Comments on: Whore of Reason

By: Wake Up Maggie » Reason Is A Whore

Wake Up Maggie » Reason Is A Whore — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 03:15:46 +0000

[...] â€œBut since the devilâ€™s bride, Reason, that pretty whore, comes in and thinks sheâ€™s wise, and what she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not doctors, no king or emperor, because [reason] is the Devilâ€™s greatest whore.â€- Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spritual things, butâ€“more frequently than not â€“struggles against the Divine Word [...]

By: Occult Investigator

Occult Investigator — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 17:20:00 +0000

Um, I don’t know. But I do know that this is what I think “reason is a whore” is supposed to mean: You can get it to do what you want to do, but it’s going to cost you.

By: alistair

alistair — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 11:37:13 +0000

does that give the catholic church(or any other) the right to victimise those who aren`t ready to handle thought?

By: Occult Investigator

Occult Investigator — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 05:30:19 +0000

This is an interesting quote from an essay on Charles Manson that I was referred to earlier. Interesting coincidence:

Charlie Manson was exactly what the feudal European establishment foresaw and feared in 1517 when Martin Luther had first dared to suggest that truth lay not in the rationalizations of the scholastics but in the subjectivities of the spirit. Such philosophical abstractions are fine for the educated who converse with each other in Latin and, in the final analysis, know what social codes sustain them. But to preach such things to peasants invites anarchy of the wildest sort and leads to such events as the anabaptist rebellion at Muenster. Even Luther recoiled in horror at the extremes to which those radical Protestants took his ideas. He never imagined that Faith would be achieved here, on earth, in the literal realm of time and space.

By: Occult Investigator

Occult Investigator — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 05:12:47 +0000

Dan, I actually wrote about the Sophia/Reason connection a while back. I don’t know if its a simple equation…

Bill, I definitely agree about intuition. Works for me, but only when I follow it! I guess what I’m exploring right now is how to tell when Reason is in service to intuition, or to fear, or to something else. I like what Luther says here mainly because he’s talking about going beyond Reason into some deeper type of knowing. I don’t know what that is exactly. I’d hesitate to call it faith myself. My favorite quote about faith comes from Alan Moore:

Faith is for sissies who daren’t go and look for themselves!

I wish that were in the Bible.

By: bill

bill — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 03:10:38 +0000

Not sure what Luther meant exactly. Perhaps I’m just getting cranky in my middle age, but blind faith in someone’s doctrine is about as promiscuous as one can get. â€œOh sure, I’ll still love you in the morning.â€

I’m with Alistair. Intuition has brought me back from the borders of belief, several times now. Yeah, reason is a whore but so is blind belief. Knowledge is deaper.

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 00:14:47 +0000

Isn’t Reason pretty close to Wisdom? And Sophia was called whore, right?

By: Occult Investigator

Occult Investigator — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 21:06:14 +0000

oh shit thats a great call max. the crowley quote goes:

“I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”

By: alistair

alistair — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 20:32:41 +0000

once you switch off the critical filters of reason then you have the potential to believe anything. reason can be a whore too, mind you. to me, intuition is divine.
crowley reminds me of winston churchhill. the curmudgeon of mystcism.(both of them)

By: rev max

rev max — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 20:19:14 +0000

Isn’t there some crowley quote about dancing with doubt as a whore and awakening in the morning to find her a virigin called faith?

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:52:57 +0000

Oddly, the terms “whore” and “reason” used together always makes me think of the quote:

“Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.” - Emile M. Cioran

Which actually fits much better with some of the earlier threads re: the malleability of reason, logic and rationalism to explain behavior…

But I always thought Cioran’s quote:

“Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Which is what I do every day. An apparently ineffectual operation, since I must begin all over again the next day.”

…was apt, particularly when dealing with metaphysics, the occult or philosophy.

But yeah, Luther seems, like many of the “old” church, to be heavily screwed up misogynistically, at the very least. Comes from the whole Pauline “sex=sin” “better to marry than burn” nonsense…