space for my spitballs on esoterica (yours too)

[luka]

One way in is as good as any other, is what I'm trying to say

 

[luka]

The Marxist stuff, for most people, is much like the Crowley stuff, a huge and unwieldy apparatus, creaking siege machinery wheeled laboriously into place to crack a nut. Most people can't be fucked, or see the point. For you, it's your favourite genre of literature, for other people, not so much. It's just about the way different minds work isn't it

 

[thirdform]

I dunno third, I think it's just a cast of mind that stuff. I've got at least one friend who is heavily into it. Any avenue of study can be profitable (although in his case it is always a prelude to a psychotic break) if you treat it as what Olson called, an immersion job. I don't think there's rules anyone has to follow.

there aren't rules as such, but there is effectiveness, (connecting to other people in terms of needs) or ineffectiveness, commodity magic, trying to sell something. so i think we agree.

 

[thirdform]

The Marxist stuff, for most people, is much like the Crowley stuff, a huge and unwieldy apparatus, creaking siege machinery wheeled laboriously into place to crack a nut. Most people can't be fucked, or see the point. For you, it's your favourite genre of literature, for other people, not so much. It's just about the way different minds work isn't it

but I thought prynn was a marxist! granted not a party one, but neither am i...

 

[thirdform]

i mean, i don't think you can get to a vaguely similar position without at least taking marx's analysis of capitalism seriously.

For instance, we work for them is absolutely true, but only a half truth. who is we, who is them and what is work? a marxist framework allows you to think through those propositions with rigour, even if you don't call yourself a marxist.

You look at people saying My family has always been working class and I'm like, ok, why should i care? That's just a lifestyle choice then. it's no different to a mockney. in fact, a mockney is far more noble than that, if they have a genuine affection, whereas these people will adamantly deny that they are middle or upper class, even if they are sociologically, politically and economically.

But that's marxism. back to the esoteric talk.

 

[luka]

but I thought prynn was a marxist! granted not a party one, but neither am i...

He is, yeah.

 

[luka]

That note on metal is obviously in dialogue with (among other things) the ethnological notebooks otherlife is ploughing through.

 

[thirdform]

look i am gonna read it.

i promise.

but

my concentration is so fucked atm. that shit is like intellectually hardcore porn. I need intellectual soft porn. I'm (mentally) in the comedown phase.

I need tangerine dream not Peter Brotzmann.

you get what im saying?

 

[luka]

Well the thing is, it's unintelligible. And it's very short. Three small pages. So there's no pressure to understand it, because it's unintelligible. And there's no time demand, cos it's so short.

 

[droid]

The E8 Lattice, or the unified theory of everything. An 8 dimensional structure projected onto 4 dimensions, then 3 dimensions and portrayed in 2 dimensions. This is a significant element of emergence theory which postulates that this object is a system in which all frames of spacetime interact with all other frames all the time and there is a constant, dynamic, causality loop relationship between all moments in time, in which the past influences the future, the future influences the past and reality is created by conscious observation from the Planck scale up.

 

[DannyL]

precisely because my parents had such shitty experiences w their respective christian denominations. wanted magical powers as a child so it's been a compulsion to find out if that was possible

What are your conclusions so far?

 

[luka]

http://www.resurrectisis.org/A1WebPage.htm

This is a brilliant website. The sort of thing I'm always being scolded for enjoying. " but Luke, what about facts. Don't you see they're important?"

 

[luka]

"What about rigour?

 

[DannyL]

My eyeballs just start sliding off the page when I read sites like that, I can't concentrate on them - find 'em boring, unengaging. It might be weird to belabour esoteric sites for a lack of facts but I think a lack of experiential content is part of that. I like the facts of the experiential, the life-changing, someone being able to say "this changed me, and this is how". Sites like that don't give me that sensation.

 

[DannyL]

With esoterica rigour really only matters when it's tethered to practice.

 

[luka]

My eyeballs just start sliding off the page when I read sites like that, I can't concentrate on them - find 'em boring, unengaging. It might be weird to belabour esoteric sites for a lack of facts but I think a lack of experiential content is part of that. I like the facts of the experiential, the life-changing, someone being able to say "this changed me, and this is how". Sites like that don't give me that sensation.

This is the point I've been making. People are different and have different needs, different desires, different pleasures.

 

[luka]

What happens in that page is to do with the imagination, with metaphor, with underlying form, with creativity, with a brilliant ability to reduce to essence. It isn't entirely untethered from fact in as much as the parallels actually work, but it is nothing to do with facts in the very narrow and tendentious sense people recently have been using the term.

 

[DannyL]

I haven't read the whole thread I'm afraid.

I guess textual exegesis is an esoteric tradition in it's own right, after all, discerning the ten million names of God. Kenneth Grant was infamous for using gematria and textual overload to create a dreamworld for his readers.

 

[luka]

Of course, it's central to the western esoteric tradition. Why Frances Yates wrote so much about Christian Kabbala

 

[luka]

A lot of this stuff is erected upon the perception of correspondences

Charles Baudelaire
(1821—1867)


Correspondences


Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let escape sometimes confused words;
Man traverses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.

Like long echoes that intermingle from afar
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast like the night and like the light,
The perfumes, the colors and the sounds respond.

There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
—And others corrupted, rich and triumphant

That have the expanse of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, balsam and incense,
Which sing the ecstasies of the mind and senses.

. . .


Correspondances


La nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme une nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

Il est des parfums frais comme de chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
—Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.