Alchemical Analogy [Archive] - Abrahadabra Forums

Logos

12-19-2006, 07:30 PM

Well, I started talking about this in the "What type of alchemy do you do?" thread and decided that really wasn't the place to talk about it. If everyone started an indepth discussion of his or her approach to alchemy in one thread, we'd have the biggest clusterf*** of ideas this side of Wednesday. So, here's my take on Renaissance alchemical use of analogy and maybe we can talk a little bit about it and how it might relate to other disciplines.

Analogy:

First, it would be a really good idea, I think, to provide a key of some sort concerning analogical notation:

A single colon ":" means "is to"
A double colon "::" means "as"

So, when I say "the verb," I mean ":"
When I say "the preposition," I mean "::"

That said, here's a basic, alphabetic analogy: (A : B :: C : D)
In other words, "A is to B as C is to D."
But, why? Because A comes before B in the sense that C comes before D. Hence this analogy may be considered true. And it may be considered a true analogy because the relationship between A and B and the relationship between C and D are comparable (i.e., able to be compared).

In the case of our alphabetic analogy, the relationships are more than just comparable, they are the same. Note: the relationships defined by analogies need not be the same, they simply need be comparable.

For example, a good analogy in which the relationships are comparable but not the same would be the father-president analogy:

(Father : Children :: President : Citizens)

The relationship between father and children is not the same as the relationship between president and citizens, but they are comparable in certain senses. They are not the same because children typically don't vote for their father. They are comparable because father and president share a rule-making role. (And here I'm talking about father with respect to the ideal family unit as described by sociology text books written in the 1970's.)

Okay, so there's analogy in a nutshell. Normally, I would say a word about sources and targets, but that's not really necessary, yet, for what I want to do here with analogy.

Prepositions:

Now, before we move on, I want to say a quick word about verbs and prepositions. I have my own definition for preposition, which plays a major role, I think, in understanding alchemical/magical applications of analogy.

Preposition: any word or phrase that shapes the trajectory of a subject's action.

For example, "I sat" means something entirely different than "I sat on the cat." The word "on" is a preposition that shapes the trajectory of my act of having sat and thereby alters the meaning of the initial statement, "I sat." Likewise, "I sat on the cat" is a very different kind of having sat than "I sat with the cat."

Thus, prepositions play a major role with respect to transmutation. Changing the preposition from "on" to "with" changed the relationship between the subject ("I") and the object ("cat").

Note: if you ever read an old alchemical text, you might notice how often things are defined according to relationships as opposed to straight-up definitions. You rarely ever come across phrases like, "The Mother is this." No, "the Mother meets with the Father" is typically the best kind of "definition" you'll ever get from a Renaissance alchemist. It's all about relationships. And prepositions are all about relationships. So are analogies, for that matter.

Analogical Sets:

Moving on, we come to analogical sets. Whereas an analogy defines a relationship between relationships. An analogical set defines a relationship between analogies.

For example, the one in my signature:
[(A : B :: C : D) : (E : F :: G : H) :: (I : J :: K : L) : (M : N :: O : P)]

For alchemists like Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), planetary symbols are analogies because they embody analogical sets of correspondences.

For example,
[(Saturn : lead :: lead : topaz) : (topaz : hellebore :: hellebore : cypress) :: (cypress : tunny :: tunny : bittern) : (bittern : bear :: bear : black)] = that funny lower-case h looking symbol for Saturn we all know and love.

In other words, when Kircher wields the symbol for Saturn, he's not just wielding a symbol for Saturn, he's wielding an entire analogical set of correspondences. He's not influencing Saturn or lead or topaz. He's influencing the relationships between them. And those relationships are, at least in terms of Renaissance alchemy, the product of shared virtues. Saturn, lead, topaz, etc. all share the same virtue: to make melancholy. This shared virtue gives rise to their correspondence.

So let's say Kircher wants to make melancholy someone or something that does not already possess that virtue. He would incorporate that someone or something into the analogy.

...(bittern : bear :: bear : black :: black : John Doe).

My Approach:

My approach consists of fleshing out analogies in the form of prose. The act of writing, for me, is very meditative in that I typically enter trance while writing quicker than any other approach to meditation that I've tried. So, I take advantage of this tendency of mine and I combine Renaissance alchemical use of analogy with the act of writing to devise analogies into which I incorporate whatever or whoever it is I want to influence. Through the act of writing, the analogy becomes a reality and I project it through tapping the keys on my keyboard.

So I guess I'll leave it at that for the time being.

v/s/s/v

Logos

12-19-2006, 07:49 PM

Astral Projection:

I've been getting into astral projection a lot over the past year. It's taking me a while to get good at it, but I've had seven successful projections since I moved to New Orleans four and a half months ago, so success is looking more like a possibility than previously.

Anyway, I wanted to bring this up because the main reason I practice astral projection is to eventually construct prepositional nodes on the astral plane.

The function of a prepositional node would be to enhance the role of prepositions in my writing and assist in the process of projecting my will through the act of writing.

Here's a list of the 110 prepositions I plan to map onto the astral plane once I get good enough at astral projection:

aboard, barring, except, near, saving, about, because of, except for, near to, similar to, above, before, excepting, next to, since, according to, behind, exclusive of, notwithstanding, than, across, below, failing, of, through, after, beneath, for, off, throughout, against, beside, from, on, till, ahead of, besides, in, on top of, to, all over, between, in accordance with, onto, toward(s), along, beyond, in between, opposite, under, alongside, but, in front of, out, underneath, amidst, by, in light of, out of, until, among, by the time of, in spite of, outside, unto, around, circa, in terms of, over, up, as, close by, in view of, past, upon, as of, close to, inclusive of, pending, versus, as to, concerning, inside, per, via, aside from, considering, instead of, plus, while, astride, despite, into, regarding, with, at, down, less, respecting, with respect to, away from, due to, like, round, within, bar, during, minus, save, without

v/s/s/v

Kain

12-20-2006, 08:45 PM

Anyway, I wanted to bring this up because the main reason I practice astral projection is to eventually construct prepositional nodes on the astral plane.

The function of a prepositional node would be to enhance the role of prepositions in my writing and assist in the process of projecting my will through the act of writing.

Here's a list of the 110 prepositions I plan to map onto the astral plane once I get good enough at astral projection:

aboard, barring, except, near, saving, about, because of, except for, near to, similar to, above, before, excepting, next to, since, according to, behind, exclusive of, notwithstanding, than, across, below, failing, of, through, after, beneath, for, off, throughout, against, beside, from, on, till, ahead of, besides, in, on top of, to, all over, between, in accordance with, onto, toward(s), along, beyond, in between, opposite, under, alongside, but, in front of, out, underneath, amidst, by, in light of, out of, until, among, by the time of, in spite of, outside, unto, around, circa, in terms of, over, up, as, close by, in view of, past, upon, as of, close to, inclusive of, pending, versus, as to, concerning, inside, per, via, aside from, considering, instead of, plus, while, astride, despite, into, regarding, with, at, down, less, respecting, with respect to, away from, due to, like, round, within, bar, during, minus, save, without

v/s/s/vAmazing stuff v/s/s/v! You know, I so deeply perceive what you mean by "prepositional nodes" and I actually think and work in a very similar fashion myself in a way. Not so much as a goal of my practice, but a lot on how I learn and interpret things, so it has to do with my mind works. I in fact very often approach written language in such a fashion (and consequently write in such a way, especially in my personal notes on Alchemy etc), understanding the components of a sentence through their individual (and then collective) dissolved essence/feel in a purely subtle sense, in fact finding out that the most direct and efficient way I learn anything (perhaps the only way, I come to realize) is after those components of an astral/subtle nature have been properly constructed and linked/accounted for in my personal system.

Kain

Logos

12-20-2006, 09:12 PM

Where it really gets exciting is when you apply it to statements of intent.

The only way to be really exact about your intent is to increase the number of prepositions in your statement of intent.

For example, I will have dinner with Kain on Monday at Taco Bell from 10pm until 12am.

The five prepositions shape the trajectory of the verb "will have dinner." Think of each prepositional node as performing the chore of a demon. When you evoke a demon and ask it to do something for you, you hand your intent to the demon and the demon delivers it to the object of intent. In the case of my example, there are five objects of intent: Kain, Monday, Taco Bell, 10pm, and 12am. Likewise, there are five prepositions: with, on, at, from, until. Each preposition is charged with the task of delivering my intent to its assigned object of intent.

Prepositional nodes would be like astral mailmen delivering identical letters to different addresses in space/time.

With analogies, the prepositional node "to" from "is to" delivers the "correspondence" from A to B and from C to D, and the prepositional node "as" delivers the "correspondence" from A and B to C and D, creating a complex relationship on the astral that then translates over to the physical. And since meaning is entirely the product of perceived relationships... well, that's when things start changing for better or worse.

v/s/s/v

Kain

12-20-2006, 09:28 PM

Well, we're it really gets exciting is when you apply it to statements of intent.

The only way to be really exact about your intent is to increase the number of prepositions. For example, I will have dinner with Kain on Monday at Taco Bell from 10pm until 12am.

The five prepositions shape the trajectory of the verb "will have dinner." Think of each prepositional node as performing the chore of a demon. When you evoke a demon and ask it to do something for you, you hand your statement of intent to the demon and the demon delivers it to the object of intent. In the case of my example, there are five objects of intent: Kain, Monday, Taco Bell, 10pm, and 12am. Likewise, there are five prepositions: with, on, at, from, until. Each preposition is charged with the task of delivering my statement of intent to its assigned object of intent.

Prepositional nodes are like mailmen delivering identical letters to different addresses in space/time.

v/s/s/vExactly the way I perceive and use it as well v/s/s/v, and certainly a field/aspect of Alchemy not usually discussed although I'm sure you understand the nearly limitless and profound ramiffications of this practice as it literally increases, evolves and refines our arsenal of Will Manifestation in all fields. A redefinition of language in a higher stratum, allowing for more precise direct volitional *expression* in return. You know, this is a practice that has literally built my Body of Light model part by part by particularly and in detail defining the exact articulated properties of each junction/center, and then defining the relations between those properties. It is very meticulous work, in a way very similar to both the way mantras and vrittis function in the field of Yoga. Personally I often think of it in terms of computer programming "code blocks" as well (due to my backgrounding I suppose).

The expansion and freedom of movements and influence it provides is exceptionally profound though, and perhaps the best field I have come to experiment with it first hand is elementary psychokinesis, where "unnatural" and generally "weird" movement patterns are to be introduced to the object, in order to track the sensitivity and directness of your manifestational ability. The aim is to minimize the time difference between the entertaining of the thought and the manifestation of the movement, and also the preciceness the movement actually manifests as and follows the pattern set by the original thought. Unnatural movments naturally increase this difficulty. I have noticed however that both the preciseness fo the move and the speed of manifestation increase as one's ability to directly astrally perceive (and thus emanate) language and directions also increases. With analogies, the prepositional node "to" from "is to" delivers the "correspondence" from A to B and from C to D, and the prepositional node "as" delivers the "correspondence" from A and B to C and D, creating a complex relationship on the astral that then translates over to the physical. And since meaning is entirely the product of perceived relationships... well, that's when things start changing for better or worse.Great way to phrase it...

Kain

Logos

12-21-2006, 09:32 PM

I find it's a matter of recognizing the potential in reorganizing your worldview in terms of analogy-making.

A good example I like to use is the one about the empty wine bottle. If you walk into a dirty run-down apartment and you see an empty wine bottle on the floor, the meaning you project onto that wine bottle will be a product of its relationship with the rest of the mess. However, if you go back a month later and the apartment is clean and the empty wine bottle is now sitting on a windowsill next to other wine bottles, the meaning you project onto that wine bottle will be a product of its relationship with the rest of the collection. In short, the wine bottle on the floor is not the same wine bottle anymore even though it did not physically change whatsoever. Your changing perception of the wine bottle transmutes the wine bottle.

So, if we take this to the level of analogy-making, we find that all meaning is a product of the analogies we make on a regular basis: "this pen on my desk is to my desk as this bottle of orange juice sitting on my coffee table is to my coffee table."

Reality is a product of the analogies we construct. And even though the Renaissance alchemists did not say this outright, I think they understood it on an intuitive level.

I tried to finish this post, but I'm on the verge of being late to work, so I'll add a follow-up and a more relevant response to Kain's comments when I get back in the morning.

v/s/s/v

Son of Mr. Gordo

12-22-2006, 01:58 PM

v/s,

Do you think that the use of many prepositional nodes would be problematic if a certain statement that one is looking to manifest did not occur? For example, in the statement:

Kain will treat me to lunch on Monday at Taco Bell from 10pm until 12am.

If Kain meets all the requirements for being at Taco Bell on Monday from 10 - 12, but doesn't purchase lunch for you as well, it may decrease the level of belief for the practitioner regarding future statements. In other words, wouldn't the efficacy and consistency of the approach be stronger if one left out many prepositional nodes, because it seems very constraining. So a statement like

Kain will treat me to lunch at Taco Bell

could occur, but it may not be today. It could be the week after if you can Kain go to Taco Bell. That way there is some room for the statement to breathe, as opposed to brute forcing a statement to occur at a certain time and date.

SoMG
Where it really gets exciting is when you apply it to statements of intent.

The only way to be really exact about your intent is to increase the number of prepositions in your statement of intent.

For example, I will have dinner with Kain on Monday at Taco Bell from 10pm until 12am.

The five prepositions shape the trajectory of the verb "will have dinner." Think of each prepositional node as performing the chore of a demon. When you evoke a demon and ask it to do something for you, you hand your intent to the demon and the demon delivers it to the object of intent. In the case of my example, there are five objects of intent: Kain, Monday, Taco Bell, 10pm, and 12am. Likewise, there are five prepositions: with, on, at, from, until. Each preposition is charged with the task of delivering my intent to its assigned object of intent.

Prepositional nodes would be like astral mailmen delivering identical letters to different addresses in space/time.

With analogies, the prepositional node "to" from "is to" delivers the "correspondence" from A to B and from C to D, and the prepositional node "as" delivers the "correspondence" from A and B to C and D, creating a complex relationship on the astral that then translates over to the physical. And since meaning is entirely the product of perceived relationships... well, that's when things start changing for better or worse.

v/s/s/v

m1thr0s

12-22-2006, 02:40 PM

geez...and I thought I was intense...this is way cool...

I have no brilliancies just yet so I'm just gonna watch you wizards fly...

m1thr0s

Kain

12-22-2006, 05:12 PM

That's a good point you bring up SoMG. Personally I very much understand and appreciate breathing room in such instances, and also agree that it can very much fascilitate their actual manifestation. Specialization should be used with caution and full knowledge of where one's limits lie and where what one's power ammounts to, as over specialization almost always "fizzles" and has the effect of "anti-concentration"...much like using a magnifying glass to collect and concentrate the sunlight in one point, but aiming closer than the area we wanted to aim for is, in fact achieving a similarly unconcentrated state.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/Goyios/Forum%20stuff/Projectionerror.jpg
__________________________________________________ ___________________

I'd like to point out that since the process of setting prepositional nodes is heavily technical in nature (at least in my view), belief in one's abilities is not so much a factor as is understanding of the factors at play. Thus, as I said, specialization through intense concentration (through employing a lot of nodes, aiming for a much more concentrated area of "potentiality") should be used with care, in fact one should try to always be aware how much can one handle without being excessive or prematurely controling. In that sense, failure should inform the practitioner that not sufficient understanding of the factors at play has been achieved, and thus indicate further study as the most logical course of action. On the other hand, if specialized and forced control can be manifested successfully, then I feel a breathing room is not necessarily required. However this applies only for the magnitude of situations one can actually handle completely.
geez...and I thought I was intense...this is way cool...

I have no brilliancies just yet so I'm just gonna watch you wizards fly...

m1thr0s
A very interesting subject to be sure...:)

Kain

Logos

12-22-2006, 06:24 PM

Logos

12-22-2006, 07:01 PM

Exactly the way I perceive and use it as well v/s/s/v, and certainly a field/aspect of Alchemy not usually discussed although I'm sure you understand the nearly limitless and profound ramiffications of this practice as it literally increases, evolves and refines our arsenal of Will Manifestation in all fields. A redefinition of language in a higher stratum, allowing for more precise direct volitional *expression* in return. You know, this is a practice that has literally built my Body of Light model part by part by particularly and in detail defining the exact articulated properties of each junction/center, and then defining the relations between those properties. It is very meticulous work, in a way very similar to both the way mantras and vrittis function in the field of Yoga. Personally I often think of it in terms of computer programming "code blocks" as well (due to my backgrounding I suppose).

The expansion and freedom of movements and influence it provides is exceptionally profound though, and perhaps the best field I have come to experiment with it first hand is elementary psychokinesis, where "unnatural" and generally "weird" movement patterns are to be introduced to the object, in order to track the sensitivity and directness of your manifestational ability. The aim is to minimize the time difference between the entertaining of the thought and the manifestation of the movement, and also the preciceness the movement actually manifests as and follows the pattern set by the original thought. Unnatural movments naturally increase this difficulty. I have noticed however that both the preciseness fo the move and the speed of manifestation increase as one's ability to directly astrally perceive (and thus emanate) language and directions also increases. Great way to phrase it...

Kain
Not too many people realize this, but Renaissance alchemy was about lost knowledge: elixirs and Stones were means; they weren't ends. And this actually goes back even further to Roger Bacon, who was a huge influence on Paracelsus.

Anyway, knowledge. Alchemy in the Renaissance was about rediscovering the lost knowledge of the Adamic language. In Eden, Adam was given the ability to name everything. And it was believed that he named everything according to its qualities and virtues, so when Adam said, "Cow," he wasn't just calling for "Cow," he was manipulating its qualities and virtues.

In other words, God gave Adam knowledge of the Word--e.g., "Let there be light." And this knowledge was taken away when he was kicked out of Eden.

Paracelsus believed that somewhere hidden within matter was this lost knowledge of the Word because it was the Word that gave rise to matter in the first place. And this, I would argue, is why Paracelsus' and others' notorious uses of analogy was more than just a means to keeping secrets.

If you consider this, it follows soon after that when Paracelsus talked about Mother and Father meeting, he wasn't just talking about it, he believed he was actually affecting matter by talking about matter. His writings themselves are his most profound alchemical experiments.

To clarify, if you look at Paracelsus, Agrippa, Pico, Bruno, and Kircher, to name a few, they all agree that words and symbols possess the same virtues and qualities as the things they represent, so when you manipulate the word or symbol for something, you manipulate the something in the process (they just didn't understand how it worked as well as Adam did, which is what finding the knowledge was all about). So when these people wrote about something taking place in the physical world, it took place by virtue of the fact that they were writing about it.

Make sense?

And this is where my term "alchemical linguistics" comes in: the main reason the alchemists wrote in obscuring analogy was not to be secretive, but because they honestly believed that they could transmute something by manipulating the words and symbols for that something.

It's almost absurd how profoundly this affects the history of science in general.

I'm going to try posting my short essay on the correspondence system, so you can get a better idea of what I mean when I say qualities and virtues.

Take special note of this statement: Michel Foucault, observes that, during the sixteenth century, natural signatures "indicate what is hidden only in so far as they resemble it; and it is not possible to act upon those marks without at the same time operating upon that which is secretly indicated by them."

Foucault, I think, sums it all up right there. If "it is not possible to act upon those marks without at the same time operating upon that which is secretly indicated by them," then what were the alchemists doing when they acted upon those marks by writing enigmatic texts full of obscuring analogies?

Unfortunately, Foucault never carried his profound insight as far as it could go.

v/s/s/v

Logos

12-22-2006, 07:15 PM

excerpt from
Hidden Linguistics and the Media of Magic
by Robert Francis Olsen (at this point, I think it's important to take at least a little credit)

In 1988, Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus edited a collection of essays concerning various aspects of Renaissance Hermetism and Hermeticism.[1] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn1) The collection, Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, includes Brian Vickers’ “On the Function of Analogy in the Occult.” In this essay, Vickers attempts to discredit the conclusions of S.K. Heninger and D.P. Walker by analyzing occult analogy in terms of Ferdinand de Saussure’s sign-based structural linguistics and Mary Hesse’s more recent observations on scientific models.[2] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn2) That Vickers employs Saussure and Hesse in an attempt to define, box-and-line, the function of analogy in the occult of the Renaissance should, I hope, trigger warning bells for any initiate familiar with the otherwise shadowy mysteria of modern historical scholarship. Indeed (that is, according to the archetypal modern scholar with whom I am alchemically acquainted via my oneness with the collective unconscious[3] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn3)), one simply cannot read Renaissance analogies in terms of a twentieth-century linguistics and expect to arrive at anything even remotely resembling a valid, scholarly conclusion; however, if that twentieth-century linguistics is universally and totally objective, as it most certainly is thanks to Saussure’s undeniable proof (painstakingly proofed and re-proofed by two of his most reliable students), then, and only then, can one expect to arrive at a valid, scholarly conclusion.

***

During his analysis, Vickers concludes that the correspondence system, characteristic of a large portion of Renaissance magical and alchemical literature, does not qualify as a language. He states,

"The correspondence system is based on resemblances, similarities, often heterogeneous and superficial, yet it claims to represent real, purposeful connection. The linguistic sign, as defined by Saussure, is known to be arbitrary and is based not on likeness but on difference, the crucial element being the line that separates the sign and the concept signified. This line shows that the word and the concept to which it refers exist on different levels and cannot be fused or conflated. The relationship of signified to signifier may be arbitrary, but it is known to all speakers of that language and provides a system that can comprehend or interpret reality in all its forms."[4] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn4)

In other words, because modern readers “know” the relationship of signified to signifier (even though most of them do not), Renaissance readers “knew” it, too (even though Saussure died in 1913 and his lectures were published posthumously). Somehow, I disagree, especially with respect to Vickers’ use of the word “all”: if the relationship of signified to signifier “is known to all speakers of that language,” why does Vickers take the time to explain that relationship in depth? Is he flaunting his knowledge of Saussure to distract his readers from the realization that he has absolutely nothing important to say about the function of analogy in the occult?

According to Stuart Clark, “To be an anthropologist is to confront these difficulties in deciding just how speakers in ‘other’ cultures relate words and things. But historians of early modern Europe have recently found themselves with the same problems.”[5] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn5) One such historian, Michel Foucault, observes that, during the sixteenth century, natural signatures “indicate what is hidden only in so far as they resemble it; and it is not possible to act upon those marks without at the same time operating upon that which is secretly indicated by them.”[6] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn6) In other words, natural signatures, according to Foucault, were not “known to be arbitrary.” However, as Clark points out, both Aristotle and Aquinas approach language similarly to the way in which many of us commonly do today—i.e., words arbitrarily relate to that which they signify and do so only by virtue of conventional use. Therefore, considering the availability of alternative perspectives during the Renaissance, Foucault’s observation applies, with seeming certainty, only to those who state so themselves—e.g., Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Paracelsus the Great (1493-1541), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535), and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600).[7] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn7) Thus, Vickers’ generalization of language is not only inappropriate, but inaccurate. People do not always agree on what constitutes a language, regardless of whether or not they lived during the Renaissance, or in some modern bubble. The possibility that the correspondence system qualifies as a language remains open.

***

Moving on, Vickers then compares Hesse’s father-is-to-children-as-state-is-to-citizens analogy to Athanasius Kircher’s (1601-1680) “Harmonia Mundi Sympathica, 10 Enneachordis totius natura Symphoniam exhibens”[8] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn8)—a chart depicting a “9-fold correspondence between ten distinct categories of existence: angels, heavenly spheres, metals, stones, plants, trees, water creatures, winged creatures, four-legged animals, and colors.”[9] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn9) Hesse concludes that the horizontal relations between father and state or children and citizens do not depend upon the vertical relations between father and children or state and citizens. In response, Vickers concludes that such an example

"seems to me to describe perfectly the situation of the reader confronted with Kircher’s row 2 out of context, wondering what possible connection there could be between cherubim, Saturn, lead, the topaz, the hellebore, the cypress, the tunny-fish, the bittern, the ass and the bear, and black. One can now say that the vertical relation is merely that of being members of the same class, such as colores varii, of which nine representatives have been arbitrarily chosen for insertion into this grid. As for the horizontal relationship, there is no identity, and no similarity, other than that of being the second, or fourth, number in each list. There is no innate or causal link."[10] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn10)

Vickers’ observation that “there is no identity, and no similarity, other than that of being the second, or fourth, number in each list” is based entirely upon his disregard for the natural philosophical belief in the presence of occult virtues. He considers the uninitiated reader “confronted with Kircher’s row 2 out of context,” yet not once throughout the course of his essay does he consider the initiated reader. For many Renaissance magicians and alchemists, the similarity between certain plants, planets, and metals depends not on their inclusion in a list, but rather on their occult virtues. (For example, black corresponds with lead because both possess the occult virtue “to make melancholy.”[11] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn11)) By disregarding those virtues, Vickers automatically forfeits any chance of accurately portraying occult use of analogy.

***

According to Vickers,

"Some modern historians of literature have found Renaissance writers attractive for their ability to ‘think in images.’ Where this phrase describes the fluent use of metaphor to illuminate judgments, states of mind or feeling, I, too, find it attractive. But where it implies reducing abstract thought to concrete symbols, maneuvering symbols as if they were objects in order to influence other objects, then the result is not attractive but limiting and confusing, especially in the discourse of science."[12] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn12)

Why attack occult use of analogy as “limiting and confusing” with respect to the discourse of science when, for many Renaissance thinkers, it constitutes such discourse--the discourse of natural philosophy, natural magic, and alchemy?[13] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftn13) Why discuss occult use of analogy (a practice) at all when you do not intend to consider the “reality” of occult virtues (the foundation of that practice)? Needless to say, Vickers’ essay is the product of a historian wearing modern shoes.

--------------------------------------------

[1] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref1) According to Merkel and Debus, “Yates used the term Hermeticism for a wide range of occult and mystical writings and reserved Hermetism for texts and documents immediately related to the Corpus Hermeticum.” Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus, “Introduction,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe. Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus, eds. (Washington: Folger Books, 1988), p. 8. For a more recent treatment of the two terms, see Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaff, eds., Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).

[2] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref2) Brian Vickers, “On the Function of Analogy in the Occult,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe. Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus, eds. (Washington: Folger Books, 1988), pp. 265-92. See also Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics. Charles Bally et al., eds. Wade Baskin, trans. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966) and Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966).

[3] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref3) For detailed instructions on attaining said oneness, see C.G. Jung, Alchemical Studies. R.F.C. Hull, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967) and C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy. R.F.C. Hull, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).

[4] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref4) Ibid., 277. Emphasis added.

[5] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref5) Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 283.

[6] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref6) Michel Foucault, The Order of Things. (New York: Vintage, 1970), 32-3.

[7] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref7) Clark, 287.

[8] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref8) Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia universalis, 2 vols. (Rome, 1650), 2:393.

[9] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref9) Heninger, cited in Vickers, 274.

[10] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref10) Vickers, 279.

[11] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref11) Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Donald Tyson, ed. James Freake, trans. (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 2004), 73: “Also all things under Saturn conduce to sadness, and melancholy.” Ibid., 83: “Saturnine things, amongst elements, are Earth, and also Water… Amongst metals, lead… Amongst plants… those which bring forth berries of a dark colour, and black fruit, as the black fig tree, the pine tree, the cypress tree…” Ibid., 146: “For all colours, black, lucid, earthy, leaden, brown, have relation to Saturn.”

[12] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref12) Ibid., 283.

[13] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8071#_ftnref13) For a fairly recent indictment of Vickers’ analysis of occult use of analogy with respect to the discourse of early-modern science, see James J. Bono, “Science, Discourse, and Literature: The Role/Rule of Metaphor in Science” in Literature and Science: Theory and Practice, Stuart Peterfreund, ed. (Boston: Northeastern University, 1990), 59-89.

Logos

12-22-2006, 09:23 PM

excerpt from
Hidden Linguistics and the Media of Magic
by Robert Francis Olsen

Agrippa writes, “Of the natural virtues of things, some are elementary, as to heat, to cool, to moisten, to dry; and they are called operations, or first qualities, and the second act: for these qualities only do wholly change the whole substance, which none of the other qualities can do.”[1] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn1)

Note the simplicity of the Hermetic tradition:

a) Virtues are called operations. According to Agrippa, “Fire is hot and dry, Earth dry and cold, the Water cold and moist, the Air moist and hot;”[2] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn2) however, hot, cold, moist, and dry are not the four elementary virtues. There is a fundamental difference between “hot” and “to heat.” When Agrippa tells us Fire is both “hot” and “dry,” he uses adjectives to describe Fire as an element. When he tells us the elementary virtues of Fire are “to heat” and “to dry,” he uses verbs to describe two distinct qualities according to which Fire operates upon “the whole substance” to which it is applied.

b) Elementary virtues “do wholly change the whole substance,” whereas occult virtues do not:

"There are also other virtues in things, which are not from any element, as to expel poison, to drive away the noxious vapours of minerals, to attract iron, or anything else; and this virtue is a sequel of the species, and form of this or that thing; whence also it being little in quantity, is of great efficacy; which is not granted to any elementary quality. For these virtues having much form, and little matter, can do very much; but an elementary virtue, because it hath more materiality, requires much matter for its acting.
And these are called occult qualities, because their causes lie hid, and man’s intellect cannot in any way reach, and find them out."[3] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn3)

Let us consider music—emotional music. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that a certain lover of music cherishes a few songs that make her feel sad. She does not know why they make her feel that way, but she knows that they do. For her, “to evoke sadness” is one of music’s many great qualities. And if she could manipulate that quality, she could forever change the way she reacts to music: the sad songs would be happy and the happy songs would be sad. She would not change the matter of the music (the keys, the progressions, the rests); she would change the form of the music, for it is the form of the music which “can do very much”:

"In regard to the powers or forms or accidents which are transmitted from subject to subject, some are observable, for example, those that belong to the genus of active and passive qualities, and the things that immediately follow from them, like heating and cooling, wetting and drying, softening and hardening, attracting and repelling. Others are more hidden because their effects are also obscure, for example, to be happy or sad, to experience desire or aversion, and fear or boldness." [4] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn4)

c) All things in the natural world function as verbs. By their elementary virtues, the four elements function as verbs. By their occult virtues, planets, animals, plants, metals, and colors also function as verbs. “Thou must know,” Agrippa states,

"that so great is the power of natural things, that they not only work upon all things that are near them, by their virtue, but also besides this, they infuse into them a like power, through which by the same virtue they also work upon other things, as we see in the loadstone, which stone indeed doth not only draw iron rings, but also infuseth a virtue into the rings themselves, whereby they can do the same."[5] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn5)

For example, let us consider charms by way of planetary characters, which “contain, and retain in them the peculiar natures, virtues, and roots of their stars, and produce the like operations upon other things, on which they are reflected, and stir up, and help the influences of their stars, whether they be planets, or fixed stars.”[6] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn6) If I inscribe the planetary character of Saturn upon someone’s skin, my doing so would enable Saturn to operate upon her.[7] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn7) In turn, she would operate in like manner upon all things within her vicinity. Therefore, if we consider the notion that all things, by their virtues, function as verbs, we may simplify the practice of magic within the Hermetic tradition as a practice of articulating sentences in which the subject is the magus, the verb is the thing whose virtues are called operations, and the object is the recipient of those virtues. With respect to our example, I am the subject, the planetary character of Saturn is the verb, and the someone is the object. Thus, the act of inscribing the planetary character of Saturn upon someone’s skin is the act of articulating the sentence “I will make this person melancholy” with the motion of my body.

Now, in order to avoid confusion on this point, we should note an important difference. When I say the act of inscribing a symbol is the act of articulating a sentence, I do not mean the symbol is a sentence. On the contrary, the symbol possesses virtues which enable that symbol to function as a verb. Without the movement of my body with respect to both the symbol and the object of intent, the sentence remains a “conception of the mind.”[8] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn8) When I speak to you, you may listen, but when I magically inscribe a symbol upon a surface, I speak to nature and nature listens. When working with symbols, I do not simply verbalize or write the sentence; I articulate the sentence with the motion of my body with respect to both the symbol and the object of intent. Even the reciting of an Orphic hymn, as Mirandola suggests,[9] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn9) qualifies as a bodily articulation of a sentence in which the entire hymn functions as the verb or verbs.[10] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn10)

In sum, the practice of magic within the Hermetic tradition consists of speaking or writing a declaration of intent, gathering that which operates in accordance with the declaration’s verb, and subsequently articulating that declaration via the manipulation of the thing with respect to the object of intent:

"And therefore magicians command, that in every work, there be imprecations, and inscriptions made, by which the operator may express his affection: that if he gather an herb, or a stone, he declare for what use he doth it: if he make a picture, he say, and write to what end he maketh it; which imprecations, and inscription… without which all our works would never be brought into effect; seeing a disposition doth not cause an effect, but the act of the disposition."[11] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftn11)

In other words, magical works are analogies for declarations of intent. However, the role of words and symbols is by no means limited to such declarations.

---------------------------------

[1] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref1) Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1531). James Freake, trans. Donald Tyson, ed. (St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1993), 29. Agrippa uses the terms “qualities,” “virtues,” and “properties” interchangeably throughout his Three Books.

[2] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref2) Ibid., 8.

[3] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref3) Ibid., 32.

[4] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref4) Giordano Bruno, “On magic,” in Cause, Principle and Unity and Essays on Magic. Richard J. Blackwell, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 110.

[5] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref5) Agrippa, 50.

[6] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref6) Ibid., 102.

[7] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref7) Ibid., 73: “all things under Saturn conduce to sadness, and melancholy.” Therefore, in following with Agrippa’s use of verbs to describe virtues, one of the virtues of the planet Saturn is “to sadden and make melancholy.”

[8] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref8) Ibid., 211.

[9] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref9) Giovani Pico della Mirandola, Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486). Stephen A. Farmer, trans. (Tempe: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998), 507: “Nothing is more effective in natural magic than the Orphic hymns.” .

[10] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref10) Ibid., 507: “For each natural or divine power the analogy of properties is the same, the name is the same, the hymn the same, the work the same, with proportion observed. And whoever tries to explain this will see the correspondence.” “Anyone who does not know how to intellectualize sensible properties perfectly through the method of secret analogizing understands nothing sound from the Orphic hymns.”

[11] (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8073#_ftnref11) Agrippa, 221.

Logos

12-24-2006, 07:09 PM

So I guess to sum up...

All things material, including words and symbols, possess hidden virtues that, in effect, enable them to function as verbs whose trajectories are shaped and guided by prepositions.

And that's Renaissance alchemical/magical use of analogy in a nutshell.

Note: All unconjugated verbs begin with "to"--e.g., "to heat," "to cool," "to dry," "to moisten." And "to" was, is, and probably always will be a directing preposition.

Sun is to Father as Moon is to Mother

v/s/s/v

MythMath

12-24-2006, 08:10 PM

Thanks for all that, v/s/s/v...

I'm going to re-read it all a few
times and see what happens...;)
______________________

It feels like the concept itself could be used as a
way to arrange relative elements into a structure...

{other than actual words}

I'd like to try to approach composing
music using the general analogy principles...

{this tone (or key) : this rhythm :: that tone (or key) : that rhythm}

And there's potential for graphic applications...

{patterns, mandalas}
________________

Do you have any graphs (or tats) that
incorporate these "alchemical linguistics"...?
________________

edit: I think your golden spiral qualifies:

http://a548.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/29/m_e7c36fcc1a833ba07392ca076a4d1013.jpg

MM

Logos

12-24-2006, 09:19 PM

The part about that golden spiral tattoo is that you can't see the snake:

The golden spiral becomes a serpent which becomes the green man.

Golden Spiral : Ouroboros :: Ouroboros : Green Man

For me, the golden spiral represents "as above, so below" because no matter how close to or far away from the limit you are, it's still the same damn spiral.

Anyway, that's the analogy I've got tattooed on my left arm.

But what I reall wanted to say was that I consider this understanding of alchemical analogy the key to unlocking the alchemical texts of the Renaissance. Without understanding the relationship between analogy, qualities and virtues, and the correspondence system, the texts make no sense.

As far as I can tell, there really is no understanding Renaissance alchemy (e.g., Paracelsus, Kircher, Maier, Libavius, Mylius, Altus, Bohme, etc.) without understanding this aspect of it.

And I dare not claim to be the only one who knows about this. Stuart Clark, Michel Foucault, James Bono, William Newman, Lawrence Principe, and Adam McLean, to name a few, have all hinted at or touched upon this aspect of Renaissance alchemy. The problem is that none of them have really discussed it in writing to the extent it can be discussed.

v/s/s/v

MythMath

12-24-2006, 09:33 PM

Wow, yeah I guess that one qualifies...

Well that snake gets around, indeed... :yes:

MM

Logos

12-25-2006, 03:28 PM

It feels like the concept itself could be used as a
way to arrange relative elements into a structure...

{other than actual words}

I'd like to try to approach composing
music using the general analogy principles...

{this tone (or key) : this rhythm :: that tone (or key) : that rhythm}

And there's potential for graphic applications...

{patterns, mandalas}
There's more than just potential for all of the applications you mention...

Relative elements: the relationship between the pentagram and the four archangels is analogical. The relationships between Words of Power and intent, movements and states of consciousness, acts of chanting and acts of breathing, are all analogical.

Music: almost all classical symphonies are analogical--e.g., this movement is to the second movement as that movement is to the final movement; violin is to clarinet as flute is to xylophone as cello is trombone as bass is to tuba as viola is to alto saxophone.

Graphic: alchemical engravings, Buddhist mandalas, magic squares, the Tree of Life, etc. Basically, every time you wield a magical symbol, sigil, talisman, or tool, you're wielding an analogy. That doesn't mean you wield them according to a Renaissance worldview in which all things in Nature possess occult virtues, but you wield them as analogies nonetheless.

From my experience working with symbols, I'd say magic works because we, the sentient beings we are, are capable of constructing analogies. In fact, I agree with cognitive scientists when they say we think in terms of analogy, so magic works according to the principles of analogy by default. As magicians, we construct analogical relationships between symbols and states of consciousness to the point the symbols themselves induce the states of consciousness attributed to them. If you practice enough, you eventually get to the point the symbols do most of the work for you. Wouldn't you agree?

Zoltan Kovecses wrote a great little book on cognitive theory of metaphor called, Metaphor: An Introduction. In it, he says, "No scientific discipline is imaginable without recourse to metaphor." I would say the same for magical disciplines. I would say, "No magical discipline is imaginable without recourse to metaphor."

And what is a metaphor if not a compressed analogy?

Analogy: prisoner is to prison as John is to New Age dogma
Metaphor: John is a prisoner of New Age dogma

You see? Every metaphor is a compressed analogy. And you can't even talk, much less practice magic or alchemy, without resorting to metaphor in the process.

Which is precisely why I'm so passionate about analogy. In my mind, (A : B :: C : D) is the universe in the form of an equation.

v/s/s/v

MythMath

12-26-2006, 06:04 PM

That makes sense...interesting stuff...

Thanks for the clarifications,

MythMath

Logos

12-28-2006, 07:51 AM

By virtue of Aristotelian attributions (i.e., hot, cold, moist, dry), we may simultaneously wield all potential alchemical relationships between each of the four elements via a single cubed analogy:

Be sure to note the sixty-four parts that comprise the cubed analogy.

Analogy = Four Parts: (A : B :: C : D)
Analogy^2 = Sixteen Parts: (i.e., the analogy in my signature)
Analogy^3 = Sixty-Four Parts
Analogy^4 = Two Hundred Fifty-Six Parts

So, here it goes:

Key: Elements and their Attributions (according to Aristotle; adopted by Agrippa, et al.):

Fire - Hot & Dry
Water - Cold & Moist
Air - Hot & Moist
Earth - Cold & Dry

Attributions:

1. (H&D : C&M :: H&M : C&D)
2. (H&D : C&M :: C&D : H&M)
3. (H&D : H&M :: C&D : C&M)
4. (H&D : C&D :: H&M : C&M)

[Note: Opposites emphasized (red) in one and two; equivalents emphasized (red) in three and four.]

Elements (transcribed from the previous set of analogies):

1. (Fire : Water :: Air : Earth)
2. (Fire : Water :: Earth : Air)
3. (Fire : Air :: Earth : Water)
4. (Fire : Earth :: Air : Water)

Cubed Analogy:

[(1 : 2 :: 3 : 4) : (1 : 3 :: 2 : 4) :: (1 : 2 :: 4 : 3) : (1 : 3 :: 4 : 2)]

or

[(F : W :: A : E) : (F : W :: E : A) :: (F : A :: E : W) : (F : E :: A : W)] : [(F : W :: A : E) : (F : A :: E : W) :: (F : W :: E : A) : (F : E :: A : W)] :: [(F : W :: A : E) : (F : W :: E : A) :: (F : E :: A : W) : (F : A :: E : W)] : [(F : W :: A : E) : (F : A :: E : W) :: (F : E :: A : W) : (F : W :: E : A)]

And that is the cubed analogy that represents all potential alchemical relationships between each of the four elements.

[Note: Every ":" (i.e., a single colon) means "is to." And every "is to" denotes (or refers to) a relationship.]

And, yes, it is a true analogy.

If you consider the red attributions, you get the following squared analogy:

[(Opposites : Equivalents :: Opposites : Equivalents) : (Opposites : Opposites :: Equivalents : Equivalents) :: (Opposites : Equivalents :: Opposites : Equivalents) : (Opposites : Opposites :: Equivalents : Equivalents)]

Which represents the cubed analogy in that "Opposites" refers to either (H&D : C&M :: H&M : C&D) or (H&D : C&M :: C&D : H&M) and "Equivalents" refers to either (H&D : H&M :: C&D : C&M) or (H&D : C&D :: H&M : C&M).

v/s/s/v

fr.novumorganum

01-01-2007, 05:53 PM

Logos: i'm starting to believe you are umberto eco, at the least.....

very interesting work. i look foward to reading more of your original work. it seems we are arriving at a view that the practice of magick/alchemy gave insight into the 'linguistic turn'---the theoretical knowledge of the creative nexus language wraps around reality and that our relation to reality is a relationship of language.

this has got me thinking of 'the barborous names' and such in a whole new light now

Logos

01-01-2007, 07:51 PM

Our relationship with reality, our ability to change reality, to learn languages, to incorporate new words into our vocabularies, to manipulate symbols and states of consciousness or modes of thinking, and intuit emotions, thoughts, and potential, are each a product, I would say, of our tendency to process information in terms of analogies.

The process of processing information is an alchemical process.

-Logos

Logos

01-07-2007, 03:44 PM

So I want to talk a bit about two very different categories of analogy at the risk of skipping steps like a mathematician failing to explain how she arrived at her solution (even though she might be right as rain).

It seems natural to me to divide analogy into two categories in light of two magical practices commonly referred to as theurgy (transmutation of oneself) and thaumaturgy (transmutation of something other than oneself).

That said, I want to try to avoid losing readers by saying the same thing three subtly different ways. [Note the words in bold.]

1)

Theurgy: John wields an analogy with intent to transmute an aspect of his personality.

Thaumaturgy: John wields an analogy with intent to transmute an aspect of Jane's personality.

2)

Theurgy: John wields a theurgic analogy with intent to transmute an aspect of his personality.

Thaumaturgy: John wields a thaumaturgic analogy with intent to transmute an aspect of Jane's personality.

3)

Theurgy: John wields a subject-oriented analogy with intent to transmute an aspect of his personality.

Thaumaturgy: John wields an object-oriented analogy with intent to transmute an aspect of Jane's personality.

***

In other words, if the object of intent is oneself, one wields a subject-oriented analogy, but if the object of intent is something other than oneself, one wields an object-oriented analogy.

Example (Subject-Oriented Analogy):

m1thr0s' "twinstar" is a subject-oriented analogy. The alchemist wields the "twinstar" by scrying, tracing ley lines along the path of the "twinstar" with intent to reimburse her relationship with her/the/a Twinstar. This would be considered a theurgic practice; thus, the "twinstar" functions as a subject-oriented analogy.

The wielder of a subject-oriented analogy wields a symbolic relationship between herself and whatever it is she intends to relate to in a more meaningful, magical way.

Om Mani Padme Hum, the Middle Pillar, and the LBRP are all examples of subject-oriented analogies. One typically does not wield the LBRP, for example, with intent to transmute something other than oneself. To do so would probably prove detrimental (which is something I would like to talk more about later on).

Example (Object-Oriented Analogy):

A chaos magician's sigilization of Christian animosity inscribed on the wall of a stall in a restroom in a Wal-Mart is an object-oriented analogy. The chaos magician wields the sigil with intent to reimburse a relationship between shopping at Wal-Mart, Christianity, and whatever it is that causes feelings of animosity in the poor Christian who happens to lose himself in the sigil while taking a shit. Yet another great shopping experience at Wal-Mart!!

The wielder of an object-oriented analogy wields a symbolic relationship between something other than herself and whatever she intends it to relate to in a more meaningful, magical way.

Love spells, talismans created for friends, and epitaphs on gravestones are all examples of object-oriented analogies. One typically does not wield a love spell with intent to transmute oneself.

So it's important, I think, to distinguish between subject-oriented analogies and object-oriented analogies. From my experience, the best way to get a magical working to backfire is to wield a subject-oriented analogy where you should be wielding an object-oriented analogy, and vice versa: wielding an object-oriented analogy when you're trying to reimburse your relationship with your Holy Guardian Angel might result in a coworker you can't stand feeling more in touch with his Holy Guardian Angel than you do with yours.

-Logos

Ci Celli Ddu

01-07-2007, 04:02 PM

it seems we are arriving at a view that the practice of magick/alchemy gave insight into the 'linguistic turn'---the theoretical knowledge of the creative nexus language wraps around reality and that our relation to reality is a relationship of language.

Reminds me of what Bruce Chatwin was talking about in his book Songlines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songlines). It is also interesting to note how different languages can use different concepts to describe the same action or quality. One example is the Celtic lack of the verb "to have", where "to be with" or "to be at" are used instead eg "I have a dog" is "(there) is (a) dog at-me" [Tha cu agam] in Scots Gaelic and "(there) is (a) dog with-me" [Mae ci gennyf] in Welsh.

m1thr0s

01-07-2007, 05:50 PM

m1thr0s' "twinstar" is a subject-oriented analogy. The alchemist wields the "twinstar" by scrying, tracing ley lines along the path of the "twinstar" with intent to reimburse her relationship with her/the/a Twinstar. This would be considered a theurgic practice; thus, the "twinstar" functions as a subject-oriented analogy.I really enjoy this whole analytical structure you have going on here Logos...it seems very lucid to me, perhaps until we start getting into polynomial fractions which I was never very good at anyway...

But I am curious if it is possible in your opinion for an analogy to be both subject and object related or if it always winds up on one side ot the other...

m1thr0s

Logos

01-07-2007, 07:02 PM

I really enjoy this whole analytical structure you have going on here Logos...it seems very lucid to me, perhaps until we start getting into polynomial fractions which I was never very good at anyway...

But I am curious if it is possible in your opinion for an analogy to be both subject and object related or if it always winds up on one side ot the other...

m1thr0s
Well, for me, it's more yin-yangy than anything else: the only reason why you would even think to transmute yourself is if there's an "other" you don't already relate with.

So, yes, I would say all subject-oriented analogies are a little bit object-oriented and all object-oriented analogies are a little bit subject-oriented, especially once we consider the relationships between wielders and analogies.

Words embody relationships between concepts, analogies embody relationships between words, and alchemical experiments embody relationships between alchemists and their analogies. So, not only do analogies embody relationships, but acts of wielding analogies embody relationships--quite possibly the most important relationships of all.

And this is what Agrippa means when he says, "seeing a disposition doth not cause an effect, but the act of the disposition" (see footnote 11 (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/showpost.php?p=8084&postcount=13)). The act of the disposition embodies the relationship that makes the other relationships possible. An unwielded analogy is a meaningless analogy. [Note: disposition, in this sense, means "the tendency of something to act in a certain manner under given circumstances," so "the act of the disposition" means the something is no longer tending to act because it's acting right now. In other words, if you have a tendency to fall asleep at your desk, you stop tending to do so the moment you actually fall asleep.]

Anyway, an alchemical experiment-in-progress is what I call a meta-analogy. And it's a meta-analogy because you can't wield it until you step away from it: you can't perform an alchemical experiment while wielding the act of performing it...

...unless the act of performing it and the act of wielding the act of performing it share media on at least one level. In my case, writing. Through writing, I can perform an alchemical experiment while at the same time writing about performing it. For instance, if this post was an alchemical experiment, it would be a meta-meta-analogy because it would be an alchemical meta-experiment of an alchemical experiment-in-progress. Thus, an alchemical meta-experiment is a meta-meta-analogy.

And Renaissance alchemical texts are alchemical meta-experiments.

But now this is getting ridiculous and out-of-hand...

The point is that a subject-oriented analogy can be a little object-oriented in the sense that this thread is mainly about transmuting the relationship between me and my thoughts on Renaissance alchemical analogy and partly about transmuting the relationship between you and Renaissance alchemy.

Analogy embodied by this thread: Logos is to Renaissance alchemical analogy as Logos' reader is to Renaissance alchemy.

As the source relationship changes, so the target relationship changes. As above, so below. All I need to do is transmute myself. The rest will take care of itself.

-Logos

m1thr0s

01-07-2007, 07:18 PM

Logos

01-08-2007, 02:00 PM

ok...I mostly follow that I think. The reason I ask I suppose is because I think your classification of talismatic scrying work is mostly correct, but there remains a certain matter of energy itself which one tends to observe through a different set of lenses. I usually think of this aspect as being more object-oriented since the energy relationship is reciprocal in nature. On the one hand it is certainly about change in oneself, but in another sense it is also about the actual tool being employed and what we might think of as a kind of "weather phenomenum" corresponding to that tool, or at least intimately connected to it. So this is the whole idea of building up a "charge" essentially. It is difficult to think of that particular aspect as truly subjective...it sort of is what it is and operates according to principles and factors of a more generic nature. That aspect of things tends to feel more "objective" in scope.

m1thr0s
Well, I think we might actually agree more than we both realize. The energy would be the "other" one is trying to incorporate into oneself. And it's the "other" that makes the subject-oriented analogy a little object-oriented. The immediate goal remains subject-oriented and as long as that's the case, the analogy is considered subject-oriented. Also, when I said, "twinstar," I was referring to the image posted all over this site; when I said, Twinstar, I was referring to the Twinstar itself as something we manipulate via the "twinstar."

And I don't think you're interpreting it this way (hence your use of quotes?), but I tend to shy away from the terms "subjective" and "objective" when talking about categories of analogies because those terms often carry a lot of baggage. Whether or not magic is a subjective or objective practice in the postmodern sense that, say, truth is subjective is of no concern to me. There is a difference, however, between transmuting oneself and transmuting something other than oneself. Adjectively, "subjective analogy" and "objective analogy" would be more proper, but I don't like the baggage and I don't like the kinds of circular arguments that often accompany such terms.

And this is why I tried to talk about the act of wielding an analogy as the most important analogy of all. In the statement, John is to Jane as Jack is to Jill, John and Jack are the subjects and Jane and Jill are the objects. The question, though, is whether or not John, Jane, Jack, or Jill is the one wielding the analogy. If one of them wields the analogy, the analogy is subject-oriented, but if Joe wields it, the analogy is object-oriented.

Remember, shared qualities and virtues are the basis of the Renaissance alchemical correspondence system. Qualities and virtues determine relationships. So the symbol for Saturn is no more or less of an analogy than (A : B :: C : D). And since it's the qualities and virtues (e.g., "to heat," "to cool," "to moisten," "to dry") that render all things in nature verbs, all acts of magic may be considered statements-in-action. The magician is the subject, the analogy she wields is the verb, and the object of intent is the object. The question is whether or not her immediate goal in wielding the analogy as a verb changes her (e.g., LBRP) or something other than her (e.g., a love spell). But, like I said, you can't change yourself without changing something other than yourself at least a little bit, and vice verse, which is why it's always a little yin-yangy.

So I would conclude that most Renaissance alchemical texts are object-oriented analogies, but because of the Renaissance alchemists' "as above, so below" worldview, it follows that they transmuted themselves along with the things "out there" that they were writing about. Renaissance alchemists worked with metals and chemicals because that's where the lost knowledge was hidden, and they couldn't change themselves until they changed the metals and chemicals enough to uncover that knowledge. And, yes, I would say some of them uncovered at least some of that knowledge: Paracelsus knew enough to write entire treatises on the function of analogy in alchemical practices.

-Logos

Logos

04-16-2007, 10:26 PM

So I've been thinking a lot on and off recently about metaphors as compressed analogies...

I mentioned this in passing earlier on in this thread, but sometimes it's important to rehash a few things every once in a while, so here it goes...

Every metaphor is a compressed analogy.

Analogy: prisoner is to prison as John is to dogma.
Metaphor: John is a prisoner of dogma.

So here we have a metaphor that amounts to a paraphrase of an analogy.

What concerns me about this is the possibility that everything we do as magicians is analogical and that our interpretations of it are paraphrases. Basically, we live according to paraphrases. We live in paraphrastic realities (if I may be so bold as to coin a new term).

Anyway, I'm sitting here in a bar in the French Quarter with a laptop and thought I'd share the beginnings of an ongoing train of thought, which I'll try to get back to and elaborate on a little more sometime soon.

-Logos

m1thr0s

04-16-2007, 10:40 PM

also sometimes referred to as "chunking" I think...

some of this must class as a kind of necessary evil, if it is an evil at all. Life is short and we are hedged into a kind of short-hand thinking just to maximize time itself I think. But I am really not so sure that this is a bad thing. We do this on all kinds of levels. If we had to wait until we really understood the physics of walking, how many of us would be able to walk? We take the data our legs are feeding us and chunk it down, make a few adjustments and soon enough we are walking... Not until we really have to learn to walk the hard way (accident or injury) do we discover how complex a thing it really is...

Funny that I would be reminded of the Garden of Eden in this...Adam being led around by God to do what? "Name" everything!
We seem to be a chunky-monkey by design...

m1thr0s

Radiant Star

04-17-2007, 05:29 AM

A quick thought is that this grouping and reducing is a really useful tool as seems to be how learning and memorising operates to a great extent; the downfall lies in the way that some kinds of "chunks" are passed through the media etc and the mind on the receiving end misses the real knowledge and understanding beneath it. Its the kind of thing that can trigger a moral panic or be used to manipulate groups of people.

Adverts are often quite inventive in their use of this kind of linking.

Kuroyagi

04-17-2007, 08:47 AM

Generally speaking I must say that I dislike the use of metaphor per se as well as in my literature and in my poetry. (metaphor in the narrower sense of the English word). The reason for it is simple: metaphors age too quickly when used too often. They will degenerate to phrases and formulas that people babble forth without thinking about their meaning and content anymore, and this happens indenpendently of their educational level or their intelligence. Things like "the book of life" or "a fountain of wisdom" disgust me. For me a metaphor must be a hell of an invention to be bearable. (whatever: e.g. "life is the guilotine of truth" or something like that, this isnt manneristic anymore, so basically I have nothing against it but against its habitual usage).

Abundance of metaphor and set-phrases is the hallmark of a degenerate and feeble literature while straightforwardness and simplicity that is filled with meaning is always one characteristic of a classical style standing on the height of a certain culture. And I'm saying this as someone who is standing on the rotting carcass of whole culutreS myself, so its self-realization, also.

Having said all that, this has to be differentiated from décandence literature and baroque mannerisms (that get close), but are still romantic or playful in reaction to a certain classical age. What we have to do now is to take the shards the philosophers (like e.g. Adorno for German, whose language is utterly terrible) have left us of this barbaric age and forge from them a new archaic language (archaic ex ante) relentlessly based on our own direct experiences. The teachings of this age will work in us unconsciously anyway.

(Also in occult circles I highly dislike phrases like: lust for result, and stuff like that, All-is-One..and noone no one has experienced it, many keep blabbering along with the crowd.)

edit: but apart from my ramblings, its true: from a certain view everything we do and all words we use are an analogy or a reaction to something. I know what I oppose but dont know yet what I support. This is how all creation and development begins.

m1thr0s

04-17-2007, 10:10 AM

cool post K...several layers going on there at once.

I am suspicious of this statement:

What concerns me about this is the possibility that everything we do as magicians is analogical and that our interpretations of it are paraphrases.
what does that mean..."everything we do as magicians"? This would seem to presuppose that all magicianship is rooted in analytical processes alone...something I would be very hesitant to agree with.

m1thr0s

Logos

04-18-2007, 11:42 PM

In response to m1thr0s:

From rituals to spells to wielding basic symbols. I'd even go so far as to say that the way I interact with my surroundings is analogical: this customer's beer is to this napkin as this napkin is to this bar. I'm not saying it's analytical, I'm saying we just naturally paraphrase everything we do in terms of symbols, metaphors, etc.

-Logos

Logos

04-18-2007, 11:48 PM

Essentially, what I'm trying to get at is that symbols are paraphrastic. Every symbol embodies a series of complex relationships and paraphrases it in terms of its simplicity. In this sense, a ritual is a symbol: a symbolic, paraphrastic reenactment of a series of complex relationships. And this is by no means a good or a bad thing, it just seems to be the case and it seems to work quite well. We've been doing it for so long, there doesn't seem to be any alternative. There doesn't seem to be a different way to build the bike. That is, of course, until we begin to understand how we go about building it.

It's like a meta-methodology: a methodological approach to employing a methodological approach. And until we figure out the approach to the approach, we can only alter the approach to a certain extent.

For example, Chaos Magic is an exercise in altering the approach to Magic, but it's not different in the sense that it still relies on paraphrasing relationships in terms of symbols. Paraphrasing is what we always fall back on regardless of how post-modern we think we're being.

-Logos

Logos

04-19-2007, 12:13 AM

m1thr0s

04-19-2007, 12:40 AM

It's like a meta-methodology: a methodological approach to employing a methodological approach. And until we figure out the approach to the approach, we can only alter the approach to a certain extent. ok, so don't take this the wrong way because I really am trying to understand how this actually benefits us in some way but right now this all just sort of seems like a bunch of words.

I sort of take it for granted that we are really mostly talking about how the human brain processes information...whether we recognize this or not. The brain itself processes information analogously as near as I can tell and has been doing this for probably millions of years already (since it is very likely that primate or even rodent brains do this at lesser degrees of complexity). If this is true, and we finally agree that this is true, how does this help us in any way? What is this going to tell us that we really need to know? Do you envision some kind of self-improvement stemming from this realization? Are we then able to develop a better means of thinking or visualizing or anything?

I think this needs to be asked since for many people this is all going to seem like a lot of hair-splitting that doesn't really lend itself to anything very useful. I doubt that this is what you have in mind, but it's difficult to see where it is all going...or...is it going anywhere at all? Perhaps this is simply not the point from your perspective. In either case, I think this needs some clarification.

m1thr0s

Logos

04-19-2007, 01:10 AM

Well, it's not so much concerned with improving anything as it is with simply understanding what it is we do on a cognitive level and going from there. For me, understanding how I go about constructing symbols helps me understand how I go about using them. And if I can better understand how I go about using them, then maybe I can begin to use them in ways that haven't been considered, yet.

As for the hair-splitting, anything occult can be nothing more than a bunch of hair-splitting depending on who you ask. There's people out there who think alchemy is just a bunch of hair-splitting nonsense, and I'm sure there are people who think the LBRP is a bunch of hair-splitting nonsense: too much technical jargon (or dogma) to work through to finally get results. But that's always going to be the case. For me, understanding the role of the paraphrase in magic is far less hair-splitting than understanding the role of the tetractys in Kabbalah.

I'm sharing my thoughts. I'm not necessarily trying to concoct an alternative to everything that's already been done. What I am trying to do is understand how I use symbols and how I can go about using them differently if only for the sake of understanding symbols.

Other than that, I'd say you can't really develop a better means to anything until you understand what it is you're trying to change.

-Logos

m1thr0s

04-19-2007, 01:47 AM

For me, understanding the role of the paraphrase in magic is far less hair-splitting than understanding the role of the tetractys in Kabbalah. well, that sounds unnecessarily confrontational to me but also makes no particular sense in general. The Tetractys is a pragmatic model of reality whose relationship to Qaballah is already long established, so nothing new is actually being introduced there so much at all. When we use the term "hair-spiltting" as it would normally be used in conversation, we are talking about debating details of things that really make no particular difference of any remarkable kind. Whatever applications of the Tetractys I might be interested in are all very specifically related to Abrahadabra and provide a way of viewing Abrahadabra that has not only not been emphasized, but has apparently not even been very much observed at all. There is no "hair-splitting" in this kind of analysis since here we are distinctly addressing very specific advances in the management of very specific models of the Body of Light itself. If these things don't mean anything to you personally that's too bad, but in the longrun these things have a great deal of meaning to anyone tackling the physics of the Tree of Life or Abrahadabra in particular...

What you are presenting thus far seems to lack any kind of application at all, and this is what I am trying to understand. I don't think your comparison is really very well placed in this instance and I wasn't trying to get into comparing your system vs mine anyway. I am always interested in other people's systems as a matter of course, whether they seem to apply to me or not. You say:
I'm sharing my thoughts. I'm not necessarily trying to concoct an alternative to everything that's already been done. Here again, your first sentence makes sense but your second is clearly some sort of jab and I frankly have no idea what it means to "concoct an alternative to everything that's already been done." I'm not sure who would have any interest in that either...no one that I know at any rate.

How then does all of this lead to using symbols "differently"? Differently in what way? This is precisely what I am having a difficult time sorting out.

m1thr0s

Logos

04-19-2007, 02:19 AM

How then does all of this lead to using symbols "differently"? Differently in what way? This is precisely what I am having a difficult time sorting out.

m1thr0s
I don't know, yet. I suppose that's why I'm asking the question.

I want to know how you go about considering the tetractys (a geometrical diagram) a "pragmatic model of reality." Without analogy, without metaphor, and without your ability to paraphrase reality, the tetractys is absolutely nothing but a few dots or numbers or letters arranged in a certain order geometrically. There is absolutely nothing special about the tetractys until you impose meaning upon it. And here I'm including going all the way back to imposing meaning upon certain shapes and calling them "numbers."

Your methodological approach to magic involves the tetractys. What in the world is your methodological approach to interpreting the tetractys as a "pragmatic model of reality" that enables you to employ your methodological approach to magic?

I honestly want to know how you, or anyone else, go about seeing something special in the tetractys where others see absolutely nothing special at all. And I want to know how the ways we go about doing such things (e.g., paraphrasing, analogizing, etc.) enable us to do other things, such as practice magic, law, medicine, and so on.

For centuries, millenia even, we've been using what appears to be one very specific kind of model as a means to constructing models of reality (such as Abrahadabra, the ToL, etc.). We can change our models of reality. What I want to know is whether or not we are capable of changing the meta-model--the model we rely on to construct our models of reality.

-Logos

m1thr0s

04-19-2007, 03:10 AM

Your methodological approach to magic involves the tetractys. What in the world is your methodological approach to interpreting the tetractys as a "pragmatic model of reality" that enables you to employ your methodological approach to magic?I'm not going to play a bunch of ridiculous college rhetoric games here Logos. The tetractys itself is only one part of an overall methodology which is actually more correctly rooted in Trigrammaton outlining a logical system of elemental universe-creation within a multiplicity of long established contexts at once, including the I Ching, Tai Hsuan Ching, Tree of Life, Gematria, Shemhamphorasch and many others acting in perfect unison. The Tetractys itself acts as the rational hub of that greater elemental enginery and is "qualified" to do so on a number of important fronts, including its geometry, its numerology, cosmology, history and so on... If I define it as a pragmatic model of reality it is because it asserts a certain physical totality and also implicates certain procedures vital to the realization of that totality. It's all about methodology from start to finish in point of fact.

I honestly want to know how you, or anyone else, go about seeing something special in the tetractys where others see absolutely nothing special at all. And I want to know how the ways we go about doing such things (e.g., paraphrasing, analogizing, etc.) enable us to do other things, such as practice magic, law, medicine, and so on.You actually speak as someone with some kind of axe to grind against things you apparently are hostile to to begin with. I won't try to speak for everyone else because it is mainly my job to outline the proofs I have thus far discovered and let others determine for themselves what the sum total does or does not mean. It's really not my job to define that for you but I am nevertheless quite capable of clarifying what I am up to without flying off into irrational hysterics of any kind. The Tetractys model of Abrahadabra outlines a very detailed theory of the principle and mechanics of "Completion". Abrahadabra itself has been referred to as a glyph of the "Great Work in Completion" and what this model does is detail an anatomical explanation of that terminology offering a certain technological operatives...certain very specific things that can be done about it. Why it would mean "nothing" to others is anyone's guess...mine would simply be that they do not clearly recognize the potentials and have not, for the mostpart, really looked very hard in this particular direction to begin with.

You really are unnecessarily defensive from my perspective. I am asking a very simple question here and you are firing back with a lot of unrealistic demands that you know godamm well would take a very long time to answer completely. I am not asking you to justify your system of magick...I am simply asking what difference it makes...or even might make from your perspective just as a matter of clarification. You come back with a lot of bullshit demands in my view that will hopefully place me in an impossible argumentative position. But these are cheap debating tricks Logos and we both know better than this I think. I can answer the questions I have put to you and you may or may not accept those answers but at least I can answer them.

m1thr0s

Logos

04-19-2007, 03:21 AM

Wow, well I guess there's no point in talking about it anymore.

-Logos

m1thr0s

04-19-2007, 03:31 AM

well, that's really up to you. I am still interested in what you are trying to accomplish and still unclear as to what difference might be made following these kinds of leads. I am asking a question that has been brewing a very long time whenever I read through your posts. I don't expect you to convince me of anything...I was hoping you could explain your thinking without getting defensive about it...

m1thr0s

Logos

04-19-2007, 03:47 AM

I don't understand how one can be so adamant about knowing where a path leads before embarking down that path. I don't know where it leads, m1thr0s. I'm asking questions, nothing more. And you're claiming I'm playing games with rhetoric. I'm questioning the foundations upon which you and many others construct models of reality and you are obviously very offended by it, which tells me I must be asking the right questions, even though there are no answers in sight at the moment.

-Logos

m1thr0s

04-19-2007, 04:00 AM

people seem to resort a lot to telling me how offended I am. I am not actually half so offended as you presume, but you are attempting to answer a reasonable question with a dozen unreasonable ones as far as I can tell.

you say:

I don't understand how one can be so adamant about knowing where a path leads before embarking down that path.
there are all kinds of situations in life where we might embark on a certain course without knowing exactly where it leads! Xst, that's what life is for the mostpart! In general, I have relied upon a combination of proofs both logical and energetic since I don't just *think* about the crap I come up with but have worked with it magickally at every step along the way. So while I may not be 100% certain where things ultimately lead I nevertheless enjoy a high level of confidence in the strength and the clarity I have thus far unearthed. It's a step-by-step sort of process but I am already so many thousands of steps into it...still on my feet...still making sense...still making progress and so on...Why do I need to know exactly how things resolve before I embark upon the journey? What kind of way to live is that?

m1thr0s

Logos

04-19-2007, 04:06 AM

If we agree, then why did you attack me by saying that "at least I can answer them?"

I don't understand why you're attacking me.

-Logos

m1thr0s

04-19-2007, 04:28 AM

I wasn't aware that I was attacking anybody Logos. I asked you a simple question and the next thing I find is a whole litany of complaints against my own method of operations...none of which should even matter...it's completely irrelevant to the question.

All I wanted to know is what practical applications there may be to understanding this whole analogies business...because it simply isn't clear to me. you say:
It's like a meta-methodology: a methodological approach to employing a methodological approach. And until we figure out the approach to the approach, we can only alter the approach to a certain extent.I have no idea at all what that's supposed to mean! I am simply asking for some example of how this applies to anything I can relate to.

edit: I would think someone as skillful at words as yourself would be able to recognize that this sounds an awful lot like a classical "double-talk".

m1thr0s

m1thr0s

04-19-2007, 04:58 AM

I see you are putting together a seemingly long response. I will have to get back to this tomorrow...

m1thr0s

Logos

04-19-2007, 06:39 AM

OK.

Etymologically, "metaphor" means "to carry across." The term "meta" is originally Greek, meaning "among, with, after." With the exception of "metaphor" (and maybe a few other words that don't come to mind at the moment), "meta" is typically a hyphenated prefix--e.g., meta-mathematics, meta-ethics, meta-discussion, etc.

Meta-mathematics is the mathematics of mathematics.
Meta-ethics is the ethics of ethics.
A meta-discussion is a discussion about having a discussion.
So far, there is no meta-biology or meta-chemistry: you can't conduct a biological analysis of the field of biology or a chemical analysis of the field of chemistry.

Thus, a meta-methodology is a methodology underlying a methodology--a methodological approach to employing a methodological approach. For example, let's say your methodology is feminism: you interpret a text according to a feminist mentality. In this case, the meta-methodology would be the methodological approach to employing the feminist approach: I'm going to approach gender a certain way so I can approach the texts a certain way and I'm going to approach myself in a certain way so I can approach gender a certain way. Meta-methodologies are all about preparation: you prepare yourself to interpret aspects of reality in such a way so that you can interpret other aspects of reality in such a way.

If you're convinced a certain approach to life is best, you tend to approach everything in such a way that your experience validates that certain approach to life. If you're convinced white people are stupid, you will interpret your experiences in such a way that you further convince yourself that white people are stupid. You have a methodology that you know works, so you tend to employ a methodology to validate that methodology.

i think what might best make sense out of this is if I share my definition of "rhetorical knavery," which was a term I coined for my master's thesis.

Rhetorical knavery is a meta-methodology--it's a methodological approach to taking texts out of context in such a way that your methodology works the way it should. In terms of feminism, a feminist critic will take certain statements out of context for the purpose of validating his feminist approach. The meta-methodology is all about taking the statements out of context, the methodology is all about interpreting the statements you just took out of context. You recontextualize and then you interpret.

In terms of magic, you take an unfamiliar symbol, interpret it, and apply it. The applying it is the methodology. The interpreting it is the meta-methodology. The interpreting makes the applying possible.

I'm afraid that's about the best I can do at the moment.

-Logos

m1thr0s

04-19-2007, 11:08 AM

ok...thanks for trying.

I guess it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me since, for me, this meta-methodology is really all an integrated part of the methodology I am used to employing to begin with, hence my confusion with the term. It is possible that I have been employing this strategy for years without calling it by these terms. This is one of the things I have been hoping to ascertain.

you say:
You recontextualize and then you interpret.this is precisely how the trigrammal fields logic was developed. It's a sensitive process since there do have to be certain rules applied. Not everything of the "old context" is necessarily irrelevant in the new etc...it's little tricky at certain passes.

we can try to discuss this if you like but I feel like this has become too combative to be very constructive. I will have to reside for the time being at the same confusion I started out with. I think this is all very interesting but without some concrete example of how it applies to my own methodology, I probably won't be able to utilize it any more than I already do.

I appreciate your efforts nevertheless. From my own standpoint this is all fundamentally syncretic method at its best. I think it would ultimately be very useful to spend more time carefully constructing some textbook examples of how it can be applied. A lot more people would then be able to scrutinize it better and perhaps also correct ther own methods somewhat as a result.

note: here is an article that may support the notion that this is all essentially syncretic method:
article: Towards a Syncretic Method for Complex Systems-of-Systems Problems (http://www.unisa.edu.au/seec/pubs/01papers/ANZSYS7-paper-rjstaker.pdf)

m1thr0s

Kuroyagi

04-20-2007, 08:57 AM

We use metaphors all the time. There's no getting away from it. We have to paraphrase experience in terms of "other," otherwise unrelated things.

-LogosExactly, and isnt that, what I wrote, the thing you are aiming at, also? Namely the interpretation of a thing via the aid of the very same "thing" as a tool? Meaning: interpreting language by/via language. So one could choose two main methods in interpreting or answering my post: one would be the concrete, the "material" one that concerns itself with the content: this could be an answer like: "I dont think that the modern language is as degenerate as you say" or whatever, while you choose the meta-textual interpretation of it by saying: "you are critizising metaphors while using metaphors yourself".

Yet both methods are hermeneutic tools: ways of interpreting a text. (for general info on hermeneutics, -maybe all else but Logos need it, me included, I wanted to read Dilthey for a long time- see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics )

As for the question of "why are we drawn to certain things", like mathematics OR humanities or both etc, and: why is the Tetractys interesting to some people and why are the French philosophers of the mid 20th century interesting to another, my opinion is that basically ALL those things and questions (if they are more or less relevant to nature or life or art etc), and all those systems, are interesting if one takes the time to concern oneself indepth with them. But alas life is short and we cant do everything, yet still I have (by researching and reading in a wide spectrum [metaphor haha] of interests acquired a certain "intuition" that points me to things that are worth looking into deeper at some point in the futur when having more time; and this servant-"demon", this inuitition of mine safes me lots of time, too.

On a more general note, I doubt that one can find out why one person is drawn to a certain way of expression and another to another, by logical means or "thinking" alone: it depends so much on chance on things like childhood influences, on: if you liked your math teacher, and on emotions, even on genetic or pre incarnational dispositions and even whims of the moment, that it seems difficult to get good results. (yet maybe it is worth trying, so I wish you all the best: and do tell me of your results!). Yet this meta-interpretational field is in itself also another predilection another field of research that not everyone is interested in, n'est-ce pas?

m1thr0s

04-20-2007, 10:10 AM

the time issue is very relevant in my view and it may be easy for us to forget how much more time most of have to commit to the "hard questions" than has been the norm for most in the past.

I have also detected a kind of laissez-faire it's-all-been-done-before sort of preassumption going on with some that I find objectionable. The fact of the matter is that there are new ways of attacking old problems springing up all the time and some of these are very important...others perhaps less so. We have entered the Information Age which will move differently than the Age of Reason and new ways of approaching ancient human issues will be and are continuously occuring as a result of our position in the timeline itself. Knowledge evolves, just like everything else in life, so that new discoveries do, in fact, happen.

Why have we only just recently learned to fly? Certainly humakind has dreamt of flight for thousands of years before us. My own work has been very impacted by genetics science for instance which has only even existed since the early 1950's. New knowledge gives rise to new approaches to yet "hidden" knowledge. I would have thought that perfectly obvious but some seem to be very resistant to this reality.

m1thr0s

Kuroyagi

04-20-2007, 10:53 AM

I very much agree with that. New combinations and re (re) interpretations of old things in the light of a new age/lifetime was always the engine and catalyst (many metaphors!) of inventions.

In times when certain of such interpretations are "forbidden" or taboo it stagnates. but even this has some advantage: e.g. such times can refine those things and interpretations that are "allowed". (eg look at the highly refined non-technical culture of pre Meiji Japan or the sometimes "Babylonian" mental constructs of European MA scholastic philosophers).

From the beginning of my short Western magical carreer I was always progapating for myself "to invent and re-invent the wheel anew", as you said pertaining to a self-designed alphabet. (and it was a bit sobering then, that people who I held in some respect said tings like: its stupid to do that.)

But generally speaking: filters are very important pertaining to the problem of (life) time; as I said: my "demon" and other methods I have do some good work here. The things that get sorted as "good" (worthy to look into further) by this system are not simply piled on some heap of "yet to do" papers that I wont look into anymore, but are rather set as some sort of future priorities. And there are many opportunities to come back to them: be it when ones (present) research is frustarting, be it that I want to give my life a new perspective or creative impulse (use them in order to "banish" and "forget", or "change perspective" etc as the magician would say.)

edit/note: and this consequently leads to the question of "context" and "usefulness" in a general sense ("context"/relation is very en vogue nowadays); and this again is the connection to what Logos has said, I think. Now Im interested, :lol: so lets see if i can come up with some useage of this for myself....

m1thr0s

04-20-2007, 12:38 PM

well..despite the heated debate earlier, I happen to think this whole issue is pivotal...context, and the ways we deal with context, are one of the most important matters before us as *modern* occult pioneers and thinkers...virtually nothing that I know of is more important than this...just to (hopefully) set the record straight on that...

Because of its importance though...I think we have to hammer out the language we may use to be as unambiguous as possible...

m1thr0s

Logos

04-22-2007, 11:56 PM

In my mind, there is one perfect example of a magical system that completely relies on meta-methodologies on a superficial level (superficial as in, it's not overshadowed by dogma the way it is in, say, academia): Chaos Magic

Chaos Magic is a meta-methodology whereby you may adopt any other previously established methodology as your own at the whim of the moment. Chaos magic is a meta-methodology in the sense that it's a methodology that enables you to employ one methodology one day (e.g., a Catholic methodology) and then employ a completely different methodology another day (e.g., a Wiccan methodology). Chaos Magic is a methodological approach to adopting a methodology.

So this is what I'm getting at. And I'm attempting to apply this to something that applies to a non-occult community, such as academia. Like Chaos Magic, there is a meta-methodology underlying any decision to choose a certain methodology. The difference is that in academia the meta-methodology is overshadowed by a lot of pompous, white-tower bullshit. And if you can "get at" that meta-methodology and, say, alter it, you may open a lot of doors that may remain closed otherwise.

In other words, I guess what I'm trying to do is rethink the meta-methodology that defines schools of thought similar to Chaos Magic or post-structuralism (which is basically postmodern linguistics).

-Logos

m1thr0s

04-23-2007, 02:25 AM

Logos

04-24-2007, 10:51 PM

that all makes sense to me, although I think it's funny, in a way, that you would use Chaos Magic as the exceptional standard of this meta-methodology, since I have found it to be self-limiting in unexpected ways. It has become sort of the nouveau riche of occult philosophy and lacks a character of depth I find necessary to undertaking certain tasks. So I have set my own sights to Hermetic Alchemy and a general redefining of Hermeticism as better suited to the kinds of goals you seem to be suggesting.

It isn't important that you agree or disagree with that conclusions since it's a purely subjective call so far as I can tell. What is important I think, is to consider that any branch of modern occult philosophy might just as easily adopt this meta-methodological approach to things at least insofar as it might be interested in redefining itself on a broader scale than tradition alone might be willing to allow.

And really...I think this is, in fact, happening straight across the board...probably more on an intuitive level than a pragmatic one for the mostpart.

m1thr0s
Well, I wouldn't necessarily consider Chaos Magic an "exceptional standard," but it's probably the most popular example and it's probably the most obvious example: meta-methodology is what makes Chaos Magic chaotic. It's an easy example, and it's the main reason why I don't think we've carried the idea anywhere near as far as it can go.

Methodologies are kind of like glasses: some are prescription, some are tinted, some have blue lenses, some are for reading, others are for watching 3-D. You put on a pair of yellow sunglasses and the grass looks a little bit greener and the sky looks a little bit grayer, but you're limited according to that yellow tint: the sky will never be blue as long as you wear those yellow sunglasses. Tradition tends not to acknowledge those who want to wear more than one pair of glasses at the same time or those who want to wear one pair for attending mass on Sunday and a different pair for getting laid Saturday night. And yet we all tend to mix and match, anyway: have you ever met a Catholic who's never had trouble forgiving someone? or a Goth who's never laughed?

We continue to open new doors and cut new paths because we see the value in mixing methodologies. m1thr0s' Mutational Alchemy, for example, combines Kabbalah with I-Ching with Hermeticism with other things that don't come to mind at the moment.

I think our failure to take meta-methodology farther than we have so far has a lot to do with the fact that we often take for granted the technologies we use on a regular basis: Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Digg, Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, RSS, etc. Search engines, blogs, forums, and open-source encyclopedias enable us and sometimes force us to take meta-methodological approaches to information and communication in ways that weren't possible ten years ago, even five years ago.

I'm trying to figure out how I can go about practicing magic and alchemy the way I go about gathering and sharing information on the internet.

-Logos

m1thr0s

04-24-2007, 11:25 PM

I'm trying to figure out how I can go about practicing magic and alchemy the way I go about gathering and sharing information on the internet.well...maybe even how not to based on what you just said...

I do think it is important to arrive at a comprehensive grasp of the rules of a meta-methodology and also some sense of its improper or incorrect applications. Syncretism, by way of example, falls off into historical revisionism if it isn't very careful, and this has, in fact, been one of the most frequently levied complaints against it. This is one of its pitfalls...it doesn't really disqualify the methodology itself but is an ill-dignified manifestation that can occur when people don't really understand the rules. Understanding those rules is a bit tricky since I am not sure they have actually been formally compiled yet. To some extent they have (such as in the article I posted) but the vast majority of people just sort of wing it I think...sometimes very poorly.

Comparing this to the internet itself we see similar kinds of complaints occuring. More is not always better...particularly when original content is misinterpreted or misrepresented or only scanned at the most superficial levels etc. Observer bias always finds its nitch so we have to constantly be on guard against distortions rooted in motivational or cognitive prejudice...

m1thr0s

Logos

04-24-2007, 11:55 PM

Comparing it to the internet, I wouldn't say I was trying to compare it to the kind of superficial knowledge production characteristic of most aspects of the internet, but to compare it to the different kinds of