Ego and Dark Arts Practitioners [Archive]

Naomi

01-25-2008, 11:26 PM

:D

I think ego is the friction required to cause change to occur - m1thr0s you have never been a stranger to the necessity of violent acts, these are destructive and curative for all manner of magickal and societal ills, to me, ego is the evidence of the presence of dark sections of mind requiring putrescing capillaries of cosmic mind that absolutely must be devoured and reintegrated properly into the great black cosmic serpent (again Annta=endless) so I have for quite some time regarded the ego as another tool in the toolset, so to speak, one that has to be used properly. I don't like all this rubbish about destroying the ego or casting it out, it is a foly of man to think that he is not one with the universe and the universe itself does not have a god of ego - in Hinduism it is Ananta. Ananta is the threshold into the uncharted realms of darkness and death, beyond this entire universe.

afk.

m1thr0s

01-26-2008, 01:16 AM

I don't like all this rubbish about destroying the ego or casting it out, it is a foly of man to think that he is not one with the universe and the universe itself does not have a god of ego...not only this...but it also cannot be physically accomplished. It has never been accomplished. It never will be accomplished. It is as classical a "fool's errand" as anything that has ever been defined.

People who espouse this crap like to point to mysticism and very often to the Buddha as the perfect example of this so-called accomplishment, but the Buddha does not address "ego"...not once in his entire life does he discuss the merits of so-called ego-death. It is nowhere in his language if you take the time to look, but has been piled on by others long after the fact.

The Buddha does however talk a great deal about Ignorance and especially something called Unconscious Ignorance. In the language of modern psychology this amounts to the language of "Imprinting" and there are volumes of evidence to show that our "imprints" greatly impact our choices in life and have a lot to do with our likes and dislikes and our strengths and weaknesses, abilities and inabilities etc. An improper or bogus imprinting amounts to an erroneous self-image and thus an imbalanced "ego"...but the culprit is not ego...it is just as the Buddha outlined...it is Ignorance, and Unconscious Ignorance most of all...

Occultists who would be aware individuals would do well to not get too wrapped up in attempting to accomplish logically impossible tasks, but rather learn to tackle those tasks which may in fact be possible, no matter how improbable they may seem at first glance. There does not exist even one example in this entire world of an individual who has died to his/her ego and yet remains a functional human being. It cannot be done...it has never been done...it will never be possible to achieve this.

What is possible is to redirect the ego. To aim it at something more powerful, more universal in its long-range implications. It is a well known fact that common car thieves think of themselves as master car thieves...people who think of themselves as master poets very rarely become common car thieves...

m1thr0s

Naomi

01-26-2008, 01:42 AM

I often wonder at how stupid people can get passing around second hand information - as if they never actually sat down to read first hand accounts of these teacher's lives from an actual book but just collected glamourous opinions from the internet or New Age glossaries.

Buddha especially is used to justify reams of rediculous assertions, focusing mostly on sex and pleasure, just like what happened with Jesus's writings.

I really fucking hate this shit because it infects everyone with this guilt trip that seems to just glue itself onto socially normalized minds. Satanism is the prybar that says

LOOK ITS OK TO FUCKING ENJOY YOURSELF GET OVER IT

but be smart....

Anyways the only problem with ego is it's a new invention, I don't totally buy into freud's model, I think it's a bunch of socially stigmatized fantasy that will be discarded in the distant future if humans even survive that long.

In a way Satanism seems to glorify the ego but I almost want to just chuck the whole stupid model and say "Uh what's an ego?"

edit:

I also had a really bad experience tonight. I get in this frames of mind where everyone is, of course a child of the universe, ,everyone has the divine spark and has to be treated with compassion. Yet simply being here on this earth is just asking for trouble, like there's this huge knot of entropy or chaos settled right into the fabric of space, so you simply must not react passively all the time. I feel very strongly that my darker side is necessary for this time and place and the wrathful deities especialy in Tibetan Buddhism are appropriately popular. Kali is not as well liked in India amongst the Brahmins - they actually won't hang her picture in the conservative homes, but she was very famous with the Thugee cult of course and especially Siva (her consort as Parvati the earth goddess) is popular with the untouchable class since he does not place value on caste. Siva spends a great amount of time fulfilling his own needs and thinks of nothing else but fucking pussy when he's not being an austere pylon of death and destruction (or recreation, to be nice) no one calls him egotistical.

It's all bastardized through these filters of morality that permeate everything, I cannot believe some of the shit that constrains my own mind simply from being exposed to the wrong sort of social programming, and it's a world problem, not just Western or Eastern - there's a whole lot of selflessness that is causing serious problems....which is what makes it so insidious I suppose. People want ot be helpful but they are just nurturing the decay.

m1thr0s

01-26-2008, 01:50 AM

Freud's *agenda* and Life's agenda are several continents apart...If you can strip it down to its barest essentials it's not so bad. This is what most of his brighter pupils did and they went on to establish a much broader "Science of Mind" than he alone ever clearly imagined possible...

m1

Naomi

01-26-2008, 02:32 AM

I suppose so, I really enjoyed Jung and Freud when I was in highschool but not so much anymore, i really hate psychology, actually....it's done nothing but harm to my psyche...

m1thr0s

01-26-2008, 09:40 AM

Freud suffered as much or more from elitest-asshole disease as any of the marinated pork rinds he was going out of his way to impress with his shiny new "science of the mind". On a humanistic level he was a total write-off and as a physician he would have been tossed in jail for malpractice by even the laxest standards of today but for all of that he was capable of certain strokes of real genius. Providing academia with its own internally coherent "holy trinity" in the form of Id - Ego - Superego was such a stroke and was the single most compelling construct of anything and everything he ever devised. His entire life's work would have amounted to exactly nothing without it...yet when you really break it down, it is hardly all that original...only the language itself is unique. So in many ways his entire genius consisted of being a skillful packager and marketing person...the basic trinity he asserts has been asserted for thousands of years already. In one sense, it simply follows a naturally occurring timeline apparent in all human experience from Infant to Adult to Elder. The doctrine he introduced was only original at the level of its rhetoric and has largely been rejected at the level of its specifics, since the only very useful way to interpret Freud at the pragmatic level is metaphorically.

So I agree that the whole language of ego and *ego-death* (which is not a freudian concept) is mostly useless as it stands. But it isn't likely to go away because it still provides modern academia with a politically neutral consciousness matrix.

m1thr0s

Anibis

01-26-2008, 10:04 AM

But the doctrine of course had its own 'trajectory' which has been a bit of a problem. For example in caliming to 'discover' an incestual triad at the core of the human beings unconcious, It appears to me that he actually installed one... I mean think about all the things that strike us now as 'Freudian'... The whole notion manages to insinuate 'guilt' into everyday human activities as if they were all founded on a dirty sex secret about your mom... I think that the colonizing effect of the Oedipal triad on the modern mind is an insidious one, largely because it is pretended that Freud merely observed something about the shape of our desire, but not so much that he also may have, in doing so, introduced an agenda into how those desires are collectively shaped. And he founded a discipline which proagates it...

I like some stuff about Freud too... Mostly the notion of Charging symbols with unconscious weight (Cathexis)... Very magickal paradigm... His incestual dialectic is one nasty meme, though..

Deleuze and Guattari have a fun rip at the whole thing in 'Anti-Oedipus'. Your Oedipus is a fucking drag, man...

-Anibis

m1thr0s

01-26-2008, 10:25 AM

Ego itself can be used in this same way, which returns I think to the notion of Ego being useful as a tool.

m1

Naomi

01-26-2008, 12:32 PM

Well, do you see it as a dirty sex secret about your mom? I don't think we can blame Freud for making us feel uncomfortable.

Do you think that I do not see Ningishzidda as brother, lover, father and son all at once? In Bhakti yoga where the chosen - what's the word - ishta devata - is not all and everything at once? Bhakta begins with love for god as a child sometimes, baby krsna for example, or love for god as parental figure, but the highest attainment of Bhakti is god as lover according to scripture - including all of these less than singular archetypes - you become mother, and father, and sometimes child - all interchangeably, to experience the vast array of forms the universe takes at a level of human understanding.

Now that aside

I had an acquaintance through Sebastian, she made quite an expressive post on OF some time ago (pre-hack) where she announced she had slept with her father by choice by getting him drunk and had been plotting to get at him for some time.

I was pretty well shocked at this but at the time i had to stop and think about that one because I had been working on my ethical boundaries at the time and this one was prety confusing. I'm not sure exactly why she did it but I don't discount Freud's theories on that so easily, I've spoken to too many friends who insist there is an oedipus complex and to me that's weird - I didn't like my mother at all throughout puberty and I didn't have any sort of father figure - a few, but none lasting and none that made an impression,and after analyzing my life I think I do see myself sort of struggling with that trying to find some sort of replacement in my psyche, which I never did successfully to much satisfaction.

If I look at my relationship choices (many of which didn't pan out) everything indicates that Freud was probably right about boys and about girls, if he had dared to explore girl psyche more carefully....

and qite honestly I hated women, every single one of them except very strong figures like Kali, but even this was unfair - I later reflected and noticed that even if they had strong qualities of the dark mother goddess I rejected them simply because they were visible, fleshly, and therefore fallible...really extreme. The Electra complex is true, imho....

but then, there's no father figure

so what else could I do but go into the deepest reaches of my psyche and screw Satan, that unparalleled archetype of masculine virility and strength...

Don't think I don't struggle with the same questions Anibis, but I do have to analyze them carefully rather than just discvard them, it's part of being honest with yourself and returning to the original condition....

I suppose it's more difficult if your mom really wasn't sexy - just see the humor in it. PArt of being a magician is upgrading our parts, even if we can't escape this human machine just yet....

Anyways, yeah - if the goddess Durga was your mom, would you do her? :

(She is!!)

Anibis

01-26-2008, 12:42 PM

Don't think I don't struggle with the same questions Anibis, but I do have to analyze them carefully rather than just discvard them, it's part of being honest with yourself and returning to the original condition...

What the fuck are you talking about Naomi? I have my criticisms about the 'Oedipus' complex and how it is formulated. They are INFORMED criticisms... Turning it into a 'complex' that supposedly everyone has, has skewed how people view their unconscious... Now we can't make a 'slip of the tounge' with out it being assigned to Freud. Truth be told I spend more time defending him than criticising him, but in the end, like with everything, I do both. In my post I addressed what I admired about Freud and gave it a balanced analysis, but your response to me seems once again to have glazed over the actual content of a poster's argument in order to fit it into a rhetorical agenda you seem to have of twisting folk's words around to make it look like you have more of a handle on everything than you actually do. I think they call this 'projection' in the Freudian system. Certainly it's known as 'Sophistry' in the discipline of philosophy. Whatever... You sure like your straw men...
-Anibis

Naomi

01-26-2008, 12:56 PM

hehe, sure....

you sound disturbed, go on...

Anibis

01-26-2008, 12:59 PM

The 'Original condition', does not have an Oedipus complex attached to it. That is a modern development. The Id/Ego/Superego formulation is not the true condition of consciousness. It's more like a modernist 'folding' of the life-energy of a particular sort of being under a particular sort of circumstances...

-Anibis

Anibis

01-26-2008, 01:03 PM

Not disturbed. Annoyed. Annoyed at you. You imagine that you are 'leading' the discussion like a shrink does with a patient on their couch, but you are posturing and pretending, and it's ugly to see. You should maybe credit your interlocutors with a bit more intelligence than you typically do. What are you trying to protect?

-Anibis

m1thr0s

01-26-2008, 01:23 PM

It might be useful if we avoid psychoanalyzing altogether on all sides...it doesn't further the discussion as originally framed.

If it continues in this vein we may as well shut it down.

You were the first to start in with this Naomi...I suggest you back up and address points...not persons. And certainly not other person's mothers...for Xst sake...that should be obvious!

This can't go anywhere productive as it is going.

m1thr0s

Naomi

01-26-2008, 03:01 PM

No it was more like a generalized statement, and I was discussing it from my perspective, that possibly the Oedipus complex theory might have some validity to it, I'm really not that interested in analyzing you personally Anibis, nor am I finding this conversation as emotionally charged as you are, it's something rather mundane to me.

I have a high capacity for dark and weird and always have - experiencing myself being sliced into pieces as a regular healthy tantric visionary diet....

I really wasn't thinking about you in my meandering, and I am certainly not interested in sleeping with you, so well, maybe that helps...

Oh, I like sexualizing everything though, it's just interesting to me.

I have to defend freud as much as I have to attack his weak points, and to be fair, from an evolutionary standpoint the oedipus complex makes sense...murder our mothers (as females) who are on their way out anyways, (making our va jays jays choice #1) and find a target male who resembles the genes that managed to create us in the first place - a successful and direct way to perpetuate a stable line.

This all falls apart at a certain level of society though. Animals don't care though.

I'm not posturing at all, or pretending. I'm devilish to the core, and as comfortable with murder and mayhem as I am with meddling with the sacred cow of mother-child holy virgin mary BS...you don't like it obviously, as you're completely over reacting. I find that interesting. The universe doesn't care about our sensibilities though, it never did....

And m1thr0s, I don't understand it, that was the point - if your mother isn't attractive by societal standards it would make the Oedipus complex seem rather absurd and one would be more likely to knock it. I can't help i t if people want to get all emotional about it. I actually had an acquaintance who wouldn't date guys who were attracted to breasts - she thought they all had an Oedipus complex. (haha!) I don't particularily like that breasts have to be covered in public, while men are allowed to go around with their shirts off, it reminds me of Islam or something.

I do think there is something to his Elektra complex, from personal experience, and that was what I was trying to illustrate most of all.

Plus, I very rarely talk directly to anyone Anibis, you shouldn't take it personal, I would have said it anywhere and not to you, it was my standpoint towards society in general. I stand my ground on that though, I think parental figures are no better than any other sacred cow and I particularily hate that saying "Thou shalt honor your father and your mother" so it's an aspect of society I would prefer to target for destruction.

It's nothing individual however, I would never be so petty. I'm only petty about my cosmetics and clothes.

m1thr0s

01-26-2008, 03:09 PM

well, this topic has gone way beyond anything rational at this point...

maybe it's not such a good idea to begin a post from an assortment of somebody else's quotes. I'm sure none of what is going on here now has anything to do with those original statements.

m1

Naomi

01-26-2008, 03:43 PM

I rewrote the intro. :)

Freud's an important part of this - it's just a detour, ,there's no reason we can't be flexible about it...

I've already moved on anyways....

But please indicate what you don't think is rational m1thr0s, then maybe we can have a good debate about it...

m1thr0s

01-26-2008, 03:53 PM

I'm not as keen on debate as I once was, but thanks anyway. I sort of feel like if things can't be *discussed* in a more congenial sort of way, nobody ever really gets much from it...that's just my own experience...results may vary according to region and driving conditions etc...

m1

Naomi

01-26-2008, 03:59 PM

lol - debate in general or just this thread? I kind of have a hard time believing you've lost a taste for debate itself.

I'm beginning to think the Satanism folder has a curse on it....

m1thr0s

01-26-2008, 05:46 PM

maybe that's the difference between ego and Ego. I've won a lot of arguments in my time but most battles have been stalemates in terms of anybody actually acknowledging a different point of view. As soon as you get looped into an argument you can pretty well kiss off any chance of convincing anybody of anything. Maybe that's why Satan himself confines himself to the subtle art of *suggestion* for the most part...The very best way to win an argument is to do something or say something that causes others to come to your point of view in the privacy of their own hearts and minds by their own ways and means.

The rest is mostly a vanity...I ought to know...I have really really been there.

m1thr0s

Naomi

01-26-2008, 07:03 PM

oh, vanity, my dark nemesis....

m1thr0s

01-26-2008, 11:26 PM

In my own meditational work I have been very involved with the process of "assuming the mantle" of those things I may happen to be studying at the moment. A great many godforms have very healthy "egos" so if you assume the mantle of Set, say, you're not going to get anywhere being timid little timmy or whatever...you have to be able to flow into it for what it is and also flow out as needed. After you've done this a few hundred times or more you really kind of lose much concern over the idea of having an inflated ego...that's just part of the package of being a god...or perhaps even bigger...

m1

deviadah

01-27-2008, 01:24 AM

I've found, from personal experience, that the destruction of the ego is a good thing. Now the word EGO gets tossed around a lot and really when we speak about it we have to be sure what we mean (since it can represent many things).

In this post EGO represents the true self, not the self projected (the self others see).

It is this self that I destroy. It has nothing to do with the destruction of Egoism (which has its benefits) nor with the destruction of Pride (which is a good thing in my eyes). But with the de-construction/destruction of the very thing that makes a person who s/he is!

Perhaps not what has been discussed... just a few cents thrown in...

http://www.alchemylab.com/mindathanor.jpg (http://alchemy-forums.forumotion.com/spiritual-alchemy-f5/spiritual-calcination-t86.htm#352)

:cool:

Naomi

01-27-2008, 01:32 AM

AND JUST who are you?!?!

m1thr0s

01-27-2008, 03:35 AM

well...we get into these semantic loops on this one. I'm a transmutationist so I take offense to the word "destruction" being used in place of the word "mutation" because a whole lot more than a simple oversight occurs in this omission...the whole godamm point of evolution is glossed right over in my opinion and the end result is that we are right back at nothing...no better off than we were before.

So "ego-death", while we could bend over backwards to redeem it on the basis of its underscoring intent, is nevertheless a misrepresentation of the process of "ego-transmutation"...or simply "trading up" as I more often seem to call it. If the ego should ever actually die...that's it...show's over...you don't walk away from that shit...there is no "you" left to bargain...it died...it's toast...end of story.

I have no reason to believe this is actually attainable to human beings. The only death they are capable of is transitory and circumstantial as near as I have any way to tell. There is a line from the Book of the Law that addresses this...Hadit speaks (I think): "Death is forbidden, o man, unto thee." In saying this he is alluding to the difference between death as a simple cessation of bodily functions and Death as the "Crown of All", which no one accomplishes by accident, nor by any ignorant means can this ever be accomplished.

So I cannot in good faith forgive this impulsive abuse of language. The term "ego-death" is an oxymoron...it has no actual meaning and serves no productive purpose but rather obscures the only useful purpose it would otherwise presume to be representing. The whole notion of transmuting the little "i" into the greater"I" is at the very heart of classical Hermetic Alchemy...that's what the whole lead-into-gold business is all about and this is serious stuff...not to be sluffed off sideways by some popular rhetorical graffiti...

So I oppose this terminology, but I am aware that people who use it don't typically grasp the damage they are doing by lending their energy to this ultimately useless language. I also understand that it absolutely is a question of semantics...I don't oppose the underlying intent...I oppose the language it is being translated through. So much of the damage wrought in human affairs boils down to a misappropriation of rhetoric... Whole realities are built upon these little coins, so it cannot help but matter.

m1

Frater CaO

01-27-2008, 05:22 AM

Id agree that the Ego isnt in itself an actual enemy at all. And I wouldnt exactly agree with the whole Destruction of the Ego biz either. I think its kind of a wierd expression..
What its about is more that one needs to realize what the Ego is and how it works. To destroy the "Illusion/s" of the Ego, or more like transcend them.
I dont think that it is a purely intellectual matter either, it is something more..

deviadah

01-27-2008, 08:17 AM

Yeah there are different words that can be applied to what I wrote. Mutation is probably a better word than destruction, but the Nietzschean in me always tend to use the stronger/offensive word rather than the softer. Not saying mutational is a weak word... but hopefully you get what I mean. I guess it depends, also, what kind of ego we are talking about as well. But I fully comprehend what you are saying m1thr0s & Frater CaO.

Although I must say to scorch the earth can sometimes be a good thing. One has to question oneself, and the false ego IS the enemy. We all have a Demiurge-Self (and some don't anymore of course).

Most folks don't even know who they are, having never questioned themselves. I am sure the members of boards like this one don't have that problem, and I don't burn my ego that often anymore. It is a process I feel almost done with. The ego that society has imposed on me is indeed a very faint affair.

Once the crust is scraped off, the true individual emerges.

AND JUST who are you?!?!
Not you!

:cool:

Nalyd Khezr Bey

01-30-2008, 10:14 PM

Wow, this is an interesting synchronicity. I was just reading last night about the necessity of ego-inflation in Michael Bertiaux's Voudoun Gnostic Workbook and then I happen upon this thread this evening. I don't have the book with me to quote it but the gist of what he was saying was along the lines of "if you want a magickian to actually do some fucking magick or just be productive at all just do whatever you can to inflate his or her ego". In his example he was describing his bestowing some fancy title upon one of the members of his order after that member asked him not to give him the title because it would make him "big-headed". The result was the person got big-headed, started his own chapter of the order and got busy doing some magickal work or something along those lines. So Bertiaux's point is that the ego can supply some needed motivation when inflated and directed.

m1thr0s

01-31-2008, 03:48 AM

that is absolutely the truth of it.
you gotta think really big to produce something from nothing.
You gotta really think your asshole shines in the dark on some level, and little by little...it will.

are there dangers?
why, yes...or you can strangle to death on a godamm chicken bone just trying to finish your damn lunch in time to get back to work...

Everything has its risks...absolutely everything.

m1

m1thr0s

01-31-2008, 04:18 AM

deviadah

01-31-2008, 09:02 AM

The result was the person got big-headed, started his own chapter of the order and got busy doing some magickal work or something along those lines. So Bertiaux's point is that the ego can supply some needed motivation when inflated and directed.
Very nice... I've seen this in non-magic circles too. But one has to thread carefully. Sometimes the actions of Big Headed folks can be - let's say - out of their range/league!

Fun to watch though!

:laugh:

Naomi

02-01-2008, 10:33 PM

I don't know. In many ways Ego is the Dark Art itself... It's a question of balance of course but it's also a question of balls. Some people are able to weigh the hazards in such a way that the risks involved in being a timid little nobody are revealed to be far more dangerous than being a so-called megalomaniac or whatever. It's just a dance for xst sake and you do have to be able to laugh at it but you also have to be able to dance it. And that's when really weird shit starts to happen as a rule...stuff commonly referred to as magick.

m1

Once the wave hits you also have to be able to ride with it too, - really believe you are the baddest fucker on the whole universe.

Does anyone think I would not be where I am without reveling in the death of obstacles in my path?

Still it's a balance, if you don't know how to shift properly between humility and power, you won't last very long. So yes, in a very real way it is a dance, you need rhythm and balance. That may be all there is too it really...on all sides. If you're egotistical about passing material wants such as your stock portfolio or house in the hamptons, you will be buried with them. I think that is how it works.

If you place all of your potential in the power of the eternal you will be reborn into the eternal.

jai ma kali

m1thr0s

02-01-2008, 11:46 PM

If you place all of your potential in the power of the eternal you will be reborn into the eternal.I agree.

I think it is evident that a lot of people are good at the projection end and not so good at following up on these grandiose notions of themselves or their abilities. I can rattle off a dozen (or more) worthless shits who imagine themselves superior to me in ways that are altogether laughable in point of fact. They are good at beating off essentially but not so good at following through at the level of power itself. That takes real work and a formidable commitment to identifying the how in things.

A thing needs to find expression to be clear, but expression itself does not make it real. So there are rules to being a successful megalomaniac and there may be a thousand ways to fail to every one way to succeed. The risks are completely real and completely devastating...but that's just life really...they'll get another chance somewhere down the line.

Of course, I'll be long gone by then so they'll have to slipstream off of somebody else...

m1thr0s

Naomi

02-02-2008, 12:07 AM

that's so godamned depressing

m1thr0s

02-02-2008, 12:13 AM

It's a numbers game Naomi. Look how many people tried to fly before somebody finally got it right. It's easy to imagine yourself being able to fly but not so easy to ascertain the actual rules of flight. The how in things as I said... But those who tried and died still accomplished something...in some small way their comic disasters served to cement that reality so that eventually somebody would actually sort it out.

The only real difference between the winners and losers in this game is that the winners have somehow managed to eliminate the inessentials in their own thinking, and are therefor cleared to attack things for what they are...not just what they might be. People love those "inessentials" though...love them enough to die for them over and over again...though it changes exactly nothing.

m1thr0s

Naomi

02-02-2008, 12:35 AM

And so we return to what being a selfish Satanist is really all about....

m1thr0s

02-02-2008, 12:40 AM

yeah...funny word Self-ish...different angles on that one.

m1

Naomi

02-02-2008, 12:52 AM

Yeah, it's an ancient concept too. It goes back to the dawn of civilization, in fact the basis for all civilization is holding the center. Whether protecting the village, family, flock or whatever, it all begins with valueing the self first above all else.

I think the tricky part is achieving this level of universal mind with other people - which is why Satanism is both a huge success and a huge failure when it comes to social arenas. For a Satanist, only another Satanist can really hope to understand the mindset going on, and so the company of other Satanists (or even Satanic individuals who don't claim the title) are preferred, yet We know that Satanic society in general doesn't form a cohesive unit easily - it's a very proud lot. And Things like ToS or CoS just tend to degenerate into absurdity.

But yeah it's really fucking ancient - like Kali - my way or the highway - you can take her as she is, and embrace her as Ma or be utterly destroyed. The reasoning behind this is she is the divine cleanser set against the demons of ignorance. And we've got a lot of those around these parts.

Satanism starts with destroying god usually, oddly one of the greatest obstacles to enlightenment and divine intercourse in the human psyche, and ends with being able to take on just about anything else you have a problem with - it allows you to put yourself first....and thast's really the best design for everyone concerned.

m1thr0s

02-02-2008, 01:32 AM

"Know Thyself"...Pythagoras

I always seek to view the "satanic" evolutionary current outside the box called "satanism"...because it's really a very stupid little box anyway whose only outstanding merits are juxtapositional and therefor not especially global...So we can do this by attempting to track "autotheism" for instance, or we can do it by attempting to track various tentacles of cultural evolution seeking to climb out the mold of faith and superstition etc... science itself is one of the faces of so-called "satanism" and was called the "enemy of faith" until it could no longer be suppressed with violence and stupidity.

And when you do this it begins to be more apparent how much is actually encompassed here...most satanists are totally blowing their whole advantage by restricting themselves to LaVey or whatever...pulp-satanism in my view.

But as you say...this whole development has had a lot to do with an underscoring belief in self as the only right and proper focal point of spirituality in general. It's more a recognition of certain facts I think...knowing that truth itself is always in the eye of the beholder anyway perhaps...

m1thr0s

Naomi

02-10-2008, 08:16 PM

Pythagoras coined that? I had no idea.

When you talk about going outside of the box with Satanism are we then talking about Protosatanism as soon as you go beyond the good vs evil paradigm?

The only thing good about pulp satanism is it allows you to be free to shape your ego however you like. So I want to swear, wear bizarre clothing (occasionally) and promote free love and anarchy - Satanism is useful for just allowing you to do whatever you like really. Generally just a "me too" thing, very much a trend - though a powerful one and a freeing trend.

And for some people that's good. Not everyone is gifted with the mind or tenacity to tackle much bigger issues.

Yet holding the center is hardly a new idea, Satanism isn't very original, merely I think it is a modern repackaging of old ideas geared towards a crowd with a certain taste for dark flavoring. It's important to find a central theme in Satanism that is in fact revolutionary and I don't know what that is for certain - god in man, suitheism and autotheism maybe, but you see autotheism in history, with royal families especially, and it's not especially liberating. Suitheism was introduced to me by the owner of the local goth club 2-3 years ago, who was a very very ethical person in the extreme, though quite comfortable with sexual themes and debauchery.

I think that the perfection in Satanism is its ability to extricate moralism from ethical behavior, giving humans a chance to really know why we do things a certain way - for the good of mankind and not merely for one's own "I'm good" egotistical paradigm. The thing I like most about Satanism is the return to a more natural wild state, something Lavey was aware of - never read any of his stuff mind you but you can't get away from it online.

la la la

m1thr0s

02-10-2008, 10:03 PM

When you talk about going outside of the box with Satanism are we then talking about Protosatanism as soon as you go beyond the good vs evil paradigm?probably more like autotheism itself. "protosatanism" is more a broadening of the satanic mindset beyond the Xian paradigm, of which the ancient past can be especially helpful.

one needn't go this route necessarily though. I am fortunate in the sense that I come at autotheism from more of an anatomical slant, a habit I picked up from the I Ching which constructs a logical cosmology built largely upon number. So when I attack issues of this nature I am already aligned with not only my immediate species but literally all of nature identifiable through this logic. This amounts to a strategic advantage many people lack who imagine themselves set apart from nature, or otherwise set apart from the human race at large.

In a lesser sense this can be useful, but when one sets about to actually resolve matters corresponding to the physics of mortality, one has to have some way of approximating universality or the whole attempt is pointless. One cannot realistically expect to resolve for themselves such things as inherently involve everything which they are not (as much as everything which they are) from the vantage of a vacuum. The lesser satanic mindset resists holism while the greater satanic mindset embraces it...not for altruistic reasons but for reasons of motivated self-interest.

You can only build a useful engine upon the principles that make engines work. Whatever other engine you may have built, if it rejects these overriding principles...won't amount to much of an engine. That's pretty much non-negotiable, though as you say, perhaps not many can grasp such stuff. All this tells me is that there are many reasons why satanism may very well be the philosophy of the elite...not the "elitist" per se.

m1thr0s

Naomi

02-10-2008, 10:15 PM

Beautifully stated m1thr0s. I wonder how you came to bridge the I Ching with Satanism was it merely the autotheism slant or did you entertain it because of the common reasoning of toppling the established order?

m1thr0s

02-10-2008, 10:21 PM

well...somehow I have always been positioned as the "odd-man-out" anyway...it's always been this way for me and it took many years to understand what the f*ck was going on. I've only really been consciously aware of satanism as an actual philosophy for less than a decade. I guess the lights just sort of came on since the pattern was already long established anyway...

nothing intentional actually...more a recognition of things "such as they are"...

the only thing I ever consciously set about to *topple* was double-talk and half-truths that resolved exactly nothing.

m1thr0s

Naomi

02-10-2008, 10:28 PM

Yes that's strange it was also that way for me, even when I was only five. I wonder if I set myself up for that because of preset parameters or did early experiences with being outcast in school and social circles lead to me becoming used to it in such a way that I finally felt comfortable with it?

One thing I do know is eventually you just stop trying to fit in because it never works. :(

But then I think you are freed to shape your self however you please, and beyond the constraints of human parameters this can indeed be very rewarding.

Recently you know I had the same experience of being an unintentional bhakti practitioner, I just fell in with the whole Mirabai and Akka Mahadevi mindset perfectly and did the research on actual bhakti phenomenon. This seems on the surface incompatible with Satanism but then again not - the beauty of Satanism is it is so flexible it only says to do what is right for yourself and what makes you successful in your definition so it's perfect.

I like how being a Satanism just allows you to do whatever, so long as you are furthering yourself and your domain, it's really a life-forward option....

m1thr0s

02-11-2008, 12:35 AM

What we call satanism today is actually very likely to become something quite different 50-100-150 years from now. I call it a term of inconvenience because while many of its basic tenets are sound, it is nevertheless bound up with Xianity in ways that limit its own intrinsic goals. By the time it manages to transcend those limitations it is likely to have mutated into something else entirely...what this would be exactly I have no certain clue...probably not an "ism" of any kind exactly though...possibly more of an "ology"...maybe none of the above...

even a term like autotheism becomes obsolete if it turns out you don't even need the "theism" part to realize these objectives.

just guessing of course, shooting in the dark etc, but it's a rapidly evolving current all in all...

m1thr0s

Naomi

02-11-2008, 01:48 AM

maybe Masters of the Universe was a better term

I think that your theory may be correct here...after all without all of its sensationalism Satanism would just be a blip on the page much like beatniks, cynics, harajuku girls and whatever else nature coughs up to rebel against too much dead order...

m1thr0s

02-11-2008, 03:03 AM

there's a lot of new tech coming down the pike. our whole view of science itself is poised for a major overhaul I think...that's going to change a lot of things. It's hard to see it all right now cuz it's moving so fast and seems to be all across the board. If we don't don't blow our asses to pieces we seem to be on the edge of another major surge in technology, and these are building upon themselves hand-over-fist. So the so-called Satanism of today with its not-god approach to self-realization may be the mutational engineering of tomorrow, where breakthroughs in scientific understanding will make deliberate steps towards so-called "godhead" not only possible but actually fairly common...but we will gradually cease to call it "godhead" and begin calling it something else I think. Crowley used the term "completion" as did the eastern sages and also western qaballah. If this "completion" ever becomes a recognized evolutionary criterion, we are off to a whole other kind of "godhead".

150 years may be too soon of course but knowledge builds exponentially so that may not even be all that off the mark...but there's a knee-jerk resistance barrier to be dealt with and the old guard has to be physically retired so this will certainly create unnecessary bloodshed and trauma...as always...

m1

Naomi

02-11-2008, 12:30 PM

m1thr0s I continued my response here (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/showthread.php?p=32516#post32516)

Naomi

03-19-2008, 11:45 AM

Something I need to talk about atm because of what Frater Yechidah brought up in another thread that has gone way off topic.

The saying "Pride cometh before the fall" is one quote from either Aesop or some other unknown scholar - some claim it to be biblical - as one of my markers for guidance along the path of life. The phrase gets repeated in my head often enough that I have it running on automatic most of the time.

The juxtaposition of the Satanist seeking to become a god and distilling pride into something extremely useful is a hard bargain.

I think I've come to the conclusion that to prevent the fall, your pride has to be adjusted according to your vision. If one is seemingly arrogant it may be - and I have found this to be so in cases where Kuroyagi, m1thr0s or even Jacob is concerned, to be balanced with an equally extraordinary sense of the grand macrocosmic scale of the universe, where intense humility in the face of extreme awesome cosmic power is also present and accounted for.

One may say "all religion is bullshit" where to an Islamic extremist this is the height of arrogance. The humor in it is they can never get where I am until they've gotten over their religion, and by then it will be too late - so much is invested in a dead alleyway they cannot go back - it's the trap of wanting something you can never have, from a system - religion - that will never deliver the goods it promises.

Reminds me a little bit of Madame Butterfly, kind of sad actually. I do feel the humanity of these people. I regard them as trapped, not unlike the minds you hear Morpheus go on about in the Matrix trilogy of films.

But yeah I have had my "Pride goeth before the fall" moments, where I was shown to always be very careful of how you tangle with mother nature or the minds of god - ie religious minds, and how you approach everything in general. My perspective is it's all god, by their standards, so I don't argue to much with religious nuts about their assertions about god and Jesus - I get that alot here in Memphis and I just smile and agree. that battle will be won by others as a matter of fact.

But yeah just to lay out my perspective a little mor on this ego thing - it's important. One has to defend the territory they have won in their mind yet also keep a sharp eye out for new ground to cover, and there will always be interlopers unfamiliar with the ground you have already covered. If that sounds arrogant then so be it, but I think the lesson to be learned is that one can never really know one's mind until they ask.

Someone said recently to me on a Satanist board that you can never really know anyone until you sit down and eat with them, which was funny because he was a soldier, so it was unexpected whereas you know, some people say you never really know anyone until you fight them, something my friends in the martial arts have to say.

I think this just goes to show that soldiers know a lot more about war than so called martial artists, though there are of course those who have risen above the crowd in this regard.

So there are many paths to one goal and if you keep sight of that while at the same time making real progress, then the fall is usually preventable.

Lucifer made the biggest fall of all but he survived, so it may not be such a bad thing, these broken towers...

Frater SI

03-19-2008, 05:31 PM

I Agree with you to an extent "Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real" Keeping focus on a goal is great but when it starts blurring your vision and you start seeing things through rose tinted glassed it becomes and issue .. For so long as a musician I refused to go back to my roots I only concentrated on certain styles of music thinking I had found what pushed me and challenged me but once I had mastered that I had to go back to my roots once again because I found things in Blues and Classical music that I totally missed for many years.. I think its a cycle just we keep creating and recreating nothing is new its just interpretation. And I dont think anyone has an issue with your opinion or your excitment for what you have found and acheived but saying its my way or the highway or this is the shit and everything else is crap is a little narrow sighted not all of us are as far up the evolutionary tree. We still have to learn the lessons and experiment I have read through the abrahadabra stuff and to be honest it just doesnt click or gel I see the logic in it but hey in a year or two or three I might be ready for it. Ego is important its what seperates the wheat from the chaff in regards to survival and instinct but pride combined with arrogance is the killer and forums are not conducive to these kinds of chats like you mentioned if we sat together with a bottle of chardonnay things would probably be so much more toned down you wouldnt have to defend your territory and try and win me over in three paragraphs.

Naomi

03-19-2008, 05:52 PM

Yeah, well I'm not trying to win anyone over at all, I really don't care about that because like we see here, you're either ready for it or you're not, Most of the time I regard the world as a stage and people as audience, so taking my views as a personal attack is your perogative of course, I rarely even pay attention to the lives of others unless they're harassing me, live and let live is pretty much my motto. I also believe strongly in the distribution of occult thought in a free, open arena.

I'm so laid back anyways I really don't need to drink to feel relaxed. ....I have my opinions and state them openly at the cost that some people might get their feelings hurt and their ideas trampled on, and for what? If they can't defend their truths or at least make an effort to discuss them then I really don't see how they can feel that discipline or system is at all engaging or worthwhile. And this is the first time I've heard you say you disagree with me Frater Si, so why now? Why not be brave and lay out your thoughts. Nobody is going to attack you for having an opinion. I've heard it told before us ENTP's have a hard time relating to other people's feelings in regards to debate - we see it as a sport and don't get caught up in the emotional attachments like others do - it really is true. I can argue for days on end without taking anything personal or even remembering that the other person was arguing with me the next day. I just don't carry grudges like that. Arguing is a sport to me. I do try to add humor but it's a grim topic most of the time, the world is really not a very nice place and I'm looking for solutions. There's a very tight curve humanity is going to have to navigate soon.

You know what I love about this system - the guy who fucking invented it actually encourages you to attack the principles, because the foundational supports are so rock hard you can't penetrate them enough to find any purchase for attack.

It's all about results, just like in the business world....it's the first time I've actually felt like I was making unstoppable progress in the occult, like the whole fog has lifted that I've been wandering in for ages upon ages. And yes, it's a very high bar. Nothing that steady research can't handle though. I went through the mutational alchemy material for months over and over and over again until I finally got it. However, it was the mirrors themselves that ignited the flame. So as has been mentioned before by m1thr0s and others, just looking at the damned things will work....it doesn't take much more than that.

but yeah if you feel insecure with me stating my opinions I mean, really...I can't help you there, maybe find some other hobby? Doesn't really matter to me in the end...it's your life, your ka, your ba and not mine....you be the judge. You can stop looking at me for approval. I approve of the entire universe so, well, that includes you....do whatever makes you happy.

Frater SI

03-19-2008, 05:57 PM

but yeah if you feel insecure with me stating my opinions I mean, really...I can't help you there, maybe find some other hobby? Doesn't really matter to me in the end...it's your life, your ka, your ba and not mine....you be the judge. You can stop looking at me for approval. I approve of the entire universe so, well, that includes you....do whatever makes you happy.

Now that sums up everything taking that kind of slant will win over anyone even though you feel you dont have to :) I have always had a great respect for your posts through many years and on many forums. But just remember some of the systems you now reject as dross your past posts have been really inspirational to us that still are half way up the ladder.

Naomi

03-19-2008, 09:16 PM

Like what for example?

Amur

03-27-2008, 10:42 AM

Haha, I'm probably one of the very few who have actually destroyed the ego, with this I mean destroying the self. It got totally destroyed and I have to build it up from scratch to even be able to function in this world. By destroyed I mean that a severe trauma bubbled up which shattered the whole being (even when I was god I was a shattered god which only means that I can't really escape the pain by becoming a god). Anyway shattered ego again turns out in different personalities and what not even though they are all part of my own mind. But I think that what they mean with ego death is when all the crap from the mind is destroyed which means that our true ego remains which is ourselves. Happened to me once when on ingesting mushrooms, I had a 4-5 hours trip of being in hell with black spirits attacking me, disintegrating me completely in everyway, when I prayed they took my prayer and moulded it into a weapon to hit me with. This continued straight up for the whole trip and was literally hellish and when it ended I started chanting and then I got reconstructed into a new clean personality of myself with a very holy feeling.

Anyway, my meditation experiments have concluded that to 'destroy ego' is really to destroy the crap inside the mind which are memes that have come from external sources (which really aren't part of us anyway). By meditating into a complete silence of the mind the brain hemispheres are synced with each other and there is no ego in front of our self, which in turn makes it so that we can be ourselves in every situation as we don't have any added crap in it.

I find it funny that some think that our Self is different from our self. Atleast in my world the self should remain intact and should approach the Self instead of destroying the self which just seems like a stupid and hypocrite thing to do.

When the mind is silent and unified into void it's easy to rise the kundalini (which actually requires silence to arise in the first place). I don't really buy that chakra crap around kundalini as it arose with me without even having chakras activated heh. Anyway, when kundalini has arisen it balances the body and mind completely into a unity which in turn is locked into the earth consciousness directly. This state is a state of void or nothingness, and the brain hemispheres are balanced together along with the whole being, which in turn means that one has no 'ego' except the ego which is the self that one really is. Animals are already naturally in this state, but for some reason the humans were uprooted from it and fell down from it. When in this state there are no extra thoughts, the only thoughts that come are those that one truly thinks or feels or whatever.

deviadah

05-07-2008, 06:27 PM

Haha, I'm probably one of the very few who have actually destroyed the ego, with this I mean destroying the self. It got totally destroyed and I have to build it up from scratch to even be able to function in this world.
Yes, destroying the Ego and the Self is two different things... the former does good, the latter does harm!

Anyway, my meditation experiments have concluded that to 'destroy ego' is really to destroy the crap inside the mind which are memes that have come from external sources (which really aren't part of us anyway).
We are all living in a collective nightmare, shaped by our ancestors, and - with a little patience and hard work - destroyed by ours and future generations!

:cool:

m1thr0s

05-07-2008, 10:24 PM

deviadah

05-08-2008, 06:38 AM

If you were replying to my post perhaps I wasn't that clear. There is no good or bad ego, I was just stating the difference between self and ego as I see it as two seperate things.

Destroying the Ego is a mental thing... destroying the self is suicide!

:cool:

Amur

05-08-2008, 08:09 AM

now just hold the phone a minute here...if the (bad) ego can be destroyed and then somehow rebuilt as a (good) ego, then the ego never really got *destroyed* at all...it just got refurbished...it took a bath...had its diaper changed, whatever...

I'm telling you folks it can't be done...not literally at any rate. The ego isn't bad just because it's the ego...if you're gonna destroy something...concentrate on its programming...that's where all the bullshit lies anyway...ever hear of *imprinting*???

m1

Yeah, well that's basically what happens / happened. I got my head so full up with bullshit and traumas that I started imprinting everyone else's egos instead of listening to myself, and this went on for about 3-4 years, and now I got to destroy it all to actually be able to feel myself at all gah.