Nor am I. For a start, the intended interpretation of the word sophism Peter is using here hasn't been the primary meaning since at least the time of Plato. It thus comes across as rather a confusing archaic use of an already obscure word.
At 11:35 PM +0000 21/12/10, julianlord wrote:
>I would personally treat veneration as a form of meditation, that is
>to say that you meditate what you know about the Saint, and you are
>rewarded with insights providing a better understanding of that
>saint's magic -- among a host of other possible insights not
>involving magic at all, but moral lessons, insights into the saint's
>relationship with other saints, Malkion, and the church or order,
>etc.
That would be a sort of gnostic interpretation - that the extra knowledge that adepts etc have is of a direct, spiritual, experiential sort. Because otherwise, it would only be necessary for somone to come up with the necessary insights once - the saints would be the ones who meditate and come up with insights and write them down, veneration would consist of reading the words of the saints. While I personally have some sympathy towards this interpretation (and it is sort of borne out by the necessity of direct experience of the Essence plane for higher magic) most interpretations of the Western world view have implied rather that the special knowledge required for higher forms of Western magic was still of an abstract, reasoned, sort, capable of being written down, just very complex.
Of course, it is distinctly possible for both to be in part true - the knowledge required to access the Essence plane (or appropriate parts of it) directly might be abstract and learnable, the higher gnostic insights required for adept/wizard status etc accessible via that direct experience of the Essential world.
>However you treat veneration though, what Trotsky is suggesting is
>of course probably the best way to go -- it's a relationship with
>knowledge of the saint, and knowledge of how the religion
>understands and conceptualises the saint, rather than being just a
>straightforward one-to-one relationship with the saint him/herself.
My understanding is that the saints discover/create particular nodes on the essence plane, and the saints magic is accessible only via those nodes - and knowledge of how to access and use those nodes ultimately stems from the words and deeds of the saints, which must then be studied - and which also means studying the virtues and moral teachings of said saint at the same time.
I think it is possible that sorcerers could learn alternate ways of accessing such nodes directly, but why would the saints or their venerators want that to happen? Learning how to intellectually separate the magical techniques of a saint from their moral teachings is pure God Learnerism, and likely to get you excommunicated these days.
Cheers
David
Powered by hypermail