Without a Vision, the People perish
Death-Forces in Matter, Psyche, and Social Forms
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- The Roots of Power in the Present Age
- The Bomb: a One-Sided Tarot of Power and its Historical Context
- Alternative Modes for Working with Power within Our Mesoamerican Legacy
- The Role of the Divine Feminine of the Far West in Earth-Evolution
- The Pivot Point in Mesoamerican History
Death-Forces in Matter, Psyche, and Social Forms Across the entire spectrum of the artistic imagination of the 18th and 19th C. one can find examples of what we now also find in highly materialized (incarnated?) form. Take for example Mary Shelly’s Dr. Frankenstein’s monster or Bram Stoker’s equally famous vampire. Minus the lurid frills and quaint dialogue, in function and effect, don’t they eerily prefigure the phenomenon of the diversified for-profit Corporation? Consider these attributes: a legal person, not exactly alive but potentially immortal, absent to the senses although possessing an “Invisible Hand”, the “Inc.”, is oblivious to non-quantifiable values of human beings. Born from fraudulent and devious circumstances (no specific legal decision authorized its conception) and midwifed not by the eccentric wizardry of scientific mythology but by a curiously banal ambition, it is without capacity of soul or conscience yet is full of independent intent, a sociopathic legal metaphysic of finance…. Is the Inc. perhaps the Mother-ship for the real invading aliens, the rest of the hoopla a secondary reality? One could go on and on describing its occult reality. Or, for an example which is excruciatingly specific, take the man-made element of plutonium: no element of fantasy here. No better example can be found for the fully incarnated, materialized, and literalized forces of Death, for it is virulently unstable in a fashion which makes it ideal for bomb-making. It is also one of the most chemically toxic of substances: even if it were not radioactive, it would be right up there with Dioxin as a #1 poison. *****
The Corporation in its modern full-blown mega-state certainly does seem to have acquired a life of its own which is independent of and inimical to the basic needs of its human parents. I use the term “creature” in accordance with the principle that if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. Take any post-WWII monster movie or science-fiction epic, from Forbidden Planet to Alien, Pitch Black, and beyond. The landscape in which our creatures prowl reflects the desolate world in which we find ourselves: worlds within totally manufactured or toxic environments. Spaceships, absent soil, plants, or animals, but chock full of weaponry confront their own malfunctioning technology. The general context is hostile: no air, water, or dancing. Coarse sex, no children (as children: the little girl in Alien 2 is significantly more mature and battle-wise than most of her adult “protectors”). If the scene is set on another planet, the filmmakers vie with each other to escalate the violent and poisonous settings. We are trying to tell ourselves something here, but as long as we pay to witness the prophecies of our destruction as entertainment, we may be too far gone to benefit. The Roots of Power in the Present Age While the prophetic Imaginations of previous eras of visionaries may have been as explicitly cautionary as they could manage, those same powerful images can, for us, obscure and deflect our own perceptions of their incarnated realities. For example: Steiner again, in talking about the forces behind Anglo-Saxon geopolitics and the hidden causes of the First World War, refers to certain unnamed “Brotherhoods.” With our imagination distracted by popular media, one tends to imagine chanting circles of black-robed sneaks, performing powerfully unsettling if obscure rituals, maybe even a bloody chicken or naked virgin tossed in for good measure. Even this scenario does well enough in depicting the mode of activity of the corporate elite, if the Imagination is decoded appropriately and not taken literally. What did transpire in those meetings between Cheney and the energy corporation executives? Those were as “occult” as anything dreamed up by a writer of lurid fiction. What we see described in artistically realistic terms in these examples of hubris run amuck is an unnatural concentration of Power acting out in the realms of science and economics. It is the dilemma of our Age. Take politics, as we have just done. The era in which both the atom and the psyche were cracked also saw the rise of mega-dictators Hitler, Stalin, and Hirohito, with the USA stepping in to pick up all the pieces when the dust had settled. (Since then the topic of “isolationism” has not been on the table for discussion.) Idealistic but naïve scientists were bought out by the military-industrial complex – this was the seduction of Genius by Power. In the same fashion, those who sought the foundation of the Soul have all too often become snake-oil frontmen for the pharmaceutical industry; employees of the advertising media – this is a parallel corruption of Knowledge by Control? “Is she just shy? Or is it Social Anxiety Disorder? ZOLOFT – NOW Indicated for Social Anxiety Disorder” – media ad for Zoloft, 2002. “Every time you identify a new receptor or a new hormone, you identify a potential druggable target.” – Philip Smith, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. In these instances of physics and psychology we have picture-perfect illustrations of the, good cop – bad cop, one-two squeeze play – on an archetypal level, a Luciferic-Ahrimanic dynamic, one which we will unfold as we continue. Most significantly for some, the planet Pluto, named after the Lord of the UnderWorld – riches, power (e.g.: “plutocrat”, “plutocracy”, etc.), and transmutation let us not forget - was discovered in 1930 by Percival Lowell in Arizona. All these and others overlap and feed back into each other. Do these mutually supporting manifestations share a common intent? Is it fair to ascribe intent to what we usually characterize “blind” forces? We shall see…. The Bomb: a One-Sided Tarot of Power and its Historical Context Since we have been using the instance of the atomic bomb as a reference point for a wide range of considerations, it should be emphasized again that the bomb could not have arisen without an entire range of supporting infrastructure - not only industrial and scientific, but also psychological. A brief examination of the actual first use of the bomb makes this very clear: In mid-1945, the American military high command knew that although the Japanese naval and air forces had been shredded to ineffectual tatters, their army was still a potent force. An invasion of the Home Islands, in which the entire civilian population would have resisted to the death along with millions of troops, all defending known and reinforced territory and possessing the potent advantage of very short supply lines, was expected to cost over one million US casualties. US troops, released from duty in the European theatre by the defeat of Germany in 1944, were scheduled to be transferred to the Pacific front. It was doubtful whether the US public would be willing to sustain the cost entailed by such a commitment to “unconditional surrender” – for this was the “nailed to the wall” policy of the Allied political and military command, a rather unusual and extreme one in the annals of war, but one which capitalized on America’s strengths of Power and was typical of extremism in American foreign policy in general (Wilson’s naïve idealism of “making the world safe for democracy” represents the other side of the same coin). Nonetheless, the US was intent on a total removal of the causes of such a devastating world war, and with its conviction bolstered by capacity of technology, industry, and capability, it proceeded in its policy of bringing Japan to its knees so thoroughly that it would never get up again. Whatever else you might say about it, this was a consistent policy: before the atomic bomb was used, and long before its development was revealed to the war-planners in Washington – for it was probably the most successfully top-secret of all top-secret projects – from Day One of WWII in the USA there was a thoroughly integrated plan to maximize the amount of devastation that could be applied to the enemy. Policy restraints against bringing the war to the civilian populations of enemy nations were few, and when they existed, they usually resulted from lack of means and opportunity, not from lack of intent. This was true of all combatant nations. Thus, although it is true that the Nazis and Soviets fought a war without restraint on the Eastern Front in the European theatre, it is also true that “Bomber Harris” of the British Air Force had no compunctions against “targeting” the civilian population centers of Germany when it proved utterly impossible to target designated military objectives in the night attacks which it was allotted. The mittelaltern city of Dresden, without much military value (it was a supply nexus for the Eastern Front), was firebombed to the tune of 50,000 civilians in order to “teach them a lesson” and justify the air wing’s expenditures. Noting the effectiveness of such tactics in generating impressive statistics and observable results, if not much of immediate military value, and observing the meager results obtained by their own brand-new B-29 Superfortress bombers (the first intercontinental bomber) in their recently inaugurated high-level raids over Japan, US air-generals decided to change tactics. It was decided to forego the use of 500lb and 1,000lb high-explosive bombs, useful mainly against fortified emplacements, and switch to scatterings of an equal tonnage of 6-pound bomblets spewing inextinguishable napalm. Used against the wood-and-paper construction of residential Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, the 325-plane mission, with each plane loaded with 5 tons of incendiaries, produced results far exceeding expectations. Many more were killed in the resultant firestorm than perished in either of the later atomic bomb blasts – over 100,000 killed, unknown numbers wounded, over one million homeless, and 16 square miles of the city completely burned out. The raids continued over as many Japanese cities - 63 - as could be targeted with the bombs, bombers, and crews available. Twenty-two million citizens were rendered homeless as a result – 30% of the country’s population – 900,000 civilians were killed, 2,200,000 were casualties, and 178 square miles of densely populated urban areas were razed. Brigadier General Thomas S. Powers, who led the Tokyo mission, said: “It was the greatest single disaster incurred by any enemy in military history. It was greater than the combined damage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were more casualties than in any other military action in the history of the world.”
‘Killing Japanese didn’t bother me much at that time. It was getting the war over that bothered me. So I wasn’t worried particularly about how many people we killed in getting the job done. I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side. Incidentally, everybody bemoans the fast that we dropped the atomic bomb and killed a lot of people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That I guess is immoral; but nobody says anything about the incendiary attacks on every industrial city in Japan, and the first attack on Tokyo killed more people than the atomic bomb did. Apparently, that was all right… ‘I guess the direct answer to your question is, yes, every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral, and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.’ “11 If you decide to fight war, it is men like LeMay, Patton, Halsey – and Groves - that you want both leading the charge or providing the wherewithal back home. The problem with that is how to put those tigers back on the leash once the dirty work is done. It seems that question was never seriously asked. Our former Soviet allies quickly became our evil nemesis, and whatever brief window of opportunity for a “peace dividend” that might have existed vanished like the dew in the hot desert sun. The momentum of the military-industrial-political complex was too large for it to turn on a dime and anyway, it was powered by forces that conventional thought and discourse was incapable of addressing. It is a question for later historians to investigate as to whether any of the twentieth century’s sorcerer’s apprentices had any real idea of what they were doing; did any actually intend the results they obtained? Once so many thresholds had been passed, the decision to use the atomic bomb was just another one in a long series. In retrospect, a Rubicon of sorts had been passed. At the time, it was not seen as such: the basic policy decisions necessary to employ such a device had long since been made. It would have required a total break with precedent in order to have not used the bomb – and the war was being won; success was being reinforced, societies had been organized for total war…. Alternative Modes for Working with Power within Our Mesoamerican Legacy There are many dilemmas excited by the 16th C. entry of the “New World” into the vortex of Europe’s empire-building and the post-WWII role reversal. It is long overdue that insight born from the spiritual Traditions of Europe (the “West” of Asia but the “Middle” of world-culture, and which by no means except conceit allots itself a continent of its own) be brought into relationship with those of the cultures which lie on the other side of the Atlantic in the Far West. After all, since it is admitted, though typically disregarded, that these latter were spiritually-oriented cultures of the first degree, and that the overlapping transpersonal causes and human motivations for their existence and cycles of transformations lay in those spiritual underpinnings, it is fundamentally absurd to look elsewhere than in those inner realities for our understandings of them. Examination of exhumed potsherds and corpses (interred with ritual intent but with no respect in the unearthing, nor cognizance of the consequences in so doing), study of temple architecture and iconography, the evidences of trade economics and agricultural practices, etc., can give illuminating data and insights, but the broad conclusions derived from them tend to be projection. In other words, their emphases reveal more about ourselves and what is important to us than about what may have been important to them. And when does one decide that the data is sufficient? When one’s prejudices are confirmed? When the funding starts to run out or the deadline nears? The questions we ask and the manner in which we ask them determines in large part the nature of the answers received – and which questions are rejected out of hand. Our understandings should, in the last analysis, help us to understand what they understood. Informed spiritual insight can be exactly that: in-sight. Not a replacement for scholarship or study, but a necessary if by no means sufficient component of a well-rounded approach - one that is glaring by its relative absence in the academic literature. The dynamic of cultural invasion, annexation, disassembly, stripmining, and exploitation which began at the outset with Columbus and Cortez continues. While the physical residue of civilizations long extinct are exhumed and scrutinized with laudable rigor, the living soul and spirit of the peoples are dishonored, and dismissed as an atavistic chimera. A passing familiarity with the state of modern Mesoamerican archeology reveals that this façade is not homogenous and uniform: beneath the dry formal prose of the scholarly papers there are numerous instances of penetrating insight. Schele, Taube, Furst, Carrasco, and many others demonstrate that there beats a living heart in there somewhere, but most seem to live in fear that they might be found out as having a personal investment with the subjectivity that lives within the object of their studies. Sometimes the dissonance between content and style is so acute that one suspects that a very droll sense of humor is in play. So it is by use of a method more suited to its “subject” that we quest to understand these cultures which are so seemingly Other, ones which have only quite recently become overlaid by our own imported one. But if they were truly Other, they would have no mystique; they would exert no hold on our imagination – but they do. That is, I propose, because they are Other only insofar as they are the other half of our own identity, the hidden side; the downside. Not “down” as in “bad”, but “down” in the sense of direction: into the depths of the microcosmic personal psyche, holographic analogue of the macrocosmic planetary UnderWorld. In between, there are the disenfranchised portions of our social body. Ostensibly refused and exiled, none of these ever went away, in spite of our pretending that they had. The amount of psychological self-mutilation involved in such avoidance and denial must be immense, and probably accounts for many of our personal neuroses and frankly paranoid and schizophrenic national behaviors. ***** For those who have had the skills and intent to amplify and manipulate such repressed forces, the opportunities are vast. Bringing these forces into consciousness defuses their negative potentials and reintegration of them brings about release of their positive potential. As the original and balanced prototypes of twisted negative expressions are activated by those who engage with them in the InnerWorlds, the shamanic pathway continues to develop underneath the feet of those who walk it. Necessary to this is commitment and continual release in prayer – very different indeed from the hypertrophied “objectivity” which borders on autism. Although the alternative modes of access and perception which I employ are thoroughly discounted by most academic professionals (the salaried referees and pundits of discourse), they offer great promise for overcoming the specific problems inherent in the onlooker status: one which is part and parcel of the modern scientific method, a stance which has only a temporary and limited if spectacular utility; one which is showing clear signs of unraveling about the edges. Essential questions are: “Is the mythos of the ancient cultures really lost?” “What has changed in that mythos, for better and for worse, and what is invariant?” While there is no lack of those who have “gone native” to one degree or another, including a surprising proportion of those who publish about indigenous cultures, what I am talking about here is cross-cultural contemplation from an equivalent esoteric basis; from an peer level of vision, so to speak. Of course, this is only an initial attempt at such an endeavor, but that such an approach as is attempted here is sorely needed, there can be no doubt. Nothing ventured, nothing gained – and yes, we know it has been proved that bumblebees can’t fly…and in the late 1800’s the head of the U.S. Patent Office officially proposed that his department be shut down because everything inventable had already been invented! So let us not waste too much time looking over our shoulders to see whether the skeptics are giving us their benediction! Let us see what we can come up with. If it works, it works. How this is gone about will be taken up in a following Chapter. For now, it will suffice to focus on insights resulting from use of that method. The Role of the Divine Feminine of the Far West in Earth-Evolution It has been profoundly satisfying for this writer that his multi-disciplinary investigation into ancient American spirituality goes a long way towards answering Rudolf Steiner’s injunction: “Precisely from the example of agriculture, we can see how necessary it is to derive forces from the spirit; forces that are as yet quite unknown. This is necessary…so that human life on Earth can continue at all…”12 (Emphasis added) Our glance into Mesoamerican spiritual impulses will bring us into close proximity to these very forces – forces which can be so threatening, but which also have within them the deepest rejuvenating possibilities! It is significant that Steiner’s statement comes from the Agriculture Course, where he gives his most detailed indications for the healing of the natural order of the Earth. During that occasion he also had his very revealing private conversations with his hostess the Countess von Keyserlingk, concerning the golden core of the Earth and, by implication, the modern role of Persephone.13 One can only note with poetic irony that what was the deepest and most taboo-ridden esotericism for that European culture was at the same time the simplest common, intuitive knowledge for most native peoples in the New World. The link through agriculture is significant, given that for all indigenous peoples it was the beginning and closure point of spirituality. Note, in this regard, the blitz being made upon our genetic inheritance by Terminator seed technology, Frankenfoods, and the astoundingly audacious attacks upon humanity’s link to the Earth-body through the corporate patenting of the genetic codes of biological life. Underlying these agendas is the relentless upwelling of subnatural forces. Steiner’s insights are again relevant in this matter: in hand with his descriptions of the subnatural forces are his recommendations for a revamped social construct which would be able to handle these forces in a way which would not lead inexorably to chaos for all biological life-forms. Interestingly enough, this Threefold Social Order is having its best chance for success in the USA through the biodynamically-inspired Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. Biodynamics is Steiner’s pre-“organic” set of farming prescriptions, dating from the earliest years of the 20th C.
Notwithstanding the fame of their astronomical science and calendar lore, the InnerWorlds of the Mesoamerican civilizations were strongly oriented towards the chthonic dimensions (a.k.a. “UnderWorld”). ***** In European lore, by contrast, the UnderWorld is generally denied and considered, when it is considered at all, an extremely unfortunate place. Aphorisms like “better a beggar in the land of the living than a king in the realm of the Shades” or imagery of the burning sinners in Hell dominate the mind or represent the general level of appreciation of the UnderWorld by those with either classical education or no education at all. It is beyond the scope of this section to trace the esoteric lore of the UnderWorld in Western thought. Although it does quite definitely exist, it lies outside the boundaries of the standard-issue maps and catechisms. Its significance will gradually come into focus as we repeatedly circle back to consider how it operates within specific situations. It will also be impossible to present the vast scope of the Chthonic realms in Mesoamerican mythology and practice, not least because so much of it is still unknown – and it is also in the midst of a profound revealing of a new metamorphosis! A remarkable amount is known about it, however, and strong illuminating parallels exist within our own Western European Tradition; most significantly in what has to do with the vicissitudes of the Divine Feminine and the Celtic roots of the Grail sagas. Contemplating these parallels sheds an unexpected light in many directions, and its significance will gradually come into focus as we repeatedly return to consider how it operates and what its effects are in specific instances, especially regarding the implications of the encounter between the Magi of Black and White Magic at America’s Turning Point of Time. The Pivot Point in Mesoamerican History The ”Turning Point of Time.” What does this mean? This phrase of Rudolf Steiner’s indicates his perception that in those critical years and days two thousand years ago, there was a shift in evolutionary affairs equivalent to nothing else before or since. Pole shifts, killer comets, galactic alignments, Floods or Ice Ages…none of these can begin to convey the long-range implications of this event. At this unique and unrepeatable node of singularity, all historical, spiritual, material, involutionary currents converged and merged only to disperse and then begin to evolve towards distant horizons. Consider the hourglass, where everything that flows, passes through that bottleneck. Consider it as a picture of the flow, not of sand, but of time, where all impulses merged before they were released into new combinations. More on this later, although we should note that one of the reasons that this event is not more noticeable is that our historical memory is too short to be able to chart the trend and our scientific measurements cover far too small a sample of the spectrums of existence, and that the energies involved are too long- and deep-cycle to attract casual notice. The tracks left by two thousand years of religion are hardly enough to plot its curve. What is the gist of these insights concerning events in Mexico at this time? To recap, they relate a struggle in the first century AD between an unnamed representative of greatly devolved “Mexican Mysteries” (Steiner’s term), one who attempted to thwart not the birth of Christ as did Palestine’s Herod, but the purpose of His Sacrificial Death: the at-long-last fully realized-in-history archetype of the Rite of the Sacred King. What really gets our attention is that he places this attempt within the historical record for the years 30 - 33 AD. Against this, he relates how an advanced initiate, of origin and pathway unspecified, stepped forward to deny this malign intention so that the Deed of Christ could complete its full arc.14 Not only that, but he states that natural evolution would have run out of momentum and petered out altogether and human souls would have refused to incarnate if the dislocated occult forces provoked by the “Black Magician” had been allowed to run riot. Steiner relates that the “White Magician” was named “Vitzliputzli” (he uses the early german transliteration of “Huitzilopochtli”).15 We will retain the former rendering, as applicable, to distinguish the earlier aspect of the famous culture-hero from that which he eventually acquired under the terminal-phase Aztecs. ***** Here we are in deep and unusual waters, even for many who are well acquainted with the standard studies in archeology or occultism! We have introduced terms and concepts for which we have established no precedent or context, but we will have to plunge right, generating our understandings of them as we proceed. Yet even a cursory review of pre-Columbian mythologies reveals a preoccupation with continual struggles between humans and demons and between evolved humans and degenerate humans. The historical record of the peoples themselves indicate the same – for instance, in the archetypal saga of the downfall of king Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl (935 or 947 CE, exiled c. 987), famous ruler of Tula and the Toltec empire, due to the evil shaman-priesthood of Tezcatlipoca. Enacting as avatar the archetypal drama of his namesake, under the totemic influence of his planet Venus, he was exiled, but with a prophecy of his return. ***** Cortez had the wit to capitalize on this universal expectation, having the good fortune to show up on the prophesized year and day of his return! There are corroborating indications from Mesoamerica’s own mythologies that crucial events did transpire there two thousand years ago - for example, the self-immolation of the Gods in Teotihuacan which inaugurated the present World-Age, the first stories of the Mayan Hero Twins which tell the tales of those days, and the implementation of the Long Count Calendar system. Archeologists also date the start of the high-point Classic Period throughout Mesoamerica in this general time-slot. While the coincidence of these events do not in themselves prove anything, they give us more than enough reason to search for a unifying factor. Although the investigative method of active inner participation allied with strict observation, discrimination, and verification as utilized in this article is dismissed by those who have no experience of it, it offers great promise for overcoming that hurdle of the onlooker status which has already been referred to. It is admitted, though the implications are promptly disregarded, that ancient cultures did not live and die by the measurable data which remains to us, but by an agreement unknown to us, one which was for them was the controlling reality. More essential questions: “Is that mythos really lost?”, “What has changed in that mythos – for better and for worse, what is invariant, and what is the same as the core insights of all cultures?” ***** Directory: Objects Objects -> Engine Manufacturers Association v. South Coast Air Quality Management District, 124 S. C Objects -> Basic telephone etiquette Objects -> Review of Probability (a) Probability distribution function for Objects -> Internet Mini Case 1 Palm, Inc Objects -> Apple Computer Inc v. Franklin Computer Corp Objects -> Pointers and Dynamic Arrays Objects -> Chapter 16: Population Growth and the Atlantic Migration Summary Objects -> Environmental protection Objects -> Toyota and the Changing Car Market a case of non-price competition Download 0.88 Mb. Share with your friends:
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