Quotations relevant to the Path

[obnoxion]

Here is an excerpt from an interview with the late archetypal psychologist James Hillman by Scott London. The extract deals with relationship to "the invisibles" in a way that does correspond to the way I myself tend to view the concept of Ascended Masters. It is an effective outlook on life that has to do with subtle interpretations of the common aspects of life, rather than a claim to some secret communications or special irregularities of the senses. The whole interview can be found online from: http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/hillman.html


London: You've written that "the great task of any culture is to keep the invisibles attached." What do you mean by that?

Hillman: It's a difficult idea to present without leaving psychology and getting into religion. I don't talk about who the invisibles are or where they live or what they want. There is no real theology in it. But it's the only way we can get out of being so human-centered: to remain attached to something other than humans.

London: God?

Hillman: Yes, but it doesn't have to be that lofty.

London: Our calling?

Hillman: I think the first step is the realization that each of us has such a thing. And then we must look back over our lives and look at some of the accidents and curiosities and oddities and troubles and sicknesses and begin to see more in those things than we saw before. It raises questions, so that when peculiar little accidents happen, you ask whether there is something else at work in your life. It doesn't necessarily have to involve an out-of-body experience during surgery, or the sort of high-level magic that the new age hopes to press on us. It's more a sensitivity, such as a person living in a tribal culture would have: the concept that there are other forces at work. A more reverential way of living.

[E.Velestie]

I like riddles a lot and have some specific that has been following my mind for some time.
Fun part is that almost every riddle I enjoy is in english not finnish
This one in below is basicly mix of few different but added together it has a bit different meaning for me than they were in their original idea.
Via googling around one will find them easily in original meaning but it doesn't have same meaning for me.
But reveal I will it not 'cause where would the fun part be then eh?
Partly it's too easy and partly not and I leave it as whole to one's decide what I speak of or don't.

"Each morning I appear
To lie at your feet,
All day I will follow
No matter how fast you run,
Yet I nearly perish
In the midday sun.

To unravel me
You need a simple key,
No key that was made
By locksmith’s hand,
But a key that only some
Will understand.

With potent, flowery words speak I,
Of something common, absurd, even dry;
I weave webs of pedantic prose,
In effort to befuddle those,
Who think I wile time away,
In lofty things, above all day
The common kind that linger where
Monadic beings live and fare;
Practical I may not be,
But life, it seems, is full of me."

[Nefastos]

"Only yesterday, Sunday, I was publicly denounced from the Episcopalian pulpit as a devil incarnate, an "antichrist" who came to tempt good Christians in India. Better be a wise devil than a stupid Methodist cherub, with nothing but his tonsils to sit upon, and a golden harp hooked on to his chin."
- H.P. Blavatsky's letter to Adelberth de Bourbon, September 4, 1881 (From "H.P.B. Speaks, vol. II")

[Nefastos]

Yasyâm antarvisvam etad vibhâti
Bâhyâbhâsam bhâsamânam visrstau
Ksobhe ksîne' nuttarâyam sthitau tâm
Vande devîm svâtmasamvittim ekâm.

I bow to that one goddess in the form of Self-consciousness in whom this universe which appears as an external objective existence in the state of manifestation, shines, on the extinction of that delusive understanding which makes one identify oneself with one's vehicles, inwardly in the state of Supreme Reality.

– Abhinavagupta: Parâtrîsikâ-Vivarana, 2. Translated by Jaideva Singh.

[Nefastos]

"If she had just been able to exert her powers normally, it would have been no problem. But she knew that each one of the hundred people surrounding her was wanting and hoping her to fail. She trembled, she crouched down on the floor, she cried out in anguish, "Enough of this!" Shizuko herself explained it this way: everybody had a certain degree of psychic power. She just had more of it than others did. But surrounded be a hundred people all willing her to fail, her power was disrupted – she couldn't get it to work. Ikuma went even further: "It's not just a hundred people. No, now the whole population of Japan is trying to stamp out the fruits of my research. When public opinion, fanned by the media, begins to turn, then the media says nothing the people don't want to hear."" – Koji Suzuki: Ring. Transl. by Robert B. Rohmer & Glynne Walley.

[obnoxion]

Compell the poor to live upon a Crust of bread, by soft mild arts.
Smile when they frown, frown when they smile; & when a man looks pale
With labour & abstinence, say he looks healthy & happy;
And when his children sicken, let them die; there are enough
Born, even too many, & our earth will be overrun
Without these arts. If you would make the poor live on temperance,
With pomp give every crust of bread you give; with gracious cunning
Magnify small gifts; reduce the man to want a gift, & then give with pomp.
Say he smiles when you hear him sigh. If pale, say he is ruddy.
Preach temperance: say he is overgorg'd & drown his wit
In strong drink, tho' you know that bread & water are all
He can afford. Flatter his wife, pity his children, till we can
Reduce all to our will, as spaniels are thaught with art.

William Blake

[Heith]

“You cannot pass," he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. "I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.”

-J.R.R.Tolkien; The Fellowship of the Ring

[Nefastos]

"Seen from out here, everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man's ego. I feel lonely. That's about it. Tell me, though... Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who has sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother, keep his neighbour's children starving?"

– Planet of the Apes (1968)

[Silvaeon]

In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.

- The thoughts of Elric of Melniboné, from The Sailor on the Seas of Fate by Michael Moorcock

[Heith]

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
-Gandalf