The cradle of our civilization
When I studied Western Philosophy, many years ago, the official story was that Greek Philosophy was the first step in a world of intellectual achievement. In that moment, philosophy just popped off the face of the earth. The reason: Athenas and the Greek islands were ports full of people from different cultures, so they could observe the contradictions between cultures, and realized that only one answer wouldn’t be the right answer. They needed to use logic to get out of that conundrum.
That is the children’s tale our civilization has told itself to separate us from the superstitious/religious people that came before.
According to contemporary studies, things are not so straightforward. Greek philosophers came from a long tradition that was influenced by Hinduism and Egyptian philosophy, and the only thing new about them is that they wrote their exoteric knowledge, the one intended for non-initiated people. They were not intellectuals as we know them now. They were magicians, astrologers, oneiromancers, wise people who tried to answer the question:
What are we doing here?
Photo by cottonbro
Studying academic Philosophy for six years taught me the question has no meaning. It has no answer. Still, I am not convinced. Somebody, somewhere, should have the answers.
Christianity has an answer, after all. We were created by God, with a capital letter, and then something went wrong, and we need to be better people to go back to where we started; paradise.
There are different versions of this story. For Kabbalists, there were different versions of reality, and some of them were so out of the pattern that YHVH intended He had to destroy them. Our reality was bad, but not so bad that we couldn’t go back to the original Adam Kadmon, the original pure man that is connected to God.
The Jewish-Christian versions emphasized our need to do something. We have to work to become the blessed beings we were meant to be. Let’s work!
And this version of the question has permeated all our Western culture. In Christianity, that was combined with the idea of the Apocalypses. We not only have to work hard, we have a limited time for it, because very soon, and it has been very soon since John wrote his book, almost two thousand years now, Christ is coming back and taking the good ones with him, and condemning the bad ones to Hell. It was not enough knowing that death was waiting for you to judge, now you had the added pressure of the end of all.
Funny enough, the idea of judgement after death was in Egyptian religion, but there are no traces of it in the traditional Greek culture or Jewish culture.
The idea of the Christ, who came only once, marking the beginning, and the Apocalypses, at the end, created what is called linear time. The idea that history started at a certain point, and it has an end. We have to work hard to improve ourselves, and we have to do it fast. And from that, once the idea of God was eliminated by Illustration, people still believed we have to work hard to improve ourselves. From that came our cultural obsession for being something better. We are always working hard and as fast as we possibly can, to become the better version of ourselves. I have to say, it is exhausting.
Left Hand Path (LHP) and Right Hand Path (RHP)
The need to improve is part also of Western Esotericism. Let’s take a look at the two different paths. The RHP, also called white magic, and the LHP, known as black magic.
For the RHP, the goal is to become one with God, so we can go back to the pattern that was created for us. For the LHP, the target is to become a god and create your own universe. The tools are the same, but as one esoteric friend reminded me a couple of days ago, at a certain point, you have to choose. I had been told this before, when I was starting out in the esoteric world. You have to choose if you want to be one with God or become a god and create your own universe. I wished it was so simple. Just two options, like a short menu.
Chaos Magic
There is more. There are more answers, and they are not necessarily coherent.
Let’s look at Chaos magic. For them, there is no truth. We create our own truths, paradigms. They have taken the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn at heart. There are no truths at all, we create our own truths, so we just go into a paradigm; Qabalah, for instance, we act and feel and think as if we believed it, we work with it, we get results, then we leave. When we are out of the ritual or the working, we know nothing is true. But inside the paradigm, we can use the tools to get what we want.
It took me a while to understand that my first magic teacher was a Chaos magician by heart. She would organize Workings that lasted 3 to 6 months, in a particular tradition. And then she would pass to another tradition. It made sense, and I thought every magician was like that. But that is not universally true. So, the goal here is, basically, to have fun exploring.
To finish, for now
Many magicians entered a tradition, a temple, and they have stayed there forever. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to try other things, but some of them have already some answers. It doesn’t matter if they are LHP or RHP: they know why they are here, and where they are going. Even Chaos Magicians do: the question has no meaning, there is no answer.
I will reformulate my question now. If there are different answers, is there one that is better than others? Or should we find one that suits as, as a collective, for these difficult times?
To answer that, I have to go also into Eastern Esotericism. In this area, things get even more complicated, with godless traditions full of deities and protectors. That’s a subject for another article.
A. B. Neilly is a magician, writer, philosopher, astrologer and founder of Heka-ICRE.