"The World" Tarot (Marseille) - symbolism explicated

 Behind the dirty yellow curtain... Childermass uses his Marseille Tarot, hand-copied from an ancient set lent him by a sailer, to divine what's going-on with Vinculus in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (BBC adaptation)

William James Tychoneivich continues his slow, extraordinarily detailed and wide-ranging, sifting of the symbolism of the Major Arcana of the Marseille Tarot pack; with The World.

Fourth Gospel meditations (essentially) complete

Regular readers will no doubt be relieved to hear that I think my 'project' of reading the Fourth Gospel in isolation, on the basis that it is most important book of the Bible, seems now to have reached its natural end-point.

I regard the Fourth Gospel as chronologically the first, and qualitatively the most authoritative, source on the life and teachings of Jesus. As I read and re-read, I found that the discipline created a situation as if the Fourth Gospel was the only scripture.

And indeed, whenever I turned to other Gospels, or to the Epistles and Revelation, they looked very much inferior; very much like rag-bag collections of theology, memoirs, theories and folk tales about Jesus; and of very mixed validity - since many things in them contradict the Fourth Gospel.

I don't know that I can ever again regard the bulk of the New Testament as any more intrinsically authoritative than I already regarded the Old Testament - which I see as a collection of many types of writing (including myth, fiction, poems, rulebooks, histories and prophecies), made over many years and with no single purpose in mind - a collection of potentially valuable resources.

At any rate, I feel a sense of completion - and I no longer feel internally-driven to continue. My initial assumptions about the special and unique validity of the Fourth Gospel remains and has been greatly strengthened; and I can understand why it has been systematically downgraded by the historical churches throughout history.

(By 'sytematic', I mean that the method and assumptions by which the historical churches created and have interpreted The Bible, and especially the New Testament, have downgraded the Fourth Gospel in multiple ways. By choosing Not to accord it primacy, the unique and challenging qualities of the Fourth Gospel have been negated, simply by its being 'outvoted'.) 

This downgrading seems inevitable, given that the Fourth Gospel provides no authority for churches, nor for a priesthood, nor for celibacy, nor for the ritual communal life that has often dominated Christian practice; the Gospel's vision of the Christian life is highly individual, personal, un-institutional. 

In the Fourth Gospel; Christians are seen to more like a new kind of family, than a new version of ancient religions.

And the historical church has mostly portrayed Jesus as a rescuer of an otherwise-doomed Mankind - a double-negative description, with Jesus negating the negative state of a 'fallen' world. Whereas the Fourth Gospel shows a Jesus dealing with individual persons to enhance their existence - a positive addition to human possibility, with Jesus making possible a qualitative transformation of mortal to divine Life.

The Fourth Gospel sees 'Christianity' as a one-at-a-time opt-in life, likely to be chosen by a minority of people; not a thing of masses, not a matter for politics or organisation.  

So, on the one hand, a Fourth Gospel-centred understanding tends to undermine the validity and relevance of a great deal of historical Christianity - including undermining things that have been, and are, seen as the very essence of the religion.

On the other hand, Fourth Gospel-centred Christianity may be exactly what is most needed in a world where, already, most of historical Christianity (in the West) has-been not just undermined, but subverted and inverted into purposive anti-Christian evil...

The Fourth Gospel is a message of hope directly and immediately applicable to every person in every situation - no matter how isolated. Across the centuries, leaping the millennia; the Fourth is precisely the Gospel for here and now.

Gemeinschaft not Gesellschaft: In the Fourth Gospel Jesus tells the disciples that Christians should grow as a loving 'family', not as a formal institution

One of the most striking, and indeed shocking, aspects of reading the Fourth Gospel as the primary and most authoritative source about Jesus- is that Jesus tells the disciples to propagate the faith as a 'family' of believers and says nothing about setting up a church.

To use the old German Sociological terminology: Christians ought to be a Gemeinschaft, not a Gesellschaft - a loving community, not an institutional society.

In a long section (Chapters 13-17*) describing the night before the crucifixion; Jesus instructs the disciples on the meaning of his teaching and what they should do after his departure. What he seems to be saying is that the disciples have (since the departure of Judas Iscariot) a mutually loving 'family'; and that future Christians should be the same.

The themes (here and elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel) are all about love between Christians; in effect, a group cohering by a web of love. Love cannot be imposed. A loving group can and does grow, as a family grows by marriage and children - but only one person at a time, and only by mutual consent. It is clear that this is the consent of friends, not of master and servant.

Is there then to be no structure to the Christian community? It is not explicit, but the structure of family is sustained throughout the Fourth Gospel - including that between Jesus and his Father. The family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus (who is himself the author of the Fourth Gospel) is a major feature of the Gospel; Mary's marriage to Jesus in indicated in three places; and Lazarus (Jesus's brother in law) is made the son of Jesus's Mother at the crucifixion.

I assume, therefore, that the Christian community would have the same kind of internal structure of authority as an ideal family.

What I take from this is that Jesus intended for his followers to be structured and operate like a loving family - a family that adopted new members, as well as marrying and procreating them.

*John 15: [7] If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. [8] Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. [9] As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. [10] If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. [11] These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. [12] This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. [13] Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. [14] Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. [15] Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. [16] Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. [17] These things I command you, that ye love one another. [18] If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. [19] If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. [20] Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

Queries invited?

After a few days rest, I have switched blog commenting back on - and un-hidden previous comments.

So, do readers/ commenters have any queries that have been building-up a head of steam over the recent period of enforced silence?

The 'Anarchist' Left

There is a small but relatively impactful group of people on the Left of the Left who have various self-identifications; but could be termed the 'anarchist' Left, because their focus is on power (rather than Old Left economics or New Left culture).

The Anarchist Left are, indeed, close cousins of the 'Right wing' Libertarians, in terms of their general analysis and aims; the main difference is that the Anarchists are anti-markets and instead pro-participative-democracy. Being secular and anti-Christian by assumption; both Anarchists and Libertarians favour the sexual revolution, and line-up against marriage and families.

The best known living representative is Noam Chomsky, and George Orwell was also sympathetic to this kind of Leftism - but there are quite a lot of these people in academic positions, education and the media. I would have counted myself among them for a few years - they were thin on the ground (I don't think I knew anyone else, personally), but produce quite a lot of words - and can find an outlet as ideological 'purists' on mainstream Leftist platforms. When I was of this ilk, I had no trouble publishing my stuff, and spoke at some high level conferences.

The Anarchist Left is mainly about opposition; and in principle believes that policies should emerge from a grassroots consensus. In practice, they always support the Mainstream Left against the Mainstream Right; which is why the Anarchists are tolerated, and indeed encouraged, in a small way (e.g by small subsidies and grants, and low-level jobs in the media and academia) - by the Establishment.

The Anarchists are, I would say, as individuals; considerably braver and more principled than the Mainstream. They have to be, because they are usually working pretty much alone, or in nooks and corners, and have neither wealth nor status to defend themselves.

The Anarchist Left are going-nowhere, indeed they have no idea where they would want to go - except tagging behind the Mainstream, complaining - but they are potentially dangerous (because of their courage and principle) and therefore pretend-opposition/ covert-support is the best way of neutralising them, the best way of buying-off a dedicated partial-opposition.

The most valuable insight of the Anarchist Left is their recognition of the deadliness of bureaucracy; their recognition that bureaucracy is totalitarian.

But this true and rare insight is negated by the fact that the Anarchists trace bureaucracy back to The Market and to Capitalism - which is partially true, but essentially false; since there was not much bureaucracy in 19th century in the UK or USA, when Market Capitalism was in its rawest and purest form. Bureaucracy is, obviously, driven by Leftism, by State power - it is a consequence of a Leftist ideal of Government control (in order that Government be powerful enough to do good Things).

And the single linked bureaucracy that dominates the developed world is a product of high-minded Leftist ideals (such as World Peace, Climate Control, Equality, Humanitarian Aid etc); far more than it is a product of the evil desire of Capitalists/ Bosses to make ever-more money.  

And what makes the Anarchist Left such a Dead End, a free-spinning cog, is essentially that they are atheist - which means that nothing they think, say, or do really has any validity or makes any objective difference; they are living in a fog of incoherence and nihilism.

The main benefit of the Anarchist Left is that they (like Libertarians, like the Conspiracy Theory movement) provide a partially true unmasking of the mainstream System. There main disadvantage is that they fail to expose and evaluate their own ultimate (metaphysical) assumptions about the nature of reality - and therefore remain mired in futile atheism.

Is your life and my life Fit-for-Purpose? - or, did God do a bad job in making this world?

This is a basic question - and needs asking.

And we know the answer.

For a Christian, it seems to me that the answer must-be Yes, my life is fit-for-purpose and No, God did not do a bad job.

Our faith Must Be that a God who is both the creator and our loving Father must-have made a world that is fit-for-purpose - everywhere and for all Men.

This has-to be true, because God created this world, and loves each of us. It is really that simple; and things that simple can be known with intuitive sureness. If we think otherwise, on whatever basis, then we are mistaken.


Fit-for-purpose... The question then arises - What is that purpose?

The general state of people and things makes clear that the purpose is not, cannot be, any kind of perfection... But the world is well-suited to providing us with a vast range of never-repeating experiences, and we are able to learn from these experiences.

In sum - this is a world of change, and a world of trials-and-errors (as well as successes), or attempts and failures (as well as triumphs). But in the end, nothing succeeds in this world, because everything is labile; prone to corruption and death.

But that fact cannot matter, fundamentally, to the prime purpose of reality, of creation.


It must-be that every single individual person alive now or ever, and in whatever situation, is able (If they Try) to get from their own life what they need. What each person needs is available to them.

(We cannot know the specifics for other people, but we can for our-selves - if we try...)


It may well be (it looks that way) that many or most people do not actually get what they need, learn what they need - but then, very few people (apparently) make the attempt.

They don't even ask...

And - of course - what we each need from this mortal life is not something that is needed for this mortal life; but that which is needed for the eternity to follow.

In sum: every individual person is able to learn what they need to learn, for eternal life after death - regardless of themselves and their circumstances; but (probably, in practice) not everyone does-so.  


Of course, I am taking a minimal approach to what is needed. Yes we can always get what is needed; but to live our won life optimally is a very different, much harder, probably not universal thing. God cannot do that for us, neither can we do it alone... Of course - given such and other constraints, God will do his best to ensure that the seeker does as well as possible. But we can always find what is needed - in some way, it will always be made available to each seeker; and made available before it is too late (whenever that may be).

To be 'born again' is death and resurrection to life everlasting - Fourth Gospel

There is a wonderful scene in the Fourth Gospel* in which Jesus talks with Nicodemus about the need to be 'born again'. (Dramatised beautifully here: https://www.lds.org/bible-videos/videos/jesus-teaches-of-being-born-again?lang=eng )

This passage is about the need for each Man to die, before he can be resurrected to eternal life, and dwell in Heaven. This is to be 'born again'.

Jesus is talking to Nicodemus in the present tense, about a situation that is already possible, at the time of the conversation. Because, at the time of conversing with Nicodemus; Jesus had already become divine when he was Baptised by John; and from then onwards a pattern was made by which any Man could choose to follow Jesus from Manhood to Divinity.

Thus, Jesus began his life as a Man, then was transformed and became divine; and the 'template' was established.  Any Man may be transformed because Jesus was transformed.

However, before a Man can be made divine - his body must die.

After death of the body, the soul remains; but the soul without the body is maimed and lacks agency; the soul cannot 'resurrect itself'.

The soul must be-resurrected by another; and that other is the divine Jesus, who himself went-through the process.


Note: When Jesus was talking with Nicodemus; the transformation by Jesus of Man to divinity by resurrection was already possible - and soon afterwards Jesus resurrected Lazarus - but to remain on earth rather than dwell in the kingdom of God; as a miraculous demonstration of the new dispensation.


*John.3 [1] There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: [2] The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. [3] Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. [4] Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? [5] Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. [6] That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. [7] Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. [8] The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. [9] Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? [10] Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? [11] Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. [12] If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? [13] And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. [14] And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: [15] That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. [16] For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. [17] For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. [18] He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. [19] And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. [20] For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. [21] But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

What is intuition? How do we know it?

Intuition is self-validating - and intuition is the only self-validating form of knowing.

Intuition is the foundation of all knowing - all valid knowledge derived from reason and evidence can be traced back to an intuition. If not traceable back to an intuition, then it cannot be known to be valid. 

A valid foundation is an intuition; any other foundation is arbitrary. 

Intuition is the same thing as direct-knowing; it does not come from 'evidence'.

Intuition is a simple knowing-the-truth-of something; and that can only be in response to a simple question that is emerged or posed in a state (probably momentary) of absolute clarity, with absolute sincerity, with the pure motivation of wanting to know.

Once something is known from intuition, it will be confirmed by later 'evidence' - so long as that evidence is itself confirmed by intuition.

No amount of any other kind of 'evidence' should ever be allowed to overcome an intuition. 

The confirmation of an intuition comes from being able to repeat the experience of intuition whenever the same state of simplicity and clarity can be attained.

Intuition is a gift, and one we are all born with, and have access to - but for most people most of the time intuition is not looked-for - and arbitrary assumption is preferred, as being short-term expedient. Even worse, the gift of spontaneous intuition is disbelieved, disdained and rejected.

So, our first intuition must be to know the validity of intuition... 
 

The cultural importance of the Ossian poetry of James Macpherson

James Macpherson (1736-96) (portrait, very fine!, by George Romney*) the greatest British author you've never heard of...

At Albion Awakening; I argue that the 'Ossian' poems of James Macpherson, beginning with the publication of 'Fragments of Ancient Poetry' in 1760, is of great importance to our literature and thinking; and this achievement ought to be more widely known and respected.

*Note: I am quite a big fan of what I term The Four Rs of 18th century portraiture: Reynolds, Raeburn, Ramsay and Romney. A few years ago I saw a big exhibition of Romney portraits at a stately home... he did a lot of really good work. 

Modern morality is impossible - so why has it been forced upon us?

Modern morality is often thought of as a deliverance from the harshness of past moral codes. But that’s only because we don’t take it seriously. If we do, then it is absolutely inhuman in its demands, a sprit-crushing, insatiable monstrosity, whether modern morals are taken in their Kantian-personalist or, especially, in their utilitarian form. Can you imagine being required to maximize the total happiness of mankind, never treat anyone as a mere means, or value everyone on Earth’s happiness equally with your own every moment of every day? Every human good would be strangled, and no one could ever be happy again. One begins to appreciate that the legalism and casuistry of pre-modern morality functioned not to burden mankind but to us from the hell of unbounded altruism.

From Bonald at Throne and Altar

This passage hit home - in particular the bit: being required to maximize the total happiness of mankind, never treat anyone as a mere means, or value everyone on Earth’s happiness equally with your own every moment of every day?


What struck me was the realisation that the utilitarian morality - which is simply assumed valid by  all public discourse and by all public policy -  is unknowable by any individual. It converts morality to a branch of statistical 'social science'.

When we are required to live by a morality of consequences; and when these consequences include distal consequences of people we have never seen and know only by report, and when the consequences include futures so remote that that their causal link with our action is a matter of multi-chain reasoning and complex theory - then our morality is necessarily one of plain, uncomprehending obedience to authority. It cannot be anything else.

Because there is not, cannot be, any truly evidential basis for linking my actions with the emotional consequences of everybody in the world into the remote future. So, in practice this morality is something which is asserted by authority - typically either the authority of The System of linked bureaucracies (and their assumptions) or else the authority of the mass media; based on their ability mobilise and direct the attention and emotions of colossal numbers of people.

So we can see exactly why modern morality has been first encouraged and now enforced on Western people by The Establishment - because it makes 'morality' into something decided-upon by the Establishment; and their tame class of 'experts', analysts and 'intellectuals'; and implemented by the tame class of journalists, teachers, and (above all) managers.

But why was modern morality wanted? Why was it so easy for the Establishment to impose this labile and un-predictable, yet totalitarian, moral system we all live-in?

When Bonald speaks of modern morality having been embraced in The West on the basis of its implicit promise of deliverance from the harshness of past moral codes - this in practice boils down to The Sexual Revolution; which removed the prohibition on sex outside marriage and the sanctions enforcing the permanence of marriage.

In sum, the promise was to allow sex without responsibility; to impose a social order that favoured the short term, mainly sexual, preferences of young single people as its priority. Hence the deification of Youth over the past half century, and continuing.

For a short period, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, this was indeed the main character of Modern morality; but as we know, one the sixties hippy hedonism (unrestricted free love, drugs, dropping-out etc) had done its work, and won the hearts of the elite youth - then the bait was taken and the incremental 'switch' began; first with feminism.

Instead of being about carefree freedom, no work, euphoric drugs and lots of sex with lots of people;  the new morality turned-out to be a state of perpetual guilt, insecurity, drudgery and despair... A world of people in therapy instead of in communes; on antidepressants and antipsychotics instead of acid and dope; of regressive rap instead of progressive rock; of omni-surveillance and micro-control instead of 'people's democracy'; of Big Business, Big Media, and Big Government instead of Small is Beautiful. 

Yet, very, very few people have learned from the experience, few have noticed the gross mismatch between the promise of the new morality; and what actually got delivered. And most still regard the old Morality - and God - as the root of mass misery (and for utilitarians misery = evil).

This being so - people get what they ask for - which is no God, and the de facto abolition of family responsibilities from most people's lives.

Since this is, by revealed preferences, what Western people want more than anything else; they can hardly complain about the way the world has turned-out. There is always a price to pay - and it is, clearly, a price most modern people prefer, compared with living in accordance with 'traditional' morality.

  

Uncanny Steeleye

Demon Lover is a little known example of how - in the early 1970s - Steeleye Span were often able to capture the uncanny and supernatural style of Romanticism that was pioneered by Coleridge. The chilling lyrics are derived from an ancient Border Ballad - and seem to refer to a demon who masquerades as a beautiful fairy in order to entice-away a young wife.

The strands of English folk music have included this uncanny element; although not many performers are able to treat it with the seriousness required for it really to hit home. In Steeleye Span's case, it was specifically the lead guitarist and vocalist Robert Johnson who brought this into the band (e.g. King Henry, Alison Gross, Thomas the Rhymer, Long Lankin).

This mood is quite easy to for modern people ruin by any taint of irony or commercialism - and it only lasted for the first four albums of Johnson's membership of Steeleye, being largely spoiled by the producer Mike Batt - after which Johnson left Steeleye to make a 'concept album' of Lord Dunsany's novel The King of Elfland's Daughter.

As I have often remarked, it is a sadness to me that this early 70s Romantic Revival, of which The Watersons, Steeleye Span and The Albion Country Band were a part; and which was quite genuine in terms of its picking-up the impulse from Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth; failed to kick-on by rejecting and failing to Romanticise Christianity.

(Many of the adherents seem to have had neo-pagan, anything-but-Christian, sympathies - although the Watersons recorded many gospel revival songs, and some Christmas carols were popular.)

Instead, this reborn Romanticism was (yet-again) appropriated (especially by journalists, critics and scholars) and distorted/ diverted into Leftist politics... It is hard to blame musicians for failing to do what people seemingly better equipped also failed to do, and the true direction of which was, and is, novel and far from obvious; nonetheless it is a sadness.

While I have enjoyed plenty of folk music since this time - it always lacks the implied depths and serious intent of those early years.

I'm delighted with the Brexit mess

I was pleased by the Brexit vote (although, as readers know, I have not participated in any kind of voting for many years); but I was delighted mainly because it gave some hope that the English people had not been utterly cowed.

Placing a vote for Brexit isn't much, it is indeed very little - but it was considerably more than I believed we as a nation were capable of.

So, I hoped that it would presage a spiritual, Christian Awakening of Albion - and soon after we started a blog dedicated to that hope.

There has not been any such awakening; but the way that Brexit has played-out over the past two and a half years has provided the best possible stimulus to lead free and thoughtful people to some correct conclusions about the British (Globalist) ruling Establishment.

They have shown-themselves, they have revealed their attitudes; and it has been easy to observe that all of mainstream politics (all parties, major institution's leaders, managerial minions, officials, mass media - the whole gang) is professionally corrupt, dishonest, cowardly, servile to evil, and acting on the basis of moral inversion.

It has all been spread-out for us, day by day, week by week, year by year - things do not ever get clearer than this.

Whether many people have had their eyes-opened, have had the scales drop, or the blinkers removed - I really don't know; although I think I sense something positive, some positive shift, at an imperceptible and unverifiable intuitive level - although it may-well be wishful-thinking.

But given that I knew that the Establishment would never lead England into a Brexit that was worth having; it really couldn't have gone any better, in terms of this being seen to be the case.

If England wants a real Brexit, or anything better; then it will not be done by voting, or by any other means that depends on our leadership class to implement it. If that message is beginning to get through, then that will be a stride in the right direction.

Deep Sleep, Waking and Dreaming - a range of cognitive capacities

In terms of our subjective experience of Time, there is a gradient between the three conscious states - Deep sleep, Waking and Dreaming, between-which we alternate through our lives. 

Deep sleep - when we are hardly aware of Time passing, and hardly anything seems to be experienced (in so far as we recall anything at all from Deep Sleep - I personally do not).

Waking - when Time passes in the way we know; not always at the same subjective speed, but within limits of a few-fold variation between time passing quickly and slowly. Experience likewise.

Dreaming sleep - in which time seems to pass at the same subjective speed as it does in waking life, but, relative to waking life Dreaming sleep moves much more rapidly; so that we can fit ?100 fold more events and emotions into a section of dreaming, than we could do in the equivalent time awake.

In other words, Dreaming is a very rapid and complex type of cognitive processing. However, Dreaming is poorly remembered; and notoriously unreliable - in terms of its content being incoherent within itself, and incoherent with subsequent and previous experience. 

This implies that the gain in rapidity and complexity of mental processing that we get in dreaming has a price to pay in terms of the validity of 'conclusions'.

We can think, and experience, many many more things in five waking-minutes of a dream than in five waking-minutes; but a great deal of the dream material is unreliable, and does not stand up to scrutiny: it is not confirmed by experience.

If we assume that these conscious states are on a continuum; then I can back-extrapolate to the situation of Deep sleep. I can then assume that:

1. Deep sleep is necessary - and has important functions; or else we wouldn't do it, and would not have to do it.

2. Deep sleep is only capable of very slow and simple cognitive processing.

3. The thinking of Deep sleep is of the greatest coherence, within itself and with Life; and the knowledge of Deep sleep has the highest validity.

In sum, Deep sleep seems to be a kind of Intuition. That is; a bottom-line form of thinking, a self-validating form of thinking. If we can Deep sleep a thing; then that thing is real: or, it is as subjectively-real as something can be, for us. 

My guess is that the things were are most sure about, or become surest about; are things that we have 'processed' in Deep sleep; and that the slowness, and simplicity of concepts, of Deep sleep is a constraint upon our capacity really to know things.


Note, aside: I've hidden the blog comments for a while, to take a break from dealing with them. I shall reveal them again soon, when I feel refreshed.

'Following' Jesus to Life Eternal': the good news of the Fourth Gospel

Modern people assume that death is the end of everything personal, the destruction of the self; they assume that when the body dies then nothing is left.

The ancients, before Jesus, also believed that death was the end of everything personal, and that there was destruction of the self - but the difference was that after the body has died, they believed that something was left: that the soul remained.

The soul minus the body wasn't any use, it lacked self-consciousness, it could not help-itself... but the soul remained alive, like a witless 'ghost'. (The Underworld/ Hades/ Sheol was populated by such ghosts; left-over after death of the body.)

Before Jesus only a perfectly divine-aligned Man could become fully-divine; because being divine means to join with God in the creative work of the universe. To join in the work of creation, one must wholly embrace that work and its aims; to have something distinctive to contribute to creation, one must have free will, must have agency.

Therefore one must have 'a body' because the body is what enables us to have divine free will: it is incarnation that separates our will from that of God.

So resurrection - with an immortal, indestructible body - is necessary for us to become divine agents. 

In sum, before Jesus divinity was not possible to a Man unless one was already fully divine-aligned. However, Jesus was a perfectly divine-aligned man, and therefore Jesus could and did become fully divine (at his baptism by John).  

And that event changed everything.

After Jesus, who began as a Man, had become fully divine; then it was possible for any other Man to become fully divine, simply by following the path that Jesus had made. In other words, one needed to love Jesus, to have faith in who Jesus was and what he could do; and then anyone could follow Jesus to full divinity - but only after death, only via death.

Why only after death? Because we are not perfectly-aligned to God during our mortal lives (that is, because we are all sinners) our body must first die, before our soul can be resurrected. Our personal self must be ended before it can be remade (from the remnant soul)

This process began before Jesus himself died, with the resurrection of Lazarus. What we know of Lazarus is the mutual love between him and Jesus. Lazarus was the first Man to die who had faith in Jesus, and Lazarus was therefore the first Man to be resurrected by Jesus - but uniquely Lazarus was resurrected back into earthly life, as a miraculous sign of the new dispensation.

Lazarus then went on to write the Fourth Gospel as the 'beloved disciple', being the best possible witness to the reality of this new dispensation; and the Man who best knew the nature of Jesus and what gift he brought. 

So, now, after Jesus - the Good News is that we can each and all have life everlasting and the resurrection that entails; no matter what our state of sin or how far from being God-aligned we may be. We may have resurrected life everlasting after we have died; 'simply' by loving and trusting Jesus to lead us, and by following the same path to full divinity that Jesus first took, and which (by taking) he made for us.

Things coming to a point - running-out of other-people's money

The cost of incrementally destroying the specific functionality of all social institutions, and making them into a single bureaucracy converged upon Leftist ideals (diversity, sustainability, inclusion, social justice blah blah blah...) - is that all institutions require more and more subsidy; not least because they are so managerialist and clogged with Red Tape that nobody will work for them unless they are paid market rates.

And - in our kind of society - the subsidy is extracted from a small base of productive workers; who are so demonised, hassled and demoralised that the base is shrinking ever faster than already imposed by the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of being controlled by converged institutions.

As Margaret Thatcher said - the problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people's money. She was right about the economics - but of course the real problem with socialism goes much deeper: for example, the denial of God; the spiritual realm; and the objectivity of truth, beauty and virtue...

Therefore, things are failing faster and faster - and whereas in the more recent past, failing institutions would be absorbed into the state-business-media-bureaucracy-plex; now they are becoming too frequent and too many to be able to do so.

The process of convergence deeds-upon itself, is therefore depends upon accelerating, and therefore the point at which it will become unsustainable gets closer with increasing rapidity. 

A straw in the wind is that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) is now (apparently) rapidly approaching bankruptcy only six months after the CJCLDS (Mormon Church) finally decided to leave the BSA in response to ever-increasing Leftist/ sexual multi-corruption.

Among those who knew how the BSA worked (and how much they depended on Mormon membership, leadership and funding), it was confidently known that the BSA must collapse (either to closure or being taken-over) - but the speed at which this happened has probably surprised everybody. 

(...Even the BSA management, who - no doubt - expected to be long gone by the time that the consequences of their ideologically-driven incomptetence came home to roost.)

These signs of impending collapse are, obviously, getting closer together at an increasing rate - i.e. things are coming to a point.

What to do? Well, it is not your job or my job to prop-up and re-vitalise Western or even National civilization (if such a thing even makes sense, which it probably does not)... and in this world of hollow and dysfunctional institutions if something can't be done at the individual level, it ain't going to happen at all...

Our job is to be clear about what is going on in terms of Spiritual Warfare - to take the Big Perspective that Christians are everlasting Beings to whom our mortal lives, and this earth, are very important but part of an eternal time-frame.

And then to act accordingly.

If the universe is alive - what then?

If we accept that everything is alive and that reality consists of Beings (which is what we, apparently, all spontaneously believed as young children, and which all tribal nomads assert)...

If, that is, we go back to and re-accept the unconscious, built-in assumptions of Man - but this time in awareness and with our modern consciousness; various consequences are implied...

One is that modern Man is surrounded by Beings that he ignores; he is surrounded by living consciousnesses whose life and awareness he denies.

What might be the consequence? Well, in general, such an attitude from Men is likely to elicit unconscious anger, maybe resentment, from the surrounding Beings. At the least, they will provide some kind of reflex negative feedback, intended to resist and correct this materialistic attitude of understanding the near-universal assumption that (apart from humans, some humans) the world as dead, random, mechanical.

There would also be a neglect of many causes in Life; so that many things would happen apparently 'randomly' and without reason - things which, if we would acknowledge and recognise other Beings and their motivations, we might make-sense-of and predict.

Existentially, because of our assumptions, we suffer from an ineradicable disconnection between ourselves and our world; ourselves as alive and conscious and capable of relationships with other people - but everything else as just a background, a blank canvas, raw material to be interpreted and shaped and exploited...

A whole world to which indifference is the appropriate attitude; and from-which we expect indifference in return.   

Yet all such things could be addressed, life would be transformed from bottom to top; if again we were to acknowledge that which we already, spontaneously, deep-down know about the universe.

But we are contending with a lifetime of bad habits, and a pervasive and invasive culture of reality-denial.

Nonetheless, much can be done. 

The meaning of flowers

William Wildblood offers-up an inspiring meditation on the lovely subject of flowers, at Albion Awakening.

Dad jokes - They work on so many levels...

I am a great fan of Dad jokes; which are something that everybody 'enjoys'; enjoys making, laughing the first time, groaning or complaining in response the next score times, enjoys noticing the recurrence, enjoys making-fun-of, enjoys campaigning to try and stop... and so on.

A Dad joke is one that keeps on giving, year after year.

Here's a good example, from Junior Ganymede, of a Dad joke that mutated and started to evolve, to invade new ecosystems...

Fear is now prohibited

However things may have been in the past; fear is prohibited now. It is the demonic plan to use fear to gain their objectives - the public realm has been turned into a discourse of fear; therefore Christians cannot use it.

This is difficult, I personally fail and lapse often - but it is a deep truth: fear is prohibited, absolutely.

Therefore, Christians cannot use fear to persuade, or to warn. I think we all feel this to be a fact of life?

We cannot use arguments of the If-Then type that depend on inculcating fear to avoid something - even if such arguments are effective in changing behaviour in the desired direction, the overall consequences of the argument having done so by the use of fear will more than negate any such benefit.

We must be able to present our Christian message without threats: we Just Must. It is the use of fear to manipulate that characterises our modern totalitarian world; but the use of fear is built-into the deep assumptions of The System; thus it is deniable and denied.

Anyone coming from outside the system, like Christians, who need to challenge the deep assumptions; can only hope to succeed in improving things overall if the outcome is a reduction in fear. The old method of inculcating 'holy dread', fear of hellfire' - then showing the way to escape... well, that will not do At All.

Not least because, in the current climate of endemic fear, to be effective the Christian would need to threaten something that induced even more fear than the high background level of fear. This would entail first convincing people of a world of premised upon more terrifying assumptions, greater dread and worse horrors than the modern media public realm... Well, you can see where this is going.

This is perhaps why the Fourth Gospel should be our Bible - since (with only a few and dubious exceptions among its many verses) here we get Jesus bringing and offering a positive addition to human life.

The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel does not argue by threats nor by inducing fear; not by threatening 'or else!'; but by offering something better than people already have, something wonderful - and simple: Heavenly eternal life.

And what should we do to get it? Simple. We get it by 'believing-on' Jesus, knowing he is the Son of God; by loving and following him through death into Life Everlasting, as a lost sheep follows a Good Shepherd.

We must not be drawn into the If Not side of things, the 'what will happen if I Don't follow Jesus', 'what will happen if I can't or won't believe he is the Son of God?' The simple answer is that Jesus has made an offer - and if you want it, you can have it. If you don't want it; well, you are not compelled to take it.

But what happens then - people will ask. What happens to me if I choose to reject Christ's offer/ The exact answer is not made explicit in the Fourth Gospel, and the outcome probably will vary from person by person; so each must work-out the answer for himself.

If not? The proper answer is a shrug?... You Tell Me?...

The mission is simply to tell what Jesus positively offers, what he adds to our earthly mortal lives, the cosmic, eternal, loving perspective... And what to do about it. Assuming that is what you want.

The demons do not want the Left to win...

My knowledge of 'what is going on' according to public discourse is restricted to headlines; but from them I can see that those who oppose the Left are still talking politics; and thereby playing into the hands of the demonic overlords of the Left.

Demonic objectives are related to the best conditions for the damnation of Men's souls - and not about which side 'wins' in politics. They will succeed insofar as Men regard life as being about politics; rather than about salvation in an eternal spiritual context.

Defeating the current Global Establishment conspiracy does not matter either way, unless the result is for Men to come to their senses and realise the peril of their souls and recognise the everlasting scope of the human condition.

We need to recall that the perfect result for demons is not the success of the Left, and the subordination of the masses; but that the whole of humanity be embroiled in materialist politicking; such that it matters more than anything else; such that Men's hopes and fears are all to do with material conditions and emotional states experienced in this mortal life.

That would indeed be victory for the demons. Whoever happens to 'win'.

Romantic Shakespeare and Fantasy (the supernatural)

Brian Blessed as the Ghost in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet movie - and whispering, not shouting!

In the preface to Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, the 'romantic' was given a definition in terms of Wordsworth focusing on the numinous qualities of Nature, and Coleridge upon the Supernatural. So the Fantasy aspect of Romanticism - such as we see in The Inklings - was present from the start.

Shakespeare had a role in Romanticism, in that his renewed popularity came from a German reappraisal (probably originating with Herder, who worked from translated excerpts of Shakespeare - and greatly amplified in England by the Shakespeare lectures of Coleridge) that saw Shakespeare in such terms; as a 'wild', spontaneous, natural genius.

Shakespeare was often linked with the then extremely high valuation of the strange, semi-faked 'poems' of 'Ossian' - which were a 'translation', plus very extensive reworking and expansion, of Gaelic songs and stories collected in the highlands and islands of Scotland by James Macpherson and published in the middle 1700s. So that Homer, Ossian and Shakespeare were found linked in a 'bardic' lineage - for instance, this is later referenced by Emerson and Thoreau.

Shakespeare came from a 'recusant' Catholic, and therefore pre-Reformation, sensibility on his mother's side. She was Mary Arden, and members of the Arden family were part of a concentration of families trying to practice the Old religion; Ardens even involved in, and some executed for, spying, rebellion, and assassination plots.

So, Shakespeare had an interest in magic, fairies, ghosts, witches and the like; that can be seen from A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest (the only plays whose plots were essentially original) and others of his greatest work such as Macbeth and Hamlet. And, in general, many of the plays have a strong 'premodern' element of fate or providence governing the affairs of Men. However, as Tolkien noted with disappointment, such elements are seldom given full value or treated with full seriousness - it is mostly a matter of hints and epiphanies.

With the dawning of the Romantic consciousness, Shakespeare was therefore ripe for revival and reinterpretation in this light - despite that in other respects, his work was often very 'artificial', ironic, fashionable, or simply derivative (in terms of basic plots and subject matter).

Shakespeare can therefore be seen as spanning from the Medieval consciousness, which simply took magic and the supernatural for granted as a real and objective part of the external environment; the early modern consciousness, which treated such matters ironically and satirically - as being unreal and delusional - purely a part of subjective consciousness; and the Romantic consciousness which (in its highest development; e.g. Coleridge, Novalis, Blake) returns to the pre-modern in conscious thought, with a realism that includes as necessary, both the subjective and the objective.

In other words, the Romantic concept of the magical-supernatural is that these things are real; and/but - like all real things - their reality is neither wholly in the external environment nor the internal consciousness, but in the necessary apprehension of the environment by consciousness. They (both the supernatural and all real phenomena) are indeed out-there, and/but they require the subjective consciousness to be known; and only the known is real. (Only the known is part of Creation - all else is unknowable chaos.)

The magical is real, but reality has a new location, in the realm of thinking. Neither purely out-there nor in-here, but in a new conception of the potential of the world of thinking to know directly and perhaps participate in divine creation. This is the thinking of the 'creative genius', who is seen by Romantics as (potentially) the proper mode of all Men.

So the ghost in Hamlet is 'really there' but requires someone to see and hear it; if there was no consciousness present, there would be no ghost.