Green Egg, No. 63
Forum
Dear Green Eggers,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
As usual, the Forum in GE 62 seems to consist about half-and-half of (a) people who want to bicker, slander and call names among themselves and (b) people who think Crafters shouldn't bicker and slander and call names. Thus the Hodge and the Podge remain in permanent unbalance, which is good.
I was moved by Margot Adler's letter recounting how the Lady spoke to her and said that all this bickering is good because it keeps the Craft decentralized. This confirms the vision of Malaclypse the Younger, who invoked the Lady in Her Erisian aspect (156=Chaos=Babalon) in 1958 and was told, "We Discordians must stick apart."
Following this logic, all Discordians are Popes and we have all mutually excommunicated one another. Furthermore, we have incorporated the Opposition by recognizing them as Accordians and thus part of the eternal unbalance with us. (In more technical theological language, they are aneristic and we are eristic, whereby it can clearly be seen that neither side would have a reason to exist unless the other existed to be resisted.)
This is in keeping with Crowley's great equation 0=2, which defines the universe as the non-existent resultant (0) of the imaginary conflict of two (2) unreal forces. If this Holy Wisdom were more generally understood all the amusing quarrels could continue merrily without people getting themselves all tired out by it. After all, as Leary shows so brilliantly in Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality and Neurologic, the emotional-glandular circuits are appropriate only for emergencies, like being bitten by a bear. Running on the emotional circuits chronically is living in full-time neurological-glandular emergency imprints and wears down the gut and other important organs something awful. This is why neurotics are always tired and the happiest people are those who have forgotten most (and own least).
Crafters might find much profit in those Sufi exercises based on alternating concentrations of impassioned emotional identification and meditative detachment. This quickly gives some idea of what Crowley means by that 0=2 hype. Everything that exists (for you) is that which you have passionately identified into existence: the Void always underlies it all. Below all the emotional and intellectual and emotional imprints, the mind remains unblemished and pristine as those Zen jokers say.
There is no need to drop out entirely into Buddhist bliss and just wallow in the void, of course. Rather, the Discordian unbalance suggests the advisability of including both attachment and detachment, thereby unbalancing the last possible threat of balance and stagnation.
In re: Lady Persephone's musings about "white" and "black" magick (and curse this racist terminology) -- normal consciousness is the most statistically prevalent form of magick. Other forms of black magick merely heighten one or more of the basic perversities of this normal consciousness (dualism). Similarly, the normal ego, based on infantile-to-adolescent imprinting of emotional-glandular and muscular-spatial circuits, is the most prevalent form of demonic possession. (The great demon Choronzon always begins his appearance with the typical ego-centered cry, "I am I!" His nastiness is based on the terror underlying any ego: the recognition that I am only I temporarily and accidentally.) A close and unsentimental examination of Jesus Freaks, Krishna Freaks, Scientologists and ordinary people during the 8 hours a day of working for wages (doing the Will of others) shows the mechanisms of black magic and demonic possession to be quite simple and dreadfully ubiquitous. Or just examine any of the quarrels in Wiccadom or elsewhere to see this process advance from germ to monstrosity.
The art of quarreling without delusion (identification) is explained in the Bhagavad Gita in symbolic-allegorical terms and in Korzybski's Science and Sanity in precise neurological terms. In general, any conflict in which it seems to you important that you win is a temporary bout of insanity and obsession. Discordians know that whatever happens is all part of Her great plan, or Her great lack of plan (play) and merely say when Chaos manifests again, "Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia! Kallisti!"
Love is the law, love under will.
Theophobia the Elder
House of Apostles of Eris
c/o Wilson, 535 Taylor #104
San Francisco CA 94102
4 comments:
Great post, as usual. One can see E-Prime had not yet come to dominate Bob's thinking.
Bob sure loved Leary's book Neurologic. Bob had planned to teach a class at the Maybe Logic Academy at the end of his life, but he cancelled it due to ill health.
I liked Bob's comment in yesterday's post about the value of studying Catiullus. I plan to work on my Latin this year, and hopefully I that will help me get deeper into Catullus.
Oops - Bob had planned to teach a course called Neurologic.
Yes, I laughed out loud at the end where Bob brings up Korzybski in a paragraph full of is's.
D. David Bourland, a student of Korzybski's, "invented" E-Prime around 1965.
According to Bruce Kodish's wonderful, thick, well-researched and well-written bio of Korzybski, AK tried to dissuade Bourland from marrying a woman twice Bourland's age (he was 21; she 42), without discussing it with Bourland's parents. Bourland married her anyway, and they were divorced soon after. Korzybski died shortly after trying to dissuade Bourland.
Bourland, 15 yrs later, interpreted his teacher's words in a literal experiment (which reminds me of Wilhelm Reich taking Freud at his word and interpreting the idea of repression of the sex instinct and developing a radical way of thinking).
So, when RAW was writing these bits E-Prime was still sort of a "new" idea. RAW often adopted new, radical ideas as soon as he found out about them and played around with them to see if they worked FOR HIM. I think we can make a pretty good guess that he knew about E-Prime while writing these Green Egg pieces/letters (the RAW letters seem like the best writing in any ish of Green Egg to me, when RAW appears in that ish at all, but YMMV), but he hadn't yet adopted it.
Science and Sanity contains a huge number of the forms of "to be" that AK argues hinders clear thought; this was a major actuator of Bourland's experiment of extending AK's ideas.
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