Evil

Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.

- Plato

Education, IV

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

- Socrates

Mouth of Hell

I went to Ostium to experience Oktapi (from Singapore/Finland) and Anla Courtis (from Argentina) tonight. It was a very welcome and inspiring break into tailoring philosophy lessons I am going to teach to some high school students the next week. My conceptions of music got positively shaken once again at Some Place Else´s physical location as Anla Courtis used sleeping bag (!) as a musical instrument. Some Place Else continues to offer something very unique for those who are interested in “experimental, esoteric, eccentric and electronic musick”. I am lucky to have them in the same city I am living in. When it comes to music, Some Place Else offers something else. Keep your eyes and ears open for what they have to offer. It is nothing less than sounds from real borderlands of a living culture. Great stuff, hot and freshly served from the steaming mouth of Hell.

End and goal

Not every end is a goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and his Shadow.

Dinner with Ladies

Art by Roland Winkhart

Ensio Kataja sent me a challenge to take part in spreading a meme. It´s about six historical women I would like to dine with. I thought about this while having my morning coffee and ended up having two saints, a queen, a witch, a countess and a fashion designer on my list. Here´s the list, in chronological historical order.

Saint Birgitta (Saint, mystic, pilgrim, and founder of the Bridgettine Order. 1303-1373 CE). Without doubt, Saint Birgitta was one of the most powerful women in Europe during her lifetime. My childhood´s hometown Naantali would not be what it is today without Saint Birgitta´s visions. No matter what kind of magic this might be called, it nevertheless was very antinomian in its time and it brought some concrete results (that I do appreciate) into the world. I would like to learn from Saint Birgitta about working against established social order and about spirit of dedication and will. Without doubt we would also have an interesting theological debate.

Karin Månsdotter (Queen of Sweden, wife of Eric XIV, king of Sweden. 1550-1612 CE). Here´s another lady who has something to do with the places I have lived in. Karin entered the Swedish court with low status. She saw some really hard times during her life, some of them in the prison of the Turku castle (which is not too far away from where I am living currently). Karin lived the latter part of her life in Finland and was well loved here, contributing notably to the Finnish culture. She is buried in the cathedral of Turku. I find her extraordinary rite of passage into the Swedish court and her endurance of her life´s trials fascinating, and her influence on Finnish culture noble. She must have been a strong yet humble person with a good heart, someone to admire and certainly learn a thing or two from.

Marketta Punasuomalainen (Convicted witch. 1610-1658 CE). Marketta Punasuomalainen was a nature healer from Vaasa, West of Finland, who lived largely on begging. She had a reputation of being a witch and she apparently also used this to boost her success as a healer. She was beheaded as a witch after being convicted of using magic in killing two men, causing illnesses and spoiling beer. As such, she was one of the first witches sentenced to death in Finland during the witch trials of the 17th century. This date for a dinner would be very different from the first two names on my list. Marketta could give a very interesting and different perspective to what life was like during those times and what the religious atmosphere was like back then. I would also like to get a first-hand account of a witch-trial from someone who was convicted as a witch. If Marketta Punasuomalainen would accept my invitation she would be welcome to take Marketta Parkoinen (another witch who lost her head due to witchcraft in the same place and the same day as Marketta Punasuomalainen) with her to the dinner. Background reading for this dinner: Malleus Maleficarum.

Julia Ostrowska (Countess, a member of the Czar’s court, G.I. Gurdjieff’s wife. 1889-1926 CE). A woman who was G.I. Gurdjieff´s wife must have been very interesting individual in her own right as well. Meeting her would probably also tell me such things about one my greatest heroes that James Webb (author of The Harmonious Circle) or nobody else could tell. Besides all the Fourth Way stuff I would like to ask her what St. Petersburg was like in 1912 CE when she married Gurdjieff there. Around that time I had relatives who regularly visited St. Petersburg and I am amused about the idea that they could have seen this just married remarkable couple there. If Julia would accept my invitation, I would be happy if she would take Jeanne de Salzmann (1889-1990 CE), another Fourth Way legend, with her to the dinner.

Leila Ida Nerrissa Waddell (Thelemic saint and priestess, violinist, and love of Aleister Crowley. 1880–1932 CE). Leila Waddell must have been a special individual in her own right just like Julia Ostrowska, although they both are generally known via other people. Evidently, Waddell was of enormous inspiration to Aleister Crowley. Waddell must have been a powerful woman, probably one of those who had most power to effect the Great Beast´s inner life. I would like to talk with her about music and magick and hear her views about fylgja and optimal dynamics involved. Being a saint Leila Waddell was a bit different from saint Birgitta - the thelemic saint is known to have said It's nice to be a devil when you're one like me.

Coco Chanel (Fashion designer, couturier. 1883-1971 CE). Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel had something in common with Karin Månsdotter. They both had some really tough times in their lives and they both survived those times with success. I grew up spending lots of time in my mother´s sewing room. I got familiar with different clothes, buttons, zippers, and the rest, you name it. I bet there were no other young man in the city who knew better the latest fashion magazines, Finnish and foreign, than I did. As a teenager I almost decided to follow my mother´s (and her father´s) footsteps into the world of fashion and clothes, but the philosophical spark that Friedrich Nietzsche had hammered out of my young long-haired head had started to burn fiercely and books won clothes on the cosmic scales. I would like to talk with Chanel about how to get things done when there is huge amount of opposition, how to bring something new into the world. She would also be welcome to give me few tips on how to update my garderobe. And of course, I would be happy to thank this Maga of fashion for bringing Chanel Platinum Egoiste into the world – I have weared it almost exclusively since I was around 17 years old.

Bubbling under: Virgin Mary and H.P. Blavatsky.

Having finished my list here, I throw this same challenge to my friend Petri Laakso.

Audiobook recordings

Recordings for my second book's audioversion are done. At least initially. I sort of expect that there are parts of the book that need to be recorded again, though. Well, I just keep my fingers crossed that there would not arise any need to record anything anew... it would be nice to dedicate all the time I have for other projects now.

Friends

"Without friends no one would choose to live".

"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit".

"In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness; and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds".

- Aristotle

Fundamental insight

There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human.

Soundwave menu

Art by Roland Winkhart

I thought to write about something else today, but I’ll stick to music and keep it light (and no, I have not been singing karaoke again). Music is one of those universal things that are part of cultures as self-evidently as food and clothing among other things. I am not going to ponder about different uses of music, what one’s preferences in music might tell about oneself, why music can move us so much, or any other interesting dimensions of sonic magic. I might do some of that later, though. Maybe you will do such pondering in the comments section in addition to telling what those soundwaves that you have been putting your fork and knife (or spoon or sticks if it wasn’t all fingerfood) into have been called?

During the last week my soundwave menu (served to needs of all floors of my house of consciousness, more or less) has been dominated by these artists and their cookings (not in any particular order): Kate Bush: Lionheart, Laibach: Wat, Ovro: Gegendurchgangenzeit, Niko Skorpio: The Hidden Nameless, Cosine Nomine: Electric Deer Fiends, Pixies: Surfer Rosa, Keuhkot: Minun käy sääliksi bilharzialoista, Wesley Willis: Greatest Hits, Vol.3, Bad Sector: Plasma, and des Esseintes: Les Diaboliques.

Hemaisevan seksikäs pörröpää

I can't believe it.

Some biology student from the Turku university somehow wickedly lured me into singing in karaoke... for the first time in my life... ever. I still can't believe it... Wow! Quite a social nietzcshean overcoming here!

I have performed live on stage numerous times before, in front of much bigger crowds, in Finland and Sweden, but I had never sang before... Well, at least I picked a perfect artist and a song for the context (Those of you who know me are probably laughing your asses off at this point...).

I sang Aarne Tenkanen's hit Hemaisevan Seksikäs Pörröpää. To my big surprise I got some raging applause! People were asking me to do the same again. To quote Wesley Willis, the crowd roared like a mountain lion! Some of those oddballs apparently really liked my singing...

No doubt, I have taken a step into a new dimension of galdr.

Two kinds of galdr

I spent some time at my book publisher's headquarters yesterday. As predicted, good amounts of coffee and vegetarian pies were consumed. I also got more pages covered for the audiobook version of Saatanan Mustat Nahkasiivet. I guess it is going to take two more sessions to get the whole work completed for recordings of the book. Then there is the work of creating the covers, leaflet, and so forth for the publication... but I am just happy about all of that. And I already have a vision of what the end result is going to be like.

When it comes for today, I had a wonderful time with a handful of brilliant people. Musicians and magicians, from different academic realms - of biology, astronomy, computers, and such. Setians and non-setians. In Finnish, people who represent parhautta in many ways.

I gave a short lecture (maybe 40 minutes) about aletheia. After that, we talked about the topic for a good while. I think there is going to be some kind of summary about the lecture here in a day or two. Before of that, I want to express my sincere thanks for those individuals who were here today to talk about self-remembering.

Levels of Aletheia

Art by Roland Winkhart

I have heard some thoughts that have indicated that my ideas about aletheia have sometimes been understood to be either atheistic or pessimistic or both (maybe the William Shatner quote in this blog has something to do with this?). Nothing could be more far away from the truth of the matter.

There are certain levels of aletheia, that is, of self-remembering, as talked about f.ex in my previous posts entitled The Five Floors of the House of Consciousness and Domestic Rites of Passage and the river Lethe (if you have not read them before, they would make a good background to this post). Finns who have my two publictly published books could check them out too in relation to this subject (aletheia breathes them throughout). And, as some of you already know, Robert S. de Ropp’s The Master Game is an essential reading regarding the floors I am so stubbornly talking about.

Because we are human beings (at least to my knowledge), I tend to teach my initiatory teaching with an emphasis that speaks most of all to the human aspect in the totality of our being (although our highest potential as human beings can be labeled divine). As a teacher I see this to be a good and common sense basic pedagogic strategy. Bluntly put, I seek to make people in general to remember themselves between their natural birth and death. This is one key to what aletheia is about, but it is not the only one (Martin Heidegger wrote well about this key to aletheia with his notes on death as a mirror for being. See his classic Being and Time for further details).

If you are able to remember yourself between natural birth and death (which most often equals to remembering yourself in your consciousness house’s floor number 4 which roughly means on the level of self-trancendence), you might start to become able to remember yourself also on higher levels of being. If we get into the 4th and the 5th floor of the house of consciousness, we are pretty much also starting to talk about what Plato meant with remembering in his works (see f.ex his Meno regarding this). This is about remembering yourself in relation to the eternal ideas of the universe (f.ex the idea of the Isolate Intelligence).

I was privileged to hear of such a higher remembering last night. My Brother Ensio Kataja told me about his initiatory work with runes and germanic tradition and how he experienced remembering an ancient runemaster communicating with his being. By the way, check out Ensio’s blog-entry on the five floors of the house of consciousness in relation to the germanic pattern of cosmos, that of Yggdrasill. Ensio has plenty of great thoughts to offer here and in the world of the internet, this reminds me of the saying ”casting pearls before swines”...

To hit a nail to the forehead of the cosmos: Aletheia is not pessimistic, fatalistic, or atheistic concept. It is essentially very much on the contrary. It is positive, optimistic, and trancendental concept. It is about remembering the most sacred dimension of the universe. It is a mirror that can help you to Be and to Become more efficiently.

Remember yourself... always and everywhere. Be as much as you can as a human being and through that seek to Become... what you Need to.

Education, III

The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done.
- Jean Piaget

In honor of Pan

If I smoke, I smoke pipe. It's healthier, more stylish and meditative, plus in numerous variations better smelling and tasting than any cigarette you can find. I never found smoking interesting for any reason – until my good friend from Stuttgart introduced me to pipes.

Aleister Crowley, Carl Jung, Ensio Kataja, J.R.R. Tolkien, Roland Winkhart, Ian Read, and Albert Einstein are among some great pipe smoker names I honor in raising Peterson’s Killarney # 150 with some Amphora here.

I hated tobacco. I could have almost lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobacco smokers to death... I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable practice, and is productive of good. There is no more harm in a pipe than in a cup of tea. You may poison yourself by drinking too much green tea, and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks. For my part, I consider that tobacco, in moderation, is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper.

-Thomas Henry Huxley

Keep the hellfires burning!

- Roland Winkhart while lighting his pipe

I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgement in all human affairs

-Albert Einstein

Devil or god, to me, to me / my man! my man! / Come with trumpets sounding shrill / over the hill! / Come with drums low muttering / from the spring! / Come with flute and come with pipe! / am I not ripe?

- Aleister Crowley in Hymn to Pan

St. Augustine's fear

I have loved books all my life. I still remember how that passionate and enduring love affair begun. I was around five years old as I got an obsession to go to Lietsalan sivukirjasto, a little local library to explore it. My mother kindly went with me few times a week there. I always carried tons of new books home with me. During the next few years, those books of sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, religion, occultism, philosophy, science, etc., opened a whole new magical world for me. I can’t overestimate how much those books contributed to the development of my thinking and worldview... And I have been on that magical mystery tour ever since. The magic of Óðinn, that of galdr, verbal magic, is truly powerful.

The last three books that I have added to my own library have been Aino Kontula’s Rexi on homo ja opettajat hullui!, a real-life horror diary of a Finnish teacher, The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Edward Craig, and Zygmunt Bauman’s excellent and very thought provoking Sosiologinen ajattelu (Thinking Sociologically). I got Kontula’s book just today. I am going to dive into it’s world later today and to really enjoy it. Based on my professional interests and on what I have heard about the book I am pretty sure it is going to be a blast... big time.

St. Augustine wrote sometime somewhere that he is afraid of a man who has read only one book during his life. I don’t know if I would feel the same way about such persons (I think I have never met such), especially if they are from areas where reading skills and books are luxury. But I need to say that a thought of an individual in the Western world without any interest in books sounds odd to me... But then, I have my very biased perspective of a booklover.

What are the last three books you have been reading?

Letter from Don Webb

This is the sort of book I have wanted to see. It deals in LHP concepts with maturity, and does a good job placing them in the context of anthropology -- Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, religious studies, and modern philosophy. You get 10 out of 10.

- Don Webb commenting the draft of my forthcoming the Left Hand Path.

Vetus et nova

The first day of recording my second book Saatanan Mustat Nahkasiivet into an audiobook was an interesting experience. Some 90 pages done, some 150 pages to go. It means lots of coffee and vegetarian pies to be consumed at my publisher's headquarters.

The feedback from my proofreaders regarding the draft of my first book's English translation has been very positive and encouraging. My thanks for those of you in the U.K. and the States who are part of getting the Left Hand Path translated and published. We'll get there.

I heard about a new review of my CD Terra Hyperborea. Jere Salonen from Noise.fi penned something that can be found from here.

The True Believer

"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves. "

"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."

"The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless."

"This minding of other's people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat."

- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951 cE)

Education, II

I taught basics of ethics for some 9th graders yesterday. It was great. Many of these youngsters are so bright that their parents should be really proud of them. These students certainly make me proud of them and of what I am teaching and they also give me hope about the potential future through their thoughts and deeds.

Education

Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.

- George Halifax

Horoscope

I got a phonecall from my brother in essence from South Europe. He is so right. I need to admit that; no matter that I am not too big on horoscopes, I still am very much a stereotypical aries. Like William Shatner. I was told he is my perfect mirror. Shat happens.

Night and music

The ear, the organ of fear, could have evolved as greatly as it has only in the night and twilight of obscure caves and woods, in accordance with the mode of life of the age of timidity, that is to say the longest human age there has ever been: in bright daylight the ear is less necessary. That is how music acquired the character of an art of night and twilight.

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak

Music in the night

I went to see Ovro, Beyond Sensory Experience, and des Esseintes at TVO, Turku, on Saturday night. There were people packed in a modern cave. Individuals making soundscapes and offering visuals, creating separation from everyday reality.

This is something that has been happening since the dawn of humanity, all the way from primordial percussions till newest laptop computers, often with the ageless instrument of human voice added. It was inspiring to be there and to take part in an archetypal occasion of sonic magic, moving between few floors of my house of consciousness.

Amor Java

Coffee - you can sleep when you're dead!

- Anonymous

I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.

- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord; Recipe for coffee

I take my coffee and magic black

- Anonymous setian

Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma.

- Jean Jacques Rousseau

I think if I were a woman I'd wear coffee as perfume.

- John Van Druten

The powers of a man's mind are directly proportioned to the quantity of coffee he drinks.

- Sir James Mackintosh

No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.

- Sheik Abd-al-Kadir

If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee.

- Broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, Eagle, to Johnson Space Center, Houston (July 20, 1969 CE).

Picard always drank tea. Kirk always drank coffee. Any questions?

- Anonymous

Resurrection

Oddly enough, soon after updating my blog with a reminder of death yesterday, I learned that someone had a dream that I died - and resurrected. Henkiinheräämisuni can be read here.

It is rare for me to remember dreams. I usually sleep soundly at the bottom floor of my house of consciousness. No material for psychoanalysing dreams to be expected here.

You'll have time

One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.

- G.I. Gurdjieff

Live life like you're gonna die - because you're gonna. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you're gonna die.

- William Shatner, Has been

Domestic Rites of Passage and the river Lethe

I wrote about a rite of passage recently. Within comparative religions the subject is one of my pet areas in addition to a concept of sacred or holy, contextualizing and signifying time, use of music in religions, et cetera (when it comes to the concept holy, I urge you to read Ensio Kataja’s new blog).

The house of consciousness with all of its floors constitutes the vertical dimension of existence. Roughly speaking, it is pretty much about being (and it includes your body, persona, and psyche). The house stands in the flow of time, which begins at natural birth and ends at natural death. This river constitutes the horizontal dimension of existence. This is roughly speaking pretty much about change or becoming (Finns with a copy of my first book might want think about Pirun Nyrkki here, p. 83).

The house of consciousness is a hydroelectric plant of a magical sort. If you don’t work with the flow of the river (which is called Lethe, by the way), your level of energy keeps low, the plant gets rusty and outdated, and in general you can’t really achieve too much with your life. In a certain profound sense, you are asleep even when you are awake. Things happen to you, you can’t make things happen. You have forgot yourself. If you on the other hand work with the flow, do conscious efforts to use it to get some energy to produce something precious that you need and desire, if you remember yourself between natural birth and death, you might start to make things happen. You might start to remember yourself. You might start to unconceal mysteries and truth about the hidden dimension of existence where being and becoming are one. This is aletheia, and its experience is sacred.

This flow of time effects our being, our multidimensional identity in many ways. A good number of those ways are very personal, but there are also experiences that in their basics are quite universal. One of these rather universal experiences is that of moving away from an old home to a new one. Typically, this experience carries with it a notable change in one’s life. Moving often marks new important phase in life, and as such it is also linked to a change in one’s experience of self, one’s status.

Moving is a perfect example of a rite of passage that we all know and can think about based on our personal experiences. I am sure we all can also find phases of separation, liminality, and incorporation from these experiences. If you are interested to learn more about them, study Arnold van Gennep’s The Rites of Passage.

I have lived in nine homes thus far. Interestingly enough, they form a kind of valknut with three clear groups: 3 homes I have had in Naantali, 3 homes I have had in Turku, and lastly, 3 homes I have had elsewhere (in Raisio, Esslingen, and San Francisco). It is interesting to think about what kind of patterns these places have had in relation to each other and what kind of phases I have had in them in my life.

How many homes you have had thus far? What kind of phases of your life does those homes represent? Do you think you will move again at some point, and why and when and where? How has these domestic rites of passage influenced your path, your experience of yourself, your status? If it is as above, so below, then what does your home tell about yourself?

Two kinds of thinkers

It makes all the difference whether a thinker stands in a personal relationship to his problems, so that he possesses in them his destiny, his necessity and also his greatest happiness, or whether this relationship is 'impersonal': that is, he knows how to feel and grasp them only with the tentacles of cold, inquisitive thought. In the latter case nothing will result, so much is certain: for the grand problems, even if they let themselves be grasped, refuse to let themselves be retained by frogs and weaklings, that has been their taste from all eternity.

- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science