bigger picture Darwinism redux (especially for Rick Santorum)

Watching PBS online last night (Secrets of the Dead) about Michelangelo. All very much memory management -- a gentler, kinder, form of inquisition-- claiming (basically) Michelangelo as a a closet Protestant, that "by faith alone is salvation" and none of those sacraments or good works for him, thank you. Once again it's that modern tendency of stuffing something into a bin that simply didn't exist at the time, certainly not in the way it "exists" now. No faith? Sacraments were defined as the "outward sign of faith". Faith is essential to make any spell work (Alohomora!) and corruption simply corruption. And what is faith? A life shaping verb: what you act on. The gods you worship are the gods you deserve.

So -- minds that make sensuality look like spirituality? Of course and vice versa -- remembering that the great magnum opus IS the great magnum opus: stuffing souls (sentience, consciousness) into bodies (Sit up, clay!). Dancing really is a fine religion.

"...The ultimate fate of every dogma is that it gradually becomes soulless. Life wants to create new forms, and therefore, when a dogma loses its vitality, it must perforce activate the archetype that has always helped man to express the mystery of the soul....the psychic archetype .... take form and become accessible to understanding....But the supremely important motive power which is needed .... and which sets the archetypal possibilities in motion at a given historical moment, cannot be explained in terms of archetype itself. Only experience can establish which archetype has become operative, but one can never predict that it must enter into manifestation. ..."
(CGJung, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 347, par. 488)

Or, as our own Mike Dickman once said

The Mass is not a parody of the Magnum Opus. The Mass is an exact manifestation of the Magnum Opus. Most Parisian Catholics have no idea of what they're about. They're Sunday Christians only. Many French people today are fascinated with all things esoteric. But it's only an intellectual fascination. Alchemical wisdom can not be understood intellectually but only experienced...or -better put- Alchemical wisdom can only be understood intellectually IF experienced.

I am by birth half mortal, half divine...

And Culianu:

Magic is not about disorder. On the contrary, it reestablishes a peaceful coexistence between the conscious and unconscious when coexistence is under attack. ~Ioan Couliano

And I dare say that's also the function of art.

And here's the kicker. "Peaceful coexistence" = Equilibrium. And that means no movement, no change, no gradients, no life. No dance. No Eros. No Mojo. So... embrace the tension. Live your story. In the end, equilibrium. And behind it all always, equilibrium. It just that just now, you're still moving through your own story.



UNFOLD YOUR OWN MYTH

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age, smells the shirt of his lost
son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies, and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there’s a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins. Suddenly he’s wealthy.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage:

We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams.
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown,

lifting.

~RUMI

bigger picture Darwinism redux (especially for Rick Santorum)

Watching PBS online last night (Secrets of the Dead) about Michelangelo. All very much memory management -- a gentler, kinder, form of inquisition-- claiming (basically) Michelangelo as a a closet Protestant, that "by faith alone is salvation" and none of those sacraments or good works for him, thank you. Once again it's that modern tendency of stuffing something into a bin that simply didn't exist at the time, certainly not in the way it "exists" now. No faith? Sacraments were defined as the "outward sign of faith". Faith is essential to make any spell work (Alohomora!) and corruption simply corruption. And what is faith? A life shaping verb: what you act on. The gods you worship are the gods you deserve.

So -- minds that make sensuality look like spirituality? Of course and vice versa -- remembering that the great magnum opus IS the great magnum opus: stuffing souls (sentience, consciousness) into bodies (Sit up, clay!). Dancing really is a fine religion.

"...The ultimate fate of every dogma is that it gradually becomes soulless. Life wants to create new forms, and therefore, when a dogma loses its vitality, it must perforce activate the archetype that has always helped man to express the mystery of the soul....the psychic archetype .... take form and become accessible to understanding....But the supremely important motive power which is needed .... and which sets the archetypal possibilities in motion at a given historical moment, cannot be explained in terms of archetype itself. Only experience can establish which archetype has become operative, but one can never predict that it must enter into manifestation. ..."
(CGJung, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 347, par. 488)

Or, as our own Mike Dickman once said

The Mass is not a parody of the Magnum Opus. The Mass is an exact manifestation of the Magnum Opus. Most Parisian Catholics have no idea of what they're about. They're Sunday Christians only. Many French people today are fascinated with all things esoteric. But it's only an intellectual fascination. Alchemical wisdom can not be understood intellectually but only experienced...or -better put- Alchemical wisdom can only be understood intellectually IF experienced.

I am by birth half mortal, half divine...

And Culianu:

Magic is not about disorder. On the contrary, it reestablishes a peaceful coexistence between the conscious and unconscious when coexistence is under attack. ~Ioan Couliano

And I dare say that's also the function of art.

And here's the kicker. "Peaceful coexistence" = Equilibrium. And that means no movement, no change, no gradients, no life. No dance. No Eros. No Mojo. So... embrace the tension. Live your story. In the end, equilibrium. And behind it all always, equilibrium. It just that just now, you're still moving through your own story.



UNFOLD YOUR OWN MYTH

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age, smells the shirt of his lost
son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies, and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there’s a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins. Suddenly he’s wealthy.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage:

We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams.
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown,

lifting.

~RUMI

Rossetti was a bit of a stud, and put himself about rather more than the morally scrupulous Superman.

Mike Kelley: It came from Planet Bunkum

extra: illuminating-them-like-reliquaries

Rossetti was a bit of a stud, and put himself about rather more than the morally scrupulous Superman.

Mike Kelley: It came from Planet Bunkum

extra: illuminating-them-like-reliquaries

EROS: nota bene

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Peter of Lone Tree wrote:
"He is the god of love, EROS:"

Lest we fergit, the anagram is "sore."


Peter of Loin Tree

---

deb:
Oh my aching back and knees.... Point is, funny man, Hesiod. Eros is more than erotic sex. Eros is metaphor for Desire, sure, which implicates Libido. But to grasp the real meaning, let go of Freud, his hangups, and embrace Jung. Libido is life force, life force beyond mere (magical, stuffing souls in clay!) procreation. Libido is living, is Life: the body and all its necessary equilibriums, homeostasis, gradients; spirit beyond meh, blah: passion: the passion to do anything. Their unity, spirit and matter (of which Christ is the sublime -- and but one of many -- metaphor). Thus (stay on target) Eros is as Hesiod frames him: movement itself, the force that moves all. Read again with these new eyes.
Naquarius. Sex is but life's sacrament, the cherry on top. Or bottom. The thing is -- Dance. No better religion than life.

(Conjunction here with Dionysos... All good symbols become transparent -- a penetration leading on to deeper meaning)

EROS: nota bene

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Peter of Lone Tree wrote:
"He is the god of love, EROS:"

Lest we fergit, the anagram is "sore."


Peter of Loin Tree

---

deb:
Oh my aching back and knees.... Point is, funny man, Hesiod. Eros is more than erotic sex. Eros is metaphor for Desire, sure, which implicates Libido. But to grasp the real meaning, let go of Freud, his hangups, and embrace Jung. Libido is life force, life force beyond mere (magical, stuffing souls in clay!) procreation. Libido is living, is Life: the body and all its necessary equilibriums, homeostasis, gradients; spirit beyond meh, blah: passion: the passion to do anything. Their unity, spirit and matter (of which Christ is the sublime -- and but one of many -- metaphor). Thus (stay on target) Eros is as Hesiod frames him: movement itself, the force that moves all. Read again with these new eyes.
Naquarius. Sex is but life's sacrament, the cherry on top. Or bottom. The thing is -- Dance. No better religion than life.

(Conjunction here with Dionysos... All good symbols become transparent -- a penetration leading on to deeper meaning)

He is the god of love, EROS:

We read about Rossetti, the Aesthetes and their eroticism. Let's go to the source.

You know how the body, nature, physics works in our experiential world: Gradients. There has to be an energy imbalance to make things flow, to do "work". And flow -- change -- is the nature of being in the sphere of time, essential to the magic of life. This understanding frames my thinking, as it did with Jung's, applied not just to the material world, but to the psyche, personal and collective. But that creator of gradients, that potential for movement, change, chaos, creation: Eros embodies that cosmic force.

---

He is bold and forward and strenuous, always devising tricks like a cunning huntsman; he yearns after knowledge and is full of resource and is a lover of wisdom all his life, a skillful magician, an alchemist, a true sophist.... but on one and the same day he will live and flourish, and also meet his death; and then come to life again through the force of his father's nature." ~Plato, Symposium

"... the Love-god, golden-haired, stretches his charmed bow with twin arrows, and one is aimed at happiness, the other at life's confusion." ~Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 549

The idealizations which Eros tends always to constellate can be counterbalanced: creativity expresses itself also as destruction. Love's torture may not always lead to the happy ending of our tale. The idealizations may further be weighted by recalling the connections in Hesiod, the Orphics, and renaissance Neoplatonism between eros and chaos.
Eros is born of Chaos, implying that out of every chaotic moment the creativity of which we have been speaking can be born. Further more, Eros will always hearken back to its origins in chaos and will seek it for revivification. ... Eros will attempt again and again to create those dark nights and confusions which are its nests. It renews itself in affective attacks, jealousies, fulminations, and turmoils. It thrives close to the dragon." --James Hillman (Love's Torturous Enchantment, A BLUE FIRE)

Eros is a questionable fellow and will always remain so . . . . He belongs on one side to man's primordial animal nature which will endure as long as man has an animal body. On the other side he is related to the highest forms of the spirit. But he thrives only when spirit and instinct are in right harmony. ~CGJung CW 7.

---

Right Harmony. That pair so important in ancient music and extrapolated into all the arts onward: the eternal, orderly and unified Apollo and the diverse and unpredictable Dionysos. The latter had the ability to make the head spin, to overwhelm, to make mad, so that one did not drink wine alone, but in a group, and only one person drinking from the vessel at a time. The idea of the fire and the moving flame, then, is reflected in the pair. And Eros is the movement, the stirring. (Just as the Apollonian Muses move the poet, the mythos.)

There is simply no abiding, no sitting still, no resolution of opposites in the field of time, especially for the force, the energy, that moves it (not to mention the sun and all the stars). This ambivalence, this two-faced nature, both creative/destructive, has been intuited in metaphor as far back as we can remember... And later, as the mythology morphs and mutates, we find Venus wed to Hephaestus--Venus, variously mother or sister of Eros; Eros, shooter of arrows, mover of stars, and Love itself--the ultimate fascination:

[Latin fascin³re, fascin³t-, to cast a spell on, from fascinum, an evil spell, a phallic-shaped amulet.]

In these same early myths, that creative fire inside the earth, that union of opposite forces, made and projected the stars that make our very bodies. (Fascinating, the way we've always known this.) The source of starlight was Hades, that place of paradox and inversion. Originally, daemons were messengers, inter-mediators between man and deity; time and eternity.

The Greek poet Hesiod tells us Eros is born of Chaos at the same time as Earth and the Tartarus. He's the comrade of Aphrodite from the moment of her birth. And he's not merely the god of sensual love. He's much more:

Eros is the power that forms the world by the inner union of the separated elements...

Throughout Plato's Symposium, speakers relate mythical accounts of Eros. There are two opposing mythologies of the origin of Eros. The opening speaker, Phaedrus (light-bringer), the “Father of Logic," introduces Eros as the first god according to the story in Hesiod. In this view, Earth and Eros are born of the whirling (“dynos”) chaos. Eros is not a personification, but a cosmological force or ordering principle (“kosmos” meaning “order”). It is as though in Hesiod’s account, matter and order are born of Chaos, are the inchoate elements of the universe in which all life originates. According to this view, Eros is a primordial cosmological mechanism.
The account of Eros as the youngest god depicted in traditional Greek mythology appears in Pausanius’ speech. Pausanius, reputed for little other than being Agathon’s lover, presents the famous dichotomy between Uranian love and Pandemic love. Pausanius shares the view that Eros is the youngest god, son of Aphrodite. There are differing accounts, however, of the nature of Aphrodite’s birth corresponding to the two different types of love: Uranian (heavenly) and Pandemic (earthly). According to the Uranian account, Aphrodite is born of the castration of Uranus. In contrast, Pandemic love derives from the view of Aphrodite as the child of Zeus and a mortal. It is here that the system of romantic relationships between an older man and a younger man, lover and beloved, is described. Ideally, says Pausanius, this relationship is to represent Uranian (heavenly) love in that the older man, or lover, is a teacher and mentor to the youth (beloved), as opposed to the older man lasciviously desiring the youth only to leave him once his beauty fades. The Uranian lover is a lifelong friend to his beloved, remaining dedicated to him after the flower of youth.
It is one of the oft-mentioned facts of the Symposium that Socrates’ speech is, oddly enough, an account of love that he received from a woman. This woman, Diotima the Delphic Priestess of Mantinea, gives an original mythical description of Eros and his parentage. In contrast to the views of Eros as both the oldest and youngest god, according to Diotima, Eros is the child of Resource (Poros) and Poverty (Penia). Because Eros’ mother is destitute, she sleeps with Resource and conceives Eros on the night of Aphrodite’s feast day. The result is an offspring who is ever in search of objects but unable to maintain them. Like his mother, Eros is ever craving, restless and desirous, yet he possesses the charms and know-how of his father. Because of his relentless conniving to possess what he does not have and his inability to maintain it, Eros is said to be a daimon. Daimon, in the Greek, means something like an intermediary or spirit, a messenger between gods and humankind.
In this exposition, Diotima also establishes that Eros is like a philosopher because he constantly seeks to find what he lacks. One cannot desire what one already possesses. If one already possesses something, one cannot desire it in itself, though one may desire the maintenance of this possession. A philosopher desires wisdom because he recognizes that he lacks it. The gods, on the other hand, do not seek wisdom as they already possess it. It is also established that though humans do not possess immortality, humankind seeks to possess deathlessness. There is a drive within humanity for different types of immortality. Procreation is a type of yearning for bodily immortality, but as it is limited to the body, it is the lowest sort of love. The highest type of love is that which, inspired by beauty, ascends to a vision of the Forms.
Socrates’ account of love is as a spirit guiding one, through the experience of Beauty, to a vision of the Idea of the Good, or the Form of all Forms, the origin of all that exists in the universe.
~EMC, The Platonic Eros

-------
extra credit:  http://angelavoss.org/wp-content/uploads/EROS.pdf
EROS Angela Voss

He is the god of love, EROS:

We read about Rossetti, the Aesthetes and their eroticism. Let's go to the source.

You know how the body, nature, physics works in our experiential world: Gradients. There has to be an energy imbalance to make things flow, to do "work". And flow -- change -- is the nature of being in the sphere of time, essential to the magic of life. This understanding frames my thinking, as it did with Jung's, applied not just to the material world, but to the psyche, personal and collective. But that creator of gradients, that potential for movement, change, chaos, creation: Eros embodies that cosmic force.

---

He is bold and forward and strenuous, always devising tricks like a cunning huntsman; he yearns after knowledge and is full of resource and is a lover of wisdom all his life, a skillful magician, an alchemist, a true sophist.... but on one and the same day he will live and flourish, and also meet his death; and then come to life again through the force of his father's nature." ~Plato, Symposium

"... the Love-god, golden-haired, stretches his charmed bow with twin arrows, and one is aimed at happiness, the other at life's confusion." ~Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 549

The idealizations which Eros tends always to constellate can be counterbalanced: creativity expresses itself also as destruction. Love's torture may not always lead to the happy ending of our tale. The idealizations may further be weighted by recalling the connections in Hesiod, the Orphics, and renaissance Neoplatonism between eros and chaos.
Eros is born of Chaos, implying that out of every chaotic moment the creativity of which we have been speaking can be born. Further more, Eros will always hearken back to its origins in chaos and will seek it for revivification. ... Eros will attempt again and again to create those dark nights and confusions which are its nests. It renews itself in affective attacks, jealousies, fulminations, and turmoils. It thrives close to the dragon." --James Hillman (Love's Torturous Enchantment, A BLUE FIRE)

Eros is a questionable fellow and will always remain so . . . . He belongs on one side to man's primordial animal nature which will endure as long as man has an animal body. On the other side he is related to the highest forms of the spirit. But he thrives only when spirit and instinct are in right harmony. ~CGJung CW 7.

---

Right Harmony. That pair so important in ancient music and extrapolated into all the arts onward: the eternal, orderly and unified Apollo and the diverse and unpredictable Dionysos. The latter had the ability to make the head spin, to overwhelm, to make mad, so that one did not drink wine alone, but in a group, and only one person drinking from the vessel at a time. The idea of the fire and the moving flame, then, is reflected in the pair. And Eros is the movement, the stirring. (Just as the Apollonian Muses move the poet, the mythos.)

There is simply no abiding, no sitting still, no resolution of opposites in the field of time, especially for the force, the energy, that moves it (not to mention the sun and all the stars). This ambivalence, this two-faced nature, both creative/destructive, has been intuited in metaphor as far back as we can remember... And later, as the mythology morphs and mutates, we find Venus wed to Hephaestus--Venus, variously mother or sister of Eros; Eros, shooter of arrows, mover of stars, and Love itself--the ultimate fascination:

[Latin fascin³re, fascin³t-, to cast a spell on, from fascinum, an evil spell, a phallic-shaped amulet.]

In these same early myths, that creative fire inside the earth, that union of opposite forces, made and projected the stars that make our very bodies. (Fascinating, the way we've always known this.) The source of starlight was Hades, that place of paradox and inversion. Originally, daemons were messengers, inter-mediators between man and deity; time and eternity.

The Greek poet Hesiod tells us Eros is born of Chaos at the same time as Earth and the Tartarus. He's the comrade of Aphrodite from the moment of her birth. And he's not merely the god of sensual love. He's much more:

Eros is the power that forms the world by the inner union of the separated elements...

Throughout Plato's Symposium, speakers relate mythical accounts of Eros. There are two opposing mythologies of the origin of Eros. The opening speaker, Phaedrus (light-bringer), the “Father of Logic," introduces Eros as the first god according to the story in Hesiod. In this view, Earth and Eros are born of the whirling (“dynos”) chaos. Eros is not a personification, but a cosmological force or ordering principle (“kosmos” meaning “order”). It is as though in Hesiod’s account, matter and order are born of Chaos, are the inchoate elements of the universe in which all life originates. According to this view, Eros is a primordial cosmological mechanism.
The account of Eros as the youngest god depicted in traditional Greek mythology appears in Pausanius’ speech. Pausanius, reputed for little other than being Agathon’s lover, presents the famous dichotomy between Uranian love and Pandemic love. Pausanius shares the view that Eros is the youngest god, son of Aphrodite. There are differing accounts, however, of the nature of Aphrodite’s birth corresponding to the two different types of love: Uranian (heavenly) and Pandemic (earthly). According to the Uranian account, Aphrodite is born of the castration of Uranus. In contrast, Pandemic love derives from the view of Aphrodite as the child of Zeus and a mortal. It is here that the system of romantic relationships between an older man and a younger man, lover and beloved, is described. Ideally, says Pausanius, this relationship is to represent Uranian (heavenly) love in that the older man, or lover, is a teacher and mentor to the youth (beloved), as opposed to the older man lasciviously desiring the youth only to leave him once his beauty fades. The Uranian lover is a lifelong friend to his beloved, remaining dedicated to him after the flower of youth.
It is one of the oft-mentioned facts of the Symposium that Socrates’ speech is, oddly enough, an account of love that he received from a woman. This woman, Diotima the Delphic Priestess of Mantinea, gives an original mythical description of Eros and his parentage. In contrast to the views of Eros as both the oldest and youngest god, according to Diotima, Eros is the child of Resource (Poros) and Poverty (Penia). Because Eros’ mother is destitute, she sleeps with Resource and conceives Eros on the night of Aphrodite’s feast day. The result is an offspring who is ever in search of objects but unable to maintain them. Like his mother, Eros is ever craving, restless and desirous, yet he possesses the charms and know-how of his father. Because of his relentless conniving to possess what he does not have and his inability to maintain it, Eros is said to be a daimon. Daimon, in the Greek, means something like an intermediary or spirit, a messenger between gods and humankind.
In this exposition, Diotima also establishes that Eros is like a philosopher because he constantly seeks to find what he lacks. One cannot desire what one already possesses. If one already possesses something, one cannot desire it in itself, though one may desire the maintenance of this possession. A philosopher desires wisdom because he recognizes that he lacks it. The gods, on the other hand, do not seek wisdom as they already possess it. It is also established that though humans do not possess immortality, humankind seeks to possess deathlessness. There is a drive within humanity for different types of immortality. Procreation is a type of yearning for bodily immortality, but as it is limited to the body, it is the lowest sort of love. The highest type of love is that which, inspired by beauty, ascends to a vision of the Forms.
Socrates’ account of love is as a spirit guiding one, through the experience of Beauty, to a vision of the Idea of the Good, or the Form of all Forms, the origin of all that exists in the universe.
~EMC, The Platonic Eros

-------
extra credit:  http://angelavoss.org/wp-content/uploads/EROS.pdf
EROS Angela Voss