Mediumism and the Critique

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Zeraim
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

Post by Zeraim »

I still have questions. The answer might clarify the difference of these seemingly very different views here, or drive the ideas even further apart.

I would like to know, what exactly theosophists and people here mean, when they speak of a shell? In a way, I understand the idea of breakdown of the principles during death and the idea that the higher principles are not present in those shells. But what does it actually mean?

If I think about the normal living human being, in their normal waking consciousness, I don’t think we are seeing something that I would call complete representation of their higher principles. I see a shell, or personality with all its habits, manoeuvrers, traumas, emotions, thoughts, cultural conditioning, physical body and appearance etc. We might hold dear beautiful ideologies where everyone has divine essence, but in the real life, do we actually really recognize the divine when we meet people? I understand that this recognizing is based on our own ability to be conscious of our own and others higher principles, but still I think, we actually meet more shells than living gods as peoples mind is focused on their daily activities, emotions and thoughts. In my mind, we are mostly just almost empty shells, only a bit life force animating us and the Ego sleeping soundly. I do see us being quite far from actually being and expressing the divine monad or what ever we call the highest parts. Only sometimes a spark of self awareness might ignite when something happens (in meditation, discussion, while reading or doing some spiritual training, some life events etc.) and shift the consciousness towards our higher principles.

So how does this shell of personality differ from what we call shell when we consider the dead?

I am not trying to promote any connection or practices with the dead here, I really do not strive to have those experience, but I just want understand what people actually think of the process of dying and the nature of these shells.

For example Ervast was earlier considering that the dead cannot learn anything new after dying, later thinking death as part of the human evolution with more possibilities. In the Tibetan book of the dead, which was one of my favourites in my late teens, also seem to give much meaning to these between states. They had idea that even very profound development can happen even after dying. Their very symbolical descriptions of the states were filled with gods and spiritual beings, but the most important thing was seeing through all of them. In very rare cases even the attainment of enlightenment was seen possible during these states.

From my point of view, I consider the pieces left behind after dying, to be very similar to robotic states we are in our daily life while we were still living. And if one have encounter with them, you mostly meet these shells or facets of the dead. Only very advanced travellers, who can go far beyond the lower principles, might meet the higher principles or bodies of these dead. So personally I consider focusing to work with the dead quite meaningless (for me personally), but in rare cases, when the contact happens, I would like to help them to turn their consciousness to their higher principles, to just let go of their former states. This is similar to my daily life, when I work with the people, if someone is clinging their pains and problems, I would like to help one becoming more fully himself on every facet of life. But just as I cannot offer much in the living world, I do not consider myself much help in the between states. In this way, I am all in for the idea of shells, but I still don’t consider them meaningless or totally devoid of the thing that was once human being in the living world. I think they are, in a way, phases we go through during the death process before our consciousness “join” again with our higher principles. This idea is what also prevents me from seeing much reason for trying to contact the dead or asking their occult knowledge or life lessons.

But I understand this is just very preliminary hypothesis based on my oobe experiences. I might think totally different later on. At least I hope so.
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Nebenkheperu
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

Post by Nebenkheperu »

Many fruitful comments have been voiced above. I shall add just a bit to the muddle...

Unsurprisingly I have no personal experiences of "mediumship" in the clichéd late 19th century fad sense of the séance, where alleged ectoplasm is vomited forth, tables are rapped & levitated and so forth. Neither do I have any real knowledge of its present-day forms like certain self-styled(?) clairvoyants may practice - often for personal gain, naturally.
I do know some persons who claim to constantly see (or otherwise sense) ghosts & shades etc., in their sleep (perhaps interestingly most of them suffer from sleep paralysis), in their homes and other places too. The "funny" thing about this is that sometimes other people also witness these apparitions, when they are in said persons' presence...myself perhaps included.

These folks, however, do not consciously seek contact with the dead or call to them. It "just happens" to them. Of course, we who are gathered here could offer any number of theories/explanations for this, so let's not. I digress (it's my superpower), so back on track:

As I said in the other, linked, thread: I've practiced necrolatry (but not really -mancy) for a number of years now, so I cannot really opine from personal experience about the latter.
However, those wishing to experiment with this thing could probably do worse than follow the advice in the book 'Communing with the Spirits - the Magical Practice of Necromancy' by the pen-name Martin Coleman.

But should one? Obviously it's up to the individual in question. Should we trust the received wisdom of e.g. Theosophy and the opinions of its key author(itie)s or test matters for ourselves? The LHP approach would likely argue for the latter option.

Like Johannes stated above, this whole topic is a tough nut to crack. You could end up with busted teeth lest you have suitable tools & protection.

Speaking about spiritual shells, crusts, layers etc., could it not be argued that, if they are indeed the mere decaying parts left behind of an ex-person i.e. robot-like sheddings without consciousness, communing with them would not be harmful to either party? Let's take a very banal example: the magician's Great-Uncle has recently died and rumours abound of his hidden stash of cash. Would it be unwise trying to contact his shell(s) about this? The result would probably be binary: either the message received by the necromancer points to the correct location or it does not.

I may be rambling here, but perhaps my point is that rather than engage in too much philosophical pondering & deliberation about this subject, the occultist could be better served getting his hands a little dirty. For who has ever advanced far by just following "thou shalt nots"? 'Test everything' seems not a bad advice in order to learn from personal experience rather than just writings ex cathedra. Especially if one feels a strong inner Need to engage in a certain practice...this could be called personal dharma or Wyrd. Not to follow it through & repression could be much more harmful than partaking in a supposedly risky endeavour. And isn't everything risky anyways, to utter a platitude?
Well, at least I think that I've verified for myself in this way a number of Theosophy's doctrines - which upon a casual reading can first appear awfully like arbitrary dogmas or articles of faith.
In short: there must be no irrevocable damage from testing out even those things for which we are shown a big Verboten-sign. This opinion of mine should still probably be taken with Temperance. But fear is always a bad reason to do or not to do something :roll:
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Nebenkheperu
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

Post by Nebenkheperu »

About contacted spirits of the dead being inherently misleading towards the living or not, HPB's The Key to Theosophy (p. 91) of course mentions at least two special categories of ex-humans: the nirmanakayas being of interest here. If you're contacting your dead relatives, could one or more of them actually be such a highly evolved (i.e. honest also after death) person? Well...it's not impossible.

On mediumism in general, critique voiced against it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by such occult luminaries as Blavatsky, Crowley and Gurdjieff (and many later authors) seems to be mostly based, according to my reading, not on the spiritism fad per se as being a hoax or smoke & mirrors to fleece the gullible, but because of the passive and invocatory nature of the practice. Writers belonging to the ceremonial/ritual magic camp especially condemn these two attributes, because they see "real magic/necromancy" as requiring the magician to be active and evocatory. The same method as in dealings with non-human spirits, demons and all manner of otherwordly entities in general.

Arguments against both of these approaches are easy to make and have been made in abundance. The debate seems to be still going on in e.g. modern occult publications. A perennial question which is probably best answered personally :geek:
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Smaragd
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

Post by Smaragd »

Zeraim wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 12:40 pm So how does this shell of personality differ from what we call shell when we consider the dead?
They differ from each other by 1. the state they are in, and 2. their ”ownership”.

1. The shells of the dead are on the disintegrating ramp where the shell is being partly shed from the spirit in order for the spirit to find its rest in devachan or even deeper states. This means that if we mess with these parts of the dead it is a form of distrubance and not helping the dying process.

So if we would start messing with the coarse physical body or the more subtle bodies, we could be for example messing with the state of thukdam, where it has been said enlightenment can still happen. The practitioners in thukdam are not cremated because that would interfere with the process.

Now, if the disintegrating ramp has gotten further from thukdam and a medium would hassle with the shells, it is still disturbing the disintegrating process. The shells might act like they want to live but they are like hungry ghosts repeating things that are not in proportion to the actual events, robot-like as they are. Perhaps meeting with ghosts it is sometimes good to gently guide them to their higher principles, because in other words that is the furthering of disintegrating process. Unless we secretly or unbeknownst to our selves feed the shells with our attention.

2. The shells of the living have, with karmic accuracy, certain individual spirits responsible for their bodies according to the Theosophists and their Buddhist teachers. The spirits of the dead in their disintegrating ramp are leaving these responsibilities for the time being in order to return to these responsibilities later on rested. I am not sure if the shells disintegrate meaningfully in to the mana pool of anima mundi which would be later on gathered, again meaningfully around the reincarnating spirit. This is my own loose intuition (not thorougly reflect upon), while the Theosophists claim the shells remain, hopefully, intact waiting for their respective spirit to fill them again (perhaps leaning on the relative accuracy of the akashic libraries). Anyway, playing with these cloaks of rensponsibilities as a sort of specific necromancy might have unpredictable consequences. Can you take someone elses dharma away from them, or perhaps a piece of it, making their next incarnation, or a series of them, tilted and askewed or atleast somehow ghastly mixed with that of the medium? There are quite alot of body horror examples in the world, not to mention disfigurements of the mind to consider as possible outcomes of horribly mixed up shells. Does the truly or seemingly unjust events in the world relate to such deeds in the past? Does our intuitive respect and awe, and aversion towards death and the dead mean something? Some of these are quite far out questions, but so is mediumism as a phenomena, and I think the possible results should be considered, mapped out and weighted.

Zeraim wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 12:40 pm For example Ervast was earlier considering that the dead cannot learn anything new after dying, later thinking death as part of the human evolution with more possibilities.
In books nearing his final years (Christosophian Peruskysymyksiä trilogy) he also stressed the usual viewpoint where living human beings are seen having the greatest possibilities to make a difference and effort regarding the spiritual evolution of the whole world. Higher states after humanity are said to only give their occult influence on human beings for them to act and make their conscious choices a reality. But I think I know what you are trying to point here. I regard the dead (manan väki) as a whole very much present in my life and my occult practice. Thus I am not separating myself from the world or the realm of the dead, nor the more abstract possibilities of a human being. Perhaps correspondingly, the dead are with me mainly as the power pool of anima mundi. Some more specific remnants of the dead are those remnants which I, in my personal being, share intimately with the dead. Those are mostly dead and living family members and ”enemies” etc. These sorts of connections where they are abstracted through the waters of anima mundi, or actually shared karma between living and dead individuals is quite afar from messing with the intimate parts (skandhas) of particular individuals. I find too much specificity with the remains of the dead, especially those you have no close and intimate relation with, going wrong with extreme ease.
Lievo wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 9:20 pm In short: there must be no irrevocable damage from testing out even those things for which we are shown a big Verboten-sign. This opinion of mine should still probably be taken with Temperance. But fear is always a bad reason to do or not to do something :roll:
The problem here is that a foolish dappler can think to be testing something out and being able to see most of the results soon or in this life. Not to mention the problem of reprogramming oneself in to more and more ignorant state, there are also quite more graphicly horrific things to be considered. For example let's say one tests out mediumism and is unconsciously pulled deeper and deeper to that course of life; corresponding to the overt emphasis of water element there and following a possible causation of mixed skandhas (using the word according to Theosophical definitions) this dappler could be, for example, reincarnated terribly disfigured (lacking definite and balanced form and posture) in accordance to the monstrous mixing of alltogether different karmic paths. This is admittedly quite a phantasm of an example but let me make my point. Would he be understanding in this newly found mental or bodily disfiguration, that yes, that mediumism isn't quite useful for occultism? Perhaps eventually, but it could take many incarnations of tortued feelings of injustice etc. to get to that point. I think it is much more efficient to take heed of the warnings and inspect things in a smaller scale. For example, we can inspect the small and quite harmless things in life, not to mention the greater and smaller mistakes of others and our own, and come in to conclusions of larger things without taking unnecessary risks. The usual Western LHP mentality of blindly cutting corners and imbalanced behaviour is giving an unnecessary definition of 'foolishness' to the Left-Hand Path. I don't think real adepts of the LHP would see their practice and teaching as opposing true Wisdom. There are much more deeper meanings and definitions to the path than that. Although it can incorporate seemingly irradicate moves, it can still base on philosophy that is not foolish. The tree is know for its fruits and I have never seen deeply wise people going on testing things so blindly. Philosophy and humble look through life experiences, hand in hand, goes a long way.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Nefastos
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

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Since October, I have had 29 discussions with a certain entity and received some very helpful advise. But even though I have enjoyed these spirit discussions and in many cases been uplifted by them in precious ways, I know that this entity is not the one whose name he uses, and that he is not a single independent personality. When pressed for physical information such that I could not possibly have had previous access to, such entities admit that they can only use the information they find already existing in my brain, and they can only inspire it to this or that direction, bringing to mind's focus something I already know, putting together different inspiration factors. For they are not actually personal beings one can talk with without projection.

This should be easy to put to test. In case one thinks he is talking with an unchanged, enduring personality, such a spirit of the deceased can be asked of any information one would certainly have known when living, but which nowadays is available only by major efforts – but which can be reached with such efforts, although not accidentally glanced from anywhere. If one talks with, say, a Sicilian monk from 1600, ask him name the most important local title-holders of the major noble houses or clerical office-holders of the time. Not some one vague name, but the whole bunch. Then visit relevant archives and check. Or some other similar information, which would be everyday and easy for the enduring spirit, but which cannot be just silent (subconsciously somewhere glanced and then seemingly forgotten) knowledge in the mind of a modern person. In case the spirit cannot give such factual new information, which stands for test when tried several times and in detail, we have a pretty good case that the entity in question is not factually an enduring block of personality, but an amalgam elemental involving subconscious mind-projections of its summoner. Modern ghosts can be tested with even greater ease, for their secret personal knowledge is something that is not buried by time but only hidden because it has been unmeaningful to distribute to any wider audience.
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Istar
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

Post by Istar »

Nefastos wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 1:12 am ...such entities admit that they can only use the information they find already existing in my brain, and they can only inspire it to this or that direction, bringing to mind's focus something I already know, putting together different inspiration factors. For they are not actually personal beings one can talk with without projection.
Since communicating with spirits involves not only the quality of the spirit but also the abilities of the person receiving the information, it is difficult to say which problems in communication are caused by which party. I have also received similar answers from entities where some information cannot be accessed because I do not know that already, not even on any deeper level. I have experienced that this might sometimes be more because of me and the fact that my consciousness has not expanded enough. However, I think that I do not personally need to have the information, but having some access to collective consciousness enables the reception of the "new" information. In principle, all information is available from the collective conscious, but whether we can access it is a different matter.

Personally, I feel that things related to the external framework, such as the appearance and environment of the spirit are more accessible, as well as the personality traits of the spirit, the world of thought and the prevailing views of the surrounding culture. Finding out names and years is more difficult, but I have thought that it may be due to my personal qualities. Usually I see spirits appearance and surroundings, feel they emotions and know their thoughts and habits. I do not see the names, nor years. The communication is less a conversation based on asking and answering. It is just knowing how some one feels and thinks without use of words.

I find the transmission of internal information to be more important than external factors. Finding out factual information can be useful, but depending on the content of the spirit's mind or the clues given by external factors, it might be either possible or very difficult. A spirit of the dead is in a limited state of consciousness, stuck in between state, and is only able to manifest the state of the things it clings to. According to my own experiences, there are different levels in consciousness of the spirits. Most spirits have very limited consciousness but there are also those who are on higher astral levels and are capable of communication in different ways. Even so, they are still close to the consciousness of ordinary people. These are only my current personal opinions, which I believe will change and become more precise over time. It is good to keep in mind that the spirits we communicate with are not necessarily what our minds interpret them to be. For example, they can be just contents of one's own mind that take an external form.
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Nebenkheperu
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

Post by Nebenkheperu »

To a few points made above by different people:

-I myself do not advocate recklessly engaging in spirit/entity/deity/[insert term] contact "just to see what happens". Neither do I think it's emblematic of the Western LHP - more like the attitude of Chaos Magic, the praxis/theory of which I am familiar with and largely disagree with currently. AFAIK most LHP groups/lines of thought seem of the atheist/"magic is nonsense" variety, excluding e.g. SoA, ToS, Dragon Rouge and Ford's Luciferianism. When I say "test everything", I don't mean without precautions or consideration. The same should IMO be applied to e.g. the tenets of Theosophy, which shouldn't be accepted "on faith", for if one does so, then we're talking about a purely RHP approach, whilst I believe the SoA intends to combine and balance the hands in the attitude of prayer, both in symbol & practice.
Therefore, is it bad (or even "evil") to engage in spirit communication, IF one feels a strong enough motivation to do so? Should this result in a Karmic punishment aka adjustment, isn't it still all well and good? The result: lesson learned.

-On testing a spirit, trying to verify in detail its claims could easily be a mere waste of time & effort on your part, depending on how personally important you deem your contact with it to be. There are a lot of "ifs". Maybe it's a "misguiding entity", maybe it's a shell that has degraded so far that it "can't remember", maybe your mind is playing tricks on itself, maybe, maybe, maybe...which leads me to the oft-repeated truism of:

-When a person/magician/operator deals with any kind of entity or spiritual form, perhaps all of these explanations are true simultaneously: it's a figment of your psyche, it's an autonomous entity, it's some kind of quantum phenomenon, etc.
That is my personal attitude & experience at least...the "theory" that the human bodymind is a sort of receiver for also extrasensory input. For example, let's say you have a spirit in close physical(?) proximity to you, yet undetectable via your normal senses. Then it will manifest itself in a way which to you feels like a "thought popping into your head".
This to me is also why I find occultism fascinating (maybe in all the senses of that term)...you just never can tell. This results in an internal philosophical struggle about "what's real" and how to live, how to exist, what is true, can there be any "truth" to anything...if you accept something as true, is it all just a cop-out?
The measure of everything seems to be personal experience & intuition, although it surely is fallible, yet what else is there? Hmm...sorry for being such an Ouroboros here 8-)
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Smaragd
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

Post by Smaragd »

Lievo wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 9:23 pm When I say "test everything", I don't mean without precautions or consideration. The same should IMO be applied to e.g. the tenets of Theosophy, which shouldn't be accepted "on faith", for if one does so, then we're talking about a purely RHP approach, whilst I believe the SoA intends to combine and balance the hands--
I respect this attitude and agree with you. Although my writings might often seem faith oriented to the extent of credulity, that is not the case, at least regarding my aims. My method is to use faith to the utmost end before abandoning information or advices from sources that are seen generally good and revelatory. This is done in order to squeeze out all of the juice and depth I am able to reach. Trying not to toss the baby out with the bathwater.
Lievo wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 9:23 pm Therefore, is it bad (or even "evil") to engage in spirit communication, IF one feels a strong enough motivation to do so? Should this result in a Karmic punishment aka adjustment, isn't it still all well and good?
I don't think the amount of motivation affects the consequenses much at all, unless it means we have energy and will to do our research and truly avoid the snares*. Mixed skandhas are mixed skandhas, and the consequence is what it is. I believe it's kind of a cold system, we our selves being the ones swinging the hammer of justice by our deeds, and the karmic operators, Lipikas, if you will, just seeing the webs of all the causes and effects coming together according to the limitations of the world's initiatory system.

* Perhaps one with enough motivation will arise to the awareness that we are enganging in spirit communication with much higher spirits on every single moment if we allow ourselves to see the world, and the challenges it presents, as an exchange of words with the seven spirits, or Satan, or God. From such a perspective the possibility for seance style communication might appear even quite banal.
Lievo wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 9:23 pm -When a person/magician/operator deals with any kind of entity or spiritual form, perhaps all of these explanations are true simultaneously: it's a figment of your psyche, it's an autonomous entity, it's some kind of quantum phenomenon, etc.
I agree with you on some level. I wouldn't personally go too far in to "everything is everything" mentality and relativism. In the case of the human microcosm this can be said, but when we are speaking of elemental portions of the microcosm, it becomes a bit problematic. I'd like to give structure to these thoughts by agreeing that when we are speaking of the dead as a collective mass we are reaching deep in to the matrix on to which the human being is attached. Through this matrix we beging to see the more abstract nature of reality and the abstract portions of our mind, for example the deceased as a collective mass - the power pool of the world - presenting us our collective karma. Because the connections in the point in the matrix we are attached to is the Demon's Cube, with its multiple ways its sides can be turned and connected towards each others, in a sense we can say that many of our explanations are true simultaneously. Naming this matrix as Anima Mundi gives a nice perspective to the rather complex details.

When we have a clear image of the whole - the metaphysics of the abstraction - it might be easier, in turn, to try to go to the details and see how the different aspects of reality (or the faces of the Demon's Cube) meet each others. For example, a question rises from the very good examples Istar gave, whether these entities of different levels of consciousness could be exactly those elementals Nefastos mentioned ("not factually an enduring block of personality, but an amalgam elemental involving subconscious mind-projections of its summoner"), only representing different amalgam of elements (the lower the element, the less high level consciousness we can project on the elemental)?:
Istar wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 6:03 pm A spirit of the dead is in a limited state of consciousness, stuck in between state, and is only able to manifest the state of the things it clings to. According to my own experiences, there are different levels in consciousness of the spirits. Most spirits have very limited consciousness but there are also those who are on higher astral levels and are capable of communication in different ways. Even so, they are still close to the consciousness of ordinary people.
I'm also wondering if the empty shells in different positions of the disintegrating ramp are still attached to their elemental portions of the Manasic Star, and can it explain some of these experiences? Because these shells are on the disintegrating ramp, detaching from their elemental portions rather than actively using them, I would still suppose they would need outside help to be manifested, taking us back to the problem of mediumism disrupting the disintegration by giving them life force through attention.
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

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A wonderfully nuanced discussion here! I'm not sure if I can really add anything that hasn't been already said, but I think that I could contemplate the subject from another perspective.

When it comes to entities of any sorts, (be it a spirit of a dead person, an angel, a wild animal, a fellow occultist or a digital homunculus such as ChatGPT), I think it's most helpful to remind myself that all interactions are mediated through a complex web of presuppositions/intuitions that are baked in to the encounter - f. ex. what I think I am, what I think you are, what I think that you think I am etc. When I feel emotionally resonant to another entity (when this "web" is curiously bent), for example a dear friend, I am prone to overemphasize the nature of this resonance. I may realize a telepathic link between us, manifesting itself through weird occurrences, or flashes of mental images. Then I jump to conclusions that this link bonds me to my friend on a more fundamental level than it really does. From a psychoanalytical lens (which I find a useful tool, ableit inadequate by itself) we can speak of effects of transference and so on. What fra Nefastos said about distinguishing between autonomous entities and the amalgam elementals is also true on emotional level. I mean, that if an entity always gives you what you want or expect from it, then there is a chance, that there is a distortion in the aforementioned web - that in the place of a "legitimate entity", there is actually a concentration of "dark matter" (elemental, posessing a gravitational pull so to speak), that, in order to manifest itself, has to utilize my faculties.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to experience an emotionally resonant connection, but it is something that should be cultivated with wisdom and empathy. I would be willing to argue, that the desire for a connection is something that penetrates being on a fundamental metaphysical level. Hell (pun intended), even the elementals seem to reflect this, even though they think that their only way to do this is by vampirizing others. The desire for connection, when understood appropriately, has something to do with the idea of reciprocity, that is, it has something to do with the idea of letting you be you, and I being I. As with most things in this world, it too can be overdone: as fra Smaragd pointed out, mercury starts to slice the Mothers matrix when one forgets the uniting principle of Love, and You starts to drift off from I. Then begins the melancholy rumination of "why bother with trying to connect with anything in the first place, since every connection is always relative - you will never truly get me, and I will never truly get you".
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Re: Mediumism and the Critique

Post by Smaragd »

Aperiemus wrote: Sat Feb 11, 2023 9:51 am There is nothing wrong with wanting to experience an emotionally resonant connection, but it is something that should be cultivated with wisdom and empathy. I would be willing to argue, that the desire for a connection is something that penetrates being on a fundamental metaphysical level. Hell (pun intended), even the elementals seem to reflect this, even though they think that their only way to do this is by vampirizing others. The desire for connection, when understood appropriately, has something to do with the idea of reciprocity, that is, it has something to do with the idea of letting you be you, and I being I.
Well grounded perspective to the matter. It makes me think of how the elementals are aspects of our interaction with alive human beings, and there being certain rules for dealing with these in social situations, rules of which we are surprisingly often oblivious about, but which can be still grounded in simple good manners. Thinking the elemental remains of the ancestors as our burden in a specific form of hungry ghosts is a good way to look at this. We have our burdens that weight on us like vampires sucking our life fluids (and thus presenting occult challenges to overcome these), and when we are not carrying our responsibility regarding this burden, we are sort of forced to externalize the burden. Often times this happens in a way that people close to us are burdened by the vampirizing ghost and needs to assert the social rule of this being a problem. Coming back to the reciprocity: if I am not given permission to be a balanced I, and there is unnecessarily burdening limit coming from outside, then what is the root of this burden in the limiting party, and how could he or she carry this burden themselves? If this mirroring from the external world is not heeded the conflicts usually gets worse and worse, making a close contact between the parties impossible if the problem is not heeded.

Similarly we can think of such vampirizing taking place when we are alone and happen to come across a hungry ghost which is not inherently part of our karma, but in one way or another lost in to the vortex of a mediumistic individual. I wonder if the disintegrating state of the medium is the very condition which pulls these ghosts in to their vortex? Like a human being half dead roaming the disintegrating aspects of the world as their vortex around their "laya point" weakens allowing them to see the denizens of that weakened state. In addition to the folk stories of dying people often seeing ghosts, this reminds me of the game Disco Elysium where the protagonist has lost his memory, roams the streets of a decaying city with decaying culture while the whole world is slowly being devoured by the surrounding "Pale" - nothingness. In this warring world, it seems nearly whole nations can succumb in to such deteoriorating state. In Finland we have quite alot of stories of the other side leaking in to the senses of the common people during WW2, although extending these occurrences completely to this disintegrating state might be a reach. But a nation in war is surely disintegrating.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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