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Some tweets
Jun. 20th, 2013 01:25 pmSome recent tweets on pathologies of immanence, eidetics of the Gods' bodies and equipment, a bit of Advaita Vedanta, and the intellective hebdomad
16 Jun
The "supernatural" pertains to nature, "parapsychology" pertains to psyche, the Gods are beyond these things. This can make the Gods seem very "quiet", however, compared to entities more like us, broadly termed "spirits". One of the key "pathologies of immanence" is that such entities, so quick to respond and to demonstrate their presence, will tend to crowd out the Gods. Where this issue is really important, I think, is with respect to the divine series themselves. It is important to be able to distinguish conceptually between the Gods and the temporal structures devoted to them. Sometimes the Gods will wish to overturn these temporal structures, or at least supplement them, or foster new interpretations of them. Tradition cannot be the last word, even where there is unbroken continuity of practice.
This attitude toward traditions does not mean that anything goes; to be precise, what "doesn't go" is what would foreclose a space. Hence the "humanist pagan" contingent foreclose the space of Gods as real existents, whereas their space is not foreclosed by polytheists. In general, distinctions do not foreclose a space, but conflations do. Bridging distinctions is easy, it's implicit in the very notion.
@RoryGrant2: What qualities do you ascribe to existents, which you do not think humanist pagans ascribe to the Gods? I assume you refer to, loosely, the idea that the Gods are 'metaphors', or are explained away in such general terms as 'nature', or 'life.
Many of them regard the Gods as archetypes or thoughtforms (egregores) which makes them dependencies of psyche, or as ideas, which makes them dependencies of intellect, or as purely relative entities, which makes them dependencies of being.
17 Jun
Lovely passage from Damascius, De princ. III 39. Damascius seems to establish a sort of succession of articulations, that starts from the articulations of the Gods' bodies, then proceeds to their equipment, as it were, and from there to intelligible forms and then down to intellective forms and so forth. And so, for example, he speaks of Hekate and her girdle and her crown: "For the organization embracing the parts [of a 'source' or intelligible form] is analogous to the parts organized by the very divine shape; the Girdle corresponds to the girdled flanks of the Goddess, the Crown to the temples and the front of the divine head." (This follows on a passage from 38 that mentions certain archai, or ‘principles’, proceeding from the crown and girdle of Hekate; archai are systematically conceived as parts relative to the wholes formed by pêgai, or ‘sources’ (intelligible forms).)
***
@Llimoner_: The five elements and the one Self make a group of six,but there is a seventh, which is the falseness of all of these six.~ Siddharameshwar
That's got to be the most vehement reification of negativity I've ever read: a countably distinct substance.
@Llimoner_: doesn't compute. If a computer is melted what happened to the computer? It's not there at all and nothing happened.
I like the boldness, though. In a way, this is what any doctrine of substance looks like: alongside every thing, its nonbeing.
@Llimoner_ : I don't get the "doctrine of substance." Falseness is not "a thing" or "a being." Non-existence isn't something. It's like saying there's Santa and reindeer and elves and BTW they don't exist.
I could imagine Siddharameshwar speaking in this way in order to have something purely negative holding the place of Substance, so that no positive term could be appealed to as reality-of-last-resort.
@Llimoner_: in a sense this is correct as he was indicating Nirguna Brahman, but he wouldn't say NB is substance or opposite.
19 Jun
According to the later Platonists, the form of the intellective cause as such is the hebdomad, conceived as a triad, each term of which is secured, thus a hexad, to which is added a diacritical monad, which secures the reciprocity of the total manifold. Thus the intellective cause has a sort of absolute sevenness that is in turn dialectically unfolded from a basic triplicity of causality.
16 Jun
The "supernatural" pertains to nature, "parapsychology" pertains to psyche, the Gods are beyond these things. This can make the Gods seem very "quiet", however, compared to entities more like us, broadly termed "spirits". One of the key "pathologies of immanence" is that such entities, so quick to respond and to demonstrate their presence, will tend to crowd out the Gods. Where this issue is really important, I think, is with respect to the divine series themselves. It is important to be able to distinguish conceptually between the Gods and the temporal structures devoted to them. Sometimes the Gods will wish to overturn these temporal structures, or at least supplement them, or foster new interpretations of them. Tradition cannot be the last word, even where there is unbroken continuity of practice.
This attitude toward traditions does not mean that anything goes; to be precise, what "doesn't go" is what would foreclose a space. Hence the "humanist pagan" contingent foreclose the space of Gods as real existents, whereas their space is not foreclosed by polytheists. In general, distinctions do not foreclose a space, but conflations do. Bridging distinctions is easy, it's implicit in the very notion.
@RoryGrant2: What qualities do you ascribe to existents, which you do not think humanist pagans ascribe to the Gods? I assume you refer to, loosely, the idea that the Gods are 'metaphors', or are explained away in such general terms as 'nature', or 'life.
Many of them regard the Gods as archetypes or thoughtforms (egregores) which makes them dependencies of psyche, or as ideas, which makes them dependencies of intellect, or as purely relative entities, which makes them dependencies of being.
17 Jun
Lovely passage from Damascius, De princ. III 39. Damascius seems to establish a sort of succession of articulations, that starts from the articulations of the Gods' bodies, then proceeds to their equipment, as it were, and from there to intelligible forms and then down to intellective forms and so forth. And so, for example, he speaks of Hekate and her girdle and her crown: "For the organization embracing the parts [of a 'source' or intelligible form] is analogous to the parts organized by the very divine shape; the Girdle corresponds to the girdled flanks of the Goddess, the Crown to the temples and the front of the divine head." (This follows on a passage from 38 that mentions certain archai, or ‘principles’, proceeding from the crown and girdle of Hekate; archai are systematically conceived as parts relative to the wholes formed by pêgai, or ‘sources’ (intelligible forms).)
***
@Llimoner_: The five elements and the one Self make a group of six,but there is a seventh, which is the falseness of all of these six.~ Siddharameshwar
That's got to be the most vehement reification of negativity I've ever read: a countably distinct substance.
@Llimoner_: doesn't compute. If a computer is melted what happened to the computer? It's not there at all and nothing happened.
I like the boldness, though. In a way, this is what any doctrine of substance looks like: alongside every thing, its nonbeing.
@Llimoner_ : I don't get the "doctrine of substance." Falseness is not "a thing" or "a being." Non-existence isn't something. It's like saying there's Santa and reindeer and elves and BTW they don't exist.
I could imagine Siddharameshwar speaking in this way in order to have something purely negative holding the place of Substance, so that no positive term could be appealed to as reality-of-last-resort.
@Llimoner_: in a sense this is correct as he was indicating Nirguna Brahman, but he wouldn't say NB is substance or opposite.
19 Jun
According to the later Platonists, the form of the intellective cause as such is the hebdomad, conceived as a triad, each term of which is secured, thus a hexad, to which is added a diacritical monad, which secures the reciprocity of the total manifold. Thus the intellective cause has a sort of absolute sevenness that is in turn dialectically unfolded from a basic triplicity of causality.
