Stranger

I was shocked to read about the tragedy in Oslo and nearby Utoeya. Norway is not a country you associate with violence. Their stiffest penalty under the law is 21 years in prison. The worst that police usually contend with are breaking up drunken brawls. The kind of massacre that went on there doesn't seem possible, as though we will all wake up and find it was just a disturbing dream.

In reading the initial news reports, there was an immediate suspicion of "al-Qaeda" terrorism. Maybe that wasn't an unreasonable assumption, given that at least some of the native population was not pleased about the influx of Muslim immigrants, and there have been conflicts about Muslim religious laws versus the laws of the country throughout all of the Netherlands. However, in a twist of fate, the person responsible was not a Muslim, not associated with al-Qaeda--he was, in fact, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigration. You would not look at the suspect's photo and think "terrorist". That should give us reason to pause.

I recall growing up, that I would hear at home and in school about "talking to strangers". Strangers who lure you into their car and then take you away and kill you, or whatever they're supposed to do. People who would put razor blades in Halloween candy. If you believed the movies they showed you, and the lectures in class, anyone who you didn't know, especially if they were "different" or appeared "shifty", clearly fell into this category and were criminals. Similarly, there were assumptions about certain "neighborhoods". To this day, I am continually amazed at the unawareness about perceptions of "otherness". I think of older family members, former co-workers, and others who I know and deal with who work side by side with others in diverse environments every day, with no conflict. Yet, you will still hear them make statements like, "That used to be a good neighborhood until the blacks moved in." And there's absolutely no awareness of the racism of that statement, no understanding that it's not the "blacks" that make a neighborhood unsafe, it's usually the economic and social conditions of the area. We're not talking about neo-Nazis; we're talking about your average nice old man or lady who has lived his or her life in a suburban neighborhood in a very socially "normal" way.

In spite of all this negative mythology, the facts are quite different. It is incredibly unlikely that strangers are waiting around corners to grab you. Statistics show that most child abductions are not committed by strangers, they're committed by family members, friends, or neighbors. Your kid isn't dumb enough to get in a car with a stranger; they are likely to get into a car with someone they know, and think they can trust. Similarly, just as much crime occurs among the "privileged white" segment of society. They're also more likely to be the ones buying drugs; after all, they have the money for it. Boredom plus money usually equals trouble in the adolescent set.

Back to Norway. The latest "outsider" group has been the Muslims. After 9/11, the cultural myth suggested that every Muslim was suspect, they were all extremists by definition and operatives for al-Qaeda. If you don't believe that, you just have to recall all the nonsense and uproar over the "Ground Zero Mosque" or the assumption that President Obama was really a Muslim. (Not that it matters if he really was, but that was something usually included in a laundry list of negatives by his opponents). Again, the fact is that Islam is not a violent religion, and its adherents are not all extremists. In fact, the overwhelming majority are not extremists. Yes, there are violent extremist cells that should be monitored, and are being monitored. But the attacks on Norway show it's not just those who are Muslim with extremist views. It's also those who profess to be Christian.

There is a lot of Christian extremism out there. The most violent of them tend to be associated with white supremacist groups or ideologies. It is clear that these groups do not represent the whole of Christianity, or even the Christian message. But--if you are a Christian--do you want people to look at the Norway events and assume that all Christians are terrorists? The young man responsible was described as being a fundamentalist Christian with right-wing ideologies. And--he was Norwegian. He was one of their own, not a foreign national. (Incidentally--another report says he was a freemason. I don't know which version is true, but I can similarly imagine the ignorant outpouring against "secret societies", and "occultism" that will ensue if that proves to be true).

This case has something in common with the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords; in both cases, the people involved were psychotic. I don't know what the diagnosis will prove to be for Anders Breivik, but there has to be a certain amount of blind paranoia and delusion to take the ideologies he espoused and take them to that extreme. There is a component of humanness missing there, that is a trademark of the sociopath. In short--these are individuals who are sick. And--when these kinds of atrocities happen, it usually centers around an individual who is mentally sick. It has everything to do with the person, and nothing to do with the group they belong to, unless the group openly espouses violence. And still--you can't take the characteristics of that group and apply that to everyone with the same characteristic (e.g., saying Al-Qaeda is made up of Muslims, therefore all Muslims espouse the views of al-Qaeda).

We tend to want to blame groups in such cases, as the attack of the psychotic is so random, so unexpected, it preys upon our worst fears. We start to study the psychotic individual, and his characteristics, and our sense of self-protection makes us wary of others with similar characteristics. We think we can protect ourselves from such future events in this way. But it is a fear response; it does not represent the reality, and usually creates more conflict and violence.

There are components of this that make me think of the "critical thinking" discussion occurring online where I teach, which I still plan to address. For now--just remember those who are suffering in Norway, who have lost loved ones, have been injured, or are traumatized from being there. It's a sobering reminder of how one person can do so much damage, and also of the sad fact that so much good could have been done with that passion instead. Humans have great potential for both.

Other

It is 3 am, and there are piles of books all over my bedroom floor. I have finally finished a draft proposal for a textbook, which has taken me much longer than expected due to publisher submission requirements. The heat index is supposed to hit 105 degrees today, so I have turned on the air conditioners already to cool the house down before I go to work. I am conscious, but cognizance comes slowly.

While I am pleased with this writing milestone, it is only a beginning, and I still have 3 articles to reformat and write abstracts for in at least one other language besides English. In addition, I have to put a proposal together for my fiction collection as well. So, life has been busy, and needless to say, blogging has fallen by the wayside.

During my researching binge this past week, I stopped in a restaurant very near to the library where I was working to get some dinner. For some reason it seemed there were a lot of children in the restaurant that evening. I think five or six of them belonged to a blonde woman who appeared to be in a Xanax-induced haze. They swarmed the area around their table like vengeful locusts, while she was the picture of Stillness, staring into space with perfect detachment, blissfully unaware of her brood. But the locusts could not compete with the wailing I heard two tables over. Turning around, I saw an Indian family--a young woman, her daughter, her mother or mother-in-law, and her baby son. It was the latter who was wailing like a goete. I expected spirits to appear from the underworld momentarily.

Seeing the family suddenly jarred my memory with a thought. I recalled being in Hindu temples, and at pujas, and the way I was treated when I walked in, looking decidedly out of place in a sea of colorful saris, chanting and ringing of bells. Even when I am dressed accordingly, I still look out of place. I remember sitting for Shiva puja, and an older Indian gentleman leaned over to me. He said, "I don't mean to sound rude when I say this, but--what are you doing here? Are you Hindu?" "Yes," I replied. "Ah. Then that would be a good reason for you to be here." He then asked me many questions about why I would embrace Hinduism, which is what usually happens if I appear in such places. There is a certain fascination that a "foreigner" would be interested in their religion. They are not unwelcoming, just curious.

"Otherness" is usually associated with a kind of xenophobia--a suspicion of strangers. The Devil is always the stranger who sweeps into town, and people seek to eject him and protect themselves. I have discovered, however, that there is a strange kind of reverse discrimination that goes on in many cases. When I mingle with traditional Indian families, they always ask if I am married. When I say I am divorced, they nod and say, "Are you going to get married again?" I tell them probably not. They will then nod vigorously, "ah well, that is good then." By contrast--I have Indian friends who are divorced. When they enter these communities, they are shunned like lepers. I noted this discrepancy to a friend of mine, who replied, "No offense when I say this, but it's because you are white. They worship white people." She was not the only one to tell me this. A friend's daughter in Dubai told me that I should go there--it would be easy for me as a white American to get work. It was the natives and Indians who were shunned for the high-paying jobs.

So, it is a case of the foreigners having elevated or exceptional status in the community. It is as though a deity has swept in, and is exempt from the normal social rules. I wonder why that is the case. Perhaps the long-standing effects of British colonialism? I didn't think that was too well received, though I've also been told that British-style education and culture is the norm in parts of India; the British are gone, but their cultural impact remains. It may be a financial thing as well--there might be an assumption that white Americans are wealthy. I don't really know. But I find it peculiar, just as I find their treatment of their own communities peculiar at times. But human nature is the same regardless of nationality.

I finished grading for my summer course, and I'm starting to notice a new trend, not specifically with these students, but over all of my classes. There are a rising number of students who are clearly very smart, but believe they can pass a course without doing any of the work or reading. They are cultivating the art of bullshit. I have to confess that this is a useful skill in the world; no one knows everything, and sometimes you have to appear as though you know. So, you "bullshit", and some people are more convincing at it than others. Politics is a career based entirely on bullshit. So is television journalism. Unfortunately for these students, I don't do "bullshit". Call us elitist if you will, but in the academic world, I need to see that you understand what I've taken the time to teach you. Even if you just understand a little.

In checking my faculty e-mail, I noticed that there was a long thread of discussion about teaching critical thinking to students, and how you know you've done it. I'm still making my way through the discussion, which is quite interesting.

But now, it is time to go to work, and brave the heat, humidity, and bloodthirsty bugs outside. I'll write on critical thinking tomorrow if I haven't melted or been drained of all my blood.

Know

I have been spending my "relax" time doing something not very relaxing--working on a textbook proposal. Textbook proposals are a lot of work--not only do you have to do your market research in terms of other similar texts, but you need to put together sample chapters (some publishers only want one, most want three--the one I'm querying wants three), and you have to have other peripheral documents like a curriculum vitae (fancy term for resume) and a list of potential reviewers. None of this is unreasonable, but it is a lot of work, especially considering that most publishers don't want you to query them with a finished product. They usually want to be involved in the process.

Writing the chapters has been tough, because I am limited in the amount of sources I have available in my home library. For all the books I have in this house, there are some topics where my holdings are sparse. Having most of the academic libraries around here closed or on limited summer hours doesn't help, especially since I have to write in between taking care of my household tasks, and I have to work full-time during the week. Since I am not writing the final product, I just want to give them an idea, but I also don't want to over-rely on one text, or inadvertently regurgitate the work of another author. This is especially true in cases where I only know a little bit about the person I'm writing about, or when I've only had access to a few of their writings.

This raised a question in my mind--how much "knowledge" of a topic is enough? What makes you an "expert"?

On some grand scale, we never really "know" anything. There is the old saying that a wise man knows that he does not know. Much of the method of Socrates demonstrated this fact; he would question the "experts" to get to the root of a subject, only to find that they really didn't know very much at all. This made him decidedly unpopular, but it's an ugly fact for the ego--there is only so much that you know.

For every book I've read on the subject I'm working on, there are probably ten I haven't read. My reading list could fill a football stadium right now. And the books I have read already might come close to filling a football stadium. Compared to other scholars, I start to wonder if I've read the "right" books. I comfort myself with the notion that other scholars must do this as well.

Pierre Bayard wrote a book that I actually read a few years ago, entitled, "How to Talk About Books You've Never Read". He notes that the great writer Umberto Eco has said that you don't even have to hold a book in your hands if you pay attention to what others have said about it. I'm sure a lot of this goes on in literary circles. In any event, Bayard argues that we don't read books to memorize their content, and we certainly can't read everything that's out there. We should understand a book's place in our library, as the books we choose speak more about ourselves than about the book, its author, or the author's intent.

Maybe this says a lot about the acquisition of "knowledge". We seek to know about things that tell us about ourselves. We become passionately interested in topics because they relate to our own inner life, the thing that we know the best. If this is the case, then "expertise" tells us more about the expert than about his or her subject. This makes learning much more subjective rather than objective. There isn't a single person out there reading this (or not) who hasn't had to slog their way through some assigned text that they have no interest in. In such cases, nothing is ever remembered about the book--except the title, maybe a line here or there--and I would bet those lines are remembered because they were mentioned by a professor in class.

As a professor, I want everyone to be interested in my subject, and to make it interesting. But, to use the old expression, we can't all "tap dance and spit nickels" for our classes. Even a basic understanding of many subjects requires effort on the part of students outside the lecture hall (and a fair amount of attention inside). And what I find fascinating someone else might find utterly boring. And vice versa.

There has been an unpleasant trend in universities in recent years, allowing the students to grade the professor. While there are some truly awful professors out there, I would say that overall this is a huge mistake. Students will declare a class "bad" because it was "too hard" or "not interesting enough". Yet you hear many stories about how years later, the person suddenly realizes the value of the class. In short--students don't know enough to know whether a professor is good or not, unless the professor really falls down on the job.

Which brings up another point--a lot of the time, when asked to give presentations or lectures, the presenter will be nervous that they'll come across sounding stupid or foolish. The fact is that most of the time, the audience knows little or nothing about the topic, and anything known by the presenter comes across as a world of knowledge. It's like the phenomenon surrounding parents and computers. Even if I only know a little about computers, the first time I figure out a problem on my mother's machine, I am suddenly an "expert", and will receive a call about every difficulty she is having with the Internet, with her Excel spreadsheets, with her e-mail. Usually they're questions I can't answer until I come over and look at it. This is because the knowledge I have is not a memorization of every program--it's a basic knowledge of how the computer works.

That's probably true in scholarship as well. I once heard that in library science, 80% of peer reviewed articles were basically re-writes of other studies; very little of it was original material. People will write what they have to for tenure, and they'll likely stick to something "safe" (something already well researched). So, if you're familiar with core readings, you don't need to know all of the peripheral material to get by.

In any event--I have to remind myself that there's no need to scale Mount Everest, knowledge-wise. Almost no one else has done it, either.

Early

I've mentioned before that my cat has a habit of waking me up at 4 am. He's now decided that he wants to eat at 3 am, and my refusal to feed him until at least 4 means that the 3:00 hour is a decidedly unsettled one, full of yowling, pawing, and being frequently nuzzled by a wet cat nose. He's going to be awfully traumatized when I go away for 2 weeks to the UK. My neighbor won't feed him until at least 8 am.

In any event, I don't know yet whether these early feline wake-ups are a curse or a blessing. I'd like to have a full night's sleep, but I also find that early morning is the best writing time for me. Last year I wrote about a Sylvia Plath documentary from the Voices and Visions series. In the documentary, A. Alvarez mentioned the last year's of Plath's life, when she was writing intensely. He said she would get up at 3 or 4 in the morning, work until the kids got up--and then she was a Mum, looking after the kids, and looking after the house. By nighttime, she was likely too exhausted to write anything. In this scene in the documentary, you see a woman portraying Plath, opening her shutters to a London sunrise, looking over the rooftops, the outside sounds dominated by deliverymen making early morning deliveries. The woman glances out the window, then picks up her tea, and heads for her typewriter. I was reminded of this scene once when I was staying in an old Bloomsbury hotel in London. I opened the curtains at around 5 in the morning in late July, and I had this view of the London rooftops with all of the pastels of an impending sunrise. I looked down, and there were very few people about--just trucks making deliveries. And, I was sitting there with my tea, taking in the morning air. While I would never compare myself to Sylvia Plath in a literary sense, I can definitely understand the charm of those early hours looking over the city, and why one would want to write at those hours.

Besides the atmosphere, the other thing about early mornings is that I've usually just woken up from REM sleep. This means that I'm fresh from dreaming, and my mind is filled with those thoughts that occur before the conscious ego has entirely taken over. Lately my dreams have been coming from the collective rather than the personal unconscious. It may be because of daytime conscious thoughts--I've finished my fiction series reflecting on various archetypes, and I've been confronted with both the Child and the Trickster archetypes in dreams. I also had an insight about a character that I created years ago--back in the mid-1980s. This character doesn't appear in any of my published writings; she is the focus of a novel I've been writing for some time, and a character like her is in the story "Animus". While the story of this character is not my story by any means, I recognize that the character's myth is also one of my own driving myths.

"Myth" is a frequently misunderstood term. I sometimes use the word "narrative" instead. I remember a conversation in New York with John Foxx during the same London trip mentioned above, when he told me there was nothing "mythical" about his work. This is because he and I are not using the same definition of myth. The work of the writer and the artist is by definition "mythical"--that work is storytelling work. Whatever imagery is used, with paint, words, photos, music--some narrative is being related. Much is made in literary theory about "intent"--there is the author's intent, and then there's how readers interpret a work. In short, the author created the piece with his or her own unconscious myth, and others viewing, hearing, or reading the piece will relate it to their own unconscious myth. Or, I should say, one myth of our many myths.

I don't want to get into the story of my character here, as it is complex. But the driving myth comes from the personal unconscious. While I did not have a perfect childhood, it was still a very imaginative one. I held onto it as long as I could. Then one day, I woke up, and everything was different. The kind of play I engaged in was suddenly childish, and I found myself with romantic feelings. This literally happened in one night. I just woke up in the morning, and this is how I felt. Life completely changed after that, and while I could never go back to being a "child", I also didn't like adolescence. Love was a hurtful thing, frequently unrequited, and it was against a backdrop of adolescent social drama. The worst part is that it was largely unavoidable--young hormones do not yield to being tamed. The myth started then, and it has to do with being thrust into the maelstrom of life without any warning or control. Because romantic love was wrapped up in all of this, that has gotten a decidedly unfavorable review from me. There is a sense of past happiness decimated, and the need to stoically keep moving forward, because going backward is impossible.

Of course, rationally I know that all of this upheaval was necessary. One doesn't stay in a single phase of life forever. But the unconscious still plays it out as a betrayal on the part of life--on the part of "God", on the part of society. And therefore, all of the above are viewed with polite suspicion.

I'm not interested in turning this into a personal therapy session, so I think that's enough said. But it is a pretty good illustration of how our unconscious stories drive our life decisions, and our creative output as well.

Noise

There was almost no one on the road when I drove to work this morning. This afternoon, I could only assume one of 3 things:

1. Everyone got over their 4th of July hangover at the same time and hit the road
2. Schools reopened early and no one told me
3. There is some major natural disaster headed our way, and everyone is stocking up on canned goods in anticipation

Seriously, there was an obscene amount of traffic driving home--unusual for highways not pointing at the Jersey Shore in the summer. If you're from New Jersey, you don't go "to the beach", you go "down the Shore". And pretty much everyone is down the Shore at this time of year. I live 2 hours from the Shore, so it's usually dead around here in the summer, except for people swimming in the local reservoirs. Which is fine with me.

I was out with a friend the other day who wondered why you can't walk into a bar or eating establishment and not have music blaring. Come to think of it, you can't go anywhere and not have music blaring--usually music anyone over 30 would hate. There was some psychological study done (there always is), that suggested that loud music causes people to drink more, which is why bars are always blaring loud music. That doesn't work for people like me, and I don't think I'm alone. So, for you entrepreneurs, here's a new get-rich-quick scheme--quiet restaurants.

I remember hating every minute of my wedding reception, even though it was very nicely done. My guests loved it, because we chose to not have loud music blaring. Some of the people invited hadn't seen each other in years. They didn't want to shout over some obnoxious band or DJ. If I ever had to plan such an occasion again, that is something I would not change.

I realize I'm far more sensitive to noise than I used to be. Mind you, I've always been a fan of hardcore punk and thrash--you would think that I'd love loud music. But I don't consider that noise. Unless I'm trying to write, in which case, it's a distraction--but it's still not noise. If there was one thing I could say for the family with 8 million kids that moved out this past year--at least their teenage boys were into the Misfits. I could handle that kind of interruption during the day. In general though, I like things quiet, which is why I listen to more ambient music these days, if I listen to anything at all. Or, I watch re-runs of my favorite TV shows; I don't have to pay attention because I've already seen them.

My big problem with music in public places is that I usually like to go out, have a meal, and either read a book or think about my writing. In spite of meditation, it's really hard to think or focus when you have loud music blaring around you. I wouldn't even mind if it was classical music, played softly. Not soft rock--soft rock is an abomination to the human race.

In addition to having my nerves rubbed raw by loud contemporary music, I really hate soft rock and all the sentiment that goes with it. It sounds terrible, but I find myself cringing at words like love, light, healing, angels, etc.--just as I am irritated by men who sing, in the immortal words of Dave Barry, like they are "having their prostate examined by Captain Hook." I'm not moved by the music of "soulful" women either--I have visions of turning a fire hose on them full blast. Whether it be some New Agey light thing or a smarmy love song about how the guy knows he has cheated on her a billion times but now he knows he loves her and it's forever, I can't help but feeling like vomiting in the best case scenario. (Worst case scenario--I want to punch the person until they stop talking or singing). It's like eating massive amounts of raw sugar--it's sickening. If I'm subjected, for example, to a group like Air Supply, or perhaps to Midge Ure's Ultravox, I feel like I need to listen to Minor Threat or DRI stat.

I don't know if I've become a cynical and crabby old lady, or if I'm just good at calling BS when I see it. I don't mind heartfelt emotion, but "heartfelt" is the key word--this isn't heartfelt, it's totally phony. There's something to be said for subtlety.

On a totally different note, in your Cthulhu moment of the day, here are Cthulhu slippers. These are almost as good as Mental Floss' Freudian slippers.

And for the heck of it, because it's my blog--here's a video of a cat ruining someone else's video. Your welcome.

Independence Day Post: Eyes

It's 3:00 in the morning. I'm wondering why I'm awake, but then I realized that I fell asleep around 6:30. Rather lame, I know, but I have been ridiculously exhausted from non-stop writing, keeping up with teaching an online class, and several trips to New York. (Going to New York wears me out, because it's a minimum 3 hours of travel each way, mainly because of train schedules). It is the 4th of July, and I can hear music outside. There has been music outside since yesterday afternoon, all of it crappy. I've had the fans in the house on full blast, just to drown it out.

I checked messages on the phone I never answer. Most new messages were hang-ups, but one was a woman's voice saying: "Yes--no. It's just that he's come to himself." Then she hung up. I'm pleased to hear it. Everyone should come to themselves eventually.

My archetype story collection is now finished, and I will be shopping for a publisher this summer. I'm now working on a different book proposal, but I won't bore you with the details. Needless to say, blogging has fallen behind. It's amazing how difficult ordinary things become when you go on a writing binge. Stuff like, "remember to pick up butter at the store" somehow get forgotten, even when it's written on a piece of paper in front of you. I keep wanting to call various friends, and my sister, but I realize that I am in no condition for normal conversation.

Added to the mix--John Foxx is now doing a UK tour in October. There are 8 dates in the UK, and one festival date in Poland. The cities are: Leamington Spa, Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, York, Liverpool, and 2 London dates. The John Foxx and the Maths page has more info--that, and the Facebook page has the most up to date info with links at the moment. Metamatic should have an update soon as well. In any case--I have been scrounging to find money for tickets, as I am going to all 8 shows. (Not to Poland...I hate festivals, and I don't speak Polish).

I look at myself in the mirror, and notice that my eyes are red, and I haven't even been drinking. It's actually the kind of red that says "Hi, I have allergies, probably to the cat that sleeps under my arm all night."

They say that eyes are the windows to the soul. I find that when I look into someone's eyes, I get some kind of associative picture. For example, when I look into the eyes of Michelle Bachmann, I see this:

Her campaign slogan is "Saying what conservatives have really been thinking." I think that's a fair statement. They all seem like deluded, raging lunatics with no regard for humanity these days. I don't think conservatives were always like that--and maybe all conservatives aren't. But the ones that aren't seem to be invisible.

When I look into the eyes of Glenn Beck, I see this:

Glenn Beck is finally off the air--apparently his deranged rantings are causing Fox News to lose too much money. They wouldn't drop him because of deranged rantings--that's most of their programming. But Glenn sort of "jumped the shark", I guess. At any rate, these two sort of prove that eyes are not just windows to the soul, they are sometimes a view of evil, in the Arthur Machen sense. There's something dreadfully unnatural about both of them.

Speaking of eyes--here are 2 creepy sites--

Chicks With Steve Buscemi Eyes

Muppets With People Eyes

I don't know why these sites are so profoundly disturbing, but it goes to show you how much impact eyes have on your impression of someone.

For an entirely different (and hilarious) kind of disturbing--I bring you a 5-foot metal chicken, courtesy of the Bloggess. (If you are not already aware of this site, add it to your RSS feeds immediately. You can also follow her on Twitter at username TheBloggess).

And--speaking of RSS--I'd better go now and catch up on the 2000+ feeds that must be waiting for me, as I haven't looked at them in a week. Happy Independence Day, for those of you in the United States. Remember that we are supposed to be a democracy, not an oligarchy. So, don't vote Republican in 2012 if you want it to stay that way, and don't stand for the kind of nonsense going on in Congress right now (e.g., no taxes for big corporations or the uber-rich, while at the same time trying to eliminate programs like Medicare). Democracy requires vigilance. And--a touch of socialism. Which has to do with looking out for the welfare of people, not Soviet or Nazi-style communism or fascism.

On the Subject of Compassion

This past Thursday, I heard a lecture given by writer and religious historian Karen Armstrong. It was the first in a series of lectures in honor of Bishop John Shelby Spong, who was also present at the event. I am teaching my religion class right now, and I was hoping that I'd learn something from Karen that I could bring back to my students, especially when we got to the discussion of interfaith dialogue.

I realize that Karen was speaking for a more general audience, but I felt the lecture was a bit too generic. A lot of it was the same discussion of learning mutual respect and having compassion. She mentioned that as part of a TED prize she had won, she was going from city to city and country to country, trying to get them to buy in to a contract of compassion. She said she tended to be cynical about such things, but was really surprised and hopeful at the response.

I say good for Karen for initiating positive steps towards mutual respect among humans. However, I am not sure I agree with her vision of compassion. Karen has a new book out, a sort of 12-step program to becoming compassionate. She went over 3 of the steps in the lecture. She started off rightly enough in my opinion, by stating that compassion is not equal to pity. There is a tendency to believe that these terms are synonymous, and they are not. Compassion accepts and respects other humans as they are; pity "feels sorry for them" because they are not as wonderful as you are. Compassion does not judge.

It was her description of judgment that struck a discordant note with me. She suggests that we make statements and judgments about others in order to feel superior ourselves. In some cases, that might be true. Insecure people tend to take the world personally, and the actions of others are clearly an offense in their mind because of the other person's obvious character flaw. But Karen misses the point of the everyday judgments that people make. When people act in ways that are disturbing or inconsiderate, we often seek to find a reason for it. We don't actually want to believe the other person is just a jerk. We look at other patterns in their behavior relative to others and say, "Suzie forgets to call because she obviously can't control all the stuff she has going on in her life" (for example). If we feel positively towards people, we tend to make excuses for them. If we feel negatively towards them, we may be less forgiving. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. In the end, all of us do things that are annoying to others. I agree with her that you should detach from a tendency to demonize others because of that.

In addition, her ideas about compassion don't address personal boundaries. Perhaps she addresses this in her book, but she didn't in the lecture. Standing at the pulpit chastising people for "turning a blind eye to those who are really crying out" just perpetuates an already vicious circle. For instance--Person A may cry to me about their personal problems. Now, as humans, our first instinct would be to want to help. Person A may be describing real problems, but Person A may also be what you could call a "perpetual victim". They constantly get themselves into bad situations and use high drama to manipulate others into cleaning up for them. Now, maybe you've helped Person A, and you've gotten screwed--you gave an inch, they took a mile. The bottom line is that you don't help Person A by giving them money or other resources. You help Person A by saying, "oh well, best of luck" and letting them figure it out on their own. Person A may possibly need therapy, but that really should not be your concern.

The vicious circle comes in, because when we refuse to help, we feel guilty. To others, we may look cold and heartless. This doesn't only happen with people with fiscal or emotional problems--it may also be someone trying to wedge their way into your private life, when you're really not comfortable having them there. If you tell them to get lost, you look like a mean and heartless person. But you have a right to set boundaries--and you have a right to expect others to respect them. AND--you have a right to expect that others will be accountable for themselves. If someone is disabled, or otherwise unable to do some particular thing, that is a different story. But the examples I can think of involve perfectly healthy and capable individuals.

Perhaps it was because Karen was giving a general lecture to the group that she didn't get into these nuances. But I don't like the generalization that compassion always involves breaking down personal barriers. You may want to be friendly to everyone in a crime-ridden neighborhood, but it doesn't hurt to have your martial arts skills sharpened just in case. There is a very human need for self-preservation.

An article appeared shortly before Karen's lecture on "unconditional love without caring". The phrasing is odd, but the gist of the article is that one should not be attached to outcomes. We let other people become what they need to be, even if that means letting them drop into utter failure. Trying to control outcomes is bad enough in our own lives--it's certainly not appreciated by others if we do it to them, no matter how well intentioned. Sometimes compassion involves reminding someone that they have enough brains to figure something out on their own.

On the whole, I think Karen's message is important, and compassion is something too often missing these days, especially in extreme versions of religion. But in order to be compassionate, we have to understand the limitations and boundaries of ourselves and others. Otherwise, the move towards compassion is an empty one--it is what we're "supposed" to do, but it ends up being done with resentment. The only way to really care is to not care so much. If you are a religious person, you might better understand this as "letting God do the caring about outcomes".

Garden Ganeshas

I was out walking with a friend after breakfast on Sunday. As we walked along a bicycle path, she suddenly pointed to my right. "There's a Ganesha over there!" We walked over to take a look. A path had been created through a small clearing in the trees, and there were actually 2 Ganeshas, a Hanuman, and a couple of broken Devis. Beyond this was a parking lot, and a garden center, which had a whole display of statues--Ganeshas, Devis, Buddhas, and others.

We walked back to the path, and my friend dusted off the two Ganeshas. "This is all very bad luck. They should not put these outside." She went on to tell me about a temple created by a Western couple, that everyone said was amazing. She had been to a program at this temple, which had a Ganesha "installed" by the man's guru, who she said was just an Indian priest. (In case you don't know--it is one thing to have a statue of a deity, it is another thing to "install" it. Installation means "establishing life", and making it a real object for temple worship). She talked about a Swami that she had discussed this with--he said that the temple was tended to, but anyone who visited could do the rituals. He shrugged and said, "well, it's better for them to do that than to hang out in bars." She then went on to discuss groups that allow anyone to chant archanas, which she said would have ill effects. (While I don't entirely agree, I have heard really awful recitations of archana that really destroy the devotional mood). Things have to be done "correctly". I thought this was odd, since she had just been discussing her annoyance with traditions about women and holy rituals and places.

Later, I thought more about what she said, and I realized that I totally disagree with her. I couldn't put my finger on what I found wrong with her argument at first, but then I realized that it was a very Western way of thinking. Deity should not be in Nature--Nature is inferior and impure, and only very special "pure" people are capable of doing the rituals. I understand that this is her tradition--and perhaps taught as regular Hindu doctrine--but it's crap, as far as I'm concerned. I am sure that rituals performed in this atmosphere of reverence and "purity" are very effective. I also understand that those who have given up worldly life often feel pained or weighed down by "worldly" modes of worship. I think of Sri Ramakrishna and his wife, Sarada Devi, who cried out in pain if a devotee touched their feet. They were not living a "human" life, and were acutely aware of the weight of worldly living.

However--to say that a deity image should not be in nature is to relegate nature to an inferior status, and make the god into something "out there", something of which we are unworthy. That is completely contrary to Eastern thought. Everyone is treated with respect because everyone--and everything--is a manifestation of the Divine. This is monism, not monotheism. Not everyone does treat others with respect, but that is because of ignorance--they have forgotten their divine status, and that of others.

With regard to chanting--yes, I realize that the proper intonation of the words creates a certain vibration designed to raise awareness. However--I think of a footnote I read in the "Secret of the Golden Flower". A man overheard a monk chanting his mantra, and decided to chant it as well. However, he was saying it incorrectly, and ended up chanting "I am the latrine". However, the footnote states, "he chanted 'I am the latrine' over and over until he achieved enlightenment." Just because it is not the traditional way doesn't mean it can't work or doesn't work. Similarly, Amma has said that a mother does not reject a child's offering of a drawing because it's not a technical artistic masterpiece.

Ritual is psychological, and to believe that it "must" be done a certain way is to be attached to the ritual rather than its effect. It probably has the maximum psychological effect if one does it exactly as tradition records it, but it isn't necessary. Notions of purity and sanctity, while they have value, can also end up being alienating. The goal is to unite, not to separate. If someone is shooed away from practice because it's not "traditional" enough and therefore "bad luck", you will have created the "bad luck" by creating a separation from the "divine".

We also tend to forget that rituals are man-made, no matter how well-crafted or inspired. While they point towards something beyond the material, they are still nothing more than the material. All religions agree that on some fundamental level there is only Void--there is a No-Thingness, a state that cannot be described or comprehended through images. Out of that Void worlds are created, but they are illusory because they are temporal. The rituals, writings, experiences, and beliefs that anyone may have and subscribe to are going to be as individual as their own creation of the world via their perceptions. At a time when there was one community shaman, and the community acted as a unit, it may have been appropriate to say that there was only one way to do things. In the modern world--which focuses on the individual development towards unity rather than everyone acting as a unit--there are as many ways to do things as there are people. And if "God" isn't everywhere--especially if you are a Hindu or Buddhist--then "God" is nowhere at all.

For Example, Miscellaneous

(Post title stolen from a Dilbert cartoon).

A quick announcement--another of my archetype stories, "Umbra", will be appearing in Death Head Grin magazine, September issue. Details to follow when I have them.

Last night was once again a night full of strange dreams. Unwanted weddings (not mine), perverted priests, and strange dramas played out by people I was close to years ago. Also appearing in last night's dream was Amma, my guru. I have not dreamed of her in a long time--probably not in years. They say that a dream of Amma means she is thinking of you. After considering all the dream content, I think Amma is somehow aware of my pressure-cooker status. I have a lot to accomplish, I feel I don't have much time in which to accomplish it--and there are still many roadblocks. I'm not notorious for having a lot of patience with roadblocks--once I'm revved up and get going, I don't have any brakes--it's go, go, go at 100 miles per hour. Braking requires an emergency brake, and I don't like that. It makes me cranky, to say the least. And I think the guru has appeared to say, "Hey, chill out. It's all good, you'll get to where you're going."

Today is Father's Day, and my father's birthday was this past week as well. He is 80 years old this year, which seems really strange. He was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, which my grandmother also had. (Really hoping I inherited my Mom's genetics on this one). On Saturday he helped me fix the fence in my yard, and he was in pretty good shape. My mother usually comes along to "supervise", but she wasn't there today. I noted that he finished the job without supervision, and he grunted. "Your mother has all these projects for me at home. I told her she was a very ambitious person."

I had a lot more that I wanted to do this weekend, but I went shopping instead. Not the smartest thing, given that I'm not flush right now with cash, and I really want to save money. Of course, every bit of extra money I've made in the last 2 months has had to go elsewhere--to a sick cat, and now to a sick car. And there are some things I desperately need, so I might as well quit penny-pinching. That extra bit of money is not going to sort everything out.

I can't complain, though--Friday and Saturday were two days of amazing synchronicity. I'd recently written some articles that I asked a friend to review for clarity. I know he's busy, so I didn't want to rush him. On Friday I thought, hmm, it would be nice to revise those articles, but I have to wait. Then, I opened my e-mail, and there were the comments. Similarly--I was wondering what John Foxx was up to for the rest of the year, as I would like to make some travel and financial plans for the rest of the year. On Saturday, I had a call with someone out of the blue who answered those questions. And--even better--what I was told coincided perfectly with what I'd already decided on. (No, I can't say anything--what I've been told hasn't been officially announced or confirmed. Sorry about that. All I can say is what Steve Malins said already--some exciting announcements coming soon.)

I've received several communications in the last couple of weeks, and a few of them said, "Hope your well." I was puzzled, because I don't have a well. I have city water (city being a relative term out here). My neighbor has a well, but it's purely for decoration. I also don't know why anyone would "hope" my well--maybe they mean "wish", in which case, see the sentence before the last one. For anyone else, I recommend this blurb from the Oatmeal.

Speaking of recommendations, here is a short film take on H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" by Cthulhu Films. Thanks to Grim Reviews for posting:




OK, it's been a long weekend, and I'm going to bed. If you're lonely, here's a friend for you, courtesy of the Found Footage Festival.

Semi-Disturbed

I'm short on cash these days, but I still decided to hit one of my favorite restaurants for lunch after a long drive to New Jersey's illustrious capital, Trenton, to drop off some items at their huge Goodwill center. (OK, it's technically in Ewing, but that's really a Trenton neighborhood. This part sure looks like it, too).

I'm acquainted with a couple of the waiters and waitresses there. If you recall my blog posting from a couple of years ago, The Guide to Brigid for the Romantically Perplexed, I mentioned a waiter who referred to me as a "character". This is the same guy. Who is something of a character himself. On this particular day, he wasn't waiting on my table, but he dropped by with his iPhone. He showed me a picture he'd taken on the Main Street of a pile of garbage bags with a sign on top that said, "free cats". He prefaced showing me this photo by saying, "Here, you're semi-disturbed, you'll like this." My waitress then popped over and said, "yeah, he showed me that too. But I happen to love cats." "Yeah, me too," I said. "I have three of them. But it's still pretty funny."

I think my status there has moved from "a character" to "semi-disturbed" because of another visit, when I was reading D.P. Walker's "Spiritual and Demonic Magic" while having lunch. Which is an academic treatise that attempts to create a theoretical construct of magical philosophy as described in the writings of famous alchemists and occultists from the time of the Orphic hymns and Chaldean Oracle through the Reformation. In other words--not a book of magic, even though I've read lots of those too. Of course, explaining that when asked goes nowhere--it's like sitting there with Playboy and saying you're just looking at an interesting article. Even if it's true, no one believes it.

People have always treated an interest in the occult as a sign of deviance, something to be suspicious of. I recall all of those videos and TV programs that were on when I was in high school, that saw "Satan" everywhere, and urged parents to intervene with their children if they were even reading about the subject. I read Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's great history of Western Esotericism (The Western Esoteric Traditions), and one of the first things he mentions in the introduction is the fact that "occult" subjects are rarely treated in academia, except in sociological studies of deviance. (And, as a friend of mine noted--when discussing the practices of primitive cultures). Originally, "magic" had to do with shamanism, and the shaman is someone who stands between "this" world and the "other" world. They are both feared and reverenced because they have seen the Numinous and lived to tell about it. In our modern society, which dismisses the idea of the "other" world, such a person is "crazy" and "irrational". Modern "religious" people associate occultism with the "devil" and with "black magic", and that means everything and anything related to it--crystals, Tarot cards, etc. They all forget that much of our modern science, especially chemistry, medicine, and psychology, were developed by alchemists and other magicians.

I've been reading about the occult and about comparative religion since I was in the first grade. They may have been simple books in the school library, but I was always looking to get more at the public library. I could always be found in the 133.4 section (or, in some cases, 398.2. They're Dewey numbers. Look 'em up). As an adult, this has blossomed into an interest in depth psychology--the actual shamanic bridge between our material world and the "other". Magic ought to be explored, because its rich symbolism tells us much about ourselves.

My current read is a collection of Dirk Mosig's writings on H.P. Lovecraft. Mosig is a psychologist, and his psychological (and particularly Jungian) take on Lovecraft is interesting to me. He points out, as other critics do, that Lovecraft was a materialist, and would have scoffed at the occult in the same way he scoffed at religion--and at science, when it came down to it. Both religion and science act as though they can control the vast, indifferent forces of the Universe, which can't really be done. We are like ants marching in front of humans--we could be squashed or not, and there's no reason except that we've gotten in the way. In spite of August Derleth's Catholic pleading, the "Cthulhu Mythos" stories (which Mosig said should be called the Yog-Sothoth cycle instead) are not a battle between good "Elder Gods" and evil "Old Ones". The monsters confronted are nothing less than one's own archetypal Shadow, and the terrifying realization in Lovecraft's stories is that we are nothing but a speck in a vast cosmos, and our lives are meaningless. Lovecraft would have seen occultism as another way to "find" meaning where there isn't any. I tend to look at it differently--I don't think life has any meaning, but that makes it a game--it's happening just for fun. It's a puzzle that's been split into a thousand pieces, and you have to put it back together again. And--the puzzle is incredibly complex. Doing puzzles is merely entertaining and not meaningful. But that's really what we're doing. It's a long and colorful journey, sometimes wonderful, sometimes tragic, back to nothing. Which doesn't have to be terrifying. We enjoy playing the game, but eventual annihilation into Nothingness means we don't have to deal with the suffering that goes with the game.

In any case, I'm glad to read more and more criticism refuting Derleth's view. I didn't know the background for years, and when I read Lovecraft stories vis-a-vis the Lovecraft knockoff stories, I found the latter very dissatisfying, while I can read the former over and over again. Mosig notes that the "knockoffs" have completely missed the point, accepting Derleth's "good vs. evil" view of the pseudomythos. And it shows.

So, now I will take my semi-disturbed self, and begin my evil, sinister day by making some tea and an English muffin, and putting some laundry into the washing machine, then washing my floors. Then I will make my bed, wash dishes, go for a walk, and then back to some reading. Oh, the scandalous and shocking life of a deviant...

From the Sky

Last night, I dreamt about two strange things. Both were at receptions or parties of some sort. In the first episode, I was talking to one of my colleagues where I teach. She asked if I was all right, because I looked like I was burning up with fever. The second part of the dream, I was with a group of magicians. They were talking about someone who had "retired" from the group. Someone had called them to see how they were, and the sense was that they were fine, but they were not going to come by any time soon. Someone asked the person who made the call if they would be able to speak to this person. "Possibly," was the answer. "But it's not a question of how he's doing; it's a question of whether or not the group can let go of him."

Earlier this week, I finally received an article I'd requested on interlibrary loan. It was a sort of "psychoanalysis for the dinner table", written in Vanity Fair in 1915, by none other than Aleister Crowley. It's written in his typically bombastic style, which probably would have been amusing to that magazine's readership. Though he can't help but to inject language from Liber Legis ("every man and woman is a Star", etc.) into the article, and I wonder if that audience would have found it to be anything but an eccentricity. In any case--Crowley talks about Freud and Jung, and about dream analysis. He declares that he kept track of his dreams for a month, and in that time, only two dreams seemed to have any significance outside of everyday events. His dreams could be tracked to something he read before going to sleep, a particularly intense chess match with a friend, or a conversation he might have had the day before.

The dream I mention above would fall into that category. I had a long phone conversation last night with a friend who I don't get to talk to very often, since he moved a couple thousand miles away. We were discussing things that later appeared in my dream--in particular, magical societies and famous long-running members. Probably not coincidentally, the colleague in the first part of my dream is one of the few people I know where I work who has made some kind of formal academic study into the areas I'm currently writing about. In short--this is a dream of the personal unconscious rather than the collective. But they can be just as instructive.

In a broader context--I now have an association with interlibrary loans and black holes. I'm used to book or article requests taking 2 or 3 days; the standard now seems to be 2 or 3 weeks, even if it's only being sent from one campus to another of the same school where I work during the day. Perhaps many people are on vacation, but there should also be far fewer requests in the summertime. No one seems to know where these items go for 2 or 3 weeks; hence, I think of them as falling "into a black hole", though they eventually come out intact on the other side. Maybe they know of my interest in drinking good wine, and assume I like everything "vintage", so they hold my requests for aging. Which is thoughtful, but books don't taste as good as wine, though a really old book will have a wonderful "bouquet" (aroma). Like wine, this is probably due to some kind of growth (fungal or bacterial) in the thing itself. In fact, it has been posited that reading old books can be like taking drugs, due to inhaling the fungi that tend to grow in the pages.

But returning to black holes. I have discussed the Kabbalistic "Tree of Life" before, with its 10 sephiroth. An 11th sephiroth has been posited underneath Binah and Chokmah, and above Geburah and Chesed. This "invisible" sephiroth is known as "Da'ath", and refers to the Abyss that one crosses in the journey from the temporal to the eternal. (Mr. Crowley comes in once again here, as the positing of Da'ath is attributed to him, but I'm pretty sure the idea pre-dates him. He may have been the one who popularized its use in magical philosophy).

(Click on the image to make it bigger).

If I may oversimplify for a moment--one might think of the bottom half of the tree as "Earth", and the upper part as "the Heavens", using that term very broadly. The tree is light at the top and dense at the bottom (really, it hangs upside down), and the lighter part is the realm of "spirit". The Abyss is located in the realm of Spirit, not on the "material" side of things, as you might expect. Metaphorically speaking--to cross the Abyss and not fall in would require one to be light on ego baggage. So, someone on a spiritual journey would have to do a lot of work on themselves and their weak areas before attempting this psychological leap. In a cosmological metaphor--it is the black hole in the middle of the heavens. I cannot help but think of Joseph Campbell and his functions of mythology--one function is to provide a reasonable cosmology or understanding of the universe. Interestingly--it is now known that at the center of our "heavenly" galaxy (and indeed, many, if not all, galaxies) there is a black hole. (This doesn't scientifically prove anything about anything, but it's an interesting thing to observe).

Another book I am finishing right now is Jake Stratton-Kent's "Geosophia", volume 1. It is about the history of Goetia, and it is incredibly well-researched and thorough in its treatment. He uncovers the origins of Greek mythologies, tracing their characters back to their various forms in different parts of Asia Minor. One of the things he addresses is the transference of the afterlife/underworld to the sky. He attributes the origin of this transfer to Heraclides of Pontus, writing around the 4th century BCE. Previously the dead were thought to travel through underground caves to the underworld, regardless of what kind of life they led. What is important is the changing roles of deities and spirits when the underworld was moved to the sky. "The resultant upheavals indifferently made objects of devotion into demons and restored lustre to those formerly despised". (p. 177) Eventually this would lead to the Platonic idea that separated the deity from the material universe. And thus--as Stratton-Kent notes--"This separation, which monotheistic theology occasionally considers its crowning accomplishment, is from another point of view one of the world's greatest doctrinal disasters." (p. 177)

Or, to put it another way--in Carl Jung's writing on Paracelsus--“The Church might exorcise demons and banish them, but that only alienated man from his own nature, which, unconscious of itself, had clothed itself in these spectral forms.” It is responsible for the psychological split that all of us experience--between "science" and "religion", between "good" and "evil", between "God" and the "Devil".

Of final interest--Jung also talks about the Axis Mundi, which translates to "the center of the world", and is a mythological metaphor for the place where the sacred and the profane intersect. He describes the center as "an infinite Abyss of mysteries." Da'ath has to do with dispersion, being scattered. And, (still Jung talking), "distillation begins at the center".

In short--what tears us apart is what we also need to put us back together.

Chaos, Anyone?

I've come to realize what my problem is with Jesus. I hear a lot about embracing Jesus and "being saved". As though suddenly opening a Bible or looking at an image of Jesus will cause my heart to overflow and explode. In fact, I can liken people who ask me to embrace Jesus to friends who say, "I know this really great, perfect guy--and he'd be perfect for you!" Then I meet the guy in question to be nice, and feel seriously underwhelmed. I mean, he might be a nice person, might do something interesting, might even be good-looking by some collective aesthetic standard. But I'm not feeling it. So--I think, "yeah, nice guy, wouldn't mind a chat over some coffee, but otherwise...nah."

What typically happens when I say "thanks no thanks" is a backward shift in tactic. The tone becomes ominous. "You HAVE to embrace Jesus, or you'll burn for all eternity." Now just a second. Here's this nice perfect guy, suddenly he's serial killer material. As in, "Love me bitch, or I'll kill you." Call me crazy if you wish, but this makes me just a tad uneasy. I'd get a restraining order, and move to an island under an assumed name if I encountered a person like that. That isn't what Jesus is supposed to symbolize. But that's what evangelists end up making him symbolize. Symbols change over time--they may still retain their original meaning for some, but this kind of repeated barrage of Jesus LOVES you/Jesus is going to PUNISH you ends up sounding like a form of torture porn, not liberation from suffering. Perhaps Christian missionaries and evangelists will want to ponder this.

On another note, I found an interesting blog by Hyperritual, who posted this Magical Probability Calculator (with thanks to Weiser Books for posting).The formulas come from Liber Kaos, written by Peter Carroll, one of the originators of the idea of Chaos Magic. While I understand the principles behind Chaos Magic, there is a superficial irony in the notion of putting together "chaos" with things like mathematical probability. We acknowledge the overriding condition of Chaos, and deal with it by using order and rationality.

If there is one activity that I think all humans engage in, regardless of education, culture, class, race, economic status, or religion, it's attempting to find order in chaos. Chaos is thought of as what we call "God", though it is more specifically like the idea of Tao, or the No-Thingness of reality in Hinduism and Buddhism. (More like the Eastern idea of God than the Western one). There is no rationality, because the Source is beyond anything like "mind", or anything that our egos can relate to. Hindu Satgurus, like the one I've received a mantra from, are fond of what Hindus call "leela"--the deliberate and senseless screwing up of something, with the intention of making you abandon your delusions of control, expectation, and outcome. "Leela" literally means "play", and was often attributed to Krishna when he played tricks on the Gopis, stole butter, and other such things. The word "play" is intentional here, because we tend to take ourselves, our goals, and our beliefs much too seriously.

Naturally, this will make some of you think of the Principia Discordia, the gospel of Eris (goddess of Chaos). It's a very funny read, and it's been described as "religion pretending to be a joke, or a joke pretending to be a religion". Some people have posited that this was written by Robert Anton Wilson, but the authorship is really anonymous. The basic idea that Principia lays out, in appropriately archane language, is that humans suffer the "curse of Greyface". They believe everything is somber and serious and have destroyed the joy of living. So, the Discordians fight back against "Greyface" by being ridiculously silly. Anyone who joins the "religion" is automatically declared a Pope.

This brings me back to a question posted by Weiser Books on their Twitter feed this week (paraphrased by me)--can one live a life according to "Chaos Magic", or is it just something theoretical, an abstract exercise? Can we really embrace "chaos" as a way of living in our societies? Our minds want sense and order--we want to classify, label, measure, and reason. Scientific method is based on causality (even though David Hume proved that causality is philosophically flawed). Cause and effect. We assume it, and scratch our heads when things fall outside of our sphere of understanding.In Eastern meditation, the Vedantics, who have no image of God at all, still meditate on something like a candle flame. The mind needs to focus on something. It's an incredibly rare occurrence if someone can do so and still live a normal life in the world. I would suggest that such a person has gone beyond being human. Even the originators of Chaos Magic themselves suggest using religion and its symbols "pragmatically".

In the end, it goes back to the idea of Surrender. (Which, by the way, is the meaning of the word "Islam"). We spend our lives making careers, families, setting goals. But it's all temporal, and has no value or meaning at the Eternal level. When the Adept crosses the Abyss, there is no ego left--the weight of the ego is systematically shed on the spiritual path. The same is true of the great saints of Catholicism--reading John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila shows you this burning away, and the Void that is created. This is the meaning of the Goddess Kali--her destruction involves stripping away all of one's delusions about reality until there's nothing left but naked Consciousness. To survive such a thing requires no attachments, just a willingness to accept everything as it comes without judging it against your ego's ethics and standards. Needless to say, this is incredibly difficult--and more difficult to switch back and forth between this state and the state of "living in the world".

In a little piece in the Principia Discordia called "Starbuck's Pebbles", we read: "The real reality is there, but everything you KNOW about "it" is in your mind and yours to do with as you like. Conceptualization is art, and YOU ARE THE ARTIST. Convictions cause convicts." (We are also helpfully told, "Never write in pencil unless you are on a train or sick in bed".)

Austin Osman Spare, anyone?

Sacrifice

I subscribe to the Religion News Blog, which should be no surprise to anyone. As I scan the headlines, I see a lot about court cases and murder charges. Parents who starve their children as some kind of penance. People drowned as a result of some bizarre exorcism ritual. Most recently--a mother who burned her daughter as part of a voodoo ritual.

I think about this kind of thing in the context of folkloric "satanic" rituals, in which you get groups of people killing animals, or occasionally you will find a human being supposedly killed for such reasons. Like Lovecraft's "Necronomicon", there are a lot of people who believe that this is "real" magic. (In case you don't know--the Necronomicon is a fictional invention, but many people think it is a real occult grimoire).

This idea is a very old one in religion--bloody sacrifice is all over the Old Testament, and all religions have had some version of this in their distant past. In modern times it is often associated with black magic. The attribution, if not faulty, is unnecessary. A.E. Waite traces the idea of a "sacrificial victim" in black magic to a simple functional need--blood was not required for the ceremonies. Pacts required a written document, and it wasn't that easy to procure the right writing implements. So--the magician often had to slaughter his own lamb and tan the skin for this purpose. In modern times, assuming one would want to do such a ritual, the magician certainly has fine parchment and vellum at his or her disposal without going through that trouble.

Outside of the idea of "pacts", there are also old "natural" magic rituals that may call for the blood of an animal, or maybe even of the person. However, for those practicing today, there are obvious substitutions. Just as various herbs and essences can be substituted in incenses and oils for various purposes, those ingredients obviously can be dispensed with as well.

Blood is associated with life, and hence with one's "manna", or power. This at least is part of the psychology of its use. On the other hand--I've heard Swamis who refer to blood offerings (in this case to Kali) as being "impure". Blood is associated with the temporal body rather than the eternal soul. Hence, one should not offer blood, but true devotion.

For all this, you still hear about bloody sacrifice. It's probably not as prevalent as you would think; like many things, the media will tend to focus on the shocking, and treat it like it's the norm. Sacrifice is probably most prevalent today in traditions like Santeria (a sort of Catholic voodoo), in some tribal religions, and in small villages in Asia. Kali worshippers in rural parts of India are said to occasionally perform sacrifice--sometimes you even hear of a Tantric priest sacrificing a child. Amma has said that such practices are based on a misunderstanding of Kali. She is not a violent force to be appeased--she is the root of Consciousness, and as such, is very intense.

Intensity may be the key regarding such practices today. We live in fear of the Numinous, and we feel it has to be approached in grave ways. This is why you will not only see the idea of bloody sacrifice, but the need for very expensive tools in magical practices (e.g., sigils made of solid gold). Someone asked Lon Milo DuQuette about that very thing at his lecture on Goetia. Lon's response to the idea of gold sigils for demons was, "they're lucky if they get cardboard". The reality is that none of these things are necessary. It says more about the insecurity (and perhaps the inexperience) of the magician in question. Which goes back to something else said by Lon--in order to practice Goetia, "one must be a Solomon". Which means you have to be in control of yourself and willing to face the unknown with confidence. Often there isn't perfect confidence, so one needs a lot of fancy trappings to make oneself feel "like a Solomon".

Magic of any type is psychological, and as you know, that doesn't reduce or minimize it. It is highly symbolic, and all that matters is that you are able to connect with the symbols you are using. I remember a witch telling me once that you could do a Wiccan ritual with a feather, a match, a coin, and a drop of water (for each of the elements). When you examine the universe, it becomes more and more granular, until you realize there's not much to it that's "real" at all. When we take ourselves and rituals too seriously, it is because we are completely taken in by the illusions around us. One of the most fascinating things about psychology is how something can exist independently of you, but also be "just in your head" at the same time.

As humans we like illusions. We tell stories. The whole drama of our existence is based on stories. The scarier things sound, the more expensive things are, the more authentic they must be--they must be "better" or more "real". It's amazing how much time and energy we waste on that kind of absurdity. Often the only real thing is fear is such cases. But all of us are affected by it unconsciously.

A final thought--most of the Adepts that I have met over the years are people who didn't (or don't) take themselves too seriously. Being around them is like being around the Satguru--they radiate a joy and peace that comes from understanding in a real way (not just intellectually) that Life is a drama, and should not be approached in such a grave manner. And of course, the more ego baggage we lose on the journey, the more we find that rituals are at some point unnecessary for us. This is true of religion as well. Amma has said that rituals and deities and images are "ladders that we climb to reach our destination"--but they are not the destination. That said--the mind does work in images, so images will always be with us.

Cat With Thumbs

A couple of my Facebook friends posted this British TV commercial. It's for a brand of milk, and it speculates on the idea of cats with thumbs:



This is Janis Joplin. She is a cat I inherited when I moved into this house. She actually has thumbs:




As the owner of a polydactyl (i.e., thumbed) cat, I can tell you that she does not open doors, read books, or file her nails. However, I have entered my basement (where she lives) and found mouse intestines strewn in front of the furnace. The other day I found a cave cricket near her bed, with the head ripped off. I treat this cat like an elemental--she can be sweet and loving, but I always have a wary eye on her darker proclivities.

This, by the way, is a cave cricket:

I probably have several of them in my basement, but aside from the headless one, I've only seen two others. They hang out in the basement stairwell. I call them Fred and Ethel. I have no idea about the sex of either of them--I didn't check. And my policy on cave crickets is I don't mind them being around, as long as they don't jump on me or end up on my clothes or in my hair.

Besides thumbed cats and striped crickets, I encountered another mismatch yesterday evening. I have been writing an article on H.P. Lovecraft, and I came across a couple of articles about the Cthulhu mythos. They suggested that Cthulhu and the Old Ones were not deities at all, but aliens, and that humanity was an accident. Lovecraft was no occultist; he was more of an existentialist than anything. His stories suggested the power and indifference of the cosmos, and how insignificant we are in the whole scheme.

I noticed that the author of two of these articles was Robert M. Price. My interest was piqued when I saw that he went to the same theological seminary where I got my graduate degree. As it turns out, this is the same "Bob Price" that served as minister when my now ex-husband and I were married in 1994. I had no idea he'd written about the Cthulhu mythos, and I wasn't sure I'd expected it. On the other hand--this is the same Dr. Price who, when we were writing our wedding service, said, "we'll just delete all that Jesus stuff out of there." Lest I get him in any trouble--he was tailoring the service to my husband and I, and had more "secular" versions of the service. We did not want a religious service.

Life and the people you encounter in life are often surprising. In reflecting on my last blog post, we have very curious ideas about what is "normal", and what pattern people's lives should follow, given what they've identified with. As someone with a Religious Studies Master's degree, people are usually surprised (and perhaps uncomfortable in some cases) with my interest in the occult. Then again, I never went to school to be a minister; people just assume that this is what one does with a Religion degree, or what one aspires to do. I suppose that I was surprised by Bob because he DID become a minister--a Baptist minister, at that. But, I don't think it's "weird"--in fact, I applaud his openness, which could only benefit his congregation.

I've been labeled "weird" by people before, and not just for my esoteric interests. I had a friend once who was very attached to me, but whenever we went out with her friends, she always introduced me as her "weird friend". I never really understood why I was considered "weird". Then I considered that her life revolved around hanging out in bars, discussing stock portfolios, and moaning that she was too stressed because her husband didn't shower her with affection daily and she wasn't appreciated enough at her job. One day I said to her, "maybe you're unhappy because you have no passion. Your life revolves around your husband and your job. Your job sucks, and your husband is a busy executive. Maybe you need to find what really interests you." She looked at me like I had three heads, and then intoned, like a mantra, "I don't know why I'm so depressed."

When I think about myself, the places where I don't intersect with the "norm" are--not being married, not wanting children, not waiting for Prince Charming to sweep me off my feet, taking responsibility for my mistakes and problems, and accepting the negatives in life as much as the positives. Oh, and not basing my life and career on how much money I can make. If I've read the literature correctly, this comes out to being at least reasonably "psychologically healthy". Which, by some social standard, makes me "weird".

Of course, they say that one in twenty-five people are sociopaths, and one in one-hundred are psychopaths. Which would make psychological disease the norm.

I often reflect on this when I think I've chosen a risky life path. Given the norm, I'd rather be a cat with thumbs.

The Surprise

Saturday afternoon--I'm in my bedroom, at my re-claimed office desk. The sky is blue, the ground outside is decidedly green, and a beautiful breeze blows through my window. My indoor cat is snoring away on my bed, and I can see one of my outdoor kitties from the far window asleep on a patio chair, curled up in a ball that is white spotted with gray. It is a sleepy afternoon, with the hum of lawnmowers, and the singing of birds. I sit cross-legged in an old 18th century chair with a glass of claret, newly awake from a nap. On weekends, most of my chores and cleaning are done early--I'm usually finished with all domestic tasks by noon at the latest. Today, I have two more big tasks for the afternoon. I contemplate blowing off everything and just heading out to one of the local microbreweries for some exceptional beer and maybe food. But I am short on money and not in need of extra pounds, so the adult in me decides to stay put.

An early morning e-mail check always takes me to Yahoo's home page, that bastion of "normalcy", where a bevy of unrelated articles always rotate across the screen. Today, there was an article about racecar driver Danica Patrick. The question was whether or not she was planning to have a family with her husband. In typical Yahoo fashion, the headline said, "the answer might surprise you." Of course, her answer was no. She's married, but has a career and other interests, and doesn't feel a pull to motherhood. Surprise!

As is often the case with Yahoo articles, that "surprise" phrase managed to irk me. Maybe because I've been asked the same question a thousand times before--not so much since I've been divorced, but an awful lot when I was married. And it's an annoying question in this day and age. Instead, if she announced she wanted a family, the question ought to be, "are you sure that's what you want?"

I probably shouldn't blame Yahoo or anyone else. After all, motherhood is the central mythological female theme. The mystery of Woman is that she can manifest life. There is a Mother archetype--and a Terrible Mother archetype. There are hosts of goddesses that represent different aspects of women as mothers, and as family nurturers. Even Amma will always say that one should embrace their inner Motherhood--men included. (In that case, she is not being literal--she is saying to develop the associated qualities of compassion and nurturing).
The Virgin, Maiden, and Crone as archetypes of a woman's life cycle all center around the woman's ability to bear children. Joseph Campbell once said that girls become women when they experience menstruation, meaning that they are finally able to have children. And thus their myth begins.

But does it?

Biologically, the woman as potential mother is a fact. Our myths are as hardwired as other genetic features, and just as animals know when to engage in certain behavior to reproduce, the human female also changes when she finally "grows up" via drowning in a sea of aggressive hormones. A sea, by the way, she is told to stay out of when it happens to her in adolescence. But when she is an adult, it is expected of her.

But consider the following--there are men who love men, and women who love women. They are not driven to reproduce, not in the ordinary sense. They may choose to have families, but that's usually through adoption, artificial insemination, or surrogate motherhood with a third-party female. There are also women like myself, and apparently, Danica Patrick--we have no urge to have children. And that's not likely to change.

I don't like children. I'll say it plainly here, whether that's considered "right" or not. While I am happy for friends, family and acquaintances who have children and want them, in no way do I want to hold said baby, or babysit, or have anything to with them or their care. When I see a baby, I see an ugly, pruny thing that spits up, craps radioactive waste, and cannot be reasoned with when it starts screaming its head off. It is basically a giant producer of disgusting things, and it is excessively high maintenance. It will learn to manipulate its parents much earlier than anyone would imagine. I don't mind kids once they've become more sentient and can carry on a conversation. But I still don't want one.

I know I'm not alone in this. The saddest part is when I have female friends who get married and have families, and realize they feel the same way. I had a college friend who married early and had a baby with her husband at 23. She continually referred to the baby as "it"--as in, "I can hardly wait to get away from it."

To me, there is no joy in trading a life of freedom for life with a child. I like traveling, researching, making new friends, going on adventures. You can't do that with a child. Motherhood is a huge sacrifice, and as far as I'm concerned, you have to want it. When you don't, and you do it because you're "supposed" to, trouble ensues--for you, and for the child. I don't want to bear that kind of psychological responsibility for someone else's existence.

So, back to my original question--can woman be defined and identified by her biological abilities? Is this her archetypical "journey" and "hero cycle"? I don't believe it is. We've been handed that line of garbage since time immemorial, and it is one of those Collective Unconscious things that gives us complexes. While I have no urge or desire to have kids, there is always that subtle external influence--those voices that say, "What do you mean you don't want children?" The same ones that are puzzled when I say I've never been happier since I've been divorced. Things are "not supposed to happen" that way, and you become another abnormality, a social deviant.

But my point is that I don't think it's "deviant" at all--I think most women, given the chance, would skip on the whole marriage and motherhood thing. Some love it to death and are content with that life, so good for them. They will continue to propagate the species. But many never should have gone there, never really wanted to go there. In the end, they walk away from their married lives, and in a lot of cases, the children end up feeling abandoned, at fault, or unloved, even if those feelings are not consciously obvious. For instance--most friends of mine who are children of divorce are quite content with their parents' decision--until that parent decides to re-marry or pick up with someone else. The resentment that comes out, regardless of age, is an interesting phenomenon. The women who do stay often profess to being unhappy--there is a constant feeling of needing to escape, and constant guilt about feeling that way.

And--just to reiterate--I realize some people have made this choice and are very happy with it. And that's great--I'm glad it really does work out for some people, and that their kids are well-loved. But that will never be me, even if I decided to re-marry at some point.

So--this is why I say, ask "are you sure?" before embarking on motherhood. Don't ask me when I'm going to have kids. And don't assume wanting kids is normal female "thing". Above all--don't pressure women who want to build their own lives to embark on such a thing because it's "what women are supposed to do." It's not.

Source

Well, Saturday was a lovely day for a Rapture, and it didn't happen. Not that this surprised anyone, except perhaps for Harold Camping and his followers. If the Bible does contain any secret prophetic information, we can say one thing for certain: Camping is no Qabalist.

David Rankine (who, along with his wife Sorita D'Este, have written some of the best works on magic, grimoires, and esoterica for both a general and scholarly audience) published a quote today on his Twitter feed: “There was no Bible in any meaningful sense until after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE." He cites "Ulrich", by which he presumably means Eugene Ulrich, chair of Hebrew Scripture and Theology at Notre Dame. (Ulrich wrote some rather definitive texts for Oxford University Press, among his other scholarship).

It's a very important statement, one that provides a real context for Biblical scripture. One piece of the puzzle that helps you put books like the Revelation of John in its proper place. The destruction of the Temple in 70 CE spawned a lot of apocalyptic literature and prophecy. After all, Jesus had predicted the fall of the Temple, so that gave his followers hope that the rest of his predictions were true. Of course, no other predictions did come true. And thus--the early Church began what Harold Camping's group had to begin on Sunday--routinization of charisma. A re-interpretation rather than a rejection. No one will reject something they have staked their life on.

However, even understanding this facet of human nature, it's important that good scholarship is not rejected. Most people don't know what good scholarship is, and if they haven't learned how to do real research, they probably never will. People think research is just for academic papers, but that isn't the case. If someone tells you something that could potentially change your life forever, you want to be reasonably sure that their statement is valid. For instance--in the political realm, I hear a lot about the horrible things Obama is going to do--make us all spend thousands to get "greener" homes or we can't sell them, install tracking devices in our cars, send kids to re-education camps, and--the best of all--that he was paying Hamas to come into the country. All of these are patently false. All one has to do is go to fact checking sites. Snopes is one, Factcheck.org is another, PolitFact is another. These sites have no political agenda. They find the source of the rumors, and discuss them. If it has to do with a Congressional bill, they'll post the relevant parts of the bill.

"Source" is the important word here. In the case of the Bible, I'm more likely to accept a Scriptural interpretation from someone who actually knows the language of the Bible (and that person would probably be Jewish, or a scholar in Greek or Aramaic). Hebrew is a difficult language, and often times words or letters can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The Bible is also full of puns and word-plays-- common literary devices in Hebrew writing, likely to befuddle the Biblical literalist reading the Old Testament. If the interpreting theologian is not an expert in the language, then I at least want to see that they've consulted the language experts. Often you don't have to be the expert--you just have to know who the experts are.

Historical and social context are also important. One of the best writers I've encountered in this area is Dr. Elaine Pagels of Princeton University. She's written many books, very accessible, and is mainly known for her research on the Gnostic gospels and apocryphal texts. (Here is an excellent talk she gave on the Book of Revelation) Her work is important because it provides context. The so-called "Gnostic" gospels (some of them were, some weren't, by definition) allow us to get a bigger picture of early Christianity, not just the "official" version decided in 325 CE. The gospel writers were called "evangelists", and this is not just an honorary title--the 4 canonical gospels were written for specific audiences. This is why, for instance, the Jews are portrayed as being "more responsible" for Jesus' death in one gospel, and why the Romans are more guilty in another. One was written to evangelize Jews, another to evangelize Gentiles--probably Romans who didn't like Jews, in the former case. If you're trying to sell something, you're going to look for common ground with your potential buyer.

Authorship is something else to be considered. For all the names attributed to Biblical books, we know nothing about who really wrote them. Recently, a scholar from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Bart D. Ehrman, who has the title "James Gray Distinguished Professor", and is a magna cum laude Princeton graduate) wrote a book called "Forged", alleging that the many of the New Testament books were faked. When he says "faked", he means simply that they were attributed to a particular writer, when in fact they are probably not written by that writer. For instance--Paul's second letter to Timothy was not likely to have been written by Paul. For all the controversy this has generated, it's not really that controversial. One can study writing styles and samples, and determine if they were written by the same person. Ehrman says that in the early days of the Church, when it was still trying to define itself and its doctrine, lesser-known writers would make their views heard by signing the names of more well-known writers. They didn't quote the experts, they pretended to be the experts. Writing as one of Jesus' apostles, or saying you knew one of them, probably helped your case, too. People considered the source at that time as well.

Those who object to "liberal arts" Bible scholarship are the same ones who object to their children learning about other religions--they want to preserve their version of the narrative, which has more to do with them than with the Bible. It's like a mirror onto which the believer projects his or her image of the Unknown. If we believe they've found the "light", we try to ignore the shadow behind it. That is the most important thing to remember--regardless of interpretation, it's always about what we'll never really "know".

The Electric Thread

A couple of random events in the last few days have me thinking about electricity.

First--I was watching some Ghost Hunters reruns, and one of the episodes I revisited was the "Edgerly Home" episode. Mr. Edgerly was the gentleman who felt depressed--oppressed, even--and uneasy in his home. He sometimes heard footsteps, and his visiting friend saw black shadows that would suddenly disappear. The man did historical restorations for a living, and had many of the chemicals associated with his work in his house.

The end result of the investigation was not that his house was haunted, but that a number of normal factors were causing the phenomena. An area of mold in his basement, along with the chemical fumes, was one part of the problem. The other part is what is of interest--he had an open electrical box that was registering very high numbers on an EMF (electromagnetic frequency) detector. A normal household EMF reading is about 0.1 or 0.2. The electrical box spiked at 112, and even higher.

Electromagnetism can cause people to get uneasy feelings, physical side effects like nausea and skin rashes, and also to see things that aren't there. In other words, electricity can make people see "ghosts", or one version of them.

The second thing is an article I saw from PBS about a paraplegic man who was able to stand after being treated with electricity. The electric current apparently stimulated the man's nervous system. Electricity affects our bodies and our ability to physically move. Electricity animates us.

Thinking about these two things together--I started wondering about the old John Foxx phrase, "electricity and ghosts". There is a definite connection between electricity and consciousness, and electricity and the appearance of spirits.

I'm sure this is not news. But I've spent so much time reading about consciousness and the unconscious, I have to wonder about the connection between the unconscious and electricity. if spirits are manifestations of the unconscious, how do they manifest? It seems electricity has something to do with it.

We don't really know what spirits are; it's difficult (if not impossible scientifically) to prove they exist. You have to have an experience of a spirit or ghost to believe. But what are you experiencing? The "demonic" is no different--it's the same sort of thing, really. They are aspects of the psyche that manifest separately because they have no connection with your ego--they are unconscious. But are we experiencing "electricity with a personality"? How does that work? Are our personalities "electric"? Or, is the personality/attribute aspect a result of our collective symbol system interacting with something universal--and electrical--in nature?

There certainly seems to be a relationship between consciousness and electricity. I've written before about kundalini yoga and meditation. Most Eastern mediation systems (and medical practices) are based on balancing the electrical impulses in the spine, often referred to as "shakti"--and causing that electrical "consciousness" to move from the base of the spine through the major chakra centers, to the top of the head. This rise is experienced as an electrical charge throughout the body, and the unprepared body (i.e., one not proficient in yoga) may experience symptoms similar to those of high EMF exposure when they come out of their meditation.

A converse question--is the electricity we use to power our homes, our technological devices, etc. related to consciousness? Are electricity and consciousness synonymous in some way? Does electricity have a consciousness?

I did some cursory investigation of this idea, and apparently the idea of consciousness as electromagnetic has been proposed as a line of scientific inquiry, though not without objections. Seems to me it is a question worth pursuing.