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The Immersion into Symbolic Language

Nerone

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"Truth did not come into the world naked, it came in types and images."

So goes the Gnostic Gospel of Philip.

We are told that we must "...Enter through the image".

One of the books I had issues finishing, nay, to deal with and wishing to relinquish from my psyche, was Outlines of Pyrrhonism by Sextus Empiricus. The very notion that our human constitution and it's faculties is not at all adequate to comprehend the nature of reality, that we always have an inborn limited perspective on matters, is something I find quite frightening - because it is, in essence, disempowering. I don't think I would be too far off in calling this sentiment a fundamentally Lovecraftian horror.

Traditions of yore tells us that the higher aspects of reality is something to be experienced and lived through; what the Neoplatonists called Intellectual-Intuition, what the Sufis considered their Wine - it goes by many names. At a certain point it seems that we must relinquish our rational cleverness, and experience that which expression pertains primarily to a symbolic dream-like logic. Hence the use of myth.

But alas, there are those who go into a movie and immerse themselves into the narrative; to such an extent, as Gustave Le Bon tells us in his Psychology of Crowds, that even the actors who played the villains in a play had to be escorted out backstage, lest they suffer the wrath of the crowd. The young man who played Geoffrey in Game of Thrones is a good modern example of this, and James Gandolfini remarked once in an interview that people off the street always called him Tony.

In the astrological writings of Vettius Valens, there is a peculiar mention of the planet Venus and her rulership; besides the usual sweet stuff we know her from today, he remarked that she made excellent Priests. I think the root of this idea can be found in the word "Faith", the Latin "Fidere", and it's negative manifestation "infidelity", where we eventually derive words such as "Confidence" from. In other words, Immersion.

I myself have no confidence in any one particular myth, just as a movie goer who cannot buy into the make-believe of the cinema, always dissecting it from a point a rational, Saturnian detachment, and I believe I greatly suffer from this in my praxis. I can of course suspend disbelief for a while and enjoy the spectacle. But I wish to remain there and unfold my roots, and this I cannot. I have no home so to speak; I envy the ancients who saw their thunder as Zeus.

In Matthew 11:28 it says: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest".

And this is what I seek. But I cannot buy into any one narrative as the absolute, nor can I sell myself short into a complete negation of myth. Somewhere between these two poles exists a Golden Mean, but for now I cannot grasp it.

How do you guys deal with this stuff?
 

MorganBlack

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Dammit, Nerone.

So sorry to hit and run! I have work to do, and here you are proposing interesting questions that hit right at the crux of so much of our more mystical and sublunar work , work that engages with our emotions and inner sense of meaning. Story and myth so my jam. We are narrative creatures.

I need to find time to share my thoughts more fully, but here's the pith.

I've found Dr. Iain McGilchrist's writing to be usefully paired with Neoplatonist thought to move into what I think of as Mythic Space.

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Basically, the Big Picture is right-hemispheric in nature. It does the comprehending - taking in the whole., experiencing the whole , the Totality (in my some of my personal language)

Our chatty left-hemisphere, by contrast, is does apprehending - it's far more limited, and what we use to grab things for our own use, where we apply the Big Picture to our personal, short-term goals an, as well break things down into parts, to get a handle on them, and try to communicate them , often with metaphor, symbols and words. Myth meets us on the other end.

Our primary experience of the world is right-hemispheric. What some continental psychologists call The Umwelt. We intellectualize with our left brain, but it does not move the magical or mystical needles one iota.

I hit at this spot in a hope to help us see and harness these two horses of our nature, in my Recommended Reading List for Chao-Animist Necromancy:

-- Karen Armstrong - A Short History of Myth (2005)
-- Patrick Harpur - Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld (2003)
-- Patrick Harpur - The Secret Tradition of the Soul (2011)
-- Dr. Gregory Shaw - Hellenic Tantra: The Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus

I am sure there are other ways to talk about it, but McGilchrist is a great place to find a shared common langauage.
 
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