How evil would it be..

If someone were to offer his services doing electional astrology on IPOs to help venture capitalists invest on safe horses? And how much more evil would it be to offer extra magical services to dope up those safe horses?

I’m not personally considering doing these things, I’m not that good with electional astrology besides all my moral qualms about such a thing. But I wonder about how others see this. And while the extra magical services could range from the benign i.e. a blessing on a company to do well, to the malevolent i.e. nasty-rumor boosting against any adversaries in the same industry, the astrological part isn’t that different than doing horary astrology for wedding dates from a practical standpoint.

I’d like to start a discussion on the moral implications of aiding particular individuals become more successful doing what they do, assuming that what they do isn’t the most beneficial thing for the rest of society.

We occultists have accepted the black and white dichotomy more or less, even though it’s pretty shallow and objectionable in many cases. But is there such a thing as black and white astrology? Thoughts?

[Featured image is Viktor Vasnetsov’s Alyonushka, source.]

Astromagical project now called the Snowflake Project: update I

Started writing my last post on the 20th on basically little more than a whim, finished and posted it on the 21st, found a good solution to the problem a few hours later which I’ll write about in this post but I completely forgot I’ve missed the Equinox and I’ve been planning for it! Being so intensely focused isn’t always a good thing. So more astromagic and in this specific post, a lot of sacred geometry.

Initiating the astromagical project I wrote about in the 11th thesis

I should have checked if this is a good birthday for it but I didn’t because I’m impulsive sometimes. Actually, I’m better at everything when I’m impulsive so this should work anyway. For reference, this is the practical stage of exploring if what I wrote about in this post is workable.

This is also the first time I’m making my magical work public in this way. I’m really not used to this but anyway. A warning to the curious though. It might get boring and it might at times look crazy so if you’re not really interested in my type of experimental magic, you are better off reading some of the other posts on this blog. Actually, it does look crazy until you consider that this is more or less standard magical practice -although we all have our quirky methods and there’s not one method for all- and that it’s basically little more than creating symbols through solving a cosmic puzzle of correspondences while trying to make the symbol harmonic, symmetric and basically pretty.

Anyway, this post is going to be more technical and less expository than anything else I’ve written so far. Comments and input however are always welcome, especially if you spot any kind of error. That’s the point of going public with this.

The Four Elements of Empedocles: part III Random observations instead of a conclusion

• Part I: Introduction, The Four Elements, The method, Properties of the Elements, The Principles of Love and Strife, Magic
• Part II: The First State, Evolution of Living Forms, The Magnum Opus, Practical Claims, Biographical Traditions and a note on morality
• Part III: Anticipating Science, Uneducated ramblings on the Big Bang

On Nature is a treasure trove of ideas and insights. I’d recommend everyone to read through both that and Purifications, since they both take little more than half an hour and that would be the complete set of fragments we have from Empedocles. Two full translations plus the original Greek text can be found here and a more recent translation based on a new reconstruction from a different papyrus can be found here. The later is by far the most poetically translated and is a delight to read but it sometimes obfuscates the meaning so I chose Burnet’s old translation for most of my quotes.

Instead of a proper conclusion that would be solely focused on what I’ve been examining, I’ll simply use the previous two posts as a jumping point to talk about related subjects.

The Four Elements of Empedocles: part II

• Part I: Introduction, The Four Elements, The method, Properties of the Elements, The Principles of Love and Strife, Magic
• Part II: The First State, Evolution of Living Forms, The Magnum Opus, Practical Claims, Biographical Traditions and a note on morality
• Part III: Anticipating Science, Uneducated ramblings on the Big Bang

The First State

Besides explaining how the world is the way it is, Empedocles also explains the creation of the world. This is by far one of the strangest parts of On Nature.

The Four Elements of Empedocles: part I

In Love we come together in one world;
in Hatred many grew from one to be apart,
whence all that was, and is, and shall at some time be
blossomed as trees, as men, as women too,
as beasts, as birds, as fish that water rears,
as well as gods who ages live and greatest honours have.

In Her they never cease to swirl in constant flux
with frequent whirlings . .
relentlessly, and never do they cease. .
But many ages previous must elapse . .
before their motions alter . .

They never cease in any way to swirl in constant flux.

Empedocles, On Nature (fragment), 267-278.

• Part I: Introduction, The Four Elements, The method, Properties of the Elements, The Principles of Love and Strife, Magic
• Part II: The First State, Evolution of Living Forms, The Magnum Opus, Practical Claims, Biographical Traditions and a note on morality
• Part III: Anticipating Science, Uneducated ramblings on the Big Bang

Introduction

Does this not reach the heights of the sublime? Yet, it would be hard to see that in modern sources that simply discuss the ideas or the historical importance of Empedocles. The account will be dry and beyond doubt biased. Modern scholars seek to see in Empedocles nothing that goes beyond their own image. Sometimes he is a rationalist, a precursor of science, a physicist. It’s not only the implications of his words that are removed and discarded, it is his words themselves. Empedocles must not be allowed to be completely comprehended on his own terms. He must be filtered through modern concepts. Such a rational philosopher could not have been a believer in the Gods. He could not have been a magician. People as smart and perceptive as Empedocles discard all that nonsense. Or is the truth that people as intelligent and perceptive as Empedocles, when seeking wisdom and ask the Gods for it, sometimes attain it, which puts them ahead and outside of their time but ours as well? Could Empedocles, in the entirety of his philosophy instead of the mangled image that is presented to us, be beyond the mundane comprehension of modern scholars?

How to re-enchant the world?

The short and easy answer: You can’t re-enchant what’s already enchanted. You don’t need to try. The long answer? It might be hard to put this into words, which is exactly the point of what I’ll try to say.

The 11th thesis applied to astrology

Probably too cryptic a title. To spare any reader from the horrid act of googling and guessing I’ll quickly decipher what I mean and then expound on it. The 11th thesis is a famous maxim by Karl Marx -famous among marxists at least-, found in his short list of notes on the ideas of Feuerbach, collectively called Theses on Feuerbach. The eleventh and final note is this: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.“

Can we substitute the word philosophers for the word astrologers there? And if we can, is it possible to change the world with knowledge of the influence of the stars or change the influence of the stars and so, the world?

Witches going to witchwar against Boko Haram: Not exactly a cunning plan

I’ve been reading some completely ridiculous shit on various blogs lately that made me rethink how misguided certain Greek -meaning nationals- Polytheists are. Turns out, foreigners are just as misguided. I guess that’s good because it helps me cast off this impression I’ve had that we’re especially bad when it comes to attaching completely irrational crap to the Greek Religion. Nope, actually we’re not. But I wasn’t so negatively surprised by polytheists this time. It was witches.