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