Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Rational discussions on metaphysical and abstract topics.
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Nefastos
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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Post by Nefastos »

Red Bird wrote:Whatever part dies because of an intense emotion was not worth being kept alive. I’m not speaking about damage, I’m speaking about death.


But for an occultist, what is "death"?

This is the terrible key-keeper that blocks our way: There is no way out. There is no ceasing.

We can (and we should) try to work with the whole of our soul, with the whole of the energetical spectrum of creation (including transformations known as death), but the nauseating terror in this is that it never ends. Which means, that our idea that at some point will come either some healing or collapse (death; annihilation) if we just put our best effort to the work, will be tested.

Let's say we pass that test, and move on.

But... it doesn't stop there. The damage that has been done to our psyche, our psychoenergetical whole, is there. The chopped off limb is gone. Yet the work continues, the life continues, the tests continue; new limbs will be demanded. In this way, psyche can become like a vampire victim.

When I was young, I used to keep my eyes in beautiful death. That at some day all this will end. But when the terrible truth starts to dawn, namely, that this will never end, there we have Despair that is not like a shadow seen on the light canvas, but total black that swallows whole the canvas, the artist with all his tools, the apartment, the whole Piedmont & all the stars in the firmament.

That Despair is no longer an emotion, in the same way Love isn't. These two are the whole ocean of salty water drops, lasting so much longer than any eyes from where they are poured. There are depths for Despair that can be reached by full conviction of immortality.
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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Cerastes
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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Post by Cerastes »

Heith wrote:
Red Bird wrote:
I can only give you my personal experience on this. It might depend on the individual and I tend to be a little radical on those things.
Whatever part dies because of an intense emotion was not worth being kept alive. I’m not speaking about damage, I’m speaking about death. One can spend his whole life trying to repair damaged goods and they will determine his life from this point. I prefer to tear it all down in the most relentless way possible. So I would most likely let the despair grow until it is unbearable and destroys whatever should be destroyed. As you said destruction is an essence of occultism. After doing this for a decade my relationship to emotions has become more distant. They are nothing more like a tool that can be used. So a strong emotion would be a powerful tool and not something to run away from.
I'm not entirely on the same lines with you, if I understand you correctly. While I do absolutely agree that one must seek to remove negative, damaging / hindering parts which stand on the way of one's spiritual growth -by undertaking them in one way or another, by growing through those experiences- there are ways to do things which are not damaging. There is ways to let things die which happen without the somewhat violent nature of despair.

If my above text read as that I recommend running away from emotions, that was not at all what I meant. I was simply pondering if despair is a necessary tool at all or could it be replaced with something else that would get the same job done. So one can go through a stone with a drill, or let water carve its course. Both alter the stone but the rhythm and nature of these is quite different.

This can of course depend greatly of how one lives their life. For example to me emotions are a complete necessity and being in touch with them is something that must be in check always, because without this sensitive contact I can not hope for any kind of satisfactory result in my line of work (artist).
Thanks for your answer.
There is no need to agree, it would be quite boring to have someone repeating my thoughts.
I’m handling negative and positive emotions in the same way for they are the same to me. Let them grow but cut the connection with everything formal so they can act on the inside. Neither would I love or hate another human being which of course comes at a high cost. It is a destructive way. I always thought it will knock me out completely one day. Tickling the borderline to self-destruction is exactly what I did and still do. Yes, I’m drilling that stone.
I wouldn’t advise anyone to handle emotions in the relentless deep-red aries way I do. If you tend do go forward in a more reasonable way it has absolutely nothing to do with running away from emotions. 
“Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn't the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where SHE was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else.”
(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
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Cerastes
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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Post by Cerastes »

Nefastos wrote:
Red Bird wrote:Whatever part dies because of an intense emotion was not worth being kept alive. I’m not speaking about damage, I’m speaking about death.


But for an occultist, what is "death"?

This is the terrible key-keeper that blocks our way: There is no way out. There is no ceasing.

We can (and we should) try to work with the whole of our soul, with the whole of the energetical spectrum of creation (including transformations known as death), but the nauseating terror in this is that it never ends. Which means, that our idea that at some point will come either some healing or collapse (death; annihilation) if we just put our best effort to the work, will be tested.

Let's say we pass that test, and move on.

But... it doesn't stop there. The damage that has been done to our psyche, our psychoenergetical whole, is there. The chopped off limb is gone. Yet the work continues, the life continues, the tests continue; new limbs will be demanded. In this way, psyche can become like a vampire victim.

When I was young, I used to keep my eyes in beautiful death. That at some day all this will end. But when the terrible truth starts to dawn, namely, that this will never end, there we have Despair that is not like a shadow seen on the light canvas, but total black that swallows whole the canvas, the artist with all his tools, the apartment, the whole Piedmont & all the stars in the firmament.

That Despair is no longer an emotion, in the same way Love isn't. These two are the whole ocean of salty water drops, lasting so much longer than any eyes from where they are poured. There are depths for Despair that can be reached by full conviction of immortality.
There is quite lot of despair and love gleaming between your beautiful words.
The total black and diffuse despair you are talking about is something one cannot hide. People feel it in ones presence even without knowing what it is. There faces reflect it and every contact with another human being turns out to be a mirror of despair. Did you ever make that experience? Sorry for being curious. I never had contact with other occultists. It's more of a maverick thing for me.
After diving into this ocean I instantly isolate myself from any contact. The pain comes from the fact that I have to deal with the what is called normality. If I'm looking back at that it makes me recognize how far away I am and that I could never go back even if I wanted.
“Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn't the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where SHE was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else.”
(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
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Nefastos
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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Post by Nefastos »

Red Bird wrote:There faces reflect it and every contact with another human being turns out to be a mirror of despair. Did you ever make that experience?


If you mean, mirror for their despair, then no. On the contrary, I'm always confused how people do not share the same horror.

If you mean, mirror for my despair, in that case yes. The experience was strongest when I was only a teenager, and first noticed the emphasised impossibility of this world around. It took two decades to learn how not to see that uncanny valley, but to disperse the focus more into the consensus reality.
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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Cerastes
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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Post by Cerastes »

Nefastos wrote:
Red Bird wrote:There faces reflect it and every contact with another human being turns out to be a mirror of despair. Did you ever make that experience?


If you mean, mirror for their despair, then no. On the contrary, I'm always confused how people do not share the same horror.

If you mean, mirror for my despair, in that case yes. The experience was strongest when I was only a teenager, and first noticed the emphasised impossibility of this world around. It took two decades to learn how not to see that uncanny valley, but to disperse the focus more into the consensus reality.
So it was most likely your despair that made you search for the consensus reality.
Isn't that a good thing born from despair? By „good“ I don't mean something that makes you happy. We all know that happiness is just another sacrifice to the path we walk. For me „good“ equals „true“. Despair is a cleaning energy that gives you the truth in the most merciless way. So despair is in fact a blessing of Satan.
-
I don't know if this makes sense to you since I don't fully understand your philosophy yet.
Still this forum is amazing I never found so much thoughtful, kind and intelligent content at one page.
You should totally keep it alive.
“Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn't the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where SHE was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else.”
(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
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Heith
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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Post by Heith »

Red Bird wrote:Still this forum is amazing I never found so much thoughtful, kind and intelligent content at one page.
You should totally keep it alive.
A offtopic note:
By posting on our forum, you are also keeping them alive. So thank you for contributing!

I'll now rush back to my annual vacation preparations ->
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LunaticSun
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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Post by LunaticSun »

Good time to everyone, I am a Newbie and feel rather uncertain, but I felt like this thread would be a good place for one of the questions I have regarding ideas of Fosforos. (I will have to add some information which might seem unnecessary, but will aid in showing the path of my thoughts)

As far as I understood the text, it states there there exist no pure good and evil. And while I see that there indeed is no absolute goodness (which was actually the reason why I sought for satanism and was a LaVeyan kind of thinker for a while), I still cannot understand how there can be no absolute evil.

Now, reading such spiritual books as Fosforos is always a challenge: for it is a challenge to live on afterwards. For (let me insert a true, yet humorous example from my life) once, after finishing reading "Faust" by Goethe and being deep within the heavenly thoughts, I eventually realized that this whole time my eyes were blindly staring at someone's but* while I was standing in the subway train... (that contrast was simultaneously horrific and brought sardonic laughter to me)

And Fosforos feels like yet another example of such wonderful book, such glass ledder, or bridge, which is alluring and reaches far above, but very fragile and desctructable when applied here. For human perception won't manage to exist on such heights for long and eventually falls.

So in order to check how fragile the Fosforos was, from the very start of the chapters that spoke of relativity of good and evil, I kept thinking of yet one thing that I NEVER managed to justify as something that can be "not necessarily evil" (have a grain of goodness in it) to see if the book had a direct answer, or at least a misty trail for my own thoughts that could really prove that there is no total evil in it. And I could not find such justification ... :(

That is why I am eager to ask about it here, where I could have the possibility to know the ideas of the author himself, and of his close colleagues. (Now this topic does not relate to me or any person close to me, but here it is...)

What is, ahem, rape, if not the total and unjastifiable evil? For there can sometimes be found a reason for murder, or any other deed that is considered evil in general, and is basically immoral, and such deeds may even lead to something good simultaneously. (let's say, a murder of a serial killer by their victim) Moreover, such thing as murder can be a brutal lesson to the rest (which is still one of purposes of death penalties) and ,just as it brings pain it simultaneously ends it for it ends with death of body and its senses. But rape is not a lesson to others, and it doesn't end itself as does death, and victims of such deed may actually wish for death and its comfort...
the only 'good' essence I see in it is the fact that victims may overcome their experience, but as I understand, this victory is never actually finished, or maybe the terrible experience just alters the victim's personality. (and we cannot know if such alteration was for good or for bad for them, so 'chance' of goodness gets ever lower, though it still exists). Therefore, that feels like too big of a price for a 'lesson', and what would it teach if not that people can act in evil and unjastifiable ways?

I address you with this awful topic to see the opinion of (sorry, I don't know how to call this philosophical-religious group) followers, and to realise its attitude towards concepts of good and evil correctly. Thank you for attention! I am looking forward to reading your answers/continuing the discussion.
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Nefastos
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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Post by Nefastos »

Welcome to the forum, LunaticSun! Thank you for your input, & the very important question.
LunaticSun wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 9:34 pmAs far as I understood the text, it states there there exist no pure good and evil. And while I see that there indeed is no absolute goodness (which was actually the reason why I sought for satanism and was a LaVeyan kind of thinker for a while), I still cannot understand how there can be no absolute evil. [...]

What is, ahem, rape, if not the total and unjastifiable evil?

I think that your question has mostly to do with the metaphysical basis given in the first book of Fosforos, Polyharmonia, rather than the collective of its six (seven) books as a whole.

For even though Polyharmonia starts with this idea that you quite correctly – even though I would have phrased it a bit differently – said to present the idea of the relativity of evil, the very same idea gets strongly confronted instantly when advancing from the cosmological basis of Polyharmonia (book I) to the individual sphere in Discordamelior (book II). The books of Fosforos form together kind like a winding dialogue, which is the reason the prologue characterizes the book as a labyrinth. The labyrinthine nature is not in the relativity itself but the turns one must take to find out answers in seeming relativities. For the book itself is (we could say in this context) primarily concerned about the Absolute, and our relation to that Absolute.

Thus Fosforos is actually not about accepting relativity it all, but almost the opposite. Consider the polyphonic voices that are raised in Discordamelior, forming like an antithesis to Polyharmonia's stance, that is the stance of the Absolute. Even though things are "good" from the viewpoint of God, so to say, they are from from good – even from a neutrality we could accept! – from the viewpoint of an individual. The example you chose, rape, is very good for this.

The stance of Fosforos is, therefore, that:

(1) From the viewpoint of the Absolute ("God"), rape is not any more evil than anything else. It is an event happening in the endless loop, or sphere, of karmic causations. That the rape could happen at all is based on the almost infinite web of karmic occurrences, and in the end, these karmic occurrences that include that particular rape, bring forth the divine plan.

(2) From the viewpoint of a Satanist, the above statement number one is (pardon me) bullshit. Even though it is metaphysically true, and we see that rape indeed happens in this "best of all the possible worlds", and is, so to say, an act blessed by God – because ultimately only spiritual & free beings can be held responsible in our universe of fetters – and this rape also is the work of God, that is one more reason to hate God (the Absolute, the universe). Even though evil is relative from the absolute viewpoint, it is very real and absolute from a relative viewpoint.

(3) From the end of Discordamelior (where the absolute freedom is finally found from the state of laya), the rest of the book is concerned about the synthesis of these two doctrines of absolute and relative morals. For example, an excerpt from Fosforos published in our website in October, deals primarily with this particular subject.

To use the language of Christian theology, we have here the three different forms of holiness: The first one is the holiness of the aspect of "Father"; the second, of "Son" (a human being); and the third is the most sacred holiness of "the Holy Spirit". And it is this third one that Fosforos considers to be the actual "living" sacredness of Lucifer-Christos, our patron & master in the Star of Azazel. It is the Meaning that must be found personally, to connect the two challenging forms of holiness in God (Absolute) and man (relative).
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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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

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LunaticSun wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 9:34 pm As far as I understood the text, it states there there exist no pure good and evil. And while I see that there indeed is no absolute goodness (which was actually the reason why I sought for satanism and was a LaVeyan kind of thinker for a while), I still cannot understand how there can be no absolute evil.
Good question and it might be something one has to think about quite thorougly and deeply before things fall in to their places and be seen in a clear light. First we should clarify what is absolute evil. Absolute is better word than ”total” to understand this point of view. Absolute evil is not something that could be calculated or weighted in any horrible deed by judging if the deed has any good sides to it or if its seemingly totally evil. If absolute evil would exist, it would be something whole. As absolute by definition can not be diminished or qualified, it would be beyond all words and beyond all worlds and everything manifested would be parts of this absolute evil, while the very nature of evil for me seems to be on the contrary, something fragmented, or partial - blind spots in the subjects eye sight. Indeed many deeds can be said to be evil, but are these deeds and the evil in them not only misconceptions, partial understandings of situations, misconceptions of the world and the one absolute (how could there be two absolutes?), everything is part of – the whole of existence and non-existence?

If a man harms another person, isn’t he acting from a place where he fails to understand the relationship between them and the meaning of the other person in the whole of the world?

LunaticSun wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 9:34 pm...such deeds may even lead to something good simultaneously. (let's say, a murder of a serial killer by their victim) Moreover, such thing as murder can be a brutal lesson to the rest (which is still one of purposes of death penalties)
Such scare tactics as lessons could be seen only to build outer moral conformity, while true occult lessons in ethics are taken within individuals owns decision regarding situations of ethical choices. Ethics are superior to morals, and as a Satanist I would see it a terrible failure to kill somebody to build moral walls for the sheep; walls that are destined to be destroyed anyway. Only individual living relation to ethics is building on a sound basis.

If serial killers victims would kill in revenge, wouldn’t the victim be also a victim of himself doing such violence, rather than overcoming the original trauma? My personal experience of meeting someone who has killed a human being is that the act has severly impaired them psychicly, leaving them half blind to matters at hand, although having altered perspective to the world (which does not necessarily mean any true steps of individuation to have happened other than being born, that is) by driving themselves (further) socially apart from the masses and having to confront their terrible past deeds on every moment of their life. Why would this also happen in a revenge kill? Because one would take away the potential of the supposed serial killers to make even some tiny amends with their actions, which is much more important than sweeping the problem under the carpet, as I believe would happen by killing as a punishment. Nothing in nature simply dissappears, everything continues forth to be processed in other forms.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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LunaticSun
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Re: Despair - A Blessing of Satan

Post by LunaticSun »

Dear Nefastos, thanks a lot! Must reread the Discordamelion then, and take a pause for truly getting the 'gist' of it
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