Tag: philosophy

Many ancient stories concern the rules of hospitality. Every culture has a framework for describing the duties of a householder toward a guest, especially a traveler or stranger in need, and the duties of the guest toward their host. Violation of those rules provide the starting point for epics and tragedies. Given the hazards of travel, one can easily understand how hospitality became a recurring theme in morality and mythology. The householder welcomes the stranger because they can easily imagine themselves with the needs of the stranger. Then stranger accepts what is given gracefully and returns what they can because they would want a guest to treat their house the same way.

Hospitality norms reflect the fundamental role of reciprocity as a moral value. Reciprocity builds trust between individuals. By serving another’s interest and being served in return, one demonstrates regard for the needs and interest of another. Establishing reciprocity provides the foundation for all agreements and organizations.

Simple regard for another’s needs demonstrates respect and allows us to recognize common wants and needs. Despite the wide diversity of individuals, humans share a common set of basic needs, food, shelter, companionship, and recognition. Practicing reciprocity teaches a person these needs and teaches them to recognize the other as commensurable with themselves. In the continuity of self and other, one finds humanity.

Compatibilists argue that free will and determinism can co-exist as long as either concept is diminished to fit within an expanded concept of the other. Free will is consistent with determinism as long as one does not demand unqualified freedom or absolute regularity. In very deep meditation sessions, I sometimes experience volition as phenomenon separate from urges or cognition. I see a desire to end the session, and I have thoughts about ending the session. Nevertheless, the session does not end until I direct a formless push to open the eyes, bow, and stand.

The push is influenced by cause and effect. Hunger, fatigue, anxiety, and enthusiasm can lend it power. Nevertheless, between anticipation of action and acting, there is a moment of decision. I do not need a stronger concept of free will to anchor responsibility for my actions, yet I can also see how previous events direct that decision, lend it strength or present resistance. The decision moment is not absolutely free anymore than the next moment is possible to predict with absolute precision. A consistent account of causation can account for both free will and determinism in the sense presented here.

A study of Epictetus shows how far philosophy has fallen from its roots in Ancient Greece. The foundations of Stoicism are a simple, practical focus on developing durable happiness and freedom from the vicissitudes of fortune. Following the virtue tradition of Aristotle, Epictetus sets out the aims of philosophy as cultivation of oneself, of virtue, and of the means of living well. Like the Buddha, Epictetus argues that living well means forsaking pursuit of transitory goods and focusing on lasting peace through changing one’s attitude toward desire and circumstance. There is nothing in Epictetus that one cannot infer by reflecting on the value of maintaining a broad perspective on incidental events. Epictetus himself reminds his reader that they already know what is needed for happiness. Only deliberate effort to habituate the right attitudes separates the wise from the foolish.

The writing of Epictetus belong to the “wisdom” genre, the set of creative works dedicated to giving practical advice. Wisdom literature often takes an elevated perspective, bringing the reader to a higher level of abstraction where patterns of cause and effect become more accessible. By relating patterns to discrete in-the-moment actions or decisions, one derives principles and practices that support a set of values. All cultures have wisdom literature that composes the inheritance of tradition and value passed down the generations.
A common theme is dissatisfaction with transitory pleasures and seeking liberation from suffering by developing an attitude that places the most value on achieving holistic contentment with oneself and one’s environment. Developing kindness, compassion, forethought, and reflection promotes the development of a lasting freedom from transitory pleasures and pains.

Academic philosophy concerns the minutia of esoteric subjects. Lines of research focus on distinctions that change nothing about human behavior, perception, or experience. Analytic Philosophy, the dominant tradition of the English-speaking world, rejected the study of ethics for much of its early history. Continental Philosophy, dominant in Western Europe, embraces perception and reflection but often twists itself into engaging primarily with its own jargon-laden literature. As a result, academic philosophers demonstrate no marked capacity for wisdom or happiness. Philosophers who do pursue wisdom are either confined to very narrow subfields on the margin of the discipline or do so in a non-professional capacity only.

The phrase “sixth sense” entered wide usage in English through the writing of Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy. Blavatsky appropriated concepts from Indian traditions such as yoga and Buddhism and crafted them into an occult movement. Distorted ideas about karma and reincarnation stem from Blavatsky’s popularity, and the “sixth sense” suffered a similar fate.

Scientists who study perception and sensation identify far more then five senses in human anatomy. In addition to those listed above, humans have a sense of balance, a kinesthetic sense, and several others. Theosophy’s “sixth sense” must be understood as a framework for sensation and perception, appropriated from Indian philosophy to enhance Blavatsky’s mystique.

Buddhist philosophers recognized six senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, small, and mind. The last sense refers to the awareness of thoughts, memories, imagination, and other cognitive phenomena. Metaphysical arguments in Buddhist sutras describe experience as requiring a sensory organ, sensory stimulation, and sensory consciousness. Since one experiences thoughts and memories, one must also have a sense that enables the experience. The “sixth sense” here is a straightforward way of talking about mental experiences like dreams or imagination.

In the Buddhist framework, the six senses are part of a naturalistic phenomenology that rejects distinguishing between “internal” and “external” phenomena. The European philosophical tradition often frames mental phenomena against mind-body dualism, a view that “physical” and “mental” phenomena consist of fundamentally different substances. Buddhist phenomenologists instead frame all objects of experience as sharing the same essential substance. A subject experiences sight, sound, and thought through different sense modalities, but the Buddhist framework does not infer differing substances from differing modalities.

Differentiating experiences as “internal” or “external” is not coherent because the subject experiences all sense modalities as a uniform flow of sensory stimulation. As a consequence Buddhist metaphysics rejects mind body dualism. The subject knows themself a continuity of sensory organs, sensory consciousness, and sensory stimuli, a fundamentally non-dual metaphysics. By framing “the sixth sense” as extrasensory perception, Blavatsky reintroduces dualist metaphysics to an account of sensation that should reinforce non-dualism.

A Pagan with a bias toward scholarship tends to encounter difficulties belonging with the wider community. Founding members of the movement built their frameworks with faulty scholarship and fantastic claims. As fictions become beliefs, people hold them too dearly to revise or challenge them. When intuitive and mystical ways of knowing ground belief, academic analysis is rejected as reductive and disenchanting. Nevertheless, the scholar sees their investigation as a form of veneration. Insofar as one confronts one’s truths in the sacred space, one must acquaint oneself with the means to find truth. Studying immerses the scholar in the subject and changes them as well. While untruths of the subject are cut away, the untruths of the scholar are cut likewise. The subject and the scholar emerge more whole from this process.

Where one’s practice includes operant magick, one should have an internally consistent framework. The framework should account for the limits of magic, its necessary conditions, and how to interpret results. Logical consistency does not require a strict commitment to empirical science, but it does require that all claims made by the framework can be true without causing a contradiction. Adopting as principles poorly interpreted claims from natural science weakens a framework, making it reliant on something that can be determined true or false, and often a pseudoscience that has been determined false. Logically consistent principles allow one to draw inferences from the framework to explore the logical space it defines. Otherwise, the magician does not learn about themselves through their framework and therefore never develops.

Mystical insights and personal gnosis should be part of every practice. Through critical reflection on those insights, one engages with the divine and develops their relationship to the sacred. Uncritical acceptance does not allow the insight to take root deeply, leading to a shallow pursuit of experiences whenever the previous bliss is spent. Asserting the truth of one’s personal gnosis as binding on a third party may help a person reinforce a shallow belief, but one can only make epistemic judgments on their own experiences.

Revival of ancient Paganism requires evidence-based investigation such as archeology, history, and linguistics. While experts may offer different interpretations, they also acknowledge the limits of what we can glean from evidence and what we can only speculate based on broader patterns. Scholarship in these fields requires rigorous attention to detail, evidence, and bias. Grounding our beliefs in the on-going academic search for truth gives contemporary Pagans a firmer foundation than amateur speculation and debunked theories.

The practice should work inward, not outward. Beginning magick, ritual, or any working with the intention to create external changes results in delusion and disappointment. Ceremonial magick works change on the magician, encouraging the development of insight and understanding. When witchcraft aims for external results, it works the way nature works. Witchcraft seeks the necessary and sufficient condition, the smallest movement for the greatest change. One must first learn patience, observation, and diligence. On either path the initiate should focus on introspection and personal development and follow those paths into mastery.

While many introductory sources teach protection magick as a safe introduction, focus on wards and protection leads to paranoia. One focuses anxiety or depression on an external cause, a magical or psychic attack, and then employs ineffective external responses. The adversary is the inexperienced mind, clinging to material explanations for mental phenomenon, seeking easy answers over honest introspection. Mindful awareness in meditation serves as a safer introductory practice that teaches investigation of sensation and feelings that encourages steadiness of mind.

When seeking deeply meaningful symbols, one should remember that behind each mythic figure stands an ocean of local cults, personal shrines, and unrecorded re-tellings. A living culture changes as its participants change, as their needs, hopes, and dreams change. By embracing reinterpretation and retelling, one can explore the idiosyncrasies of their personal experience of the divine. Renewed practices should be grounded in the past but should not be confined by it.

In a mass media saturated culture, one encounters the monolithic image first and foremost. In the recorded performance or the perfect copy, one sees the idealized abstract. When encountering a local incarnation such as a cosplayer or fan drawing, the comparison favors the monolith because it is the basis of their experience. The tendency to revere abstraction reinforces the hierarchy of monolith over local expression. However, when reflecting on the prehistoric experience of the divine, a contemporary person must imagine their accustomed hierarchy reversed.

Patterns of worship in the ancient world appear to be very localized. While everyone in a region may venerate the same god, local cults may have different idols, epithets, or rituals. The available evidence suggests that gods had epithets specific to local worship. One might think of gods as local expressions of common concepts. One does not first learn the common aspects and then encounter the local expression. The expressive form serves as the primary introduction to the underlying concept.

“Mythology” is derived from poetry, drama, and other means of artistic expression. The hymn that one village uses to worship Athena might differ from the one used by a nearby village. Each hymn may offer a different introduction to Athena, a different honorific, or different attributes that suit the local cult. One who travels between villages learns about the differences as changes relative to their experience. The abstraction shared between the two villages grows from recognition of attributes shared across both local cults. When that recognition is elevated, stories summarized, and epithets aggregated, the abstract eclipses the specific.

People tend to overestimate the persuasiveness of a message on the part of others but underestimate it on their own part. Sociologists name this dual tendency “the Third Person Effect” and implicate it in various misunderstandings about the influence of mass media. When a person advocates action based on how a message might be received by others, they reveal that they themselves have been implicitly influenced by the message. Social scientists study the Third Person Effect and its impacts on communities, media, and social movements.

The mechanics of the Third Person Effect suggest something morally relevant at work. Beneath the effect lies an implicit assumption of difference between the subject, their interlocutor, and other (third) people. One might believe that that “most people” are less educated, that their perspective is overly informed by a group stereotype, or that some other group-based difference sets the subject apart from the wider audience. Individuals tend to think of themselves as one entity and “everyone else” as an additional entity, failing to recognize that “everyone else” consists of individuals capable of doing the same with regard to themselves. Falling victim to the Third Person Effect reveals an unchecked assumption of inequality and the superiority of the subject.

In Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant argues that the principal moral duty, the Categorical Imperative, requires us to treat one another as ends in themselves and never merely as a means. Every person has the rational capacity to interpret the moral law, so all people have equal status as moral agents. A moral agent must be the author of their decisions about duty, the good life, and morality. One then has a duty to assume that others are close reflections of themselves in terms of their epistemic and moral capabilities. The Third Person Effect shows that this duty is often neglected.

Social scientists and epistemologists can agree that the Third Person Effect represents an epistemic error, but ethicists could note a moral error as well. Pragmatically, one must guard against the Third Person Effort, as one must any potential bias in belief or perception. One should also recognize the opportunity for moral reflection, to inquire about the perceived differences driving the Third Person bias in a particular case. Correcting the biases of the Third Person Effect is not just pragmatic, but a moral duty.

Since contemporary paganism lacks a singular theology, every pagan must develop their own account of gods, spirits, and other supernatural beings. A detailed ontology might enumerate hierarchies of entities and their domains, but any ontology must be grounded in a coherent metaphysical explanation of such beings. For the purposes of a general account, one can ignore the vagaries of category and hierarchy and focus only the principles that make supernatural beings possible. The term “Powers” used here will represent an inclusive set of gods, totem spirits, demons, fairies, and other unseen entities that attract veneration, supplication, or appeasement.

While “Powers” must be defined over a wide set, all members of that set share the characteristic of sacredness. Whether benevolent, malignant, or neutral, Powers belong to the non-ordinary space and time of the sacred. One does not experience Powers as one does fellow humans, animals, or plants, so a metaphysics of Powers is needed. A metaphysics of Powers does not need to prove that such entities exist per se, but it does need to address how their existence is possible and how one would gain knowledge about them.

Without some argument in favor of their existence, developing a metaphysics of Powers lacks a immediate significance. To motivate a general account, one needs only a weak existence claim such as existing as phenomena. Whether or not Powers exist as independent entities, their associated traditions and communities demonstrate that they are experienced. If one can grant that subjective experience includes entities described here as Powers, one should also grant that a metaphysical account of Powers must be possible to set boundaries for existence claims.

Assuming that Powers exist as experiences allows one to derive a few characteristics. Powers resemble thoughts, beliefs, fantasies, and other “mental” constructs in that they are experienced as immaterial substance confined to the cognitive landscape. While conventional idioms would describe such apparitions as existing “in the head,” immaterial substance lacks extension in space or time. By definition, material substance is extended in space and time and available to sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Immaterial substance contrasts as not extended in space and time and unavailable to the coarse senses. Strictly speaking, Powers have no location and take up no space.

If Powers have no location, one must also infer that the potential to experience Powers is not bounded by the individual body, brain, or mind. There is no reason to think that one person’s experience of a Power is necessarily experience of a different Power, as if each subject manifests a Power anew in each experience. If two subjects would agree that the objects of their separate divine experiences are the same, one can infer that they experience the same Power, much as one might say two people share an idea.
As the shared perspective of a power grows and changes, the power can be said to develop accordingly, containing the multitudes of its past and present. The collective creation of Powers distinguishes them from other immaterial objects. When immaterial objects find themselves available to an engaged collective that attaches significance to them, they become Powers in an apotheosis of ideas.

Taking these characteristics together, Powers represent the individual’s encounter with collective ideas. They are real insofar as they are experienced as real, insofar as ideas are real. Powers serve to remind the individual that they are also members of a collective, that they stand in the shadow of something greater, that we are waves in the ocean. The Powers reminds us that we are water.

As capitalism orders the world around its economic rhythm, holidays become pulled into the five day work week. Workers taking off at the beginning or end of a week causes less disruption than a midweek holiday, and the most sacred holidays demand observance even when they fall on a weekend. To address these issues, contemporary governments normalize observing a holiday at the end or beginning of a week rather than on its appointed day.

To put this practice in perspective, one should consider that the single day of release offered for most holidays represents a diminished standard from agrarian societies where major festivals could last multiple days. The Catholic Church maintains seasonal periods that culminate in the supreme feast day, but the capitalist engine thrives on continued motion. Secular society then strangled holidays down from a week to a single day and maintains control over the timing of celebrations.

Neopagans tend to celebrate the solar cycle, the ever-turning wheel of year. Solar festivals are unsurprisingly common among agrarian cultures that must plan according to the seasons. At the appointed time one venerates the gods whose powers are needed for the next phase of the cycle. The times are appointed by the Earth and Sun, and calendars are made to follow them.

In ceremonial magic time often serves as one component of ritual. The working must begin, culminate, or end at the proper time, during the correct phase of the moon or position of the sun. Like most ritual components, time imposes discipline and sacrifice that call the magician’s focus to the ritual and its intentions. It requires the magician to be mindful of celestial movements as well as their own movements on the terrestrial plane. The magician must bring themselves into alignment with time, the Earth, the Sun, the Moon to propel their intention into being with the force of those movements.

The habit of shifting observances draws the magician out of alignment. Instead, one lets the celestial sphere runs its course and work only within the terrestrial plane. One sets aside the sacrifice and discipline required to align with time, and one thereby sets aside the potential to utilize that power. When one works only within the regulated structures of capitalism and secular society, one loses the grace of the sacred.

Capitalism thrives on alienation. The worker becomes alienated from their fellows, their community, and their labor. In driving the calendar capitalism also alienates us from the sacred, from the opportunities to unite with the rhythm of the world at large. Traditional festivals of colonizer cultures are reduced to regimented observances. The traditions of colonized cultures go unobserved unless they can be molded to the colonizer framework. Reclaiming festivals and leisure time is a revolutionary act, a struggle to bring our communities into harmony with themselves and the world.

Contemporary occultists generally agree that belief is a key component for magic. The magician must believe in the methods, the symbols, and the potential for results. Symbols and other occult metaphors require sincere invocation in order to have the desired effect. Phil Hines, among others, centralized the role of belief in the tradition dubbed “Chaos Magic.” The Chaos approach invites the magician to incorporate any element of recreation, occupation, or popular culture into their magical belief system. If focused belief is the core requirement, one can invoke superheroes through playing video games just as one might invoke an ancient goddess with chanting, candles, and incense.

Unpacking the phenomenology of belief shows that the Chaos Magic account remains incomplete. Reducing operative magick to wielding belief as a tool discounts the subjective feeling associated with a belief sincerely held. Holding a belief entails maintaining a propositional attitude toward a statement of fact. William James argues that volition plays a significant role in adopting belief, but will alone is not a sufficient condition for belief. The belief must also feel plausibly true, and it must resolve a significant concern. According to James, belief formation sits at the intersection of reason and subjectivity. For a belief to be sincerely held, the believer must feel the gravity of the settled matter.

While popular culture may hold deep meaning, the economic structures that produce it strip symbols of gravitas. North Americans born in the late 20th and early 21st century have access to a wide array of superheroes, literary protagonists, and beloved childhood cartoons. Unlike the mythos of Ancient Greece, all of these contemporary figures are owned and controlled by corporate entities. They were created to generate profit, and they appear in multiple iterations and adaptations in order to generate further profit. Sophisticated media corporations engineered increased popularity, ensuring that their intellectual property has a place in hearts and minds to motivate further spending. As North Americans we do not possess the mythos of our popular culture. We are not free to adapt stories to new media, to rearrange events, or to imagine new stories. Our heroes are given to us, but not made ours.

Beneath then surface of popular icons lies a web of deeper significance. The mythic traditions of the world provide themes, tropes, and archetypes that inform the creation of contemporary heroes and villains. Following these symbols back in time creates a connection with concepts fundamental to the human experience. Furthermore, these symbols escape tight intellectual property protection due to their great age. They belong to their people unlike the proprietary celebrities that populate our screens.

Traditions and their symbols must live alongside those who held them dear. Tying ourselves too tightly to the past invites stasis, but without any connection to the past, belief is left unmoored. Nothing essential hangs on images promoted in order to separate an audience from its money. If popular culture and Chaos Magic provides an entry point into the occult, the seeker must eventually grow beyond them.