Path: Supernews70!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.thelema,talk.religion.misc,alt.magick.order,alt.atheism Subject: Cavalorn: Thelema and Death Date: 23 Dec 1997 22:23:33 -0800 Organization: Access Internet Communications, Inc. Lines: 145 Sender: tyagi@accesscom.com Message-ID: <67q9p5$c6t$1@shell.accesscom.com> Reply-To: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 28829@205.226.156.10 X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 (NOV) Xref: Supernews70 alt.magick.tyagi:14549 alt.magick:121132 talk.religion.misc:336603 alt.magick.order:1005 alt.atheism:576108 [all from thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org] Cavalorn : In message <345E4E8F.408D@ix.netcom.com>, drew@topanga.com writes >> death for Thelemites is supposed to >> be something we celebrate, more so even than birth. 'A feast for life >> and a greater feast for death.' > >I thought you said that you had a problem with the term. Here you are >using it. I have a problem with what I would see as the *misuse* of the term. (Oh, no, a forthright opinion, flame the bastard now... ;) ) The feast for death is one of a listed series of feasts, the Calendar of our Church as AC put it. There is a feast FOR death. This does not mean that death IS a feast. To say that Brother Bloggs 'celebrated his greater feast' when he had in fact (in the words of Saint Cleese) shuffled off 'is mortal coil and gone to meet 'is maker is just plain wrong. It takes the phrase from Liber AL and twists it around so that the wrong person is the subject of the phrase. Do we see Brother Bloggs rising from his bier and tucking into the biscuits and petits fours? We do not. Yes, you can look for mystical Second Meanings and all that, but I'd rather keep that option in reserve... a second meaning is, after all, a *second* meaning, and all too often the straightforward and obvious is buried under drifts of mystic-minded guff. >Agreed, but who says that that is what is happening here (other than >yourself)? Good question. I call 'em as I see 'em, and what I see is a tendency to call a spade a hands-on interactive excavation utensil. I'd be interested to see if anyone else *does* agree. Remember that America is the country where some people started calling themselves 'moon people' instead of the star sign Cancer, because cancer was a nasty word... and that's just the start of it. >Perhaps the Greater Feast is that of the Universe swallowing the >individual, or the earth swallowing the body. Sounds like a Great Feast >to me. Well, one can justify anything whatsoever by playing around with words. If you're going to take that tack, you may as well say that the worms are the Great ones, since they do the real feasting; that therefore the common earthworm is the avatar of our Lord Hadit, 'hell's own worm'; and that Lowly Worm should be added to the list of Gnostic Saints at the next opportunity. Personally, my idea of a Greater Feast is Finnegan's Wake... ;) ================================================== Cavalorn : In message , David Greiner writes >So then, explain to me why using an expression with an upbeat ring to it >for death, is somehow infringing on this concept of death being a >celebration? *sigh* Death isn't a celebration. It's a process by which the physical vehicle stops functioning. Now, this event is something that Thelemites are encouraged TO celebrate, to erode (as I would see it) the Old Aeon fear of death, and the tendency to mask death in sugary notions of 'going to heaven' or 'passing over' or whatever. The other important function of celebrating death is that when one finally snuffs it, if one has celebrated death during one's life, one is likely to be better prepared for it, less afraid, and consequently more likely to be able to remember previous incarnations in one's next life... it is supposed to be the trauma of death that blocks recollections of former lives. >So then, what is the "Truth of Death?" When you say that, it has a ring >of finality to it, an idea that runs rabid in the minds of the people of >the Old Aeon. A ring of finality? Ha! You can't get much *more* bloody final than death. For the Ruach, and the Ego, physical death is the end of the road. (The truly controversial might like to reflect on the ABSENCE of any suggestion of reincarnation in Liber AL). The New Aeon is not the New Age. The Point of View survives, true enough; but there is that which doesn't. We have to understand that while we incarnate Stars are playing the parts of fragile human beings on a screwed-up planet, we will come into contact with a lot of grief, loss and misery. Material existence is like that. Shit happens. Now, it's one thing to apply ourselves magickally, aspire, attain, and by dint of experience come to *perceive* that all these fleshly accidents are merely the fulfilment of our Starry Natures, and that nothing can truly do us harm; it is quite another thing to glibly state that the pain and the suffering are not real. That is, ultimately, cowardice. If you deny the ending of things, you rob them of their meaning. It is the limitation of any incarnation that gives it richness and makes it worthwhile. That is the truth of death. Does anyone on this list *remember* their last death? ========================================== Cavalorn : In article <199711041217.EAA28254@chatlink.com>, "David R. Jones" writes > But very few I have ever known >are really up to the rigors of Liber Thisarb, Nor are the methods contained therein suitable for everyone. AC himself couldn't do the backwards-brain bit at all... It takes more than hard work to get results, it takes intelligent work. >wherefrom, with diligent >practice, the phenomena are pretty clear. True, but there is a difference between clarity and reality. If we're quoting AC, you may wish to recall the fact that he 'does not care a scrap of yesterday's newspaper whether he ever was Marius de Aquila'. What seem to be memories of previous lives need not be taken at face value. Besides, AC considered many of his earlier commentaries on Liber AL to be wrong. The certainty that Nuit confers concerning death is not necessarily anything to do with reincarnation. It is possible to experience a certain kind of trance in which one effectively undergoes death while remaining alive, the results of which do include a certainty that while the experience is one hell of a shock, it is not to be feared.... ================================== EOF -- (emailed replies may be posted); http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi; 408/2-666-SLUG join the esoteric syncretism in alt.magick.tyagi; http://www.abyss.com/tokus