The Voegelin Enigma

A fair assessment.

From The Mystical To The Political...

And back.

Winter In America 1975

Zilpo Road, Daniel Boone National Forest

With The Drawing Of This Love And The Voice Of This Calling...

Mysticism is not a form of belief but of practice, experience, gnosis, and rapture.

The preparation for the mystical "event" is skepsis about the ability of the sensus communis to deliver reliable access to that which calls the mystic to her destiny.

Her skepsis is warranted, for that which draws and calls the mystic eludes empirical investigation and rational analysis.

Religious communities that require credal assent in order to be "a member in good standing" tend to alienate mystics; circumspection and reticence towards communal norms and a responsiveness to the lisan al-ghaib distinguish the mystic from her neighbors and co-religionists.

To be alone with the alone is the mystic's destiny--and a strange fate.

Transgressive Transcendentalism Is Daoist Dervishhood

Part Irish:



Part Dervish:



Romantic Modernist:



Radical Hermeneut:



Heraclitean elements:



In every case, the number is four:

Civilization In A Cup

Turkish tea.



Turkish coffee.

Norbert Elias: On The Civilizing Process

The Importance Of Norbert Elias

Norbert Elias

Summer Solstice

Make the most of it.

Yo! Farmer Dude!

Thoughtful essay from the Front Porch Republic.

Happy Eid!

Prayer Of Anwari

O Lord, give me, in exchange for that luxury which was of yore,
The contentment of Truth and an innocent livelihood,
Security, health, and acceptable devotion,
A loaf of bread, a ragged cloak, and to sit apart in some corner.

(tr. E. G. Browne)

Not A Prophet

Wendell Berry.

The Matrix

Take the red pill.

The Lions Of Faith

The Lions of Faith do not fear any truth--no matter whose ox it may gore (including their own sacred cows). Instead, they fear the unexamined life and the degradation of faith in the form of credulity.



The Lions of Faith resist those who suggest--in the name of religion or nationalism or any other authority--that freedom must be surrendered in exchange for security. They respond to those Whisperers: "Get thee behind me, Satan!" (Matthew 16:23, KJV).



With the great Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111 CE), the Lions of Faith recognize taqlid (blind obedience) as "the religion of asses" and refuse it a seat at the table of the Feast of Faith.

Selfie

via GIPHY

The Tree Of Life

The world and the wine go round. At this banquet
drain a bowl or two and go, that is, don't long for eternal life.

~ Hafez, tr. E. T. Gray, Jr.

Psychotropics

The period of American history from 1965-1975 was the exception that proves the rule. Those of us who were fortunate enough to witness it remember it as a period (coinciding, a good friend of mine insists, with experimentation with psychotropic drugs as a means of achieving enlightenment—not escape) when there was broad questioning of just what the hell we were doing.

Given, however, that that period was exceptional, we need to adjust (downward) our expectations of what is possible most of the time, and certainly at the present time.

There is some room for hope as Colorado and California decriminalize some psychotropics and other states consider following suit (when they see the bonanza they can reap through taxing the sale of the stuff). But the keys to the decade from '65 to '75 were the spirit of experimentation and the goal of enlightenment. When escape is the goal, the results are not the same. And, in the long run, psychotropics can only show a person that things need not be as they are, they cannot show anyone how things ought to be. There is a different wine for that:

via GIPHY

Prayer Of Jami

O God! Dervish let me live and Dervish die, and in the company of Dervishes raise me to life eternal!

~ Nur ad-Din 'Abd ar-Rahman Jami (d. 1492 CE)

The Vine

The seed of Sufism was sown in the days of Adam; it sprang up during those of Noah; blossomed under Abraham; and, at the time of Moses, the grapes began to form; they came to maturity in the days of Jesus; and in those of Muhammad the wine was pressed from them.

Those of the Sufis who have loved this wine have drunk of it until self-consciousness was drowned...

~ Al-Bistami (d. 874 CE)

Narrow Is The Gate

Edirnekapi, Istanbul.

Rest Assured

As obnoxious and volatile as he may be, Donald Trump is not the end of the world. Cooler heads will prevail--not in the United States, with its religion of Disneyanity and culture of self-delusion--but rather in China.

While the hollow American empire has been bombing the daylights out of everyone it finds threatening to "the New World Order," the Chinese have been quietly fanning out around the globe cutting deals and building economic relationships of dependency.

This is because they’ve read their Marx carefully and understand that, before it collapses, capitalism shifts the world’s wealth and resources to the capitalists. That’s why they have become arch-capitalists: not because they think Jesus would have wanted it that way (an American delusion) but because they see the endgame and are preparing for the next big meltdown. For they also know that capitalism has repeatedly demonstrated itself to be an unstable system: without rationalized bureaucratic intervention, it lurches along in bi-polar fashion from boom-time to bust. So, when the next big bust finally comes, the Chinese plan to be sitting pretty. In the meantime, they are enjoying the benefits of Marxian materialism—though in a way that Marx himself, prophetic moralist that he was, would never have approved.

I doubt the next great meltdown will happen in my own lifetime; I suspect that we are still a couple of generations away. If history is any guide (and, unfortunately, it's our only guide), things can get far more dystopic than they are at present. And they probably will. American fascism will eventually wake up to the success of Chinese pragmatic Marxism and, in the name of all that's holy (i.e., a bigger slice of the global economic pie), start spoiling for a fight. What will come of that confrontation I cannot say. Trump's muddle-headed tariff policy is an early indication of American discomfort with Chinese success.

In the interim, however, the human race will hunker down deeper in its accustomed forms of self-delusion.

It is important to stress that we--ordinary human beings, cogs in the wheel--are not without options in this matter. We can follow the crowd and cultivate our own self-delusions or we can embrace the Near Eastern prophetic inheritance and model a better way—not looking for “results” (that’s so American)—but on principle. We can cultivate a subterranean counter-culture dedicated to something along the lines of Jack R. Lundbom's "a better righteousness."



As I say, we should not enter upon such a course hoping to turn the historical tide (though, of course, despite its remoteness as a possibility, that could happen); rather, we should do it as representatives of a worthy--if losing--cause. We should do it, in other words, because we wish to assert our personal integrity by conducting ourselves as class acts.

And the god alone knows best.

Sakina

Feed The Poor

From the Book of Neighbors.

Choose Ecstasy

The Soul should always stand ajar
That if the Heaven inquire
He will not be obliged to wait
Or shy of troubling Her

Depart, before the Host have slid
The Bolt unto the Door--
To search for the accomplished Guest,
Her Visitor, no more--

Emily Dickinson, 1055 (c. 1865)

Choose Life

XYZ Of Anarchism

ABC Of Anarchism

The Last Of The Great German Mystics

Both Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger labored to subvert the Plato to Kant tradition of Western philosophy—though, admittedly, by engaging with the tradition in order to subvert it they were inevitably contaminated by it.

Heidegger wrote Contributions To Philosophy alone in his hut in the Black Forest after he’d been banned from teaching. He considered Being and Time a failure and was starting from scratch. It reads like it was composed by someone from another planet.

Central Europe produced its own brand of mysticism due to the peculiarities of its own history. Besides Plato to Kant, German mystics had to overcome Christianity. I spot them points for that. But even if we grade them on a curve, they still end up only holding a candle in the bright sun of tasawwuf.

Anarchism's Hidden Histories

Let us focus on the hidden histories of the world and the everyday "saints of circumstance" who compose informal communities of grace and bear witness to the truth as they can best discern it.

Beyond the demonic obfuscation generated by the 24 hour news cycle, quiet revolutions unfold:

"The revolutionary alternative to the status quo today is not collectivized property administered by a 'workers' state' whatever that means, but some kind of anarchist decentralization that will break up mass society into small communities where individuals can live together as variegated human beings instead of as impersonal individuals in a mass sum...Anarchism leads back to the individual and the community, which is 'impractical' but necessary--that is to say, it is revolutionary."

~ Dwight Macdonald, cited in Colin Ward, Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford, 2004), 70-71.

San Juan Mountains