What is the opposite of the life of a butterfly?
"It's essence is to train a man to be anything by training him to be it's opposite. At the end of anything, think they, it turns out to be it's opposite, and that opposite is thus mastered without having been soiled by the labours of the student, and without the false impressions of early learning being left in the mind" -Aleister Crowley, Liber LI of "preperation of the antinomy"
To reverse the result is to discover the origin. To seek a result, work backwards until you see the first step. Does seem to make sense, doesn't it? So what effect does this very simple rule have when applied to human society? Crowley explores this question, in various permutations, in Liber LI, The Lost Continent. The implications are interesting. To learn to make money we have to learn to effectively waste it. To learn to attract love we must first learn to discard love. This doctrine seems an axiomatic means of expressing one of the central aspects of Gnostic epistemology. If we take it seriously we get some clues as to what ails western civilization...
A society that aims to be good and free must be anything but, in practice. The human being is an existential manifestation of contradiction by the Gnostic reckoning, a spiritual substance in a material vehicle. Our most potent attribute is, by our particular virtue, our contrarion or rebellious nature. A society that imposes a "good order" provides a challenging environment for "evil" to evolve into a far more sophisticated and vital force. Those who conform to the order are necessarily the weak ones lacking in the human virtue of rebellion. To remove this postulate from the dominion of slave language, any order promotes and strengthens what constitutes an inversion of the order (the thing which under the rules of that order, by it's nature, sows chaos), because all orders and systems contain within them the seeds of their own degeneration. The stronger the order, the more surely it will fulfil and therefore destroy itself. In fact, Crowley's account of the Lost Continent borrows some aspects of the story that were added by H.P. Blatvatsky: in particular the notion that serveral versions of this "expariment" had occured before. Rather than adhering to the notion that the Atlanteans were done in by their own hubris, Crowley indicates that their civilization was destroyed because it FULFILLED itself. That fulfilling necessarily leads to the destruction of the system, because to fulfil the system is to perfect it, which is to demand the creation of the new, which is to destroy the old.
The first section of this document (to which I limit this post for your attention span, part II tomorrow) describes the Servile Race of Atlas. The means by which the First of the philosophers of Atlas (who had written: "An empty brain is a threat to society") would ensure that these people would be subject to:
"...a system of mental culture, comprising two parts:
1. As a basis, a mass of useless disconnected facts
2. A superstructure of lies.
Part 1 was compulsory; the people then took Part 2 without protest."
Disconnected facts must be actively disconnected by the media which transmits those facts. Facts naturally flow in a logical order of progression, and that is how our faculties of comprehension expect to see them. As such, inherently random facts presented in an order will APPEAR to have a logic to them with little effort. It is easy to observe, in any case where there is some series of disconnected facts which appear our of context from which no logical conclusions can be determined, the first thing that 99% of people do is construct a narrative that connects the facts into an intelligable description from which some form of closure or conslusion can be arrived at. 98% of people than attatch great importance to this narrative (and why not? our artistic creations are like our children...) and it becomes a part of their ego-identity. If you can feed people disconnected facts out of context, you create the conditions which allow you to offer an obvious narrative to connect these facts and lead the audience to particular conclusions. The thing is, if you let THEM make the connections, and just provide the tools to connect particular facts that have no intrinsic relationship to one another, the audience is easily duped into thinking that the conclusions are their own, even though the ruse may be as obvious a a connect-the-dots picture of a a middle finger. This is the crucial element that invites people to attatch their own ego to the conclusion. If they do this, then even if they strongly suspect they are being duped (many people committed to absurd ideologies will cop to this when pressed), they will defend the *idea* in question *as if it was a part of their self.*
Of the language of the servile race:
"They had few nouns and fewer verbs. "To work again" (there was no word for "to work" simply), "to eat again," "to break the law" (no word for "to break the law again"), "to come from without," "to find light" ("i.e. "to go to the phosphorus factory) were almost the only verbs used by adults. The young men and women had a verb-language yet simpler, and of degraded coarseness. All had, however, an extraordinary wealth of adjectives, most of them meaningless, as attached to no noun ideas, and a great quantity of abstract nouns such as "Liberty," "Progress," without which no refined inhabitant could consider a sentence complete. He would introduce them into a discussion on the most material subjects. "The immoral snub-nose," "the unprogressive teeth," "lascivious music," "reactionary eyebrows" --- such were phrases familiar to all."To eat again, to sleep again, to work again, to find the light --- that is Liberty, that is Progress" was a proverb common in every mouth."
It should be obvious what is being said here. There is an implied perpetual element to work/sleep/eat. There is an implied singluar element to "to break the law." By equating work with sleep and food it equates it with the things one needs to live. By placing the description of a violation of the rules contrary to this, the violation of the rules is eqequated with death, and removed from any notion of continuity that could lead to such an activity becoming habituated or normalized. The existence of excessive adjectives relates back to the culture of thought established by the first of the philosophers of Atlas. A false relationship, qualified by apparent value judgements (but false judgements, because they are not a description of the relationship between the noun and a larger principle) can be established between out-of-context, disconnected facts with total ease through this linguistic mechanism. Crowley mentions elsewhere in this section that none of the servile race are allowed to stop talking at any time. A wealth of adjectives allows one to talk endlessly about nothing, or at least a great deal can be said with very little in the way of actual subjects about which to say anything.
Perhaps my favorite part of the whole Liber is the following. In an age when Magick in Theory and Practice (among a numberless quantity and measureless quality of occult documents) can be read by anyone with internet access, it's particularly relevant.
"In every field was, however, an enormous tablet of rock,carved on one side with a representation of the three stages of life: the fields, the labour mill, the factory; and on the other side with these words: "To enter Atlas, fly." Beneath this an elaborate series of graphic pictures showed how to acquire the art of flying. During all the generations of Atlas, not one man had been known to take advantage of these instructions."
In other words, they don't do the work.
But there's more than just a snarky comment on the human aversion to self-improvement. The people are the most cynical about power, money, love, sex, material possessions, etc. ad infinitum still WANT all of those things. They just DON'T LIKE what they have to do to get them. The thing is, they think that they should be able to get what they want because they want it rather than concentrating on what fulfilling this desire actually requires. I've been guilty of this from time to time... I'd deliver insightful diatribes about the breakdown of relations between the sexes rather than just going out and doing and saying the things that I knew I would have to do and say to get sex. The sum total of my insight during "the dark age" of celibacy was less than masturbation. I was describing in great, cynical detail the steps that I would have to take to get my pole smoked. People do the same thing with what it takes to get money, what it takes to get power, etc. The simple fact is that you have to learn to ENJOY those requirements and strive for them. If you think that they are immoral, your definition of morality is at odds with reality and what reality requires. So you have fun with that. I'll be balls deep in a good time and enjoying a sense of accomplishment to boot. If you want to change the way things work, hop to it! But to get the power to do THAT, I'm willing to bet you'll also have to do some shit that you don't want to do.
These are not two legitimate ways of approaching life that simply happen to differ in their approach. One is a smart way which feels good. The other is a stupid way that feels bad. People who do not think that the ends justify the means are forced to settle for what they can get with the means that they have decided (by WHAT criteria, in absence of an end?) are safe to use. They don't get to pursue certain ends, because they will not use the means. Frequently they desire these ends anyway. This makes them sad. Aw.
Let me tell you, I'd rather have my choice of ends. ;)
To reverse the result is to discover the origin. To seek a result, work backwards until you see the first step. Does seem to make sense, doesn't it? So what effect does this very simple rule have when applied to human society? Crowley explores this question, in various permutations, in Liber LI, The Lost Continent. The implications are interesting. To learn to make money we have to learn to effectively waste it. To learn to attract love we must first learn to discard love. This doctrine seems an axiomatic means of expressing one of the central aspects of Gnostic epistemology. If we take it seriously we get some clues as to what ails western civilization...
A society that aims to be good and free must be anything but, in practice. The human being is an existential manifestation of contradiction by the Gnostic reckoning, a spiritual substance in a material vehicle. Our most potent attribute is, by our particular virtue, our contrarion or rebellious nature. A society that imposes a "good order" provides a challenging environment for "evil" to evolve into a far more sophisticated and vital force. Those who conform to the order are necessarily the weak ones lacking in the human virtue of rebellion. To remove this postulate from the dominion of slave language, any order promotes and strengthens what constitutes an inversion of the order (the thing which under the rules of that order, by it's nature, sows chaos), because all orders and systems contain within them the seeds of their own degeneration. The stronger the order, the more surely it will fulfil and therefore destroy itself. In fact, Crowley's account of the Lost Continent borrows some aspects of the story that were added by H.P. Blatvatsky: in particular the notion that serveral versions of this "expariment" had occured before. Rather than adhering to the notion that the Atlanteans were done in by their own hubris, Crowley indicates that their civilization was destroyed because it FULFILLED itself. That fulfilling necessarily leads to the destruction of the system, because to fulfil the system is to perfect it, which is to demand the creation of the new, which is to destroy the old.
The first section of this document (to which I limit this post for your attention span, part II tomorrow) describes the Servile Race of Atlas. The means by which the First of the philosophers of Atlas (who had written: "An empty brain is a threat to society") would ensure that these people would be subject to:
"...a system of mental culture, comprising two parts:
1. As a basis, a mass of useless disconnected facts
2. A superstructure of lies.
Part 1 was compulsory; the people then took Part 2 without protest."
Disconnected facts must be actively disconnected by the media which transmits those facts. Facts naturally flow in a logical order of progression, and that is how our faculties of comprehension expect to see them. As such, inherently random facts presented in an order will APPEAR to have a logic to them with little effort. It is easy to observe, in any case where there is some series of disconnected facts which appear our of context from which no logical conclusions can be determined, the first thing that 99% of people do is construct a narrative that connects the facts into an intelligable description from which some form of closure or conslusion can be arrived at. 98% of people than attatch great importance to this narrative (and why not? our artistic creations are like our children...) and it becomes a part of their ego-identity. If you can feed people disconnected facts out of context, you create the conditions which allow you to offer an obvious narrative to connect these facts and lead the audience to particular conclusions. The thing is, if you let THEM make the connections, and just provide the tools to connect particular facts that have no intrinsic relationship to one another, the audience is easily duped into thinking that the conclusions are their own, even though the ruse may be as obvious a a connect-the-dots picture of a a middle finger. This is the crucial element that invites people to attatch their own ego to the conclusion. If they do this, then even if they strongly suspect they are being duped (many people committed to absurd ideologies will cop to this when pressed), they will defend the *idea* in question *as if it was a part of their self.*
Of the language of the servile race:
"They had few nouns and fewer verbs. "To work again" (there was no word for "to work" simply), "to eat again," "to break the law" (no word for "to break the law again"), "to come from without," "to find light" ("i.e. "to go to the phosphorus factory) were almost the only verbs used by adults. The young men and women had a verb-language yet simpler, and of degraded coarseness. All had, however, an extraordinary wealth of adjectives, most of them meaningless, as attached to no noun ideas, and a great quantity of abstract nouns such as "Liberty," "Progress," without which no refined inhabitant could consider a sentence complete. He would introduce them into a discussion on the most material subjects. "The immoral snub-nose," "the unprogressive teeth," "lascivious music," "reactionary eyebrows" --- such were phrases familiar to all."To eat again, to sleep again, to work again, to find the light --- that is Liberty, that is Progress" was a proverb common in every mouth."
It should be obvious what is being said here. There is an implied perpetual element to work/sleep/eat. There is an implied singluar element to "to break the law." By equating work with sleep and food it equates it with the things one needs to live. By placing the description of a violation of the rules contrary to this, the violation of the rules is eqequated with death, and removed from any notion of continuity that could lead to such an activity becoming habituated or normalized. The existence of excessive adjectives relates back to the culture of thought established by the first of the philosophers of Atlas. A false relationship, qualified by apparent value judgements (but false judgements, because they are not a description of the relationship between the noun and a larger principle) can be established between out-of-context, disconnected facts with total ease through this linguistic mechanism. Crowley mentions elsewhere in this section that none of the servile race are allowed to stop talking at any time. A wealth of adjectives allows one to talk endlessly about nothing, or at least a great deal can be said with very little in the way of actual subjects about which to say anything.
Perhaps my favorite part of the whole Liber is the following. In an age when Magick in Theory and Practice (among a numberless quantity and measureless quality of occult documents) can be read by anyone with internet access, it's particularly relevant.
"In every field was, however, an enormous tablet of rock,carved on one side with a representation of the three stages of life: the fields, the labour mill, the factory; and on the other side with these words: "To enter Atlas, fly." Beneath this an elaborate series of graphic pictures showed how to acquire the art of flying. During all the generations of Atlas, not one man had been known to take advantage of these instructions."
In other words, they don't do the work.
But there's more than just a snarky comment on the human aversion to self-improvement. The people are the most cynical about power, money, love, sex, material possessions, etc. ad infinitum still WANT all of those things. They just DON'T LIKE what they have to do to get them. The thing is, they think that they should be able to get what they want because they want it rather than concentrating on what fulfilling this desire actually requires. I've been guilty of this from time to time... I'd deliver insightful diatribes about the breakdown of relations between the sexes rather than just going out and doing and saying the things that I knew I would have to do and say to get sex. The sum total of my insight during "the dark age" of celibacy was less than masturbation. I was describing in great, cynical detail the steps that I would have to take to get my pole smoked. People do the same thing with what it takes to get money, what it takes to get power, etc. The simple fact is that you have to learn to ENJOY those requirements and strive for them. If you think that they are immoral, your definition of morality is at odds with reality and what reality requires. So you have fun with that. I'll be balls deep in a good time and enjoying a sense of accomplishment to boot. If you want to change the way things work, hop to it! But to get the power to do THAT, I'm willing to bet you'll also have to do some shit that you don't want to do.
These are not two legitimate ways of approaching life that simply happen to differ in their approach. One is a smart way which feels good. The other is a stupid way that feels bad. People who do not think that the ends justify the means are forced to settle for what they can get with the means that they have decided (by WHAT criteria, in absence of an end?) are safe to use. They don't get to pursue certain ends, because they will not use the means. Frequently they desire these ends anyway. This makes them sad. Aw.
Let me tell you, I'd rather have my choice of ends. ;)