The symbol of Light for Goodness has become ineffectual

The ancient symbolisation of light (and white) for goodness used to be more than just symbolism. In the ancient past symbols were also realities, directly. 

There was then a necessity about goodness manifesting as white light, and about the power of white and light imagery to form and shape effective intention. 

Light made good. 

What I'm saying is that Light really used to more than "imagery" or a concept; and when light was used in religious imagery or architecture, scripture or ritual; or when light was the focus for prayer and meditation etc - doing-this actually had a positive effect on the world. 

I think that this effect of Light was still a factor in early twentieth century, and especially when deployed in a heightened form (for example, in The Lord of the Rings) - but the power of Light to have a positive effect on the world dwindled through the twentieth century to its current very low level. 

Light no longer works the way it once did; as a mode (or vehicle) of transforming for the better, of defeating evil, and making good. 

This is part of the generic phenomenon of losing the ability to to Do Good in any centralized and top-down or strategic fashion. 

Just as politics is now always allied with evil (at best, a lesser evil) - so the old "physics-like" ways of describing God and the divine (such as light, energy, force etc) are ineffectual and indeed actively misleading. 

From now goodness is, and ought to be recognized as, personal. 

Goodness is done not by shining a beam of good light onto the world, or anything at all like that; but instead person-to-person, being-to-being - including relationships between us and divine and spiritual beings, and the resurrected dead. 

A future for pagan religion? Laeth insights

 As a complement to William Wildblood's reflections on the potential value for Christians in what might be termed pagan-ism; Laeth makes an interesting point about the possibility of a future pagan religion in The West (edited): 

Jupiter stopped answering the Romans, and Jesus stopped answering the Christians. This is obvious. 

There is no power or magic left in the churches... 

Lots of people may say: "but my church is wonderful, we do this and do that, and so on". But that doesn’t change the fact that the spirit going through your local, or even home, church is not infecting and affecting the world the way Christianity as a whole thing did...

The fact is, no religion moves the West (and beyond) anymore. 

But it obviously did, as any look into history will show. 

Look around: the remnants of that incredibly strong motivation are still here. We like to visit such places. But we don’t do there what our ancestors did; and even when we do, we don’t feel like they did doing it.

C. S. Lewis, I think, once said that this was doubly true for paganism; that if we are removed from Christianity, we are even more so from paganism. 

But now I think it’s pretty much the same. That "gap" has been closed. 

The more a body decomposes, the more it looks like the one next to it.

That point about the "gap" between Christianity and pagan religions having closed strikes me as a genuine insight from Laeth. 

It is probably what underpins such pagan revivalism as has been evident over the past half century or so: Wiccan witchcraft; Druidism; Shamanism; and revivals of neo-Celtic, -Norse, or -Anglo-Saxon polytheistic rituals and symbolism - and the like.

This has been possible because - experientially - such invented neo-paganism is overall, pretty much, just as motivating and powerful as Christianity... 

The trouble is that this level power and motivation is Not Enough - in either case.

So that Christianity and the varieties of paganism are way too feeble to overcome pre-existing political beliefs.

So that both Christianity and paganisms now operate at the level of lifestyle, hobbies, fandoms - and do not do what religion historically "obviously did". 

From such a recognition we may look back into history and recognize that - in terms of theosis (i.e. learning and developing spiritually during mortal life) and salvation (resurrection into Heaven after death) - None Of This Matters. 

Christianity was essentially not/ never supposed-to-be a socio-economic state programme. 

And it was supposed to be possible for all individuals who wanted what Jesus offered; regardless of their time, place, or personal circumstances. 

The change of human consciousness throughout my life-span

We all begin our lives in the state of immersive, spontaneous, initially un-conscious Original Participation - which was, pretty much, the consciousness of mature adults in the earliest (e.g. hunter gatherer) phase of human history - a state of mind when we are in direct contact with an animistic (living, purposive, aware) universe of beings/ spirits, gods. 

The Medieval Consciousness (aka Intellectual Soul) is that of the great span of recorded human history, of agricultural society, of civilization - the "axial age" when religions were developed; changing through the Ancient Egyptian (for example), Ancient Greek, Roman and into the Medieval era. 

During this era, spirituality was largely communal, and contact with the world of spirit (experience of the spirit within us) was via intermediaries such as church structures, priests, symbolism and ritual. 

For Christians this type of consciousness reached a peak in the Byzantine and Holy Russian societies of Orthodox Catholicism; and for Westerners it peaked in the Medieval times with Roman Catholicism in Western Europe. 

Modern Consciousness - in which man is alienated from God, the gods, the world of spirits, and other beings; began to emerge with the Renaissance and Reformation (as traditional forms and symbols began to lose their objectivity and power) - and accelerated through the Industrial Revolution up to now. 

So that now it seems obvious common sense that this is a purposeless, meaningless, dead universe - going nowhere, and in which we humans and individual persons are irrelevant; such that our "morality" is merely maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering until we die and are annihilated. 

Looking back; it now seems that I experienced the dying residuum of the Medieval Consciousness; which, although relatively feeble and only among a minority, was behind the radicalism of the counter-cultural desire for a simple, "natural", agrarian - and essentially modified-Medieval - life and society. 

My point is that until the late 1970s a restoration of Medieval Cosnciousness actually seemed a realistic possibility; such that alternative living and self-sufficiency were topics of mainstream social discussion and aspiration. The revival of folk music and arts, and even "hippie" styles of dress and fashion - all seemed to presage this. 

It really seemed possible then that we might "go back" to a village-based and agricultural society - on lines described earlier by William Cobbett, and depicted fictionally by William Morris. 

Much of the mass youth interest in Tolkien was related to the hope aroused by his work that a Middle Earth kind of life might yet be genuinely possible. 

And for some (but not me, at that time), this included an expectation that Christianity would again have a central and pervasive influence on society: a Chesterton/ Belloc type Distributism.  

But through my life span the Medieval Consciousness has faded in objectivity and power; until now it is not regarded as a realistic possibility - or only except in a remote, abstract, wishful and as-if kind of fashion. 

This can be seen in the disintegration, decline and corruption of all the major Christian churches; and their extreme alienation and giving up of shaping spiritual experience.

But the most significant decline of Medieval Consciousness (and the cause of church changes) is in the minds of Men - an inexorable dwindling which I have both experienced and observed. 

This is where we find ourselves. I regard these changes in consciousness as objective, as causal, and as irreversible. 

So it is from here that we ought to regard the future.

Since we cannot go back, and (further) my experience and observations suggest that trying to revert ourselves and society to Medievalism of consciousness is not just ineffective; but actually spiritually harmful... That, any rate, is how I read the various "utopian" experiments in back-to-the-land, communal and Alternative living. 

Since what we have now is so dominated by the powers of evil, and so devoid of both purpose and meaning and hope - it seems to me that it is imperative we actively and consciously attempt to move our consciousness, and consequently our lives, forward into nigh unprecedented territory. 

**

NOTE: It may sound, from the above, as if I regarded Original Participation and Medieval Consciousness as taboo, necessarily harmful and to-be-shunned; but this is not the case. For many people, in many situations, both still have much to offer in the way of "therapy", encouragement, and even guidance. However the point I wish to emphasize is that they are not enough. They are both too feeble for what is necessary in our world, and both are harmful if made a strategy. They cannot suffice. There is no future in them. 

Knowing Jesus from personal experience - how is it done?

Meeting Jesus in a dream...

What does it mean, how should we understand it? 

I suppose that - for a Christian to have strong faith - he needs to know Jesus from personal experience. 

But what does this actually mean, in practice? - and in a world where there is an apparently infinite amount of conflicting advice concerning how to do it. 

Where should one even begin to look? 

Most sources of advice on how to know Jesus will direct us at specific secondary and second-hand sources, that need first to be discerned and recognized as true (among a mass majority of other sources of information that are required to be rejected), and then the information provided about Jesus needs to be understood. 

This will not suffice for obvious reasons; including failure to locate, failure to evaluate correctly, failure to comprehend correctly. 

And it observably does not suffice for most people most of the time - who never get to know Jesus.  

To know Jesus, indeed to know anything, we need to know it directly, unmediated. 

Know from inner contact, yes; but specifically the contact of Love. 

This knowing is and must be simple; because it must be comprehended by a single mental "moment".

With Jesus; the need and purpose is to have a clear and simple apprehension by which we know a few things (whether separately or perhaps all-at-once); such as what he offers us, that this offer is real, and what to do if we want to accept his offer. 

This experience of direct-knowing is what matters - but it does Not matter how this experience is achieved...

Possible examples of "how" people get to know Jesus include the usual religious activities: scripture, ritual, symbolism, churches, prayer, meditation, spiritual and physical disciplines...

It may included divinely-purposed experiences in this mortal life: such as miracles, answered prayers. 

Or it may include dreams, near-death, or post-mortal encounters (e.g. meeting Jesus, meeting a beloved resurrected person). 

But in practice; how we get to know Jesus may also include many negative experiences; such as realization of death, rock-bottom despair, extreme fear, sin, loneliness... 

Therefore; in principle, almost anything that induces a turning-away which becomes a turning-toward may lead a person to experience Jesus directly and personally. 

So much for the direct experience; but this is useless unless recognized as such! If we insist on rendering the clarity and simplicity of direct knowing into indirect forms - by translating into words, concepts, pictures - then we have made it into something abstract, complex, ambiguous... 

Into something that requires theoretical interpretation. 

Consider the example of a dream. 

In a dream we may meet Jesus in visual or audial imagery - and there is a strong tendency to focus on dream content: what Jesus looked-like, what did did, what he taught us...

Thus we get misleadingly caught-up by trying to interpret the meaning, decode the message, understand the implications... 

But the proper way to understand this kind of dream - or any other experience of Jesus - is to disregard specific content; and instead reflect on what we know experientially in consequence; and know so simply and so clearly that we can grasp it whole. 

**

NOTE ADDED: The above came from my reflecting upon how it is that the Fourth Gospel ("John") had become so important to me over the past years - its simple and clear "message" hitting me with the force of revelation; but that I would not expect other people to learn from reading it in the same way. 

For me, that particular means worked towards the desired end. But for other people, a very wide range of means might lead to the same end. 

In sum: the means to the end are personal, contextual - hence idiosyncratic. 

The problem is that - for too many people - being given the right answer is insufficient, because they are set-up to reject any answer when that answer is simple. 

Furthermore (as I said in a comment over at Francis Berger's place) It is a huge change of attitude required, from people assuming that reality is going to be something forced-upon them (almost irresistibly) by external power -- to recognizing that (as of here-and-now) people who want to know reality must make an explicit choice and pursue reality actively - and as an individual. 

That people do not do this is partly from psychological factors such as laziness and wrong priorities; but also most people assume that any belief or knowledge that is actively-chosen on the basis of inner-conviction (no matter how solidly-affirmed that conviction), must be just engaged in a wishful-thinking fantasy.

Lion, Crown, St George - Bad (because Norman) symbols of England

Richard I - rapacious absentee landlord of England, in-himself epitomising nearly-all that is alien about Normanised English symbolism

For about a thousand years, England has been a nation under occupation by a hostile and alien ruling class: the Normans. 

Well... to be clear, this statement is somewhat of an exaggeration! - but it has a solid core of truth, as Tolkien attested, among others. 

Evidence can be seen from several of the the Symbols of England - which are as alien (hence spiritually hostile) as those who imposed them. 

Most countries symbolic animal, is one which actually lives in that country; but England is stuck with a foreign-dwelling creature: a Lion. At best the Lion is a symbol of Empire, not nation - but Empire was an alien project, and the near death of England... So there you have it. 

The Crown - which features all over the place as a symbol, including (alongside the Lion) the sports teams - is of course The symbol par excellence of secular and top-down imposed alien power - of Us under the yoke of Them. 

And then there is St George; a pseudo-Saint from the Middle East, wished upon England by the usual Normans in consequence of their usual Norman warrings*, in their usual Norman pursuit of overseas Empire (since Normans prefer almost anywhere else to England, and almost any other people to the English). 

The Norman-backed "George" then coercively displaced our home-grown Anglo-Saxon Saint Edmund the martyr.

Of course there are some real - albeit inevitably somewhat Norman-co-opted! - English symbols - oak tree, rose, Stonehenge, the flat cap...

But even the primary English folk hero of medieval times, Robin Hood, was distorted into being an exiled Norman aristocrat, and make to work on behalf of a disastrously-typical Norman monarch:

i.e. Richard I - Crowned King of England, "Lion" hearted, and the originator of St George's cult.        

*Normans excelled at two main things: fighting and architecture. However, they had a short-termist psychopathic tendency, so they lacked the capacity for loyalty - even among themselves. Consequently, they spent most of their time fighting each other (and forcing everybody else into it). It was not until after four centuries, when the Barons had exhausted themselves in the War of the Roses, that a monarch with administrative genius (Henry VII)  managed to impose himself on the other Normans... But after just a generation (Henry VIII) the Normans were despoiling and killing each other again; only this time it was so one-sided in favour of the Norman King as against the Norman Abbots, Priors, and Heads of Religious Orders; that the process and outcome resembled unbridled rapine and pseudo-legal execution, instead of the usual civil war.   

The doubled-edged quality of sacred symbolism: from means to the sacred, to blocking the sacred

By "sacred symbolism" I intend all the intermediary forms that are between a Man and the divine: so this includes all intended-means towards the desired-end: contact with the sacred. 

"Sacred symbols" include religious symbols (the cross, the crucifix, the ICHTHYS fish) and Icons; ritual and ceremony; prayer and meditation; sacred places such as churches, cathedrals, places of pilgrimage; and "the church" itself*. 

None of these are "the thing itself" but are intermediary - intended to function as means to that end.

(For my present purposes; this also applies to the Eucharist/ Divine Liturgy/ Mass/ Holy Communion - since, even when there is believed to be the real presence of Christ as a consequence of the ceremony; the ceremony is understood as intermediary - a means towards that transformative end. )

From our Modern perspective that is rooted in a non-sacred, materialist world-view, we usually tend to regard sacred symbolism in a positive sense: the sense of symbols generating "sacredness" from a context of the mundane. 

Those serious about their religion therefore tend to emphasise, and try to strengthen, the power of symbolism. 

But sacred symbolism is double-edged. 

It is intended to bridge between the mundane and the sacred; but symbolism also (and necessarily) stands between the mundane and the sacred. 

I believe that historically (and in our own development from young childhood) symbolism became a part of religion as a response to the waning, declining, sacredness of life-as-a-whole.

Originally, I think that humans lived in and experienced a sacred world. That seems to be the situation of the nomadic hunter gatherers. Symbolism ("totemism") emerged as a later development. 

Likewise in the transition between young and older childhood - initially all the world is experienced as "spiritual" (or "enchanted" - which includes negatively such), but later much of life retreats to the mundane - and the sacred becomes discrete and increasingly separated.   

Symbolism therefore has both the positive and intended effect of making a bridge to the sacred; and also a negative and inevitable consequence of relatively down-grading the rest-of-life (the "not-specifically-sacred" images, actions, places etc.) to a lower and mundane level.   

Therefore... If or when symbolism loses its power to form a bridge to the sacred; then symbolism in practice will have a negative spiritual consequence. 

By focusing attention and hopes upon intermediaries that actually fail to generate the sacred; symbolism stands-between the individual and the sacred. 

Symbolism will then block our access to the sacred: will block our potential capacity to experience the sacred. 

In other words; the pre-existing systems of symbolism may claim to be the necessary and only means of accessing the sacred; yet in practice they fail to provide access to the sacred - and thus the consequence is for sacred symbolism to prevent access to the sacred. 

Then we need to realize that...

The above is not just a hypothetical; but actually has happened: is our present situation. 

*I regard my general point about symbolism to be of primary importance for Christians; but it naturally applies to other religions, to New Age spirituality, and to occult "techniques" intended to engage with the spiritual realm - such as astrology, Tarot, numerology, ritual magic; and many types of intermediary method relating to meditative or group work. 

What's going on at the planetary level? And how can we know?

A brief reflection. 

Something has been going on at the planetary level, and also with Men, since about the millennium - and this was foreseen by quite a few people in the decades (going back many decades) leading up to this stage or phase. 

I assume that there is some kind of God-aligned planetary Being (an angel, the angel of this world; some would call it) who is involved; as well as Satan and his gang. 

How might this work? Given that the planetary Being, and each of us, are free agents? 

I think it must work by love, by-analogy-with (and also in "the same way" as) the ideal human family. 

Satan's rulership, by contrast, either manipulates people as if they were cause-effect machines; or else strives to dominate their wills utterly, to "make" them do what Satan wants. 

Love is not (ultimately) an emotion or feeling; but is a creative relationship between any two Beings - it is, indeed, the ultimate basis of divine creation.   

So this contest - this war - of spiritual good, and the opposition to spiritual good - has reached a point of potential awareness in recent decades - as humans have changed to become more spiritually aware. 

(Sadly, this awareness has been, so far, overwhelmingly negative in effect - awareness has destroyed the power of traditional religion, but few have embraced the power the new awareness brings. People use their new ability to intuit and believe - to dis-believe truths because imperfectly expressed or corrupted; and believe incoherent nonsense that is part of the agenda of evil.) 

It seems that many more people are aware of the evil attempts to dominate and control this world - earth and Men; than are aware of the positively good "angel of this earth". 

This is (I think) because we are aware of love and of the angel only by the spiritual (immaterial) way of "direct-knowing"... 

And this way of direct-knowing is denied, ignored (and over-ridden) or else regarded as trivial by comparison with the material communications of institutions, words, symbols, models etc. 

Another way of conceptualizing this distinction is to regard that which is directly-known as a consequence of heart-thinking. Whereas all the mass of other communications are kind of head-thinking, rationality; modelling that maps components of reality onto a wholly-known scheme; all based ultimately upon perceptual "data" (including the perceptions and measurements of machines).  

 

So - if the above is true; it suggests that we ought to allow ourselves to aware of the angel of the earth - and also many other spiritual realities - but in such a way that we don't simply fall back into giving authority to the materialism of of head-thinking. 

This is exactly where so many spiritual writings and teachings fall down. Direct insights are re-expressed (approximated, modelled) in communicable systems; but then (and this is the fatal error) this head-thinking is allowed to take-over. 

So that we get spiritual systems that are easily assimilated into the demonic system. 

This is the problem, not only of all traditional religions (with their philosophies, specified rituals, formal symbolism etc.) - which purport to define and thereby capture spiritual realities...

And thereby become the basis for schemes of monitoring and control; very similar in nature to that of the current global totalitarianism: doing things "to" people "planning" to "make" people do what is wanted.

Not only religions; but also many spiritual systems that purport to replace religions - from the many New Age ideas to older systems such as Steiner's Anthroposophy. 

The danger is that so many of these begin with genuine insights, often achieved by direct knowing, which impress us rightly; and only then do they shift into the mode of system and communication.  

As when Rudolf Steiner or his disciples begin with true and rare insights derived from direct and personal intuitions (and thereby gain our admiration) - but then construct and fit these with numerology, categories of many types (mineral, plant, animal, human - material, etheric, astral, ego), astrology, and detailed schemes of the purported evolutionary history and future of the solar system, earth, and Men (and thereby attempt to re-impose a tyranny of external spiritual authority). 

It seems natural, and almost inevitable, for us to express direct-knowing and heart-thinking in such categorical and systemic ways, in order first to communicate-with, then maybe influence - and potentially control - other people. 

The systems begin by explaining and teaching, then get used for monitoring and evaluating; but end by attempted domination and over-riding the ultimate agency of other Beings. 

Much of our deep and strong drive to do this; arises (I think) from a strong, prioritized, sometimes exclusive, focus upon the conditions of this mortal life and our gratification during it. 

If we could, instead, view this life and world as a vital but intermediary phase leading to resurrected life in Heaven - maybe it would be easier to resist such temptations?

Meanwhile, we can but strive to recognize and repent our tendency to make ourselves (and others) captive to "that which can be communicated and systematized" - and instead strive to use our heart-thinking to listen for direct-knowing.  

A civilization that has turned against itself

 I find very little awareness of the profundity of shift in our civilization. A civilization renews itself across generations, but ours seeks its own annihilation.

This is just a fact, and quite explicit in detail. In every field or domain, subversion and inversion are most valued. 

There was, in all civilizations, a handing on and preservation of the meaning and importance of symbols whether in poetry, or science, or anything. Symbols carried the civilization through time, and the symbols linked back though the middle ages to Roman, to Greek civilization and beyond - for good and for ill, but that was the way it worked.

At some point the symbols began losing their objective nature. We were no longer sustained by the objectivity of the symbol. The symbol did not impose itself upon us...

What then happened, which was an evil thing - motivated against the divine - was that symbol was replaced by bureaucracy. Instead of continuity by objective symbol, continuity became organizational - from the overlapping personnel and procedures of system.

Now, "objectivity" comes from bureaucracy, and the actual bureaucracy works to subvert/invert the symbolism linking us to the past - and thereby remove a rival to its power and domination.

This is why poetry, science, music, farming, law, crafts, patriotism, religion... have all declined or collapsed: they are all symbols actively being killed by bureaucracy.

We no longer inhabit a civilization but a bureaucracy, and that bureaucracy is primary; because it redefines and deletes symbols at will, in order to weaken and destroy them.

In order to destroy creation, and thereby deny and replace creation.

Why does the problem of evil lead to loss of Christian faith - but only in the "modern" era?

It has become a commonplace observation that Modern people tend to lose faith when they experience pain, suffering - in a word evil. 

It is therefore assumed - and this appears to be true quite often - that such experiences as bereavement, illness, famine, war... will tend to induce Christians to lose their faith on the basis that these are incompatible with a God supposed to have created everything, and be both Good and Omnipotent. 

The reasoning goes that if mortal life is suffering from evil, then that idea of God cannot be true - therefore Christianity must be false. 

My point here is that this reason for loss of Christian faith is a Modern and "Western" phenomenon -- something that seems to have been a feature only of the "modern" era, which might be asserted to have begun (in Western Europe) around 1500, become common (in some groups) in the middle 1700s - and socially-dominant from the later 1800s; until nowadays it is all-but universal. 

Nowadays in the West it is quite normal for previously devout churchgoing Christians to experience that their faith is At Least strongly challenged by extreme adversity; by personal experience of the evils of this mortal life.    

Yet, there really is very little evidence of this happening in the first 3/4 of Christianity - it is recorded, but exceptional - despite at-least equally great (perhaps greater) human suffering. 

Indeed the opposite was more usual: the assumption that the more humans suffered, the more devoutly Christian they became. 

For instance; in a medieval work like Piers Plowman (c 1380-1400) the starving and diseased poor were generally regarded as better Christians (on average) than the idle and luxurious rich. 

It was indeed a commonplace that peace, prosperity, and comfort were the main enemies of Christianity.  

In other words; with the advent and spread of Modernity, there has been a reversal of the effect of evil experiences on people. 

I believe that the reason has been that modern consciousness has changed from the pre-modern - "consciousness" meaning (roughly) our degree of self-awareness, and the way our minds spontaneously interpret the world.  

Modern consciousness apparently began in the upper and educated classes, giving the earliest inklings and examples among the likes of poets and writers; and spread progressively downwards through almost-whole Western populations - albeit probably less-so in other places and cultures. 

But it is modern consciousness that has led to our explicit and personal awareness of the "problem of evil". 

This seems to me one of the major ways in which our basic situation in the world has changed. The experience of evil has always been part of life; but the response of people has almost inverted; exactly because modern Man experiences himself qualitatively differently from pre-modern times. 

Adult modern man is spontaneously (almost universally) cut-off and "alienated" from God, spirits, indeed the world of the spirit which used to be either spontaneously apparent in ancient times - or (later) was easily evoked by religious symbolism, language, ritual and (in general) Christian societal organization. 

What is obvious - indeed apparently unavoidable - to modern consciousness; was invisible or insignificant to most people in the past. 

Insofar as modern man is passive he does not experience God, and is atheist - hence unChristian. 

The particular power of the experience of the problem of evil in losing Christian faith is that modern Man surveys the claims of Christianity from outside. 

Pre-modern Man was spontaneously "inside" Christianity; hence he mostly did not even notice the contradiction between the existence of evil and assertion of a God who is both Omnipotent and Good.

Nowadays - surveying Christian claims "objectively", modern man can hardly fail to notice the contradictions. It seems merely rational to abandon belief in a contradiction. 

Of course, there are innumerable long and complex rationalizations as to how it is possible for God to have created everything, and also be omnipotent - and yet there be evil in the world. 

Yet these arguments have, for many and various reasons (including that they are, in my opinion, all of them fundamentally incoherent!), failed to convince. 

In practice; the stark and observable experiences of evil powerfully refute the idea of a personal, all-creating, omnipotent and wholly-good God in the context of modern consciousness. 

In this context; so long as Christians Insist that God Must Be creator-of-all, and omnipotent, and wholly-Good - for so long will the experience of evil lead quite naturally to the abandonment of Christianity. 

 

Note: The answer, as I see it, is to abandon the idea of an Omni-God. In other words, now that we recognize the incoherence of a wholly-Good God as all-creating and omnipotent - it is the attributes of all-creating and omnipotence that should be discarded. The alternative path of insisting-upon God's omnipotence and all-creating nature is - in practice - to move Christianity towards the mind-set of Judaism or Islam - where God is not argued to be "good" by Man's evaluations - but rather the argument goes in the opposite direction: that whatever God does, is what counts as good. It is the difference between "God is Good", and "Good is God" - as Charles Williams put it. In other words, when Christians find themselves asserting - whether explicitly or implicitly - that Good is God, then they have moved out of Christianity and into the theology of strict monotheism.  

Seeking power entails opening ourselves to manipulation by power

It is seldom explained explicitly; but experience of life teaches that those who seek power are thereby made more vulnerable to power. 

In general terms: those who seek to manipulate the world thereby open-themselves to manipulation by the world. And this applies whether the power sought is physical-material, or spiritual.

There are many routes and reasons by which this happens; but the general principle seems solid. It is a Faustian-type bargain; as if reality tells us:

"Yes, you can impose your will on the world, to some extent; but the price you must pay for this privilege is that your will itself becomes subject to elements within the world". 

Why this should be a kind-of law is perhaps abstractly explicable in terms of engagement: insofar as we engage with the world (for whatever purpose), we are Just Are engaged-with the world! And influence flows both ways, whether we like it or not. 

Another way to consider this interaction is relevant to the role of churches and religious structures such as priestly hierarchy, ritual, symbolism and sacred scriptures. These structures can generically be considered as intermediary between human and divine: a set of intermediary media. And these media are charged with power by the religious believer, who then seeks to lead the religious life by their intermediary power. 

Thus a religious symbol is effective in achieving its life-changing goals, only when and if it is made powerful; and when we yield to that symbol the ability to affect us. In a Good religion, that symbolic power will (on the whole) be wielded upon-us for our net-Good, and that is why we open ourselves to symbolism. 

But when the religious symbolism is used with evil intent, it has power over those who have (to some significant extent) previously yielded to it that personal power, and implicitly opened-themselves to the power of that symbol. 

(This is the principle behind a Black Mass, or other forms of subversion using distorted but traditional Christian symbols and rituals.) 

 

If we consider this issue very generally; it also applies to secular and physical power. At a material level; anyone (say a monarch or dictator) who intends to impose his will on society, must do so via "human technologies" such as powerful armies, police, spies, and bureaucrats; and by doing so, he becomes the subject of manipulation (individually, and in combination) by these same powerful institutions. 

This is a Big Problem in a world and society of increasingly-evil corruption, where all intermediate institutions, media, symbols, rituals... that whole world of abstractions and things by which we have traditionally related to Reality - gets subverted, destroyed and/or inverted. 

In a corrupting world; those entities by-which we sought power to do Good, to our-selves and to the world, are turned-against us - and with a power that we have previously given to them. And that power strikes home exactly because we have previously (but originally for Good intentions) made ourselves open-to it. 

So; in battling the evil manipulations of The World; we are also turning-against our-selves: turning-against our own former convictions and intentions. 

We are (inevitably) dis-engaging-from The World; and eschewing power - even the attempt to impose power on the world.  

It strikes me that this perspective may help us to understand why so many people are incrementally apostatizing from Christianity - and also why they seldom realize they are doing-so.  

Erecting a "middle realm" between the private-subjective and public-objective is a Dead End

Through the twentieth century, but especially since the late 1960s - and associated with Hippy/ New Age spirituality - there have been many repeated attempts to erect a middle realm to mediate between the private and subjective realms, and the public and objective realm. 

In other words - for many people The spiritual problem of modernity is alienation: the severing between subjective and objective - and the consequent denigration of the subjective; so that modern people experience life as a personally-purposeless and -meaningless, temporary and brief, state of mere-existence in an indifferent universe, which is operating on the basis of randomness and mechanical causality. 

In the pre-modern era, this situation was - to varying degrees - ameliorated by "the church"; which provided a shared, public, 'sacred-realm' of ritual and symbolism. 

This meant that the individual had an indirect (because mediated) relationship with divine reality; yet the symbolism and ritual was (although intermittent) so effective in bridging the gap, as to enable engagement ('participation') between Man and reality; making life broadly tolerable, and sometimes spiritually-fulfilling. 

Due (I believe) ultimately to changed in Man's consciousness, the symbolism and ritual lost its connecting-power; and left modern Man bereft and alienated. The new and traditional 'middle realm' systems were, implicitly, an attempt to replace what the churches had once provided. 

There have been, and are, many middle realm systems. 

One, and the most explicit, was provided by CG Jung and various neo-Jungians such as Joseph Campbell and James Hillman. Such people envisaged an underlying, mostly unconscious, collective "objective psyche"; shared by all Men in all times and places. 

The idea was that modern, subjective Man could engage with this middle realm of the Psyche as a kind of symbolic/ ritual bridge - accessed via meditation, dream, psychotherapy, personal creativity (arts, crafts) etc.  

Such Jungian ideas provided a rationale for a massive resurgence in occult traditions and new systems of symbol and ritual; which had the advantage over traditional churches of novelty and abundance. Novelty and abundance together overcome habituation and fatigue; so that a whole life could be spent in exploring, sampling, and permutating spiritual systems selected from the New Age smorgasbord.  

So, there have been big revivals of astrology, Tarot, alchemy, , numerology, Neo-Platonism and the like; and new systems based on UFOs, crop circles, geomancy, earth energies, cosmic radiations - and a multitude of healing therapies with spiritual implications. 

I'm afraid I regard all such attempts as essentially misguided because regressive, hence ineffective. 

And indeed, despite great hopes for a "New Age" inspired global spiritual revival, the world has become more and more materialistic, bureaucratic, and totalitarian. Spirituality (as well as religion) has been eliminated from the public realm in the West.

(Or, at the least, reduced to reactive, insincere, and ineffectual rhetoric - such as the regular call from-and-to explicit atheists to 'pray' for such-and-such victims. Politics now - very obviously - drives religion; and spirituality merely fits-around prior left-ideologies such as antiracism, carbon-environmentalism, socialism, feminism, healthism etc.) 

Middle realm construction and advocacy is misguided, ineffectual and a dead-end. 

What actually happens with such middle realm constructions, is that they become absorbed-into materialism. Instead of making a bridge connecting modern Man from the material to the spiritual; these systems either do nothing but provide lifestyle options...

Or else the rituals and symbols crystallize into the material to become large, difficult and complex systems - the preserve of experts and professionals - standing between the individual and the spiritual in much the same way as institutional churches. 

This is why I am filled with a mixture of boredom and dismay whenever I come-across one of these middle realm systems; describing some large/ difficult-to-understand/ complex layer of ideas; or purporting to give 'information' or 'teaching' concerning the higher or spiritual world (which spiritual world always seems to resemble a complex, hierarchical, multi-specialized, multi-national corporation, or bloated state bureaucracy!). 

These middle realms purport to be bridges and mediations; but I see just-another barrier.  

After many centuries during which the effectiveness of mediation has progressively dwindled; and all churches and religions have become corrupted to the agenda of this-worldly, materialist-leftist, socio-politics; we are now confronted by a situation in which our choice is either to abandon the subjective along with the spiritual (and accept our status as depersonalized 'units' in a transhumanist world)...

Or else: To approach reality (including God) directly and (as much as possible) un-mediated. 

Gareth Knight - Romantic Christian

In 2011, Gareth Knight (1939-2022) published an autobiography titled I call it Magic which is easy and enjoyable to read on the surface; yet contains several deeper layers of implied content that have only revealed themselves on re-reading.

Of particular interest was his account of the transformation in his own 'magical life' throughout his adult life; especially the changes in what he 'called' magic, the means by which he reached the state of enchantment or poetry, and the actual content of these magical-states. 

Knight began as a formal ritual magician, ascending through the prolonged training and initiatory steps of the Society of the Inner Light (founded a generation earlier, as a Christian organization, by Dion Fortune); he went on to found his own ritual magic group - on similar, though looser, lines; then to 'staging' much larger annual weekend events (almost 'happenings') at an anthroposophical centre called Hawkwood. 

By Knight's own account, in the 1970s to the early 1980s, these weekends attained a very powerful level of magical activity among the participants (who had been trained in the requisite methods of concentration and visualization). He then stopped doing this, and moved on to less formal and more improvisatory styles of magic either alone, with his wife and daughter, or in small and private groups. 

After the turn of the millennium his magic practice had changed further. In December of 2004 he was invited back to the Hawkwood weekend; which had changed considerably over the previous couple of decades (the following quotations are from Chapter 31 of I called it Magic) :

The occasion was a jolly romp, with the place filled to capacity, and a rich variety of activity. [But] Power was not ramped up to the degree that it had been in the early Hawkwood days...   

In other words, the experience was less-strongly magical, less enchanted than it had been. In other words; this corresponds to my observations on the declining power of symbolism and ritual through the late 20th century.  

Knight does not draw attention to the meaning of these changes for his inner life; but describes how in fact his practices changed - in the direction of becoming more individual, personally based, and exploratory (rather than relying-on an established and quasi-objective system of symbols, rituals, and group activity). 

Rooted in his study of French language and literature (in which subject he did a degree in later life); Knight embarked on an engagement with the medieval French Arthurian poet Chretien de Troyes:

I took upon myself the task of going through each of Chretien's romances as if both he and I were present, travelling through the whole scenario from start to finish as a kind of directed visualization, and writing it all down...

It then filtered into my head the realization that much that I had witnessed in this was was not chivalrous knights going to the aid of damsels in distress but accounts of their initiation into fairyland - for there was a strong case for seeing the principal female characters as faery rather than human. 

This led on to what Knight termed faery 'contacts' - which then led to writing several books deriving from these contacts. What this meant he explains further: 

It dealt in imagery but with a philosophical intent, yet a wisdom expressed more through the medium of a story than by intellectual definitions. To make the contact it was necessary to build a scenario [i.e. in imagination] something like a questing knight discovering a castle in a particular symbolic shape, and then entering into it... with a ... direct feeling of relationship with the fabric of the building itself. 

After further description of his imagined but real-seeming experiences; Knight elaborates the resulting new and deeper engagement with nature:

This kind of thing was at a different level from local countryside experiences where contact was virtually devoid of intellect but impacted more on the emotional and etheric levels... Along with contacts... came a greater sense of presence and communion with the world of nature, and particularly trees...

It may well be that experience and wisdom of this nature comes with age, which is [an] aspect of the Merlin and Nimue story... But there is no real need to await one's dotage for a realization of these things.

  

What Gareth Knight seems to me to be describing here, is a kind of recapitulation of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield's scheme of the development of consciousness. The ritual magic was the Intellectual Soul era, characteristic of classical and medieval culture. 

Contact bears some relationship to 'channeling' of spiritual Beings - which he also did for example in a channeled series of direct communication (much like taking dictation) of 1993, published as The Abbey Papers. 

But 'contact' comes across to me as much more of a two-way interaction between himself and a spiritual Being - and not necessarily in words, nor in images - i.e. more direct than language- or symbol-mediated. 

Knight then moved towards what sound very much like Final Participation - which is something like a recapitulation in conscious thinking of what was a much more passive and unconscious in the spontaneous animistic Original Participation of early childhood and tribal Man. 

Animistic, because it recognizes the world as consisting of living, conscious Beings with which one may have relationships and communication. Knight also seems to be moving towards a communication less based on perceptions and visions, and more a matter of what I have called Direct Knowing: that is direct, wordless and imageless communication in thinking. 

In other words, a direct communion between Beings, such that the thinking of one is participated-in by the thinking of another. 

Once Gareth Knight had reached this kind of 'magic' I think he has largely left-behind the formal and institutional roots of his practice, and indeed its 'objective' aspects, where experiences were shared via a common language and symbolism that could be relied-upon to evoke the same inner states in its participants.

It seems he has - in practice, if not in terms of theorization - fully Romantic Christian; in that he takes an inner, intuitive and personal responsibility for whatever 'methods' he uses to attain magical states of mind (within the over-arching and primary Christian metaphysical framework).   

Knight puts this change down to his own personal development, experiences, expediency, and ageing - but such is the generality of such a development that I interpret it as driven by inner and divinely-destined changes in the human consciousness of Western Man. 

What all this seems to mean is that (here and now) we cannot rely upon external and institutional forms of spirituality to attain 'participation' in the world; and the language of 'objective' communication of spiritual experiences has weakening and withered. 

Yet, on the positive side, we can develop distinctive (perhaps unique) personal 'aids' and methods (i.e. 'contacts' occurring inside thinking, rather than as external 'events), that will achieve the participation which is natural, good, and divinely-intended. 

Also, that strong forms of achieved participation are likely to be more animistic and personal - engagement with particular Beings - than the abstract forms of earlier symbolism. 

     

Whether Gareth Knight would have agreed with my interpretation of his life and development is perhaps doubtful... 

It does rather involve a cutting-off of the branch upon which his life's work rested: that is, the general validity of some particular kinds of ritual, symbols, group-activity; and the communication of these in abstract and written forms, and by speech. 

But his desire to use more narrative story-like communications; his primary mode of magic in later life being a personal, inter-Being and two-way 'contact'; and the continually-evolving nature of the subject matter and formal techniques of his magic - all suggest that there was exactly such an evolution; and that Gareth Knight's life ended with him being implicitly a genuine and fully-realized Romantic Christian. 

Loss of the (supposed) Collective Unconscious - an effect of modernity and the declining power of symbolism

Reading books from even as recently as the early and middle 20th century, it is clear that many believed-in (or at least hoped-for) a universal and permanent 'system' of symbols - which was inferred to be rooted in an innate collective unconscious - that would reliably evoke human responses of particular types: certain symbols 'releasing' certain emotions, thoughts, behaviors, motivations etc. 

This idea has mystical overtones; but also had a quasi-scientific aspect, with supposed roots in biology, evolutionary history, and the presumed structure of the human mind (and brain). 

Yet there has been a striking decline in the specificity of symbolism, and its power - and the great mass of people (especially in modernized societies) have all-but completely abandoned whole systems of symbolism that as recently as a century ago seemed to be 'eternal' - part of the human condition. And among those who have not abandoned these system, they clearly have less power, are less motivating, make less of a difference. 

There are many factors contributing to this - I'm sure that the constant influx of novelty (especially from mass media), changing surroundings, changing location, cultural mixing; plus a great deal of top-down subversion focused on Christianity, tradition, and related to the pervasive leftism of modernity - all had a role to play. 

My own assumptions is that this overall process was driven by changes in the nature of Man's consciousness; which were ultimately part of our divine destiny - because the power of symbolism to evoke religious devotion and solidarity (for instance) was also a subjugation of Man to the power of symbol: a limitation to each man's freedom, autonomy, agency.  

It seems to me that there is a direction of spiritual development at work, which is a matter of maturation from child like, through adolescent, to adult - and aiming-at the divine state of resurrected Man becoming a co-worker with God and participant in creation. 

In this mortal life on earth, such a spiritual development is a maturation - but it is not a spiritual improvement - just as maturing from a child to adolescent is not always (or usually) an improvement... Rather it is a new set of challenges and possibilities, and maybe more people fail to respond well to these changes than emerge as better people. 

Growing up is a very risky business. Nonetheless, it is what we must attempt, if we are to reach higher spiritual levels - which is what we are alive for.  

My point here is that we have an enormous cultural residue that assumes, in the face of current experience, that symbolism is an intrinsic 'fact of life'; that both for better and worse, certain symbols evoke certain human responses. 

People on the side of God therefore deploy Christian symbolism where possible - putting crosses, ICHTHYS fishes, Bibles, performing public rituals, building sacred buildings. But they seem to have little effect - if any. 

On the other side; those against God continually try to co-opt and subvert Christian images; making crosses a fashion item, of deploying them in subversive contexts such as body-mutilations, or inverted, of being used in publicly-demonized rituals (such as the US fake-PSYOP which is the 'Klan'); of making the rainbow a symbol for sexual perversion and the agenda of child abuse. 

And this kind of anti-Christian symbolism seems (and obviously) far more effective than the traditional usages.

What all this seems to imply is that insofar as symbolism is still a significantly powerful and motivating force for Good, then it is revealed as being more individually-rooted and much less innate and universal, than was supposed a few generations ago. 

Speaking for myself, the symbolism of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and its associated works is very powerful - and for Good; yet I recognize that much of this is due to my particular personality and experiences - and that for the great mass of Tolkien fans/ critics/ scholars, there is no apparent positive influence of Tolkien. 

Most Tolkienites are on-side with the most strategically-evil aspects of current totalitarian materialism; and they deploy Tolkien's symbolism in support of mainstream social evils. 

I am Not saying that symbolism should be abandoned; because we need all the help we can get! 

I intend to make the best possible use of traditional Christian symbolism - where it works for me, and has not been spoiled - as well as Tolkien, and many others.

But it would be unwise for a Christian to rely on symbolism, or to put it at centre or root; because it will probably weaken over time, and may even be inverted in its significance. 

We each need to be able to discern when that which used-to help is now starting-to harm; and be able - spiritually - to step-away from it. 

Implications of Modern Man's waning capacity to pool consciousness and generate thought forms/ elementals/ egregores/ dynamic archetypes

I have been re-reading Dion Fortune's Applied Magic - and thinking about her descriptions and discussions of 'thought forms'. These are essentially the same phenomena variously called elementals, egregores and dynamic archetypes. 

These hypothetical entities are generated by the pooled consciousness of a group of people, attain some kind of separate agency, and then act back to influence or indeed control that same group. 

So, a group of people whose attention is focused and motivated is posited to undergo a merging of thought to generate an entity that then develops 'a life of its own' such that - depending upon its nature and orientation - will then drive the group towards those goals (and by those methods) with which it was established. 

In sum: there is a reciprocal relation between group and thought form; and the though form depends on the group for its original form, energy and continued existence - but the thought form may develop in new directions and impose these on the group; and the individuals in the group are also subjugated to the thought form and cannot (or cannot easily or always) withdraw assent and membership. 

I will here assume that, if not an exact formulation, these thought forms are at least potentially real phenomena. 

In fact I am going to argue that the ability to generate thought forms was essentially universal among Men, at least until the end of the Medieval period in Europe - but that this was a phase in the development of human consciousness that has now dwindled to almost vestigial levels of power. 

This is because the ability to generate thought forms by group pooling of consciousness is double-edged; because it is also a vulnerability to control-by thought forms - directly a vulnerability to being controlled by an irresistible thought form; and indirectly to being-controlled-by the group in which an individual is participating. 

Which is to say that thought forms are experienced as overwhelming, universal (to the group), mandatory - and, in a word, as objective reality. 

Therefore, thought forms of this kind are what Owen Barfield - in Saving the Appearances - calls collective representations. 

Taking up the ideas of Owen Barfield (and Rudolf Steiner) concerning the 'evolutionary development of human consciousness; I am struck by how deftly this can be applied to the changing capacity/ vulnerability of humans to thought forms. 

In brief; I regard known history as one in which humans (at different rates in different places and among different peoples) are gradually losing the pooled consciousness that was at first natural and spontaneous; then became a product of ritual, symbolism, use of sacred texts and traditions etc - which can be understood psychologically as inculcating associations and building them among groups to reach the desired state of pooled consciousness. This then because the basic of social cohesion and purpose. 

Dion Fortune was writing as a 'ritual magician' active in the 1920s and 30s; and at that time it was still possible for selected and highly-motivated groups of people (i.e. members of magical lodges) to be trained in concentration, control of emotions, and the use of symbolism and ritual - to attain that pooled consciousness and generation of 'objective' thought forms, which had receded from the population at large. 

The thought forms might be positive and benign - as with the Hite magic Dion Fortune's Christian mysticism; or negative and malign (self-gratifying, and manipulative) - as with Aleister Crowley and other Black Magicians.  

But generation of benign, positive, and overwhelmingly powerful thought forms by groups became more difficult and rarer though the twentieth century - and (I infer from my reading in the field, not from experience) had essentially ceased by the millennium. Nowadays, White magical rituals apparently have an as-if quality; more like attending a drama than being irresistibly affected by objective reality.

And the same applies to Western churches. Whereas they once had the ability to generate positive thought forms that would then impose upon members - not this has waned in strength such that all the churches are overwhelmed - and have been re-orientated - by the mainstream globalist totalitarian ideology. 

What of this totalitarian ideology? Is this a thought form? If so, is it really weak? 

The answer is yes - it is a thought form and it is weak. The fact that the totalitarian ideology must command the attention and motivation of 100s of millions of people is precisely because the levels of attention and motivation are so weak. Yet people no longer experience this ideology as objectively real, and require a continuous and escalating level of media propaganda combined with exclusion of alternatives in order to make it effective. 

Furthermore, the content of the mainstream ideology is negative - it can only generate even minimal levels of motivation by inducing negative (sinful) emotions such as fear, resentment and despair. And - even so - these strategically-induced mega-mass thought forms are only temporarily effective, and need to be swapped around, and novelties introduced - every few months.   

What, then, is God's positive purpose behind this development of consciousness away from groups pooling and making thoughts forms? 

The answer is that the loss of pooling is a consequence of the increased autonomy of thinking: the greater potential strength of individual thinking. We are less passively controlled, because we are more actively generative. Less immersed-in what seems 'objective' because we are able to range across reality in the primary thinking of our divine-selves.  

We are now more able to resist the influence of thought forms, and domination by 'the group' - and this works both ways - resistance to good group influences and evil. 

We choose and make that reality we live-by. This choosing is necessary - because we cannot pool with a group; and also, therefore, the direction of choice is also an unavoidable personal responsibility. 

Each Man now has the capability consciously to resist any and all external influences; to think 'for himself'; and therefore to become able to pursue his own unique destiny through this mortal life. 

This is possible, despite that vastness of negative global totalitarian thought forms - because these are low-density elementals, they are experienced as diffuse archetypes - that, at the point of impact upon us, are not able to exert the irresistible (and often unconscious) pressure of ancient thought forms. 

Now, exactly because modern consciousness is cut-off and self-conscious; the thought forms generated by our attention and chosen source of motivation, are unique and individually-tailored. 

Each person's positive, God-aligned, thought form is (by analogy) high in density, resistant to subverting influences, and in its motion powered by that which our deepest intuitions tell us is true, beautiful and virtuous.  

An individual thought form can therefore work like a knife whose edge can penetrate through any amount of the toxic gaseous influences of mega-mass ideology. 

In other words; our positive personal thought form - when motivated by faith and harmonious with divine creation - can 'beat' a whole world of shifting negations. 

All Institutional Systems - and Intellectual Systems - are having the Life drained from them

It seems to me that all Systems - whether they are intellectual systems such as mainstream-ideology, religions and theology, church doctrines, philosophies, or the ever-multiplying New Age spiritual systems that purport to replace these - are continually being drained of Life. 

The fact that there is a now a single interconnected nearly-global system (The System) of the international, national; and also the functional (mass media, law, health, education, science, military etc) institutional bureaucracies - actually confirms my contention that the life has been drained from systems. 

Because The System is not merely life-less, but life-consuming. 

The System - and indeed all systems - subordinate and consume not just humans, but animals, plants and mineral planet/ weather/ climate itself - assimilating Life to System requirements and imperatives. 

And, strictly, The System is not even a true system; because it is parasitic rather than self-regenerating.

(Systems, like organisms, are defined as being substantially autonomous, self-perpetuating, self-reproducing. Whereas some parasites are not, since they depend to various degrees on a host. They would be defined as either sub-systemic parts-of other true-systems, as with symbiosis; or else destructive of true-systems.) 

In other words The System as a whole, predates upon its constituent systems; destroying their autonomy (i.e. their very nature as systems) and extracting their energies. 

Thus The System is consuming itself; and actually shrinking - which is why the trend globally has been to destroy nations, agricultural and industrial productivity, and - increasingly - human/ animal/ plant life and the actual structures of 'the environment'. 

Consider how 'the environment' - which is a top-down defined and actively-managed abstract concept; has replaced the freedom, self-sustenance, and independence of real 'nature' - such that theoretical-'environmentalism' - in all its major manifestations - is in practice always destructive of actual-nature.  

As Christians; we can experience for ourselves how the System aspects of our religion (doctrines and dogmas, rituals and practices, symbolism and structures...) are continually-collapsing: continually losing their power and effectiveness - and it has, so far, been impossible to stop (let alone reverse) this trend. 

Traditions are subject to this trend of collapse, but so are all attempts to re-found and innovate new systems of Christianity.

Any apparent success turns out to be at the expense of Christianity as a whole - and short-lived.

This is happening, I believe, because of changes in human nature - especially of human consciousness; because of a divinely-driven development which is a part of God's plan of salvation and theosis.

Systems that worked well with earlier, and different - kinds of people, now don't work as well - or don't work at all. 

(This seems to apply to all types of Christianity, in the West.)

In so far as Christian systems remain - they are increasingly material and mundane - and less and less spiritual. Thus the power of systems positively to transform Man has now all-but gone (and where it remains is, as I said, continually ebbing). 

Consequently, those who remain inside the Christian (or other religious) systems, and who are actively committed to the systems, have become indistinguishable from the secular in those fundamental respects that matter to The System.   

Whether we like it or not (and many Christians do not like it at all, and resist as strongly as they can) positive support from systems is continually disappearing. One may think he has found a supportive niche - but the chances are high that this niche is already dwindling, will not last for long - and will become assimilated to the general pattern of collapse.

Sooner or later, and in the end;  I believe all Christians will have system-help stripped-away - and be thrown-back onto an individual relationship with the divine and creation. 

He will then need to discover how best to survive, and thrive, on such a basis - or else become drawn onto the non-Christian - which is in practice anti-Christian -  side, in the spiritual war of this mortal world. 

The choice is between joining the self-destroying ideology of The System; or developing for oneself a faith rooted out-with that System.

Note added: One whose faith is rooted out-with The System and its sub-manifestations (including System-linked churches) - can safely make good use of the remnant Good within the waning niches of once-real Christian churches. But if he has rooted his faith within any institutional manifestation of Christianity; then I predict that - sooner or later - his faith will be in-trouble: either becoming Christian-in-name-only and dishonestly corrupted to the side of System evil while in denial; or having faith lost altogether and by disillusion and despair coming to a direct affirmation of System ideology.  

Is resurrected life *after* death really the best that can be done?

If we think back and recall the early dawning of self-awareness as young children, then perhaps we may remember the catastrophic dawn of consciousness of death - the time when we first realized that everybody, including our-selves, will die. 

It seems likely that this stunning fact, and the implications it carries for the rest of life, is perhaps the primary fact of consciousness.

For example, that seems to have been the conviction of JRR Tolkien, which he wove into Lord of the Rings as the deepest structuring concept. 

I have come to recognize - or, at least, believe - that the core of Christianity, the prime work and achievement of Jesus Christ, was 'simply' offering the possibility of a life beyond this mortal life, and indeed a better life; the chance of escaping the otherwise universal fate of death.

In other words - starting from where we are, the human condition as-is - Christianity essentially offers eternal resurrected life after death; and the promise that the everlasting life beyond temporary mortal life will be like this life, in that we are still our-selves with the same kind of experiences; but these selves and experiences will be qualitatively enhanced. 

This I regard as having been very clearly set-out in the Fourth Gospel - but it is also something that is quite spontaneous and intuitive in terms of what we, qua Men, want - starting from the situation in which we find-ourselves. 

So, we become aware that death is the great catastrophe and destroyer of life's meaning and hope, and we naturally seek - above all else - an escape from that ultimate termination. 

That, at least, is - I believe - how Men spontaneously, naturally, consciously regard death as young children - albeit 'culture' will overlay this innate attitude with some other attitude; and there are a wide range of secondary and acquired - but more superficial, and often ineffective - attitudes to death and what happens after it.

(All ancient societies believe in some kind of persistence after biological death, often a kind of reincarnation, or partial, maybe depersonalized, life as a spirit or 'ghost'. The Christian idea of resurrection was something new; as is the mainstream modern atheist idea of annihilation of the person.)  

But we can see that the Christian offer of resurrected life is not ideal. It is not a full and perfect solution. 

After all, death - and what leads-up to death, which is entropic change, decline, decay, disease, suffering etc. - is still a catastrophe. (Albeit temporary.)

Would not the ideal have been that Men were created-into Heaven, or, in some way, could go directly to resurrection without having to go-through mortal life and death?  

In other words; we can see Christianity as an eventual cure for the tragedy of the human condition; but it is not an immediate cure, and resurrection into Heaven does not - of itself - do much, or ultimately do anything substantive, to ameliorate the human condition (except secondarily, in providing hope for the future). 

I suppose this deficiency must have been immediately apparent; because "Christianity the religion" very quickly became 'mixed-up' with ideas that it would improve the human condition here on earth and during this mortal life - plans and schemes whereby mortal life would be regulated by 'God's laws' and (by ritual, symbolism, lifestyle etc) connected with divinity.

Also the idea that - at some point - Jesus Christ would return and transform life on earth so that there was no suffering or decay (the Second Coming, the New Jerusalem). 

Yet even with such additions to what Jesus actually said; the fundamental 'problem' remained to be explained: the question of why do we have to go through the tragedy of earthly mortal life terminated by death - before attaining resurrected Heavenly life? 

Properly to answer this question (rather than just kicking the can) requires further assumptions concerning the nature and attributes of God; and of God's aims in creation.

The fact that we are living in this mortal life, and destined to suffer the death of others and ourselves, suggests that there is no other way of reaching resurrected eternal life than via incarnated mortal life. 

Perhaps, for example, it is not possible for God to 'make' a resurrected body except via a mortal body. There might be another reason - but whatever the reason implies a constraint upon the power of God. 

This is not a metaphysical problem for me; but is ruled-out by the common belief in the omnipotence of God. 

Believers in an Omni-God have never, I think, been able satisfactorily to explain why such a God did not create resurrected Men ready for Heaven and incarnated directly-into Heavenly bliss - thereby avoiding the hazards, suffering, and risks of damnation of mortal life. 

(I regard the 'omnipotent God' assumption as false; and probably a post-ascension, maybe even post Apostolic, importation (from pagan Greek-Roman philosophy) to Christ's teaching, not being found explicitly in the New Testament.)

Once we have discarded this notion of the Omni-God, it is then coherent to assert that because God wants as many as possible to choose resurrection, there is no alternative to suffering death. 

This implies that - yes! - resurrected life after mortal death is the best that can be done, if the destination is to be resurrection. 

Thus far mortal life is irreducibly tragic; but for Christians that tragedy is ameliorated by the post-mortal destination.

However, for non-Christians, mortal life and death is just inescapably tragic in its structure; which may help explain why denial, distraction and despair in relation to death are so common among non-Christians.   

Therefore; my bottom-line answer is that, in broad terms, this entropic mortal life, followed by the catastrophe of death, is indeed the best that can be done - given that the destination God desires for us is resurrection, and resurrection can only be attained via the intermediate phase of a mortal body and death.  

Are the demon-serving (or demon-hosting) Establishment afraid of dying? Not necessarily, but increasingly

It is often said on Christian blogs that the demon-serving high-level globalist Establishment (Them) live in fear of death; because They know They are going to Hell. 

But I do not believe that They necessarily live in fear of death. Some do, no doubt - but not all, by any means; and that has been an important fact in the nature of global evil.

But this may be changing; and more and more of the most evil Men of this world may be becoming terrified of the own deaths; and behaving accordingly with their most evil natures...

What follows are my intuitively-guided speculations on this subject.  

Some of Them do not fear death, I think, because in some instances Hell (accurately understood as a personal fate, rather than a uniform destination) is exactly what They desire, and what They prefer to Heaven.

In other words; They have understood and rejected Christ's offer of salvation. They do not wish to affiliate to God's creative intentions, which entail making an eternal and unbreakable commitment to live in Love. They prefer, and choose, Hell (at least, as They understand Hell will be for Themselves). 

Their choice is, instead of Love; to live (after mortal life, as well as in it) especially in-accordance-with that sin to which each is personally most devoted: pride, resentment, fear, lust, sloth, or whatever. (This is well described in CS Lewis's The Great Divorce.)

The question then is: to what extent this choice is fulfilled in actuality? Can They actually get what They most want? 

In other instances, They do not fear death because They do not believe that they personally are going to die. Not fully: not in their essential nature.   

How They believe this continuation of consciousness is to be achieved is necessarily speculative, but I have written on this subject before.  

In a nutshell; I think They believe that They may continue to 'live' because what we might term Dark Magicians purport to conjure animate thought-forms by group activities that entail mental concentration and ritual. 

This is regarded - not as a spiritual activity; but instead as a quasi-science; a manipulation of the material world by means of channeled will. 

(This belief intersects with the most ideological forms of Transhumanism; when people hope for continued life in a 'downloaded', or perhaps transplanted, form of consciousness. This shows how a wholly materialistic/ atheistic perspective can lead to quasi-spiritual hopes and intentions.)

It is the group nature of such Dark Magical activities that lies behind the Ahrimanic, materialist quality of evil that has dominated the world in recent decades. 

In other words; Ahrimanic evil operates by organized, hierarchical, bureaucratic mechanisms - to create a unified global System that is a mechanism for damnation.  

I think it likely that Their oft-observed concern with symbolism, signaling, ritual, pain, sacrifice etc.; is part of a genuinely black-magic orientated group-concern. This is not just about somewhat extending mortal life (although that is part of it); but also, ultimately, (for perhaps the 'chosen few') with attaining a kind of immortality after mortal death in a material but ghostly, or spirit form, 

The personal goal is then to continue (self-gratifying) activities in this world, as an 'honorary demon'; that has been created (and, probably is sustained - because this state is subject to entropy, and therefore needs constant infusion of energy to remain viable) by Black Magical means.

But, having said all this; I also believe that there has been a change in human consciousness over recent generations, but particularly since the millennium; and that part of this change has been a sharp decline in the ability of group-activity to conjure thought-forms. 

This change in Men's consciousness has affected the 'good magic' of Christianity, as well as the black magic of the demonic Establishment. This development has been a part of the decline of church-based Christianity: the fact that it can no longer do for people as much as it used to do. 

Those Christian group practices that used to 'work' reliably and powerfully to sustain and enhance spirituality, are now diminished in effect, and still diminishing. Indeed, for many people in the West; these practices have altogether lost spiritual power; and church activities have declined to a wholly psycho-social and political role.  

However, this development of consciousness must - I think - also have affected the power of Ahrimanic evil - and this will probably be one of the major causes that the cooperation of evil consciousnesses, which sustains The System, is now breaking-down.

I am (again!) talking about the transition between Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil, about which I have written many times before. 

I mean the breakdown of long-termist and coordinated evil by the defection of individual evil Beings; into the chaotic state of many simultaneous personal agendas each characterized by short-termist and destructive spite.

This is something that can be observed in the world today. The globalist alliance that launched a successful (covert) coup in early 2020 has, this year, fractured geo-politically into Anglosphere/ Western European 'West' and its vassal states; versus the others. 

Furthermore, The West has fractured such that the dominant elements are beginning to destroy the vassal states by acts of sabotage - financial, economic, demographic - and recently actual physical sabotage. 

This must have a confidence-shattering effect on many Establishment members who, until recently, 'trusted' that They would be exempted from the planned mass destruction; and would be rewarded for Their cooperation by eternal 'life' - among other and more immediate gratifications. 

Whether the evil-Establishment were correct to trust in the integrity of the principalities of evil is, for Christians, a question that answers itself! Yet, such Faustian stupidity is a fact of human life. Many Men have believed that Their cooperation with The Plan would win personal rewards; believed that They had a contract with evil, an agreement that evil would "honour"... 

(Despite that the powers of evil cannot be trusted; and will lie and cheat as is expedient - or as provides Them with some kind of sadistic enjoyment.)

Anyway, the hope was that They could achieve a kind of eternal existence of self-gratifying worldly activity.

There must, I think, have been some such 'trust' between lower and higher evil-souls - however misguided - in order to enlist the cooperation of so many individuals in so many nations. 

Many of These are now realizing that They have-been, or soon will-be, betrayed.

They face a dawning awareness of the terror of bodily annihilation and eternal spiritual torment. 

Of course; this betrayal and disillusionment opens a window to repentance; to affiliate with God and accept the salvation of Jesus Christ. 

In this mortal life it is never too late to repent - although it gets harder and more painful, the further advanced in evil a soul has gone. 

But, when repentance is rejected, realization may lead instead to a kind of destructive frenzy of vengeance - the desire to inflict as much suffering on others as possible, before falling into the pit oneself. 

This very purely negative form of evil, a 'lashing-out' which takes 'pleasure' only in the doing of evil and not in rewards from so doing; is what I call Sorathic - and it seems to be gathering strength, perhaps especially in the Establishment of the dominant Western power: the USA. 

I would guess that the 'promised' reward of an eternal life of personal satisfaction was, at best - only ever, in practice, short-term. 

Sooner rather than later; the promised rewards are revoked, and the self-gratifications of eternal living are inverted into a state of eternal slavery; a continued existence only as objects of torment for the pleasure of other evil beings - who are Themselves destined for the same fate.  

As the cabal of organized evil breaks down; such betrayals will be happening, and be observed; more and more often; and no doubt some terrible conclusions will be drawn. 

If this interpretation is correct, and the Dark Magician cabal is increasingly breaking-down into mutual warring factions; factions that then themselves splinter break-down into each against all - then these times are both very dangerous and somewhat hopeful. 

Christians are no longer up-against a coordinated conspiracy - which is good. But those evil Beings (human, as well as demonic) that remain powerful in this world, will feel that - now that their chance at 'eternal life' is gone' - They have nothing to gain from long-termism or cooperation;: nothing to lose' by sheer spitefulness. 

They seem highly likely to behave in an increasingly reckless and frenziedly destructive manner - whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself. 

Be Prepared (spiritually, I mean).

Angels, demons, exorcism and the mass media

It is interesting that there are plenty of mass media, indeed Hellmouth-Hollywood, products that depict the spiritual war of this world - in terms of angels and demons, and including what might be termed 'spiritual technologies' such as exorcism. And such matters have been the subject of best-selling novels for many decades. 

The provenance of these stories should alert us to the probability that many are evil-intentioned in one way or another (and, since it is negative by nature, there are numberless ways in which evil can oppose Good). 

But there is perhaps a deeper and more devious misleading going-on in terms of the basic quality of these depictions - which is nearly always of a 'medieval' nature. What I mean is that in these stories symbols have objective effectiveness in a quasi-technological fashion. 

The media spiritual world is one in which demons possess good people against their will; and when corrupted they can be saved (again, without consent) by physical objects such as Holy Water, Consecrated Host; or by expert exorcisms using specific Latin prayers and which must be performed by consecrated priests.   

Such aspects make spirituality into an almost materialist technology and down-play (or eliminate altogether) what is actually the core role of human freedom and choice in spiritual matters. 

I believe that human consciousness has changed since the medieval era, and therefore the 'objective' world as we know it - has also changed. 

In the middle ages, Men lived in a mental-world that we would experience as communal - they had not fully dissociated their consciousness from the group; and (to a significant extent) meanings and effects were taken-in with perceptions.  

What this meant was that symbols and language had an objective reality - perceived symbols affected the material world; because the material world was not separable from them. For example, a physical cross, or a picture or a vision of the cross; had reliable and powerful spiritual effects - on unbelievers, animals, disease - causally potent much as we would expect from a laser beam. 

Thus, demons could attack men who resisted them, because Men could not fully resist them due to their (partial but significant) absorption into the communal spiritual mind. And/ but these demons could be exorcised even without the consent of the possessed - for the same reason. 

Exorcism, done by those with authority and in the proper form of words and actions, therefore had the kind of objective efficacy we moderns might associate with penicillin or surgery.  

As the modern era dawned from around 1500 in Europe; these symbols began to lose their objective effect and the Reformation was a major result. This focused on whether the consecrated host was objectively spiritually-effectual - or whether there needed to be an inner 'subjective' act on the part of the believer. 

I believe this dispute arose exactly because the Eucharist began to lose the unquestioned and reliable objective effects it had possessed for many centuries.

My understanding is that the root cause of this change was a change in human consciousness - with the separating-out of the individual 'self' from the communal mind. Men no longer took in meaning with their perceptions, but also required that the outer symbol be met with a voluntary inner assent. 

And I believe this process has continued until now; when once-sacred and objectively-effective symbolism has become completely ineffectual and irrelevant for many modern people.  

The other side of this coin is that individuals are now responsible for their own spirituality. On the one hand (as I understand it, as a rule); nowadays demons cannot possess men unless they are invited, and can only stay in possession with consent... 

On the other hand, exorcism has lost its objective and reliable effectiveness. 

Nowadays an exorcism would not be something done-to a possessed person; but would need to be more like an attempt to persuade and encourage a possessed person to resist and repent - to withdraw consent and make an inward decision to refuse demonic control. 

The basic nature and conduct of the spiritual war has therefore changed since medieval times - and both the power and responsibility of the individual have increased greatly. 

Thus individuals are personally to blame for their own spiritual plight. And also, for the same reasons, people must do for-themselves what could once be done for-them.  

What I am saying is that in their depictions of angels, demons, and spiritual technologies; the mass media are encouraging a false understanding of the spiritual war as it (nearly always) applies here-and-now.  

They are encouraging an atavistic, obsolete spirituality - which is not true for these times; and therefore does not work. 

This has two kinds of bad effects: 

In the first place it absolves individuals of responsibility of their own spiritual corruption, and encourages a spiritual passivity that looks to other people, external actions and physical objects for their salvation. 

Yet none of this actually works. (Or, only seldom, and incompletely.)

In the second place; this atavistic spirituality is so alien to the actuality of modern life (and so ineffective) as to seem utterly absurd; and to encourage the rejection of spiritual belief altogether. 

When the depictions are so sensational, medieval and untrue to experience; naturally most people regard the whole subject as mere make-believe.  

Meanwhile, the real spiritual war proceeds and thrives unnoticed, denied; and unimpeded by that correct-understanding, acknowledged responsibility, and free-individual-choice - which are the demons only truly-powerful opponents.  

Note: The above perspective, especially on the developmental (evolutionary) changes in human consciousness through history - and causally-driving that history - is heavily indebted to Owen Barfield - in books such as Romanticism Comes of Age, Saving the Appearances and Worlds Apart - and also a selective reading from the vast (and uneven) corpus of Rudolf Steiner.