Tag Archives: philosophy

Celebrating the Solstice

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I love this time of year. As the solstice approaches and the days grow longer the weather is usually warm and nature is in her verdant fullest. Thanks to the strong presence of the sun.

The ancient Egyptians honored the sun, whom they thought of as Aman, on the summer solstice. Apparently in Egypt this time of year the Nile begins to rise and flood it’s banks replenishing the soil; an incredibly significant occurrence for a desert culture.  The Egyptian solstice celebration involved re-enactment of the battle between Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris and his uncle Set. Set, having recently killed his brother Osiris was cast as the bad guy. Horus ends up winning the battle and becoming king of the land but Set isn’t annihilated so continues to hang around being evil and causing havoc.

I find it interesting that so many of the Egyptian gods have animal attributes. For instance, Osiris is associated with the bull symbolizing virility and strength, Isis’ fertility is symbolized in association with the cow, Horus, the falcon symbolizes royalty and strength. And that’s just to name three. There was cat, baboon, Ibis, jackal and many other animals honored as well.  Sometimes the gods were thought to have reincarnated into their animal attributes leading the Egyptians to revere animals in a way we, being so thoroughly anthropomorphic, probably can never understand.

I also found it interesting that Osiris, after being reconstructed and brought back to life by Isis was thought to be annually resurrected with the rise of the Nile and it’s life-giving replenishing of the soil. I guess for an agronomist culture the idea of resurrection of life doesn’t take too much imagination.

It seems to me unfortunate that any religious tradition would claim exclusive rights to such a concept.

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The Benefits of Yoga

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I’ve been practicing yoga lately and despite my limited mobility am finding the activity very energizing both physically and psychologically. The breathing exercises alone have great beneficial worth.

So, I was somewhat dismayed to read recently that an Indian Yogi named Maharaj, who had, according to his followers achieved the deep meditative state called Samadhi and had actually been existing in transcendental bliss for nearly five months, was declared clinically dead by a group of physicians that the family had called in to examine him.  Apparently his flesh began to turn green which the family saw as a pretty convincing give away.

As it turns out, the organization Maharaj operated from his Ashram  is a multi-national non-profit worth millions. What this suggests to skeptical me is ulterior motives vis a vis the yogi’s followers and his family.

Well, whatever happens regarding this distasteful affair, it won’t dissuade me from my semi-daily yogic exercises. I may never reach Samadhi (which, come to think of it, may be for the best) but I will continue to enjoy the benefits of a wonderful discipline.

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The Great Revivals

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Brother Abraham, the Semitic cleric and Biblical scholar, was telling me the other day about the great Revival Movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He said the movements began as a reaction to the scientistic attitudes brought about by Enlightenment thinking which the faithful found to be atheistic and involved a return to the fundamental beliefs of Christian doctrine and an irrefutable belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.

The revival meetings, Abraham told me, were heavy on emotional content with lots of singing and praising and pretty light on intellectual substance which, I guess, was a real crowd pleaser because the revival meetings became quite popular with a lot of people finding God and looking forward to the next event.

The good brother said that these fundamentalist Christians were for the most part dispensational premillennialists, which means, among other things, that God will make good on his promise to establish Jewish dominion over the world, which, Abraham said, will certainly be good for him and that he’s looking forward to it.

As I think about what these meetings might have been like, I think I could have enjoyed the energy and reverie, the coming together of like-minded people in a celebratory gathering. As long as no one asked me whose fault it was that apple got picked.

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Something or Nothing

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I find myself spending a lot of time lately in the black void of the covered toy chest and despite the faint Sounds of Music coming from somewhere in the playroom the situation has got me thinking about the notion of complete nothingness.

People have thought, for a long time, about why there is something rather than nothing. Some have found the question a small problem easily answered by an existent creator God, rationalizing that the order in nature demands a creative intelligence. But, these folks are hard pressed to explain who created the creator.

Over the centuries this intellectual conundrum found temporary ontological solution in the notion of a Self-created Infinitely Perfect Being whose perfection demands existence. But, this, of course, begs the question of how something can come from nothing; an idea that can be thought about in mathematical abstractions but is a lot harder to figure in terms of matter and substance.

In the context of time the eternal is pretty impossible to think through and unless we are willing to abandon the search for a reasonable answer in favor of blind faith the dilemma will probably always remain an enigma………….unless we entertain the solipsistic notion that there is indeed nothing; no material reality at all; only consciousness, which seems initially to work pretty well until I encounter another consciousness. From there it’s only a short mental hop to the collective unconscious and the archetypes that make up our illusory universe.
So, here I lie, in total blackness, contemplating a question I can probably never know the answer to, not knowing whether there is something rather than nothing and unable to get that annoying tune out of my head………………which brings us back to Do, a deer,……………….. or maybe I’m just not an asset to the Abby.

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Free Will

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I was thinking the other day about the nature of free will-whether it was truly a viable concept given the determinist position that everything we do we do because it’s in our nature to do it and we really have no free choice in the matter.

So, I was thinking that in order to exercise free will I’d have to do just the opposite of what I was inclined to do; so that when making a decision, if it made total sense to do A-that A would be the best choice for my well-being-would be preferable to choice B in every way-that I would instead choose B in order to exercise said freewill even though it would result in a bad outcome for me.

I suppose the determinist would respond that the likelihood was I harbored masochistic tendencies and therefore perfectly natural and predictable that I would choose B.
So, given my said masochistic tendencies I instead choose A, I suppose the determinist would then respond that it is only natural to preserve one’s well-being and therefore no freewill will have been exercised in that case either.

So, what if I embraced the absurd-if I imagined a preternatural essence hovering about me-something that I interact with on a daily basis-a sort of magical companion? That would certainly take the wind out of the determinist’s sails wouldn’t it?

I guess, in the end, the freewill thing might depend on how carefully I listen to my invisible friend.

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God-likeness

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I was thinking back to my school days recently.  Doll school was really a lot less about acquiring information than it was about seeking truth and the nature of doll existence.  We spent a lot of time contemplating the big questions, you know, like, does the universe have a purpose, What can we know for sure, Why is there something instead of nothing, does evolution explain human nature, does the free market erode moral character?

One day we got to talking about Plato’s belief that universal, Ideal forms underlay all our observable phenomena; that the things we see around us as well as we, ourselves, are imperfect representations of these transcendent perfect Ideals.  So that, the apple there on the table is a manifestation of the Ideas of redness, roundness, hardness and if we were to bite into it sweetness or tartness-it is an imperfect representation of the Idea of Appleness.

Our professor, Leonard D., then got us thinking about what universal ideals were existent in each of us; imperfect as we know we are, he asked, what are some of the ideal forms each of us exhibit?

My immediate thoughts were to my physical appearance which I am fully aware are far from ideal, at least in terms of Beauty although that does seem to be a bit relative to the times.  But certainly there is more to me than that.  There’s my personality and intellect: I think I’m reasonably intelligent, pretty compassionate, somewhat humble and unassuming and mostly friendly.  And then there’s my sense of responsibility and social participation: I pretty well keep things clean and orderly and I usually do my best to be a functional member of our doll community.

So, when I tried to envision Ideal universal DeiDei-ness, I supposed she might be more beautiful, smarter, more caring, friendlier and altogether more god-like, which got me wondering what it meant to think of myself in terms of god.  Should I be humbled by the realization of my obvious inadequacies or do I think of my relative god-likeness as an ego boost?

Well, that was all quite some time ago but I still think about the dilemma occasionally and how my behavior might reflect one position or the other.  I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion there are places and times for both behaviors.

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The Rapture

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Sister Chloe was enlightening me the other day about what to expect when the end times descend upon us.  At some point, she said, the quick and the dead, provided they are/were true believers, will be raptured heavenward to live for eternity in paradise.

I got to wondering what ‘paradise’ might consist of; is the weather always temperate, the days sunny?  Will the food be exceptional?  Is exercise part of the equation even though it can be a bit painful sometimes?

Anyway, I was reading this book, The Leftovers, about these folks who didn’t get raptured so were left to their daily grinds.  Well, the question that immediately arose after the rapture was why them and not us. It seemed that some of those folks raptured didn’t appear to have led all that great of a life in moral terms and some of those left had been fairly devout church goers.  It was a real conundrum which led to the development of an extremist cult aimed at dealing with the leftovers’ apparent rejection.

Sister Chloe seems to think if I follow my conscience and try to always do the right thing I’ll be just fine-will have nothing to worry about when the Rapture happens.  She’s so compassionate; naïve but compassionate.

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Migrating South

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Granny Applehead has been talking about joining the migration of the elderly to the warmer climes of the south.  She says that, as one’s metabolism slows down with age warmth is a primary need for any sort of comfort to exist.  She yearns for the nice dry walks and roadways and the easy availability of golf carts allowing a mobility that the ice, cold and snow prohibit.

Besides, she says, a retirement community offers the benefits of social interaction with others of one’s own age and, often, sensibility.  Structured days playing mahjong, drinking tea and attending concerts and lectures are pleasant distractions from our ever present aches and pains.  Everything about it points toward enjoying quality time in our autumnal years and prepare us for the day when the warmth of the cremation furnace will return us, dust to dust, to our mother earth from whence we came.

She jokes with her friends that she might instead opt for Plastination so that her children will be able to enjoy her personage gathering dust in the corner of the living room (boy, does that sound familiar).  It seems kind of morbid to me but I guess it’s just her way of making lite of the impending reality; the unknowns of death everyone must face.

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Fertility Rites

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Eastra, the doll of the season, was telling me the other day that in ancient times the beginning of spring at or about the time of the vernal equinox was celebrated with fertility rites which were meant to encourage a general fecundity among all living things animal and vegetable.

Many cultures had gods and goddesses honored in these rites; there was Artemis in Greece, Cebele in Phrygia, Diana in Ephesus and Attis the god of ever-reviving vegetation who was believed to have been born of a virgin and who died and was reborn annually.

I was trying to imagine what these rites might have been like. They probably involved a lot of fertilizing of various seeds and things and to get everyone into the mood, to get their energy up, to really get into the re-generation mind set there probably was a bit of strong drink, wild dancing and singing.

I found out Cebele the Phrygian Earth goddess was honored with a procession involving wild, high pitched flute music and drumming, scattered rose petals and clouds of incense followed by priests and priestesses scourging themselves with sharp knives.

But that was mild compared to the cult of Ishtar that may have involved child sacrifice, ritual copulation and virginal girls dancing around large male genitalia.

Whatever the rites involved the celebrants must have thought it worked. Besides the great fun had by all (excepting the sacrificial victim) animals reproduced, babies were born and crops grew. It does seem pretty magical and I guess it was hard for most people to take for granted the resurrection of the dormant (or dead) without providing some sort of penitential assistance even though we all know Mother Earth is a gigantic incubator and really doesn’t need that kind of help.

I think I’ll celebrate Mother’s magic with a nice contemplative walk in the woods.

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Beyond Space and Time

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Free-thinking Frank was telling me the other day about this group-a movement really-of skeptics dedicated to the task of debunking all things paranormal like ESP, UFO sightings, conversing with the deceased, telekinesis, and anything else they see as magical thinking.  They’re a conscientious bunch, Frank says, avoiding generalization and attending to the particular, which means they pretty much take all claims seriously.

Employing the scientific method these skeptics seek out verifiable data and eye-witnesses with consistent, non-contradictory accounts but for the most part are seeking normal and natural explanations for the anomalous phenomena thought of as paranormal.  Frank said these skeptics find religious claims dubious as well but aren’t inclined to consider them for analysis since they rely so heavily on non-falsifiable premises.

All in all, Frank said he thought the skeptics are on the right track attempting as they are to clear the air of the fog of magical thinking, you know, putting people on the path of verifiable truth.

As I thought about it, I wasn’t so sure; I found myself skeptical of the skeptics.  It seems to me science has relinquished its claim to the ground of truth these days.  The space-time continuum among other things has really messed with our intuitive sense of the cosmos.  Do our processes of thought even correspond to the structure of nature?

So, for me, it’s time to re-examine the paranormal.  The first thing I’m going to do is dig out my birth chart and see what the stars have in store for me.


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