Working with Jesus as a spirit/Deity

[Beyond Everything]

It's an egregore (or series of egregores). You can work with it anyway you like. That is, if you don't put inner freedom as a paramount value.

 

[MorganBlack]

I always thought of "Christ" (not Jesus) as a title again similar to "Buddha" or like an ascended master or something. Mary and sophia being connected here is interesting but i found something you might think is interesting.
This see's hekate as the world soul or "womb"

Love it, yep yep. World Soul. Neoplationism is a pretty great framework for ceremony. Needs updating but can do a lot of heavy lifting

I don't "work with" Hecate, but I like her. Mary, in her manifestation of Queen of Hell, fulfills a similar role for me, but one tied into a specially Catholic mythic structure.

I do not like erasing other people's viewpoints, but maybe they are manifestations of the same principle/consciousness. It gets messy trying to square world mythology. The best I can say is, when in ceremony, take it all very literally - then, when out of it, take it as metaphor. Then we can have these conversations.

I'm not saying we need to revive a monolithic Catholic culture (I like secularism and neoliberalism just fine. Look at the 50 kinds of craft beers you can buy.) But some more sympathy and awareness might help to unpack a lot of magical discipline. For 500 years we had a shared Catholic worldview to provide a mythic framework, where "the usual" in ritual would be pretty obvious and not subject to a bunch of randomization from silly and pointless New Age esoteric speculation.

But even saying "work with" has so many assumptions and uncritical inferences baked in.

Just by saying it, you're implying Hecate is a spirit you can meet. Technically, in a Neoplatonic mode, any theophanic manifestation you can interact with is a daimon that a god, or God, has created for you - but it's pretty rude to call Thor or even Mary a daimon. See?

The Church is actually very flexible here, they call whatever we experience where it matter, on a personal level, "apparitions." It keeps the persona alive while also air-gapping personal gnosis from randomizing the culture and all societal institutions.

(Soapbox warning:
Some randomization is fine, but taking it too far it all fractures and factionalizes into pettym atomized little tribes, making us prey to transnational finance, which is why they fund a lot of smaller and smaller local identities and put them against each other. Anglo Esoteric culture is a perfect example. So much backbiting and fighting among ourselves. That was the plan, I feel.)

About Vodou:

OK there is no such thing as hegemonic Vodou. Everything is at the family level. Many Vodou houses are just as well-read on esotericism, if more French Continental esotericism than British-encoded ones found English-speaking cultures. So I have to be careful because I am an Anglo-Latino American and not Haitian, so this is me translating.

In Vodou, there are different kinds of lwa. Anglo neopagans usually totally misunderstand Vodou, because the lwa are not neopagan gods. They are elevated dead people, which would be called saints. And they are very localized into Haitian culture. There is no way to change the lwa into neopagan gods without destroying legitimate manifestations ('illegitimate' heave meaning torn away from Haitian culture).

So, there are different kinds of lwa - an all-purpose word that I think should be translated as "a spirit." There are wild spirits called djabs, that are not "in the House." There are zombis, which are the shades from the local cemetery who are not elevated, who are called to do work. You need to use names they recognize from when they were alive.

Now this is awkward, because I actually don't believe in ghosts (while having exorcised a few of them), but like I said, you must take it literally when you are in ritual and ceremony. Calling them apparitions, damaions, gods, spirits, lwa, egregores, masks, Offices, or even shdes- none of that ultimately matters, and each is coded to a specific culture's time-and place, and is mostly just our left-hemispheric rationalist brain trying to make sense of The Mystery.

Then there are the Catholic saints.

Jesus Christ fits here as an elevated dead person. He is mostly gone to... and this is my language... providing authority to call the rest. He is not a "work spirt" Some saint like St. Cyprian are teaching spits, and are called to do work, and provide Authority in the quantum 'mythstream' you are in. This is woven into the open prayers of the Priye Ginen, which is a whole litany of Catholic saints called into the opening of the ceremony to come and bless the proceedings, keep out djabs, and form a recognized signal in the spirit world that the party is getting started.

Legba is an elevated dead person who is called to open the gates to the Rada Vodou nation (nachon). There are rulers for each of the nations and they have point in the ceremony where they are "flipped" to.Jesus Christ opens the way to God and grants authority to do this, but he is not standing there as the ritual impresario. Each of the points has a master who rules there. Met Kalfu for instance, is Petwo nachon, and is the opener of the crossroads of night and demons, but he is not Lego, and is Christ. The total "vibe" is very different.

It gets tricky theologically if people are looking to make a Neopagan Platonism, which I do not recommend, trying to fabricate a single Tree of Life to fit everything. For instance, in one Vodou house, King Lucifer rules what they call "the Hebrew spirits," which includes the demons of the grimoires. He is not the Neopagan Lucifer very mcuh, and is much more a manifestation of something far darker. More like Met Kalfu. I hope that helps.

 

[Firetree]

Totally in sympathy here, Firetree! Man, these are DEEP and sacred topics!

That my HGA is very feminine confused me for awhile, until I read more Gnosticism. I guess I'm a cryptic Valentinian Gnostic and see Mary / Sophia as the mother of our Personal Angel (Daimon).

I see it as beyond that , due to my studies in Anthropology , going back as far as I can , this female aspect is in ancient Australian lore * , and all through time . A Sassanian perspective ;

'' The daēnā of the bridge appeared in early Sasanian times in the inscription of Kerdīr at Sar Mašhad (KSM) as Kerdīr’s own dēn, leading his “ideal body” (hangirb “likeness”) over the Činwad bridge. The high priest, in his vision of the hereafter, related “and now comes a maiden, appearing from the east, and I have not seen a nobler woman than she” (KSM 35; Back, p. 452); “he who is righteous his own dēn leads him to paradise, and he who is wicked his own dēn leads him to hell” (KSM 29; Back, p. 445; Gignoux, 1968, ll. 42-43). The story is repeated in the Ardā Wīrāz (q.v.) nāmag (4.11; Gignoux, 1984, pp. 48, 157; Vahman, 1986, pp. 194-95), where the woman is said to be the personification of one’s own dēn and deeds (ān ī xwēš dēn ud ān ī xwēš kunišn), and in the Mēnōg ī Xrad (2.125; Nyberg, Manual, pt. 1, p. 73), where she introduces herself as the just man’s “good deeds.” According to the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram (31.5) the dēn, personified as a beautiful woman, takes care of the soul of the righteous person in paradise, teaching it the speech of the spirits. ''

* the earliest story I know starts before the Dreamtime ( I have only ever heard of this one ' before' then ) where the male snake on a barren Earth is vitalized by a female snake 'above and beyond ' ( the dark 'river' running through the Milky Way ) who 'spits some of her water down on ' the Earth .

The historical traditions uphold this view. (Speaking more mystically, I feel one of the reasons we don't meet Jesus Christ very often is becasue we are supposed to be more like him, and to not externalize "him" too much.)

Anyway, back to Mary / Sophia / Nuit. (Yes i know that is alot of overlapping going on, everyone, Please don't yell at me.) Basically according to ancient traditions, found in Plato’s Timaeus and later heavily leaned on by Hermetic and Gnostic texts,

I see them as 'levels' of the one manifestation . In an indogenous (here ) perspective ( and using non-local lingo ) ; I have a physical Mum , but 'over me' is 'big mum ' , who looks after me and the local environment and helps me to act correctly within it . But 'over' her is a 'bigger Mum' for 'the country ( of which there are around 250 in Australia ) and over that ' Star Mother ' - generally - (in one language ) ' Wallenganda' - ' the Milky Way ' . . . or Nuit if one prefers .

before a soul incarnates into the heavy sublunar realm, it passes through the cosmic matrix of the World Soul (Sophia/Mary).

And before that the surrounding angular planetary formations formed the 'natal horoscope ' ... to be embedded and gestated in the 'world soul' .

In the Valentinian Gnostic schools, this was explicitly ritualized. They believed that every human soul has a heavenly, angelic counterpart in the Pleroma. True salvation or Gnosis was viewed as a mystic marriage between the human soul and its personal Angel, as Thelemite would very much be in sympathy with.

As the soul descends through the planetary spheres, it is assigned a Daimon to help it find it way. Because the Anima Mundi (World Soul) is the womb of all individualized consciousness in the cosmos, the personal Daimon is generated from her substance. She is the Mother and Queen of the Angels because the Angel is a localized ray of her own Wisdom, tasked with guarding the human ego while it experince the joy and terrors of this material "simulation" Maya.

(Oh fun fact, As I am sure you know The Personal Daimon = the HGA in the Book of Abramelin - which a German Christian text pretending to be Jewish, that was actually composed in the early 17th century . Heh. )

I had a long conversation with an anti-hermetic Jew about that , claiming it was Judaism ... oh, the antics he went through regarding that - maybe a topic for a different discussion though .

Post automatically merged: Sunday at 1:52 AM

Oh, just to add a personal note.

In my view, I do feel this model needs to be updated a little with a sort of Neoplatonic Daimonic Idealism.

Henry Corbin’s Mundus Imaginalis (the Imaginal) is all we experience. We don't descend really from the Pleroma and we are always "in" the World Soul. "God" is raw consciousness. "Mind" at the abstract "code" level of reality. We are not born, and we do not die. We are eternal. BUT, all of this theurgic stuff we do makes changing states to parts of the World Soul where time flows differently a little easier.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 1:51 AM

If you've ever attended a catholic mass and watched the invocation of the holy spirit before the transubstantion of the eucharist I dare you to view that as anything less than invocation of the spirit and evocation of christ.

I have many times when young and in adult life I have done similar myself ( I had been ordained as a Priest in E.G.C. ) . For me it depends on one's definition of the terms ; Invocation means to call IN ( to yourself ) . Evocation means 'calling forth' to appear 'outside' of yourself . In the Mass I would EVOKE the 'essence of the life of the Sun' and the joy of the Earth' into the substance , and then by consuming it , that would be the INvocation .

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 1:54 AM

I’d like to offer my two cents on this. Someone I respect once said that you could even evoke Santa Claus. What I mean is, if you try to evoke a spirit, something is going to show up eventually. But during an evocation, it might not be the actual spirit itself, but rather its proxy. It’s the exact same thing here.

To EVOKE Santa ; one large pine tree , one glass of milk and paten with three 'cakes of cookies ' .

To INVOKE Santa .... dress up late on Christmas eve and sneak around laying presents.

 

[MorganBlack]

the earliest story I know starts before the Dreamtime

Love it . Yep yep. One quibble.

The Dreamtime isn't a period of time that happened and ended. (Although I prefer the term 'The Imaginal' per Henry Corben or Patrick Harpur’s 'Daimonic Reality.'

The Dreamtime, in one sense, is a parallel, eternal state of reality that coexists with the present. And it is also all that there is. To an indigenous person asking what happened "before" the Dreaming is a nonsense question, because the Dreaming is the baseline of existence itself (and is existence).

In most of the much much older Ingenuous undertaking The World has no beginning and no end. It is the Eternal Now. Always. There is no Ragnarok, and the universe was not created by the murder of Tiamat, or giants, or the Titans. The myths are much more recent mewling baby myths.

And yep yep. The Milky Way as Serpent River is the Celestial Nile the collects the tears of Isis weeps for her murdered husband, Osiris. Thelemites got it going on!

 

[Jade]

Love it, yep yep. World Soul. Neoplationism is a pretty great framework for ceremony. Needs updating but can do a lot of heavy lifting

I don't "work with" Hecate, but I like her. Mary, in her manifestation of Queen of Hell, fulfills a similar role for me, but one tied into a specially Catholic mythic structure.

I do not like erasing other people's viewpoints, but maybe they are manifestations of the same principle/consciousness. It gets messy trying to square world mythology. The best I can say is, when in ceremony, take it all very literally - then, when out of it, take it as metaphor. Then we can have these conversations.

I'm not saying we need to revive a monolithic Catholic culture (I like secularism and neoliberalism just fine. Look at the 50 kinds of craft beers you can buy.) But some more sympathy and awareness might help to unpack a lot of magical discipline. For 500 years we had a shared Catholic worldview to provide a mythic framework, where "the usual" in ritual would be pretty obvious and not subject to a bunch of randomization from silly and pointless New Age esoteric speculation.

But even saying "work with" has so many assumptions and uncritical inferences baked in.

Just by saying it, you're implying Hecate is a spirit you can meet. Technically, in a Neoplatonic mode, any theophanic manifestation you can interact with is a daimon that a god, or God, has created for you - but it's pretty rude to call Thor or even Mary a daimon. See?

The Church is actually very flexible here, they call whatever we experience where it matter, on a personal level, "apparitions." It keeps the persona alive while also air-gapping personal gnosis from randomizing the culture and all societal institutions.

(Soapbox warning:
Some randomization is fine, but taking it too far it all fractures and factionalizes into pettym atomized little tribes, making us prey to transnational finance, which is why they fund a lot of smaller and smaller local identities and put them against each other. Anglo Esoteric culture is a perfect example. So much backbiting and fighting among ourselves. That was the plan, I feel.)

About Vodou:

OK there is no such thing as hegemonic Vodou. Everything is at the family level. Many Vodou houses are just as well-read on esotericism, if more French Continental esotericism than British-encoded ones found English-speaking cultures. So I have to be careful because I am an Anglo-Latino American and not Haitian, so this is me translating.

In Vodou, there are different kinds of lwa. Anglo neopagans usually totally misunderstand Vodou, because the lwa are not neopagan gods. They are elevated dead people, which would be called saints. And they are very localized into Haitian culture. There is no way to change the lwa into neopagan gods without destroying legitimate manifestations ('illegitimate' heave meaning torn away from Haitian culture).

So, there are different kinds of lwa - an all-purpose word that I think should be translated as "a spirit." There are wild spirits called djabs, that are not "in the House." There are zombis, which are the shades from the local cemetery who are not elevated, who are called to do work. You need to use names they recognize from when they were alive.

Now this is awkward, because I actually don't believe in ghosts (while having exorcised a few of them), but like I said, you must take it literally when you are in ritual and ceremony. Calling them apparitions, damaions, gods, spirits, lwa, egregores, masks, Offices, or even shdes- none of that ultimately matters, and each is coded to a specific culture's time-and place, and is mostly just our left-hemispheric rationalist brain trying to make sense of The Mystery.

Then there are the Catholic saints.

Jesus Christ fits here as an elevated dead person. He is mostly gone to... and this is my language... providing authority to call the rest. He is not a "work spirt" Some saint like St. Cyprian are teaching spits, and are called to do work, and provide Authority in the quantum 'mythstream' you are in. This is woven into the open prayers of the Priye Ginen, which is a whole litany of Catholic saints called into the opening of the ceremony to come and bless the proceedings, keep out djabs, and form a recognized signal in the spirit world that the party is getting started.

Legba is an elevated dead person who is called to open the gates to the Rada Vodou nation (nachon). There are rulers for each of the nations and they have point in the ceremony where they are "flipped" to.Jesus Christ opens the way to God and grants authority to do this, but he is not standing there as the ritual impresario. Each of the points has a master who rules there. Met Kalfu for instance, is Petwo nachon, and is the opener of the crossroads of night and demons, but he is not Lego, and is Christ. The total "vibe" is very different.

It gets tricky theologically if people are looking to make a Neopagan Platonism, which I do not recommend, trying to fabricate a single Tree of Life to fit everything. For instance, in one Vodou house, King Lucifer rules what they call "the Hebrew spirits," which includes the demons of the grimoires. He is not the Neopagan Lucifer very mcuh, and is much more a manifestation of something far darker. More like Met Kalfu. I hope that helps.

I don't like the term "work with" but i use it for convenience sake. It makes sense why calling some of these Gods and even "unofficial Gods" Like mary (I consider her a God at this point.)
I Always thought that Voudou was more structured that what you described but it makes senses, having been in haiti myself many practice behind closed doors because of how far protestant Christianity has spread. If the LWA are not gods then the Orisha would be im sure. when you say you don't believe in Ghosts do you mean you don't think it's the actual person or? I believe that it's a shade left behind by the soul with the memories of life. I can see why you would compare them to saints as they are elevated dead people. I always assumed there was atleast a god(Not an elevated person) in the religion. So their lucifer and the Western Lucifer are different, kind of like how some saints are different depending on the area. I apreciate the time you take to respond to these. I have Haitian Family myself and it's nice to learn, ill scroll through the library to see if i can find anything related to hoodoo/voudou

 

[Firetree]

Love it . Yep yep. One quibble.

The Dreamtime isn't a period of time that happened and ended. (Although I prefer the term 'The Imaginal' per Henry Corben or Patrick Harpur’s 'Daimonic Reality.'

Isn't it ? ... you want to quibble with me about understanding regarding the Dreamtime ?

Okay then , are you familiar with its origins as 'alcheringa' in Arrernte language ? It roughly means 'in the beginning' or 'from eternity ' ...not 'for eternity ' . That word went on a journey , through all sorts of people ; anthropologists , other indigenous language groups . Also in the story it starts that way ; '' Long time ago ... before the Dreamtime ... '' and that is deliberate ... a pause , the listeners will be going like you are ; ''Whaaaat ? Nooooo ... impossible ! '' ( A bit like the 'worst story ever told ' - which is about the formation of Scorpius - which of course they dont see as that - it has deliberate shocking law breaking behavior in it .... curiously with strong 'scorpionic themes ' ) AND the story ends with the Dreamtime ending ! The dream is a snake's dream ... he dreamed 'all this' up , and at the end of the story , the snake wakes up and the dream time ends ... and everything vanishes .

All this other stuff is add ons coming from different uses of the word ( eg we can say we had dream , meaning last night , or we have vision for a future , or we went into a dream like state , or be describing the 'dream world' and how different things are in that realm etc etc ... combined with a whole lot of later projections onto it ) .

Yes the dreamtime can also be likened to the Imaginal realm AND 'Aboriginal consciousness ... but it can also have a beginning and an end, and the first meanings do not cancel out the 'temporal' meanings ESPECIALLY in the story I cited , which is a traditional story and form and not one I made up from my own understandings . It comes from the Kimberly area ; the Wororra, Ngarinyin Wunambul peoples .

The Dreamtime, in one sense, is a parallel, eternal state of reality that coexists with the present. And it is also all that there is. To an indigenous person asking what happened "before" the Dreaming is a nonsense question, because the Dreaming is the baseline of existence itself (and is existence).

Sorry, that is wrong ... I can TELL YOU what happened BEFORE the Dreamtime , with this traditional story ... the dreaming does not start until after the story starts .

In most of the much much older Ingenuous undertaking The World has no beginning and no end. It is the Eternal Now. Always. There is no Ragnarok, and the universe was not created by the murder of Tiamat, or giants, or the Titans. The myths are much more recent mewling baby myths.

Much older ? Older than +40.000 ya. ?

And yep yep. The Milky Way as Serpent River is the Celestial Nile the collects the tears of Isis weeps for her murdered husband, Osiris. Thelemites got it going on!

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[MorganBlack]

If the LWA are not gods then the Orisha would be im sure

Haitan and African cosmologies are incredibly sophisticated! I more a fan of the Congolese Bantu speaking people's visions but the Yoruba Orisha are pretty neat too.

When Anglo-Neopagans or Western academics use the word "god," they are usually thinking of an independent, supreme entity with a fixed personality who rules over a specific domain like a cosmic monarch. That is not what an Orisha is, and it is easy to misunderstand the framework of West African cosmology.

In Yoruba cosmology, there is a Supreme, uncreated, formless source of all existence called Olodumare (or Ọlorun ). Olodumare doesn't have a gender and is too vast to be interacted with directly.

The Vodou Bondye (The Good God) is this. Vodou is very Deist. God made the universe and then left. Then "he" left it in charge of the lwa.

The Orishas are not competing "gods" under Olodumare. ( I had to check but this is the basis of it.)

They are a multidimensional convergence of three distinct things

Primordial Energy - called Irunmọle, this is the raw cosmic building blocks of the universe that existed before humans (e.g., the concept of justice, the element of fire, the chemical properties of iron).

Local Natural Phenomena - The physical manifestation of that energy on Earth in the biosphere (e.g., a specific river, a thunderstorm, the ocean).

Elevated Ancestry - in the continuity of human beings - kings, warriors, scientists, or cultural founders - who lived so perfectly in alignment with a specific primordial cosmic energy that when they died, they didn't become standard ancestors , called the Egun in Ifa and The Ghede in Vodou. They completely fused with that natural energy and became, in Haiti, the lwa. . And in Africa, and Ifa, these deified historical figures are the Imale or ancestral Orishas. (I think. Not an expert here)

So in Haiti, the primordial energy of "The Spirit of Iron" that is known as "Old Ogou" had to fractionalize"to meet the diverse needs of the human community in a new place under brutal slave conditions. When Vodou refers to the Lwa as t"he dead," they aren't talking about a ghost haunting a graveyard. They are talking about a vast, ancestral continuum that speaks to the culture, their experience under slavery, and their geographical location.

So in my view, turning them into bodyless, Platonic, neopagan gods really makes no sense, and it is also an insult to the sophistication of the African cosmology of Vodou and Ifa.

Also, I have to wonder, how unbalanced and hysterial many neopgans usually are, what the fuck are the neopagans contacting when they do not have a livng pagan culture? I support them trying to rebuild it, but that is the work of generations. Without children the whole concept of "community" really make little sense in my understanding of how these things work. Maybe soon they will have rebuilt, but who knows?

Post automatically merged: Today at 12:30 AM

Okay then , are you familiar with its origins as 'alcheringa' in Arrernte language ?

Yep yep. I think we are both talking about a divergence that completely smokes the +40,000 BCE Upper Paleolithic revolution in Europe.

See Harvard Professor Michael Witzel’s The Origins of the World's Mythologies for this, but human cosmology is split into two massive historical layers - Laurasian and Gondwanan.

Aboriginal stories and myths are Gondwanan, not Laurasian

Among the very late Laurasian myths are the murder of Tiamat, the Titans, or the doom of Ragnarok all mewling baby myths with the Laurasian narrative structures. This framework really didn't come about until roughly 40,000 years ago in Southwest Asia before spreading across Eurasia and the Americas. They are ALL obsessed with linear time, a hard narrative beginning (creation from a corpse or a cosmic egg), generational warfare (blood and soil!! Rawr! So adorable. ) ,and an ultimate apocalyptic end. Boooo!

By contrast Indigenous Australian cosmologies belong to the Gondwanan layer.

This layer represents the initial southern migration out of Africa along the Indian Ocean, reaching Australia at least 60,000 to 65,000 years ago, where it was culturally preserved in isolation.

Prof. Witzel notes that Gondwanan mythologies precede the Laurasian storyline by at least 20,000 to 25,000 years, tracing back to an ancestral African core that is over 100,000 years old!!

You can see proof is in the structure, which I outlined above.

Gondwanan lore has no interest in the absolute creation or destruction of the universe. The Earth, Sky, and Sea already exist, they are simply flat, dark, or sleeping until awakened. It is a cosmology of the Eternal Now, completely unburdened by the linear, black-pill doom-laden narrative arcs of the much younger Eurasian systems.

So yeah., compared to a 65,000+ year unbroken tradition of the Everywhen, a narrative about gods murdering a giant to carve up the continents is, comparatively speaking, all mewling baby myths.

Many many years ago I reads somewhere an interview with an Aboriginal elder. He was asked if the gods made humans. He said, no, only the flat reality existed before humans. Before the Ancestral Beings woke up, the Earth already existed, but it was completely flat, cold, dark, and soft. There were no mountains, no rivers, no trees, no distinct animals, and no stars.

Humans were already there, but they weren't fully human yet. They existed in a dormant, semi-formed state called Inapatua (in the Arrernte language). The Inapatua are described as unshaped, embryonic clumps of life. They were unfinished creatures, stuck together without distinct limbs, fingers, eyes, or mouths. They lay blank and paralyzed on the flat, damp crust of the earth. But they were always there, just undifferentiated blobs . Like people on Instagram. Or NPCs in a video game.

There is more , but I am tired of writing today

 

[Firetree]

Too off topic - I better 'split' . Lets meet here ;

Aboriginals , 'Dream ' time and Tralfamidore .

Yep yep. I think we are both talking about a divergence that completely smokes the +40,000 BCE Upper Paleolithic revolution in Europe. See Harvard Professor Michael Witzel’s The Origins of the World's Mythologies for this, but human cosmology is split into two massive historical layers -...

wizardforums.com

 

[MorganBlack]

Too off topic - I better 'split' . Lets meet here ;

Nice!

I feel grappling and coming to terms with Gondwanan ideas (including the Indigenous Australian ones especially) is incredibly important for modern occultism and the Anglo Magical Revival overall.

Modern paganism has been cribbing notes from the New World for a couple of decades. They have been looking to systems like Vodou and trying to incorporate the Ancestors, but then trying to graft them into all European and Eurasian mythic structures, which are fundamentally Laurasian. So it mutates into some form of Platonic paganism with Eurptoean creation myths (Or Sumerian, etc. ) - which are all Lurasian creation myths , range-limiting their explorations. And what they see over here, they misinterpret.

So Vodou leans heavily Gondwanan, a worldvew inherited from the Dahomean, Fon, and Guinee (African) peoples. Again, this is why you cannot turn the lwa into Platonic neopagan gods, nor yank them from a living culture without completely changing them. The same applies to Santa Muerte. Well, you can, but then what are they, really? That is whole other topic.

According to Prof. Witzel, Gondwanan mythology is found primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and parts of Melanesia. It can also be defined by what it doesn't care about. Gondwanan myths generally take the existence of the physical universe completely for granted. Witzel notes that as you move north toward the Sahel and the West African coast, you start running into pockets of Laurasian drift or "Pan-Gaean" features.

In Africa the Yoruba and Fon systems are incredibly sophisticated, urbanized, and state-centric, which means they developed attributes that mimic Laurasian systems. They feature a high, detached, non-interventionist creator (Olodumare), which mimics the Laurasian Deus Otiosus (the retired god). They also feature an incredibly precise, hierarchical division of the cosmos (as the World) among the Orishas/Lwa, which Westerners mistake for a Laurasian pantheon. And all this run-off flows right into modern occultism and neopaganism. Even people who are not white and neopagan use it and it flows through the internet everywhere.

When the enslaved people of Dahomey (and later some from Yorubaland ( although they left very little mark on Vodou compared to the Fon, being brought over in much smaller numbers and much later) were brought to Haiti, they were forced into a brutal collision with the Laurasian worldview of French Catholicism, with its definitive Genesis. Although, I would argue Catholicism is far less Laurasian than Protestantism, as it focuses on the continual renewal of the Earth through the Resurrection.

They maintained the ancient, ancestral understanding that the universe is an eternal, parallel continuum. No matter how hard Western structures tried to force them into a Platonic, linear box, the timeless, immortal reality of the ancestors survived the crossing intact.

To tie it all together, grappling with this helps us understand Jesus as "the greatest Houngan" Across many African Diasporic Traditions. But he is also not a Platonic "god" in the purely European sense. It gets tricky here , and grasping Gondwanan worldview give us better handles to look at his role in Vodou and other African-influrnced Folk CAtholicism, and New World Sorcery.

Jesus Chirst is also more than just a shade. He is an Ancestor. And Ancestors are not ghosts,per se.

Prominent African theologians like notably Benezet Bujo and Charles Nyamiti pioneered "Ancestral Christology." They argued that using Western, Laurasian terms like Logos, Substance, or Hypostatic Union meant absolutely nothing to a Gondwanan worldview. (As much as I love them, they need rebalancing. . )

Instead they framed Jesus as the Proto-Ancestor, the Supreme Ancestor, or the Bringer of Life. In African and Vodou cosmo-visions, an ancestor is someone who left a flawless (meaning exemparary) blueprint for how to live in alignment with a particular cosmic principle or "life force" (Ase ). Jesus healed, cast out spirits, conquered death, and passed down a lineage of spiritual power to his disciples, he fits the exact structural definition of an Elevated Ancestor.

A "shade" or a ghost is a fragment, n my view a lingering, localized memory or psychic residue of a dead individual. Jesus as Ancestor means he has completely fused with the universal life force, acting as a massive conduit of cosmic energy (Bondye's grace/power) available to everyone, everywhere.

To tie it all together, grappling with this helps us understand Jesus, but he is also more than just a shade - and calling him a neopagan "god" does not work either. Here, he is an Ancestor. And Ancestors are not ghosts. Well, they can be, but you can see above how BIG that cosmo-vision (as Gordon White would excellently put it) really is. The Anglo magical revival needs much more of that.

As a side note, Vodou fit inside of Catholcism better than it does in Platonic NeoPaganism. This above is also how the Gondwanan understanding fits very easily inside Catholicism. The Resurrected God-Man easily becomes the elevated Ancestor. It's the same story, with just some very minor details changed.

 

[Morell]

Jesus Chirst is also more than just a shade. He is an Ancestor. And Ancestors are not ghosts, per se.

Never thought about it that way, but yeah. That's true.

 

[Sarah24]

If you plan on working with Jesus, you may find Gnosticism and/or other forms of early Christianity interesting. They had a very different view of Jesus compared how modern Christians see him today. The only way you'll know for sure is to try it out and see how it goes. Just make sure you take all the necessary protective precautions. If you do I'd for one appreciate an update on what happens.

 

[MorganBlack]

Thanks, Morell. I appreciate you reading this.

I hope it helps you understand why I get low-level irritated at modern pagan reconstructionists taking a surface-level, shallow reading of Folk Catholicism and lumping it all together under the "Abrahamic" label. We are not the same. The good parts are actually the older, mythic substrate.

I also think people gotta find their own way.

I happen to love Neoplatonic "gods" if we take the stories of gods and colorful characters and turn them back into cosmic principles and energy (without calling them Archetypes). Neoplatonism can still be used, but this unconscious Laurasian Platonism needs to be called out and isolated from infecting everything under the sun, IMHO.

Sarah12, I agree with you. I'm a crypto-Valentinian Gnostic.

Right now Neopagan gods still don't have any bodies, and their followers have read far too much Christian Kabbalah (So Hecate = Binah. Just... fuck. Not how that works).

And they hate it when I diffuse everything "Above the Sun" back into Infinite Mind / Ase / Bondye / cosmic code. I will hint that it can all be reconciled with the classical Sublunar model pretty easily if people "move" their "gods" a little lower, back down "Under the Moon," so to speak, where they have bodies again. But then, are they really European "gods" anymore?

I would also say having a single mega-model, a single view to rule them all, is a manifestation of the much younger Laurasian layer. I flip models depending on what level of reality I am ritualizing towards. I literally have had modern Neopagans scream at me for even suggesting this. Such hysteria.

 

[Morell]

Thanks, Morell. I appreciate you reading this.

I hope it helps you understand why I get low-level irritated at modern pagan reconstructionists taking a surface-level, shallow reading of Folk Catholicism and lumping it all together under the "Abrahamic" label. We are not the same. The good parts are actually the older, mythic substrate.

I also think people gotta find their own way.

Not really. Though you are right, but being angry at them for not being what you expect them to be and when you do not depend on them in any way... why to bother?

Taking things for granted because someone say them is an error we all learn at school where it is forced into us for many years. And not easy to remove if it takes serious hold...

 

[MorganBlack]

So... not angry, just tired.

It’s the exhaustion of constantly having to clean off the same graffiti, the spray-painting over history, before we can even start a real conversation. I'm a big believer in the free exchange of ideas, but not in belittling or badgering people. (I will bait them, however, to knock them off their assumed superiority, so we can talk. )

And I'm disappointed. I remember fondly the neopagans from my 1980's childhood, and they were not these mewling hysterics. Something went very badly off the rails with their revivalism efforts, and I really have to wonder why.

It’s the loss of potential that’s disappointing, but it also has real-world consequences. This kind of shallow reductionism spawns some truly vile and racist manifestations. It’s not just an internet debates. It has actual, dangerous real-life impacts. Like Neopagans telling Haitain Vodou folks they need to "throw off the yoke of colonialism" and turn the saints into neopagan gods. Again. Not how that works, kids.

 

[Jade]

So... not angry, just tired.

It’s the exhaustion of constantly having to clean off the same graffiti, the spray-painting over history, before we can even start a real conversation. I'm a big believer in the free exchange of ideas, but not in belittling or badgering people. (I will bait them, however, to knock them off their assumed superiority, so we can talk. )

And I'm disappointed. I remember fondly the neopagans from my childhood, and they were not these mewling hysterics. Something went very badly off the rails with their revivalism efforts, and I really have to wonder why.

It’s the loss of potential that’s disappointing, but it also has real-world consequences. This kind of shallow reductionism spawns some truly vile and racist manifestations. It’s not just an internet debates. It has actual, dangerous real-life impacts. Like Neopagans telling Haitain Vodou folks they need to "throw off the yoke of colonialism" and turn the saints into neopagan gods. Again. Not how that works, kids.

I believe that trying to mix too many things into a melting pot can lead to a loss of nuance and eventually losing the original traditional framework the practice was in.
Especially when the two traditions are rooted in completely different cultures.
Too much syncretism can be a bad thing. But maybe if approached correctly and with respect good things can come out of it

 

[MorganBlack]

Too much syncretism can be a bad thing. But maybe if approached correctly and with respect good things can come out of it

Totally agreed!

Vodou is profoundly syncretic, but not in a low-information, pre-digested neopagan baby pablum way (not to pick on the kids too much).

One of the hopes I have for public, international forums like WF is that they can become a sort of New Alexandria - applying and THEN synthesizing something new we can all use (but not so much in the other direction, which is just rationalism with sparkle-magic) , without erasing the very best of what came before. The Africans did exactly this in Haiti, and one of the best living magical cultures to learn from (with necessarily becoming Voudisant).

European "gods" should absolutely be part of that mix. But updating them from a standard European/Eurasian mythic framework requires some modulation with an Eternal Universe.

Honestly, I think that's the real reason Gordon White was so persecuted by those assholes. They claimed it was over his naughty political views, but the truth is he was introducing a massive audience to the older New World and Gondwanan substrate. It's an architecture so much deeper than their pop-paganism or European "gods" (As a category, folks. Just saying that model could use some updating.) that they had no vocabulary for - so they just went on the attack. It hurts their brand.

 

[Jade]

Totally agreed!

Vodou is profoundly syncretic, but not in a low-information, pre-digested neopagan baby pablum way (not to pick on the kids too much).

One of the hopes I have for public, international forums like WF is that they can become a sort of New Alexandria - applying and THEN synthesizing something new we can all use (but not so much in the other direction, which is just rationalism with sparkle-magic) , without erasing the very best of what came before. The Africans did exactly this in Haiti, and one of the best living magical cultures to learn from (with necessarily becoming Voudisant).

European "gods" should absolutely be part of that mix. But updating them from a standard European/Eurasian mythic framework requires some modulation with an Eternal Universe.

Honestly, I think that's the real reason Gordon White was so persecuted by those assholes. They claimed it was over his naughty political views, but the truth is he was introducing a massive audience to the older New World and Gondwanan substrate. It's an architecture so much deeper than their pop-paganism or European "gods" (As a category, folks. Just saying that model could use some updating.) that they had no vocabulary for - so they just went on the attack. It hurts their brand.

I really like your idea of the new Alexandria, maybe I’m just too optimistic but it could happen under the right circumstances. You explained to me that a lot of the LWA of Haiti are elevated dead people and even some of the orishas have some human associations like king shango. The European Gods are very different in that aspect but how do you see the European gods and their differences to the Lwa. Just to touch on pop paganism, from my experience I usually a lot of under researched pagans infantilizing their gods or sometimes not even respecting their GodHood. I believe that Gods should be Gods and most people just aren’t ready for that level of respect and devotion. Sometimes they actually expect their god to act like Jesus in the way that they will coddle them or something. Just looking at the history would tell a different story. Just go on TikTok or even Reddit and you will plenty of examples of “pop paganism”

 

[Kepler]

The many ways to work with Jesus reflective of the many ways to personally approach a deity.

Viewing the universe as alive with Jesus representative of cyclic astronomical events that are attached to worldly figures and events mapping the cosmos and the soul in corresponding natural metaphor is one I've been looking into.
Specifically thinking about my early experiments with Jesus as Caesarion and the star Regulus, Mary as Cleopatra and the star Spica, Joseph as Antony and Antares leading into solstice. The star associations have changed and continue to change as things develop but the point is that viewed as accessible living discrete cosmic patterns they've opened up new energetic ways to work with deities and Jesus specifically in a hylozoic framework with modern natural science and a different astronomical calendar with a different layer of historical markers. Aligned with new approach to the afterlife without invalidating the old. Adapting spirit communication.

 

[MorganBlack]

I like they way you're thinking, Jade.

To fend off the risk of going way off topic, may I suggest we move these importation explorations to this thread:

Gabbing about Traditions and Inclusive, Ecumenical Occultism

Making a thread to continue an enjoyable conversation from here: https://wizardforums.com/threads/does-aurum-solis-belong-to-the-golden-dawn-what-is-the-relationship-between-its-magical-system-and-greek-polytheism.20018/

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