I know. I'm fine with that. I have too many reservations about institutional religion in general and some aspects of the doctrine in particular to throw in with the RC Church myself, but despite its flaws and its parallel structures and the episodes of corruption and power drunkenness in high places, I think it's restored and redeemed by…
I know. I'm fine with that. I have too many reservations about institutional religion in general and some aspects of the doctrine in particular to throw in with the RC Church myself, but despite its flaws and its parallel structures and the episodes of corruption and power drunkenness in high places, I think it's restored and redeemed by the faith of the ordinary people- and, strange as it might seem to those who are unaware of it, its formidable intellectual tradition. J. S. Bach, Dante Alghieri, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Garry Wills, Penny Lernoux, Dorothy Day, Teilhard de Chardin, Jerry Brown, Kevin Starr, the younger Catholics writing in publications like First Things...I have enormous respect for all of those writers and thinkers. For that matter, some of the "lapsed" Catholics of the modern age keep a sense of spiritual questing in their life and work: Robert Stone. Tim Leary. Robert Anton Wilson. As arch and ironic and witheringly sarcastic and contemptuous as all of them often sound when offering their observations on the Church, its history, its priesthood, the hierarchy, the Pope, and Christianity, they can't quite seem to quit the transcendent quest. If they had only went all in for humanist Egotism and the Will to Power over all, they might have hit the big time in their lifetimes, but they couldn't quite get to do it. They couldn't quite stop fucking around, having a good time for its own sake. Like Chesterton. Bob Anton Wilson...I suppose that I might find out one day that he's actually a nightmarishly evil person. All that sketchy company he's kept, and the Crowleyan fascination, and all that...ritual magic, trying to game the system, it's a fool's errand. But in the proto-Woke social climate of the Berkeley of the 1980s., Wilson always stood up for the autonomous individual, religious tolerance, and the libertarian philosophical ideal of tolerance in general. He rebuked the self-ordained Enlightened Humanist Progressive conceit that demonized Christians as if they were the source of all militarism, intolerance, and evil on earth. Bob Wilson didn't have to do that. There was no payoff for him in speaking up for Christians, who were beginning to be openly stereotyped en masse as the very embodied identity of the Oppressor, due to a Left backlash of pique and resentment in the era of the face of the ascendant politicized Republican Christianity represented by Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. But Robert Anton Wilson prized the ideals of fair-mindedness and transcendent agnosticism, and he was opposed to hating people. Even weird monotheists with mystical blood rituals and arcane notions about the transcendent benefits of an internally consistent code of selfless and pure moral behavior, notwithstanding the continual failures on their part to uphold that standard in practice.
The other Christian reference tag about RAW that stays in my head is the review blurb on some Dadaist playlet that was one of his last books (I've read just about all of them, and bought most of them new; And/Or Press. Paperbacks, some of them with terrible bindings, fell apart in your hands...)
I forgot who the review was by, but it went like this:
"I'm a Christian; I hope Wilson is wrong. Funny, though."
Managing to achieve the Funny is not a bad score, in this life.
Thanks for the interesting aside. I had not heard of RAW -- will check him out. I spent my undergraduate years studying classical and medieval philosophy & theology; i.e., immersed in that 'formidable intellectual tradition' you mention. My personal favorite contemporary-ish representative of it is Evelyn Waugh, who sounds like a bit of a mirror image of RAW. After declaring himself an atheist in high school and attempting suicide shortly after Oxford, he became intellectually convinced of Christianity and spent the rest of his life as a rather caustic defender of the Catholic Church... but could never quite shake his delight in the things of this world and died of a sudden heart attack at age 63 (on Easter Sunday!), after living pretty hard for basically his entire adult life. The books he wrote in the meantime are pure delight. I feel terrible for young Christians who have a spark of intellectual life in them but aren't aware of this stuff.
You'd probably enjoy Gary Lachman's books. His latest, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, is quite good.
Not sure how much validity I give to Chaos Magic, but there are a lot of people who insist it works. I reserve judgement because I've never tried it.
I do believe that reality is malleable & open to interpretation. That it isn't the old "seeing is believing" trope. It's more like you see what you believe you're going to see.
Oh boy. Magic works to the extent that you can talk yourself into believing it. The problem is what happens when you wish you hadn't done that, and you want to get out of it. I don't think there are any accomplished human sorcerers. There are only sorcerer's apprentices. From my point of view, that scene in Fantasia with Mickey and the brooms and buckets is a perfect depiction of Chaos Magic. Except that in real life, once the power is summoned and unleashed, there's no way for the apprentice to retain any power to get the brooms and buckets to quit. If you want to see a real world example of chaos magic, have a look at the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And approximately every aggressive invasion of a foreign land, ever.
I'm definitely aware of the possibility of the Uncanny and Extraordinary aspects of reality cropping up in my existence. It's usually great when that happens (not always.) Like, awesome. I've tried to keep my eye out for it, to be a little quicker on the uptake about noticing it when it happens. The notion of Opportunity is inherently magical, I think.
But I don't mess with trying to work the system with magic. I just try to do my natural best. I'm bad enough at that.
I know. I'm fine with that. I have too many reservations about institutional religion in general and some aspects of the doctrine in particular to throw in with the RC Church myself, but despite its flaws and its parallel structures and the episodes of corruption and power drunkenness in high places, I think it's restored and redeemed by the faith of the ordinary people- and, strange as it might seem to those who are unaware of it, its formidable intellectual tradition. J. S. Bach, Dante Alghieri, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Garry Wills, Penny Lernoux, Dorothy Day, Teilhard de Chardin, Jerry Brown, Kevin Starr, the younger Catholics writing in publications like First Things...I have enormous respect for all of those writers and thinkers. For that matter, some of the "lapsed" Catholics of the modern age keep a sense of spiritual questing in their life and work: Robert Stone. Tim Leary. Robert Anton Wilson. As arch and ironic and witheringly sarcastic and contemptuous as all of them often sound when offering their observations on the Church, its history, its priesthood, the hierarchy, the Pope, and Christianity, they can't quite seem to quit the transcendent quest. If they had only went all in for humanist Egotism and the Will to Power over all, they might have hit the big time in their lifetimes, but they couldn't quite get to do it. They couldn't quite stop fucking around, having a good time for its own sake. Like Chesterton. Bob Anton Wilson...I suppose that I might find out one day that he's actually a nightmarishly evil person. All that sketchy company he's kept, and the Crowleyan fascination, and all that...ritual magic, trying to game the system, it's a fool's errand. But in the proto-Woke social climate of the Berkeley of the 1980s., Wilson always stood up for the autonomous individual, religious tolerance, and the libertarian philosophical ideal of tolerance in general. He rebuked the self-ordained Enlightened Humanist Progressive conceit that demonized Christians as if they were the source of all militarism, intolerance, and evil on earth. Bob Wilson didn't have to do that. There was no payoff for him in speaking up for Christians, who were beginning to be openly stereotyped en masse as the very embodied identity of the Oppressor, due to a Left backlash of pique and resentment in the era of the face of the ascendant politicized Republican Christianity represented by Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. But Robert Anton Wilson prized the ideals of fair-mindedness and transcendent agnosticism, and he was opposed to hating people. Even weird monotheists with mystical blood rituals and arcane notions about the transcendent benefits of an internally consistent code of selfless and pure moral behavior, notwithstanding the continual failures on their part to uphold that standard in practice.
The other Christian reference tag about RAW that stays in my head is the review blurb on some Dadaist playlet that was one of his last books (I've read just about all of them, and bought most of them new; And/Or Press. Paperbacks, some of them with terrible bindings, fell apart in your hands...)
I forgot who the review was by, but it went like this:
"I'm a Christian; I hope Wilson is wrong. Funny, though."
Managing to achieve the Funny is not a bad score, in this life.
Thanks for the interesting aside. I had not heard of RAW -- will check him out. I spent my undergraduate years studying classical and medieval philosophy & theology; i.e., immersed in that 'formidable intellectual tradition' you mention. My personal favorite contemporary-ish representative of it is Evelyn Waugh, who sounds like a bit of a mirror image of RAW. After declaring himself an atheist in high school and attempting suicide shortly after Oxford, he became intellectually convinced of Christianity and spent the rest of his life as a rather caustic defender of the Catholic Church... but could never quite shake his delight in the things of this world and died of a sudden heart attack at age 63 (on Easter Sunday!), after living pretty hard for basically his entire adult life. The books he wrote in the meantime are pure delight. I feel terrible for young Christians who have a spark of intellectual life in them but aren't aware of this stuff.
You'd probably enjoy Gary Lachman's books. His latest, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, is quite good.
Not sure how much validity I give to Chaos Magic, but there are a lot of people who insist it works. I reserve judgement because I've never tried it.
I do believe that reality is malleable & open to interpretation. That it isn't the old "seeing is believing" trope. It's more like you see what you believe you're going to see.
Oh boy. Magic works to the extent that you can talk yourself into believing it. The problem is what happens when you wish you hadn't done that, and you want to get out of it. I don't think there are any accomplished human sorcerers. There are only sorcerer's apprentices. From my point of view, that scene in Fantasia with Mickey and the brooms and buckets is a perfect depiction of Chaos Magic. Except that in real life, once the power is summoned and unleashed, there's no way for the apprentice to retain any power to get the brooms and buckets to quit. If you want to see a real world example of chaos magic, have a look at the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And approximately every aggressive invasion of a foreign land, ever.
I'm definitely aware of the possibility of the Uncanny and Extraordinary aspects of reality cropping up in my existence. It's usually great when that happens (not always.) Like, awesome. I've tried to keep my eye out for it, to be a little quicker on the uptake about noticing it when it happens. The notion of Opportunity is inherently magical, I think.
But I don't mess with trying to work the system with magic. I just try to do my natural best. I'm bad enough at that.