It's precisely because this is "a place where people can discuss the hypothesis of demonic influence in human affairs" that it ends up being one of the few places of sanity online. Insanity arises from trying to foist too much denied baggage off onto our limited and finite Shadows (truly everything does end up having a natural and healthy limit!) Any culture, civilization, or worldview that refuses to tolerate the least contemplation of demonic influence is going to end up with quite the overstuffed Shadow just from that one prohibition.
As we've witnessed in the West, denying the possibility of malign spiritual influences gradually morphed into a denial of any spiritual influences whatsoever. That's when a great philosopher, cracking under the incomprehensible stresses thus created, declared his beloved God to be dead. With all the gods and demons banished into our impossibly overstuffed Shadows, sanity isn't much of a possibility for modern materialists.
Once no actual divinites are allowed to be contemplated, man then appears to be the apotheosis of all of existence's strivings. Inside our puny blinkered minds, man ends up replacing both gods and devils. We then attempt to live up to the impossible ideal we’ve set for ourselves by forcing all of our limiting mundane attributes into our Shadows as well. By imagining ourselves to be divinities, we have predictably made ourselves truly insane.
Rediscovering the reality of influences inconceivably greater than us is the way out of that insanity. Unpacking our Shadows is never easy, but always worth the effort, and always considerably less effort than desperately trying to keep them continually policed. Human Shadows are just way too small to effectively contain even the tiniest of divinites... let alone all of them.
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branchandroot
Re: Big Picture Questions
Date: 2023-01-15 08:55 pm (UTC)As we've witnessed in the West, denying the possibility of malign spiritual influences gradually morphed into a denial of any spiritual influences whatsoever. That's when a great philosopher, cracking under the incomprehensible stresses thus created, declared his beloved God to be dead. With all the gods and demons banished into our impossibly overstuffed Shadows, sanity isn't much of a possibility for modern materialists.
Once no actual divinites are allowed to be contemplated, man then appears to be the apotheosis of all of existence's strivings. Inside our puny blinkered minds, man ends up replacing both gods and devils. We then attempt to live up to the impossible ideal we’ve set for ourselves by forcing all of our limiting mundane attributes into our Shadows as well. By imagining ourselves to be divinities, we have predictably made ourselves truly insane.
Rediscovering the reality of influences inconceivably greater than us is the way out of that insanity. Unpacking our Shadows is never easy, but always worth the effort, and always considerably less effort than desperately trying to keep them continually policed. Human Shadows are just way too small to effectively contain even the tiniest of divinites... let alone all of them.
— Christophe