Tag: magic

Gorgias and Language as Enchantment

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For centuries, the Sophistic movement of ancient Greece was either ignored or marginalized, likely due to the negative portrayal they received at the hands of Plato. They were written off as charlatans and frauds who had little to offer of philosophical value. 

Gorgias of Leontini

Of all the Sophists, Gorgias even today remains the most recognized and well known. In contrast to his contemporary Plato, Gorgias did not believe in the possibility of absolute truth. Instead, he believed that the best we can manage is an educated opinion, and that all knowledge is subjective and contextual.

He is famous for the following paradox: “Nothing exists; or if it does exist, we cannot know it; or if we can know it, we cannot communicate our knowledge to another person.”

In the past, some have read this statement either as a parody, or as an excessively resigned and nihilistic take on epistemological reality.

But for Gorgias, this state of affairs was not to be lamented, but rather something to be accepted and worked with.

The impossibility of absolute truth was no cause for despair, but instead simply a recognition of the limitations inherent to human language and cognition.

For Gorgias, the purpose of rhetoric was to allow us to navigate the uncertainties of a reality created by and shared through imperfect language. In a world where truth always remained elusive and uncertain, rhetoric could help us to establish consensus as the basis for action.

The rhetoric of Gorgias is firmly rooted in a relativistic epistemology that views all language and all argumentation as inherently deceptive (in that it obscures the full truth, a position which foreshadows Burke’s concept of the terministic screen).

He even directly compares the power of language to magic, with its capacity to enchant and to cast a spell over the listener. For him, words are creative, rather than merely descriptive. Words are the best tools that we have at our disposal to create a shared consensus reality in a world where nothing is ever certain.

It is better, for Gorgias, to recognize the powerful but limited nature of words as a kind of spell or enchantment–for only then may we hope to retain some measure of control and skill in their use and application.

The Tower of Babel

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“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.” –John 1:1

For most of my life, my greatest passion has been the search for knowledge.

A lonely child, I found refuge in books: in fiction, tales about foreign lands and fantastic creatures; in practical books about science, the earth, and life processes; in languages, philosophy, religion; in the paranormal, occult, and mysterious. You name it, I had to know about it.

I often felt like everyone else had gotten the instruction manual on this thing called Life, and I was the only one left empty-handed.

And so I took this business very seriously. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. Somewhere out there was the answer, one day I would find the truth behind it all, and everything would make sense.

In college, I studied literature and languages, and later went to graduate school for a master’s degree in Rhetoric & Composition. I developed an obsession with epistemology, the study of truth, language, and what we can know.

Eventually I started to think that maybe Socrates had it right all along, and the answer was that we truly can know nothing;  but my obsession now had a life of its own, and the demon inside me demanding answers ate every piece of text and trivia in its path, never satisfied, always hungry for more.

I was building my very own Tower of Babel, and it was destroying me. Every Word was another brick in this tower, growing higher and higher into the sky, and I thought that in this way I would one day touch God.

This tower was not built of truth, but of ego. It was a fortress meant to protect me from this reality: that I was terrified, confused, lost and alone.

As all I had built crumbled in a flash, I saw that each little piece of knowledge, each little fact, each bit of data was a line of defense against the world, against chaos, and against life.

It was awareness that I was seeking, and consciousness that I needed.

Words can be a useful tool in directing thought, in guiding the mind to greater consciousness. The word is creative, it is generative, it directs the manifestation of life, but it is not life itself.

Finding Gold in the Shadow

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I’d spent a lifetime running

seeking

needing

using

fearing

hoping

destroying

doing anything to fill the narrow, trembling void between

self and shame.

One day I stopped running, and my shame

she turned, and came to me.

She took me over and she held me down

in soft savage embrace,

when I finally caught my breath and

dared to look at her straight in

tender eyes, I saw more beauty and more

goodness and more

grace than I’d ever found

in years of wild flight.

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This is what it means in alchemy to “find the gold in the shadow.” To be able to look within at all of what is hidden, to see and to know the self in its fullness without fear, no matter what may come—that’s the moment when we first die, and when we are first born.

“We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid—it reflects the face we turn towards it. Hostility lends it a threatening aspect, friendliness softens its features.” —Carl Jung

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Don’t be afraid to change direction. It might be that you end up finding a friend in what you once feared.

The Archetypal in Astrology

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According to Richard Tarnas, the archetypal is the spiritual and energetic. It was originally experienced by human people as “Gods” and “Goddesses,” and described in terms of mythologies.

The archetypal is about the essences and qualities that transcend the human.

These ideas were later expounded upon in Ancient Greece, with the philosophies of Plato and Plotinus, among others. They were forgotten for many years until their recovery by the likes of Nietzsche, Freud, and Carl Jung.

Jung’s depth psychology explored the idea of the archetypal pleroma, the pantheon of archetypal energy, both within and without. It was Jung who recognized that we are in psyche. It informs not only us but all of nature. This is what is meant by the Anima Mundi, or world soul.

It was through myths that man tried to understand and convey its experience of this world soul. Myth, as well as dreams, are the narrative form of archetypal energy. According to Tarnas, this is how the cosmos pours its consciousness through us humans. The archetypes are thus the mediators of the cosmos, the way the Anima Mundi often speaks to us directly of its secrets.

Plotinus says that astrology is like a script that the soul of the sky is writing. Meaning is something that extends and permeates through all levels of reality and existence. We are living in a pan-psychic universe, and if we wish to, we can be active participants with this consciousness or sentience.

The cosmos gives us guidance on how we can participate constructively. The archetypes don’t “cause” human affairs or outer events to occur in some mechanistic way. Instead, it is open to our human participation.

It is as if the universe or nature is providing us with symbols or guideposts regarding the qualitative meaning of our unfolding. We can choose to participate actively in our own evolution by noticing and following the signs provided for us by the macrocosm.

VITRIOL

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I’ve been thinking often about the past.

That is nothing new. But what is new are the things that are coming up for me.

So many long-forgotten memories are coming to the surface.

So many feelings and events and versions of me that I have mostly been avoiding. The past is so painful, I’ve just wanted to bury the entire thing and forget about it all.

But I’ve been surprised by my self the past few days; not all of these memories are bad ones.

There are actually many, many things which have made me smile. And some which have even made me feel very proud of my self and the person I was.

Mostly, it has been bittersweet.

I’ve been able to look back and see that there were so many good things about me that I have chosen to not recognize.

And I have found that even in the most painful, tragic circumstances of my past, there is the recognition that I was truly doing the best I knew how to do.

Now that I’m further removed from it, I can see the impossibility of the situation for what it was. I can forgive myself now. What I did then didn’t mean what I thought it did at the time. Even in my greatest darkness, I find that there is some redemption.

Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem

“Visit the innermost parts of the Earth; by setting things right, you will find the Hidden Stone.”

I came across this as I was reading a book on alchemy last night.

I wrote it down immediately. I felt it was perfect for the process I am undergoing now.

I’m visiting the deepest parts of myself, places I didn’t even know existed still. I am going to the core of my being, and with new vision, I find that I am capable of setting things right.

I am finding that what I pushed down as unworthy, the things that weighed heavy on my heart like lead, often contained a secret shimmer of gold.

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Earlier this week I was reading more about alchemy in my new book, “The Emerald Tablet.” I learned about the concept of the rejected stone, or what manifests from the parts of ourselves we have not accepted and integrated. It comes from the persistance of what we keep in the shadows, unwilling to recognize and transmute.

So I said, in my mind, “I want to see my shadow. I want to know what I’m hiding from myself, so that I can work with it, and stop the cycle of manifestation into my life.” I didn’t really expect much of an answer; it was more of like, “I’ll put that on my to-do list for later.”

But I did get an answer. I entered the field of Hermes, I know that for sure. I was shown a lot of things that made me uncomfortable. That I didn’t want to accept. That even still, I tried to deny, or justify, or rationalize.

I knew that I was in the presence of Hermes, because of the play of language that was fighting it’s self in my mind.

One of my attempted justifications was, “Well, you didn’t know better. It’s understandable that you would act that way based on your past experiences & what you’ve been taught.”

Then I heard myself answer, “Okay well you are an adult now, and every day you have the choice to do differently. You don’t have to live as an extension of your past; you have a responsibility to do better now.”

I attempted to deny those words, too, but I couldn’t: they were the same things I had just said the day before about my parents. I could acknowledge that, yes, it would make sense for them to act as they did & do, but that’s never an excuse.

“Music is the space between the notes.”

Claude Debussy

So I kept going. I kept seeing. I kept accepting. I kept staying in that space between understanding and questioning. Of accepting and knowing I could do better. This space in between in where the magic is.

I’m working on staying grounded in this liminal space. At the border between two truths, between the inner and the outer, at the crossroads of above and below, the masculine and the feminine, of my light and my own darkness. To look both ways as I leap into this infinite void, the place of all possibility and of true presence.

It’s an ever-changing dance, a beautiful and delicate stepping into the future, a jump divinely inspired and grounded in truth.

Step by step, I’m here, and I’m ready for whatever may come.

Who is Thoth?

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Known as the “Father of Alchemy,” Thoth is the Egyptian God of wisdom, writing, science, magic, art and judgement. Considered “the divine intermediary between spirit and matter,” he is also the God of the dead.

In the myth of Osiris, it was Thoth who gave Isis the words she used to resurrect him after she had gathered all the dismembered pieces of Osiris’ body.

According to Budge’s The Gods of the Egyptians, “The ancient Egyptians regarded Thoth as One, self-begotten, and self-produced.” It was said that he spoke the first Word of Creation; what he speaks, he creates. It was he who brought all the other Gods into existence.

According to some sources, Thoth was born at the beginning of time “from the lips of Ra” and was even known as the “god without a mother.” According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, “Thoth is self-created at the beginning of time and, as an ibis, lays the cosmic egg which holds all of creation.”

Thoth was also known as “Lord of Ma’at”, “Lord of Divine Words”, “Revealer of the Hidden”, and “Lord of Rebirth.” Later, the Greeks would know him as Hermes Trismegistus.

He is credited with writing thousands of scrolls containing ancient wisdom and knowledge. Among these are:

  • The Book of Breathings — teaches spells and breathwork that can be used by humans to become like Gods.
  • The Book of the Dead — teaches how the departed can navigate the underworld to reach the afterlife.
  • The Book of Thoth — this text is said to have “revealed the true story of the creation of mankind and described an afterlife in the stars for those who followed his teachings” (Hauck).