Sinking further in
I have had way more than my share of sick this year. I'm recovering now from my third bout being down with some kind of cold or flu. At least this one is not as wretched as the fever-and-lung-pain thing I had in January. And I thought I had escaped the plague of PCon.
So I'm at home and have been doing some further readings on the Faery researches ( Read more... )
So I'm at home and have been doing some further readings on the Faery researches ( Read more... )
I still feel like this psychological model misses something about the nature of it though. I'm grasping at how to describe this: My instinct is that what the myths are pointing to is a primal force or presence that is embedded in the planetary ecology of power, and onto which we have mapped our notions of religious Hell, the home of demons, etc. Thus for me interpreting it as a symbol for the worst of the self is as reductive as interpreting it as a symbol for spiritual death and rebirth. I don't know if that will make sense to you.
I think what I'm getting at is that I don't think this is all in our heads. Even in the expanded sense of our heads. Faery, and the Underworld generally, are real places to me, albeit they occupy space differently than places as we know them here on the surface. Yes, our heads are bigger than we think they are, in the sense that parts of us are operative in the Underworld and other parts of creation beyond the narrow awareness of Talker-mind. But that's different than saying that the Underworld itself is some kind of symbol for a state of mind or psychological process. So I'm not looking for another way to interpret Hell as a symbol for something abstract. The question I'm trying to answer is what real part or function of the Underworld is referenced by the term 'Hell' in the Faery lore? And, what is the relationship between that and Faery as I know it?
I think that what DuQuette says about demons and Hell in that context makes sense... but I think he's maybe talking about something different from what I am. Demons, yes, are often externalized and disowned bits of shadow. And I don't believe in a literal Hell that looks like the Christian description with sulfur and suffering. But I also don't think that the Hell-and-Lucifer connection the Faery myths keep referencing is a symbol for something abstract; I think it's a reference to something that is really there, just presented in language and image specific to the period.
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Aye. To this point, I was just saying to panshiva the other day:The cosmos is so constructed that the effects of magickal practice will always be explainable as only a change in the practitioner's psyche. Early in magickal practice, though surprising things happen to the practitioner this psychological explanation is far simpler and tidier than believing in spooky æthers, deities, energies, and so forth. As the practitioner continues to work, explaining events in purely psychological terms requires increasingly elaborate justification ... until eventually one realizes that those “spooky” explanations are actually simpler.
More specifically to the question of where this “Hell” place really is, there's the way I understand the tradition in qabalah to say that the Tree of Life is both a map of the Cosmos and a map of the Self. It can be both because each element of the Self-each element of the mind, in the greatest sense of mind-is the way we make contact with that element of the Cosmos. When I get all rational science-y, and think about Newtonian Physics in my personal sphere of Hod, I'm engaging with the local-to-my-Self manifestation of the laws of physics which are “out there” in the greater Cosmos' sphere of Hod.
If I wrestle with my “inner demons” of, say, rage in Gevurah, I'm wrestling with the place where the greater cosmic forces of Rage manifest in me. I'm touching the big cosmic Rage as well as my “merely psychological” rage. If my personal hell is where I am out of balance, then the cosmic Hell is where the Cosmos is out of balance.
And actually, now that I say that, I find it easier to grasp where Hell is in the Cosmos than where Færie is!
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And actually, now that I say that, I find it easier to grasp where Hell is in the Cosmos than where Færie is!
We are amused. Also, the opposite is true of me!
It strikes me (wandering into the wilds of speculation here, BTW) that it being difficult to grasp where Faery is, might be an evidence of one of its defenses. Its 'location' can't really be understood in terms of rational, orderly concepts of space. That property forms a sort of veil through which one can only find it by opening oneself to non-rational consciousness (or, maybe trans-rational?). Doing that makes you vulnerable; it's like laying down your arms at the door of a stranger's house. We (meaning this present culture) are trained to feel safer and stronger when armed with rationality and intellectualism. The touch of delirium, of ekstasis that it takes to reach Faery is just uncomfortable enough for most of us that it forms a barrier. For some people, it requires psychedelics to carry them through. I think I find Faerie easier than some because my brain is sort of naturally irrational. I am dreamy to the point of irritating even myself, and often. But even so, if I think too hard about 'where' Faery is it tends to have the effect of making me more confused about it, instead of less so. Because, you see, thinking isn't the way there, it's how you get lost in the hedge-maze and mists.
Maybe that is why it seems to be less easy to find, and reached by fewer people, these days than it once was. I think we were not always so much the prisoner of reason.
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yezida often alludes to how the rational Talker/Ruach can be a barrier to connecting with the trans-rational God Soul/Neshemah, so we can often best reach up to the trans-rational by revving up the pre-rational Fetch/Sticky One/Nephesh. So there's a place in the Self where Fetch touches God Soul ... which suggests to me that perhaps the Fæ realms are the corresponding place in the Cosmos?
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See, the thing is that it isn't somewhere. It's everywhere and nowhere. Reachable by getting lost, thus being possibly anywhere. The paradox is that when you get there, it has dimension and feels like place.
Eventually I start to feel like I'd make more sense using nonsense rhymes to describe it. :)
How many miles to Babylon?
Fourscore miles and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again.
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To borrow a silly metaphor: you can interact with the world's mundane manifestation, or you can interact with the world through Keanu-vision, with the green Matrix code dripping all over it, but it's still the same Cosmos, in the same space, either way. And there are many layers like that.
Am I correct in saying that Færie is the Earth's Fetch? Or do you mean the whole Cosmos' Fetch? (Or perhaps that's an irrelevant distinction.)
And to borrow from the kabbalists for a moment, in addition to the nephesh, ruach, and neshemah (corresponding to the Fetch, Talker, and Godsoul) they sometimes refer to the guph, which is the flesh itself, the thing left behind when you die. In which case the “physical world” is the Earth's guph and Færie is the Earth's fetch, yes?
Makes me want to have a word with the Earth's Talker ...
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Yes, essentially. As I experience it, our Fetch arises from the biological life processes of the body. Likewise the Earth has a body and its Fetch, if you will, is the Underworld, and Faery is part of that; it's centered there, but also extends into Surface world too. Sort of like our Fetch is centered inside the body but extends out of it.
No, I do not mean the Cosmos' Fetch. It is very much a planetary thing, although it has like I said connections to the starry places. Witchcraft for me is very earth-centric. Everything begins in and is experienced through the Earth, the body. That's why you have to greet Fetch before you can do 'knowledge and conversation' etc. The whole inward-outward Underworld-Heavenworld model is built around the planetary perspective, the experience of beings living in a planet. I'm not sure it translates to 'the Cosmos' as a whole. That's the Star Godess, anyhow. She's unitary, total, void, undivided. I dunno if it makes sense to think of Her as having a triple soul in the same way that we do.
Makes me want to have a word with the Earth's Talker ...
Or, to look at it another way: there is too much dominance of Earth's Talker, and what we need is to listen more to its Fetch and its Godsoul!
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But that said, perhaps it is the unique mix of consciousnesses of *this* world that lend it its liminal quality. Perhaps Faery could only be accessible on a planet such as ours?
Looking at the illustrations in the relatively new paperback of The Goetia, it seems to me that the demons of the shemhamforash look an awful lot like Faeries...
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Yes, I think it's true that Faery is tied to and part of the life of, the planet itself. In the way, I suppose, that our Fetch arises from and is tied to the life of our body.
I also concur with what you say about the Earth being a gateway to the outer spaces. I'm not accustomed to the terminology of calling the Earth 'the Deep Well of Space' but I sense that what that references is that part of the Underworld that I've experienced, where if you go deep enough in, you reach a place where it opens out into the Outer Spaces again. My experience is that this part of the Underworld is 'deeper' than Faery. Faery is more connected to the surface; it lives or has its heart in the Underworld, but connects to our world and kind of bleeds over, a bit. It is sort of a mirror of our surface world, just below.
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(I'm sure you know this one.) One consistent part of the lore around the tithe is the reason for it. Faerie is under the protection of Hell--in effect, has taken Lucifer as liege--and thereby owes him compensation for his defense of the realm against the encroachment of the mortal world.
(I'm thinking out loud here...) I don't know that that necessarily references any part of the underworld, other than as Lucifer's domain. There's a lot there, though; allied powers, the communication of Fetch with Dove, the use of fear as a *necessary* boundary...
And another piece--I don't know where I'm pulling this, whether some long-forgotten piece of myth or out of the nether regions of my head--but there's something about how the tithe could be abolished by a willing sacrifice (or I could just be conflating the classic king-sacrifice here). Of course, that would not only abolish the tithe but the protection, and thus leave Faerie vulnerable.
Why was Faerie vulnerable in the first place? Disbelief, or literal (physical) encroachment? What does Lucifer have to do with creating/strengthening boundary and liminal space?
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Interesting. What's your source for that?
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