>My own take on the Stygians is that they want to reach the Invisible God
>*through* the 'Masks of God' , to use a Joseph Cambellism, while a more
>rigourous Malkioni views these Masks as distractions or perversions of the
>Invisible God.
The only reason why I disagree with the core principle of this is that it is not what _Arkat_ did. Given his life story was the destruction of the Deceiver, it seems appropiate to me that they describe their enlightenment in such terms (or to use another Indian parallel - Buddha's refutation of Mara). All this can be described as reaching God, the more malkionized stygians say it is, and at some level it is.
>I may be wrong but I think this is a bit like Hinduism, where
>there are hundreds of gods, but these are really only three gods which are,
>in turn just aspects of one single thing.
I would instead turn this on its head and say that all the hundred gods are really masks of the deceiver that prevent one from truely knowing God.
>This bit from the Upanishads seems a good description of the Invisible God:
>'It is other, indeed, than the known
>And, moreover, above the unknown
>His form is not to be beheld,
>No one ever sees him with the eyes."
And for these reasons, the Stygians IMO use their magical faculties against the world rather than to reach God.
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