Spirit and Letter
No matter how often the familiar idea is restated in different ways —
“the letter kills, but the spirit gives life,”
there will always be people who cite someone’s quotations, “original sources,” and so on as the final, decisive argument.
The origins of such a detractor are obvious — it stems from a mistaken understanding of the binary “idea-word”, “eidos-logos”. On the one hand, the spoken word is the embodiment of the idea and therefore its logical completion. An idea that does not reach verbal embodiment cannot attain actual existence, remaining only a potentiality. But on the other hand — any embodiment limits the spirit, and the verbal expression of an idea limits the idea itself, forcing it into the Procrustean bed of verbal formulas.
One effective response has been striving for the fullest expression of an idea, approaching its embodiment from different directions, often paradoxical and unexpected — paradoxical and figurative. From this point of view, another well-known formula becomes clear:
“truth, expressed without contradiction, is not truth.”
Hence the turn to poetry, the bardic and erilevian flowery language, the metaphors and parables so popular among the Magi and philosophers.
Hence the crucial value of poetry that made Odin himself risk his life for the Sacred Mead.
However, often the mind, instead of neutralizing the binary, attempts to shift to one pole, producing either a complete disregard for embodiment and an emphasis on the ‘spirit’, which then proves to be a disembodied fantasy, an illusion, or, conversely, a fixation on quotations and authorities that robs the living current of its spirit.
For the Magus, both approaches are unacceptable.
On the one hand, the Magus strives for a clear verbal expression of their thoughts and ideas. On the other, they understand its limitations and resort to various techniques to make the embodiment of ideas more effective.
It is important not to forget the word’s duality — on the one hand its power to bring things into being, on the other, its relativity and limits.
Dear Enmerkar, your Blog can provide answers to many questions, the solutions to which are necessary for continuing the Path. The articles are like springs and wells for a traveler in the desert.
But there is also the danger of substituting “easy” (i.e., knowledge acquired from the outside) knowledge for that which was previously difficult, painful, and long to acquire, and is therefore more valuable for internal perception. Moreover, distractors come into play: “read and you will know everything, no need to think” and “if you already know this, then why understand it”.
Please tell me, where is the boundary?
The teacher is as good as he tries less to teach. The articles on the blog are structured precisely to provide food for thought, without offering ready solutions. The articles discuss only general issues, and their application to specific private situations requires personal reflection and creativity. At least, that is how this blog was conceived – merely as a set of hints, using which the traveler can chart their own course.
Well said… “Springs and wells on the traveler’s path.” In this, Balthazar, it seems to me, you answered your own question.
In my opinion, the pursuit of truth is the most ordinary pursuit of development. For power appears at the moment of neutralization (overcoming). And as for someone’s quotes, it seems well stated in the “Book of Wisdom and Foolishness” – “Do not disdain the study of ancient writings, for thus you will understand the past of your mind, that is, its nature expressed in the system of causes and effects.” And, it seems to me, there is no difference in the concepts of “ancient,” as everything that has happened can be considered past.
I think I understand what Enmerkar, you wanted to say with your post. Perhaps I will express myself clumsily, but this is how I think. Every person is an expression of the creator’s thought, his ideas. And every thought is individual, i.e., unique and enriched by its individual beauty. Like a snowflake that, alone on a quadrillion, creates the beauty of a winter forest. And every magician must become this snowflake and transform our world into a beautiful oasis.
The main thing is not to stay by the springs and wells for too long, and to continue Your Path. It’s just that each time one has to remind oneself that they are merely a means, not the Goal itself.
Thank you, Enmerkar, for the wonderful means. And thank you, Kmet, for the experience of the Path that you share with us.
I believe the statement that truth expressed non-contradictorily ceases to be truth concerns the description of the universe from the perspective of consciousness. Or it pertains to some philosophical truths. However, regarding the description from the perspective of Being, in this respect, truth is expressed clearly and unambiguously. If the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea, it cannot flow into the Bay of Bengal at the same time. Or, taking zoology as an example – if a raven is not the ‘male’ of the raven, but a separate species of birds of the crow family, then this is an undisputed fact. Just like an owl – not the ‘male’ of the owl (although the latter statement is more controversial because ‘just an owl’ does not exist. There is a snowy owl, a great grey owl, a tawny owl, an eagle owl, and others. That is, there is an order of ‘owls’, which includes the owl. In this sense, the owl is indeed an owl-male, ‘male’ of the owl (female owl), since the owl is an owl of the genus of owls. But uneducated people consider the owl to be the ‘male’ of that owl depicted in children’s books (owls without ears – usually implying a great grey owl). In this sense, the owl is not the ‘male’ of the great grey owl.) Research by geneticists has shown that the falcon and the eagle are not related, stemming from a common ancestor. The falcon is closer to parrots and sparrows. But due to convergence (acquisition of external similarity under the influence of a similar lifestyle and feeding), it acquired similarity to hawks (hawks, eagles, vultures) during evolution. And this too is clear and unambiguous – there cannot be another truth. Either falcons and eagles, hawks and vultures originate from a common ancestor, or they do not. The same goes for physics. It cannot be that the law of gravity both operates and does not operate simultaneously (at least in the realm of large masses and low speeds). Water cannot have a different boiling point other than 100 degrees Celsius. Copper does not dissolve in hydrochloric acid with the release of hydrogen. This is a fact, and there cannot be another truth. But concerning consciousness, things are not so unambiguous. It is unknown who Jesus Christ truly was – a god-man, a man-god, an avatar of Vishnu, a half-mad Jewish mystic, or simply a charlatan born as a result of the rape of a Jewish maiden by a drunken Roman legionnaire. Moreover, it is unclear whether he even existed as a historical figure. Nevertheless, the influence of the legend on the consciousness of people was such that all subsequent history unfolded as if all these did indeed take place. And what, in this case, is the truth? Real events, or that legend whose influence on the subsequent course of events is undeniable? C.G. Jung said that if three thousand people come to believe that the Rhine will flow backward at a certain time, it is worth considering the symbolic significance of this belief.
Allow me to express the opinion of a completely inexperienced ‘traveler’. When stopping by such ‘springs and wells’, there is no desire to stop at what has been achieved; rather, there arises a desire to move further, to the next source. From my point of view, the presented articles do not so much provide answers to any questions as they help build certain bridges between the worldview of the ‘traveler’ and that of the blog’s author. In this way, ordering (systematizing) the worldview of the ‘traveler’, like the structure of water, which we drink, is transmitted to the water already within us. Such ordering helps the ‘traveler’ to go further (if you will, to understand oneself more deeply), opening new horizons.
I will allow myself to state that Truth is, however, contradictory and can be viewed as Truth only under the conditions of the Myth we have chosen. Even for the scientific truth stated above (in the sense that this truth is not of a philosophical nature and not a truth of awareness), a number of specific and quite strict conditions must be maintained. These conditions are, in principle, chosen by us precisely so that the ‘truth’ we have come to know is indeed Truth because we make use of it. For example, certain physical conditions of the medium are necessary for the physical and chemical laws to be fulfilled. For the Volga to flow into the Caspian Sea, conceptual conditions must be fulfilled; after all, if the Caspian Sea is known to someone under the name ‘Bengal Bay’, the validity of the statement that ‘the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea and does not flow into the Bengal Bay’ would not seem so indisputable. In biology, the question arises as to whether evolution (in the conceptual system of Darwin) existed as such (from the emergence of life to the division of species) and if so, whether humans were the result of such evolution. Regarding history, there is a theory of the ‘beam of a spotlight’, according to which all the infinite volume of human history is seen by us as no more than a part of a certain space illuminated by the ‘beam of light’ of knowledge obtained from various sources (books, legends, architecture, and others). I believe everything is relative, and there exists only Myth. I can only confidently assert that I Am.
I disagree. Truth expressed non-contradictorily is what is indeed true expressed non-contradictorily. If a statement can be asserted and refuted simultaneously, then it is either not the truth or a deliberate concealment of the truth behind tautologies, symbols, incomplete descriptions of conditions, and so forth. For example: a rectangle has all four angles right – a non-contradictory truth.
Dear discussants! Your argument is about words – simply due to different understandings of the word ‘truth’. In general, any discussion should begin with checking the understanding of key concepts used in the discussion. From the perspective of the Myth I describe, for example, truth is called such a description of an object which allows it to be used most effectively. I have already written about this: https://enmerkar.com/en/way/the-maguss-truth The discussion arose simply because some participants recognize ‘objective reality’, and for them, truth is the correspondence of a thing to its description, while others stand on relativist positions, and for them, a thing and its description are one and the same. From this perspective, ‘truthfulness’ of the description depends on who is describing, as effective descriptions differ on different paths. Hence, statements like ‘the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea’ or ‘a rectangle has right angles’ are forms of description convenient for a particular Myth, while in another Myth, such a concept as ‘right angle’ may not even exist (for example, in Lobachevsky’s geometry, in which ‘through point A outside line a in the plane determined by point A and line a, at least two lines c and d that do not have a common point with line a pass.’), or river and sea may not be separated, being perceived as a single element of water – the dwelling of Elementals.
Here you are right. I call absolute truth just that and associate it with objective reality, while relative truth is a judgment. Therefore, there is confusion due to the names, I apologize.
Regarding the Volga – one doesn’t have to go far. After all, the Caspian Sea is strictly speaking, not a sea, but a salt lake. Thus, the phrase ‘the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea’ is incorrect since there is no ‘Caspian Sea’. However, for a sailor, more efficient navigation in the Caspian Sea will be facilitated if he considers it a sea and acts accordingly (storms there are no child’s play). If we consider the evolutionary theory to be correct, then according to genetic data, the falcon and the eagle may not belong to the same order and may have originated from different ancestors. But if considering ancestry at the class level, all birds descend from a single ancestor. However, throughout the history of zoology as a science, no scientist has observed the origin of species – the transformation of a population, or breed into a separate species. A raven is not the ‘male’ of a crow – this is also a relative statement that requires clarification. The common raven is indeed not the ‘male’ of the grey crow. But both the common raven and the grey crow belong to the same genus – the genus Corvus, all the numerous species of which are uniformly called ‘Corvus + species designation’. And in Russian, for some reason, in some cases ‘Corvus’ is translated as ‘raven’, while in others as ‘crow’. So, it will not be a big mistake to call the female common raven a ‘crow’ and the male of the grey crow a ‘raven’. Copper indeed does not spontaneously dissolve in hydrochloric acid with the release of hydrogen. But this process can be induced artificially by electrolyzing hydrochloric acid with a carbon cathode and a copper anode. Thus, hydrogen will be released at the cathode, and the anode will dissolve. A straight line is a curve whose radius of curvature equals infinity. Therefore, even the description of the universe from the perspective of Being is not so unambiguous as it may seem. But from the perspective of Consciousness, it is even less unambiguous. From the perspective of Being, if something looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is most likely a duck. From the perspective of Consciousness, from the mythical, mystical, magical description, if something looks like an eagle, flies like an eagle, and screams like an eagle, then it can be – a Cherub of Water (according to the English School) – a Cherub of Air (according to the French School) – Something related to Jupiter – Something related to Tiferet – A White Eagle (the alchemical opposite of the Red Lion) – An Alchemical Two-headed Eagle, or Phoenix – Finally, simply an eagle and nothing more. And try to define what specifically the eagle may symbolize for you at this moment.