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anarcho-shamanism, mountain spirits; sacred wilderness, sacred sites, sacred everything; psychonautics, entheogens, pushing the envelope of consciousness; dominator culture and undermining its activities; Jung, Hillman, archetypes; Buddhism, multidimensional realities, and the ever-present satori at the centre of the brain; a few cosmic laughs; and much much more....


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Friday 27 July 2018

A Big Taboo

There are times when we remain quiet for reasons of discretion, politeness, tact, out of consideration for others. Or simply from boredom or indifference. And there are times when we stay silent out of fear. Out of fear for our career, our reputation, our friendships, our safety or that of others we love. When the topic of which we may be tempted to communicate is deemed dangerous, unsuitable, unacceptable, mainly for reasons of social, cultural, or religious conditioning. When the topic we may wish to discuss is not in the interests of those who like to make the rules to be discussed. This is what we call a taboo.

I was proud in my youth to play my own small part in the collective consciousness of the time, which strove to break down many taboos. Unfortunately, new taboos have since arisen to take the place of the old ones. Some of these new taboos are, ironically, supported most vigorously by those who were, in the 1960s and 1970s, my 'comrades'.

Here on Pale Green Vortex, we are happy to avoid topics due to matters of discretion, respect etc. Taboos, however, are a somewhat different thing. If we are indeed striving for some kind of 'spiritual illumination', then freedom of mind is a prerequisite. And for true freedom of mind, taboos have to go.

Of all the taboos of our present time, there is one, in the social and political world at least, above all others about which anyone in their right mind will not speak. To do so is likely to attract a torrent of abuse and false accusation, the end of friendship, reputation and career. It is the taboo on 'the Jewish question'.

The Jewish problem is one which has occupied philosophers, politicians, people of power and people of religion for centuries. Western 'liberal democracies' thought they had finally found the answer to the problem once and for all: make it a completely unacceptable topic for discussion; make it an imprisonable offence in some places. Fortunately, it has not been so simple: the courageous human spirit refuses to go away.

The Jewish question deserves a decent airing - for the good of reasonable Jews as well as everybody else. Maybe 'the Jewish problem' could turn out to be no problem at all: a storm in a teacup, or a figment of imagination. However, while it remains the taboo subject to end all taboos, we will never know.

Below is a link to an article, which I find to be clear, well-written, reasonable and reasoned. It mainly concerns Russia and Russian history, but a read by anybody unfamiliar with the Jewish question will help to see its import.      


The article is from 'Russia Insider'. By linking to this piece, Pale Green Vortex is not necessarily condoning everything else on this site. Having said that, there is some thought-provoking material there. And we agree with 'Russian Insider' that the western mainstream media is totally, madly, and irrationally hysterical in its anti-Putin propaganda. It needs a collective brain transplant.....

https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/its-time-drop-jew-taboo/ri22186


Tuesday 17 July 2018

The Egalitarian

It was the thing with Johnson, really: he was a great egalitarian. To Johnson, all people were the same, more or less, give or take the odd detail or two. His goodly nature, his overall bonhomie, would not allow for the possibility that some of his fellow humans might actually be a bit distinct from the others. That some might be fairly nice, while others might be quite nasty.

His egalitarianism led him to speak in sweeping generalities. 'People do this'; 'We humans are like this': his conversations were frequently peppered with such sentiments.

Sometimes Johnson's egalitarianism rendered him prone to depression and despair. 'We humans are a terrible bunch. We do some terrible things,' he could be heard to fret of an evening. Such observations, saturated with feeling, would fall from his mouth, as he surveyed the history of the human race, which he saw as characterised by viciousness, cruelty, betrayal, and general needless suffering.

On other occasions, however, Johnson's sense that we are all made of the same stuff would give rise to a certain optimism and faith in the human spirit. Put to him the proposition that some politicians really are a nasty bit of business, and he will reassure you that theirs is indeed a difficult job. They are not really bad, but are trying to do their best, just like everybody else. Changing things for the better is not an easy task.

Johnson had a good friend. His name was Larwood. They would spend afternoons walking together by the river or through the forests, half the time in silent communication with nature, half the time in animated discussion.

Johnson and Larwood had much in common. There was one thing, however, about which they could not agree. You see, Larwood was not an egalitarian. He desperately wanted to be one, to be like his dear friend. But, based upon the evidence all around, his heart and his instincts refused to allow it. Larwood could not help but see difference and distinction all around him. Not just difference, but real difference: difference that made a difference. He sensed some people to be seriously different to others. He felt uneasy with the feeling, and struggled hard to throw it off, but all to no avail.

Larwood was still young when he first felt the difference. On returning home from his primary school, he would peer out the front living room window at the world going by. He would watch with unbounded fascination the 9-to-5ers making their way home. Men with briefcases, a few ladies in high heels, after a day earning their keep, paying off the mortgage, now going home to family, food, and television. One day as Larwood was observing the parade, a strange realisation flashed into his young little mind. He wasn't going to be doing this stuff. This all bore no relation whatsoever to his own course through the jungle of life. Where this flash came from he had no idea. But it came with a certainty that was rare. Its impact was almost enough to make him fall onto the floor in shock.

As Larwood grew older, he was relieved to find others who were similar to him; people he met in person or through their writing. People who were not 9-to-5ers; who could not be 9-to-5ers. People whose destiny was distinct, already decided. Normally such people sensed a deep lack, a profound emptiness, in a life devoted to the everyday, to 'normality'.

He had read the stories. About Thule, the Hyperboreans, Atlantis. About how, once upon a time, there prevailed a Golden Age, inhabited by giants, whose wisdom was as great as their height. And about how some sort of catastrophe occurred, decimating these glorious populations, but how a few escaped, their traces and their wisdom still dimly felt here and there, a small minority of distinct humans wandering the face of the globe.

He knew Nietzche and the Superman. He knew, also, about the Gnostics, with their threefold classification of human beings according to their spiritual status. There were the pneumatics, whose nature was essentially spirit; the psychics, who could exercise freewill to go up or down; and the hylics, those on a downward trajectory, and who, some said, possessed no soul whatsoever. There were even those nice guys from Buddhism, the tulkus and Bodhisattvas. In truth, these were Ubermenschen if ever there was one. They were not 'normal people' with a nice kind and friendly bit stuck onto them. They were substantially recalibrated beings, of a different order to the majority of humanity.

Larwood felt no compulsion to believe any of these theories and notions. At the same time, he recognised something in them all, an attempt to understand, explain, or at least describe, the differences which seemed to present themselves.

Larwood hated to feel this way. It filled him with discomfort, distaste. The implications of all this, whatever they might turn out to be, were surely abhorrent.

He resisted and resisted, until ……. One afternoon he was on the bus going home. Two ladies across the aisle from him were engaged in animated discussion about the price of pork sausages in a variety of different leading supermarkets. It was their world, more or less, he realised, the price of pork sausages. He could go and talk to them about his world - the Tree of Life, multidimensional existence, the luminous Void, all felt, experienced realities to him - but it would be to no avail. They, like probably everybody else on the bus, would be incredulous. Not out of personal preference, but because they could not, were not able to, enter into his world. It was beyond them. They somehow lacked the capacity. Larwood's belief system, held together for long years by musty sticky tape, began to crumble. Slowly at first, before disintegrating comprehensively just as he got off the bus at his usual stop.

He felt no arrogance, no ill-will, no sense of superiority, at the now crystal-clear feeling of differences. He felt nothing at all, really. Except for an occasional tender-heartedness towards all and sundry, each and every one of us stumbling along, blindfolded to how things more truly are.

Time passed. It was the evening before the end of the world. Johnson and Larwood sat on a bench overlooking the river. Behind them, the pub was noisy with shouting and laughter as the big match was relayed on the big screen. Johnson put down his thick volume on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, commenting on how awful it all was, and how people act just as viciously today, all of which says a lot about human nature. Larwood gazed into nowhere in particular, quietly bracing himself for the Exit. The Void beckoned irresistibly. He wondered whether he and Johnson would meet again; and, if so, if they would recognise one another.


     

Tuesday 10 July 2018

The Fool Darkens

The Fool, some say, is the most important card in the Tarot deck. The major arcana, some say further, from the Magician through to the World, can be seen as mapping out the entire journey of the spiritual pilgrim. That pilgrim is the Fool, who follows the winding pathway from start to end, while simultaneously being outside time altogether. Unlike the other cards of Tarot, the Fool boasts no number - the Fool is 0, zero, infinite; living in eternity.

Traditional depictions of the Fool show him - it is invariably male - as indeed a fool. There are early depictions which look like a beggar, a wild man, or someone who has lost his marbles a bit. The most familiar portrayals of the Fool, such as that of the Waite-Smith Tarot, show a figure resembling a jongleur, a jester. Decked out in colourful splendour, he sets out happily on a journey under the blessings of the morning sun. Sometimes he is juggling balls in the air, his head in the clouds. At other times he carries his worldly possessions in a bundle on a stick over his shoulder; travelling light, psychologically and materially. Sometimes he is shown about to stride over the top of a precipice. Sometimes he is accompanied by an animal, normally a cat or a dog.

Optimism, a carefree sense of freedom; life as a journey jam-packed with possibilities: this is the kind of attitude communicated by our traditional Fool. He cocks a snook at  the limited, oppressive nature of a life too determined by, and identified with, rationality.

His 'down side' is naivety - hence the imminent topple over the cliff -, recklessness, irresponsibility. The animal at his side may be issuing a warning, attempting to bring our Fool down to earth. It may be the animal nature which the Fool deigns to forget or disown.

The Fool follows the pilgrim on the journey. At least it's best if he does. He brings constant freshness to matters; he is the Zen beginner's mind, if you like. Recall the Fool if in danger of feeling stuck, stale, or depressed. In an ideal world, he is the constant companion.

With age, and with experience, the Fool is challenged. In Blake's 'Innocence and Experience', this Fool sings the songs of innocence, and this song only. Maybe he needs to fall down that scary precipice in order to learn a thing or two. And so the vision of existence darkens. And the focus shifts into Dark Tarot......

There are a number of fascinating Fools scattered around in the darker corners of the Tarot world. My favourite is that of the Royo Dark Tarot.

It is not a figure designed specifically for the Tarot: she first appears in Luis Royo's book 'Dark Labyrinth'. She is, nevertheless, perfect for the occasion.

It is not essential to be a Tarot specialist to realise that the Fool has undergone a considerable transformation. 'He' has become 'she'. Along with this change comes the disappearance of the bright light of the morning sun. The Fool now emerges out of and into darkness; she is a being of the night. Sun gives way to moon, the bright light of day and understanding succeeded by the night and the infinite mystery. Bye bye Apollo; hello Dionysos and the Queen of the Night.

The Fool with his head in the clouds is dead and gone. In his place we have a being fully cognisant of the deeper realities of existence. In Shakespearian mode, she contemplates a human skull, and is constantly aware of her own mortality. She keeps herself behind a mask, not giving too much about herself away to all and sundry, another sign of her movement from innocence to experience. Her loss of innocence imparts only greater beauty to her being, however. It is the particular loveliness which arises only when one possesses the courage to embrace darkness, the unknown, the great mystery. She is the real Fool, the darkened Fool, the Wise Fool.

Images. Some favourite Fools:
Cachet Tarot (top)
Way of the Fool Tarot (middle)
Royo Dark Tarot (bottom)