Considering Upside-Down Angels

Concerning those Upside-Down Angels 

Numidian philosopher, Lucius Apulius, growing the ears of The Golden Ass

After we had burned some sage, Su Dae drew a circle on the floor with chalk and consecrated it by striking each quarter with her whip, to make sure only brave spirits could cross and the cowardly ones would retreat.

    We see in the smoke of the incense, the condensing figure of that Numidian priest of Isis who wrote the tale of The Golden Ass.

    “You must understand,” explains Apulius, “that every social power and principality not only impresses an economic footprint, but also has social libido. This social libido derives force from the longings and the lusts of the people, and this force exerts itself in ways that cause people to believe that they are observing the actions of Gods or demons.

    “Because they had social libido, the old Roman and Egyptian Gods were able to convince a rationally minded person like Augustine, that they had the same degree of existence as angels, albeit angels of a fallen nature. This is of course a misunderstanding. For instance, it is likely that the Egyptian God Tehuti originated with the memory of a saintly man, who by the most likely accounts was a teacher of philosophy. The Arabs identify him with Idris, who appears in the Qoran as the nabi who invented philosophy. The Hebrews identified him with a prophet whom they called Enoch who, after a long life as a holy man, was eventually carried away by an alien race of angels on a charriot of fire.

    “Of course, we must understand that this was a very long time ago, because we find that even the oldest Egyptian dynasties were already worshiping Thoth as a God. So much for the Arabian Idris, whom we call Thoth. It is a great thing that his name shall be honored so long as there are humans who study philosophy, but can we really imagine that the corruptions which may have occurred within the temples to Mercury in 2nd Century Rome diminished the blessed state state of the soul of Idris the Prophet? So it becomes evident that the notion that the Gods of Imperial Rome were really fallen angels was misleading, and will be of little value in providing a remedy for the harm that these false Gods inflict.

    “Augustine almost got the point when he inquires, why these demons, as he calls them, are delighted in public performances depicting adulteries and other acts of immorality. In fact where these False Gods are concerned there is really no ‘angel’ at all, but a sort of collective hallucination that is the product of the fascination that an enactment of forbidden sins can exert on the minds of the repressed. As priests we have known all along that under highly controlled circumstances, this collective imagining resulting from the polarization of fascinated libidoes can become so strong results are produced that everyone shall believe are miraculous.

    “If you really would wish to examine how we were led astray by False Gods, you must be willing to examine how similar these False Gods of our own day were to the Trans-National Corporations of your own. These both are a variety of principality described by Augustine as ‘upside down angels,’ insofar as it was believed that the ‘body of air’ that demons and angels had in common was eternal whereas the rational soul of a demon was defective and diseased on account of rebellion.

    “Now if we shave the supernatural hairs from these demons with Occam’s razor, we will see that their bodies are not made of air at all, but rather are a projection of the collective libido. In other words, the Gods of the Empire are not eternal at all; indeed, they would cease to exist if the people did not use their festivals as a pretext to excuse their own immorality. Nevertheless these Gods had a very long lifetime, much longer than that of any mortal human, and it was only after great struggle that these principalities were extinguished by Christianity and Islam.

     “At ths point the parallel between our demons and false gods and the great corporations of your own day should be obvious. Again, in regard to that aspect which is furthest from the soul, your corporations have a life of unlimited duration, as well as rather extravagant material powers. But at that point where we respond to the Divine Intention, which is to say the world of rational cognition, your corporations are even more defective than the wild beasts. The wild beasts may have no rational capacity for ethical philosophy, but for the most part they have enough emotional loyalty that they do not devour their own kind. Whereas in the corporate system, obligation to the investors takes such precedence that even the personal moral scruples of the directors must be sacrificed, so that the investors may receive their reward for their offerings to the Golden Calf.

     “So now you will see just why I assert that the corporations of your day have really become upside down angels. In the material sense they have the powers that our pagan Gods had, but when we look at the rational aspect they have no conscience and no soul, and their so-called intelligence is dedicated only to extracting the last dollar possible from the ecosystem.

     “One of your 19^th Century philosophers, a gentleman named Hegel, once referred to the nations of the world as “Gods who walk on earth.” In his day the corporations were dependent on the nations which gave them a legal existence, but in your own day many of these trans-national corporations have gained the power to impose their Olympian decrees even on the most powerful national governments. I therefore would say that in your day it is these trans-national corporations who walk on the earth like Gods – only when we consider their effect upon the environment, we shall clearly see that they are not Gods at all, but overgrown Upside Down Angels.”

Numidian

Philosopher 

Snow Falls on Mountains

Snow Falls on the Mountains

Nov. 16, 2016

The snow falls quietly on mountains that remember the blood of Christ. It was really the blood of the Natives, but Christ claimed that blood as his own. Under this spell of quietude, we slowly discover that violence is not the only way to struggle for an ideal.

The quietly falling snow reminds us that we have come to the end of an era. The results of the past election demonstrate that, all over the world, it is the Crude Oil Bros. who are firmly in control. Unfortunately for them, their insistence on punishing the people who refuse to bow down to their great Golden Calf has set the stage for what is going to become a major revolution, some 30 or 40 years hence.

The grinning face of Vladimir Putin on the BBC webpage reminds us how subtly the fiction of corporate personhood may be employed to subvert the so-called democratic process. We don’t really know yet what kind of chief executive Donald Trump will be, but the indications from what he has said in his campaign and what he has done in the past are not reassuring.

Wary though we may be of his wiles, we must admit that Mr. Putin is simply defending his nation. Somehow, Vespucci evangelicalism seems to have conceived the vain imagination that it is destined to accomplish the destruction, not only of Communism, but of the whole Russian nation. This crusading fervor has blasted Afghanistan back into the Middle Ages, and destabilized the whole Middle East. Despite the repeated assurances of Western leaders, it is likely that Prince Vladimir sees the Vespucci effort to bring down the Syrian regime as a proxy war against his own nation.

From a corporate perspective, Russia represents a huge market. According to the Party Line, Russia has repented of her Communist ways, and converted to the Capitalist faith. But the antics of Bingbum de Singsum have given the Russian intellectuals looking out their windows from Moscow or St. Petersberg cause to believe that the wealthy and privileged class represented by the IMF will stop at nothing short of an absolute dominion that would reduce Russians to thralldom.

Political Discontinuities

Russia may have a long way to go before she achieves her dream of being a philosophically guided democracy, but her citizens tend to be more patriotic than our own high-rolling gentry. While he may grant that glassnost and the ensuing reforms brought about social improvement, the Russian citizen also resents the humiliation his nation suffered when the old Soviet Union collapsed. Returning the favor, by exposing the racism and misogyny of “White America” for the whole world to see shall be such a crowning achievement, that in spite of his personal fortune, Prince Vladimir shall be remembered as a socialist hero forever.

Right now, the Stars and Stripes are drooping in exhaustion, even though the Stars and Bars are leaping in exuberant expectation. The Man from Brecht has chosen a rather notorious racist with known anti-semetic qualities to be his chief of staff. Everywhere, people who expect dignified conduct from their leaders are asking just what their nation could have done wrong.

Having devoured the turkey that Renata’s oven sacrificed to the National Cult, Su Dae, Renata, Thieu and I are seated on the couch in our parlor and commiserating with each other. It is obvious that the liberation struggle that Progressive America is beginning to wage has aroused a rather punishing opposition. The campaign to raise Atlan up from the unconscious depths has begun, but the immediate evidence is showing us, the jihad shall be long and painful.

“Wasn’t it Ghandi,” offers Thieu, “who said, ‘First they ignore you, then they punish you, then you win’?”

“We’ve been getting punished,” shrugs Renata with a cynical laugh. “They are sounding the call for battle, but the problem is, it has taken most of their capacity all along to keep us down. They can unleash barbarity, as they are doing at Standing Rock, but that will only fragment their forces. Most of their supporters have no idea yet, that what they are fighting for is really a criminal power & control cartel.”

“We are just like the second century Christians,” observes Thieu. “There are some differences because the movie has been played before. We are wiser on account of the sorrows of our past recurrences, and on account of this, the Republic still has a chance to recover from the date rapes inflicted by men whose primary loyalty is to gold and to their own power. Nevertheless, the lions are loose, and are out there devouring the people. In order to restrain these lions, we must find a way to pull the economic carpet out from under the feet of the Crude Oil Bros.”