Tuesday, June 20, 2006

AUTOGNOME 4 TWEAKED FLATBED SCANNER IMAGE VISIT THE SELF PORTRAIT MARATHON 10:41:54 PM    comment []

GRENDEL’S LAUNDRY LIST: LOGOS SPERMATIKOS   Millennialism always promises social transformation, and although always erroneous, it creates a new conscious expectation of social change. Sometimes it prompts men to begin to make the millennium. The new age does not come, but the effort of work, organization, and the futuristic (or restorative) ethic has important consequences. A new framework of order is established…a new conception of the social organization occurs: a glimmering sense of a different future is acquired. The idea of social change is grasped. The deities who hitherto have sanctioned custom, now—suddenly—become the initiators of change (even if that change is “restoration”). When men acquire a notion of the ancestors or the spirit initiating change they have experienced a radical transformation of consciousness. This transformation of consciousness is perhaps rooted more in millennialism—despite its inherent incapacity to fulfill the promised change it proclaims—than in any other single historical phenomenon.   Thaumaturgical belief is not only the pristine religious orientation, it is also more persistant than millennialism. The many little failures of magic are less disturbing than the one big periodic failure of the millennium, and are more easily explained away.   Bryan Wilson, Magic and the Millennium, 1973   “Magic, like myth is a word and a process that demands reclamation from the language of sneer and jeer.   John Dominic Crossan   The shortest path between two truths in the real domain passes through the complex domain.   Jacques Hadamard   The diseases of the soul are caused by accepting value judgments that are false.   Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle   The business of humanity has become entertainment, and entertainment is the business of feeding fake fitness cues to our brains.   Geoffrey Miller   Remove justice and what are states but gangs of bandits on a large scale? And what are bandit gangs but kingdoms in miniature?   St. Augustine, City of God   God doesn’t kill people, people kill people—mostly people who believe God loves them kill people.   Rabbi Ishmael Immanuel ben Sheba, The Atheist Kabballah   10:10:18 PM    comment []