John Griogair Bell - Arlecchino Malbenvolio

I previously posted some initial thoughts about paradigms in, honestly, a kind of screed. From the content of that post, it may not be clear why I think the topic relates to my category of esoterica, I think this continuation will tie those together usefully. I note that Mark over at Darkline made some of this connection already based on my previous.

It’s already been over a year since the previous Ask the Initiates panel at Sekhet-Maat, part of a weekend of activity around the annual Thelemic Symposium. Although it’s come up before and since, I recall especially that one of the questions I was asked by the students was what I thought about the reality of magick and magical entities. Now that the Ask the Initiates panel came around again, the topic came around again as well but I may have brought it up myself because I was thinking about it.

My answer has generally been that If I take seriously the notion of “as above, so below”; it simply doesn’t matter whether my experiences are due to some logically positive objective materialism, purely artefacts of my method and mechanics of perception, or even more abstractly simply contained only within a Popperian third world. In otherwords, I reject the premise that it needs must be answered in an Aristotelean way, that I must answer whether these things are either true or false, real or not real, and that I must accept the particular epistemological stratum in which another intends to hunt for snark.

Not only is the snark a boojum, you see; but, these are particularly my boojum. The reality of these entities in question is an epistemological one, not an ontological one; and most definitely not a phenomenological one since the answer is most emphatically about personal consciousness and not a universal. The question of the ontological and phenomenological reality of magick and magickal entities is actually irrelevant to my ability to engage with them and the utility to me and mine of that work. But, the epistemological reality of these same could be of the utmost importance. The real question is not whether these entities have some objective existence, but whether I gain knowledge and experience through the interaction, the relationship. And, moreover whether I have a justified belief in them.

So, I say it doesn’t matter, except, of course, that it does matter in a way. It may be of the utmost importance that I believe, for the efficacy of a particular magical operation, for the usefulness of any knowledge gained in the experience, one way or the other. But, the important issue is that it may also, at some other point in time-space, be equally or more important for me to believe the opposite.

One of my favourite examples of this is Goetic or Enochian work. The operation is one which I might summon specific entities, with whom I work to develop a relationship, or, in cases, mastery over. One view is that the entity has an objective existence independent of my own cognition and experience of the interaction. However, another way of viewing this: I might be simply externalizing parts of myself in order to gain the distance necessary to integrate those parts of my shadow with which I could not otherwise engage. It may be completely necessary for me to not only act as if the goetic entities are real with independent existences, but also to actually, for some period of time, be completely convinced that is an objective fact.

If for the purposes of a magickal operation, I tend to believe one way or another on the question and the operation is not successful, then it may be necessary to change my mind, alter my thinking, or, change my consciousness in accordance with my will (to sort of make a mishmash of definitions). In other words, if a particular paradigm doesn’t seem to be effective, try another. (And I can’t help but wonder how someone unable to change their consciousness in this way is capable of doing magick at all.)

Here’s where I find myself thinking about the quote from the Principia Discordia: “All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.” The corollary to this might be that in doing magick one will likely need to be pragmatic and artful about the power and limitation of dogma. (I’ll stop before I make the claim that this is also the secret not just to magick but also to peace on Earth, but – Oops. Never mind.)

The mechanism by which this happens has, for me, always been about liminality as long as I’ve known the term. But, moreover, before I really had incorporated notions of the liminal into my thinking, this is surprisingly similar to the act of acting, or rather, for me, the act of being, on stage. For me there’s a concept of an “actor’s brain” which is essentially a doubling of consciousness wherein there is both a character and an actor. Where the former cannot know certain things, the latter must know them; and the “actor’s brain” is where these paradoxical states are reconciled, co-located. Similar to the audience’s suspension of disbelief, where they simultaneously believe and disbelieve the theatrical event; the “actor’s brain” is a place where two conflicting sets of wholistic personality and understanding co-exist, and inform each other, but neither completely subsumes the other. (There are things, in my direct experience, that the character side of the “actor’s brain” knows about how to be and behave which the actor side is unable to discover or fully understand or replicate alone.) In addition to being similar in my experience to the “actor’s brain”, I find this paradigmatic liminality to also have resonance with the notion of suspension in dialogue and Bey’s notion of an autonomous zone [also], and from there a whole host of other things.

Of course, there are other paradigms of acting, to continue the simile, than mine. There are those that are merely mechanical and those that are more fully intuitive. My particular paradigm is one I operate in because of the efficaciousness of that paradigm for me. For the mechanical paradigm, I find that more about performance than ritual, and to and for me theatre is always best when it is ritualized; the mechanical paradigm seems shallow and is to treat the theatrical experience, for both actor and audience, as one of simple deception and manipulation. For the more intuitive paradigm, I find that a slippery slope to madness as so many actors get lost on that road. But, that’s about the utility of these paradigms for me. However, for all these three, there are great actors that have operated in each.

Another example that has always come to mind for me is what I’ve come to see as the Renaissance paradigm shift of astrology. There seems to me a significant paradigm shift where previously the upper determined the lower. after the renaissance, the inner determined the outer. It seems to me that the understanding of astrology radically changed as the paradigm shifts of the Renaissance did. Whereas typically a modern view of the universe is that it is determined from the inside out, that the individual mind and perception of the world, one’s consciousness of the world, changes the world; an earlier view would see the individual as being determined from the outside in, that one’s consciousness was the last mile in a cosmic broadband connection to the divine. Whereas astrology might now see the vagaries of an individual reflected in the stars, that the quirks and foibles of the self are written above, that the individual choices are helped or hindered by the influence of the spheres; it seems to me that an earlier world-view would have seen rather that the self is a reflection of the divine whole, a facet of the larger totality of the universe, that the self is a product of the functioning of the spheres. So, in an older overall paradigm, the notion that the personality of an individual would appear and be amenable to study through the outer makes a great deal of sense. On the other hand, in the newer paradigm, the direction of influence is essentially reversed. In one the stars are the environment in which one acts, and in the other the stars are an intermediate layer in which the influence of cosmic order can be traced to either end, the above or below.

Depending on what kind of information I was looking for, I might need to approach astrology in a radically different way. You know, if one does approach it at all.

Paradigms are sets of meanings derived from observations. The observations don’t really change, unless I get better or different mechanisms and methods of observation, but the value of the meanings derived from those observations is directly related to the utility and efficacy of those meanings as they apply to the work; whether that’s the work of daily living, where the notions of newtonian physics and vector maths and a sensory feedback loop are useful to me as I try to cross the street with my life, or that’s when I’m engaging in a magical operation and trying to gain some effect through affecting efficaciously.

In this way the aphorism “as above, so below”, and its corollaries and co-legates under the wings of their ruling dux, the esoteric archidoxes of the seven hermetic laws detailed in the Kybalion, are all ways of saying paradigms matter but it is not necessary to hold on to them for dear life. “As above, so below”; “as within, so without”; and even “solve et coagula” – these are also structurally the same as the interplay between Self and the Other. There is the Jungian shadow to be integrated, and the self to be absorbed into the communal.

Of course, it really doesn’t matter to me if someone else believes in my experience or not. My “unsubstantiated personal gnosis” is justified to me to the extent that it offers some utility to me. As the Book says, “Success is your proof” … The danger is that I become a victim to confirmation bias, but that’s really a separate question of the scientific rigour of my work. However, the utility of UPG requires necessarily neither that it be shared nor confirmed beyond my own practice. My ongoing personal testing of that UPG is part of the work, such that it may become, at least personally, confirmed and possibly maybe even shared, but it is that the work is that matters more than what is the work, so the necessity is of a different order. It matters not what my paradigm is, but that I have one and that it works for me in the work I need to do when I need to do it. What matters is not the reality of what I do, but the reality that I do it.

In this case, as opposed to a more strictly defined view of the sciences, replicability by others is interesting but not necessary strictly speaking for the value of my esoteric science, and the paradigm in which I operate my scientific method of the work, to be valid and sufficient. However, that’s not to say that sharing and confirming with others is not also useful both as a check on my own work, but also in participating in a community of workers on a shared syncopated operation, perhaps as in the formation of an egregor over time. But, this shared work and my personal work can exist, as much as it is possible for anything to do so since things necessarily on some level exist in relationship with each other, independently of each other. Neither is necessarily significantly diminished by not participating in a system-in-focus with the other, though those connections do necessarily exist in some larger or out-of-focus systemic relationship. In each case it doesn’t, except when it does, matter so much what I’m doing, so long as I’m doing it; and visa versa, it doesn’t matter what work the egregor does, so much that the work works.

In this way magick more closely resembles an engineering black-box problem than an effort at scientific experimental replication. Where the latter is attempting to repeat the method to arrive at the same result, the former is trying to sufficiently repeat a similar result through some method to be determined as necessary.

I’m not sure but it’s most certainly earlier that I started being interested in etymology, but I definitely recall the effect of my meager semester of Latin from freshman year of high school. I know without a doubt that I got a couple extra answers correct on my S.A.T. because of that class.

I find myself periodically lamenting not having been able to take more Latin, but it wasn’t offered again and (really, who am I fooling?) I totally slacked off in that class anyway. I also find myself lamenting the lack of a better grounding in the classics, that I know I would have resisted had it been required, but would have no doubt utilized that often in my life had I had it.

As it is, my Latin joins my French, Spanish, Japanese, Irish, American Sign Language classes and my dabbling informally with another dozen or so (not the least of which are Klingon, Esperanto, Mohawk, and so on and on). All things at quite less than any functional basis let alone fluency, and really more closely resembling trivial acquaintances.

Anyhow, it should be no surprise that when I read years ago a poem about Star Goddess in Victor Anderson’s Thorns of the Blood Rose, I immediately parsed the name in that work, Quakoralina, into the speculative macaronic parts “quak-oral-ina” which to me immediately suggested “quake”, derived from OE cwacian meaning to “shake or tremble”, “oral”, from L os-, or- meaning “mouth”, and “-ina”, from L -ina which is a diminutive feminine ending that my dictionary safari at the time suggested could even mean “Our Lady”. So, ever since then, I’ve connected Star Goddess in Feri to a title “Our Lady Orgasm” in my own mind.

At some point in the last couple of years (apparently this was Dec 2007), I was on another dictionary safari for something or other (was I maybe looking again at the debate between the using “fora” vs. “forums”?) and tangentially ran into the Latin root fera, meaning “wild animal”, and thought of the word Feri. Previously, I’ve made sense of the name Feri through a colocation of Fae and iron and, using the Irish rí, for “king”, “royal Fae/iron” (Did I come up with that one or did I actually see it somewhere? Not to be confused with Iron Chef at all!) or “workers of the Fey” or as an anagram for Fire, being perhaps a hidden blue flame. But, Feri could be ferī, a masculine plural nominative of L fera, which, since the masculine is used to denote mixed genders, could now equate to “wild animals of mixed genders”. How interesting and fitting given the wild lascivious freedom said to be regained from recovering the Black Heart of Innocence.

Well, I don’t know why it took so long, but in the last couple weeks it suddenly flashed to mind that the Latin word fera is related to the Greek root thēri- which, of course, is in the word thēria, “wild beasts”, and thērion, “wild beast”, which last along with ΤΟ ΜΕΓΑ ΘΗΡΙΟΝ, “The Great Beast”, are names used by Aleister Crowley.

And, of course, now that’s present in my mind, it’s like a wild beast in its obviousness tromping through my china shop. For example, it’s plainly staring me in the face on the Wiktionary page about the Latin ferus, so how did I not see it before now?

I know it’s a speculative thing really, but this flashed to me as another possible way of creating connection and reflection for myself, at the very least through the process of hermetic drift, between the ideas and traditions of Feri and Thelema. And, you know, could conceivably, though this is not attested anywhere I’ve seen and may be controversial, be more possible evidence of some measure of influence between the two.

I probably should have said this at the outset, but better late than never: I’m not speaking from any authority about Feri; in any case, I’m only speaking from any authority to, for and from myself; my mind is my own, in several senses of meaning. I suppose at this point at most I’m an interested outsider anymore. But, at the very least this can’t be shocking to anyone else from Reclaiming or Feri that’s participated in a Gnostic Mass and therefore has surely also seen reflection of Star Goddess on the altar there, right? And, anyway, I’d already suggested this when I noted the quote in ABA of a connection between Aiwass and “the God of the Yezidis” that in turn suggests, and is further explored in the footnote in that source, Crowley had connected Aiwass with Melek Taus, including that both are “messengers”. Although not really “explicit” in the direct quote from Crowley as I wrote then, this connection is pretty damned apparently being made. In spite of an almost psychotic flurry of messages to me via every possible method of contacting me once I’d pointed it out, I was excited and surprised to have that other flash of connection then too. (Though I was quite a bit less so once I returned from being out and about and I found the hounds had started hounding and bounding around; especially after all that to then finally agree and even get enthusiastic about finding peacock feathers. Yeah, not that I’ve anything against hounds per se, but I’m really more of a cat person, my own self.)

(I’d sure like to get my eyes on a list of books that were in Victor Anderson’s library out of curiosity! It seemed like there was some idea of a list in something I read about pentacles and trees by Valerie Walker)

And, through backpropagation, as a Greek equivalent to the Latin, I can also personally see using Therioi as an equivalent to Feri.

Update 30mar10 @ 8:07am:

I keep meaning to note somewhere and never seem to find a place, and here is at least as good as anywhere, if not topical: every time I see Liber AL II.28, I am struck by the homonym/synonym there:

“None, breathed the light, faint & færy, of the stars, and two.”

So not to be all, you know, interpretive of Liber AL, but, one could say the light of the stars is faint and færy; the light is star goddess. Nuit is a færy light. And, elsewhere one could find that her colour is black, but really blue and gold.

You know, just sayin’.

Way back in the day, I studied the philosophy of science. I also studied the sciences. I pretty much left it behind as an active study, but these things informed and inform and will continue to inform my engagement with the world. My youth was informed by scientific study and my childhood informed by the character Spock. You know, that counts for something, anyway. I do not now consider myself to be a scientist, though I feel that I continue to apply a scientific attitude in my engagement with the world. So, I sometimes find it a bit surreal when I’m accused of being otherwise.

In specific, I’ve come to understand that I engage the world informed by the science and scientific method I’ve learned, and an attitude of scientific philosophy, which is at odds with the deathly serious certainty held by defenders of a religious faith in science, or, more generally, anything at all, I suppose. Even more generally, I feel I’m an edge-seeking thinker, looking at and wondering about those places where anomalies demonstrate the vulnerability of paradigms to shift. (The particle to the wave of that is that this same thinking is also pattern-seeking.) I think that means that I hanker to have a, sadly twarted, healthy humour, in myself and others, about accuracy. One thing I do is experiment with how rules breakdown in interesting ways and what that means. You know, I’m a Munkchin. (Anyone interfering? 3 … 2 … 1 … Time’s up! I kill Medusa and gain a level.)

I suppose defenders of the faith tend to feel a paranoid kind of fear of anyone, so I shouldn’t take it personally, willing to look for anomalies, or who point out the difference between fanatic faith in one, true paradigm and the real method and philosophy of science. And, they are happy to externalize their feverish insecurity onto others by claiming they’ve got the truth of a thing and anyone that is even willing to question that thing is at some kind of fault. You know, that’s usually when the righteous accuse other people of being witches, of some kind or another. Sometimes those accusations are purely out of fear. Other times those are out of some measure of strategy and sociopathology. The former is merely sad, the later, however, is most scary and something to validly take personally and seriously since it is thwartsome of liberty of thought.

The predictable fiasco that follows this realization is that defenders of the faith, machiavellian or otherwise, in a pique of persecution complex, then preemptively, or at least with more melodrama and passive-aggressive forum shopping, breathlessly turn about and accuse those intolerant of intolerance of being intolerant instead, and thus the whole thing devolves into a recedingly bizarre and sinister farce from which the only escapes are taking names and tossing people to the lions. (See Crowley’s new comment on Liber AL II,57. Unfortunately, I’m all out of lions. Does a ginger tabby suffice? “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” I need to refill my hipster PDA, it’s getting full of names.)

I keep meaning to go back to my notes and figure out all the texts that were required in my philosophy of science course, but the only one I remember for certain is Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The ideas introduced by Kuhn have been misused quite a bit, and the ubiquity and emptiness of most usage of the terms “paradigm” and “paradigm shift” has greatly damaged the utility of these term and the original ideas. Because of misuse, many valid and important points about and supported by these ideas made may be misheard or ignored.

Paradigms are internally coherent models which explain sets of observed phenomena. The knowledge, observation, of phenomena is understood within the context of a paradigm, and are made sense of through the coherence of a particular scientific model. A paradigm shift does not change the observed phenomena, but it does change the understanding, the meaning, derived from the phenomena.

This is the difference between knowledge and understanding. Understanding is changed through scientific revolutions when paradigms shift. Phenomena only change when the method of observation is improved, and then it is not really the phenomena that change but rather the observation of them.

There are those that legitimately toil within a paradigm, doing the day to day work that is involved with applying the implications of a particular paradigm in an almost mechanical way. They mainly and merely seek verification of their current paradigm, usually through application, and maybe occasionally the falsification of another. I know my personal bias is showing here; I’m sure it’s all quite rewarding to those that tautologically find it rewarding.

There are also edge-seekers willing and able to do new science. By a willingness to contemplate anomalies, and the possibility of falsifiability or inexplicability within a current paradigm, edge-seekers are able to approach with a real scientific attitude the interchangeability of paradigms. A paradigm is useful to the extent that it explains phenomena, and harmful when held onto in spite of or in the face of falsification or inexplication.

But, I’ve also noticed, you probably have too, that there are defenders of the faith. These are the ones that use the banner of science to champion a particular paradigm as truth instead of using the method and philosophy of science to become more accurate (see xkcd 701, including the hoverover, for one clue to discern the difference: as opposed to waving the banner of “science”, the use of actual science does not always give welcome answers to the wielder). These defenders are devoted to discovering nothing that upsets their existing paradigm and are so very often over-willing to do what it takes to prove that to others, with a fanatic’s frisson and fervor.

Defenders of the faith seem to be focused on purity of doctrine and sub-cultural identity maintenance. That’s not the method or philosophy of science. It’s definitely also not minding one’s own business. It’s being a busybody, both sneakily behind people’s backs and but also brazenly in the open, and then running as quickly as possible to touch the flag pole of “science” as a rhetorical convenience only when necessary to avoid being tagged “it”.

(I suppose to be fair there’s also, to fill out the obvious fourth frame, those that don’t use science at all, and so on. These might be called kooky, whereas the defenders of the faith are creepy; neither are Addamses [also], but I also suppose it’s no mystery that both are kind of ooky. But, I further suppose, as long as there’s Wednesdays around, I’m kinda cool with this fourth.)

The key to scientific revolutions here is the rough ashlar, the anomaly, the notion that all paradigms contain their own seeds of destruction, in that they cannot and do not explain everything. You know, say it with me: they are maps, not territories. But, that failure becomes a fulcrum for the builders. Paradigms are meanings derived from sets of observations, theories derived from observations. It is the anomaly that initiates change, and the power of the scientific attitude is an active spirit that is both able and willing to go to those edges and contemplate change by climbing to the top of the pyramid just to see from a different perspective, with all the other potential benefits that accrue therefrom as a bonus. And, the stone rejected by the defenders of the faith becomes the foundation of a new temple, levered into place on the fulcrum of change.

It’s important to also understand here the difference between function and form. Real scientific attitude does not prejudge or prejudice the form that is derived from the function of thought, but rather only the method by which the function of scientific thought is enacted. Rather, it is the religious faith of science which prejudges and prejudices the function of thought to condition the form derived therefrom. Mind, both are subject to the human condition, which could lead to a wide tangent discussing metaphysical concepts. But, since these metaphysical concerns are the same for both cases, I chose to make my calculus on the differential. Scientific method and attitude is a function that does not determine, aside from metaphysical concerns, form.

Eventually, people pushing one, true paradigm end up saying or doing ridiculous things to defend the privileged position they’ve given their pet. The example that springs to mind most strongly is the possibly apocryphal example, heard through reading Robert Anton Wilson (What book was that, anyway? Was it The Earth Will Shake or Cosmic Trigger?), of the committee which consistently dismissed evidence of meteors because the idea of a meteor did not fit the prevailing paradigm. This is an egregious example of the defenders of a faith rejecting observation in order to preserve a paradigm, but no doubt there are many other and other less egregious examples throughout history.

The notion that all paradigms have limited boundaries of applicability, that they contain their own sets of inexplicability, means that the activity of defending a paradigm as one true anything is inherently nonsensical and illogical and unscientific. And, vehement hatred of other paradigms, or those operating within different paradigms, is bogglingly, self-evidently, torturously backward to the very idea and philosophy of science. It seems to me, that kind of vehement hate is a failure of humanity to live up to the potential afforded by the idea and philosophy of science as a function which liberates them from tyranny of form determined for them by faith.

The implication of this structure of scientific revolutions suggests to me is that the people of the world need is not advocacy, violent or otherwise, of another one, true paradigm; but, rather to grow up and evolve to the point that they don’t have the maniacal need for there to be one, true paradigm. Like Herbert’s last book written in the Dune series, it’s the messianic impulse from which humanity ultimately needs to be and becomes free. We need to be free from the tyranny over ideas and thought and understanding that the notion of one paradigm to rule them all implies and requires.

Real science, science that is honest with and about itself, recognizes that understanding is always provisional, and susceptible to radical revision at any point not just when new, unexplained phenomenon are observed; but further that the same phenomena could at any point be explained simultaneously via radically different paradigms. And, that observation is dependent on methods and tools which can never be perfect or exact but rather are more or less accurate, always have a margin for error and have a mechanism of observation which can be questioned.

Real science is a fiery liberation of thought; not thought shackled to a rock, perpetually pecked at by birds. Whether out of revenge or not, being shackled for thinking is the ultimate reward for standing idle in the face of defenders of the faith victorious. Being pecked by birds is the constant conscious reminder of paradigmatic anomalies ignored. The only escape is escape. Either break those chains or refuse them in the first place; or be resigned to fate and hope for rescue, like some outmoded formula of the damsel in distress in a tattered prom dress.

And this, to me, is the difference between a real scientific attitude, the function of science, and the rigid form of religious faith in science. A religious faith in science conflates observed phenomena and the understanding that is derived from those phenomena. And, the religious faith in science approaches both phenomena and understanding with various levels of non-skeptical certainty. A real scientific attitude recognizes that the accuracy of observation is never exact, but is conditioned by the qualities of observation. A real scientific attitude recognizes that understanding derived from observation is always provisional in the face of additional or more accurate observations, including the possibility of a need for radical paradigm shift to explain new phenomena. A real scientific attitude generally seems always skeptical not certain. A religious faith in science generally seems always certain not skeptical. Real science seems to express itself in its followers through rigourous methods but flexible understanding. A religious faith in science seems to express itself in its followers through ruthless methods and rigid understanding. A real scientific attitude is adaptable and ecstatic, whereas a religious faith in science is as atrophied as any foolish lover of Medusa ever was.

I think I bring, as best as I am able, the ever-provisional understanding of this theoretical structure to the way that I engage the world, others and myself. While I generally feel it’s the best thing for me to do (except when it’s not), I’m also open to the possibility that can change for me. To the extent that I have my liberty of thought undiminished by another’s rigidity and faith, my attitude does not require others to do as I do or think as I think. However, I suspect I will continue to be vocally intolerant of intolerance to myself, or to those around me whether close to me or not, when I encounter it. At least, until I get more lions. Or, find a way to tolerantly chop off Medusa’s head.

I’ve found myself thinking off and on over the [insert your favourite lengthy time interval here] about calendars. I’ve been interested in various calendars at various times, for some value of “interested” which ranges from genuine curiosity to amusement. A few of the calendars that come to mind off-hand which I’ve found interesting include the history of the Gregorian, the Discordian calendar, (although not strictly a calendar rather than a system of coordinated metric time) the Swatch @Beat, various cultural/ritual Lunar calendars, the 13 Moon calendar, the French Revolutionary calendar, and, recently, the Thelemic calendar.

Believe me when I say that I’ve gone on many an Internet safari looking over various articles and also seeking a pocket watch which only displays the solar and lunar locations, at the minimal, or more recently offers the functions of a planetarium.

Among the various thoughts I’ve had recently is the increasing sense that the Gregorian calendar appears to me to be more heliocentric than the Thelemic calendar. The Thelemic calendar system is supposed to be more appropriate than the Gregorian for a heliocentric age as it is purported to escape the unscientific notion of geocentric arrangement in the heavens. Of course, the reality of scientifically appropriate and accurate relativism means that any point can be the apparent center around which things more or less orbit, even if Occam’s Razor does preference some answers over others, but to intentionally build a system which places that point of reference at a solar center requires a notation that reflects that viewpoint, not another; or else the message of the system undermines what it is meant to mean.

The indicators for the Thelemic calendar are the zodiacal house and degree in which the Sun appears and the house with the degree in which the Moon appears, both of which are notations of the apparent path of those bodies through the heavens as they move from the vantage point of the Earth. This notation represents the viewpoint that the Sun and Moon move, or at least tracks their apparent movement as if from a stationary Earth. Although this does use the only two celestial bodies for which retrograde motion isn’t an apparent issue, which is merely a mask that the model still presents this phenomena if other bodies are looked at in the very same way, it’s still from the perspective of those bodies moving as if around Earth. This calendar also has the further disadvantage of not necessarily being coordinated universal time, and instead can offer not only different calendar notations from different places on Earth, but is also ambiguously unclear about whether the notation is from one place on Earth. For example, one might use the Thelemic time server to read out time from a coordinated time or from the apparent notation where the observer is standing on Earth. Again, this is not only ambiguous but is conditional based on the apparent movement of the heavens as it appears from some point on earth. That’s pretty darned geocentric for a system adopted in order to represent a heliocentric intent.

A discussion of this notation as a way of “tracking of the sun and moon through the zodiac” can be found at Thelemapedia’s Calendar article. The specificity of the system clearly implies a mobile Sun and Moon from the viewpoint of the Earth and the observer.

The Gregorian calendar, however, is actually a bit more ambivalent. It could be said of the Gregorian calendar that the year marks the point at which the Sun returns to the same point in the sky as viewed from Earth, but could also be said to represent the Earth returning to the same point along its orbit around a stationary Sun. The advantage here is that whether from a stationary Earth or a stationary Sun, the notation is the same, and thus is flexibly useful across paradigms. Further, the notation is universally coordinated for users of the same calendar except for the minor caveat of the International Date Line. Thus, since the Gregorian calendar is, aside from a minor issue, more universally coordinated (not talking about the clock here, but the calendar) no matter where on Earth one is, and can be said to represent the journey of the Earth around a stationary Sun, it is definitely more heliocentric than the Thelemic calendar.

In other words, one of the useful things about the status quo Gregorian system is that it is amenable to various paradigms of thought on centricism. This flexibility of meaning, this ambivalence, is part of the system’s longevity. Any novel proposal must somehow overcome this utilitarian and somewhat universal appeal to have any hope of general adoption.

However, and here’s a comparative-benefit alternative affirmative case, there’s a way to create a more heliocentric calendar than either the Gregorian or Thelemic systems. Simply use instead the apparent house and degree of the Earth from the viewpoint of the Sun, instead of the apparent house and degree of the Sun from the viewpoint of the Earth. Essentially, this is diametrically opposite a position in the sky from the Thelemic notation of the Sun from a geocentric position. This is nicely metaphorical and poetical, since the one-hundred and eighty degree dichotomy neatly mirrors breaking from geocentric to heliocentric as well moving radically between Aeons.

(I’ll avoid the obvious preciousness of calling this alternative the Griogairian system. “Oops! … I did it again.”)

For the minor indicator, one could use the Moon, assuming the realization that this is as the Moon travels about the mobile Earth, which makes some sense to me since it nicely echos the Collect language, “… so that we may in our particular orbit give out light and life to them that revolve about us …” [see], but using a lunar notation from the viewpoint of the Earth is by definition geocentric, even if it is the minor index of the notation, and thus counter to the intent of switching to a heliocentric model; and, a lunar position from the viewpoint of the Sun would just simply be unreasonably confusing, violating Occam’s Razor, and thus run counter to the intent of switching to a more rational, modern and scientific calendar.

One might decide instead to use for the minor index, say, the house and degree of fast moving Mercury’s apparent position from the viewpoint of the Sun. Mercury, the messenger, king of jesters and jester to kings, as it dances like a crazed piper close to the throne of the gravity well. (Mercury sure holds appeal for me because of that correspondence, if this were about advocating my own personal system. But, there may actually be something which will remain unexplored here about using personally or situationally relevant planetary influences to mark time.) Another possibility is to use Mars, since there’s some correspondence with Ra-Hoor-Khuit that is particularly sub-culturally relevant. But, the point remains that the major indicator should be the movement of the Earth around the apparently stationary Sun, or else the notation is simply not heliocentric, in spite of claims otherwise.

One could go further, and like the concentric rings of the Mayan calendar stone, develop a notation for larger periodic movements. The precession of the equinoxes may not be suitable, since it’s the apparent precession from the viewpoint of the Earth; but, could be used for its symbolic relation to the Aeons. Another option is to develop some indicator based on the travels of the Sun around the galactic core, but the gap between the cycle of the Earth around the Sun to the cycle of the Sun around the galactic core may simply be too wide to be useful. Perhaps one of the other planets as it moves around the Sun, or the periodicity of a particular comet, would be suitably longer in period while still being a notation from the viewpoint of the Sun. The most useful of these longer periodic movements would be ones that could be verified visually in some fashion through reasonable astronomical observation and some calculation, instead of something that would not be verifiable through some observational technique or only through calculations.

It seems to me the Thelemic calendar actually moves further away from a heliocentric notation, not toward it; and fails to provide a suitable universally coordinated notation, since it offers two plausible notations for date-time at each geographic location.

For example, depending whether I am using my timezone or not as my point of view, January 1, 2010 EV at 00:00:00 could appear as either (using no offset):

Sol in 10° Capricorni : Luna in 13° Cancri : dies Veneris : Anno IVxvii æræ novæ

or (using an improbable, but funny, offset of -666 minutes, near the International Date Line):

Sol in 10° Capricorni : Luna in 20° Cancri : dies Veneris : Anno IVxvii æræ novæ

Further, January 1, 2001 EV at 00:00:00 could appear as either (using no offset):

Sol in 10° Capricorni : Luna in 18° Piscis : dies Lunæ : Anno IVviii æræ novæ

or (again using an improbable, but funny, offset of -666 minutes, near the International Date Line):

Sol in 11° Capricorni : Luna in 24° Piscis : dies Lunæ : Anno IVviii æræ novæ

While these examples only demonstrate differences by degree, other specific times on this planet will also have more dramatic differences in zodiac as well, but certainly minute and second. And, to be fair, the documentation of the Thelemic Time Server does make clear that the difference in degree based on location on Earth is negligible, natheless it does exist. And, since we’re talking about science, accuracy is a matter of sensitivity in measurement.

And, most importantly, notice that the canonical Thelemic notation offers no indication of what offset is being used, are approximately twice as long, and are more syntactically complex than the alternative status quo. Canonical date-time in Gregorian would generally offer some time zone indication, be shorter, and quicker to parse. It’s possible that the time and time zone would be also specified in conjunction to the Thelemic notation, but this would mean using neither canonical nor purely Thelemic notation.

These examples of Thelemic notation also mix diversely different symbol sets, since each have different bases. There’s base-10, base-12, base-26, and so on. There’s alphabetical and numeric and symbolic. This notation also mixes two languages which makes it either detached from the vernacular or else makes it pseudo-Latin. These two points alone suggest that the notation is unnecessarily complex and not well designed.

It may be worth noting here also that by being more granular than the smallest unit used by the Gregorian, a day, the Thelemic calendar is actually overlapping two different systems. The Thelemic calendar actually offers a granularity which requires two systems under the status quo, the Gregorian calendar and the system of time told by a clock. This might seem to be a useful simplification, but rather, and very often, the Thelemic calendar system is used in conjunction with times given by clock, thus it does not actually simplify over the symbiotic relationship between calendar and clock of the status quo since that relationship is maintained. Also, generally, the proponents of the Thelemic calendar do not rail against the clock, rather only against the calendar of the status quo; so, those proponents cannot be said to actually be proposing the simplification of dissolving the two into one … at least, um, in this case.

Further, it’s worth noting that the Thelemic date system is computationally obfuscated when compared to common numerical representations of the Gregorian date system in the same way that the Roman numeral system is computationally obfuscated when compared to the Arabic numeral system, as there is no canonically correct way to note a Thelemic date in purely numerical notation [see]. Whereas, for example, even the 13 Moon calendar has a computationally useful canonical notation, such as representing December 20, 2012 as:

12.19.19.17.19

which is computationally convenient. That’s not to say that the Thelemic notation is impossible, as is clearly demonstrated by the reverse lookup facility of the Thelemic Time Server [see]; but, rather that it’s more obfuscated and thus has less comparative utility because it does not offer a clear and canonical numerical notation.

For example, a decimal notation for the Thelemic calendar could be something like:

ANO::CC:DD:MM:SS::CC:DD:MM:SS

where the order is from greater to lesser, with year first followed by the major index and then minor index (which, by the way, is also disordered in the current Thelemic notation as major, minor and then followed by the greatest index of year). The first CDMS is the constellation, degree, minute and second of the major index, and the second is the second; and finally the digital representation of the Thelemic years since The Equinox of the Gods in 1904. This notation could be used in a less granular way, say by dropping minutes and seconds, like representing January 1, 2001 EV at 00:00:00 (using no offset) as:

96::10:10::12:18

(which means Sun in 10° Capricorn and Moon in 18° Pisces in the year 96). Additionally, for even more granularity, the seconds could include decimal fractions.

“96::10:10::12:18″ is significantly simpler, of greater utility, and more concise than “Sol in 10° Capricorni : Luna in 18° Piscis : dies Lunæ : Anno IVviii æræ novæ”. This decimal notation is also less obfuscated and still simpler and of greater utility than the more abbreviated Thelemic notation which uses mixed symbol sets of alphabet and zodiac. Obvious proof of this is that this decimal notation could appear on a simple LED digital clock and be understood.

Therefore, it seems to me a reasonable conclusion that a more properly heliocentric time notation than either the Thelemic or Gregorian calendars offer would be to use the universally coordinated, and unambiguous, position of the Earth relative to the Sun instead of the apparent position of the Sun relative to the Earth.

I also feel it worth reflecting on the fact that in general novel time and calendar systems have to my eyes failed because they are more complex, and thus more unwieldy, or less precise, and thus less useful, than the status quo system of notation and calculation. For example, the Swatch @Beat was actually less granular than the standard second, though it was universally coordinated and metric; and that lack of granularity actually was one reason, but certainly not the only, why it did not develop a wider following. (Another relevant criticism of the Swatch @Beat was that while it was universally coordinated, it used as the mean the location of Swatch HQ in Biel, CH. Using an UTC based on Boleskine in a Thelemic system would also be subject to this same criticism.) In this case, the Thelemic calendar appear to fail, as demonstrated above, to improve on the Gregorian calendar system in both of these areas: ease and precision. It fails ease because of the difficulty of conversion and use in daily activities for general application. It fails in precision because it requires much more notation to mark precise date-time, and even if a more precise degree is noted with both minutes and seconds the notation is still of ambiguous offset.

Obviously a ritual or religious calendar has less necessary need to oblige the users with general ease and unambiguous precision than a civic or secular calendar; but offering both is something that will aid in the cross-over of a primarily religious calendar into common use for civic and secular purposes.

But, even aside from these issues, the Thelemic calendar fails to actually deliver on the intent of being more suitable to a heliocentric worldview because it is actually quite geocentric in notation. The claim that the Thelemic calendar notation is more heliocentric that the Gregorian is simply false, and there is a demonstrably better notation in which it is possible to be more heliocentric than the Thelemic calendar. Though this alternative I’ve explored does not answer the issues of ease or precision either, my alternative suggestion succeeds as a comparative benefit because it more fully meets the intent toward heliocentricity.

A true and obvious advance in ease and precision is needed from any novel proposal in order to have the chance for civic and secular adoption, and the current Thelemic calendar system and notation does not meet that test of modern utility and applicability no matter how laudable as a poetic, symbolically-rich, religiously significant or qualitative system it may be. This and it’s utility to sub-cultural identity formation by simply being different actually seem counter-productive to adoption in the mainstream of the core meaning of heliocentricity.

Conclusions

Not only does the current Thelemic calendar and notation system fail to best the Gregorian for utility and adoption, but it also fails to be the best way to present a heliocentric model and paradigm when compared to either the Gregorian or an alternative. In fact, the Thelemic system is not only geocentric but also opaquely observer-location dependent; which would fit with the Aeon of the Child if it were indicated, but would be even less convenient or universally coordinated.

Based on this thinking, I have a few concluding suggestions that might be adopted to improve the Thelemic calendar and notation system. One or more of the following could be adopted:

• Change the major index to the heliocentric model by rather noting which constellation the Earth is in from the viewpoint of the Sun, which would be canonically and clearly heliocentric.
• Change the minor index to the heliocentric model of noting which constellation some other body, Mercury or Mars, is in orbit around and from the viewpoint of the Sun. It would be nice for this minor index to offer at least as much, if not more, granularity than a clock in order to allow the simplification of resolving both calendar and clock into a single system, but if one continues to use a clock in symbiosis then that is not as necessary a feature, and perhaps even undesirable to have overlap.
• Consider adding an even longer index, such as the Great Year or more to the point some index which represents the motion of the Sun around the galactic core, which adds that the Sun also moves, not around the Earth, but around another larger center.
• Create a standard decimal notation which uses only numerals in base-10 with only the minimally necessary punctuation for clarity, such as ANO::CC:DD:MM:SS::CC:DD:MM:SS or optionally ANO::CC:DD::CC:DD when less granularity is needed. Even if the larger issue of the model isn’t made more heliocentric, the utility of a simple decimal notation added to the status quo for both humans and machines would be an improvement.
• If an actual heliocentric model and notation is not adopted, at the least the existing system could be standardized on an universally coordinated viewpoint, from Boleskine for example. This would mean that there would be no ambiguity about parallax from one location on Earth to another. Otherwise, some method of indicating offset should be included in the current Thelemic notation.
• Beyond all of the above, knowing that a nano-century is PI seconds long, means to me that the Gregorian system is cool and interesting. Some detractors of the Gregorian system (especially the 13 Moon people who are constantly crying that “it makes no sense!”) tend to miss how interesting it actually is and might consider being more friendly and knowledgeable about the historicity and story of it.
• In general, detractors of the Gregorian system (especially the 13 Moon people) seem to not know much about other more or less modern attempts to change calendaring systems. Becoming more familiar with those other attempts might offer insights into why they weren’t effective that can be used to further reflect on the calendar change they support, and offer ways to modify their proposal to be more likely adopted.

Update 21jan2010 @ 2:44pm:

Clay F. suggests to me that the paradigm for the Thelemic system is egocentric not heliocentric, which is a possible paradigmatic meaning of the system.

However, while the Thelemic system is inherently observer-dependent, it fails to note even the possible use of the offset of the observer, if used at all, and thus does not clearly specify an egocentric over geocentric paradigm. Thus, if it is meant to be egocentric, it also fails at that. To succeed it should include at least the offset, but might fully specify the location on Earth by latitude and longitude and maybe something about which individual it is that is making the observation, such as a short biographical statement or motto. But, a truly egocentric model would include epicycles, and other subjective notions. Even Earth would be tumbling about underneath Ego like a spirograph. Oh, so very post-modern in a neo-romantic way. But, then it continues to fail utility and convenience, and is still and moreso certainly not likely to be widely adopted.

He also pointed out that another issue I didn’t mention with the minor lunar index is that it is not unique to a particular date, and that without more accurate notation, a particular solar and lunar set of degree can reoccur for times separated by a lunar month. His suggestion to resolve this specific fault is to drop the lunar index but include the planetary day in the notation, such as “sol in 1° aq., dies jovis”.

He also pointed out as an oddity that the Thelemic system is using the tropical not sidereal zodiac.

Update 25jan2010 @ 9:54am:

Stephen C. suggests an interesting possible paradigmatic shift for the Thelemic system which didn’t really occur to me, and that is to see the system as not to really focused on the observer location but on Sun as being in the center on a line between Earth and the sign.

This is sort of seeing the relationship as being like a teeter-toter, with Sun as a pivot, or fulcrum. Instead of Sun constantly cock-blocking the current constellation, like a cat always trying to sit between you and the TV, Earth and the current degree along the zodiac chase each other around Sun, like Enterprise and Reliant around Regula I in The Wrath of Khan. There’s something about this that seems interestingly reminiscent of the notion of an alternate Earth in the opposite orbit from Earth prime, hanging out in L3, like divine brothers, sons of Sun, battling over solar inheritance. There’s also something to this that seems appropriate to the switch from LVX to NOX, with a persistent shadow of sorts marking time as a celestial-scale sundial.

However, I think if this were the paradigm one wanted to suggest, then the notation might better reflect that by iconographically representing this relationship. It also doesn’t address the other issues about which I made suggestions.

There’s been lots of talk about whether vulgar events should be celebrated, whether holy days or holidays, at the lodge. But, should events that people are going to do anyway remain unmolested by Thelemites? For Thelemites to ignore them is to say it is better to have these events occur without explicit and overt Thelemic themes and relationship, than to have them but inject them with Thelemic philosophy so that they are infected with something more than an unexamined and old way of being in the world. A perennial example is the hand wringing over whether to have some event at the lodge for Thanksgiving or New Year’s Eve, which I feel is an example of the dangerous slide toward alienation from engaging in and living in the world while at the same time to not celebrate them with the contagious virus of a Thelemic message is to leave these things unexamined from an intentional, experimental, and hopefully radical social perspective.

Recently at the lodge we’ve had several weddings. These events were beautiful ceremonies were two people celebrated their desire to be joined together. However, the ceremonies themselves, while appearing to be Thelemic, being part of a Gnostic Mass, and being based on the unofficial wedding ceremony by Helena and T. Apiryon, even after all that, really did not seem to me to fully realize an explicit expression that the result of the event was different than any of the other many marriages past or present.

One can apologize for the ceremony, for example by saying that it merely celebrates publicly an existing natural union, but even that need for apology just further demonstrates an essential disconnect that isn’t fully or sufficiently expressed or resolved. And, even the apology for form doesn’t itself realize a distinction between natural union and the lineage of marriage in intent. If a ritual design doesn’t clearly and conclusively enact the intent, then it’s not the right rite.

There’s also been a recent series of interesting exploration from a Thelemic perspective over at AC2012 of same-sex marriage, which then also necessarily reflects more generally on the idea of marriage itself.

I remember reading A History of the Wife and hoping for a happy ending which never came. Traditional weddings are events which already and obviously reflect many outmoded ideas not commonly held as well as many lingering vestigial notions still cherished. Marriages tend to include a lot of cultural baggage, including the ownership and oppression of women. They are commercial enterprises wrapped around commercial transactions. They are life-long commitments. They are monogamous.

As transactions, marriage is human trafficking. Although there are actually few cases, perhaps notably marriages of convenience, where any of the primary focus of the union is on a financial exchange or economic arrangement; the human transaction is mostly historical in the West, but continues in many cultures as a transition of ownership. (Mind, this is wholly different than the massive industry of marriage, which is focused entirely on the financial to the exclusion of the human, but that’s a fortiori!) The historic bride-as-property is still, however, some of the baggage of marriage; and, the protected, gated community of legal marriage is a de facto function of privilege and prejudice which offers social and economic bribes to the happy couple for playing along in the pantomime of putting others down.

As life-long, marriage is dead. Divorce and cuckolding rates alone disprove that marriage is actually what it pretends to be as a life-long commitment and that’s enough to move on, though more could be said. But, at least, divorce and cuckolding offer some kind of discharge from, to name a few fates, misery or suttee. And, for the most part we’ve laudably managed as a culture to give people a more reasonable chance to grow up before locking them in the first place into a myth without rational escape from emotional damage when things don’t work out, by jettisoning underage and arranged marriages. But, these escapes and modifications merely represent the frayed edges of the moth-eaten tapestry which still hides the truth that marriage as life-long is essentially escapist fiction.

As monogamous, marriage is impossible. (Or, at least impossibly rare!) Most people misuse the term ‘monogamy’. Its literal meaning is one marriage or union, but has come in common use to describe the habit of ‘one partner at a time’. And yet, people find it necessary to create sub-classifications such as ‘serial monogamy’ to clarify; but even that is technically an oxymoron. If either participant has ever had another partner in their life, then they cannot be called monogamous. If they ever take another partner in the future, then they are not ultimately monogamous. Again, the rates of divorce and cuckolding put the lie to this notion. The occasional diminishing exceptions, where not suspect, are remarkable, which remarkableness is merely more proof of this point.

Marriage itself as a term and a sacrament is not rationally based. The cultural understanding of what marriage is, is false on the face of it. It’s a lie of convenience. My tendency is to blame the whole thing on advertising and consumerist culture, but it could just be that people want to believe the romantic notions in spite of reality. But, that’s a form of insanity.

Marriage has always been about restriction. It’s a restriction of person as property, a restriction to bind people to unnatural behaviour, and it is an economic and social restriction. How much more un-Thelemic can it get than that?

Frankly, I think no government should have any say in who can or cannot consensually marry. (Mind, this is wholly and completely separate from legal protections from and punishments for abuse or rape, which should still stand severe.) All legal definitions and delineation of marriage should be abolished. The legal construct of marriage is used as a way of creating second class citizens, previously and still the wife and now moreover those excluded, and is a form which should be dissolved.

However, if abolition of marriage is not possible in general, then it should for Thelemites be specifically and consciously injected with more overt and explicit Thelemic meaning. It should be rationally based on the essential impossibility of exclusivity and the myth of monogamy. The institution needs to undergo a radical analysis and the ritual written to read aloud a radical message, or the event simply weakly represents the participants’ resignation to, and ratifies, a status quo of restriction. Unless it’s radically redrawn, it’s ritualized recidivism.

So if ‘monogamy’ is a lie and the term is misused, how does one talk about ‘one partner at a time’?

In the poly community, one way of talking about partners is to say, for example, “my primary partner, and I’m not seeking others now.” There’s language in the Gnostic Mass [see, also] which may be useful, as the language of the Collects. One can say a partner is “chosen and preferred”.

So if marriage is not of the things that it pretends, what could it be?

It is my view that marriage is a magical oath. It is an activity taken on for a particular period of time for a particular purpose. It is an inter-, intra-, extra- and supra-personal act of magick.

That is not to say that in the new aeon people cannot chose to be exclusive partners. After all, the collect offers “chosen and preferred”. However, a rationally based notion of marriage would contemplate explictly that the nature of relationships change, that people change, and that oaths are worthy experiments which are not always successful in accord with their worth as opportunities to learn.

The purpose of a magical oath is to learn, to grow, to experiment. It is a method of self-discovery. And, it’s one that can be made with any other regardless of any category, or even alone. And, moreover, a magical oath requires no artificial legal or religious structures to keep people in or to keep people out.

When celebrated in this way, marriage can be rational and ritual, and can be renewed, in a year and a day or at some other periodicity, but is no longer a form of social, economic, mental or spiritual slavery of self or others.

At the same time, I recognize that I have still my own romantic notions to dispel, and my tears at witnessing these recent wedding ceremonies were full of yearning for myself, for another, for together; but it seems, within the current context of marriage, these are the remnants of cultural conditioning. Contrary to that conditioning, I still believe there’s a profound place for such ritual and magick union, and yearning for union, but not marriage at the price of being unconscious or silent about the implications.

(Hat-tip to Fr. Khabs Kaos for the conversation which led to writing.)