I have been reading your stuff a bit and am a bit confused about this division between yielding to authority (yaldabaoth) as a way of living (or modus operandi) and rebellion (lucifer) as a different way of living. In this text you seem to propose a solution to these two flawed ways of living, in conservatism or rather moderation between the two. A version of the Aristotelian golden mean perhaps?
A problem i find with this however is that the slave is unavoidably a rebel, and the rebel a slave. The pious christian living in todays society will perhaps be a slave to his religious doctrine (yeilding to god), living under the iron fist of yaldabaoth, but at the same time he will be a luciferic rebel against modern society (rebelling against the world) as he renounces things generally accepted and even promoted today, like adultery, abortion and different kinds of hedonism.
At the same time a luciferian might be quite rebellious in the sense of unconventional morals (do what thou will) in contrast to conventional christian morals, but he will feel quite at home in modern society (yielding to consensus/ the world), and moreover he will always be serving under the authority of lucifer and carrying out his will.
This means that subjection is rebellion, and rebellion is subjection. These are terms that derive their meaning from contrast; who do i rebel against? and who do i follow into rebellion? It all desolves into subjectivism, only hindered by anchoring lucifer to specifik traits like heat, sex, creativity, and yaldabaoth to others like cold, discipline, rigidity. This anchoring is insufficient. For example, a cold object will have more heat than a even colder object. Something deemed creative in one situation can likewise be deemed rigid in another. Inventing the wheel in pre-colonial south america would be creative, in europe it wouldn't be creative at all (already invented).
This in my opinion is precisely the elegance of the model. I would mistrust it if this were not so. It mirrors the patterns of reality far better than the alternative.
Take motion for example: we might easily say that energy, which is hot and light, is Lucifer's. And we might easily say that mass which is cold and heavy is Yaldabaoth's. Physics says that energy and mass are not really different, but from your perspective, they are experienced as such.
This shows us the manner in which both spirits are illusory deceivers and incomplete. And it illustrates the way in which the ego tends to adopt the role of the one, and the shadow, the other. The hedonist is a slave to the body and the ascetic a rebel against it. Thus, both are always simultaneously embodied, but often only one side is inhabited consciously.
It points to an underlying unity just as in the taijitu where yin and yang contain one another. This unity manifests as Christ when the ego occupies both and neither position and Satan when it picks a side. Abraxas is both, but slants toward Christ because reality seems to favor that position. The point of the model is to understand oneself and find where one fits. It is primarily a map of the inner landscape, not the outer one. This is why these beings have always been understood to exist outside of time and space, as they can never fully inhabit our reality.
Ah so it's about which one is inhabited consciously. It does make a lot of sense when you put it like that. That means the identification of one of them with your current conscious belief lets you "know yourself" and then practice the conservatism you mention to regulate the content of your ego.
I do still see one problem. If you regulate your ego in order to avoid evil (Satan) then in practice, with this model, I presume you will avoid occupying extremely authoritarian/rebellious positions without questioning your own belief. This makes unquestioning obedience evil, and unrelenting rebellion evil. Questioning and relent/forgiveness become virtue (characteristics of Christ).
The big problem here is that the question if, for example, asceticism or hedonism is good or evil will be answered by which of them can be done while the ego “occupies both and neither position” of rebel and slave. A hedonist can be evil because he is unquestioning, and another (or his future self) doing the exact same thing can be good if he questions his own behavior. My complaint is that it seems like anything goes!
Sidenote:
This problem can also be formulated in terms of metaphysics. If there is only a phenomenal difference (a difference seen within our reality or from our point of view) between energy and matter, or yaldabaoth and lucifer, or any other thing for that matter (kantian metaphysics) - couldn't that mean that there is only a phenomenal difference between evil and good, questioning and unquestioning, Satan and Christ?
Well, I think we can't really hope to solve the moral problem too easily. This is mostly about the structure and constitution of reality and the psyche.
But I would say that the true synthesis represents something much deeper than questioning one's behavior. It starts there, but it ends in the union of questioner and questioned, so that the question is redundant. That is, in theosis; a state where the inner duality of Lucifer and Yaldabaoth is unmade. There is no longer id or super-ego, and one may say "I am who I am."
If one in that state became a hedonist, it would not be my place to object. But I do not know of any apparent examples.
Regarding phenomenology, there is no view from nowhere. What exists beyond any possible experience is not accessible and thus not relevant to consciousness.
Would this be to say that consciousness is only present in intellect ,I think an argument could be made that all mater is conscious of itself and that would represent itself as dark matter but that's just an anecdote of one super ego
In my writing I've attempted to initiate dialogue between my personal id and superego. I've found, at length, that both have a great deal of trouble identifying what "the good" is: on the one hand, the id finds anything personally gratifying as good, although it does not rightly think ahead of these things as "good or not" before urging actions. The superego surely has plenty of opinions, often complex, about what is "good," but in the end has little to substantiate it's moral framework when pressed: it has inherited it's sense of morals from the axiom "don't do anything that pisses anyone off" which is a fear-motivation falling ultimately outside of the realm of reason and back into the realm of instinct, back to the id.
Yaldabaoth cannot posit anything about what is good (indeed, cannot posit anything at all) without at first relying on Lucifer, who holds the creative principle, even if it then goes on to deny Lucifer. But neither can Lucifer come up with any coherent rationale for the good, since Lucifer refuses to think through anything beyond the initial perception of some pleasurable/painful phenomenon to pursue/avoid. Both end up in utter confusion when truly pressed to explain themselves. The middle principle, insofar as it borrows equally from the hot and the cold, must necessarily transcend them as much as it includes them; for out of the Christ comes the good, which neither other principle could readily supply on its own.
Moses is often depicted with horns also. I suppose Aaron would be his suppressing super-ego counterpart. Prophecy and priesthood. Thank you for sharing your work!
I have been reading your stuff a bit and am a bit confused about this division between yielding to authority (yaldabaoth) as a way of living (or modus operandi) and rebellion (lucifer) as a different way of living. In this text you seem to propose a solution to these two flawed ways of living, in conservatism or rather moderation between the two. A version of the Aristotelian golden mean perhaps?
A problem i find with this however is that the slave is unavoidably a rebel, and the rebel a slave. The pious christian living in todays society will perhaps be a slave to his religious doctrine (yeilding to god), living under the iron fist of yaldabaoth, but at the same time he will be a luciferic rebel against modern society (rebelling against the world) as he renounces things generally accepted and even promoted today, like adultery, abortion and different kinds of hedonism.
At the same time a luciferian might be quite rebellious in the sense of unconventional morals (do what thou will) in contrast to conventional christian morals, but he will feel quite at home in modern society (yielding to consensus/ the world), and moreover he will always be serving under the authority of lucifer and carrying out his will.
This means that subjection is rebellion, and rebellion is subjection. These are terms that derive their meaning from contrast; who do i rebel against? and who do i follow into rebellion? It all desolves into subjectivism, only hindered by anchoring lucifer to specifik traits like heat, sex, creativity, and yaldabaoth to others like cold, discipline, rigidity. This anchoring is insufficient. For example, a cold object will have more heat than a even colder object. Something deemed creative in one situation can likewise be deemed rigid in another. Inventing the wheel in pre-colonial south america would be creative, in europe it wouldn't be creative at all (already invented).
This in my opinion is precisely the elegance of the model. I would mistrust it if this were not so. It mirrors the patterns of reality far better than the alternative.
Take motion for example: we might easily say that energy, which is hot and light, is Lucifer's. And we might easily say that mass which is cold and heavy is Yaldabaoth's. Physics says that energy and mass are not really different, but from your perspective, they are experienced as such.
This shows us the manner in which both spirits are illusory deceivers and incomplete. And it illustrates the way in which the ego tends to adopt the role of the one, and the shadow, the other. The hedonist is a slave to the body and the ascetic a rebel against it. Thus, both are always simultaneously embodied, but often only one side is inhabited consciously.
It points to an underlying unity just as in the taijitu where yin and yang contain one another. This unity manifests as Christ when the ego occupies both and neither position and Satan when it picks a side. Abraxas is both, but slants toward Christ because reality seems to favor that position. The point of the model is to understand oneself and find where one fits. It is primarily a map of the inner landscape, not the outer one. This is why these beings have always been understood to exist outside of time and space, as they can never fully inhabit our reality.
Ah so it's about which one is inhabited consciously. It does make a lot of sense when you put it like that. That means the identification of one of them with your current conscious belief lets you "know yourself" and then practice the conservatism you mention to regulate the content of your ego.
I do still see one problem. If you regulate your ego in order to avoid evil (Satan) then in practice, with this model, I presume you will avoid occupying extremely authoritarian/rebellious positions without questioning your own belief. This makes unquestioning obedience evil, and unrelenting rebellion evil. Questioning and relent/forgiveness become virtue (characteristics of Christ).
The big problem here is that the question if, for example, asceticism or hedonism is good or evil will be answered by which of them can be done while the ego “occupies both and neither position” of rebel and slave. A hedonist can be evil because he is unquestioning, and another (or his future self) doing the exact same thing can be good if he questions his own behavior. My complaint is that it seems like anything goes!
Sidenote:
This problem can also be formulated in terms of metaphysics. If there is only a phenomenal difference (a difference seen within our reality or from our point of view) between energy and matter, or yaldabaoth and lucifer, or any other thing for that matter (kantian metaphysics) - couldn't that mean that there is only a phenomenal difference between evil and good, questioning and unquestioning, Satan and Christ?
Well, I think we can't really hope to solve the moral problem too easily. This is mostly about the structure and constitution of reality and the psyche.
But I would say that the true synthesis represents something much deeper than questioning one's behavior. It starts there, but it ends in the union of questioner and questioned, so that the question is redundant. That is, in theosis; a state where the inner duality of Lucifer and Yaldabaoth is unmade. There is no longer id or super-ego, and one may say "I am who I am."
If one in that state became a hedonist, it would not be my place to object. But I do not know of any apparent examples.
Regarding phenomenology, there is no view from nowhere. What exists beyond any possible experience is not accessible and thus not relevant to consciousness.
The view from nowhere is Nothing. Nothing can be relevant to consciousness.
Would this be to say that consciousness is only present in intellect ,I think an argument could be made that all mater is conscious of itself and that would represent itself as dark matter but that's just an anecdote of one super ego
In my writing I've attempted to initiate dialogue between my personal id and superego. I've found, at length, that both have a great deal of trouble identifying what "the good" is: on the one hand, the id finds anything personally gratifying as good, although it does not rightly think ahead of these things as "good or not" before urging actions. The superego surely has plenty of opinions, often complex, about what is "good," but in the end has little to substantiate it's moral framework when pressed: it has inherited it's sense of morals from the axiom "don't do anything that pisses anyone off" which is a fear-motivation falling ultimately outside of the realm of reason and back into the realm of instinct, back to the id.
Yaldabaoth cannot posit anything about what is good (indeed, cannot posit anything at all) without at first relying on Lucifer, who holds the creative principle, even if it then goes on to deny Lucifer. But neither can Lucifer come up with any coherent rationale for the good, since Lucifer refuses to think through anything beyond the initial perception of some pleasurable/painful phenomenon to pursue/avoid. Both end up in utter confusion when truly pressed to explain themselves. The middle principle, insofar as it borrows equally from the hot and the cold, must necessarily transcend them as much as it includes them; for out of the Christ comes the good, which neither other principle could readily supply on its own.
Music is made of sound and silence, but is greater than the sum of the two.
This reminds me of chemical reactions, how two different element react to create something other than the parent
Moses is often depicted with horns also. I suppose Aaron would be his suppressing super-ego counterpart. Prophecy and priesthood. Thank you for sharing your work!
Interestingly, this is because in Hebrew, the word for "shining" is easily mistaken for the word for "horned!"