Reading

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On Providence

ὃ δ’ ἀφήμενος οὐκ ἀλεγίζει οὐδ’ ὄθεται
but he sits apart neither heeding nor caring

(Hera speaking of Zeus. Homer, Iliad XV 106b–7a, as translated by yours truly.)

We homeschool my daughter, and the curriculum we are working from is a Christian curriculum—not surprising, I suppose, as most homeschoolers in the USA are so for religious reasons, and so most of the materials on the market cater to that. In any case, the English textbook she is studying had her working with Christian hymns today, and she was complaining about these; so, as a counterpoint, I read her a few bits and pieces from the Homeric Hymns and Orphic Hymns and Porphyry's Hymn to the Intellect, and we discussed what the point of the hymns are, coming to the conclusion that the hymns in her book were about lowering god to the man, while the hymns I showed her were about raising man to the god. This led to a pretty interesting dialogue:

Daughter. But why should we raise ourselves to Zeus (for example)?

Me. Do you care about the cells in your body?

Daughter. What? ... No, not really. I don't even think about them.

Me. But you are like a "cell" in the "body" of Zeus.

Daughter. So Zeus doesn't care about us?

Me. I don't think so. (That's pretty different from what the hymns in your book say, isn't it?) But you still take care of the cells in your body, don't you?

Daughter. I don't try to, but yeah, I guess I kinda do. I mean, if I didn't, I'd get sick and die.

Me. I think that's how it is with Zeus, too. He doesn't care of us but that doesn't mean he doesn't take care of us. (That's what angels are for, after all!) So to raise yourself to Zeus is to harmonize with Zeus: it's like your cell trying to harmonize with your body. Wouldn't your body work better if all your cells tried to be as aware of the whole as possible?

She went away very contemplative...

Entry tags:

egypt,
silliness

Retracing Old Ground

One of my prized possessions, back in the day, was an over-the-top, folio-sized copy of Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages. (It didn't survive the trip when we fled our old home, alas; but just as well, since it wasn't the direction I needed.)

The highlight of that book, I think, was it's extravagant full-page illustrations by John Augustus Knapp. I had occasion to be looking back over these today, and what do I see in the painting accompanying Hall's essay on Hermetism?

woof woof

Why, it's our old and faithful friend Upuat, waiting to guide us into the ruins of ancient wisdom! Hey there, buddy! Who's a good boy?

Diary: Chances are, this will piss you off

The Donald is doing something terrible. The Donald is raising taxes. Oh, he is pretending that he is lowering taxes, but really, that just doesn't seem the way things are going from my point of view.

I have never seen the contrived difference between taxes and tariffs. The Donald is raising tariffs because that is where the money is for corporations and rich folk. 15% tariff on manufactured goods from Europe, well buckaroos, no one here in corporate land is going to absorb that (despite the ravings of the Orange), that cost will be passed on to consumers. So what is going to happen is that some PMC types will start paying more for their BMW or Mercedes. I can't say that I am depressed.

Now, I am certain that us lowlifes will be discomfited. Apparently food is included, so my 3,000 mile salads (Made in Mexico) are going to be more expensive in January . But truthfully, they really are a bit of a luxury so I guess I can deal with that. The truth being that I eat less salads in the cold weather anyway.

Nope, from what I see, the tariff will bite primarily to those folks who are either buying status or cheap plastic shit.

I guess that folks will set me right if they disagree. But tariffs are just taxes. For the most part, I can live with how these are being assessed. They might well price some of my luxury items out of my reach, but I can live with that.

Donald is still as dumb as a doorknob though, but I have no problem with tariffs or taxes. Budgets have to be balanced and you have to either raise taxes or lower spending.

Not into it

It is amazing how uninterested I am in just about everything right now. I’m just drinking tea and looking out at the trees. That’s it. I’m content.

Essay: Action Arms

Lovely Lillies

Les Gens heureux n'ont pas d'histoire

Camus hated that phrase, but then again, Camus was an asshole. But the phrase has some merit when the words are changed a little. Swap out “content” for “happy” and you might get something useful.

I got an email from a friend in Germany the other day, asking what seems to be a fairly simple question:

how capable the leading people of the action-arm of America might be.

Now that is quite the question. Because there are a bunch of action arms here in the US of A. They are quite geographically dispersed and ideologically diverse. We see hints of their presence protesting ICE raids and on January 6th. They surface wearing pussy hats and adorn their lifted pickup trucks with huge American flags.

But I am thinking that taken as a whole, they are not so much an assemblage that have the ability to effect an action, they are too set in the mold of "opposing the other side" than actually trying to accomplish their stated goals.

No, I think that the action arms here in America are pretty sad creatures. They drift along pretty aimlessly until someone/something rouses them from their torpor. But when awakened their activity is to stop the "other side". By having so many competing flavors of these "arms" they manage to cancel each other out when it comes to change of any type so the ship just drifts with the tide.

This isn't saying that there aren't individuals or groups out there who don't have decent goals or who aren't competent, but the overall effect is that no one seems to want to begin the decades long process of making change happen to a large, inertia ridden system that for all the bitching, seems to work well enough overall.

So, here in America, what we have is disparate sets of activists more bent on frustrating the opposition than actually making the effort to put together a sufficiently cohesive and focused coalition to move goals forward (opposition is not a positive forward movement). You can see this happening most noticeably in the Democratic Party where the Democratic Socialists (the folks who seem to have a positive plan) are trying to split away from the main Democratic party. The question that remains is will they shut up and actually get to work or will they turn out to be just a bunch of whiners like the party that calved them.

I think that the trouble that my country and Europe are having is simply the non-problem of sufficiency and projection. The problems seem to stem from the odd situation that there is enough to go around. Hell, I don’t know how it is in Europe, but poor people here in America are probably fatter than the well off. The immigrant problem is because the folks here are unwilling to do the shitty jobs that no one in America wants to do. Taxes are absurdly low (look at the difference between rates in our two countries). Colleges pump out degrees at an alarming rate (this one will probably cause a crisis when the graduates finally figure out that there aren’t dream jobs for everyone).

I think that the “action arms” in both countries will have the same level of competence as they always have had. The percentage of people who are actually capable of accomplishing something (as always, a distressingly small percentage) are going to remain fractured and unfocused, which will mean that they will be ineffective. What is holding them back is that things really aren’t that god-awful and the ideas they peddle to “fix” the “problems” just move the problems around a little and change the order of the queue waiting for seconds at the table.

So, in answer to your question. The folks who constitute the “action arms” are just dandy, thank you very much. Their problem is that there isn’t a decent idea for them to coalesce around.

Entry tags:

On Digestive Organs

Okay, you guys, it's driving me nuts how everyone says "evil livers" and I need to get to the bottom of it. Murray's translation of Sallustios XIX reads,

[...] which is seen about graves, especially the graves of evil livers.

In the original, this is,

ὃ περὶ τοὺς τάφους καὶ μάλιστα τῶν κακῶς ζησάντων ὁρᾶται.

All of these are genitive case, hence "of." τῶν is the definite article. κακῶς is the adjective "bad" or "evil." ζησάντων is the past-tense active participle of ζῶ "to live," therefore... shit.

SALLUSTIOS HIMSELF SAYS "EVIL LIVERS."

Diary: SNAFU

I think that one of the big reasons that I really can't get all up and huffy about the state of the world is that I do have a pretty good memory and most people really don't.

Having a good memory complicates things. Spending time reading different histories complicates things even more.

Memories are an amalgam of long term storage in a suspect biological matrix that is processed through a set of cultural programming that tries (usually unsuccessfully) to force a set of explanations through an ever shifting set of constructed and self-serving "values".

The human world is what we live in. It is a shifting competition for resources and the power needed to control access to those resources. We here in the West are comfortable at being top dog and intend to stay there. Here in the West, the algorithm has shifted from the workers and soldiers being in a position of greater relative power to one where the priesthood (control of symbols) is fighting to stay on top.

Same as it ever was. The balance is being fought out at the interface between the different groups within our local tribe and our contact points with other tribes.

Get over it, this is the way the world works

Entry tags:

enneads,
philosophy

Spirit and Matter

Plotinos says (Enneads III ix §3) that "Soul is Matter to the Intellectual-Principle."

That is, the Intellect is matter to the One; Soul is matter to the Intellect; and Matter is matter to Nature. Conversely, Soul is spirit to Nature; the Intellect is spirit to Soul; and the One is spirit to the Intellect (insofar as the One is anything at all).

To put it another way, we say that the spirit is potential and matter is actualization; our soul is, in potential, what our body becomes in actuality. So it is that while dead, we see but do not act, and while alive, we act but do not see.

But this is only true from the perspective of the material life: the soul itself is the actualization of its potential in the Intellect. So what do souls do when free from all body? They live, just as we do, in the manner peculiar to their sphere...

Diary: Cui Bono?

One of the reasons I have been somewhat silent lately is that I have been thinking pretty hard about Voltaire's “Oui, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.”

As a culture, we have moved about as far from this simple suggestion as possible. Everything that happens and every person around me seems to want to draw my attention from my garden to what is perceived by others as problems that I should care about. Events a continent away are parsed in detail to attract my attention and draw my ire. Yet when I look at the "problem", it is really someone else's problem that they attempt to make mine by creating an imaginary linkage between their problem and my life. I would estimate that 99% of the time the linkage does not truly exist.

I have spent nearly ten years now stripping away problems from my own life (which is tending my garden). I have a small garden, bounded by a small retirement, a wee bit of savings, and social security. My garden is currently well kept and the small harvest is sufficient. I am content.

But the electrons that constitute the "news and commentary" spend a great deal of rhetorical energy trying to convince me that the problems in gardens thousands of miles away from me are my problems. I no longer believe this is the case. People killing people 7,000 miles away is not a weed in my garden. The possibility of plastic shit I don't need costing more at the Wal-Mart because the government want to tax plastic shit I don't need isn't my problem. Someone somewhere is not invited to a function because of they have different or different ways of utilizing their genitalia is not my problem. Opinions about others relative poverty or wealth are not my problem.

I suppose that I could construct a chain of potential for all of these problems that would lead me to think somehow these problems are my problems, but I just don't have the inclination or the energy, and the case made by these chains would be weak at best. At the end of the day, I think that it is important to realize that gardens have good and bad years. Weeds happen. Droughts are unwelcome. Pests are annoying.

Now don't get me wrong. I will still bitch about things, but it will be like watching the a storm front come in. I will wonder if the gust front will play itself out across the valley or will it knock down my plants with its squall of hail. But the storm is part of taking care of the garden. I don't have the ability to change the storm, all I can do is deal with the effects.

Diary: Pathos

So, a "scandal" in the NFL. Players Union President and "Chief of Strategy" (intelligent ex-player) went to a stripper bar and spent less than 3K with a couple of players.

This is a scandal? Man, either we are a bunch of puritans or the news cycle is truly sad. I am disappointed that they were that cheap. Those girls work hard for their money.

Entry tags:

language

Orphic Hymn to the White Goddess

Λευκοθέας, θυμίαμα, ἀρώματα.
Λευκοθέην καλέω Καδμηΐδα, δαίμονα σεμνήν,
εὐδύνατον, θρέπτειραν ἐϋστεφάνου Διονύσου.
κλῦθι, θεά πόντοιο βαθυστέρνοιο μέδουσα,
κύμασι τερπομένη, θνητῶν σώτειρα μεγίστη.
ἐν σοὶ γὰρ νηῶν πελαγοδρόμος ἄστατος ὁρμή,
μούνη δὲ θνητῶν οἰκτρὸν μόρον εἰν ἁλὶ λύεις,
οἷς ἂν ἐφορμαίνουσα φίλη σωτήριος ἔλθοις.
ἀλλά, θεὰ δέσποινα, μόλοις ἐπαρωγὸς ἐοῦσα
νηυσὶν ἐπ’ εὐσέλμοις σωτήριος εὔφρονι βουλῇ,
μύσταις ἐν πόντῳ ναυσίδρομον οὖρον ἄγουσα.

For the White Goddess. (Cense with aromatics.)
I call the White Goddess, daughter of Kadmos, august divinity,
well-able nurse of well-crowned Dionusos—
hear me, leading goddess of the deep-bosomed sea,
delighting in the waves [of adversity], great savior of mortals;
for by you ships fly unceasingly over the sea,
and alone you dissolve the lamentable fate of sea-bound mortals,
those to whom you would rush to as a rescuing friend.
But, mistress goddess, come be a helper
to well-decked ships, dispensing gracious advice,
and bring a ship-speeding stretch to sea-going initiates.

(As translated—probably very poorly as the hymns are grammatically difficult!—by yours truly.)

Diary: An Offering

Pour yourself a cup of coffee. Have a read:

https://libertiesjournal.com/online-articles/apology-for-decadence-pleasures-of-empire-at-worlds-end/

Entry tags:

philosophy

Riddles

Isn't it interesting how Kalupso's ("she who veils") clothing drags Odusseus down, while Leukothea's veil buoys him up?

Isn't it interesting how the "veil" separates us from spirit, but how the "veiled" mysteries connect us to it?

Isn't it interesting how Loxias ("the oblique one") always shoots straight?