Precious Things

Nightstand Buddhist.

Tofu eating,
Yoga for flexibility practising,
Ethical fund investing,
Once a week Tyke.
Dyke?

Metaphor mixing
Discordian,
Out-of-body
Theosophan
Glossolalia for soul healing
Astral tourism.

Spiritual athlete,

Patriarchy clasping,
Matricity grasping,
Your body is a temple
evangelising.

Conflation of pronunciation,
fence-sitting politicisation,
Damned if you do/don't cynicism.

Crooked grin.

Template for peace is inclusion

Every now and then, I drag my nose out of my religious texts, open my eyes from my prayers and put down my mantra beads, and realise there's a great big world of happenstances that are completely obliterated from my myopic perspective on The Importance Of Divinity.

Well, yes, I guess the question of divinity will be of major importance, though somewhat moot, if this reign of global economic prosperity is given the short shrift in a nuclear power-mongering exercise....

So, I'm doing penance by posting this link:

Paul Keating - The template for peace is inclusion

And I'm sure She will forgive my misdemeanors of ignorance in her own graceful Time.

Siena Cathedral

The Siena cathedral, from all accounts, appears to have an amazing mosaic floor. It includes this image, of Hermes Trismegistus, and on the table supported by the two sphinxes the Latin is inscribed:

'DEUS OMINUM CREATOR SECUM DEUM FECIT VISIBILEM ET HUNC FECIT PRIMUM ET SOLUM QUO OBLECTATUS EST VALDE AMAVIT PROPRIUM FILIULM QUI APPELLATUR SANCTUM VERBUM'

That is:

(as an abbreviation of a passage from Asclepius conflated with a passage from Pimander)

'God, the creator of all things, made the second invisible God, and made him first and alone, in whom He was well pleased, He loved deeply as his own Son, who is called the Holy Word'.

The Hermetic texts were composed by various writers between 100AD to 300 AD. They contain Platonism, Stoicism, Jewish and Persian philosophy. There were essentially two types of treatises, the occult texts of astrology, magic and alchemy and the second type being written later, concerning gnosticism, that is, discovering the divine within the self through a mystical rapport with the world and mankind.

An intense piety characterises the Hermetic writings, where a psychological shift from reason to belief is endemic in science and in religion. An astrological cosmos is typically assumed, where the material world is ruled by the stars and the seven planets. Each celestial body is controlled by demons, and time is astrologied into the thirty-six decans, Egyptian sidereal gods ruling the All.

There are two ways of achieving gnosis, the optimistic path, accepting the universe as divine, where god reveals himself in everything, and man, through his intellect, can become like enough to god to be able to comprehend Her. Pessimistic gnosticism interprets the material world as a form of divine punishment, where man can escape the confines of the body through asceticism and piety, thereby elevating himself above matter and ascending to God.

Ref: French, P. (1972) John Dee, The World of an Elizabethan Magus, pp. 68-71

Listening not to me but to the Logos

"Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one."


Orthodox Christianity has Plato to thank for it's clear, sharp lines between body and soul (amongst other things), but I think that the pre-Socratic phusikoi, Heraclitus, might possibly be the philosophical grandaddy of the Gnostics. Living around 500 years prior to our Lord, he's a gentleman who I imagine would have earned his title 'The Riddler' and 'The Obscure' quite easily in Ancient Greece. His quotes remind me of T.S. Eliot:

'The way up and the way down are one and the same. '
'Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony. '
'Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, one living the others death and dying the others life.'
'Nature is wont to hide herself.'
'If you do not the expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.'

Logos is usually translated as 'word', but it also means a pattern, a rational account:

'Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it -- not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time. That is to say, although all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos , men seem to be quite without any experience of it -- at least if they are judged in the light of such words and deeds as I am here setting forth. ...'

I think I would have liked to have known this, from all accounts, highly unpopular and uniquely obstreperous man.

Praise be to the Void.

Mark

Yea,

If I figure out the way

to wait

without will

if I channel the grace
of that call

when I wake
paralysed again

and I burn, quake, chill
collect it again

dispersed silence

the hush of the Fall.

(come hither soon, o worker of the vineyard)

Psalm 23

For Queenie,

God bless her rouged cheeks and beautiful ruby red shoes.

A Psalm of David

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Individuation

On Saturday night I was blessed to attend a talk by Dr Judith Pickering, a couples psychoanalyst, at the monthly CG Jung Society meeting here in Sydney. Her talk was deep, thought-provoking, and jam-packed with novel ways to look at relationships. She has recently published a book, called 'Being In Love', but this talk was less directly focussed on romantic relationships and more oriented towards looking at the individuated self, and the unique markers that we use that act as filters, not only disguising other persons, but also disguising ourselves from ourselves.

Individuation proposes that there is a single, incomparable and homogenous being that arises through the path created by the re-integration of the scattered parts of the self. Jung saw individuation as the greatest endeavour a human being could undertake, and proposed that the meeting of two people could be seen as relational transformation, where the chemical interaction of two personalities produces a transformation where the original substance of both beings is irrevocably altered, henceforth always differentiated.

Object relations approaches to psychology since Jung's time have attempted to map these intersubjective spaces, and neuroscience, with it's supporting evidence of the existence of mirror neurons, provides a sense of how individuation might occur, a movement in the personality that is either with, or against, an external identity. The findings have challenged the old metaphysical divides between what is inner, and what is outer, and our understanding of our interdependence deepens with the recognition that babies seem to be born with an intersubjective instinct.

As Dr. Pickering moved into describing the human experience of love, and her experiences as a couples therapist - noting that us poor English cousins have to make do with one word for 'love', against Greece's six - there was one line, in particular, that she said, that has resounded in my mind:

'Love is the impossibility of reducing the other into myself'.

The duality of self and other must be transcended, not collapsed, and she used the word 'alterity' to define the sense of the strange and uncanny, the unknowable alien within us, that connects in the moment of awareness of the other person. She notes that "other" seems to privilege the 'I' position, whereas alterity allows the space for the recognition of the unconscious, the de-centred subject. To put it in the words of Derrida: ''The unknown is not the negative limit of knowledge'. This non-knowledge is the element of friendship of transcendence of the stranger.

The intersubjective field always includes projections - initially developmentally we seek exogamy (literally, marriage outside one's own group), that is, we seek exit from our old and defensive patterns of relating, but somehow, imperceptibly, we find we're enacting endogamy, our familial patterns of behaving, no matter where we are, no matter who we are with.

Ultimately, the assumption that we know each other inhibits our curiosity, and in the 'interlocking scenes' that are the contexts of all of our projections, in order to promote alethia, where the essentially hidden throws itself towards the light, where we can encounter the undisguised numinosity of the other, we need to understand that who we were yesterday does not equal to who we are today, in the stream of consciousess that is our each, individual, self.

Benedictions of the Blessed Sacrament

Some of the left-over activities from the from all accounts, successful, World Youth Day held here in the vicinity of our lady, St Mary's Cathedral, have been mana from heaven as far as I'm concerned.

Today, I was blessed to be a part of 'Holy Hour', where, in the company of some wonderful Dominican monks, we shared an hour's worth of kneeling on the cold stone floor of the crypt in song, in devotion, and in meditation.

I asked a close, dear, friend tonight whether he saw me as someone who he could easily see wearing the habit of an Australian Catholic Nun.

He laughed and said, 'There's far too much of a mystic in you for me to ever imagine you happy under the House Rule of an Abbey.'

I honestly don't know whether to be chuffed, or dismayed. For how much I enjoyed tonight, I fear my answer, for today, is dismay, tinged with loneliness.

Enough solemnity. This was the Benediction service that brought me such peace:

The Blessed Sacrament is enshrined in the Monstrance.

Hymn: O Salutaris (O Saving Victim, the last two verses from the Eucharistic Hymn Verbum Supernum by St Thomas Aquinas)

O Salutaris Hostia
Quae coeli pandis ostium
Bella premunt hostilia
Da robur fer auxilium
Uni trinoque Domino
Sit sempi terna gloria
Qui vitam sine termino
Nobis donet in patria.
Amen.

The Priest incenses the Blessed Sacrament

Gospel: John 1:42:

"Then he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, 'You are Simon the son of John; you will be called Kephas.'"

Hymn: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly-minded,
for with blessing on his hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords, a human vesture,
in the body and the blood;
he will give to all the faithful
his own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
spreads it's vanguard on the way,
as the Light of light descendeth
from the realms of endless day,
that the powers of hell may vanish
as the darkness clears away.

At his feet the six-winged seraph,
cherubim with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry;
Alleluia, alleluia
Alleluia, Lord, Most High.

The Priest incenses the Blessed Sacrament

Hymn: Tantum Ergo
Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui
Et antiquum documentum
novo cedat ritui
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensum defecti

Genitori, Genitoque
Laus et jubliatio
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedictio
Procedenti ab utroque
Compar sit laudatio.

Adoremus:
Adoremus in aeternum Sanctissimum Sacramentum.
Laudate Dominum Omnes Gentes Laudate Eum Omnes Populi Quoniam confirmata est super nos misercordia eius Et veritas Domini manet in aeternum. Gloria Patri Et Filio et Spiritui Sancto Sieut erat in Principio et Nune et Semper et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Salve Regina

Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae,

vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.

ad te clamamus

exsules filii Hevae,

ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes

in hac lacrimarum valle.

Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos

misericordes oculos ad nos converte;

et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,

nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.

O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

That a girl such as me is blessed with losing herself in words such as these. Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ, and Hail Mary, Mother of the Saints.

The Seven Sermons to the Dead

tidbits from (Saint?) CG Jung:

" Yet because we are parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us.
Even in the smallest point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and
entire, since small and great are qualities which are contained in it.
It is that nothingness which is everywhere whole and continuous.
Only figuratively, therefore, do I speak of created being as part of
the pleroma. Because, actually, the pleroma is nowhere divided,
since it is nothingness. We are also the whole pleroma, because,
figuratively, the pleroma is the smallest point (assumed only, not
existing) in us and the boundless firmanent about us. But wherefore,
then, do we speak of the pleroma at all, since it is thus everything
and nothing? I speak of it to make a beginning somewhere, and also
to free you from the delusion that somewhere, either without or within,
there standeth something fixed, or in some way established, from the
beginning. Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative.
That alone is fixed and certain which is subject to change.
What is changeable, however, is creature. Therefore is it the one thing
which is fixed and certain because it hath qualities: or as even a quality itself.