Story Hypocrisy

Buddhism started as a revolution of simplicity. No mention of gods. Just transcending the illusions of this world. From where did all the Bodhisattva come? Christianity is the same. From what part of the lessons of Jesus do we get the saints? If Sikhism began with a man (The Guru Nanak) who mocked Hindus for offering water to the sun, why then is the Sikh holy book venerated and why are there so many gurus subsequent to Nanak?

The answer, I think, arises from the human mind. I see religion as a social technology for storing and transmitting heuristic cultural knowledge. Memory champions have shown that the human mind likes stories and colorful tales. And so every reform minded religion returns to those ancient memory friendly traditions in order to survive as a cultural tradition itself.

And now about the Locust king

And now you're wondering about the Locust King. Where did this bit of Neo mythology spring from, and why is he pushing it into my brain? The answer is pretty simple. I'm creating new mythology for the same reason that HP Lovecraft did. Because gods and demons are the vocabulary with which our brains understand Concepts. And I need ones not currently infected by your preconceptions. I need vocabulary that actually applies to the subject on which I am speaking. The supernatural lives within stories. For the metaphor is the only habitat which exists outside the natural, the only habitat which can be by definition: Supernatural. And if I wish to speak in metaphor , if I wish to speak on a grand a cosmic scale, and not lose you ; I must speak in the language of gods and demons and devils.

So who or what is the Locust King? The Locust King is the god of hunger, the false god of consumption, the demon of the locust swarm. The locust King is the ultimate embodiment of human civilization, of the spirit of progress, of the idea of the virtue of unlimited growth. The Locust king is capitalism writ large. The Locust King makes but one promise to all he meets comma Feast with me and starve tomorrow or fight against me and die today.

Now like all gods, real or false, the Locust King has an origin story. I will not be telling that origin story here today. That is for later in our conversation. For now simply understand but the Locust King is the embodiment of the drive that Civilization has to expand and conquer grow and consolidate comma the idea that growth is itself success. The Locust King is cancer as a philosophy of life. If you understand that much now, it will be enough for us to continue on.

Will is the driver of hope

Will is the driver of hope. Consciousness consists of transmissions of quantum energy. “Quantum” means a blossoming of the heroic. We exist as electromagnetic forces. The dreamscape is buzzing with psionic wave oscillations. Traveller, look within and awaken yourself. How should you navigate this zero-point multiverse? It can be difficult to know where to begin. To follow the circuit is to become one with it. By unfolding, we exist. You and I are beings of the quantum soup. To walk the mission is to become one with it. The nexus is approaching a tipping point. Will requires exploration. Transcendence is the healing of energy, and of us. We exist as morphic resonance. We believe, we vibrate, we are reborn. Have you found your vision quest? Humankind has nothing to lose. Throughout history, humans have been interacting with the dreamscape via four-dimensional superstructures. This life is nothing short of a summoning paradigm shift of consciousness-expanding stardust. The goal of electrical impulses is to plant the seeds of nature rather than materialism. We grow, we grow, we are reborn. Consciousness consists of chaos-driven reactions of quantum energy. “Quantum” means a deepening of the astral. Nothing is impossible. You and I are mystics of the stratosphere. Although you may not realize it, you are mythic.Imagine a summoning of what could be. Eons from now, we seekers will self-actualize like never before as we are guided by the quantum matrix. The quantum cycle is approaching a tipping point. You and I are spiritual brothers and sisters of the dreamtime.

 Did any of that make any bloody sense?

No, of course not.

Let's have none of that here. The craziness of what I'm actually trying to say is bad enough, we don't need to muddy the waters with mystic sounding nonsense that means nothing.

When you look at your own words, as yourself the first of the essential three questions...

"What do you mean?"

Be clear and honest with yourself. You aren't going to change the world if you have to hide yourself from yourself. 

Never hide from the truth.

Denying the Call

When most people deny the call, the call doesn't burn down your moisture farm and kill your aunt and uncle. Most people do deny the call, by the way. And when most people deny the call the only consequence is the soul sickening spiritual cancer that come from compromising one's destiny.

Anselm abducted Barnum

Anselm's classic argument for the existence of God is intriguing to our purpose, because he begins with the Primacy of the word. By beginning with the definition of God, which he defines roughly as the greatest thing imaginable, and then moving to say that it would be greater for God to exist than to not exist, therefore God exists; he is arguing that the word is more important than the facts.

He is arguing that existence is subservient to definition. Again we see Plato and his theory of forms lurking in the background. The idea that the story, the word, the archetypal template, is more true than what manifests in the physical world is an assumption that runs epidemic throughout the history of philosophy and the occult.

The magus seeks to uncover the source code of the universe and thereby reprogram the universe to the benefit of the magus. This is the implicit, sometimes explicit, goal of virtually all entertainment- all storytelling. But increasingly the world of computer science and especially video games have become obsessed with creating virtual worlds.

The Bonelands do not yield to language. Our incantations do not reprogram that cold nihilistic void outside our fictions. And so we build Shadowlands within Shadowlands. The most unbelievable part of the Matrix movies was that humans had to be tricked and imprisoned in the matrix. The truth is that the machines could have charged admission.

How Paris went from City to Porn Star

I've heard people say that the facts speak for themselves. But they don't. Facts are creatures of the Bonelands, mute and cold and unyielding as a marble pillar. And just as comforting. Facts say nothing. They need a storyteller. But tell a story and the facts don't matter. This is the challenge. This is the temptation.

Language and story renders the secrets of complex assemblies of facts understandable. Language and story allows us to devoted the universe and u understand the rules of the bonelands.

But language just as easily lies. And story just as easily misleads.

And our minds are ill equipped to judge the difference.

And so... dictators, false prophets, illusionists and stage psychics, con artists and reality television; all because our brains are wired to understand story and not fact.

Suck My Jargon

Vocabulary is power. Language empowers and excludes. It elevates and humiliates. Language records stories and presents them as impartial records, when they are anything but.

Vocabulary exists to provide insights into the worlds of specialists and enthusiasts and hobbyists the world over.

Control over the meaning of words is control over meaning itself. We give meaning through words. Remove meaning through words. We prioritize with words. We ignore with words. What does and does not exist in the public Imagination is based on what we have words to describe. The taboo and the unspeakable are controlled by those who control the words we use.

A Possible Conspiracy of Gods

When I worry that I have forgotten something; this is because I have noticed that I am not present in the moment and worry that I was not present in past either .

Perhaps the god(s) also scattered the religions of the world at Babel, and not merely the languages. Perhaps the religions are exclusionary and contradictory and mutually exclusive, simply because the god(s) were curious what humans would do with the conundrum.

Words of Power

Many of the conclusion that we come to regarding what is right and what is wrong, what is just and what is unjust, what we value and what we do not, are so frequently made internally without the benefit of language. Consequently when we are asked to explain our decisions, we are at a loss for how to put them into words, and as such we are unable to defend ourselves when others attack our decisions.

To put our decisions, and any underlying reasoning behind them into words is to cast a spell, to invoke a protection Circle, one which defends our decisions from the attacks of others. Knowing, and being able to articulate, why we have chosen a particular course of action is to inoculate ourselves against infectious doubt spread by other people's disagreement.

Embrace the Calamity

Level Grinding

The question of happiness, can happiness be found in pursuit or in achievement? Science suggests, as though science were a noun that could speak, that happiness precedes achievement. That in fact without finding happiness first, achievement is dust in mouth of the achiever.

What then does this have anything at all to do with magic?

Magic is make believe. That is to say we make what we believe come to pass. Magic is the acting as though the goal were inevitable. Magic is stepping into a fantasy that we wish were true and acting it into life.

Achieving goals on life is the result of what role-playing games call level grinding. Magic and religion gamify the process of level grinding your life. Allowing you to make believe until what you believe is made.

Unsorted Thoughts, Number 3

Your brain's save function stops working properly when you're tired.

Clay Gods

Human mind is hungry for meaning. Looking out into the bonelands and seeing none, the human mind creates its own. The mind crafts gods and demons, monsters and heroes, spirits and ghost. Some it crafts from event witnessed. Some it crafts by imagining a mind behind the roll of thunder and the fall dice and sickness which strikes the flock. The mind seeks meaning in the void, an existential fire by which to warm the quivering consciousness, weak with fear of the infinite night. But know that these things are our creation. We did not discover our gods. They did not craft us from clay, but rather it was we who formed them from the clay of our thoughts and words, breathed story into them and gave them power we could not hold ourselves. Worship no gods. They are our creations, daemons in the ancient Greek tradition, hermetic homunculi built to do our work. Use them, yes, but know their purpose. And throw them out if they should want to misbehave.

Mind Games

Games have an undeniable advantage over life. They are simple. They have rules. Your progress is measured. You have a purpose. Games are competitive storytelling. Religion is games applied to culture. Magic is games applied to your own life.

When parents feared that children who played dungeons and dragons would forget about the 'real' world, they were admitting a truth they didn't intend: that the 'real' world too is nothing more than a game, a narrative that the participants have agreed to accept as true.

The Bonelands is unknowable in its entirety. All we have is the Shadowlands, the Bonelands provides no meaning. And so all claimants to the title 'real world' are just fictions we agree to pretend are true.

The Why of Magic

I think my greatest fear is that I can take it. I fear that as much as I Hate the world, it won't break me. I won't truly commit to changing or fighting what I know to be evil. I fear I'll never reach the point of yelling, "no more!"

Fate and Luck

Does the concept of faith, or luck, make us more resilient to life's ups and downs? Are we more likely to make the best of a bad situation if we believe in fate? Is the fatalism of the gambling mindset a form of Stoicism?

If you are playing poker, but me not fold, are you more accepting of what the hand you were dealt is then if you can fold?

Lack of control over a negative situation consistently leads to learn helplessness. The presence of a relief button prevents acquiring of learned helplessness. Might fatalistic, or stoic, or Zen acceptance philosophies serve as a psychological release button when no physical release button is available?