yet another French Symbolist writer I would love to read in the original language (to be exact, he was Flemish, but wrote in French). In this quote that I lifted straight from the Wikipedia, he projects on the old man much of my ideals for the meditative life and the poetic life, which both I've begun to see increasingly as one organic and unseparable whole.
Maeterlinck is also a favorite of mine... think I took The exact quote you posted from My copy of "köyhäin aarteet" to My old diary.
I actually just got to know of him from a great book I'm reading, "Animism and Shamanism in Twentieth-Century Art - Kandinsky, Ernst, Pollock, Beuys" by Evan R. Firestone. But by from what little I read up on him, I immediately proceeded to purchase a load of his texts in Finnish translations - "Köyhän aarteet" included.

The idea that leaving home - to go on an adventure - is spiritually and psychologically impoverishing is a sentiment I tend to share. I've done a little traveling and I've always found it tedious and exhausting. Sitting silently at home, on the other hand, I've found more uplifting each passing year. It really is one of the best things in life to be immersed in deep, long thoughts. Gently inspecting the contours of one's soul in lavish solitude is the one journey that all other little trips echo darkly. Or so I see it.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Nefastos
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

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Insanus wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 1:26 pmSorry for The weird Capital letters. My phone updated some strange autocorrect that seems to like to emphasize.


I am unsure if I am more grateful or sad that you mentioned the cause, for I was already eagerly starting to crack the code of the implied meanings. I have recently had several discussions in which I have tried to defend the now hopelessly archaic freer use of capital letters. Particularly in Finnish this method is nowadays considered very poor language, and this is one example of the use of language getting considerable less rich in possibilities of nuanced expressiveness from a change. I learned my own Finnish from the books which used the capitals more freely, and came to appreciate the poetic and philosophical uses this made possible.

The idea of the hiatus of giving birth to Logos where words fail is very interesting, especially for my Karelian mindset to consider. (Unlike the other Finns, we are seldom able to suffer silence, or breaks in the rhythmics of speech.)
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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Insanus
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

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Nefastos wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 7:19 pm
Insanus wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 1:26 pmSorry for The weird Capital letters. My phone updated some strange autocorrect that seems to like to emphasize.


I am unsure if I am more grateful or sad that you mentioned the cause, for I was already eagerly starting to crack the code of the implied meanings. I have recently had several discussions in which I have tried to defend the now hopelessly archaic freer use of capital letters.
:) My favorite ones were Express and IT. I sometimes use Capital letters (oh no My phone again :D) to imply that I mean vivid experience and conscious participation in sort of actualization of an idea. "Truth" is an action, conscious comprehension whereas "truth" is somehow old, already known. I think we should learn to use bigger and smaller letters, Capital letters, colors, fonts and everything in written language.
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obnoxion
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

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Our error, often, is to consider transcendent human experience as something extraordinary, something rare and of major consequence. Ordinary stuff is thus cut off, preventing everyday discovery of meaning found in the commonplace, an interaction of banality and what pops open one's eyes as implication, the more-than-what-is-obvious. Yet fantasy is quite obvious, coming upon us every time we slip into undirected reflection, every time something occurs to us when we're noy looking. Banal transcendence is that step into meaning occuring to us in chance thought, in the peripheral notion that flies away dismissed as absurdity. That we usually pay no serious attention to our fantasy but pay enormous amounts of money to see and read and listen to someone else's is a sign of our being out of touch with our own sacredness, our inner source.

- Eugene Monick: "Evil, Sexuality and Disease in Grunewald's Body of Christ" (the writer says he uses the concept of fantasy in the same sense as the Archetypal Psychologist James Hillman - that is, fantasy is the lingua franca of imagination and imagination is lingua franca of psyche).
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
obnoxion
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by obnoxion »

Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities.
They are not things which you can possess and
comprehend. On the contrary, these are mighty demons,
manifestations of the gods and therefore they tower
above you and they exist in themselves. One does not
possess spirituality for oneself and sexuality for
oneself. Rather, one is subject to the laws of
spirituality ans sexuality. Therefore, no one escapes
these two demons. They ate common causes and grave
dangers, and above all like the terrible Abraxas.

- C. G. Jung: "The Seven Sermons to the Dead"
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Insanus
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Re: Quotations relevant to the Path

Post by Insanus »

obnoxion wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2019 11:37 am Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities.
They are not things which you can possess and
comprehend. On the contrary, these are mighty demons,
manifestations of the gods and therefore they tower
above you and they exist in themselves. One does not
possess spirituality for oneself and sexuality for
oneself. Rather, one is subject to the laws of
spirituality ans sexuality. Therefore, no one escapes
these two demons. They ate common causes and grave
dangers, and above all like the terrible Abraxas.

- C. G. Jung: "The Seven Sermons to the Dead"
Is the last line really "ate" or is that a divinely inspired typo? It works both ways ate/are.
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