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The Counter-Initiation
Aepalizage has a really excellent quote from Julius Evola’s Introduction to Magic. It reads:
Thus the legitimate suspicion arises that what is at work here is a secret, nonhuman, intelligent action, the specific purpose of which is to lead every spirit that attempts to leave the magic circle of practical materialism in a downward rather than upward direction; not toward the higher personality but toward the subpersonality; not toward true spirituality, and metaphysical and initiatic knowledge, but toward the world of an inferior psychism, consisting of phenomena, nebulous visions, and sensations, which end by inhibiting every possibility of authentic development, if not actually causing the alteration and disintegration of the spiritual unity. This is precisely the purpose of the counter-initiation.
A reader recently sent me a wild, semi-racist (which I have no patience for) occult conspiracy theory that said something about how there is a false heaven. It’s basically set up to lure and trap souls who think they are striving towards something positive, when what they are really striving for is well beyond that. Racism aside, it’s an interesting sort of model of spirituality: that real spirituality is hard. Fake spirituality offers you seemingly easy paths which eventually lead you nowhere.
UPDATE!
Whoa, somebody pointed out to me that Deconsumption wrote a lengthy article today on the Counter-Initiation as well. Haven’t had time to read it yet, but that’s a weird coincidence.
June 13th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
the idea of the false heaven is a pretty interesting concept. i’ve written some on the subject– i’ll do a post on it today!
June 13th, 2005 at 12:30 pm
would explain why so many sinister phemon have initiation-like characteristics. this clears things up quite a bit, actually! as a fan of initiation experiences (having gone through them myself), it’s totally perfect that the ‘black lodge’ characters would have ‘infernal’ initiations that dupe people into thinking they’re receiving valid experience, when actually they’re not.
this is so simple i don’t know why i hadn’t thought of it before!
June 13th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Not to discount the possibility of false goals, but in my experience, the pretense of difficulty is a tool charlatans use to make what they have seem worthwhile, where many seemingly-difficult tasks, IF APPROACHED PROPERLY are often quite simple.
June 13th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
This has always bothered me, and after reading the long and interesting post on deconsumption, I figured I’d ask others’ opinions:
One thing I garnered from reading Julius Evola some time ago was the differences between mystics and sorcerers. Forgive my butchered and not-so-eloquent comparison here — The mystics look to accomplish a union with the Divine, which was just posted by Mmothra (via Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche), or a union to co-exist with the symbolic orders of the Divine… whatever… and they continuously move “up” the spiritual ladder, for lack of better terms. The pursuit of “betterment.” On the other hand, sorcerers look to become Divine, to become God, and yet tend to all levels of reality it seems. Taking in context As above, so below, the manifest and the spiritual aren’t so divided and there is enjoyment in playing on all realms to interact with the myths and symbolism.
The aristocracy and natural orders of social hierarchy presented by Evola and Guénon push for a very libertarian society (or so I’d like to believe, as opposed to the corrupt caste orders and power struggles of old Indo-Europe). In these systems, or whatever we, as a society, may be moving towards, where and should we seperate ourselves, or not? On one hand, I have existentialists, chaotes, Buddhists, all this rubbish pushing for the seperation of the entity from its surroundings, and at the same time the embrace of it all. We all know the drill. I am in no way enlightened, except to the mythic drama we’re all a part of, so I am not currently capable of Zenning right out, as beautiful as it is. I have also had the pleasure of having these instances of completel bliss, sharing the essence of a flower, and other wordless experiences. But on the other hand, I see us all as cogs in the machine, deus ex machina.
As I see it, we are all fleeting thoughts in the mind of the God. We all have a cacophony of little ideas and sparks going off in our minds. Some neural pathways link, as in society some cliques and social means meld and merge to become influential (memetics). So as ideas form, they begin to attach themselves to other ideas, building up these paradigms and the current gestalt. This is no different than on a social level, all of us as ideas in the mind of the Divine… are as the old saying goes, we dream of God, and the God dreams of us.
If this is the gameboard, and I am a cog in the machine, given the illusion of free will, which is best here… to pursue the inner peace and beauty within, which in turn harmonizes with the rest of Eternity and brings a peace to the inner cosmos and affects the God on the highest levels (keeping in mind here, that words will always pale in the ineffible beauty of Zen meditation), I guess that would be the “As above” part, or do I play the game down here, “So below,” and work to stretch from being just a fleeting brainfart in the mind of the God and to blossom thusly, as Frank Outlaw put it (also the alchemical secret I think everyone needs to ponder):
Watch your thoughts; they become your words
Watch your words; they become your actions
Watch your actions; they become your habits
Watch your habits; they become your character
Watch your character for it will become your destiny
Think of that on the social level. If most of us are just fleeting moments in the mind, some grow to become words, actions, habits… Jesus, Buddha, Hitler, Gandhi, Elvis, Dubya, et cetera. Can we shape this all, be sloughing off the shackles of our own egos, by embracing the divine spark, and really pushing to become that memetic virus, by bringing a True Initiatory system back, a return to Traditionalism, Liberty, Freedom, Anarchy, Peace & Love, whatever…
Hmm, I guess it’s not so much a direct Yes or No question, but these are often subjects I wrack myself over. Any other comments on such?
Cuz it’d be so easy for one person to change it all. It just comes down to that thing called ego, individuality, fear, self-worth. Illusory, or is that stuff all propaganda to take away from enjoying the spoils of a beautiful life filled with sunsets, clouds, love, and blowjobs? I dunno.
Also, sometimes I forget that there is no answer — Nothing is True; Everything is Permitted — but it makes for good food for thought, I suppose.
June 13th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
i think that people believe that there is a way to stay high all the time.to become fixed in that moment of the first smell of flowers in the hedgerow.capturing poetry in a bottle to sip later.advertisers sell that possibility and the incredulous buy it,only to be disappointed later.i am irritated by buhhdists desire to be seperate from this world.i question my buhhdist friends about thier desire to become a single point.i think what the fuck for?there is so much cool shit going on being alive and watching.
initiation is for initiates.we are already god.even the buhhdists recognise that when they ask who is the god that makes the grass green.
we are already making the world in our image as frank outlaw was quoted above.WE are doing it.what do we need to be initiated into?someone elses game perhaps.
June 13th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
evola was a putrid nazi fuckwad.
June 13th, 2005 at 10:21 pm
i dont know anything about evola, so i’d like to hear more. i just thought it was a good quote!
June 13th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
sorry, residual irritation from my exchange with steven in the comments of his evola post at deconsumption. evola may have been a brilliant esoterist, but he was a nazi.
June 13th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
oh, ill go check it out at his site then. thanks! i havent yet had a chance to look
June 13th, 2005 at 11:07 pm
there is some suggestion that suffering is a fuel for some forms of power.this reasoning goes to the idea that skull-and-bones types deliberately set out to cause as much suffering as possible to charge thier psychic batteries.the catholic church seems to operate that way too.it sheds some light on the reason for the vietnam war or the u.n.`s fascination with witnessing genocides while thier guns are silent.
ted gunderson,a former f.b.i. agent is convinced that there is a satanic cult that operates a ring of child abductors for use in rituals in the highest offices in the land.
all of our religions seem to be hooked up to misery and fear.where are the systems that subscribe to love and enjoyment?
other than dvds of led zeppelin in concert,of course.
June 14th, 2005 at 12:27 am
Evola flirted initially with Nazism, hoping it would be the exoteric political manifestation of his political ideas. He soon realized that the Nazis had no goals in common with him, though, and the Nazis tried to assassinate him, crippling him.
June 14th, 2005 at 12:49 am
alistair, you ought to check out the blog rigorous intuition, if you’ve not done so before. between him and i and fantastic planet, we’ve been talking about this same exact topic for months now.
June 14th, 2005 at 1:14 am
as i understand it evola was more interested in secret societies than mass movements. but parapolitics is still a form of politics, and evola was well-connected within the fascist far right. it was himmler who rejected evola, not the other way around. the ss report on evola said that “his political plans for a roman-germanic imperium are utopian in character and moreover likely to give rise to ideological entanglements.” so it wasn’t for lack of trying that evola didn’t garner himmler’s favor. but that wasn’t the end of it. according to kevin coogan “Evola spent WW2 working for a section of SS intelligence called the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuhrers-SS (Security Service of the Reichsfuhrer-SS, or SD) in Rome, Berlin and Vienna. He may even have collaborated with the SD in Romania in the late 1930’s.” his ties to the italian right are even better documented, and it has been speculated that he also worked with allied intelligence after the war.
i just think this kind of stuff should be kept in mind when talking about evola.
June 14th, 2005 at 4:36 am
it has been speculated that he also worked with allied intelligence after the war
summary of said speculation here:
http://www.spitfirelist.com/f233.html
June 14th, 2005 at 8:29 am
thanks for the suggestion about rigorous intuition.the posting about the o.t.o. and the comments helped make a distinction for me.these people of high ritual aren`t after spiritual enlightenment.they are after power.these games they play seem to feel certain neural pathways that resonate with the power that they need.like
lovecraft`s cuthulu.you have to stamp around with some serious intent for a long time before he comes,but like yelling for your mum in the dark at night when you were a kid,she eventually wakes up.(cue the bill hicks devil sounds.)
June 14th, 2005 at 3:39 pm
Please don’t go spewing off about Evola unless you’re familiar with him. He’s not the easiest person to empathise with, I’ll say that much, but he was brilliant. Yes, he flirted with the Nazis and did some work with the S.S., he was also a huge proponent of fascism, but he was trying to mould a state which could produce a warrior poet. He later criticized Italy for their bastardization of fascism.
As far as his occult writings go, I believe they are un-equaled in their lucidity and erudite manner. He was the head of the UR Group, and he lived the life of a true sorcerer — as well as being a respected officer, mountaineer, Dadaist, poet, and painter.
June 14th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
oh go smoke a hookah and jerk off.
June 15th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
[…] e”
I wanted to bring up this subject in light of recent posts on deconsumption, Tim’s site, and Rigorous Intuition which discuss the idea of a “ […]