space for my spitballs on esoterica (yours too)
luka
Well-known member
Well I've said this before but I do get confused sometimes with you cos obviously you have immersed yourself in this stuff to a far greater degree than I have and taken it a great deal more seriously but it always seems to end with me defending it against your sallies.... And I never quite know why!
Yeah, it's interesting to think on. I think with "facts" and so forth, following the Syrian revolution makes it hard for me to be as sympathetic to conspiracy thinking. Nothing has been weaponised more powerful against the Syrian cause. And seeing oceans of this shit pour out to cover up the gassing and bombing of kids and families just makes me go "ugh". It's a visceral reaction. It's happening right now in Idlib, and there will be some cunt on the internet lying about it. So conspiratorial material I might've simply found entertaining before I'm more critical about.
I have a different mode of thinking when I'm doing magic or thinking with it - I'm open to whatever, inspiration, correspondences, coincidence but for the most part, I'd be very wary when mixing that with politics or having as a catch all way of understanding the world. Occultism can also be a vector for shitty thinking - outright alt-right nationalism in some instances, blood and soil is but a short journey away from paganism - so I think the criticality that you mostly find in academia is really useful here. If you were going to start invoking the loa, this brings up questions about what does it mean for a white guy to do this? What about colonialism, history, constructions of blackness and whiteness? You don't need to bring these into play but they're kind of in the room with those kind of practices. Does that make sense?
I went to an event last week about this actually - "Towards a progressive magic" at The Horse Hospital. People who're much more able thinkers than I were talking about what does it mean to practice magic now, in the age of Trump? and trying to pick apart some of the underlying philosophical threads.
I do have a bias toward the experiential but that's a slightly different topic. I think it's only when you try these practices that you understand them, see how you might use them.
I have a different mode of thinking when I'm doing magic or thinking with it - I'm open to whatever, inspiration, correspondences, coincidence but for the most part, I'd be very wary when mixing that with politics or having as a catch all way of understanding the world. Occultism can also be a vector for shitty thinking - outright alt-right nationalism in some instances, blood and soil is but a short journey away from paganism - so I think the criticality that you mostly find in academia is really useful here. If you were going to start invoking the loa, this brings up questions about what does it mean for a white guy to do this? What about colonialism, history, constructions of blackness and whiteness? You don't need to bring these into play but they're kind of in the room with those kind of practices. Does that make sense?
I went to an event last week about this actually - "Towards a progressive magic" at The Horse Hospital. People who're much more able thinkers than I were talking about what does it mean to practice magic now, in the age of Trump? and trying to pick apart some of the underlying philosophical threads.
I do have a bias toward the experiential but that's a slightly different topic. I think it's only when you try these practices that you understand them, see how you might use them.
Another thing is I guess that I'm a believer. I believe that if I cast a hexagram, the I Ching will grant me direct insight into whatever I'm asking about. I don't know how that happens but it does and that's an experiential fact for me which is a further complexifying factor. A lot of magic is self-delusion and bullshit but not all of it is. (I can see this post being dug up and used as evidence at my trial in a few years time).
There's some good writing coming out on this stuff atm. A friend has just written a brilliant piece I'll post here soon. Reading this in another tab:https://datacide-magazine.com/a-fas...-right-wing-meme-magic-and-the-rise-of-trump/
There's some good writing coming out on this stuff atm. A friend has just written a brilliant piece I'll post here soon. Reading this in another tab:https://datacide-magazine.com/a-fas...-right-wing-meme-magic-and-the-rise-of-trump/
other_life
bioconfused
so r u saying the approach i'm trying now, even though it's explicitly against ready-made systems like Chaos or Crowley, is misguided? or just that i'll eventually have to Let Go of all the accumulated knowledge and just... go into it, go into the space
other_life
bioconfused
remind me i also need to read 'fluctuations in superhuman abilities'
oh absolutely, re syria i totally agree, it's just some of the people weaponising islam like oz katerji really cheese me off you know? At least Robin Yasin Qasab is honest about him being willing to back US intervention. I obviously think that will make things even worse but I appreciate that forthrightness and honesty. and i find sometimes someone like idreez ahmad will just go petty on american black people in the public sphere like Ilhan Omar or Cornal West. Like I'm not a fan/devotee of Cornal but so what if he voted for jill stein? And why attack boots for his anti-americanism as a black man rather than engage with him fruitfully? Someone like Michael Karadjis is able to rigorously document all of this stuff (assad's war crimes) whilst showing the destructive role the US played in routing all rebel support to isis and thereby giving a leg up to the more islamist factions in the FSA. Like, JaI did kidnap the douma four, but not many people care about that apart from people like Leila Shami, who i still to this day really respect and admire, she's managed to report on some important stuff whilst keeping her politics fairly solid.
I think with some internet liberal defenders of the syrian rev they're doing it to maintain a sort of loyalty to Turkey even though for the past 3 years TR's foreign policy has markedly shifted to a tolerate and work with assad position. obviously them not understanding Turkish is part of this, but also this belief that turkey can play a role in recentring the global muslim community on the political stage is a big fantasy of some muslim intellectuals. It's about 7 years out of date.
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other_life
bioconfused
wanted to inscribe this one in my heart, turn it over in my mind, nail it to my doorpost, wrap it around arms and my hands and wear it on my head.
other_life
bioconfused
it's very possible because i've seen it work but it takes plenty of concentration, plenty of patience, plenty of time and more than anything, can't have enough of this: Yirat haShamaim and Yirat haShem. there is no royal road to science.
Also ba'athism was never socialist. that's a delusion of both the anglo left and muslim intelectuals raised in the west. the first thing saddam did was lock up and torture communists (Stalinists granted, but communists none the less.) Assad likewise locked up many dissidents from the left, many still missing.
there's a valid criticism of the accommodationist and non-revolutionary/counter-revolutionary trajectory of soviet anti-imperialist ideology to be made.
That's one thing.
Another thing is to conceive any communism as pro-soviet and any protest as inherently anti-communist. it's like anne applebaum saying the 1956 revolution in hungary was anti-communist. So setting up workers councils and workplace democracy is anti-communist? But sending in the tanks is communist then? I can't.
They thought the Stalinists weren't communist enough, for christ's sake. they wanted to go way harder. they wanted to kill the party bosses. Maybe not literally but metaphorically you know what I mean. they wanted to take power into their own hands.
That's one thing.
Another thing is to conceive any communism as pro-soviet and any protest as inherently anti-communist. it's like anne applebaum saying the 1956 revolution in hungary was anti-communist. So setting up workers councils and workplace democracy is anti-communist? But sending in the tanks is communist then? I can't.
They thought the Stalinists weren't communist enough, for christ's sake. they wanted to go way harder. they wanted to kill the party bosses. Maybe not literally but metaphorically you know what I mean. they wanted to take power into their own hands.
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other_life
bioconfused
i'm absolutely guilty of taking shitty ready-made Tank positions on tons of stuff. i was brow-beaten into it as an impressionable teenager but actually taking it publicly as a position is absolutely on me.
It's like, she doesn't understand the euroasianist game people like orban are playing. For them Stalinism was ultimately a form of developmentalist asian nationalism, whereas 1956 was communist. when he says we must never commemorate Imre Nagy because he was a communist, well Orban is not wrong. the thing is, we should stand tall and say, 'yes, he was a communist. we proudly admit to that but you are a fascist'
What she thinks this is is Putin's pernicious influence, but actually she's playing into putin's hands by claiming that communists are running hungary now. putin loyalists can easily say she's an american jingoist, an anti-trump neocon (yes they exist in droves) and they would be right! Putin has played them like a flock of gullable sheep. the far right can sometimes be far more intelligent than the centre right which like the centre left is still heavily moralistic.
This is my problem with the disinformation/post-truth discourse. look, I'm the type of person to push a fascists head into the gutter, but i've swam in the sewer a bit and the thing is, these people can be rational, intellectual and intelligent as anyone else. they aren't all crazed psychopaths. in some senses they are far more *normal* than some people on the left. That threatens these liberal to centre right intellectuals. they see fascism as a Machiavellian power game rather than a form of state organisation.
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other_life
bioconfused
the dissensus between samaritans, rabbanites, karaites, minhagdim, chassidim, within judaism alone,
and then between judaism and christianity (and the dissensus within christianity itself),
between mandaeans and both jews and christians (they seem internally consistent because they're such a small community, from what i can gather ba'athism is to blame in a huge way?),
muslims and all three aforementioned (and of course dissensus within islam),
and then splintering into all this other stuff like sikhism or the donmeh or druze or bah'ai... the hundreds of extinct gnostic schools
it feels like it prefigures + is happening alongside the dissensus within the Real Communist Party. and possibly has historical consequences of a similar scale, political character and ultimate consequence (ie, huge, very contentious and not at all good).
maybe the real Noachide Gnosis is like the real Communist Party?
i think my entire purpose in this program of study is to re-integrate the two, communism and the noachide gnosis.
and then between judaism and christianity (and the dissensus within christianity itself),
between mandaeans and both jews and christians (they seem internally consistent because they're such a small community, from what i can gather ba'athism is to blame in a huge way?),
muslims and all three aforementioned (and of course dissensus within islam),
and then splintering into all this other stuff like sikhism or the donmeh or druze or bah'ai... the hundreds of extinct gnostic schools
it feels like it prefigures + is happening alongside the dissensus within the Real Communist Party. and possibly has historical consequences of a similar scale, political character and ultimate consequence (ie, huge, very contentious and not at all good).
maybe the real Noachide Gnosis is like the real Communist Party?
i think my entire purpose in this program of study is to re-integrate the two, communism and the noachide gnosis.
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other_life
bioconfused
it's all about results
I don't have time to dig into all this today but it seems we are largely on the same page about Syria, Third. I also have a huge amount of respect for Lelia.
Some of the stuff from the talks I went to last week starting to emerge, audio to follow. I mentioned it a page or two back - quick screengrabs of some of the slides:
Some of the stuff from the talks I went to last week starting to emerge, audio to follow. I mentioned it a page or two back - quick screengrabs of some of the slides: