We are born and live as young children with a coherent world view

It is strange to a modern mind, but makes obvious sense if this is the creation of a good and loving God; that our innate understanding of the world, which we spontaneously experience as young children, often (and ideally) seems to be more coherent than any of the others which come to replace it. 

In other words; a child's experience and explanation of reality makes sense and hangs-together better than mainstream modern materialism, and also better than the complex intellectual structures of religions. 

However, a vital element of this coherence is the mind of the child - the consciousness of a child (the way he apprehends, experiences, explains the world); which is different from the minds of those who come-up with alternative explanations. 

I have come to regard the young child's understanding as innate because God-given, part of divine creation - which is why it is true; so although different, other forms of understanding (e.g. among adults, and in various societies) ought to be compatible with those of the child. 

This innate understanding relates to the pre-Christian world, the not Christian world - or what I term Primary Creation: creation without Christ. 

A loving child in a loving family knows the goodness of God; and that this world is purposive and has meaning is implicit. 

Reality is personal - a matter of beings not things. And the world works in terms of the relationships between beings - in terms of desires, motives, etc. 

I don't think young children spontaneously think about "creation"; rather, they implicitly assume that the world is created by personal intentions - the world doesn't "just happen", is not random nor mechanical.  

But the child also has an implicit understanding of both entropy (change, death) and of evil that sometimes impinges upon goodness and happiness. He realizes there are threatening beings, that want to scare and harm him. 

The child also knows that he is involved in this, that bad things happen in part because of something in himself - e.g. it is because he thinks about them or dreams about them - that monsters and other threats are attracted, and may come. (It is because he got angry that his favourite toy was smashed.) Yet he cannot stop himself from thinking/ dreaming about monsters; cannot stop himself getting angry, spiteful...

This implies a knowledge of evil in himself. 

The child also realizes also that people and "things" change, and he does and may lose things and people from forgetting, breakages, destruction, theft, removal, death etc. 

And also that when these happen, or might happen; the child will also himself have something to do with it. 

Irresistible, irrevocable change is inside himself, as well as outside. 

The child's spontaneous "answer" to these problems would seem to be a wish for invulnerability for himself and those he loves; so that the bad things of the world do not affect him or his life.

A wish, too, to be free from those bad thoughts that attract trouble and misery.  

This relates to the fascination for heroes - whether divine, demi-god, angelic, or "superhero"... what lies behind this is the idea that we may personally be transformed - while remaining our-selves - such that the bad things of life do not affect us personally, or those we love. 

If this were to happen, then we could live in the world without fear of pain, harm or loss; and this I believe is a daydream hope of young children. 

So far this is negative; but a child aspires to the positive as well. 

Especially if we recognize that a child spontaneously knows that the material is always spiritual, and nothing is neutral - all has meaning and relates to purpose. For a child; everything is personal and relational, and everything has resonance and depth and is important - nothing is mundane or trivial. 

Children's play and talk is full of fantasies, of wishful thinking and make-believe. And these are important to the child. 

It is here we should be looking to find spontaneous creativity. 

One common fantasy aspiration of childhood (which can stand for many others) is to fly - fly without wings and by will-power (again the "superhero" idea, or in the past some kind of spiritual being, were-being, demi-god or the like). 

This is a way in which a young child is creative, or proto-creative: wanting to expand his experience, especially in ways that lead to a new quality of experience. 

Hoping to do something of his own that adds to the world (adds to creation).

This lies behind the wish-fulfilling fantasies of being a superhero or a princess; of being unique, special, famous. This isn't merely trivial hedonism or conceit; because to a child such a possibility is creative, important - enlarging and changing the world for the better.   

It seems to me that - in terms of a young child's world - the meaning of what Jesus Christ made possible lies in the relationship between his understanding of everyday reality; and the world of his wishful thinking and fantasies. 

The work of Jesus impinged upon the already existing world; to offer a new possible reality; and this unique historical event may be recapitulated in the development of a child. 

Anyone who was genuinely wholly satisfied with "Primary Creation" - with the world as-is - would not be interested or attracted by Jesus's possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

What such a person wants is to become something like an invulnerable superhero - a super-man (Ubermensch) who inhabits this world as it is, but is personally invulnerable to the entropy and evils that are intrinsic to Primary Creation. 

Resurrection and Heaven are, on the other hand, attractive to those whose child-like day-dreams are of a world - that is, a Second Creation - in which there is only love and no evil in ourselves and all other beings whom we love.

A world in which all change is good: the exciting possibility of growing-up. 

What Jesus offers is that instead of only living in this world but becoming invulnerable to its bad things; we can also inhabit a world where we have become all-good, there are only loving relationships, and happy day-dreams can become reality - with our help.  

That - in a young child's terms - is approximately what Heaven offers; above and beyond the wishes or hopes of pre-Christian and non-Christian understandings. 

Christians are badly mixed-up about Hope - with evil consequences

It seems to be a hallmark of the dangerous stupidity of most self-identified Christians that they translate the injunction to Hope - as one of the core virtues - into a kind of dumb optimism about the people and social institutions of 2025. 

They "hope" that if they continue to believe, support and obey their leaders, national government, church, science and medicine etc; then this kind of undiscerning process of taking the side of evil and obeying it, on the basis that it "might" (hopefully) actually be good is A Good Thing. 

Good and also necessary because a "Christian" thing. 

The reasoning is that if a good thing is not certainly utterly impossible, then Christians ought to believe it - or, at least, say they believe it. 

Such Christians seem to spend most of their energies and efforts in lending assistance to evil-affiliated people and institutions; on the grounds that "there is always Hope!" that these might already are secretly good, or good despite everything, or change their minds and become good...

Especially if we "give them the benefit of the doubt" - who knows? 

(It is easy to imagine what Jesus would have said if he had been told to "give the benefit of the doubt" to the activities of Temple money-changers, or the Pharisees?)

So people continue (actively as well as passively) to support Western nations and social institutions - including churches - that once may well have been overall-good; but now are quite openly and aggressively untruthful and pursue value inversion... 

And all on the basis of what they call Hope!

This is evil in at least two ways: Firstly because it supports the strategies of evil institutions in their work of corrupting the world. Secondly because it corrupts the individual who supports evil institutions. 

It's my impression that such is one of the most common methods by which individuals, including many individual Christians, get corrupted; and drift into changing sides in the spiritual war of this world.

Even worse, they change sides without realizing that they have done so, and therefore they have aligned with evil without repenting. 

[In this world of sin; to do evil, even to support evil, is itself not the most fundamental spiritual problem. Jesus came to save sinners, exactly because we cannot stop sinning. The really serious, indeed lethal, spiritual problem is to do evil without recognizing, acknowledging and repenting that evil.] 

Such Christians have set-aside the need to take personal responsibility for their discernments and judgments, and personally to make spiritual choices in this mortal life. 

Instead, what they actually do, is make more-expedient, more socially-acceptable, more personally-rewarding life choices on the excuse of Hope... 

Which as of 2025 means supporting organizations and groups that are overall explicitly evil in both their aims and methods. 

The problem with this "Hope" is therefore that it blocks thinking, discernment, judgment and personal responsibility - and dissolves the very purpose and meaning of life.

Not good.  

If not; then what?

Christian Hope is meant to be something very solid and sure; it is meant to be rooted our firm intention and belief in our own salvation. 

We ought not to be un-sure about this, because the matter is in our own hands. Jesus made it possible; after that, it is our choice. 

Vague wishful-thinking Hope has no place in this - we ought to be thinking of salvation in a realistic way: do we want it, will we commit to it? 

But what about other people? 

In the first place we have no business hoping for the salvation of people in the mass or in the abstract ("people" reported in history books, or the mass media); and our feelings are only genuinely Christian when they relate to actual human beings...

Indeed, to those whom we love to at least some degree. (Bearing in mind that love is inter-personal - between human and other beings.) 

We can and should and do Hope for the salvation of those we love: and this is very important. 

Loving is, indeed, the single most important thing that we can do for them. 

But this Hope is rooted in the fact that the game is not over until it is over. 

In particular, no matter how deeply enmeshed and engaged in evil; those who currently reject salvation are allowed to change their mind at the very last moment - and perhaps forever.

It can be seen that this Hope has nothing to do with the necessity for judgment and discernment in this our mortal lives. 

We can, should and must evaluate other people, organizations, nations; in terms of whether they are good-affiliated on the one hand - or else opposed to God and divine creation. 

We need to make and act upon such judgments. Obviously we do! As Jesus did. 

And this has absolutely nothing to do with any claim that our judgment is fallible... Of course our judgment is fallible, in this as in everything! If infallibility were required we could never do anything, and neither would we choose to do nothing. 

To demand infallibility before judgment is incoherent; hence (even for this reason alone) evil.  

Genuine, strong Christian Hope is in fact a product of faith in God: faith in a God who is our loving parents, and who is the creator. 

But that is not sufficient, because for Hope to be real and for us personally, we need furthermore faith in Jesus Christ who made our salvation - resurrected eternal life in Heaven - possible to those who follow him. 

All genuine Hope therefore springs from our personal confidence in our own salvation. 

So, in this sense, and contrary to mainstream Christian teaching; we ought not merely to "Hope" for our salvation, because it is guaranteed us - if we make the needful commitment to live wholly by love. 

We should therefore live in sureness of our salvation. 

And Hope? 

Well, Hope is for those we love; and Hope is an ultimate aspiration related to their final choice and destination.

Hope is not a guide to our behaviour in this mortal life.  

We harm people by treating metaphysical errors with psychological palliatives

There is a very common psychological scenario in which someone is (or feels himself to be) motivated by high goals, then he is given "well meaning" advice that addresses mundane concerns. And the consequence is that the high-aimer feels misunderstood and alienated.   

For instance, somebody wants to change jobs or get married; and such risky (and perhaps genuinely misguided) behaviour is met by "well-meaning" pragmatic advice pitched at the level of probabilistic human psychology.

Perhaps advice about being cautious, not burning bridges, maybe by describing the kind of adverse scenarios that could be expected to eventuate - and so forth. 

In this situation; one person is operating at a higher level of aspiration and motivation than the other; and the attempt to drag him down to mundane cautiousness and matters of practical expedience may (quite accurately) be experienced as a profound misunderstanding - and the process leaves the high-aiming one feeling isolated.

This is a serious error of discourse. 

Yet, I'm sure we have all done it - and more than once. 

Especially because in our society, the mundane is equated with the only-real - and high goals seems imaginary and delusional - which indeed they may be... 

But the point is that even "obviously" mistaken, imaginary and delusional high aspirations need to be addressed at the same level - or a higher level. 

We should learn not to try and drag-down high aspirations to expedient pragmatism - even when (perhaps especially when) the aspirations are wrong. 

This situation arises in individual persons and at a societal level. For example; it describes public discourse concerning 1960s counter-culture - as it affected many millions of adolescents and young adults. 

The counter-culture included a great deal of manipulation and wishful-delusion; and was based on wrong metaphysical assumptions and included many selfish and hedonic intentions - nonetheless it operated at a higher than mundane level: a level of "idealism". 

When flaky and naïve 60s ideals were met with pragmatic and mundane arguments concerning the Real World and economic necessity, status and security - this was (rightly) experienced as an attack on idealism, and a dragging-down of high aspirations to the futility of barnyard materialism.

In dealing with high but wrong aims; we ought to eschew the temptation of shooting at the easy mundane targets - and consequently reducing the discourse to a level of mere survival and selfishness. 

We ought to respect the aspiration for higher things - and sympathize with the instinct to reject mere expediency as the primary guide for life. 

We need to meet naïve idealism on its own level, or above. 

NOTE: This point was derived from re-reading and considering Chapter Four of William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness. 

What blogging should be about - and sometimes is

Last week the "secular right" blogger ZMan - who I had been reading regularly for several years - apparently died suddenly of natural causes; and I find that has saddened me more than might be expected.

The reason seems related to this strange and recent literary form of blogging, which I have been reading for more than twenty years, and myself doing regularly for fifteen.

In particular to the distinctive relationship that may develop (inwardly, perhaps wholly in imagination) between a blogger and his readers - and vice versa.   

To read and get-something-from a blog, it really needs to be a personal thing - either frequent, or else extensive. This is because there needs to be a persona behind the blog; we need to be aware of a person behind the opinions. 

(On the flip side; for a blogger to sustain his work sufficiently; he must himself be motivated by the process of blogging - and by its opportunity for presenting miscellaneous ideas freshly, and without being subject to overview.)

And - while there obviously must be a significant degree of common interest to keep reading a blog; there need not be any very complete "agreement". For instance, several of my long-term favourite bloggers long-term have been orthodox and traditional Roman Catholics - people such such as Bonald at the Orthosphere, who I've been reading for a couple of decades. 

Instead there has to be some kind of basic affinity with the blog persona - but especially with the person we infer behind that persona. I say infer, because we don't need to know much specifically about the blogger "in real life" - so long as what we do know is honest and unpretentious.

I personally find it very irritating/ intolerable when bloggers are trying to impress me, especially when they try to stimulate may admiration or envy!  - no matter what other valuable qualities they have. And there are many such bloggers, and unfortunately their need to brag seems to feed upon itself, and get worse.

In other words, we keep reading a blog attentively because (to use an English phrase) we have come to believe that the blogger is Basically A Good Bloke. That is far more important than a close fit of specific convictions or opinions.

But, as the pretentiousness/ bragging aspects makes clear - bloggers change; and someone we begin liking may evolve into somebody we find intolerable - and so we bale out from readership. 

Beyond that, because blogging needs to be relatively high volume, interest is maintained by insights - and a good blogger needs to generate plenty of these to sustain attention. 

Blogging is, I think, mainly a stimulus; rather than a medium for conclusive argument. So, a blogger like ZMan kept me reading partly because he had many insights that seemed personal rather than (as with mainstream journalism) merely parroted; and partly because I found what he wrote stimulating.

Even though I often disagreed with it both ultimately and superficially; and even though I think his blogging was constrained by the constraint of monetization and pseudonymity, which prevented it from achieving the highest levels of the form.

(I have come to believe that professional writers very seldom generate first rate work, although they may produce a large amount of second and third rank work - furthermore I think all the greatest writers did something else, worked some other "job", before they wrote their greatest work. Writers who have done nothing but write as adults; never, I think, attain the highest levels.) 

I think readers usually judge a blog by its best, rather than its average, level - just so long as the gaps between the good stuff is not too great. So long as we retain our basic liking for the blogger - we don't much mind the duds. 

And in fact we cannot have the peaks without the troughs, as we see from the history of even the greatest artists. Even so supreme and natural and artists as Mozart, for instance, continued to produce dud operas and concertos even during his greatest phases of achievement and right up to his death. 

To do our best, we must take risks; and when we take risks we shall sometimes (or often) fail. And we can learn much from acknowledging our failures - but first the failures have t happen.   

At any rate, blogging benefits from a careless attitude of freedo-, and the ability to shrug-off those times when posts don't take-off or just don't gel.

As an example of a recent example of the kind of blog post I like best; here is (non-famous) blogger Irish Papist; with a very personal and honest, free-associational development of ideas on the theme: Everything comes back to religion. 

As often said: writing is thinking (or it can be); and here you can sense AP thinking as he writes; and share his excitement at the insights as they emerge from the exploration.

I've been sampling Irish Papist on-and-off for several years - long enough to have decided he is a Good Bloke; and from this assumption I find that he produces a stimulating post every so often, that seems to set off associations and notions in myself. 

And this perhaps is what good blogging is about; and why regular readers come to care - at least somewhat - about our favourite bloggers; and miss them when they are gone.  

When nobody believes what everybody believes - more on Word Spells

In response to Francis Berger's comment on Word Spells in Christian theology

Maybe it's like this... 

If someone becomes convinced by the usual-mainstream-modern assumption that truth is objectively located in the external world ("truth is out-there"), and our job is just to perceive and recognize this external truth...

Then such a person never has to convince himself of truth. 

He feels more confident of some proposition only secondarily, not inwardly; e.g. by re-reading and reciting it, by propagating and defending it in public discourse. 

This way of thinking may explain how arguments that cannot really convince, become perpetuated over centuries. 

It happens because, when truth is out-there, reasoning does not even need to convince.

Indeed, nobody ever needs personally to be convinced! 

So we get a world (and this is our actual world, and the world of historical past) where everybody claims/ argues and acts-like they believe some-thing... some-thing that - inwardly - literally nobody believes!

Word Spells in Christian theology - We absolutely need simplicity and clarity concerning what it is to be a Christian

When "explanations" get complex or highly abstract, they become Word Spells, and people think a question has been answered when they have actually just been lulled to sleep. 

This is perhaps why questions asked of witnesses in court, and their answers, need to be short and simple. 

(But this is misleading if the assumptions behind the questions, the assumptions within-which the questions arise; are wrong.) 

That's perhaps functionally OK... if it works. 

But Word Spells may work only temporarily, or in certain contexts. For instance; the complex and abstract Word Spells of Trinitarianism were not designed to answer questions; but to stop Christians persecuting and killing each other in the early Christology disputes, by employing a kind of hypnosis. 

This, more or less, worked... for a while - until the soothing enchantment was broken by the rise of Islam 

(Which was, I think, substantially rooted in a clear, simple, rational rejection of the literal non-sense of Trinitarian Word Spelling.)  

Other initially successful examples of word-spelling include the crucial areas of the necessity for Jesus Christ, the nature of free-will, and the origins of evil - in a world that is defined as the product of an omnipotent and omniscient God who created everything from nothing. The traditional answers to these questions work insofar as they complexify and abstract; until the problem is lost-sight-of and/or the irrelevance or insufficiency of the answer is lost-sight-of. 

But in Christian theology, the traditional Word Spells clearly do not work anymore, and has not worked for several generations. 

Word-spelling comes with the price that everybody is then asleep or dazed, insofar as they are Christian. 

Since they are deeply and ineradicably confused and disorientated by the abstractness and complexity their theology; Christians are not strongly motivated. they are in a state of permanent uncertainty as to what they are supposed to have as their primary priorities and fundamental convictions and desires.

Therefore Christians have, by default, become passively-assimilated to worldly evil and; and now Christian churches support the Satanic totalitarian agenda - as became explicitly evident in 2020 and since.

Any viable answer must include a refusal and rejection of theological Word Spells; and the inexorable demand for simplicity and clarity concerning what it is to be a Christian, what is entailed by becoming a follower of Jesus. 

A suitable answer must, like any truthful answer, depend on valid assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

But it must also be the kind of short, simple, and concrete answer that would be acceptable in a law court.  

**

Note: This post was developed from a comment I made at Francis Berger's blog.

Is life after death important? CG Jung's opinion

Jung in his shirmer phase - beside his mistress/ extra-wife Toni

Regular readers will know that I regard Christianity to be, in essence, Jesus's offer of resurrected eternal Heavenly life to those who follow him. Yet this is very far from being regarded as the core of Christianity. Indeed most Christians would disagree - both now and throughout the history of the Christian churches. 

The idea that we might want/ need/ expect eternal life after mortal death - especially first-and-foremost - is something that the modern mind sees as a bad thing; selfish, childish, indeed ridiculous. To the typical modern atheist-stoic; a desire or demand for life everlasting is seen as irrational; and a product of psychological deficiencies such as wishful thinking and/or cowardice. 

It is interesting to consider what CJ Jung - son of a Protestant Pastor; in late life probably a deist rather than theist, and not a Christian - had to say about life after death, writing in the middle 20th century and in old age. 

It is not that I wish we had a life after death. In fact, I would prefer not to foster such ideas. 

Still, I must state, to give reality its due, that, without my wishing and without my doing anything about it, thoughts of this nature move about within me. 

I can't say whether these thoughts are true or false, but I do know they are there, and can be given utterance, if I do not repress them out of some prejudice. Prejudice cripples and injures the full phenomenon of psychic life. And I know too little about psychic life to feel that I can set it right out of superior knowledge...

I lend an attentive ear to the strange myths of the psyche, and take a careful look at the varied events that come my way, regardless of whether or not they fit in with my theoretical postulates. Unfortunately, the mythic side of man is given short shrift nowadays. He can no longer create fables. As a result, a great deal escapes him; for it is important and salutary to speak also of incomprehensible things. 

Such talk is like the telling of a good ghost story, as we sit by the fireside and smoke a pipe. What the myths or stories about a life after death really mean, or what kind of reality lies behind them, we certainly do not know. 

We cannot tell whether they possess any validity beyond their indubitable value as anthropomorphic projections. Rather, we must hold clearly in mind that there is no possible way for us to attain certainty concerning things which pass our understanding.

From Memories, Dreams, and Reflections by CG Jung 

Jung seems confident that ideas concerning life after death are in the realm of anthropomorphic stories we tell-ourselves, and therefore cannot in principle be understood in terms of truth to reality. 

Nonetheless Jung feels that there is a psychological reality to life after death - and he personally cannot-help but regard an afterlife as something that will happen to him. 

Such a perspective seems only to have been a genuine possibility as a relatively brief transitional phase; possible only for those who were raised religious, became atheist in adolescence or young adulthood, then came to value psychological (or social) aspects of religion as helpful (or indeed necessary) for an integrated and fulfilling life. 

In considering what is objectively real and knowable; Jung's perspective makes the same assumptions and exclusions as natural science - therefore its conclusions are inevitable: and Christianity becomes nothing more than a potentially therapeutic fairy-tale - something that it may make us feel better, if we believe it. 

In a word: for Jung, as for many other modern people, religion is, at best, a palliative. 

He would have said that (for many people) it is "good to believe" - and by "good" he meant good for our health and happiness, here-and-now. 

This (I think) is what underlies the common assertion (something we heard a lot from Prince/ King Charles - for instance) that "faith" is a good thing; while atheism is (usually a mistake, because is makes many people ill, miserable, dysfunctional. 

Jung may argue that life after death is important; but its importance is confined to how we are feeling in life before death. 

Life after death exists as an idea, and its reality relates to the role that ideas have in human functioning. 

(For Jung, this included a collective unconscious that was part of - and accessible to - all humans, and extended through many generations. Yet the nature and value of ideas in the collective unconscious ultimately and inevitably cashed-out in term of human mortal lives; human happiness or misery, health, social functionality and the like.) 

Life after death therefore is excluded from any cosmic role; it cannot have anything to do about solving the fundamental problems of existence - the problem of evil, and the problems of entropy (disease, degeneration, death). 

Life after death by Jung's account can affect what we think about such matters; it is a matter of adjustment to immoveable realities - it is a therapeutic understanding of religion.

As I said, Jung did not, apparently, seriously identify himself as a Christian; but here are plenty of people who do self-identify as Christian and who have a closely similar understanding of life after death. 

Paging Boromir! Anyone who approves of (real or imagined) "4-dimensional chess" strategies in politics is on the side of evil

Let me explain what's really going-on...

There has been, I notice, another and severe outbreak of 4-dimensional chess attribution among political commentary in relation to the current US President's foreign policy. 

I would suggest that politics when it is Good is actually very simple.

Whenever politics actually is, or aspires to be, complex, nuanced, multi-faceted - then we should know that we are confronted with our old friend the Boromir Strategy. 

Under all the rationalizations it's just another case of: Hey lads, let's use the One Ring to fight Sauron! 

It's not that the US President and his gang couldn't or wouldn't play some kind of 4-D chess game; but that insofar as they do operate thus - then they objectively are on the side of evil. 

And those political commentators and analysts who approve such modes of operation are part of the pseudo-alternative, but in fact totalitarian Establishment-allied, "Boromirosphere"...

They are doing the work of Satan; however they may self-identify or self-present as one of the Good Guys. 

Church faith, or church superstition

If once a person becomes convinced that a church (i.e. his church) is ultimately not an institution but also a divine entity; then there is a faith in the church which, in principle, cannot be refuted by any possible experience or action.

With faith; the divine nature of a church is irrefutable. 

And if such a faith is lacking, then there can be nothing that could happen that would ever prove a church to be divine. 

In other words; the judgment is contained in the assumptions.

Yet the above two faith-focused alternatives do not exhaust the possibilities; because a church may instead be, or become, the object of superstition.

Superstition is an interesting and seldom remarked phenomenon, because it does not make sense either to real spirituality or to materialism - yet it is almost universal. 

A person can be, and innumerable people actually are, highly superstitious, yet in their theoretical understanding of the nature of the world, they reject any possible explanation for having their superstitions.

Superstition survives and thrives in this "age of science", just as it did in the preceding "age of faith" - but although powerful superstition is also... uncomfortable. 

So we can be confident that superstition is not the same phenomenon as religion, nor necessarily a part of religion; also that it is a spontaneous and innate aspect of being human. These by the fact that superstition as a phenomenon has been nigh-universally rejected: it was (sometimes) rejected as evil by religion -- and currently is (usually) now rejected as non-valid by mainstream leftist-materialism.  

Superstition is therefore disreputable, furtive, and we sense that it probably "does us no good" even as we feel it personally necessary to yield to its insistent claims. 

The sceptical materialist explains superstition as a phenomenon of psychology; indeed psychopathology - an irrational symptom of some dysfunctional mental condition. 

Yet this does not coherently explain why this aspect of psychology survives (and thrives) without the oxygen of societal approval, and in face of ridicule; when so much of human instinct (eg in the sexual realm) has been inverted. 

Superstition is instead perhaps best understood by a follower of Jesus Christ as part of a constellation of extremely durable ideas to do with luck and propitiation. 

Luck and propitiation are, in turn, bound up with implicit assumptions concerning the incomprehensibility and hostility of supernatural and divine entities. 

There ideas have seemingly been integral to past religions - for instance, Roman religion and superstition were so integrated as to be inextricable. 

Superstition is still very much a part of religion as-is in 2025 and The West - in particular, I would say, in terms of people's attitudes to their church. 

There is no strong faith in churches, as was evident by church behaviour in 2020 and the birdemic; but as is evident in almost everything almost all of the time.      

Instead we have superstition about churches. 

The difference between faith and superstition is the difference between positive and negative. 

Faith is positive, superstition negative. 

Faith is expressed by a trust analogous to the young child's trust in his loving parents in a good family. This trust is something like the opposite of superstition. 

The faith of a Christian is an analogous trust in God; because God loves us personally. 

Conversely, superstition is rooted in mistrust; and the need for propitiation. 

The implicit assumptions of superstition is that the world is alive and purposive - which is why materialists cannot explain it - and the world is partly incomprehensible in its motives (hence the attention to "luck"), and partly hostile. 

Superstition focuses on the negative harm that may be done to us, if we anger or offend those entities who have power over us. 

We can't really understand these entities, therefore we sometimes must do things that make no sense to us - yet we fear not to do them, lest this cause offence...

Why must we grovel, kneel, prostrate, avoid eye contact? Who knows? But best to do it, to be on the safe, side, to avoid offence. 

Why must we perform superstitious rituals? Same reason. We don't believe in the validity of these rituals, but we do fear not-to-do them. 

Why must we make ritual obeisance to church authority, why refrain from acknowledging personal discernment, why refuse publicly to acknowledge that we have taken ultimate responsibility for our fundamental convictions? 

Therefore superstition is a double-negation; it seeks to avoid the harm that may result from antagonizing the world, and its entities. 

People neither believe-in nor act-upon positive faith in a church and the goodness of God the creator - yet we double-negatively fear to deny the claims of the church, and its ultimate and eternal authority over us.

(After all; somebody might notice, might be listening - and then who knows what may happen?...) 

It seems to me that the continuing power of churches over Men's minds, especially among Christians, is of this superstitious nature - which is why churches have survived the extreme loss of faith occurring both in church-rulers (priesthoods, ministers leadership) and among church laity/ members. 

Church Christians do not positively and faithfully trust their churches in any strong and durable or primarily-motivating way. 

And churches have almost ceased to be a force for good in the spiritual realm; but instead net-support the agenda of totalitarian evil. 

Yet Church Christians fear to antagonize their churches (even mentally); in a way closely analogous to that by which people fear to go against irrational and meaningless superstitions. 

Church adherence by superstition is thus, like other superstitions, not a product of theory or understanding; but something people do despite their theories, and because of their lack of understanding.

One who faithfully believed and trusted in a creator God who loved us each as His individual children; such an one would have no truck with his own felt-needs to propitiate the divine. 

However motivationally or psychologically powerful, such a desire would be recognized as a sin - because it misrepresents the nature of God and divine creation. 

Superstition is strong and superstition is wrong - but this is no paradox, and quite normal in our lives and this world 

 

A Christian should know and acknowledge that superstition is an evil; even though he cannot stop feeling it, and even when cannot stop yielding to it. 

And even when it applies to his church. 

Superstition should lead to repentance, not to the attempt to justify its necessity.   

Such is the nature of sin and of human beings in this world: we just-are "sinners", and cannot cease from sinning - but we can always repent. 

Therefore, like other superstitions; Church Christianity as-is in 2025, is primarily a consequence of lack of faith in the personal and loving goodness of God the creator.

And the spiritual harm of church superstition is sustained by the refusal to repent.        

Note: The above is a harsh teaching, but I believe that it is true. The only way out and up from where we now are, is first to return to unexamined or denied root assumptions; then to acknowledge and evaluate these assumptions - and that is what I am trying to stimulate here. In other words; far too many Christians actually are assuming that God is incomprehensible and unloving - when the reality is very simply that God the Creator is our Father who loves us as His children, and God's motives are understandable as those of ideal parents are confidently known by their offspring. A child ought not to regard genuinely loving parents in a superstitious manner, and to assume that fear is appropriate and propitiation is necessary is a sad and self-harming misunderstanding - that actually denigrates love. All I am suggesting is that Christians take seriously, and put first, the teachings and example of Jesus concerning his Father - especially as it is revealed in the IV Gospel. This teaching on God as an actual and loving parent of us as His children is what is literal, sure and certain about Christianity, above all else. And all else, all other claims of church, theology, philosophy, doctrine, church history etc.; needs to be judged by this. 

Time Loops and other temporal paradoxes don't Really exist. Charles Williams's novel Many Dimensions (1931)

I am currently reading Charles Williams's 1931 novel, in which there is a very early discussion of the possibility of a "time loop". 

In his biography of Charles Williams, Grevel Lindop suggests that this novel contains the first discussion of temporal paradoxes in any fiction, since the subject was first broached by HG Wells in The Time Machine (1895).

The stimulus for Williams's discussion seems to have been the 1927 non-fiction volume An Experiment with Time, by JW Dunne.  

But I regard the whole notion of temporal paradox as unreal; an artefact of distinctively modern scientific-abstract modellings of "time", as if it were a separable thing.

Read the whole thing at my Notion Club Papers blog.

An area of genuine supremacy of Girl Geniuses - spiritualist mediums and psychics of the past two centuries

Genius is much commoner in men than women. 

Indeed, in Charles Murray's historical survey of Human Accomplishment; English literature was the only one of the subjects surveyed in which women made a strong showing. 

And, even there, women did not feature among the very highest literary geniuses such as Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. 

But there is one neglected but culturally highly significant area in which it seems as if women geniuses have been supreme, in terms of ability and influence; and that is as spiritualist mediums and psychics. 

1. The Fox Sisters, who from 1848 were the origin of Spiritualism, which became a global phenomenon for a century, and still persists (there is a spiritualist church within ten minutes walk of where I write).  

2. Madam HP Blavatsky - the founder of Theosophy; whose international influence is so vast as to be difficult to calculate and of extraordinary breadth. For instance; much of Rudolf Steiner's vast oeuvre derives from Theosophy; and it was the Theosophical Society in London that converted a secular-minded Gandhi to Hinduism. 

3. Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science, which grew very fast and went all around the world in a couple of generations to become extremely widespread at its peak - and, although much diminished, it still continues. (There is a Christian Science Reading Room about a mile from here.) 

4. Ellen G White was the prophetess whose insights underpinned the Seventh Day Adventist church - global in reach and apparently still growing, especially in the third world.  

5. Dion Fortune - who was the leading Christian magical occultist of the twentieth century. Her teaching and Fraternity of the Inner Light gave rise to multiple other major magicians and magical societies. Nowadays DF's influence appears to be growing in New Age and Neo-Pagan media.  

These five women (to which some others could be added) constitute a pretty formidable tally in a short space of time.

And the contributions of these women was apparently of a fundamental and foundational (rather than derivative) nature. 

This also fits with the oft-noticed fact (across several religions and churches) that women are intrinsically more often naturally psychic and mediumistic; and can also (like Dion Fortune, who was not naturally a medium) become psychic by effort and training. 

It is no coincidence that the (currently) best known, most beloved, English Christian mystic is Lady Julian of Norwich. 

Although genius is always rare, and in most cultures for most of the time (including our own, now) essentially absent; there are, indeed, solid psychological reasons (e.g. innate personality and intelligence) why genius is overall much more often to be found in men.   

Despite which, over the past half century, it has become a rather dodgy academic-journalistic pastime to manufacture and fake women-"geniuses" in science and the arts (and culture more generally). 

This has been attempted even in several fields in which there are zero women of the first, or even second, rank (such as mathematics, and the composition of classical music). 

Meanwhile, there has been this area in which women really do excel; but which has been ignored!

...Albeit for fairly obvious reasons; in that their activities seem fake, mad, or wicked both to the outgoing Christian traditionalists and the incoming Leftist materialists. 

Nonetheless, if evaluated by the normal standards of our culture; these womens' achievements clearly emerge as both socially significant and distinctively creative - and can then be recognized as products of genius.

  

God works primarily with individual persons, and always has done - thus God merely "makes-the-best-of" man-made groupings such as civilizations, nations, religions, churches...

It suddenly seems obvious that God has always worked primarily with and by individual persons; and that the historical necessity by which Men came to regard divine providence and plans in terms of tribes and nations and churches was partly a spiritual fact and partly a psychological constraint. 

In other words, Men of the past experienced the world and themselves, spontaneously (often unconsciously), as part of a group consciousness. 

And reality was experienced (psychologically) as oneself being primarily a group-member, whose primary role in life was to serve the group. 

In sum: the group came first, individuality was dependent on the group. 

"Individuality" was hard for such people even to conceptualize; but insofar as it was conceptualized, individuality was spiritually regarded as a sin, and psychologically as a menace to society. 

But Man's consciousness has changed since ancient times, and so has his psychology. 

Now that the spiritual group mind has substantially dwindled and weakened to a level of insufficiency; and now that Man's psychology is substantially autonomous and spontaneously alienated - these have ceased to motivate people strongly. 

It has at last become clear that God always was working primarily with individual persons; but this fact was obscured by the earlier more "pooled" nature of consciousness, and the innate needs of psychology. 

All that stuff about God working through tribes, races, nations, civilizations - and via the primacy of churches and other institutions - we (from our individuality) can now recognize to be merely God making-the-best-of whatever and various human groupings by which men used spontaneously to identify themselves themselves. 

We now (like it or not) realize that God must either primarily be working through groups with individuals as subordinate and in-service-to group interests... Or else God relates primarily to individual persons, with groups secondary*.

(*There is an exception for groups rooted in mutual personal love, such as some families, marriages, and deep friendships. It seems God is directly concerned by such - when they are real; for the obvious reason that love is the basis of divine creation. Any individual incapable of love or excluding of love, is beyond God's reach. Thus, in summary, God works on that aspect of individual beings which is loving of other individual beings.)  

This means that we now are called upon to drop many habits of thinking about God, providence, destiny and the like. 

We need to stop thinking of God's will in terms of civilizations, nations, religions, churches, tribes...

Instead; we are asked to recognize that these institutions are man-made and man-sustained - and God simply makes the best of them. 

The future of our souls, and of the world, depends first and foremost on God's relationship with each and every being (including human beings). 

We should regard our relationship with God in terms of this inter-individual reality, and what helps this relationship - and not psychologically-erect a mandatory groupish barrier or buffer-zone between our-selves and the divine. 

And the rest of it (civilizations, nations, religions, churches, tribes...) is - ultimately - a distraction and a self-deception. 

Group-primacy is - here-and-now - a perspective capable of leading us towards evil affiliations; but not towards Goodness.

 

Spiritual Systems, such as churches, used to be net-helpful, but now block spiritual contact

We live in a world of systems - of interlinked formal institutions, organizations, corporations etc - so this is a fact of life... "inevitable", at least at present. 

But these modern systems - or indeed the overall System - is scientistic, physicalist, materialist in its assumptions; and leaves-out the reality of the spirit at the level of our thinking. 

Systems thinking just-is mundane in its nature; and mundane thinking has no space for God or Jesus Christ (except falsely, as supposed means to materialist and this-worldly ends). 

This means that what would have been regarded in the past as spiritual, supernatural, divine knowledge and experiences; are nowadays excluded. The world of spirit is not noticed, or it is explained-away as the product of immaturity, stupidity, gullibility, manipulations and lying, or mental illness. 

In the past it was accepted that religion meant a church; and church meant a system by which the spiritual was achieved. The church was very complex; and consisted of approved knowledge - facts and interpretations; and narrative, symbolism, and rituals etc... 

Each Christian got from his church a strategy for life - almost a blueprint... What to do and what to expect from doing it. 

There was a plan, methods, and procedures: a causality of do this, and that will be the result. 

A church was a Spiritual System. 

But Men changed, human consciousness changed, and the world changed. 

From the later 1700s in England and Germany, people began to notice: Church Systems had ceased to lead to the spirit - the cause and effect of do-this and get-that was broken.

And this experience, or insight, or reality; spread throughout the West, and the world. 

And, from this point, the System of a church would overall and normally serve to block spiritual contact and experiences, instead of helping them. 

Because the churches maintained all or most of their canonical information, procedures and interpretations - but these had lost their positive and beneficial effect of leading to the spirit. 

Leaving (increasingly) empty forms and structures and actions - that were nonetheless asserted to be essential. 

Instead of providing a plan-of-action leading to the spirit; the churches (inevitably, by their nature as social institutions) retained a pre-determined, objectified, materialist framework - into-which all possible individual spiritual experience must be "slotted". 

And having been slotted-into the already-existing church System, spiritual experience was thereby linked with the other social systems (politics, law, economics, science etc) - which total-system explained it away as not-really-real (perhaps with the church-added spin of being due to some sin such as spiritual pride, disobedience etc).

By their very existence as social institutions and therefore, necessarily, part of The System (aka globalist, leftist, totalitarianism) - the Christian churches went from (often) doing net-spiritual-good, to constituting a barrier, perhaps a blockage, to the individual Christians ability directly to experience spiritual reality.

So long as Modern men remain primarily committed to System, God cannot get at us.

Because whatever God does to contact or guide us; we can - and usually will - explain it away.  

And the churches are complicit in this reality-distortion. 

Of course, the churches often assert that outside their walls lies chaos at best, and unopposed demonic control as most likely. 

Yet all of these are within the walls of the churches, and often dominant; operating at the level of what makes any church an institution in the world as it now is. 

The churches are on average and predominantly this-worldly in orientation, and mundane in discourse.

The spirit is allowed only if confined to predetermined slots in a dysfunctional (because no longer spiritual) System.  

Christians must therefore (and I think the "must" is justified) have faith that God can and will operate outwith churches and by a direct and personal relationship with each Christian.

So long as God is honestly sought...

And have faith that Jesus Christ's gift of resurrected eternal Heavenly life is available to every person who genuinely desires and actively-seeks it - (ultimately) regardless of human institutions, and of the circumstances of mortal life on earth.  

We should have faith (confirmable by personal spiritual knowledge) that God the Creator, our loving Father, will have set up the world so that salvation is available and possible always and everywhere, and for everybody. 

The deep archetypes of King Arthur and the knights, Robin Hood, and Merlin

What follows is either a deep archetypal insight, or more likely just my headcanon, concerning some subjects I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading and thinking-about. 

While I love the Big Picture; I have always had some reservations about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table - perhaps because of their deployment by the Plantagenet and Tudor aristocracy in a self-justifying, self-aggrandizing, sort of way. 

I mean, when all is said and done, Arthur is a king, and they're all knights!

And the stories are often (at least superficially) about fighting on horseback, ransoms, castles, hunting, courtly love, points of honour - and other such nasty or ridiculous (and typically Norman) stuff. 

To complement this as any kind of myth for England and the English; it is necessary to give primacy to Robin Hood and his Merry Men. 

These represent to me something like the Yeomanry and Craftsmen of the English and "Welsh" (Saxons and Celts). Certainly there was, for many generations, a kind of obsession - an insatiable hunger - among ordinary English people for songs and tales of Robin Hood. 

This archetype is, however, rather poisoned by the gentrification of making Robin an Earl, and having the story rotate around his supposed loyalty and obedience to his feudal monarch King Richard I ("Lionheart") - who was a a pretty typical absentee Francophile militaristic Norman oppressor. 

I see Robin and Co.'s "outlawry" as - negatively - a protest against the Norman Yoke and especially the vile Forest Laws imposed on the Anglo Saxons; but positively as a kind of restoration of the freedom and animism of a hunter-gatherer life. 

The other great archetypal character is Merlin the wizard - whose greatest resonance is as a kind of shaman-priest, and a link between the pagan and Christian. 

I suppose Merlin to have spent most of his time in the forest, nearby the Merry Men - In my mind replacing Friar Tuck in the role of spiritual teacher, advisor, seer, and magician. 

But, linking the worlds of Arthur and Robin; Merlin might reasonably have been supposed to spend some time in the court; including the crucial task of arranging the birth of Arthur from suitable hereditary stock - on the basis that, since we apparently must have a King and Knights, these might as well be Good ones. 

Western politicos, military and mass media have now talked-up deliberate gamma-ray-emitting environmental contamination into An OK Thing to do

Beginning with the Fire Nation conflict, and now in the Middle East, it has become An OK Thing for Western Forces deliberately to try and contaminate the environment with gamma/ alpha/ beta-emitting substances. 

There have already (seemingly) been Western-forces launching multiple and sustained missile (and other military) attacks on (what is supposed to be) Europe's largest electricity-generating power station that uses gamma-ray-emitting materials. 

(Compare this with the Green "outrage" over the 1986 power station accident in the same part of the world.) 

There was also reported the massive usage of artillery mucky missiles - which inevitably polluted the very nation that the West was using as a proxy against the FN (as would the power station attacks have done, if they succeeded). 

There were and are evidenced claims of Western proxies (with Western help) developing mucky mines; devices explicitly-designed to cause lasting mutation-inducing pollution over a wide area.    

And just now there are triumphant claims of having destroyed research and development facilities in Zoroastria; which, if true, would inevitably mean extreme and lasting environmental damage from spread of these substances. 

My point is not so much about what has actually been done (which is unclear); but how this discourse has normalized the idea of deliberately causing, strategic, lasting and dangerous contamination and pollution -- and of a kind that has for, the previous 80 years, been regarded as the ultimate environmental horror that humanity ought to avoid.  

We have already reached a point where people do Not Even Notice that this is the intent and consequence of multiple and repeated (and planned) - West-initiated - actions. 

The nature-harming implications apparently do not even occur to the mass of Concerned (self-identified Responsible) people who affect passionate environmentalism, pseudo-worship of Gaia, who support Green parties and policies... 

This kind of stuff is beyond ridicule: a Bizarro Inverted World where people are terrified-of, and try to eliminate "Carbon" (Trade Mark: The Gas of Life); yet cool and approving about spreading gamma/ alpha/beta-emitters across and into our planet, on a whim; from military expediency - indeed, simply because it make A Good Headline. 

NOTE: All the above is hard to explain on the basis of politics based on a primary desire for money and power. But it is easily understandable on the basis that Western geopoliticsis dominated by those who serve the agenda of Sorathic demons - in other words; those who seek maximal destruction of divine creation as their ultimate goal.  

Pride/ Wishful Thinking - versus futility and shirked responsibility

There are always defaults in (what pretends to be) "reasoning" - and defaults are assumptions, not necessities.

Currently, the default assumption is that individual human beings are accidents of causality and randomness, products of physical processes and biology, motivated by evolved instinct... 

And, as a product of more fundamental causes and accidents, each human being therefore has no genuine significance - everybody is inessential; and to believe otherwise is a delusion of pride or sheer wishful thinking. 

Modern Man's default and underlying assumption is: "I don't matter to the universe, or to the world."

And insofar as modern humans matter to anyone, it is framed in terms of providing material, or maybe psychological, "help" to "others"... which, if thought about consecutively, means no more than that we are supposed to help each other to... help-each-other.

Against such a background; anyone who asserts (or even believes privately) that he has a significant cosmic role to play - a destiny in terms of "the cosmos"; is regarded as stupid or dangerous; maybe a childish daydreamer, insane with arrogant pride, or a would-be manipulator and dominator of others.  

And of course any of these might be true, in particular persons.

But they do not exhaust the possibilities.  

It should be recognized that there are very serious - indeed lethal - adverse consequences from an affected humility or conviction of insignificance. 

For a start, there is no basis for taking responsibility for anything at all! - and this fundamental evasion, this refusal to be responsible for one's existence, life, behaviour - is mainstream and encouraged.  

And if we have no spiritual or cosmic role, not even potentially; then life is reduced to mere hedonism - seeking pleasure and gratification, avoiding suffering and misery. And that tends (with uncertainty of expectations) to reduce towards hedonism in the short-term and for-sure; hedonism in here-and-now. 

(Which is why modern people are - compared with their ancestors - so weak-willed, demotivated, and cowardly.)

Also; it tends towards a lowering threshold of suicide - that is disposing of ourselves (preferably without suffering)... whenever it happens to be convenient, or apparently expedient.

(Suicide has become popular on the metaphysical assumption - which is unique to modern Western people - that death is annihilation, the end, and leads to nothing-else.)

Modern Western people therefore see no reason why we should not dispose of ourselves in order to avoid the risk of future suffering, if that currently happens to be what we want... 

(This is what is entailed by regarding "quality of life" as the justification for staying alive.) 

But - if we have no ultimate (cosmic, spiritual, eternal) significance, even potentially, as individuals - then we are just cogs in a machine, bits of a computer program... so there is no solid, objective reason why others should not dispose of us, whenever it suits them (i.e. whenever some kind of pseudo-plausible justification can be cobbled together). 

And this is what we find...

In the past, it seems that people justified themselves, saw reason for existence, not individually but in terms of their loyal membership of a family, clan, tribe... later of a nation.

That's gone. 

Now; it's either justification for each individual person, or no justification at all. 

Clear, simple, difficult. 

And if it is to be justification for each individual person, there can be no shirking of individual responsibility. 

We are each, therefore, of cosmic significance; each life is important to creation; and each person just-is responsible for his own life.

That's the proper default. 

We cannot hide behind service to some "group-good" - because we don't really believe it, so we don't really act upon it. 

It's a fake excuse. 

  

Trying to ignore evil in an evil-dominated world...

I keep circling back to the basic insight that negations do not suffice; so that the common strategy of trying to ignore something like geopolitical evil turns-out to be an assimilation to exactly that evil. 

On the one hand, mass media (eg "news") addiction, is a besetting sin of our times and place: the media is intrinsically evil in motivation and net effect. 

If we are to choose salvation and learn spiritually from this mortal life; then we each must know this evil, and must not surrender to it. 

But! 

Cutting-off from the mass media (as well as being literally impossible for most people) is not a virtue - it does not even tend to goodness; because negation does not lead us to positive good. 

And positive goodness is what we must have. 

If we attempt to cut-off our awareness, try to Empty our minds, try Not to have our thoughts occupied with the totalitarian agenda...  all this does not accomplish anything good, because thinking does not stop, minds will not stay empty... 

Unless we acknowledge and discern the presence and activities of purposive evil in our world - such minds will passively be filled by the pervasiveness of evil motivations throughout all the social institutions.

In a world that is - as now - administered and managed by evil-affiliated persons, any form of passivity, negation, attempted-ignoring, or the like; will fail to discern evil, fail to dissociate from evil, fail spiritually to oppose evil by active goodness. 

However differently things were in the past and in other places; for Men in 2025 in our society it is only a conscious and positive spiritual affiliation to the hopes of God and divine creation that suffices to benefit ourselves and the world. 

This, naturally, entails an inner detachment from the ideology and propaganda that pervades (and is the ultimate purpose of) mass media and the Western social institutions - yet it also entails our own active, aware, positive and personal choice to reject the plans and schemes of the servants of evil, whenever they impinge upon us... 

Which impingement is frequent and unavoidable.

The main thing is not, therefore, to try (and fail) to avoid the endless unavoidable impingements, not to enter the infinite and overwhelming vortex of double-negation - hoping to reject evil after evil after evil, without end...

But instead consciously to recognize evil-motives and actions in our orbit of thinking...

And - whenever this happens - recurrently to confirm our desire to align with God's eternal agenda, and confirm our intention to follow Jesus to resurrected eternal Heavenly life. 

**

Note: Back in January when DT replaced the previous puppet-Prez, done with the essential support of CHOAM and its agents; I made a precise prediction of upcoming direct Western military action in the Middle East before April, rationalized by a fake pennant event. This prediction was wrong. My prediction was about three months too early, and I underestimated both the scale of action; and I failed to recognize that the nature of evil in The West would have reached such a point that large scale direct intervention could happen without bothering about false pennants - and indeed without any plausible excuse or attempt to explain its "rationale". Yet here we are. To me, this confirms the acceleration of that decisive shift away from the Ahrimanic evil which is rational pursuit of global totalitarianism (i.e. wars intended to gain relative power and wealth). A decisive shift away from this, and instead into a spitefully-motivated and intentionally destructive evil of the Sorathic kind. (NB: Mutually destructive war - war intended not to "win" but to damage both sides, indeed all sides, i.e. to damage the world, humanity, and divine creation.) So this war is primarily spiritual, and to oppose it requires a spiritual act of conscious recognition and choice. And such discernment is A Must; not something that can be avoided by negations such as trying and pretending not to know, or attempting not to think about such things. Or pretending that what we personally think makes no difference... when in truth what we personally think, makes the only potentially positive difference. 

DuckTales introductory song

I used to watch the Disney TV programme DuckTales when the kids were small. 

I never thought much of it, except for enjoying the Stax-Atlantic influenced introductory theme song; with its incomprehensible words, but marvellous brass section interjections. 

I later found a superb parody performed by the impressionist Hunter Davis; whose version of Ian McKellen reciting the lyrics of DuckTales is little short of genius in its phrasing and comedic timing. 

Three kinds of magic in stories

When magic occurs in stories it has various flavours: here are three of them. 

One is the low magic of "sword and sorcery" stories, and indeed most stories that feature magic - in which magic functions as a technology of power. This ranges widely across spells, and conjurations, summoning of powerful beings, seeing the future, controlling others etc. 

But this is not a very "magical" use of magic - indeed it reduces the magical to the mundane. 

Indeed, such stories are often cynical, reductionist, intended to dis-enchant. 

There are also stories in which magical elements function to indicate a hidden world - the magic enables perception of what would otherwise be imperceptible or hidden: this is the "occult revealing" function of magic. 

Such magic may reveal a world of spirits behind the material world, that "the dead" are alive and can be communicated with, that there are invisible manifestations (such as auras), that telepathy is real - and such like. 

The general impression is that there is more to life than commonly acknowledged, and this can impart an enchanted atmosphere.

The third kind of magic is pure enchantment - and this is (pretty much) how the magic of elves is depicted in The Lord of the Rings. 

There is very little use of magic as a technology - although there is some (the Mirror of Galadriel; and elven swords, cloaks, and ropes for instance). There is also the occult trope, in the hobbits often comment that the world turns-out to contains much more and strange phenomena and entities than the commonplace experiences of the Shire would suggest.   

But the main use of elf magic is related to an atmosphere of enchantment; a different quality of attitude, experience, motivation among elves; a feeling that is both joyous and sad, supremely good and perilous - here-and-now and yet backward looking across vast expanses of time.

 As implied - these uses of magic have somewhat different narrative functions in stories, and presumably different intent. When magic is used as a technology, there may be an element of intending to induce wishful thinking in the reader; but on the whole the magic is just a narrative device, among many. 

When magic is used to indicate occult realities, this may have the intent of indirectly encouraging the reader to take the same attitude to his ordinary life - the story may be encouraging the reader to assume that behind the mundane world is another reality... if only a different attitude were adopted to perceiving it, or particular abilities were available.   

The purpose of pure enchantment in a story is - I take it - religious - in the sense of a whole-world view.

The magic of enchantment in a story carries - to some degree - the implication that "reality" - our life, nature - really is a more wonder-full and inspiring thing than we generally assume. 

Are you still in thrall to the dishonesty of Primary Institutional Wisdom?

Primary Institutional Wisdom is a belief which is part of our society, and has been for centuries - indeed probably for millennia. It is the assumption that authority lies with institutions and not with individual persons. 

At its most fundamental, it is the assumption that spiritual goodness is primarily to be found in that human institution The Church or Religion ("the" Church or Religion that we personally believe to have such authority) - and individual spiritual goodness is derivative from that Church or Religion. 

That is the default and thought-habit, and long has been - and it is something which is hard to escape. 

The alternative assumption is that ultimate authority, including spiritual goodness, is primarily to be found in an individual person. 

This means all institutions - all possible institutions - are secondary in authority and goodness...

And that institutional authority, truth, goodness etc. is primarily and ultimately (albeit not exclusively) derivative of the individuals from-which an institution is composed.    

I believe that ultimate authority - and therefore necessarily ultimate responsibility - resides in the individual person. 

And I believe it to be false to knowledge and experience, hence dishonest, to assert (and pretend to believe) that ultimate authority, truth, goodness etc is located in any institution.

That this dishonest falsehood is so common I therefore put down to wrong motivations - fear, laziness, shirking, and other sinful motivations that require to be acknowledged and repented.   

**

NOTE: I also believe that things have changed over recent human generations, and that in the past (the more anciently, the more this was the case) it was not possible mentally or spiritually to separate the individual from the group in the way that now seems almost unavoidable to many people. And that therefore (in the past) it did not make sense (i.e. it was not humanly comprehensible) to ask whether authority resided in the individual or the group. Now it does make sense, and therefore the question is honestly unavoidable, and demands an answer.  

All US Presidents are now Big Liars because they are all themselves A Total Lie

The US President is - and leaders of all Western-orbit nations are and long-have-been an intrinsic lie - a lie in-and-of themselves - consequently we observe that they are all untruthful all the time and about everything. 

It is several or many cycles since the US President has been anything more substantial than (to put it kindly) a puppet; more accurately a human autopen - when it comes to the issues regarded as important by those who hold the real material power of this world.  

If this wasn't obvious by the contrived election and four-year term of a dementia victim; then it is surely obvious now. 

The "President" has presided over two gratuitous war-acts of gross wickedness (and, for what little it's worth nowadays, treachery and illegality) - first against the Fire Nation the second against modern Zoroastria. Either (but especially the first) might well have, and I believe were intended to, precipitate all out world war.

And this outcome is very might a live and continued possibility. 

And it is clear either that the President foreknew and approved, and lied about this at the time; or did not know or approve beforehand, and then lied about that. 

And either way - the operations originated before the President, were conducted by other persons and institutions; and would very probably have happened whether or not Presidentially approved. 

Both of these supremely significant events were planned and executed on a timescale which spans US Presidents, and in collaboration with institutions of other "nations" -- and the planning, execution and decision to implement were very clearly indifferent to whoever might currently be acting the role of US President. 

So, for those who are actually making and executing these supremely significant plans - why bother with a President at all? 

Well, we can see the reason - in that the vast news and social media coverage and discourse is almost-exclusively about... the US President: what he has or has not said and done; what decision he may or may not make; whether he approves or not... and the rest of it.

(We have often seen the same puppet show focused on UK and EU "leaders" wrt each increment of the Western-derived anti-Fire Nation escalations over the past three years.)  

In this media circus; the US President plays a role analogous to the proxy-nations used by The West (= US = ultimately the demon-serving globalist-totalitarian Establishment) in warfare. 

I mean proxy-nations such as CHOAM or the corn-growing Western region of the Fire Nation. These nations have been armed, trained, equipped, and resourced to go to war against current enemies of the globalist totalitarians - to take the bulk of battle casualties, provide a focus for retaliation, and absorb most of the damage. 

And in process, often be destroyed as (even potential) nations. 

US Presidents, British PMs, EU Presidents and the like are in a closely analogous position. 

As proxy agents in the war of demonic evil against God and Creation, such pseudo-leaders may be rewarded lavishly in the short-term - but ultimately they are disposable tools; that will inevitably (later if not sooner) be disposed-of. 

So why do these pseudo-leaders make so much noise; why lie all the time and about everything? 

Why don't they just shut up? 

Well, firstly in order to serve as a focus. 

A focus for idealism, discourse, and dissent - just as the nation proxies and their "leaders" are admired and loathed, praised and criticized, sympathized-with and blamed - for doing... whatever it is that their totalitarians masters tell them to do.

We all keep our eyes on the puppets and their antics, seldom asking who is working them.  

More extremely, these leaders are like mass media commentators; whose job is to observe whatever happens, and cheer it or boo it according to editorial instructions. 

They have no control of what is happening, and indeed are often not even officially informed of what has happened - but they passionately desire to sustain the illusion that they are significant. 

So they lie. They pretend that they have personal power over the most significant events - when in reality they are victims of these events...

The most expert politicians are like surfers, riding the breakers of whatever is happening - but nobody with sense would suppose that the surfer actually makes the ways - whereas a majority are deluded that the US President is the ultimate wave-maker.  

Meanwhile; those with real power are willing to let Presidents act Presidential roles; and provide them with the needful pomp and circumstances; because the real-rulers put the Presidents in place to do exactly this. 

Sometimes a President knows explicitly that a puppet-role is what he does and must do; sometimes (apparently) a President convinces himself he is a real and significant origin of power. 

The inverted-beauty of the scheme is that it works either way!

Whether the President is a sincere fool, a conceited bloviator, or a self-aware and evil-embracing slimeball - doesn't matter to the effectiveness of the system. 

So long as people are looking at, talking-about, and treating seriously the cut-out cardboard-leader - then they aren't thinking about and recognizing the reality of a world so deluded that we never even ask who is making the major decisions - and what They really want, what Their motives really-are. 

Note added: These thoughts were crystallized by some of the analysis of Brian Berletic at the New Atlas vlog channel. BB's analysis is (I believe) correct at the supra-national geopolitical level - but he does not consider the ultimate spiritual war of this world; therefore his understanding of the ultimate motivations of geopolitical power is incorrect.