I agree with you that Nietzsche’s celebration of gift giving is one of the high points of his thinking. I wonder if he (or anyone) could ever really live up to that virtue to the extend that he demanded though ;)

Nietzsche relied on the kindness of his friends a lot – especially the theologian Franz Overbeck. After Nietzsche’s death Overbeck evaluated his close friend as a Christian with a conscience! This view is shared by many Christian scholars to this day.

My interest in Nietzsche is primarily based on the potential for a pagan revival in philosophy through his book “The Birth of Tragedy” and his life-long exaltation of the Dionysian.

A positive aspect of Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is his assessment of giving as the main virtue – what he called the “bestowing virtue”. The spirit of Gebo is resonant here, I think. It is also common sense: giving is what sustains life and makes community-building possible. But this is also the spirit of the New Testament: we need to evaluate the positive aspects of Christianity fairly. This is why before state politics got involved, heathens and Christians got on and intermarried in Scandinavia, because the better of the two traditions evaluated each other in terms of one’s deeds.

“I have to wonder about the claims of wizards who live on welfare, and don’t contribute articles because they can’t afford a second hand computer, or squander their talents on drugs and self pity. Even if we choose to live economical lives, we still have the choices and abilities to achieve things that matter [!!]. This usually entails a minimum level of material attainment. So some material ambitions are a good thing, if the results support some worthwhile works.”

I just added this to make clear that I don’t find Nietzsche’s extreme gap between his thoughts and his lifestyle worth emulating. Living a ‘normal’, status quo life on the one hand (with a job and family) doesn’t exclude being an extraordinary individual who is engaged in the process of ‘Become-Who-You-Are’! I don’t want to draw a too big dichotomy here. But sometimes the lifestyles of creative ’self-actualizers’ and the happiness of the mass (a.k.a. ‘nesting-and-digesting’) can be quiet huge. The former lives with the far bigger risk to fail (= being not succesful).

One thing though because this is something a non-magician friend (he’s just a plain atheist and materialist and I love him as he is!) said once, too: “Something I wonder: how many of the truly successful and powerful are actually magicians?”

Again, here ‘truely succesful’ should be defined clearly. I mean, was Nietzsche succesful compared to a professor at university or a business man? Probably he looked like a cranky, sick and old weirdo? However, are we reading the books of the ’succesful’ professors of that time or books about the lives of ’succesful business men of that time OR do we read Nietzsche’s ‘Zarathustra’?

This list is endless: Do ’succesful people’ (in a normal sense) make music like John Balance (Coil) or write books like William Burroughs or live outsider lives like Austin Osman Spare? Do they have bands and think about weird things like Chaos Heathen ideas? ;) Would you and me be happy with a ‘normal’ job? (Actually, are you?!?) How much I have Become What I (truely) Am will be my measurement of how ‘truely succesful’ I really was, when the time has come to shed my mortal shell, I believe. I’m also not disputing anything you have to say here. It’s just interesting to think about all this. And just for the record of fearless honesty: There’s nothing I fear more than living a ‘normal’, status quo life. Which brings me back to:

“…we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. … We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others; but we were a long time finding out WHERE TO DIRECT OUR COURAGE. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate–it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the ['truely succesful'?] weakling…”

Just thoughts… Throw in what you think!

Something I wonder: how many of the truly successful and powerful are actually magicians? Most of them would probably laugh their asses off at this stuff. Milton Erickson could have kicked the metaphysical crap out of Aleister Crowley any day, and he was an avowed skeptic!

Perhaps we “magicians” are all just having ourselves on with these dreams of power and transformation.

Or did I just go too far in saying that? Ooooohooohhhh!!!

What do they say? Nothing is True, All is Permitted? Who said that again?
;)

As to ‘the weak’ in Nietzsche’s concept (as I read him), I think he is talking of a special ‘type’ that Xtianity has bred. “Wisdom says: be strong!”, as Crowley pondered (AL II, 70). Xtianity posed that „wisdom says; be weak!“ in some sense and thus destroyed the heroic virtues (to me this isn’t about a ‘militant mindset’, but rather Fearless Honesty, the ancient truth of the divine spark in man, the strength to go beyond one’s boundaries, the will face truth even if it hurts or threatens one’s ego-identity etc.). Weakness, for me is, a certain state of mind (“If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.” – AL II, 30 & 31) – not being a beggar or a thief. “… it may be that yonder beggar is a King. A King may choose his garment as he will: there is no certain test: but a beggar cannot hide his poverty. ” (AL II, 58) Well, you know what I’m talking about.

Nietzsche’s intriguing concept of going ‘beyond good and evil’ is part the Dagazian paradox, as seeking between two extremes to find a ‘third’ that exists beyond them is the essence of illuminated Oðinnic Consciousness. To realize that good and evil are only attributions of the human mind rather than actual, objective ‘things’ is certainly a difficult challenge that has to be met, a fine line where many will fail, I suppose. It’s a great challenge to live by one’s own law (creating / finding your own values), because it implies the danger of failing and/or becoming a real asshole (and some of them use Nietzsche as a justification). It’s also why magic is nothing for the faint-hearted and weak and why some so-called ‘magicians’ or self-proclaimed ‘Masters’ will prefer to believe in fairytales for little children like the Wiccan ‘threefold law’ and ‘karmic debt’ or whatever.

The main point is that I don’t really care what Nietzsche „really meant“. I interpret Nietzsche’s statements in magical terms and would even apply him in terms of Soul-Lore. When he speaks of “the will to power” I think of the Hamingja, for example, not how to control people or deny the weak.

As I said recently in a post here: In the Heathen Germanic system of magic this will to power manifests differently (more like Assagioli’s Transpersonal Will or Crowley’s True Will). I don’t understand these concepts in soley in a Nietzschean superman fashion. as you know, it is rather the power of the soul that I seek and the ability to let the different ‘parts’ of the soul communicate with eachother. A dynamic balance of Nietzsche’s will to power and de Ropp’s will to transcendence might be another hint. However, „The Antichrist“ has been a necessary antidote to my Catholic upbringing. A good cure against wounds in the soul and fresh mountain air for the elitist (not the fascist! :-) inside of me. “If you feel guilty, you will steal again”, the late Dr. Hyatt used to say.

These days it all seems like a bit of a “put on” to me, like he’s playing at a certain identity rather than being it (and by the time he wrote the Antichrist he seems to have lost his grasp on the levity and playfulness of Zarathustra, to his cost).

But I guess given his crippling health problems and near-total isolation it figures that he would idealise the notion of the splendidly isolated overman. I think that if he had possessed as much power as he seems to think he did then he could have tolerated an endless swarm of beggars and theives and not needed to insist on denying the weak…the powerless have nothing to give, and Nietzche’s power seemed to end whenever he put down the pen.

When, filled with passion, we write, we tend to make the uncertain absolute and the merely-passing into an eternal now. Sometimes Nietzsche seems to understand that; sometimes he seems to have no idea at all.

Just some thoughts, thrown out in a tentative spirit.