Miles Mathis on art forgeries and fakes

After having been well taught artistic discernment (not ability!) by my father - who had been an art teacher and was a decent landscape watercolourist; I have recently learned a great deal from reading Miles W Mathis on the subject of forgeries and fakes in Fine Art, such the B. Awful Not-Leonardo  depicted above. 

Or the much more famous and quite pleasant looking, but modern and mediocre, Not-Vermeer below:

It is well worth reading these articles, and following their references - and looking more widely at MWM's reflections on the almost-unbelievably corrupt and incompetent world of Fine Art auctioneers, academics, critics, and galleries. 

The idiocy and ugliness of Art over the past several generations is so extreme and unrepentant; that it is explicable only on the basis that the activity is not about art any more. 

It is Not Even Trying to do art; nor to teach, display or reward art. 

But instead it's about such anti-artistic activities as managed investment, subsidy-grubbing, money-laundering, political activism, and the exchange of bribes.  

I don't think there is any great art being done nowadays; just as there is no great classical music being composed or poetry being written. 

This is not a golden age for human creativity - nor even a silver one. The major creative geniuses are a thing of the past.  

But there are good paintings and portraits done by serious artists - I have bought some over the years, and been gifted others.

Such violation of quality by a perverse and inverted system of incentives; is yet another symptom of the advanced phase of our civilization's collapse. 

And the way in which this situation is officially rationalized and defended - even more so.   

Tolkien's world is Not a "modern myth"

I have reworked my post on the "fuzziness" of myth, from a couple of days ago - and with reference to JRR Tolkien's work - over at the Notion Club Papers blog. 

The argument is that Tolkien is "literature" rather than myth; tied to his actual writings in a way that myth is (almost by definition) not. 

I also mention that the idea Tolkien is a myth is used as a "justification" for new "versions" of Tolkien, mostly in other media such as movies and TV, that distort, subvert, and invert the spirit and meanings of the original. 

We can see how far this process can go with such characters as Sherlock Holmes; where, nowadays, few read the superb original stories, and most people "know" Holmes only through the lens of recent - and didactically leftist - "re-interpretations". 

Of course; such deliberate desecration and destruction of Tolkien's real greatness cannot be prevented or stopped - those behind the process are too wealthy and powerful for that; but we can recognize and inwardly reject what is going-on. 

  

Midsummer season between the cross-quarter days

Buttercups at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. I saw this glorious field a while ago, while my family had a picnic on its edge. We were all fascinated and enchanted by watching a little girl of about three years old in a pretty summer dress, who "waded" all around and across the field through the flowers. Engaged by some very serious business, it seemed.   

The neo-pagans seem to be right about the primary seasonal significance of the "cross-quarter days" - those that come half-way between the Solstices and the Equinoxes - at least in England. 

These days are located around the first days of February, May, August and November; and sometimes correspond to the Christian feasts; so there is Candlemass (Imbolc); May Day (Beltane); Lammas; and Halloween/ All Hallows (All Saints) Day.

We are currently into the Midsummer season that comes between May Day and Lammas; and the change this month has been decisive, because the tress have - suddenly, it seems! - come into full leaf; and already it feels more like summer than spring. 

But May can be the most delightful of months, as everything is still fresh as spring, but with summer's abundance. 

May's special flower, the buttercup, is just beginning to wax dominant in the fields; to climax in a couple of weeks. And buttercups are perhaps, along with snowdrops, my favourite of our wild flowers.  

In particular the daylight never really ceases up-here at 55 degrees North; and the stargazing hobby must go into abeyance; as only the brightest planets and stars are visible (when there are no clouds!) against the always-twilight, never-black, sky. 

And these only from after about 10:30 pm, or even later in a couple of weeks  - at present the likes of Venus (just about, before it sets), Jupiter, Regulus, Arcturus, Vega, and Deneb. 

Unlike the Equinoxes, where the change in day length is at its most rapid; Midsummer Day - when it comes - is just a calendar date, because there is no perceptible difference in sunrise and sunset for some days either side of it. 

Here in Newcastle upon Tyne, Midsummer is dominated by an enormous travelling (gypsy) fun fair The Hoppings; which sets-up on the Town Moor for more than a week, and makes a great deal of (horrible) noise! 

So Midsummer is far from a spiritual environment, except when we get out into the countryside. 

Movie review - Good Fortune (2025)

Good Fortune (2025) works pretty well as a mainstream Hollywood comedy; it is a fairly typical "3 Star" movie (i.e. 3/5 Stars; i.e. worth watching, but not re-watching). 

What makes Good Fortune rather different is that it is very earnest in tone, and tackles the deep subject of "meaning in life"; and, as such I found its assumptions and aspirations interesting and illustrative, and I continued thinking about it for a while after watching. 

I was attracted to the movie because it features an angel as a main character (and I find it interesting to see how this device is used); but the conceptualization of angel is - as usual - a being that "helps people" in very practical ways (almost trivial ways, in the case of our protagonist) in a universe assumed to be wholly materialistic in its nature. 

But the angel comes-up-against a person - endearingly played by the film's auteur Aziz Ansari - whose constantly-working life is on a down-trend of materially deprivation and insecurity, such that it seems to him not worth living. 

The other main character is an ultra-wealthy technology-investor-type of the post 1990s style; whose life is depicted as very pleasant and easy - and a lot happier. 

Magical-life-swaps ensue; and these are used to examine the question of what Makes Life Worth Living, in order to save the "soul" of the despairing protagonist, and undo a plot conundrum. 

These "things" that MLWL, are all depicted as material; except for romantic (and maybe filial) relationships; and, to an extent, casual friendships. For instance, much is made of the Mexican food Tacos, as a symbol of the good life; and a cheap kind of good life... that could/should be accessible to all. 

Because the life worth living is materially-conceptualized, the "answer" to the problem of meaninglessness and despair is a material one; and that which is arrived-at is (implicitly)... mid-twentieth-century, Old Left-style socialism. 

So; Trades Unions are very positively depicted as a way "forward", and redistribution of wealth from the few ultra-rich to the hundred-millions of grindingly poor; is explicitly stated to be the solution to poverty. 

Economic socialism is portrayed as if it were a "radical" notion, but in reality the ideal utopia is almost exactly a reactionary yearning for the 1950s in The West. Something that already has-been; and something which was vehemently rejected at the time, by the exact same class of people who are making this movie!

In other words, Good Fortune implicitly rejects the post 1960s "Civil Rights" New Left focus on race, feminism, and the sexual revolution; and argues for a restoration of the Old Left focus on socialist economics.  

Except, of course, it doesn't! Because the movie has the usual (mandatory) quota-casting and soft-sell idealization of "vibrancy" and the rest of it. 

So what is actually being advocated is to re-impose Old Left economics on top of the actually-existing New Left society... 

Therefore (and for obvious reasons); Good Fortune says nothing-at-all about the decades of colossal immigration; which was exactly the primary cause of the (rightly-) vilified mass life of a "gig-economy" of low-paid, insecure jobs getting worse at one end...

And the tiny minority of ever-fewer, ever-richer and ever more-powerful class of people at the top...

(Who were, of course, the class of people producing, scripting, directing, and acting the movie.)  

It is an historical fact that it was the Old Left who favoured a Trades-Union-dominated, high-minimum wage economy, Characterized by strong top-down regulation of work conditions, enforced exclusion of competition, labour protection, and secure contracts. And these were the group most vehemently against mass immigration and "globalization".

(For instance, as I well remember, it was the Left of the Labour Party who most strongly opposed the UK's entry into the "European Union" in the referendum of 1975.) 

And this was for very obvious reasons (i.e. "obvious" to common sense, if not to the current ruling intellectual class of Hollywood opinion-formers!). 

But my main point is that this morally-earnest movie can come-up with no higher ideal for human existence than reversion to the actually-achieved socialist Old Left, mid-20th century. With its notion of a "decent minimum" level of material provision and security for the masses; in the context of a structurally-secular vision of reality.

Yet even this mundane, low-animal-level, "barnyard ethics" social-utopia of "comfort and convenience for all"; is rendered an impossible "fairytale" - by the insistence on the continuing destructive reality of open-ended massive immigration - with its inevitable consequences!

 

It is the old story. Those who ask for, work for, live for, aspire to have "nothing more" than a comfortable life of minimal decency; will thereby become so alienated, fearful, demotivated, and despairing that they will have even so meagre an existence taken from them. 

Materialism is incoherent - and leads to incoherent understanding and therefore the inability to recognize/ conceptualize/ defend simple-self-interest in the medium/ long-term. 

This; because human beings Just Are by nature religious and spiritual. It is built-in - whether we like it, or like it not. 

Excise religion etc; and we become fundamentally helpless; self-hating drivelling idiot-lunatics. 

In sum; we are creatures who can only function in a (broadly) sensible and realistic way, when we know that this mortal life is not everything...

Subtract all this context; and what remains is not just happy (or miserable) animals; but something less-than an animal. 

The fuzziness of myths

Fuzziness - imprecision - seems to be a characteristic of a myth; such that the specific form in which a myth is expressed - e.g. its exact words - does not seem to matter very much. It is as if the myth has a life of its down, and the words or images by which a myth is presented are not its origin; but serve some secondary purpose, as reminders or pointers. 

The two great myths of England are King Arthur - including Merlin; and Robin Hood and his Merry Men. 

When I think of either of these, no specific version comes to mind; and indeed I find that none of the versions of these myths is very satisfactory. 

For instance, whenever I decide to read one of the Arthur accounts - whether historical (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon, Malory) or a modern description, novel, story, TV programme or movie - I am often overwhelmed with a kind of irritation at their inadequacy; and end-up quitting, bailing-out before I have gone very far. 

The best I can hope for is odd and brief hints, images, phrases, or gestures; that imply rather than depict the mythical - and many versions lack even this. 

I also find the "explanations" of myth to be unsatisfactory - and when a myth gets decoded or unpacked, and its supposed underlying meaning is described - this too always distorts the "reality", and again often evokes a rather strong sense of rejection, or even revulsion. 

So what is the myth? On the one hand it is nebulous, indefinable; on the other hand the particular feeling and expectation that it evokes is quite precise. 

If I am engaging with some version of Arthur I seem to have a pretty clear grasp of what I am looking for and what is valid - even if I could not say just what that is. 

But really, the situation with respect to myth is not really unusual. After all - much the same applies to such everyday and real-life matters as our attitude to a place or nations, or loving a particular someone. 

A real myth is a kind of "miniature" or "model" of something in real life. The situation is just that any specific "model" we make of reality, is really just that: a model; whether it is made of words, pictures, or theories. 

A model is made by leaving-out almost everything, and only including a few things - so it never captures real life, always distorts it; and indeed the relationship between the model and the real is itself indefinable. And the number of ways that any actual model is wrong are innumerably large.    

Unless we have some way of knowing reality directly, and without intermediary communications such as words, images, stories, or other models; then we cannot ever know it At All. 

At bottom, our ability genuinely to live in a relationship with this world depends on the ability to know directly and unmediated; and we need to decide, each for himself, whether or not this direct knowing is actually real and actually happens.

By this account a myth that "works" and is not a fail or fake, works first for one person at a time - no matter how national (or international) it may supposedly be; and secondly by a direct, person-to-person sharing of that myth. 

And this situation is the bottom line "collective" mythic reality, towards which any particular version of a myth may gesture - or not.

Gold *can* stay, but not in this world

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

I first encountered Robert Frost's beautiful and so-memorable miniature some forty-plus years ago, and at this time of the year; via SE Hinton's The Outsiders novel, and then through reading RF's selected poems - in what now seems like a dark and despairing era of my life. 

On that cusp of early, working, adulthood - as the enchanted state of childhood and early adolescence receded fast and very fully under pressure of day and night study and work as a doctor in a psychiatric hospital; the truth that "Nothing gold can stay" was evident and inescapable. 

Inescapable in terms of my fundamental assumptions concerning life. 

So much so, that the only optimistic future was one in which I simply did not think about this truth; in which I was so immersed in the business of living that "living" consumed all of my attention.  

As a means to this end, I sought a "niche" of pleasant living, of relative ease and comfort and stimulus... And this was (always implicitly and sometimes explicitly) my aim from then onward and for a decade, and somewhat more. 

This poem is an indelible insight into the fundamental tragedy of this world, which is death - or, more generally, what I nowadays conceptualize as entropy - a tragedy even more fundamental and all-pervading than evil. 

The fact that there is a new spring, and new "gold", each year is good; but (as Tolkien's longaevus elves knew) it also repeats and amplifies the tragedy. 

In this-world, creation does not, and cannot, solve the deep sadness of entropy: that nothing gold can stay. 

Our real and solid and sufficient hope, the only real hope, the only answer; is the Second Creation of Heaven, on the other side of death, for those who choose to follow Jesus there. Thus the tragedy remains but subsumed in a "Comedy" - a happy ending. 

Escaping from the hard-sell/ soft-sell cycle of mainstream ideology

The totalitarian ideology of "this world" works by establishing a cycle of soft-sell assumptions, that are "confirmed" by the hard-sell propaganda of facts and theories, that provide evidence to "prove" the assumptions. 

Assumptions and evidence support each other pre-emptively; in a confirmatory-cycle that encompasses all the "respectable" sources...

Including officialdom, education, science and arts, churches, mainstream mass media - enforced by bureaucratic regulations, law, and economic incentives (subsidies, bribes, fines, jobs etc).

The System is inescapable to one who stays within the cycle of confirmation; because any dissent is both irrational and arbitrary.  

There is only one way out; which is go outside the cycle; which means outside this-world. 

Which seems to imply: the only escape needs to be rooted in "my" direct personal experience of the divine. 

The necessity of Jesus only makes sense if...

Christians say Jesus Christ is necessary. 

The necessity of Jesus only makes sense if God, the creator of this world, is not-wholly responsible for the situation. 

If God is doing His best... But a further factor is needed. 

Jesus Christ - Saviour from what and why? An imaginary conversation

Jesus Christ is our saviour. 

What is he saving us from? And don't say "our sins" because that doesn't make sense to me.

Jesus is saving us from death. 

But everybody dies, including Christians; and when we die we cease to exist...

It is about what happens after we die. Even without Jesus, everybody remains in existence, but not as themselves, just as demented "ghosts". With Jesus, we are restored and resurrected to become a qualitatively superior version of our-selves, the same "you" as here-and-now, still living, learning, doing - but all-good, and forever...

How better? Do you just mean that we will be made completely virtuous, like it or not? Because that doesn't sound particularly appealing.

The decision we need to make, is to live wholly from love. And love means between people (and other living-beings); and this love includes what we think of as creative activity. And it is not done-to us; because resurrection is cooperative: we have to want it, ask for it - and then Jesus is capable of making it happen.  

Sounds great, if it was true.  

You don't need to believe it is true: you do need to believe it is possible, and that you want it. 

But why do we need saving in the first place? I thought you Christians said that God loved us all and was all-knowing, all-powerful, and created everything. If so, your God is by-definition responsible for everything. How come things are such a mess and people are so mixed up, weak, and (often) wicked? 

That is a false understanding of God. The reality is that God is the creator; but creation is made up from all kinds of unique beings - a mixture of good and evil, and some beings are very evil. This world cannot be made wholly-good because the "ingredients" God works-with are not wholly-good. Such is the reason why Jesus Christ is needed to save us - if we want to be saved. And why we are saved in Heaven and on the other side of death; and can't be saved here and now. 

It seems to me that in order to be saved, I need to give up a lot of myself... 

True enough. You need to be prepared to give up everything about yourself that is not motivated by love. Only then can you become an eternal and good being, live in a Heaven of similar beings. You need to want that kind of Heaven.   

Okay... I think I would be prepared to do that, but what would I actually have to do to achieve it? Christianity seems like a package-deal holiday. To get to Heaven I am asked to sign-up to obey a bunch of dodgy bureaucrats; who insist on me believing and doing all sorts of dubious stuff. Frankly, I can't see any relationship between the end and the means. 

I understand, and agree. It is your soul, and your future that is at stake. 

I suggest that you sort things out for yourself, and to your own satisfaction, in whatever way ultimately has the potential to convince you.- 

Perhaps by going direct to source.

  

More on Music - the down-side of the Greatest composers

I am continuing to add to the new compilation blog "Bruce Charlton on Music" - most recently a post that might be useful to those who are setting out to explore the Classical music repertoire. 

I focus on my three favourite composers, and probably the greatest by reputation - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven; and discuss how a good deal of their music is pretty bad; but each is bad in different ways. 

The different quality of badness in the bad-stuff from B,M& B; can throw light on the nature of the greatness.  

Is modern Christian traditionalism even possible?

A problem that I experienced upon becoming a Christian, is that the standard model over the centuries is first to discover the true institutional manifestation of Christianity: then believe it, obey it. 

The flip side of this standard model; is that a good Christian does not make up his own mind; because the major issues have already been settled, long ago, by wiser and holier persons. 

The good Christian's job is to discover these already-known truths, then believe and obey them. 

Yet, in our civilization; when it comes to questions of Which religion? Which church? - and Which party or person to believe to believe and obey among the factions within any church - choice is inescapable. 

Literally inescapable. The most traditional and orthodox of Christians inescapably choose to be Christian, choose what kind of Christian to be, choose which particular church institution; and within that church institution they must choose between rival and contradictory claims concerning significant matters. 

Every church-based Christian actually has-made these choices, and continues to make them. 

He cannot believe and obey until after he personally has decided who to believe and obey. 

This is a contradiction; because by a traditional model the good Christian is not supposed to be choosing who to believe and obey. 

However, this contradiction is exactly what all modern Western traditionalists have already done and continue doing.  

**

Note added. The above argument is based on the logic and facts of the situation, and is generic in scope. But the psychological element is also relevant. 

When I became a Christian, I followed the standard model of conversion and practice outlined here. Therefore; once I had decided that Christianity was true; I then sought a denomination, and a church. However; I rapidly found that my first choice of a church was so corrupted with respect to the priority given to major issues of the day, that it seemed obviously harmful to take the approved attitude of belief and obedience. 

I therefore sought an uncorrupted church; and the search eventually expanded to include Protestant and Catholic (Western and Eastern), as well as Mormon. But even when I made a "firm" choice of a church towards which I intended to B and O; it became  rapidly apparent that "the" church was not of one mind - but instead riven by fundamental division on core issues of validity.

...Such that yet more choosing would be required. Until, in the end, it struck me that I was compelled to do so much personal discerning and picking - which never seemed to stop, that it reduced to absurdity the notion that belief and obedience to external-authority ought-to-be primary. 

After all, if we are subjectively picking the authority to which we will submit; then how can we then regard that self-picked authority as objectively valid?  

But there are other individuals who have, nonetheless, decided that the B&O attitude to whatever sub-institution has survived this selective process is the one-and-only valid form of Christianity. Even after themselves having been-through so much, and continuing, discerning - they have convinced themselves that their choice of an authority is objective and with universal validity; such that an attitude of humility and submission is necessarily due to this picked-authority. 

Such a process of choice and its denial seems to result in a vociferous and hyper-aggressive attitude when asserting their "final" choices! My interpretation is that this noisy dogmatism is transparently understandable on a psychological basis, as a form of compensation; whereby such individuals are refusing to acknowledge or defend the non-objective nature of their their own religious incoherence; by a combination of starkly denying any problem, creating abstract models of the unity, and concluding the objectivity of their church's teaching and authority... 

In the end, such "traditionalists" have manufactured a quasi-Medieval fantasy of tradition, rooted in what they personally suppose their church ought-to-be; rather than what it is. So that an attitude of obedient belief and practice against becomes possible, and natural. 

In short, the "Christian Crusader" pose is an act; intended by the pseudo-traditionalists to distract themselves, as well as others, from the fatal knowledge that they are indeed... acting. 

Fascinated by "magic"... But only a small bit of it

I have been reading magical fiction and fantasy since discovering Tolkien in 1972, and continued with a (partly academic) study of animism and shamanism in the early 2000s; but I began reading about 20th century magic at the start of 2020. 

In this I was, belatedly, following-up a recommendation by William Wildblood to read The Magical Battle of Britain by Dion Fortune edited by Gareth Knight. 

Since then I have read, and often re-read, scores of such books - nearly-all by Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight, and their close associates.

This; despite that I have near-zero interest in practicing ritual magic of any kind, and even less in participating in the kind of formal, initiating magical group that DF then GK were trained-in and led - this sustained interest in magic is strange, even to me.

Indeed, I soon concluded that this kind of ritual magical society has become nigh impossible nowadays - or, at least, it is now very weak in the pursuit of positive spiritual development, whether of individuals or (even more) of society. 

Clearly, I have got, am getting, significant satisfaction from at least some of this reading. 

But what? I would characterize it as a kind of enchantment that (sometimes) comes over me while I am reading - of a similar nature to that when reading a good fantasy novel, when encountering elves or entering faerie.

However, it is significant that DF and GK were both explicitly self-identified Christian - albeit of a very different kind than me (but then that applies to almost everybody, anyway). 

Even during the active lives of DF, and even more so GK, there were relatively few ritual magicians who considered themselves Christian. 

Nowadays; it seems that those who practice magic are almost all "neo-pagans" of one sort or another; and those that I have encountered express "anything but Christianity" at best, but are mostly (and often vehemently) anti-Christian.

(This opposition usually boils-down-to an opposition to the constraints that Christian churches have placed on sex and sexuality - i.e. they hate what they regard as Christianity "because" they support some aspect of the sexual revolution of which they desire to avail themselves.) 

While several neo-pagan magical writers seem like decent people in themselves, and surely no worse overall than many/most devout Christian church-members; I cannot shake off a solid awareness of a kind of shadow that lies behind, motivates, and tends to corrupt neo-paganism - whether magical or any other kind.

Consequently I have little interest in the present day practitioners of ritual magic - and very seldom find myself "enchanted" by their work -- indeed more often I experience the opposite: a repulsion.

So my conclusion is rather like Sturgeon's Law: probably 99% of Ritual Magic is crap - but then 99% of all actual Christian Churches (including the best) is crap. In this actual world, here-and-now, 100% of most institutions is crap. If we find something that contains even one percent that is good; then we should cleave to that tiny proportion, and set-aside the rest. 

But experiencing such repulsion when sensing the deep motivations of modern people is actually the norm for me. 

And, on the other side, I find the underlying personal character of both Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight to be very appealing and indeed inspiring; even when I regard them as mistaken or on the wrong track in many specifics.

I find that I am less and less impressed by superficial agreements or disagreements with those who I read; more and more my discernments of good and not-good people, seem to be rooted-in (what I infer to be) some much deeper level of character and attitude. 

This is yet another way in which I find myself at odds with traditional, group-based, external-authority-rooted ways of understanding the purpose and meaning of life; and of the Christian Life specifically. 

It seems to me that anybody - including those corrupted, or even of of deeply evil nature - can make public affirmations or rejections of whatever checklist of doctrines or dogmas will get them accepted by some kind of institution or social group. 

This kind of stuff (which is 99% of "religions") is nowadays (it was not always so) just about gatekeeping, boundaries, gang-membership - in short: attempts to increase this-worldly power. 

And therefore it already-is, or soon-becomes, assimilated to the aims and methods of the ruling totalitarian System; which is why in 2026 all institutions (including all churches) are converged or converging with the evil-strategies of atheistic-materialism.  

On the other side; I am both interested and grateful when I encounter a person (alive or dead) whose motivates are genuinely good; and who is working, in his inner life, for positive and spiritual goals.

I believe these to be the truest followers of Jesus; in the sense that such people are much the most likely to desire, accept, and embrace Christ's offer of post-mortal, resurrected eternal life in Heaven.  

And with such rare people, I will take them where I find them and enjoy the experience, and try to learn from it - whether such individuals are located in or out-of the institutions of ritual magic, or elsewhere.    

The development (evolution) of consciousness is an attribute of creation

Since reading Owen Barfield, in context of my preceding academic studies of human evolution; I have accepted that there has been (and is, ongoing) a development of human consciousness that is evident through recorded history, and consistent with what we infer about prehistory - and evident also in the lifespan of individual humans. 

But I have never been confident about how this development of consciousness happens - its "cause" or reason. 

Barfield (following Rudolf Steiner) regards the evolution of consciousness as a consequence of serial reincarnation; and that it represents a long term process of "learning" from a range of life experiences in very different situations (extending back into pre-incarnate existences) - and that this is, indeed, the underlying purpose of reincarnation.

But I don't think this is right, for various reasons. In particular; since Jesus I think that serial reincarnation has been replaced by resurrection (at least for those who affirm God's creative purpose) yet the development of human consciousness has apparently accelerated. 

On the other hand, I have remained uncertain about the matter; which is uncomfortable considering that I regard the DofC as a vital explanatory concept. 

It now strikes me that the reason it is difficult to assign causes to the development of consciousness is probably that it is intrinsic, not caused. 

In other words; my conclusion is that the development of consciousness is what happens to all Beings, serially, as they continue to exist-in, and interact-with, divine creation.

**

Note: It always seems to be be necessary to emphasize that the development of consciousness is not, not, NOT a matter of "progress" or betterment of a Being. DofC should be regarded as analogous to the biological development of an organism - for example from a fetus to childhood, childhood through puberty etc. An adolescent is not "better" than he was as a child, indeed he is usually worse; but the adolescent is more developed. Likewise modern Man is overall worse than pre-modern Man (not necessarily worse, but mainly by wrong choices and their consequences) but modern man is more developed. Also, as with biological development, spiritual development is linear, cumulative, not-reversible - it cannot be undone, nor made as if it had never happened.

Explaining the origin of irredeemable, never-incarnated, demonic spirits

Following from yesterday's discussion; I shall put forward here an explanation for those beings who are traditionally regarded as demons in orthodox Christian theology:

The definition of which is that they are spirit-beings, that have never incarnated, and which are eternally committed to evil such that they cannot be redeemed or saved. 

There are several other kinds of being that might be termed "demons"* - and these might include currently-incarnated beings, or beings that have previously been incarnated and died (analogous to evil ghosts)...

But here I am focusing on beings that have always been spirits - and I am trying to understand and explain how any being might be outwith the scope of the salvation of Jesus Christ.   

I will first outline my metaphysical assumptions: those who want to cut straight to the explanation of demons will find this after the break: indicated +++

My metaphysical understanding of reality is that it comprises beings in relationships; and that beings have attributes such that they are alive, conscious (to some degree), purposive, self-sustaining and so forth. 

Beings are eternal, always have existed - including before creation.

All beings are unique: that is important. Some Christians (perhaps influenced by oneness spiritualty) assume that all Men are originally equal, and diverge - and then spiritually develop and converge towards becoming very similar, or even identical. 

But in contrast I assume that all beings began as unique (and un-cooperative) and God's plan of salvation is a matter of progressively achieving harmony. At first a partly-imposed and temporary harmony, but a process that is completed by the Second Creation, of Heaven; where each resurrected being has chosen to be remade such as to live wholly from-love, and harmony between unalike beings is then innate and spontaneous**.

That is: living-beings are the primary unit of reality; and "beings" include humans, animals, plants, as well as what are usually considered to be "mineral" entities and materials. 

Everything primary in reality is thus either itself a being, or part of a being. 

A further assumption is that all beings were originally spirits. 

Only later, and only for some beings, there may be incarnation into some material form. 

Many spirits have never been incarnated.  

Originally (before creation) beings may have been aware of each other, to varying degrees, and with varying attitudes - but each being is assumed to have been autonomous, separate, pursuing its own goals. 

Before creation, reality was a "chaos" of beings. 

Divine creation happened when God's love became the means of "coordinating" or harmonizing these already-existing beings. 

However, to become a part of divine creation, a being must first be capable of love; then secondly a being-capable-of-love must choose to live by, or from, this love.

(Because it is love that harmonizes the disparate beings, and this harmonization is creation.)

Hence the formulation "God is love", and the great commandments to love God and fellow Men - which can be interpreted to make the choice to embrace the loving purpose of God as ideal, and to aspire to live wholly from love of other beings. 

+++

Now I will explain the origin of demons:

All beings are unique. To participate in creation, a being must be capable of love; but not all beings are capable of love. 

A love-incapable being happens to be constituted that way. Such a being will not be part of creation, and cannot ever become a part of creation. 

Demons are here regarded as spirits that are incapable of love. 

For a being to be saved or redeemed includes death and resurrection such as to live entirely from love. 

It follows that any being constitutionally incapable of love, cannot undergo salvation, indeed, such a being cannot even want salvation.

Some love-incapable beings might remain passive, detached from creation. But demons are assumed to be those love-incapable beings who have chosen to oppose creation - for various motives. 

For instance; demons may aim to exploit creation, or may seek to destroy it. They may be motivated by their own pleasure, by negative resentment, or sheer spiteful desire to inflict suffering. Or mixture of motivation; and demonic motivations may change over time. 

But although capable of changing their behaviours; a love-incapable demon can never become part of creation, and can never seek or attain salvation through following Jesus Christ. 

The above scheme may explain the occurrence of those demons - traditionally-defined: demons that are spirits, have never incarnated, and are eternally outwith even the possibility of salvation. 

*(And some of these are capable of choosing salvation.)

**(An analogy is that the first creation is like a State ruled by a loving creator God with a mixture of coercion and consent; while the Second Creation is a perfectly loving family.) 

The fact of demons refutes that God can be both "Omni" and Good

What seems to me a very powerful argument against the mainstream orthodox Christian notion that God-the-creator is both Good and an Omni-God; is the theologically-assumed reality of demons - that is, of never-incarnated spirits who are irredeemably committed to evil, and who operate in this world.

In an ultimate sense, this is a just a subset of "the problem of evil" - and its existence At All; but most of the attempted explanations of the presence of evil in this world are focused upon human beings. Apparently; many mainstream Christians (although not me) are sufficiently satisfied by the traditional explanation that human evil is a consequence of 1. human free will (granted by God) and 2. The Fall; plus 3. that there is always a possibility that mortal humans may repent and accept salvation. 

It is this possibility that any human who is currently committed to evil may, nonetheless, repent and accept salvation that serves to explain why such humans are not annihilated or incarcerated somewhere where they can do no harm. 

So; most orthodox Christians believe that evil demons are real, and that they have a harmful effect on this world; but that they cannot ever repent. 

This creates a contradiction. 

It seems obvious (?) that any Good God who had the power to do so (as an Omni-god does, be definition); would decisively sequester such evil beings somewhere where they could not corrupt or damn human beings. 

That God does not do; and allows demons access to humans, implies either that God is not Good, or that God is not "Omni". 

[Note added: To clarify, here I am not trying to refute the orthodox explanation of the existence of demons in the first place. This, in traditional orthodoxy is usually a matter of angels being conceived as a separate creation from Men. Upon having been created, these angels then use their free will to choose evil - they become fallen-angels. This fall is then regarded a - according to the attributed nature of angelic beings - a permanent condition. What I am instead saying here is focused on the question of what God does about fallen-angels/ demons, after they have arisen.] 

Maybe this is why so many modern Christians who cleave to the definition of God as wholly Good and "Omni" tend to deny the reality of traditionally-understood demons. Instead they (seem to) regard demons ("if they really exist") as merely confused, misguided and "disturbed" spirits who might attain salvation; or in some other way as only-partly-evil, or reversibly-evil.   

Or else such Christians fall back on the "God's Goodness is total but un-understandable by Men" argument; which leaves the Christian "God-is-Good" deity indistinguishable from the Islamic concept of "Good is God".  

Such are the ways in which the stark contradiction of traditional Christian theology when it comes to demons is obscured; and concealed behind imprecision, and complexity of (only vaguely-understood) abstractions. 

NOTE: I intend to present an alternative metaphysics to explain permanently-evil demon-spirits and their continued operations in this world; in a soon-to-be-published post - which will be referenced back to the above argument.

Another tranche added to Bruce Charlton on Music

I have added (and compiled) some more entries for the Bruce Charlton on Music blog - including an extended piece on Music in my Early Life.

This is how it begins:

My first musical instrument, at age ten, was a ukelele - the one that looks like a little guitar - and it cost one pound and one shilling; bought for me on impulse by my Dad, unplanned, from a shop in Bristol. It came with George Formby guide on how to play it.

Within days or weeks my then group of friends had formed a 'pop group' which we called The Shades. We wore sunglasses (naturally!), flared trousers and brightly coloured nylon shirts with cravats.

The Shades comprised an electric and pneumatic reed organ (which sounded like a motorised accordion), a steel strung acoustic guitar, ukelele, and maracas - we had no amplification.

With such a bizarre line-up, I can only attribute our success to the musicality of the organ player - who could compose, arrange, and improvise a bit; and also that we must have had nice treble voices - because it was not long before we were playing 'concerts'.

...

I visit Saint Mungo's Holy-stain in Simonburn Church, Northumberland

Saint Mungo (aka Kentigern) meets, debates and baptises Merlin (aka Lailoken) as depicted in Stobo Kirk, Scotland 

Saint Kentigern (aka Mungo) was one of the great missionaries to the Ancient Britons (including Picts), founder of the Cathedral and Patron Saint of the city of Glasgow; and has many churches named after him in Scotland and the North of England. 

One of these is in the remote-isolated Northumbrian church of Simonburn, just north of Hadrian's wall; whose Parish covered the largest area of any in England; and was also/therefore one of the very richest "livings" (i.e. the priest got an enormous "salary") from Medieval right through to Victorian times. 

As you can see from the above inscription; after St Mungo was driven from Glasgow, he went South to the Lake District, then East along Hadrian's Wall - doing missionary work as he went. 

In Simonburn; Mungo baptised in a particular spring of water, upon which the current church was built.

And to this day, the spring wells up at the end of the aisle; creating a damp, stained-patch on the flagstones that has been regarded as Holy ground - as I point-out below:  

"If Jesus Christ is King, then why isn't he doing a better job?" This is not a trivial quip...

Christians (of various denominations) often make a good deal of the assertion that Jesus Christ is King of the world, and the Universe - everything. 

The intent is, obviously, to emphasize that Jesus is divine, is a god - and (for Trinitarians) that Jesus is The One creator God. 

The intent is to make sure that everybody recognizes that there is no-thing, no-person, no-god that is greater than Jesus, or more powerful - that Jesus can do anything that Jesus wills. To make clear that - because he is the King of everything and always - Jesus not only should-not, but cannot (coherently) be ignored by anyone. 

When Jesus is King of the Universe, then anyone who believes otherwise must be ignorant or insane; or else purposively evil. There can be no rational choice against Jesus.   

But if Jesus is the actual ruler of every-thing, now and forever (and indeed always has been, from eternity) - then why doesn't he do a better job ?

This is not just a rhetorical quip - it is an unanswerable, knock-down refutation of Christ is King.

Because if Jesus rules everything, then either King Jesus is making a mess of things (and always has done); or else Jesus's idea of being a Good King is so different from my idea, and your idea, of a Good King; that most decent people would want nothing to do with such a monarch. 

It is simply not-good-enough to point-out that most things "work" for most of the time, else we would not be here to discuss anything. It is not enough to point out all the good stuff that happens. 

When such absolute claims are being made for Jesus's rulership, claims that include omnipotence, omniscience and the rest of it; then quantitative arguments are irrelevant: qualitative claims require qualitative consistency. 

If Jesus is King of Everything and Jesus is Good, then everything should be Good. 

It is not enough to wave at the "Free Will" of Men, and blame freedom for everything that goes wrong; because that just kicks the can onto why the creator-King made Men such that they want bad things; and why the King doesn't run his realm with all possible inducements to Good and excluding evil.    

Indeed, the presence of exceptionally evil people, some of whom have been that way from early childhood, is the King's fault; and so are "environments" that (we believe) cause so many people to become evil during their lives. 

The more powerful Jesus is claimed to be, the more Jesus's rulership and power is emphasized; the bigger such contradictions become. 

My point is that such Justifications of Jesus Just Will Not Do! 

And insofar as Christian belief in Jesus genuinely depends on this kind of Justification - faith is a house built upon sand. 

It will not do - so, Christians Must Do Better!... 

And this will require reaching a better, more coherent, less complex and abstract, understanding of who Jesus Christ was (i.e. his nature, what kind of person he was), what he did; and what it means for each person, individually. 

And this when attained must satisfy each of us; so as to provide a solid basis for faith; and afterwards Must Be (and it then will be) explainable briefly and clearly to non-Christians. 

How to escape the reductive-corrosive "So what?"

Although an irritating affectation among adolescents; there is more to the "So what?" attitude than is first apparent. 

To respond to information thus is a form of reductionism; and reductionism (aka. scientism, materialism, positivism) has been and is the ruling reality of our civilization - hence the world. 

"So what?" expresses the conviction - and the fear - that nothing really matters; with the possible temporary-exception of how I personally feel in the here and now...

But actually that doesn't really matter either; because how I happen to be feeling is brief and unstable, and a matter of indifference to the mass majority of "Who cares?"  

"So what?" encapsulates the characteristic, all-but inescapable nihilistic-hedonism and hedonic-nihilism of the modern West - manifested as pessimistic selfishness and immersive distraction - occulted by vast, soaring, ineffectual abstractions; such as universal altruism, planetary peace, cosmic environmentalism... 

From inside; the attitude expressed by "So what?" finds that the two extreme replies of "Everything what - i.e. everything matters, or "Nothing what" - i.e. nothing matters; are equally un-tenable as a basis for living - which is all about discernments, choices, motivations and the like. 

In practice, the problem of answering the "So what?" question is ignored, because of its difficulty. The difficulty is that any valid answer would, itself, need to be stable to the repeated question of "So what?" - and this is very difficult to achieve, even to our own satisfaction (leaving aside the impossibility of finding an answer acceptable to "other people")!

The fact is that in this mortal life on earth, everything material is subject to entropy, to death; and therefore is easily dissolved by "So what?". 

If we desire to answer this question, we must move beyond the material world, we must consider the world of "spirit", and tackle the questions of "eternity"... Indeed, we must consider whatever will lead to an answer. 

For most people, such philosophical questions are regarded as irrelevant, unanswerable - indeed meaningless. 

But in this matter, if we decide to seek an answer; our civilization provides no help. Indeed it is the basis of the problem. 

Worse than this; we find inadequate, misleading assistance by looking behind our civilization into the past. 

We find answers that are incoherent, based in arbitrary or dubious values; and we find possibly-helpful answers to be packed inextricably with all kinds of other stuff that is said to be mandatory. 

And we find the modern people who assert these old answers, actually are assimilated to modern values - so the traditional answers seem to be little more than just-another lifestyle option.   

In sum: we cannot find anybody to tell us a good answer to "So what?" If we want an answer, we will have to find it for our-selves. 

So our civilization (and nearly-all of its members) is self-trapped in a down-spiral of compulsive distraction and underlying futility; trapped, on the one hand, by its own assumptions...

And, on the other side, doomed by an overmastering mental laziness.

Rather than admit that it is important for each one of us to be able to answer "So what?" - each to our own solid satisfaction; people find it easier to pretend either that the question is trivial and does not need answering, or else that the question is un-answerable - hence best left-alone. 

But who suffers from such a dishonestly slothful attitude? 

The answer is that every-single-person suffers, who has not found an answer.

He suffers necessarily; because for people like us, in a society like this; the question of "So what?" will not go away, and is inescapable.  

God cannot make us Good - The State as an analogy for Heaven

In a universe consisting of eternal Beings, the question arises: When God made divine creation, what could he do with these already-existing Beings, and what could he not do. 

 

God could do many things - such as giving attributes to the Beings, and enforcing upon Beings a passive cooperation with divine creation; but God could not make Beings Good. 

Because, Goodness is living from Love, and in harmony with divine creation. Therefore; for a Being to be Good, it must want to live in-harmony-with divine creation, it must be living from Love. 

(i.e.  Love of God and other fellow-Beings)

And, Love cannot be imposed - it must come from within each being. Ultimately, a Being cannot be made to want anything (induced, encouraged... Yes. But not forced). 

The motivation of "wanting" comes from the nature of a Being and its freedom (with "freedom" being conceptualized as the existential fact of Beings as the prime components of reality: Beings Just Are).

God can, in various ways, compel cooperation on Beings (God can structure reality such that "things work" harmoniously, overall). 

Analogously; a State may force its citizens to cooperate sufficiently that the State is sustained. 

But God cannot make Beings want to cooperate, cannot make us to love God and creation. 

Analogously a State cannot compel its citizens positively to embrace that State's nature and policies (no matter how Good the State's nature and policies may be)... A State cannot compel its citizens to love the State.  

People often call-upon God - in effect - to make everybody Good. But this is not possible. 

God can make some people behave well (overall) by establishing a powerful System of incentives (rewards for Good behaviour, punishments for bad) - but of course Good behaviour isn't the same thing as being Good.  

And a System of powerful incentives isn't what is meant by Heaven!

 

Furthermore; whatever system of incentives is deployed; there will surely be individual Beings (and groups of such individuals) that resist or reject some or many of these incentives (for a variety of reasons); and these Beings will therefore be less-well-behaved in the case of divine creation -- less compliant in the case of citizens of a State. 

The more force that is applied by the System, the more resistance the System is likely to evoke. The System will not be able to enforce complete passive cooperation.  

And some Beings may become rebels against the whole System. 

This can be interpreted, by analogy, as an explanation for the presence of evil in divine creation, the resistance to Good; and the motivation of demons. 

It is because God cannot compel us to be Good, that Jesus Christ was needed. 

What Jesus did was make it possible for those who wanted it, to become fully-Good; via death and resurrection. 

Jesus thereby made Heaven possible: heaven understood as analogous to a "State" of fully-Good citizens. A State without compulsion (or propaganda) because it is comprised of citizens who completely and permanently embrace the goals and methods of the State. 

A State of citizens who from-themselves, and freely: love The State.   

Substitute God for the State; and Beings for citizens; and that is an analogy with Heaven.  

Metaphysics and the Marriage of Jesus - or, how fundamental assumptions shape and determine Christianity

Our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality (i.e. our "metaphysical" assumptions) have a decisive effect upon our perceptions and interpretations - such that when our metaphysics rules-out something, then that thing is often unperceived - or, if perceived, then regarded as impossible. 

This is, I presume, why the marriage of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene (who is the same person as Mary of Bethany) is either unnoticed by readers of the IV Gospel (called "John"), and/or why each mention of it is interpreted-away - despite that there is ample and coherent reference to the marriage and its profound spiritual significance in that Gospel.  

The reason is not far to seek; because most Christians have the fundamental assumption that Jesus cannot be married, because Jesus is mystically conceptualized (in an Athanasian-Trinitarian fashion) as one of the three persons of the One Godhead. And, as such, a cosmically-significant marriage of Jesus to a human being is so impossible as to be absurd. 

Consequently, each and every mention of the marriage of Jesus and Mary must mean something else; and the only task is to suggest what these references might mean. Since humans are natural experts at explaining-away whatever they regard as impossible, this is an almost automatic process.  

The same applies to reading the IV Gospel itself. As I described at the beginning of Lazarus Writes; when mainstream, orthodox, traditional Christians read this Gospel; they do so by implicitly-but-decisively subordinating it to the numerical majority "consensus" of the rest of the New Testament. First to the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Gospels I, II, III; but especially Matthew and Luke), and/or the Epistles (especially Pauline), and to some parts of the Revelation/ Apocalypse.

(Almost as if spiritual authority was determined by majority vote!)  

My understanding - that the IV Gospel is the only eye-witness, earliest, and qualitatively most authoritative source concerning Jesus - is regarded as idiosyncratic, and indeed arbitrary. 

Therefore; the New Testament, and whole Bible, are being read in terms of fundamental assumptions concerning the weight and validity of its components, and how this question ought to be determined; that washes-away anything stated in the IV Gospel, or omitted from it, that is regarded as significant but contradictory to the majority of Books (or to other sources such as Matthew, Luke and Paul; that are treated as de facto more authoritative). 

By assumption, therefore, the IV Gospel must be explained in terms that harmonize it with other parts of the Bible; those parts that have, through history and as maintained by the churches, been accorded an assumed primacy. 

Another assumption relates to how we personally (each of us) ought to read The Bible - including the IV Gospel. 

It is assumed that we ought to defer to and obey some external authority in allowed ways of reading or understanding the Bible. 

Which particular authority we ought to defer to is a matter of contention between Christian denominations and churches (e.g. church tradition, or current authoritative church teaching as a whole or of specific persons, or some version of theology, or current linguistic and historical scholarship...). 

Among among those Christians who state that the Bible is primary, and its own authority, and ought to be understood as inerrant and literally true; there are always prior assumptions as to whether this means the Bible as a whole is true, or else the New Testament primarily, or particular parts of the New Testament. 

And the "correct" way of understanding the Bible is likewise a prior assumption. Should its ultimate meaning be understood in an overall sense of mutual cohesion - including all Boks in both Old and New Testaments? Or understood one Book at a time? 

Or does truth reside in the Bible verse by verse - or even word by word? 

And/or do those words ascribed to Jesus (spoken by him, as recorded), have the highest authority?

Even those denominations that assert we ought to read the Bible for ourselves by personal revelation, invariably insist upon some particular interpretations; at least for key doctrines, and for church members we aspire to have good standing in the institution. 

My point here is that our understanding of what is significant and what it means, is structured by assumptions that we all have before we embark on Christian exegesis; and before we read The Bible - or indeed seek guidance from any external source.

This is just a fact of things: our fundamental metaphysical assumptions have structured our Christian faith, determine what counts as evidence, and shape what that evidence means.  

We cannot choose not to have fundamental assumptions. 

Therefore your choice and my choice as Christians; lies in whether we acknowledge and become aware of the fact of prior assumptions; or - as is more usual - to deny and refuse to discuss the fact.  

 

NOTE ADDED: A further example of a prior-to-Christianity and fundamental structuring assumption is the nature of God-the-creator. Most theologically-minded Christians insist that God is and must be an Omni-God that created ex nihilo. Such a person's entire Christianity is built within such assumptions; such that (for example) "God is Love" is conceptualized within the metaphysical assumption that the loving God must be the Omni-/ ex nihilo-God; such that whatever Love means to them (their conceptualization of the nature of Love) is subordinated to the imperatives of the Omni-/ ex nihilo-God. Yet, such persons usually refuse to admit that their metaphysical assumptions regarding God Just Are prior-to, and therefore not derived-from, Christianity.