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Hmm...From: Nnonnth
Subject: General
Date/Time 2007-07-25 13:53:10
Remote IP: 195.93.21.72
Message>>Was/Is the DemiUrge the great enemy of mankind or its benefactor or what?<<
Well like I said in that essay, whether out of the huge diversity of Gnostic viewpoints you could say a unified view on this emerged or not, basically you don't get the former view, the 'great enemy who keeps us in check' etc. in the west until that period. I really think it's down to what you think about the body, and about spiritual power used to manifest things physically - whether a healthy physical and emotional self, or a new worldview like Alexander is talking about, or any of the things magicians manifest etc. Iamblichus would agree with me! :) The 'escape from physicality' doesn't sit well with me. But on this site I realize I am preaching to the converted on that issue.
Bill Mistele has an amusing moment on his site where he talks about paying an entire Tibetan monastery to do a certain ritual to manifest something, but equally having great trouble and having to defend his point of view sometimes because the idea that one should come out of neutrality and do magic with a physical effect is anathema to alot of Buddhists, even if the effect is wholeheartedly egoless. Obviously the western traditions don't share this viewpoint, and most eastern martial ones don't seem to either.
>>Interesting about the spirits appearing as whirls of energy to the pure vision. Couldn't you could extend that to humans,animals, plants or anything else?<<
I'm sure you could but actually this was a more technical issue that I was pointing to. For someone like Alexander he will say 'the life force does this or that', whereas in Hermetics people will give exhaustive systems of the spirits responsible for this or that on earth etc. They are not like beings which incarnate and seem to have a separate role in creation through evolving in time, as do plants and animals, they don't exist in time in the same way. But essentially they are like personalities because they have developed over huge periods of time, they are like the instruments of the life force in their particular areas.
At least, we as human beings can communicate and interpret them *as if* they had human personalities, is maybe a better way to say it!
However in kabbalistic terms one sees them also apparently just as energies. This isn't taoist in the terms of this site of course, although I'm sure there are taoists who work in this way. If all the individual currents of energy that make up the spirit (which need not of course be energies that would normally appear in a human being) are mastered inside oneself then apparently one does not need to 'contact the spirit' and his/her personality etc., one simply assumes the role and powers of that part of the life force, the 'true name' of the spirit being a way to understand it... more info in Bardon books 2 and 3. The real intent of what I said was to point out for those who don't like the 'working with spirits' angle that another way exists in Hermetics which is to do with isolating and contacting the energy as an energy rather than as a being per se.
j
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