#absurdism offers freedom from christianity

[exvangelicalrage]

What Is Crooked Cannot Be Straightened

5/29/23

When I started going to therapy for religious trauma, my therapist directed me to Abraham Piper, a rather famous exvangelical and son of John Piper, a famous evangelical fundamentalist. Abraham Piper's TikTok account was interesting, philosophical, and entertaining all at the same time, and many of his ideas hit home with me, as someone who was floundering with the idea of religious trauma, despite it having been nearly 8 years after my Exit. 

One of the tags he used was #abusurdism which I'd never heard of before, and being a curious type of person, I googled it. 

"What is absurdism?"

Of course, as you might expect, I found dozens of articles and reddit threads discussing Albert Camus, existentialism, and meaninglessness.

I was hooked. 

Meaninglessness had been an appealing concept to me since the first time I read Ecclesiastes, the only book of the bible I ever really liked. 

Even now, if you asked me what my favorite book of the bible was, I'd still say Ecclesiastes. When I was young, my reason was that it was beautiful poetry written by a clearly intelligent person who understood the futility of life, and which ended by directing you to trust god. 

Now my reason is because Ecclesiastes breaks christianity. It's like a computer virus. As soon as you run ecclesiastes.exe, blue screen.

In Ecclesiastes, the writer concludes that everything is meaningless, therefore, your best bet is to fear god and follow his commandments (cough *philosophical suicide* cough). The ending offers an easy "skip" button. 

"Fear god!" christian you might think. "Great, that's all I need to know. I was gonna do that anyway."

This answer is good enough until you read that verse in Romans about how you're supposed to study the scriptures. And then you do study them.

As soon as you really begin to look deeply into Ecclesiastes, one key thing leaps out: if everything is meaningless... so is following god and his commandments. That solution the Teacher offers? Just as meaningless as any other solution.

All of christianity centers around one foundational element: the meaning of everything is god.

But if there is no meaning to everything, if god is not the meaning after all... what does that mean for the entirety of the christian religion? 

If you take Ecclesiastes literally, then making the choice to "obey god" is just as meaningless as making a different choice. Even if you choose to "follow god," the method for doing so is meaningless. You could choose to follow the old testament god or the new testament god, you could follow Thor or Allah, you could rename the universe "god" and call it a day—and you get to make up your own "rules" about what following god looks like, and at least philosophically speaking, you're good to go.

Most christians would argue that therefore you must follow the christian scripture, because obviously the bible doesn't contradict itself, because it says so. heh

But this doesn't work. Literally no one follows the scriptures literally. Not even literalists. Because it's impossible. Because the bible doesn't agree with itself about anything.

And even if you find ways to look past all the other contradictions, Ecclesiastes undermines everything else. It puts questions where They don't want questions. It adds flexibility where They don't want flexibility. It adds meaninglessness where They want meaning.

And They can't get rid of Ecclesiastes. Because if They do that, then they're picking and choosing what scripture to follow. And if you can cut and paste Ecclesiastes, then it follows you can cut and paste the rest of the bible, in which case you might as well just throw the whole thing in the trash and start over. 

As far as I can tell, the "best" argument against my interpretation of Ecclesiastes is "no, you're misinterpreting it" which... isn't an argument. The very fact that Ecclesiastes demands interpretation in order to "fit" with the rest of christianity, means that I can interpret it however the hell I want.

And I choose to interpret it as an exploration of the meaninglessness of everything that ultimately undermines the whole of christianity.

When faced with ultimate meaninglessness, some people choose to avail themselves of the pleasures of life. Some people choose to work. Some people choose to find meaning in the mundane. Some people create their own meaning. Some people (like Solomon) choose to follow god and obey the king. And some people simply... accept meaninglessness.

And this is the heart of absurdism: choosing to accept meaninglessness as a fact of life, rather than fighting against it, trying to fix it, or trying to solve it.

Everything is meaningless. Utterly meaningless.

Including Ecclesiastes.

Everything is meaningless and that’s okay. Not only is it okay, it's good. Because acceptance often brings peace, freedom, and joy where there was only cognitive dissonance before.

[everythingmaxriemelt]

Max’s interview with Film-Rezensionen (part 1), they talk about: “Zwei zu Eins” (“2 to 1”), money, life before the internet and social media ❤️

Q: How did you get involved in this film project?

Max: Natja Brunckhorst had specifically asked me if I would like to work with her. Of course, I knew her as an actress and appreciated her work in “Christiane F. - We children from Bahnhof Zoo”. Being so good at that age shows just how much she offers to a film. And I respect her for that. But also for the script she wrote. So I was involved very early on. It took a while for it to really get started, but for me it was clear from the beginning that I wanted to work with her.

Of course, I was also attracted by the topic. This is not only an “East-theme”topic, but a universal one: about money or the philosophy of money. How we chase after money and what we make of it is already absurd. The film’s tagline: “Money is printed freedom” fits very well and also makes you think. Especially at a time when people with money can accumulate even more money without having to do anything, while others have nothing at all. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting further apart, and you realise that this simply cannot work in the long run. You must not make yourself dependent on money and define yourself by it. It is of course difficult if you have existential crisis and fears. But “Zwei zu Eins”also talks about solidarity and other values and how you can be rich without money. These are values that you easily lose if you focus too much on money.

Q: Is money a topic you think about at all?

Max: Sure, that’s always the case. I’d like to have so much that I would have no fears and needs and can afford stuff. But if you have so much and don't know what to do with it, then I think it can be detrimental to you. Especially in human relationships, you are often defined by how much you own. This makes it more difficult to tell who is your friend and who is after your status symbols. I think people who have a lot of money, also afraid of losing it. Once you have become accustomed to a certain standard of living, you quickly become dependent to it. So you really need a healthy relationship with money, it's certainly not wrong to work for it. But if it simply falls into you, then it’s not so healthy. These are all subjects featured in “Zwei zu Eins”, which I think is great. I like this attitude towards life, the simplicity of the period before the internet and smartphones. Back then, if you were bored, you would look for something to do or have a conversation with others. It is very interesting to remember that not too long ago, we worked in a very different way. That we weren't distracted all the time, our memory wasn’t stuffed with things we don't need at all.

Q: Is that something you miss?

Max: Yes, maybe so. I'm not that so savvy when it comes to the internet and social media. In fact, I am rather critical of it, because it is demonstrably not healthy for your mental health if you constantly compare yourself to others or upload pictures of yourself in the hope that someone will like them. I also miss the directness that you look at yourself, to search inside yourself, when you can't think of anything, instead of shyly staring at your mobile phone. Maybe this way, you can come up with new ideas, and not just consume.

[papandau5566]

Hi,I want to start this by saying that I have some problems with some satanists on tiktok,I am a Luciferian Satanist myself and I dislike those people,I believe that they are fake Satanists,I want to call them out on this but before doing so I wanted to know what would other Satanists think,to make sure that I am not the only one who believes that they are posers(poser may not be the appropriate word to describe them but I dont know what else I should call them). These people claim to be theistic Satanists and believe in Baphomet,I don't know if there are other Satanists who believe in Baphomet but I think it's pretty absurd to actually believe in him,in my eyes he is just a symbol of duality that Satanists use.

This makes me think that they don't even do research in what Theistic Satanists and Luciferian Satanists believe in,from things like claiming to be Theistic Satanists but will also believe in Lucifer and claim that diabolism doesn't belong into satanism.

It's also kind of amusing how they will tell others that they actually believe in satan but then will use the 11 satanic rules and 7 satanic sins from the Satanic Bible to try and make Satanism look good,I think that this is wrong for more reasons,using paragraphs from the Satanic Bible while being a Theistic Satanists is stupid because every type of satanism holds different types of beliefs and morals and trying to make Satanism look good for non Satanists is just stupid because we don't need to explain ourselves and our beliefs to anyone and we don't need their acceptance or anything.

These "Satanists" see Satan/Lucifer how Christians see their god,claiming that you hold beliefs in Lucifer and that he is an loving god who offers you comfort is just stupid,Lucifer offers enlightenment,not comfort,and saying stuff like "Satanism is not evil and dark" is stupid,especially if you are a Luciferian one,evil and darkness are parts of our belief but they are just not wrong and them saying that you must respect everyone's beliefs but only if they respect yours,I believe that it's pretty stupid to respect Christianity,Islam and Judaism as a Satanist,Satanism is about freedom,enlightenment,rebellion and to always question the higher authority,its supposed to be hateful towards religions who are based on faith and have a history of multiple genocides and oppressing women's.

Before ending my rant I want to say that no,I will not harass those people for being "posers",I will most likely create an account in which I will call them out and post about what Luciferian Satanism is.

[esthermika]

hewwo!

What the mweaning of life? Should we comwit cwimes if we think they're fair? I'm just a silly cat giwl asking silly qwestions UwU

The quest for the meaning of life has been an eternal pursuit that has captivated human minds throughout the ages. Philosophers, theologians, scientists, and ordinary individuals alike have grappled with this enigmatic question, seeking answers to the fundamental purpose of existence. The multifaceted nature of this inquiry has led to a plethora of perspectives, beliefs, and interpretations, making it a subject of immense interest and debate. In this essay, we shall embark on an exhaustive journey through history, philosophy, religion, and science, as we explore the intricacies of this age-old question: "What is the meaning of life?"

The Philosophical Quest for Meaning

Philosophers have long been at the forefront of exploring the meaning of life. Ancient thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle sought to unveil the essence of human existence and its place in the cosmos. Aristotle, for instance, argued that the ultimate purpose of life was eudaimonia, or "flourishing," achieved through the cultivation of virtues and the pursuit of knowledge.

Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus approached the question from a different angle, emphasizing individual responsibility and the creation of personal meaning in an otherwise indifferent universe. Their works delved into the absurdity of life and the need for individuals to embrace their freedom and define their own existence.

Furthermore, in the contemporary era, philosophers like Viktor Frankl proposed that the search for meaning is at the core of human nature. Drawing from his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, Frankl developed logotherapy, which asserts that finding purpose even in the most challenging circumstances is the key to psychological well-being.

The Religious Perspectives on Life's Meaning

Religion has played an integral role in shaping the understanding of life's purpose for billions of people worldwide. Different religious traditions offer diverse perspectives on the meaning of life, each rooted in sacred texts, doctrines, and rituals.

In Christianity, the belief that life's meaning lies in devotion to God, following the teachings of Jesus Christ, and achieving salvation through faith and good deeds prevails. Islam, too, emphasizes submission to Allah's will, following the guidance of the Quran, and performing righteous actions as the path to eternal reward.

Buddhism, on the other hand, seeks the cessation of suffering through the pursuit of enlightenment and detachment from material desires. Hinduism teaches that the purpose of life is to attain moksha, liberation from the cycle of birth and death, achieved through karma, dharma, and spiritual realization.

The Meaning of Life in Scientific Discourse

Science, with its empirical approach and rigorous methodology, has also contributed to the discussion of life's meaning. While scientific inquiry primarily focuses on understanding the natural world, it has indirectly shed light on human existence.

Biological sciences explore the origins of life, the complexities of evolution, and the genetic underpinnings of human behavior. Psychology delves into human consciousness, emotions, and cognition, attempting to comprehend what drives individuals to seek meaning and purpose.

Astrophysics and cosmology contemplate the grandeur of the universe, leading some to speculate about the potential existence of extraterrestrial life and its implications on the meaning of our own existence.

Synthesizing Perspectives: Towards a Comprehensive Understanding

As we navigate through the myriad of philosophical, religious, and scientific perspectives on the meaning of life, it becomes evident that no single answer can satisfy all of humanity. Each viewpoint offers unique insights into the complexity of this profound question, and a synthesis of these perspectives might lead us closer to a comprehensive understanding.

The human condition is one of diversity, and with it comes the richness of human experiences, beliefs, and cultures. Recognizing the validity of different worldviews and appreciating the wisdom they bring to life's meaning is an essential step towards fostering empathy, understanding, and harmony in a diverse world.

Conclusion

The search for the meaning of life is a timeless endeavor that transcends cultural, philosophical, and scientific boundaries. From ancient philosophies to contemporary scientific discoveries, every aspect of human knowledge contributes to our quest for purpose and understanding.

Perhaps the true meaning of life lies not in finding a definitive answer, but in the pursuit itself—an ongoing journey of introspection, growth, and enlightenment. Embracing the diversity of perspectives and recognizing the interconnectedness of all life may be the key to unlocking the deeper mysteries of existence.

In the end, we must remember that the pursuit of meaning is an individual and collective endeavor, shaped by our unique perspectives and experiences. As we continue on this eternal quest, let us embrace the beauty of life, the wonder of existence, and the potential to create our own meaning in a vast and mysterious universe.

Also you can do crimes for fun and no one can stop you

[amandaoftherosemire]

No, Thank You

TW: Religious trauma

So, a friend irl of mine is, once again (this happens all the time and I hate it), dealing with harassment from “Christians” and I feel feelings about it. (Btw, WWJD? Maybe not be a huge dick. Seemed like a chill guy to me when *I* read the gospels.)

There’s this funny thing that’s been happening to me for as long as I can remember. Since I was too young to read, I have been given “literature” explaining to me god’s great plan by Christians of all stripes and denominations. First, it started with my mother’s family. I can still remember the red script of the title against the oddly grained yellow book cover that said “My Book of Bible Stories” or something to that effect. It’s the McDonald’s color scheme that sticks with me, not the title, clearly. I would receive countless more books like these from that side of the family. Even though my mother, herself, had been forcibly ejected from that particular sect of Christianity, and had chosen not to return, still they sent me books, and letters, and propaganda, trying to, supposedly, save my soul.

The attempted indoctrination didn’t stop there. My parents put me in Catholic school in kindergarten, where I stayed until the school insisted that I be baptized and assigned godparents. My parents were okay with me exploring any religion I wanted, but my mother’s experience had taught her that I should be of the age of reason before I made any decisions about my religion. My mother was baptized at twelve, and she believed that was a mistake. She thought that she had been too young to know what she really believed and Young Sharon had made promises that Adult Sharon couldn’t keep. But she never prevented me from exploring such things. I went to Sunday School with a friend in third grade, went to the Wednesday afternoon bible study at the church next to the elementary school. I went to Catholic church with my best friend in middle school any time I stayed over on a Saturday night. I even tried again in high school, with some very odd evangelicals that spoke in tongues and really weirded me the fuck out.

Somehow, my little circle of girlfriends going through our obligatory weird girl Wiccan high school phase seemed less weird than the girl in the church sitting on the floor, two inches from the wall, laughing at it. At least, on some level, we knew the midsummer celebration was more about the slumber party than anything else. Jaycelyn, please stop putting your toe up my nose.

As I got older, I explored other faiths, other cultures. I dipped into Buddhism, read the Tao Te Ching to touch base with Taoism, was exposed in college to Shintoism, Hinduism, Islam. Nothing touched me. Until I read atheist writers, who told me that it was okay to not connect. That it was okay that I couldn’t believe what was being offered. That there was nothing after death, and that I could cope with that if I wanted to.

When I was young, my search through Christianity was an attempt to belong somewhere. And in this society, this culture, the easiest way to belong is to go to church. But I couldn’t belong somewhere when I was simply going through the motions, pretending to believe. After my father died, my search became more desperate, more about a search for meaning, a need to mitigate my loss.

After many years, I have come to absurdism. There is no meaning, and it is absurd to search for it. Let’s be absurd. Who cares? It’s not like anything matters so we might as well have some fun with this. For some this is bleak, empty and cold. For me it is freedom, joy and dread in equal parts. But I no longer cringe away from the parts of life that hurt. Because life is pain. And joy, and fear, and love, and, and, and…

My point? At no point did anything that anyone else did or didn’t do convince me to convert to any religion. The books, the pamphlets, the in-person visits, or the constant harassment and bullying all throughout my formative years, none of it did anything but show me what was on offer. I politely declined, because what was on offer looked sad and empty to me. A life spent longing for the next. Thank you, but no thank you. I’m grateful enough for what I have.

To be fair, the constant harassment and bullying by Christians has only made it clear to me that most of them don’t really know what their religion is even about, so I can’t learn anything about the universe or meaning from them. If you want to know why I’m not a Christian, ask yourself if you’ve ever done anything that might be considered bullying or harassment to try to shame someone into it. If that’s how you believe your god wants you to act, I want nothing to do with you or your god.

I am an absurdist agnostic atheist. If you want to know what that means, I’m happy to tell you. But if you want to offer me something else, stop. I know what you have. I do not want it. If you have it, and it brings you joy, I am genuinely happy for you and I would never want to take that away from you. Stop trying to give it to me. I. DO. NOT. WANT. IT.

I have what I need.

[silverandsoulbonded]

A Life of Stories - Soulbonding and My Story

It’s the late 90’s. A tiny child sits in the grip of wonder on the carpet two feet from the old, analog television screen. The volume is turned way down on a Saturday morning, so as not to wake the parents. And Digimon: Adventure is playing.

That kid was me.

I spent the next several days telling anyone and everyone I knew about the trials and bravery of my favorite new friends on the TV. Taichi and his Digi-pals.

Every Saturday morning I tuned in with wrapped attention to check in on my friends. Because that is what they were. I could not explain it at the time, and looking back I see that I did not understand just how powerful my love for them was, but over the years I began to notice the disparity between my experience and that of others. The glazed looks I received when I tried to communicate just how much the “stories” around me meant to my heart and spirit.

As I grew, so too did my well of worlds. When it was not Digimon, it turned to Batman and the DC Animated Universe. Over the years, as things became harder and harder for me in an unsafe household, I would reach out to those stories for safety and comfort. In the dead of night, listening to shouts, I would silently pray for Batman to come in and save me. I would think about Static, from Static Shock, and his bravery. I would long for the Justice League to show me hope.

I grew up in a conservative Protestant Christian household, and I was quickly taught from the moment I could understand stories that they were not real. It seemed a strange double-standard to me, as we read of Jesus and his amazing feats, recorded centuries ago by the hands of men but somehow “different” than the other stories I consumed, which also taught me and affected me just as emotionally.

It would not be until adulthood that I could finally articulate this incongruity I felt, much less possess the bravery and personal freedom to think about it on my own terms. To set aside the pre-packaged “truth” I had been fed growing up in order to find my own fresh fruits of wisdom and meaning.

Stories. Stories are what sustain humanity. All we have are stories. Even the perceptions we store in our brains are only that. Perceptions. Stories. We can never truly know what an orange is, or who a person is. We only can know our perception of them, and the story of them that lives on within us.

And, sometimes, those stories speak to us in the most fantastic and magical of ways.

Fast forward to 2021.

I am an adult. A practicing witch and pagan. An artist and writer. I am functional and thriving. And I have an unusual family.

Some of the most important people in my life do not exist on the physical plane of this Earth quite the same as other friends of mine. They exist in the subtle realms of Dream and thought and wonder. Over time I have come to find many names for them. Spirits, guides, and “soulbonds”.

I began my foray into the community of “soulbonding” when I began to sense, or rather, acknowledge the living quality of some of the “characters” I was writing about. One character in particular, a being who introduced himself to me in a dream, had me particularly flummoxed. I called him Asura, and from the moment he entered my life through that dream, my entire world changed. It was akin to stepping onto a roller coaster car while it was still moving—except this roller coaster had no track and no limits. His entire presence permeated my life, my thoughts, my daydreams. I wrote about him, and it was my writing about him that led me to thoughts, questions, and explorations I would have never dared otherwise. By finding him, he led me to find myself, and for that I shall be forever grateful.

At some point, I, and even my closest friends, became aware of a “spookiness” about my dogged pursuit of this mysterious character. I started to know things about him and his world, and make connections in his story, that seemed to come out of nowhere but which all cohered together perfectly. Without a fault, I would learn tidbits about him that would suddenly fit with another thing I learned later, though I never had to strain to achieve such things. It was not so much that I was “creating” the story so much as “recording” it. There were elements of his story that overlapped with our world’s history and it was spooky as all get out when I learned about historical facts through his story and later found them to also be reflected in my own world, which has a similar timeline to his. A sort of “sibling world” to his.

We also noticed the tremendous power of my emotional connection to him and his friends. My boyfriend at the time even became jealous of Asura, though I assured him that was absurd. “Asura is just a story,” I would say. And my boyfriend thought the same yet he, and others, seemed unable to ignore the fact that there seemed to be something weird going on.

And, one day, with horror, I realized I was in love with Asura—fortunately, by that time I had since broken up with my boyfriend—but the idea terrified me. Unsurprisingly, this sent a conservative Christian “good kid” such as myself down into a spiral of questions and disbelief.

I felt the imposter syndrome. I thought, “I must be insane.” Yet, no one, myself included, could deny the reality of this connection I felt.

Over time, Asura and his friends began to speak to me. They guided me and provided loving support to me. I, at the time, figured I was either crazy or eccentric.

“Maybe this is a writer thing,” I thought.

And it was that thought that led me to soulbonding. I learned of other writers who also had their “characters” come alive to them. Alice Walker, author of the famed American work, The Color Purple, allegedly purported that she had received her story straight from the characters’ mouths one afternoon, during which she sat down to tea with them and learned their tale. And that is when I found a forum site called “The Living Library” (now defunct), and learned the term “soulbonding”.

In that community I found others who echoed my story in various ways. Deep personal connections to entities from other worlds, many of whom they found depicted in the flourishing ecosystem of thought and imagination, stories, that surrounds the human race. Others, discovered their unconventional friends via dreams, visions, or odd circumstances just like myself. One person I met had actually found one such friend first, in this instance a version of Edward Elric from “Full Metal Alchemist”, before learning years later—with a start I imagine—that Edward actually had an entire manga and anime about him.

I say “version” because another amazing phenomenon I discovered was the occurrence of many instantiations of people, characters, from infinite worlds, all with slight variances from one another. That is when I was introduced to the idea of Multiverse Theory and Many Worlds Theory.

As my personal investigations led me down various spiritual rabbit holes, and eventually led me to spirit-working and witchcraft, I found more and more ideas that seemed to jive with my experience.

I discovered what are colloquially called “pop pantheons” in occult circles. Pantheons of spirits and deities who connect to pop culture figures in human society—and even figures from “fiction”. And there is a whole, thriving community of people who lead successful, fulfilled, and meaningful spiritual lives working with these entities. I learned that reality and “truth” are not objective like I had been taught so long ago. And I finally understood MY truth—all we have are myths and stories. Experience is subjective and the only measure of meaning and truth we have is in the effects we see in our own lives.

With tremendous wonder and happiness, and even love, I have seen the effects my unconventional friends and family have wrought in my life. Asura is my familiar spirit now, and I have a whole host of other beings whom I love. Some come from “personal gnosis”, or unique experience, such as Asura. Others are beings who have come to me from the vast world of collective Dreaming that permeates our world, evident in media sources, in the form of stories.

I still have moments of doubt. I sometimes wonder, “Gee-golly-whiz, am I NUTS?” But then I remember that my truth exists only in my own experience. My ethereal family brings me happiness, growth, and meaning. And there really is no difference between my relationship with them and the relationship I had with Jesus so long ago. Every experience is real to me, and brings with it change and good. And that is what matters.

In this blog I intend to share my experience, in hopes that it can offer a beacon to others in similar situations. Every person’s experience is unique, though I hope mine can at least offer some hope, understanding, and love to another.

Cheers.

And happy story-telling.

- Cosmic

[rigmarolling]

Historical Holiday Traditions We Really Need To Bring Back

Here comes Santa Claus, and also a bunch of annual holiday Things we do to ensure he commits a truly boggling act of breaking and entering and leaves goods underneath the large plant in the living room.

Because I’ve always got a hankerin’ for the days of yore, here are some historical holiday traditions we really need to bring back:

1. Everything that happened on Saturnalia

Saturnalia was the ancient Roman winter festival held on December 25th--which is why we celebrate Christmas on that day and not on the day historians speculate Jesus was actually born, which was probably in the spring. 

Saturnalia was bonkers. As the name suggests, it celebrated the god Saturn, who represented wealth and liberty and generally having a great time.

Above: Their party is way cooler than yours could ever hope to be.

During Saturnalia, masters would serve their slaves, because it was the one day during the year when everybody agreed that freedom for all is great, actually, let’s just do that. Everyone wore a coned hat called the pilleus to denote that they were all bros and equal, and also to disguise the fact that they hadn’t brushed their hair after partying hard all week, probably.

Gambling was allowed on Saturnalia, so all of Rome basically turned into ancient Vegas, complete with Caesar’s Palace, except with the actual Caesar and his palace because he was, you know. Alive. 

The most famous part (besides getting drunk off your rocker) was gift-giving--usually gag gifts. Historians have records of people giving each other some truly impressive white elephant gifts for Saturnalia, including: a parrot, balls, toothpicks, a pig, one single sausage, spoons, and deliberately awful books of poetry. 

Above: Me, except all the time.

Partygoers also crowned a King of Saturnalia, which was a predecessor to the King of Fools popular in medieval festivals. The king was basically the head idiot who delivered absurd commands to everyone there, like, “Sing naked!” or “run around screaming for an hour,” or “slap your butt cheeks real hard in front of your crush; DO IT, Brutus.”

Oh, wait. Everyone was already doing all that. Hell yes.

(Quick clarification: early celebrations of Saturnalia did feature human sacrifice, so let’s just leave that bit out and instead wear the pointy hats and sing naked, okay? Io Saturnalia, everybody.)

2. Leaving out treats for Sleipnir in the hopes of avoiding Odin’s complete disregard for your property

The whole “leave out cookies and milk for Santa” thing comes from a much older tradition of trying to appease old guys with white beards. In Norse mythology, Odin, who was sort of the head god but preferred to be on a perpetual road trip instead, took an annual nighttime ride through the winter sky called the Wild Hunt. 

Above: The holidays, now with 300% more heavy metal.

Variations of the Wild Hunt story exist in a bunch of European folklore--in Odin’s case, he usually brought along a bunch of supernatural buddies, like spirits and other gods and Valkyries and ghost dogs, who, the Vikings said, you could hear howling and barking as the group approached (GOOD DOGGOS).

That was the thing, though; you never actually saw Odin’s hunt--you only heard it. And hearing it did not spark the same sense of childish glee you felt when you thought you heard Santa’s sleigh bells approaching as a kid--instead, the Vikings said, you should be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

Because Odin could be kind of a dick.

Odin was also known as the Allfather, and like any father, he hated asking for directions. GPS who? I’m the Allfather, I’m riding the same way I always ride.

And that was pretty much it: “I took this road last year and I’m taking it again this year.”

“But,” someone would pipe up from the back, “there are houses on the road now--we’re gonna run right into them. We could just take a different path; there’s actually a detour off the--”

“Nope,” Odin would say. “They know the rules. My road, my hunt, my rules. We’re going this way.”

So if you were unlucky enough to have built your house along one of Odin’s favorite road trip sky-ways, he wouldn’t just plow right past you.

He would burn your entire house down--and your family along with it.

Kids playing in the yard? Torch ‘em; they should have known better. Grandma knitting while she waits for her gingerbread Einherjar to finish baking? Sucks to be her; my road, my rules, my beard, I’m the Allfather, bitch.

Above: Santa, but so much worse.

To be fair to Odin, he could be a cool guy sometimes. He just turned into any dad when he was on a road trip and wanted to MAKE GOOD TIME, DAMN IT, I AM NOT STOPPING; YOU SHOULD HAVE PEED BEFORE WE LEFT.

To ensure they didn’t incur Odin’s road trip wrath, the Vikings had a few ways of smoothing things over with Dad.

They would leave Odin offerings on the road, like pieces of steel (??? okay ???) or bread for his dogs, or food for his giant, eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, because the only true way to a man’s heart is through his pet. 

People would generally leave veggies and oats and other horse-y things out for Sleipnir, whose eight legs made him the fastest flying horse in the world and also made him the only horse to ever win Asgard’s coveted tap dancing championship. 

(Side note: EIGHT legs...EIGHT tiny reindeer...eh? Eh? See how we got here? Thanks, nightmare horse!)

Above: An excellent prancer AND dancer. 

And if Odin was feeling particularly charitable and not in the mood for horrific acts of arson, children would also leave their shoes out for him--it was said that he’d put gifts in your boots to ring in a happy new year.

If all that didn’t work and the Vikings heard the hunt approaching, they would resort to throwing themselves on the ground and covering their heads while the massive party sped above them like a giant Halloween rager. 

So this holiday season, leave your boots out for Odin and some carrots out for his giant spider horse or you and your entire family will die in a fiery inferno, the end.

3. Yule Logs

Speaking of Scandinavia, another Northern European winter solstice tradition was the yule log. Today, if you google “yule log,” something like this will pop up:

...which isn’t an actual log, but is instead log-shaped food that you shove into your mouth along with 500 other cakes at the same time because it’s CHRISTMAS, and I’m having ME TIME; so WHAT if I ate the whole jar of Nutella by myself, alone, in the dark at 3 am?

But that log cake is actually inspired by actual logs of yore that Celtic, Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples decorated with fragrant plants like holly, ivy, pinecones, and other Stuff That Smells Nice before tossing the log into the fire.

This served a few purposes: 

It smelled nice, and Bath and Body Works scented candles hadn’t been invented yet.

It had religious and/or spiritual significance as a way to mark the winter solstice.

It was a symbolic way of ringing in the new year and kicking out the old.

Common belief held that the ashes of a yule log could ward off lightning strikes and bad energy.

Winter cold. Fire warm.

Everybody loves to watch things burn. (See: Odin.)

The yule log cakes we eat today got their start in 19th century Paris, when bakers thought it was a cute idea to resurrect an ancient pagan tradition in the form of a delicious dessert, and boy, howdy, were they right.

In any case, I’m 100% down with eating a chocolate yule log while burning an actual yule log in my backyard because everybody loves to watch things burn; winter cold, fire warm; and hnnnngggg pine tree smell hnnnnggg.

(Quick note:  The word “yule” is  the name of a traditional pagan winter festival, still celebrated culturally or religiously in modern pagan practice. It’s also another name for Odin. He had a bunch of other names, one of the most well-known being jólfaðr, which is Old Norse for “Yule father.” If you would like to royally piss him off, or if you are Loki, feel free to call him “Yule Daddy.”)

4. Upside down Christmas trees

I just found out that apparently, upside down Christmas trees are a hot new trend with HGTV types this year, so I guess this is one historical trend we did bring back, meaning it doesn’t really belong on this list, but I’m gonna talk about it, anyway.

Side note: Oh, my god, that BANNISTER. I NEED.

Historians aren’t actually sure where the inverted Christmas tree thing came from, but we know people were bringing home trees and then hanging them upside down in the living room as early as the 7th century. We have a couple theories as to why people turned trees on their heads:

Logistically, it’s way easier to hang a giant pine tree from your rafters upside down by its trunk and roots. You just hoist that baby up there, wind some rope around the rafter and the trunk, and boom. Start decorating.

A Christian tradition says that one day in the 7th century, a Benedictine monk named Saint Boniface stumbled across a group of pagans worshipping an oak tree. So, instead of minding his own damn business, he cut the tree down and replaced it with a fir tree. While the pagans were like, “Dude, what the hell?” Boniface used the triangular shape of the fir tree to explain the concept of the holy trinity to the pagans. Some versions have him planting it right-side up, others having him displaying a fir tree upside down. Either way, it’s still a triangle that’s a solid but ultimately very rude way of explaining God. Word’s still out on whether anyone was converted or just rightly pissed off that this random guy strolled into their place of worship, chopped down their sacred tree, and plopped HIS tree down instead. Please do not do that this holiday season.

Eastern Europeans lay claim to the upside-down tree phenomenon with a tradition called podłazniczek in Poland--people hung the tree from the ceiling and decorated it with fruits and nuts and seeds and ribbons and other festive doodads. 

(God, who lives in these houses? Look at that. That’s like a swanky version of Gaston’s hunting lodge. Where do I get one? Which enchanted castle do I have to stumble into to chill out in a Christmas living room like that?)

Today, at least in the West, upside-down trees are making a comeback because...I don’t know. Chip and Joanna Gaines said so. 

Some folks say it’s a surefire way to keep your cats from clawing their way through the tree and then puking up fir needles for weeks afterward, which checks out for me.

5. Incredibly weird Victorian Christmas cards

So back in the 19th century, the Christmas card industry was really getting fired up. Victorians loved their mail, let me tell you. They loved sending it. They loved getting it. They loved writing it. They loved opening it. They loved those sexy wax seals you use to keep all that sweet, sweet mail inside that sizzling envelope. (Those things are incredibly sexy. Have you ever made a wax seal? Oh, man, it’s hot.)

The problem, though, was that while the Victorians arguably helped standardize many of the holiday traditions we know and love today (Christmas trees, caroling, Dickens everything, spending too much money, etc.) back in 1800-whenever, a lot of that Christmas symbolism was, um...still under construction. No one had really agreed on which visual holiday cues worked and which...didn’t.

Meaning everyone just kind of made up their own holiday symbols. Which resulted in monstrous aberrations like this card:

What the hell is that? A beet? Is that a beet? Or a turnip? Why is it...oh, God, why does it have a man’s head? Why does the man beet have insect claws? 

What is it that he’s holding? A cookie? Cardboard? A terra cotta planter?

And then there’s this one:

“A Merry Christmas to you,” it says, while depicting a brutal frog murder/mugging. 

What are you trying to tell me? Are you threatening me with this card? Is that it? Is this a threat? How the hell am I supposed to interpret this? “Merry Christmas, hide your money or you’re dead, you stupid bitch.”

Also, why is the dead frog naked? Did the other frog steal his clothes after the murder? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS?

Victorian holiday cards also doubled as early absurdist Internet memes, apparently, because how else do I explain this?

Is this some sort of tiny animal Santa? A mouse riding a lobster? Like, the mouse, I get. Mice are fine. Disney built an empire on a mouse. And look, he’s got a little list of things he’s presumably going to bring you: Peace, joy, health, happiness. (In French. Oh, wait, is that that Patton Oswalt rat?)

But a LOBSTER? What’s with the lobster? It’s basically a sea scorpion. Why in the name of all that is good and holy would you saddle up a LOBSTER? I hate it. I hate it so, so much. Just scurrying around the floor with more legs than are strictly necessary, smelling like the seafood section of Smith’s, snapping its giant claws.

This whole card is a health inspector’s worst nightmare. It really is.

I gotta say, though, I am a fan of this one:

Presumably, that polar bear is going in for a hug because nothing stamps out a polar bear’s innate desire to rip your face from your skull than candy canes and Coke and Christmas spirit.

This next one is actually fantastic, but for all the wrong reasons:

I know everyone overuses “same” these days but geez, LOOK at that kid. I can HEAR it. SAME.

If you’ve ever been in a shopping mall stuffed with kids, nothing sums it up better than this card. This is like the perverse version of those Anne Geddes portraits that were everywhere in the late 90s. “Make wee Jacob sit in the tea pot; everyone will--Jacob, STOP, look at Mommy; I said LOOK. AT. MOMMY--everyone will love it.”

Actually, you know what? Every other Christmas card is cancelled. This is the only card we will be using from now on. This is it. 

Wait, no. We can also use this one:

Merry Christmas. Here’s a fuckin’...just a dead fuckin’ bird.

[redantsunderneath]

I’ve Never Seen David Lynch and George Lucas in the Same Room at the Same Time…

The thematic parallels between David Lynch and George Lucas are something I keep coming back to again and again, but their careers and evolution have a lot of overlap too.  They were born in the earliest Boomer cohort (George Lucas in May 1944, David Lynch January 1946) and had experiences growing up that were colored by the idyllic 1950s, but shifted into a distrust of authority structures that was common for many of their age cohort in the 1960s. They both came of age wanting to do something physical with her hands that felt creative to them in large grimy spaces - fixing cars for Lucas, and painting and installations with a fascination with organic materials, industrial metal, and rot for Lynch. They both fell into film because they were looking for something that satisfied their artistic bent (although film was never a primary aspect of her life to that point).  They wound up making a handful of short films over a 3 year period, culminating in a longer short-film that would eventually get them noticed at roughly the same age (Electric Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB [1967] and the Grandmother [1970] for Lynch).

These films netted both of them a patron (Francis Ford Coppola for Lucas, the American Film Institute for Lynch) and started filming their first feature-length film two years after those films.  They both got their biggest name recognition bump by films released in 1977 and pulled away from the power of the studio system in roughly 1984. Famously, Lucas offered Lynch a chance to direct what would become Return of the Jedi in about 1981 ( I prefer the story where Lucas does this by picking him up in a Lamborghini - I’ve heard a phone call version too, but it’s not as perfect) and Lynch answered something like “it’s your movie George, you direct it.” They both spent the mid 80s in movie jail, and although they took very different paths in general after (I’ve been emphasizing the similarities) there are still things that jibe in the history - they both reminded people of what they liked about them with a late 80s movie, spent a lot of the 90s on TV projects, did one project around classic radio, returned to theatrical notice around the millennium, all the while generally keeping their own council and disappointing a lot of fans.

There’s obviously a world of difference. Lucas is a left brained technologist who equated freedom with an owning of the means of production.  Lynch is it right brained impressionist seeing freedom-as no one ever being able to tell you what to do, acting as a solo artist with collaborators who merge with his sensibilities.  Lynch is a production lone wolf, depending mostly on people believing in him and funding him, and losing out in the popular consciousness by making uncompromising art that may not be what the audience wants, meaning funding is sometimes hard to come by. Lucas is like the Democratic party controlling the Congress and presidency - having total power but unable to turn that into what he really wants to make, somehow. The idea of Lynch selling his body of work to Disney is absurd.

But the correspondences in this are telling and help to explain the thematic similarities and divergences.  Plus, the differences often relate to the similarities - Lucas identifies with corrupted controlling paternalistic power as a horror of inevitable capture of the individual by larger structures, while Lynch sees the corrupted masculine influence as an archetype, the call coming from inside the house, agency coopted by a collective taint in the universal pattern .  But on some level these are the same thing - what is this person I am capable of becoming seeing as I am in control but yet not, doing horrific things?  Lucas’ constant commentary on slavery is about hegemony and a systemic oppression he is complicit in, while Lynch has whole pantheons of beings that turn people into vessels that oblate the self and make them act on subconscious programming.  Neither probably think the word neoliberalism too much but tend to communicate similar things about it is almost diametrically opposed ways.  

The thematic similarities are rooted in a few areas that unpack in to a variety of subspaces which overlap – patriarchal structures as psychoanalytic dynamics (more Freudian father fixation for Lucas, Jung for Lynch), boomer generational failure as socio-first-but-economics-ultimately, the artist as in struggle with larger forces (largely of the self), and an eastern religious metaphysics that is American Christian in flavor.   The major line of difference running through this is gender/sex/desire, Lynch being on main with a lot of spiritual overtones of sin, guilt, and “the fall” and Lucas finding this kind of guilt and sin as a secondary phenomenon that is mostly actively suppressed and unconvincing when it shows up; yet both wind up often finding physical consummation at direct odds with art in a gendered creation way (that also links Eraserhead to Age of Ultron and the original Frankenstein). Try doing a psychosexual reading of Howard the Duck sometime.  

Lucas’ developmental through line is this: dude in love with 50’s culture but informed by 60s counterculture makes a movie where the young granola-ish revolutionaries win against the fascists in an effort to rewrite society but, having secured rights for “independent spirit” reasons now finds himself in control of something huge and immediately starts making art about boomer men becoming their controlling fathers and then moves on to movies where powerless freaks are the real focus.  After a creatively fallow period, he comes back to make a sequel/prequel trilogy that is one of the most misunderstood complicated statements about people becoming what they hate as an eternal cycle at the level of the personal, the societal, the political, the spiritual, the artistic, you name it!

Lynch’s developmental through line is this: dude in love with 50’s culture but informed by 60s outsider/art counterculture makes a movie where the young artist struggles with the idea of a regular life, initiated by fatherhood, which attempts to destroy the artistic spark, after which he enters the Hollywood system and makes an artist as freak movie and a movie about plucky rebels conquering space authoritarianism (that the future of is books about that ending in messianic authoritarianism) and then disavows that system.  He then proceeds to make art about subject and object as a supremely gendered thing, in a land that has fallen from grace, moving inexorably towards the idea of eternal cycle at the level of the personal, the societal, the political, the spiritual, you name it!

They both have an idea of the father-artist identified with the abject oppressed, under siege as figure, resentful from being kept from creation, over a career realizing that their “self” is the horrific villain of their own story.  For Lynch, this is psychosexual, then spiritual, with a resisted toxic masculine urge to control and overwhelm, often in a violent way.  It is the artist’s own urges that get in the way of making art, of desiring in the universe that has an unbalanced power structure from some far off echoes of an original symmetry breaking inherent to the archetypal gender dynamic. For Lucas, it is the realization that the artist in control has a tendency to become the controlling dad and sexual relations are inherently problematic in a political and spiritual way.  Real art seems impossible if the artist has control, identifying with the downtrodden is a bit of a lie, happy endings can’t happen not because of the happiness bit because of the ending bit.  For both, there is a fundamental flaw in the cycle, which is patriarchal in nature, but Lynch just approaches this much hornier.

The boomer part probably requires the most discussion, but the TLDR is that they are both are crawling out, through Vietnam, from the 50s social order, and grappling with how badly the 60s idealism failed.  Lucas does this in the prequels as a big canvas critique of how the social revolution was co-opted by the generation not being able to see its own flaws, of not seeing the system taking over again, an Empire calling itself a Republic.  An inability to look in the mirror and really see.  The wisest oldest hippie is the only one who sees what’s happening, but is powerless as his apprentices are inevitably spit out, and the next generation has to be raised not by a skeptic but a true believer in “liberal” “democracy” (cynic quotes theirs).

Lynch is interesting here in that he most directly addresses this only in Twin Peaks, but we see more naked reflections, divorced of contemporary politics, in his other works. In Twin Peaks, Ben Horn is the Palpatine figure, who winds up a sweet old man buying off the harm his life’s work and progeny have produced while ignoring the poor and next generation personally. Jacoby the neutered, fried Yoda that eventually slides into Alex Jones territory (the canonical Boomer ethos in a nutshell – “what me” neoliberalism and change the world ideology going crackpot).  All of Twin Peaks except for Fire Walk with Me is directly socioeconomically generational (Bobby Briggs becomes a young Republican in season 2, the mill, the trailer park), but the other works are full of class issues informed by Lynch’s age.  From Blue Velvet’s suburban kid exploring his darker side by going to the poor part of town through a career of classist low-life encoding (Bob is a denim jacket wearing homeless person, all the covered in grime by the dumpster/trailer park characters, Ronette as the factory floor version of Laura, etc), culminating in Inland Empire and Twin Peaks the Return chronicling the fall of man as partially an (generationally specific in TP) economic fall into a unequal class defined world of needing an opening and leaving the house to labor as where evil is born. TP OS is about how boomers turned out just as bad, the Return is about how we inhabit the world of their ideological blindness.

All filmmakers seem to, at least to a certain degree, bring the question of creation of art directly into their work via distant or close metaphor. In Eraserhead and Elephant Man, Lynch values the spark of art which the downtrodden protagonist is trying not to lose. In Dune, the visionary with a big project that seeks to upend the system (but that we know eventually become something even worse) is a project that fell apart due to studio interference.  Blue velvet is about the act of watching awakening something uncomfortable in us that is incompatible with normie life (it wouldn’t be weird to say it was about porn). Twin Peaks is about television, FWWM about movies, and all at least partially about closure being a death act in art.  Lost Highway is about the artist tortured by desire, Mulholland Drive about desire being central to be eaten alive by the Hollywood system.  Inland Empire is about filmmaking as a way into understanding the world on a deeper level (as is its unofficial sequel Inception) to cure its ills.  All of this is art’s struggle against power, with an element of the major powers being subconscious forces that control us leading to desires that ablate the artistic impulse.

Lucas' projects have over time been about a young upstart independent filmmaker, losing his soul by becoming successful, and becoming the system, man.  He then tries desperately to identify as really not the one in charge, until he admits to what he has become.  He consistently dips back into filmmaking as an adventure or a good fight, but he has to set these in a time period before his birth.  As in Lynch, having a child is equated with not being able to fulfill the kind of artistic destiny, but Lucas goes further in equating it to an excuse for why the powerful artist goes bad and needs redemption.  He had a naïve or-is-it canny motif focused on the short inhuman outsider, often related to music or primitive settings (often with wooden cages) as a recurring thing for a while.  These characters are often wise, or at least no filter tell-it, and are similar to the Elephant Man.  This is a trope, sure, the wise different wavelength other, but there is also an identification of the artist at knowing and right yet impotent and a clue to the author’s metaphysical system.

Lynch is the mainline protestant in upbringing and very much influenced by a kind of proto-eastern religion (you can just say the Vedas for shorthand).  Lucas is not very religious, but was brought up Christian, influenced by Christian symbolism and became interested in world religion as narrative via figures like Joseph Campbell.  Hence, they both gravitate towards some kind of Gnostic Proto Christian, So-Cal zen, Thomas Aquinas “gets” Plato kind of amalgam, which informs their work.  Lynch has veered towards an eternal cycle framework, and the very physics compatible idea of something in the past breaking and causing consciousness/suffering, through which we can achieve joy as a counter only through letting go of the self, and the recurrence of ruptures on all scales demonstrating a fractal pattern of hurt and redemption.  Lucas also sees a big cycle, but it is one more of human existence as narrative that has a tendency to return, with a little bit of Nietzsche and movie eastern spirituality thrown in. Both believe in a recurring pattern that plays itself out in a way that is terrible, but hopeful, as the struggle is where hope derives from.  Both have inherently Christian ideas and symbols in their work but lean back on non-Christian ideas that the Christian ideas have a history with. Lynch has his virgin Mary as the real Christ figure female angels that show up, while Lucas has turnt space Jesus.

Suffice it to say that the tree trial scene in the Empire Strikes Back and the lodge sequences in Twin Peaks are a very good place to start looking for how the two auteurs meet.  Compare Anakin/Luke Skywalker to Mr C, look at the 90s turn they both made, register their seeing the “sleeper must awaken” of fiction being terribly fraught, compare the force vs. the universal field, the way their relationship status and partners carve their work into eras, and their continued existence as mainstream experimental filmmakers. 

[melias-cimitiere]

LHP, ATHEISTS AND SPIRITS

I see at times so many attempts to define or to "purify" what the LHP is, while forgetting perhaps that the truth of it is not in simple dissections or refutations, but in a greater understanding that encompasses all the undercurrents.

For example, the classic opposition between Noetic (or Philosophical Approach) versus Spiritual (not blind faith). Why do these have to be mutually exclusive? By all means, it's like condemning a part of the self to favor another. It makes no sense to me. There is a place for logic and philosophical arguments (without which we would be like animals) and there's a place for the spirit. I am all in favor for experimentation but this doesn't have to be in opposition to magic for example. I totally don't get why some choose to set themselves against the belief systems of their supposed brethren, even if they are quite close.

Perhaps my own understanding of LHP is at fault; I know that by being solitary perhaps one may mistrust groups/guidelines, but on the other hand, it's a Path - meaning that it is a Way of Life, a Practice and something that integrates certain sets of behavior with belief, evidence, practice (ie ritual) and many more depending on the definition. So for a LHP person to call another person or a group not LHP just because they are focused more on the magical/ritual element instead of the noetic, seems absurd to me. I know that it is quite trendy to go against the theistic principle or anything that resembles faith or a spiritual system, but surely any person that would refute that as LHP would have to discredit the Yezidis, the demonolater communities everywhere, those who accept Set as a distinct Entity external to us, those that practice draconian magic, the Vodou and so on...  there are simply too many examples of LHP that the materialist or overtly sceptical tends to discredit all too easily, in favor of what? his mind?... and why would this be More LHP than those who practice on the Path under the tuition of demons, for example?

I personally think that all modalities of thinking have their use, much like the Aeon of Horus has/d its use but that doesn't mean that the Aeon of Set for example is not the prime example of xeper and deification. So why would anyone seek to adopt a certain stance that only would be useful in serving as a modality and not as a universal tool? Crowley's Thelema and La Vey's attitudes certainly served the LHP well, but to become stuck on these is to limit oneself while there are so many more things to experience and to explore. And in private conversations I have lately heard the same old argument, that faith stems from christianity... I would like to remind that faith predates christianity (or other monotheistic religions) for dozens or even hundreds of millennia (depending on whether one studies ancient Egyptian - Kemetian scripts or Sumerian including the Isin King List). Faith is much like logic; it's a tool. Faith, in the right hands can achieve certain altered states and access different experiences that could transform the self. Of course, we have seen the misuse of faith all throughout history with the fanatics, the burning of the libraries of the ancient world, the crusades, the inquisition etc... but just because monotheistic religions perverted faith and spirituality, doesn't mean we have to throw away traditions predating them since the Dawn of Man.

Evidently there are many LHP practitioners who are atheists and who simply choose to exalt the Self as the centre of everything in their universe. Whereas the Self is indeed very important in freedom, choice, and consequence, I never was an atheist nor do my personal experiences validate a cosmic paradigm devoid of spiritual presences. I also do not subscribe to the notion that all Deities/Entities/Spirits/Demons are parts of our brain. I believe that they correspond to areas of our brain (like linking to old phrenology charts) but that is all; correspondence is not the same as Identity, so through my own experience such entities have a truly external Essence and Identity. While correspondence to brain parts is probably essential in order to sense something that would normally lie outside the realm of human senses, I am certain that they do exist externally to me. The Self is important for many things such as initiation, becoming/xeper, constructing an interface with reality, however I don't accept that the Self is the only deity there is.

For example, let's take Set. I have significant personal evidence (but not proof to convince cynics) that this deity is Indeed a true Deity, external to me. Some would argue that Set is the only true deity, others could say there are others (neteru or something else) that are also true.

So assuming that one accepts the existence of deities that are superior or external to Self, there are different stances/ paradigms as to dealing with this: demonolatry for example would worship or offer ritual honors to such entities. While others would seek to control them for own gain using grimoires/demonologies etc which is something entirely different. Some would attempt to use such energies in order to "harvest" specific results for themselves, either as part of self-transformation or as part of micromanaging life with its problems. On the other side of the spectrum, RHP would use parts of this knowledge to attempt to exorcise these deities (for them they would all be classed as demons anyway).

Something metaphysical truly exists beyond the Self, whatever that is. Any model of self-transformation does not contradict to the existence of said deities/spirits/demons nor do I see any issues with tuition from such immaterial beings.

As for the other worlds and their denizens/ deities/ daemons etc, I accept the existence of a mental stratum acting as the interface between the entities and the mind. Even if the Otherness is extreme so that the entity cannot be easily discerned, this mental interface allows for it to be "clothed" in a particular disguise that is somewhat acceptable within certain parameters of the socio-cultural paradigm as well as the era in which one lives. Perhaps from a different stance all worlds are one in essence, despite their individual differences, much like hues in color in a vast and incomprehensible painting. If such entities / creatures of Otherness are known to exist, there must have been some evidence in the works of those that worked with them, such as Michael Aquino when contacted by Set, Aleister Crowley with regards to Aiwass etc. These Beings were described in such a way as to imply independent existence and individuality. Whether these voices were symbolic, or partly covered in archetypal forms, or actual Entities, matters very little since they had tremendous impact on the entire LHP spectrum. In terms of validity, it's almost impossible to discern whether these are actual Beings external to the Self, but even though LHP people like to believe in total freedom, they commonly accept what widely known figures such as LaVey, Aquino, Crowley say as authorities on the path. But even their words would have to be validated through personal experience. And here the endless arguments take place, hopefully eloquently and politely and with mutual respect between those who support the archetype theory or the beings from another world/dimension. Even if the conversation takes place with the best of intentions, I doubt whether much will be gained from it due to the fact that each side tends to be firmly entrenched and frankly it's quite difficult for experienced people to just change their mind. It is true that there's no clear yes or no to these things; for example demons could be true actual beings from another dimension, or they could be shells, almost robotic in nature, or they could be an Order's egregore, or a thought-form, etc. All these could be argued that they could produce results, but for different reasons / mechanisms. And sometimes this makes all the difference.

To me LHP is about the only type of Spirituality that can access and harness the power needed to break the chains put on us by monotheistic paradigms for millennia. It frees the mind from many illusions while redefining social cohesion under a new light, while assisting the individual achieve Luciferian Gnosis and at the same time, xeper as in Becoming and a state of being initiated all the time.

[papastor]

Hyper Grace

For almost 17 years, Apostle Paul preached the Gospel of Grace through his God given revelation alone. He preached Christ sa loob ng panahong 'yun without being taught by any of the Super Apostles (12 Appointed Apostles). Now it happened sa Acts 15 that while he and Barnabas stayed at Antioch, some men from Judea ay nagsimulang magturo ng ganito, "Liban na kayo ay matuli ayon sa alituntunin ni Moses, hindi kayo maliligtas (Acts 15:1)." Why is it that those men from Judea had such belief? Ang pagtutuli kasi or circumcision ay naging mandato ng bansang Israel mula pa nung panahon ni Moses. It is included in the Law, or the Torah---the Constitution and Bill of Rights of Israel nuong Old Testament times. Paul and Barnabas had a small dissension with them, because such teaching is against Christ's Gospel. They are committing the common error ng mga Christians-influencers ngayon, an error that is rooted from their failure in rightly dividing the word.

2 Timothy 2:15 (New King James Version) “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth.” 

Sa mga di aware, the Word of Truth or the Scriptures should be divided because there are two existing major covenants in its entirety. The Law Covenant (from Moses to John the Baptist, ending after the the veil of the temple was torn in two) and the Grace Covenant (which began when Jesus ascended to the Father’s right hand).  

The problem is this people from Judea are mixing Law and Grace, and in the process nullifies Christ’s finished work---Galatians 2:21, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”

Isipin mo nalang, kapag pala may taong malapit nang mamatay, hindi pa pala sapat na paniwalaan lang nya ang Gospel, dapat tutulian pa muna sya. Kasi baka harangin s'ya sa pintuan ng Kaharian ng Langit at sabihin sa kanyang, "Oops! Bawal ka dito, supot ka pa!" Tapos pagdating n'ya sa impiyerno, tatanungin s'ya ng mga bantay dun, "Anong kasalanan mo at 'di ka nakapasok sa langit?" at sasagot naman 'yung tao, at sasabihing, "Supot pa po kasi ako." Even though biro lang 'yan, pero if you will insist that Faith in Christ is not enough to save a person, then that joke is true to you. Hence, isang malaking kalokohan ang eternity mo.

Going back dun sa scenario, after having a dissension with this Judeans, they decided to settle the issue by asking the Head Council of the Church at that time. Alam mo ang matindi? Kahit maraming taon na ang nakalipas after Christ had ascended, marami pa'din sa mga apostles and disciples ay walang firm knowledge about this issue.

Acts 15:7 reveals to us that there has been much debate. And maybe Apostle Paul was amazed din, kasi for 17 years that they were sharing the Gospel of Grace, ito pala ay hindi pa’din klaro sa mga Apostles at Disciples na unlike him ay nakasama si Christ all throughtout while He was still on earth. They heard Jesus teach for more than three years, yet parang hindi nila nakuha ang pinakang punto ng lahat ng tinuro ni LORD.

Buti nalang biglang sumingit si Pedro at sinabing, "Mga kapatid, alam natin na nung mga naunang araw, pinili ako ng Diyos para sa pamamagitan ng aking bibig ay marinig ng mga Hentil ang Magandang Balita at maniwala. At ang Diyos ay naging saksi sa pamamagitan ng pagkakaloob sa kanila ng Banal na Espiritu gaya ng ginawa N'ya sa atin, hindi S'ya nagtaguyod ng pagkakaiba sa pagitan natin at ng mga Hentil ng linisin N'ya ang kanilang mga puso sa pamamagitan ng pananampalataya (Acts 15:7-9, paraphrased by me.)” and then Acts 15:10-11, "Bakit sinusubok ninyo ang Diyos? Bakit ninyo iniaatang sa mga mananampalataya ang isang pasaning hindi nakayang dalhin ng ating mga ninuno at hindi rin natin kayang pasanin? Sumasampalataya tayo na tayo'y maliligtas sa pamamagitan ng kagandahang-loob ng Panginoong Jesus at gayundin sila.”

Ulitin ko 'yung verse 11 in English para super clear: Acts 15:11, "But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

Let's be real! At the end of the day you will fail. The standards you set, ikaw din mismo ang magre-reset. Then ikaw din mismo mapapagod at maiintindihan sa sarili mo that it's not about what I should do, rather it's about what Christ did for me.

Cheap Grace. Hyper Grace. Ano pa ba? Bakit hindi mo aralin mismo sa sarili mo ang Kasulatan, imbis na patuloy na panghawakan ang mga preconceived notions and dogmas na tinanim sayo ng mga nakakataas sayo. Don't you know that Jesus wants to reveal Himself personally to you? Why not stop pursuing your idols and start focusing on pursuing no one but Jesus?

I'm hearing people, labeling us that we tolerate sin. That we teach na okay nang magkasala. You develop such stereotype only because you won't hear us completely. Don't you know that even si Apostle Paul ay pinaratangan din ng mga ganan? See Romans 3:8 and Romans 6:1-2. Because he would say things like this, Romans 5:20, "Now the Law came to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more."

I won't deny that what we preach is Hyper Grace, alam mo kung bakit? Kasi God's Grace itself is Hyper. Look at Apostle Paul? Look at Peter who denied Christ three times? Look at Thomas who still doubted after everything that Jesus did? And look at the other apostles and disciples who doubted the testimony that Jesus has risen from the dead (Mark 16:14)? Sa tingin mo hindi pa ba Hyper Grace 'yun that Jesus still retained them as His servants?

Even nung hindi pa naku-crucify si Christ, don't you know that God had been very gracious? Moses kind of break God’s principles when he married a Cushite woman other than his first Midianite wife Zipporah (Numbers 12:1); his sister Miriam tried to deal with him pero God defended Moses. Adam and Eve sinned, they were found naked and afraid, pero pinagtahi pa'din sila ni God ng damit to cover their shame (Genesis 3:21). That's what Jesus did to us. We were found naked because of our sins, but Christ put off His robe of righteousness to put it on us, hence He became sin and was crucified for our sake (2 Corinthians 5:21).

If Grace is not hyper? Why it is then na sa Romans 5:20, the original Greek word there for the English word ‘increase’ is the word hyperperisseuō? Revealing that when sin increased, grace didn’t just increase but it hyper-increased.

The real erroneous teaching is the idea that grace can be attain apart from Christ. And to teach that there’s no hell and that everyone will go to heaven is absurd. Kasi holiness, justification and adoption can only be attained by being one with Christ through faith. Without the hearing of the Gospel there will be no faith in Christ, and if there’s no faith in Christ, then that person cannot be in Christ. Hence he/she is still under God’s wrath and has no share sa inheritance ng mga saints.  

2 Corinthians 3:16-18, “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

We preach grace in its true form, unlimited and abounding, because that’s what made us see grace as from God. Ang tao, kapag nagbigay ‘yan ng pabor, it’s either limitado o may hihinging kapalit later on. Why then are we treating God like human? Why do we put a limit to His grace and then treat the power of sin greater than the power of the blood of Christ? Bakit hindi natin mailagay sa kokote natin na palaging hihigit ang biyaya sa kapangyarihan ng kasalanan, kaya imposibleng maging alipin pa tayo ng kasalanan.  Romans 6:14, "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under Law but under Grace."

1 John 3:9, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.” See that? A child of God cannot keep on sinning, kasi God will take care of Him and will help Him grow in righteousness. 

Romans 5:17, “For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” What was said there? If a person’s mistake caused too much disaster, don’t you think that God, by a single offering, will be able to fix such mistake? If sin is so powerful that it was able to enslave the whole of humanity, paanong hindi ito mahihigitan ng nag-uumapaw na biyaya ng Dios? If Adam’s sin caused all of humanity to become sinners, paanong hindi hihigit duon ‘yung epekto ng libreng katuwiran na nagmumula kay Hesus? Kaya surely those who have received the hyper grace of God and His free gift of righteousness will triumph over sin and its entirety through the one man Jesus Christ. 

[revlyncox]

Dreamers (2021)

Working toward a better world, a world of racial justice and an end to interlocking oppressions, requires imagination. On this weekend when we remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let's also consider both the history of civil rights and the unbounded creativity of speculative fiction by writers of color as sources of inspiration. 

Expanded and revised for the Washington Ethical Society, presented January 17, 2021. 

“We are creating a world we have never seen,” writes Adrienne Maree Brown in Emergent Strategy. On this weekend, as we remember the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., support a peaceful transfer of power, and recommit to his legacy and the work of civil rights yet to do, it may seem like a luxury or a distraction to engage with imagination. It is not. Just like we cannot allow oppression to steal our joy, we cannot let it steal our imagination. Neither threats of violence, nor attempts to push us into re-creating a fictional and regressive society of the past, nor manufactured austerity preventing relief from reaching working people, nor white supremacy in any form should be allowed to steal our imagination. Our ability to dream of a better world is a matter of collective survival.

What does it take to dream big? What fuels our ability to imagine a future without limits like racism, classism, and sexism? Entering a dream state where equality is possible takes some practice. Music can get us there. Listening to activists who are moving our society forward can help us get into that frame of mind. Great art can invite us into that kind of transformational trance.

Dreaming is important. Dreaming gives us creativity, energy, and a warm vision around which we can gather a community. Dreaming is not enough. Once we have imagined a better world, we have to (we get to) build it, to keep building it, and to rebuild the parts that got torn down when we weren’t paying attention. The next step is to use those dreams as a doorway to action.

Dr. King’s words and actions demonstrated connections between systemic racial inequality, economic injustice, war, threats to labor rights, and blockades to voting rights. All of those forces are still relevant. He and the other activists of his era left a very rich legacy, for which we are grateful. We are not done.

I’ll be drawing today from Dr. King’s 1963 work, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” (Also available as an audio file from the King Institute.) I think the critiques he offered in that letter are still valid, especially for us in this community that strives to be anti-racist and yet must acknowledge that we are impacted by the norms of what King calls, “the white moderate.” His letter was a response to Christian and Jewish clergy, who had written an open letter criticizing nonviolent direct action. Though Ethical Culture uses different language and methods than our explicitly theist neighbors, I think it is incumbent upon us to hold on to the accountability that comes with being part of the interfaith community. So I believe this letter is written to us as well. Dr. King wrote:

I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the … great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises [us] to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I would like to think that, in this community, we have made some progress since 1963, and that majority-white communities have stopped explicitly trying to slow the pace of civil rights. Indeed, WES can be proud that racial justice has been woven into its goals from the beginning, though we must also be honest that a perfectly anti-racist history is unlikely. At the same time, I see people who claim to be progressive rushing to calls for “civility” or “unity” without accountability. Understanding the direct link between the intended audience of this letter and the people and communities with which we have kinship today is an act of imagination that we must embrace in order to learn from the past and to continue Dr. King’s legacy. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” can help us understand why we need to dream of something different in the world.

We need dreams and we need plans. We seek inspiration as we continue to work toward bringing a dream of economic and political equality fully into reality.

One place I turn for inspiration is toward socially conscious science fiction. Looking at how the art form has offered critiques of what’s wrong and pathways to what’s right, I see suggestions for how we can nurture the dream of a better world.

Science fiction has even helped me understand spiritually-connected social movements, such as the one depicted in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. The series depicts a self-governing poetic community that tries to live sustainably in an environment affected by catastrophic climate change, and that maintains an improbable vision of exploring the stars. The poetry uses the word God, but not in the way that it is normally used. Recognizing that WES is not a community that makes use of theism, I hope you’ll be able to hear how that metaphor is used in the world of the story. In Parable of the Talents, the main character, Lauren Olamina, writes a poem for her community:

God is change

And hidden within change

Is surprise, delight,

Confusion, pain,

Discovery, loss,

Opportunity and growth.

As always, God exists

To shape

And to be shaped 

(Parable of the Talents, p. 92)

In the book, the community that reflects on change in meditation and song is able to use that energy to maintain resilience, even in the face of white supremacist violence and criminalization. Butler imagines an inclusive community led by People of Color who strengthen and encourage one another, inject their strategic planning with an expectation for backlash, and still imagine and make their way toward a better world. Her books provide inspiration to those who know that the negative extremes of the world of the story are possible.

Socially conscious science fiction spins dreams that are extreme, that challenge us in good ways. In science fiction and in practical experience with progressive movements, we learn that dreams need help to become reality.

The alternate universe where justice rolls down like water may seem too fantastic to believe, it may be cobbled together in ways that seem mis-matched to mundane perceptions, and it will certainly take work to achieve. Nevertheless, like Dr. King, I believe “we must use time creatively.”

Dreams Are Extreme

The first thing to note about dreams, whether sleeping or socially conscious, is that they are extreme. Things that would be totally absurd or unthinkable in everyday reality are woven into the fabric of a new vision. The dream might be a positive one, in which we imagine what it would be like to live in a better world. On the other hand, dystopian dreams can also be effective at stirring us to action. In an imagined world, we are met with the possibility that a flaw in our current society might go too far. Absurdity comes uncomfortably close to the truth.

Dr. King spoke about the role of discomfort in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” saying that nonviolent direct action is meant to bring that discomfort to bear so that those in power will sit down and negotiate, to recognize people of good conscience. This is different from using violence as coercion, which is destructive to democracy; this is using peaceful means to declare the right of people to have a voice in what concerns them. Dr. King writes:

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.

Tension has a place in literature and drama that can also be used for racial justice. I once served as an intern at a regional theater. In one of the plays we presented that year, the plot hinged on something unexplainable and highly improbable, which is one definition for science fiction. It was the 1965 play Day of Absence by African American playwright Douglas Turner Ward. In the story, white citizens of a racist town awaken one day to find that all of the African American residents have mysteriously disappeared. They slowly come to realize that they cannot function without the neighbors they mistreated and took for granted. Rather than try to solve their problems, they spend the rest of the play panicking and blaming each other in comedic ways.

Between the satirical script, the exaggerated makeup, and the abstract set, the show turns reality inside out in an effort to alter the audience’s collective conscience. Day of Absence shines a spotlight on the links between racial oppression and economic oppression, and is an incitement to join a movement for change. Consistent with the Revolutionary Theatre aesthetic, the play is meant to make people uncomfortable. We should be uncomfortable with the real systems of inequality parodied in the play.

It worked. Audiences were uncomfortable. Some patrons were able to take that discomfort and use it to grow. Some patrons were not ready to deal productively with their discomfort. For art or spirituality or dreams or anything else to offer the chance for transformation, creating the opportunity can’t wait until everyone is equally ready to begin the journey.

One goal of satire is to take something that is true and to exaggerate it until the truth cannot be ignored. When that something is oppression, making art that can’t be ignored and suggesting a justice-oriented overhaul to society is going to seem extreme to some people.

Speculative fiction by writers of color, even when not satirical, can also use exaggeration for a positive effect. The 2019 HBO Watchmen series explored this, creating an alternate history that lifted out problems with racism and policing in our own timeline. The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin explores extremes of climate change and identity-based exploitation, and weaves in glimpses of generational trauma between parents and children trying to survive in a society that rejects their wholeness. Extremes in literature can reflect back to us the plain truth.

Similarly, a dream that draws people together for the hope of a society that is very different from what we have, a dream that re-imagines the future of justice and economic opportunity, is going to be considered extreme, which is not a good thing by some standards. Every time there is a popular movie or TV show in the science fiction/fantasy genre that uses multiracial casting, and every time a speculative fiction novel by a writer of color receives sales or awards, there are claims that social justice warriors are running amok, or that trends have gone too far. Allowing for multiracial imagination is considered a violation of balance, a bridge too far. Inclusion is considered extreme, rather than a tool for bringing imagined futures into being.  

Dr. King explored this critique of extremism. In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he expresses some initial frustration at being labeled an extremist for his peaceful methods. It seemed that any movement toward change was too radical for the white moderate clergy. But the status quo was not and is not acceptable. Dr. King writes:

So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." … (Dr. King gives a few more examples before he goes on.) So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? … Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. (paragraph 24)

I believe the nation and the world are in need of creative extremists. We need dreamers. We need bold playwrights, courageous writers, and artists who cannot be ignored. We need the power to imagine a more just and radically different future.

Dreams Need Help to Become Reality

Another point that connects science fiction with visions of equality is that dreams need help to become reality. We hear often that “the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” but the unwritten part of that is that actual people have to do some bending. Dr. King wrote about that, too; though he uses “man” in a way that was common at the time to mean people of all genders, and he invokes his own religious tradition, we can all hear the collective responsibility in this passage. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King wrote:

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity. (paragraph 21)

We can and should have hope. We still need to act according to our values. No act of encouragement, no vote cast, no letter written is a wasted effort. We must use time creatively. In the case of arts, literature, and entertainment, we must also use time travel creatively. Progress does not happen by accident.

Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in the original Star Trek series, spoke about the creation of her character and why she chose to stay on the show. None of it was an accident. When she first met with Gene Roddenberry, she was in the middle of reading a book on Uhuru, which is Swahili for freedom. Roddenberry became more convinced than ever that he wanted a Black woman on the bridge of the Enterprise. Nichols said:

When the show began and I was cast to develop this character – I was cast as one of the stars of the show – the reality of the matter was the industry was not ready for a woman or a Black and certainly not the combination of the two (and you have to remember this was 1966) in that kind of role, on that equal basis, and certainly not that kind of power role.

Nichols was also an accomplished singer and stage actress. The producers never told her about the volume of fan mail she was receiving. She was considering leaving the show to join a theatrical production headed for Broadway, when she was at an event (probably a fundraiser for the NAACP, but Nichols doesn’t remember clearly) and was asked to meet a fan. The fan turned out to be the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He told her how much he enjoyed the show, and that it was the only show he and his wife allowed their children to stay up late to watch. She told him that she was planning to resign. “You cannot!” he said. Nichols goes on:

Dr. King said to me, ‘Don’t you understand that you have the first non-stereotypical role in television in a major TV series of importance, and you establish us as we are supposed to be: as equals, whether it’s ethnic, racial, or gender.’ I was breathless. ‘Thank you, and Yes, I will stay.’

Nichols’ decision to stay had a ripple effect. Whoopi Goldberg said that the first time she saw Lieutenant Uhura on television was a major turning point for her as a child. Mae Jemison, the first African American astronaut in space, spoke about Uhura as an inspiration. Stacey Abrams is a fan.

The inner workings of a TV show with cheesy special effects, beloved as that show may be, might seem inconsequential to the future of human rights. I maintain that anything that expands our ability to dream of a better world is necessary. Stories that give us building blocks for change make a difference. And representation matters. People are hungry for diverse, respectful, innovative stories. Representation increases the chances that someone from a marginalized group can get the resources to tell their own stories rather than relying on the dominant group to borrow them. In this age of communication, it is possible to engage people from all over the planet in a conversation about our shared future. The trick is that we have to work to make sure all of the voices are included. The dream of a better world needs people who can make it a reality.

Imagination is key, and it is a starting point. In Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown writes:

Science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together. I suspect that is what many of you are up to, practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories. It is our right and responsibility to create a new world. What we pay attention to grows, so I’m thinking about how we grow what we are all imagining and creating into something large enough and solid enough that it becomes a tipping point.

Earlier, you heard another quote from the book, in which Brown names the Beloved Community that we can use imagination to grow ourselves into. She names “a future without police and prisons ... a future without rape … harassment … constant fear, and childhood sexual assault. A future without war, hunger, violence. With abundance. Where gender is a joyful spectrum.”

Brown frames this imagined future world, this Beloved Community, as a project of both imagination and community organizing. A better world is possible.

Conclusion

The arts, in particular science fiction, can ignite a kind of a dream state. By using time and time-travel creatively, we can envision a world of justice, equality, and compassion. We have yet more ways to craft stories and plans that respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person. The dream of economic equality, the dream of equal voting rights, the dream of equal protection under the law all need foundations built under them.

If we wish to count ourselves among the dreamers, let us take action. We can continue to build coalitions with partner organizations of other faiths and cultures. We can send representatives to workshops and meetings, and listen carefully to their findings when they return. We can read about dismantling oppression and share what we find with each other.

This community is a place where we can dream freely. Let us use time effectively. Let us enter into the powers of myth, creativity, and art to imagine a better future. And then let us work and plan to make that better future come to pass. May our dreams refresh us and energize us for the tasks ahead.

May it be so.

[jewish-privilege]

...This fall, [my children] both signed up for Tuesday wheel-throwing, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Last week, when that fell at the end of the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I emailed the museum school to double-check that class was still on (yes), and then realized the next one would clash with Kol Nidre.

“Presume next week is off because of Yom Kippur?” I wrote back.

“The museum does not cancel classes because of any religious holidays,” came the reply.

This may be technically true: Classes are not cancelled because of Christmas or Easter; they’re never scheduled on those days. The whole museum is closed on both Christmas and Christmas Eve.

I was annoyed, yet not sure whether I was justified.

It’s not like Yom Kippur is some minor holiday, and Kol Nidre, the evening service that opens the 25-hour fast, a critical part of observing it. My synagogue’s Kol Nidre was scheduled to start at 7 p.m., and the four of us would need to be showered, dressed, fed and watered well before; obviously, pottery would not be possible.

Which is fine. I grew up in a family that attended an Orthodox shul and public schools, which meant we were constantly missing something. I considered it character-building to be virtually the only student missing two days for Shavuot, a holiday most of my Jewish classmates had never heard of; four for Sukkot, Shemini Atzereth and Simchat Torah; and four more over Passover — unless Passover happened to coincide with Easter break, which of course we called “spring break” in a nod to the supposed separation of church and state, but did you ever notice spring break always includes not just Easter Sunday but usually Good Friday, too?

I recall taking a somewhat absurd pride in excelling despite missing all these days, especially in the first weeks of school. I also remember being called out, not by Christian classmates or teachers, but by the secular Jews, who did not see why I needed to skip soccer practice for Shemini Atzeret, a holiday they could hardly pronounce never mind observe.

...I decided to gut-check my pottery outrage with — who else? — my Facebook friends, an admittedly unscientific (and heavily Jewish) universe. The response was fast and fascinating.

One of the first came from a neighbor who is Bosnian, and Muslim. “Imagine being part of a religious minority, and having your holidays ignored,” she wrote, not only by the museum “but, you know, schools and government.” Later, a professor who is from Birmingham, Alabama, and now lives in Beirut, noted: “They’re not closed for Diwali or Mawlid al-Nabi either, much less the nights before.”

Point taken. Seriously.

And then there were fellow Jews, including two friends from childhood, who thought outrage was definitely not appropriate. “I expect that everything is going to go on business as usual and would be surprised if a class were cancelled,” wrote one. Another, who now lives in Israel, noted: “The USA claims separation of church and state, but it’s a Christian country no matter how you look at it. Otherwise, why would Xmas be a federal holiday?”

Indeed, the museum’s explanation was that it “follows the federal-holiday schedule.” For the record, Christmas is the only religious holiday included among the 10 federal holidays in 2019; Christmas Eve is not a federal holiday, and is the only other day besides the 10 our little museum is closed.

...My Facebook friends shared a litany of complaints: soccer games on the first day of Rosh Hashanah despite school having been closed, chess tournaments on Passover, few non-Christmas patterns in the wrapping-paper sale fundraiser. They also had some constructive ideas: one from New York City noted that her kids’ pottery and photography classes were not canceled, but that she’d been offered a makeup session or a pro-rated refund.

That struck me as fair, smart and sensitive, and so I wrote to the head of our museum’s education program, Leah Fox, suggesting such. They could be ecumenical about it: anyone who missed class for any holiday — or any other conflict — could go to one make-up session.

She referred me to the museum school’s Policies and Procedures on Make Up Classes, which, no, I had not read before shelling out the $343 per kid for 10 weeks. “Students missing class by their own choice will not receive a make-up class, refund or credit.”

This did not help the outrage factor. I wrote back saying I found her explanation “disappointing and discriminatory.”

“I think students missing class for religious reasons should be in a different category than ‘by their own choice,’” I pointed out. “I guess it is technically our choice to live in a country that is de facto Christian, but it’s also one that has freedom of religion as a foundational principle.”

As this was unfolding, my husband reminded me that we had had a similar situation with the very same museum barely six months ago, over our then-Friday afternoon pottery class that was on the night of the first Passover Seder — and Good Friday, the start of our school “spring break.” He had done the emailing that time, and first got the same “federal holiday” answer, but after bumping up to Ms. Fox, the education director, won the day — sort of.

Class that Friday was “cancelled due to construction in the Ceramic Studio as well as the holiday and vacation weekend,” Ms. Fox wrote back in April.

So I guess we’re 1 for 2 on the pottery-holiday scoreboard. Or maybe 1.5.

In her last email to me, Ms. Fox noted that accommodating all the Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and “other religious observances” would overwhelm the calendar, and that “in following the federal calendar, we remain open on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.” She also said she’d talk to the museum leadership about “how we may accommodate more observances in the future.”

“In the meantime,” Ms. Fox added, “we will change the policy language related to personal choice.”

That felt like a tiny victory I could take with me — and my kids — to Kol Nidre.

[Read Jodi Rudoren’s full piece at Forward]

[thevividgreenmoss]

Like much folk horror, The Wicker Man first appears to be a rural exploitation story in which an urbanite stumbles across a backwater burg where society’s standardized pieties aren’t observed. But it twists into a story about how useful a naive scapegoat—the “fool,” as Howie is positioned by Summerisle—can be in keeping the pitchforks pointed down at the land and never up at the landowner. Whether Lee’s character buys into his folksy, back-to-the-land heresy is irrelevant. For all his rituals and ceremonies, he remains gentry. This is what governs his actions, and what seals Howie’s fiery fate.

In Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019), a group of curious American millennials decamp to a remote Swedish hamlet for a highly Instagrammable solstice festival (think Maypoles, peasant dresses, flower crowns, and all the other summery, Coachella-chic accoutrements). In Wicker Man fashion, their arrival is more auspicious than it initially appears, as they end up embroiled in a conspiratorial pagan plot, unfolding against the ceaseless daylight of the Scandinavian mid-summer. Even before Midsommar, the ideas and imagery of The Wicker Man have sprouted up across the landscape of contemporary horror cinema, tapping into fears about manipulation, xenophobia, urban-rural divides, crowds gone mad, post-truth epistemology, and a lurking sense that personal agency is illusory, with the actions of the individual governed by forces that are (or are presented as being) beyond our ken.

In Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange, Adam Scovell identifies isolation, landscape, skewed morality, and a happening/summoning (often in the form of ritual sacrifice) as the four links in the “folk horror chain.” In Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015), a family of seventeenth century Puritans banished from their New England village must carve out their place in a hostile, unforgiving landscape. Crops fail, family members disappear, livestock is unsettled, and adolescent girls fall prey to the hysterical throes of puberty. In Eggers’s film, it’s as if nature—that immortal “devil’s playground”—is avenging itself on the colonizers who came to tame it.

...In contrast to horror films that teach us to fear Satanists simply because they are Satanists (Rosemary’s Baby, The Mephisto Waltz, House of the Devil), The Wicker Man and its progeny force us to reckon with the deeper implications of the hooting-and-hollering heretic cabal. Folk horror may be best distinguished not by its mere depiction of Satanists, pagans, witches, buxom nudes wreathed in summer garlands, but by the manner in which they pose threats to our fundamental beliefs. Unlike most horror, in which an interloping monster is either destroyed (in order to purge a threat to an established order) or otherwise incorporated into that order, folk horror operates by implicating the viewer in the dissolution and destruction of that order.

...The first wave of folk horror crested during the waning of a vital counter-culture that had wholesale rejected long-held beliefs about social order, gender, sexuality, and imperialism. If 1968, the year Witchfinder General was released, marks the beginning of the folk horror cycle, it also marks the moment where utopian visions of social revolution were abandoning a politics of collective liberation and ceding to New Age philosophies of personal transformation. The genre’s development maps onto the what Scovell describes as “a backdrop of confident optimism disintegrating impossibly quickly into a nihilistic pessimism.” The films crack open the space between the promise of Paris 1968 and the repression of Kent State 1970, between the dream of Woodstock and the nightmare of Altamont, between The Beatles and Black Sabbath.

Folk horror’s original social context saw the energy animating the 1960s collectivist repudiation of traditional values fizzle and fade into the following decade’s interest in esotericism, astrology, and the occult. Some hippies who suspected that the existing social order could not be willed away with songs about peace and love reasoned that they could at least build their own Buckminster Fuller-style domes and settled into agricultural communes to experiment with pantheistic spiritualties.

...While The Wicker Man’s viewers are not exactly invited to cheer as Howie burns, the merry music and free love of the Summerislanders does seem more fun than the dour abstention of the film’s ostensible protagonist. Teenage daughter Tomasin’s entry into the forest at the end of The Witch is also treated with similar ambiguity. The witches’ coven is both a source of fear for the viewer and freedom for the character, who after accepting the enticing offer of a talking goat—“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”—gets to literally fly away from her overbearing, repressive family.

The overlapping intention here is not mere proselytizing, or preaching the ethical superiority of some alternative, some hippy-dippy, left-liberal, or openly Satanic worldview. Indeed, some read the end of The Wicker Man as a defense of Howie’s beliefs (a reading encouraged by the rictus grinning Summerislanders who gaze upon his burning body, joined together to sing some sinister folk shanty). But finding horror in the space between opposing belief systems, rather than in the content of belief systems themselves, allows these films to appeal both to the permaculture-curious anarchist sporting a “Cops for Crops” back patch and the Christian viewer scared of the Beltane-observing freaks who hate their un-freedom.

A 1998 reappraisal of The Wicker Man in a Scottish broadsheet identified the shifting appeal of a film that, since its release, was regarded as little more than a relatively obscure Brit-film cult classic:

Now, as demonstrated by the enthusiastic remarks of a group of New Age twenty-somethings with Celtic tattoos (that’s Celtic with a hard C, folks) and faces full of ironmongery, The Wicker Man has become keenly appreciated not only by mainstream film buffs and horror hounds but by people who find it a vindication of their own mystical beliefs. It is as though a movie of The Diary of Anne Frank were to become a hit with Nazis, who’d come along to cheer the feel-good ending when the storm troopers haul the Frank family out of the attic.

It’s a sarcastic quip that probably seemed absurd at the time, invoking a comparison so far outside the sphere of consensus that it’s easy to brush off as a harmless joke. But it seems, like so many historical absurdities, considerably less funny now, as white supremacist attacks on synagogues and racially motivated murders regularly dominate the fickle news cycle. The surge of blood-and-soil, volkish fascism in North America makes the counter-cultural embrace of folk horror antagonists seem more deeply uncomfortable, especially when groups like the Soldiers of Odin and the Wolves of Vinland incorporate runic symbols and pagan iconography that seems culled from some hard-bound Compendium of Folk Horror.

In Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, Mattias Gardell argues that during the 1990s, Ariosophic occultism and Norse heathen religions like Asatru overtook Christian Identity as the spiritual dimension of the white supremacist movement. This might seem like a crude projection of the fears of the present onto the films of the past, demanding a revision of that old Mark Twain quote: “To a man with a Hammer film, every nail driven into the palms of a scapegoat looks like brigades of /pol/ cybernazis unleashing Pepes of pestilence to trigger the libs.” But the association between the appeals of paganism and fascism was not lost on The Wicker Man helmer Robin Hardy, who in a 1979 interview was quoted as saying: “It was no accident that Hitler brought back all those pagan feasts at the Nuremberg rallies. The ovens would be lit later.”

Such evaluations may be reasonably deemed a little suspect; like a variation of the internet-favorite Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy, in which the themes of Hardy’s film gain consequence in their evocation of the world-historic cataclysm of the Holocaust. But they gain a renewed (and again, sinisterly absurd) significance in the present moment, where symbols of paganism and white nationalism are being revived not only in conspicuous tandem, but confused confluence. In place of a more conspicuous swastika, a more obscure runic symbol—a Celtic cross, Thor’s hammer, the German Wolfsangel—will suffice. Once again, the symbols and regalia of the past (be it the imagined distant past of pre-Christian heathenry or the more recent past of the Third Reich) are being revived. We live in an age where, ludicrous as it may seem, certain viewers may well cheer the Nazis hauling Anne Frank out of her annex.

...At its core, folk horror is speculative fiction about the failures of the Age of Enlightenment. In Tentacles Longer than the Night, Eugene Thacker explains how the universal maxims of Enlightenment thinkers are conditional. Kant’s categorical imperative requires one to act “as if” the values dictating their actions are universally valid. In supernatural horror, the conditions of this logic are violated by the appearance of some entity that threatens the anthropocentric view of the world, evoking terror from the knowledge that Enlightenment rationality is bumping up against its limit.

Folk horror, by contrast, inverts rather than negates Enlightenment philosophy: the mob sacrifices the individual, peasant superstitions supplant science and reason as the true source of knowledge, a holistic and animistic conception of the universe overtakes an atomistic and mechanistic one. The genre presents a return of these things that had to be repressed in the transition towards a rational, individualistic, and ultimately capitalist social order: witchcraft, female empowerment, sexuality, and an organismic, earth-based conception of the universe.

Here the idea is not so much that logic and reason have reached some natural limit, but rather that the promises of the Enlightenment are always provisional, subject to revocation following one too many bad harvests. Again, the ideological structure may seem warped and inverted, but it possesses an internal, contingent consistency. The death of Sergeant Howie turns the standard horror trope of sexuality and impropriety leading to death on its ear. Unlike the many slain corpses stacked elsewhere in the horror genre, Howie’s sin is precisely his dopey virginity and piousness.

For all its dabbling with the supernatural, the folk horror genre is ultimately one rooted in materialism. The landscape holds considerable power over its people, but not in a mystical way. Allan Brown argues that The Wicker Man specifically can be read as a sci-fi story about technological failure—without the barren fruit trees caused by the poor performance of Lord Summerisle’s experimental botany, no sacrifice would be needed. If the Enlightenment philosophy that provides the grounds for contemporary liberalism involves a faith in humanity’s ability to transcend material conditions, to behave as if laws were universal and human ingenuity had no natural limits, then The Wicker Man brings us back down to earth, and we are reminded of the material conditions that make modern society possible.

Chained up in the wooden structure, Howie attempts to reason with the Lord:

Your crops failed because your strains failed. Fruit is not meant to be grown on these islands. It’s against nature. Don’t you see that killing me is not going to bring back your apples? . . . Don’t you understand that if your crops fail this year, next year you’re going to have to have another blood sacrifice? And next year, no one less than the king of Summerisle himself will do.

In this moment, Adam Scovell argues, the film is “laying down the law/lore of folk horror; that fear supplanted into communities comes back to haunt those who sowed its first seeds.” Burning to death, Howie calls out to his Christian god; the villagers sing and dance as they offer him up to their pagan lords. The viewer may feel that Howie is right, the apples won’t come next year, but the horror comes from the realization that Summerisle is also right: the sacrifice will be accepted.

Like the detestable vogue in white nationalist movements, which cop their iconography and philosophy from the rubbish heap of some imagined pre-Christian, Aryanist past, the renewal of folk horror (particularly in the American context) speaks to an unsettling truth, festering in contemporary political and cultural life. The return to symbology of Neo-Paganism, or the back-to-the-land return to the supposed “realness” inherent in far-off solstice festivals (an attraction of authenticity alluring the lambs of Midsommar), suggests not so much an antidote to the cult of Enlightenment rationality as its uncanny complement. Think only of Julius Caesar himself, whose grisly imagery of human bodies crammed into a flaming wicker statue was utterly self-serving: casting Gauls and Celts as paranoid pagans in order to justify their slaughter and conquest at the tips of legionnaires’ spearheads.

The horror latent in folk horror, then as now, is not an abject fear of pagans or free-loving hippies or straight-up Satanists. It’s the unsettling knowledge that the people are often all too willing to trade one form of power and subjugation for an aesthetically different manifestation of those same conditions, if only to restore faith in power itself. Even if the crops continue to fail, and the heathens of Summerisle never again taste a locally sourced organic apple, it doesn’t matter: the sacrifice succeeds. Killing Howie need not bring back the damn apples themselves, so long as it restores faith in ritual, mysticism, heathen magick, and the other counter-Enlightenment energies that Lee’s Summerisle, in all his sinisterness and sartorial preposterousness, wields in a perverse seasonal pageant, all undertaken to consolidate his own power: as gentry and patriarch, one Lord substituted for another.

[mikejryan]

Marshall McLuhan and Modern Tribalism and Our Present Idiocies, Intoxications, and Incomprehension.

Many people out there are ignorantly and vacuously mentioning our modern tribalism like a) it’s a surprise, b) it’s new, and c) a quick fix, law or change of attitude will fix it.  Well, YOU’RE WRONG on all counts.  

Here I used Marshall McLuhan from 1969 in his interview with Playboy Magazine, which I strongly suggest ALL of you read.  This portion speaks to an area I’ve read quite a bit about, from his muses Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Harold Innis and James Joyce to name a few - I’ve read pretty much everything McLuhan published [even shorter documents located at the University of Toronto McLuhan Archives], everything after his reduction and elimination of regular economics as a key and communication being the driving force by Innis, and then simply everything I could find anywhere by Pere Teilhard.  Jacques Ellul also adds much support to this train of thought, although he and McLuhan wrote concurrently.  

What McLuhan says here some might see as prescient, but he saw as a logical outgrowth of what he saw in the arts, in technology, and mechanization.  We do well to pay attention and approach the problems of increased tribalism, which now is down to almost the individual against all other individuals, a truly psychic and tectonic break from everyone by the individual who then strives to grasp onto anything that can ground the persona, find a commonality, no matter how absurd, ignorant or transient.  

Before the whole excerpt, this part strikes hard at our present incomprehension, and again, from 1969... 

“The day of political democracy as we know it today is finished. Let me stress again that individual freedom itself will not be submerged in the new tribal society, but it will certainly assume different and more complex dimensions. The ballot box, for example, is the product of literate Western culture — a hot box in a cool world — and thus obsolescent. The tribal will is consensually expressed through the simultaneous interplay of all members of a community that is deeply interrelated and involved, and would thus consider the casting of a “private” ballot in a shrouded polling booth a ludicrous anachronism. The TV networks’ computers, by “projecting” a victor in a Presidential race while the polls are still open, have already rendered the traditional electoral process obsolescent.”

Here the excerpt...     

“PLAYBOY: That can hardly be said of the young, whom you claim are leading the process of retribalization, and according to most estimates are also the most radical generation in our history.

McLUHAN: Ah, but you’re talking about politics, about goals and issues, which are really quite irrelevant. I’m saying that the result, not the current process, of retribalization makes us reactionary in our basic attitudes and values. Once we are enmeshed in the magical resonance of the tribal echo chamber, the debunking of myths and legends is replaced by their religious study. Within the consensual framework of tribal values, there will be unending diversity — but there will be few if any rebels who challenge the tribe itself.

The instant involvement that accompanies instant technologies triggers a conservative, stabilizing, gyroscopic function in man, as reflected by the second-grader who, when requested by her teacher to compose a poem after the first Sputnik was launched into orbit, wrote: “The stars are so big / The earth is so small / Stay as you are.” The little girl who wrote those lines is part of the new tribal society; she lives in a world infinitely more complex, vast and eternal than any scientist has instruments to measure or imagination to describe.

PLAYBOY: If personal freedom will still exist — although restricted by certain consensual taboos — in this new tribal world, what about the political system most closely associated with individual freedom: democracy? Will it, too, survive the transition to your global village?

McLUHAN: No, it will not. The day of political democracy as we know it today is finished. Let me stress again that individual freedom itself will not be submerged in the new tribal society, but it will certainly assume different and more complex dimensions. The ballot box, for example, is the product of literate Western culture — a hot box in a cool world — and thus obsolescent. The tribal will is consensually expressed through the simultaneous interplay of all members of a community that is deeply interrelated and involved, and would thus consider the casting of a “private” ballot in a shrouded polling booth a ludicrous anachronism. The TV networks’ computers, by “projecting” a victor in a Presidential race while the polls are still open, have already rendered the traditional electoral process obsolescent.

In our software world of instant electric communications movement, politics is shifting from the old patterns of political representation by electoral delegation to a new form of spontaneous and instantaneous communal involvement in all areas of decision making. In a tribal all-at-once culture, the idea of the “public” as a differentiated agglomerate of fragmented individuals, all dissimilar but all capable of acting in basically the same way, like interchangeable mechanical cogs in a production line, is supplanted by a mass society in which personal diversity is encouraged while at the same time everybody reacts and interacts simultaneously to every stimulus. The election as we know it today will be meaningless in such a society.

PLAYBOY: How will the popular will be registered in the new tribal society if elections are passe¨?

McLUHAN: The electric media open up totally new means of registering popular opinion. The old concept of the plebiscite, for example, may take on new relevance; TV could conduct daily plebiscites by presenting facts to 200,000,000 people and providing a computerized feedback of the popular will. But voting, in the traditional sense, is through as we leave the age of political parties, political issues and political goals, and enter an age where the collective tribal image and the iconic image of the tribal chieftain is the overriding political reality. But that’s only one of countless new realities we’ll be confronted with in the tribal village. We must understand that a totally new society is coming into being, one that rejects all our old values, conditioned responses, attitudes and institutions. If you have difficulty envisioning something as trivial as the imminent end of elections, you’ll be totally unprepared to cope with the prospect of the forthcoming demise of spoken language and its replacement by a global consciousness.

PLAYBOY: You’re right.

McLUHAN: Let me help you. Tribal man is tightly sealed in an integral collective awareness that transcends conventional boundaries of time and space. As such, the new society will be one mythic integration, a resonating world akin to the old tribal echo chamber where magic will live again: a world of ESP. The current interest of youth in astrology, clairvoyance and the occult is no coincidence. Electric technology, you see, does not require words any more than a digital computer requires numbers. Electricity makes possible — and not in the distant future, either — an amplification of human consciousness on a world scale, without any verbalization at all.

PLAYBOY: Are you talking about global telepathy?

McLUHAN: Precisely. Already, computers offer the potential of instantaneous translation of any code or language into any other code or language. If a data feedback is possible through the computer, why not a feed-forward of thought whereby a world consciousness links into a world computer? Via the computer, we could logically proceed from translating languages to bypassing them entirely in favor of an integral cosmic unconsciousness somewhat similar to the collective unconscious envisioned by Bergson. The computer thus holds out the promise of a technologically engendered state of universal understanding and unity, a state of absorption in the logos that could knit mankind into one family and create a perpetuity of collective harmony and peace. This is the real use of the computer, not to expedite marketing or solve technical problems but to speed the process of discovery and orchestrate terrestrial — and eventually galactic — environments and energies. Psychic communal integration, made possible at last by the electronic media, could create the universality of consciousness foreseen by Dante when he predicted that men would continue as no more than broken fragments until they were unified into an inclusive consciousness. In a Christian sense, this is merely a new interpretation of the mystical body of Christ; and Christ, after all, is the ultimate extension of man.”

[kakaji]

contemporary colonial art by luis camnitzer

I was about eighteen years old when I read the three volumes of “The Culture of the Cities” by Lewis Mumford. Of the whole work only one idea remained stuck in my mind, an idea or description with which I had identified immediately: “The bathroom is the only place of privacy we have left.”It took me about five years to realize that this statement was somebody else’s truth.It is true in what Mumford himself calls a “megalopolis,”an overgrown monster city, but it definitely was not true in my city, Montevideo, with less than a million people—and widely spaced, at least in that time and in my background. A symptom of metropolitan culture had managed to evoke in me, an inhabitant of the colonies —through apparently intellectual means—an experience I never had had. 

One day I left my country. At the time of my leaving, people used to whistle when they wanted to show public disapproval. Five years later I returned and discovered that whistling was being used for approval, the same as in the United States of America. 

A gentleman in a developed country invents the“potato chip.”In his own living context, he managed to enrich qualitatively the cocktail hour and quantitatively, himself. However, in the colonial context, he introduced a new habit, a notion of status, a point of identification through which the colony can relate to the metropolis and believe to feel and act the same. We can say that what happened was a cultural rape through a potato. 

The examples only show fragments of a process of transculturation, a part of a vicious circle that holds: economic dependence, mono-production, the creation of artificial needs and the substitution of cultural values. It is a process that managed the ideal situation of nearly everybody actually wanting to participate in it. It creates the need of listening to the latest record, of reading the latest book, of chewing the latest chewing gum, of fitting all the metropolitan molds. 

There is no need for this process to be accomplished in all social segments. From the Empire’s point of view the need decreases in proportion to the amount of power held by each social segment, provided the total mechanism is well oiled. 

Most of the social classes fit between the Cadillac and the Coke, some even remaining under the latter. United Press provides total, instantaneous and universal information. But in the same act, it also leaves total, instantaneous and universal ignorance. 

The artist is an integral part of these informed and isolated social segments. In the colonial areas, in a role which is not very defined—somewhere between a buffoon and a spokesman—he is one of the leaks through which the informative pressure of the Empire keeps filtering through. It is strange that the phrase“Colonial Art” is filled with only positive connotations and that it only refers to the past. In reality it happens in the present, and with benevolence it is called “international style. ”With less courtesy, it tends to be epigonous, derivative, and sometimes even opportunistic. 

There is a rhetoric and a mental process of the Empire which are very particular and which are not new. As president of the U.S.A., Quincy Adams, said in 1842: “The moral obligation to proceed to commercial exchanges between nations is solely based on the Christian premise that obliges us to love our neighbor.”At the time, the conclusion of this concept was that since China was not Christian, it was bellicose and anti-social, since “The fundamental principle of the Chinese Empire is anti-commercial.” This way, the moral justification was set down for what was called the “opium war,” a war mainly between Britain and China, but with strong profits for the western and Christian civilization. 

Commodore Perry went with four battleships to isolationist Japan to offer a commercial treaty. Seven months later, in February of 1854, he returned with an increased squadron to look for the answer. 

As with Commerce, Art is above stingy political games: “it helps the communication and understanding of the people,” “it is a common denominator for understanding.” “The world is smaller everyday,” and under the rug of this phrase one sweeps the moment-by- moment growing difference between the cultural needs of economically developed countries and those underdeveloped or developing. 

The achievements of the Metropolis have international validity automatically. To speak in the U.S.A. of a Jasper Johns or of a Rauschenberg as a good local artist, with all the implications of provincialism, sounds offensive and insulting. Both are universal luminaries and “art does not have frontiers.” The size of the transculturation problem may be indicated by the fact that “art does not have frontiers” is no longer a figure of speech, a saying, but rather, a commonplace. 

The distortion is even deeper. The United States of America, with 6% of the world population, consumes 50% of the world consumer goods. In addition to the necessary military consequences to maintain that situation, this rather monstrous proportion allows the United States of America to also fix the conditions of the market for those goods. The artconsumer goods do not escape the rule.

 An empire has a culture to disseminate, even when this culture is only a collection of habits. In the metropolis, art consumer goods are created which originate from an “existing culture.” The creation of these goods, which we can call “cultural products,” and their con sumption, determine a series of rules both rigid and functional. Their results remain accumu lated in what we call “history of art.” This “history” is metropolitan in nature, and when local histories appear in other places, they are compiled with the same measuring sticks. Who determines what is universal, also is who determines how it is done. 

The question for the colonial artist is this—by participating in the metropolitan art game, is he really only postponing the liberation of the colony to which he belongs? There is an absurdity in creating cultural products when there is no culture to justify them. Latin America has five centuries of being a colony, without a breathing space to assume itself. The task is still there—to build its own culture, to find a cultural identity. The artist, instead of working on this problem, holds the same attitude which Chinese restaurants have in western countries: a Chinese restaurant submits willingly to the image the metropolitan culture has of it. It announces its name with Chinesely-styled letters, advertises “exotic food,” and has, just in case, a page of metropolitan food listed in the menu. 

Without too much scientific care, I will borrow some terms of Information Theory: originality, redundancy, and banality. 

Traditionally, in art there is a careful balance of the three elements. The originality is the contribution of the artwork. The redundancy, technically a waste of repetitive information, insures the intelligent reception of the message by the public. The banality is the frame of reference, or the collection of known elements which the originality needs as a vehicle in order not to die in hermetism and incommunicability. 

One of the decisions that places the artist, politically as well as among other things, is the banality system or the system he will use as a reference. The colonial artist believes that he makes this choice in total freedom. Generally speaking, however, he only chooses out of three possibilities, and the three of them are based on manufacturing cultural products. That is how the paradox comes about that politically aware artists keep working for the metropolitan culture. The three options are : the “international style,” the regional and picturesque “folklorism,” and the subordination to political-literary content. 

The contribution or originality of a cultural product only functions as a refinement of the culture from which it comes (for the culture itself and also for its expansion or proselytizing). It achieves a sophistication of the consuming process. The creation of cultural products in the colonial area then becomes a tool for the enrichment and sophistication of the metropolitan culture. With the growing strength of the “international style,” the result becomes obvious in the productive outlook of Latin America. The aesthetic trends used are permanently lagging behind those promulgated in the imperial centers, without the corresponding evolutions which take place in those centers. It happens that in this way we have individual developments of artists with artificial breaks, which can only be explained by the date the “art magazine” arrived, or the date the “exhibition” was held with the updating information. The increase of the information stream only increases the speed of the changes. Alan Solomon, who was in charge of the American exhibit in the Biennial of Venice (where Rauschenberg won the Big Prize–exhibit flown over with military aircraft), commended a group of artists of Rosario, Argentina, because “they worked according to New York standards only with some weeks of delay.” TheNewYork painter, FrankStella, said : “If we are the best, it is only fair that they imitate us.” At the same time, colonial artists complained about the expenses of chroming and plastics in general—a fact which, according to them, put them out of the international Market. And E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) is opening branches in different underdeveloped countries, usually after the artists’ own request. 

The result is obviously to be a perfecting of the metropolitan imagery. 

One of the reactions to the “international style, ”as well as willful ignoring in regard to this style, leads to folklorism. This option, instead of basing itself on the activities of the imperial cultural centers, is based on local traditions, and especially on the formal symptoms of the local traditions. There are two problems with this option. The first is that these traditions are usually not sensitive to the immediate and present reality, opening a way to escapism. Second, with few exceptions these traditions are dead. There have been too many colonizations to allow a continuity between the traditions and the artist. Usually the artist comes from the middle class, thus consuming those traditions rather than living them. The folklorist option, then, becomes as derivative as the option that follows the “international style.” 

The third option is the subordination to the political-literary content. This option comes from a political commitment prior to a creative decision. This in itself would be a normal process. The limitations appear when the creative process only is dedicated to the production of illustrations, didactically worried, and simultaneously follows the rules of the game indicated by the history of art. The didactic function requires a high percentage of redundance, leaving little room for originality. 

The options described were in their purest form. In the international market, the winners coming from the colonies appear always to refer to more than one option at the time. In this way they probably achieve at the same time a higher degree of contribution and of communicability. But all the artists who follow these rules of the game, whatever the reference system they use, are bound by a broader system regardless of their aesthetics or their politics. It is the system of the object. A painting is a painting recognizable as such, whatever its form or its content. The same happens with any art object, even if it doesn’t follow the traditional formal lines. There is a publicity machinery strong enough to transmit the norms of recognition which in every moment is called “avant-garde.” The label “avantgarde” is one of these norms. 

The relation between the object and the consuming of that object (which generalized gives the relation between art and society) serves as a thermometer for the functionality of art. In the capitalist, economically developed society, the art object is subject to the laws of supply and demand. The artist is placed in the production of objects with his creation, with the production of creators with his teaching. He is paid for both with very little or no philanthropy, since the power structure accepts him as important, or at least, as usable. 

The situation is also reflected in the economic investment of the artist, or his patron, in the actual work production. In 1968, in the Whitney Sculpture Annual, the average investment in materials alone, per sculpture, must have reached about $200. This amount is more than the annual income of the majority of the inhabitants in underdeveloped countries. 

Meanwhile, the concessions the artist has to make in the colonies are more obvious and more painful. In normal circumstances, the artist cannot live by his skills. He has one or more jobs unrelated to his art. He sells to a small national elite or to tourists. He depends on the government’s philanthropy through its politically corrupt exhibitions. He always has that permanent option between his principles and the corruption and alms.

I believe the possibilities for change are two: The first one, moderate, is to continue to use the system of reference pertaining to certain forms capable of being related to art, but not to produce cultural products, but rather to inform about data toward a culture. This means to inform about situations not necessarily aesthetic, able to affect the mechanisms that eventually will produce or define a culture. To isolate, stress, and bring to awareness of transculturating elements, and to give a notion of essences which will allow the creation of new platforms is what I feel is needed. It is what we can call a perceptual alphabetization. It implies to assume economical underdevelopment as cultural stimulus, without relative value judgments. What may be negative in economical terms is only factual in cultural terms. In this moment, a huge percentage of inhabitants of the underdeveloped areas are starving to death. But artists continue to produce full-belly art. 

The second possibility is to affect cultural structures through social and political ones, applying the same creativity usually used for art. If we analyze the activities of certain guerrilla groups, especially the Tupamaros and some other urban groups, we can see that something like this is already happening. The system of reference is decidedly alien to the traditional art reference systems. However, they are functioning for expressions which, at the same time they contribute to a total structure change, also have a high density of aesthetic content. For the first time the aesthetic message is understandable as such, without the help of the “art context” given by the museum, the gallery, etc. 

The urban guerrilla functions in conditions very similar to those with which the traditional artist is confronted when he is about to produce a work. There is a common goal: to communicate a message and at the same time to change with the process the conditions in which the public finds itself. There is a similar search to find the exact amount of originality which, using the known as a background, allows him to stress the message until notoriety for its effectiveness, sometimes signaling towards the unknown. But by going from the object to the situation, from the elitist legality to subversion, there appear new elements. The public, a passive consumer, suddenly in passing from object to situation has to participate actively to be part of the situation. Passing from legality to subversion, the need of finding a minimum stimulus with a maximum effect appears—an effect that through its impact justifies the risk taken and pays for it. During certain historical periods, at the level of the object, this meant dealing with and creating mysteries. At the level of situations, and in this case, it means the change of the social structure. 

These coincidences are not enough to make an artist out of the urban guerilla fighter, the same way as the activity of painting is not enough to make an artist out of a painter. But there are definite cases where the urban guerilla achieves aesthetic levels, widely transcending the movement’s pure political function. It is when the movement reaches this stage that it really is on the way toward creating a new culture instead of simply providing old perceptions with a new political form. 

The options of traditional art fulfill socially the same function of other institutions used by the power structure to insure stability. That is why they lead to an aesthetic of balance. In a Machiavellian way, within these coordinates, a revolutionary message can be reduced to a stabilizing function. Art then becomes a safety valve for the expression of individual and collective neuroses originating in the inability of coping with the environment. Its products serve as a retarded correction of a perception braked by the system of conventions and stereotypes that stabilize society. They create a slightly updated system which, eventually assimilated by history, will require a new system, and so on without end. Art objects serve as points of identification alienated from the consumer, requiring more sympathy than empathy. The consumer, for instance, is able to identify with the moral message of a film. He applauds it, feeling that in this way he pays his quota of personal commitment without having to change the course of his life in a significant way. It is the same cathartic action offered by religion. 

Instead, the aesthetics of imbalance, the one that affects structures, that demands full participation or full rejection, does not allow for the comfort of alienation. 

It leads to the confrontation which will bring about change. 

It leads to the integration of aesthetic creativity with all the systems of reference used in everyday life. 

It leads the individual to be a permanent creator, to be in a state of constant perception. 

It leads him to determine his environment according to his needs and to fight in order to achieve the changes. 

This text is the transcript for a paper presented to the Latin American Studies Association conference, Washington, D.C., 1969. The paper was subsequently translated into Spanish, and published in the Montevideo-based journal Marcha in mid-1970. 

[romancatholicreflections]

24th February >> Daily Reflection on Today’s Mass Readings for Roman Catholics on the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. Cycle C (1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23, Psalms 103: 1-2, 3-4, 8, 10, 12-13, 1 Corinthians 15:45-49 & Luke 6:27-38).

Lectionary:81

Praying Ordinary Time

Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer

In last Sunday’s gospel we heard Jesus’ discourse to the disciples, Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. Today’s gospel continues this discourse with the same seemingly paradoxical, even absurd, directives for his followers. He tells them to love their enemies and to do good to those who hate them. He asks them to bless those who curse them, to turn the other cheek to those who strike them, and to let people take what belongs to them. Be merciful and forgiving, expect nothing, and “your reward will be great.”

If we hear these as rules of conduct or obligatory behavior for becoming a disciple, we are missing the point. This is one of the reasons Christianity is dismissed by so many.... taken literally, Jesus seems to be advocating passivity in the face of all manner of mistreatment. Let people walk all over you now, your reward is in heaven, i.e. “later.”

But his discourse begins with a key phrase, “to you who hear...”. One would assume the hearing is intact for the great majority of people who were gathered, so why begin is discourse with that phrase? Perhaps Jesus is speaking to those who “get it,” whose world view had already been turned upside down. Those who were already living in the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Love, understand that Jesus is talking about receiving our identity from God, rather than from how others treat us. “Nobody is going to take advantage of me” is not an identity we receive from God.

Those who live in the kingdom are willing to risk being generous, forgiving and vulnerable, as they draw from the Ultimate Abundant Source – God – the source of all generosity, forgiveness and vulnerability. They live without the protection of power, position, privilege and righteousness. “We are called to be light for the kingdom, to live in the freedom of the city of God!” is how the song goes. Letting our light shine brightly, without fear of being snuffed out, ushers us into the kingdom of God now, not later.

Our first reading tells the story of David’s restraint in not killing Saul when seemingly, God had presented this auspicious moment. We are challenged daily to show restraint, not in the battlefield, but in board rooms, classrooms and family rooms. Restraint from harming others is a good thing, demonstrates human maturity, but Jesus is offering us so much more: Spiritual Freedom!

The second reading from Paul reminds me of a quotation attributed to Teilhard de Chardin. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” And what an adventure it is.

by Diane Jorgensen

Creighton University's School of Pharmacy