There is a silent power in acquiescing, enduring and suffering. In my own personal mythology this is the mystery of the transformative power of salt…

Or as Jung paraphrased: “give up what thou halt and then thou wilt receive”.

Or my personal favourite: Odin swinging on the tree…

Teacher: “But you still desire not to desire!”

Hehe, but as they say, ‘The Fool who persists in his Folly becomes Wise.’ And Buddhism seems to have a great affinity for Folly.

Just a few thoughts leading from what John said about Crowley and the concept of transcendence through the ‘Abyss’.
The Qabbalistic Tree of Life shows us the Magicians ‘path of return’ from Malkuth to Kether (10 to 1). At Tiphareth (6), the Magician has the choice to follow the remaining Sephirot to the top, or to take a shortcut straight to Kether, via the 13th Path, or ‘The Abyss’. This experience is symbolised by the 10th AEthyr of the Enochian system, Choronzon. A rather entertaining and enlightening account of Crowley’s encounter with this AEthyr can be found in his ‘The Vision and The Voice’.

You ‘cannot take anything with you across the Abyss’, ego and the false self are stripped away to prepare for dissolution into Kether (Divinity, Ecstasy).

I think it was Gurdjieff who said, ‘Pain is Dynamic, Pleasure is Static.’
Which also puts the Christian ideal of ‘transcendence through sacrifice’ in a rare light.

Yet a foundation is necesary, a known and well defined ego needs to be built and fortified before it can be successfully destroyed. Crowley’s A.`.A.`. System of Initiation is set out as such (6 Degrees, corresponding to the Sephirot, once completed the Magician is then considered ‘prepared’ to cross The Abyss.)
A snake shedding its skin must form a new skin over its body before shedding the old one, or it dies.
In that sense the ego can be seen as a tool for purification of the self. A map of ‘known unkonowns’ that we can use to distinguish the false self from what remains.

93 93/93

Stewart

I haven’t read Contributions to Philosophy but it sounds extremely exciting.

H

With Yggdrasil as the ground of the “not-ground” of ego dissolution, we can be certain that the gods and goddesses are with us along the journey. Any fear is transformed into the “not-fear” of affirmation – Nietzsche had a taste of it in the ecstasy of amor fati. For Nietzsche was one who was in love with the Norns and left all mortal women behind.

Yggdrasil contains the Greek meaning of metra – cosmic measure is what sustains being. In the historicised awareness that human consciousness is, the spatio-temporal metra of Yggdrasil keeps the dissolution of madness at bay. Pagan polytheology, too – hence your emphasis on human existence (Dasein) as the “vessel” for a higher reality is in fact what grounds the impermanence of life. When a tantric Buddhist looks at Norse cosmology, he or she may preceive Yggdrasil as an European form of mandala. It is the mandala that prevents an adept from bursting asunder with all the tantric energy that he or she has raised, for in its centre is the “house” of being. Yggdrasil symbolises the Norse understanding of the house of being. Heidegger says it is language; I say it is more than language: a language of a certain kind, of specific as well as unnameable power, which we call myth (mythos). And through the creation of art, such as music, Heidegger extols the power of mythopoiesis.

The ancestors of northern Europeans were, in my view, as familiar with the mythic way of thinking (in the sense of reflection on being) as the ancient Greeks. (Today we are all struggling against what Heidegger calls the “onto-theology” of Christian metaphysics.) Yggdrasil was the central, most profound symbol in Norse understanding. The All-Father Odin himself was supposed to have obtained the wisdom of the runes from a sacrificial relationship he established with it. Yggdrasil also refers to a profound dimension of temporality, in that the three Norns – Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld – together weave the destiny of gods, giants and humans. Destiny, for Heidegger, is the “destining” of being – how each and every one of us is going to exist in the “being-towards-death” (Sein zum Tode)that is inseparable from Dasein. It can be either a passive consumption of time – the inauthentic life of distractions – or a fusion of will and life, where our mortal Dasein can become a vessel for the gods. In Contributions to Philosophy (1936-1938), which was written in secret, away from the prying eyes of the Gestapo, Heidegger talks about attunement to the sacred as the guardianship of being for the gods, so that they may one day return and live among us again.

A “hardening” of the self in the form of an “armoured” ego, or a “cultivation” of the self in the form of a “refined” ego – the latter can be used for occult enhancement, as in ceremonial magic – is a choice, perhaps never fully voluntary, that an individual, or a community, makes while always already “swimming” in the river of life. We can continue to draw heathen inspirations from Norse mythology and folklore as we negotiate our ways in the increasing complexity of postmodernity, and in face of the dire challenges that it poses (which include the question of species survival – ours).