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Friday, July 1st, 2022
10:40
Only read the foreword to the Mencius before taking a short break from serious literature due to slight burnout; returned now after reading CJ Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle and watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes, the latter of which had me assessing ethical frameworks from here to the moon and back again, it felt like. Back to work, regardless.
1B.6: “And what if there were disorder within the borders of the state, what then?" The King turned to his other courtiers and changed the subject.
Insightfully simple and funny.
2A.1: Though you may be clever and wise, The fortunes of circumstance are better to ride. Though you may farm with the blade of a hoe, The time of the season is what you must know.
11:07
2A.9, interesting commentary on the nature of balance; Bo Yi would refuse to accord himself with anything even suggestive of impropriety and so his influence—even if in accordance with timeliness—would not foster the sprouts of humanity, whereas Liuxia Hui was undiscerning to the point of accepting corruption even in his presence, undistressed of his own integrity as it was merely the actions of the offices of others, and so considered such inaction on his part as virtuous—a true tool of the state.
A junzi will not emulate them.
Tuesday, July 5th, 2022
16:20
Initially unsure how to read 3A.5, but I think I have a general idea; the format is something of a Mencian critique on Mohist philosophy, with Mencius pointing out how filial considerations seems to be an intrinsic aspect of Ren, and that, despite their focus on 'impartial caring' (Jian Ai), the Mohists don't do much to deny this presupposition, the key example being the lavish funerals that Yi Zhi (the Mohist in this instance) provided for his parents despite his ethic of frugality.
Yi Zhi skillfully appropriates one of Mencius' own arguments in an attempt to counter this, namely, the 'baby about to fall into a well' example that—in Mencius' eyes—suggests innate goodness, but to Yi Zhi such an act implies an impartial caring in and of itself, and that 'loving without distinction' may exist simply as stemming from filial respect as a foundation; it makes sense for Yi Zhi that one would give more respect to family given their proximity in daily life.
Mencius' retort seems to be that such impartial caring is self-evidently false, and that the example of the baby is an extraordinary circumstance; if 'men can love their neighbors’ children as much as their brothers', why is it that one is so compelled to provide for their own parents' deaths over that of near anyone else in their life?
From this, I take it that Mencius' implication here is that, if impartial caring were the true way to live, the Mohist would not provide preferential treatment in regards to filiality—their consequentialism is thereby considered too soft, and thus, hypocritical. Part of me believes that even if the Mohists did live up to the rigor of Mencius' attack in this regard, he would still consider it impractical, and un-Zhou-like, and disregard it based on it's lack of traditional reverence from the get go.
I did briefly skim over an article on this passage, namely Mencius' Criticism of Mohism: An Analysis of "Meng Tzu" 3A: 5 from Kwong-loi Shun, and even Shun opens with an admittance of the passage being somewhat unclear, perhaps there are one too many assumptions to make in either case.
One thing I'll personally point out on this subject, though, is that the Mencius and the Analects actually have at least a few instances of men treating Junzi with as much respect as their own parents, arranging lavish funerals and even standing-in for mourning periods if the deceased lacked children. Mencius would likely call this an extraordinary circumstance too, however, but it's interesting all the same.
18:37
3B.9, interesting blend of historical myths, from flood to Zhou to the inevitable fall. I really do not know enough about Mozi or Yangzi (the latter being a form of early, ethical egoism) to know if they too are principally predicated on such grand pseudo-historical narratives (though from what I do know about Mohism, I would assume not, due to their emphasis on ritual austerity). I use the word 'principally', because I do know as general history such narratives were taken as given, but Confucianism especially is built on the presumed foundations of Zhou propriety as a model to replicate.
It really should be noted the extent to which this reactionary sentiment pervades these texts in this manner, but then, to focus too strongly on that point would be to ignore evolutions in thought that brought Xunzi and, later, the Neo-Confucian schools to prominence.
Wednesday, July 6th, 2022
13:56
5B.1 ...Mencius concluded, “Bo Yi was the sage of purity; Yi Yin was the sage of responsibility; Liuxia Hui was the sage of harmony; Confucius was the sage of timeliness."
14:42
6A.6: Tian gave birth to the teeming people,
For every thing there is a norm.
The constant for people, within their grasp,
Is love of beautiful virtue’s form.
15:13
6B.15, commentary on perseverance in the face of adversity as a means of fostering the four sprouts:
...these are means to motivate his heart, strengthen his endurance, and expand what he is capable of doing. Only after persisting in error can a man correct himself; only after his mind is pressed and his thoughts thwarted can he create a new way.
This section as a whole is a good example of the idealistic approach that typifies Mencius' perspective, particularly in the way it expounds on the idea of an environment's ability to accentuate Mencius' conception of innate goodness, differentiated in this case by the highlighting of negative circumstances that could beget positive change, which is an interesting interpretation; such natural hardships are considered to be mandated by Tian, and if one isn't swayed by the actions of immoral actors to do otherwise, one will find in themselves the means by which to become an exemplary human in spite of such circumstances, or so Mencius believes.
The argument Mozi and Xunzi (and later, the Legalists) would use against this would be to point out that environmental determinism devoid of the guiding hand of either moral teaching or the state incontrovertibly leads to selfishness and violence, and that Mencius' emphasis on the four sprouts as doctrine—alongside the comprehensive education and a societal prescription of personal duty as in Li that he likewise advocated for—are themselves just another set of governing tools that exist as a prerequisite to this idealized view of man, and that therefore such goodness can not be said to be 'innate'. This is especially interesting in the case of Xunzi, who, though taking the contrary position within his own ethical framework, still advocated for most of the same policy prescriptions on a state level that Mencius did (though the notable exception being his advocacy for a form of advanced meritocracy that exceeded Mencius' own progressivism in such fields).
I do find the rationalist approach to be more convincing, but like Xunzi, it seems to be a slant of degrees, and maybe just an issue of language; I really have no solid grasp of meta-ethics, so walking into that debate here would be fruitless.
16:11
7A.26, Zimo advocates holding to a middle course. Holding to the middle comes near to it, but if you insist on holding to the middle without considering the balance of circumstances it is really no different from grasping one extreme.
This passage expresses the same message that can be found within the Doctrine of the Mean; such focus on equilibrium of extremes without contextual knowledge on how to properly 'balance' the greater Tao as a Junzi would is ultimately as thoughtless, one could assume that Mencius believed that the four sprouts could be used to properly assess correct action in any particular circumstance, straying nearer either extreme depending on the case.
No middle, only a pivot.
16:34
7B.3, Mencius said, “It would be better have no documents than to believe everything in the Documents."
17:05
Finished up the Mencius, not much to say on the text as a whole, lengthy treatises, understandable enough in spite of my lack of historical knowledge of the period (that was a lot of names and places), though. Book 7 is quite interesting in regards to it's theodical lamentation of Tian's slow-moving progress, a lot of the passages exude a kind of stoic dejection. This about wraps up my reading on Confucianism for the time being, though, unsure where to go next, might return to finishing Crowley's Magick Without Tears that I left off so long ago, just to clear the backlog.
Thursday, July 7th, 2022
16:45
On Letter 26 of Magick Without Tears:
. . . the first stumbling-block to study is the one never has any certainty as to what the author means . . . Try something simple: "The soul is part of God." Now then, when he writes "soul" does he mean Atma, or Buddhi, or the Higher Manas, or Purusha, or Yechidah, or Neschamah, or Nepheshch, or Nous, or Psyche, or Phren, or Ba, or Khu, or Ka, or Animus, or Anima, or Seele, or what? . . . But even this very plain word "part." Does he mean to imply a quantitative assertion, as when one says sixpence is part of a pound, or a factor indispensable, as when one says "A wheel is part of a motor-car" . . .
With terms defined and assumptions stated, you might get to the root of a matter, how funny it is then that 80% of a debate can be considered as covering this ground alone!
It is true though, I think that people wrongly take for granted the presupposed acceptance of those internalized, applied traits that concepts found within spirituality and metaphysics play host to, when such assumptions are in actuality sociocultural vestiges that necessarily need to be cut through to get to the core of an argument (this is mostly in the case of laypeople, one can presume that the devout would come to the table with a slew of apologetic frameworks with which the conversation will be led askew; this can at least be a productive exercise, however, in the former you're mostly charged with tackling irreverence).
Friday, July 8th, 2022
12:30
Began reading Mary Beard's SPQR, good timing to have picked up a copy by chance, as I just finished HBO's Rome a month or so ago. Watch the shock overcome my body as I discover Vorenus and Pullo are mere fictionalized footnotes!
Joke. I'll note anything that pertains to the topic of religion.
Saturday, July 9th, 2022
21:21
In Letter 27 of Tears:
You stop me, obviously with a demand for a personal explanation. "How is it," you write, "that you reject with such immitigable scorn the very foundation-stones of Buddhism, and yet refer disciples enthusiastically to the technique of some of its subtlest super-structures?"
I laff.
It is the old, old story. When the Buddha was making experiments and recording the results, he was on safe ground: when he started to theorize, committing (incidentally) innumerable logical crimes in the process, he is no better a guesser than the Arahat next door, or for the matter of that, the Arahat's Lady Char.
Relate these words to those I've written on Thanissaro Bhikkhu's The Truth of Rebirth. I'm more sympathetic than Crowley in this instance, I wouldn't go as far as saying Buddhism's foundation necessarily engenders those 'innumerable logical crimes', but I agree with him broadly in the sense that, in application, such thought-terminating cliches that lace the unfalsifiability of Buddhism's claims on 'right living'—as in the noble eightfold path (not even to speak of the metaphysics)—make it a cumbersome discussion at best.
21:53
Selection from Letter 29:
The prime function of intellect is differentiation; it deals with marks, with limits, with the relations of what is not identical; in Neschamah all this work has been carried out so perfectly that the "rough working" has passed clean out of mind; just so, you say "I" as if it were an indivisible Unity, unconscious of the inconceivably intricate machinery of anatomical, physiological, psychological construction which issues in this idea of "I."
21:58
I write so soon after the last entry having just read Letter 30, and it's a doozy. On the existence of God, Crowley outlines the issues that come with defining such a thing (an echo of Letter 26; see my entry from July 7th), and that 'the further one goes, the darker the path. All I have written is somehow muddled and obscure, maugre my frenzied struggle for lucidity, simplicity . . . ', but the succeeding meat of the Letter lies within the experiment Crowley conducts: putting the question to his masseuse.
The masseuse in question quite quickly puts herself in a logical bind, self-admittedly unlearned, but surefire in her assertions because they're built on her foundation of intuited morality as backed up by the good book! You can imagine a slew of claims that anyone would agree with; do unto others, the golden rule, surely the way! Self evidently true even if not put into the right words, clarification might help if you want, but I'm not one for book-learnin'.
What a muddle, indeed.
It just goes to show that, as Crowley rightly points out, these inherent, unjustified beliefs well pervade our minds, even the minds of the intellectually aware, but what separates the agnostic from the theist within this realm is the latter's inability (or refusal) to recognize that that which is built upon the sands of the ruach can well be dismantled by the ruach, or, in less haughty terms, the pretence of a logical foundation for such theistic claims will inevitably fall to scrutiny.
That which can be asserted, etcetera. Spread your wings within neschamah and commit no fallacy. We should be so lucky!
Monday, July 11th, 2022
19:42
Even in and around the 1st century BC figures like Cicero and Claudius were expressing serious skepticism in regards to their mythologized, religious past. It was generally accepted that the historical record didn't match up to the claims of the Regal period, and the idea that the gods of Mars, Castor and Pollux personally intervened within the founding of Rome was taken with a heap of salt, and many theories regarding parentage, missing histories and other such explanations were common, to the point that one can find multiple incredibly divergent perspectives on any number of pre-republican events among the ancient historians.
To think such discourses were being had within Rome during Christ's lifetime.
Tuesday, July 12th, 2022
15:08
On the matter of woes as entailed by causality, fate/destiny, or the Tao within Letter 32 of Tears:
The very terms of his Bargain with Destiny not only allow for, but imply, some such reaction on the part of the Master to the Bludgeonings of Fate.
15:15
Some sections from Letter 33 on the subject of the Golden Mean I find especially illuminating:
James Hilton has a most amusing Chinese in his Lost Horizon. When the American 100% he-man, mixer, joiner, and go-getter, agrees with him about broadmindedness in religious beliefs, and ends "and I'm dead sure you're right!" his host mildly rebukes him, saying: "But we are only moderately sure." Such thought plumbs the Abysses of Wisdom.
Excusing the slightly problematic wording that is characteristic of the writing in Crowley's day on topics of the 'Orient', we find here a pretty pithy characterization of the agnostic, rational bent we've come to find much expressed in Chinese thought. Crowley himself seems to have a pretty good handle on the philosophies at hand, especially given the rudimentary nature of translations and the lack of material at the time, but what especially surprises me is the level of nuance to be found in one of the subsequent passages:
But this is not as simple as it sounds. There is great danger in this Golden Mean, one of whose main objects is to steer clear of shipwreck, Scylla being as fatal as Charybdis. No, this lofty and equable attitude is worse than wrong unless it derives from striking the balance between two very distant opposites. One of the worst perils of the present time is that, in the reaction against ignorant bigotry, people no longer dare to make up their minds about anything. The very practice, which the A∴A∴ so strongly and persistently advocates, tends to make people feel that any positive attitude or gesture is certainly wrong, whatever may be right. They forget that the opposite may, within the limit of the universe of discourse, amount to nothing.
This eschewal of strict adherence and commitment to the middle path being described is exactly what we only recently read Mencius speak on (refer to my entry on July 6th regarding Mencius' commentary on Zimo), not to mention the divergent perspectives on wu wei and other such concepts to be found within both Confucianism and Taoism.
Such pragmatic considerations, as well as the explicitly progressive nature of the statement Crowley makes here are quite refreshing, as it's something that I've been thinking of for some time now, that frustrating implication that a set of two perspectives are intrinsically, equally valid (or sometimes, more dangerously, that a set of two extremes are equally invalid) due to their existence as 'opinion' or 'belief', and the assumption therein that the middle path is the sole goldilocks zone of practical consideration, or that both are to be accepted at face value.
The overton window may well fracture before it shifts.
In regards to matters of religion specifically, this conversation frustrates the mind to the edges of the earth, that dull, unconcerned insistence that faith in and of itself can act as a foundation and supporting structure for doctrine and theology, even if systematically deconstructed before the claimants' very eyes through any means of argument. I would like to see such types advocate for the support of independently spawned eschatologies of any other creed or indiviudal to fortify such a positon, but you'll see no such endorsement. It's only more moral superiority riding on the back of tenure. Thoughtless.
Negative today.
17:26
On reincarnation as discussed in Letter 37, I'm unconvinced. Crowley presents a lot of words that amount only to obfuscation and comparative postulation that holds no water. He is at least self-aware enough to frame it as an experiential exercise, ending with 'We certainly do not know enough of what actually takes place to speak positively on any such point. Don't lose any sleep over it', but I would point out that his attempt to rationalize it under qabalah in the first place is a fruitless attempt to lend credence to something he knows to be unfalsifiable, and might therefore sway people to a mode of uncritical thinking on this point.
Friday, July 15th, 2022
07:00
Far too many quotes to pick from Letter 42 of Tears to speak on in generality, but the letter as a whole acts as a warning against the encroachment of the Ego within spiritual matters, specifically introspective exercises as found in 'mysticism' (refer to Liber ABA for specific definitions).
I think the warning is indispensable, most of the self-righteousness and delusions of grandeur that permeate both the traditionally religious and the mystic stem fundamentally from how the Ego is inadvertently fed by such practices if left unchecked, as it necessarily becomes a feedback loop of the self if one gauges one's spiritual development by such progress. It wouldn't be too far to call such misconceptions dangerous.
Quoting Liber O: It is desirable that the student should never attach to any result the importance which it at first seems to possess. One should always doubt.
One selection from the end of the letter that is fittingly heedful I'll include, too:
It is better to conjure up the most obnoxious demons from the most noisome pit of Hell than to take one's own exhilarations for Divine benediction; if only because there was never a demon yet so atrocious as that same old Ego.
I'll have to return to this letter in the future if I want to write on this topic substantially.
07:55
From Letter 44:
There is nothing worse in religion, especially in the Wisdom-Religion, than the pedagogic-horatory accents of the owlish dogmatist, unless it be the pompous self-satisfaction of the prig. Eschew it, sister, eschew it!
Hear, hear! And then also:
On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant; more, it is an inflation and exacerbation of the Ego, so that its victim runs the peril of straying into a Black Lodge, and finding himself at home there.
If this is preaching, I certainly find myself the choir. Well-timed recompense to appease my recent indignation, I suppose!
17:13
Letter 49 regarding Crowley's view of Thelemic morality is an interesting one. The question is posed:
If the Great Work is the end to which we aspire, what means are justified to that end?
Crowley is quick to point out that one can not be an ethical automaton, always acting in the pursuit of this goal, lest one risk the limits of energy, health and sanity, but the main thread seems to be that to do one's Will would itself be to act in the manner that intrinsically balances effort with result, definitionally so—it is said, after all, that 'pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.'
So too is there the understanding that 'every man and every woman is a star', or that respect of personal autonomy is of the utmost priority for the moral actor, Thelemic or otherwise; the balancing of independent Wills becomes a natural, inviolable truth when communicated and made conscious in the mind of the practitioner, echoed in this letter accordingly:
. . . to violate the right of another is to forfeit one's claim to protection in the matter involved.
17:49
From Letter 52:
The Path for men of spiritual integrity begins with absolute scepticism. Our methods must be exclusively inductive.'
18:09
Letter 57 tells of Charles Henry Allan Bennett, or Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya, one of Crowley's early friends, he was the second Englishman to be ordained as a Theravada Bhikkhu, and an instrumental figure in bringing Buddhism to the west. A former member of the Golden Dawn and christian-cum-agnostic to boot. I'll have to look into him further at some point!
Saturday, July 16th, 2022
17:05
Letter 67, on Faith:
Faith in its Meaning Number One was perfectly well defined by the schoolboy: "the faculty of believing that which we know to be untrue." It is at least the acceptance of any statement as true without criticism, examination, verification, or any other method of test. Faith of this sort is evidently the main symptom of the moron, the half-wit, the village idiot. It is this kind of faith upon the possession and exercise of which religious persons always insist as the first condition of salvation.
Though I might personally take issue with the initial definition (and I speak specifically within the context of religion here), and shift it to align more with something in the vein of 'motivated conviction in the unfalsifiable' or 'uncritical trust in that which forgoes reliance on criteria employed in the empirical' (I think defining it as 'that which we know to be untrue' offers too much of a grey area to debate on 'knowability' which gets you stuck in the mud of theology, the use of 'unfalsifiable' or 'unempirical' sidesteps this by presupposing the ends to which such debates on knowability inevitably reach—if the opponent takes issue with such a presupposition, they're the one that will falter in their attempts to justify mythology and the like), the core message of this quote still rings very true, particularly faith's existence as that 'first condition of salvation'.
The grounds for dependence on faith in this manner necessarily emerge from the religious' belief in self-proclaimed 'factual' doctrine that is unexplainable otherwise, no, worse, it is a requisite component in the continued acceptance of dogma that has fallen to scrutiny in most, if not all other respects; that is to say, there is no validity to the belief because the premises are definitively untrue as proven by analytical reasoning.
Or, as Bill Maher laconically puts it: 'Faith means the purposeful suspension of critical thinking.'
'That's all very good, but faith doesn't need reason, you said as much yourself, whyfor the antagonism?' I hear you ask, and this is true and to the point. The issue lies in the acceptance of doctrine that runs downstream of the faith-predicated claim. If I tell you I have faith in something that is demonstrably untrue, the faultiness of my reason is rightly pointed out, but if I tell you I have faith in something that is unfalsifiable, well, so long as it does not entail negative consequences, it's acceptable to be left well enough alone, better still (one might say 'exclusively') if there is a philosophical framework that recognizes and incorporates such unfalsifiability into the wider worldview. This is the foundation of deism and other such rational theologies, you would be hard-pressed to come up with a counter for such beliefs that doesn't highlight the uncertainty of ontological concepts such as the self or reality as a whole on that same merit! A waste of breath and ink, then? It might well be the foundation of one's conception of meaning! The religious majority, however, are all too quick to make religious prescriptions that can be falsified via deductive reasoning, as in doctrine; unjustified belief in 'facts' about the divine or of humanity that masquerade as being equally acceptable as the faith in the unfalsifiable. It simply doesn't connect. Even religions that proclaim to not make such prescriptions—like Sikhism—still come with a lot of baggage in this respect.
Crowley himself says in this letter in far fewer words than I, 'To prop faith is to destroy it.'
I have written and re-written this entry for over two hours. I suppose we'll leave it at that.
Monday, July 18th, 2022
01:55
Letter 71:
What is the artistic sense in you? What but the One Channel always open to you through which this Light flows freely to enkindle you (and the world through you) with flowers of inexhaustible fervour and flame?
Then, Letter 72:
Experience makes "confirmation strong as Holy Writ;" but beware of à priori. Do not be dogmatic; do not insist in the face of disappointment.
Quoting Othello.
02:21
Letter 73 is an awkward one. Crowley's derision of democracy is well known, so too is his initial praise for Hitler (note that Hitler was quoted in the preceding letters, even), but the disdain for any political ideology beyond the quasi-magickal form of harsh individualism found within his interpretation of revelation is, again, awkward to say the least. We have only just read in Letter 72 that Crowley was 'advocating an aristocratic revolution', but what that would actually entail is vague at best; Crowley rightly points to the enlightenment as a movement brimming with good ideals and potential, but is also quick to disparage any political movement founded on such ideas as collectivist hogwash.
I'll quote:
It is this fundamental fact which ensures that every democracy shall end with an upstart autocrat; the stability of peace depends upon the original idea which aggrandized America in a century from four millions to a hundred: extreme individualism with opportunity.
And:
Not only does it seem to me the only conceivable way of reconciling this and similar passages with "Every man and every woman is a star." to assert the sovereignty of the individual, and to deny the right-to-exist to "class-consciousness," "crowd-psychology," and so to mob-rule and Lynch-Law, but also the only practicable plan whereby we may each one of us settle down peaceably to mind his own business, to pursue his True Will, and to accomplish the Great Work.
Crowley's dismissal of conversations regarding governing institutions, class analysis and the political movements of the day in favor of a meek gesture at an individual's right to do their Will seems to speak more to his privilege than to any intellectual rigor in this respect. To live through a time of such economic upheaval, conflict, the destruction and founding of nation states, the untold societal sins of fledgling dictatorships and autocratic structures, to look at such people, places, events, and to come away with a shrug and a "Well, they were doing alright until they renounced individualism," is wilful ignorance at best and a callous contempt for the notion of social progress at worst.
03:10
Letter 74, somehow even worse. I would only be repeating myself. Might be worth returning to in the future in order to assess the downfalls of this mode of thinking, however.
One quote, vested in irony:
Civilization of course, implies organization up to a certain point. The freedom of any function is built upon system; and so long as Law and Order make it easier for a man to do his True Will, they are admirable.
The sentiment is altruistic, it's just funny to see how Crowley could hold this ideal in his mind yet stoop to such indifference regarding debate over such systems. Ego forsakes pragmatism, I suppose. I'd hope to hold myself to such a value.
03:45
Letter 82, on Magick in general:
It is at least theoretically possible to exalt the whole of your own consciousness until it becomes as free to move on that exalted plane as it is for [the Holy Guardian Angel]. You should note, by the way, that in this case the postulation of another being is not necessary. There is no way of refuting the solipsism if you feel like that.
03:52
Finished Magick Without Tears, not much to say on it as a whole given its status as a collection of individual letters, but interesting all the same to see so many concepts compiled in this way. A good eye into Crowley, faults and all.
I will finish reading Beard's SPQR before moving onto William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience.
21:53
Ex-Consul and Pontifex Maximus, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, bludgeons Tiberius Gracchus to death on the Capitoline Hill to stop his attempts at political reform by way of land redistribution; Publius wore his toga in the ritual fashion with hood over the head, an attempt to justify his actions by painting his murder of Tiberius as that of a sacrifice to the Gods. It would be apparent to Publius that such an act would mirror those events of religious vindication that dotted the Republic's history, even back into the Regal period, but the extent to which he believed his act was actually in service of the divine will is certainly up for debate given his status as an optimate, well invested in the land holdings that such political reform spearheaded by Tiberius threatened.
Perhaps he hoped history would vindicate him like his predecessors, the slaying of a tribunal dictator-to-be in the service of the Republic, his venture smiled upon by the gods—what is clear is that he got away with his extrajudicial killing, retiring outside of Rome regardless, so perhaps he died fully believing that virtue.
Tuesday, July 19th, 2022
06:24
Very interesting that Catiline has his own Pilate moment, washing his hands of the blood of personal enemies he'd had put on the hit list during Sulla's war—in a sacred fountain no less. The themes and implications are quite different, but it's interesting that such an instance was written about only a generation or so predating Christ.
Cursory search doesn't tell me if these instances are related, or the latter being inspired by the former, but we'll see if such information reveals itself when I tackle my Oxford study bible.
Saturday, July 23rd, 2022
11:21
Vespasian's beguiling last words, 'Oh dear, I think I'm becoming a God' speak to the relationship ancient Rome had with the divine by the time of the Empire, with the line between the Olympian and Imperial pantheons becoming increasingly flexible and open to interpretation and satire—though with the understanding that once-mortal figures deified upon death most definitely lacked the 'Numen', or 'Divine Presence' inherent to the Olympians (only being bequeathed it from the Gods above as a form of grace) thus marking them unfit figures for ritual sacrifice and the like.
Interesting how closely this interpretation of the divine's interaction with earthly matters and the human soul mirrors that of Song Era China's understanding of 'Numinous Power' (Ling); in both cases a world-prevading, liminal force that exists on this plane downstream of the divine will. There are some clear distinctions to be made between these perspectives though, the extent to which the deceased could be venerated under this framework is of foremost concern here—the Chinese were far more Liberal in this respect.
Also of note is the apparently-new phenomenon of political figures claiming the power of miracleworking, a flagrant and marked change in how the Romans attempted to Foster religious legitimacy and authority, a stark contrast indeed to the murders 'capite velato' of Scipio Nasica's day, and, as Beard notes, startlingly reminiscent of a certain preacher from Judea.
Monday, July 25th, 2022
08:18
Finished SPQR. Further reading section has a few texts on religion in ancient Rome, may return to them at a later date if I'm interested. Will begin James' The Varieties of Religious Experience next.
12:25
I've decided to write my entries on Varieties on a lecture-by-lecture basis, presuming off the bat that each section will give me at least a couple things to write on.
Lecture I, then:
James begins with outlining an extremely important point, that is, the distinction between rationally admissible, epistemic justifications for a belief (i.e. the textual accuracy and credibility of a religious text) and the philosophical, moral determinations and value one derives given such a belief, unjustified or otherwise, or, in James' terms: 'Existential Judgement' versus 'Spiritual Judgement'.
For James, 'Spiritual Judgement' is ostensibly a shorthand for describing how one interprets and acts on religious truth claims according to one's inherently subjective value system; James considers self-evident propositions (as in axioms) to be the basis by which one makes such Spiritual Judgements, as such, various Spiritual Judgements can be made regarding a belief (as in conveyed or witnessed religious experience) depending on one's ethical philosophy.
Intrinsic to this framework is the understanding that 'Existential Judgement' can indeed separate fact from fiction within revelation and religious experience, as if a claim does not conform with reality, it can't really be called rational to believe in such a claim, as such, Spiritual Judgements ideally align with Existential Judgements; untrue claims are disregarded and the veracity of the religious experience itself becomes the subject of analysis—James is very quick to highlight that such religious experiences are definitionally unfalsifiable, unique to the individual and may well spring from any confluence of pathological and sociological factors, but this fact does not diminish their importance as a seemingly omnipresent aspect of the human condition. This, as a psychologist, is what he hopes to investigate. There is too the understanding that such religious beliefs may be unfalsifiable themselves, and it is presumably these unfalsifiable claims that James will go on to defend as the foundation of justified Mysticism under his conception of 'over-beliefs' insofar as they beget positive outcomes for the individual (given my current understanding, of course).
Irrational Spiritual Judgements certainly exist too, however (as in, those Spiritual Judgements that do not align with truths deduced via Existential Judgements), and it seems that James believes most religious thought consists of such irrational Judgements. For instance, the Bible (or any given religious text) may well fall to scrutiny under Existential Judgement, rife with logical errors and contradiction, either in recitation, translation, or even mere interpretation, but people are extremely willing to forego Existential Judgement and accept it as rote. James defines this form of religious belief as 'second-hand', as it is not predicated on the adherent's ability to verifiy the claims being made, merely the acceptance of doctrine—you could argue the theology, but this is a fundamentally different class of inquiry to that of determining the veracity of the foundational religious experiences themselves; James wants to build a pragmatic lens through which such experiences can be assessed and categorized separate from these discussions of 'Existential' provenance.
Condensing the key information of this eighteen page lecture alone has taken me over three hours, and I'm finding it hard to focus. I'll return to reading later.
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022
11:45
Can't keep my mind off of death. Didn't sleep well, anxiety attacks. I think of martyrs frequently, how people are brought to that point, to take on a willingness to die for their belief. I can't help but feel part of the conviction has to do with a loss of self or self worth in other aspects of one's life. It provides meaning. I'd say I can't fathom it, but I can understand the motivation well enough, but then, I think anyone does if they care about the state of the world. A vessel through which the ideal is expressed in blood, pain. It shouldn't afford the message any more legitimacy, but it does. We're social creatures. All that separates virtue from extremism is a lack of results. 'Timeliness' indeed, better to stew in apathy.
Speaking of apathy, I've been unable to communicate my thoughts to others in a productive manner recently, I can't tell if it's an inability on others' part to internalize what I'm conveying, or if I'm just mistaken in the approach I take with my assertions to begin with. I can't argue spirituality with people, I don't have the patience or the means, good fucking help the stack of books on my desk are when it comes to actually communicating the arguments. Every exchange reinforces the notion that to bother at all is a waste of words. It is. I can't expend that energy, it leaves me exasperated, I can't confer that change. I'm not discussing it.
Frustrated and seriously can't focus. I'll try and meditate.
Wednesday, July 27th, 2022
11:15
Acquired copies of the Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth & Religion, Robin Gill's Textbook of Christian Ethics, as well as Simon Baker's Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire.
Began lighter reading with C.J. Cherryh's Hellburner first, however.
16:35
On Lecture II of 'Varieties':
James defines religion as 'the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider divine'. I don't take any immediate issue with the definition, though if any present themselves as we continue, I will note them.
The primary distinction James makes in regards to philosophy versus religion as a state of mind following this given definition is the presence of a form of conscious 'assent', or welcoming acceptance of a metaphysical reality within the religious, rather than the begrudging acceptance, or 'indifference' characteristic of a standalone philosophical claim; religion is that which combines a moral system with a particular positive sentiment. Again, I see no immediate issues, but the line does become fuzzier, transcendentalism and other such rational theologies to which one might align with are of particular note here, and James does name them specifically, attaching quotes that would imply such pantheistic belief can easily engender positive sentiment with optimistic perspective, but then, can not the 'indifference' of one's philosophy on its own do likewise (see: Absurdism's critiques of irrational 'Spiritual Judgements')?
To James' credit, he is first to the punch to categorize such a distinction as being innately fuzzy, with the religious mindset presenting as something of a character-permeating force that is a struggle to pin down and untangle from the self, ego, and any given emotional state; it is for this reason that only that which can be regarded as 'unequivocally' religious should be considered a true and admissable presentation of the religious experience, those extreme cases characteristic of that which we seem to intuitively understand as religious via our conception of the 'divine' in contrast to that which we know is not—it is by these examples the body of thought can be assessed independent of those aforementioned obfuscating forces. Again, fuzzy, but a better working definition for parsing the psychological from the transcendental than any other, 'Existential' vestiges taken well into account, one would hope.
It is this notion of religion as intuitively understood, defined in contrast to the incuriosity or inability of the philosophical to produce meaning that James considers the most pertinent evidence of religious experience as an emergent property of the human mind:
To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is. Well, we are all such helpless failures in the last resort. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison inmates, and death finally runs the robustest of us down. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity and provisionality of our voluntary career comes over us that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not.
For James, religion is the antidote for the irreconcilable. Anyone that dwells on the question long enough is met with the disagreeable nature of existence, the paradoxes and resultant uncomfortable indifferences that seem so inherently wrong. The religious provides the answer, even if known to be epistemologically unsound; we are compelled to believe.
Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary; and if it be the only agency that can accomplish this result, its vital importance as a human faculty stands vindicated beyond dispute.
Thursday, July 28th, 2022
16:56
Anxious again. Body and mind revolving through every disposition in polaric waltz. Tired one moment, restless to the point of jitters the next, then melancholic, pensive, but then just as quickly this ravenous, spiteful frustration, switches to sudden, all-embracing sexual arousal, then total disinterest, my head can't make up it's mind. Most of all I'm worn out. I haven't been sleeping great and my nightmares are back again.
I want to be productive, but the mind wanders, unbalanced. It's only in short bursts I find in myself the capacity to engage with my reading.
It's better than nothing.
17:38
Feeling more stable in apparent cynicism and apathy. Just too many fleeting thoughts to note in detail, unbalanced as my foundation is, and it is that, the foundation; Malkuth is certainly neglected, might have to take up regular pranayama and meditation in earnest, commit to Resh as I had been also if it helps. General exercise as a rule. Beyond that I think I need to stay away from negative stimuli, I spiral too fast into that spite and I don't like it, I can't leave it unchecked. I don't know.
The future's not all it's cracked up to be.
Saturday, July 30th, 2022
16:46
Lecture III of 'Varieties':
James points out that most of our beliefs, principles and concepts of human ingenuity are equally as abstract and ethereal as religious conviction, submerged as they are in the platonic sea of man-made terminology we associate and ascribe meaning to within philosophy, and thus they can't be said to be 'meaningless' or irrelevant to inquiry. I don't have nearly a strong enough grasp of philosophy in general to delve into debates regarding foundationalism, nor the legitimacy of the claims James makes here based on the literature, but I can't help but feel as though grouping philosophical claims about the nature of reality (as discussed in lecture II) and religious faith in this way is putting the cart before the horse. I am of the understanding that analysis of religious experience would itself be a phenomenological exercise, and thus would exist as a question predicated on a set of given, fundamental assumptions—as in philosophical First Principles—and as such can only be considered under a presiding philosophical framework.
The answer I believe James posits from some independent research on my part mid-way through this lecture is that, in his Fideism (the epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason by virtue of its utility to 'bridge the gaps' in knowledge (as in religious experience) that reason can not) James is expressing something of an argument one will later too find in 'Reformed Epistemology', that is, the idea that belief in the veracity of religious experience or the divine may be 'properly basic' (as in a First Principle) and not need to be inferred from other truths to be rationally warranted, or, in Pragmatic terms derived from James himself, the utility of that epistemically unsond belief necessitates 'over-belief' insofar as no rational explanation is possible (given it begets positive outcomes). It is in this vein I believe I begin to understand where James is coming from.
The main critique I've found on this point is that internal religious experiences by their very nature may contradict eachother, and so claims of such experience become impractical models to work by externally. This is somewhat avoided by taking the pluralist approach; all experiences are valid unto the individual, and it is understood that religious experience, or the 'feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider divine' are fundamentally identical regardless of creed or Existential doctrine, and are thus indicative of a deeper truth, expressed in difference only through sociocultural predilection that can be done away with under Existential argument.
C. B. Martin notes too that 'there are no tests agreed upon to establish genuine experience of God and distinguish it decisively from the ungenuine', and that therefore, all that religious experiences can establish for us is the reality of these psychological states—it's up to us to pair this psychospiritual assertion with that of religious pluralism. For me this fits nicely into Thelemic practice, but so too do I see this settling well in Natural Theologies and other such philosophical models.
Nearing the end of the lecture, James outlines how rationalism and the intellect can do nothing to account for the existence of such religious experiences, and yet the experiences remain, he goes on to posit that such unreasoned belief is the basis and cause for both Existential Judgement, and reasoned argument; the desire to explain the uniquely unfalsifiable experience causes both organized religion (which acts as a retroactively justifying force) and philosophical indifference (which attempts to totally challenge any intrinsic meaning to religious phenomena):
Our impulsive belief is here always what sets up the original body of truth, and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow.
Reading back over this entry, I understand it's a bit muddled. This is part my recent inability to focus, part my lack of knowledge of some of the concepts involved; I may seem in one moment skeptical of the path James takes to reach his conclusions, but appreciative of those conclusions regardless the next. As I read on I'm sure I'll get a better grasp, this entry is by no means authoritative and I won't be surprised if I've misread, or connected dots in ways that aren't wholly consistent, I may also have conflated a few concepts, specifically in regards to my comparison of Fideism and Reformed Epistemology. Hard to keep it all together. Perhaps when I'm a sage!
Friday, July 1st, 2022
10:40
Only read the foreword to the Mencius before taking a short break from serious literature due to slight burnout; returned now after reading CJ Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle and watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes, the latter of which had me assessing ethical frameworks from here to the moon and back again, it felt like. Back to work, regardless.
1B.6: “And what if there were disorder within the borders of the state, what then?" The King turned to his other courtiers and changed the subject.
Insightfully simple and funny.
2A.1: Though you may be clever and wise, The fortunes of circumstance are better to ride. Though you may farm with the blade of a hoe, The time of the season is what you must know.
11:07
2A.9, interesting commentary on the nature of balance; Bo Yi would refuse to accord himself with anything even suggestive of impropriety and so his influence—even if in accordance with timeliness—would not foster the sprouts of humanity, whereas Liuxia Hui was undiscerning to the point of accepting corruption even in his presence, undistressed of his own integrity as it was merely the actions of the offices of others, and so considered such inaction on his part as virtuous—a true tool of the state.
A junzi will not emulate them.
Tuesday, July 5th, 2022
16:20
Initially unsure how to read 3A.5, but I think I have a general idea; the format is something of a Mencian critique on Mohist philosophy, with Mencius pointing out how filial considerations seems to be an intrinsic aspect of Ren, and that, despite their focus on 'impartial caring' (Jian Ai), the Mohists don't do much to deny this presupposition, the key example being the lavish funerals that Yi Zhi (the Mohist in this instance) provided for his parents despite his ethic of frugality.
Yi Zhi skillfully appropriates one of Mencius' own arguments in an attempt to counter this, namely, the 'baby about to fall into a well' example that—in Mencius' eyes—suggests innate goodness, but to Yi Zhi such an act implies an impartial caring in and of itself, and that 'loving without distinction' may exist simply as stemming from filial respect as a foundation; it makes sense for Yi Zhi that one would give more respect to family given their proximity in daily life.
Mencius' retort seems to be that such impartial caring is self-evidently false, and that the example of the baby is an extraordinary circumstance; if 'men can love their neighbors’ children as much as their brothers', why is it that one is so compelled to provide for their own parents' deaths over that of near anyone else in their life?
From this, I take it that Mencius' implication here is that, if impartial caring were the true way to live, the Mohist would not provide preferential treatment in regards to filiality—their consequentialism is thereby considered too soft, and thus, hypocritical. Part of me believes that even if the Mohists did live up to the rigor of Mencius' attack in this regard, he would still consider it impractical, and un-Zhou-like, and disregard it based on it's lack of traditional reverence from the get go.
I did briefly skim over an article on this passage, namely Mencius' Criticism of Mohism: An Analysis of "Meng Tzu" 3A: 5 from Kwong-loi Shun, and even Shun opens with an admittance of the passage being somewhat unclear, perhaps there are one too many assumptions to make in either case.
One thing I'll personally point out on this subject, though, is that the Mencius and the Analects actually have at least a few instances of men treating Junzi with as much respect as their own parents, arranging lavish funerals and even standing-in for mourning periods if the deceased lacked children. Mencius would likely call this an extraordinary circumstance too, however, but it's interesting all the same.
18:37
3B.9, interesting blend of historical myths, from flood to Zhou to the inevitable fall. I really do not know enough about Mozi or Yangzi (the latter being a form of early, ethical egoism) to know if they too are principally predicated on such grand pseudo-historical narratives (though from what I do know about Mohism, I would assume not, due to their emphasis on ritual austerity). I use the word 'principally', because I do know as general history such narratives were taken as given, but Confucianism especially is built on the presumed foundations of Zhou propriety as a model to replicate.
It really should be noted the extent to which this reactionary sentiment pervades these texts in this manner, but then, to focus too strongly on that point would be to ignore evolutions in thought that brought Xunzi and, later, the Neo-Confucian schools to prominence.
Wednesday, July 6th, 2022
13:56
5B.1 ...Mencius concluded, “Bo Yi was the sage of purity; Yi Yin was the sage of responsibility; Liuxia Hui was the sage of harmony; Confucius was the sage of timeliness."
14:42
6A.6: Tian gave birth to the teeming people,
For every thing there is a norm.
The constant for people, within their grasp,
Is love of beautiful virtue’s form.
15:13
6B.15, commentary on perseverance in the face of adversity as a means of fostering the four sprouts:
...these are means to motivate his heart, strengthen his endurance, and expand what he is capable of doing. Only after persisting in error can a man correct himself; only after his mind is pressed and his thoughts thwarted can he create a new way.
This section as a whole is a good example of the idealistic approach that typifies Mencius' perspective, particularly in the way it expounds on the idea of an environment's ability to accentuate Mencius' conception of innate goodness, differentiated in this case by the highlighting of negative circumstances that could beget positive change, which is an interesting interpretation; such natural hardships are considered to be mandated by Tian, and if one isn't swayed by the actions of immoral actors to do otherwise, one will find in themselves the means by which to become an exemplary human in spite of such circumstances, or so Mencius believes.
The argument Mozi and Xunzi (and later, the Legalists) would use against this would be to point out that environmental determinism devoid of the guiding hand of either moral teaching or the state incontrovertibly leads to selfishness and violence, and that Mencius' emphasis on the four sprouts as doctrine—alongside the comprehensive education and a societal prescription of personal duty as in Li that he likewise advocated for—are themselves just another set of governing tools that exist as a prerequisite to this idealized view of man, and that therefore such goodness can not be said to be 'innate'. This is especially interesting in the case of Xunzi, who, though taking the contrary position within his own ethical framework, still advocated for most of the same policy prescriptions on a state level that Mencius did (though the notable exception being his advocacy for a form of advanced meritocracy that exceeded Mencius' own progressivism in such fields).
I do find the rationalist approach to be more convincing, but like Xunzi, it seems to be a slant of degrees, and maybe just an issue of language; I really have no solid grasp of meta-ethics, so walking into that debate here would be fruitless.
16:11
7A.26, Zimo advocates holding to a middle course. Holding to the middle comes near to it, but if you insist on holding to the middle without considering the balance of circumstances it is really no different from grasping one extreme.
This passage expresses the same message that can be found within the Doctrine of the Mean; such focus on equilibrium of extremes without contextual knowledge on how to properly 'balance' the greater Tao as a Junzi would is ultimately as thoughtless, one could assume that Mencius believed that the four sprouts could be used to properly assess correct action in any particular circumstance, straying nearer either extreme depending on the case.
No middle, only a pivot.
16:34
7B.3, Mencius said, “It would be better have no documents than to believe everything in the Documents."
17:05
Finished up the Mencius, not much to say on the text as a whole, lengthy treatises, understandable enough in spite of my lack of historical knowledge of the period (that was a lot of names and places), though. Book 7 is quite interesting in regards to it's theodical lamentation of Tian's slow-moving progress, a lot of the passages exude a kind of stoic dejection. This about wraps up my reading on Confucianism for the time being, though, unsure where to go next, might return to finishing Crowley's Magick Without Tears that I left off so long ago, just to clear the backlog.
Thursday, July 7th, 2022
16:45
On Letter 26 of Magick Without Tears:
. . . the first stumbling-block to study is the one never has any certainty as to what the author means . . . Try something simple: "The soul is part of God." Now then, when he writes "soul" does he mean Atma, or Buddhi, or the Higher Manas, or Purusha, or Yechidah, or Neschamah, or Nepheshch, or Nous, or Psyche, or Phren, or Ba, or Khu, or Ka, or Animus, or Anima, or Seele, or what? . . . But even this very plain word "part." Does he mean to imply a quantitative assertion, as when one says sixpence is part of a pound, or a factor indispensable, as when one says "A wheel is part of a motor-car" . . .
With terms defined and assumptions stated, you might get to the root of a matter, how funny it is then that 80% of a debate can be considered as covering this ground alone!
It is true though, I think that people wrongly take for granted the presupposed acceptance of those internalized, applied traits that concepts found within spirituality and metaphysics play host to, when such assumptions are in actuality sociocultural vestiges that necessarily need to be cut through to get to the core of an argument (this is mostly in the case of laypeople, one can presume that the devout would come to the table with a slew of apologetic frameworks with which the conversation will be led askew; this can at least be a productive exercise, however, in the former you're mostly charged with tackling irreverence).
Friday, July 8th, 2022
12:30
Began reading Mary Beard's SPQR, good timing to have picked up a copy by chance, as I just finished HBO's Rome a month or so ago. Watch the shock overcome my body as I discover Vorenus and Pullo are mere fictionalized footnotes!
Joke. I'll note anything that pertains to the topic of religion.
Saturday, July 9th, 2022
21:21
In Letter 27 of Tears:
You stop me, obviously with a demand for a personal explanation. "How is it," you write, "that you reject with such immitigable scorn the very foundation-stones of Buddhism, and yet refer disciples enthusiastically to the technique of some of its subtlest super-structures?"
I laff.
It is the old, old story. When the Buddha was making experiments and recording the results, he was on safe ground: when he started to theorize, committing (incidentally) innumerable logical crimes in the process, he is no better a guesser than the Arahat next door, or for the matter of that, the Arahat's Lady Char.
Relate these words to those I've written on Thanissaro Bhikkhu's The Truth of Rebirth. I'm more sympathetic than Crowley in this instance, I wouldn't go as far as saying Buddhism's foundation necessarily engenders those 'innumerable logical crimes', but I agree with him broadly in the sense that, in application, such thought-terminating cliches that lace the unfalsifiability of Buddhism's claims on 'right living'—as in the noble eightfold path (not even to speak of the metaphysics)—make it a cumbersome discussion at best.
21:53
Selection from Letter 29:
The prime function of intellect is differentiation; it deals with marks, with limits, with the relations of what is not identical; in Neschamah all this work has been carried out so perfectly that the "rough working" has passed clean out of mind; just so, you say "I" as if it were an indivisible Unity, unconscious of the inconceivably intricate machinery of anatomical, physiological, psychological construction which issues in this idea of "I."
21:58
I write so soon after the last entry having just read Letter 30, and it's a doozy. On the existence of God, Crowley outlines the issues that come with defining such a thing (an echo of Letter 26; see my entry from July 7th), and that 'the further one goes, the darker the path. All I have written is somehow muddled and obscure, maugre my frenzied struggle for lucidity, simplicity . . . ', but the succeeding meat of the Letter lies within the experiment Crowley conducts: putting the question to his masseuse.
The masseuse in question quite quickly puts herself in a logical bind, self-admittedly unlearned, but surefire in her assertions because they're built on her foundation of intuited morality as backed up by the good book! You can imagine a slew of claims that anyone would agree with; do unto others, the golden rule, surely the way! Self evidently true even if not put into the right words, clarification might help if you want, but I'm not one for book-learnin'.
What a muddle, indeed.
It just goes to show that, as Crowley rightly points out, these inherent, unjustified beliefs well pervade our minds, even the minds of the intellectually aware, but what separates the agnostic from the theist within this realm is the latter's inability (or refusal) to recognize that that which is built upon the sands of the ruach can well be dismantled by the ruach, or, in less haughty terms, the pretence of a logical foundation for such theistic claims will inevitably fall to scrutiny.
That which can be asserted, etcetera. Spread your wings within neschamah and commit no fallacy. We should be so lucky!
Monday, July 11th, 2022
19:42
Even in and around the 1st century BC figures like Cicero and Claudius were expressing serious skepticism in regards to their mythologized, religious past. It was generally accepted that the historical record didn't match up to the claims of the Regal period, and the idea that the gods of Mars, Castor and Pollux personally intervened within the founding of Rome was taken with a heap of salt, and many theories regarding parentage, missing histories and other such explanations were common, to the point that one can find multiple incredibly divergent perspectives on any number of pre-republican events among the ancient historians.
To think such discourses were being had within Rome during Christ's lifetime.
Tuesday, July 12th, 2022
15:08
On the matter of woes as entailed by causality, fate/destiny, or the Tao within Letter 32 of Tears:
The very terms of his Bargain with Destiny not only allow for, but imply, some such reaction on the part of the Master to the Bludgeonings of Fate.
15:15
Some sections from Letter 33 on the subject of the Golden Mean I find especially illuminating:
James Hilton has a most amusing Chinese in his Lost Horizon. When the American 100% he-man, mixer, joiner, and go-getter, agrees with him about broadmindedness in religious beliefs, and ends "and I'm dead sure you're right!" his host mildly rebukes him, saying: "But we are only moderately sure." Such thought plumbs the Abysses of Wisdom.
Excusing the slightly problematic wording that is characteristic of the writing in Crowley's day on topics of the 'Orient', we find here a pretty pithy characterization of the agnostic, rational bent we've come to find much expressed in Chinese thought. Crowley himself seems to have a pretty good handle on the philosophies at hand, especially given the rudimentary nature of translations and the lack of material at the time, but what especially surprises me is the level of nuance to be found in one of the subsequent passages:
But this is not as simple as it sounds. There is great danger in this Golden Mean, one of whose main objects is to steer clear of shipwreck, Scylla being as fatal as Charybdis. No, this lofty and equable attitude is worse than wrong unless it derives from striking the balance between two very distant opposites. One of the worst perils of the present time is that, in the reaction against ignorant bigotry, people no longer dare to make up their minds about anything. The very practice, which the A∴A∴ so strongly and persistently advocates, tends to make people feel that any positive attitude or gesture is certainly wrong, whatever may be right. They forget that the opposite may, within the limit of the universe of discourse, amount to nothing.
This eschewal of strict adherence and commitment to the middle path being described is exactly what we only recently read Mencius speak on (refer to my entry on July 6th regarding Mencius' commentary on Zimo), not to mention the divergent perspectives on wu wei and other such concepts to be found within both Confucianism and Taoism.
Such pragmatic considerations, as well as the explicitly progressive nature of the statement Crowley makes here are quite refreshing, as it's something that I've been thinking of for some time now, that frustrating implication that a set of two perspectives are intrinsically, equally valid (or sometimes, more dangerously, that a set of two extremes are equally invalid) due to their existence as 'opinion' or 'belief', and the assumption therein that the middle path is the sole goldilocks zone of practical consideration, or that both are to be accepted at face value.
The overton window may well fracture before it shifts.
In regards to matters of religion specifically, this conversation frustrates the mind to the edges of the earth, that dull, unconcerned insistence that faith in and of itself can act as a foundation and supporting structure for doctrine and theology, even if systematically deconstructed before the claimants' very eyes through any means of argument. I would like to see such types advocate for the support of independently spawned eschatologies of any other creed or indiviudal to fortify such a positon, but you'll see no such endorsement. It's only more moral superiority riding on the back of tenure. Thoughtless.
Negative today.
17:26
On reincarnation as discussed in Letter 37, I'm unconvinced. Crowley presents a lot of words that amount only to obfuscation and comparative postulation that holds no water. He is at least self-aware enough to frame it as an experiential exercise, ending with 'We certainly do not know enough of what actually takes place to speak positively on any such point. Don't lose any sleep over it', but I would point out that his attempt to rationalize it under qabalah in the first place is a fruitless attempt to lend credence to something he knows to be unfalsifiable, and might therefore sway people to a mode of uncritical thinking on this point.
Friday, July 15th, 2022
07:00
Far too many quotes to pick from Letter 42 of Tears to speak on in generality, but the letter as a whole acts as a warning against the encroachment of the Ego within spiritual matters, specifically introspective exercises as found in 'mysticism' (refer to Liber ABA for specific definitions).
I think the warning is indispensable, most of the self-righteousness and delusions of grandeur that permeate both the traditionally religious and the mystic stem fundamentally from how the Ego is inadvertently fed by such practices if left unchecked, as it necessarily becomes a feedback loop of the self if one gauges one's spiritual development by such progress. It wouldn't be too far to call such misconceptions dangerous.
Quoting Liber O: It is desirable that the student should never attach to any result the importance which it at first seems to possess. One should always doubt.
One selection from the end of the letter that is fittingly heedful I'll include, too:
It is better to conjure up the most obnoxious demons from the most noisome pit of Hell than to take one's own exhilarations for Divine benediction; if only because there was never a demon yet so atrocious as that same old Ego.
I'll have to return to this letter in the future if I want to write on this topic substantially.
07:55
From Letter 44:
There is nothing worse in religion, especially in the Wisdom-Religion, than the pedagogic-horatory accents of the owlish dogmatist, unless it be the pompous self-satisfaction of the prig. Eschew it, sister, eschew it!
Hear, hear! And then also:
On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant; more, it is an inflation and exacerbation of the Ego, so that its victim runs the peril of straying into a Black Lodge, and finding himself at home there.
If this is preaching, I certainly find myself the choir. Well-timed recompense to appease my recent indignation, I suppose!
17:13
Letter 49 regarding Crowley's view of Thelemic morality is an interesting one. The question is posed:
If the Great Work is the end to which we aspire, what means are justified to that end?
Crowley is quick to point out that one can not be an ethical automaton, always acting in the pursuit of this goal, lest one risk the limits of energy, health and sanity, but the main thread seems to be that to do one's Will would itself be to act in the manner that intrinsically balances effort with result, definitionally so—it is said, after all, that 'pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.'
So too is there the understanding that 'every man and every woman is a star', or that respect of personal autonomy is of the utmost priority for the moral actor, Thelemic or otherwise; the balancing of independent Wills becomes a natural, inviolable truth when communicated and made conscious in the mind of the practitioner, echoed in this letter accordingly:
. . . to violate the right of another is to forfeit one's claim to protection in the matter involved.
17:49
From Letter 52:
The Path for men of spiritual integrity begins with absolute scepticism. Our methods must be exclusively inductive.'
18:09
Letter 57 tells of Charles Henry Allan Bennett, or Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya, one of Crowley's early friends, he was the second Englishman to be ordained as a Theravada Bhikkhu, and an instrumental figure in bringing Buddhism to the west. A former member of the Golden Dawn and christian-cum-agnostic to boot. I'll have to look into him further at some point!
Saturday, July 16th, 2022
17:05
Letter 67, on Faith:
Faith in its Meaning Number One was perfectly well defined by the schoolboy: "the faculty of believing that which we know to be untrue." It is at least the acceptance of any statement as true without criticism, examination, verification, or any other method of test. Faith of this sort is evidently the main symptom of the moron, the half-wit, the village idiot. It is this kind of faith upon the possession and exercise of which religious persons always insist as the first condition of salvation.
Though I might personally take issue with the initial definition (and I speak specifically within the context of religion here), and shift it to align more with something in the vein of 'motivated conviction in the unfalsifiable' or 'uncritical trust in that which forgoes reliance on criteria employed in the empirical' (I think defining it as 'that which we know to be untrue' offers too much of a grey area to debate on 'knowability' which gets you stuck in the mud of theology, the use of 'unfalsifiable' or 'unempirical' sidesteps this by presupposing the ends to which such debates on knowability inevitably reach—if the opponent takes issue with such a presupposition, they're the one that will falter in their attempts to justify mythology and the like), the core message of this quote still rings very true, particularly faith's existence as that 'first condition of salvation'.
The grounds for dependence on faith in this manner necessarily emerge from the religious' belief in self-proclaimed 'factual' doctrine that is unexplainable otherwise, no, worse, it is a requisite component in the continued acceptance of dogma that has fallen to scrutiny in most, if not all other respects; that is to say, there is no validity to the belief because the premises are definitively untrue as proven by analytical reasoning.
Or, as Bill Maher laconically puts it: 'Faith means the purposeful suspension of critical thinking.'
'That's all very good, but faith doesn't need reason, you said as much yourself, whyfor the antagonism?' I hear you ask, and this is true and to the point. The issue lies in the acceptance of doctrine that runs downstream of the faith-predicated claim. If I tell you I have faith in something that is demonstrably untrue, the faultiness of my reason is rightly pointed out, but if I tell you I have faith in something that is unfalsifiable, well, so long as it does not entail negative consequences, it's acceptable to be left well enough alone, better still (one might say 'exclusively') if there is a philosophical framework that recognizes and incorporates such unfalsifiability into the wider worldview. This is the foundation of deism and other such rational theologies, you would be hard-pressed to come up with a counter for such beliefs that doesn't highlight the uncertainty of ontological concepts such as the self or reality as a whole on that same merit! A waste of breath and ink, then? It might well be the foundation of one's conception of meaning! The religious majority, however, are all too quick to make religious prescriptions that can be falsified via deductive reasoning, as in doctrine; unjustified belief in 'facts' about the divine or of humanity that masquerade as being equally acceptable as the faith in the unfalsifiable. It simply doesn't connect. Even religions that proclaim to not make such prescriptions—like Sikhism—still come with a lot of baggage in this respect.
Crowley himself says in this letter in far fewer words than I, 'To prop faith is to destroy it.'
I have written and re-written this entry for over two hours. I suppose we'll leave it at that.
Monday, July 18th, 2022
01:55
Letter 71:
What is the artistic sense in you? What but the One Channel always open to you through which this Light flows freely to enkindle you (and the world through you) with flowers of inexhaustible fervour and flame?
Then, Letter 72:
Experience makes "confirmation strong as Holy Writ;" but beware of à priori. Do not be dogmatic; do not insist in the face of disappointment.
Quoting Othello.
02:21
Letter 73 is an awkward one. Crowley's derision of democracy is well known, so too is his initial praise for Hitler (note that Hitler was quoted in the preceding letters, even), but the disdain for any political ideology beyond the quasi-magickal form of harsh individualism found within his interpretation of revelation is, again, awkward to say the least. We have only just read in Letter 72 that Crowley was 'advocating an aristocratic revolution', but what that would actually entail is vague at best; Crowley rightly points to the enlightenment as a movement brimming with good ideals and potential, but is also quick to disparage any political movement founded on such ideas as collectivist hogwash.
I'll quote:
It is this fundamental fact which ensures that every democracy shall end with an upstart autocrat; the stability of peace depends upon the original idea which aggrandized America in a century from four millions to a hundred: extreme individualism with opportunity.
And:
Not only does it seem to me the only conceivable way of reconciling this and similar passages with "Every man and every woman is a star." to assert the sovereignty of the individual, and to deny the right-to-exist to "class-consciousness," "crowd-psychology," and so to mob-rule and Lynch-Law, but also the only practicable plan whereby we may each one of us settle down peaceably to mind his own business, to pursue his True Will, and to accomplish the Great Work.
Crowley's dismissal of conversations regarding governing institutions, class analysis and the political movements of the day in favor of a meek gesture at an individual's right to do their Will seems to speak more to his privilege than to any intellectual rigor in this respect. To live through a time of such economic upheaval, conflict, the destruction and founding of nation states, the untold societal sins of fledgling dictatorships and autocratic structures, to look at such people, places, events, and to come away with a shrug and a "Well, they were doing alright until they renounced individualism," is wilful ignorance at best and a callous contempt for the notion of social progress at worst.
03:10
Letter 74, somehow even worse. I would only be repeating myself. Might be worth returning to in the future in order to assess the downfalls of this mode of thinking, however.
One quote, vested in irony:
Civilization of course, implies organization up to a certain point. The freedom of any function is built upon system; and so long as Law and Order make it easier for a man to do his True Will, they are admirable.
The sentiment is altruistic, it's just funny to see how Crowley could hold this ideal in his mind yet stoop to such indifference regarding debate over such systems. Ego forsakes pragmatism, I suppose. I'd hope to hold myself to such a value.
03:45
Letter 82, on Magick in general:
It is at least theoretically possible to exalt the whole of your own consciousness until it becomes as free to move on that exalted plane as it is for [the Holy Guardian Angel]. You should note, by the way, that in this case the postulation of another being is not necessary. There is no way of refuting the solipsism if you feel like that.
03:52
Finished Magick Without Tears, not much to say on it as a whole given its status as a collection of individual letters, but interesting all the same to see so many concepts compiled in this way. A good eye into Crowley, faults and all.
I will finish reading Beard's SPQR before moving onto William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience.
21:53
Ex-Consul and Pontifex Maximus, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, bludgeons Tiberius Gracchus to death on the Capitoline Hill to stop his attempts at political reform by way of land redistribution; Publius wore his toga in the ritual fashion with hood over the head, an attempt to justify his actions by painting his murder of Tiberius as that of a sacrifice to the Gods. It would be apparent to Publius that such an act would mirror those events of religious vindication that dotted the Republic's history, even back into the Regal period, but the extent to which he believed his act was actually in service of the divine will is certainly up for debate given his status as an optimate, well invested in the land holdings that such political reform spearheaded by Tiberius threatened.
Perhaps he hoped history would vindicate him like his predecessors, the slaying of a tribunal dictator-to-be in the service of the Republic, his venture smiled upon by the gods—what is clear is that he got away with his extrajudicial killing, retiring outside of Rome regardless, so perhaps he died fully believing that virtue.
Tuesday, July 19th, 2022
06:24
Very interesting that Catiline has his own Pilate moment, washing his hands of the blood of personal enemies he'd had put on the hit list during Sulla's war—in a sacred fountain no less. The themes and implications are quite different, but it's interesting that such an instance was written about only a generation or so predating Christ.
Cursory search doesn't tell me if these instances are related, or the latter being inspired by the former, but we'll see if such information reveals itself when I tackle my Oxford study bible.
Saturday, July 23rd, 2022
11:21
Vespasian's beguiling last words, 'Oh dear, I think I'm becoming a God' speak to the relationship ancient Rome had with the divine by the time of the Empire, with the line between the Olympian and Imperial pantheons becoming increasingly flexible and open to interpretation and satire—though with the understanding that once-mortal figures deified upon death most definitely lacked the 'Numen', or 'Divine Presence' inherent to the Olympians (only being bequeathed it from the Gods above as a form of grace) thus marking them unfit figures for ritual sacrifice and the like.
Interesting how closely this interpretation of the divine's interaction with earthly matters and the human soul mirrors that of Song Era China's understanding of 'Numinous Power' (Ling); in both cases a world-prevading, liminal force that exists on this plane downstream of the divine will. There are some clear distinctions to be made between these perspectives though, the extent to which the deceased could be venerated under this framework is of foremost concern here—the Chinese were far more Liberal in this respect.
Also of note is the apparently-new phenomenon of political figures claiming the power of miracleworking, a flagrant and marked change in how the Romans attempted to Foster religious legitimacy and authority, a stark contrast indeed to the murders 'capite velato' of Scipio Nasica's day, and, as Beard notes, startlingly reminiscent of a certain preacher from Judea.
Monday, July 25th, 2022
08:18
Finished SPQR. Further reading section has a few texts on religion in ancient Rome, may return to them at a later date if I'm interested. Will begin James' The Varieties of Religious Experience next.
12:25
I've decided to write my entries on Varieties on a lecture-by-lecture basis, presuming off the bat that each section will give me at least a couple things to write on.
Lecture I, then:
James begins with outlining an extremely important point, that is, the distinction between rationally admissible, epistemic justifications for a belief (i.e. the textual accuracy and credibility of a religious text) and the philosophical, moral determinations and value one derives given such a belief, unjustified or otherwise, or, in James' terms: 'Existential Judgement' versus 'Spiritual Judgement'.
For James, 'Spiritual Judgement' is ostensibly a shorthand for describing how one interprets and acts on religious truth claims according to one's inherently subjective value system; James considers self-evident propositions (as in axioms) to be the basis by which one makes such Spiritual Judgements, as such, various Spiritual Judgements can be made regarding a belief (as in conveyed or witnessed religious experience) depending on one's ethical philosophy.
Intrinsic to this framework is the understanding that 'Existential Judgement' can indeed separate fact from fiction within revelation and religious experience, as if a claim does not conform with reality, it can't really be called rational to believe in such a claim, as such, Spiritual Judgements ideally align with Existential Judgements; untrue claims are disregarded and the veracity of the religious experience itself becomes the subject of analysis—James is very quick to highlight that such religious experiences are definitionally unfalsifiable, unique to the individual and may well spring from any confluence of pathological and sociological factors, but this fact does not diminish their importance as a seemingly omnipresent aspect of the human condition. This, as a psychologist, is what he hopes to investigate. There is too the understanding that such religious beliefs may be unfalsifiable themselves, and it is presumably these unfalsifiable claims that James will go on to defend as the foundation of justified Mysticism under his conception of 'over-beliefs' insofar as they beget positive outcomes for the individual (given my current understanding, of course).
Irrational Spiritual Judgements certainly exist too, however (as in, those Spiritual Judgements that do not align with truths deduced via Existential Judgements), and it seems that James believes most religious thought consists of such irrational Judgements. For instance, the Bible (or any given religious text) may well fall to scrutiny under Existential Judgement, rife with logical errors and contradiction, either in recitation, translation, or even mere interpretation, but people are extremely willing to forego Existential Judgement and accept it as rote. James defines this form of religious belief as 'second-hand', as it is not predicated on the adherent's ability to verifiy the claims being made, merely the acceptance of doctrine—you could argue the theology, but this is a fundamentally different class of inquiry to that of determining the veracity of the foundational religious experiences themselves; James wants to build a pragmatic lens through which such experiences can be assessed and categorized separate from these discussions of 'Existential' provenance.
Condensing the key information of this eighteen page lecture alone has taken me over three hours, and I'm finding it hard to focus. I'll return to reading later.
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022
11:45
Can't keep my mind off of death. Didn't sleep well, anxiety attacks. I think of martyrs frequently, how people are brought to that point, to take on a willingness to die for their belief. I can't help but feel part of the conviction has to do with a loss of self or self worth in other aspects of one's life. It provides meaning. I'd say I can't fathom it, but I can understand the motivation well enough, but then, I think anyone does if they care about the state of the world. A vessel through which the ideal is expressed in blood, pain. It shouldn't afford the message any more legitimacy, but it does. We're social creatures. All that separates virtue from extremism is a lack of results. 'Timeliness' indeed, better to stew in apathy.
Speaking of apathy, I've been unable to communicate my thoughts to others in a productive manner recently, I can't tell if it's an inability on others' part to internalize what I'm conveying, or if I'm just mistaken in the approach I take with my assertions to begin with. I can't argue spirituality with people, I don't have the patience or the means, good fucking help the stack of books on my desk are when it comes to actually communicating the arguments. Every exchange reinforces the notion that to bother at all is a waste of words. It is. I can't expend that energy, it leaves me exasperated, I can't confer that change. I'm not discussing it.
Frustrated and seriously can't focus. I'll try and meditate.
Wednesday, July 27th, 2022
11:15
Acquired copies of the Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth & Religion, Robin Gill's Textbook of Christian Ethics, as well as Simon Baker's Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire.
Began lighter reading with C.J. Cherryh's Hellburner first, however.
16:35
On Lecture II of 'Varieties':
James defines religion as 'the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider divine'. I don't take any immediate issue with the definition, though if any present themselves as we continue, I will note them.
The primary distinction James makes in regards to philosophy versus religion as a state of mind following this given definition is the presence of a form of conscious 'assent', or welcoming acceptance of a metaphysical reality within the religious, rather than the begrudging acceptance, or 'indifference' characteristic of a standalone philosophical claim; religion is that which combines a moral system with a particular positive sentiment. Again, I see no immediate issues, but the line does become fuzzier, transcendentalism and other such rational theologies to which one might align with are of particular note here, and James does name them specifically, attaching quotes that would imply such pantheistic belief can easily engender positive sentiment with optimistic perspective, but then, can not the 'indifference' of one's philosophy on its own do likewise (see: Absurdism's critiques of irrational 'Spiritual Judgements')?
To James' credit, he is first to the punch to categorize such a distinction as being innately fuzzy, with the religious mindset presenting as something of a character-permeating force that is a struggle to pin down and untangle from the self, ego, and any given emotional state; it is for this reason that only that which can be regarded as 'unequivocally' religious should be considered a true and admissable presentation of the religious experience, those extreme cases characteristic of that which we seem to intuitively understand as religious via our conception of the 'divine' in contrast to that which we know is not—it is by these examples the body of thought can be assessed independent of those aforementioned obfuscating forces. Again, fuzzy, but a better working definition for parsing the psychological from the transcendental than any other, 'Existential' vestiges taken well into account, one would hope.
It is this notion of religion as intuitively understood, defined in contrast to the incuriosity or inability of the philosophical to produce meaning that James considers the most pertinent evidence of religious experience as an emergent property of the human mind:
To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is. Well, we are all such helpless failures in the last resort. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison inmates, and death finally runs the robustest of us down. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity and provisionality of our voluntary career comes over us that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not.
For James, religion is the antidote for the irreconcilable. Anyone that dwells on the question long enough is met with the disagreeable nature of existence, the paradoxes and resultant uncomfortable indifferences that seem so inherently wrong. The religious provides the answer, even if known to be epistemologically unsound; we are compelled to believe.
Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary; and if it be the only agency that can accomplish this result, its vital importance as a human faculty stands vindicated beyond dispute.
Thursday, July 28th, 2022
16:56
Anxious again. Body and mind revolving through every disposition in polaric waltz. Tired one moment, restless to the point of jitters the next, then melancholic, pensive, but then just as quickly this ravenous, spiteful frustration, switches to sudden, all-embracing sexual arousal, then total disinterest, my head can't make up it's mind. Most of all I'm worn out. I haven't been sleeping great and my nightmares are back again.
I want to be productive, but the mind wanders, unbalanced. It's only in short bursts I find in myself the capacity to engage with my reading.
It's better than nothing.
17:38
Feeling more stable in apparent cynicism and apathy. Just too many fleeting thoughts to note in detail, unbalanced as my foundation is, and it is that, the foundation; Malkuth is certainly neglected, might have to take up regular pranayama and meditation in earnest, commit to Resh as I had been also if it helps. General exercise as a rule. Beyond that I think I need to stay away from negative stimuli, I spiral too fast into that spite and I don't like it, I can't leave it unchecked. I don't know.
The future's not all it's cracked up to be.
Saturday, July 30th, 2022
16:46
Lecture III of 'Varieties':
James points out that most of our beliefs, principles and concepts of human ingenuity are equally as abstract and ethereal as religious conviction, submerged as they are in the platonic sea of man-made terminology we associate and ascribe meaning to within philosophy, and thus they can't be said to be 'meaningless' or irrelevant to inquiry. I don't have nearly a strong enough grasp of philosophy in general to delve into debates regarding foundationalism, nor the legitimacy of the claims James makes here based on the literature, but I can't help but feel as though grouping philosophical claims about the nature of reality (as discussed in lecture II) and religious faith in this way is putting the cart before the horse. I am of the understanding that analysis of religious experience would itself be a phenomenological exercise, and thus would exist as a question predicated on a set of given, fundamental assumptions—as in philosophical First Principles—and as such can only be considered under a presiding philosophical framework.
The answer I believe James posits from some independent research on my part mid-way through this lecture is that, in his Fideism (the epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason by virtue of its utility to 'bridge the gaps' in knowledge (as in religious experience) that reason can not) James is expressing something of an argument one will later too find in 'Reformed Epistemology', that is, the idea that belief in the veracity of religious experience or the divine may be 'properly basic' (as in a First Principle) and not need to be inferred from other truths to be rationally warranted, or, in Pragmatic terms derived from James himself, the utility of that epistemically unsond belief necessitates 'over-belief' insofar as no rational explanation is possible (given it begets positive outcomes). It is in this vein I believe I begin to understand where James is coming from.
The main critique I've found on this point is that internal religious experiences by their very nature may contradict eachother, and so claims of such experience become impractical models to work by externally. This is somewhat avoided by taking the pluralist approach; all experiences are valid unto the individual, and it is understood that religious experience, or the 'feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider divine' are fundamentally identical regardless of creed or Existential doctrine, and are thus indicative of a deeper truth, expressed in difference only through sociocultural predilection that can be done away with under Existential argument.
C. B. Martin notes too that 'there are no tests agreed upon to establish genuine experience of God and distinguish it decisively from the ungenuine', and that therefore, all that religious experiences can establish for us is the reality of these psychological states—it's up to us to pair this psychospiritual assertion with that of religious pluralism. For me this fits nicely into Thelemic practice, but so too do I see this settling well in Natural Theologies and other such philosophical models.
Nearing the end of the lecture, James outlines how rationalism and the intellect can do nothing to account for the existence of such religious experiences, and yet the experiences remain, he goes on to posit that such unreasoned belief is the basis and cause for both Existential Judgement, and reasoned argument; the desire to explain the uniquely unfalsifiable experience causes both organized religion (which acts as a retroactively justifying force) and philosophical indifference (which attempts to totally challenge any intrinsic meaning to religious phenomena):
Our impulsive belief is here always what sets up the original body of truth, and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow.
Reading back over this entry, I understand it's a bit muddled. This is part my recent inability to focus, part my lack of knowledge of some of the concepts involved; I may seem in one moment skeptical of the path James takes to reach his conclusions, but appreciative of those conclusions regardless the next. As I read on I'm sure I'll get a better grasp, this entry is by no means authoritative and I won't be surprised if I've misread, or connected dots in ways that aren't wholly consistent, I may also have conflated a few concepts, specifically in regards to my comparison of Fideism and Reformed Epistemology. Hard to keep it all together. Perhaps when I'm a sage!