[Opinion] Loving god because he's perfect?? (Rufus Opus/hermetecism)

[beardedeldridge]

Yeah I like the how of hermetics never cared much for most of the why.

Now regarding beauty and perfection. First I’m with you on what makes someone physically/intellectually/mentally attractive and it isn’t what most people call perfection. Honestly “perfection” is just boring.

But trying to shoehorn what our physical selfs are taught is physical perfection over how our higher selves view the ineffable is not particularly useful imo.

-Eld

 

[Xenophon]

Perhaps the Hermetic definition of "perfection" might not be fitting to what its common definition might be, yet you also admitted to feeling God's love of perfection yourself:

Perfection is not that something is flawless in the sense of having 20 on all of your stats, but that your individuality composed of flaws and strengths is itself perfect just the way it is because there is no 'right' or 'wrong' arrangements of strengths and weaknesses outside if duality where God hangs out. You love people for their faults and struggles, so does God, because everything in life struggles and is imperfect.

Loving this sense of infinitely unique and changing perfection may be what the original person may have been trying to express: you can go to the local Walmart and never see the exact same circus again, it's lovely!

And I think perhaps in the Hermetic philosiphy indulging in this form of loving observation brings you closer to God cause observing and loving is his shtick, right?

Somewhere above I plagiarize Ortega y Gasset's "immanent ideal," which seems to be what you speak of here. A thing is beautiful based on how its own parts are arranged with reference to, well, its own quiddity. That's why some people, ugly or overweight by any collective standard, are still beautiful. (I mean, hey, in his younger days John Goodman oozed a certain definite charisma.)

Still, Walmart strikes me as a reach. Personally I think a few pages were lost from Dante's Inferno. Say those treating of the third or fourth rings or so. Whatever Walmart might have been, the Stateside ones fall rather short of.

 

[HocusPocus]

Isn't beauty a sort of power? Remember Mephisto near the end of Faust II
Doch möcht' ich euch nur einmal lächeln sehn!
Das wäre mir ein ewiges Entzücken.
Ich meine so, wie wenn Verliebte blicken:
Ein kleiner Zug am Mund, so ist's getan.
Dich, langer Bursche, dich mag ich am liebsten leiden,
Die Pfaffenmiene will dich gar nicht kleiden,
So sieh mich doch ein wenig lüstern an!
Auch könntet ihr anständig-nackter gehen,
Das lange Faltenhemd ist übersittlich--
Sie wenden sich--von hinten anzusehen!--
Die Racker sind doch gar zu appetitlich!
(But I would only like to see you smile once!
That would be an eternal delight to me.
I mean as when lovers look:
A little puff on the mouth, that's it.
You, tall fellow, I like you best,
The priest's face will not clothe you at all,
So look at me a little lustfully!
You could also go more decently naked,
The long pleated shirt is over-moral--
They turn--to look at from behind--
The rascals are too appetizing!)

Sure, he's a good bit low-minded here. But the angels' beauty quite unmans him. Though, yeah, maybe caution is a perfectly valid response in the face of beauty. Put your love on a choke-chain, as it were.

You know you raise a good point, men have done alot of sad and ridiculous thing for a beautiful woman. I guess in my POV I try to neutralize anything that has soft power over me at least I find that life gets less problematic that way.