“The Meditating Scholar” part six … Merry Christmas
Wild Magic
A lot of the previous “parts” were to provide context. At this juncture it is necessary to consider the idea of personal Rites. It would be useful to the reader to make a list of the natural ritual of their day. Much of what we do day to day repeats itself. That ritual can be given various new self-chosen meanings.
The future includes an increase in what I call Wild Magic. People have different talents, and the Mother seems to intend to seed the coming transformations with such gifts. Today’s TV shows involve folk who “channel”, others who chase ghosts, some are called “mediums”, and of late there are the children who are remembering past lives. One of my Lady’s favorites involves people discovering “portals”, or “vortexes”.
Then there are the ideas of Ancient Alien Theorists, and the folk who have been abducted by beings from outer space. Included in Wild Talents are the folks like horse whisperers, and the fellow in communion-with an octopus.
The Goddess Natura waits for us to come calling, and courting. Recently I ran into the word “manifesting”. As I understand that term, we can have/wish a causal effect on some future event. In looking back over my own life, I realized that what I “manifested” was more frequently realized if the thoughts were selfless, and other-directed.
I have for decades had an interest in films and books, especially if “magic” is an aspect of the tales. There seems to be two major types of activity, such as for example: the stories in the TV shows: Charmed, and/or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the good “witches” fight off demons.
The other major type is horror movies, such as Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street. In these stories innocent people, especially children, get caught up in running from, and maybe turning and fighting, the most horrible troubles the film makers can imagine. We even have a name for some of this obscene bloodletting: “Slasher” movies.
In both these types, the vehicle is the fantastic imagination. The “fantastic imagination” is not rooted in actual phenomena, although many such works of “art” will say they are based on a true story. The real imagination plays a powerful role in knowledge, when we recreate in picture-thinking an experience as it unfolds over time.
We should not forget Madness.
I worked for several years on the “graveyard” shift at a for-profit behavioral (mental) hospital. There was a regular patient there, who had horrible hallucinations, which featured experiences/visions of blood and Charles Manson. One late night we were sitting in the quiet room, waiting for her meds to kick in, and talking about these apparitions, when the thought crossed my mind to suggest to her, … what if it was not Charles Manson you were meeting, but Robin Williams?
She said: then people would think she really was crazy, which had us both laughing for several moments.
I did have a patient for which demonic possession seemed the only explanation for his behavior. He came to us from a different hospital, who assured us he was just someone needing new meds, and given that his parents had some wealth (so they could pay the full cost), we admitted this young man. In reality it was a dump job, where the sending hospital lied us into accepting him.
The staff was gathering around him, because he would not take direction, and it looked like we might have to take him down, wrap him in a canvass and wooden restraint apparatus, and put him in the quiet room. As we approached, he grabbed at one woman staff member’s breast, and then as we got closer, he turned suddenly and struck another woman in the face. She was wearing glasses and the cuts required a trip to the ER – 12 stitches.
I sat with him in the quiet room for the rest of the night, and for several hours he struggled against the restraint, never still and mostly yelling at me what awful things he would do to me. We had the sheriffs come and take him away in shackles that morning.
I wrote a long essay on my experiences in mental health: “Healing the Insanity of Psychiatric Medicines and Practices” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/mental.html One of the points I made in that essay was that we consider that some of the experiences of the Mad are real. How? Their fate was to have an abnormal relationship to the threshold between the material and spiritual worlds. In more ancient times, such folk were seen to be touched by the divine, and often became prophets.
A few years ago I began to think of our daily ritual/rites as a kind of Labyrinth. There is much sameness in our activities, yet each morning’s water rites, and rituals for eating, are not the same in that day’s specifics.
I also thought about the thoughts that went with these rituals, and it seems workable to think of these repeating activities as united with a kind of Maze in the mind. Traps await those not paying attention.
We also make and unmake personal myths. We can be scientists of the spirit in how we look at these common experiences. Even though similar on the surface, the Labyrinth and the Maze vary each day, as well as being highly individualized.
One of the reasons the Maya counted days was that the primary cycle of life was the Day. Then there are the monthly and annual rituals. If you are a traditional anthroposophist, you recognize four seasonal periods of ritual activity: The Twelve Holy Nights at Christmas; the Seven Holy Days of Easter; St. John’s Tide (Summer Solstice); and, Michaelmas (the Autumn Equinox).
If you study a bit of Wicca, there are then eight ritual aspects to the year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_the_Year As well, we have the twelve moons of the year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_moon
Rudolf Steiner produced what he called: “A Calendar of the Soul”, basically a weekly rhythm, with each week given poetic verses as to what is happening to the life of the Soul over the course of a year.
Most of the ideas connected to these weekly rhythms can be approached in two ways. One is to study before, as if that can be a guide for our experience. I prefer to live the time periods I pick first, and then read the indications afterward. The point for me has been to feel what I actually feel, and develop that capacity without preconceptions.
Here is a sample complex Labyrinth, which I see as a kind of experimental structure, for being “scientific” is crucial, as long as we include art and religion. I don’t have to follow it, in large part because my experience is that setting goals makes more trouble than that should. A goal is something we can fail at. The fact is part of the reason we need to learn to live in the Now. What we need to do is to realize that to survive the day, the week, the month, and the year is itself a wonder:
do: (matins/2a.m.) 7 opi*
do-re: “I am the true Vine” … rhetoric … washing the feet>self-care
re: (lauds/sunrise) 7-8
re-mi: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” … grammar … the scourging >research
mi: (prime/6a.m.) 8-11
mi-fa: “I am the Door” … logic … the crowning with thorns>writing
fa: (terce/9a.m.) 12-3
fa-sol: “I am the Bread of Life” … astronomy … the carrying the cross>THC*
sol: (sext/miday) 3-5
sol-la: “I am the Good Shepherd” … geometry … the crucifixion>hand art
la: (none/3p.m.) 5-8 opi*
la-ti: “I am the Light of the World” … arithmetic … the death>theoretic arithmetic
ti: (vespers/sunset) 8-9
ti-do: “I am the Resurrection and the Life” … music … the resurrection>singing and dancing
do: (compline/before retiring) 10
*On the seas of mortality, Intoxication is Medicine, … “opi” refers to the synthetic non-addictive opiate I take for my chronic knee pain, “THC” refers to the values of Marijuana as an antidote to the heavy foot of the threefold double complex – details here: “The Mystery of Evil in the Light of the Sermon on the Mount” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/mysteryofevil.html
The numbers above approximate the actual time of my day, although the names come from the ritual practices of nuns and monks, usually called: The Rule, for each Order.
There are seven “I am” statements in the Gospel of John, and seven liberal arts, as well as seven stages of the Passion of Christ. The notes after the “>” are potential activities.
In an earlier “part”, I pointed out that the highest “Power” to seek is knowledge. We get fantastic uses of “powers” in film and television, whether it is Harry Potter, and the Marvel Avenger films. None of that is really possible.
In the Bardon places on Facebook, it is clear that some seek just that self important goal of powers. Should they really study his works, they would see a whole set of instructions for healing others, all of which can be done without being noticed. It is “Silence” that grants the highest powers. As to knowledge, that we can and ought to share.
I made a series of videos for YouTube: “On Becoming a Real Wizard”. In a sense, the word wizard is a stand-in for wise head and wise heart. A wizard seeks wisdom: aka knowledge, which is why I emphasize that the Meditating Scholar needs to learn to experience “Ideas”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBCW9MyliMM&list=PL4CAB86F6A9E5F238&ab_channel=JoelWendt
“In basic terms, Plato’s Theory of Forms asserts that the physical world is not really the ‘real’ world; instead, ultimate reality exists beyond our physical world. … The Forms are abstract, perfect, unchanging concepts or ideals that transcend time and space; they exist in the Realm of Forms.”
I have found that a good way to connect with the Goddess Natura is through communion-with so called “dead” trees. http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/GrandmotherTree.html
Nature is a whole, not parts, as even materialistic science is discovering. The root networks are thought to be a vehicle for the trees to exchange matter, and even some kind of knowing with each other. The mycelium network is huge, and gives us Mushrooms and their medicinal and spiritual effects.
“Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus or fungus-like bacterial colony, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. The mass of hyphae is sometimes called shiro, especially within the fairy ring fungi. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates.” Wikipedia
A leader in this field is Paul Stamets. In the television show Star Trek Discovery, a new form of instantaneous stellar transportation is discovered, based on the whole universe being interconnected via Mycelium. The name of the lead scientist character on the show: Paul Stamets.
The hallucinogenic called “psilocybin” is a type of mycelium, and has been discovered to be very helpful to people needing to recover from severe trauma, and/or facing certain death through an incurable disease.
“Hemp, or industrial hemp, is a botanical class of Cannabis sativa cultivars grown specifically for industrial or medicinal use. It can be used to make a wide range of products. Along with bamboo, hemp is among the fastest growing plants on Earth.” Wikipedia
Folks who study old growth forests (never cut down, or otherwise altered), discover that in this free from human harm place, unusual organisms can be found, that do stuff like take apart the oil from oil spills, and can also transform such horrors as nerve gas.
The Goddess Natura is the original alchemist. Many of our “pollution” problems can be resolved if we open our heart’s mind to Her Magics. The curse of “dominion over”, from the Old Testament, that came to be when the wisdom of the Goddess was being abandoned, can now be healed through “communion-with”.
I had a vision one day, that the mycelium network was a physical manifestation of
the fully spiritual thought world … just as “water” is a physical manifestation of the spiritual nature of the life sphere.
In looking at the coming collapse of “civilization”, it seems highly likely that cities (huge concentrations of people) will fail, and that there will be migrations towards cultivatable open lands. For some, becoming a farmer (hemp and bamboo) will be just a way station. These latter folks will seek to return to the wild places, and become United with Them the Way aboriginal and indigenous peoples once lived.
If we were to appreciate the Mystery nature of the Covid Plague, we will see that scientific materialism (all is matter, there is no spirit) was not up to the task of dealing with this crisis. At the same time, for those who wish to work to manifest the defeat of scientific materialism, such a task should not be assumed to be impossible.
Around what Idea could ordinary humanity unite? In “part” seven, we will explore: If a Corporation can be a Person before the Law, then certainly a Planet can be a Person before the Law, a matter to be effected by a world-wide annual magical Rite: aka: Earth Day.
Fake Ancient Alien Theorist Foolishly Visits the Collective Imagination 