alan kazlev Says: March 23rd, 2007 at 6:35 pm [This is the classic occultist dodge: one is said to not “understand” an occult scene.]
And understanding is based on experience. Academia, physicalism, agnosticism, pomo relativism, and the ordinary “man in the street”, all do not have any experiences of non-physical states of existence. Not having experienced these things, they then reject them, because these realities don’t fit into the consensus paradigm of secular modernity that postmodernism is a part of.
Qoth Shakespeare in a line that has become a cliche but is nonetheless still as true now as ever: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Hamlet Act 1. Scene V).
[Nothing matters to the occultist/esotericist/traditionalist/guenonist/neofolkite but their own little elite incomprehensible magic circle. Postmodernism is Jewish, but at least knows that occultism is, and has always been, a sham]
A knee-jerk response like the above makes one consider psychological factors. Something I said has obviously touched a raw nerve!
Consider the resistance to occultism and esotericism that many more conservatively minded people have (I don’t mean politically conservative, I mean secular or religiously conservative, not wanting to explore or acknowledge possibilities beyond one’s own belief system). Looking at it psychologically, you will find that this resistance to anything outside one’s own sphere of understanding and belief is based ultimately on fear. Psychologically, the secular materialist, radical agnostic, and exoteric religionist all tend to build up a wall of fear (which they are generally not even aware of), because they themselves can’t conceptualise anything beyond the five senses. Hence they think what is being said must be crazy, and they project that quality of craziness that they are imagining onto the person saying or writing about these things.
Add to this the sublimional conditioning by the Church (such as the Exorcist movies, based on Catholicism), and the fear-based suggestions by mainstream media (like the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of some 15 years back that was reported as fact by the straight-faced mainstream media). None of which is based on authentic occult or esoteric understanding, it doesn’t have the slightest connection. But it still helpss pump people full of fear regarding this subject by association with the world “occult”. So Christians will use bible language, and sceptical agnostics will use academic language like “guenonist” and “neofolkite”, in an effort to banish the threatening possibility that maybe there may indeed be something beyond their own limited and claustrophobic belief-system.
Sorry to be so cynical
I did google that book you referred to. By the way, I don’t follow newspaper astrology columns either.
It is also worth pointing out that many of the world’s greatest occultists were Jewish; Abramelin, Max Theon, Israel Regardie… and of course the Kabbalah, one of the greatest occult systems ever developed, is Jewish esotericism that is even accepted by many ultra-orthodox (such as the Chabad Hassidism).
I do not wish to criticise the great value pomo has as cultural criticism. But you wouldn’t hire a motor mechanic to explain to you about art history. Why believe a sceptical agnostic when it comes to esotericism?
It has always been my position that a true integral philosophy has to take iunto account occultism, something Wilber has been unwilling to do, perhaps for fear of offending mainstream academia (who still consider him a New Age crank in any case; check out some of the discussion in the Ken Wilber talk page archives on Wikipedia). This is why the Integral movement has to go beyond Wilber, to accommodate people like Gebser and Aurobindo.alan kazlev Says: March 23rd, 2007 at 7:18 pm Hi Edward, Yes, good point! Regardie is not in the same league as Crowley or Mathers or Theon or Blavatsky! Mea culpa. His contribution was really in popularising the Golden Dawn and also providing another perspective on people like Crowley who had been over sensationalised (something Crowley himself seems to have encouraged).
There are many lodges that trace descent and authority from the GD. GD Kabbalah is very different to the original Judaic form. Read Gershom Scholem for an excellent introduction to Jewish Kabbalah. The genius of the GD is that it constituted - through Mathers, one of the greatest esoteric syncretists of the 19th century, he was an \”integral occultist\” if you want to use the Wilberian definition of the adjective) a synthesis of all practical occult knowledge that was known at the time (just as Blavatsky did for the theoretical side). However the GD still represented a Hermeticised form of Kabbalah, notwithstanding Mathers\’ The Kabbalah Unveiled (which was an english translation of a latin translation and interpretation of the Hebrew original). Dion Fortune presents a good theoretical introduction to GD/Hermetic Kabbalah.
I do remember Edward that rather than poo poo your experiences I was actually very impressed to hear that you ahd previously been involved in a Hermetic lodge. My apologies if I didn\’t articulate this. However I was and am disappointed that you haven\’t carried those insights through to your current understanding. The insights of GD practical magic are such as to completely overturn secular physicalism and radical agnosticism. Especially because practical magic has real effects, and these effects cannot be explained within a conservative secular paradigm. Like so many things, they are anomalies, that have to be resisted, denied, explained away, and ignored. In this context Thomas Kuhn\’s paradigm hypothesis, and its further applications by people like Charles T. Tart (Transpersonal psychology) and Fritjof Capra (New Paradigm/New Age - see The Turning Point) is extremely pertinent.
And understanding is based on experience. Academia, physicalism, agnosticism, pomo relativism, and the ordinary “man in the street”, all do not have any experiences of non-physical states of existence. Not having experienced these things, they then reject them, because these realities don’t fit into the consensus paradigm of secular modernity that postmodernism is a part of.
Qoth Shakespeare in a line that has become a cliche but is nonetheless still as true now as ever: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Hamlet Act 1. Scene V).
[Nothing matters to the occultist/esotericist/traditionalist/guenonist/neofolkite but their own little elite incomprehensible magic circle. Postmodernism is Jewish, but at least knows that occultism is, and has always been, a sham]
A knee-jerk response like the above makes one consider psychological factors. Something I said has obviously touched a raw nerve!
Consider the resistance to occultism and esotericism that many more conservatively minded people have (I don’t mean politically conservative, I mean secular or religiously conservative, not wanting to explore or acknowledge possibilities beyond one’s own belief system). Looking at it psychologically, you will find that this resistance to anything outside one’s own sphere of understanding and belief is based ultimately on fear. Psychologically, the secular materialist, radical agnostic, and exoteric religionist all tend to build up a wall of fear (which they are generally not even aware of), because they themselves can’t conceptualise anything beyond the five senses. Hence they think what is being said must be crazy, and they project that quality of craziness that they are imagining onto the person saying or writing about these things.
Add to this the sublimional conditioning by the Church (such as the Exorcist movies, based on Catholicism), and the fear-based suggestions by mainstream media (like the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of some 15 years back that was reported as fact by the straight-faced mainstream media). None of which is based on authentic occult or esoteric understanding, it doesn’t have the slightest connection. But it still helpss pump people full of fear regarding this subject by association with the world “occult”. So Christians will use bible language, and sceptical agnostics will use academic language like “guenonist” and “neofolkite”, in an effort to banish the threatening possibility that maybe there may indeed be something beyond their own limited and claustrophobic belief-system.
Sorry to be so cynical
I did google that book you referred to. By the way, I don’t follow newspaper astrology columns either.
It is also worth pointing out that many of the world’s greatest occultists were Jewish; Abramelin, Max Theon, Israel Regardie… and of course the Kabbalah, one of the greatest occult systems ever developed, is Jewish esotericism that is even accepted by many ultra-orthodox (such as the Chabad Hassidism).
I do not wish to criticise the great value pomo has as cultural criticism. But you wouldn’t hire a motor mechanic to explain to you about art history. Why believe a sceptical agnostic when it comes to esotericism?
It has always been my position that a true integral philosophy has to take iunto account occultism, something Wilber has been unwilling to do, perhaps for fear of offending mainstream academia (who still consider him a New Age crank in any case; check out some of the discussion in the Ken Wilber talk page archives on Wikipedia). This is why the Integral movement has to go beyond Wilber, to accommodate people like Gebser and Aurobindo.alan kazlev Says: March 23rd, 2007 at 7:18 pm Hi Edward, Yes, good point! Regardie is not in the same league as Crowley or Mathers or Theon or Blavatsky! Mea culpa. His contribution was really in popularising the Golden Dawn and also providing another perspective on people like Crowley who had been over sensationalised (something Crowley himself seems to have encouraged).
There are many lodges that trace descent and authority from the GD. GD Kabbalah is very different to the original Judaic form. Read Gershom Scholem for an excellent introduction to Jewish Kabbalah. The genius of the GD is that it constituted - through Mathers, one of the greatest esoteric syncretists of the 19th century, he was an \”integral occultist\” if you want to use the Wilberian definition of the adjective) a synthesis of all practical occult knowledge that was known at the time (just as Blavatsky did for the theoretical side). However the GD still represented a Hermeticised form of Kabbalah, notwithstanding Mathers\’ The Kabbalah Unveiled (which was an english translation of a latin translation and interpretation of the Hebrew original). Dion Fortune presents a good theoretical introduction to GD/Hermetic Kabbalah.
I do remember Edward that rather than poo poo your experiences I was actually very impressed to hear that you ahd previously been involved in a Hermetic lodge. My apologies if I didn\’t articulate this. However I was and am disappointed that you haven\’t carried those insights through to your current understanding. The insights of GD practical magic are such as to completely overturn secular physicalism and radical agnosticism. Especially because practical magic has real effects, and these effects cannot be explained within a conservative secular paradigm. Like so many things, they are anomalies, that have to be resisted, denied, explained away, and ignored. In this context Thomas Kuhn\’s paradigm hypothesis, and its further applications by people like Charles T. Tart (Transpersonal psychology) and Fritjof Capra (New Paradigm/New Age - see The Turning Point) is extremely pertinent.
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