SirPalomides

Then even “socialist” economies are capitalist. No, trading stuff is not capitalism.

No, usury in the classic Christian sense refers to any lending at interest. There is no distinction between excessive and reasonable interest, it’s all predatory. Christianity didn’t oppose capitalism because it didn’t exist in the 1st century. But it did consistently condemn usury. No usury, no capitalism.

Odd thing to say. Maybe the one consistent economic teaching of Christianity, from the Old Testament through the church fathers, east and west, and from there to the reformation era, is the condemnation of lending at interest, AKA usury. No usury, no capitalism. Of course this is one more topic where today's McChristianity has no relationship to any recognizable Christian tradition.

Far be it from me to suggest such impiety. No, what I'm saying is that the whole of the Old and New Testaments point us toward one final revelation: ICP's epoch defining video for "Miracles."

I too evaluate the claims of a religion based on the number of adherents who are bloodsport enthusiasts.

If I put my mind to it I could give you a systematic exposition of how the Bible predicted the Juggalos.

I mean, there's the explicit Bible prophecy that Christ would return within the generation of the apostles. Naturally when that didn't happen it was reinterpreted, e.g. "by 'this generation' he means the church". The text is full of enough ambiguities and suggestive images that it is possible to map pretty much any world event onto some scrap of text. And the people who are really good at this are well-practiced enough in esoteric hermeneutics to spin any failed prediction as some deeper insight. And so people have been doing for centuries.

I'm gonna get pedantic about arbitrary and strange romanization rules- Ching = Jing; Ch'ing = Qing. Tao Te Ching = Dao De Jing; Ch'ing Ching Ching = Qingjing Jing

https://centrostudimetafisici.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/surrealism-esoteric-secrets-200-221.pdf I'm about 2/3 through this fascinating book and I wonder if anyone else has read it. It is, on the one hand, extremely dense and if I didn't have a basic grasp of the history of surrealism and some of the key people, I would be totally lost. (I'd read the Andre Breton anthology What is Surrealism?, including the lengthy introduction, as well as Pierre Mabille's wonderful book on surrealism and myth, Mirror of the Marvelous). As it is, it can still be tricky reading. Overall it charts the surrealists' involvement in a number of esoteric currents, in the service their poetic occultism. I have sometimes seen this involvement characterized as a mere whimsical dabbling but this book makes it clear that it was quite profound.

The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast also gives a good account (stretching over many episodes and many thinkers, with much more to come, it’s still in the 4th century now) about the development of divine transcendence and ineffability through the middle and late Platonists. The uncompromising monotheism associated with the Abrahamic faiths built on this foundation. It is one thing to say “there is one God” and another to say this God is a. the ground of all that exists and b. so utterly transcendent from his creation that even words like “God” and “being” are ultimately inappropriate

Each of these points would probably need its own thread but I'll briefly sum up my thoughts here: 1. Paganism, as noted elsewhere, is a term of very limited usefulness; it comes with the assumption that there was a pure, non-influenced Christianity that emerged which only later assimilated pagan elements. Leaving aside the traces of "pagan" thought in the New Testament itself, the church fathers who elaborated Christian theology using Stoic, Platonist, and Aristotelian concepts did so as people raised and steeped in this intellectual culture, not as outsiders. If we consider how virtually everyone nowadays thinks in terms set by Newton, Copernicus, or Darwin- even if in distorted ways, even if they never read any of these guys- that might give some idea of how pervasive these philosophical currents were among the learned of the Roman period, even with men like Tertullian or Augustine who tried to establish a rigid demarcation between Christian and pagan thought (and these guys were in the minority among church fathers). 2. Paul's treatment of Satan, Prince (Archon) of the Power of the air) and the other heavenly "archons" (yes, he uses that word) is something that seems to be often ignored or glossed over, which is worth discussing. As with Christianity itself, the origins of the phenomenon later called "gnosticism" are very murky and controversial but suffice to say that in this era a lot of people were elaborating a vision of the cosmos as a prison ruled by oppressive celestial / astral entities who needed to be bypassed somehow to achieve salvation in the divine sphere above. Paul doesn't engage in the complex gnostic mythologizing, he doesn't elaborate a full system of 7 planetary spheres, each with its own archon, but he seems to be on a similar wavelength. Another curious idea that Paul expresses in Galatians is that the Law was delivered not directly by God but through the mediation of angels. This seems to crop up in some other Jewish writings of the period (e.g. Josephus) but no one seems to know where it came from. Paul leans on this understanding to suggest that the Law is imperfect, mediated- it is Christ who breaks through the celestial mediations and enables direct access to the divine realm. 3. Hell and universalism is another fascinating topic and it never really seems to be definitively resolved even among the "orthodox" party. It seems for a while the notion of universal salvation was accepted by the "orthodox" majority, with hell regarded as something more like purgatory. This is most clearly expressed by Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian Fathers who were hugely influential in shaping what came to be considered "orthodox" Trinitarian Christianity. Traces of it can still be found in church hymns still sung in Eastern Orthodox churches today.

Yes, the King in Yellow stories are great! Something uniquely strange about them that isn't really well served by the later post-Lovecraft pastiches, at least the ones I've seen. In any case, a major influence for the "cosmic horror" genre. Be warned- as I recall, only 4-5 of the stories in this book are actually part of that mythos, the rest being less interesting IMO. If you're interested in a complete collection of Chambers' weird fiction, you might be interested in this volume: https://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Sign-Other-Stories-Complete/dp/1568821700

On the topic of Christian magic, these two episodes of the always-fascinating SHWEP are well worth a listen: Prolegomena to Christian Magic Interview with Korshi Dosoo on Early Christian Magic Not only them. For instance, the Platonist Celsus, in his anti-Christian polemic (as it is preserved in Origen's rebuttal) accuses Jesus of being a sorcerer relying on a combination of stage tricks and evil spirits.

Not even close to a new development. It strikes me that a lot of today's "pagan" occultists don't realize how much of the material they use was transmitted by Christians.

And lastly there is now a split within the Eastern Orthodox communion, between the churches of Constantinople and Moscow, over the status of the Orthodox in Ukraine. Time will tell how this one will develop.

2 important schisms in the post-Nicene church that are often neglected here: 1. The Church of the East, so-called Nestorian, which was centered in the Persian empire, and which did not accept the 431 Council of Ephesus. This is the church that brought the first Christian missions to China and, for a while, had some sympathy among Mongol and Turkic elites. Nowadays it maintains a small and embattled presence in Iraq and a diaspora in the west. 2. The split over the Council of Chalcedon (451), which really only solidified about 100 years later, leading to the modern Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, and Syriac churches. These churches are called Orthodox but are not in communion with the "Eastern" or "Greek" orthodox churches that were the state churches of the East Roman Empire and allied/ successor states.

We can talk about any of these but I'll give you my hot take on this one: 1054 didn't really have much effect "on the ground"- there remained local churches in communion with both Rome and Constantinople. Some people say the schism was really solidified by the Crusades, especially the Fourth Crusade. However, the East Roman Church of Antioch remained basically in communion with both Rome and Constantinople until the so-called Melkite schism of 1724 when it finally split into the Melkite Catholic Church and the Roman Orthodox Church of Antioch (usually called "Greek Orthodox" in English but in Arabic, the majority language in that Church, it's called "Rum"). So I would argue that the Great Schism wasn't really definitive until 1724.

I feel like this is a theme Ennio Morricone would write for a western set in central Asia.

He also says aliens are using computers to take over human bodies, race-mixing severs our connection with the gods, and feminism and gay rights are part of a Satanic scheme to make us all communists.

I'm interested in talking about intellectual history. The view of a modern sectarian as to what constitutes heresy is no concern of mine. You might want to look into the parallels between Philo's Logos and Isaac Luria's Adam Kadmon though. The accusation that I am somehow doctoring the passage would make sense if I had used quotes. I didn't. I did quote the original without any editing whatsoever. I then paraphrased and indicated the correspondences. Supernal big letters= forms. Small letters in Malkhuth= logoi. From speech to silence, so far so Platonic. I would love to hear your account of what "intellect" means to all the Greek philosophers. And I have demonstrated amply that it was. Nope, I am simply stating how the Kabbalists framed their own relationship to Greek philosophy and the "prisca theologia." Only if one resorts to a "no true scotsman" strategy of ruling out inconvenient examples, which you have of course done at every turn. Philo is a heretic. Moses Maimonides (a towering figure in Judaism even today) and everyone influenced by him (including many Kabbalists)- heretics. Abulafia (very influential Kabbalist)- heretic. Whoever wrote the Merkavah-Hechalot texts were apparently heretics. Doubtless the Italian kabbalists cited by Moshe Idel will shortly be added to the catalog of heretics. And of course Gershom Scholem- whose enormous work for the study of Kabbalah is hailed not only by academics but practitioners- was a blockhead who never learned the real stuff. Okay, whatever. I do not intend to waste any more time engaging with a narrow sectarian mindset that feels threatened by a little bit of historical context. I'd love to talk to anyone actually interested in discussing this stuff.

My purpose in posting that link on logos was to show how the term has been used in differing ways by different thinkers. Jumping on Philo's particular usage to say, "Aha! Heresy!" is besides the point. I referred to a specific Platonic section of the Zohar passage: the supernal large letters above (forms), and the small letters below in their likeness (logoi). We contemplate the likenesses below, accessible to thought and speech, and then we can rise to the silent, noetic contemplation of their originals. The theurgic ascent from speech to silent prayer/contemplation is also typical of late Platonism. I did not, however, suggest that there is a 1:1 correspondence between everything in the Zohar (or everything in Kabbalah) and Greek philosophy; that there are plenty of uniquely Jewish elements was never in doubt. Nor have I suggested that Greek concepts were adopted uncritically or without modification. The "pagan" Platonists had plenty of disagreements among themselves. Iamblichus' seminal On the Mysteries of the Egyptians is framed as a polemic against Porphyry (and, by extension, Plotinus). Again, "copying" is a mischaracterization. Like Philo, medieval kabbalists were in their view drawing legitimately from a common inheritance of wisdom- the truth is one whether spoken by Jews or gentiles- and the gentile philosophers had ultimately learned from Jews anyway. The "pagan" Platonists likewise traced their views not only to Greeks but to various "barbarian" sages (barbarian here meaning foreign, not uncivilized)- these barbarian sages included Egyptians, Chaldeans/Babylonians, Brahmins, and, in some accounts, Hebrews. Porphyry in his anti-Christian polemics speaks very favorably of the Jews (and seems to know the scriptures quite well)- he regards them as inheritors of a genuine wisdom tradition. Iamblichus- of Arab extraction and proudly retaining his Arab name- castigated the Greeks as chasing after novelties while the wise barbarians held fast to the authentic tradition. So there was a general agreement in the late antique and medieval intellectual culture that there was some unified primordial wisdom tradition, shared between cultures, even if one saw this primarily/ most purely expounded by Moses, Thoth-Hermes, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, or someone else. Among the Abrahamic religions it was typical to draw on "pagan" thinkers with the understanding that that they had received some imperfect revelation which, once cleaned up of erroneous elements, could serve in expounding the true religion (whatever that was)- in fact, this "pagan" wisdom properly belonged to the true religion and ultimately stemmed from it. Moshe Idel gives some really good examples of this thinking among renaissance Italian Kabbalists:

This site has a good selection of quotes on Logos by various Stoics and middle Platonists (including Philo): https://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~funkk/Personal/logos.html Philo’s work proved influential for Christians trying to make sense of the New Testament Logos. Later Platonists like Plotinus and Proclus use Nous (usually translated “mind” or “intellect”) to designate something like Philo’s Logos. They use the term logoi to designate the principles by which the forms in the divine Nous are translated into ensouled and inanimate beings. Roughly by this schema, in the Zohar passage above, the big letters are forms, the little letters logoi. Christians like Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor take this notion of logoi and combine it with Christ the Logos to say that all the logoi in creation proceed from- and lead back to- the Logos, and by contemplating the logoi in creation we can ascend to contemplation of God. The logoi are not independent at all- insofar as anything strays from the will of God, it strays from its own logos. I’m not aware of any conception of the Logos as a being with “a will of its own.” Even the Christian Logos as a distinct “hypostasis” (problematically translated “person” in English) does not have his own will, will being a property of nature, and the Trinity being of one nature (homoousios), according the adaptation of Aristotelian categories by post-Nicene Christians. (Of course this is complicated by the Logos’ assumption of human nature- did Christ then assume a human will distinct from the divine will? This was a matter of bitter controversy in the 7th century which earned Maximus the name “Confessor” and essentially cost him his life). Leaving Logos aside, even the explicitly polytheist systems of Iamblichus and Proclus, which talk about the Demiurge, hypercosmic gods, encosmic gods, daemons, etc were easily cleaned up and adapted by monotheists since these “gods” are emanations from the One acting in perfect harmony and could easily be reframed as attributes or activities of the one God, or mapped onto the angelic hierarchy.

To say “there is no logos in monotheism” one would have to actually define what logos means. The term was used in many different ways in Greek philosophy and among Platonists. Depending on the sense it clearly does have an important role in all the monotheistic faiths. (Gospel of John being only the most obvious example). Often it is a principle related to, or identical with, God’s wisdom, creative pattern, etc. Kabbalah’s heavenly Adam or one or several of the sefirot, for instance, are logos along these lines.