Bruce Charlton's Notions

Published in the current issue of Oxford Magazine – by Bruce G Charlton

Review of: Jeremy Naydler. In the shadow of the machine: the prehistory of the computer and the evolution of consciousness. Temple Lodge Publishing: Forest Row, Sussex, 2018 pp xi, 373.

Oxford residents might have come-across Jeremy Naydler; since he often guides tours of the city and has given lectures to a wide range of local groups over recent decades. He is also a Fellow of the Temenos Academy, and teaches at their London headquarters. Or perhaps you have come-across him looking after flowers and vegetables in the suburbs? Because Naydler’s main lifetime job has been as a gardener.

He read PPE in the nineteen seventies and then pursued scholarly interests independently before completing a PhD in middle age; on the subject of the pyramid texts of Ancient Egypt. Since publishing books on this subject and on Goethe’s science in 1996; Jeremy Naydler has become, in my judgment, one of the most interesting and original living writers in Britain.

Naydler’s central concern is the interaction between human consciousness and human culture; and he is of the opinion (which I share) that changes in human consciousness have been a driving factor in cultural evolution; as well as cultural evolution having affected human consciousness. Hence the subtitle of this book: The prehistory of the computer and the evolution of consciousness.

What makes this book distinctive is that it is a prehistory of computers. In other words, it is about the stepwise change in human thinking and technology that led, over a span of thousands of years, to the situation in the late 20th century in which - suddenly – computers became first possible, then developed with astonishing speed, and then swiftly took-over first the material world and, increasingly, human thinking. For this progression to happen in just three generations from the first electronic computers until today, was possible only because all the necessary pieces were already in-place.

In the Shadow of the Machine is thus a work in the genre History of Ideas, and as such it is exceptionally thorough and carefully argued. The argument is broadly chronological, describing many steps in the development of each significant component necessary for the computers of today. And as well as describing the specifics of the technological changes; these are related to the necessary conceptual change in the people involved, without which the technological progression could not have happened, and would neither have been understood nor implemented.

Naydler starts with some of the most simple of technologies from the oldest societies of which we have record; such as the Ancient Egyptian methods for raising water; or, as another example, medieval clocks and renaissance calculating devices. He explains why there were periods when apparently-valuable technologies were known-about but not used; then quite rapidly, something changed and the technologies became widespread.

But computers are software as well as hardware; so Naydler also lists and discusses the changes in symbolic notation, language, numbers, logic and so forth – and how these were implemented in physical form – via cogs, punched cards, switches etc.

Then there is electricity; without which computers would have remained exceedingly simple and slow. One of the most fascinating themes of this book is the discussion of the mysterious nature of electricity (and electricity turns-out to be much stranger, and much less well understood, than commonly realised); and the way that its ‘reputation’ began as something dark sinister, alien, inhuman – but later took on increasingly positive connotations until it became so pervasive as to be all-but invisible.

In the Shadow of the Machine takes us right up to the early years of modern computers and the threshold of our current era, and concludes with some wise words about the implications of computers for the way we think – and the established and increasing degree to which our own thinking is entrained to being computer-compatible; such that we habitually think like machines, and tend to disregard any thinking that does not conform to this reduced mode.

In sum; this is a book of ancient history that is of crucial importance for the present and future.

I have just finished reading (pretty much but not quite) everything written by Jeremy Naydler - a contemporary gardener philosopher whom first I encountered on a video talking about Rudolf Steiner - and whose work on Ancient Egyptian religion I started reading when investigating that subject. So, since August, I have read


Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred 
Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts: The Mystical Tradition of Ancient Egypt 

• These books are only of interest if the religion of Ancient Egypt is of interest - but Naydler really brings this to life; in the sense that it becomes possible empathically to inhabit the thought world of that religion. 

Future of the Ancient World: Essays on the History of Consciousness 

• This is the book of Naydler's that I would recommend most strongly for most people. The essays cover a range of topics on ancient and modern religion and spirituality - with a strong Steiner influence. There are many important insights and observations. Indeed, Naydler here assumes the mantle of the Owen Barfield of our age - and anyone who has been impressed by Barfield will want to engage with these ideas. 

Goethe on Science: A Selection of Goethe's Writings

• An excellent little book comprising a selection of paragraphs from Goethe with a commentary. I wish I had encountered these ideas many years ago - since it took me a couple of decades to (more or less) rediscover them for myself. 

Gardening as a Sacred Art 
Soul Gardening

• Naydler made his living as a gardener for most of his life. The first is a history of the evolving concepts of what a garden is for, with a look towards the future - fascinating. The second is a pleasing and unpretentious book of verse on themes suggested by gardening - much in the style of Stevie Smith (including naive drawings).

The Advent of the Wearable Computer
The Quest for the Pearl: Technology and the Crisis of Contemporary Culture
The Struggle for a Human Future
Technology and the soul (part one): Living in the Shadow of the Machine
Technology and the soul (part two): The Inhuman in our Midst 
Technology and nature (part one): The Unquenchable Thirst to Live in Gratitude: Digital Technology and the Afflicted Soul of the Earth
Technology and nature (part two): Synthetic Biology: The Assault on the Realm of Life

• These booklets, some of which are available as free downloads, can be found at: www.abzupress.co.uk/webcat.htm . Naydler opens-up a important and neglected subject here - the effects of digital technology, the invention (and purpose) of the computer, the development of personal mass media etc on human thinking. I would regard this as work-in-progress - because at present Naydler's analysis is stronger in its diagnosis and descriptions of the nature of the problem, than in its (rather imprecise and uncertain) suggestions for treating (and perhaps solving) the problem. 

Altogether, it has been a very cheering experience for me to discover that Naydler has been quietly working away on important topics, living in England (near Oxford).

Since the beginning of 2015 I have therefore made two significant personal discoveries of important, contemporary English people of around my own age who have been doing important work unbeknownst to me; the one other being Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Since I did not know them, there presumably are others I have yet to discover - which would be nice!

In November of 2018, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorised the rocket company SpaceX... to launch a fleet of 7,518 satellites... 

The satellites will operate at a height of approximately 210 miles, and irradiate the Earth with extremely high frequencies between 37.5 GHz and 42 GHz. This fleet will be in addition to a smaller SpaceX fleet of 4,425 satellites, already authorised earlier in the year by the FCC, which will orbit the Earth at a height of approximately 750 miles and is set to bathe us in frequencies between 12 GHz and 30 GHz...

There are at present approximately two thousand fully functioning satellites orbiting the Earth...

Other companies... are each launching their own smaller fleets, bringing the total number of projected new broadband satellites to around 20,000...

The introduction of 5G will require hundreds of thousands of new mini mobile phone masts... in urban centres throughout the UK, and literally millions of new masts in cities throughout the rest of the world, all emitting radiation at frequencies and at power levels far higher than those to which we are presently subjected. 

These masts... will be discreetly attached to the side of shops and offices or secured to lampposts. The 20,000 satellites are a necessary supplement to this land-based effort, for they will guarantee that... not one inch of the globe will be free of radiation.

Edited from an article by Jeremy Naydler in New View magazine.

Regular readers will know of my respect for Jeremy Naydler; so I take his warnings seriously.

My understanding of the 5G phenomenon is that it part of the Global Totalitarian (and transhumanist) agenda - it appears to be, in its urgency and almost wild desperation and over-reach, a last and largest grab at achieving that centrally-directed omni-surveillance and micro-control that the demonic powers apparently regard as their best strategy for mass damnation.

Since - in this post Christian, materialistic world or hedonic nihilism; there is near-zero resistance to the totalitarian agenda and its aspects such as a 5G-irradiated-everything - indeed, there is far more of keenness and approval; the race is on between opposed trends: one towards the collapse of social order/ technological capability; and the other towards the waking-nightmare of Global Transhumanism.

Which will come first? Collapse or the Brave New-1984?

Which would you, personally, prefer?

Note: By my understanding 5G is not an issue of business profits versus mass health - as most of those who oppose it seem to suppose (after all, with this level of infrastructure, the only 'profits' will come from truly-massive hidden subsidies paid-for by taxpayers: it's basically a government-funded project). The issue is whether or not we want a quantum leap in Global totalitarian surveillance and control versus rolling this back at whatever cost it takes.

I came across a strikingly thought-full and thought-provoking interview with a philosopher/ gardener called Jeremy Naydler - I was impressed by his quiet, slow-spoken honesty.



From about 16 minutes there is a sequence of reflections on the change of consciousness since ancient (pre-Christian) times.

For the ancients: it wasn't a question of belief or superstition - they were living with a direct awareness of the world being full of these spiritual beings... an invisible reality was interpenetrating the visible reality...

It makes you notice that today our consciousness is incredibly reduced, and we don't realize the extent to which we have become ignorant of things which are incredibly important...

The gods have had a terribly hard time! The one thing they want is for us to become aware of them again - or to at least acknowledge that there is something beyond what we perceive through the five senses or through all our amazing instruments and machines.  


The work of Owen Barfield, or of Rudolf Steiner (which is the immediate context for Naydler's interview), is a about the change from this 'original participation' in a world of spirits, via an intensification of the ego/ self such that we can no longer perceive the world of spirits, towards a 'final participation' in which we will retain our strong sense of self and freedom of choice while reconnecting with the spiritual world - the world perceived as alive and conscious.

I explain this to myself as:

1. living immersed in the world, then
2. isolated-from the world and aiming at a future when we are
3. in a relationship with the world.

But a first step towards this desirable goal may be a simple acknowledgement of the potential reality of imperceptible spiritual beings (in some form or another, by some description or another) - involving an acknowledgement that we have no reason to assume that ancient peoples were always and necessarily being childish, ignorant, gullible or deluded on this subject.

The advent of the wearable computer presents us all with the challenge as to how far and how warmly we are prepared to extend our embrace of digital technology, as we move towards the projected merger of human and machine...

There is yet another, more formidable challenge, however, which runs alongside this moral question. And this is the challenge of addressing the hunger that humanity feels so strongly for greater connection with the realm of spirit, and which many mistakenly seek to satisfy through greater connection with technology.

For the strength of the enticement of the virtual world may best be understood as being due to its offering an alluring counterfeit to the genuine spiritual experience that alone can satisfy this spiritual hunger.

Here we have to face a different kind of choice, which concerns our own cognitive development. Are we prepared to take in hand the difficult task of inner development, as a conscious decision, followed through in daily practice? It seems to me that only when we do this can we stand a chance of coming into the right human relationship with our technologies. Whatever is happening at a collective level, we still have the freedom as individuals to make choices and embark on resolves...

Given its addictive nature, the technology actually presents an opportunity for us, by resisting it, to lift the veil on what it is concealing from us, and to glimpse that greater, more authentic experience from which it continually diverts us.

From The advent of the wearable computer by Jeremy Naydler (2012)
http://www.abzupress.co.uk/pdf/Advent_of_the_Wearable_Computer.pdf


This often insightful essay makes the important point that the digital world we inhabit - especially via the internet based mass media, does not just inundate us with images and data (mostly malign) but also affects the way that we think - making us less human and more machine-like.

Yet the hunger which leads us into mass media/ computer addiction is in fact a spiritual one - and the addiction is sustained because the internet experience is 'an alluring counterfeit' of real spiritual experience. In the short term, being connected provides us with partial gratification - while disconnecting rapid induces cravings, boredom, a need for stimulation and quasi-engagement.

As so often, things have to get worse before they can get better - and there are no guarantees -
withdrawal always causes suffering.

The first step is to want something more; the second step is to recognize that this 'more' really-exists - only then we can embark on mass media and computer detoxification, and again start to think and feel like humans should.

I was rewatching a marvellous video interview of Jeremy Naydler in relation to a review I am writing of his new book on the 'ancient' history of the computer concept: In the Shadow of the Machine.


I should say that I regard Naydler as one of the most insightful people thinking and writing in modern Britain, and this was confirmed when I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, at 22 minutes he begins to talk about the Ahrimanic influence on modern consciousness; and how computers and bureaucracy are training/ compelling Men to think like machines.

That's an alternative way to conceptualise the failure of modern consciousness that so obsesses me; the way that Western Man did not take up the true Romantic Revolution around 1800; but instead - for what were basically sin-full reasons to do with the pursuit of worldly pleasures - we embarked on the continuing project of reducing and assimilating the human mind to the machine; with Luciferic, mainly sexual, interludes for R&R.

Jeremy's books and publications are listed at: http://www.abzupress.co.uk/webcat.htm

Everything Naydler writes is at least interesting, and some of it is exceptionally original and important - my favourite is probably The Future of the Ancient World (2009).

A recent post by William James Tychonievich has made me start thinking again about Time, and how to understand it. I first began considering Time some 20 years ago, after reading a book called Ceremonial Time (by JH Mitchell).

Furthermore, I am currently reading a new book by Jeremy Naydler (In the Shadow of the Machine), in the course of which he discusses the effect of the invention of the clockwork-clock on the mind of Men of the Middle Ages.

Naydler argues that the clock began as explicitly a model of reality (early clocks often had moving models of the planets). But soon the mechanical model usurped consciousness, so that it became regarded as real reality - and that situation continues today, in a modified form. This was a major step in the abstraction that utimately led to The Computer (or Information) - which nowadays provides (for many people) the 'reality' to which human minds can only aspire, can only subordinate themselves...


We naturally think of Time as a kind of 'physics', and tell time by engineering. Originally; this 'Objective' Time was astronomical, based on the day, lunar month and year; but now we regard astronomical time as deficient, because (by our engineering definitions) astronomical days, months and years do not fit together in neat fractions.

We moderns regard Time as abstract, external and Objective - to such as extent that we try to assert that Time has nothing to do with individual Men's consciousnesses; and it is impicit that we are each ideally and properly subordinated to Objective Time. In effect, Men make this Objective Time by our culture-bound philosophy, science, engineering... project it onto the Universe... and then regard ourselves as utterly bound-by-it!

In fact, this modern Objective concept of Time is incoherent (as demonstrated by advanced physics, as well as philosophy) - and in reality our Time is merely a practical expedient for the coordination and control of our kind of civilisation.


What strikes me (since reading Ceremonial Time) is that for young children, and for 'hunter-gatherer' early tribal Men, Time is a psychological concept - in the sense that it is something that exists in minds.

However, it is vital to remember that the 'psychology' of children and tribal people includes what would be regarded by modern science as religious, spiritual or supernatural aspects. Ceremonial Time could be termed Subjective Time; but the current divorce between Subjective and Objective is not a necessary aspect of reality; rather, it is a product of our materialist metaphysics.

To be more exact, we Westerners are currently but very temporarily inside an alienating delusion; the effect is that we try to live by an absolutely artificial, unnatural concept of Time.But if we are able to develop a more honest and coherent metaphysics, then Time could again become Subjective and Objective both. 


So what ought we to do about it? I believe that Men should live by Subjective Time - and that this is how Men live in pre-mortal and post-mortal life. Christians can look-forward to living by Subjective Time in Heaven.

But how about now? What ought we to be aiming at?

Well, I think we should be aiming at an adult version of that Subjective child state we all (presumably) went through. The child was immersed-in Time, unconscious of its existence, swept-along by it. Children share a unified subjective Time because they are unaware of its separate existence - it is like an invisible ocean inside of each child - each inner ocean connected with all others. Children are moved-by the tides and waves of this sea. 

In our striving we should not be trying to live by any different concept than the child's; rather striving to become aware of Subjective Time, to stand apart from it in thought, to contemplate and interact-with Time.

So, the reality of Time is in each of us; we can be aware-of and know the inner ocean; we can know our-selves to be distinct from it; and we can interact with it consciously - indeed, we cannot help doing so. We can re-connect with Time.


If Objectivity is that which makes a world shared and public and universal; then modern Man understands Time as something external that is imposed-upon everybody. All we can do as individuals is recognise this brute fact.

But our aim should be to understand Time as something that cannot be separated from the minds of Men, and therefore as something that with-which we each interact.

We are part of Time, whether we recognise this fact, or not - the child lives as part of Time but does not recognise the fact; the adult may recognise reality; if he so chooses. And in this recognition is freedom: divine freedom.

To define Romanticism with precision has proved impossible - because it is a movement, a phase in human consciousness; but those who feel it will recognise it when we see it.  

To be included in this list, one must be both Romantic and Christian (and be someone whose work I personally respond-to):

William Blake
William Wordsworth
ST Coleridge

Then came several generations during which the Romantics were not Christian, and the Christians were not Romantic. Exceptions include George Macdonald and GK Chesterton, who link between the early Romantic Christians and the Inklings. Both of these I somewhat like, especially GKC - but I am unable to engage whole-heartedly.

Charles Williams
JRR Tolkien
CS Lewis
Owen Barfield

William Arkle

Current representatives of whom I am aware include Jeremy Naydler, Terry Boardman, and the Albion Awakening bloggers: William Wildblood, John Fitzgerald and myself.

Comments:

The influence of Rudolf Steiner is evident; since although Anthroposophists are extremely rare in England - Barfield, Naydler and Boardman are all of that ilk. This is evidence that Romanticism fits most comfortably with heterodox Christianity - despite that Tolkien (Roman Catholic) and Lewis (Church of England) were orthodox in their practice. Indeed; Blake, Barfield (for much of his life), Arkle and most of the currently alive people - are (I believe) essentially unaffiliated Christians; whose religious and spiritual practice is mostly and in-principle individual rather than communal.

The Steiner link is also important because Germany (in the sense of the Central European German-speaking culture - including Austria and Switzerland, and some culturally-Germanic cities not nowadays in Germany) was the other great origin of Romanticism - with Herder, Goethe, Schiller etc. However until Steiner's 'conversion' in about 1898; the German Romantic literary tradition was not really Christian. An exception is Novalis - the father of Romantic Christianity in Germany.

It might also be argued that CG Jung (1875-1961) is also part of the German tradition of Romantic Christianity - although (as so often with Jung) his status as a Christian is ambiguous - overall, I would say that by the end of his life, Jung should indeed be regarded as a Christian.  

There are not many on this list; because I don't know of many Romantic Christians. It is a job still to be done, by each individual - since Romantic Christianity must be experiential (knowing 'about' it does not suffice).

However, I regard both Barfield and Arkle as having essentially done the necessary work and, uniquely, achieved Romantic Christianity: both in their theory and in their living.


Mainstream Christianity still tends to regard Traditionalism as a 'safe' path to salvation; and theosis as too 'risky' - and Romanticism is about theosis.

But for the Romantic Christian there is no 'safe' path in the modern world; and traditionalism has in fact become impossible (judged at the deepest level of motivation); as well as sub-optimally desirable. We feel that, in modern conditions, salvation requires theosis; so a purely salvation orientation can only be a kind of 'rescue' procedure.

Because ultimately Romanticism is not a 'reaction' against the Industrial Revolution, modernity and bureaucracy; rather, Romanticism is a positive path of divine destiny, concerned with human evolutionary-development of consciousness.


The aim of Romantic Christianity is (implicitly) to attain the divine form of cosnciousness (what Barfield termed Final Participation) as the primary goal of mortal life at this era of history. In different words: the aim is to restore the unity of Life - including the healing of the split between mind and matter, subjective and objective... to cure the malaise of alienation.

Romantic Christianity is both theoretical (metaphysical) and practical (experiential) - ideas and living both need to change; because otherwise the two aspects will be at contradictory, at war - and therefore unattainable in life.

The Romantic Christian demands that life be Christian - as its root and frame; and also demands that life (including Christianity) be Romantic - therefore it cannot accept the ultimate of primary necessity of System, organisation, institution, bureaucracy... these are all to be regarded as evils; even if, sometimes (in mortal life); expedient or even temoprarily-necessary evils - evils that challenge us to love, faith and hope; and to grow.

Love and creativity are the goal; with creativity as located in thinking, and thinking regarded as universal and primary. 

While I read much less than I once did - I am delighted to have made some significant 'discoveries' both in fiction and non-fiction through 2015.

1. In fiction the main discovery was Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004) which was certainly one of the best novels I have ever read - and within my favourite adult fantasy genre. I was put onto this by a BBC TV adaptation which was significantly flawed, but whose first two episodes conveyed enough of the novel's virtues to get me to read it.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=norrell

2. The other discovery was another fantasy-genre writer Brandon Sanderson. This is very recent - I read the teen-fantasy The Rithmatist a few months ago

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/book-recommendation-rithmatist-by.html

And just a few days ago finished a very long and extremely enjoyable audiobook version of the first version of a projected ten-volume adult fantasy called The Way of Kings.

Sanderson strikes me as an exceptionally deep and knowledgeable writer - he is also highly prolific and only about forty years old, which is particularly pleasing.

3. After many years of trying and failing to get onto his wavelength, the writing of Owen Barfield was unlocked for me by The Fellowship, a new group biography og The Inklings

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/review-of-fellowship-literary-lives-of.html

Since then I have had great benefit from reading some of Barfield's philosophical books and individual essays.

4. Barfield was an Anthroposophist which again pointed me at Rudolf Steiner, which led to the discovery of Jeremy Naydler - a modern English writer on spiritual and philosophical themes who has particular expertise on Ancient Egypt. Convergently listening to an audiobook of teen-fantasy writer Rick Riordan's Ancient Egyptian Gods series The Kane Chronicles with the family (as in-car entertainment) led me to want to read more about Egypt.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Naydler

5. I have also continued to read slowly, and reflect considerably upon, the writings of William Arkle - but strictly speaking, that was a 2014 discovery...

http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/


 

I have had a breakthrough in my understanding of the Imagination - which came to me when reading a passage from Jeremy Naydler's essay Ancient Egypt and modern esotericism - from the book The Future of the Ancient World (2009). I now feel I understand the function of Imagination.

Excerpted:

The cosmic being who presided over Ra's diurnal voyage across the sky was the heavenly goddess Nut. It was she who gave birth to Ra each morning, and who received him into herself again in the evening. 

Each evening, when the sun god Ra entered her interior realm, he entered the secret and wholly invisible world that the Egyptians called the Dwat [usually spelled Duat]. The Dwat was conceived as being on the other side of the stars that we see when we look up at night. The stars were imagined as being on the flesh of the goddess Nut, and the Dwat was in some sense behind or within the world of which the stars demarcated the outermost boundary. 

All creatures were believed to return to the Dwat at the end of their lives, and wer born from it again, just as the sun God was born from the Dwat each morning. 

Knowledge of the interior world of the Dwat was considered by the Egyptians to be the most important, most profound knowledge, for people living on Earth to acquire. The Dwat was not only the realm of the dead, but the realm of the gods and spirits, and furthermore the realm from which all living things emerge. All life issues from the Dwat. 

To know this mysterious interior world was to become truly wise, because then one would know both sides of existence - the invisible along with the visible. 

The Egyptians lived with an awareness of a dimension of reality that is best described by the term 'Imaginal'. It is a nonphysical yet objective reality that we become aware of through the human faculty of Imagination. 


In other words, the reason that Men posses the faculty of Imagination, why it is built-into us, is so that we may know imperceptible reality.

That is what Imagination is for.

So, Man knows perceptible reality via his perception - the senses of vision, hearing, smell touch and taste - that is why we are born with eyes, ears, noses, tongues and skin receptors; and Man knows the imperceptible reality via the faculty of Imagination: that is why we are born with the faculty of Imagination.

Of course the Imagination can err - but so can the senses. But to deny the reality of Imagination as a source of knowledge - of real, objective, necessary knowledge - is akin to denying the reality of everything we get from our senses.

Yet, of course, that is what mainstream modern public discourse does assume - that Imagination is a mixture of hallucinations and refers to nothing real. We are in the position of someone who assumes that everything he sees, hears, tastes, touches and feels is a hallucination.

Which neatly explains the strange psychoticism of our Imagination-denying society - its gross and yet systematically un-noticed pathology.

It is is a difference which goes far to explain why Ancient Egypt was so adaptive as to persist for 3,000 years, why The West will not reach 300.

There are some striking parallels and contrasts between the civilization of Ancient Egypt and that of Neolithic England - one being the comparison between Silbury Hill (which I visited for the first time this summer - above) -

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/silbury-hill/

Which is the about 100 feet high and nearly 5000 years old and took about 18 million man hours to construct; and was originally probably a conical, stepped, white-ish coloured, flat-topped chalky mound.

(Note Silbury is not unique - there is a nearby and contemporary 'sister' mound in the grounds of Marlborough College http://www.marlboroughcollege.org/about-us/college-history/the-mound/.)


Up until very recently (and stimulated by listening to an audiobook of Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles teen fantasy books with my family, whilst on car journeys), I never had much interest in the ancient Egyptian culture or religion; but I have found a superb guide in Jeremy Naydler's Temple of the Cosmos (1996) which convincingly gives a phenomenological reconstruction of what religious life was probably like in that strange and wonderful civilization.

Yes, for all the marvels of that most enduring, cohesive and stunningly-well-documented of known high civilizations - its writing, formal and finished art and statuary, refined technology, magic, architecture and all the rest... my heart is with the contemporary English civilization in all its rough-hewn and blurred and partial remnants.


I envisage Neolithic, megalithic England as a kind of twin but polar equivalent of Egypt - standing in comparison and contrast - the two places and spiritual worlds known to each other and drawing on the same roots - but emerging very differently due to the different soil, climate, and peoples.

While Egypt had extreme and (mostly) predictable seasons, and a stark contrast between the Nile and the Desert regions, and clear air and skies and the sun, moon and stars always dazzlingly visible -- England has its skies dominated and blurred by clouds, mists, rain; multiple tiny streams, rivers, ponds and lakes; hills, forests and bogs; wholly un-predictable weather and little seasonality and its earth being earthy rather and sandy or silty.

My inference is that the English religion would have been less celestial and fiery than Egypt's, and more cloudy and wet! Less of a contrast and circularity about its stories, and more gradually transformative and modulatory...

A fascinating post called Computers and Demons from William Wildblood . He opens up a discussion on whether demonic spirits may, in some way, be using the electromagnetic mass media as a way of influencing the world.

I think that the computer revolution has been driven by demons. It has certainly been captured by them but it was probably instigated by them too... If the IT revolution is demonically inspired the question is why? The immediate answer might be to distract people from the spiritual and make them more susceptible to evil using that word in its broadest sense to mean anti-spiritual...

But is there more? It seems to be the case that the demons cannot take physical form except under certain very particular circumstances and for brief periods... Demons would probably like to incarnate directly on Earth because this would give them greater power over us. There might also be something about being in a body that they covet. 

Might the drive towards artificial intelligence, quantum computing and developing computers that are carbon-based actually be all about enabling demons to incarnate? ... What if the true purpose of the computer revolution, the end game so to speak, was to enable the incarnation of demons in this world? Is this a possibility we should start taking seriously?

This looks like an important insight. For example, it seems to fit with the frantic urgency with which the global Establishment are pushing ahead with 5G. Perhaps the aim is that 5G, potentially via the network of interconnected, externally-controlled and -monitored 'smart' devices that has infiltrated and been forced-upon so many homes and workplaces, is to be subject to some relatively direct demonic influence?...

I am unclear about the mechanism with which this might work; indeed I don't think we need to know such details. However, (according to the historical delvings of Jeremy Naydler) there has been a traditional understanding of electricity (going back millennia) which regards it as an inhuman and sinister phenomenon.

It is possible that such ancient wisdom had more truth in it than is apparent from a reductionistic scientistic perspective which sees electromagnetism only in terms of its potential convenience, usefulness - and as a means of amusement and the medium of virtuality. 

In a time when things are coming to a point, it seems likely that our choices will be stark; and the cost of avoiding damnation (after two centuries of collusion) may be extreme.

There are many prehistoric monuments in England - the earliest seem to be under the ground - such as West Kennet Long Barrow of some five and half thousand years ago, perhaps the centre of the religious landscape of that time...


While somewhat later are the more famous stone circles such as Avebury (near to West Kennet, and part of the same 'ritual landscape')


In general, through human development it has become more and more difficult to contact the divine. And this may be related to the assumed whereabouts of the divine.

Probably (there are no records), the earliest humans lived always 'in' the divine world - there was no separation between divine and mundane. Later, among the recorded simple hunter gatherers - contact with gods and spirits was more difficult; only attainable intermittently by a minority of specialist 'shamans' - who had to undergo some training, or else learn to use altered conscious states.

I would guess that the next stage - after the development of agriculture, and corresponding to the early Neolithic as at West Kennet - involved a professional priesthood, each of whom would experience a prolonged initiation. And also sensory deprivation and isolation - hence the underground sacred places.

(The Pyramids of Ancient Egypt are likely a highly developed version of this - the inside of the pyramid being the sacred space.) 

Under-ground was also the place of the divine - corresponding to the intuition that the divine was 'within' everyone and every-thing.

The monument Seahenge had an upside-down oak tree at its centre - roots above the surface, trunk and branches projecting deep into the earth - perhaps linking the divine underworld with this mundane surface world...


In the later neolithic, and into the bronze age - it seems likely that the contact with the divine became even more difficult - such that the gods were no longer experienced 'inside' - but in the sky, far away, imperceptible - and only indirectly and abstractly contactable by such methods as divination.

Hence the great stone circles (and pyramidal 'mounds' such as Silbury) were 'sky temples' - astronomically-shaped and aligned. I also assume that there was a supreme single god, by this time (henotheism); corresponding to centralised priestly government. 'Heaven' also means sky.

(The gods-under-ground, and god-in-the-sky temples seem to have co-existed for a long time - perhaps catering to different types of person; but the distinct impression is that the sky temples to the supreme god had the highest status, at least among the ruling group - since the greatest efforts were put into these structures.)

By this point, the kind of knowledge-based, abstract, priest-led religion was established which survived (gradually changing, becoming more theoretical and less direct) right through to the Reformation, and (somewhat modified) into modernity - after which it declined.

Until, from the advent of modernity (?1500s) increasing up-to nowadays, most people cannot contact the divine at all, under any circumstances - and deny its reality.

The idea of Romantic Christianity is that - starting with a few people from about the middle 1750s, and increasing, modern people are implicitly aware of the divine in a different, and individual, way; but which is not recognised as divine contact.

This is the process of conscious intuition, which I have often tried to describe on this blog. My understanding is that it happens to many (or most) people - but that nearly-always its validity is denied, and it implications ignored.

The modern sacred space is each Man's consciousness.

Note: If you are interested by the above line of argument, although not the specifics, you can find it superbly explored in Jeremy Naydler's The Future of the Ancient World, 2009.

This is the question addressed by William Wildblood in a recent blog post to which I have contributed a comment:

http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/question-on-justice-and-mercy.html

It is an important observation that modern spiritual people are indeed notably left/ liberal in outlook; because it leads to the recognition that they are left/ liberal with greater intensity and conviction than they are spiritual. Their spirituality is eclectic, flexible, changeable - their leftist politics is dogmatic, solid and often fanatical. It is easy to see which they are most serious about. 

I became interested in New Age type spirituality from the late 1990s (i.e. before I was a Christian), in the sense of reading some of the recent and still active US writers. Up until then I had read a great deal of CG Jung, upon which much of New Age is based; and a lot of Colin Wilson - who never quite fitted into this category but overlapped with it. But from 1998 I read John Hanson Mitchell, James Hillman and some of his 'disciples' such as Daniel C Noel and Thomas Moore; and a smattering of others across the field, including most of the best known writers. 

At that time I was a libertarian centrist in politics - and would have been a Republican if I was American; and I noticed in interviews and personal reminiscences that these and other writers came across as fanatical Democrats of the most partisan type for whom even the mildest libertarian or conservative ideas were demonised - and on the other hand openly advocating seedy, corrupt, dishonest careerist Democrats as if they were spiritual exemplars leading the world to a higher future (e.g. the likes of Al Gore!).

And New Age writers were typically, almost universally, utterly in thrall to New Left concerns - and structured their theories inside such a world view. For example Ecopsychology (look it up) was supposed to be a fundamental biological-spiritual perspective on the earth - but in practise made all kinds of recent and ephemeral leftist socio-political assumptions - and seemed to operate as a Left Wing pressure group. 

A book that I read with great attention - the Soul of Shamanism, by Daniel C Noel - structured its entire analysis and argument within a context of politically correct 'sensitivity' to the imagined perceptions of 'indigenous peoples' - with an intensely moralistic inflection to this demand that stood in complete contrast to the 'amoralism' of the spirituality being advocated. I mean, those individuals who were deemed to have behaved disrespectfully to the supposed sensitivities of American Indians (by 'appropriating' their spiritualities and adapting them for modern Western usage) were 'damned' pretty strongly!

This happened so often that I eventually realised that it was structural to New Age spirituality; and undercut the depth and validity of that spirituality. The New Age was, in fact, being led by people whose own spirituality was at best shallow and insincere; and at worst merely a front for their primary aims which were Left-political. 

Nowadays, I see one of my main tasks as resynthesising spirituality with Christianity, in a Christian frame - i.e. with Christianity as primary but spirituality given full value as a necessary modern priority. 

And in this task I realise that very little of modern spirituality is relevant, because very little is worthwhile. Those authors who are worthwhile are those for whom politics is a very secondary concern - the likes of William Blake, ST Coleridge, Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield; and more recently William Arkle, Colin Wilson, Jeremy Naydler, and William Wildblood himself. 

By no coincidence these are also those whose spirituality is honest, sincere, often deep: and primary.
                                             

Since the deaths of Geoffrey Ashe and then Gareth Knight earlier this year - I am scratching my head over who I should now regard as the Greatest Living Englishman? 

To qualify, a person (man or woman) would need to be broadly-within the Romantic Christian ideal - and his work should be 'about' England - or, more accurately, the mythic land of Albion. 

That is, he should contribute - through his work, mainly - to a romantic, spiritual and Christian awakening, revival, renewal of Albion. 

If I first exclude (because of my positive biases) the (English) members of the circle of bloggers of which I am a part - so I cannot propose William Wildblood, John Fitzgerald, Ama Bodenstein (or myself!) - likewise I exclude members of my family... Then, who is left? 

Jeremy Naydler is a strong candidate - but he does not focus much upon 'the matter of Britain'. Susanna Clarke is a possibility, since I regard Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell as a work of genius, and it is exactly about Romantic Christian England; but I feel that more than a single work is required. 

So that leaves Terry Boardman as the outstanding possibility.

Does anyone agree? Or can readers think of someone else more worthy of the GLE mantle?  

I need to keep explaining the importance of Rudolf Steiner, and why it is that - for example - so many of my recent posts have been about or inspired-by him... Despite that almost-all of his advocates and followers, and the Anthroposophical Society itself, are anti-Christian, Satan-allied Leftists (whatever and despite their self-identification). And despite that most of what Steiner wrote and spoke is just plain wrong. 

In the first place 'almost-all' Steiner's advocates misses-out that among the small handful of The Most valuable, insightful and important Good Guys at work today; there are several Steiner followers such as Terry Boardman, Jeremy Naydler, Amo Boden; and the editors of New View and The Present Age. 

These are among the extremely few people and venues currently worth reading; where, for instance, you can see a solid understanding of the world historical events of 2020, and what led-up-to them. Or of the long-term purpose and effects of the sexual revolution; the computer/ internet revolution - the 5G mania; or the strategy behind the climate change agenda.  

But the core of what Steiner supplies the discerning reader - above all other authors and sources - is his insistence that the core task of Men in this time and in The West - is a new-restoration of the spiritual to our thinking. 

 

A 'new-restoration' (both restored and new) because what's required is something on the one hand unprecedented in world history; and also a restoration - because it represents (in several respects) a return to the basic, original, primal way of knowing. 

As a brief summary, Steiner advocates (in vital respects) a return to the 'animistic' world-view; that saw the universe as alive; composed of multiple Beings - each with life, purposes, and a distinct nature that develops through time. But this primal animism was unconscious, unchosen, passive. Men were simply immersed-in this spiritual reality, and (pretty much) passively and instinctively responded-to it. They were swept-along by the thoughts of spiritual Beings - to the point that Men's thinking was itself the thinking of spiritual beings. 

When Men (in Ancient Greek times) first began to become aware of this situation; it was captured by the idea of 'inspiration', in its original sense; that we 'breathe-in' the spirits of Heavenly beings, which are all around us, as-it-were in the wind. But there was almost no freedom, and life was passive, responsive.

Steiner's idea is that mainstream Modern Man incrementally has become detached from this primal situation. Man can now originate his own thinking and is free to choose; but until now has rejected the reality of the spiritual. He has becomes an isolated and alienated consciousness, and feels his own thoughts to be sealed inside his mind (=brain) and thereby disconnected from external reality. For Modern Man; 'subjective' means private, and unreal. 

 

Steiner advocates that Modern Man needs to move to an unprecedented primacy of intuition; where intuition means a creative, generative thinking; that originates from our real, true and divine self. A 'heart thinking' that takes primacy over both primitive unconscious instinct and current conscious materialism.

By 1917; Steiner saw very clearly that Modern Man - trapped in his own consciousness and rejecting of the spirit - would inevitably and inexorably degenerate. That the paradoxes of materialism would tend to destroy everything of positive value. That, for example, pervasive materialism would destroy even that autonomy and agency of human thinking which generated materialism in the first place! That a consciousness disconnected from the spiritual, would end by denying consciousness itself!

Steinr saw (among other things) how the consequences would include the (now mainstream and mandatory) value-inversions of the sexual revolution; and he saw that this corruption would be 'validated' and supported by an increasingly corrupted materialist 'science'. He also foresaw a 'healthism' that destroys actual health and causes death; along with destroying basic human needs and freedom. And he described a society in which technology became organised towards totality of mind-control by an integration of the electronic-technological with the demonic. 

 

In sum, Steiner expicitly foresaw the essential features of 2020 if we did not restore the spiritual to thinking, to life-in-general. And he further described what we need to do, what we should aim-at; which is - as individuals - developing (in our-selves) a qualitatively-different and spiritual way of thinking, living, and being in our own lives.

Now, much of the detail Steiner described about what exactly we should do - such as his prescribed mental exercises designed to train concentration, visualisation, imagination; and a large role for 'initiated Masters', and a major role for the Anthroposophical Society itself - almost all of this I regard as mistaken - or even counter-productive. 

But in terms of what we most need to accomplish (aside from the suggested methods of doing it); Steiner was solid, vital and unsurpassed. 

 

I completely agree with Steiner's core teaching, which is that our primary urgent task - here and now in 2020 - is to choose consciously to live by-and-from the spiritual (including to discover what that means for us, as individuals). 

This should be what we think about when we awaken each morning, and when we look back on our day each evening, and as we settle to sleep at night. 

This should be a focus of our meditations and prayers. 

Nothing is more important than this: here, now; for you - and for me. 

Note: The Spiritual must be Christian - that comes first; but Christianity without a newly-developed return to spiritual-based-thinking/living is Not going to be sufficient. Indeed, it is not even a working possibility; as can be seen by taking a clear look at what has happened to the mainstream - including traditional - Christian churches this year of 2020. Christian Churches are in essence Gone, Finished, Closed - have ceased operations. 100 years after Steiner, and of refusing to follow Steiner's advice; Christians Now have 'Hobson's Choice' - i.e. no choice at all. Either they follow Steiner's direction of developing personal spirituality, or else they they will de facto cease to be Christian (unless that has, indeed, already happened). In this necessary transition; the West might have followed a gentle path of gradualism - but did not. Having rejected multiple opportunities over the past generations; Christians now have a sudden, massive spiritual shock, applied by external events; and the prospect of being compelled to choose-between either an almost instantaneous, and 'mind-blowing', transformation - or else passively going over to the-other-side (which the majority have already done). 

William Wildblood has brought to my attention a pair of articles entitled Four Questions Concerning the Internet, part one The Universal and part two The Neon God; written by Paul Kingsnorth, in which he independently converges on a theme explored here (also in related blogs and by Jeremy Naydler) over the past few years. 

Kingsnorth also reaches the same general conclusion (Which William Wildblood has articulated lucidly; which is that 'the internet' and computers generally may (in some circumstances) provide a vehicle for the incarnation of demons. 

If this is regarded as a possibility (which mostly depends on one's metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of this reality and the relationship of 'life' and 'matter') - then the hypothesis of demonic incarnation in 'computers' explains a great deal, and has extensive implications.

For instance; technology is usually presented as value-neutral, and whether it is a Good Thing or an Evil would therefore depend on the use to which it is being-put. 

Yet, if demonic incarnation is a reality, then technology may itself become an active and purposive evil; in other words, technology may seek the spiritual harm - including destruction - of Men. 

If we accept this as probably true, in some real but imprecise sense; then what are the implications?

Kingsnorth (a recent convert to Eastern Orthodoxy) focuses on the potential for asceticism; for rejecting, denying-ourselves (as much as possible) usage-of and contact-with these demonic entities. 

Such a strategy has the practical limitation that people Just Aren't doing this - not even the most ascetic. Kingsnorth describes that even the famously-ascetic monks of Mount Athos are, albeit belatedly, often carrying and using 'smartphones'. 

Then there is the more general problem that it is almost impossible to function in the modern world without a significant level of usage of these possessed technologies.      

But there is also - and most importantly - the ultimate limitations of asceticism: the deep question of whether this is the proper or best Christian response to the evils of this world. 

My approach would be rather different. I see the problem of a demonic internet as an extension of the very general problem of evil-affiliated social institutions, a problem that characterizes All major social institutions in The West and 'globally' - including the (self-identified) Western Christian churches (and a Western convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, still counts as Western). 

This means that the Christian inescapably lives in a demon-dominated and evil-orientated society; from which there can be no escape while remaining alive and socially-functional. 

But this has - to some significant extent - always been the case; and was surely the case for Jesus himself during his earthly life. 

Thus Christianity has always, properly understood (e.g. in the Fourth Gospel), been rooted and aimed beyond this mortal and social life - and therefore the task for Christians is to deal-with the presence of pervasive evil. 

As I see it; the primary problem of 'the internet' is that people spiritually surrender their values and attitudes to it; and by this they invite evil into their hearts. 

Evil needs to be invited - and this invitation of evil has become not just a personal corruption, not just a 'means to ends' as in the past; but in Western Society here-and-now evil has been given positive evaluations; officially, by the mass media, legally, economically etc. 

We are, for the first time in human history, inhabiting a world where transcendental values of truth, beauty, and virtue are substantially and increasingly inverted.

Since this situation is almost-everywhere and cannot be escaped; we must recognize it, and deal with it. 

Dealing with the internet, computers and digitalization is part of this; but only part. Evil needs to be discerned, identified, recognized - and spiritually rejected (and repented when we have failed to do this) wherever it is encountered.  

Some of this will surely entail avoidance of internet, computers, AI etc; but as a specific tactic, not as a general strategy.  

Such a Christian life is not to be envisaged negatively, as a state of siege; ended only by death or the triumph of evil. To accept this understanding would itself be a surrender to the demonic perspective. 

Because the Christian life is positive, not negative; thus discernment is a by-product of faith, and faith is 'about' spiritual learning during this life ('theosis'), as well as resurrection after this life ('salvation').

In sum; life may be regarded as what it spiritually is; that is, an adventure and a quest. 

We must therefore engage-with evil, and the business of identifying and rejecting evil is a by-product of our positive spiritual goals. 

Since God is the Creator, and is Good, and Loves us each as His child; our personal life-situation has been set-up so that nobody can be defeated except by his own choice, and we can all succeed in the end - if that is what we really want to do.  

So, we should strive not for an ideal of asceticism, but for an ideal of high-hearted and hope-full confidence; with faith that, no matter what the demon-dominated world throws-at-us; we are equipped to beat it.