This was thought provoking. I'm looking forward to future installments.
Your concept seems similar on the surface at least to CS Lewis's macrobes, as described in That Hideous Strength - worth a read if you haven't yet.
One wonders if these beings might be composed of dark matter? Such entities would only be able to interact via gravitation, the weakest but most pervasive of the physical forces.
It also brought to mind Rudolf Steiner's three demons - Lucifer, Ahriman, and a third entity whose name escapes me at the moment. All three are the expression of a great No. Lucifer denies conscience and goodness, and exults in the glorification of the ego. Ahriman denies mind and soul, and insists on a world of dead matter and pure mechanism. The third is the No to everything - it seeks to destroy existence itself. Steiner saw the influence of these demons as being successive, leading from Lucifer, to Ahriman, to the third entity. One might also see them as emanations, with the final No to everything being the core attractor that draws the world toward it, first through the lure of the Luciferian face, then the Ahrimanic, and revealing its true nature only way the final stage.
Another interpretation: aliens attempting to subvert and conquer humanity via hyperspatial influence operations.
Finally, there's the question of the good egregore. I'd submit that the metaphysical body of Christ is precisely this entity.
Thanks, John. Same as Jay, I couldn't have done it without you.
"Your concept seems similar on the surface at least to CS Lewis's macrobes, as described in That Hideous Strength. (.....) It also brought to mind Rudolf Steiner's three demons - Lucifer, Ahriman, and a third entity whose name escapes me at the moment. All three are the expression of a great No."
Yes, I agree on both counts. Although I'm torn about whether to use those names in this series, or esoteric names in general. For instance, I loved your use of "a great No".
"One wonders if these beings might be composed of dark matter? Such entities would only be able to interact via gravitation, the weakest but most pervasive of the physical forces."
Yeah, I wonder that too. I might say something about it in my next post. One problem is of course that, while it historically hasn't been difficult for humans to imagine complex agent work accomplished without the use of heavy tools/machines, the zeitgeists have made a serious dent in that capacity in the past few centuries. I will try my best (but will obviously need some help).
"Finally, there's the question of the good egregore. I'd submit that the metaphysical body of Christ is precisely this entity."
Now we're cookin' with gas, Mr. Carter!
There is much in this statement I agree with. Honestly, I've yet to fully confront it, so I might have a slightly different take when I put pen to page. I may need to digest your upcoming, final post in the JC/JC series (which is not a nudge; I understand that such writings take time).
Dark matter does not appear to actually be a "thing." It's a concept to try to reconcile observations. But Distinti breaks it down into something quite simple and understandable.
i always remember what kazantzakis relates in his autobiography 'report to greco' (great book btw): angels are simply refined devils and nothing more.
henry miller illustrates this concept well - the devil at large who eventually becomes a saint
or as osho says, everyman can become a buddha, but first he must become a zorba (kazantzakis also)
the devil, lucifer, is the existential rebel. and rebellion is essential to spiritual growth. Christ tells us to rebel against a corrupt world and we do this by believing in ourselves over society...and this presents the danger of 'inflation' - we recognise ourselves as a centre of the universe, but if we don't recognise that others are too - then we fall prey to that gateway sin - pride.
Jesus denies the devil three times and then he is freed from him. not only this but the devil himself is transformed into something else - an ally. the devil becomes what he originally was - pan, the green man, merlin,,,,a demi-God in service to Nature.
it is up to us to deny the three temptations - that is the role of the devil - the adversary. he forces our spiritual growth. he will grow til we say 'no'.
the devil's faith in God is not in question, only his faith in man.
the devil is God's shadow - in a Jungian sense. in old testament times God and the devil are not so separate. God of the OT was quite a badass when he wanted to be, and arguably an asshole when he let his right hand man get in his ear (Job)...
so we go from God and the devil in cahoots more or less, to the devil being cast down to earth, leaving God alone without his shadow, which has now been cast onto mankind to wrestle with.
so this leaves a totally benevolent God (abba) as the true God, but on Earth our presiding deity is not so benevolent, he is the prince of this world and likes to control things.
so it is up to humanity to escape this control system - the matrix, that has been developed to trap us mentally and therefore spiritually here below.
we do this by understanding, not fighting the devil; we must understand what is going on in the world and why, first politically, then metaphysically....ie there is no point fighting what is - what is, is.
work out why it is and then progress begins....put simply, once we let go of thinking things are 'wrong' (even though they are) we can put our energies into understanding why this has to happen - what purpose it serves. indeed it is this 'wrongness' that is necessary to activate what has been dormant for a long time; this wrongness is necessary to wake us up from our comfortable slumber.
the final realisation being that we, all of us, get the reality we believe in, that we think we deserve deep down....blaming any group, blaming any 'other' for our own predicament is how we disempowered ourselves in the first place.
we are always in control of our own destiny, not our fate....our fate is set, our destiny is how we respond to it....
every man that frees himself from the herd, that says no to the wages of sin, moves mankind one step further towards the goal.
P.S. I'll just keep my distance from Jung (and Freud as it were) because people in general are inseperable from their ideas and, more importantly, their actions.
This is the same conversation I've had many times over, so I'll keep it brief.
Alright, I believe there is a God and the devil (or imagining things, as you put it) and you believe there is no God and no devil (imagining there are no such entities, actually using the "imagining" in this context is even more convenient than "believing").
We both believe in something, I'll just be better off if my belief turns out to be the correct one.
Arguments for belief refers to those arguments which, instead of attempting to prove the existence of God, simply attempt to justify belief, which they cannot do under 1 Peter 3:15 Bible-icon.png. Typically this is done by either assuming that belief in God is justified a priori or as the result of a risk/reward analysis.....
Steiner’s insights about Bees were remarkably accurate. His architecture looks terrible to me. This three stage articulation of the demonic sounds fascinating.
John, it is my comprehension that Steiner's "3rd entity" is the dark feminine aspect, Lilith. I have written in a few of my Substack articles about Lilith. One such article analyzes Gigi Young's research into Steiner's "Eighth Sphere," the "realm" of Lucifer, Ahriman, and Lilith. (I wanted to do a "Part II," but I'm thinking now that I already covered the most important part of her presentation.) Anyway, I'm glad you brought up the topic here.
Yes. In fact, I believe that "centralized goodness" is one of the devil's most devious lies, hiding in plain sight.
"I believe, as Lewis seemed to, that what's underneath Aslan's form is something beyond our understanding..."
Yes, and I think the same might be said of Tolkein's Eru Ilúvatar. Somewhat hilariously, only now do I realize I don't even know how to pronounce that one.
I enjoyed this very much. Your writing is great to me! I believe Satan is real. I believe his intention is to drag as many souls to hell with him that he can and will use any means possible to achieve it. I also believe this is all meant to happen and that God is in control, but we are called to be spiritual warriors to fight against the powers and principalities of evil. This is not a flesh and blood battle but a battle for the souls of men.
Instant sub and recommendation! Eagerly awaiting all future parts.
Another angle for investigating "invisibility" may be the counterintelligence angle. In addition to being a function of their nature, there may be operational advantages to secrecy and subterfuge. Being exposed may turn out to be fatal or injurious in certain contexts like our own. And studying Satan's wiles may require the skills of a cosmic counterintelligence officer.
Thanks Harrison. I've actually been trying to play catch up on your excellent work in recent days.
Thanks to John Carter, I have "Ponerogenesis and the "Other God"" open in a tab right now. I'm only roughly halfway through it, but it's so brilliant thus far I'll just drop a link here for others to find:
As to your point about secrecy and subterfuge, yes I agree that invisibility may be the result intentional strategy (or perhaps an evolved adaptation, or some mixture of the two).
As for who will be our cosmic counterintelligence officer, I think this guy might do a bang up job:
good writing! what is evil, and what is the nature of Satan?
evil is a corrective....a magnet that draws the diseased tissue from the body politic, and then destroys itself.
the hypostasis of evil - satan - is real though relative, ie not absolute. satan is not a divine idea, but he is a very real entity for us.
the crucial analogy is with matter - also not a divine idea, matter is therefore essentially unreal (see quantum physics), but it does have a relative existence here below. matter is that which introduces entropy and inertia into the world. it is unconsciousness, and evil is also.
it does seem that evil 'takes possession of' the individual....like a parasite with its host. dostoevsky's 'the possessed'.
plotinus equates evil and matter. the price of incarnate existence is to be exposed to evil, which is unconsciousness, unconsciousness of reality. it is therefore imprisoning humanity within a false reality that is the modus operandi of evil: the matrix, the gnostic simulacrum, the spectacle.
therefore philosophy, properly speaking, is the antidote and prophylactic to evil...the intelligibility of the truth and our capacity to recognise it through our God-given nous,,,this is the truth that sets us free.
we can see how a reductively materialistic metaphysic has led to a denial of God and the intelligible reality of which he is the prime symbol...we can also see how a reductively materialistic worldview is still promulgated, even when it has become absurd,,,ie in the face of the inseparability of perceiver and perceived, esse est percipi.
objective reality belongs to the platonic forms, not the phenomenal world. a mechanistic view of reality is still promulgated because only this can be used to validate the need for social engineering, ie only reductive materialism dethrones the individual from his sovereign position vis-a-vis his experience of the world.
Very interesting. I'll have to think about this a while before I can properly respond. thanks.
One question I have: could you elaborate a little on what you mean by "divine idea"? I have a hunch it is related to platonic forms and/or solids, but I don't want to misunderstand you.
There's no question whatsoever in my mind that evil exists, that some of us are at war with it, and that it's an unwinnable war, in terms of being able to vanquish or extinguish it. It's equally evident to me that there are benevolent forces (I don't like to use the word "God" because I think it has lost all meaning at this point) which are on the side of those of us who resist evil. I wish I could have a real-life conversation with you, Mark Bisone. I intend to reread this essay (including the embedded one on egregores, which I skipped this time) and I'm definitely looking forward to the upcoming essays you've promised your readers. Thank you for this extraordinarily thoughtful essay.
Thank you for reading it. And who knows? Maybe we will have a real-life conversation one of these days? The world's a funny place. Till then, this medium will need to suffice.
In any case, I greatly appreciate your insights. As I mentioned, none of us can do this alone.
His Name is powerful. Your idea that it has lost meaning is a trick of the, ahem, entity. Invoking his holy Name is to invoke his reality, his power and his presence. Peace and courage to you.
Very interesting article. The idea of evil entities needing attention to survive is most certainly correct, along with the various gods that man has created. Neil Gaiman touched on this topic in the book American Gods, alludes that a gods power resides in the belief humans have for them. I believe that this is the case for most things in this world, the more energy you put into thinking about things the more they will manifest within in your life, i.e. if you worry about getting sick constantly you will eventually make yourself sick. It's the reason why the powers that be spend so much time and money trying to manage the narrative, allows them to create the reality they desire on the backs of those they delude.
I think that might depend a great deal on the nature of the entities, good or bad. "The Market" for example, exists whether people pay it any attention or not; it is the emergent process being created by the interaction of all the individuals. It seems quite likely that many beings exist that are emergent process beings of lower level agent interactions, and those beings are not something we need to pay attention to, or even could really comprehend. Yet, they affect us whether we pay attention or not, and they may be good, bad, or some mix of both.
Mark, this was an extraordinary debut and challenging in all the very best ways. My instinctive reaction is to wonder how the egregore might relate to Jung's thinking about autonomous complexes. i.e. is the egregore being formed by the synchronisation of such a complex on a mass scale?
My hunch is that it is. [NB C.G. Jung was preoccupied by demonism. Apparently he witnessed an exorcism as a child and it inspired his interest in psychiatry.]
Even if you assume that the egregore is summoned or attracted, rather than formed, by collective emotion/ideation, it would make sense that such a force would find a collective autonomous complex (and the morbid minds that are caught up with it) a convenient host/target.
Collective insanity is nothing new, but the immersion of the current generation in dematerialised experience (thanks to digital technology) is creating ideal conditions for very poor mental health on both an individual and collective level. I'd have no trouble accepting that the collective affect of an enfeebled and dysfunctional mass is creating the conditions necessary for an episode of mass psychosis. And there is no question that there is a very sinister character to the current zeitgeist.
Finally, your idea that the egregore is summoned made me think of David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS season 3, which I'd strongly recommend in case you have not seen it. Do you see any connection between your ideas and the Lynchian cosmology/mythos?
Thanks, Philip. Nice to have you along for the ride!
"My instinctive reaction is to wonder how the egregore might relate to Jung's thinking about autonomous complexes...'
I think it correlates very well with that. To my mind, this would include synchronization of Jung's "shadow selves" as well, which is where the trouble begins (although, in my opinion, not where it ends),
"Even if you assume that the egregore is summoned or attracted, rather than formed, by collective emotion/ideation, it would make sense that such a force would find a collective autonomous complex (and the morbid minds that are caught up with it) a convenient host/target."
It makes a lot of sense. I'm not even sure that "formed" would be the correct word; "discovered" might be better for some egregores, regardless of whether or not we think they can aquire non-human agents as riders. Markets strike me as discoverable egregores, since economies preexist human agents and persist outside of them (the ocean, for just one example, contains a multitude of economic exchanges).
I'd also say that the baseline egregore (which I do think conforms to Jung's model) is not the same as the manifested version, in which I think the locus of the agent is removed from the summoners. In these cases, I think it may actually invert the initial agent-object relationship, at which point the summoners are now "ridden" by the summoned being.
"Do you see any connection between your ideas and the Lynchian cosmology/mythos?"
100%. Lynch features prominently in one of my future planned chapters, on art and its predictive/illuminative capabilities.
Re markets, the financial markets attract attention/interference from precisely the sort of people with an interest in covert institutionalised malice and exploitation (governments, intelligence agencies) and there are plenty of cultists involved in both of these areas and they would make plays derived in part from esoteric considerations. This would create yet another fertile dimension for egregore formation/attraction/intervention.
"This is why I think it’s incredibly dangerous for autistics (who are prone to dissociation) or anyone with a psychological trauma history to dabble in the occult."
Absolutely. Actually, I tend to think it's dangerous for anyone to do so, but those people in particular are going to be in deep shit, real fast. And that's not only due to the potential dangers of entities; human agents also use each other quite often, exploiting weaknesses for gains. Anton LaVey's Church of Satan strikes me as a place where people were used in this way, with no demonic possession required. Then again, so does Amnesty International, these days (and I was once a local chapter president, if you can believe it).
The entire thrust of contemporary culture in the West is to foster susceptibility to suggestion. Advertising and mass consumption depend upon it. The infotainment, mass and social media do too. The effect is most marked on those on the spectrum or with impaired cognition as a result of drug abuse.
Re people being "used", you do not have to subscribe to a belief in discarnate intelligence to accept the reality of what is happening. Personalities/identities split off from the mind and develop an agency that is distinct from the conscious life of the person involved. They can and do channel subconscious energies that the person would never otherwise express or acknowledge.
IMO the immersion in dematerialised experience is dangerous because too few people are properly prepared for it. In the old days books allowed people to immerse themselves in abstractions and imaginative literature, but only a tiny number of people could spend much time doing this and they were usually well-socialised and educated. Today we have vast numbers of people (often severely undersocialised or poorly socialised) immersed in unreality and they are becoming highly responsive to it...enchanted as it were. This must account for at least some of the weirdness now emerging.
Absolutely! Individuals who know how to do it can evoke psychotic reactions (or related states) in others. I'd expect it would be easy enough in cases where an individual was undergoing a mental health crisis.
The weirdness is oppressive, but the oppressive effects are easily dispelled: immersion in nature, beauty, relationships, activity.
Welcome Mark, it's lovely to see how many insightful people are taking the plunge! What you write about is dear to my heart, I think we really need fresh takes on theological questions in this day and age.
Regarding evil, I think St. Paul's theology has much to offer: for him, we live in 2 worlds at once, the world of the flesh (material world with its materialist mindset, its earthy aspirations and drives) and the world of the Spirit, which functions according to very different laws. We can transcend the material world by living in it, but functioning according to the world of the spirit, thereby aligning ourselves with Good, and, I suspect, co-creating it by so doing. It's our only chance of "defeating" evil: we move away from it, into a different reality, the world of the Spirit. However, there are many who don't have "eyes to see" and cannot pull it off, so it is up to us.
If you haven't come across them yet, you might be interested in 2 essays I wrote where I touch on some of these things:
Thanks Luc. I'll read these two and get back to you.
Generally speaking, the Pauline vocabulary makes philosophical sense to me. But I think its explanatory power has some limitations when it comes to the subject of demons, egegores and other non-human beings. That's not to say these limitations are "baked-in" to those texts. Indeed, to some degree I think the limitations have more to do with our current crop of (debauched, exploded) languages than with his.
Taken from Nikolai Berdyaev's Freedom and the Spirit:
Pure monism and pure dualism do not understand and therefore reject the mystery of freedom; they regard evil from an exterior point of view without grasping its inward origin.
Either evil finally disappears or it appears as a force completely outside and apart from the human spirit. But if evil cannot be regarded as having its source in God, and if outside God there is no other source of being, how can the phenomenon of evil be explained.
How can this dilemma be resolved?
To the Christian way of thinking neither monism nor dualism is right, and it has its own peculiar solution of the problem of the origin of evil. For Christianity this question is connected with that of freedom and cannot be solved apart from it.
Indeed monism and dualism both involve the denial of freedom, and are thereby incapable of comprehending the phenomenon of evil. The interpretation of the mystery of evil through that of freedom is a suprarational interpretation and presents reason with an antinomy.
The source of evil is not in God, nor in a being existing positively side by side with him, but in the unfathomable irrationality of freedom, in pure possibility, in the forces concealed within that dark void which precedes all positive determination of being.
Thus evil has no basis in anything; it is determined by no possible being and has no ontological origin. The possibility of evil is latent in that mysterious principle of being in which every sort of possibility lies concealed.
The void is not evil, it is the source of every kind of life and every actualization of being. It conceals within itself the possibility of both evil and of good. An initial, irrational, and mysterious void lies at the heart of the whole life of the universe, but it is a mystery beyond the reach of logic.
“But to resurrect an egregore of this narrative species would take a lengthy and concerted effort, by a large number of people who not only are interested, but psychologically and spiritually invested in that result. When this happens, I think the distributed hive-mind of riders that sits atop the egregore disappears. It becomes more than just a Jungian construct of the collective unconscious, but rather a real manifestation, with a will and agency of its own. Like the market, it becomes unpredictable, and potentially very dangerous.”
How do you feel about bitcoin?
Regardless of the answer I’ll subscribe if I didn’t already. Really enjoyed this post, thanks for writing it.
Haha. Good question. Sometimes it depends on which side of the bed I get up on. The short answer is that while i find some of the tech interesting, and potentially useful, I think the current application is naive (and perhaps dangerously so).
Sorry if that sounds cryptic (pun intended); I might try to write at length about my thoughts at some point. Thanks for subscribing!
Very interesting essay! I am planning on rereading it, hopefully before the next one comes up :)
I started writing a response, but it got a bit long so I will post it up on the blog instead. This is a very important topic, and I am glad to see so many people discussing it!
"....But there’s a problem here: the process of corrupting individual minds within these principalities one-by-one would be both inefficient and exhausting, even for a powerful illusionist like our entity...."
Look at the strong evidence that we are living in an Electric Universe.
The movement of electric currents happen in spirals, which can be percived as cycles.
If you search for cycle theories, you will find plenty of evidence that the nature 'operates' in a cyclical way.
The history of human civilisation can also be described as a cycle. This means we are currently in a specific stage of the human cycle which is 'repeating'.
For sure this author is not the first one formulating such kind of thoughts. There were much older times with individuals thinking similar thoughts.... We are apparently in a certain stage in the 'evolution' cycle which is a kind of contraction phase when 'problems' manifest and when people are searching for explanations for the 'problems' of this particular time.
The cycle will continue for some decades more and take another direction, as all cycles do, and the 'collective mood' will change again.
I assume you're referring to Strauss–Howe cycles. Ironically, this theory itself has been recycled, the Stoics offering the earliest iteration of it (before that, who knows? Sands of time, and all that).
But even they were not so fatalistic about the world as to think that such cycles were an inescapable prison. Otherwise, Cato would have probably led a fairly boring life. They suspected there was a chance -- however slim -- to break the cycle or, at least, to slightly alter its trajectory for greater gains in future iterations. That's why equilibrium is never reached, and the progress of technologies is a slope function. To modify an old saying, "the less things stay the same, the more they change."
I think the thing about these cycles (or "turnings") is that they certainly conform to reason, but are not evidence of strict determinism. That the sun will rise each morning like clockwork is deterministic. That we will repeat the triumphs and errors of the past -- and in more or less the same order -- is not. It's just a very strong force to overcome. Probably even stronger than breaking the gravitational pull of the earth to hit the moon shot. Or, I guess *definitely* stronger, since we already pulled that off.
But, yeah, the cycles exist (I actually think they're quite obvious). To quote another old saying: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.:" The human animal can be accused of many things, but being sane isn't one of them. We are beings who are mostly irrational, most of the time. But that means we are also somewhat rational, some small fraction of the time. We are also spectacularly creative, and perhaps more than a little lucky, considering our path from minimally interactive pond scum to offhand global conversations about the meaning of life, the patterns of history, and the future of reality. It's an impressive story arc, I think (if, at times, a ponderously slow and frustratingly redundant one).
In any case, thanks for the interesting comment, Croc. I hope you'll stick around!
The great majority doesn't understand the nature of interst (on credit).
'Those' who control us understand it and are taking advantage of their knowledge. For many centuries now !
Our World is absolutely in the grip of interest and the only logical result of this grip is an economic destruction of the current system. It is INEVITABLE ! Not because 'Evil people' are working towards the distruction, but EVERY PERSON that ist expecting to 'earn' interest on his/her money ist driving our system to it's inevitable collapse. There are big players and very many small players....
Those who really want to understand this, need to learn WHAT IS interest !
I was refering to the Foundation for the Study of Cycles :
A non-profit, research organization, Foundation for the Study of Cycles was incorporated on January 10, 1941, by Edward R. Dewey after he discovered coincident cycles in nature and business.
This was thought provoking. I'm looking forward to future installments.
Your concept seems similar on the surface at least to CS Lewis's macrobes, as described in That Hideous Strength - worth a read if you haven't yet.
One wonders if these beings might be composed of dark matter? Such entities would only be able to interact via gravitation, the weakest but most pervasive of the physical forces.
It also brought to mind Rudolf Steiner's three demons - Lucifer, Ahriman, and a third entity whose name escapes me at the moment. All three are the expression of a great No. Lucifer denies conscience and goodness, and exults in the glorification of the ego. Ahriman denies mind and soul, and insists on a world of dead matter and pure mechanism. The third is the No to everything - it seeks to destroy existence itself. Steiner saw the influence of these demons as being successive, leading from Lucifer, to Ahriman, to the third entity. One might also see them as emanations, with the final No to everything being the core attractor that draws the world toward it, first through the lure of the Luciferian face, then the Ahrimanic, and revealing its true nature only way the final stage.
Another interpretation: aliens attempting to subvert and conquer humanity via hyperspatial influence operations.
Finally, there's the question of the good egregore. I'd submit that the metaphysical body of Christ is precisely this entity.
Thanks, John. Same as Jay, I couldn't have done it without you.
"Your concept seems similar on the surface at least to CS Lewis's macrobes, as described in That Hideous Strength. (.....) It also brought to mind Rudolf Steiner's three demons - Lucifer, Ahriman, and a third entity whose name escapes me at the moment. All three are the expression of a great No."
Yes, I agree on both counts. Although I'm torn about whether to use those names in this series, or esoteric names in general. For instance, I loved your use of "a great No".
"One wonders if these beings might be composed of dark matter? Such entities would only be able to interact via gravitation, the weakest but most pervasive of the physical forces."
Yeah, I wonder that too. I might say something about it in my next post. One problem is of course that, while it historically hasn't been difficult for humans to imagine complex agent work accomplished without the use of heavy tools/machines, the zeitgeists have made a serious dent in that capacity in the past few centuries. I will try my best (but will obviously need some help).
"Finally, there's the question of the good egregore. I'd submit that the metaphysical body of Christ is precisely this entity."
Now we're cookin' with gas, Mr. Carter!
There is much in this statement I agree with. Honestly, I've yet to fully confront it, so I might have a slightly different take when I put pen to page. I may need to digest your upcoming, final post in the JC/JC series (which is not a nudge; I understand that such writings take time).
Dark matter does not appear to actually be a "thing." It's a concept to try to reconcile observations. But Distinti breaks it down into something quite simple and understandable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stx32321uVg
i always remember what kazantzakis relates in his autobiography 'report to greco' (great book btw): angels are simply refined devils and nothing more.
henry miller illustrates this concept well - the devil at large who eventually becomes a saint
or as osho says, everyman can become a buddha, but first he must become a zorba (kazantzakis also)
the devil, lucifer, is the existential rebel. and rebellion is essential to spiritual growth. Christ tells us to rebel against a corrupt world and we do this by believing in ourselves over society...and this presents the danger of 'inflation' - we recognise ourselves as a centre of the universe, but if we don't recognise that others are too - then we fall prey to that gateway sin - pride.
Jesus denies the devil three times and then he is freed from him. not only this but the devil himself is transformed into something else - an ally. the devil becomes what he originally was - pan, the green man, merlin,,,,a demi-God in service to Nature.
it is up to us to deny the three temptations - that is the role of the devil - the adversary. he forces our spiritual growth. he will grow til we say 'no'.
the devil's faith in God is not in question, only his faith in man.
yes, the devil believes in God but denies Him, and when the devil can't deny God then he refuses Him.
the devil is God's shadow - in a Jungian sense. in old testament times God and the devil are not so separate. God of the OT was quite a badass when he wanted to be, and arguably an asshole when he let his right hand man get in his ear (Job)...
so we go from God and the devil in cahoots more or less, to the devil being cast down to earth, leaving God alone without his shadow, which has now been cast onto mankind to wrestle with.
so this leaves a totally benevolent God (abba) as the true God, but on Earth our presiding deity is not so benevolent, he is the prince of this world and likes to control things.
so it is up to humanity to escape this control system - the matrix, that has been developed to trap us mentally and therefore spiritually here below.
we do this by understanding, not fighting the devil; we must understand what is going on in the world and why, first politically, then metaphysically....ie there is no point fighting what is - what is, is.
work out why it is and then progress begins....put simply, once we let go of thinking things are 'wrong' (even though they are) we can put our energies into understanding why this has to happen - what purpose it serves. indeed it is this 'wrongness' that is necessary to activate what has been dormant for a long time; this wrongness is necessary to wake us up from our comfortable slumber.
the final realisation being that we, all of us, get the reality we believe in, that we think we deserve deep down....blaming any group, blaming any 'other' for our own predicament is how we disempowered ourselves in the first place.
we are always in control of our own destiny, not our fate....our fate is set, our destiny is how we respond to it....
every man that frees himself from the herd, that says no to the wages of sin, moves mankind one step further towards the goal.
very, very well put!
P.S. I'll just keep my distance from Jung (and Freud as it were) because people in general are inseperable from their ideas and, more importantly, their actions.
Just in your imagination and many others, Dark Horse.
But this is in no way a proof any of these imagined entities to be real.
This is the same conversation I've had many times over, so I'll keep it brief.
Alright, I believe there is a God and the devil (or imagining things, as you put it) and you believe there is no God and no devil (imagining there are no such entities, actually using the "imagining" in this context is even more convenient than "believing").
We both believe in something, I'll just be better off if my belief turns out to be the correct one.
All the best to ya, Crocky.
Arguments for belief refers to those arguments which, instead of attempting to prove the existence of God, simply attempt to justify belief, which they cannot do under 1 Peter 3:15 Bible-icon.png. Typically this is done by either assuming that belief in God is justified a priori or as the result of a risk/reward analysis.....
https://religions.wiki/index.php/Category:Arguments_for_belief
The avoidance of hell is a commonly cited reason for believing in God. This is an example of religion trying to control people through fear.
A similar apologetic tactic is to ask "What would you say to God?" after you died....
https://religions.wiki/index.php/Avoidance_of_hell
And much more !
This might sound like a strange question, but how did you find this stack?
Steiner’s insights about Bees were remarkably accurate. His architecture looks terrible to me. This three stage articulation of the demonic sounds fascinating.
John, it is my comprehension that Steiner's "3rd entity" is the dark feminine aspect, Lilith. I have written in a few of my Substack articles about Lilith. One such article analyzes Gigi Young's research into Steiner's "Eighth Sphere," the "realm" of Lucifer, Ahriman, and Lilith. (I wanted to do a "Part II," but I'm thinking now that I already covered the most important part of her presentation.) Anyway, I'm glad you brought up the topic here.
Reply to me on "sir ISO" or you're banned.
https://siriso.substack.com/p/have-a-nice-day?r=16h9b&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct
Yes. In fact, I believe that "centralized goodness" is one of the devil's most devious lies, hiding in plain sight.
"I believe, as Lewis seemed to, that what's underneath Aslan's form is something beyond our understanding..."
Yes, and I think the same might be said of Tolkein's Eru Ilúvatar. Somewhat hilariously, only now do I realize I don't even know how to pronounce that one.
I enjoyed this very much. Your writing is great to me! I believe Satan is real. I believe his intention is to drag as many souls to hell with him that he can and will use any means possible to achieve it. I also believe this is all meant to happen and that God is in control, but we are called to be spiritual warriors to fight against the powers and principalities of evil. This is not a flesh and blood battle but a battle for the souls of men.
Thank you Rosa. I would be proud to serve in that host with you, should it come to that.
Instant sub and recommendation! Eagerly awaiting all future parts.
Another angle for investigating "invisibility" may be the counterintelligence angle. In addition to being a function of their nature, there may be operational advantages to secrecy and subterfuge. Being exposed may turn out to be fatal or injurious in certain contexts like our own. And studying Satan's wiles may require the skills of a cosmic counterintelligence officer.
Thanks Harrison. I've actually been trying to play catch up on your excellent work in recent days.
Thanks to John Carter, I have "Ponerogenesis and the "Other God"" open in a tab right now. I'm only roughly halfway through it, but it's so brilliant thus far I'll just drop a link here for others to find:
https://ponerology.substack.com/p/ponerogenesis-and-the-other-god
I've got some similar ideas in there, I believe. But not as extensively developed as you're doing here.
As to your point about secrecy and subterfuge, yes I agree that invisibility may be the result intentional strategy (or perhaps an evolved adaptation, or some mixture of the two).
As for who will be our cosmic counterintelligence officer, I think this guy might do a bang up job:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjjiE0OD4K0
The name of Jesus Christ was mentioned a few times in this clip, you didn't by any chance mean He would be that counteintel officer, did ya? :D
Oh man, you're right! I guess I missed that, lmao.
Or did I? O_o
good writing! what is evil, and what is the nature of Satan?
evil is a corrective....a magnet that draws the diseased tissue from the body politic, and then destroys itself.
the hypostasis of evil - satan - is real though relative, ie not absolute. satan is not a divine idea, but he is a very real entity for us.
the crucial analogy is with matter - also not a divine idea, matter is therefore essentially unreal (see quantum physics), but it does have a relative existence here below. matter is that which introduces entropy and inertia into the world. it is unconsciousness, and evil is also.
it does seem that evil 'takes possession of' the individual....like a parasite with its host. dostoevsky's 'the possessed'.
plotinus equates evil and matter. the price of incarnate existence is to be exposed to evil, which is unconsciousness, unconsciousness of reality. it is therefore imprisoning humanity within a false reality that is the modus operandi of evil: the matrix, the gnostic simulacrum, the spectacle.
therefore philosophy, properly speaking, is the antidote and prophylactic to evil...the intelligibility of the truth and our capacity to recognise it through our God-given nous,,,this is the truth that sets us free.
we can see how a reductively materialistic metaphysic has led to a denial of God and the intelligible reality of which he is the prime symbol...we can also see how a reductively materialistic worldview is still promulgated, even when it has become absurd,,,ie in the face of the inseparability of perceiver and perceived, esse est percipi.
objective reality belongs to the platonic forms, not the phenomenal world. a mechanistic view of reality is still promulgated because only this can be used to validate the need for social engineering, ie only reductive materialism dethrones the individual from his sovereign position vis-a-vis his experience of the world.
Very interesting. I'll have to think about this a while before I can properly respond. thanks.
One question I have: could you elaborate a little on what you mean by "divine idea"? I have a hunch it is related to platonic forms and/or solids, but I don't want to misunderstand you.
yes....i mean the platonic forms or archetypal ideas.
There's no question whatsoever in my mind that evil exists, that some of us are at war with it, and that it's an unwinnable war, in terms of being able to vanquish or extinguish it. It's equally evident to me that there are benevolent forces (I don't like to use the word "God" because I think it has lost all meaning at this point) which are on the side of those of us who resist evil. I wish I could have a real-life conversation with you, Mark Bisone. I intend to reread this essay (including the embedded one on egregores, which I skipped this time) and I'm definitely looking forward to the upcoming essays you've promised your readers. Thank you for this extraordinarily thoughtful essay.
Thank you for reading it. And who knows? Maybe we will have a real-life conversation one of these days? The world's a funny place. Till then, this medium will need to suffice.
In any case, I greatly appreciate your insights. As I mentioned, none of us can do this alone.
His Name is powerful. Your idea that it has lost meaning is a trick of the, ahem, entity. Invoking his holy Name is to invoke his reality, his power and his presence. Peace and courage to you.
Very interesting article. The idea of evil entities needing attention to survive is most certainly correct, along with the various gods that man has created. Neil Gaiman touched on this topic in the book American Gods, alludes that a gods power resides in the belief humans have for them. I believe that this is the case for most things in this world, the more energy you put into thinking about things the more they will manifest within in your life, i.e. if you worry about getting sick constantly you will eventually make yourself sick. It's the reason why the powers that be spend so much time and money trying to manage the narrative, allows them to create the reality they desire on the backs of those they delude.
I think that might depend a great deal on the nature of the entities, good or bad. "The Market" for example, exists whether people pay it any attention or not; it is the emergent process being created by the interaction of all the individuals. It seems quite likely that many beings exist that are emergent process beings of lower level agent interactions, and those beings are not something we need to pay attention to, or even could really comprehend. Yet, they affect us whether we pay attention or not, and they may be good, bad, or some mix of both.
Mark, this was an extraordinary debut and challenging in all the very best ways. My instinctive reaction is to wonder how the egregore might relate to Jung's thinking about autonomous complexes. i.e. is the egregore being formed by the synchronisation of such a complex on a mass scale?
My hunch is that it is. [NB C.G. Jung was preoccupied by demonism. Apparently he witnessed an exorcism as a child and it inspired his interest in psychiatry.]
Even if you assume that the egregore is summoned or attracted, rather than formed, by collective emotion/ideation, it would make sense that such a force would find a collective autonomous complex (and the morbid minds that are caught up with it) a convenient host/target.
Collective insanity is nothing new, but the immersion of the current generation in dematerialised experience (thanks to digital technology) is creating ideal conditions for very poor mental health on both an individual and collective level. I'd have no trouble accepting that the collective affect of an enfeebled and dysfunctional mass is creating the conditions necessary for an episode of mass psychosis. And there is no question that there is a very sinister character to the current zeitgeist.
Finally, your idea that the egregore is summoned made me think of David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS season 3, which I'd strongly recommend in case you have not seen it. Do you see any connection between your ideas and the Lynchian cosmology/mythos?
Thanks, Philip. Nice to have you along for the ride!
"My instinctive reaction is to wonder how the egregore might relate to Jung's thinking about autonomous complexes...'
I think it correlates very well with that. To my mind, this would include synchronization of Jung's "shadow selves" as well, which is where the trouble begins (although, in my opinion, not where it ends),
"Even if you assume that the egregore is summoned or attracted, rather than formed, by collective emotion/ideation, it would make sense that such a force would find a collective autonomous complex (and the morbid minds that are caught up with it) a convenient host/target."
It makes a lot of sense. I'm not even sure that "formed" would be the correct word; "discovered" might be better for some egregores, regardless of whether or not we think they can aquire non-human agents as riders. Markets strike me as discoverable egregores, since economies preexist human agents and persist outside of them (the ocean, for just one example, contains a multitude of economic exchanges).
I'd also say that the baseline egregore (which I do think conforms to Jung's model) is not the same as the manifested version, in which I think the locus of the agent is removed from the summoners. In these cases, I think it may actually invert the initial agent-object relationship, at which point the summoners are now "ridden" by the summoned being.
"Do you see any connection between your ideas and the Lynchian cosmology/mythos?"
100%. Lynch features prominently in one of my future planned chapters, on art and its predictive/illuminative capabilities.
Re markets, the financial markets attract attention/interference from precisely the sort of people with an interest in covert institutionalised malice and exploitation (governments, intelligence agencies) and there are plenty of cultists involved in both of these areas and they would make plays derived in part from esoteric considerations. This would create yet another fertile dimension for egregore formation/attraction/intervention.
"This is why I think it’s incredibly dangerous for autistics (who are prone to dissociation) or anyone with a psychological trauma history to dabble in the occult."
Absolutely. Actually, I tend to think it's dangerous for anyone to do so, but those people in particular are going to be in deep shit, real fast. And that's not only due to the potential dangers of entities; human agents also use each other quite often, exploiting weaknesses for gains. Anton LaVey's Church of Satan strikes me as a place where people were used in this way, with no demonic possession required. Then again, so does Amnesty International, these days (and I was once a local chapter president, if you can believe it).
The entire thrust of contemporary culture in the West is to foster susceptibility to suggestion. Advertising and mass consumption depend upon it. The infotainment, mass and social media do too. The effect is most marked on those on the spectrum or with impaired cognition as a result of drug abuse.
Re people being "used", you do not have to subscribe to a belief in discarnate intelligence to accept the reality of what is happening. Personalities/identities split off from the mind and develop an agency that is distinct from the conscious life of the person involved. They can and do channel subconscious energies that the person would never otherwise express or acknowledge.
IMO the immersion in dematerialised experience is dangerous because too few people are properly prepared for it. In the old days books allowed people to immerse themselves in abstractions and imaginative literature, but only a tiny number of people could spend much time doing this and they were usually well-socialised and educated. Today we have vast numbers of people (often severely undersocialised or poorly socialised) immersed in unreality and they are becoming highly responsive to it...enchanted as it were. This must account for at least some of the weirdness now emerging.
Absolutely! Individuals who know how to do it can evoke psychotic reactions (or related states) in others. I'd expect it would be easy enough in cases where an individual was undergoing a mental health crisis.
The weirdness is oppressive, but the oppressive effects are easily dispelled: immersion in nature, beauty, relationships, activity.
Welcome Mark, it's lovely to see how many insightful people are taking the plunge! What you write about is dear to my heart, I think we really need fresh takes on theological questions in this day and age.
Regarding evil, I think St. Paul's theology has much to offer: for him, we live in 2 worlds at once, the world of the flesh (material world with its materialist mindset, its earthy aspirations and drives) and the world of the Spirit, which functions according to very different laws. We can transcend the material world by living in it, but functioning according to the world of the spirit, thereby aligning ourselves with Good, and, I suspect, co-creating it by so doing. It's our only chance of "defeating" evil: we move away from it, into a different reality, the world of the Spirit. However, there are many who don't have "eyes to see" and cannot pull it off, so it is up to us.
If you haven't come across them yet, you might be interested in 2 essays I wrote where I touch on some of these things:
https://luctalks.substack.com/p/can-we-change-the-past
https://luctalks.substack.com/p/the-problem-of-evil-solved
Thanks Luc. I'll read these two and get back to you.
Generally speaking, the Pauline vocabulary makes philosophical sense to me. But I think its explanatory power has some limitations when it comes to the subject of demons, egegores and other non-human beings. That's not to say these limitations are "baked-in" to those texts. Indeed, to some degree I think the limitations have more to do with our current crop of (debauched, exploded) languages than with his.
Taken from Nikolai Berdyaev's Freedom and the Spirit:
Pure monism and pure dualism do not understand and therefore reject the mystery of freedom; they regard evil from an exterior point of view without grasping its inward origin.
Either evil finally disappears or it appears as a force completely outside and apart from the human spirit. But if evil cannot be regarded as having its source in God, and if outside God there is no other source of being, how can the phenomenon of evil be explained.
How can this dilemma be resolved?
To the Christian way of thinking neither monism nor dualism is right, and it has its own peculiar solution of the problem of the origin of evil. For Christianity this question is connected with that of freedom and cannot be solved apart from it.
Indeed monism and dualism both involve the denial of freedom, and are thereby incapable of comprehending the phenomenon of evil. The interpretation of the mystery of evil through that of freedom is a suprarational interpretation and presents reason with an antinomy.
The source of evil is not in God, nor in a being existing positively side by side with him, but in the unfathomable irrationality of freedom, in pure possibility, in the forces concealed within that dark void which precedes all positive determination of being.
Thus evil has no basis in anything; it is determined by no possible being and has no ontological origin. The possibility of evil is latent in that mysterious principle of being in which every sort of possibility lies concealed.
The void is not evil, it is the source of every kind of life and every actualization of being. It conceals within itself the possibility of both evil and of good. An initial, irrational, and mysterious void lies at the heart of the whole life of the universe, but it is a mystery beyond the reach of logic.
“But to resurrect an egregore of this narrative species would take a lengthy and concerted effort, by a large number of people who not only are interested, but psychologically and spiritually invested in that result. When this happens, I think the distributed hive-mind of riders that sits atop the egregore disappears. It becomes more than just a Jungian construct of the collective unconscious, but rather a real manifestation, with a will and agency of its own. Like the market, it becomes unpredictable, and potentially very dangerous.”
How do you feel about bitcoin?
Regardless of the answer I’ll subscribe if I didn’t already. Really enjoyed this post, thanks for writing it.
"How do you feel about Bitcoin?"
Haha. Good question. Sometimes it depends on which side of the bed I get up on. The short answer is that while i find some of the tech interesting, and potentially useful, I think the current application is naive (and perhaps dangerously so).
Sorry if that sounds cryptic (pun intended); I might try to write at length about my thoughts at some point. Thanks for subscribing!
Very interesting essay! I am planning on rereading it, hopefully before the next one comes up :)
I started writing a response, but it got a bit long so I will post it up on the blog instead. This is a very important topic, and I am glad to see so many people discussing it!
Ok, full response here https://dochammer.substack.com/p/so-youve-got-a-satan-problem-now?sd=pf
Just popping in to say "its the demiurge, bro".
Great essay.
"....But there’s a problem here: the process of corrupting individual minds within these principalities one-by-one would be both inefficient and exhausting, even for a powerful illusionist like our entity...."
Look at the strong evidence that we are living in an Electric Universe.
The movement of electric currents happen in spirals, which can be percived as cycles.
If you search for cycle theories, you will find plenty of evidence that the nature 'operates' in a cyclical way.
The history of human civilisation can also be described as a cycle. This means we are currently in a specific stage of the human cycle which is 'repeating'.
For sure this author is not the first one formulating such kind of thoughts. There were much older times with individuals thinking similar thoughts.... We are apparently in a certain stage in the 'evolution' cycle which is a kind of contraction phase when 'problems' manifest and when people are searching for explanations for the 'problems' of this particular time.
The cycle will continue for some decades more and take another direction, as all cycles do, and the 'collective mood' will change again.
I assume you're referring to Strauss–Howe cycles. Ironically, this theory itself has been recycled, the Stoics offering the earliest iteration of it (before that, who knows? Sands of time, and all that).
But even they were not so fatalistic about the world as to think that such cycles were an inescapable prison. Otherwise, Cato would have probably led a fairly boring life. They suspected there was a chance -- however slim -- to break the cycle or, at least, to slightly alter its trajectory for greater gains in future iterations. That's why equilibrium is never reached, and the progress of technologies is a slope function. To modify an old saying, "the less things stay the same, the more they change."
I think the thing about these cycles (or "turnings") is that they certainly conform to reason, but are not evidence of strict determinism. That the sun will rise each morning like clockwork is deterministic. That we will repeat the triumphs and errors of the past -- and in more or less the same order -- is not. It's just a very strong force to overcome. Probably even stronger than breaking the gravitational pull of the earth to hit the moon shot. Or, I guess *definitely* stronger, since we already pulled that off.
But, yeah, the cycles exist (I actually think they're quite obvious). To quote another old saying: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.:" The human animal can be accused of many things, but being sane isn't one of them. We are beings who are mostly irrational, most of the time. But that means we are also somewhat rational, some small fraction of the time. We are also spectacularly creative, and perhaps more than a little lucky, considering our path from minimally interactive pond scum to offhand global conversations about the meaning of life, the patterns of history, and the future of reality. It's an impressive story arc, I think (if, at times, a ponderously slow and frustratingly redundant one).
In any case, thanks for the interesting comment, Croc. I hope you'll stick around!
The great majority doesn't understand the nature of interst (on credit).
'Those' who control us understand it and are taking advantage of their knowledge. For many centuries now !
Our World is absolutely in the grip of interest and the only logical result of this grip is an economic destruction of the current system. It is INEVITABLE ! Not because 'Evil people' are working towards the distruction, but EVERY PERSON that ist expecting to 'earn' interest on his/her money ist driving our system to it's inevitable collapse. There are big players and very many small players....
Those who really want to understand this, need to learn WHAT IS interest !
https://www.community-exchange.org/docs/Gesell/en/neo/
No, Mark, I'm not familiar wit Strauss-Howe.
I was refering to the Foundation for the Study of Cycles :
A non-profit, research organization, Foundation for the Study of Cycles was incorporated on January 10, 1941, by Edward R. Dewey after he discovered coincident cycles in nature and business.
https://cycles.org/#what_we_do
This might sound like a strange question, but what are your thoughts about independence in Taiwan?
I am not familiar with this sitution and not following geopolitics in that region.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wRfRIXg2spo
Not that one, Meme !
I mean this one : https://www.youtube.com/user/ThunderboltsProject
Loved it, though some went over my head. I called attention to it in this article: https://heroesvsvillains.substack.com/p/why-i-changed-my-mind-about-evil
Just finished watching it, and left a comment on your stack. But, yeah, I like this guy and agree with much of his framing of the problem.
Great essay, very well written and insightful, and after reading, I had to subscribe so I don't miss future installments!
Thanks Daniel. Looking forward to hearing from you.
We're talking about Schrödinger's cat, right? (the cat that was never found)