111–120 of 123 posts
Occultism is something conveniently both esoteric enough to feel special but also hollow enough that you can wrap it around all your personal narcissism and still have it make sense.
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I am a Sikh (this isn't the reason I am not so keen on christian literature, I've just already been exposed to a fair bit) so I would definitely be interested in some material related to Eastern faiths, I'll check out David Bentley Hart too.
I just picked up You are Gods and it's actually pretty dense stuff and would be a poor choice if you were tired of Christian thought (even if he winds Vedanta into it). It might be worth having a look at Bentley Hart on Wikipedia and seeing if some of his other work appeals. "The Experience of God" is very good, as is "The Beauty of the Infinite". But obviously he's writing from a Christian perspective. From a comple…
Plus, a book recommendations is always good :).
Crowley, and his forebear Eliphas Levi, are responsible for the stupid air of sulphur which hangs around a lot of modern esoterica. AC has his apologists, and he was obviously clever, but he was unquestionably a complete turd, and created a religious system which was fundamentally Satanic, wrapped in enough layers of obfuscation that it can fascinate intelligent people, especially those who have received a substandar…
> ...substandard education in theology. Isn't most of theology just folks getting red faced arguing over things which are ultimately just made up, and are unknowable anyway in the first place? It's only a step away from a couple of guys shouting at each other about how the warp nacelles work in Star Trek.
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Crowley might have been a drug-addicted sophist and not a good source for seeking ultimate truths. But was he a good sophist? I am interested in occultism and symbology, but only as entertainment. I am certain of my materialistic beliefs. It might be that he is so popular here because he is clever and decadent, something shocking and thrilling if you don't take it as truth. Also, was he actually a fun sophist? You se…
Absolutely! He's very entertaining. As a committed materialist, what do you make of the Kalaam cosmological argument and others which make similar points? How can something come from nothing?
Through the ages people tried to answer the great mysteries with great answers, but they didn't achieve anything. Truth should have predictive power, and understanding of great enigmas should help explain lesser ones, like the laws of gravity can calculate the fall of an object, but these answers haven't done something useful. But lesser questions have been answered with lesser and less interesting answers, and they successfully predicted stuff. Through answering many small questions, we now know why rain happens, why the seasons change, or how eels and flies come into existence. And the domain of the great mysteries was reduced, bit by bit.
Trying to answer the great mysteries, like the origin of existence, is building a house from the roof. Religious experiences and the numinous can be better explained by psychiatry and medicine than by theology.
There might still be something not more, but greater, than our understanding. It is probable, since our intuition and our senses are limited. But if there is, it would be equal to a colour we don't see due to lacking color cones. We might be unable to intuitively explain how it's like to see color to a colorblind person, but it's not divine or magical, greater than the material world and what we can measure and calculate; it's just greater than our eyes or our vocabulary.
That is at least my belief. It was hard to write somewhat concisely my beliefs, but I think I did a good enough job. I must say I'm not opposed to trying to answer the great mysteries, it's very similar to when the ancient greek philosophers tried to find the origin of matter. But I do not believe real truth can be obtained that way.
Also, I must say that your comments in this post were great. A perspective very different to the common HN point of view, thought-provoking and in-depth. I also learned the word numinous, which makes me happy as I have now a word to describe something I couldn't before.
For anyone insterested in reading Crowley, I was told Liber four is the most straightforward writing of his. His collection of poems "White Stains" is just amazing as well - mostly speaking about human secretions of all kinds and ingesting them. Edit:"White Stains, a collection of Crowley's poetry praised by W.B. Yeats, published in paperback for the first time, has been called 'the filthiest book of verse ever writt…
To me, to not make up your own rituals is to not really understand any of this. A good modern Crowley ritual based on the Absinthe book is to get some wine and other substances of choice, get quite inebriated over many hours and listen to Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion. Even better with a lover involved. To just copy Crowley is to not understand that every man and woman is a star. To treat Crowley as just some author…
Crowley, being a master magician, casted a spell.
Yeats, also being a master magician, kicked Crowley down a flight of stairs.
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> ...substandard education in theology. Isn't most of theology just folks getting red faced arguing over things which are ultimately just made up, and are unknowable anyway in the first place? It's only a step away from a couple of guys shouting at each other about how the warp nacelles work in Star Trek.
Without an empirical reference somewhere in the conversation, it's just fanfic.
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It's still all make-believe. And I say this as someone who has had an interest in Fortean and occult lore for years - it's just folklore people choose to pretend is real.
No its not. Its metaphor for truth which is unable to be expressed with precise language - because we lack understanding.
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No its not. Its metaphor for truth which is unable to be expressed with precise language - because we lack understanding.
If you lack understanding of the truth, and can only refer to it through metaphor, then how do you know it is true ?
Sure, then why bother systematizing its study in theology, would it be better to just study English language usage of metaphor?