Sir Darius the Clairvoyent

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Posts posted by Sir Darius the Clairvoyent

  3. Posted

    First of all, let me say that I know way to little about your philosophy/tradition/religion/system. I hope you'll forgive any potential misunderstanding of your faith. I find a lot of beauty and wisdom in your system. One thing I am a little uncertain about tho, is the focus on suffering, and all the energy that goes into avoiding it. That suffering is part of life is absolutely undeniable. However, I wonder, if this perspective possibly hinders your from experiencing all the beauty of life?

     

    Again, I might be totally misunderstanding your way of life, and would really appreciate if someone could clarify.

  4. Posted

    I made a post on politics in the byzantine empire on a history forum I am active on. Nobody seemed to care tho. The reason I found it so intriguing, is the obvious parallels to today. Nothing have changed, seemingly. It is based on the following article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-rocking-the-byzantine-empire-113325928/. Either you can read that first hand, or you can take a look at my shortened version of it in the spoiler below.

     

    Spoiler

    (…)

    "Bread and circuses," the poet Juvenal wrote scathingly. "That's all the common people want." Food and entertainment.

    (…)

    By the sixth century A.D., after the western half of the empire fell, only two of these survived—the Greens had incorporated the Reds, and the Whites had been absorbed into the Blues. But the two remaining teams were wildly popular in the Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire, which had its capital at Constantinople, and their supporters were as passionate as ever—so much so that they were frequently responsible for bloody riots.

    Exactly what the Blues and the Greens stood for remains a matter of dispute among historians. For a long time it was thought that the two groups gradually evolved into what were essentially early political parties, the Blues representing the ruling classes and standing for religious orthodoxy, and the Greens being the party of the people.

    (…)

    These two threads—the fast-growing importance of the circus factions and the ever-increasing burden of taxation—combined in 532. By this time, John of Cappadocia had introduced no fewer than 26 new taxes, many of which fell, for the first time, on Byzantium's wealthiest citizens. Their discontent sent shock waves through the imperial city, which were only magnified when Justinian reacted harshly to an outbreak of fighting between the Greens and the Blues at the races of January 10. Sensing the disorder had the potential to spread, and eschewing his allegiance to the Blues, the emperor sent in his troops. Seven of the ringleaders in the rioting were condemned to death.


    The men were taken out of the city a few days later to be hanged at Sycae, on the east side of the Bosphorus, but the executions were botched. Two of the seven survived when the scaffold broke; the mob that had assembled to watch the hangings cut them down and hustled them off to the security of a nearby church. The two men were, as it happened, a Blue and a Green, and thus the two factions found themselves, for once, united in a common cause. The next time the chariots raced in the Hippodrome, Blues and Greens alike called on Justinian to spare the lives of the condemned, who had been so plainly and so miraculously spared by God.

    (…)

    It was at this point that Theodora proved her mettle. Justinian, panicked, was all for fleeing the capital to seek the support of loyal army units. His empress refused to countenance so cowardly an act. "If you, my lord," she told him,
     

    wish to save your skin, you will have no difficulty in doing so. We are rich, there is the sea, there too are our ships. But consider first whether, when you reach safety, you will regret that you did not choose death in preference. As for me, I stand by the ancient saying: the purple is the noblest winding-sheet.


    (…)

    Shamed, Justinian determined to stay and fight. Both Belisarius and Narses were with him in the palace, and the two generals planned a counterstrike. The Blues and the Greens, still assembled in the Hippodrome, were to be locked into the arena. After that, loyal troops, most of them Thracians and Goths with no allegiance to either of the circus factions, could be sent in to cut them down.


    Imagine a force of heavily armed troops advancing on the crowds in the MetLife Stadium or Wembley and you'll have some idea of how things developed in the Hippodrome, a stadium with a capacity of about 150,000 that held tens of thousands of partisans of the Greens and Blues. While Belisarius' Goths hacked away with swords and spears, Narses and the men of the Imperial Bodyguard blocked the exits and prevented any of the panicking rioters from escaping. "Within a few minutes," John Julius Norwich writes in his history of Byzantium, "the angry shouts of the great amphitheater had given place to the cries and groans of wounded and dying men; soon these too grew quiet, until silence spread over the entire arena, its sand now sodden with the blood of the victims."

    (…)

    With the massacre complete, Justinian and Theodora had little trouble re-establishing control over their smoldering capital. The unfortunate Hypatius was executed; the rebels' property was confiscated, and John of Cappadocia was swiftly reinstalled to levy yet more burdensome taxes on the depopulated city.


    The Nika Riots marked the end of an era in which circus factions held some sway over the greatest empire west of China, and signaled the end of chariot racing as a mass spectator sport within Byzantium. Within a few years the great races and Green-Blue rivalries were memories.

    Cant help but see parallels to every society to know to man (in the west at least, a little ignorant on the rest of the world). Bread and circus is self evident. Two opposing parties (the right and the left) arguing passionatley and hatefully, thinking they are right and the other part evil. The two party system giving the illusion of a democracy. But when push comes to show, the man dressed in the finest, royal purple calls all the shots. 

     

     

    Also, I have read a little of Platos Republic. The segment on the noble lie gave me the creeps. I know he is an important character in many esoteric circles. Is it social engineering? Could anyone help shed some light on this?

     

  5. Posted

    15 hours ago, Nungali said:

     "ESSENTIALS OF METHOD

    I. Theology is immaterial; for both Buddha and St. Ignatius were Christs.

    II. Morality is immaterial; for both Socrates and Mohammed were Christs.

    III. Super-consciousness is a natural phenomenon; its conditions are therefore to be sought rather in the acts than the words of those who attain it.

    The essential acts are retirement and concentration — as taught by Yoga and Ceremonial Magic. "

    That paragraph has baffled me for a while. Finally it clicked.

  6. Posted

    15 hours ago, Nungali said:

    " Thou therefore who desirest Magical Gifts, be sure that thy soul is firm and steadfast; for it is by flattering thy weaknesses that the Weak Ones will gain power over thee. Humble thyself before thy Self, yet fear neither man not spirit. Fear is failure, and the forerunner of failure: and courage is the beginning of virtue. "

    https://sacred-texts.com/oto/lib30.htm

     

     

    Beautifull text

  7. Posted

    28 minutes ago, old3bob said:

     

    "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", is straight forward and is related to karma, so what kind of karma would we want to come back on us!

    Sure, I am not talking about running around killing everyone and everything. I do not think that would happen even If we admitted good and evil is entirely a construct. I just have a problem with moralizing, and wonder if it is a tool of control. A way to pressure others to behave the way youd like them to behave and is good for you, but maybe not themself.

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    As I see it, life is nothing but cause and effect, and therefore predeterment. In other words, you have no controll - what happens, happens. Why worry about things out of your controll? That just make your problems infinetly worse. I find the deterministic world view very liberating, and I feel way more self secure and less anxious after I have started thinking in these ways.

     

    Fortune favours the bold.

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    Tacitus, germania:

     

    The Germans do not think it in keeping with the divine majesty to confine gods within walls or to portray them in the likeness of any human countenance. Their holy places are woods and groves, and they apply the names of deities to that hidden presence which is seen only by the eye of reverence. 

     

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    On 5.10.2024 at 7:53 PM, manitou said:

     

     

    There is only one void, on this level at least.  The concept of Dao is an intelligence which controls but doesn't care, lol.  We are as ceremonial straw dogs to 'the Dao'.  To me, that means it doesn't really matter to It who lives and who dies, where or when.  Bringing it to the Old Testament, wasn'st there some sort of prohibition on saying the word 'God', or Ra, or Jehovah, or whatever they used?  I understand that now.  It's just like the Dao.  The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao.  Probably the same state of awe with the origin of the concept of Jehovah.  I don't think that it was a punishable offense for 'saying the name', but I'll bet the ancient Christians understood that there was just no one word for such magnificence. 

    Indeed it does. One of the ten commandmeds reads: you shall not take the name of God your lord in vain. The one before that says you shall not make idols, so your interpertation seems valid. And the first one: you shall not have other gods before me. Ironically, the old hebrews seems to have been henothistic, and there are plentifull of examples of other gods being mentioned in the bible. But maybe we are witnessing the transformation and struggles of a people trough religious reforms?

     

    No offense daoist, but can the term dao be used in the way westerners often use nature? I have been reading Aurelius, and I find it very intruiging how he talks about the gods, uniervsal reason, nature and fate almost synomously. 

  16. Posted

    (3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the
    birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will
    precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you
    come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you
    who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in
    poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
     

    ^ this is my Jesus tho. Could read it a thouasand times and never get tired of it.

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1

  17. Posted

    Ty for introducing me to something New, tho:

     

    Avalokiteśvara was translated into Guanyin or Guanshiyin 觀世音 in Chinese, which means “the one who hears (the world’s) sounds” – in the sense of hearing the world’s prayers – and has become the most important bodhisattva in Chinese and East Asian Buddhism. These two names were later borrowed into Japanese as Kannon and Kanzeon, respectively.
     

    It is good wording, I belive. Not suggesting that I have any thing to say on it after reading a paragraph fron wiki, however.

  18. Posted

    Just now, Apech said:


    I can’t find the reference but some suggest that meek in this context refers to someone who has the power to react but refuses to use it.  Like perhaps self restrained or something like that.

    It should, that is where virtue comes in, IMO. 

  19. Posted

    11 minutes ago, Thrice Daily said:

    I'm interested to know if people pray to guanyin in a similar way to Mary, it seems like I'm off track with that analogy though... 

    alright, let me just share my take on this. I stress that it is my own, I am not talking on behalf of anyone. But I see prayer as not to different from meditating on a concept. Giving thanks, maybe, and maybe you direct that towards God, or nature or the universe or what have you, but I really do not think it matters. Nor do I think the words used matters. Do I have to tell the gods anything, and do they speak Norwegian or english?

  20. Posted

    Also, we have the much more… fiery view from Nietzche. He uses some terms you might want to avoid useing on a first date, but we are all grown ups, no?

     

    Spoiler

    that priestly nation which eventually realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was at the same time an act of the cleverest revenge. Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary equation, namely, "the wretched are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation—but you, on the other hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!" We know who it was who reaped the heritage of this Jewish transvaluation. In the context of the monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative which the Jews have exhibited in connection with

    [Pg 31]

    this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I remember the passage which came to my pen on another occasion (Beyond Good and Evil, Aph. 195)—that it was, in fact, with the Jews that the revolt of the slaves begins in the sphere of morals; that revolt which has behind it a history of two millennia, and which at the present day has only moved out of our sight, because it—has achieved victory.

    On the genealogy of morals, The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Genealogy of Morals, by Friedrich Nietzsche.

     

  21. Posted

    5 minutes ago, Apech said:


    I think meek has a specific meaning which you might like to look up.

    This one:

     

    Meek in the Greek literature of the period most often meant gentle or soft. Nolland writes that a more accurate interpretation for this verse is powerless.[5] Clarke notes how important and revolutionary this elevation of meekness was in the Mediterranean societies of the time that placed enormous stock in honor and status.[6]Strong's entry for the Greek word praus lists it as "mild, gentle".[7]
     

    ?

     

    I must say, it is a very curious concept in a way. Let me share a passage from the foreword of Epictetus work, written by Viggo Johansen on the stoic influence on christianity. Think you might enjoy it:

     

    Spoiler

    Here is the English translation of the two pages:

    ---

    **Page 12:**

    "In his introduction to Marcus Aurelius' classic *Meditations* (1964, Penguin Classics), the Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth discusses the influence Stoicism has had on Christianity. He wrote that the author of the Gospel of John declared Christ to be identical with the *logos*, 'which for a long time had been one of the most important concepts within Stoicism, originally chosen with the purpose of explaining how divinity existed in relation to the universe.' Staniforth also wrote that the doctrine of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—finds its source in the various Stoic concepts of divine unity. The fact that these three are one, he further claims, appears paradoxical to modern people, but..."

    **Page 13:**

    "...entirely ordinary for someone familiar with Stoic thought.

    The Church Fathers regarded Stoicism as a pagan philosophy. Nevertheless, early Christian writers adopted many of Stoicism's central philosophical concepts, such as the *logos* (which we have already discussed), as well as other highly central theological concepts such as 'virtue,' 'spirit,' and 'conscience.' However, the similarities run deeper than just terminology. Both Stoicism and Christianity claim that humans have an inherent possibility for inner freedom, independent of the outer world, a belief in humanity's kinship with Nature or God, a fundamental assumption that human nature is flawed, even though there is a way out, and that it is futile to seek refuge in everything that is external and perishable. Both recommend asceticism, especially spiritual exercises, to avoid being governed by the lower emotions—such as lust, envy, greed, and hate—so that the higher potential of the human being can be awakened and developed. But above all, Stoicism and Christianity converge in the idea of equality: We all have equal worth by virtue of being human. In antiquity, this was a very radical idea. The Stoics considered all people equal, regardless of race, gender, rank, or status, on the basis that everyone shares in nature in the same way. What is essential in human nature is that it is a spiritual being, and within the spirit, there is no hierarchy. At this point, Stoicism broke with the common ancient view that made a fundamental distinction between citizens and barbarians, between slave and master. That this appears as an equally important..."

     

  22. Posted

    3 hours ago, old3bob said:

     

    well there are several variations and here is one example:  Quote: "Panentheism views God as both immanent and transcendent. This means that while the entire universe is a part of God, God also exists beyond the universe. As such, this God can be a personal God, a conscious being that manifested the universe with whom one can have a personal relationship 2018"

    I like that very much.

     

    Meditations, second book, paragraph III:

    III. What comes from the gods is permeated by their providence. The work of fate is not nature foreign, nor is it different from the web that is woven by fortune. Everything flows from there. The necessary comes from it, and what benefits the entire universe that you are a part of. What all-nature gives, and what serves to sustain it, is also good for every part of nature. The world is sustained by change, changes in the things that the elements form, as much as the elements themselves. Let that be enough for you if you accept these teachings. Free yourself from your thirst for books, so that you do not die with rebellion in your heart, but sincerely content and with a heart grateful to the gods.

  23. Posted

    47 minutes ago, doc benway said:

    Not sure if any of that makes sense but it's fun to chat about "it" once in a while.

    Let me offer a radically different perception of «it,» for a moment, if only as a thought experiment. How about fully embracing this very personal and limited experience can be very fulfilling? That instead of trying to escape it, you say yes from the bottom of your heart, even your perception might or might not be in accordance to the underlying… what term would you prefer here? I think you would prefer no term, but can we call it reality?

  24. Posted · Edited by NaturaNaturans

    27 minutes ago, ChiDragon said:


    The same token goes with Tao.
    Tao was created by Laozi, then Tao was said to be before god or deity. Tao is on top the universe to monitor how things are created properly. If not, so let it be by following the course of nature. That is what the Laozi's philosophy of Wu Wei(無為) was all about.

    Let me repeat something I just read ans commented on in another thread: the chinese translation of the greek term Logos (the Word in english). They translate it as Dao. This was helpfull info for me aswell, since it gave me a lense to understand dao better with. So lets see:

     

     

     

    John 1
     
    King James Version
     
     

    1 In the beginning was the Word/logos/Dao, and the Word/logos/Dao was with God, and the Word/logos/Dao was God.

    2 The same was in the beginning with God.

    3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

    4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

    5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

     

    Another interresting curiousity, is, I belive, that in the works of Aurelius and Epictetus, the term gods and nature are used interchangebly.

     

    Â