Gonzo Soup

    

John Roddam Spencer Stanhope's The Waters of the Lethe by the Plains of Elysium

    There is gonzo style writing, and then there is gonzo style writing, and this is going to be on the gonzo end of gonzo...gonzo.  I'm not going to go quoting anyone directly or adding hyperlinks (although my sense of esthetics will likely not allow me to not put at least one cool picture or so in the mix).  The holidays are behind us, just Imbolc on the horizon, and the peace and quiet that slightly floats on the air just before a snow storm abounds.  We can breathe the bitter cold air in easily now that Uncle Dip Shit and friends are back to being drunks in the privacy of their own rat infested, intellect vanquished, sports hole fried possom ass hole ambiance.  I don't even think they would eat that shit without ranch to dip it in (RIP George Carlin).  Let's, those of us with at least a pretend simulacrum of sentience, all breathe that bitter cold winter air in together and let it heal our beer chips and ranch cheese farts infected holiday lungs together.  Man, I feel better already!  In case you have not figured it out yet I am a complete, unashamed, no compunction having misanthrope.   I really hate people as a collective and yet also really care a lot about them.  I mostly just don't like listening to their faces when they go on about trivial trivialities.  I'm an Aquarian Sun after all. Lest I sound arrogant, I'm also wrong sometimes and believe that other people have lots to teach me.  But it's hard out here for an Aquarian!  

    What I want to talk about, now that I've cleared my lungs of that holiday funk, is the Daimon.  I've been aware of the concept for quite some time, but I just recently read an excellent book on the topic by James Hillman called "The Soul's Code."  I highly recommend anyone reading these words to get a copy off ebay and read it (there are plenty of copies to be had for around $4.50 with free shipping).  Hillman has been on my radar for some time, but then the signal got particularly strong due to synchronicity and that book came to me in the mail (not really synchronistically because I ordered it).  James Hillman was an American psychologist who studied under the tutelage of C.G. Jung in Zurich in the 60's, but then he branched off and took Jung's work in some different directions; not unlike Jung did with Freud, but also not quite as far afield as Jung did with Freud.  Having just read the one Hillman book, I'm no expert, but the general gist of it is that we are all born with a Daimon (Hillman was a Platonist).  What is a daimon I hear you thinking.  Well, it's not a demon, but it's also not not a demon.  It's like between a demon and an angel.  In fact, the Christian conception of a daimon is the "guardian angel."  A daimon can be demonic or angelic, and we don't really get to chose which.  That's not license to go on a psychopathic murdering spree.  

    In "The Soul's Code," Hillman uses biography to explore the concept of the daimon.  He uses extraordinary people, like Judy Garland, Josephine Baker, and Hitler (among many others), because they are marginal cases and so it's easier to see their daimon's in action.   Yeah, but what is a daimon?  I think the simplest way to understand it is with the concept of the soul.  The daimon is your soul, and it's here to do something, it has a purpose, and that purpose is also your purpose if you are to have one.  The daimon is what calls you to do what is extraordinary and important.  The daimon incarnates into your body to make use of it for it's own purposes, and it really doesn't care if you like it or not.  It's not that it doesn't care about you, it does, it just doesn't like to be ignored, and most of us ignore it.  I think we are taught to ignore it, and we are told that it's due to necessity that we should ignore it, and that is ironic because of Plato's myth of Er which is where the concept comes from.  In that myth the goddess Necessity has the final say about the shape of your daimon.  After the Moira (pictured above) get finished putting it together for you it's placed under the lap of Necessity (something like that...I'd have to go digging to be sure and this is gonzo remember?).  Why should we ignore our daimon?  Well we shouldn't go on believing in things like possession by demon like entities right?  We especially shouldn't go on thinking that attending to such a thing, or wishing, or facilitating possession by daimon is a good thing right?  

    Is it hard to believe that such a thing exists?  I'm constantly reminded about how Scientism gets the final say in what we should believe, in what gets to be taken seriously when adults are in the room.  Why does Scientism get the final say on reality?  Why does appealing to quantum science have to be cliché when defending new age ideas? That "New Age" is the age of Aquarius by the way.  I think we entered that age when we split the atom, but theories abound and there isn't much agreement on when the aeon of Aquarius begins or began.  My opinion is that it began when the first atom bomb was detonated in New Mexico on July 16 1945 and appropriately enough code named "Trinity."  There was a "less than 0 percent chance" that we were going to detonate the atmosphere and destroy all life on Earth.  Can you imagine that Promethean mind?  The mind that knew that there was a chance we would destroy the entire Earth but went ahead and tested the bomb anyways?  I mean there were Nazi's, but they had surrendered before the bomb was tested, and at that point it was just the psychology of previous investment on the part of the American government military industrial complex.  Beyond my digression is the idea that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle only applies to those of us who have the appropriate scientific paperwork attached to our names.  The rest of us are not intelligent enough to appeal to that particular type of scientific uncertainty.  That's how they deal with us, we aren't educated enough to understand that observation changes the behavior of the observed, so we can be ignored, we of the New Age.  What a secret, that, and it's only a secret because we aren't educated enough to understand the mathematical implications of it.  We can't do all of the equations on the blackboard so we can't appeal to it.  Well...maybe, but my daimon understands.  

    There are many levels to reality.  I think the simplest way to understand reality is with the Jungian conception of intuition, sensing, feeling, and thinking.  That's also the astrological breakdown of reality with the elements as the triplicities of fire, earth, water, and air respectively.  Yet there is that fifth element, the quintessence, the suit of pentacles in the tarot (oh no, tarot too, where does his woo end?).  I wondered for a long time why the suit for earth was pentacles.  Why not blocks, or rocks, or stones (that roll and gather no moss)?  The pentacle is that most magical of occult symbols.  Many a wayward teenager without a cause and lost in teenage rebellion has scrawled that particular emblem on a wall in spray paint, or on the floor with table salt and 12 other 13 year old hooligans in tow on Friday the 13th.  That along with 666, and be sure to draw the pentagram upside down or it's not evil.  Devil worshipers....devil worshipers...quick somebody get a stake ready, and some gasoline and a match.  Witch!!!!  Witch!!!  Settle down Karen of the Church, nobodies worshiping the devil (well admittedly daimons maybe...I mean demons...I mean how about that weather?).  

    Why the pentacle for Earth?  In a lot of ways material reality is the least magical reality, but in all the ways that matter it is in fact the most magical of all magical realities.  It's the reality that's real regardless of what we think about it.  If you smash your head with a hammer you probably will knock yourself out, possibly die, bleed a LOT, and at minimum it's going to really hurt; that's the reality I'm talking about, and that is the reality of Earth.  That is the reality that Saturn, that responsible Titan Cronos, rules over.  That's the reality of Capricorn, Taurus, and Virgo as well (the Earth triplicity in astrology).  I would think that the most magical of common occult symbols would be a fire symbol, or at least an air, hell even a water, but Earth?  What is going on with that?  I finally came to a realization via sacred geometry and the platonic solids.  The platonic solids are the shapes that crystals make at a microscopic level.  They are the literal shapes that reality manifest as, as in crystalline structure, like rocks, or human atoms, or even viruses, everything that is real exist in the geometrical shapes that are the platonic solids.  The shapes that the element Earth makes are platonic solids.  That this process of material manifestation happens is a literal miracle. It happens scientifically by the way.  The platonic solids are not woo, they are science.  You can even hear a lecture about them at the Church of Scientism just before they start working out those theoretical quantum mechanics equations.  Yet if I go on talking about pentacles, astrology, and tarot, well all of a sudden I'm New Age and lost in the Woo Woods.  

    Pentacles belong to the Earth suit because material reality is actual magic.  Material reality can also be manipulated by the use of the other three elements which correspond to thinking, feeling, and intuiting.  Material reality is malleable beyond the common conception of physical manipulation.   That is, I can think something, and then I can use my will to manipulate reality and make that thought real.  We do this all of the time.  If I am thirsty say (that's feeling as well as material) I can think about water in a glass, go get a glass, fill it with water, and then drink it to quench my thirst.  This all starts with a biological feeling, and via that mind body link it spreads to me getting up to get a glass of water.  We don't view that as being magical, but why don't we?  Well we don't because we take all of that for granted.  We take physical reality for granted, at least until we die, then we probably think we maybe shouldn't have done that.  Pentacles are earth because that is how magic manifests in reality.  Before it crystalizes it's not "real" in the scientific since of real, but all of the other modes of existence contribute to and manufacture that physical reality.  That physical reality exists at all is a miracle.  That there is actually something that it's like to be embodied with sentience and consciousness is a miracle.  Science doesn't even have an answer for that one.  As far as the science is concerned there is no reason why there should be an experience of being like a human, or dog, or ant, or plant.  Consciousness is not necessary for the Darwinian, Cartesian, Newtonian world view to exist.  Well it's necessary for the "view" part to exist, but then that just proves my point.  Theory of mind doesn't even require mind.  It just requires data.  That data can exist without us to process or view it, at least that's the scientific view.  Again, it needs the view that it says it doesn't need to expound on its own view.  That view, by the way, is the same view that changes the nature of that view (Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle...but I'm clearly not educated enough to appeal to that bit of science).  Man, I'm wearing myself out today, I can't imagine what you are going through.  

    What does all of that have to do with the concept of the daimon?  Well I think that the daimon is what has the power to manipulate those platonic solids.  We are just animals without the daimon.  The daimon brings a holy and sacred dimension into humanity.  It offers us a chance to participate in something that is bigger than us.  We are mundane, and have bills to pay, and jobs to work, because we need money, which is also what the suit of pentacles represents in the tarot.  Material reality and money go hand in hand in the world of man.  Yet money is also how we are controlled.  Money also belongs to Saturn, which Saturn may as well be synonymous with the world of man.  I also don't think that the daimon cares about money because it's to corporeal and mundane.  Interestingly the great C.G. Jung's daimon was Saturn...there's a bit of irony for you.  Jordan Peterson also has Saturn in Aquarius just as Jung did, but Jung also had Aquarius on his ascendant.  I don't know where it is in Peterson's nativity because I don't know the time of his birth (but I know he's from Alberta Canada).  Which brings me to Dr. Jordan Peterson.  

    I have spent a lot of time listening to Jordan Peterson.  I used to listen to the Jordan Peterson Podcast when I was driving a truck for a living.  I also listened to a lot of his lectures.  Now before my liberal BIPOC LGBTQIA+ friends go gettin' all stank face in my direction due to even mentioning Peterson, please just give it a moment, and trust that I'm not going to assault your identification with whatever you identify with or as.  The internet has a very nasty habit of taking things that Peterson has said out of context and then trouncing on it as proof that he's a bigot.  I can assure you, having listened to hundreds of hours of Peterson lecturing, as well as having read most of his books (admittedly I didn't make it to the end of Maps of Meaning...but he spent 14 years writing it and it's not easy reading) that Dr. Peterson is no bigot.  He doesn't think we should be cutting the genitals off of pre-pubescent children, but then nor do I.  Peterson is a genius of psychiatry and the human condition.  I put him up there with C.G Jung in his psychological brilliance.  I do disagree with him on some things, and the big thing is polytheism.  In his newest book "We Who Wrestle With God" (which I am currently making my way through...at least trying to...it's like reading Cronos himself if he were to write a book) he actually says something like "all polytheist are necessarily also hedonist."  Umm, I'm a polytheist, and I'm not a hedonist.  In fact this is where Dr. Peterson and I depart polite company.  

    So I got "We Who Wrestle With God," because I've read his last two books and they were both marvelous, and also because I want to keep up with what he's up to.  I gotta say he's gotten a bit too chummy with the Christian Right for my liking, but still I'm willing to take him at his word, give him a fair hearing (or reading rather) and keep an open mind.  I have to be willing to be challenged in my thinking, as should you dear reader.  The fact that he's defending Christian monotheism in his new book, and explicitly that, and yet to my knowledge has not claimed himself to be a Christian, is certainly an interesting point to ponder.  When asked if he believes in God he's answered "I believe as if god exists," or some such words.  His point is that we should be living as if the Christian God is true, and the highest possible truth at that.  While I was plodding my way through WWWWG, Hillman's "The Soul Code" showed up in the mail.  I put WWWWG down and read TSC in two days.  I found out in the process that Hillman was a polytheist, at least he relied on polytheism in his system of psychology.  Dr. Peterson has quoted C.G. Jung I think around 4 times in the first 100 pages of this 500 page book.  Hillman and Peterson share Jung in common as psychological inspiration, and yet they have landed in quite different places.  So there I was reading a book by Cronos Saturn himself when a book written by the Daimon of the Puer Aeternus arrives for me to read.  

    The irony and the synchronicity of it all astounds me some days.  Now, like with Maps of Meaning, I'm not sure I'm going to take the time to finish WWWWG.  I'm not sure it's what I need just now.  I'm trying to facilitate a relationship with my Daimon.  In another book that I just started reading Mythic Astrology, I recently learned that if one has a strong Mercury, or Gemini, in one's nativity than it means that one has a strong Puer Aeternus in one's nature...mythic I am.  I have a very strong Mercury as well as Gemini rising.  Honestly, as an Aquarius, I don't think that Aquarius is too far away from the Hermes sensibility either.  In modern astrology Uranus is considered to rule Aquarius and also to be a higher octave of Mercury (Greek Hermes).  I also have a stellium of Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn in Virgo which is another Mercury ruled sign.  I have Gemini rising (mercury ruled sign), Mercury 1 degrees away from my Sun in Aquarius, and that Stellium of  heavy personal outer planets in Virgo.  Mercury is my Oikodespotes (a complete astro nerd word for Chart Ruler), which is also another word for daimon.  In another twist of irony my Oikodespotes is Hermes as Puer Aeternus.  "Wow, he's really lost in the Woo Woods now.  Somebody should really get him some help.  He needs to get back on his medication.  Karen, get the Bible, quick, that guy's possessed by the Earth Spirit."  Well, yeah, it's not the Serpent Drawn Chariot to be ironic!  I'm for real with this shit.  Hopefully next time I'll pick up with The Kabeiroi, Athena,  Hephaestus, Thetis, Cancer, Gemini, Hecate, and the tripple moon goddess and how they all intersect, that will all be coming to a Serpent Drawn Chariot near you!