When Hell Freezes Over

dashendeavors

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When I was studying magic as a member of a mini-coven in the mid-90's, I learned that the root origin of the word 'religion' was 're-ligare'. As our coven priest Merlin explained it, 'ligare' meant to 'connect', therefore the word religion meant literally to reconnect - presumably with God.

I found it odd that the word 'religion' itself implied that somehow our connection with the divine - with God - had ever been severed to begin with.

Merlin also took us, (the coven), eleven to see the author and Terrance McKenna ethnobotinist give a lecture. I had not heard of him prior to my going so was completely incapable of comprehending the material in his lecture, but remember my curiosity being piqued at his musings over Whether the mind of the universe Reflected the mind of man or vice-versa.

These curious puzzles of theology, spirituality, and the quantum physics of consciousness and matter became the motivating force of my life that drove me to explore and hopefully understand with greater clarity how they all fit together and why. Later, I read in Terrence McKenna's book Food of the Gods while in India that he "... learned, that 'religion', where ever the luminous flame of spirit has Guttered low, is no more than a hustle."

On this point, I could not agree more.

One of the interesting aspects of the word 'religion' I've recently discovered is that the root, 'ligare' is more accurately derived from the word 'ligament' and means 'to bind'. It is my feeling that the true meaning of the word religion actually Communicate the effect of binding peoples' consciousness more than it does the idea of re-attunement to one's creator.

Doctrinaire religions introduce a third party or group whose agenda may be in conflict with people of greatly varied backgrounds and cultures. Priests and pedagogues act in abitrage of environmental stimuli and impose their ideas of how we should relate our experience to the imagry in our environments. This arbitration deliberately binds our consciousness to symbols and ideas, like the reserrection for example, or the engraved images on a Federal Reserve Note, that are then perceived in rational devaluations. They may not sustain their relevance to our preservation in a rapidly changing environment or worse, may never have been relevant to our success as interdependent and self sustaining individuals at all to begin with.

Even science has been used in ways that are morally relative to support the advantage of our corporate, institutional agendas.

The imagery of doctrinaire religions is generally drawn from ideas fermenting, as James Joyce said, "forged in the smithy" of uncreated collective supra-consciousness, and is then distorted and censored by Instututions of Authority in ways that are relative to institutional advantage as well as the disadvantage of its victims.

Every aspect of our environment is for many of us, hightly controlled. The revised and dubious imagery is familiar enough in spite of its distortions and therefore is more or less adopted with relative receptivity by an audience which has been so deprived of the elements of Nature.

Consider the conversion of Pagan rites spring into the Easter holy day largley which excluded any referrences to Natural phenomenon and the reawakening of the earth from the death of winter, or any other ideas of rebirth we may have a personal connection to. The abstracted imagry, highjack and distorted out of the collective today, is reinforced through the media, and easily enforced through a population toggling between fear and greed.

The net effect this predatory system has on its victims is that it separates them from the nature of their changing environment and renders them less able to connect to their true power and authentic identity. This is true of both religions and secular ecclesiasical.

The reason I bring these points up is that there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that our economic system is another form of doctrinaire religion where the luminous flame of spirit has gutteres so low I wonder how low it can go. It relies on confidence, and that confidence is faith. This system to which we are all bound in varying degrees is, by any measure, "no more than a hustle", and the gap between the symbols legitmacy we identify ourselves with and what those symbols actually deliver is growing wider each passing moment.

It's a grand fleecing. Anyone who does not take "conspiracy theories" with at least a few grains of salt credulous has never studied the history of paper money. Our environment began to change most rapidly with the institutionalization of credit, easy money, and various schemes to defraud the public debasements connected to currency and credit cycles of booms and busts.

Charles Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent. Rather it is the one that is most adaptable to change."

And I might add that adaptability is the one characteristic most stringently required at present by laws other than those of Nature ... (-Lillian Readon), namely powerful men in high places with a great deal to gain from a population confused over where its greatest risks lie.

This past winter solstice of 2009, while preparing for a ceremony at the home of some friends in Laguna Canyon, I meditated for a while on what this longest night of the year might have meant to early hunter gatherer societies of pre-historic times, before the market economy began to bud with advances in agriculture and animal husbandry.

As their world began countless times its annual, seasonal decline into the stasis of winter, mankind could rely on the relative stability of Nature's temperament and maintain the reasonable expectation that the sun would be resurrected to spend more time above than below the earth in the underworld , bringing life giving energy and warmth for earth's rebirth. That's when it struck me. 'Hell' is the image of that moment within the cycle of seasons frozen without any hope of the sun's resurrection. Think of it. An eternity spent in the firey place to geocentric below to philosophy is a world without warmth, without love, without reasonable expectations or even a sliver of hope for change.

Joseph Campbell said;
"The aspect of hell is pain. People in hell are people temporarily fixed in their interests, people trapped in their ego systems, practical people for whom the world has not become transparent. That is what hell is, a place for people who are fixed forever. And being fixed for eternity is very painful. Every sense is tormented - sound, smell, taste -- and a black fire burns but does not eat. "

It is this 'fixing' that is where I believe our troubles begin. Nature is not static. If it is to be commander, it must be obey. We are morally obliged to move with it with all our senses vigilantly aware. It moves and vibrates, rolls and stretches, rumble and crashes, withers, dies, ferments, bubbles, bubbles, boils ... and Perceived as big trouble to mankind who have Achieved a great ability to protect himself from these HARDSHIPS and this constant motion.

Mankind's ability to control nature through its destruction is only as great as our willingness to tolerate that Immorality. It's funny, but I feel now like I'm an actor in a Twilight Zone episode - one of Serling's best - where I'm reading a book and as I'm reading the words they are describing the events are actually happening in the outside world.

The book that I'm reading ... still, is Atlas Shrugged, and on page 877 there is a paragraph where Jame's Taggart is fiendishly exposing a government plan to which he is privy and complicite in to his wife in an attempt to recapture her lost respect. The plan states he will change things;

"For the better of course ... It's a plan to save the country, to stop our economic decline, to hold things still, To achieve stability and security."

It's in reality, to plan for more draconian interventions to 'fix' the mess that he and his cronies created by their meddling Under the auspices of public need.

When something that moves is 'fixed' or 'frozen' or not allowed to move in the way that is most characteristic of its being in order to satisfy our need for comfort, it suffers enslavement and dies.

When natural corrective forces are postponed, or when human interventions Continually interfere with the cycles and movements of the marketplace environment in order that it is immoral maintained in all its glory, and preventer from achieving atonement ... there is a cost.


The burden of that cost is born by those to Which risk Effectively most has been transferred to in our based debt economy; the people. All the risk of institutional debt is, by design, the moral hazard of each member of society. Of course there is the price of suffering under this immoral system paid by the animals, and the environment as well.

****

This year, our treasury is obligate to sell $ 80 billion dollars of debt a week and it appears that an extremely high percent of that $ 80 billion is being monatized meaning, we the people are buying our own debt.

If Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged can be more aptly read as a Romantic novel mythic archetype that characterize consistently over arching economic and socio-political themes of the industrial age, then we can see once again in the laboratory of life happening that her material hits the bullseye as we watch yet another nation , The once great United States of America, smother the light of brilliance with pillow of public need.

Those who are arbitrating whose "need" is a priorety no longer have any connection to the communities and entities to which they favors from a hollow portion and bottomless public purse. They are accountable only to those who've purchased their allegiance. They are our elected whores and pimps.


This most recent play of Obama's to freeze the budget is a move right out of the handbook on 'end-game' destruction by Socialism, but because it is not meant to go into effect until next year it seems more like political pandering that dubious affect is not intended to any real meaningful change. There was after all, a quantum upset in Massachusetts last week.

If he should make good on this promise (or threat as the case may be), at a time when our global economies enmeshed and are so intimately interconnected, you can be sure that it will have a chilling effect on the entire planet. If Hell is, as Joseph Campbell describes, "a black fire that burns but does not consume" and the economic overstimulation of the past decade can be perceived as that Hellish decline, then perhaps a low budget freeze will the catalyst that causes Hell to finally freeze over.​
 
God, I need to stop assuming that my audience is intelligent or at least kind enough to be constructive if they're going to 'speak'.

I think I get the point, though.
Maybe, you are all the strongest of the species. Good luck with that.

And... cutsiecutsie little Sarasara, there's an angry mob that's looking for a nasty goon. I'm sure you would qualify.
 
No offense dude, but anyone who starts off what appears to be an economic discussion with discussions by what wiccans have to say about "theology, spirituality, and the quantum physics of consciousness and matter" and then the actual meaning of religion does not seem very focused to me. You don't even begin to discuss your actual thesis until about 2/3 of the way through your lengthy prose, where you say "The reason I bring these points up.."

Your writing style is fairly decent as far as the sentences and phrases you put together. While it is easy to read, it does nothing to pull the reader in and make him/her interested - unless the reader is interested in magic and witches. That's actually a very narrow audience, I think. Even then, I would be willing to bet that many of those who would be interested in magic and witches would beging to be lost when they realized that what you are talking about is not that after all.

Which means to me that your style of exposition leaves much to be desired. If you want to connect with readers on a specific topic and include ideas which, to the mainstream, might seem a little strange, try postulating what it is exactly that you are trying to say first, then include separate ideas to support your supposition, theme, what have you.

For example - you almost lost me in the beginning because I liken wiccan concepts to other religious concepts (note I am not necessarily including "spiritual" - that is a completely different concept which often gets mixed up with religion). People want to talk religion with me and my eyes glaze over - to me a complete waste of time. Particularly when you start talking about a coven priest whose name is Merlin - I mean come on, could he not have chosen something more original at least?

I'm not interested in learning about magic because I (personally) know that it does not exist. You are welcome to believe what you want, that's for sure, and I won't even give you a hard time about it unless you are rude and offensive, as in your response to the honest criticisms of your writing style that followed.

If you are going to rope in readers with a topic you wish to discuss seriously, you should try to figure out what the best means of capturing their interest is first, and then work in your concepts. Starting off with magic and mummery (which is what all that is to me) just doesn't give most people enough interest to continue onward into a long body of text.

In fact, some of what you have to say after the "magic and mummery" that was in the beginning is somewhat interesting and a conversation that many could have. I have to wonder why you even included the first section to begin with, much less put it at the beginning where the outline of your thesis should have been.

Don't necessarily blame the readers for their reaction to your writing - look inside and consider where you failed to bring their attention in to what you are saying. It is almost always the author's fault for not being clear enough - and you cannot expect readers to necessarily respond with erudite criticism unless your target audience is academia within their ivory towers.
 
Thanks ElQueso.
I'm so glad I checked back in.
I appreciate your extraordinarily detailed feedback. I agree with you on every point you made. I'm out here without guidence for writing. When we settle down from travelling, I'll be able to get into a writing class.

I don't believe in 'magic' either, but it was a part of my spiritual path in learning about ritual and symbol. I do however, see a correlation between the rational devaluation of myth from a way to explain much of the phenomenal world we live in to mere entertainment to be dismissed, and the first monetary debasesments that occured in Rome, 80 A.D. Our current economic system is really a mutation of the Holy Roman Catholic Church which manipulated the masses through fear, except that now greed has been added as a toggle. It's difficult to synopsise and I definitely need to work at finding a better way to communicate. I am actually Dave's wife, so not the 'dude' you thought I was. ...and what can I say, his name was 'Merlin'.

You have said what I really knew to be true. That feedback I responded to came after some personal "thank you's" to the writers, but sarasara put me over the edge. It all hurt like the devil and I expected something a little less cruel from this audience.

best regards,
Ashley
 
If you want to hang out on this forum you would have to get used to the critique. People here normally don't have very nice comments (me included). And personally I thought your post was just another copy and paste job. And since it was missing an introduction, and also like ElQueso correctly pointed out; that it failed to capture our interest, I quickly stopped reading.
I was surprised on the good critique ElQueso gave you. I surely have underestimated him. Maybe you should, like he suggested; find another forum with people more into writing?
 
I have to say El Queso's critique was spot on. If you are going to write as more of a meditation style instead of an academic thesis, I would work on smoothing out your transitions. The jumps that you make, that are self evident to you, are not the same with the reader. Thereby, the points that you make get lost in the disjointed fragments.

I had just comeback from the ER when I wrote the first comment and was hopped up on goofballs. Sorry if was a bit cruel in my first post.
 
YohoYoho~ I hope a bottle of yum got you feeling better. (I'm sure there's a story there.)

You're the English teacher, right? Thanks for the soothing salve. I'm blogging to get a sense of feedback for a book project involving an academic thesis and boy, feedback is what I got.

It seems like there are so many pre-programmed responses out there in the world that I don't know where to begin to draw people in except with anecdotal rides through concepts that try to entertain. I'm the one who failed to entertain. It's hard though, when one word or deed can drop an audience's attention.

I sold my house at the top of the housing bubble, and at that time was percieved as a lunatic, so was dismissed. That even angered my father so much that he doesn't speak to me to this day. I have bought gold to preserve my wealth, so I'm 'anti-american'. I have percieved the democratic party to be just another tool for the banking system and so have been dropped from party invitation lists of my pro-Obama friends. At the very least I feel I'm not permitted the freedom of expression for my views without hurtful consequence.

I see the fragmentation of our society as a reflection of the fragmentation of our psyche from the time of Greek Antiquity where Dionysus was eliminated from the Temple at Delphi... which was a result of what I believe to be a 'haughtiness of spirit' as the human race developed more effective ways to protect itself from the hardships of Nature and for some elites; the hardships of 'consequence' by transferring 'risk' to others. 'Form' thus became more important than 'substance' and through the last 30 - 40 centuries we've seen the tragectory of that schizm.

As an English teacher, you may have a background in English literature. My thesis is rooted mostly in the mythology that has been expressed in art since the fall of the Roman Empire as doctrinaire religions became the way to control the masses. I see the Arthurian legends and medieval stories of Merlin and Pendragon as being mythic allegories to the union of the state with the 'dark art' of monetary and currency debasement, which transfers risk and consequences to a governed population.

To isolate politics from economics, or myth from economics, or psychology.. etc.... is like trying to isolate the US foreign policy from economics. You can do it, but cause and effect gets mixed up and symptoms get treated rather than the disease itself.

It's clear I've tried to cram to much info into too small a format.

Consider me edified.

Thanks to you and to all who've taken any time with this.
-Ashley
 
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