What's going-on about the obsession with 2030? Black magic numerology...

We have all heard "by 2030" so many times that the oddness of that date does not surprise us as it should. 

The main focus comes from United Nations Agenda 2030 - originated, endorsed and publicised by the World Economic Foundation gang - which is the plan to bring the world under totalitarian omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

But why that date - or rather, why that number? Because this is about numerology - the magic of numbers.

And I mean literal magic, as with Black Magical ceremonies, designed to make contacts with demons, and thereby to mobilize and serve demonic powers. 

Be clear - numerology is not what I believe is possible or real, but what They believe is possible and real: the kind of things that They do. They believe in the power of numbers, and work in accordance with numbers. 

And 2030? Well, ritually speaking 2030 is two thousand years, two-millennia, after the beginning of the three year ministry of Jesus Christ. 

So 2030 to 2033 (i.e. Jesus's ministry to his crucifixion) is significant; because by Their reasoning this is a "dangerous" time for the agenda of evil; and therefore a time when they want everything under control - and a population for whom everything real is "a thing". 

(That is, a world of the masses where the spiritual is ignored, regarded as not-real - when it isn't being ridiculed.) 

"They" do not ignore or ridicule the spiritual, because that includes the demonic; and They know that the demonic is real - because They serve it. But is the The Agenda that everyone not inside the demonic elite should disbelieve the spiritual.

(When people are convinced that only the material is real, then they can be controlled insofar as the material world can be controlled - which, nowadays, when most choose to inhabit a virtuality, is to a very great extent. By contrast, the world of spirit is not easily controlled. For instance, yours and my relationship with the Holy Ghost is beyond Their control.)  

However... The bureaucratic demons of materialism and totalitarian control are rapidly losing ground to the spiteful demons of destruction and chaos. 

So it seems more and more likely that Agenda 2030 is not going to happen on schedule, or ever. Things are moving away from it overall, and this trend is accelerating.

This does not mean they will give up on the Agenda for 2030; but that their efforts will become more frantic, more urgent, more extreme. 

And Christians should bear in mind that 2030-33 is an opportunity. 

Even if (as I believe) the numerology is nonsense, then frantic totalitarianism may (if the opportunity is grasped) create an accidental self-inflicted self-fulfilment about the danger to Them. 

If, but only insofar as, this opportunity is taken. 

     

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. 

The 'sacred landscape' of England is the opposite of geometric!

We took a rail trip out to Hexham yesterday - a favourite place. The Abbey, in an earlier version built by St Wilfrid during Northumbria's 'golden age' was once the largest building in Europe, north of the Alps.

The views of the River Tyne and its valley, seen from the train window, are evidence of the wonderful strength of beauty that remains, waiting; and it is delightful that the buskers (i.e. street musicians - a melodeon player in one place, and two fiddlers in another) were playing folk music - including this (first) tune:

Anyway, as I travelled out I was reading a collection of John Michell's essays (Writings and rants of a radical traditionalist - recommended by this site's sometime guest blogger John Fitzgerald: Thanks!) - and reflecting on Michell's popularisation of the idea of the sacred landscape of Britain.

But Michell was a 'geomancer' and described the sacred landscape in terms of straight tracks, roads and Ley Lines of energy force - the ancient sites along along such alignments - and the detailed geometric/ astronomically-oriented  diagrams of monuments such as Stonehenge - this kind of thing:

Michell also painted geometric designs, e.g.:

But, I am struck by exactly the opposite!

That the sacred landscape of England - in large and in microcosm is extremely irregular, asymmetric and un-geometric - and this applies to Neolithic/ Bronze Age - Celtic or Anglo Saxon designs, sites, roads etc - I see little in the way of straight lines, sharp points, repeating patterns:

So, although I am pleased that John Michell drew attention to the subject of sacred landscape - I feel he was barking up the wrong tree in discussing it in terms of geometry and numerology.

This would, indeed, be appropriate to somewhere like Ancient Egypt, with its stereotypical obelisks, pyramids, right-angles - sharp edges, smoothed and polished stone - all silhouetted against a plain blue sky...

But England is all mists, rugged rocks, and wavy lines - it was an English painter (Hogarth) who said the line of beauty was a curve - and English literature prizes its array of unique characters (not 'representative' 'types') which fill Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens... Harry Potter.

John Michell was a Christianised (but not actually Christian) Platonist - with a strong element of the Pythagorean number mystic. This is alien to my temperament! - I find it a mystery why anyone would want to 'explain' spiritual beauty with mathematics!

Why would so many people want so much to describe everything as ultimately a matter of geometric shapes, or of 'fractals'!

Yet to regard mathematics as the underlying truth or reality - the archetypal world of 'forms' - is a deep and powerful urge among many, probably most, Western intellectuals since Ancient Greek times. So they see nothing absurd or contrived about covering the British landscape with abstract lines, angles and shapes drawn on maps, and aligned.

Although I reject this approach, I don't have any equally comprehensible and depict-able alternative for the sacred landscape - so me it is a miracle of intuitively sensed but undescribable rightness - like an unique character from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Shakespeare's plays, the 'design' can be shown and felt, but not made into a formula.

2020 Synchronicity Magic, following after the leaching of enchantment from life

One of the most painful - although, it turns-out necessary - trends through my life, has been the leaching of magic, of enchantment, from all institutions, and almost all places. 

This is the familiar 'public world' of materialist assumptions: that the world is made of 'things'; that subjective mind (consciousness) is separate and thoughts are epiphenomenal; that Beings are ultimately mere artefacts of the 'laws' of physics and statistical chance...

Although the theme of modern life becoming disenchanted goes back a long way, to the first Romantics around 1800; and the sociologist Max Weber defined it as characteristic of modernity more than a century ago. And it was also Weber who also named the Iron Cage of bureaucracy, which has been the primary mechanism by which enchantment has been destroyed. 

For me, the disenchantment of universities was probably the most painful of these trends; since I had grown-up the son of a 'professor' (consultant/ senior lecturer in dentistry) and known from an early age that this was a known world I felt organically a part-of. I was an insider. 

Right into the 1990s, there was a residuum of magic about academia - albeit a thin and dwindling stream compared with the height of the middle ages. 

But it was evident - here and there, again and again; and I valued that magic despite that hardly any of my colleagues noticed it, and even fewer liked it. Indeed, as an atheist, I depended on that enchantment at a deep level; for a sense of meaning and purpose in life, larger than myself.

The process of diminishing enchantment was partly driven by the evil destructiveness of bureaucracy (whose 'reforms' were always based upon lies and denied, unexamined false assumptions) - but also, underlying, by the long-term trend that Men were progressively less and less susceptible to enchantment. 

Magic, gradually, ceased to work. 

 

This can be seen everywhere - indeed, even in the world of magic itself: I mean the 'esoteric' societies of ritual magic that grew up from the late 19th century. 

In the late 19th century people were claiming all kind of magical manifestations; the rituals seemed objectively effective, indeed potentially dangerous - hence they were kept secret. But by the 1980s or 90s nobody was even claiming this, thus there seemed no need for secrecy; and the activities of magical societies were hard to distinguish from group psychotherapy, artsy 'happenings', or ritual pageantry. 

For most people, nearly all the time; Magic just doesn't work anymore. 

 

The old systems and symbolisms (alchemy, astrology, numerology, ritual objects and actions...) - are left looking more like bureaucratic flow-charts. People can still learn about the history of magical stuff, and intended correlations; but it is clear that objects and actions no longer animate people. 

The objectivity that linked magical things and doings with predictable real world effects has gone. Such correlations have become merely theoretical - or else reduced to (transient) feelings.  

The human mind seems to have become more and more resistant to magic. 

And not only among Westerners. The 19th century Amerindians 'needed' to introduce peyote in order to attain the mystical states that had previously arisen spontaneously. However, peyote is a mild, slow-acting psychedelic; requiring additional supportive group immersion and ritual actions. 

But among Westerners the psychedelic drugs of the 1960s were relatively a 'necessary' chemical sledgehammer of ultra-potent, or mega-dose, brain impairment agents; such extreme measure needed in order to create some warped simulacrum of the 'larger consciousness' that most people could experience naturally earlier in human history. 

Psychedelics are a last gasp of the idea that spiritual experience should come from outside, be objective and irresistible, should overwhelm the mind... and, of course, psychedelics have overall proved to be not merely a failure as 'entheogens', but actively counter-productive.

Cause and effect have worked together - and by now I find that the disenchantment of public life and my compelled withdrawal of reliance upon it has been an advantage - a necessity; as the whole organisational world moves ever deeper into more explicit evil. 

Anyone now mentally-dependent on any kind of institution is drawn into supporting the agenda of Satanic evil which has swept the world in 2020. 

Enchantment of our social world is now an illusion rather than an insight - albeit a flimsy and ineffectual illusion in a world where all institutions are permanently convulsed by externally-bureaucratic-media-imposed transformations, driven by global Establishment priorities (birdemic, climate change, antiracism, sexual revolution...). 

 

Here and now any magic must come from within - and modern institutions have no 'within'; they are permeable and hollow; the imperatives of The System sweep through them unopposed and uncontradicted - they are mere subsections of The One System.

This is related to an increased awareness of synchronicity as a 'mechanism' of enchantment. Synchronicity as the basis of a way of life was the core message of the 1993 bestselling New Age 'novel' The Celestine Prophecy; and this is indirect evidence that there are no longer effective magical 'systems'.

Magic is now something that unpredictably happens-to us - our job being to recognise and understand it when it happens. 

 

But mainly; our 'job' is to create the frame of mind (frame of Being) in which synchronicities happen more often, more powerfully and meaningfully; become 'normal', and link-together towards Good ends. 

Because - although this is seldom recognised - synchronicity entails a loving creator God. Acknowledgment and understanding of synchronicity takes us most of the way to Christianity!

Thus a modern Christian - at his most Christian - would experience life as a continuous-web of synchronicity. Quite naturally so - because a life of meaning and purpose would be full of positive and striking 'coincidental' happenings; one leading onto another. 

Our mortal life is sustained because of our need to learn - to learn for the resurrected life to come; and sychronicity is a kind of learning-opportunity. 

Thus synchronicity is not a code - not a system of objective correlatives, like the old magical system; but a natural aspect of a Christian life in this 2020 world where all meaning must come from God and from the divine within; because pretty much all of external life has become evil, meaningless and purposeless. 

2020 Magic just is Christian; not institutional. 

Note: moderated commenting has returned...

Accelerating chaos and evil Not-plans: wishing you a Happy (demonic fake) New Year!...

Old readers will know of my aversion to the official New Year defined as 1st January; which is defined in terms of what it is not (not astronomical, not seasonal and not Christian) rather than what it is - which is to say arbitrarily numerical... 

This means the Year is not truly new, but only demonic-fake-'New'. 

So, the New Year and its 'celebration' is almost-certainly Satan-spawned - as what else could it be? When we are induced to celebrate the arbitrary, it is only one step away from celebrating the actively-evil.  

Thus your cheerful and social Happy New Year! greetings with neighbours are approximately spiritually-equivalent to a Nazi salute or the clenched fist of Communism... 

(...You're welcome...)

But this is the day one of the calendar-year; and my understanding is that the demons are very keen on arbitrary numerology - on the special significance of certain arbitrary numbers (i.e. fakely-significant numbers); being super-especially fond of decimals, decades, centuries - and the metric system generally, including SI units ("Systeme International" - French, wouldn't you know). 

The lower-ranked (bureaucratic, 'Ahrimanic') demons love these systems because they are made-up by officials; and because of their abstract efficiency, and easily calculational inter-convertibility. 

SI units model the world as-if it was already the single totalitarian System that the Ahriminic demons day-dream about implementing and operating... 

The metric-SI system artificially-'unifies' the world - and achieves this abstract coherence by its indifference to the human.  

By contrast the Imperial System (feet and inches, furlongs and leagues etc) was originally based-on the human body and mind; and the usage of measures that are functionally appropriate to the actual task in hand. This was especially the case in its earlier, 'medieval' forms - e.g. when 'an acre' was the amount of land that could be ploughed in a day, locally. 

There are also sacred, 'magical' number and geometrical 'systems', apparently derived from Pythagorean-Platonic philosophy - and these are universal; but abstract, not human, not functionally-derived.

(See How the world is made: the story of creation according to sacred geometry, by John Michell, 2012.)   

But naturally, none of these genuine, good-aiming spiritualities are of interest to the demonic powers - except when they can be subverted and then inverted; because inversion is the basis of anti-Christian symbolism and ritual - just as inversion of values is the most advanced form of evil. 

It was, presumably, the middle-managers among the demons (as among humans) who chose to make 2020 the year for the global totalitarian coup. 

2020 is just the kind of meaningless but superficially-significant 'decimal' number which they like best, and which they believe brings them the best results. 

So - what about 2022? Anything special? 

I think not - not for the kind of Being that is engaged in the Ahrimanic programme. They are keen planners and 'strategists', and are explicitly aiming at 2030, the next decade - for the 'completion' of their current strategy of worldwide surveillance and control.  

But as of the approach to 2022; these mid-level demons have apparently lost control, and their plans are not happening to schedule. 

Why? Partly because the plans were based on falsehoods and could never have-worked. 

Partly because of unexpected resistance. 

But mostly because the 'Sorathic' demons of chaos, of sheer destruction and negation, are increasingly in control; and are using The System to inject chaos, destruction and negation into itself.

The Ahrimanic demons intended to use The System to rule the world post 2020... 

But the Sorathic demons want to use The System to destroy The System. 

There is no doubt that order is collapsing and chaos is increasing - locally and worldwide. 

Therefore: the most likely prediction for 2022 is... Accelerating chaos  

(...Which is actually a bit of a non-prediction - since the nature and location of chaos cannot - by definition - be predicted!) 

But this tsunami of dysfunction is not apparent to the Ahrimanic middle-managers, because they are incompetent and dishonest; self-blinded fools who live by self-serving lies - and they believe that their interests are best served by pretending to omniscience and omnipotence. 

When real knowledge and power are lacking, the adopt the Texas Sharpshooter tactic of claiming that whatever has-happened was exactly what they wanted to happen...

In the face of actual accelerating chaos; demonic middle-managers will continue 'confidently' to assert that everything is getting better... 

...All is on-track and on-schedule; tractor production continues to increase by hundreds of percent per year; and the bureaucratic utopia of own-nothing/ be-happy will be oven-ready for 2030 - all in accordance with plans... 

And this will be asserted, louder and louder, officially and by the mass media - until the world is engulfed by war and famine, disease and death, flame and flood...

At which point they will simply claim that they always meant to do that. 

Romantic Christians should not be misled by the collapse of the Ahrimanic-bureaucratic plans into assuming that this means the powers of Good are necessarily ascendant. 

The birdemic-peck narrative would indeed collapse because of Christian resistance - if such existed. But does it exist?

Good can only come of good (not from evil-motivations) - and unless there really is a Christian resurgence, then failures of evil planning will not imply a better overall outcome - not if those failure are due to ascendant chaos.  

All complex strategies and functionalities (both Good-motivated, and of evil-intent) that depend on organization, coordination and obedience will - sooner and sooner - be sabotaged by the waxing of Sorathic evil. 

Thus, the failure of evil-plans is not good news when they are being thwarted by evil-not-plans...

But only when evil-plans are thwarted by intentions on the side of Good. 

Terry Boardman in 2014 prediciting the 'unmissable global event' that heralds the impending advent of 'Ahriman' as Antichrist

Terry Boardman is always worth watching and reading - for me, he is perhaps the premier Big Picture intellectual in Britain today.

Here he has some very interesting material on the nature of Rudolf Steiner's concept of Ahriman (who he expected to be incarnated and born close to the millennium), and the prophesied global revolution of materialism.

I am skeptical about the literal truth about these predictions and the reasoning behind them (based on numerology and a claimed understanding of the future course of human evolution stretching 1000s of years ahead) - I always read Steiner and his followers through a Romantic Christian filter; however, Steiner was undoubtedly in some ways very gifted at sensing 'what was coming' - and he might well be correct in a general sense, and for different reasons than those explicitly posited.

Thus, here you will find idea that the demon Satan/ Ahriman would be incarnated as a human born near the year 2000. It may be that - taken in a 'soft and flexible' fashion, in terms of the role a person (even if not literall A Demon) plays in the spiritual war or the world - this may turn-out to be broadly correct.

Anyway, we will soon know if a single Antichrist figure emerges as the focus for what is going on - and there is one very obvious candidate millennial baby who is being groomed, and might well be placed in the world leadership position very soon; someone born on 03/01/03.  

I would watch the whole video if I were you - indeed I bought the DVD from which this is excerpted; but for a flavour drop in at 15:00.

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.  

Some imaginative speculations on English Neolithic/ Early Bronze Age civilisation (?4500-1500 BC)

The hardly-known Ancient English Neolithic 'high civilisation' (which continued into the early Bronze Age) is something that increasingly fascinates me - especially in comparison and contrast with the roughly contemporary but vastly better-documented and far more technologically-sophisticated Ancient Egypt.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Neolithic

I am going to speculate freely on the nature and spiritual life of the Neolithic.

This was a society of magic rather than machines (things were done by magic that were later and elsewhere done by machines) - the obviously 'man-made' was disliked, and complex technology was regarded with revulsion and suspicion.

Since the economy was based on farming, the landscape was of course substantially re-made. There were long, winding or snaking roads and pathways - and these were unpaved - merely short grass, perhaps worn or scraped clear of turf to expose the natural chalk or other stone beneath. Large earthworks were not faced with rock but merely scraped clear of turf to stand-out white, grey or brown against the horizon or green fields.

Monuments were constructed as a matter of primary social activity - yet there was an attitude of minimal intervention. The standing stones and structures were left substantially natural, rough-hewn; various in size, placed according to a sense of rightness and without precise, abstract mathematical placement.

Those who harp-on about 'numerology' and the celestial alignments of Neolithic monuments have made a false emphasis - a society which strives for abstract geometry would, like Ancient Egypt, make monuments from exactly replicated blocks, with straight edges, sharp points, smooth surfaces; precision placed onto stone fixings - not variously sized and shaped, rough stones placed onto grass. There were alignments - but the whole flavour was organic and approximate - the fine interpretative 'tuning' was done on the basis of magic and wisdom - not 'read-off' like a scientific precision instrument.

Indeed, there is no point in attempting exact celestial geometry in England where clouds cover the sun, moon and stars most of the time - that kind of alignment only works under reliably unrelenting clear blue skies.

In Neolithic times, things were arranged in a suggestively symbolic fashion; features were made clearer, more obvious using contrast, colour, accumulations of earth, stone, rocks and wood - but the ideal was that no matter how obvious the features should seem to arise from the natural landscape; as if organic growths.

(Stonehenge is a late, indeed terminal, feature of this society - and marks the onset of corruption with an attempt at precision and a cult of death and sacrifice.)

The Neolithic was organised and literate - but the organisation was in the form of a fluid confederated druidical hierarchy of graded initiates, working individually and informally as mobile masters and apprentices and not organised into static colleges or temples.  The literacy deployed a symbolic and pictorial language - instead of sentences and paragraphs there were complex diagrams - each unique but with standard components - incised on leather and wood, or scraped onto stone; the subtle interpretation of which was an arcane art (so there was no need for secrecy - ordinary people could not comprehend the 'writing').

The pace of life was slow, measured. The focus of life was religious - the primary deity being associated with the Sun, the secondary deities with the Moon and stars. The stars made up a permanent and unchanging eternal basic of life; the wandering planets tracked the linearity of time such that each year was unique; the Sun was the long term timekeeper by the seasons, the Moon phases provided the monthly scale organization of daily life.

Military strength (and this was an internally peaceful society) was directed against invasion - and was achieved by the capacity to assemble and deploy vast armies, unified by religious belief, trained to work together by participation in constructing the vast earthworks and monuments, and impossible to rout or demoralise. They used projectile weapons (probably storms of spears, thrown in coordinated waves) to devastating effect; followed by stone axes wielded by powerful and untiring arms trained in day after day spent earthmoving and stone lifting and shaping.

Hostile invaders, who necessarily came in small groups by ship, poorly supplied, without anywhere to retreat-to, different in appearance, language, behaviours - stood no chance against these massive and cohesive defensive hordes.

The farming, and the villages were a patchwork of shapes, no two the same yet fitted together; all rounded, all curves and bows - no straight edges or lines, no arches, no triangles, squares or perfect circles... Animals roamed with their shepherds.

The arts were of alliterating poetry - always chanted or sung from memory; the instrumental music for accompaniment and dancing was from pipes, percussion and drones. In singing, high clear graceful voices were prized above all; low gravelly voices were for humour and ribaldry.

There were no wagons, only beasts of burden; but there were boats everywhere - mostly flat bottomed rafts pulled from the river bank, or paddled canoes that resembled tree trunks on the lakes and inland waters. But the use of boats were governed by Moon and weather, magic and divination.

And they were waiting - spiritually waiting. The whole society was prepared and poised for the coming revelation, and the transformation of earth into Heaven.

England was like two gigantic hands, cupped and waiting to receive.

**

The differences between the two contemporaneous, magical High Civilisations of England and Egypt can be encapsulated by a comparison of Neolithic standing stone 'growing' from the earth into the mist of England (this one from Avebury):

With a precision-engineered Egyptian obelisk against an electric-blue sky:





Britain - a holy land under enchantment... by John Michell

Mrs Maltwood looked with a geomancer's eye at the Somerset plains and understood in a flash the secret of the zodiacal giants hidden in the landscape. 

Alfred Watkins, envisioned on the Bredwardine hills, perceived the veins and arteries standing out clear against the Hertfordshire fields. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson and many others sought the vital spots to penetrate the layers of time that cover the face of the country. The feeling they shared was of some forgotten secret. 

They glimpsed a remote golden age of science, poetry and religion in which the vast works they saw in the landscape were accomplished. 

Each of these English visionaries knew that what he saw was but a fraction of the great mystery, the key to which had been lost. 

Britain, they felt, was the holy land under enchantment. 

At the castle of the Grail King certain things must be asked before the spell is broken, so must the right question be found to lift the veil that hides the form and spirit in the landscape. 

From The View Over Atlantis - by John Michell, 1969.

**

John Michell was probably the most influential 'New Age' thinker in Britain over the past 50 years - it is his (evolving) synthesis which forms the basis of most work since. The basis for his ideas, the 'evidence', was numerology and geometry - and I personally find this dull and unconvincing; but when he simply wrote from his intuition and love of England he could be genuinely inspired and inspiring.

For fans of Valentin Tomberg

Valentin Tomberg was one of the greatest Christian mystics of the Twentieth Century. He moved from Russian Orthodoxy, through Anthroposophy to the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote in a strange mode that I find partly compelling (and certainly authentic), but also off-putting due to its highly systematised symbolism and numerology.

Anyway, people regularly keep writing to me and recommending him - so presumably some of this blog's readers are strong admirers. If so, you will want to be aware that William James Tychonievich (the Grand Old Man of commenters at this blog) in part-way-through his own card-by-card analysis of the Tarot - in the spirit of Tomberg's Meditations on the Tarot.

William has always been an outstanding, but frustratingly infrequent, blogger; however the good news is that he is attempting to blog several times per week from now.

Please visit and encourage him in this endeavour by leaving comments!

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. 

The abstracting versus the personalising impulse

The abstracting impulse seeks ultimate explanations in impersonal, not-biological/ physical abstractions such as spirit, energy, vibrations/ frequencies. 

It is often associated with sciences such as astrology, numerology, systems of divination and healing. Also with expert priesthoods or magicians, sacred temples, rituals, texts. 

The abstracting influence is rooted in deity, and deity is regarded as non-personal (a personal god is regarded as ultimately an error, due to child-like or ignorant thinking). 

The personalising impulse seeks ultimate explanations in terms of Beings, who are living persons with purpose and some degree of consciousness; the structure of reality comes from the relationships between these Beings. 

It is associated with family-/ tribe-like arrangements; with mystical, spiritual, intuitive modes of thinking - and the conviction that there are no 'things' - but all is alive, aware, purposive. 

So, the personalising influence is rooted in god/ gods who are actual person, agents, conscious and purposive - and the change and changelessness of reality explained in terms of these Beings and the relations. 

The abstracting impulse regards Beings and persons as either illusory; or as temporary phases en route to the permanence of abstraction; because real Truth is abstract. 

The personalising impulse regards abstractions as ultra-simplified models of reality - sometimes useful for short-term and practical purposes - but never True, because they leave out most of reality. 

As may be seen, we are dealing her with different metaphysical assumptions. And such assumptions come first, are deeper than 'evidence' (because evidence is itself structured by these assumptions). 

My point is that the abstracting and personalising point in opposite directions. 

Christianity, as is, is an internally-contradictory and incoherent mixture of abstracting and personalising. 

The future of Christianity would seem to be in one or other of these directions; but not both. 

We need to ask whether we personally regard Christianity as ultimately abstract, or is it personal? 

And ask our-selves whether we ought to aim for consistency and coherence in the way we regard it?  

Whatever our decision - whether we take the abstracting or personalising path; there is work to be done, because there is much inherited and accumulated confusion to be sorted-out. 

 

2016 - The Establishment doubling-down on self-destruction, and beginning the time of final choice

It seems there is a powerful destiny shaping events towards a time of choice in the modernised West - a benign destiny from the point of view of those who recognise that a large majority of the Western population are already in a state of despair, nihilism and spiritual death, and further 'progress' in the same direction will lead to the situation becoming irrevocable at the mass level.

According to almost all easily available evidence, the Establishment (the demonic conspiracy who are behind the global elite strategy of spiritual corruption and inversion by means of their ideology secular Leftism - spearheaded by the sexual revolution) are getting close to a situation of closure; when they have complete control over all significant perceptual inputs from the mass media, official propaganda, the educational system laws and regulations etc.

This would enable them to achieve self-chosen mass damnation by the dual strategy of the modern metaphysics that only sensory information is real, combined with control of all sensory information.

But for the evil global conspiracy - things are not going according to plan...

Brexit was the first major sign that the Establishment are in a state of conflict and chaos, and have failed to brainwash the masses to anything like the extent they (and I) had supposed had already happened. This led to several days of unguarded hysterical venting and increasingly open disagreement within the elites, which situation continues.

It seems ever clearer that the elite leadership are operating on the basis of grossly false information, according to a kind of 'wishful thinking of evil' (familiar from the gloating monologues of comic and movie villains!) - whereby they have come to believe their own spin and lies - designed to mislead the masses: and are now fighting imaginary enemies and ignoring the real sources of danger to their victory.

(Indeed, in a sense, the elites are physically incapable of knowing the real threats to their hegemony, since these threats are operating in domains which they cannot perceive or influence, and the reality of which they deny.)

How else to explain the almost incredible doubling-down on the US Presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, when she is very clearly and obviously in moderately-advanced state of some kind of degenerative neurological disease (probably Parkinsonism, being treated with L-dopa and psychostimulants?)

The global conspirators imagine that this can be concealed from the US electorate by ramping-up the mass media filtering and control and propaganda (and medication...) - but they are objectively wrong, it is too late already; yet they cannot perceive it!

Even given the appeal that HRC would be the first purposively-evil Presidential candidate - who would be actively destructive of Good; and that Donald Trump is a perfectly reasonable Plan B candidate for the Establishment (his strategy being to carry on the same path of terminal spiritual decline, but a bit more slowly) - the Establishment are oblivious to the deeper reality of the emerging situation - and the unpredictable but potentially massive consequences of enforcing such a profound and obvious fraud.

There is certainly no guarantee that this will end well, and how it ends may be determined outwith the mainstream political domain (i.e. not necessarily by recorded votes or via official power groups) - but there is a coming window of opportunity; and a guarantee that many people will be awakening to the reality of their basic situation and the scope and depth of deception in which they are currently complicit.

What happens then, is up to them.


Note: If you recall the big 'Mayan Calendar' fuss about the winter solstice of 2012 supposedly being the start of a new spiritual era - and then to all appearances nothing at all happened - then my interpretation is that something of the kind anticipated in 2012 was and is brewing-up; but that many people were misled by 'numerology' into giving it a specific and pre-determined date and outcome, which takes no account of human agency.

Nostalgia for the 'Intellectual Soul' (Medieval) era; when objectivity reliably caused spirituality

A theme I encounter again and again (both among Christians, and as part of the New Age) is something I term nostalgia for the Intellectual Soul era - which is the strategy of seeking to enhance spiritual life by means of objective and symbolic manipulations. 

This was normal (and effective) from the ancient classical times of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and through the Christian Middle Ages (both in the East and the West). These times were underpinned by what Rudolf Steiner terned the Intellectual Soul phase of human consciousness*

The Intellectual Soul can be understood as a gradual transition. At the beginning systems of objective physical phenomena would - pretty reliably - induce desired spiritual states. This was the basis of ancient religions. 

Thus we get the use of ritual and symbolism in religion; based on the idea that if you do this physical thing, then that spiritual state will be the result. 

There are thousands of examples: religious processions, icons, statues, sacred buildings on sacred places. There are the sacraments such as baptism, the mass, marriage. Practices such as prostration, genuflection, and kneeling to pray - and in general using particular words. That certain physical procedures can be used for divination, or for exorcism. That reading scripture has an innately beneficial spiritual effect... 

Another aspect is that the proper ritual ordination of priests will have an objective and permanent effect on the spirit - so that priests become a qualitatively different kind of Man; with distinctive powers to operate the systems, rituals and symbols.  

Another aspect of the Intellectual Soul is the idea of objective symbolic 'systems' such as numerology, sacred geometry, astrology, alchemy, magic... and that (done properly) these causally yield reliable spiritual (and other objective) consequences. 

All these are instances that demonstrate the 'intellectual soul' assumption that the physical leads causally to the spiritual.   

However, looking across the span of history we can observe that there was a loss of the effectiveness of ritual and symbol, a loss of the power of ritual and symbol. Until in the modern era they are feeble (yielding only weak and transitory effects) or absent from many people's lives. 

Yet although the Intellectual Soul is much diminished - it is not altogether absent. Although ritual, symbol and system are much weaker and less reliable than they used to be when it comes to yielding real world and subjective consequences - they still retain some power. 

Therefore, there are always people and movements that are attempting to revive the Intellectual Soul, and to restore it to former potency and centrality. 

And always these attempts have some success, but never enough; and each successive revival/ restoration of 'Medievalism' achieves less than the one before.  

Given the alienated spiritual desert that is modern mainstream life; I am sympathetic to the attempts at revival and restoration of the intellectual soul; and I too feel (sometimes intense)  nostalgia for the medieval systems, symbols and rituals. 

Yet I think we need to recognize that the Intellectual Soul era was itself a halfway-house, a transitional phase; and that it can never be made sufficiently strong again to be the centre of a way of life (a civilization); because Men's minds (souls) have changed. 

This can be verified by looking within our-selves; where we can see that even the most complete imaginable revival and restoration would never be sufficient to satisfy us. We can imagine an ideal medieval world - but cannot imagine our-own actual-selves as ideally fitted to live in it in the way that Men did centuries ago. 

I believe that some people (such as me) can still get much help from the Intellectual Soul ideas and practices. But that we should take care Not to pin our hopes on them as a strategy for life - Nor to hope for revival and restoration as a viable or desirable civilizational path for the future. 

*The Intellectual Soul is an intermediate state coming between:

1.The immersive and passive, notaleinated 'Original Participation' of pre-religious, animistic ancient hunter gatherer times. The world was spontaneously-perceived and known-directly to be purposive and meaningful. 

2. The modern Consciousness Soul which began to emerge from about 1500 (end of the Middle Ages) and was dominant by about 1800. 

In the Consciousness Soul; subjectivity is very fully alienated. This means that the default is for modern adolescents and adults to be non-spiritual. There is no spontaneous apprehension of the divine. The world is experienced as material and accidental, not A Creation. The soul is seen as merely an artefact. Death is supposed to be annihilation of the person. 

The Intellectual Soul can be understood as a 'one and a half' intermediate phase; in which the alienated consciousness has emerged, but can (by symbols, rituals, etc) make a bridge to return (temporarily) to the original state of immersive participation in a living and purposive world. 

The pentangle - a spiritual symbol

*

(In Middle English)

THEN þay schewed hym þe schelde, þat was of schyr goulez

Wyth þe pentangel depaynt of pure golde hwez.

He braydez hit by þe bauderyk, aboute þe hals kestes,

Þat bisemed þe segge semlyly fayre.

And quy þe pentangel apendez to þat prynce noble

I am in tent yow to telle, þof tary hyt me schulde:

Hit is a syngne þat Salamon set sumquyle

In bytoknyng of trawþe, bi tytle þat hit habbez, 

For hit is a figure þat haldez fyue poyntez,

And vche lyne vmbelappez and loukez in oþer,

And ayquere hit is endelez; and Englych hit callen

Oueral, as I here, þe endeles knot.

Forþy hit acordez to þis knyȝt and to his cler armez,

For ay faythful in fyue and sere fyue syþez

Gawan watz for gode knawen, and as golde pured,

Voyded of vche vylany, wyth vertuez ennourned

in mote;

Forþy þe pentangel nwe

He ber in schelde and cote,

As tulk of tale most trwe

And gentylest knyȝt of lote.

Translated:

Then they showed him the shield that was of shining gules,

with the pentangle painted there in pure gold hues.

He brandishes it by the baldric, casts it about his neck,

that suited the wearer seemly and fair.

And why the pentangle applies to that prince noble,

I intend to tell, though I tarry more than I should.

It is a sign Solomon settled on some while back,

in token of truth, by the title that it has,

for it is a figure that has five points,

and each line overlaps and locks with another,

and everywhere it is endless, and English call it

over all the land, as I here, the Endless Knot.

For so it accords with this knight and his bright arms,

forever faithful in five ways, and five times so,

Gawain was for good known, and, as purified gold,

void of every villainy, with virtues adorned

                    all, so.

          And thus the pentangle new

          he bore on shield and coat,

          as title of trust most true

          and gentlest knight of note.

From:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/Gawain/1:2?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/English/GawainAndTheGreenKnight.htm#_Toc178583489

**

The pentangle is a name for the five pointed star drawn as one continuous line - this particular name comes from the Medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (from the late 1300s) where it is extensively described in terms which make clear that it was at that time a Christian symbol.

Others call this type of star a pentagram.

Since then the pentangle has been variously (although not frequently) used by Christians - sometimes inverted (with the point downwards, sometimes with the downward point extended) - and also and more widely known by magicians and neo-pagans, who tend to enclose the star inside a circle: this is sometime called the pentacle. As such it appears in some versions of tarot cards.

But - in one form or another - the pentangle has for a long time, been a very potent spiritual symbol for me; beginning from my early neo-pagan times and this continued when I became a Christian.

*

Symbols are interesting things. On the one hand there is an objective quality to symbols, so that they are not open-endedly interchangeable - an inverted pentangle is quite different from the usual orientation, a four- or six-pointed start is quite different from a pentangle, and enclosing the pentangle in a circle (the pentacle) is different again.

Explaining why this should be tends to lead, in my opinion and experience, to a heap of unconvincing nonsense - such as numerology.

All I can give is my own subjective feelings on the subject of the regular pentangle with point upwards

1. It has a perfection absent from any other geometrical figure: perhaps because it is the simplest figure which is yet complex enough to be non-obvious and interesting (compare the dullness of a square or a triangle).

2. Furthermore, it is a dynamic shape - closely associated with the act of drawing it, or describing it in the air - it is 'the endless knot' (mentioned in Gawain). Perhaps this suggests eternity?

3. I cannot explain why - but the shape seems to have a connotation of protection. This seems to be a particular element in the Gawain poem - the pentangle protects him - which is why it is on his shield. But, probably, it only protects the worthy knight: protects his virtue, and protects him from harm.

4. And finally there is an obvious association with the human form of head, arms and legs; regularized and abstracted - with somehow each pointed away into... What? Eternity?

*

So for me the pentangle is lovely in itself, and also for its associations. Indeed, I feel an affection for it which I do not feel for 'the cross' as a symbol (with the exception of the Russian Orthodox cross, which seems very potent in my mind). And I am, in general, averse from the crucifix (Christ on the Cross). Not fixedly so, and there are exceptions; but as a general rule the crucifix either does nothing for me, or evokes a claustrophobic despair. This is probably linked with ineradicable theological reservations about what I regard as a false and distorting emphasis on the necessity and totality of the specific action of Christ being crucified.

*

On its own, the pentangle is perhaps too abstract and inhumanly-perfect a symbol - but it has a place, I feel, among other symbols, states, icons. At any rate, for those who respond to it as I do.

*