More on feminism, wicca, and egyptian gnosticism
This post needs revision and proofing, but I will restore it anyway….
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap4_1.htm
Our discussion yesterday and before of the issues of religion, reformation, versus the archaic legacies of magic and witchcraft, suggests taking a look at the ‘eonic outline of history’: note that we don’t see any action on the issues of ‘magic’, etc, in any of the Axial Age religions. In fact if we backtrack further to the earlier era, there is still a component of such in Egyptian religion, and most probably Sumerian seed civilization, if you can sort out the hopeless confusion of fringe theories here.
Consider the way in which Xtianity is prefigured in the ‘religion’ of Isis/Osiris, etc… A close look at Egyptian religion (Dynastic era, the Pre-Dynastic data if we had it would probably solve the whole problem) shows the bifurcation between general religion and gnosticism that we see in the later world in which Xtianity arose.
The world of Egyptian gnosticism, very hard to understand (most experts don’t understand it), would assist in making clear the chaos of semi-religious and spiritual cults and proto-religions that never survived, and that would make clear why the religions are antagonistic to ‘gnosticisms’. The feminist wish for a radical witchcraft is exactly the kind of thing involved, and that was even stronger in the Egyptian world. But you can’t travel to modernity with such things. They are so old, so toxic and now demonic, as to be useless. But in the cult of Isis/Osiris you see the legacies of witchcraft sublated into a genuine religious form, as the feminists here unconsciously aspire to. But, again, that is so ancient (archaic religious forms always cancerate and turn demonic) as to be useless. But it does show what I said doesn’t exist: the equivalent in higher religion of a sublimation of the archaic feminine to make witchcraft a spiritual form. The patriarchal age suppressed that, and it is a valid protest to challenge that historic turn. But it is a lost cause in its archaic forms. A new and higher spiritualization of ‘witchcraft’ is too much to hope for in our age, but you never know. At any rate, it can’t be accomplish by freelancers of the Aleister Crowley type, female version. And in a ‘secular’ age noone will have the foggiest idea of what you wish to do.
I would not go trying to imitate/revive any of that. But it is a reminder to be wary of the lore of wicca which is contradictory in its archaic/futurist formation/aspiration.
Still we are going to see a lot of kamikazis try all this. A good example is Aleister Crowley, an obvious case of the freelancer. The result is a hopeless mess of nearly psychopathic black magic, malevolent posturing, and demonic invocation. That in’t the grand tradition, please! It has no support in the modern seed transition from the Reformation onward. You can protest that it should be some esoteric right to penetrate these secrets. If anyone has succeeded, it is news to me. In fact lone rangers may well succeed, but they are lost to history. The eonic effect distinguishes the ‘stream and sequence’ (horizontal and vertical hitory, as it were) side to history, and the horizontal legacy of Egyptian gnosticism is powerful and delusive stream from greater antiquity. It is this once ‘vertical’ religious component, entering the horizontal stream in degenerate forms, that has so confused the realm of new age, occult, rosicrucian, etc, sideshows to modernity. Perhaps in the future this will change, but it is hard to see how anyone will derive a sound religion from the psychotic mess of pottage of figures like Crowley et al.(who are the basic prime influence in the wicca movement). In the world of scientism all this will be thought crazy nonsense, not without some justification. Look at the remarkable Book of the Law, by Crowley: emerging from obscure provenance from an unknown source in the Egypt of the early twentieth century (Aha, another Egyptian gnostic operator at work). That remarkable work was the crucial moment when something like a sublimation of magic to a religious level could have occurred. Instead all we see is an ultra obscure and devious occult mishmash that will drive anyone who studies it crazy, as indeed it beguiled and ruined Crowley. It is a remnant of the shadow world of Eggyptian gnosticism, who incarnate over and over in the dead realm of occult immortals, people we never meet in public.
Compare the scale of the modern transition (see WHEE) with the efforts of lone individuals and you can see where lone rangers are unable to compute the right scope to their efforts.
It is hard to fathom whey gnostic forms decay so badly and become satanic. Perhaps you can see the effect in the Indic gurus who reincarnate (rarely) AFTER reaching enlightenment ( I don’t know if that makes sense or is exactly right). They become obscure mysteries and belong to a different realm, and do more harm than good, like Satya Sai Baba…people we could dod without. They simply corrupt the whole game. A similar effect has occurred in Egyptian gnosticism…
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 