#immanence vs transcendence

[haggishlyhagging]

The worship of animals is also indigenous to nature-based religious systems. Early people existed among animals, scarcely distinct from them. Through religious ritual, people differentiated themselves from animals and gave honor to them—they were food, sustenance. There was a respect for the natural world—people were hunter and hunted simultaneously. Their perspective was acute. They worshiped the spirit and power they saw manifest in the carnivore world of which they were an integral part. When man began to be "civilized," to separate himself out of nature, to place himself over and above woman (he became Mind, she became Carnality) and other animals, he began to seek power over nature, magical control. The witch cults still had a strong sense of people as part of nature, and animals maintained a prime place in both ritual and consciousness for the witches. The Christians, who had a profound and compulsive hatred for the natural world, thought that the witches, through malice and a lust for power (pure projection, no doubt), had mobilized nature/animals into a robotlike anti-Christian army. The witch hunters were convinced that toads, rats, dogs, cats, mice, etc., took orders from witches, carried curses from one farm to another, caused death, hysteria, and disease. They thought that nature was one massive, crawling conspiracy against them, and that the conspiracy was organized and controlled by the wicked women. They can in fact be credited with pioneering the politics of total paranoia—they developed the classic model for that particular pathology which has, as its logical consequence, genocide. Their methods of dealing with the witch menace were developed empirically—they had a great respect for what worked. For instance, when they suspected a woman of witchcraft, they would lock her in an empty room for several days or weeks and if any living creature, any insect or spider, entered that room, that creature was identified as the woman's familiar, and she was proved guilty of witchcraft. Naturally, given the fact that bugs are everywhere, particularly in the woodwork, this test of guilt always worked.

Cats were particularly associated with witches. That association is based on the ancient totemic significance of the cat:

It is well known that to the Egyptians cats were sacred. They were regarded as incarnations of Isis and there was also a cat deity. . . . Through Osiris (Ra) they were associated with the sun; the rays of the "solar cat," who was portrayed as killing the "serpent of darkness" at each dawn, were believed to produce fecundity in Nature, and thus cats were figures of fertility. . . . Cats were also associated with Hathor, a cow-headed goddess, and hence with crops and rain. . . .

Still stronger, however, was the association of the cat with the moon, and thus she was a virgin goddess—a virgin-mother incarnation. In her character as moon-goddess she was inviolate and self-renewing . . . the circle she forms in a curled-up position [is seen as] the symbol for eternity, an unending recreation.

The Christians not only converted the horned god into Satan, but also the sacred cat into a demonic incarnation. The witches, in accepting familiars and particularly in their special feeling for cats, only participated in an ancient tradition which had as its substance love and respect for the natural world.

It was also believed that the witch could transform herself into a cat or other animal. This notion, called lycanthropy, is twofold:

. . . either the belief that a witch or devil-ridden person temporarily assumes an animal form, to ravage or destroy; or, that they create an animal "double" in which, leaving the lifeless human body at home, he or she can wander, terrorize, or batten on mankind.

The origins of the belief in lycanthropy can be traced to group rituals in which celebrants, costumed as animals, recreated animal movements, sounds, even hunting patterns. As group ritual, those celebrations would be prehistorical. The witches themselves, through the use of belladonna, aconite, and other drugs, felt that they did become animals. The effect of the belief in lycanthropy on the general population was electric: a stray dog, a wild cat, a rat, a toad—all were witches, agents of Satan, bringing with them drought, disease, death. Any animal in the environment was dangerous, demonic. The legend of the werewolf (popularized in the Red Riding Hood fable) caused terror. At Labout, two hundred people were burned as werewolves. There were endless stories of farmers shooting animals who were plaguing them in the night, only to discover the next morning that a respectable town matron had been wounded in precisely the same way.

Witches, of course, could also fly on broomsticks, and often did. Before going to the sabbat, they annointed their bodies with a mixture of belladonna and aconite, which caused delirium, hallucination, and gave the sensation of flying. The broomstick was an almost archetypal symbol of womanhood, as the pitchfork was of manhood. Levitation was considered a rare but genuine fact:

As for its history, it is one of the earliest convictions, common to almost all peoples, that not only do supernatural beings, angels or devils, fly or float in the air at will, but so can those humans who invoke their assistance. Levitation among the saints was, and by the devout is, accepted as an objective fact. The most famous instance is that of St. Joseph of Cupertino, whose ecstatic flights (and he perched in trees) caused embarrassment in the seventeenth century. Yet the appearance of flight, in celestial trance, has been claimed all through the history of the Church, and not only for such outstanding figures as St. Francis, St. Ignatius Loyola, or St. Teresa. . . . In the Middle Ages it was regarded as a marvel, but a firmly established one. . . . It is not, therefore, at all remarkable that witches were believed to fly . . . [though] the Church expressly forbade, during the reign of Charlemagne, any belief that witches flew.

With typical consistency then, the Church said that saints could fly but witches could not. As far as the witches were concerned, they trusted their experience, they knew that they flew. Here they aligned themselves with Christian saints, yogis, mystics from all traditions, in the realization of a phenomenon so ancient that it would seem to extend almost to the origins of the religious impulse in people.

We now know most of what can be known about the witches: who they were, what they believed, what they did, the Church's vision of them. We have seen the historical dimensions of a myth of feminine evil which resulted in the slaughter of 9 million persons, nearly all women, over 300 years. The actual evidence of that slaughter, the remembrance of it, has been suppressed for centuries so that the myth of woman as the Original Criminal, the gaping, insatiable womb, could endure. Annihilated with the 9 million was a whole culture, woman-centered, nature-centered —all of their knowledge is gone, all of their knowing is destroyed. Historians (white, male, and utterly without credibility for women, Indians, Blacks, and other oppressed peoples as they begin to search the ashes of their own pasts) found the massacre of the witches too unimportant to include in the chronicles of those centuries except as a footnote, too unimportant to be seen as the substance of those centuries—they did not recognize the centuries of gynocide, they did not register the anguish of those deaths.

Our study of pornography, our living of life, tells us that the myth of feminine evil lived out so resolutely by the Christians of the Dark Ages, is alive and well, here and now. Our study of pornography, our living of life, tells us that though the witches are dead, burned alive at the stake, the belief in female evil is not, the hatred of female carnality is not. The Church has not changed its premises; the culture has not refuted those premises. It is left to us, the inheritors of that myth, to destroy it and the institutions based on it.

-Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating

[flamingkorybante]

I was THRILLED to join my friend Luxa on Lux Occult Podcast Episode 70 to talk about Spinoza and the Sexy Dangers of Pantheism, Transdivinity & Agdistis! Won't you give it a listen?

https://anchor.fm/luxa-strata

https://linktr.ee/LuxaStrata

Rocket https://www.instagram.com/eyeandy/ joins Luxa to talk about Spinoza, Pantheism, the idea of a Transcendent vs. an Immanent divine (and what that translates into for humans). What does this look like when religious philosophy is translated into political doctrine? We also talk about Kabbalah (with a K), and why the Mysteries (with a capital M) must be experienced somatically rather than cognitively. Rocket shares about Jewish Mysticism, the upcoming Trans Rite of Ancestor Elevation https://trans-rite.tumblr.com/ their work with Agdistis and some of the mythology surrounding the godform whose gender was just too much for the Olypians (and how this ties into they mythology surrounding Dionysis). There’s a a tasty poetry snack created via cut-ups and gematria by Keats Ross of We the Hallowed https://wethehallowed.org/ which was used to find the track order for the audio offerings of Fuck Around and Find Out pt. 2 the digital mixtape (of which tracks are featured). There are also updates about the Green Mushroom Hyphosigil Project https://greenmushroomproject.com/. Much Love!

[fernthewhimsical]

Witchcraft "Lesson Plan" Part 1

More info on this plan and how to use it here Part 2 Part 3

Below the cut you will find: I History, religions, and magical practices of the different continents II Different paths of witchcraft III Morality and Ethics IV Cosmology and Theology/Faith in Daily Life V Concepts of the Divine

I History, religions and magical practices of:

the pre-history eras

the Middle East

Africa

Europe

Asia

Oceania

the Americas

history of witchcraft/wicca

witchcraft/paganism and Xtianity

II Which witch is which, different paths of witchcraft

Contemporary paganism

Witchcraft

Wicca

Druidry

Asatru/Heathenry

Influences of the East, South, and West on contemporary witchcraft (Buddhism, Shinto, New Age, Aboriginal, Native American)

III Morality and Ethics

Morality and Ethics, what are they, what is the difference?

Does witchcraft need a separate morality or ethics?

Direct vs. indirect consequences of actions

Working with consent

Law of the Returning Tide

Rule of Three

Wiccan Rede

in Perfect Love and Perfect Trust

Karma

Self-defense vs. Baneful magic

a Witch who cannot curse, cannot heal

Personal gain

IV Cosmology and Theology/Faith in Daily Life

Levels of reality

Everything is energy

Creation myths

An Afterlife vs. Reincarnation vs. Nothing

Rituals of Transition (wiccaning, handfasting, handparting, crone ritual, passing over, etc.)

Sacred places within and around the home

Temples, Churches and Circles

Witchcraft and the laws

Witchcraft and the environment

Witchcraft and sexuality

Witchcraft and activism

the God and Goddess: duality in divinity

Honoring the Gods

Initiation vs. dedication

Honoring the Ancestors

Witchcraft texts: the Witch’s Rune, the Witch’s Credo, 13 Goals of the Witch, Rules of the Magus, the Charges, etc.

Ghosts and Spirit Guides

Angels, Demons, Fae, and other mythological spirits.

V Concepts of the Divine

Theism, Gnosticism, Atheism, Agnosticism

Immanence vs. Transcendence (the Divine within or without the self)

Monotheism vs. Polytheism

Omnitheism

Pantheism

Animism

Dualism

Deism

Spiritism

Personal deities (patron and matron deities)

Archetypes of the Goddess

Archetypes of the Gods

Jungian archetypes and deity

Demi Gods, Genus Loci and other spirits

[mahayanapilgrim]

The Path to Human Rebirth

Reincarnation in Buddhism diverges from the notion of a person simply being reborn into a different physical form, such as John becoming a cat. Unlike the idea of a transmigration of an immortal soul, Buddhism emphasizes the interplay of karma, action, and the mind in shaping one's rebirth.

**Understanding Karma: The Moral Law**

Karma, rooted in the Sanskrit word "Kri," meaning action, is more than a chain reaction of cause and effect; it is a moral law. In the Buddhist context, karma extends beyond physical causation to encompass the moral implications of actions. The adage "A good cause, a good effect; a bad cause, a bad effect" encapsulates the essence of this moral law.

**The Conservation of Moral Energy: Karma as Transformation**

In the intricate web of existence, human beings emit both physical and spiritual forces. Drawing a parallel to the conservation of energy in physics, Buddhism asserts that spiritual and mental actions are never lost but transformed. Karma, therefore, is the law of conserving moral energy. Every action, thought, and word releases spiritual energy, influencing and shaping the circumstances surrounding an individual.

**Man as the Architect of Karma: Sender and Receiver of Influences**

Human beings play a dual role in the karmic process. As senders, they release spiritual energy into the universe through their actions, thoughts, and words. Simultaneously, as receivers, they are affected by the influences emanating from the collective karmic web. The entirety of these circumstances constitutes an individual's karma, leading to a constant state of change in personality and the surrounding world.

**Karma vs. Fate: The Power of Conscious Awareness**

In contrast to fate, which suggests a predetermined life beyond one's control, karma is dynamic and changeable. Human consciousness allows individuals to be aware of their karma and actively strive to alter its course. Quoting the Dhammapada, Buddhism emphasizes the profound influence of thoughts on shaping one's reality: "All that we are is a result of what we have thought, it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts."

**The Ten Realms: Psychological States and Rebirth**

Buddhism traditionally posits ten realms of being, representing mental and spiritual states rather than fixed, objective worlds. At the pinnacle is Buddha, followed by Bodhisattva, Pratyeka Buddha, Sravka, heavenly beings, human beings, Asura, beasts, Preta, and depraved men. Each realm is mutually immanent and inclusive, reflecting the psychological states created by thoughts, actions, and words.

**The Lesson: Aspiring for Human Rebirth**

The teaching of reincarnation in Buddhism imparts a valuable lesson. The realm one inhabits is a reflection of one's desires and motivations. To be reborn as a human being, one must transcend cravings for power, love, and self-recognition associated with realms like Preta or the hungry ghosts. Instead, cultivating qualities such as ethical conduct, mindfulness, wisdom, positive thoughts, generosity, and compassion paves the path to a favorable human rebirth.

In conclusion, the journey to human rebirth in Buddhism involves mindful navigation of the intricate interplay between karma, consciousness, and the dynamic states of the mind, steering away from the extremes and aspiring towards the cultivation of virtuous qualities.

[haorev]

Reading about early 20th century critiques about the emotional in religion and the elevation of “rationality and universality” (specifically regarding the making of Judaism as an American religion) I’m beginning to understand more and more why the Goddess Movement took off in the 60s-80s (which has more Jews in it than I expected)

A lot of these men are denigrating the emotional, ritual, and physical aspects of religion (all of which they considered to be feminine, following the footsteps of Kant and others) or at the very least downplaying them in favor of emphasizing the rational, intellectual, transcendent, and universal aspects (which are so often considered masculine). And it’s not just men doing this, and those who are doing it do it to different levels (some view the ‘feminine’ aspects as still necessarily but less so than the ‘masculine’ aspects). In some cases, they saw woman’s involvement in synagogue life as good and important, but they saw the emotional (the feminine) as being undeveloped and unsophisticated.

And I am not surprised at all that there was a counter movement that basically said, “actually no the emotional, ritual, and immanent aspects of religion are the more important compared to the rational and transcendent.”

I’m biting the Enlightenment.

(To be sure, I don’t agree with either movement. I think you need a healthy balance, but that balance is going to look different to every person. And this is just about the gendered aspects, don’t even get me started on the idea of particular vs universal religion.)

[philosophystudentorg]

Transcendent vs. Immanent: Learn Philosophy's Core Concepts | PhilosophyStudent.org #shorts

Dive into the concept of the Transcendent in philosophy, exploring its meaning beyond empirical existence and its contrast with the intrinsic. Please Visit our Website to get more information: https://ift.tt/dRMNycH #transcendent #immanent #philosophy #philosophyconcepts #learnphilosophy #shorts from Philosophy Student https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBahpArmi_c

[wortzentriert]

Chapter 2: The Covenant Model | Gary North -- Specific Answers

Sutton presented the covenant model in this form:

1. God (transcendent, yet immanent)

2. Hierarchy

3. Ethics

4. Sanctions

5. Continuity

A reader recommended this restructuring:

1. Transcendence/presence

2. Hierarchy

3. Ethics

4. Oath

5. Succession

The acronym is THEOS, the Greek word for God.

In my 1980 book, Unconditional Surrender: God’s Program for Victory, I instinctively adopted the first three: God, man, and law. In the third edition, published in 1988, I added time. In the 2010 edition, I completed it by adding sanctions. I hope that this is the final edition. Here are the five inescapable components of covenant theology.

1. God

2. Man

3. Law

4. Sanctions

5. Time

This structure is visible in the structure of the Pentateuch.

1. Genesis (origins)

2. Exodus (authority)

3. Leviticus (law)

4. Numbers (sanctions)

5. Deuteronomy (inheritance)

I put all this into one short (for me) book: God’s Covenants (2014). [http://bit.ly/5covs] I also discussed the five covenants in history: dominion, individual, family, church, and state. This laid the foundation for my identification of the five inescapable factors in all social theory.

1. Sovereignty

2. Authority

3. Law

4. Sanctions

5. Succession

B. Economics: Five Points Times Four

I begin with God. Here are the theocentric judicial principles of economics in 15 words.

Judicial (theocentric)

1. God owns everything.

2. God delegates ownership.

3. God prohibits theft.

4. God evaluates performance.

5. God mandates growth.

God designates men as His trustees. As trustees, they are authorized to act in God’s name as judicial representatives. Here are the rules of trusteeship in 15 words.

Judicial (representative)

1. Owners are trustees.

2. Trustees possess authority.

3. Trusts are binding.

4. Trustees are accountable.

5. Trustees designate successors.

There are also economic aspects of delegated ownership. God requires men to act as stewards. These are responsibilities of property management. Men must act on God’s behalf. They must put His interests above their own. The laws governing men’s stewardship are structurally the same as God’s laws of ownership, but suitable for creatures. Here are the rules of stewardship in 15 words.

Stewardship Laws

1. Purpose precedes planning.

2. Priorities structure planning.

3. Ownership involves exclusion.

4. Owners evaluate performance.

5. Owners designate heirs.

Trusteeship has two aspects: judicial and economic. The judicial aspect is a matter of guardianship. The economic aspect is stewardship. This distinction goes back to God’s designation of Adam as His trustee over the creation. The garden was Adam’s testing place. God told Adam to dress the garden and keep it (Genesis 2:15). [North, Genesis, ch. 9] Stewardship was economic. Guardianship was legal. Stewardship involved increasing the value of the property. This is the meaning of “dress.” Guardianship involved defending God’s property from unlawful invasion. This is the meaning of “keep.” Other translations translate “keep” as “work.” Stewardship is trusteeship on behalf of. Guardianship is trusteeship in the name of. Both responsibilities are aspects of ownership: God’s original ownership and man’s delegated ownership.

Ownership is an inescapable concept. It is never a question of hierarchical ownership vs. no hierarchical ownership. It is always a question of who is the supreme owner. This structure of ownership leads to laws of economics. These laws are not autonomous. They are the results of God’s covenantal ownership. These laws govern the structure of production. Here are these laws in 15 words.

Economic Laws

1. Owners adopt purposes.

2. Prices provide information.

3. People prefer more.

4. Scarcity imposes costs.

5. Growth reduces scarcity.

[matriarca-inodora]

30 Days, Day 15: Any mundane practices that are associated with this deity?

It`s a simple question, really. Do I see Apollo in any of my mundane practices?

Well, let`s start by questioning what one calls “mundane practices” (yes it`s really that hard to simply answer the questions in this series like a normal person)

Essentially, we are talking about things that are “earthly”, non spiritual. Depending on how one perceives spirituality and the divine, most things in life might seem mundane. Eating, washing the dishes, looking at the night sky, talking to a friend...all mundane, all non-spiritual. But personally, I don`t view my life as mundane, most of the time. That`s a matter of perspective, of course, and I don`t think everyone should agree on this. Yet to me, it`s hard to come up with activities that I associate with Apollo, and which I could call “mundane”.

Is looking at a beautiful piece of art “mundane”?

Is taking care of oneself, recognising one`s limits, “mundane”?

Is singing a song “mundane”?

Is it “mundane” to do research, to try to learn new things and change one`s perspective?

Is it mundane to dance to a song you love?

Is it mundane to take care of those you love?

Is it mundane to strive to work in health related areas?

Is it mundane to write a story or a poem, even when it`s not a hymn to the gods?

Is a sunflower mundane, or a raven, or a dolphin? Is the first beam of light that crosses your window in the morning mundane? Is the voice of a singer across the street trying to hit just the perfect note, mundane?

 You can probably tell by the way I`m phrasing this, but no. I don`t think any of these things are "mundane". Well, is anything at all truly mundane then? Or can we choose to attach divinity to simple things? I`m not even sure it`s a choice, really. Now, you could be wondering… if nothing is mundane, then how do you view things, Krummi? Is everything sacred if you look at it from a certain perspective?

I know the word “sacred” is not thrown around lightly, so let`s use a slightly different one: is there something higher to everything we do? Should one look for the divine in everything?

Well, I don`t think it`s a matter of “should I”… rather, it`s “can I…do I?” Personally, I feel the presence of the divine not only during prayer, but in everyday life. Yes, individually those things might seem too “mundane" to be considered influenced by the divine, but are they really? 

Together, they form the majority of our lives, and by seeing divinity in them, we live differently. Nothing becomes too silly or worthless... life becomes more meaningful. Awe can be found in very simple things, I think, and to allow oneself to see things this way from time to time really changes one`s perspective. 

Personally, I`ve been a lot happier ever since I started looking at things this way, because really, it`s how I saw the world when I was younger. It was a long journey of knowing my own worldview, and accepting who I am and how I view things. I know, I know, "know thyself" really tends to pop up too often here in one way or another. But hey, to me it makes sense.

Now, to better understand all of this, it`s useful to think about two concepts, two ways of viewing the divine: a transcendentalist vs an immanent worldview. Basically, if you view the divine as something transcendental, you believe it`s beyond our physical world. Somewhere else, or something else, but that transcends this world. 

I tend towards immanence, however. I see the divine as part of our world, but not only in the "physical" world. It`s also in our mental world, and in our social world (this division is based on Karl Popper`s in the book The Self and its Brain). That doesn`t mean that by understanding solely the physical world, that I can understand the divine, however. I don`t really know the nature of the divine, and I don`t think anyone ever will, in its entirety. But I do think the gods are not entirely somewhere else...they`re here. It`s a matter of finding them.

Maybe there`s something else beyond that, sure, but if it`s beyond us, then we wouldn`t be able to approach it, and it would mean everything we live is without that essence. And well, while that may be true, it`s not something I want to believe.

[baroquespiral]

The Trumps and Apocalyptic Immanence: Justice/Adjustment and Judgment/The Aeon

I was listening to this talk with Entelecheia and Nick J Lacetti and a major point, which I’ve encountered in their discussions on Twitter/in the online Thelema-sphere, was the debate between transcendence and immanence, as well as the nature of the self and True Will - to which this question is obviously related - and at one point Nick suggested Crowley’s figure of “Adjustment” as a paradigm for a sense of Will that was radically immanent but also, within this immanence, had the capacity for agency and transformation.  This struck me as  one of the most useful points in the discussion, which otherwise risked running aground on philosophical antinomies the purpose of a spiritual system like Thelema is to traverse (a purpose I find the tendency in online Thelema that emphasizes philosophical interpretation of the tradition, incl. Entelecheia, IAO131, Georgina et al., while close to my own sympathies and practice, risks losing track of).  One reason Adjustment stuck out to me is there’s already a figure of Immanence vs. Transcendence built into the most famous expression of the concept, the Adjustment Trump of the Thoth Tarot deck.

Adjustment, as anyone familiar with the deck knows, is Crowley’s modification of the trump which appears in most decks (I’ll focus on Rider-Waite) as “Justice.”  Adjustment is one of seven Trumps Crowley renamed from their standard Marseilles or Rider-Waite versions: 

Several of these are just finicky word choices; the most significant conceptual changes are Strength > Lust, Justice > Adjustment, Temperance > Art and Judgement > The Aeon. Crowley replaced Justice because “This word has none but a purely human and therefore relative sense; so it is not to be considered as one of the facts of Nature. Nature is not just, according to any theological or ethical idea; but Nature is exact.” Crowley therefore opposes the theory of a transcendent Justice, which would have animated previous interpretations of the card: the Platonic vision of a higher ideal order with which the living world can and should be brought into conformity.  This is the sense evoked by the card that, in the Tarot de Marseilles, was titled “La Justice”: not simply Justice but The Judge, handing down judgements on behalf of a higher authority.  But if you look into the Rider-Waite card, which simplified it to Justice, there’s more to it.

Crowley would have certainly been familiar with the Rider-Waite deck and Waite’s accompanying Pictorial Tarot, if not as invested in it as the Marseille (he seems to have had something of a beef with Arthur Waite).  He would probably have been aware of Waite’s identification of the figure in his version of the card, not simply with the traditional allegorical figure of Justice, but with the Greek star goddess Astraea.  The association of Justice and Astraea itself dates back to classical antiquity, when she was associated closely with the Greek personification of justice Dike (and her Latin successor, Justitia) and the constellation Virgo, which would become part of the associations of the card. Astraea was the last of the gods to live among humans, preserving the traditions of the peace and equality of the Golden Age, and eventually fleeing to the heavens as these degenerated into the rampant injustice of the Iron.  Some day, it was believed, she would return, and the justice of the Golden Age with her. Astraea, therefore, is a transcendent Justice, but a contingently, historically transcendent one; a figure of Justice that is not necessarily but has been radically separated from the world.  The change from transcendent Justice as Astraea to a principle of Adjustment immanent to every relative human and the absolute web of Nature between them can then be read as a Return of Astraea.  There’s another reversal between the two cards that sheds more light on this transcendent/immanent dichotomy.  Astraea is a virgin goddess; her Justice is a transcendent separation from the world of sexuality.  Adjustment, on the other hand, according to Crowley, “represents The Woman Satisfied”.  The phallic sword which Justice holds at a careful distance in her right hand, Adjustment cradles between her thighs.  Not only has Astraea returned to the world, she has allowed herself to become immanent with it sexually. This transition matches neatly with the even more explicit one between Judgement and The Aeon.

Once again, there is an obvious transcendent/immanent dichotomy between these cards on the immediate level of symbolism.  In one, an angel from the heavens announces his judgement to the risen souls on Earth; in another, the principles of Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit are all united in the central child-figure of the Aeon.  Crowley’s changes here require the least explanation: Judgement is the most explicitly Christian card of the traditional deck, and with The Aeon Crowley represents the Christian historical concept with a specifically Thelemic one.  But note that the transition itself can be read as a historical, not simply doctrinal one.  The Last Judgement, in Christianity, is an event in the future; the Aeon of Horus, in Thelema, is already here.  Judgement as the transcendent historical horizon of the Aeon of Osiris and its religions is realized as immanence in the Aeon of Horus.  The Last Judgement and the return of Astraea are, of course, analogous apocalyptic events, representing a restoration of immanence between Heaven and Earth. What this suggests is that to Crowley, Transcendence and Immanence are both conditionally valid ways of understanding the divine and its relation to human social organization and history; however, the historical shift of the Aeon of Horus has tilted the scales (of Adjustment) towards Immanence.  How can this be, if we are so clearly not living in a Golden Age?  One is tempted to equate the return of Astraea not with the Aeon of Horus but with the Aeon of Ma’at (a goddess Crowley identified with Adjustment), which is hypothesized to succeed it (and which all too many Thelemic reformers have tried to skip to directly). But at this it seems sufficient to note that Adjustment is in itself not a stable state: it is a transitional one, an adjustment.  The Aeon of Horus can be interpreted as an immanent state of flux needed, in turn, to restore alignment with transcendent Justice. I haven’t thought as much about Strength/Lust and Temperance/Art, might do a follow-up post on them

[grandhotelabyss]

—Benjamin Teitelbaum, War for Eternity: Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers (2020)

Pursuant to some of the comments about contemporary conservative ideology Sam and I made on “Crossfire,” the passage above shows Bannon vs. Dugin with completely, almost comically opposed worldviews.

This is a strange book to come from a mainstream press. The author is an academic ethnomusicologist, presumably on the left, but goes well out of his way to be sympathetic to Bannon in chummy celeb-bio tones while also burnishing his image as dark fascist lord of the perennial philosophy. 

The actual evidence of Teitelbaum’s apparently disinterested “ethnology” (his research consists mostly of interviews with his subjects) undermines the sensationalism of his thesis, however. “Steve,” as Teitelbaum calls him throughout, doesn’t have any sophisticated understanding of the philosophy he reads beyond a dorm-room you’re-blowing-my-mind-man attitude. He admits it himself: “I’m just some fuckin’ guy, making it up as I go.” (My favorite of Steve’s philosophical observations from the book: “culture, true culture, is based upon immanence and transcendence.” To quote Paris Geller, “Hit me with some more lame tautology, Socrates.”) 

On the other hand, his being a Machiavellian operator rather than a mystic philosopher explains why his assessment of the global situation makes so much more sense than Dugin’s, even though the longer he talks about it—as he deplores colonialism in Africa, coerced labor, racial and religious prejudice, America’s cynical collaboration with dictatorial empires, the excesses of capitalism, et al.—the less he sounds like a Traditionalist and the more he just sounds like a liberal.

I checked in on his show yesterday to see where he (and the movement he leads) seemed to be re: Russia, and he was still flailing. He emphasized twice in the 45 minutes I listened to how much he agreed with Nikole Hannah-Jones that the media was motivated by racism in focusing on Europe. Will he, like Hannity, warm to the war?

[cealtrachs]

You said that you don't like noncon? Why Theon x Ramsay?

I’m Roman Catholic. Jk.

The pair relates well to themes/motifs I find compelling. Identity, transcendence vs immanence, father issues, the grotesque, hedonism vs morality, free will, redemptive suffering, intimacy vs dehumanization, forest as the uncanny, and many more. Theon exhibits traits that, while human, are antithetical to the way I approach the world. And Ramsay, well. He’s a monster.

Any canon iteration of them is a story of abuse, terror, and (on Theon’s part) being pushed to the brink of human suffering and surviving.

These facets can be emphasized or minimized at one’s discretion. Probably why there’s a large variety of good fic out there (ranging from canon-compliant whump to fluff to Stockholm Syndrome to 100k+ word consensual BDSM AU). It’s a very Gothic and intimate dynamic, regardless of which “flavor” you choose.

I’m chronically tender hearted, and would not be particularly effective when writing noncon, or even “harder” dubcon/domestic violence. There are some very good thramsay works that do include them and I’ve enjoyed these, albeit in a “risk aware” way where I take ownership of what I expose myself to. That being said, I do love power play and toxicity.

My own writing is p much G-rated thramsay, with cloying sweetness and lots of nature imagery in distinctly non-canon settings. Catch me in my softgirl hedge garden. Tending to my fennel blossoms or w/e.

[featheredtrex]

Matthew Stower on EU dark side vs Lucas-canon dark side

https://www.theforce.net/jedicouncil/interview/mattstover.asp

Interviewer: Can you discuss a little about the Force as it is described in Traitor? Where did the revelation about the Dark Side come from? How does it impact the Star Wars Universe?

I've often been a little bit bothered by the "deification" of the Force in the EU. The Force is not God -- it's not something "out there," a unitary entity with its own will and intention. It's right here. A Jedi is part of it -- and so is everything else. Its "will" (to use an inadequate word) is expressed in existence itself.

Stower didn’t pay attention to the fact that the Force is indeed “God” in the sense that it is a “metaphor for God” and the “greater mystery” as George Lucas put it “and God is essentially unknowable.” Lucas explained his views on life, God and spirit in 1999, saying, he believes in a collective spirit, life force and consciousness, both immanent and transcendent. This is very much the Force, a metaphor for his views on God, a reservoir, unified reality to life, what was said to be more pronounced in Buddhism. Thus, despite Stower is right in that the Force is not God in the Western sense, but it is in the Eastern sense.

And I don't see that there's any revelation about the dark side, either. When Luke is about to enter "The Cave of the Dark Side" on Dagobah, he asks Yoda what's in there. Yoda replies (if memory serves): "Only what you bring with you." That's a long way from anything resembling a Dark-Side-is-the-Devil kind of perspective; it was always clear to me that it wasn't intended to be a supernatural force of evil.

Stower did remember correctly and he is absolutely right. One should notice that Stower just said, he spotted a severe contradiction between George Lucas’ Star Wars and the Expanded Universe.

I'd like to quote here from something I wrote to one of the prominent members of the Lit Forum who was somewhat troubled by Vergere's teachings about the Force. He goes by the handle JediMasterAaron, and he asked me some pretty penetrating questions, that I think go right to the heart of this theme. This was part of my answer:

"It can be argued that Yoda trained Luke the way he did specifically to defeat the Emperor -- NOT because that's what JK were in the Old Republic. In fact, we now know that Luke would scarely qualify as a Padawan by Old Republic standards.

From my point of view, what Vergere teaches Jacen to become is far closer to what the Jedi are SUPPOSED to embody. Even Luke, remember, doesn't end up DESTROYING the Bad Guys -- instead he allows his mere presence to "save" the one who can be saved, and destroy the one who can't. (By my recollection, anyway -- it's been a few years since I saw RotJ.)

A war of Good v. Evil is better in concept than in execution. The division of reality into Good and Evil is a disease of modern civilization -- it's even infected our secular politics. It's okay for our armed forces to kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan, because we're "rooting out the Evil." From bin Laden's point of view, it's okay to kill innocent civilians in the USA (and elsewhere) for EXACTLY THE SAME REASON.

It is the responsibility of those who CAN look deeper to do so. I say: by the end of TRAITOR, Jacen is a better Jedi than he has ever been, because he has learned to LOOK DEEPER... I think SW is more about dealing with the darkness in your own heart -- Luke had to do that, in order to face Vader and the Emperor; and then instead of killing Vader he could lead him back toward the light.

I should also point out that "the Force is One." The darkness inside is reflected outside, and vice versa. What Vergere is really teaching Jacen is to seek truth within, because it will reflect truth without. To trust his feelings, you might say..."

That about sums it up.

Stower’s position on Yoda is not entirely clear, however, it’s important to notice that Vergere’s philosophy is the mainstream Jedi philosophy in George Lucas’ works: dark side is one’s own anger, fear, aggression, hate. Also, Luke acts in accordance with Yoda’s teachings in Return of the Jedi, not against it:

“There are already people sending me letters saying Jedi don’t take revenge; it’s not in their nature; it’s just not the way they are. Also, obviously, a Jedi can’t kill for the sake of killing. The mission isn’t for Luke to go out and kill his father and get rid of him. The issue is, if he confronts his father again, he may, in defending himself, have to kill him, because his father will try to kill him. This is the state of affairs that Yoda should refer to. And then Luke says, “I don’t think he’ll kill me because he could have killed me last time and he didn’t; I think there is good in him and I can’t kill him.” (Lucas to Kasdan 1981 IN: Making of Return of the Jedi by Rinzler, 2013)

The impact of Vergere's perspective... well, that depends on the other writers. I can't really say. We'll see where they go with it. I'll only say this: the Expanded Universe is a living thing. Like other living things, it must either grow (learn, adapt, change) or die. Fans grow up. Star Wars can grow with them. There'll always be room for Ewoks and Young Jedi Knights. There'll always be room for the headlong happy-go-lucky space-opera of Daley's Han Solo trilogy. The Expanded Universe can also offer stories for fans who want to move into a more challenging realm. It's a big place. And it's still getting bigger.

You might notice that Stower explicitly said the fate of his contribution to the Expanded Universe will depend on “other writers” not George Lucas and his vision.

(Around 2002)

[apptowonder]

Beautiful City -- A Theological Ramble on “Godspell”-- Pt. I: Jesus Musicals and Christology

So I had a lot of thoughts and F e e l i n g s about the 2011 revival of Tebelak and Schwartz’s musical Godspell and I wanted to share some of them here. This is gonna be a pretty disorganized piece (hence the title), but I hope that whether you’re a fan of the show or a reader of my work, you might find at least one thing that resonates or helps you understand why I feel the way I do about this show. To give my thoughts some structure, I’m turning this into a blog post series. This first piece will be divided into two sections: a longer section on theology and a shorter section on personal response.

1. Godspell vs JCS, and a Brief Diversion on Christologies

So one easy hot take is to compare and contrast Godspell with Jesus Christ Superstar, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that came out around the same time. Conservative Christians at the time were not too fond of either of them, but both found a strong audience among secular theater-goers and (presumably) progressive Christians. Tebelak, fwiw, was gay and a lifelong Episcopalian who had considered the priesthood at various points in his life. Webber is an agnostic who says he finds Jesus fascinating as an important historical figure. These facts aren’t meant to favor one writer over the other (although I will explain below why I personally prefer Godspell), but knowing these facts does do some to explain why these shows ended up the way they did while covering very similar subjects.

The general consensus I’ve heard and would agree with is that Superstar is about the interpersonal relationships of Jesus the man, and especially his relationship with Judas Iscariot. Godspell also brings the relationship between Judas and Jesus to the foreground, but Godspell (true to its name) is ultimately more about the gospel itself. About Jesus’ teachings, about the community of love that he created, and a little bit about Jesus the Son of God.

In this respect, I’d like to propose that these two musicals unintentionally illustrate two historic approaches to understanding the person and work of Christ. Jesus Christ Superstar loosely follows a theology of Christ which is aligned with the historic Antiochene school of Christology. 

A. Antioch

(St. John Chrysostom, famed Patriarch of Constantinople and student of the Antiochene School)

The Catechetical School of Antioch was a loose affiliation/institution of theologians who trained many of the prominent clergy in the Eastern churches. It emphasized the distinction between the divine and human natures of Christ. It was most invested in historical readings of Scripture. While the orthodox Antiochene scholars certainly confessed that Christ was both divine and human, they tended to state that the divinity of God the Son was not always accessible to Jesus in his humanity. Taken to the extreme, some Antiochenes embraced the heresies of Adoptionism* or Nestorianism**. The value of this school, however, was the investment in an accessible, anthropological reading of Scripture, and an understanding of Christ that emphasized the transcendence of the Son of God and the humanity of Jesus as one of us.

Jesus Christ Superstar approaches its subject matter with a mixture of both pathos and cynicism (intentional or otherwise). Taking place entirely during the Passion, none of the theophanic moments of Christ’s life are depicted (eg, the Baptism of Christ or the Transfiguration).*** We see only his humanity, and it is a very pitiable humanity. I say this not as a criticism, clearly the show succeeds at producing a great deal of sympathy and poignancy for its characters. The presence of the divine in the show is nearly absent. The Last Supper in both shows is not given its full doctrinal weight, but Superstar tones down the spiritual significance of it more than Godspell does. In Superstar, Jesus notices the indifference of his Apostles and says “For all you care, this could be my body that you’re eating, and my blood you’re drinking.”

Jesus and Judas both talk to God, and imply that God answers, but we are only shown one side of the conversation. When Judas commits suicide and is singing the titular number to Jesus on the cross, he does so as a disembodied spirit whom Jesus is not able to interact with. Rather than the traditional account of Jesus going down to Hades and preaching to the dead, here the dead preach to a human Jesus who is doing God’s will but may or may not be able to hear them. All in all, Webber (though obviously not himself an Antiochene by confession) is showing us a Jesus who is primarily a glorified human with a relationship to God, who is nonetheless not especially divine in his capacities, outlook or body. Where he is connected to divinity, there is a clear separation between his divinity and his humanity

B. Alexandria

(St. Cyril, famed Pope (Patriarch) and student of the Alexandrian School)

The Catechetical School of Alexandria was the other major center for Christian theological training in the early Eastern Church, located at Alexandria in Eastern Roman Egypt. It traced its lineage all the way back to St. Mark, but was most strongly influenced by the teachings of Pantaenus, Origen, St. Clement and St. Cyril (above). The Alexandrians were invested in allegorical readings of Scripture, and the use of “pagan” philosophy in the service of theology. They also emphasized the union of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ. Orthodox Alexandrians recognized that Jesus’ divinity and humanity were not consumed by each other, but they tended to suggest that Christ’s divinity and humanity were always operating simultaneously and synergistically, that it was impossible to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. Taken to the opposite extreme of the Antiochenes, some Alexandrians embraced the heresies of Monophysitism (i) or Apollinarianism (ii). The value of this school was an investment in a polyvalent, mystical approach to Scripture, and an understanding of Christ that emphasized the saving power of God’s own divinity taking on our humanity in an immanent way. 

Godspell is more invested in the ethical impact of Jesus’ life and ministry. However, it is more willing to blur the lines between the divine and human world for the sake of its message and framing of Christ. We see the Baptism of Christ on stage, and although there is no explicit depiction of the Holy Spirit or the Father, the scene is preceded by John the Baptist’s messianic song, “Prepare Ye,” and is woven in and around the song “Save the People,” a song where Jesus proclaims the coming salvation that God the Father will work in their midst for the benefit of all. This happens while the new disciples are also being baptized and receive a flower signifying their membership in the community forming organically around Christ. Jesus’ presence is charged with the eschatological promise of God being in their midst, which is a more Alexandrian reading that blurs the line between where Jesus the human ends and Jesus the divine begins.

I argue that we also see in Godspell an allusion (perhaps unintentional) to the Transfiguration. There is a scene where the stage lights are off and the disciples hold wave glow sticks around Jesus in rhythmic patterns while Jesus talks about the light within. Even if this is not an intentional reference, the visual language of the scene lends itself to the light of God being present in the midst of the people.

Before the Last Supper, Jesus sings the ballad “Beautiful City,” encouraging the disciples to continue the beloved community after his death. While it is a secularized approach in some ways, there is again that blurring of humanity and divinity where the promised city is coming, is beautiful, marked by eschatological hope, and is still “not a city of angels, but a city of man.” During the Last Supper, Jesus prays the traditional Jewish blessing over the bread and wine, and then has lines which mirror the words of institution for the Eucharist. Whether one reads it as a memorial or a sacrament, Tebelak and Schwartz choose to frame the Last Supper as an intentional institution on Jesus’ part. The table is also bathed in light and smoke, implying divine energy or grace gathered around Jesus and his disciples.

On the cross, in Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus’ last words emphasize his human obedience to the Father: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” In Godspell, the words are less literal to the Gospel text, but they lean towards a more divine-human reading of Jesus. He says, “Oh God, I’m dying,” and the disciples respond, “Oh God, You’re dying,” with the dual meaning of expressing despair and acknowledging his divinity. Jesus’ exclamation here is also very in line with Alexandrian theology, which emphasized the idea that if Christ is truly God incarnate, then a part of God did truly die on the cross, and not just a human who represented God or who was carried through his existence by God.

Finally, though both shows are ambiguous on the Resurrection in order to place their emotional cores front and center (iii), Godspell arguably has the more explicit allusion to the Resurrection. While Superstar ends with Jesus’ death on the cross and a final overture, Godspell ends with a stirring reprise of “Prepare Ye,” intermingled with “Long Live God,” again the messianic expectation. Jesus’ body is lovingly carried by the disciples offstage. In the production I saw, they carried him upwards into the house, where a bright white spotlight was shining. Though both the Antiochenes and the Alexandrians would naturally endorse faith in the Resurrection, in a secularized context, the Alexandrian-flavored Christology of Godspell is more comfortable with depicting Jesus’ divinity infusing and breaking into the human sphere of action. As such, Godspell is more comfortable than Superstar with at least alluding to the most awe-inspiring feat of Christ the God-man, his rising from the dead.

2. Conclusions and Pointing to Pt. II

In the end, the earnestness, exuberance and eschatological hopefulness of Godspell won me over, whereas after Jesus Christ Superstar I was impressed but not moved in the same way. The interplay between grounded radical ethics, unironic joy and tenderness, and the sprinklings of luminosity and divinity in Godspell spoke to me profoundly as a queer Orthodox Christian. Watching a filmed version of the stage show, I felt a visceral sense of connection to my faith and my God, one that echoed various points along my spiritual journey where my heart “burned within me” like the disciples on the Emmaus road. Where I was surrounded by friends who were seeking Christ, and the presence of God was an animating energy of love, hope and joy in our midst. In the next part, I want to pick up the Alexandrian lens to begin to talk about what moved me about this musical in particular, drawing on my specific experiences as a queer Christian, as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and as someone who inhabits both of those identities simultaneously.

*Adoptionism is the belief that Jesus was entirely human at his birth and that the divinity of the Son of God came and inhabited him at his baptism or later.

**Nestorianism is the belief that Jesus had a human nature and a divine nature, but that the two were entirely separate from one another, with the divine nature operating the human Jesus without experiencing any of the human things Jesus experienced directly.

***The Transfiguration is not explicitly named as such in Godspell. However, I will argue later that it does make an appearance.

(i) Monophysitism is the belief that Jesus had one nature which was an indistinct mixture of humanity and divinity. This belief is not to be confused with its orthodox Alexandrian counterpart, Miaphysitism, which is the belief that Jesus has one nature where the humanity and the divinity are united but do not dissolve into each other. The latter doctrine is the belief of the Oriental Orthodox Churches.

(ii) Apollinarianism is the belief that Jesus had a human body but a divine soul/mind.

(iii) Jesus Christ Superstar’s emotional core being the pathos of the character relationships, Godspell’s emotional core being the poignancy and ethos of the gospel and the community of disciples.

[derstheviking]

The Critique of Ideology

Slavoj Zizek claims that “it seems easier to imagine the ‘end of the world’ than a far more modest change in the mode of production, as if liberal capitalism is the ‘real’ that will somehow survive even under conditions of a global ecological catastrophe”. Zizek asserts the existence of ideology as “the generative matrix that regulates the relationship between the visible and non-visible, between imaginable and non-imaginable, as well as the changes in this relationship.” Accordingly, this matrix can be seen when an event that represents a new dimension of politics is misperceived as the continuation of or a return to the past, and the opposite, when an event that is entirely inscribed in the existing order is misperceived as a radical rupture. “The supreme example of the latter, of course, is provided by those critics of Marxism who (mis)perceive our late-capitalist society as a new social formation no longer dominated by the dynamics of capitalism as it was described by Marx”.

Zizek writes in The Sublime Object of Ideology, “The most elementary definition of ideology is probably the well-known phrase from Marx's Capital 'sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es' - ‘they do not know it, but they are doing it’. The very concept of ideology implies a kind of basic, constitutive naivete: the misrecognition of its own presuppositions, of its own effective conditions, a distance, a divergence between so-called social reality and our distorted representation, our false consciousness of it. That is why such a 'naive consciousness' can be submitted to a critical-ideological procedure. The aim of this procedure is to lead the naive ideological consciousness to a point at which it can recognize its own effective conditions, the social reality that is distorting, and through this very act dissolve itself. In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are', of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification."

Rex Butler states in his essay “What is a Master-Signifier?”, “Thus, in the analysis of ideology, it is not a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the ‘facts’, with the one that is closest to being least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already - whether we know it or not - made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on.” He goes on to explain that in 1930s Germany the Nazi narrative won out over the socialist-revolutionary narrative not because it could better explain the crisis of liberal-bourgeois ideology, but because it best insisted that there actually was a crisis, of which the socialist-revolutionary ideology was apart, and could be accounted for as a ‘Jewish conspiracy’.

Zizek, on the topic of liberal modernity’s ultimate lack of a “transcendent guarantee, of total jouissance” (in his discussion of fantasy), he lists three methods to cope politically with this negativity: utopian, democratic, and post-democratic. Democracy, according to Zizek, is the political equivalent of “traversing the fantasy” as it “institutionalizes the lack itself by creating the space for political antagonisms”. Post-Democracy, which is the postmodern condition of apolitical consumerist fantasy, tries to neutralize negativity. Finally, the utopian fantasy (which Zizek asserts is primarily totalitarian or fundamentalist) creates the conditions for the elimination of the negativity in absolute jouissance. Stavrakakis’ book ‘The Lacanian Left’ which criticizes Zizek as interpreting Lacanian psychoanalysis through the politics of disavowal, argues essentially that the category of “democratic freedom” is the solution to the negativity of jouissance in the political sphere, because it takes up the notion of Other jouissance, as the expression of antagonisms under liberal capitalism, operates “to detach the objet petit a from the signifier of the lack in the Other…to detach (anti-democratic and post-democratic) fantasy from the democratic institutionalization of lack, making possible the access to a partial enjoyment beyond fantasy.”

If “traversing the radical fantasy” is the ultimate ethical act, it remains viable only because of the ongoing practices and beliefs of the subject. The traversal of fantasy is an “active, practical intervention in the political world”. “Traversing the fantasy” is different from everyday speech and action in that it challenges the “framing sociopolitical parameters”, “touches the Real”, and as Foucault maintained, there is an ontology of utterances as pure language events, “not elements of a structure, not attributes of subjects who utter them, but events which emerge, function within a field, and disappear.” Foucault, like Deleuze, develops an immanent philosophy which is post-historicist, but time still plays a crucial role. Deleuze speaks of the micropolitics of ‘becoming’ rather than the usual transcendental ‘being’, following from Bergson the concepts of multiplicities and pure virtuality.

Zizek criticizes Hardt and Negri’s ‘Empire’ for not bringing out the line of argument that the proletarian revolution proceeds from the internal antagonisms of the capitalist mode of production; in this sense he calls their analysis of postmodern globalized finance capitalism to be short of the “space needed for such radical measures”. The reason Zizek is critical of ‘Empire’ precisely is because what is clearly needed in the critique of ideology today is “to repeat Marx’s critique of political economy”, to speak of his hypothesis that the key to social change resides in “the status of private property”, “without succeeding on the temptation of the ideologies of “postindustrial” societies”. Zizek while asking whether ‘Empire’ remains pre-Marxist, interestingly the argument continues that it is actually more of return to Lenin than a return to Marx - for Marx is loved on Wall Street, for he “provided perfect descriptions of capitalist dynamics”. But Lenin on the other hand, Zizek claims, embodies the “concrete analysis of the concrete [historical] situation”. However, unlike Lenin, they do not deplore the notion of “universal human rights”, speaking of a need for the recognition of global citizenship, a minimum basic income, and the reappropriation of the “new” means of production. So why does Zizek consider ‘Empire’ a return to Lenin? Is it because “Benevolent as it is, this will necessarily end in a new Gulag!”? Not exactly, and rather the demand for scientific objectivity means the moment one seriously questions the existing liberal consensus they are accused of “abandoning scientific objectivity for outdated ideological positions”. Furthermore, he accuses them of a “lack of concrete insight [which] is concealed in the Deleuzian jargon of multitude, deterritorialization, and so forth.” and calling their analysis “anticlimactic”.

In the now infamous Slavoj Zizek vs. Jordan Peterson debate, Zizek confronts the threat of a post-ideological postmodernity with the statement that Trump himself is a postmodernist, and is creating the ground for a new postmodern conservatism in which facts are rejected, truth is relative. He on the other hand calls Bernie Sanders an old-fashioned moralist. Zizek, however, is not a postmodernist or post-structuralist himself but builds on Lacan, Hegel and Marx to develop a diagnosis for the conditions of post-modernity that threaten rational discourse. In a lecture with Jean Baudrillard, a woman provides a geological metaphor of modernity and postmodernity riding over each other like tectonic plates. Modernity in this case represents the Marxist paradigm of class struggle, while what is taken up seriously in post-structuralist analyses is the notion of identity formation as opposed to class struggle.

[fratresdei]

Spirituality Defined

Where did our working definition of spirituality come from? How has it evolved over centuries of research, ritual and belief? Philosophy grad Brayte Singletary stopped by the blog this week to take us on deep dive into the ever-elusive meaning of spirituality. Enjoy!

What even is spirituality? Rachel asks that very question in one of this blog’s first posts, and gives her answer there too. It’s one of the fundamental questions of spiritual direction. Those seeking or giving spiritual direction are liable to stumble on it sooner or later, through education or reflection. This post is one of those trips—and since it’s a bone we may need help chewing, I attempt to shine some Sirius-light on the best research I could dig up. Hopefully it’s illuminating.

In 2016 some researchers in Germany and the U.S. published the results of a formal investigation into the meaning of spirituality [A]. They based their investigation on a 2011 survey of Germans and Americans that asked, among other questions, “How would you define the term ‘spirituality’?” Approximately eighteen hundred different definitions came back, about forty percent German and sixty percent American. Quantifying these samples, the researchers started running statistical analysis.

First they looked for categories of response, grouping similar categories together and narrowing the list down to just those that make the most sense of overall response patterns [B]. They found that ten basically distinct concept clusters [C] come under the heading of spirituality, almost always in some combination [D]:

A keenly-felt connection to and harmony with nature, humanity, the world, the universe, or the whole of reality.

Dependence on, relationship to, or union with the divine; a part of religion, esp. Christianity.

A search for one’s higher or true inner self, meaning, purpose; knowledge of these things; attainment of peace or enlightenment, esp. in terms of a path or journey [E].

Holding and daily acting according to ethical values, especially in relation to others, one’s community, or humanity; a moral way of life [F].

Faith or belief in transmundane forces, energies, beings, a higher power, gods or God.

A noncommittal, indefinite, but intensely emotional, maybe loving sense that there is some thing(s) or being(s) higher than and beyond this world, this life, or oneself [G].

Experience and contemplation of reality and the truth, meaning, purpose, and wisdom, esp. if considered beyond scientific or rational understanding, inexplicable and indemonstrable.

Awareness of and attunement to another, immaterial or supernatural realm and its denizens (spirits, angels, ghosts, etc.); feeling their presence; using special techniques to perceive and interact with them (tarot, crystals, seances, etc.).

Opposite religion, dogma, rules, traditions; unstructured, irreverent, religious individualism.

Individual or private religious practice; prayer, worship, or meditation; relationship-deepening or connection-fostering personal rituals and devotional acts. 

Doing the same grouping and narrowing to unearth anything deeper, they found that all of these ten clusters fall somewhere on three scales, which they call the dimensions of spirituality [H]:

I. Vertical vs. horizontal general terminology for transcendence [I]

II. Theistic vs. non-theistic specific terminology for transcendence

III. Individual vs. institutional mediation of transcendence

Finally they found that this analysis confirms their larger research team’s theoretically-grounded hypothesis that the root definition of spirituality is:

Individually-mediated, experience-directed religion, esp. among religious nones [J]: i.e., religion oriented away from mediation through institutions, dependence on organizational structures and absolute authority claims, toward the immediacy of firsthand experience, emancipatory independence and value relative to the individual [K].

All this verbiage cries out for explanation. But for the moment let’s step back to marvel at our good luck in having research like this. Its conclusions about the meaning of spirituality—at least the ten concept clusters and three scales—came through something nearer experimentation in a laboratory than reflection in an armchair. In philosophical jargon, this argus-eyed approach was a posteriori rather than a priori; in anthropological jargon, emic rather than etic. As a result, we better see wrinkles in the meaning of spirituality, including internal inconsistencies that a cyclopic definitional scheme might smooth over, e.g., as a part of religion (2) and as opposite it (10).

For starters then, we see that this definition of spirituality is tripartite: “individually-mediated”, “experience-directed”, and “religion”. Since spirituality here is a kind of religion, religion is the core concept, so we’ll take it from there. That will lead to the three scales of spirituality, ‘vertical vs. horizontal terminology’ (I), ‘theistic vs. non-theistic terminology’ (II), and ‘individual vs. institutional mediation’ (III). “Individually-mediated” will come along with the third. That leaves only “experience-directed” and closing remarks. Now where did I put my patience for dry exposition…?

If none of it jibes with your own sense of spirituality, all the better! We all have much to learn, and outliers—you whose lives are led under stones yet unturned by science—have much to teach us.

First “religion”: For these researchers religion is any socially constructed system of symbols and rituals that interprets transcendent experience in ultimate terms [L]. This applies even to people who don’t consider themselves religious, including those who would self-describe as “spiritual but not religious”. But precisely what do transcendent experience and ultimate mean here? Transcendent experience—or simply ‘transcendence’—is any experience of “distance and departure from [the] everyday”, above and beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience [M]. More than just extraordinary, it exceeds our expectations of life and the world as we know it, e.g., by excelling in its class or defying classification (almost) altogether: the weirder and more wonderful, the more transcendent. So transcendent experience is often what we would traditionally call ‘religious experience’, but they make the distinction that it only counts as religious if on interpretation it’s cast in ultimate terms. Turning to “ultimate” then, here this is really elliptical for ‘of ultimate concern or importance to a person’. The ultimate is what “gives depth, direction and unity to all other concerns”, as theologian Paul Tillich puts it, from whom they draw the idea—e.g., our answers to basic questions about the world and our place in it [N]. Bringing these ideas together, a merely transcendent experience becomes genuinely religious when we see in it something all-important to us, and it becomes full-fledged religion when we build around it a symbolic-ritualistic framework of beliefs and practices. One’s framework needn’t be grand or widely-shared: it might be a slim private affair, like a single-person tent that’s as easy to pitch as to pack up and carry. Likewise a person can bring to transcendent experience a religious interpretive lens, or craft one afterwards just to come to terms with it. Either priority fits.

Before we move on to the next concept, let’s clear up some potentially misleading language in this definition of religion. To start, “socially constructed” here doesn’t necessarily mean ‘made up’, ‘fake’, or otherwise unreal. It just means that if nobody thought or talked about religion, there wouldn’t be any: its existence depends on its exercise. Likewise the claim that it “interprets” transcendent experience doesn't imply that it therefore misinterprets it. Indeed the opposite may well be true. Even elementary sense perception needs interpretation to become understanding: naked experience unclothed by categories or classifications is at best a muddle—e.g., in rounding an unfamiliar corner in the city or in coming out without warning on an open expanse in the country, when the sudden change of scenery produces a visual experience of undifferentiated shape and color, it’s all just optical nonsense until reason and intellect, as it were, catch up, and organize this sense data into a coherent picture: only then when interpretation goes to work does one finally know what she’s looking at. Although we may at times be apt to make meaning where there is none, often enough we find it right where it belongs. So this definition doesn’t debunk religion; it merely says that, assuming it has this experiential basis, it’s imbued with the meaning we give it, veracious or fallacious.

The terminology of our interpretation, i.e., our way of using terms for and ideas about the ultimate, admits of a couple distinctions. These are also the first and second scales of spirituality above (I-II): vertical-horizontal, and within that, theistic and non-theistic [O]. The former measures the metaphysical distance transcendent experience crosses. The latter measures the unity and personality and sometimes also the clarity of the religious object. Vertical terminology characteristically evokes what we would traditionally call the transcendent, e.g., God and heaven—generally, the otherworldly. It aims at things other than and over this world and oneself in it. Horizontal terminology tends the other way, toward the traditionally immanent, e.g., nature and humanity. Leaning this-worldly, it aims at things in and of the world and the world itself. Notably, whereas the vertical is often explicitly religious, the horizontal’s religiosity can even escape the notice of the person professing it [P]. Within this distinction is that between theistic and non-theistic terminology. The apparent presence of God, gods, and god-like beings or forces maps an important area of vertically transcendent experience, as their apparent absence does an antipodean area of horizontally transcendent experience. But this also sheds light on terminology between vertical and horizontal. This family of views sees the ultimate as in neither our world nor a world beyond, but rather in “a world behind”, i.e., behind and beneath the world’s surface appearances [Q]. Typically this is non-theistic, e.g., about ghosts, spirits, energies, or forces.

A gloss of the third scale (III) now moves into view, and with it “individually-mediated”: Individual-institutional mediation of transcendence measures the directness or indirectness of a person’s access to transcendent experience, i.e., the extent and power of the gatekeepers standing in her way. As these researchers put it, “Institutionalized mediation says that ... there is no other way to transcendence than through the church, sacraments, and priests; that there is no other truth than the sanctioned teachings; and that the ultimate concern is determined by the institution and its tradition” [R]. By contrast, and often in vociferous reply, individual-mediation says, “there is no or very little mediation of transcendence, but rather the experiential immediacy of the individual; there are no claims of absoluteness, but the individualistic evidence of experience; there is no or very little organization or structure" [S]. In this way, against so-called organized religion’s usual mediation by institutions, esp. hierarchical structures operating them, spirituality favors an unpatrolled, gates-wide-open setup. Yet it doesn’t follow from such independence that spirituality is therefore a lonely pursuit—though “flight of the alone to the Alone”, i.e., hermetic mysticism, is surely right at home here too [T]. We’re able to have experiences with others, just not for them, so it can be equally possible to pursue direct experience of transcendence with others as by oneself.

Lastly, “experience-directed”: This means that, whereas transcendent experience might play no ongoing role in a religion’s usual exercise, e.g., as none other than an oft-remembered historical event, in spirituality it takes the lead. Ritual, symbol, etc., become at best aids to pursuit of transcendence, but at worst impediments. Therefore spirituality in its purest, i.e., barest, form may focus on such experience exclusively; and since “directed” here means both ‘directed to’ and ‘directed by’, the religious ideal may resemble an upward spiral of being led from transcendence to transcendence by transcendence. Still this isn’t to say that spirituality takes direction from nothing else, or that by focusing on transcendence even exclusively, the rest of familiar religion vanishes. A spiritual purist may disavow religious side projects in pursuit of her wonted mode of transcendence, or she may simply subordinate them to it as various means to this end. Yet while she might style herself as therefore unencumbered in her pursuit of raw experience, her religious interpretive lens remains ever-present, however unwittingly. It must, or else her chase after the spiritual would be of the wild-goose variety. E.g., someone undergoing a crisis of faith might discover to her horror that she’s no longer able to participate in her favorite religious exercises, since the vinegar of doubt now spoils every well from which she used to draw joy. Since her experiences can’t mean what they used to, they can’t be what they used to either.

Let’s sum up with a little illustration. Consider this spiritual foil: one an atheistic nature lover, the other a Catholic anchoress. The former’s approach is thoroughly horizontal and non-theistic. She takes regular hikes to feast on natural beauty and sublimity, but deems it all mere serendipity in a chaotic cosmos. She’s a proficient adventurer, as comfortable with friends as without. She might not spurn a Beatrice to guide her through some earthly paradise, but her trust would be that when she came face to facelessness with wild abundance, her delight would need no shepherd. The abundance itself would call out of her everything necessary for its appreciation. In this way she mediates her own pursuit of these experiences. Their ultimacy for her comes not only from her denial of the otherworldly, but also from her judgment that nature is intrinsically, i.e., ultimately, good—or at least, that immersion in it stirs and sustains her is. Conversely, the latter’s approach is thoroughly theistic and vertical, and manifestly ultimate. She spends her life in solitary prayer. Sometimes during contemplation of the divine she has ecstatic visions or auditions. But whatever happens, her daily goal is total abandonment to God. Still even with the individuality of her self-mediating lifestyle, it retains considerable institutionality. She holds fast to piety towards the Church, its orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Yet despite this rigid adherence to ecclesiastical authority—or, she would say, because of it—, she lives as a recluse whose sole aim is attaining union with Him Whom she worships as Transcendence Itself. Both in their disparate ways are individually-mediated, experience-directed religion.

Here we are then! We’ve gained at long last the real meaning of spirituality, right? Well, maybe: We have to trust not only that German and American ideas of spirituality are the same as everybody else’s, but also that the notions of these particular people are the same as those of other Germans and Americans [U]. Moreover we must take for granted that what they put in Tweet-sized writing when a survey bluntly asked them their opinion is the same as what they think all the time, even when they’re not thinking about what they think [V]. Still science has yet to master the art of mind-reading. So even if this isn’t the definitive definition of ‘spirituality’, it’s got my money for our best guess yet.

In Rachel’s post, she’s wise to the width of variety, saying, “Spirituality has been defined and redefined throughout human history, and it is now my intention to shout yet another definition to the abyss.” For her, its definition is: “the practice of deriving any amount of meaning from any event, thought, or activity.” Looking back at the ten concept clusters above, this bears striking resemblance to parts of (3) and (7). She’s in good company. Clinicians and care professionals typically promote this conception: e.g., psychological measures of wellbeing that account for spirituality usually cast it in these terms, viz., purpose and meaning. Though some have wondered whether this confuses spirituality with a part of mental health, the findings above resoundingly vindicate it as an important part of the spiritual puzzle [W]. If they also solve that puzzle, hopefully they do so more in the spirit of Ariadne’s clue out of the Labyrinth than Alexander’s sword through the Knot. At the very least, such research is a waypoint on the path to understanding. If none of it jibes with your own sense of spirituality, all the better! We all have much to learn, and outliers—you whose lives are led under stones yet unturned by science—have much to teach us. So it’s still worth asking:

What does spirituality mean to you? Please share your definition in the comments.

Unpack what spirituality uniquely means to you through the ancient practice of spiritual direction. Schedule a free online session through the link in the comments.

Endnotes:

A. Eisenmann, Clemens, et al. “Dimensions of “Spirituality”: The Semantics of Subjective Definitions.” Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, ed. by Heinz Streib & Ralph Wood, Jr., Springer, 2016, p. 125.

B. Op. cit., pp.129-35. Before grouping and narrowing them together and down, these were the forty-four recurring categories they found:

Faith and belief, believing, belief system

Connectedness, relationship, in touch with, harmony

Individual, personal, private, subjective

Everyday, daily life, way of life, to act

Values, (higher) order, morals, karma

God (also the Father, Lord, Creator, the Divine)

Unspecified transcendent: something bigger, beyond, greater; “may be”

Feeling, emotion, intuition, empathy, heart, love

Within, self, higher Self, inner core, essence

Seeking, path, journey, reaching, to evolve, to achieve

Awareness, consciousness, sense of, feeling a presence, in tune

Supernatural, non-material, cannot see or touch

Transcendental higher power/forces/energy

Thinking about, to understand, to reflect, contemplation

Relation to the world, nature, environment, universe

Cannot be explained or scientifically proven, beyond understanding

Higher/beyond/greater/other than oneself/humans/this life

Relation to others, community, all humanity, humankind

Experience, sensory perception Spirit and mind

Rest (i.e., the remainder of uncategorized responses)

Practices, to practice (one’s faith), music, prayer, worship, meditation

(Inner) peace, enlightenment and other attitudes and states of being

Guided, destined, controlled, saved, healed, dependent

Part of religion, Christian, biblical

All-connectedness, part of something bigger

Meaning and (higher) purpose, questions and answers

Transcendental absolute, “unity of existence,” omnipresent and indiscriminate, the one

Otherworldly, beyond this world, “spiritual” realms Acknowledge, to recognize, to accept, to realize Vague, unclear, unsure; bullshit, fantasy, hocus pocus Without rules, tradition, norms, dogma, structure, directions (21) Something else than religion, without worship

Energies, vital principle, ghosts, angels and demons, spirits

The truth, true nature of existence, wisdom, reality (4) Jesus, Christ, Holy Spirit, the Son Greater being/person, deities, gods Soul

Universal category, basis of mankind Esoteric, occultism, spiritism, mystic, magic (39) Deal with, interest in, engagement, focus

Part and beyond religion Obedience and devotion Life after death.

C. I borrow the notion of concept clusters from passing familiarity with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language.

D. Op. cit., pp. 137-8. Paraphrase.

E. Whereas spirituality conceived of as a part of religion (2) fits nicely with its mostly premodern history as just that, the conception immediately following of it as a journey to one’s true inner self (3) sits well with modern social movements toward individualism and subjectivism: op. cit., p. 146.

F. Spirituality conceived of as living out one’s values may partly underlie the self-identification “spiritual but not religious”. Here ’spirituality’ primarily indicates an ethical concern that being merely ‘religious’ doesn’t—not just talking the talk but walking the walk: ibid. More clearly this identification involves some combination of clusters with (9).

G. The much-maligned vagueness of spirituality’s meaning may come from this conception of it as a sense of something indefinite and beyond: ibid. N.b., philosophers of language usually distinguish vagueness, i.e., unclear meaning due to imprecise extension over borderline cases, from ambiguity, i.e., unclear meaning due to polysemy—having multiple meanings.

H. Op. cit., p. 143. Paraphrase. Their dimensions are: (I) mystical vs. humanistic transcending; (II) theistic vs. non-theistic transcendence; and (III) individual “lived” experience vs. dogmatism.

I. I use “transcendence” and “transcendent experience” interchangeably throughout this post. Though there may be other forms of transcendence than experience, talk of ‘transcendence’ as an event and not, e.g., as a divine attribute, usually means ‘experience of transcendence’, i.e., ‘transcendent experience’.

J. Religious nones get their names from those who answer “none” to demographic polls asking their religious affiliation. In other words, they are the religiously unaffiliated. Cf. unchurched.

K. Op. cit., p. 148. Paraphrase. Their definition is privatized experience-oriented religion, following research by other members of their team: Streib, Heinz, & Wood, Jr., Ralph. “Understanding “Spirituality”—Conceputal Considerations.” Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, ed. by Heinz Streib & Ralph Wood, Jr., Springer, 2016, p. 9. Ensuing fns. refer to that ch.

L. Op. cit., p. 11. Cf. Emile Durkheim’s definition of religion, popular esp. in U.S. religious studies depts.: “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them”: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. trans. Carol Cosman, Oxford Univ. Press, 2001, p. 46.

M. Op. cit., p. 10.

N. Op. cit., p. 11.

O. Strictly speaking, non-theistic terminology could be either vertical or horizontal, while theistic terminology is by definition vertical. As it happens however, or at least according to this research, our thinking about spirituality typically separates out the theistic and vertical from the non-theistic and horizontal.

P. Op. cit., p. 12.

Q. Ibid.

R. Op. cit. p. 14.

S. Ibid. They also mention here sectarian middle mediation “through a prophetic and charismatic person”.

T. Famous last words of the Neoplatonic classic: Plotinus. Enneads. VI.9.11. trans. Andrew Louth, qtd. in The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys, Oxford Univ. Press, 1981, p. 51.

U. Cf. WEIRD bias (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic), an ongoing problem for representative sampling: Henrich, Joseph, Heine, Steven J., & Norenzayan, Ara. “The weirdest people in the world?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 2-3, 2010, 61–83. In fact there were some statistically significant differences between German and American responses: American definitions of spirituality were more Christian or otherwise traditionally religious, mentioning Jesus and the Holy Spirit much more, but God only a little more—presumably because theism goes beyond Christianity. Still when they did mention God it was more often in Christian terms of a personal and sovereign lord. Likewise they mentioned faith and belief much more often, and this was more often faith or belief in something beyond, higher power(s), god(s), or God (5). Their notions of spiritual power were also further outside and over themselves, as in talk of guidance or obedience. By contrast German definitions of spirituality were warier of dogma and authority, whether religious orthodoxy or scientific consensus. They mentioned experience, as opposed to belief, more often, and were generally more esoteric, occult, and magical in their terminology, talking of the otherworldly in more universal but impersonal or abstract, terms. They were also more critical of spirituality, oftener complaining of its vagueness or even dismissing it as bovine fecal material. Still despite all this the researchers noted that American and German definitions were much, much more alike than different. These differences should therefore be understood as in emphasis, not substance. Their considerable overlap, striking in itself, forms the basis of the ten concept clusters and the three scales.

V. We must also assume that the scientific method deserves our confidence, and that the concept of spirituality, if not spirituality itself, is amenable to investigation by it. Other assumptions include those about word meaning, natural kinds, and other hot topics of debate in the philosophy of language and science—all of which would take us far afield of the present discussion. May curious readers experience transcendence of this post!

W. Eisenmann, Clemens, et al., p. 147.

[perkwunos]

… Whitehead never offers us such a movement back to the virtual as we find in Spinoza and in Deleuze. Indeed, Whitehead specifically declares himself to be inverting Spinoza in this crucial regard. In Whitehead’s own philosophy, “Spinoza’s ‘modes’ now become the sheer actualities; so that, though analysis of them increases our understanding, it does not lead us to the discovery of any higher grade of reality… In such monistic schemes [as Spinoza’s], the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, ’eminent’ reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents” (PR 7). In Whitehead’s resolutely pluralistic ontology, on the other hand, there are only modes or affections, the actual occasions. There is no substance, nothing behind the modes or affections, for them to be modes or affections of. This is because of Whitehead’s effort to get us away from “subject-predicate forms of thought.”

Nearly all the Spinozists and Deleuzians I know would reject Whitehead’s account as a misreading of Spinoza, a claim that Spinozian substance, or God (Deus sive Natura) is somehow transcendent, when in fact it is entirely immanent. (Bell promises to explain in a subsequent post how Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge, or his ascent from the actual back to the virtual, can “be understood in a way that doesn’t reintroduce transcendence”). However, I want to suggest that Whitehead is right. Even if it escapes transcendence, Spinozian substance is still a subject for all the predicates, a monism behind the pluralism. Whitehead, by his own admission, offers a philosophy that “is closely allied to Spinoza’s scheme of thought.” But if Whitehead does not quite set Spinoza on his feet (as Marx claimed to set Hegel on his feet, and as Deleuze claimed that Nietzsche had set Kant on his feet), he does unhinge Spinoza (in the way that, according again to Deleuze, Kant unhinges the classical notion of time, or casts it, in Shakespearean parlance, out of joint). He does this by dethroning substance, or — to put the matter back into Bell’s formulations with which I started this posting — by in a certain sense deprivileging the virtual, or at least rejecting the ethical priority of the virtual in Spinoza (and in Deleuze as well).

One can see this most clearly, I believe, by contrasting Whitehead’s God with Spinoza’s God. Whitehead secularizes God (PR 207) more radically and extensively than Spinoza does; Whitehead’s God, like Spinoza’s — and also like Deleuze/Guattari’s “body without organs,” as I argued in my book — is indeed associated with the virtual rather than the actual; but for this reason, God in Whitehead is curiously marginalized (as Substance in Spinoza is not). God operates for Whitehead as a sort of repository of the virtual, in that he envisages all “eternal objects” or potentialities indiscriminately (this is the “primordial” nature of God). God also functions as a sort of Bergsonian memory, in which all the past is preserved (this is the “consequent” nature of God). But by decentering God, and by splitting him up in this manner, Whitehead disallows anything like a return (a re-ascent?) back to the virtual from the actual. In this way, Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge is for Whitehead a kind of idealist illusion that needs to be rejected: the point being that it is still idealist, even if it is entirely immanent and doesn’t imply any recourse to transcendence. …

If we speak of the virtual, instead of God, then the point is that Whitehead’s often-rejected (even by his admirers) theory of potentialities as “eternal objects” should be seen as a secularization of theories of the virtual such as we find in Deleuze (with its roots in both Spinoza and Bergson). …

Steven Shaviro, Whitehead vs Spinoza & Deleuze on the virtual