Scattered Thoughts
.
--
Did the ancients ask of the sun,
What shall I do, or what have I done.
-
Plato: “the motions akin to the divine parts in us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe; these, therefore, every man should follow.”
As above, so below.
The Egyptian term for this order was Ma’at, in India it is Dharma, and in China, Tao, or The Way.
Today in the West we call it New Age Malarkey, or as my dear friend Art G calls it, Newage,
(rhymes with sewage).
Mecocosm: a mediating middle cosmos, through which the microcosm of the individual is brought into relation to the macrocosm of the universe.
So where did the New Age miss a crucial turn ? From its first step. The fundamental distinction between metaphysics and monotheism is always a matter, not of who spirit is, but of its primary residence: ‘out there’ (in mind, vaulted sky, and rainbow), or here, in scent, flesh, base metal, bone, stone, and yes, of course, poem.
Even conventional religion knows to revere and invoke the elements in order that the ordinary Joe may aspire to the heavens.
Stupor mundi !
The New Age movement is neither vile nor vindictive; it is simply infected with the tender desire to replace the awful wilderness with a garden.
Nowadays the pagan will study and worship, not ferocity of earth and season, but reason -- with a twist of solstice wit -- and a poet of place is a poet who flies off to exotic locales and writes a poem about it. We have long ago crossed the threshold of the myth abyss. The earth swerve. The poem drone. And who can blame us laying suit ? Who among us could sing out -- or whisper through the leaves, doing justice to the magnificence of fire, the precision of lightning, or the sorrow of the pelican. Ah, Bartleby ! Ah, humanity.
--
Did the ancients ask of the sun,
What shall I do, or what have I done.
-
Plato: “the motions akin to the divine parts in us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe; these, therefore, every man should follow.”
As above, so below.
The Egyptian term for this order was Ma’at, in India it is Dharma, and in China, Tao, or The Way.
Today in the West we call it New Age Malarkey, or as my dear friend Art G calls it, Newage,
(rhymes with sewage).
Mecocosm: a mediating middle cosmos, through which the microcosm of the individual is brought into relation to the macrocosm of the universe.
So where did the New Age miss a crucial turn ? From its first step. The fundamental distinction between metaphysics and monotheism is always a matter, not of who spirit is, but of its primary residence: ‘out there’ (in mind, vaulted sky, and rainbow), or here, in scent, flesh, base metal, bone, stone, and yes, of course, poem.
Even conventional religion knows to revere and invoke the elements in order that the ordinary Joe may aspire to the heavens.
Stupor mundi !
The New Age movement is neither vile nor vindictive; it is simply infected with the tender desire to replace the awful wilderness with a garden.
Nowadays the pagan will study and worship, not ferocity of earth and season, but reason -- with a twist of solstice wit -- and a poet of place is a poet who flies off to exotic locales and writes a poem about it. We have long ago crossed the threshold of the myth abyss. The earth swerve. The poem drone. And who can blame us laying suit ? Who among us could sing out -- or whisper through the leaves, doing justice to the magnificence of fire, the precision of lightning, or the sorrow of the pelican. Ah, Bartleby ! Ah, humanity.
