Category Archives: Pantheism

In 1868, Pope Pius IX convened what would come to be called the First Vatican Council. It appears the pope an his closer associates were concerned with the issues of rationalism, materialism, and liberalism in general, as well as the specifics of rising socialism, communism, and anarchism. They did as charged and duly The Council condemned rationalism, secularism, liberalism, naturalism, modernism, materialism and pantheism.

But it was today, the 18th of July, in 1870 that they outdid themselves. They defined Papal Infallibility.

This assertion was controversial, to say the least. Among those, a leader emerged, the German church historian and theologian J.J.I. von Dllinger. The following year, when he refused to accept the dogma, he was excommunicated. However, at the same time he was elected rector of Munich University.

From that position he called a congress of those troubled by the dogma. The congress gathered on the 22nd of September, 1871. Three hundred theologians and clergy attended. They drew up a plan for a new association of Catholics, one freed of the excesses of papal domination and as a potential gathering for Christian reunification.

The new body was called the Old Catholic Church. They gathered disaffected congregations, mostly in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. As no bishop joined them they turned to the theJansenist Church of Holland for episcopal orders. Dutch Bishop Heykamp consecrated the Reverend Dr Joseph H. Reinkens on Aug. 11, 1873.

This would lead to the Union of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Churches. (for their home page) Today the Union six member churches: the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands(OKKN), theCatholic Diocese of the Old Catholics in Germany, theChristian Catholic Church of Switzerland, theOld Catholic Church of Austria, theOld Catholic Church of the Czech Republic, and thePolish Catholic Church in Poland.

They are bound by the Declaration of Utrecht, which was formulated in 1889. The Union is in full communion with theEvangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden, and through the Bonn Agreement, with theAnglican Communion (including the American Episcopal Church).

An article at the World Council of Churches website summarizes the faith and practice of the Old Catholics.

The Old-Catholics recognize the same seven ecumenical councils as the Eastern Orthodox churches, and those doctrines accepted by the church before the Great Schism of 1054. They admit seven sacraments and recognize apostolic succession. They also believe in the real presence in the eucharist, but deny transubstantiation, forbid private masses, and permit the reception of the eucharist under one or both elements. The Old-Catholic churches have an episcopal-synodal structure. Bishops, as well as the rest of the clergy, are permitted to marry. All services are in the vernacular. Since 1996 the threefold apostolic ministry is open to women. From the start, Anglicans have been close to Old-Catholics. They participated in an international conference of theologians, convened at Bonn by Old-Catholics in 1874, to discuss the reunion of churches outside Rome. Old-Catholics recognized Anglican ordinations in 1925. Since 1931 they have been in full communion with the Church of England first and later on with all the churches of the Anglican Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury has a permanent representative with the International Old-Catholic Bishops Conference.

The issues around womens ordination and blessing of same sex unions led to a rupture with the only American affiliated church, the Polish National Catholic Church. After refusing communion with bodies that allowed the ordination of women, including the Episcopal Church the PNCC was expelled from the Union in 2003.

(A note: Here in North America and elsewhere there are micro-denominations and clergy who use the term Old Catholic, or that derive their orders through Old Catholic bishops. These bodies, some of which I find very interesting, are, however, not connected to the Union. Most are clear about this, but some are very misleading about their relationship with the Old Catholic movement. As I said, a note.)

The 84th in succession and current Archbishop of Utrecht and first among equals among the bishops of the Old Catholic churches is the Most Reverend Bernd Theodoor Wallet. The image with this article is of the archbishop at his consecration on the 18th of September, 2021.

The archbishops principal consecrator was the Rt Reverend Dirk Schoon, the Old Catholic bishop of Haarlem, assisted by the Old Catholic bishop of Germany, the Rt Reverend Matthias Ring, and the Anglican bishop of Gibraltar, the Rt Reverend Dr Robert Innes. Other bishops from the Church of England and the Church of Sweden also participated in the consecration. Official representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople as well as other ecclesiastical dignitaries were also present.

So, a lot of water under the bridge sincethis day, one hundred and fifty-two years ago.

A general google search did not show up their current demographics, numbers of congregations, clergy, nor membership. They are small and are facing the issues common to all Christian denominations in Europe. I wouldnt hazard a guess as to the number of churches, but I think their membership numbers in the tens of thousands across their several European countries.

While a small band, I find them fascinating. Im especially interested in their cross-fertilization with the Anglican communion.

So, thank you, Pius! Some serious good came out of a very problematic council

Originally posted here:
Thinking of the Old Catholics and the Union of Utrecht - Patheos

By Ratan Bhattacharjee

He was the son of the soil, the Cherrapunji poet of rains and rainbow, and the poet of the limbo-land.

Born to Hag Tongper and Lyngkien Tham in 1873, he struggled hard to study, become a high school teacher and leave behind a rich legacy of Khasi literature, placing Cherrapunji on the cultural map of Meghalaya and the country beyond.

In December 2021, the statue of the national bard of Khasi literature was unveiled in Sohra to commemorate his 81stdeath anniversary. The Khasi Department of NEHU has an extensive library containing a large number of books on Soso Tham. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih wrote Hiraeth and the Poetry of Soso Tham, a wonderful book on the bard. This book published by Ri Khasi Books and North Eastern India for Indigenous Studies, Shillong, mentioned Soso Tham as the Khasi National Bard.

Professors Antoinette Kharmalki, Bandarlin Bairo and Marbhador M. Khymdeit of NEHUs Khasi Department made tremendous efforts to develop and enrich the Khasi language and literature over two decades. Professor Badaplin War provided some facts on Tham and referred to Nongkynrihs book on the great poet.

Nongkynrihs translations retain the flavour of Thams poetry. In The Green Grass, Tham regards u tiew dohmaw, a wild flower as a symbol of great wisdom: Quietly in the wood/ It grows among the weeds./An uncommon blossom, u tiew dohmaw/ A thing of lofty thoughts. In The Days that are Gone he refers to his own birthplace: I will go to Sohra to be among the hills,/ The land of u tiew sohkhah and u tiew pawing lum/ The land of ka sim pieng, the land of u kaitor/The land of valour, the land of culture.

Thus, Tham can be also called a poet of flowers and songbirds. Like Keats, Tham names flowers, waterfalls and rivers not only because he delights in them or because of the stories they tell, but also to the question: Where do we come from? It is a question of identity not merely for the Khasi but for many others living in the North-East.

It was in 1935 that the cultural map was poetically drawn for the Khasis when Tham, known as the Father of Khasi poetry, had completed a classic in Khasi literature and the Shillong Printing Works published The Old Days of the Khasis (Ki Sngi Barim U Hyniewtrep) in which his voice cradled the vast soul of his people. Tham seemed to have come from the wilderness to carve in wood the identity of his people. Thomas Jones came to Khasi Hills in 1841 to adamantly focus on the need to teach the Khasis to read and write their own language before they read in English. Tham tried to fill the void by writing in Khasi his poems. Still, the translation of Thams Khasi poetry got a global reception and credit goes to the Shillong-born Janet Hujon, a Masters from NEHU and a PhD scholar from Cambridge. She did justice to Tham and the translation maintained the right tempo of creativity.

Literary history is not just the immediate past but the distant past and not just the literature of his or her own country but the whole mind of a nation or a continent. Sensibility for a poet like Tham is always terrific responsiveness to feeling, emotion and thought of the land where he lives and it got a crystal clear projection in his creative wonders from The Khasi Folktales, About Darkness and Light, Grains of Gold (Ki Symboh Ksiar), The Flower Garden (Ka Persyntiew), The Natural World (Pyrthei Mariang), The Cloud (U Lyoh), The Dark One (U Rngiew), The Rainbow (U Simpyllieng), Home (Ka Ling I Mei), Gentle Motherland (Ka Merilung), Lamare Peak (Lum Lamare) to the Season of Gold (Ka Aiom Ksiar).

As the poet of the landscape, myth and memory, he made his creative works a cultural signpost for the Khasis. Even as a translator, he left behind Ka Duitara Ksiar (The Golden Harp) comprising 46 short poems, lyrics, ballads and nursery rhymes, and 14 translations of various English poets. His other creation, Ki Sngi Ba Rim U Hynniewtrep (The Olden Days of U Hynniewtrep) is considered a masterpiece of Indian literature, a single long poem having 181 stanzas of six lines divided into 10 sections. His translation of Aesops Fables into the Khasi language or Charles Dickens The Life of Our Lord and the Shakespearean comedy The Tempest (U Kyllang) were more a trans-creation. He was the first person to make use of Khasi idioms in a form taken mainly from English poetry.

Like all Khasi people, Soso Tham lived in a limbo which he poeticises and had terrible nights of darkness but with the dawn of hope and light, he went back in his poems to his childhood and to the daily rituals where the sacred codes of life were affirmed. People with no evidence of written history were without foundation or worth. Which gods have made your slopes their home? asked Tham in Lum Lamar (Lamare Peak) which is a dreamlike meandering through memory, myth, reflection and the immediacy of experience found in the simple pleasures of daily life. This going to the roots is emphasised also by renowned Khasi poet Daiarisa Rumnong, a professor of English at St Marys College who said in Speak Your Roots that the renaissance of Khasi literature tapered after beginning by the 2000s. Many novels and folklore compilations are out of print and scholarly manuscripts are not open to the people in digital versions, not even in NEHU. We should leave language puritanism when a poet like Soso Tham is reaching out to the global reception.

Tham searched the past not as a dark place but as a source of light, of enlightenment. It may lie buried but it is not dead. His heart bled when he saw the Khasi and Jaitia Hills plundered. Tham composed his masterpiece The Flower Garden (Ka Persyntiew) On bracing hillcrests, shielded lee/Refreshed I walk, alone reflect/Upon my homelands darkened heart,/Then under every thatch I find/Scattered grains of thought profound/Alive in pools of haunting tears.

As in the mystic poetry of G.M. Hopkins or Wordsworth, Tham found beauty in the natural descriptions, even in pantheism.

Here is the original post:
Speaking the Roots - The Shillong Times

The World Pantheist Movements basic orienting beliefs (known as Scientific Pantheism) are set out in the WPM belief statement. This is not a creed in the religious sense. It is not something we recite, or that we are obliged to learn and accept every word of. It is a guide to what the WPM is about, a notice on our door that says, if you like this, come in.It is the set of beliefs that the WPM seeks to make widely available as a spiritual option to as many people as possible.They are not so much beliefs as a set of feeling and values about what, thanks to science and our senses, we know to exist.

The central viewpoint is that the Universe and Nature should be regarded with the deepest reverence and wonder, and Nature should be treated with the deepest love and respect and care. Similar views are shared by many people who use other terms, such as religious humanist, religious naturalist, religious atheist, and many other combinations. The WPM is a natural home for those who have this same orientation, whatever terms they use to call themselves.

When we say WE REVERE THE EARTH, we mean it with just as much commitment and reverence as believers speaking about their invisible god or gods. But we are not talking about supernatural powers or beings.

We are saying this: We are at home in Nature and in our bodies. This is where we belong. Nature made us and at our death we will be reabsorbed into Nature and recycled.Nature is our mother, our home, our security, our peace, our past and our future. We are part of Nature. Nature is an interdependent community of living beings, lands, oceans, winds. We should treat natural things and habitats as sacred to be revered and preserved in their intricate and fragile beauty.Earth is the only place where we can find and make our paradise, not some imaginary realm on the other side of the grave. We are living at a critical time where Nature is under unprecedented threat from human-created global warning.More than ever we need to be aware of our individual obligation to live sustainably with Nature, as well as to work in our families and communities so that everyone can do so.

When we say WE REVERE THE UNIVERSE we are not talking about a supernatural being, because we do not believe in supernatural beings. We are talking about the way our senses and our emotions force us to respond to the overwhelming mystery, power and beauty that surrounds us.

The Universe creates us, preserves us, destroys us. Our earth was created from the Universe and will one day be reabsorbed into the Universe. The Universe is an interdependent collective of all that exists. We are part of the Universe. We are made of the same matter and energy as the Universe.

The Universe is deep and old beyond our ability to reach with our senses. It is beautiful beyond our ability to describe in words. Through science we have glimpses into the depth and complexity of the Universe, yet it retains its mystery.

This wonder is everywhere inside you and outside you and you can never be separated from it. Wherever you are, its there with you. Wherever you go, it goes with you. Whatever happens to you, it remains with you.

If you are interested in joining please check out the benefits and subscriptions page or click the Join button on any page.

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Basic beliefs of Scientific Pantheism World Pantheism

Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese modernist who, in many respectsand in many aspectsis a fitting poet for our identity-obsessed age, was at least four poets. His best verse, and much of his prose, entered the world variously under the sign of the pastoralist Alberto Caeiro, the classicist Ricardo Reis, and the world traveler lvaro de Campos, as well as that of Pessoa himself, the progenitor of this powerful triad that he dubbed heteronyms. Too complexly realized to be mere pseudonyms, too individual in their tastes, temperaments, philosophies, and flashings-forth of genius, they were the high triumvirate among the more than 100 literary alter egos that Pessoa invented in his lifetime, many coming to light only after his death. Be plural like the universe! he commanded himself. Walt Whitmanone of his largest influencesmay have contained multitudes, but Pessoa sent his panoply of inner selves flocking out into the world, where they unfolded rich psychologies, personal convictions, and private obsessions. The heteronyms argued with one another in print, at times even taking issue with Pessoa himself.

Pessoas unstable identity reflected the upheaval of his time, as well as the disruptions of his own early life. He was born in 1888 in Lisbon, the capital of a decadent, declining power whose ruling family had sat on the throne since 1640. Even for left-wingers, colonialism was synonymous with national pride: Portugals economy depended on wealth extracted from Brazil, and its monarchy, at the time of Pessoas birth, laid claim to a vast swath of lightly occupied, poorly administered colonial territory stretching the entire breadth of the African continent, from what is now Angola in the west to Mozambique in the east. This was the decaying empire, the glory days of which Lus de Cames, Portugals national poetwhom Pessoa aimed to outdohad extolled in his Virgilian epic The Lusiads.

By the time he died, in 1935, Pessoa had lived through a dictatorship, a republican revolution, the end of the Portuguese monarchy, the Great War, and the first several years of the Salazar regime. Despite writing at length on imperialism, decadence, and other cultural topics, he remained allergic to the vocabulary of social responsibility. Even his close friends had trouble pinning down his views. As the critic Harold Bloom remarked, Pessoa can be read as a political poet only if you start with the good mornings conviction that everything is political, including a good morning. But he wasnt insensitive to the world around him. His three major heteronyms emerged in 1914, the dawning of World War I, as though welling up from the fissures of a fractured way of life. More than any of his contemporaries, Pessoa personalized the upheaval of his time. Each disruption occasioned a seismic shift of self, as Ricardo Reisa Greek Horace who writes in Portuguese, according to Pessoatells us:

Fate frightens me, Lydia. Nothing is certain.At any moment something could happenTo change all that we are.

Brilliant, restive, alternately depressed and exhilarated, Pessoa had second thoughts about everythingand third and fourth thoughts, too. After dropping out of college, he cadged money from relatives and friends, borrowed against his mother and stepfathers investment bonds, and supported himself by writing letters in English and French for Portuguese businessmen, while pursuing a dizzying array of literary projects and business schemes, most of which never got off the ground. His life in Lisbon was hectiche made the rounds of literary cafsbut largely uneventful. Having diagnosed himself with a mild sexual inversion, he never married, and likely remained a virgin. He was besotted not with men or women but with language, enamored of his own alchemical creative powers. Endlessly fecund, he seemed to be at times a spectator of himself, the meeting-place of a small humanity that belongs only to me.

They belong to the world now, Pessoas invented selves. In the dramatis personae that opens Pessoa, Richard Zeniths mammoth new biography of the poet, we learn, charmingly, that Reis immigrated to Brazil in 1919, and was still living in the Americas, perhaps in Peru, when Pessoa died in 1935the heteronym surviving his maker. Pessoas first biographer, the Portuguese author Joo Gaspar Simes, believed that the exotic appeal of the heteronyms would fadebut, in fact, it has only grown stronger with time, the poets self-partitioning a more apt allegory for the obsessive and self-obsessed way in which so many of us craft our digital personae, personal brands, and public-facing lives. Pessoas inventions, sprung from their captivity in the large wooden trunk he left behind, stuffed with more than 25,000 papers, have unquestionably outlived him.

But for every full-fledged soul and perfect piece of writing he produced, there are dozens of fragmentary works and pseudo-authors who exist in little more than name. These cast-off limbsrubble [from] a kind of literary Pompeii, Zenith calls themput me in mind of those wonderfully expressive hands by Rodin on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: radiant with genius, but incomplete. Even Pessoas greatest prose work is a tumulus of shards. Early on, in November 1914, he told a friend, despairingly, My state of mind compels me to work hard, against my will, on The Book of Disquiet. But its all fragments, fragments, fragments. Like his contemporary T. S. Eliot, Pessoa went on to the end of his life shoring up fragments, though not exactly against his ruins.

Born to a romantic, literary mother and a civil servant father who moonlighted as a prolific music and theater critic while slowly dying of tuberculosis, Pessoa grew up a sensitive, withdrawn, yet independent child. Words were his playthings, though he still enjoyed the good health of understanding nothing, as he later wrote. One thing he may have struggled to understand during those early Lisbon years was the disruptive presence of his paternal grandmother, the half-demented Dionsia. Prone like her namesake, the Greek god, to fits of madness, she furnished the future creator of so many alternate selves with early evidence, according to Zenith, that multiple personalities can dwell in one and the same human body.

At age five, Pessoa suffered the deaths, six months apart, of his father and his infant brother, Jorge. Then he watched, bewildered, as his mother whipsawed from grief to giddy elation. Just days after losing her son, she met a charming Portuguese navy captain: the attraction was electric, and they soon married. Here was another lesson for the budding Pessoa. Grief doesnt last because grief doesnt last, the heteronym lvaro de Campos tells us in a poem about a newly bereaved mother. The mother who loses her son is a recurring figure in Pessoas mature writings, along with an awareness of how quickly the loss can lose its sting. Personalities, emotions, marriage, widowhoodit seemed that nothing was stable or endured for long.

In Pessoas childish imagination, reality itself grew unstable: daydreams supplanted the waking world. Egged on by a doting uncle with a weakness for make-believe, the future poet began to people his solitude with fictitious individualsat least two of whom, Captain Thibeaut and the Chevalier de Pas, he remembered for the rest of his life as having been utterly real to him, fathomed to the depths of their souls. This dreamy habit only augmented in adolescence. The lonely boys desire to surround himself with friends and acquaintances who never existed prefigured the grand fakery of a literary career in which he would conduct interviews with himself, one heteronym picking anothers brain. Years later, Pessoa would play with his own selfhood as he had once played with imaginary friends: I unwind myself like a multicoloured skein, or I make string figures of myself, like those woven on spread fingers and passed from child to child. . . . Then I turn over my hand and the figure changes. And I start over.

Starting over was what the chameleon-like boy and his mother did in Durban, South Africa, where her new husband assumed the post of Portuguese consul. The largest city in the British colony of Natal, Durban boasted efficient public transportation, a public library, a botanical garden, literary societies, and other trappings of civilization, including the rigorous convent school where Pessoa was promptly enrolled. Forced to start the five-year primary school curriculum over from the beginning, and in a new language, he finished in just three years, receiving First Prize in both English and Latin as well as the award for all-around academic excellence. In high school, he devoured the prose of Thomas Carlyle and wrote verses emulating Milton and the English Romantics. Pessoa returned to Lisbon for good in 1905, but his exposure to Anglo-American literature proved decisive.

The most crucial influence was Whitman. The American poet, Zenith writes, taught Pessoa how to open up, feel everything, be everything, and sing. The experience of reading Song of Myself made possible the sudden emergence, on March 8, 1914, of his first true heteronym, a pastoral yet unsentimental poet named Alberto Caeiro:

I am a keeper of sheep.The sheep are my thoughtsAnd my thoughts are all sensations.I think with my eyes and my earsAnd with my hands and feetAnd with my nose and mouth.

A rush of poems poured from Pessoas pen in this astonishing new voice. Ostensibly lacking in formal education, Caeiro was nonetheless a keen observer, newborn with every moment / To the complete newness of the world. It was as though he had distilled the antidote to his own overwrought intellectualism:

I lie down in the grassAnd forget all I was taught.

However, as Thomas Merton, Caeiros first major English translator, noted, these poems have a touch of self-consciousness. It is as though the world in which the Galician poet declares himself an Argonaut of genuine sensations were not the everyday world but some imagined highland of the sun, where things dwell in accurate light and cast clean shadows on the eye. Caeiro is more cerebral than Whitman, who had likewise wondered at the material world and refused to offer final answers:

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands.How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

Pessoa dreamed of launching himself as an English poet in his own right. He wrote dozens of sonnets, publishing 35 of them as a chapbook, and sent poems to the Poetry Society in London. (They were ignored.) Often, he attributed his English works to one of his other selves. Incredibly, Pessoas last name means person in Portuguese, as well as persona. Seemingly taking the hint, he punned with the names of his English alter egos, tooeach had a distinct signature and notebooks of his own.

First came Charles Robert Anon, who published a poem in a Durban newspaper in 1904. He was superseded, around 1906, by Alexander Search, who claimed authorship of more than 100 poems, a short story, and various essays. Zenith characterizes Search as a Platonic or transcendent version of Pessoaa Shelleyan idealist questing after truth, with a head full of philosophy and enlightened humanism. In other words, Pessoas most fervent spiritual or metaphysical inquiries in English were conducted by an alter ego named A. Search. Years later, Caeiro, again as if reacting to his makers native bent, declared this search pointless: Things have no meaning: they have existence. / Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

Zeniths biography takes flight whenever it immerses us in the Pessoan imagination and tends to flag when it turns political or sociological. The Durban section gets bogged down in passages about the living conditions of native Africans and Indian immigrants in Natal, as well as asides about the racist division of labor that they were part of. The index has a two-page entry for blackface. Zeniths book having been published in 2021, it was perhaps inevitable that some of its 937 pages (not including the prologue and back matter) would be devoted to convicting Pessoa of racism and misogyny wherever possiblethough Zenith in the role of judge and jury has clemency enough to acknowledge that such attitudes, never central to Pessoas genius, had shallow roots and were eventually outgrown as he matured. A biographer, having promised us a portrait of the man, can be forgiven for describing his outer garments as a clue to the essential self, but its another thing to spend thousands of words on the pedigree and life history of the subjects tailor and on the labor practices of the mills that produced the cloth out of which said garments were made.

The essential self lies elsewhere, and what is best in Pessoa transcends politics. Yet Zenith devotes a whole chapter to Gandhi on the thin pretext that the older man was a practicing lawyer and budding civil rights activist in Durban while Pessoa was a student in primary school. Its true that Pessoa admired Gandhi later in lifemainly for his asceticismbut Zenith doesnt stop there. He closes a disquisition on the British treatment of Indians as second-class citizens this way: All of which no doubt seemed to Fernando, the stepson of a European diplomat, like the natural order of things. Rare indeed is the biographer who would feel compelled to round out his portrait of the artist as an eight-year-old by depicting that child as a representative of white supremacy.

If theres one thing I hate, its a reformer, writes Pessoa in The Book of Disquiet, defining this type as a man who sees the worlds superficial ills and sets out to cure them by aggravating the more basic ills. Call him a reactionary, if you like; one searches his oeuvre in vain for a social program. Roman Catholic by birth, he was a spiritual seeker and dabbler in the occult, obsessed with astrology, and a thoroughgoing skepticpart of a generation that inherited disbelief in the Christian faith and created in itself a disbelief in all other faiths, which presumably would include most of the secular dogmas in which our media and universities today catechize the faithful. In one of his English poems, Pessoa locates God Between our silence and our speech, between / Us and the consciousness of us. Religious curiosity and metaphysical concerns crop up frequently in his work, whether attributed to a heteronym or not. Even Caeiro, whom Pessoa dubbed an atheist St. Francis of Assisi and who denies any reality beyond material things, invokes Godif only to say that the deity is largely beside the point:

To think about God is to disobey God,Since God wanted us not to know him,

Which is why he didnt reveal himself to us. . . .Lets be simple and calm,Like the trees and streams,And God will love us, making usUs even as the trees are trees

Religion, for Pessoa, was an illusion without which we live by dreaming, which is the illusion of those who cant have illusions. His dreams were, first and foremost, about self-invention, self-division, self-multiplication. His inability to believe in the triune God seems wedded somehow to his endless unfolding of new personae. lvaro de Campos sets intellectual uncertainty beside the wish to be someone else:

Every day I have different beliefsSometimes in the same day I have different beliefsAnd I wish I were the child now crossingThe view from my window of the street below.

Just so, Pessoas detachment from society gives rise to the impulse to invent his own society. In his static drama The Mariner, a character tells of a shipwrecked man, who, finding it too painful to recall his former life, invents an imagined past, a fictitious homeland, the made-up people and geography and events of which gradually supplant his actual memories. Pessoa, in The Book of Disquiet, longs to create in himself

a nation with its own politics, parties and revolutions, and to be all of it, everything, to be God in the real pantheism of this peopleI, to be the substance and movement of their bodies and their souls, of the very ground they tread and the acts they perform! To be everything, to be them and not them!

An infinite expansion and elevation of the self, so that it would exist as both deus and demos, bringing about a solipsistic kingdom of heaven on earth, though this nationwith its parties and revolutionswould be fractious, disputative, rabble-rousing. Among friends, Pessoa had a fondness for ardently defending a certain idea one day and then attacking it the next, with equally impassioned arguments, Zenith writes. While the more romantic modernists sought an unfractioned idiom (as the American poet Hart Crane put it) with which to mount their raids on the inarticulate, Pessoas own idiom was endlessly fractionated, full of tricks and evasions, enriched by philosophies and ways of seeing that he practiced for the length of a poem and no longer. Rather than try to integrate his disparate drives into a cohesive whole, he heightened the contradictions. He produced new selves as if by cellular mitosis and gave them independent life.

Among these selves was the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, the supposed author of Pessoas unclassifiable prose masterpiece The Book of Disquiet. This factless autobiography, as Pessoa/Soares calls it, was first published in 1982 (47 years after Pessoas death), but subsequent editions have enlarged and reordered its contents, about which editors and scholars disagree. A nonbook of which no original exists, begun in 1913 and consisting of irregularly dated entries composed intermittently over the course of 20-odd years, some handwritten, some typed, with no definite order or overarching schema, The Book was nonetheless an astonishing discovery. Few posthumous works have caused such a dramatic reevaluation of their authors achievement.

I make landscapes out of what I feel, Soares writes. The Book of Disquiet puts you midway along the journey of another mans life, lost in the dark wood of his interiority. But whose interiority, exactly? The Books heteronymic authorship changed over time; but ultimately, Pessoa laid it at the feet of his invention Soares, an assistant bookkeeper who lives in a rented room on the Rua dos Douradores and writes in his spare time. Soares espouses a philosophy of inaction, lives in his imagination, and, at times, can view his fellow Portuguese only as an alien tide of living things that dont concern me. Less individuated than Caeiro, Reis, and de Campos, Soares is a sort of pared-down Pessoa, possessing his irony but not his humor. His semifictional diary is a kind of library in utero; many of the roughly 500 passages feel like the seeds of unwritten books, sorties where a more stolid writer might have launched entire campaigns.

Written over half a lifetime, The Book discloses an unwieldy profusion of styles and genres, from ethereal dream scenes and prose poems to clear-eyed confessions and cultural observations, sociological speculations, aesthetic maxims, and aphorisms worthy of Kafka. Even if you arent as dreamy or passive as Soares, you know what he means when he says that he is suffering from a headache and the universe. Paradise, for Soares, is eternal stasis, everything in abeyance: a world in which the same moment of twilight forever paint[s] the curve of the hills, a life that resembles an eternal standing by the windowbecause, even in paradise, he imagines himself as alienated, an observer at one remove from the scene. The Book of Disquiet never ceased being an experiment in how far a man can be psychologically and affectively self-sufficient, living only off of his dreams and imagination, Zenith tells us. It was an extreme, monomaniacal version of Pessoas own, essentially imaginative way of living life.

It was probably also a coping mechanism. The world of daydreams is one where mothers dont plunge suddenly into obsessional love affairs and where little brothers dont expire in infancy. Tedium besets Soares, but tedium is a small price to pay. The fictions of my imagination . . . may weary me, but they dont hurt or humiliate, he says. They never forsake [me], and they dont die or disappear.

Twenty-first-century America, with its cult of action and positive thinking, would hardly know what to make of the dreamy, ineffectual Soares, were it not that the narcissistic sublime (or a degraded facsimile) has become our dominant cultural mode. Then, too, at a time when some individuals claim to be incapable of settling on a single gender, much less any other unambiguous identity, we are primed to accept what Zenith calls Pessoas poetics of fragmented selfhood. There are moments in The Book of Disquiet when Pessoa breaks through the authorial mask, if only to affirm his lifelong masquerade: To create, Ive destroyed myself. Ive so externalized myself on the inside that I dont exist there except externally. Im the empty stage where various actors act out various plays. The triumph of his heteronymic enterprise is like that aimed at by those who today practice manifesting: the triumph of an idea transcended into life.

The Pessoan spiritalbeit lacking his geniusis alive and well. It lives on in Reddit forums, Twitch chats, Twitter feeds, and other venues where anonymity, or pseudonymity, is common and where even members of the blue-checkmark class, who use their real names, put up a front. The once-singular self divides or turns into a heteronym. Online spaces are loud with the personae we have unleashed.

I know this firsthand. In the summer of 2021, I delved into the world of non-fungible tokensdigital items that are provably unique and the ownership of which can be publicly verified on a blockchain. NFTs represent a new frontier of art and collectibles, gaming and pop culture, where even some of the biggest-name artists and collectors dont use their real names. Instead of self-portraits, they employ NFT avatars as visual identities. In this scene, anonPessoas first major English heteronymis a common form of address for a compatriot whose real-world identity you may never know.

To participate, I needed a suitable persona. So I created a pseudonymous Twitter account, registered domain names to match, and launched my alter self into that hothouse ecosystem. More gregarious than usual, I found it easy in that guise to make friends and forge bonds. The real me, such as he was (shades of Whitman again), took a backseat. And it worked: inside of three months, I had gained 1,000 followers and a reputation as a serious collector. We are what we dream ourselves to be, Pessoa says. Through his eyes, I have come to see the Internet increasingly as a place where heteronyms abound, casting large shadows and printing their own legends. From Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto to the master conspiracist Q, these identities shape the lives of millions.

Who, then, is the real Pessoa? A dream dreamed by no one, he sometimes thoughtas Borges imagined Shakespeare in one of his Ficciones. One of Pessoas strongest poems, The Tobacco Shop, begins:

Im nothing.Ill always be nothing.I cant want to be something.But I have in me all the dreams of the world.

In Borgess story, Shakespeare at the end of his life, having been so many men in vain, asks God to give him at last a singular identity to call his own. From a whirlwind, the voice of the Lord answers: Neither am I anyone; I have dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who, like myself, are many and no one.

Wanting to be everyone while fearing that he was no one, Pessoa was nonetheless, in his fiercest moments, in touch with an unshakable core at the center of his kaleidoscope of selves. Refusing either to suppress or falsify his internal conflicts, he displayed a kind of radical authenticity. Even if what we pretend to be (because we coexist with others) crumbles around us, we should remain undaunted, he exhorts readers in The Book of Disquiet, because were ourselves, and to be ourselves means having nothing to do with external things that crumble, even if they crumble right on top of what for them we are.

Nearly 90 years after his death, the best of this inveterate pretenders poetry and prose has not crumbled.

Brian Patrick Eha is a writer in New York.

Top Photo: Fernando Pessoa (18881935): even his close friends had trouble pinning down his views. (Milton Daz/GDA/AP Photo)

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Plural Like the Universe - City Journal

By Valentine Obienyem

I knew Mr. Peter Obis younger brother long before I met Mr. Peter Obi. Mr. Fabian Obi (later a Reverend Father) was our teacher in 1984 at Akpu Seminary. As a senior teacher (auxiliary), and because he was bubbling with scholarship, vitality, discipline and great character, students ran away from him because he took every opportunity to inoculate us with every virtue. I have seldom met a man so intensely absorbed in the responsibilities of his position Auxiliary.

Knowing that, as small as we were, our thoughts were mostly on what to eat and pranks to play, he would always quote this biblical passage for us: Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. He did a good job on us because most of us carried those virtues, till this day. Regrettably, in some, it was like the milk teeth doomed to decay on contact with the rough realities of the world. This is why some of us, let me look for trouble here, have even navigated through belief, Spinozaric pantheism, agnosticism, atheism and back to belief. The one we lovingly call Eke is still on the journey since completed by the likes of M.

I recall that in one of our symposia in the seminary, Mr. Fabian Obi (as he then was) presented the lead paper at a time the Maitatsine group were wreaking havoc in the North. Delivering his paper, titled Religious Fanaticism and Maitatsine Group, he likened the fanatic to one possessed by Agwu. We marvelled at the structural majesty of his ideas and the scholarship of the presentation. Yes, I still remember intellectual engagements like this because I carried a note pad and pen always to catch ideas or arresting phrases in their flight.

We called him I Force You, because he would always force us to follow the paths of rectitude. He is yet to answer the question he posed to us in one of his classes, namely, Appilico abu Njo. His one potent weapon was deadly knock on the head instant punishment for egregious acts! Part of his punishment then was also requesting the offender to read the late Msgn P.O. Achebes Maturity through Formation Forum.

We had one encounter with I Force You, which we can hardly forget. One sunny afternoon, driven by hunger after class, we rushed through the afternoon prayers, having turned the instrument of that prayer Manual of Prayers for Junior Seminarians into fans. Always calm, Mr. Fabian Obi (later a priest) was to say the final part of the prayer. Rather than do that as we enthusiastically waited, he said: Let all fanning stop, let the leader be slow and let us all start afresh. Such a pronouncement quickened the pangs of hunger in us.

Adolescents would always remain so. We stopped fanning, but only a handful of us responded to the repeated prayer out of cold protest, which all of us understood. When we finished the second round of the prayers, I Force You said wryly: Let the leader repeat the prayers and let everybody join. Clearly, the repetitions were eating into our time for siesta, such that a certain juvenile anger burned like lava in us, and yet we dared not ask questions. Lest I forget, the key moral of formation in the seminary is Obey before complaint. If we made the third mistake, Mr. Obi would have come up with one of his favourite punishments asking us to meditate on our lives and journeys as seminarians. He would have encouraged us to read The Imitation of Christ, as a component of that meditation.

The foregoing is just a minor premise. The major provocation of this piece was the exploration of the similarities between Fr. Fabian Obi and his elder brother, Mr. Peter Obi. Those days, some students served the teachers as their function in school, which included washing of plates and clothes for the teachers. It was a good function because teachers always left food for those that served them to eat. One student I will not mention his name was a butt of jolly banter among others because his master, Mr. Fabian Obi, Peter Obis younger brother, defying tradition, did not leave food for him, not once but always.

The concerned seminarian could not fathom the reason for Obis act. Unknowingly to us, Mr. Fabian Obi was teaching him the act of doing ones duty without expecting gratification.

But the concerned seminarian gained more than others. While others waited fretfully for leftover food, Mr. Obi would always invite the seminarian to his room, and after words of advice, would give him novel after novel to read and summarise for him. He never collected those novels back from him.

Over the years I have watched happily Fr. Obi rising like some spacecraft among the luminaries of his time. Because he is a good formator, he is now the rector of Iwene Tansi Major Seminary, the last formation bus stop in the priestly journey.

Like his younger brother, Nigerians should not look forward to undue gratification from the potential President Peter Obi. As he did in Anambra State and as his brother did in the seminary, he is not concerned with what we shall eat today, like the epicureans, as if we would die tomorrow. He is concerned with long-term benefits, arming the youth with education that will help them conquer the future.

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Seeing Peter Obi through prisms of his younger brother The Sun Nigeria - Daily Sun

In part one we defined Gnosticism. Part two demonstrated how the Big Bang Theory corresponds to general Occultism. Now we will show how modern evolutionary theory connects to each system.

H.P. Blavatsky believed that, allegorically, the whole Darwinian theory of natural selection is included in the first six chapters of the book of Genesis, and that the Serpents knowledge represents what she calls the Secret Doctrine: the dual-evolution and advancement of mankind. She also asserts that ancient Judaism merely copied the imagery from Eastern religion, perverted it, and made the Serpents knowledge out to be a negative thing. To her, the only Judaism that gets it right is Kabbalah.[1]

Carl Sagan had almost the exact same view. He saw the Fall as a viable allegory for the evolution of man, and that the Serpents knowledge was symbolic of fostering evolutionary development.[2] Elsewhere, he heralds religions [like] Hinduism [and] Gnostic Christianity, which teach, as impious as it may sound, that it is the goal of humans to become gods. He, too, links them to ideas of Jewish mysticism in the Talmud: that God intentionally left the Universe unfinished, and that it is the responsibility of humans, over countless generations [i.e. evolution] to participate with God in a glorious experimentcompleting the Creation.[3]

Sagan, himself of Jewish lineage, found the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria to be a kind of muse in his Cosmos series. For him, the city was a kind of Paradise Lost, with its fall due to the Dark Ages of Christendom. Alexandria also happens to be the seat of ancient Gnosticism.[4]

The figure of Sophia in Gnosticism is a heralded heroine set against the God of Israel as her accidental offspring. Although she is seen as having made a mistake by coming into the realm of matter, she is nonetheless associated with the higher forces of divinity, and is the muse of those rebelling against the Demiurges matrix of false-reality.

Sophia is the Greek word for Wisdom; it is an essential theme in OT literature, especially for Catholicism. However, the Gnostic Sophia, despite developing from Jewish Wisdom, also has overlap with the the Isis myths of Egyptian religion; thus having its roots in the Jewish communities of ancient Alexandria, who were heavily Hellenized.[5]

The Diaspora plays a heavy role here. Quispel elaborates, and shows how the foundations for Gnosticism were already in place before the time of Christ,

The historical Diaspora was the basic presupposition for the philosophical tenet that nature is Spirit in exile, God is being in movement, and that matter and history are the result of dialectics. The latter in fact is an oriental myth. It would seem that only the Jewish Diaspora is the historical presupposition for this view. Only in this specific milieu could [this] awareness arise.

Nils Dahl has argued that the target of the Gnostic revolt is the creator of the world rather than the world itself. In fact the world is better than God (I add that in the same way their target was not the Jewish people, but the deficient Law of a tribal god). Dahl shows convincingly that the main claim of the arrogant demiurgeis only understandable as a protest within Judaism.[6]

Although many Gnostics viewed the world of matter as evil, the views spoken of here are a bit modified: it is merely the OT Creator who is the problem; the natural world is better than Him, albeit in need of some re-tooling due to a flawed designer, or at least a flawed conception of Him like Sagan proposes.

Its important to highlight the fundamental tenet that developed: that the Sophianic Spirit was in movement through the dialectics of matter and history, and that rebellion against the God of Israel and His deficient Lawwhat we call Judeo-Christian valuesis inseparable from this struggle.

Indeed, the Gnostic Sophia was in exile throughout the Dark Ages of Christendom, waiting for the spark of divinity to shine forth and awaken the masses of Western Civilization; to liberate it from the horror of its Creator: the God of Israel and the Catholic Church. The means for escape, as we know, involves a kind of secret gnosis as to the true origins of man. Until such a time, religious wars fought in His Name are merely false-dialectical tensions, but ones that foster evolution toward the self-realization that the Judeo-Christian religion is merely an opiate for the masses.

In the search for origins beyond Judeo-Christianity, Darwins most famous work, On the Origin of Species (1859), presented a spark of illumination. However, his view of evolution left little room for revolutionary change. The distinct idea of movement and dialectics came later, particularly from the Marxist camp. Britannica tells us that Marx, adopting certain aspects of Hegel, believed that history conforms to a dialectical pattern, where contradictions are to overcome or transcended in the next phase.

Another major proponent of adding the label dialectical to Darwins evolutionary orientation was Marxist professor Georgi Plekhanov (d. 1918). Dubbed the father of Russian Marxism, Plekhanov heralded Darwins contributions as a triumph of a historical orientation in biology. He wrote that so long as biology adhered to a static view of nature, it relied on metaphysical styles of thought.[7]

Plekhanov also praised the work of Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries (d. 1935) whose mutation theory challenging the Darwinian commitment to gradualism, gave support to the idea of the dialectics of nature. He called it epoch-making and viewed it as a confirmation of Engels dialectics of nature. Others like anarchist prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin heralded the new arrival of evolutionary thought, believing that Russia was indebted to Darwin for its awakening of naturalism, which further demonstrates the woke ideology of Nature in exile transcending Russian Christendom.[8]

Although Marxs system is known for its focus on the material over the spiritual, its hard not to see the parallels with the Gnostic tenet Quispel described. In fact, the relationship forms a dialectic of its own: the Marxists put an emphasis on the material, but as we can see the system has hidden spiritual foundations; while the ancient Gnostics put an emphasis on the spirit, but were often accused of materialist behavior, as many Church Fathers denounced them for being unwilling to suffer persecution and martyrdom in the Name of Christ.[9]

In further irony, it seems that many Communist materialists were more willing to suffer and die for their beliefs than the more spiritual Gnostics of ancient times, particularly the Communists in Chinathe apparent origin of the Gnostic philosophic tenet.

Bolsheviks like Lenin were more partial to the evolutionary theories of Ernst Haeckel.[10] Haeckel was a great popularizer of Darwin, especially in Germany. Hes alleged to be a major source of inspiration for Nazi eugenicists, but this is hotly contested (for obvious reasons). What is not contested is Haeckels hatred of religion, particularly of the Roman Catholic variety, which isnt surprising see as he was situated right in the middle of the German Kulturkampf.

Yet Haeckel still thought of himself as a religious person, but was more interested in a monistic religion of humanity grounded in pantheism, which is in lock-step with Blavatskys Theosophy.[11] In fact, Haeckel was copiously quoted by her as a scientific authority to support her theories that mixed Darwinian evolution with Eastern pantheism and reincarnation.[12]

Haeckel also loathed the Jesuits as much as Blavatsky. In 1911 he formed a response to what he called Jesuitic attacks against his work.[13] The very first rebuttal Haeckel offered was evidence of kinship between an Irish prelate and an ape. By comparing their images, Haeckel deemed them to be two primates of close relation, facetiously suggesting that the Roman Catholic species had not evolved much since mankinds (alleged) apish-origins, putting his most scientific rebuttal front and center.

Marx was no fan of the God of Israel either despite his Jewish lineage and Lutheran upbringing. Although the Nazis, who campaigned against Marxism and Bolshevism, are most famously known for their anti-Semitism, Marxs rhetoric on the God of the Jews is almost indistinguishable from theirs. Furthermore, many prominent Nazis were rebelling against their Catholic upbringing (e.g. Hitler, Himmler, etc.), like the Gnostics of old against orthodox Judaism.

The Catholic Church is often erroneously blamed for the anti-Semitism of the Nazis, yet the Nazis frequently lumped them into the same categories as the Jews, particularly the Jesuits of the time who were considered a priori enemies of the Reich.[14] In fact, the first group Adolf Hitler rails against in Mein Kampf was not the Jews, but rather the Habsburg dynasty: the last remaining bastion of the Holy Roman Empires temporal sword. Hitler, while railing against Habsburg hypocrisy, calls them a rotten and degenerate dynasty, which is ironic considering how Blessed Karl of Austria fathered eight children and Hitler had none.[15]

All this fit into the Nazis so-called Positive Christianity schema that rejected the OT Yahweh and disconnected Him from the so-called Aryan Christjust as the primitive Gnostics did but without the Nordic tribalism attached. Here are some quotes extracted from both Marx and general Nazi propaganda; the reader can guess where each comes from (see notes for the answers),

[Our opponents are] the Jewish among them the Jesuit-ultramontane.[16]

Jewish Jesuitism, the same practical Jesuitism in the Talmud, is the relation of the world of self-interest to the laws governing that world, the chief art of which consists in the cunning circumvention of these laws.[17]

Such is laid down in the Talmud a swindle[the] Capitalist [system] is built up upon mass swindling and exploitation in great and small things. The JewplacingJehovah at the centre of all things thus creates a focal point for himself The dismissal of this tyrant god would have been synonymous with the dethronement of his papal representative.[18]

What, in itself, was the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man and turns them into commodities.[19]

[We fight] the spirit of Jewish materialism within us and without us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery can only take place from within, on the basis of the principle: public need comes before private greed.[20]

It seems very much a familiar spirit at work here. The Gnosticism of Marxism and Nazism is evident. Maybe the Radical Left, who calls everyone who disagrees with them a Nazi, would do well to recognize its common origin of species.

It is no secret that evolutionary theory was at the heart of both Nazi Communist ideology. But perhaps the true secret knowledge hidden from the somnambulant masses is that each corresponded to certain fundamental tenets of ancient Gnosticism, albeit in different ways and for different reasons. In further irony, it would appear that Darwinian dialectics and evolutionary theories are just as much an opiate of the masses and just as religious in nature as anything the archons of Judeo-Christianity or the Catholic Church could muster up in the 2,000 years of its existence, and caused far more wars and genocide in just one century compared to 2,000 years; its just that adherents of the former have not achieved gnosis of this fact.

Marxist-Darwinian dialectics appear to be nothing more than Lucifers inversion of the Holy Spirit, Who moves through the Church and synthesizes the various conflicts in Christendom into dogmas. The anti-Spirit does precisely the opposite: it causes conflict and chaos and false-dialectics that synthesize in a destruction of Christendom, moving each new reincarnation further from it; and any new dogmas it declares are subjective truths that mutate and evolves to suit the same end. Such gnosis could potentially liberate adherents of Gnostic-tenets of any sort from their true oppressorthe Adversary and his minionsilluminating them to the horror that their rule has kept them trapped and bound in the temporal realm for centuries, all under the illusion of Enlightenmentwhich is nothing less than the lie in the Garden.

Aside from the basic premise of evolution of species, little else was unified among its proponents.[21] It seems as if multiple factions were fighting to become the pope of evolutionary theory, desiring the power to infallibly interpret its meaning and formulate their own views into eternal truths. It is therefore ironic that so much of its development was fostered in direct opposition to the Church, and is perhaps similar to how many Protestants ran with Luthers foundations of Faith and Scripture alone, yet ended up with radically different views from his: from 1517 (Protestantism) to 1717 (Freemasonry) to 1917 (Communism).

Darwin, like Luther, opened the flood-gate; it could not be put back in place, and each would likely have been horrified at their progeny. Although many would argue that evolutionary theory has nothing to do with Protestantism, which believes in the God of Israel, they did share the same mortal enemy: the Jesuits and the Romish Church; perhaps that is the only dialectical synthesis that matters, and shows where true transcendence lies.

[1] Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, vol. i, 303, 575, vol. ii, 267-277; The Secret Doctrine, vol. ii, 202-219. These pages, more or less, detail all the general views mentioned here.

[2] Sagan, Dragons of Eden, 93, 127, 141.

[3] Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 314.

[4] Sagan, Cosmos, Ep. 13, Who Speaks for Earth He promotes the same propaganda against the Church and St. Cyril of Alexandria on the murder of Hypatia that is found in the literature of Theosophy and Freemasonry.

[5] Yeo, Rhetorical Interaction in Corinthians 8 & 10, 130 Brill academic work.

[6] Quispel, Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica.

[7] Vucinich, Darwin in Russian Thought, 358-360.

[8] Ibid., 16, 94, 347, 358-360.

[9] Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, pp. 88-92 She tells us that martyrdom did occur rarely among the gnostic Christians.

[10] Vucinich, Darwin in Russian Thought, p. 365.

[11] University of Chicago, Robert J. Richards, Ernst Haeckel and the Struggles over Evolution and Religion.

[12] Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, vol. ii, 87, 154, 58, 164, 185, 187, 193, 258, 261, 295, 327, 348, 490, 645, 648, 659, 673, 679, 685, 711, 729, 734, 779, 789 Blavatskys numerous citations and references to Ernst Haeckel. Ive not found a polemical word towards him thus far.

[13] Haeckel, The Answer of Ernst Haeckel to the Falsehoods of the Jesuits To be fair, he does provide his scientific evidence later, it is just ironic that the first thing he presents are brazen and emotionally charged ad hominems.

[14] Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-1945, 290 See index on Jesuits for a multitude of examples.

[15] Hitler, Mein Kampf (Manheim), 15, 512 Chapter one mentions the Habsburgs, while he doesnt get into Judaism until chapter two. Fittingly, he describes Germany as a slumbered state under Habsburg rule, like the Gnostics under the Demiurges tyranny.

[16] Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, 57 Protestant League meeting with Nazi speech.

[17] Marx, On the Jewish Question, 32.

[18] Rosenberg, The Myth of the 20th Century, 120, 194, 460.

[19] Marx, On the Jewish Question, 31

[20] Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, 14 NSDAP Party Program of 1920.

[21] Vucinich, Darwin in Russian Thought Professor Vucinich deliberates the various battles within the revolutionary circles of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov and others as it pertains to evolutionary thinking.

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From Gnosticism to Marxism: The Spirit of Antichrist in Movement - OnePeterFive

Do you feel a deep sense of peace, belonging, and gratitude in Nature? Are you blown away by a clear night sky filled with stars and galaxies? Do you say things like Forests are my cathedrals or The Universe is my higher power ? Then you may well be a scientific pantheist. Scientific pantheism focuses on saving the planet rather than saving souls. It respects the rights of humans, and also of all living beings. It encourages you to make the most and best of your one life here. It values reason and the scientific method over adherence to ancient scriptures.Over 230,000 people have taken our popular quizzes. Try the latest takes three minutes:- Are you Atheist, Agnostic, Pagan, Deist, Pantheist or What?

We relate closely to some of the central challenges of our era. At a time when the balance of our Earth is under unprecedented threat, scientific pantheism is one of the few forms of spirituality in which Nature plays a central part. For us, Nature is a source of peace, solace, joy and beauty, as well as the focus for our gratitude, love, care and vigilance. Nature was not created for us to use or abuse. Nature created us, we are an inseparable part of her. We have a duty to live sustainably, to care for Nature and to halt and reverse the harm that humans have done to her.

Scientific pantheism is the only form of spirituality we know of which fully embraces science as part of the human exploration of Earth and Cosmos. We wonder at the picture of a vast, creative and often violent Universerevealed by the Hubble Space Telescope. We regard stargazing as a spiritual practice. We oppose climate change denial and evolution denial, especially in education.

Scientific pantheism has a joyous affirmative approach to life. It has a healthy and positive attitude to sex and life in the body. We wont tell you what you should be smoking or doing in the bedroom. We fully accept We fully accept gender and sexual diversity, and we oppose all forms of discrimination.

Scientific pantheism moves beyond God and defines itself by positives. Atheism and Agnosticism both define themselves negatively, in relation to a God that they deny or doubt. These are useful starting points but they dont take us very far. Most people also need positive beliefs and feelings about their place in Nature and the wider Universe. Scientific pantheists take Nature and the Universe as our start and finish point, not some preconceived idea of God. We do not believe in a supernatural creator god who watches or judges us. Most scientific pantheists avoid god-language or religious words like church, worship, divinity and so on. We regard them as misleading in relation to pantheism. Those of us who do like to use these words, use them metaphorically, as a way of expressing their deep feelings of reverence, gratitude and belonging towards Nature and the wider Universe.

Pantheism theory, practice and history

Our beliefs and values are summarized in our Principles of Scientific Pantheism. The statement was drawn up by fallible humans. It is not required dogma it is simply a notice on our door, to show what we are about so people can decide if it suits them or if they want to learn more. These are the key elements:

Many people feel the need to belong to a religious community. Research shows that such groups provide mutual support and friends and are good for physical and mental health. Theres no good reason why groups of like-minded non-theistic folk should not enjoy similar benefits.

In the WPM we are spiritual but not religious. By spiritual we dont mean spiritualistic. We are not talking about a spirit or soul separate from our body. We mean that whole complex of deep feelings, values and beliefs that inspire our core sense of place in human society, Nature and Universe.We are not religious in the sense that we dont have churches, priests, or prescribed dogma and rituals. But we do aim to provide a home base for people who have deep feelings for Nature and the Universe and who do not believe in supernatural entities.

Two of the major benefits our members and friends say they value are gaining new like-minded friends and finding a place where they can share their enthusiasms without fear of being ostracized or feeling isolated. There have been many local meetings of members across the USA and in other parts of the world, where people have found a rare level of fellowship and stimulation.

In the longer term, as resources permit, we hope to:

If you would like to help promote these goals, please consider becoming a WPM member. Volunteering is another great way of supporting the WPM.

All who agree with our principles are encouraged to like our Facebook page (with 160,000 fans), or join our Facebook discussion group with 15,000 members.

We use the name pantheism because the term encompasses a long and venerable history dating back to Heraclitus and Marcus Aurelius and extending to Einstein, D. H. Lawrence and beyond.

Our beliefs (see the Statement of Principles) are entirely compatible with atheism, humanism, agnosticism, and symbolic paganism (viewing magic, gods and spirits as symbols rather than objective realities). We offer a home to all forms of naturalistic spirituality however you may choose to label it. Other paths that approximate include philosophical Taoism, modern Stoicism, Western forms of Buddhism that celebrate Nature and daily life without supernatural beliefs, and Unitarian Universalists who do not believe in supernatural beings.

You are free to adopt the terms and practices you prefer and draw on other traditions for inspiration or celebration. Some call this a religion (a positive one), while others call it a philosophy, a way of life, or a form of general spirituality. Its up to you.

Please explore our pages. If you have any questions, please contact us

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World Pantheism Revering the Universe, Caring for Nature, Celebrating ...

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Up until recently, I had no real opinion about pantheism. One poster...just one...has given me a totally negative view of pantheism. After reading this poster's posts over several months, I have come to the conclusion that pantheism has no moral core.

One can only hope Goldie provides credible arguments for his religion instead of the usual evasive assertions.

Location: Sun City West, Arizona

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One can only hope Goldie provides credible arguments for his religion instead of the usual evasive assertions.

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One can only hope Goldie provides credible arguments for his religion instead of the usual evasive assertions.

If you are not satisfied with that (as you are not satisfied with any Theistic Views)...that issue is completely on you. Best wishes resolving that problem. I will pray for you.

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It also appears to be a problem for those faking spiritual wisdom. These constant, dishonest attacks instead of addressing the does not suggest a wise sage is posting. One can only hope provides credible arguments for his religion instead of the usual evasive assertions.

Do you yourself even know what that is? This is not about what anyone else says or does or believes or defines it as. It is what you yourself recognize and know and grasp.

Think of it this way, think of someone who doesn't get art, or doesn't get music, making the types of demands and statements we see on threads regarding paths of religion and spirituality. What makes art, art, and not just a bunch of scribbles. What makes music,music, and not just a bunch of noise. Demands to "prove" art. Demands to "provide credible argument for music." Crowing about "which music is true" "which art is truth." Drawing conclusions such as "there are so many different kinds of music, they can't all be right, some even contradict each other, therefore music is false" "if art was true it would all show the same thing" "people who discuss art are faking it" "people who discuss music are dishonest" "where are the arguments for art" "show a rational argument for music" "faking music wisdom" "faking art wisdom"

That is how the questions and demands and 'conclusions' come across which are made about paths of religion and spirituality including Pantheism the topic of this thread. so i'm asking how do you yourself know what is music and not just a bunch of noise. how do you yourself know what is art and not just a bunch of scribbles. and again the same question: how do you yourself know what is sacred,holy,divinity.

because based on the repetitive demands and repetitive statements, that may be the obstacle. that you don't.

Last edited by Tzaphkiel; Today at 06:31 AM..

Location: Germany

Reputation: 1517

Quote:

Do you yourself even know what that is? This is not about what anyone else says or does or believes or defines it as. It is what you yourself recognize and know and grasp.

Think of it this way, think of someone who doesn't get art, or doesn't get music, making the types of demands and statements we see on threads regarding paths of religion and spirituality. What makes art, art, and not just a bunch of scribbles. What makes music,music, and not just a bunch of noise. Demands to "prove" art. Demands to "provide credible argument for music." Crowing about "which music is true" "which art is truth." Drawing conclusions such as "there are so many different kinds of music, they can't all be right, some even contradict each other, therefore music is false" "if art was true it would all show the same thing" "people who discuss art are faking it" "people who discuss music are dishonest" "where are the arguments for art" "show a rational argument for music" "faking music wisdom" "faking art wisdom"

That is how the questions and demands and 'conclusions' come across which are made about paths of religion and spirituality including Pantheism the topic of this thread. so i'm asking how do you yourself know what is music and not just a bunch of noise. how do you yourself know what is art and not just a bunch of scribbles. and again the same question: how do you yourself know what is sacred,holy,divinity.

because based on the repetitive demands and repetitive statements, that may be the obstacle. that you don't.

Reputation: 14428

Quote:

The three obstacles you show here are:1) you STILL not understanding the simple difference between subjective and objective2) the fact that people do fake sacred, holy and divine truth, and3) why are you asking me when even the religious and spiritual can not agree on what is sacred, holy or divine.

it is like someone saying these:"the fact that people do fake music" "the fact that people do fake art""people can't even agree on music" "people can't even agree on art"

Reputation: 14428

the type of music a person prefers and chooses is subjective. the existence of music is not. a person recognizes or not that music exists. the type of art a person prefers and chooses is subjective. the existence of art is not. a person recognizes or not that art exists.the type of religion and spirituality a person prefers and chooses is subjective. the existence of the holy and sacred is not. a person recognizes or not the holy and sacred exists.

Last edited by Tzaphkiel; Today at 07:53 AM..

Location: Germany

Reputation: 1517

Quote:

bingo. that answers the question and identifies the obstacle.that you do not grasp what it even is, what it even means, and do not recognize sacred,holy, Divinity.

Just more dishonesty from you, your conclusion does not follow from my post.

Quote:

it is like someone saying these:"the fact that people do fake music" "the fact that people do fake art""people can't even agree on music" "people can't even agree on art"

Location: Germany

Reputation: 1517

Quote:

repeating the phrase "subjective and objective" has nothing to do with having an internal understanding of why is art not just a fake bunch of scribbles, why is music not just a fake bunch of noise, why is religion and spirituality not just a fake bunch of words.

Focus on what people are actually saying, do not dishonestly swap objective for subjective to make an answer that answers nothing.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.

Read more from the original source:
The R&S Pantheism Thread - City-Data

Is there a being more fecund than a fly? The feminist conceptual artist Mary Beth Edelson seized brilliantly on the flys dark and secretive fecundity in her mythological pantheon that combines animals, insects, and manifold manifestations of the goddess figure. A fly is wanton in its appetites, aggressive and free, perhaps even obscene in its tastes. What better symbol for feminist art that reclaims fecundity as a transgressive female force?

Mary Beth Edelson: A Celebration at David Lewis Gallery, a compact presention of Edelsons biodiverse feminist art, trills with a flair thats unmistakably hers. Filling the gallerys two-room space is an assortment of collages on canvas that the artist, who died in 2021 at the age of 88, produced from 1972 to 2011, plus selected mixed-media works from the early 70s and one large acrylic collage-painting. The teeny fly-collages are mounted high on the wall in the front room. The swarm arches up and into the backroom, where collages wind high and low, and mushroom in the corners. The free-form installation in a way echoes Matisses site-specific cutouts an artist Edelson acknowledged as an early influence.

The flies bear faces of women artists Edelson knew or admired. The strategy reflects her most famous work, Some Living American Women Artists (1972), what looks like a poster mockup in which she replaced the faces of the apostles in Leonardo da Vincis The Last Supper (1495-98) with those of women artists such as Yoko Ono, Faith Ringgold, Agnes Martin, and Alice Neel. In the collages, Louise Bourgeois is the modernist fairy fly-godmother, and the bespectacled specimen with a Pentax camera is, I believe, Edelson herself. The effect of these buzzard-women (or artsy gnats?) peering curiously at the visitor is uncanny. In this sense, the flies embody what, in her Artforum essay on Edelson, essayist and poet Dodie Bellamy dubbed relentless otherness. At David Lewis, real women cohabit and fuse with flies, medusas, frightful mandibles, and arachno-morphs, but also female deities and mashup fertility and pop-culture idols (Faye Dunaway is easily among my favorites).

Edelsons work is inseparable from 1970s feminism, particularly its New York vanguard. Born in East Chicago, Indiana, she earned a masters degree in art and higher education from New York University. After some years in Indianapolis and Washington DC, where she organized the Conference for Women in the Visual Arts, she headed back to the Big Apple. By then, she had produced her seminal series Woman Rising, in which the artist used oil crayon, ink, and collage to ornament nude black and white self-portraits with symbols and masks. Two, Dematerializing / Trans-DNA and Burning Light (both 1973), are included in this exhibition. She said in interviews that she made the series to assert her sexual independence. No doubt her creative independence too, as she continued to make art through marriages and childrearing. In Dematerializing / Trans-DNA, her lithe body, arms raised so that her torso looks like a pitchfork, vanishes behind a black and orange swirl. Edelson was moving further into conceptualism, but she had a cartoonists sensibility for graphic shorthand and sly humor: The dots look like a swarm of colorful insects hatched from the artists sex, once again tying insects to womens bodies, and art.

In New York, Edelson began to exhibit at A.I.R. Gallery, a collaborative space run by women artists in SoHo. She also founded the Heresies mother collective in 1977, with art historian Lucy Lippard and artists Joan Braderman, Harmony Hammond, and May Stevens. Mentors to younger artists on the scene, such as Ana Mendieta, and precursors to the Guerrilla Girls, the 70s feminist artists curated communal shows and picketed prominent art institutions, such as the Museum of Modern Art, that sidelined women artists. Edelsons murals of woman-power are then much more than a quixotic manifesto culled from myriad sources (i.e., Jung, goddess-centered pantheism, or sororal multicultural exchanges with peers such as Turkish feminist artist Nil Yalter). Instead, these works form an ambitious catalogue of feminism and feminist-art history in the making, in the vein of Andr Malrauxs muse imaginaire. Edelson followed the hunch that if women artists didnt create this history for themselves, no one would.

Edelsons impulse to historiography is evident in her large, rarely exhibited 1989 painting In Exile. By the time she produced it, she had moved on from the protective cocoon of A.I.R. Gallery. Edelsons velleity for risk served her well, and her major retrospective toured the United States from 1988 to 1990. Still, as she said in interviews, curators and gallerists alike took a long time to embrace feminist artists of her generation. She was often told her work was unsellable.

In Exile might be Edelson raising her middle finger to the idea of salability. The works quilt-like composition and evocations of many historical and high and low-brow Eves made me think of her slightly younger contemporary, Judy Chicago. But Edelsons taunt at the viewer (or is it an invitation?) your face here, painted across the empty oval visage of a red-haired Amazon-like rider in the works upper left, with a sign below the horse reading Missing Aphrodite bristles with a prickly energy that feels distinctly hers. The Wonder Woman in the paintings lower right encapsulates the hypocrisy of a society that pays lip service to equality, promoting womens strength as long as its objectified. In star-spangled briefs, WW lassoes Mexicos pre-classical double-headed Virgin of Guadalupe. Id venture that this is also a critique of the United States rapaciousness toward its southern neighbor and of sexualized stereotypes. In this way it incarnates Edelsons belief, which she shared in interviews, that only in a radical, radically feminist culture of consent can external and internal colonialisms be vanquished.

Mary Beth Edelson: A Celebration continues at David Lewis Gallery (57 Walker Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) through June 4. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.

Go here to see the original:
Mary Beth Edelson Celebrated the Goddess Within - Hyperallergic

5 Decks about Cyber Dragon on its birthday, Monarchs with an Egyptian touch, Amazoness awakens to spring, and a Bakura Fan Deck.

May 25th is the release birthday of Cyber Dragon!

Deck 1: Mekk-Knight Deck Featuring Cyber Dragon

3 Mekk-Knight Purple Nightfall1 Mekk-Knight Indigo Eclipse1 Mekk-Knight Red Moon1 Mekk-Knight Yellow Star1 Mekk-Knight Green Horizon1 Mekk-Knight Orange Sunset3 Mekk-Knight Blue Sky1 Girsu, the Orcust Mekk-Knight1 World Legacy World Chalice1 Cyber Eltanin3 Cyber Dragon3 Cyber Dragon Core2 Cyber Dragon Herz3 Galaxy Soldier

3 World Legacys Memory2 World Legacy Scars1 World Legacy Key1 World Legacy Succession3 Cyber Emergency1 Cyber Repair Plant

2 World Legacys Secret1 World Legacy Whispers1 Beast King Unleashed

1 Chimeratech Megafleet Dragon1 Cyber Dragon Infinity1 Cyber Dragon Nova1 Constellar Pleiades1 Mekk-Knight Crusadia Avramax1 Accesscode Talker1 Mekk-Knight Spectrum Supreme1 Knightmare Unicorn2 Mekk-Knight of the Morning Star1 Knightmare Phoenix1 Lib the World Key Blademaster1 Union Carrier1 I:P Masquerena1 Salamangreat Almiraj

Deck 2: Gizmek Deck Featuring Cyber Dragon

3 Cyber Dragon3 Cyber Dragon Herz1 Cyber Dragon Nachster2 Jizukiru, the Star Destroying Kaiju1 Gizmek Okami, the Dreaded Deluge Dragon1 Gizmek Kaku, the Supreme Shining Sky Stag1 Gizmek Orochi, the Serpentron Sky Slasher2 Gizmek Uka, the Festive Fox of Fecundity3 Gizmek Yata, the Gleaming Vanguard3 Gizmek Arakami, the Hailbringer Hog2 Gizmek Taniguku, the Immobile Intellect3 Gizmek Naganaki, the Sunrise Signaler2 Gizmek Inaba, the Hopping Hare of Hakuto

3 Small World3 Machine Duplication1 Cyber Repair Plant1 Terraforming2 Urgent Schedule3 Sacred Scrolls of the Gizmek Legend

1 Topologic Zeroboros1 Steel Star Regulator2 Cyber Dragon Sieger1 Platinum Gadget1 Union Carrier1 Double Headed Anger Knuckle1 Qliphort Genius1 Barricadeborg Blocker1 Linkuriboh1 Cyber Dragon Infinity1 Cyber Dragon Nova1 Constellar Pleiades1 Chimeratech Megafleet Dragon1 Chimeratech Fortress Dragon

Deck 3: Mysterune Deck Featuring Cyber Dragon Deck

3 Cyber Dragon Core3 Cyber Dragon

3 Spring of the Mysterune1 Deceit of the Mysterune1 Cyber Eternal2 Mysterune of Destruction2 Mysterune of the Raging Storm2 Mysterune of Dispel2 Mysterune of Slumber3 Mysterune of the Freezing Curse3 Mysterune of the Brilliant Flame3 Spear Shard of the Mysterune1 Mysterune of the Golden Droplets3 Monster Gate3 Reasoning2 Chicken Game1 Cyberload Fusion1 Terraforming1 Set Rotation

1 Chimeratech Fortress Dragon3 Geri, Fangs of the Mysterune3 Huginn, Wings of the Mysterune3 Muninn, Wings of the Mysterune3 Chimeratech Megafleet Dragon1 Chimeratech Overdragon1 Chimeratech Rampage Dragon

Deck 4: Gradius Deck Featuring Cyber Dragon

3 Gradius3 Cyber Dragon3 Gradius Option3 Vic Viper T3011 Victory Viper XX032 Gold Gadget2 Silver Gadget1 Cyber Dragon Drei1 Cyber Dragon Vier1 Cyber Eltanin3 Honest

1 Cyclon Laser3 United We Stand3 Psychic Blade1 Unexpected Dai3 Cyber Emergency3 Limiter Removal1 Double or Nothing!1 Harpies Feather Duster

1 Red Reboot

1 Platinum Gadget1 Cyber Dragon Sieger1 Underclock Taker1 Heavy Armored Train Ironwolf1 Number 60: Dugares the Timeless1 Daigusto Emeral1 Gear Gigant X1 Number 39: Utopia Double1 Number 39: Utopia1 Drill Driver Vespenato1 Cyber Dragon Nova1 Cyber Dragon Infinity1 Divine Arsenal AA-ZEUS Sky Thunder1 Chimeratech Fortress Dragon1 Chimeratech Megafleet Dragon

Deck 5: Machine Deck Featuring Cyber Dragon

3 Cyber Dragon2 Cyber Dragon Herz3 Flying Pegasus Railroad Stampede3 Ruffian Railcar2 Super Express Bullet Train3 Night Express Knight3 Heavy Freight Train Derricrane

3 Revolving Switchyard1 Harpies Feather Duster1 Terraforming3 Cyber Emergency3 Twin Twisters2 Pot of Desires3 Urgent Schedule2 Called by the Grave1 Sky Striker Mecha Eagle Booster

2 E.M.R.

3 Chimeratech Megafleet Dragon1 Cyber Dragon Nova1 Cyber Dragon Infinity2 Superdreadnought Rail Cannon Gustav Max2 Number 81: Superdreadnought Rail Cannon Super Dora1 Skypalace Gangaridai2 Superdreadnought Rail Cannon Juggernaut Liebe1 Double Headed Anger Knuckle1 Pentestag1 Cyber Dragon Sieger

New Product Deck: Monarch Deck Featuring Qardan the Great Sage

3 Qardan the Great Sage3 Edea the Heavenly Squire3 Eidos the Underworld Squire2 Kuraz the Light Monarch1 Seleglare the Luminous Lunar Dragon1 Bahalutiya, the Grand Radiance3 Ehther the Heavenly Monarch3 Erebus the Underworld Monarch

3 Domain of the True Monarchs3 The Monarchs Stormforth1 Return of the Monarchs3 Tenacity of the Monarchs3 Pantheism of the Monarchs1 One for One

2 The Prime Monarch2 Escalation of the Monarchs2 The Monarchs Erupt1 The First Monarch

New Product Deck: Amazoness + Vernalizer Fairy Deck

1 Amazoness Baby Tiger1 Amazoness Shaman1 Vernalizer Fairy of Flowers and Fields2 Vernalizer Fairy of Mountains and Melting Snow3 Amazoness Silver Sword Master3 Amazoness Princess1 Amazoness Tiger2 Vernalizer Fairy of Forests and Awakening2 Vernalizer Fairy of Hills and Blooms2 Amazoness Swords Woman3 Amazoness Golden Whip Master1 Amazoness Warrior Chief2 Aussa the Earth Channeler1 Amazoness Queen

2 Polymerization1 Fusion Deployment1 Harpies Feather Duster1 Reinforcement of the Army1 Flower Crown of the Vernalizer Fairy3 Amazoness Call2 Amazoness Secret Technique

1 Vernalizer Fairy and Flower Buds3 Amazoness Onslaught

2 Amazoness Pet Liger2 Amazoness Empress2 Amazoness King Liger2 Amazoness Kaiserin1 Geonator Transverser1 Missus Radiant1 Knightmare Cerberus1 Aussa the Earth Charmer, Immovable1 Ferocious Flame Swordsman1 Gouki The Powerload Ogre1 Underworld Goddess of t

My Favorite Deck: Fiend + Zombie Deck

A Deck that uses various strategies!

1 Dark Master Zorc1 Doomking Balerdroch1 Curse Necrofear1 Dark Necrofear1 Puppet Master1 Diabound Kernel1 Doomcaliber Knight1 Gernia1 Necroface1 Goblin Zombie1 Mimicking Man-Eater Bug1 Spirit Reaper1 Dark Spirit of Malice1 Dark Spirit of Banishment1 Jowgen the Spiritualist1 Sangan1 Plaguespreader Zombie1 Mad Mauler1 Morphing Jar1 Headless Knight1 The Portraits Secret1 Earthbound Spirit1 The Gross Ghost of Fled Dreams

1 Dark Sanctuary1 Spirit Message I1 Spirit Message N1 Spirit Message A1 Spirit Message L1 The Dark Door1 Contract with the Dark Master1 Advanced Ritual Art1 Dark Spirits Mastery1 Spiritualism1 Monster Reborn1 Pot of Extravagance

1 Destiny Board1 Sentence of Doom1 Zoma the Spirit1 Macro Cosmos1 Dark Spirit of the Silent

1 Elder Entity Ntss1 Red-Eyes Zombie Dragon Lord1 Groza, Tyrant of Thunder1 Red-Eyes Zombie Necro Dragon1 Revived King Ha Des1 Old Entity Cthugua1 Old Entity Hastorr1 Steelswarm Roach1 Outer Entity Nyarla1 D/D/D Wave King Caesar1 Unchained Abomination1 Knightmare Phoenix1 Knightmare Gryphon1 Knightmare Cerberus1 Masterking Archfiend

See the original post here:
The Organization | [Deck Recipes] May 26th, 2022 - YGOrganization