Grendel's Laundry List: Readings for Sunday, April 13
"No one quotes scripture better than the Devil." Dr. Omed
"I have occasionally spoken of a light in the soul which is uncreated and
uncreatable. . . . This light is not satisfied with the simple, still and
divine being which neither gives nor takes, but rather it desires to know
from where this being comes. It wants to penetrate to the simple ground, to
the still desert, into which distinction never peeped, neither Father, Son
nor Holy Spirit. There, in that most inward place, where everyone is a
stranger, the light is satisfied, and there it is more inward than it is in
itself, for this ground is a simple stillness which is immovable in itself.
But all things are moved by this immovability and all the forms of life are
conceived by it which, possessing the light of reason, live of themselves."
From a sermon by Meister Eckhart, a Dominican monk and prior
of the 13th and 14th century anno domino.
Meister Eckhart also said: "God is not a being; God is absolute being." This
absolute unqualified being Eckhart calls "unnatured nature." God is not
"good" or "bad; all finite things are present in, and part of, God, exalted
and reconciled in a manner beyond the comprehension of a finite being.
Finite being is the negation of God; God is the negation of the finite, the
negation of negation. The Kabalists call this "Ein Sof," the unknowable
existence of God. It also reminds us of Keat's phrase: "negative capability."
"All positive religion rests on an enormous simplification of the manifold
and wildly engulfing forces that invade us: it is the subduing of the
fullness of existence.
All myth, in contrast, is the expression of the fullness of existence, its
image, its sign; it drinks incessantly from the gushing fountains of life.
Hence religion fights myth where it cannot absorb and incorporate it.
It is strange and wonderful to observe how in this battle religion ever
again wins the apparent victory, myth ever again wins the real one."
Martin Buber, Legends of the Baal Shem
"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,
Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.
Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.
The voice of the Devil.
All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason,
call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True:
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call'd Body is a portion
of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound
or outward circumference of Energy.
3 Energy is Eternal Delight
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough
to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs
the unwilling.
And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only
the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, & the Governor
or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly
host, is call'd the Devil or Satan and his children are call'd Sin & Death.
But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd Satan.
For this history has been adopted by both parties.
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devil's
account is, that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole
from the Abyss."
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
5:13:55 PM 
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