(no subject)

[sathor]

I had my top right wisdom tooth pulled Wednesday. It took him about 10 minutes of work after the novacaine kicked in...and he really didn't seem to think it would put me down. I still called off yesterday and today, mostly because it was still bleeding and where I work is completely unsanitary...our water line froze so there's no running water...and it takes 10 minutes to get anywhere in plant where there is running water. That and per usual, any time I get novacaine shots and have dental work done, I end up with chills and weakness. Just don't feel like I can run my ass off for eight hours, even today...and that's exactly what I've been doing the past few weeks because shutdown is right around the corner and I work in the warehouse so we've got an insane volume of equipment and parts coming in, and a lot of outside contractors coming down who need to be shown stuff. It's non-stop.

Oh yeah, shutdown. The whole plant this time, for two months. I got put on 3rd shift, which will be 10 hours from 9-10pm to 7-8am, for about two months straight. I'm not even sure I'll make it through the whole thing...it's going to be ridiculous and I'm really not looking forward to it. I'm not going to see my friends...I might be able to talk to them for a little bit before work on some days...but that's about it. Just adds on to this whole trend of meaninglessness in my life. I've saved lots of money but really have no use for it...meanwhile this job has basically taken everything that mattered to me away, including aspects of my personality which I'm still trying to cling to.

I've been reading the bible a lot lately, mainly before bed. The New Testament now, because I've never read it before - and I have probably read about half of the Old Testament already, mostly in College for religious studies. I keep finding that I seem to fit the descriptions in Matthew of the people who are damned or cast out - one particular passage last night had to deal with people who have things in abundance and those who do not. Parables, of course - A lord gives three servants a different number of "talents" (assuming Gold talents, but it could also be read as "talents" as in skills, I suppose) the first is given 5, and he makes another 5 with it, and the lord is pleased. The second is given two and makes two more, and the lord is pleased. The third is given one, and he goes before the lord and says something to the effect of, "I was afraid, so I buried it in the earth - what is yours is yours." But the lord basically condemns him for it, saying, "Those who have abundance will receive such things in abundance...those who have nothing will receive nothing." And I started thinking about love, and relationships, sex, money, whatever. Seems to me that I get to be one of the people with nothing, receiving nothing, and having to work ten times as hard to earn even the smallest bit of something. I'm not trying to play a woe is me card here...it's just that when I read that passage, I really felt like the last servant was me - I'm the one who's afraid and can't seem to turn what little he was given into something more meaningful/beautiful. I've been trying hard for a long time to no avail...maybe it's just fate, maybe it's written, just like in that passage.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Hmm, okay - but you were talking about your faith, and 'philosophy' is not a faith, any more than are 'art' or 'medicine'. You were talking about the Lord's plan for your life, which indicates that your faith is not Hermetic, Pagan, Buddhist or (most forms of) Hindu. You've been reading the New Testament as a guide to understanding your life, which pretty-well rules out both Judaism and the Qabala. So I wonder if you may be pegging yourself as not a Christian a bit too soon. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your Saviour, or do you not? And if you don't, what faith and what Lord were you talking about?

Have you ever heard of The Jefferson Bible? Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and selected just the teachings of Jesus, leaving out all the supernatural stuff.

[sathor.livejournal.com]

The Old Testament Lord, which is the same as the New - actually, right in Matthew, Jesus explicitly states that you can blaspheme him and deny him but never to deny the Lord. I did find that little passage a bit interesting because of how Christians teach the New Testament, but I'm no professional theologian quite yet, either. The reality is that I would be the first to say that I don't know, but in general, essentially all major world religions boil down to one deity (Yahweh, Brahman) but you already know that. I am always looking for a guide to better understanding my life, and religious revelation is one of few sources for that...am I a bit of a walking oxymoron, probably.

Qabalah, though, was taught by many as Christian, including Dion Fortune - it has more in common with Judaism but there's no explicit ruling against taking the teachings of Christ, either.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Hmm, no, I would not agree that all major world religions boil down to one deity. All the Abrahamic religions do - Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and all their many offshoots are monotheistic, yes. Hinduism does not boil down to monotheism, however; Brahman is not a deity, but rather the all-of-everything-that-is. Buddhism specifically has no deity. Modern Paganism is definitely not monotheistic. The expression 'major world religions' begs the question of why they are major: in the case of the Abrahamic religions, it's because of an unrelenting policy of conquest for the past 2000 years.

It could be fair enough to say that the conquest happened because the conquerors had the True Religion. That's what Genghis Khan supposedly answered when he was told he was going against God's Will: "If it is not God's will that I do these things, how have I done them?" Of course, this leads directly to the conclusion that Might=Right.

Hermetic Qabala is a Renaissance mish-mash of actual Kaballah with a lot of bits and bobs from other traditions, compatible or not. The Golden Dawn, of which Dion Fortune was one, incorporated Hermetic Qabala into their mish-mash of cultural bits and bobs, including Madame Blavatsky's fake-Tibetan theosophy, Celtic Revivalism, and a lot of post-Victorian pseudo-science. I like Dion Fortune's books a lot, but they are scarcely a reliable guide to the history of religious ideas.

The Golden Dawn was trying to unify all spiritual traditions into one Unified Field system. They didn't succeed because the concept of 'spirit' in those traditions is just like phlogiston, and also because they couldn't even agree among themselves, let alone find common ground for the whole world to stand on. What they failed to observe was that the whole world already is standing on common ground: planet Earth.

There was never any real 'Church of the Irrelevation'. It wasn't even a real fictional church - it was just a joke, reported in passing, of some people in The Masters of Solitude; basically the idea being that with so many hungry people to take care of, questions about God, the afterlife, etc. were irrelevant. My actual tradition is Pantheist Wicca, but I could call myself a Transcendental Irrelevationist too: transcendental in the sense of believing that the Higher Reality exists, and is not separate from the reality in which it is irrelevant whether it exists or not.

[sathor.livejournal.com]

Then we probably have a lot in common, because pantheism is about the closest description I have to what I believe...and in the tradition of the Golden Dawn, though I'm not trained or initiated, I am a mish-mash of basically every religion I ever came in contact with. It helps that my official masonic bible (my grandfather was a mason) states that any person who believes in the divine - be it hindu, pagan or christian, or else - can be a freemason. The writer (a mason of the highest degree) also goes on to add that all divine revelation is and was equally relevant. It's a beautiful thing...inclusive instead of exclusive. Your knowledge dwarfs mine, but I'm glad to hear what you have to say.

I still need to get around to actually responding to the rest of your original comment. These discussions are threading out at an astronomical rate, although I won't complain. You've got a great mind on you, it's quite refreshing :)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*smiles* Hey, thanks! I'm enjoying our conversations here very much, though also running short on time to type.

I think you would enjoy the writings of my Priestess-sister Nema, particularly Wings of Rapture. She was High Priestess of Sacred Grove after me, but her main tradition was always Thelema, so our views of what the Pantheist Wicca tradition comprises are an interesting contrast. But then, it's characteristic of both Wicca and (especially) Pantheism.to acknowledge that everybody's mileage may vary.

My thought about divine revelation is that it's fine to read about the experiences of others, but the whole point is to live in such a way as to experience the Sacred for oneself. No belief in deity or divinity is required for this - actually, I think beliefs tend more to get in the way of it, because it's hard to experience something when one's head is already full of ideas about how it's going to be and what it all means.

One of the first books I would assign to my Initiatory students is How To Think About Weird Things. It saves a whole lot of time if a person has a clear structure for determining which ideas are worth considering, and which are not. After all, anyone can say they've had a 'divine revelation', but does that mean it's true? People say a lot of things that aren't true. People believe a lot of things that aren't true. It's good to keep an open mind, but not so open that one's brains fall out.