Various Magick:

From the Art of Manliness:

"The Shadows of the Magician Archetype

The Detached Manipulator

The Magician in his fullness desires to initiate other men into his knowledge, bringing them up from degree to degree so that they can become better and happier men. The Manipulator Shadow poses as the Magician in his fullness–he teases would-be initiates with the prospect of learning his secrets, but he does not give them all his knowledge. He withholds things from them in order to feed both his pride and his pocketbook. Shadow Manipulators charge their seekers a ton of money with the promise that the student can become just like them, but don’t give away the real secrets to doing that, and especially the secret that they often can’t become just like them, because their own success was due to x,y, or z factor that won’t happen to anyone else.

The internet has created an army of Shadow Manipulators. Everywhere you look there are hucksters promising you the secrets to bedding women, losing weight, making money online…if you’ll only buy their $200 eBook.

Shadow manipulators play a prominent role on our cultural stage as well. Wall Street bankers, politicians, ad agencies, and media pundits are all absolute experts in getting a following by sharing some of the story, but not all of it.

Another aspect of the Manipulator is his cynical detachment from other people. I see this Shadow in guys too often. They’re the ones who, when confronted with their inability to commit to anything, be passionate about anything, or enjoy any pleasures in life, will retort with “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Moore summarizes this man’s issues very well:

“This is the man who thinks too much, who stands back from his life and never lives it. He is caught in a web of pros and cons about his decisions and lost in a labyrinth of reflective meanderings from which he cannot extricate himself. He is afraid to live, to ‘leap into battle.’ He can only sit on his rock and think. The years pass. He wonders where the time has gone. And he ends by regretting a life of sterility. He is a voyeur, an armchair adventurer. In the world of academia, he is a hairsplitter. In the fear of making the wrong decision, he makes none. In his fear of living, he also cannot participate in the joy and pleasure that other people experience in their lived lives. If he is withholding from others, and not sharing what he knows, he eventually feels isolated and lonely. To the extent that he has hurt others with his knowledge and technology—in whatever field and in whatever way—by cutting himself off from living relatedness with other human beings, he has cut off his own soul.”

The Innocent One

The Innocent One is the passive pole of the bi-polar shadow. A man possessed by the Innocent One shadow wants all the power, glory, and status that comes with harnessing the Magician archetype in his fullness, but he isn’t willing to put in the work or take on the responsibility that said power, glory, and status requires. They see another man doing something really cool, and decide they want to do it too. These are guys who get super excited about a new hobby, or faith, or career path–their excitement is absolutely coursing through them–but after the easy part has passed (coming up with the name of the band, buying a skateboard, designing the start-up’s logo), they realize how much “dead work” is required to get really good at the cool thing, and they give up.  Men haunted by the shadow of the Innocent One want to be millionaires, but aren’t willing to toil and work years to achieve it. They want to play guitar like Django Reinhardt, but they give up guitar lessons after just a few weeks. They want to be spiritual, but without all that prayer, meditation, and scripture study business.

But the Innocent One’s shadow behavior doesn’t stop there. Because a man in touch with the Innocent One can never attain or achieve his goals because of laziness, he doesn’t want others to achieve their goals and ambitions either. He becomes a stumbling block to others simply out of envy. A man possessed by the Innocent One begrudges the success of others and does all that he can to diminish it. Theodore Roosevelt despised this type of man. To him, a man possessed by the Innocent One was “one of those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.”"

This informs several interpretations.

Kresten's commitment to the former is not merely translucent but transparent; he is Saruman Incarnate. Only profound narcissism could have doomed him to this fate, for he certainly had the intellect necessary to identify the trend and to transcend it. He simply lacked the motivation; the Fate of the World, at home and a broad, was not sufficient.

Alanna's attachment to her own intellect was projected upon this Manipulative Animus, so much so that it could only reinforce those attributes that led to her untimely and tragic downfall.

No man would forgive this sort of Black Magik.

Andrew is a little harder to spot, but it does not take long to identify self-entitled, uninvolved histrionic attributes in the live-and-let-live Virgo Male. His development of the Lover archetype was precisely at the root of his spiritual laziness and academic setbacks, as well as the haze of unfeeling cynicism and collegiate dismissiveness that followed it, a pale imitation of his turned-on intellectual curiosity and altruistic fervour. He is the Innocent One in the most nauseating ways.

The Dream of the Green Jew:

The first part of the dream recounts the intoxication of infatuation. Having become victorious in Love, the protagonist returns home, only to fall asleep at the wheel. (It does not take a Driving License nor even a thorough knowledge of the dreamer's skills in driving to read the ominous portents herein.)

When he awakes, he finds himself within the house of his lover's father. Callous in his methods, the protagonist enters into debt with the father; this is not unlike an unpaid dowry. Forced to confront the realities of enduring patriarchal tradition, he takes his leave of the establishment, but not before his vehicle of love has been broken down.

A slice of pizza (a piece of the Mandala) indicates that he has however salvaged a slice of his personality from that adventure: the Lover Archetype. I would not be surprised to discover that the pizza slice was shaped to be one quarter of a whole circle.

Valuable as it might be, it is alien to this new environment. Only an entire pizza would be a fit burnt offering.

As Andrew takes his leave of the confines, having discovered his means to be invalid, he finds his own father, without the building. Mitchell is coddling a childhood friend of Andrew, who discovers the fate that will befall him should he fail to attain his new goal: a perversion of masculinity that clings eternally to the Divine Child archetype. The perpetually "innocent" Andrew is doomed to the life of the Eternal Boy.

The following part of the dream revisits the childhood state. What starts in the driver's seat ends in the backseat: a position of dependency. Therein he confronts the Anima as it is transmuted into a vicious and confining, matriarchal force: the Spider Mother, but as an octopus instead of an arachnid. His parents, whose inflated egos obligated a young Freedman to prove himself perpetually, become the chief antagonists, for they oversee this bondage but do nothing to stop it. I can personally attest to this softness in their approach to parenting: severe expectations but abounding forgiveness, praising him as much for his sensitivity as for his success, even when the former acts against the latter, rather than in harmony with it.

Directly out of this overwhelming matriarchy emerged the most depraving patriarchy. Again Andrew found himself in the clutches of a daemon, and again he was within a confined space. This time, the innocent boy was robbed forcibly of his innocence by the entire force of patriarchal tradition, represented by a centipede (effectively: a karmic snake) whose every appendage was a phallus and a fallacy.

It is only in the last of the five acts that Andrew is offered a solution: the cultivation of his spirituality, his Becoming-a-Magician. It is precisely this task that he had, by his own eventual admission, allowed to fall by the wayside upon my last visit with him, when he was at his worst and most self-destructive and emasculated.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

R.G.

Woundings.

“@baziz It's not about either, because there was no concept of "Native Americans" from the perspective of the Lakota people, since tribes treat all foreigners and social progress with rabid disregard. (Hence we can thank evolution and the development of the neo-Palium, alongside civilization, for even the freedom to make posts online, a great deal of which are maintained by servers on the West Coast, which is of course the end of the Oregon Trail and the consummation of Manifest Destiny.) As for the "whole US" (I'm guessing you mean "whole U.S." rather than "us"), that entity as we now understand it could only have been the product of sacrifices made, such as at Wounded Knee, in order to eliminate the tribal way of life and to attain an ethical, teleological purpose devoid of any further, needless violence. (A perfect parallel would be the character of Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad and his cold, uncompromising war on the Mexican drug cartels.) The only "we" that could have been referred to here is the Lakota Tribe itself, and as people who inherited a civilized language we have an obligation not to abuse it against its unitive purposes. Most uses of the word "we" are illusory, because only the Individual can truly be said to exist as a sentient phenomenon; his flourishing depends entirely upon the elimination of those oppressive ways of life, such as Fascism and tribalism, that would seek to subvert the Reasoning Intellect to the rule by force. R.G.”

Herein lies the paradox: that in order to set people free one must look down upon them, and in order to acknowledge others as being akin to one’s self one must note the limitations in not only their cultures but all so their own limitations in direct proportion to their dependency upon those cultures. Being humane must come at the expense of being all-too-human, for while people of lesser character and reason can cavort across gaps in language and sophistication, truly understanding an Other with respect must involve a sacrifice in sympathy. Excellent characters are not those who excel in the principles of any one culture exclusively, nor are they those whose partisan excellence earns them the “respect” of members from other cultures, but rather it is those people who excel in Universal Human values that only the most forward-thinking Individuals, across history and place, have discovered and brought to their respective societies: non-violence, altruism, progress, and communication are only to name a few examples. Falling short of these ideals, one can only establish a corrupt connection with foreigners, for others are reduced to mere means and threats in the narcissistic state. There are absolutely no problems that are not collective problems, and even the most personal experiences are experienced as involving and transcending all of Humanity. Once the ideals have been owned, however, any possibility for a superficial and Utilitarian connection dissolves, and only genuine human empathy – a force transcending mere self-centred sympathy – remains.

It follows that elitism is the first step towards egalitarianism, for True Equality must be attained by Progress. Progress thereby warrants itself, though not tautologically, for the seemingly circular argument in fact draws on the very Universality of its fruits: the Civilized Human Virtues.

Dm.A.A.

A Relatable Monologue:

What ails you, my old friend?

The ills of a Time and Place

Of which I am perhaps the only healthy resident.

What Hell have you returned from?

One beyond imagining or description.

Challenge me to fathom it, my friend.

Not only was I disadvantaged by a fellow human being,

Something I’d not considered yet to have been possible of fate,

But it was done so without warrant,

Deliberately, in conspiracy against me,

By those whom I’d trusted most to value my integrity

And not as a means towards some private ends,

But part and parcel with my Heart,

Whose longings were pruned and watered by those same critics,

I believing them to have done so out of consideration for my Virtue,

And with only those private ends to try to justify it.

No such evil had I known before,

The only superior of which I’ve known since

Has been this: that I am somehow blamed

For the sins of others against me

When it was my virtue and my own pursuit of it

Alongside those I trusted virtuously,

(For they’d fed me lies about my character)

That produced this fate in tandem with their

Shameful and depraving vice.

Dm.A.A.

What They Did and Why it Sucks: RateMyProfessor Cuts Down on Spice.

What They Did and Why it Sucks: RateMyProfessor Cuts Down on Spice.

What They Did:

RateMyProfessor.com removed the optional Hotness rating that had all ways spiced up this idiosyncratic, student-focused website, allowing students to recount not only their academic, intellectual but their affective, romantic experiences under a given instructor’s tutelage. In addition to praising, blaming, and slandering one’s teachers, a premise so subversive to the Ideals of Academia that the site was frighteningly gauche (that’s French for “Left”, as in Leftist, meaning traditionally antiauthoritarian) to begin with, students could warn you whether or not the man or woman in question was an eyesore. Given recent criticism by female professors, the site subtly removed the Hotness Rating option, as well as the red chili pepper that had tokenized it.

WHY IT SUCKS:

1.       The entire premise for RateMyProfessor.com was to empower the student voice, not to restrain it. Supposing that any one of the variety of personal attributes that are considered attractive to the mid-brain would have no consequence upon the psyche of the student is not only naïve, but Totalitarian in an Orwellian way.

2.     It was a Professor that spearheaded the act of censorship, not a student.

3.      The entire premise for RateMyProfessor.com was subversive TO BEGIN WITH. No idealistic scholar would dare besmirch the name of any educator, loth to blame others for his or her own scholastic shortcomings. To try to introduce some sort of MORAL AUTHORITY to this website is RIDICULOUS, because that would suggest that RATING our PROFESSORS is NOT a subversive act of Will, but rather an Objective Account that we are ENTITLED TO within certain CONSTRAINTS. Will any educated man or woman believe this lie?

4.     Hotness IS A JOKE. It’s ridiculous to suggest that:

a.     It could be objective.

b.     It needs to be objective.

c.      It would be a criterion for serious scholastic decisions.

d.     It ought ONLY to be a criterion for serious scholastic decisions.

e.     It would affect one gender group moreso than others.

f.       Claims that it would have such an effect could be substantiated objectively, especially in the ABSENCE of the censored information.

g.     Students would NOT be entitled to this censored information in revisiting the site’s decision.

h.      Professors should feel self-conscious about it based upon the irrational fear that being “unattractive” would lose them worthy students in desperate need of Learning.

i.       All of these facts would somehow IMPLY the ethical grounds for censorship, a violation of the Is-Ought Problem. (That facts alone do not dictate ethics.)

5.     The greatest psychoanalytic shortcoming of the last hundred years is the undervaluation of Eros, which finds its expression in perverse ways. See Marie-Louise von Franz and the entire history of Romance and Chivalry, as well as the threats against it posed by barbarically one-sided special interest and “rights” groups.

6.     RateMyProfessor.com is supposed to be an independent company rather than an academic institution. Do “checks and balances” mean anything to you? How about “Corporate Fascism”?? Perhaps you need to go back to school. But then again: perhaps that will not help.

7.      If none of this matters, not even from the perspective of a long-time student, what motive would remain to salvage a professor’s students other than money?

8.      There is no teleological progress made by this decision; people simply cannot TAKE A JOKE, and they supplement their own ethical shortcomings with emotive political complaints: a step BACKWARDS.

Honestly, it never affected me much. It was just funny and curious. I all so was in love with someone who became a Professor. I was hoping to know she would be remembered as much for her beauty as for her intelligence, since the former is a power that gives life whereas the latter led to her untimely death. You can be beautiful and make the most of it, even when others hate or take advantage of it. What truly kills people is academic intellect, for its very nature is so cutting, incisive, and impersonal that, to quote Jung, it “fears and rejects with horror any sign of living sympathy, and partly because a sympathetic understanding might permit contact with an alien spirit to become a serious experience.”

Dm.A.A.

Accordance:

I know now the nature of this new disease.

I am in love again.

I let my doubts in myself cloud my Vision, prompted by the distant past.

The dead are deadening to me. Yet Her Ghost haunts me with beneficence, reminding me that Death is Not the End, filling my Heart with pity for those who so callously scorn Life by fearing Death, or even by embracing it as though it had been Absolute.

I still remember: we are here to learn Unconditional Love.

That is why I am not afraid to be in Love with this new Angel that has fallen before me.

Every step in this direction, including the cultivation of my manhood, is a painful one. But knowing that my passion is yet pure, and only from this standpoint of true purity might I have seen the impurity of my enemies, I know that never shall I now become them. My attempts to understand them proved to me that I was not their Equal. God had all ways barred me from that sort of sin, even when my will erred. And His Love is greater than my peers’ vanity, however pity might cling me to them.

They know not yet what His Name Means. But it is nothing short of healing rain from endless Heaven. And it’s all ways walked beside me, and within me, and beyond and all around me.

I can beat the Heat.

Whatever shape this Love takes, whatever crevasses the healing rain must fill, I welcome that, just as I welcome now that love that narcissists and Satanists won’t understand.

It is not an addiction, and it is not pride. It’s not possession, and nor is it jealousy, though they might flank it. It is rather what I felt when I forgave Alanna, and by forgiving her absence I cut distance down to presence.

Only evil lies would have obscured this Love.

Neither is it fanaticism. It is rather the budding of Being within me.

And it’s no self-fulfilling, selfish Prophecy.

My Journey continues. I shall bring the rain and light to all I can. I have the Boon. I’ve Seen the Other Side. It’s time for me to come home.

But first I must have another Meeting with the Goddess.

Dm.A.A.

Indispensable Woman:

To see a woman as man’s other half, indispensable to him, for both serve a common goal: that is to see her as a human being. Were she some force of autonomy, capable of manipulation, prone to being manipulated, and were the former preventable only by the latter, she would become a chemical machine, put at the distance of naturalistic objectivity, and reduced to a slave.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

Why men pull away: because of virtue.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

No man or woman’s education is complete without philosophy and religion, because the various claims made by education abound in contradictions that only those disciplines resolve, so that the Soul might rest easily. An educated woman is not educated if she does not understand religious ethics to the point of respect, and neither should she be surprised when her ideal “educated mate” proves pious towards her and against her more deviant, emotive, willful wishes.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

The Summer's Tale:

There is a homeless vagrant that haunts Escondido

And his name is Sam and he is the most pious

And inspired man I ever met, perhaps. He

Told me that this time that we inhabit is the

Ending of an era, for though Pisces ruled

The last two thousand years, during which time

We saw many prophets, some false and others True,

Now it must yield its throne to fair Aquarius,

Who represents disruption but who all so

Speaks of Friendship and of Common Good

And Individuality.

Of course, no Individuality could live

Without a Common Good to serve,

Within whose light the outline of

The mental body is made clear,

Where shadows would obscure it

In a common fog,

But we are not yet upon such a

Golden Age, and daily sin grows deeper

All about us as is that infernal darkness

That would strangle us if we had not

The strength to fight it with our

Hands and tortured words.

This alone must puzzle me:

That this same Sage and Mystic claims

That my Great Age of Love and Beauty

Was in fact a time of control and oppression,

Ruled by tyrants answering to false idols

Instead of to the Voice of God that they

Pretend to profess.

But when I read the works of

Shakespeare and of Goethe,

I come back to Sanity, for

I recall that no such tyranny

Had ever thrived.

Instead of slaves I see great men and women

Doing what great men and women do:

The Good, and they desire little else

Unless they prove to be villains

That meet with disdain and tragedy

For the Bard knew that was the Devil’s fate,

And had this been MERELY the groundlings’

Longing for a Noble Sense of Cosmic Justice,

The Bard would have sooner cut his arms off

With his legs than to have written plays.

I wonder when it was therefore

That the suggestion of ulterior motive

Began, or when it became

Tolerable to hear women

Speak of infidelity with praise

And to see men perform it.

When did the scholars cease to see

The tragedy of Leontes as that of

Othello, betrayed by some infernal

Voice within his ear, misled to think

That his wife was unfaithful?

When was it no longer that same evil voice,

Suggesting sin without a warrant,

That would be the target of our

Blame, but rather the misled?

These knaves seem to suggest that

Had Hermione or had Desdemona

Truly been an evil strumpet,

All would have been well,

Provided she escaped, and that

It was not even Leontes or Othello

That was to blame, much less

Claudius or Iago,

But the very CULTURE of the TIME,

A Time that yet HAD Culture,

When the very thought of infidelity

Was not mere common sin but staunch madness,

For no sane mortal would dare to consider it,

Least of all to consider doing it,

And all men willingly submitted

To the service of their wives, and vice versa.

And now what? Am I to blame myself

For having thought well of Alanna,

That never could she have stooped so

Low as to betray me for a private purpose,

And am I to think now that though I had not

Deserved this I am to be shamed for having

Suffered it, rather than numbing

All my dignity and failing

To preserve her virtue?

How did judgment become muddled with

False judgment? Entitlement with self-

Entitlement? Love with pride?

Virtue with vice? And above all else:

Loyalty with weakness of will?

What will that is disloyal

Would not be derided as

Perverse beyond imagining?

How do these academic witches claim

That had their wives been guilty these great

Kings of men would have been no less

Misguided and no more so wronged?

How can one so delude one’s self

As to believe that any one would

WANT such a Fate to befall him,

 Or that a blameless, faithful husband

Would deserve it, or that any outside

Influence, springing from inner passion,

Could bypass the force of justice in

Preventing it? Was Hermione not

Wronged not by Death but rather by

The falseness of her accusation?

Would she not have marched towards

That Death boldly if it would have

Cleared her name of such depraving

Allegations? And what sort of foul

Fork-tongued beast, more terrifying

Than Iago or than Hamlet’s Apparition,

Would pretend to do her a great

SERVICE by attesting to the probability

Of her depravity, disguising it

As virtue?

When was dogma mistaken for Truth,

And vice versa? When did law

Turn to power, and when did

Both part with Common Human Purpose?

When did mortal sin become permissible?

What sort of person would allow for such a fate?

Who would not die so as never to see that day befall us?

And when did this noble will towards Death become Insanity?

Is that not why Alanna chose to die?

Perhaps not out of shame but

Faithlessness, craving God’s arms

So eagerly when men’s arms

Proved rough and misguided.

It was not patriarchy that had killed her.

Patriarchy never was.

It was not patriarchy that had killed

Leontes’ Queen, nor was it even

Then Leontes, but instead the Devil.

Only those same Agents of Disordered Wills

That serve the Fiend would try to blame

The victims, among whom are those

Same jealous Kings that foresaw Evil

And by acting against that same Evil

Bringing it into the state of Being.

It was not Kinghood or Chastity

That was the Enemy, but rather

Both were Heroes, and they all ways

Shall take precedence over the people

That upheld them, for it was THEY

That had suffered most the lie of infidelity,

Hence the Bard had had an Audience.

No person, even sane or insane,

Would cheer when Chastity has been

Besmirched, either in word or deed.

People are Good, and they have all ways SERVED

Each other in a Common Goodness,

For if this Great Motive did not watch

Over our every deed,

Life would lose Meaning,

Which is Its Lord,

And we all would doom

Ourselves, by our same

Self-destructive and self-

Serving Wills, to speedy

Death and Liberation.

Dm.A.A.