Over Their Heads - More Revolution

"It is true that if an individual does not purchase insurance, he or she affects the insurance market to a degree," he said. "But the Government's theory would make one's mere existence the basis for federal regulation. There would be no structural limit on the power of Congress. As a result, the Government's theory would change the relation between the citizens and the Federal Government in a fundamental way."
Justice Kennedy

I have a feeling that the phrase "lacks the tools for the job" will continue to describe our government in the coming months, no matter what decisions are reached.

LIberal Democracy's Death

"What political scientists call “liberal democracy” is a system in which competing elite groups buy the loyalty of sectors of the electorate by handing out economic largesse. That system depends on abundant fossil fuels and the industrial economy they make possible. Many of today’s political institutions will not survive the end of cheap energy, and the changeover to new political arrangements will likely involve violence."
The Archdruid

Amen

"Given the watered down, barren, commercialized and overly frontal-lobed Christianity that we often find nowadays in the West..."

They are Not Dead, Nor Do They Sleep....

Mouravieff argues that the "Knight" is actually a deformed personality (in terms of the ideal, but perhaps the best deformation?):

"The main characteristics of the Knightly type are his sense of equity and his devotion to duty. He aspires to accomplish deeds which may even lead him to sacrifice his life, and he will take any risk gladly for a beautiful ideal. One must not think that this type of Knight only belongs to bygone ages and that he is extinct today. This type always exists. However, he seldom comes to power in the environment 3 that characterizes our epoch. For modern methods of selection demand a certain suppleness, an elasticity of character on the part of those who aspire to leading roles and which for the Knight is completely foreign to his nature. If he competes in the race towards the summit of the human hierarchy, he soon gives up the struggle, either by his own action or because the circumstances eliminate him automatically. We can come across this type of human being in all strata of society; but in our intellectualized environment he is unlucky in business as well as in politics. On the other hand, he may make a military career or find a post in the magistracy or devote himself to social work. The different degree of development, and the particular nature of his intellectual and motor centres, lead to a whole series of psychic and psychological shadings in this type of man 2. Besides this classical type of Knight, there are others who fall into the same general category, like the hermit-monk, the Prophet, and the Apostle. One may also include artists of all kinds."
Gnosis 2


This picture represents the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon. Antichrist. This is the deformation of the human personality, at its worst, in the "three centers".

The Universe a Hologram?

"Once, in a cheap science fiction novel, Fat had come across a perfect description of the Black Iron Prison, but set in the far future. So if you superimposed the past (ancient Rome) over the present (California in the twentieth century) and superimposed the far future world of The Android Cried Me a River over that, you got the Empire, as the supra- or trans-temporal constant. Everyone who had ever lived was literally surrounded by the iron walls of the prison; they were all inside it and none of them knew it."
See V.A.L.I.S.
Also, source

Inevitable Crash of Progress

Most of my readers will be able to call examples of this trajectory easily to mind, and a fair number will have experienced at least a small part of it themselves. I’ve come to think, though, that in the years immediately ahead of us, it’s going to be almost impossible to miss. Plenty of belief systems will have to deal with repeated disconfirmation, but the one that’s likely to get hit the hardest, and may well produce the biggest crop of pathological behavior, is the established religion of the modern industrial world, the belief in the inevitability and goodness of progress. I suspect, rather, that the refusal to recognize and deal with the end of progress will become a massive social force in the decade or so ahead of us, and that the great divide in American society during those years will not be the one between left and right, or between rich and poor, but between those who have accepted history’s verdict on our fantasy of perpetual progress, on the one hand, and those who cling to the fantasy despite all disconfirmations, on the other. Since refusing to recognize the fact of decline is a good way to get clobbered over the head by one or another of that fact’s manifestations—a point that the inhabitants of coastal North Carolina are likely to find out the hard way one of these days—those who choose the path of denial may be in for a very rough road indeed.
Archdruid Report

Sola Fide's Danger

"In relation to the Absolute II his attitude differs, at least in appearance. Human intelligence pays homage to the greatness of Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross, Yet man above all wants to consider himself as the beneficiary of the sacrifice of his Lord, who appears to him essentially as his Saviour: salvation seems to him an acquired right, a reward for the divine sacrifice..."

Mouravieff, Gnosis II

Another way to put this is that the Protestant doctrine of Sola Fide, at its worst and perhaps even its best, opens the door to a horrible error - the objectification of Christ's sacrifice in a way impossible even during the era of rampant Indulgences, so that every person can automatically assume themselves as part of the Kingdom, rather than accepting the task to become born again and obtain the inheritance, second born of many brethren under the First.

That World, This World

After the coming of Christ, when traditions until then hermetic were partially released from secrecy, some of them were incorporated in the doctrines of schools which were attempting ro synthesize a Greco-Judaeo-Christian gnosis. A powerful movement of thought was launched by Simon Magus, a Samaritan whose personality remains shrouded in legend, A few fragments of the doctrine he elaborated with Menander's help were passed down to us by Satornil, a disciple of the latter. After an absurd and complicated account of the events which preceded Creation, he relates that the first man crawled. He said that later the Virtue from above had pity on him because he was created in His image; that He gave him a spark of Life which allowed him to stand upright and enabled him to live. This spark of Life —so Satornil taught—reascends after death towards the higher beings to whom it is related.29 This fragment, which on the whole agrees with canonical Tradition, was placed in a most fanciful framework. The error of the heretical gnostics, as we know them from criticisms by the Fathers of the Church, their adversaries — among whom we can quote Saint Irenaeus and Saint Clement of Alexandria—took the form of intellectually detaching man from the Cosmos in which he lived. The problem was thus reduced to the personal fate of the individual. On the other hand the imperfection of the phenomenal world was naively explained either by a celestial catastrophe or as an error of God or as a result of His wickedness. This error of conception has already been described in the first volume of Gnosis. We recognize here the influence of Hellenistic thought which, after the time of Homer, attributed human motives to the Gods. Neither was this tendency foreign to the Jewish mind, which went as far as making God repent of having created Man, and attributed fear ' and vengeance to him. The more important the question studied, the more it should be considered in all its aspects; otherwise synthesis, the only thing that can resolve it, becomes impossible since the value of elements analysed in isolation is always debatable — because they have then been arbitrarily detached from other elements which must be considered to obtain a complete picture. This represents them in a faulty way. The problem of man immeasurably exceeds his immediate interests here below and even in the hereafter. To understand this problem, we must turn to the source of the Tradition, to: the wisdom of Cod in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, wisdom, as St Paul said, which none of the princes of this world knew. This is the only way to avoid falling into heresy when studying these matters.
Gnosis II, Chapter 1

Sola Fide?

"For he that will say, I have a Will, and would willingly do Good, but the earthly Flesh which I carry about me, keepeth me back, so that I cannot; yet I shall be saved by Grace, for the Merits of Christ. I comfort myself with his Merit and Sufferings; who will receive me of mere Grace, without any Merits of my own, and forgive me my Sins. Such a one, I say, is like a Man that knoweth what Food is good for his Health, yet will not eat of it, but eateth Poison instead thereof, from whence Sickness and Death, will certainly follow."
Jacob Boehme

Look Truth in the Eye

"Interior collapse leads to certain consequences. Man starts to see things
in a different light. Two diametrically opposed effects can result. If man is
sufficiently strong and impartial, he will not lower his eyes before implacable
reality. He will have the courage to face things directly, and to accept
the constatations which are imposed on him, no matter how disagreeable
they are. This signifies that he has firmly started on the track which leads to
the path of Access to the Way. On the other hand, if the man is weak, this
experience will weaken him even more. The law is explicit: 'To whosoever
hath, to him shall be given. But whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even
that which he hath.'2 If man does not accept his situation and, in particular,
his inner state as it appears to him, thanks to brief illuminations from the
consciousness of the real 'I'—if he is obstinate against all evidence, justifying
his Personality by protecting himself behind logic, legitimacy and justice,
he will then turn his back on the path of Access, and thrust himself further
into the wilderness."

Feeding the Moon

"And so, my dear Hassein, when it appeared that the instinctive need for conscious labor and intentional suffering in order to be able to take in and transmute in themselves the sacred substances Abrustdonis and Helkdonis and thereby to liberate the sacred Askokin for the maintenance of the Moon and Anulios had finally disappeared from the psyche of your favorites, then Great Nature Herself was constrained to adapt Herself to extract this sacred substance by other means, one of which is precisely that periodic terrifying process there of reciprocal destruction."

Gurdjieff