Zzaburites are not robots - there have desires, and biases, and so on. They wish to overcome these and become creatures of pure will.
I was, as you are probably aware, thinking of alchemy, so the reconciliation of opposites concept came from there. Which means to me it makes sense for the closest analogue we have, introducing a new element, its true, but one arising from a very similar tradition. Obviously, its a tradition concerned outwardly with the external cosmos, but widely understood to have mystical implications.
I don't think a path that is concerned only with the nature of the external cosmos, not the self, can really be regarded as mystic.
> >The Zzaburi
>>mysticism is not separate to their sorcerous practice, so it will be
>>tied in with a sorcerous conception of the otherworld, one with some
>>superficial similarities to a Kaballah based one (or even more
>>similarities to a later Western Esoteric tradition one that combines
>>Kaballah, Tarot, and anything else they can fit in).
>
>I have big qualms about this. Zzaburism is supposed to be all
>about the use of one's logical faculties whereas stating that
>it's similar (even superficially) to Kaballah or the Golden Dawn
>(both of which are anything but rational) undermines this
>philosophical basis.
You perceive them as being irrational, perhaps, but many of their practitioners would regard them as very rational. Sure, we regard some of their premises as irrational these days, but they are consistent within their own framework and based on their own intellectual traditional - thats as rational as anything medieval really gets. Certainly kaballa especially involves a fair bit of logical analysis. And we are talking about sorcerers, not scientists.
> > >IIRC Kaballah sees the cosmos in essentially human terms (ie
>> >crown, head etc) which would be rather inappropriate for the
>> >Zzaburi in general with their view of God as impersonal.
>
>>Kaballah sees the forces of the cosmos as being reflected
>>within the microcosm of the human, not the other way around.
>
>Which makes little difference either way as the Cosmos is still
>conceived in essentially human terms.
Zzaburites are sorcerers, not astrophysicists. They perceive the cosmos as being made up of essentially human terms (ie they perceive the universe in terms of a bunch of concepts like those represented by the runes), whether they recognise it or not. Which is pretty much the same as the schemes we have been talking about (and a far cry from perceiving the cosmos as being made in the image of the human or vice versa). The Kabbalistic sephiroth might not divide the universe into the same concepts - but its a better fit, IMO, than systems that do not divide the universe up similarly at all. In broad strokes, with its concepts of the four worlds, impersonal 'nodes', etc its a fairly close fit to the sorcerous worldview until you get to the details (ie start labelling the nodes).
I think my essential problems with your conception of Zzaburism, Peter, are two - it doesn't feel all that sorcerous, as it is detached from their sorcerous view of the world, and it doesn't feel that mystic, as its still largely outward directed.
At 11:45 AM -0800 6/11/00, The Glorantha Digest wrote:
> I don't think the Golden Dawn/Crowley/Modern Hermeticism is a very good
>model for Gloranthan Sorcery, if for no other reason than these systems are
>very syncratic and the main Western experience with syncratic approaches
>was Godlearnerism, and we see where that went. Other syncratic approaches
>(e.g. Stygianism) are hardly better thought of by the orthodox, and for
>similar reasons.
Well, sure. (probably a good model for some God Learner sorcery by the same token, though). I was really saying that their developed concept of the Otherworld, and their combination of this with a worldview that is concerned primarily with the self and ones own will (rather than being a conduit for the divine will, like the Jewish Kabbalists), is fairly close. Strike the syncretism, by all means - all their grab bag of egyptian, greek, roman, hindu myth has very little to do with the parts I was suggesting as appropriate.
> Lastly, the Kabbala really should have some presence in the
>West, if only
>for the numerological systems it spawned. Logicians, especially, should
>love this stuff.
Yes. As I said above, Kabbalist practice is a very literate, scholarly, traditional, which seems a good fit for the West. Sure, some of their traditions seem irrational to us, but many of these seem actually more appropriate for the West, where words manifestly DO have power, and the holy book was actually, verifiably, written by God (thus making the search for hidden clues within it by linguistic/numerological means not that unreasonable).
Cheers David ------------------------------
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