Occultism

BW Edit after Assyrian artist of the Neo-Assyrian Period (ca. 9th–8th century BCE) (Furniture element carved in the round with the head of a roaring #lion) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc. 62.269.1)
#art

BW Edit after anonymous (Munt met een halo van elektrische stroom, c. 1893 - in or before 1898) (Rijksmuseum, Acc. RP-F-2001-7-968-1-15)
#art #electricity

Edit after Parthian artist of ca. 2nd–early 3rd century CE (Door lintel with lion-griffins and vase with lotus leaf) (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
#art

Actually, completely unknown languages ​​do not exist. In fact, shadows can always be glimpsed and it is from there that hidden meanings come, perhaps the most essential ones
#φωνή #γραφὴ

Photo depicting the solar chromosphere during an eclipse

Edit after George Ellery Hale (Zes afbeeldingen van de zonnechromosfeer en een protuberans) (Rijksmuseum)
#eclipse

Intaglio depicting the lion-serpent also known in Gnosticism as Chnoubis

Edit after Roman artist of the Imperial period (Carnelian intaglio: Lion-headed serpent) (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
#ancientart #gnosticism

Photo of terracotta sculpture depicting the head of Medusa with wings

Edit after a photo by Marcel Gustave Laverdet (Terracotta sculptuur van het hoofd van Medusa met vleugels) (Rijksmuseum)
#ancientart #medusa

If society were an organism, the laws would probably be the feet on which it stands. But it would be evident at the same time that both the hands and the head would be far from them, not to mention the soul

True, and in fact I meant that the experience of such things is so personal that it is unlikely that a priest's interpretation can replace one's own perception of it

I think the idea could not have been expressed better.
I add only that often I had the impression that religions explained that with the idea of 'protecting' the light from the world. Maybe it is just a way to make people believe that by themselves (=without intermediaries) they cannot access it

Seriously, these are things that can be felt very intensely in delicate moments of life.
Also, describing the situation as standing on top of it with your feet is the most effective way to convey it. I mean, it really gives the idea of something that one always has access to but does not realize

True. But the light is already there, and in my opinion it is within everyone's reach, even when it cannot be noticed. All that is missing is the right word to name/recognize it

The fact is that we are always faced with the sacred. It can manifest itself in disguised forms, its light can vary, but it is always there.
This has little to do with religious forms, much more with the rather informal realm of the supernatural

Regardless of the technical level, any artistic activity makes one very similar to psychics, so the darker the historical period, the more likely it is that the art produced will be dark

Deep down, all human history is a very long movement of the soul aimed at emerging from the history itself, at challenging the gods and at (re)conquering paradise

In Western thought, the concept of energy is incredibly underrated. Wilhelm Reich and Georges Bataille took it seriously; anyway imo they treated it (as orgone/dépense) in almost accounting terms of excess. In comparison, ideas like Kundalini or Chinese Qi go far beyond the merely quantitative

The ancients had a fairly clear perception that whenever it had been necessary to outline an idea, even in its simplest formulation, they would never have had a sphere before them, but at best a knot

It would be enough just to reorganize them, replacing them with more organic and systematic laws than the previous fragmentary ones

Those who desire laws that are few and simple usually forget that (in Europe) the history following the Enlightenment has shown that this desire is only a myth: in this case, in fact, the jurisprudence that applies them always increases, because human needs do not decrease by reducing the laws.

So it is presumably this shadow that is the essence through which the effects of the reduction to nothingness itself operate

The reduction to nothingness of thought/spirit that many religious traditions seem to refer to (through prayer, repetition, meditation, etc.) is never a nothingness taken in itself, but always a posterius with respect to something that was there before and that therefore left a shadow.

The tragedy of Western rationality is the attempt to reduce the background to the figure. Sooner or later the background demands its autonomy, it finds itself literally inside the figure and so the initial figure is dissolved

A few days ago I seriously thought the same thing but I did not dare say it out loud. Glad to find someone else who thinks the same way. Regards

I agree, formalities only serve to give solemnity

People are interpreters of spirits who meet and try to understand the language of the spirit of the other one, without ever fully knowing the language of their own.
The light of the mind illuminates something. But in the end, what is actually illuminated?

The fact is that scientific thinking is almost certainly a subset of magical thinking (if nothing else, the first one at least has roots in the second one). This would explain why the texts of certain scholars sometimes seem like poetry

Art is mathematics beyond formulas

Some time ago I formulated the idea that rituals have never disappeared and that they have only hidden themselves behind a mask of neutrality, in order to remain invisible custodians of the sacred.
Experience keeps confirming this hypothesis

However, it deals anyway with the problem of sacertas/sacratio in reference to Agamben and incidentally, it points out how even the notion of oath (imprecatio) is a vox media

There is this article:
Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa, The Magico-Juridical Hypothesis, in Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 2024
(it is open access)
with a very similar approach to that of 'Uscite dal Mondo' by Zolla. The difference: it places the oath and not the sacrifice as the foundation of law.