The Shroud of Turin and the Templars

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As some readers may be aware, the Shroud of Turin has been an interest of mine for many years. This morning I received a fascinating link from my bishop, Lewis Keizer of the Home Temple regarding new information on the Shroud. Dr. Keizer has been a Shroud scholar for many years and this new information vindicates his previous theories on the Shroud.

There have been several problems facing those who feel that the Shroud is an authentic relic from the time of Jesus. First has been the infamous 1988 radiocarbon dating, which showed an apparent date for the Shroud of between 1260 and 1390 CE, making it a medieval forgery. A number of researchers have cast doubt on the dating procedure. In one of my earlier posts linked below, Raymond Rogers of Los Alamos labs gave convincing evidence that the samples that were submitted to radiocarbon testing were actually part of the medieval patches which were used to repair the cloth after a fire damaged it. Other tests, such as the absence of vanillin in the cloth, show its age to be much greater.

The second problem is a gap in the apparent history of the Shroud between the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the Shroud’s sudden appearance in Turin in the middle of the 14th century. Before the Crusades, there is legendary record of a cloth containing an image of Jesus which was traced to the city of Edessa, where it was brought to King Apgar by a mysterious disciple of Jesus after Jesus’ death. The cloth was eventually brought to Constantinople by the Emperor, but connecting it with the Shroud and its appearance in Europe was conjectural.

But according to the new article linked below, researchers in the Vatican Secret Archives uncovered such a connection in the testimony compiled at the heresy trials of the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar were present at the sack of Constantinople, where the Edessa cloth disappeared. When the Shroud appeared in Turin, it was in connection with the DeCharney family – Geoffrey DeCharney having been the second in command of the Knights Templar. Some historians speculated that the Kights Templar had made off with the Edessa cloth, and that it became a secret relic in their possession, possibly used in their initiations.

The newly released testimony of a young French recruit of the Templars is that he was brought to a secret room during his initiation into the order in 1287, and shown a long linen cloth with the figure of a man impressed on it. He was instructed to venerate this relic. This gives strong support for the Templar connection and strengthens the historical chain of evidence linking the Shroud back to Constantinople, to Edessa, and finally Palestine.

Links:

News Item:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6040521.ece

My previous posts on the Shroud

http://pathstoknowledge.com/2006/07/27/shroud-of-turin-dating-error/

http://pathstoknowledge.com/2006/07/27/second-image-on-the-shroud/

Bishop Keizer’s presentation on the Shroud

http://www.wisdomseminars.org/Sh/Presentation_Files/index.html

Bishop Keizer’s links:

www.hometemple.org

www.wisdomseminars.org

Gnosticism and Nature

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How should the spiritual person look upon nature? Is it a manifestation of the divine, full of numinous energy, in which everything is a marvelous, harmonious whole? Or is it nature red of tooth and sharp of claw, where life is painful, brutish and short, and where death and entropy eventually destroy everything?

In general, Gnosticism has been accused of having the second approach. After all, most Gnostics believe the world was created by a “demiurge” – an evil or incompetent creator whose domain must be transcended by the children of light. In seeming contrast to this are the pagans, who find the highest divinity in the natural world and the forces that animate it.

One of my initial objections to Gnosticism was this reputation of animosity for the material world. After all, most of us have had experiences of “nature mysticism”. We have felt numinous, almost religious awe at a starry sky, or the perfection of a flower, or the miracle of the human body. Small wonder the pagans find their connection to the divine in nature.

On the other hand, there are parts of nature that aren’t quite so “nice”, at least when judged from a human perspective. Are parasites and viruses really part of the greater good? What about bizarre genetic mutations or terminal cancer? What about the tremendous amount of death that is fundamental to natural selection – the thousands who must die so that the “fit” can survive to improve the species? Perhaps we can rationalize and come to terms with this on an intellectual level. But try to feel that way when watching a pack of predators tear apart a baby animal screaming for its mother. Try it when looking at an infant born with harlequin baby syndrome – a grotesque and fatal genetic defect that will slowly strangle the baby to death in its own hardening skin. And try to reconcile an uplifting view of nature with the overriding cosmic principle of entropy – which tells us that the entire universe is doomed to slowly wind down into a lifeless darkness of absolute cold.

So there we have the facts. Nature is cruel and depressing, yet nature seems to have divinity peeking through it. William Blake sensed this dichotomy in a pair of his poems. In the Songs of Innocence he praises the lamb, who is a picture of the peaceful kingdom of God, and seems to echo the goodness of his Creator:

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life, & bid thee feed

By the stream & o’er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight;

Softest clothing, wooly, bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice?

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

 

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb.

He is meek, & he is mild;

He became a little child.

I a child, & thou a lamb,

We are called by his name.

Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Little Lamb, God bless thee!

(From the Songs of Innocence – William Blake)

But then he seems to re-think the situation in a later poem:

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

In the forest of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And, when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water’d heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

There are certainly plenty of forms of life abounding on the planet that strain our belief that any sense of beauty resembling our own had anything to do with their creation. (Have a loot at some of the candidates at http://listverse.com/nature/top-10-ugliest-creatures/ )

So which is it? Is this, as the pagans would prefer, a wonderful and harmonious world of natural beauty and balance? A place of infinite natural wisdom through which we can reconnect to a golden age of enlightenment? Or is it a black-iron prison of pain and fear and death from which our only hope is a quick escape?

Perhaps it is both.

Woven into some of the Gnostic myths, particularly the Valentinian, is the idea that the purpose of the higher God is not simply to redeem the divine sparks that are trapped in evil matter – but to transform the world of matter and make it a place where the spirit is supreme.

Paul seems to allude to this in one of his more Gnostic verses:

For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. Not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body.

(Rom 8:19-23 WEB)

The Gospel of Thomas, a document with early gnosic elements, seems to say the same thing in verse 113:

His Disciples say to him: When will the Sovereignty come? || (Yeshúa says:) It shall not come by expectation. They will not say: Behold here! or: Behold there! But the Sovereignty of the Father is spread upon the earth, and humans do not perceive it.

Perhaps, then, the beauty and numinous energy that we seem to feel from nature isn’t something native to it. Perhaps what we feel is the kingdom of heaven which is the higher God’s power beginning to infiltrate and transform the earth in a tremendous act of transubstantiation. Perhaps, when we feel the harmony of nature, what we are sensing is not the material world AS IT IS, but rather how Spirit INTENDS it to be.

“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

This is, in effect, the Bodhisattva version of Gnosticism. We may recognize the corrupt elements of the material world as evil. But we are committed to raising the vibration of the material world and all the divine sparks in it.

Panpsychism

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I have commented before on my willingness to accept the general facts of biological evolution. I am a theistic evolutionist, and have written quite a bit about “creationism” and how I think it does a disservice to religion in general and Christianity in particular.

Although I’ve defended the “evolution” part of theistic evolution, I think perhaps I should now devote a bit of time to defending the “theistic” part of the set. Why do I think we need theistic evolution? Isn’t plain old evolution through natural selection enough to explain the facts?

No, I don’t think it is.

It’s quite true that given reproduction, variation, and the survival of the fittest, evolution can make a convincing case on how biological change over time can and has occurred. It can even do a reasonable job of explaining many seemingly “irreducibly complex” biological systems. But note what we just said… GIVEN reproduction, variation, and survival. That’s a lot to give. Evolution presupposes a set of laws operating on an already complete, self-organizing functional system that reproduces, seeks to survive, and produces (and reproduces) variations. And even the simplest such functional system imaginable is mind-boggling in complexity.

Biologists, in discussions of evolution, usually partition the question of the actual ORIGIN of functional life into an entirely separate question of “abiogenesis”. And while enthusiasts hint that breakthroughs have occurred or are immanent that will put abiogenesis on the same footing with evolution, I don’t see it. I have followed the topic with enthusiasm for decades. There are dozens of competing theories of abiogenesis, and almost no real progress on any real explanation of the origin of life. The various theories are obviously no more than very general outlines who’s details don’t look to be supplied any time soon.

I now confess to deciding to comment on this topic after reading an interesting essay called “Thinking Matter” by James Barham. To quote him:

Darwinians often complain that such criticisms are based on a misunderstanding. It is not chance, they say, that bears the explanatory weight in their theory, it is the selection principle. Natural selection is said to act as a ratchet, locking into place the functional gains that are made, so that each new trait can be viewed as a small incremental step with an acceptable probability. But what Darwinians forget is that the way a ratchet increases probabilities and imposes directionality is through its own structure. In the present context, the structure of the ratchet is simply the functional organization of life. Darwinians are only entitled to claim that the explanatory burden of their theory lies on the selection “ratchet,” thus avoiding the combinatorial explosion problem, provided that they also acknowledge that the structure of this ratchet consists precisely in the intrinsic functional correlations among the parts of the organism. But now they have merely assumed the very functional organization that they claimed to be able to explain, thus sneaking teleology in by the back door.

Evolution works so well, in other words, because it pushes all the really interesting cosmological questions back into the abiogenesis arena. We are encouraged to have faith that great progress will be made, and not to fall into the “God of the gaps” theory that took such a pummeling with biological evolution. But it seems to me, at least, that the problems with abiogenesis are of an entirely different order of magnitude.

Is the only solution an Intelligent Designer? Not necessarily. I believe that a promising line of philosophy in this regard is panpsychism. Briefly, this is the idea that natural intelligence, including such things as choice, purpose and striving, are an intrinsic part of matter itself, down to the subatomic level. Under this principle, matter tends to organize itself into life by its very nature.

This coincides with the mystic view that God is the root reality of all things. Seen from a mystical perspective, this self-organizing property of matter is the result of the many fragments of God consciousness striving to return to unity. God doesn’t create life, or design life. God IS life, bubbling up to consciousness through the matrix of matter.

So What is a Christian

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It gets harder every day to explain my spirituality to others. I am a follower of the Master Jesus, and an independent priest. But am I a Christian? Many would say no, because I have unorthodox beliefs.

C. S. Lewis argued, in Mere Christianity, that “Christian” should mean someone who claims to hold to the “Christian doctrine”. He was arguing against those who prefer to use “Christian” as a word meaning someone who is loving and charitable. Lewis would prefer us to say of a baptized scoundrel, “he’s a bad Christian” rather than “he’s not a Christian”.

But what, exactly, constitutes “Christian doctrine?” At one time, we could identify the earliest Christian creeds and doctrines and insist that a Christian must claim to believe them. But with the emergence of early Christian writings such as the Nag Hammadi texts, our view of what early Christianity looked like is changing. Early Christians were a much more diverse bunch than originally thought. From the very beginning, there existed apostolic groups with radically different notions of what Jesus message was.

I would tend to call myself a “gnostic” Christian, but this is misleading also. No Christian group actually called itself “gnostic”. This was a catch-all phrase for several groups that differed considerably with each other. There are a few common features of “gnosticism”, such as the emphasis on individual enlightenment, that are appealing. Then on the other hand are the strange cosmologies and a very negative attitude toward the material world.

“Mystical Christian”, “Esoteric Christian”, and “Hermetic Christian” are also possibilities, but seem to conjure up strange images in the modern mind.

So, what do you think is the best self-label for an “inner” Christian in the modern world?

More on Lucid Dreaming

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In the previous article I mentioned that remembering and journaling your dreams is a good way to begin lucid dreaming. Consciously remembering and writing down your dreams has the effect of programming your mind to stay more conscious during the dream state. Sometimes this exercise alone is enough, after some time, to start lucid dreams. But there are other tricks that you can use to hurry the process along a bit.

Some people find pre-sleep programming effective. You simply repeat to yourself,just before going to sleep and any time you awake at night, “I will be lucid in my dreams”. Repeating this for as long as possible before going to sleep will often help.

Another system that is successful for many, but requires some discipline and time, is to program a cue for checking your state of wakefulness. For example, you might wear a ring, and make it a habit that every time you notice your ring, you will ask yourself, “Am I awake or asleep?” This has to revolve around some sign that you will see several times a day. Once asking yourself this question repeatedly becomes an ingraned habit, you will begin to ask the question in your dreams. And when you do, it can snap you into the realization that you are dreaming and begin a lucid dream.

Anything that changes the sleep cycle seems to increase your chances of lucid dreams. Going to bed when especially tired, or when not really tired at all sometimes helps. Various herbs or suppliments which affect sleep, such as valarian root, kava kava, catnip, or B vitamins has been known to have an effect. In the home temple, gardina and jasmin essential oils, applied to the crown, forhead and throat chakras are used to incubate vivid dreams.

Finally, you can go high-tech with machines that will use cues, such as flashing lights or sounds, to partially awaken you when you begin to dream. If done properly, this can induce lucid dreams. The more expensive of these devices, such as the Nova dreamer, actually detect when you are dreaming by detecting your eye movements under your closed lids. You can also find information for constructing these devices yourself. Often the home-made versions forgo trying to detect dreams, and simply fire off at regular intervals. You can pretty much count on it eventually catching you while dreaming.

I’ve also tried a simple computer program, DreamScape, which is somewhat effective for me. You simply leave your laptop on near your bed, and the program will play a sound at a programmed interval, either through the speakers or (if you need to keep it silent) thorough earphones. It is a bit awkward to get used to having an earphone in your ear while sleeping, but eventually it works out.

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Beginning Lucid Dreaming

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What is lucid dreaming? Since I’m not written on the topic before, I should begin with some explanation. Have you ever been in a dream in which you suddenly realized that you were dreaming? Often this results in waking up. But sometimes, with luck or training, we can manage to stay “lucid” (clear-headed and conscious) in our dreams, and begin to control what occurs in them. With practice, this can become great fun. We can give ourselves super powers, or summon up great historical figures to talk to. We can visit other planets and destroy or befriend the monsters of our nightmares.

Not only is this tremendous fun, but many esoteric teachers believe it’s an important exercise. The Tibetans apparently believe that if you can develop the power to stay completely lucid in your sleep to its ultimate potential, the same consciousness and control we develop in our dreams stays with us after death. At the point of death, we find ourselves with the consciousness to understand what it happening to us and control it. We are then able to pass by the dangers of the afterlife that various “books of the dead” warn us about and ascend to higher realms.

Would you like to add years to your life? How much time to you spend asleep and completely unconscious? If you can extend your consciousness to your dreams, it’s like living a whole new life in addition to the one you live while awake. And this life can be extremely fulfilling and useful.

Lucid dreaming is also extremely helpful for those who wish to learn astral projection. The most successful out-of-body experiences I have had began as lucid dreams. How do we develop lucid dreaming ability? There are a number of techniques, ranging from simple affirmations to complex machinery designed to “almost” wake you up at just the right moment. But the first order of business, if you don’t do it already, is to begin to remember and journal your dreams.

It’s a matter of scientific fact that everyone dreams. Many of us, however, don’t remember them. Several things contribute to our inability to remember dreams. First of all, we simply aren’t in the habit of remembering them. We have conditioned our minds to believe it isn’t important. Secondly, we may be used to waking up too abruptly. If we have an annoying alarm clock, or tend to jump out of bed abruptly, the fragile mental state with which we wake up (and which contains our dream memories) is dissolved. Within a few seconds of jumping out of bed, all our dream memories will be gone.

To begin to remember your dreams, then, put a notebook, a pencil (so you don’t have to sit up to write) and a light next to your bed. Make sure your alarm, if you use one, is gentle. Affirm to yourself several times as you go to sleep that you will remember your dreams. As you wake up, DON’T MOVE. Gently think back on what you remember from your dreams. When you have as much detail as you think you are going to get, grab your notebook and write it down. The first few times, you may forget and start to jump out of bed. Let the notebook on your bedside remind you, and write down whatever you remember. If all you remember are vague feelings, write that down. If you really don’t remember anything, take a GUESS at what you might have dreamed and write down the guess. Your mind will start to realize that you are serious about remembering your dreams, and you will remember more and more each day.

If you get up during the night, try to remember your dreams and write them down before you get out of bed. Some people have luck with setting their alarm for the middle of the night and recording their dreams at that time. In any case, if you are patient, within a short while you will remember more and more dreams.

Don’t slack. Write down everything you can. This serves several purposes. First of all, you can begin to use your dream journal for interesting analysis. Secondly, your consciousness will begin to develop itself. Soon you will start finding yourself being aware of your dreams while you are still IN them. This is one of the best roads to lucid dreaming.

There are a number of other techniques to increase your ability to have lucid dreams which I may write about soon, but dream journaling is, in my opinion, the most important.

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In Defense of Q

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Someone recently pointed me to a web side called “The Case Against Q”. This site does an excellent job of summarizing the problems with the Q hypothesis, but ultimately I believe rejecting Q creates far more problems than it solves. First of all, let’s review the relationship of the synoptic gospels  to each other. I found the following chart from Wiki which summarized it nicely.

What we see is that Matthew and Luke share a large chunk of material (consisting of 23% of Luke and 25% of Matthew) in common. This material doesn’t simply cover the same topical ground. The similarity is often word-per-word in the Greek. How are we to explain this identical material? There are basically three possibilities. The difficulty will be in deciding which is more likely.

Possibility #1 – They simply came up with the same Greek words.
Problems: This is astronomically unlikely. Even if we assume God is inspiring the writing, it’s very clear that God allows individual styles in the writing of scripture. This is copying pure and simple.

Possibility #2 – Either Matthew copied Luke or (more probably) Luke copied Matthew. This is the “two-gospel” hypothesis, which seems to be the solution of the “Case Against Q” website.
Problems: Many. Summarizing:
1.    Matthew and Luke have drastically different version of Jesus birth, genealogy, and resurrection events. These are not only different, but appear contradictory. Perhaps these have legitimate reconciliations, perhaps they don’t. But the issue is, neither Matthew or Luke make any effort to harmonize these apparent discrepancies. This is very hard to explain of Luke was using Matthew as a source.
2.    There are a number of cases in the Triple Tradition where Matthew adds some important detail to Mark’s account and Luke doesn’t copy his additions.
3.    There are places where Matthew has apparently “blended” another source (Q?) with Mark. Luke has the other source (Q?) material, but without the blends. This suggests he’s adding the material on his own, without Matthew’s guidance.
4.    Matthew has a number (10 or 11) peculiar phrases he likes to use “son of David”, “this was to fulfill…” Luke and Mark never use them. Can Luke be using Matthew and manage to NEVER use his trademark phrases?
5.    Matthew has added some things to the double tradition (Q?) that Luke doesn’t copy (for example, Matthew adding “in spirit” to “blessed are the poor”. If Matthew is the source, why doesn’t Luke copy these additions?
6.    Luke and Matthew put pieces of the double tradition (Q?) in entirely different contexts. Part of Matthew’s sermon on the mount takes place on the plain, etc. It looks very much like they are adding fragments of Jesus tradition with minimal guidance on where to put them.
7.    Luke and Matthew have a number of doublets. These are cases where they report the same event or saying twice. Once copying Mark, and once from another apparent source. This suggests that each of them is using two different sources, Mark and “Q”.
8.    The double tradition material in Matthew and Luke seems to have a certain philosophy and style (such as a preference for the Deuteronomist sources) that Matthew and Luke by themselves don’t share.

Possibility #3  – They are both copying from some common source. This is the “Q” hypothesis.
Problems: The ones listed on “Case Against Q” website.
1.    “Q” is a hypothetical document without any real examples or outside citations.
2.    There is some sequence in “Q”
3.    In the triple tradition, there are some agreements, major and minor, against Mark.
4.    In the double tradition, Luke show a fatigue toward Matthew’s version.

For those following along with the website, I believe the author is stretching things a bit to make it come out to 10 reasons.  I’ve conflated reasons 1 and 2 into my reason 1. Original reason 4 isn’t really a reason, but an introduction to reasons 5, 6 and 7, which I’ve conflated into my reason 3. Reason 9 is ad hominem and reason 10 is irrelevant.

It seems to me that 1 is a reasonable argument. The case for Q would be much stronger if there were an actual example or patristic citation. There are, however, a few hints. The page dismisses the Pappius fragments with a “no true Scotsman” fallacy (no REASONABLE scholar contends..). Since some scholars DO contend that Pappius referred to something similar to “Q”, I’m very much interested in why this is unreasonable.  Furthermore, the Gospel of Thomas itself lends credence to the existence of Q – being itself a “sayings” gospel of very early date.

I don’t see any merit in argument #2. No rule is broken if Q turns out to have SOME narrative sequence to it. It would simply be a fragmentary sequence.

Argument #3 is also a good one. However, most of this is simply explained. Mark is written in very poor and primitive Greek. The writers of Matthew and particularly Luke are much more educated. It’s not unreasonable that two learned authors correcting the bad writing of another would make many of the same corrections. Some of the other agreements also turn out to be later scribal redactions. Matthew and Luke didn’t agree until later scribes MADE them agree, and the agreement is missing from the earliest documents. Furthermore, there are places where the triple tradition may overlap with the “Q” material. In this case, Matthew and Luke may BOTH follow the earlier Q documents in preference to Mark.

Argument #4 (fatigue) seems convoluted to me. If Luke is trying to edit AWAY from Matthew, what is his source for those changes? It seems just as  likely that Luke is including additional material, but fatigues toward Q instead of toward Matthew.

So, we end up having to choose which set of problems is the least bothersome. One of these three answers (or some variation of it) is the explanation for the double tradition in Matthew and Luke. To me, the list of problems in the Two-Gospel hypothesis is really overwhelming, and require only common sense to recognize. If Luke had a copy of Matthew in front of him, he sure made some bizarre choices about things he decided NOT to explain.

The Devil You Say

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I was reading some fascinating material recently from a Christian hermeticist on the nature of demons and evil spirits which reinforces some observations I had made myself. I had written here earlier on the changing nature of “Satan” in the development of the bible. Only recently, however, did I notice an interesting distinction in the New Testament – a distinction that those who read the King James will entirely miss.

The New Testament speaks a lot about the devil and devils. In the King James, however, it uses “devil” to translate two entirely different Greek words. One is diabolos – Greek for “accuser”. This word is used as a parallel, in some of the synoptics, for “satanas”, a word from Caldean related to the Hebrew “satan” – meaning also “accuser” or “opponent”. In Luke, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness by “satanas”, and in Matthew, it’s the “diabolos”.

The other Greek word that the King James translates as “devil” is “daimonion”. This word is used in connection with an spirit who opporesses or posesses an individual – a demon. These demons are described as “pneuma poyneros” – a diseased, painful, or evil spirit.

In the Greek, devils and demons are two entirely different things, inspite of the King James translating both words “devil”. True devils are the accusers and opponents of the righteous. In the Old Testament, the opponent (the “satan”) was seen as a divine office, in the service of God. The satan of Job is one of the sons of God, the Bene Elohim, who enters the court of Heaven in something like the capacity of a district attorney. It is his job to bring charges against the faithful. Even God himself is described as acting in the capacity of a “satan” or opponent. In 1 Ch 21:1, “satan”, the opponent, provokes David to number Israel. In 2 Sa 24:1, we find that the “satan” was God himself.

As time progressed, Satan became more personified, and the traditions described him as being in rebellion against God. But still, the “satanas” and “diabolos” of the New Testament are bound by law. There is a “Geneva Convention” of sorts between the two sides, and the diabolos confine themseves to persecuting and tempting, NOT to direct posession. Resist the diabolos, we are told in James, and he must flee. The one possible exception is with Judas. Luke tells us that satan “entered into” him. John, however, states that the diabolos merely put the thought into Judas’ heart. So the “entering” here seems to be just a powerful temptation.

Daimonios, on the other hand, interfer directly with human freedom. They posess and control human beings. What my hermetic author suggests, and I believe makes perfect sense, is that these daimonios are generally what the esotericists call “elemental beings”. They are human creations of emotional energy, which live a semi-auotonomous life outside the conscious boundries of personality. To quote from my source:

“The “evil spirits” which deprive man of his freedom are not at all beings of the so-called “hierarchies of evil” or “fallen hierarchies”. Neither Satan, nor Belial, nor Lucifer, nor Mephistopheles have ever deprived anyone of his freedom. Temptation is their only weapon and this presupposes the freedom of he who is tempted. But possession by an “evil spirit” has nothing to do with temptation. It is invariably the same thing as with Frankenstein’s monster. One engenders an elemental being and one subsequently becomes the slave of one’s own creation. The “demons” or “evil spirits” of the New Testament are called today in psychotherapy “neuroses of obsession”, “neuroses of fear”, “fixed ideas”, etc. They have been discovered by contemporary psychiatrists and are recognized as real – i.e. as “parasitic psychic organisms” independent of the conscious human will and tending to subjugate it. But the devil is not there to no avail – although not in the sense of direct participation. He observes the law – which protects human freedom and is the inviolable convention between the hierarchies of “right” and those of “left” – and never violates it, as stands out in the example of the story of Job. One need not fear the devil, but rather the perverse tendencies on oneself! For these perverse human tendencies can deprive us of our freedom and enslave us. Worse still, they can avail themselves of our imagination and inventive faculties and lead us to creations which can become the scourge of mankind. The atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb are flagrant examples of this.

Man with the possible perversity of his warped imagination is far more dangerous than the devil and his legions. For man is not bound by the convention concluded between heaven and hell; he can go beyond the limits of the law and engender arbitrarily malicious forces whose nature and action are beyond the framework of the law… such as being the Molechs and other “gods” of Canaa., Phoenicia, Carthage, ancient Mexico and other lands, which exacted human sacrifice. One has to guard against accusing the beings of the hierarchies of evil to their detriment of having played the role of Molechs, these being only creatures of the perverse collective human will and imagination. These are egregores, engendered by collective perversity, just as there exist the “demons” or “evil spirits” engendered by individuals.”

This has been my experience also. While “demons” can act very much as independent entities, they are also almost certainly human creations, and usually should not be handled in isolation from the humans who create them and give them strength.

The Mystic and the Esoteric

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I had mentioned in one of my posts earlier the categories “mystic” and “esoteric”, and that there is a distinct difference between them. I ran into this distinction in a really excellent book by Richard Smoley titled “Inner Christianity“. Since the distinction is his I’d best let him clarify it:

Esotericism is characterized by an interest in these different levels of consciousness and being. Mysticism is not quite so concerned with these intermediate states; it focuses on reaching God in the most direct and immediate way. The mystic wants to reach his destination as quickly as possible; the esotericist wants to learn something about the landscape on the way. Moreover, mysticism tends more toward passivity: a quiet “waiting upon God” rather than active investigation.

I had mentioned that Eckhart Tolle, for example, is a mystic, whereas I think Ken Wilber is more of an esotericist. Myself, I’ve wandered back and forth as the mood strikes me. This distinction is similar to Ken Wilber’s distinction of “ascending” vs. “descending” spiritual currents. The “ascenders” focus on finding God in the absolute, infinite unity of being. They often disdain the physical manifestations. This group includes such folks as most gnostics, particularly Manicheans. Also in this category would be the Christian contemplatives and practitioners of Raja yoga.

The “descenders” on the other hand, celebrate God in the infinite variety of physical manifestation. Most forms of wicca, paganism and shamanism fall into this category, along with tantric yoga and “social” Christianity. The descenders often seem somewhat unconcerned with higher reality as a goal.

Both currents of spirituality are important, because God exist equally as the infinite one, and as the infinite many. Perhaps this makes esotericism a sort of compromise, because it seeks the divine unity while making plenty of interesting tours of the infinite many on the way up.

What can be frustrating about esotericism is that the “facts” of the esoteric tend to vary somewhat from teacher to teacher and from school to school. One of my favorite topics, for example, is angeology. But although nearly every religion and every esoteric school agrees that there ARE angels, and that they are important – none agree about exactly what they are, what their nature is, or their names, activities and heirarchy.

The trick seems to be to pick a system and stick with it, while realizing that all esoteric systems are somewhat arbitrary – vehicles for focusing the efforts of the student as he or she progresses on the spiritual path.

How about you? Are you a mystic or an esoteric?

All-Quadrant Spirituality

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As some of my readers know, I’ve been a reader for some time of philosopher Ken Wilber. While the level of detail in Wilber’s system can be annoying, I find it’s always good to check any new ideas against his criteria, because if you don’t – you’ve usually missed something.

One of the key components in Ken Wilber’s philosophy is the notion of quadrants, and what it says is this: Most things can be looked at in four different ways. They can be looked at either from an inner perspective or an outer perspective, and they can be looked at as individuals or as members of a group or system – giving four perspectives. Like this:

The left-hand side is the interior perspective, the right-hand side is the exterior perspective. The upper half is individual, the lower half is collective.

The easiest example of these perspectives is a human being. We can look at a human being and study him from the outside (upper right) and study his brain structure, his biology and its underlying chemistry. This will give us a great deal of insight into him. We can also study his environment and how his organism interacts with the atmosphere, the food supply, the traffic flow, etc. (the lower right). We now have a different set of insights, equally important.

But this leaves out an entire half of the picture. What is it like to be this person from the INSIDE? What are his thoughts and feelings? What meanings does he attach to things? What does he feel? These questions are all in the upper left quadrant. Finally, what is his relationship to other people, seem from within the group? What are the values and beliefs of his family, his community or his social group?

Our tendency as modern people is to focus on only one quadrant (often the upper right) to the exclusion of or devaluing of everything else. All quadrants are important, and none should be reduced or folded into another or important insight is lost.

Ok, after this overly-long introduction, how do we apply these principles to spirituality? Let’s analyze first the case of the fundamentalist. This person may believe that he or she is deriving all of their truth from the Bible or the Koran. But in fact, they are focused almost entirely in the bottom left quadrant – the inner social group. They are relying – not on the Bible, but on the meanings and values attached to the Bible by their group. The idea that another group can attach entirely different meanings to the same Bible is confusing to them.

They are also unwilling to actually examine the Bible externally in the right-hand quadrants. Objective examination of the texts would show evidence of copy errors, redactions and multiple sources. Objectively comparing the text with history and science would show evidence of historical and scientific errors or ignorance. These objective incongruities are all ignored or pushed aside in favor of the values and beliefs of the group.

Certain kinds of skeptics, on the other hand, privilege the other quadrants. They assume that the ONLY value the Bible can possess is objective factual value. That it can be a useful source of poetry, mysticism, meaning and value is ignored. That it can be a basis for community interaction,  and social solidarity – providing a literary and mythic vocabulary is likewise unimportant. Their focus is entirely on the right-hand quadrants, particularly the upper right.

Those of us attempting to live spiritually in a modern world had best be able to live in all the quadrants at once. We must be open to the mystical, the poetic and the metaphorical, and value inner spirituality. We must be aware of the prejudices and preconceptions our group mentality may lead us into. We must be willing to accept the insights of objective insights of history, science and textual scholarship without blindness. But we must also be aware of the potential blindness of those who try to live only in the upper-right quadrant of the individual externals.