Comments on: Baum Und Teufel

By: Henry

Henry — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:49:54 +0000

The idea of the devil presented here is very influenced by the Sufi understanding of Satan as the principle of forgetfulness which leads to the illusion of separation.

I suspect that Fafnir might be a nice example of this consciousness in Heathen lore.

By: Matt Anon

Matt Anon — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:18:53 +0000

Just a great text! You use the word ‘devil’ in a very idiosyncratic way. First I thought about, if this kind of devil could be Crowley’s Choronzon – but surely this isn’t it. Then I thought about the neo-satanic use of it. But even this isn’t really it. In a very strange way I think that the modern school of thought underlying capitalism matches the best with your notion of the devil. This philosophy is known as Utilitarianism and has such known exponents as John Stuart Mill. This still isn’t really it. So, I still don’t know. Volksfreund’s last question intersts me a lot. A further qustion I’d like to pose: what could symbolise this principle (you call devil here) in the Norse sagas and/or mythology?

By: Volksfreund

Volksfreund — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:18:38 +0000

The paradox of the present is presented here as a spiritual challenge – to attain non-duality while at the same time being aware of the selfhood of the self when the self itself is a construct of memories, impressions and the entire tapestry of emotions that make the best or the worst of humans! Is the present actually time? Fully dwelling in the present, consciousness is not “aware” of the passage of time. Is verdandi, then, the ground of Norse mysticism? Or the abyss? As you write in this entry, being conceals itself when we try to grasp it as this or that being – and for Heidegger that the Christian God (or the mainstream Christian understanding of God) is the most pronounced metaphysical example of this grasping. By praying to God the wrong way, we in fact hear only the voice of our own ego. Such example can be found among some New Age-oriented neo-pagans, who treat the gods and goddesses as supernatural tools to satisfy their mundane desires.

Back to the question of the present: if it is not part of the passage of time, then it is the gateway to eternity that mystics of many traditions refer to, often in rapturous language. Looking at this problem another way, the notion of the “passage” itself can perhaps be discarded. We don’t need to wear clothes when we go swimming in the ocean of eternity.

I enjoyed reading the many Zarathustrian moments – in the Nietzschean sense – of your thought-provoking piece.

For many years I grappled with the esoteric understandings of the demonic in the West, a fine example of which can be found in the introspective writings of the great German mystic Jakob Böhme (1575-1624). Although Böhme was nominally a Lutheran, he was seen as a heretic in his time as he tried to break down the dogmatic dualism between God and the Devil by declaring that the demonic was necessary to the evolution of the human spirit even if it was to be consciously rejected and transcended as a matter of spiritual will. In Böhme’s holistic scheme, the Devil has a role to play in human growth as we get closer to God in our spiritual quest.

In my study of Crowley, I was most interested in his orientation towards congressum cum daemonae. Goetia, in Crowley’s system, is actively cultivated as the embracing of the Satanic. Yet in the modern history of Western occultism, Crowley’s own spiritual dissolution was testimony to the danger of complete surrender to chaos, which the demonic was associated with in ancient civilisation. Is the general fear of the demonic a sign of suppression of an ancient memory? Can there be a role for the demonic in invocation of the spiritual ancestry of humankind?

In the 1950s Heidegger struggled, through his reading of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl, with the distressing notion that modern humans reflected the going under (Untergang) of a decaying kind. Is not the “forgetting of being” Heidegger’s harshest critique of modern metaphysics, which has come to uniformly structure “thinking” in the manner of dualistic grasping?

How do we read the Norse sagas in such a way that these philosophical issues can be adequately addressed?

By: Henry

Henry — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:18:18 +0000

I also need to say:

Noose what thou Noose shall be the whole of the Noose;
Noose is the Noose, Noose under Noose.

By: Henry

Henry — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:18:02 +0000

Thus the serpent seeks its tail.

;)

By: Clint

Clint — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:17:47 +0000

The entire universe is alive and everything is interconnected.

And if I was ever to call something God, it would be this Living Universe.

And if the Universe is alive and Everything is interconnected, then I am the Devil.

And God help me.