"The practice of magic was omnipresent in classical antiquity."
One of my favorite opening sentences in a textbook – possibly ever. Bibliographed. Footnoted. Cited. Loved it.
Graf, Fritz. Magic in the Ancient World. Philip, Franklin, trans. Harvard University Press, 1997.
Ah, the utter joy of discovering legitimate magickal traditions and not the nonsensical burbling of Tinkerbelles and Twinkies claiming to be witches when the truth is they have half of their sizeable rumps ensconced in local churches, singing "kum bah yah" around campfires just like they did in childhood bible camp. I’m serious, most of those women have deprived so many students of legitimate power in favor of "feel good" silliness, they should be run out of town on a rail.
I know, I shouldn’t be singling out christians devolving into christian-wiccan idiots for their disastrous leaps of logic that send them flying into the nearest abyss. Great example: (tune up the violins); "Every time I hear a newborn baby cry ... I believe." They even put that one to music. One of the most inane voids of logical course ever devised. Really??!!?? You believe ... what, exactly? That infants of any species are born with an inherent ability to express their basic needs? That proves evolution in the art of survival if anything, not a deity.
But that logical failure crosses all belief systems. I was also reading H.P. Blavatsky’s preface to the first volume of Isis Unveiled: "Prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers – you have proved God!" – in her "ex nihilo nihil fit" discussion, raising again the problems with idiots not realizing they are giving a sole deity a capital "G" ... raising all sorts of new issues. This is the same designation used by "an unspiritual, dogmatic, too often debauched clergy; a host of sects, and three warring great religions; discord instead of union, dogmas without proofs, sensation-loving preachers, and wealth and pleasure-seeking parishioners' hypocrisy and bigotry, begotten by the tyrannical exigencies of respectability, the rule of the day, sincerity and real piety exceptional." (same source) So why use the term?
But setting that aside for the moment in favor of the (il)logical leap, above: noooooo, (assuming you can conclusively prove the existence of a soul of man by any method, in the first place) you have only proved that men have souls. Can’t even prove that women do, according to Blavatsky, which seems an odd premise in a book written by a woman, but no matter.
(And by the way, for those who never bothered to pick up some elementary Latin: "ex nihilo nihil fit" means "nothing comes from nothing". And here you thought Rodgers and Hammerstein invented that, when they wrote the lyrics for "The Sound of Music". Ha! Not likely.)
Or this, in a discussion of Plato:
And the greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian era (i.e., Plato) mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of the Vedic philosophers who lived thousands of years before himself, and its metaphysical expression. Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati, and so many others, will be found to have transmitted their indelible imprint through the intervening centuries upon Plato and his school. Thus is warranted the inference that to Plato and the ancient Hindu sages was alike revealed the same wisdom. So surviving the shock of time, what can this wisdom be but divine and eternal?
Oh, I dunno..! Knowledge which had survived the "shock" of time might not be automatically "divine and eternal", but (logically speaking) "very, very old"? I really hate stuff that is supposed to be passing for logical deduction failing in an "epic" fashion, to use a contemporary adjective. Point being that if Ms. Blavatsky had something worthwhile to say, we might never know about her message if we can’t bring ourselves to progress in her book beyond the preface after reading nonsense like this.
I would dismiss this with, "So much for the theosophists" were it not for her basic, underlying premise that there is one "universal" truth and that all of earth’s belief systems contain one facet of it. I can’t swear that’s true, I just suspect it is; still, she hasn’t proved that in Isis Unveiled, or ... at least not so far. All she’s done is irritate me with logic failure.
I also basically agree with her overall opinion of Plato and the influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries on him, although – again – have problems with her logical deductions.
"The philosophy of Plato, we are assured by Porphyry, of the Neoplatonic School was taught and illustrated "in the mysteries". Many have questioned and even denied this; and Lobeck, in his Aglaophomus, has gone to the extreme of representing the sacred orgies as little more than an empty show to captivate the imagination. As though Athens and Greece would for twenty centuries and more have repaired every fifth year to Eleusis to witness a solemn religious farce!"
In this, I actually do agree with her, but I wouldn’t use the "twenty centuries" length as a source for logic, unless it was used by some christian to prove the veracity of their faith. I’ve actually seen them try this: "It HAS to be true. It has lasted for 2000+ years!" Then, of course, you ran roll your eyeballs at them and bring up the Eleusinian Mysteries, or even this quotation, just to watch their heads explode, trying to discredit it without discrediting their own mythologies. To come up with strong proof that the Mysteries were legitimate, it would be required to recreate them, as it appears no one broke the law and wrote down their experiences. Or at least we haven’t found a document thus far.
Although, you possibly could remind them that actual manifestations were recreated at every initiation, which might stump them for a while – until they start singing (tune up the violins); "Every time I hear a newborn baby cry ... I believe." And at that point, I give you full permission to slap them. Initiates in the Mysteries had lots more foot blisters but lots more fun – read about the recreations of Baubo and her dirty jokes sometime.
I know I haven't finished the list of fallen angels in the incubus/succubus discussion, but I did run across an interesting discussion on the word "demon", which does possibly explain the change in the word in the christian era into something exclusively malevolent, when it was not intended that way in ancient Greek:
"DAIMONION is a diminutive of DAIMWN, which originally meant something like "dispensing power" and which was often used of a god whose name was either unknown or not deemed important to identify in this instance. DAIMONES are nameless supernatural powers, generally thought subordinate to the Olympian pantheon. Bauer cites in particular a celebrated passage from the Symposium of Plato where Diotima is trying to define EROS as a supernatural power that mediates between humanity and the gods. If you want to understand what is meant by that phrase there, you really ought to look up that passage in the Symposium and read more of it. DAIMWN and DAIMONION can mean so many things across such a range that I don't think it would be fair to venture any simple account."
Source: a 1998 discussion, now archived, on http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
Moving forward: January. The month of Janus, the God of beginnings and transitions. From the online etymology dictionary:
"January (n.) late 13c., Ieneuer, from Old North French Genever, Old French Jenvier (Modern French Janvier), attested from early 12c. in Anglo-French, from Latin Ianuarius (mensis) "(the month) of Janus," to whom the month was sacred as the beginning of the year (see Janus; cf. Italian Gennajo, Provençal Genovier, Portuguese Janeiro). The form was gradually Latinized by c.1400. Replaced Old English geola se æfterra "Later Yule." In Chaucer, a type-name for an old man.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=January
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