Thought 379: My Thinking Brand

I would describe my brew of philosophising as:

• moralist
• consequentialist
• conspiracist
• de-occultist
• psychologist
• platonist
• anarchist
• artist
• etymologist
• formalist
• intuitionist
• interventionist
• simplist

Thought 378: The Meaning of Competition

Competition is formed from the Latin prefix cum, together/with and the Latin verb petitio, to petition, to request. 

Thus competition means to request together, and since only, say, one request can be granted - e.g. if there is only one job vacancy - then all the other requests will have to be rejected or ignored. 

Competition thus entails all fighting for scraps from the master's table, since all those deprived request together more or less at the same time, only few however having their request satisfied in the end due to the (artificial) scarcity of resources and jobbing positions. 

In the TV show The Apprentice, hapless candidates seek to prove themselves against the others whilst collaborating in teams but only one request for the so-called 'top job' will be met by the end of the show with the result that all the other requests for the top job, so to speak, will be rejected and denied. 

Com-petition in our current paradigm also translates in many requests at the same time for our attention and our wallets as consumers and individuals, for the purposes of money-making, political electioneering and ego massaging. 

Thought 377: Why Pubs Aren't My Scene

Public Houses aren't normally my scene. Although when quiet and when in good company they can be pleasant enough this blog post was written to showcase my general unease around pub culture.

Indeed, working in one less than a decade ago caused me much unhappiness and ill feeling, compounding the so-called mental health difficulties that I was experiencing at the time. 

The reasons for my avoiding this well-entrenched British (and English-speaking) institution are manifold:

1. I dislike large groups.
2. I dislike the din and noise that comes with said groups.
3. I dislike getting drunk and even the mere feeling of being slightly drunk.
4. I dislike drunken and rowdy behaviour, especially given the fact that drunk people seem to lose all sense of psychological and physical boundaries.
5. I dislike overhearing conversations revolving around the humdrum and, for me, depressing worlds of workaday living, money, sports, consumer objects, political cliché and local gossip.
6. I dislike being in the presence of and having to witness the lusty instincts of pub-goers, both male and female.
7. I dislike the fact that the fuel for exchange in pubs is based on the materiality of alcoholic beverages rather than the spirituality of philosophical yearning. Platonic style symposia, even with drink in plenty, would be far more to my liking (excepting of course homoerotic involvements). 
8. I dislike the general public, especially that part of it which is drawn to fulfilling itself through binge-drinking and imitative group-think.
9. I dislike the smell of most pubs.
10. I dislike the many pubs with TV screens blaring their low consciousness, thoughtless and manipulative rubbish.
11. If a pub has music there is more than a chance I'll dislike the choice of music and I am sensitive to musical communication.
12. I dislike having to spend money on drink which I have to consume in an environment where I cannot hear myself think.
13. I dislike witnessing people being sick.
14. Watching the bar workers slaving away for the benefit of the paying public brings back bad memories of myself being an unhappy bar worker who was not in his element.
15. I dislike being witness to verbal or physical aggression that often arise in pub environments.
16. I dislike materialist escapism which draws and thrives on animalistic instincts. 

Of course none of the points above will come as a surprise to those who view me an unemployed pussy philosopher but, as Nietzsche himself knew,

"Freedom comes when that part of yourself you least liked becomes the part of yourself you most like."

I cannot help it if my own methods of escapism do not involve hitting the town and getting drunk but instead entails reaching for and grasping dainty butterflies in the sky of ideas.

While drinking alcohol and having a conventional idea of fun may be the closest thing many people have to the nourishment of philosophising, I myself plan to commune with my spirit in a straightforward and quiet way, using the company of like-minded life companions, authors, artists and composers to guide me along my path to spiritual ecstasy.

Thought 376: Favourite Writers

What they say about music - that dead musicians outshine the living - could be applied to literature, i.e. that which has been written down and preserved. 

While dead composers such as J.S. Bach in my view will never be surpassed, offering a bottomless well of creative inspiration and influence, the same could be said of writers such as Homer, Plato and Shakespeare. 

Homer is my go-to poet - I have read the Iliad a good five times at least - and I delight in Plato's dialectical prose which shines in its Greek, child-like simplicity, whilst grappling with complex questions. 

I have struggled more with appreciating Shakespeare, not being comfortable with reading theatre scripts, partly because theatre is not an art form that I enjoy, and generally preferring the pre-Christian Greek to the late Middle-Age English poetic spirit. 

Some day maybe.  

Review 9: Friedrich Gulda's (Second) Beethoven Cycle

Gulda does it again!, Review of Friedrich Gulda's recording of Beethoven's piano sonatas.

Friedrich Gulda's recording of the so-called Old Testament of classical keyboard in the shape of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier almost instantly became my definitive interpretation of the preludes and fugues contained therein, short of recording them all myself. 

Having never until now found a satisfactory Beethoven piano cycle I naturally looked to Gulda's recording, despite it not being available for digital download, once I was made aware of its existence - which was no mean feat. 

To be succinct I will say that just as Gulda mesmerised me with his Old Testament rendering so his performance of the New Testament in the shape of Beethoven's piano sonatas is now my go-to favourite. 

I have explored interpretations of these sonatas for many years, owning the cycles by Artur Schnabel, Wilhelm Kempff (mono and stereo), Maurizio Pollini, Richard Goode, Alfred Brendel (second cycle) as well as odd sonatas played by Glenn Gould and Rudolf Serkin.

None of the above was I truly happy with for the reason that many of the lesser known sonatas made me feel bored and I was often in disagreement with the way the greater sonatas were played. 

Moreover, the quality over the entire cycle either wavered (Pollini and Goode) or failed to captivate (Brendel and Kempff) and listening to the whole corpus was, in the case of these aforementioned interpreters, more of a chore than a pleasure (the sound quality of the Schnabel is too poor for me to have explored his take in any depth). 

Not anymore. Gulda's fiery, immediate, un-belaboured, non-deferential, un-romantic, quick-witted approach to these piano monuments has made them all a pleasure to listen to, almost without exception, and his performance of the named sonatas is also much to my liking, e.g. the first movement of the Waldstein. 

Gulda was called a 'terrorist pianist' for a reason in so far as he was keyboard maverick with little time for the ostentation and preciousness (not to say pretentiousness) of the classical music world, openly preferring jazz in some cases and having the decency to also compose which is not the case of many pianists schooled in the classical tradition. 

In my opinion these elements of his pianistic temperament are perfect for Beethoven, a keen improviser himself with little time for common public perception, and, unlike the ponderous Kempff or the uneven Goode, Gulda makes these works exciting and arguably as fresh as when they were first conceived - quite an achievement given how familiar I am with all of them. 

Now I am aware that this is a matter of taste as I doubt Gulda will be to everyone's liking but it is a joy in my case to finally find a pianist who corresponds largely with my musical sensibility and has managed to deliver the goods in the case of giants Bach and Beethoven (his Mozart is certainly not one I'm very fond of, however). 

I have not taken the trouble to listen to the concertos included in this box set as they were not the reason I purchased it but rest assured that the piano solo works covering the first nine discs are brilliantly done justice, if of a vigorous and un-reverential kind. 

Thought 375: The Long Road to Mental Health

While pharmaceutical substances are erroneously believed to be a quick fix for poor mental health, treating as they claim to do symptoms rather than causes, there is only one path to great mental health which is coming to terms with yourself (including what you don't like about yourself and negative personal history) and the world as it is. 

My philosophy of always choosing love over fear essentially means being aware and perhaps having experienced the polarity of fear which is behind a great many mental health difficulties - fear amounting to stress in the mind-body complex, blood flowing away from higher brain functions and the torso-stomach to the extremities (fight or flight mode) - but wilfully choosing consciousness expansion (the force of love) in full awareness of the world's darkest sides. 

"To look into the sickness of the world and one's fellow human beings is a terrible undertaking, but those who do will become well."

It is truth and the freedom that comes with truth, that which is, Heidegger having defined freedom as being able to 'let beings be', that ensures the overcoming of neurosis.

"You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

If you manage to make peace with yourself and others, i.e. let yourself and others be as well as act as you think and feel, no longer being in a state of internal division, you will allow yourself to be relaxed, in touch with the whole whilst being engaged in the now, and, as I've said before, if neurosis is the enemy, relaxation is the remedy (see Relaxation as Remedy, Means and Goal). 

Thought 374: The Police & Military

At bottom, police and military are there to protect the system, not the people. 

They are, rudely speaking, the guard dogs of government - domestically in the case of the police, internationally in the case of the military -  thereby doing the bidding of psychopathic controllers in whose hands government truly lies. As they say,

"before serving your country, find out who your country serves."

Without order followers, the wickedness of those at the top would be of little moment in manifested reality as these order givers would be barking orders to no one.

Thought 373: Alexander & Aristotle - Temporal & Spiritual Power

Aristotle, foremost disciple of Plato's, was hired to be tutor to the young Alexander who came to see the philosopher as having most contributed to his well-being where his father, Philip, had contributed only to his being. 

While Aristotle was to become an emperor of sorts of the spiritual kingdom for many centuries after his death, to the extent that many still know of his philosophising today, Alexander became conqueror of the temporal kingdom of the known world in his lifetime only to be cut down in his prime, seeing the fruit of his imperial work immediately divided among his generals. 

This contrast between the ephemeral nature of temporal rulership (Alexander the Great) as compared to the long-lived nature of spiritual rulership (Aristotle, known in the Middle-Ages as the philosopher) can be extended to the example of Ancient Rome and the United States of today.

I tend to see Ancient Rome as a low point in classical civilisation, having bequeathed so little of original or transcendental value to subsequent ages, especially as compared to the nations of Egypt and Greece, and as having actively contributed to the destruction of priceless knowledge such as that gathered in the great library of Alexandria (which Caesar's troops destroyed). 

It is interesting to note that Rome's main contribution to history - apart from the dubious impressiveness of its imperial ambitions and military victories - was its legal tradition. Yet man's law is but a poor excuse for truth and justice and inevitably boils down to money's empire. As Roman author Petronius noted

"Quid faciant leges ubi sola pecunia regnat?"

what good are laws where only money reigns?

And man-made law pales in the face of the genuine laws of nature, physical and metaphysical. 

In a similar vein, ex-monty python comedian Terry Jones has made clear in a book of his that Rome - despite jokes to the contrary in The Life of Brian ("What has Rome ever done for us?") - probably set civilisation back a least a millennia in terms of spiritual and technological development. 

Similarly, for all its unquestionable military, corporate and financial power, one may question what will survive of the eventual wreckage of the 'New Atlantis' (to use Francis Bacon's coinage) - the United States of America - that is of true spiritual value for the world since devoid of all the meretricious displays of temporal rulership over the planet which, as Rome discovered, always come to an end eventually.

No doubt many North Americans have produced great works of art and philosophy that will endure through the centuries but why then the need for all the power-driven rubbish? 

The ephemeral nature of power mongering and political history as compared to philosophical and mysterious history was brought home to me by finishing Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall and then reading fifty or so pages of Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quigley. 

Whereas the former seemed to draw from the ancient past and even the beginnings of time, imparting profound long-lived truths in the process, the latter dealt in a competent way with day to day, almost hourly machinations by temporal leaders - Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier, to name a few - and various diplomats and political ideologues, these factions all ultimately wreaking much destruction and misery in their wake in their quest for power and self-preservation. 

It is perhaps the main lesson I have drawn from Heidegger's contribution to world wisdom in seeing time as more important than space, at least when it comes to the realm of spirit. In other words positive change and works of truth and beauty will endure and even manifest over time and become part of a people's tradition, i.e. transmission, long outliving whomever happens to be in political power at a given point, these power-magnates mastering space (people within a territory) rather than time, despite the expression 'temporal power'. To time we are all equally subject, regardless of our social position or level of worldly power, but not all are equal to the laws of time.

Although Orwell might have been right in saying

"He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future."

it is fortunate that despite tyrannies and thought polices throughout the ages, substantial amounts of spiritual wealth have still managed to come down to us moderns, some of the earliest works coming to consciousness the latest, such as Sumerian Creation accounts. This in itself is ground for hope, there appearing to be a modicum of justice in the game of intergenerational transmission of beauty and truth.  

Thought 372: Wisdom & Understanding

The Kabbalic Tree of Life contains two sephirotes that refer to both wisdom and understanding.

Wisdom reflects the active masculine principle and through its action flows into the passive feminine recipient that is understanding. 

Thus wisdom, knowing what to do with what you know, is the fount that nourishes and waters the spiritual vessel of understanding.

In other words, understanding comes through action based in wisdom and in turn wisdom is action that has its roots in wise understanding. 

Thought 371: Black Magic as Inversion

It is typical of black magic or sorcery to content itself with inverting sacred and esoteric concepts without bringing anything new to the table.

Thus, for example, the pentagram, sacred figure of the microcosm that is man, is inverted creating a now well-known and ubiquitous symbol of satanism. 

Ditto, mon-eye, spiritual awakening (when one's third eye or pineal gland has been activated), is inverted by dark financial occultists in the form of money, so that where the former brings truth and light into the world and therefore freedom, the latter brings falsehood and darkness with the effect of enslaving mankind. 

The same could be said of that dark symbol of National Socialism, the swastika, whose direction Hitler inverted (from anti-clockwise to clockwise), the swastika up to that point signifying the chakras in the human body (or so I read in Secret Teachings of All Ages). In fact the label National Socialist is itself an inversion of the word socialism which, strictly speaking, means ownership of the means of production by the worker-producers themselves rather than those who merely control the capital investment money.

An un-inverted swastika

Inversion is said by David Icke to be a typical technique of power of what he calls the archons who pull the true strings of our civilisation's development and course with the effect that politics destroys freedom, medicine destroys health, food destroys nutrition, schools destroy education, police destroy security, money destroys the economy, religion destroys spirituality, the media destroy truth, work destroys human relations and so on.

This inversion of a potential force for good for the purpose of promulgating a dark agenda gives weight to the view that we are indeed largely living under the thumb of black magicians/sorcerers - at least in the temporal world - who have made a pact with demons in order to acquire power and fortune and go on living for a long time, knowing there will be nothing for them after death (both David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger can testify to their undue longevity). 

The power of black magic is short lived however, even though it stands truth and the good on their heads, since resistance, rebirth and regeneration will eventually see that truth is no longer stood on its head but re-set to its proper dominant position. For Being or, as Heidegger once put it, 

"what has the character of the Beginning"

is indestructible and black magic is always dependent on standing truths on their head rather than bringing any original truths to the table; thus, though inverted, the truth remains, albeit in a concealed way, and requires merely a re-inversion to be found anew, whereas inverted truth has no independent existence outside the inversion.

It was German philosopher Hegel who said that from the point of view of common understanding, metaphysics appeared to be an 'inverted world'. I would argue that it is the world of common understanding that is inverted through sorcery and that philosophy requires seeing through the inversions created by sorcery and setting them back to their original position through magic. 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

[Speaking of Hegel, conspiracy researchers are fond of referring to the 'Hegelian Dialectic' which is a three-pronged approach to pushing through dark, power-driven agendas of control by deliberately creating chaotic events and pinning them on patsy groups. See post Engineered Crisis for a more in depth explanation of this technique. This to say, however, that the 'Hegelian Dialectic' is itself a black magic inversion of Hegel's dialectical idealism as expounded in The Phenomenology of Spirit; the interplay between thesis, antithesis and their synthesis leading to greater enlightenment and cultural evolution is replaced by problem, reaction, solution (or chaos, confusion, opportunity) for purposes of greater obscurantism and cultural involution.]

Pointing out the inversions made by the black sorcerers of consciousness and re-inverting the truths back to their natural upright inclination is one of the purposes of ScruffyOwlet's Tree. For mine is not the left-handed path.  

In conclusion, the adversary, Satan, is the great inverter of God's truth, bringing his darkness to the Creator's light if you will, the black sun to the true sun, but is nevertheless incapable of creating his own original cosmic laws. Divine wisdom thus involves being able to see through (thought) and unmake (action) Lucifer's inversions which could be commonly referred to as mind control methodologies. 

See older post Evil as Test for a more elaborate description of what identifying and resisting evil entails. 

Thought 370: Fluid Water & Solid Rock

It is often said of people who are resilient in the face of adversity that they are solid or even 'rock solid'. 

While immediately graspable, a perhaps more enlightened way to describe them would be to say they are fluid or even as 'fluid as water'.

For it is a noteworthy curiosity that despite being not solid and completely fluid, it is water that erodes minerals and rocks over time, not the reverse.

Thus this natural occurrence may present us with a lesson we can draw as to the benefits of being flexible and fluid in our behavioural psychology so as not to be eroded by life's challenges or tide patterns that repeat over a long period of time, just as waves continually collapse onto rocky beaches.

Thought 369: Prosaic v Poetic

To interpret symbols and occult traditions generally a poetic mind is required since symbology means the bringing together of data through things standing for other things (from συμβάλλω, to throw together). 

Poetry comes from the Greek verb ποιέω, to make, to create, to bring forth. In other words it requires a creative mind to be moved by the rich tapestry of ancient symbolism and nature's hidden (occult) secrets. 

The prosaic mind by contrast will immediately and unthinkingly take issue with the free and open-ended deciphering of symbols, including the signs that words constitute, e.g. in green language, invariably preferring scientifically valid explanations that have been established through conventional (from cum together and venire to come: the coming together of men) means of acquiring knowledge such as that gained through the peer-reviewed university system. 

Prosaic comes from prose, typically contrasted in modern academic discourse with verse (poetry), and the word prose is from the Latin prosa meaning 'straightfoward', 'direct'. The prosaic mind will thus scoff at and be generally offended by alternative explanations behind mainstream reality, politics, history, religion, science, instinctively preferring perceived straightforward explanations, e.g. those offered by the corporate media and established institutions. 

Perhaps the battle for knowledge of the ages has largely been one fought between prosaic and poetic minds, the former being content only with five-sense reality and intellectualist logic, the latter tapping into their in-tuitive imagination to decipher life's mysteries and esoteric lessons.   

Thought 368: The Meaning of Tradition

To a majority of British people, the word 'tradition' conjures many a stereotype pertaining to the so-called Royal Family, Sunday roasts, English breakfasts, tea and scones, wig-wearing barristers and even fox hunting.

In truth, tradition means what is passed or handed down from generation to generation, the Latin origin of the word, tradido, signifying precisely the act of delivering and handing over. 

Language is arguably the greatest example of tradition there is in so far as words, despite their many incarnations and pronunciations, always provide us with a connection to linguistic history which is usefully covered by the sciences of philology and etymology. 

Philosophy is also one for tradition, as the thoughts of older or even ancient philosophers come to bear on later generations of thinkers and the same could be said of mathematical, scientific not to say culinary discoveries.

Art too is one for tradition, as techniques and themes carry on from one generation to another, and in classical music 'old' music is constantly made afresh by contemporary interpretative talent and new technical means of recording. 

It could be argued that where tradition, i.e. the passing down of knowledge and cultural lore, is lacking, culture itself is wanting and doomed to meet a premature end at the hands of mass hypnotic entertainment and materialist fulfilment. 

For to consume means to destroy and a consumer economy is the same thing as a destructive economy while entertainment, for its part, simply means distraction from what is essential, i.e. that which is (see post What is Essential?). 

To put it succinctly, therefore, tradition is transmission. 

Thought 367: Occultism in the Christmas Calendar

I strongly recommend my rare readers to invest in a copy of The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall, the classic work on the World's Mystery Traditions and first published in 1928. 

It is impossible to account for all the rich lore contained in that encyclopaedic book but, it soon being Christmas, I just wished to share the following information.

In the Christian West, Christmas Eve occurs on 24th December and Christmas Day, the alleged date of Christ's birth, on the following day. 

These dates did not come from nowhere. It is stated in the book that in the Druid tradition of Ancient Britannia it was

"at dawn of the 25th day of December [that] the birth of the Sun God was celebrated. [...] The Druids had a Madonna, or Virgin Mother, with a  Child in her arms [...] and their Sun God was resurrected at the time of the year corresponding to that at which modern Christians celebrate Easter."

Further East in Phrygia (now Turkey) the date of birth of a Dying-God named Attis, whom many consider synonymous with the divinity Adonis, was thought to have been born 

"at midnight of the 24th of December. To the rites of Atys the modern world is indebted for the symbolism of the Christmas tree. Atys imparted his immortality to the tree beneath which he died, and days in the tomb, rose upon a date corresponding with Easter morn."

Hall writes on (after briefly considering Norse god Odin hanging himself from the branches of the World Tree whilst piercing his side with the sacred spear)

"The mystery [of the dying god] has been perpetuated in Christianity in the crucifixion and death of the God-man - Jesus the Christ.[...] The myth of the dying god is the key to both universal and individual redemption and regeneration." 

A few months ago I wrote an all-too-short blog post called Christianity as Mystery Tradition and it is clear from reading Secret Teachings that Christian mythology is steeped to the hilt with symbolism and concepts drawn from older traditions. 

An example out of dozens being the traitor apostle Judas, mirroring the Evil god Loki in the Scandinavian Odinic Mystery tradition - which comprised twelve main gods like Jesus' twelve apostles - and popularised by contemporary Marvel Comics movies in the shape of a scheming Asgardian comic book character. 

Thought 366: 18

18 is an important number for dark occultists because it is equal to 6+6+6. 

18 is also equivalent to the number 9 since 1+8=9.

For the significance of the number 9 see The Occult Significance of 9.

It strikes me that 18 is in many countries the age of majority, i.e. adulthood, and it could be asked whether this is an accident or, given the occult hand in so many aspects of everyday life, a deliberate choice.

I also recall a rather poor Moby album called 18, not that that necessarily has occult significance. 

Thought 365: Basic Instinct

Basic Instinct, an erotic thriller film released in 1992, is thus named because in all likelihood the basic instinct in question is sex - which features prominently in the film - which itself is there to ensure the perpetuation of our species, the ultimate basic instinct being survival.

It could also have been named baser instinct because we should not kid ourselves that lust or even the will to survive at all costs come from a place of high mindedness and intellectual spirituality, even though both instincts can motivate much creativity and activity.

That self-preservation be the greatest good is the first tenet of ideological satanism - survival at all costs, doesn't matter about the others! - and while based in a basic reality of human need, the will to survive no matter what can lead to immoral action when survival is seen as superseding all other considerations. 

This is something the controllers of this world are aware of. These evil sorcerers therefore make sure there is an artificial scarcity of resources and the need for competition and war to gain access to those resources. 

Too much concern for mere survival - no matter its obvious justifications - can and does lead to being played by Satan's devious ways, entrenched as they are in many mainstream facets of corporate-driven society. 

This is what in fact happens to the character of Walter White in Breaking Bad, so concerned he is with 'providing' for his family (but really concerned with his own egoic fulfilment, providing for his family being the cover story and excuse for his immoral behaviour) that he winds up practically losing his soul and alienating his loved ones, creating no shortage of chaos in his personal life, until the very end of the show where he acts altruistically in order to save his ex-partner Jessie.

In addition too much preoccupation about survival is often symptomatic of fear-based consciousness - including an impending sense of scarcity of resources and all the competition there is for jobbing positions - and indulging too much in a polarity of fear can lead to a destruction of the higher self in favour of the baser ego. 

So this post just to say that while survival may indeed be the basic instinct, it is not for all that the highest of all instincts and can in fact contribute to manifesting suffering and negative consequences both for others and oneself.

Thought 364: Life-Drawing

To draw from life is to see life as you draw it. 

Thought 363: Truth-telling

The Greek word for truth, ἀλήθεια, suggests, negatively, an idea of what does not escape one's notice and, positively, the act of taking out of hiddenness/wresting out of concealment. 

From this etymology it could be argued that modern day de-occultists (occult meaning that which is hidden) are in fact today's truth-tellers since they bring out of concealment esoteric knowledge that has traditionally been reserved to secret society initiates and that has never been openly communicated to the mass of humanity. 

It is interesting to note that the great philosopher Plato was in some ways an older-day de-occultist, initiate as he was of the Mysteries of Egypt and Greece, and was criticised in his own lifetime by some quarters for revealing too much esoterica to the profane in his work (Plato as an initiate of the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries is an angle that was put forth by esoteric philosopher Manly P. Hall). 

Thought 362: Clichés

Cliché expressions and memes have their use in casual human exchange as able to fill gaps in conversation and potentially as a way to make fun of what is a cliché-ridden media.

The reason why thinkers and many creators are self-declared enemies of cliché is that clichés are akin to dead thought and dead energy, all too often falling in the trap of stereotypes and unreflective value judgements on various things. 

Clichés are easy and immediately grasp-able, having circulated for so long on a mass scale, and many people do unfortunately think in cliché but that's not to say that some clichés do not contain seeds of truth in them, e.g.

"spend time with the people you love"

"money isn't everything"

"be nice"

"take care"

"no worries"

"take it easy"  

"sharing's caring" 

"each to their own" 

etc. 

It's not always clear where and from whom clichés originate but no doubt even clichés were once original angles on the world. 

Addendum - See also later post What are Clichés?

Thought 361: Lyrics Analysis: New World Rising

The song The Rover on Led Zeppelin's double album Physical Graffiti contains the following lyric

"Is the new world rising from the shambles of the old."

This is of course the mantra of and template for the dark occultists in charge of world destiny following as they do the free-masonic motto ordo ab chao or, in English, order out of chaos. 

Led Zeppelin band members were of course very partial to occult teachings as evidenced by the very artwork of their fourth, nameless album, casually referred to as Led Zeppelin IV, and Jimmy Page's well-documented interest in the writings of Alistair Crowley. 

There is a French saying

"jamais deux sans trois"

"never two without three" and this is why there will be a 3rd World War which will bring the world into the hands of an even smaller group of people than previously all thanks to the engineered chaos that such a war would create on the planetary stage and the need for order that would result in its aftermath.  

Thought 360: The Question Concerning Authority

Thinker Hannah Arendt saw authority in a positive light as constituting the opposite of violence, which in her thinking arises when there is a breakdown in authority and the resulting power vacuum causes conflict to occur. 

She also tended to make light of slavery in the classical world as enabling the possibility of freedom for those delivered from the necessity of labour through daily chores being carried out by slaves.

By contrast anarchist activist Mark Passio views the belief in authority as synonymous with the belief in the legitimacy of slavery, understanding as he does authority as entailing the existence of masters ruling over slaves.

This apparent antagonism can be somewhat resolved in Passio's favour by distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate forms of authority. 

• Illegitimate authority is authority based on coercion, i.e. violence, forcing people to act a certain way against their own free will in submission to masters who act in plain sight or by stealth
• Legitimate authority is authority that emanates naturally from some individuals and creators who have come to be respected through their contribution to the community, there being no trace of coercion but just wilful deference to these authors, so to speak. 

Personally I find Mark Passio's Natural Law teachings a welcome corrective to risky and rather toxic aristocratic biases that can be found in authors like Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt and Leo Strauss. 

Thought 359: Rite of Passage - Commercial Predation

I will be the first to admit that acquiring things commercially has brought me much happiness, apart from necessities, in the shape of music (songs and sheets), books, a digital piano, this laptop I'm typing on and so forth. 

But commercial society today is all-encompassing and many merchants or scammers will prey on people's weaknesses and vices, such as a relentless need for sexual fulfilment, and will do their utmost to play on people's emotions and desires (including the completionist and collector's instincts) to milk money out of them.

As someone said on twitter, humanity is about to pass an unprecedented rite of passage, what with the New World Order agenda, the decimation of public services and welfare programmes, all-seeing surveillance, the phasing out of cash currency, negative interest rates, robotisation of workplaces (physical and metaphorical, robot coming from the Tcheque word for slave worker/drone), ubiquitous mental health problems and breakdowns, poisoned food and water supplies, financial institutional malpractice and abuse, harmful technological realities, air and environmental toxicity, militarised police, engineered killer diseases, harmful pharmaceutical drugs and more. Ever-more ferocious commercialism also belongs to this list.

Now more than ever is it the time to take care of oneself, avoid what harms one's soul and indulge in that which heals and strengthens it, create meaningful and loving relationships and friendships, inform oneself about true as opposed to manufactured realities, open one's heart and crown chakras to be in tune with Being and perhaps engage in creative industry. 

Failing that one will fall victim not only to mind control methodologies and toxic influences but be mercilessly preyed on by negative commercial predation that seeks to capitalise on people's insecurities, vices and fantasies which are often neither wholesome nor temperate. 

Acquiring free will, i.e. reaching that stage in your psychic life where you truly act as you think and feel, i.e. are no longer dual and divided but an in-divi-dual in the proper sense, will protect you against the rapacious demands made on your wallet as you will be able to self-control and resist consumer temptation and easy-to-spot scams.

This ability to be discriminating will in turn help you give your purse power over to causes, businesses and creators who are fighting the good fight. 

Now I know that, for my part, I am and have been very far from perfect in these areas so I am not preaching from a high stool or throne but very much as someone who gives in to the acquisitive pleasure when it takes over.

Buying things is not a wrong in itself but I guess it takes knowing oneself (and the market) well to make purchases that are of true value for one's existence.  

Thought 358: The Meaning of Composition

The word 'composition' is formed of two Latin words, the prefix com which means 'together' and the verb ponere 'to place'.

And that perfectly captures the activity of composing, whether it be in music, photography, graphic design, comic book illustration or painting, for these arts all require an element of placing things together (musical notes, objects, words, shapes) in an aesthetically pleasing way. 

Aesthetics comes from the Greek word αἵσθησις which one modern researcher has defined as heart perception. 

Thought 357: Transcendence in Bach & Beethoven

As Glenn Gould noted in a television programme, while J.S. Bach regularly achieved transcendence in his music with an apparent air of effortlessness, Beethoven's music occasionally achieves transcendence but not without the sense of an almighty struggle in order to achieve this effect. 

Judging from their works, it would appear that J.S. Bach was very much God's steward, at least musically, whereas Beethoven was man trying to be God or at least attempting to reach him in his own way.

And this despite Beethoven's tremendous virtuosic and compositional gifts which technically had no equal in his own time and possibly outshone Bach's very own considerable talents. 

As Nietzsche once observed, if too much struggle is put in a work of art this will transpire in the energy it gives out, leaving a certain disjunctive effect in the beholder's mind, which is why that philosopher recommended only putting up to 70% of one's Creator-given energy in a production since, in his opinion, this would lead to a more harmonious and less jarring artistic outcome. 

To summarise in tweet form

Bach: man as God's steward - effortless transcendence

Beethoven: man reaches to God - transcendence achieved through struggle

Thought 356: Psychopathy and The Thing

The movie The Thing by John Carpenter has been read by the director himself as being a kind of allegory for the strange disease that was making the rounds at the time of the film's release, 1984, a disease which was to later become known as AIDS. 

I have another reading of the film based on what John Carpenter himself says is the key exchange in the film

"I don't know who to trust anymore."

"Trust is a hard thing to come by these days. Why don't you trust in the Lord?"

The story of the film revolves around a human and animal-mimicking alien life form with hostile intentions which hides in plain sight behind a fake appearance in order to conceal its true ugly self. 

The paranoia that sets in is of course inevitable as it is impossible to tell who in your entourage is the hostile alien which will kill and come to imitate your physical appearance the moment you're alone with and turn your back on it. 

In my view this is a great allegory for the disease of psychopathy because psychopaths mimic human emotion and feelings, seduce people with their glib, surface charm only to prey on and destroy them when the occasion arises. 

It is indeed very hard to tell who is a psychopath and what hostile life form may be lurking under casual passers-by on the street, someone closer to home or even in the public eye (such as Jimmy Saville). People who've been victimised by psychopathic individuals in their lives will of course develop trust issues as does the character Blair in the film (well named as it turns out, the script foreshadowing in its own way the rise to power of dubious, untrustworthy politician Tony Blair). 

Furthermore, as psychopathy researcher Thomas Sheridan has argued, psychopaths aren't really human as they lack a normal human emotional centre and are truly 'other' to you or me since completely devoid of heart consciousness and the conscience that comes with the latter. 

It is the disease and oddness of psychopathy that has made researcher Mark Passio sympathetically consider 'intervention' theories in human origins, i.e. that we were fashioned by a non-human intelligence to serve as a slave labour force and that these aliens did such a botched job in the development of our species that psychopathy was one of the many anomalies present in the original human genome. 

These 'intervention' theories - as opposed to more fashionable 'evolutionary' theories - are based on texts and artefacts going back to ancient Sumer which was located in present day Iraq and which seem to indicate extra-terrestrial interactions with humans, including in their coming to exist and in the origin of occult Mystery Traditions, as these (immoral) beings taught us knowledge about the universe in symbolic ways. 

The movie Alien v Predator points to such extra-terrestrial lore in its very plot according to which the Predator aliens were gods to us humans and the serpentine xenomorphs were there to provide a rite of passage for said gods. 

All that being said reptile-brain-based psychopathy gives some credit to reptilian conspiracies as does the presence of evil lizard-like creatures in ancient and modern popular culture (this reminds me that I once saw an old Dr Who episode with a reptilian alien able to control people's minds). 

What can be drawn from all this is the lesson many have now learnt, that many Hollywood films have a dumbed down plot that most can follow, which is their exoteric content, and a more hidden, esoteric content that will only be garnered and understood by those who are clued up as to alternative history and explanations. 

John Carpenter of course went on to make the movie They Live which explicitly suggests alien interference at the very top as well as in all the mainstream facets of human society.