Month: July 2009

More on my Extremism

Following on from my last post I had a curious realisation. You see, at various points I’ve felt that the myths of Siegfried/Sigurd provide for me some important clues into my personal evolution. Yet I’ve never been able to find my way into applying them in my life.

Certainly Jan Fries’ interpretation of the myth of Sigurd in Seidways has been a helpful stepping stone. Fries sees Sigurd’s discovery of the speech of birds after tasting the heart of Fafnir as symbolic of an attainment of expanded consciousness, a kind of enlightenment, an initiation into the Big Picture. I find this a very helpful interpretation, and relevant to many of my own interests and concerns, but somehow until now I’ve stopped at that point.

Recently the next step opened, however: I noticed that the meaning of the name Siegfried is “Victorious Peace” or more specifically, “Victorious Frith”. Sigurd means “Victory Guard” – presumably a guardian of the peace. This seems inescapably parallel to the Sufi moniker Ali Salaam that I wrote about in my last post: a fusion of fury and tranquillity. Rather Odinnic actually.

The old word frith bears some consideration: frith is a time of fruitful, ordered and harmonious activity. It is bountiful. It is a very active, creative peace. There might even be some conflict mixed into it, however it’s a constructive conflict rather than a gratuitous one. The idea of such a state being victorious in my life is very enticing.

So, hilariously, I find my Sufi interests providing the perspective I needed to advance in my understanding of my Heathen path. I love the fact that the tapestry of wyrd is always more subtle and complex than we expect or might like to think!

What does this ideal of Victorious Peace mean for my life? I’m taking it in two directions – and folks, really this article provides a model for how we can use mythology as a tool and vessel for our own growth so please take what you read here and put it to good use … and feel free to tell me about how that goes for you, too.

Acknowledging Harigast

Harigast is one of the names of Odin and means something like “Ruler of the Host”. It goes deeper than this, actually – Harigast is a provoker and inciter, spurring the war band up into paroxysms of berserk fury. As such he is capable of achieving tremendous things, but potentially also capable of causing terrible things. To me this is a very primal aspect of Odin.

In my reflections I’ve come to see this aspect of Odin as coming through me when I get on my furious, self-righteous high horse. I find something about which to feel outraged, something about which I am free to adopt a self-justifying posture, and then I scythe contemptuously through any and all dissent. Yet as I explained in my last post, allowing myself to give fuller vent to this tendency has not been nearly as satisfying or helpful as I expected. You need more than just brute force to make your way in the world.

Yet it would be false of me to deny this part of myself too. I cannot just repress this Righteous Destroyer – as Phil Hine says, “a god denied is a devil created”. I think that this Odinnic force causes all kinds of problems when repressed into ugly, twisted shapes – indeed, one of the problems of Christianity is that it encourages us to ignore this aspect of our Heathen heritage, allowing it to become subverted and twisted and vile.

To that end I have decided to adopt the name Harigast as a creative pseudonym. The purpose of doing this is not to conceal my identity (I’m happy to publicly declare that Harigast is a literary vehicle). However in doing this I can (when appropriate) explicitly disclaim responsibility for the opinions expressed and/or the manner of their expression. I can allow Harigast expression in a contained, safe form by doing this. This allows me to cleanly acknowledge this aspect of my nature without causing monumental trouble.

Sometimes permitting something you have struggled with causes the need to express it to abate. Giving oneself permission to transgress one’s ego is sometimes so satisfying that the need to transgress subsides. I’m not sure if this will happen with Harigast, but I certainly feel more at home with myself since I prepared his portrait and wrote him a short bio:

harigastHarigast is fury incarnate, a self-righteous proclaimer of violent truths and armoured dogmas, usually provoked by, and in opposition to, self-righteous proclaimers of violent truths and armoured dogmas. Self-appointed avenger of wrong-doing,

Harigast all too easily becomes the very breed of monster he seeks to demolish. His seething outbursts can be beautiful, but also disastrous – as much to Harigast as to his intended victim!

Harigast is a very forceful character and often sneaks hiddenly into Henry’s words… so while many opinions are expressed in his articles Henry, even if he wrote them, does not necessarily agree with them!

Harigast wrote a piece that will appear, Gods willing, in the next issue of Hex Magazine. I’m also making him my co-blogger for this journal; hence we now both have a little bio.

Being Present

While away travelling I realised that I rush terribly. I am rarely focussed on being where I am; I’m always running off into the arms of one thing or other. Extreme emotional trips – such as fury or vulnerability – can be a trick I use to avoid facing the realities of my actions and circumstances.

I’ve therefore started meditating regularly after not doing so for a long time. I’m working with Buddhist techniques of mindfulness to attend more to the automatic assumptions and attributions I make about myself and others (particularly the crappy negative ones).

And I’m trying to hold onto the notion that you have to “go slow to go fast”, as an old mentor used to tell me repeatedly. This last bit of wisdom is really potent. I think it is an essential ingredient for feeding frith. Holding to it is part of achieving victory in the task of building and guarding a victorious frith-stead.

It’s a slow process, bringing about this change. Nevertheless I am whole-heartedly committed to this ideal.

Sometimes I find myself writing about matters spiritual in order to avoid having to actually live in the endless ordinary dilemmas of the present moment (in fact a little bit of that is happening right now as I type this). Consequently it might be that in future I will put less energy into this journal and more into spiritual practice itself. I invite my readers to get more active with their commentary in order to make up the shortfall ;-)

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My Extremism

Well – I’m back from my travels. More to come on that soon I’m sure – and on the many reflections I’ve been gifted with while away. In the meantime, here is a piece I wrote while away:

***

I have two quite different, competing tendencies, two incredible extremes of personality.

One is reflective, compassionate, curious, gentle and calm. It tends towards a kind of oceanic rationality which is clear and logical without being alienated or over-abstract. This mode is also a source of great vulnerability and at times fear. It does not tolerate uncertainty, pain or the threat of suffering well. It is childlike and deeply mortal. It deals in the stock of uncertainty, complexity and ecology.

The other extreme I’ve come to refer to as my Righteous Destroyer. It’s distilled fury, rage, destructiveness and brutality but always through a lens of moral absolutism. It is convinced of its own point of view and no matter whether my point of view is sensible or not I lose access to my reason when this mode dominates.

I just want to tear apart all those I disagree with, refute them with a violence that does me no credit. I also see this extreme in many other people and hate them for it. I disown my violence and project it onto anyone I disagree with. This mode is overwhelming and transpersonal – a kind of raging blind deity pulsing through me.

This second mode does not activate in response to every issue or circumstance. It has specific triggers, usually in relation to my recurring feeling of being excluded or unrepresented in the communities to which I gravitate. Or else it reacts out of my perception of injustice, wrong-doing, ignorance, or poisonousness.

For example I’ve allowed it to show very slightly in my writings about the Rune Gild, Alain de Benoist and on matters political. But I work hard to tone my rants down because the seething, righteous hate that rises up in me translates very badly into articulated opinions.

I’ve come to be troubled by the rigid dichotomy I experience between these two modes. I’ve come to be troubled by how violently, destructively reactive I become, often in quite arbitrary situations.

In the last year I’ve experimented with holding back my rage less in various inter-personal situations because I felt I was wimping out by restraining myself. The results have been much less satisfying and productive than I thought they’d be, however.

I am learning that while Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot is one thing, in real life a measure of subtlety, wit, self-control and patience is necessary and not just a cop out.

Often the fury comes over so quickly that I don’t actually bother to check if my chosen target is actually promulgating a perspective I object to or not. I just decide they’re wrong and go for the jugular.

Of course the irony is that I hate those who adopt similarly absolutist and violent postures. And I’m troubled by my extremity. Even if I totally disagree with another opinion, my fury almost completely disables my ability to apply reason and reflection and hence disrupts my ability to challenge or oppose in any constructive or effective fashion.

Or at the very least, the fury overshadows the reasoned and considered aspects of my thoughts and words so that these are diluted in their impact. And I risk coming across like a jerk. All in all: not good!

My fury is a deep ego attachment and, hilariously, it’s an attachment I often unleash in the name of ego destruction! Somehow I doubt this is even the sort of thing ego-oriented magicians have in mind.

When I was initiated into the Al-Jerrahi Sufi Order I was given the magical name Ali Salaam by the then circle leader. I don’t know if she was conscious of the full aptness of the name when she selected it, but it seems highly relevant to this schizoid furious/gentle split.

Ali was one of Muhammad’s generals and really the Islamic version of a berserker; he was much feared. One day he found himself in battle with a foe. He disarmed his enemy but before he could manage the coup de grace his foe spat in his face. Ali stopped, stunned by the epiphany that he was consumed utterly by hatred.

So disgusted then was he with his own actions that he threw his sword aside and stalked from the battlefield. I don’t think that was the end of his military career, but it was the end of his use of linear, brutal fury to further his ends. He resolved to be more respectful of the nature of violence, to act from a more holistic point of view.

Hence the name Ali Salaam – a peaceful warrior or a warrior of peace. I think this name captures my divorced extremities and also articulates a way by which I might yet be able to negotiate a healthier relationship between them. Kalima sure had me figured out when she named me.

That I would mention this point about Sufism should underscore the fact that, for me, these extreme modes are a psychological and spiritual conundrum. I am less and less able to tolerate these contradictions and hypocrisies, the way that they limit me.

When I am in my gentle mode I risk becoming ineffectual and paralytic. When I’m furious I am not fit for human engagement. Insofar as I tend to suppress the latter I also sap my will, passion and courage. I need to bring the two tendencies into communication so that I can freely move between them, weave them together, become whole.

How to achieve this goal? There are several aspects to the challenge:

1) Not letting my Righteous Destroyer run away with me;
2) Not slipping into the shadows of my gentle self;
3) Bringing the two modes into communication and connection.

I’ve decided to try to expose myself more to things that might normally drive me mad, but with a mindful attitude, a determination to stay present and not be swept away. Both gentle, retiring passivity and all-destroying fury are means of avoiding being present.

Perhaps by making more of an effort to be present, to go beyond only seeking out evidence that supports what I already believe (a universal human failing), by choosing to act on my beliefs out of wisdom and confidence and not fury or fear – perhaps I can come closer to reaching a détente between my two extreme modes of being.

I want to emphasis that these comments only apply to me. They do not imply a criticism of how anyone else conducts themselves. I recognise in myself a limitation, a disjunct in my nature, along certain lines. These motifs might have very different meanings for others.

In a sense both gentleness and fury are expressions of my transpersonal channel and my ego. I’m coming into a more nuanced experience of these phenomena as I get beyond hard dichotomies around self and other. I believe reality emerges out of the middle; subjective and objective are post hoc abstractions we derive after the fact.

So around another rung of the crazy spiral of Being and Mystery we go. I hope I can detach from my attachments and reintegrate into a healthier way of relating to myself and to the world around me.

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Definitions and Distinctions

“Spectacles, Testicles, Brandy and Cigars. You are all now Discordian Popes and absolutely infalliable, so don’t take any more crap from anybody.”

Reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy on my plane ride back from Paris after midsummer, I came across a set of political definitions so wonderful that I just couldn’t resist sharing them. And, since I’m secretly a repressed plagiarist, I’ve decided to load up the page with another four fun quotes that I just happened to have laying around. 5 quotes in honor of late, great Robert Anton Wilson. 2 by Bob and 3 by some other random weirdos. Hopefully we’ll be able to melt a few minds with this lot.
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FREE MARKET: That condition of society in which all economic transactions result from voluntary choice without coercion.

THE STATE: That institution which interferes with the Free Market through the direct exercise of coercion or the granting of privileges (backed by coercion).

TAX: That form of coercion or interference with the Free Market in which the State collects tribute (the tax), allowing it to hire armed forces to practice coercion in defense of privilege, and also to engage in such wars, adventures, experiments, “reforms”, etc., as it pleases, not at its own cost, but at the cost of “its” subjects.

PRIVILEGE: From the Latin privi , private, and lege , law. An advantage granted by the State and protected by its powers of coercion. A law for private benefit.

USURY: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group monopolizes the coinage and thereby takes tribute (interest), direct or indirect, on all or most economic transactions.

LANDLORDISM: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group “owns” the land and thereby takes tribute (rent) from those who live, work, or produce on the land.

TARRIFF: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which commodities produced outside the State are not allowed to compete equally with those produced inside the State.

CAPITALISM: That organization of society, incorporating elements of tax, usury, landlordism, and tariff, which thus denies the Free Market while pretending to exemplify it.

CONSERVATISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which claims allegiance to the Free Market while actually supporting usury, landlordism, tariff, and sometimes taxation.

LIBERALISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which attempts to correct the injustices of capitalism by adding new laws to the existing laws. Each time conservatives pass a law creating privilege, liberals pass another law modifying privilege, leading conservatives to pass a more subtle law recreating privilege, etc., until “everything not forbidden is compulsory” and “everything not compulsory is forbidden”.

SOCIALISM: The attempted abolition of all privilege by restoring power entirely to the coercive agent behind privilege, the State, thereby converting capitalist oligarchy into Statist monopoly. Whitewashing a wall by painting it black.

ANARCHISM: That organization of society in which the Free Market operates freely, without taxes, usury, landlordism, tariffs, or other forms of coercion or privilege. “Right” anarchists predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to compete more often than to cooperate; “left” anarchists predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to cooperate more often than to compete.

Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy

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“Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?”

“Uh…that’s a trick question.”

“It is the key question, dear Wyoming. A radical question that strikes to the root of the whole dilemma of government. Anyone who answers honestly and abides by all consequences knows where he stands-and what he will die for.”

Wyoh frowned. “ ‘Not moral for a member of the group-’ ” she said. “Professor…what are your political principles?”

“May I first ask yours? If you can state them?”

“Certainly I can! I’m a Fifth Internationalist, most of our Organization is. Oh, we don’t rule out anyone going our way; it’s a united front. We have Communists and Fourths and Ruddyites and Societians and Single-Taxers and you name it. But I’m no Marxist; we fifths have a practical program. Private where private belongs, public where its needed, and an admission that circumstances alter cases. Nothing doctrinaire.”

Capital punishment?”

“For what?”

“Let’s say for treason. Against Luna, after you’ve freed Luna.”

“Treason how? Unless I knew the circumstances, I could not decide.”

“Nor could I, dear Wyoming. But I believe in capital punishment under some circumstances…with this difference. I would not ask a court; I would try, condem execute sentence myself and accept full responsibility.”

“But-Professor, what are your political beliefs?”

“I’m a rational anarchist.”

“I don’t know that brand. Anarchist individualist, anarchist Communist, Christian anarchist, philosophical anarchist, syndicalist, libertarian,-those I know. But what’s this? Randite?”

“I can get along with a Randite. A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame . . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world . . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.”

Mannie: “Hear, hear!” I said. “‘Less than perfect.’ What I’ve been aiming for all my life.”

“You’ve achieved it,” said Wyoh. “Professor, your words sound good but there is something slippery about them. Too much power in the hands of individuals—surely you would not want . . well, H-missiles for example—to be controlled by one irresponsible person?”

Prof: “My point is that one person is responsible. Always. If H-bombs exist—and they do—some man controls them. In terms of morals there is no such thing as a ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.”

…Wyoh plowed doggedly into Prof, certain that she had all answers. But Prof was interested in questions rather than answers, which baffled her. Finally she said “Professor, I can’t understand you. I don’t insist that you call it ‘government’-I just want you to state what rules you think are necessary to ensure equal freedom for all.”

“Dear lady, I’ll happily accept your rules.”

“But you don’t seem to want any rules.”

“True, but I will accept any rules you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

“You would not abide by a law that the majority felt was necessary?”

“Tell me what law, dear lady, and I will tell you whether I will obey it.”

Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

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WHAT IS MUTUALISM?

A one-sentence answer is that mutualism consists of people voluntarily banding together for the common purpose of mutual assistance. Clarence Swartz, in What is Mutualism?, defined it this way:

A Social System Based on Equal Freedom, Reciprocity, and the Sovereignty of the Individual Over Himself, His Affairs, and His Products, Realized Through Individual Initiative, Free Contract, Cooperation, Competition, and Voluntary Association for Defense Against the Invasive and for the Protection of Life, Liberty and Property of the Non-invasive.

A character in Ken MacLeod’s The Star Fraction gave a description of socialism that might have come from a mutualist:

…what we always meant by socialism wasn’t something you forced on people, it was people organizing themselves as they pleased into co-ops, collectives, communes, unions…. And if socialism really is better, more efficient than capitalism, then it can bloody well compete with capitalism. So we decided, forget all the statist s**t and the violence: the best place for socialism is the closest to a free market you can get!’

Mutualist.Org: Free Market Anti-Capitalism

__ ___

“I think the best bet for ourselves and for the human race is to completely ignore the fuckers, hope to fuck that others also ignore them and just go ahead and build the world we want to live in. Let’s create our own world…”

Helene sat down and answered, “easier said than done, but I agree that is what we learn from most of the magical movements of our time. Wiccans say ‘ An it harm none, do what thou wilt.’ In Chaos magic, there’s a slogan ‘Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted,’ which comes from the Arabs I believe.” She took a mouthful of beer before continuing. “In Thelema they say, ‘Do what THOU WILT shall be the whole of the law.’ If the left-wing anarchists could make peace with the right-leaning libertarians…Well, if enough of us set our minds to it and followed our hearts instead of the rules, we could build the world we want to live in and transform the world we were born into. Simple.”

Sean Scullion, Liber Malorum

__ ___

“Well I sometimes call myself a libertarian but that’s only because most people don’t know what anarchist means. Most people hear you’re an anarchist and they think you’re getting ready to throw a bomb at a building. They don’t understand the concept of voluntary association, the whole concept of replacing force with voluntary cooperation or contractual arrangements and so on. So libertarian is a clearer word that doesn’t arouse any immediate anxiety upon the listener. And then again, libertarians, if they were totally consistent with their principles would be anarchists.”

Robert Anton Wilson
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Hail Eris! Viva Loki! All Hail Pope Bob Wilson!

http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html

http://www.mutualist.org/id24.html

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