To all who observe it, a happy Father's Day, and a happy and blessed early Summer Solstice to anyone who celebrates that! Otherwise, I hope your summer is off to a pleasant start, and thanks for sharing your knowledge here.
To share this week: I asked a while back if JMG had any knowledge of Oswald Spengler (of The Decline of the West fame) being an occultist, due to many references to occult and occult-adjacent sources. It would seem the answer is a pretty definitive "no", though. From page 392 of the 2021 Arktos edition of Volume II:
"The Isis-cult in Republican Rome was something very different both from the emperor-worship that succeeded it and from the deeply earnest Isis-religion of Egypt; it was a religious pastime of high society, which at times provoked public ridicule and at times led to public scandal and the closing of the cult-centres. The Chaldean astrology was in those days a fashion, very far removed from the genuine Classical belief in oracles and from the Magian faith in the might of the hour. It was "relaxation," a "let's pretend." And, over and above this, there were the numberless charlatans and fake prophets who toured the towns and south with their pretentious rites to persuade the half-educated into a renewed interest in religion. Correspondingly, we have in the European-American world of today the occultist and theosophist fraud, the American Christian Science, the untrue Buddhism of drawing-rooms, the religious arts-and-crafts business (brisker in Germany than even in England) that caters for gropus and cults of Gothic or Late Classical or Taoist sentiment."
(Bolding mine)
As for a question, I was a bit late asking this on the last Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic post: 1) If I’m remembering correctly, you’ve characterized much (most?) of what occurs between incarnations as astral in nature, which implies some kind of (semi-?) persistent astral vehicle for the individuality. In Chapter 12 of the DaRoHM, though, it seems that some/all of our astral “body” is associated with the personality of a given incarnation and is left behind and no longer inhabited by the individuality/soul behind it.
So, I suppose my question is: what’s happening here, as far as we know? Does the astral “body” split into that which is left behind and that which stays with us? As we better reach the higher (mental, spiritual) planes, does less of our astral vehicle persist between incarnations?
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2022-06-20 04:12 am (UTC)To all who observe it, a happy Father's Day, and a happy and blessed early Summer Solstice to anyone who celebrates that! Otherwise, I hope your summer is off to a pleasant start, and thanks for sharing your knowledge here.
To share this week: I asked a while back if JMG had any knowledge of Oswald Spengler (of The Decline of the West fame) being an occultist, due to many references to occult and occult-adjacent sources. It would seem the answer is a pretty definitive "no", though. From page 392 of the 2021 Arktos edition of Volume II:
"The Isis-cult in Republican Rome was something very different both from the emperor-worship that succeeded it and from the deeply earnest Isis-religion of Egypt; it was a religious pastime of high society, which at times provoked public ridicule and at times led to public scandal and the closing of the cult-centres. The Chaldean astrology was in those days a fashion, very far removed from the genuine Classical belief in oracles and from the Magian faith in the might of the hour. It was "relaxation," a "let's pretend." And, over and above this, there were the numberless charlatans and fake prophets who toured the towns and south with their pretentious rites to persuade the half-educated into a renewed interest in religion. Correspondingly, we have in the European-American world of today the occultist and theosophist fraud, the American Christian Science, the untrue Buddhism of drawing-rooms, the religious arts-and-crafts business (brisker in Germany than even in England) that caters for gropus and cults of Gothic or Late Classical or Taoist sentiment."
(Bolding mine)
As for a question, I was a bit late asking this on the last Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic post: 1) If I’m remembering correctly, you’ve characterized much (most?) of what occurs between incarnations as astral in nature, which implies some kind of (semi-?) persistent astral vehicle for the individuality. In Chapter 12 of the DaRoHM, though, it seems that some/all of our astral “body” is associated with the personality of a given incarnation and is left behind and no longer inhabited by the individuality/soul behind it.
So, I suppose my question is: what’s happening here, as far as we know? Does the astral “body” split into that which is left behind and that which stays with us? As we better reach the higher (mental, spiritual) planes, does less of our astral vehicle persist between incarnations?
Thanks very much for your time and care,
Jeff