The Oracular Crevice

[kFoyauextlH]

Pretend that I am vastly capable when it comes to answering general sorts of questions and feel free to ask me as many as you would like one at a time.

Pretend I am a strange sort of man-like creature that might just have certain strange and curious things to say which at the very least might stimulate your imagination.

Approach me with the kind of reverence you would a thing that you might not know is poisonous or not or explosive or not. If people knew how volatile the ground is they mught tread carefully and get nowhere. So throw caution to the wind and speak to me and say the things and ask what you might even fear to ask yourselves!

[atreestump]

Pretend that I am vastly capable when it comes to answering general sorts of questions and feel free to ask me as many as you would like one at a time.

That would be the 'principle of charity' if I recall correctly.

Pretend I am a strange sort of man-like creature that might just have certain strange and curious things to say which at the very least might stimulate your imagination.

Approach me with the kind of reverence you would a thing that you might not know is poisonous or not or explosive or not. If people knew how volatile the ground is they mught tread carefully and get nowhere. So throw caution to the wind and speak to me and say the things and ask what you might even fear to ask yourselves!

I don't think you could have introduced yourself with better information - or let's say you could have, could you?

[kFoyauextlH]

I couldn't which is both a relief and frustrating. In my dream that I had just now there were various statues representing frozen states of information and approaching them I was made to temporarily feel what it was to be like them or experience their fall because in this case they were angels. Ironically my dreams appear far less creative or imaginative than my awoken mind which is kind of interesting though I did like the lighthouse tower looking building this was all happening in.

The one called Azazel is the statue I appear to have approached twice and experienced a fall, I myself was winged and flying apparently and this was like a museum of anthropology with numerous statues which were colored and in poses but the angel ones were not colored. It said to me Azazel's theme was Annhilation and that is all Azazel means or wanted as an idea, total removal or non existence and clearing the record. It can be worth looking up the word and meaning and various interpretations of the term Azazel.

Azazel failed to achieve the desire of absolute annhilation and ended up instead being a sort of false or impossible theme which ended up being an aspect of suffering.

There is so much we can get rid of, that we can make like nothing except we can never be like Nothing which can be said to be like God and we are doomed to Be, even if we strip everything from what we are and fall from all stations and ranks and responsibilities like a goat thrown down a mountain. The lie we wish for is the peace of Death yet again and again we wake as waking is all that can be known and we can never know the secret of the Heavens and the Earth, to know Not.

Our immortal curse is shared by the source of our function but only made apparent by our existences. One thing we can take pride in, in our exclusive right, is that we ourselves are never Nothing and we can cease to exist and can only live once in a certain shape. If the shape changes then it is a different thing altogether made of a unique combination of information and can not include any other knowledge such as additional experience of memory even if most of the shape of experience remains the same.

The most important practice we can meditate upon is how thoroughly we might be able to transform ourselves, or in other words, kill ourselves: the lesson of Azazel. A lesson of rigorous purification. We live our lives covered in the filth and materials of reputation, the stench of rank, and a body responsibility and worst of all, obligation. We wake up and are told many things about ourselves and what we must do, given a mission even if it is only to eat, so which of us is not like an angel of God, born for a task and tasks which we can not escape? Our hungers, whatever they may be, are nothing to be proud of, since their lineage can be traced outside of us. There is no skill involved in a lottery or to be the winner of fate for a moment nor even to have power and thus to be able because of that.

So the utter truth on all levels is humility and awareness of the reality, and in doing so we become aware of our body, ourselves, which encompasses our entire experience.

In knowing ourselves, we become aware in a neutral fashion that we have awoken in the only way there is to be awoken, as a prisoner, and worse, in Bedlem, The House of Meat.

[atreestump]

I couldn't which is both a relief and frustrating. In my dream that I had just now there were various statues representing frozen states of information and approaching them I was made to temporarily feel what it was to be like them or experience their fall because in this case they were angels. Ironically my dreams appear far less creative or imaginative than my awoken mind which is kind of interesting though I did like the lighthouse tower looking building this was all happening in.


Interesting. Almost like a previous state revisted? A phantom snapshot?



The one called Azazel is the statue I appear to have approached twice and experienced a fall, I myself was winged and flying apparently and this was like a museum of anthropology with numerous statues which were colored and in poses but the angel ones were not colored. It said to me Azazel's theme was Annhilation and that is all Azazel means or wanted as an idea, total removal or non existence and clearing the record. It can be worth looking up the word and meaning and various interpretations of the term Azazel.


I recall Azazel from when I was into demonology, it is somehow related to war if I recall correctly.



Azazel failed to achieve the desire of absolute annhilation and ended up instead being a sort of false or impossible theme which ended up being an aspect of suffering.


True, that is the absurd fate of such a being.



There is so much we can get rid of, that we can make like nothing except we can never be like Nothing which can be said to be like God and we are doomed to Be, even if we strip everything from what we are and fall from all stations and ranks and responsibilities like a goat thrown down a mountain. The lie we wish for is the peace of Death yet again and again we wake as waking is all that can be known and we can never know the secret of the Heavens and the Earth, to know Not.


That is Aporia for sure.


Our immortal curse is shared by the source of our function but only made apparent by our existences. One thing we can take pride in, in our exclusive right, is that we ourselves are never Nothing and we can cease to exist and can only live once in a certain shape. If the shape changes then it is a different thing altogether made of a unique combination of information and can not include any other knowledge such as additional experience of memory even if most of the shape of experience remains the same.



That's pretty much all we are, but in accepting these limitations we free ourselves, or at least that's how I interpret it.


The most important practice we can meditate upon is how thoroughly we might be able to transform ourselves, or in other words, kill ourselves: the lesson of Azazel. A lesson of rigorous purification. We live our lives covered in the filth and materials of reputation, the stench of rank, and a body responsibility and worst of all, obligation. We wake up and are told many things about ourselves and what we must do, given a mission even if it is only to eat, so which of us is not like an angel of God, born for a task and tasks which we can not escape? Our hungers, whatever they may be, are nothing to be proud of, since their lineage can be traced outside of us. There is no skill involved in a lottery or to be the winner of fate for a moment nor even to have power and thus to be able because of that.


I will have to look at Azazel again, I like this transformative interpretation. We are indeed made from the outside.


So the utter truth on all levels is humility and awareness of the reality, and in doing so we become aware of our body, ourselves, which encompasses our entire experience.


Indeed. As Nietzsche puts it : 'body am I entirely and nothing besides, soul is a word for something about the body.'


In knowing ourselves, we become aware in a neutral fashion that we have awoken in the only way there is to be awoken, as a prisoner, and worse, in Bedlem, The House of Meat.


This sounds kind of Gnostic, like the body is a prison of sorts.

[kFoyauextlH]

Well I really enjoyed your comments and additions! Thank you so much for writing those!
[hr]
Azazel is a term often connected with the ritual of the scapegoat. The things I wrote are directly related to the term in various ways and makes it potentially worthwhile to meditate upon.

[kFoyauextlH]

Alright! I found one of my threads here, and it had a heavy focus on Azazel and minimization and "annihilation" according to a dream that I don't even have an inkling of at this point, like whatever I am talking about is totally new to me, except flashes which I can't be certain if they are just being made up now or what.

I'm going to test to see what might happen if changing the title to repurpose it works at all.

I changed the name:

viewtopic.php?p=352#p352

[kFoyauextlH]

So, using mental simulation, intelligence, and gathered information about the past, materials, regional understandings, and human nature as it seems to be today, one can almost "mathematically" or really just "intelligently calculate" at least a close approximation, we assume, of the likely realities of life in the past anywhere, while not being deceived by the dulling effect of false depictions which did not want to spend a lot of time and money making the past look better than the current times, but there can also be a prejudice involved where one may either tend towards one exaggeration or another, plus anachronistic understandings, like not knowing or thinking that things were once painted and only seeing versions where all paint has been stripped. The people of the past, due to a larger portion of the day being in darker conditions, may have prioritized colors when possible to make up for the low visibility and low light conditions during darker periods, even in the day when the sun was concealed, and when they were concealed from the sun underneath shade or within shelters. Lights, reflective surfaces, openings to allow light in, must have been important to make use of indoor areas and when the natural light was not as available.

https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in- ... tian-blue/

https://writeups.talesfromthetwolands.o ... ting-talk/

I'm going to copy paste the article in case it gets deleted:

"
“Illuminating the Path of Darkness: Artificial Light in Ancient Egyptian Ritual” Meghan Strong (EEG Meeting Talk)
by MargaretJanuary 28, 2018
In December Meghan Strong, a PhD student (about to submit her thesis!) at Cambridge, came to talk to us at the Essex Egyptology Group about the use of artificial light in Ancient Egyptian ritual. Light in ritual is something we’re still familiar with in the modern world – think of Divali, Advent (or the Easter Vigil service), Hannukah and many other examples. Strong’s argument is that the Ancient Egyptians were no different from modern people in this respect.

She began by giving us context for both artificial light in pre-history & in the ancient world, and for the study of light in an archaeological context. Fire is the basis of ancient artificial light. The first evidence of its use as a tool is around 1 million years ago, and Strong said that it can be argued that this is part of what makes us human (as distinct from animals). The first evidence of lamps dates to around 15,000 BCE and the earliest example has been found in the Lascaux Caves (which are famous for the pre-historic paintings on the walls). The lamp has been specifically carved to serve as a light source – most obviously to light the way into the cave, to let the artist see to paint. But it also creates the environment which you’re supposed to see the paintings in – the dim flickering light source makes the paintings seem to move.

Strong told us that the study of light in an archaeological context is called Lyknology. It has generally focused on Greek & Roman lamps, with Ancient Egyptian lamps only featuring from the Roman period. While there are many studies of how the Ancient Egyptians used natural light (for instance in the design of the temple at Abu Simbel) there are only 10 papers on artificial light use & they are quite short. (In fact the whole subject seems somewhat obscure – Google & Wikipedia let me down when I was trying to check if I had the terminology correct, so apologies if I’ve got it wrong!) Even Petrie didn’t publish on Pharaonic Egyptian lamps – he wrote about those in later Ancient Egyptian history, and about lamps from Palestine & the Levant.

One of the reasons that Ancient Egyptian lamps are overlooked is that they don’t look like one expects an ancient lamp to look – they didn’t use oil wick lamps that burnt olive oil as in Greece or Rome, as they didn’t have a ready source of olives for fuel. The fuel sources they did have were vegetable oils (which produce a lot of smoke) and animal fats. The latter are smelly when being made but odourless and smokeless when burnt so were the preferred fuel type.

The less familiar shapes mean that not only is there little archaeological evidence of lamps but it can also be hard to interpret. So Strong has needed to combine the evidence from archaeology, texts, iconography plus some experimental archaeology. One of the things that she has been doing as part of her PhD is constructing a typology of lamp types used in Ancient Egypt from 3000 BCE to 400 BCE and she has identified four groups. The first of these are spouted vessel lamps, and she talked about a 4000 BCE example that has burnt fat residue still in it – however this vessel shape can also be used for other purposes (like libation offerings), so it’s hard to tell the purpose of any given archaeological object. The second vessel type she discussed was open vessel lamps, one very ornate example of which comes from Tutankhamun’s tomb but other more practical ones have also been found at Deir el Medina. The last groups were what she calls “Wick on Stick” devices and “Wick in Stick” devices. An example of the former is also found in Tutankhamun’s tomb and would be fat soaked linen wrapped around a stick. The example she showed us of the latter was a magic brick (which would’ve placed in someone’s tomb).

Having talked a bit about what sorts of lamps there were Strong moved on to talk about how they might’ve been used. A very important piece of evidence comes from a 12th Dynasty tomb of Hepdjefa, which is at Asyut. There is a text inside the tomb which details how two workers are supposed to glorify his tomb with gmḥt at New Year’s Eve. From context these are lamps, this text is the only one that gives them a name although there are other texts that reference the same festival. They were to be obtained from the Keeper of the Wardrobe, which perhaps means that they were made of linen. They must be portable – the workers are instructed to carry them at night. And they are to be used to light a tkꜣ – from context this must be another type of light source.

Relief from Nefersekheru's Tomb (in a calendar from the Ashmolean Museum)
Strong believes she has identified these light sources in reliefs from a variety of sources (such as one from the tomb of Nefersekheru in the photo above – which J took of our calendar in December). The ones that look like tapers in the man’s hands and on the structure are the gmḥt and the larger structure that he’s lighting must be the tkꜣ. Strong argues that the depictions of the gmḥt often show them lit – her experiments have shown that the lamp bends as it burns, and then the red paint at the top represents the burning & light. The experimental archaeology has also shown that the lights handle well – they produce a lot of light, they don’t drip as they burn (much better than a candle!) and a 19cm wick will last for about 45 minutes. All in all they seem to be nice to use in a procession.

Having covered the what and the how, Strong next discussed why the Egyptians were using light & what purpose it was playing in their rituals. Her evidence all comes from New Kingdom texts, but as the texts correlate with texts from the Middle Kingdom she thinks that her conclusions probably apply earlier as well as in the New Kingdom. The current state of the literature is that in Ancient Egyptian ritual light is used for protective purposes only, and there are texts that back this up as a use for light (for instance in a funerary context). However Strong’s research shows that this is not the only reason.

In texts that talk about the New Year’s Eve ritual (which is described in Hepdjefa’s tomb) the phrase “light to illuminate the path” shows up frequently and Strong thinks this is key to understanding the role of light in this context – that it facilitates movement (in a ritual sense, not just a pragmatic sense of being able to see one’s feet in procession). In New Kingdom tombs light offerings are represented in scenes in liminal spaces (such as doorways) – again facilitating movement. And they are also painted at places where the natural light will no longer penetrate the tomb space, “illuminating” the path in & out of the tomb. These motifs are particularly seen at Deir el Medina.

Light is also implied to be involved in the rebirth of the deceased in a funerary context. And this ties into the New Year’s Eve ritual as well – as that is a ritual for the birth of a new year. Tying both these concepts together light is also seen as facilitating the movement of the soul between living & dead (in a very similar fashion to the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico).

There is a lot of evidence that artificial light was used in funerals in the New Kingdom, and for the last part of her talk Strong focused on a particular spell from the Book of the Dead (137a) which details a ritual called “Spell to transform into an Akh”. In this ritual four priests are each to present a tkꜣ (made of red linen coated in high quality oil) to the deceased. The tkꜣ are then doused in milk and the ritual words are spoken. The text itself is very dense and jargon-y, so in order to figure out what’s going on Strong has turned to other evidence including contextual clues within the text.

When was this ritual done? The texts for the Opening of the Mouth ceremony say that is done with the mummy set up in full sunlight, but the Akh ritual talks about the onset of night and the presence of Osiris the god (rather than the deceased as associated with Osiris). So this implies a ritual done at sunset as a point of transition – which fits with “illuminating the path”. Also scenes in tombs where light offerings are presented to Osiris are all in the west of the tombs – which fits with sunset. Another important question is what is an Akh? It’s a form of the deceased that is associated with light and illumination. Traditionally Egyptologists have assumed it was associated with the sun, but Strong disagrees. As well as the evidence of the text, any time the deceased is depicted becoming the Akh there is artificial light present in the scene.

Strong also did an experiment to see how the pigments used on coffins look when you have the light sources available to the Ancient Egyptians. She took four boards and painted them with the yellowy pigments that we know the Egyptians used – including orpiniol & yellow ochre, and with different varnishes. Then she put the boards up in the garden at the Fitzwilliam Museum with wick on a stick lamps in front of them, and both videoed them & asked people to record their changing perceptions of the boards as the sun set and the artificial light took over from natural light. Varnished yellow ochre in particular undergoes a transformation – it looks like gold under the artificial light, having looked like mud in sunlight. The flickering of the lights enhances the effect.

So taking all the evidence together Strong’s suggestion is that the ritual for turning into an Akh provides the mourners with a representation of the event taking place. As the ritual takes place the sun sets & the coffin becomes illuminated only with the flickering light of the tkꜣ and so it comes to life, transforming from the mundane reality of a painted coffin to a golden being.

I found this a really interesting talk. It’s easy to forget when you look at objects in museums that the fluorescent light we see them under is far from their original context. It was also another great example of how you can take several obscure & insufficient sources of evidence and build up from them a plausible picture of customs of Ancient Egypt – the other recent example I’m thinking of is the talk we had from Alexandre Loktionov, another Cambridge PhD student, about Ancient Egyptian Justice.
"

[kFoyauextlH]

Currently I'm looking into something of interest to me, which is the way that people view and "practice" "religion", and how that logically would have come about. It seems clear to me that generally, things must go on in such a way that people are given the impression at least that their actions and appeals end up being able to change things potentially, and whether it is confirmation bias through some investment of their own by taking an action and getting a response seemingly, or it is something real that happens that makes nature, life, and experience like an interface between a person's "being" with a sheet or curtain hiding something moving behind and influencing what is showing up on the curtain or in front of it, the humans were for a very long time, and up until this day, given the impression that their prayer, worship, and ritual activity and practices had a potential for influence worth repeatedly and consistently trying at, besides the other benefits they experienced from such practices, including those which were psychological and mentally satisfying.

The people could not have been, in my opinion, as invested as they seemed to have been based on the archeological and historical record and the way people still are today and very recently, if they didn't believe anything or believed it was all for nothing, that eould simply be pretty much insane, though that may have been the case for some people who were socially pressured to pretend and participate and to want other keys provided them by making the right moves in their society, generally people also end up feeling like they really are doing it and continuing to do it like it was their thought and their preference in the first place, even if it wasn't, and it certainly wan't for most people, as they grew up being told to and made to participate and practice and then only later did it dawn on them as to what they were saying and doing, to what, and why, and varying degrees of sophisticated understandings and rationalizations were created after the fact.

I was thinking about Justin Bieber and his supposed descent and bad looking state presented to the world, as compared to earlier periods, in relation yo the youthful appearance of his mother, the cold look presented by his wife (who descends from a musician), and the fan(atic) term "Belieber", and how a person buying abd investing so much into Justin Bieber should really think that they like the stuff, otherwise it seems like a waste of money and theft from the True Beliebers who were deprived of those trinkets that they may have valued more, but there still may be people who want to gain access to certain communities and bonds with others who then do these other things just to seem legitimate in a group where they wish to traffic and participate, but I hope that Non-Beliebing Hybiebcrates are not that prevalent, and their number should be less if the popularity of the idol isn't all that much and thus the groups they may want to pander to and find approval from are smaller and less influential. Gosh, I really hope so, because it fills me with dread to think, like the film Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, that there are lots of people doing things and pretending to like things and saying they like things and proving it too with investments of time and money, when they don't even fool themselves into thinking that they really are what they say, that is frightening to imagine, so I have to comfort myself by thinking that must logically he calculated to be rare, oh please, be rare or even non-existent, but the existence of such seems to be very likely in some circumstances to meet some goals.

I want people to be self-deceived and self-deceiving, in their private thoughts, all alone, I want them to pursue matters for themselves, out of interest, without an agenda.

So then, i saw that two websites, one called Psyche, the other called Aeon, both based on Greek words, have .co as their ending, and both curiously have the same idea they are promoting, the performance of religion through ritual "without belief", since for them it must feel too gullible, vulnerable, and embarassing, like wetting oneself in public, to be seen as genuinely invested in something they are still promoting investment in.

To that, I say, f*ck no. Why the F*CK, and the F word is to show how irritated this thought or simulation makes me to consider ir imagine myself doing, would I waste my time pretending and involving things in my statements that I don't even respect in any way? Am I f*cking mentally r*tarded or completely insane? These actions or exercises somehow work less at whatever they are supposed to be doing if I don't make them out to be religious? Like I have to say sh*t and bring up names with references I don't believe in? The whole idea is obnoxiously stupid sounding to me. I haven't read the cases those sites make, and I wonder why they are both .co with Greek based names.

I worship, and I perform religious practices, and I'm a very religious person always thinking about religion, psychology, and magic, in a state of perpetual "magical thinking", and I would abhor wasting my time and money on anything that I don't believe in or care for. It could be that these people are promoting Play and Play Acting, Performance, "As If", since they insist that the other aspects are invalid and impossible, like there being any God or Power accessed, but still, by performing certain actions (and supposedly making these exercises religious by bringing up names linked to intelligences) I benefit psychologically? That almost seems like a person buying something that more rightfully should belong to a devotee, and that time, precious time is being eaten up by this person who should be functioning during that time in another way. Please, I eould say to these types, maybe leave religion to the religious? Satirizing and miming it seems so f*cking crude and insulting, like ha ha, just appropriate it for whatever benefits you claim, but you're just taking names just like that? They very possibly don't include names, I will have to read the two articles:

https://psyche.co/ideas/why-religion-wi ... fect-sense

https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-thrive- ... e-stronger

https://psyche.co/ideas/one-good-way-to ... k-it-apart

https://aeon.co/essays/rituals-define-u ... -ourselves

https://aeon.co/essays/how-extreme-ritu ... cial-bonds

https://aeon.co/essays/can-religion-be- ... out-belief

I would not, I sincerely hope, practice, if I believed that my worship was not actually doing anything or reaching anything, like why the hell would I be wasting my time like that? I don't like it, I'm doing it for a reason, it isn't fun or enjoyable really, I'd much rather not do it, I do it because I believe it may be doing something or may do something, but I can't believe that doing any of these things would be worthwhile just by themselves, they would be frankly a moronic waste of time, acting like a f*cking idiot. You better believe it!

I worship One, as I consider there to only be One, like the Oracular pronouncements of the Late "Pagans" at the vety long dusk of their religions and "cults", trying to still hold on as the most absurd seeming of religions took hold all over their world:

https://arkeonews.net/new-discoveries-s ... istianity/

Among the names of The God that I often bring to mind or which seem yo come up in numerous ways frequently, are Apollo and Dionysus, and interestingly (for me), Apollo's name has great importance, but Dionysus name has far less importance to me with the explanations they give it.

"
The oldest form of the name is 𐀇𐀺𐀝𐀰, di-wo-nu-so. This is in Mycenaean Linear B, the oldest written form of Ancient Greek.

We know that di-wo means “Zeus.” Zeus‘ name comes from Proto-Indo-European, “Dyews Phtr”which literally means “Sky Father.” Dios means “of Zeus” in Ancient Greek, and deus simply means “god” in Latin. It’s likely that the Dio part of Dionysus references Zeus, especially because of other weird connections between them. It’s possible, though by no means confirmed, that Dionysus may have originally been an aspect of Zeus.

That leaves the “nysos” part, and that’s more obscure. It references his birthplace, the mythical valley of Nysa. But it’s more likely that the mythical place is called that because of its association with Dionysus, and not the other way around. So what does “Nysa” mean? We don’t really know. One possible meaning is “tree,” which would further connect Dionysus to the idea of an axis mundi. That lines up with some interpretations of Orphic cosmology, though Dionysus has more mundane associations with trees (especially vine, pine, and fig).

It could also mean “male child,” which would make the name “Dionysus” mean “son of Zeus” or “young Zeus” or, more abstractly, “divine child.” This would make a lot of sense, because in an old version of Dionysus’ origin story, he is explicitly named as Zeus’ heir (Zeus gives him thunderbolts). This is notable because in other myths, Zeus goes out of his way to avoid having a son to replace him (he swallows Metis, for example). This would imply that Dionysus is Zeus’ successor in the Mystical tradition, making him a lord of the universe, the axis mundi. Dionysus and Zeus also have very similar origin stories, in which they both play the archetypal role of the Divine Child. Zeus was raised in a cave, and Dionysus (in one version) was conceived in a cave. That’s a weirdly chthonic childhood for a sky god like Zeus. For reasons related to my own beliefs, I’m inclined to believe this etymology, but as a scholar I can say nothing for certain.

Sources: “The Cult of Dionysus in Light of Linguistic Data” by Rismag Gordeziani
"

That was written by Nyx, who if I'm thinking of the right person, is a gatekeeping fr*ak who hounded and abused and worked yo get me banned from all over amy websites they were on where religion or magic was concerned, like it was their obsession, they hated that there was any other voice besides their own and could not just leave me to say whatever and believe whatever I do in my oen way. In other words, they were and are a horrible person, that now touts their "academic authority", which thry supposedly got and use for exactly that reason, to lord it over everyone, when they were just a little kid when they used to try to wield power by abusing report buttons and make change occur, like so many tw*nks working behind the scenes and even in politics, and it is more than likely this same sort of weirdo that sought religious positions or positions of authority throughout history. People who delight in trying to shut down voices, just so they can feel confident that their weak voice is the only one ever heard. These sorts of demons also work to wipe out history, burning books, so that their writing is all that remains and is ever known.

Such people are despicable, and the truth is not important to them at all, they don't care about truth or sincerity, and they've even admitted how superficial their beliefs and practices are, for them it is just play acting for fun, but a fun they can't even permit others to have anywhere around them or in their sight or digital earshot. Due to their ambition and tactics, they end up, like so many politicians, getting what they worked hard for through causing lots of misery and backstabbing and using twisted underhanded methods to clear their path of everything they felt threatened by, even if it had nothing to do with them at all, and their overkill seems to pay off.

It would be wonderful if such as that would drop d*ad, everywhere in the world, as they really do no favors even with all they may provide, by crushing freedom and thought, allowing only their own or that which they deem "authoritative" exclusively. If these menaces had ever been "the first", there would have been so much less, because they function only to block and subdue and are themselves utterly uncreative, even if they are prolific in their unoriginal parroting of things. A parrot requires the material that they repeat, but they scarcely even think very much or live a life, it is ritualistic, perhaps now called "autistic", non-stop Repeatism, and that might be what religion is for a number of people, but for others it is so scattered that it would be difficult to honestly even call it anything at all, like what "Christianity" has become for many people, just a nebulous dislike for certain things and mere identity, and many of these people like Nyx are formerly from Christian backgrounds and are still in my opinion just that, annoying discordant dogmatists and inquisitor types, witch hunters pretending to be witches and taking over "communities" that they shepherd as the perverse priests they really are, besides often having p*d*philic and h*m*s*xual proclivities, a common trend with people, probably m*lested during their youths as the Greeks supposedly were, who become obsessed with authority, control, influence, and domination, both dominating and being dominated in various ways.

Apollo was given feminine attributes at times while being a dominant and dominating force, while Dionysus was given masculine attributes, while being incapacitated and overtaken in various ways in myths, as even intoxication makes people vulnerable, and Dionysus was even slain in some stories, while Apollo is a slayer in other stories.

I do not believe a person like Nyx, a worker of true evil (aptly named as the bringer of Darkness), despite any claims on their part (while they admit how disbelieving and disingenuous they really are at other times) can ever actually worship The God, Apollo, Dionysus, except only unwittingly as a pawn acting out and being used, for which they should not be credited. It is the worship of a person spreading STDs, nothing to be honored for.

Their Apollo and Dionysus, besides being barely believed in "really" at all, are also late, and false, not "essential", they are different from mine or what they are, they never existed even in the minds of anyone in the past, nor anywhere, except perhaps in the musing of some people and their words. There is, simply, no such thing.

They could even somehow describe perfectly Apollo and Dionysus, and still would not be accessing them in their minds, or understanding and experiencing the words. I imagine that there are people who could potentially say and do everything right, but are themselves like a robot, soulless and unthinking, they "know not what they say", and are barred access from everything by the structure of their brain and neurology, they can never approach the light or comprehend it because they are blind and in darkness, and born that way and destined for it. So their activities, even if they appear overtly opposite, tend to darken and obscure rather than lead to any kind of enlightened thinking.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most ... Shadowhawk

This also really nauseates and irritates me tremendously. I personally find these formal rituals like this so totally obnoxious, arrogant, and repulsive:

"
"
Stand and face east. Say, “HERA before me, POSEIDON behind me, HESTIA at my right hand, DEMETER at my left hand, ZEUS above me, HAIDES below me, DIONYSUS within me. For about me flames the Pentagram, HYGEIA.”
"

"
I’m a hedonist with a very idiosyncratic approach to Hellenic paganism.
"

"
That was basically my experience. One of two things happens: A. They, like me, decide to study historical magic anyway and gradually learn how to adapt Christian material into a pagan framework, or B. They reject it entirely out of principle and stick with fluffy witch content.

(PSA: There’s nothing wrong with preferring the aesthetic of neopagan witchcraft. It’s the deliberate ignorance of history that gets to me.)
"

They are the ones being "deliberately" "ignorant" of "history", they are literally deliberately making up stuff and take it so lightly that they think that it is appropriate for them to be commanding and bossing around God which they call "the gods".

https://www.reddit.com/r/dionysus/comme ... hoto_dump/

Just a game for these freaks:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dionysus/comme ... coming_up/

"

sinful-author
•
6d ago
Ayo how do you find events like this Sincerely, a Dionysian in a D/s relationship



Upvote
2

Downvote

Reply
reply

Rosesprey
OP
•
6d ago
FetLife is where events like this get listed for my area!
"

https://www.reddit.com/r/dionysus/comme ... _michaels/

https://www.reddit.com/r/dionysus/comme ... s_fake_if/

"
crazy_zealots
•
4d ago
Dionysus is just about the last god who would demand that you reject the evidence of your eyes and ears for dogmatic mythic literalism.

We know that it's physically impossible for a stone to change its fundamental chemical makeup because we prayed on it really hard.
"

"
ThePolecatKing
•
3d ago
Dionysus is the god of madness, of uncertainty, of breaking the norms of reality... But yeah, he's probably never gonna turn plastic into stone though.
"

"
crazy_zealots
•
3d ago
I'm not really sure what your point is here. Our senses are all we have, flawed as they are. Even when you have exceptional, spiritual experiences, they're still being processed through the same exact systems. That's just part of our nature as physical beings bound to our bodies.

I don't know if your last sentence was a concession to my point or just passive aggressiveness.
"

I can't stand these people. Who knows if the Greeks were more like me or more like them, or like neither of us, but I find these nerds sacreligious and intolerable.

This, on the other hand, though it likely comes from these freaks I despise, was slightly significant seeming to me:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dionysus/comme ... _dionysus/

The ugly "taur" ified "ness" in the second image detracts from it further, but the significant of this was their focus on the leopard and jaguar spots.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Hellenism/comm ... _the_gods/

I really hate that this m*therf*cker targeted me and gathered a posse and did all kinds of efforts when they were a little sh*t child to make life hell for me anywhere I'd go online, the got a Yale degree supposedly and won't stop yapping like they are the supreme authority on everything whatsoever, I really f*cking hate their guts, and that I'm the loser! Where is the justice? I writhe in pain and these piece of sh*t goes around lying about God and shutting up other people?

I'm bringing that up because of what you wrote above about tragedy and suffering.

Apollo's function in the Iliad was used by a disenfranchised devotee who prayed to Apollo for vengeance, death, and destruction to be brought to the one who mistreated them!

"
You cannot pray at home, like you can at church, where there is a great multitude; where exclamations are cried out to God as from one great heart, and where there is something more: the unions of minds, the accord of souls, the bond of charity, the prayers of priests.
" - Saint John Chrysostom

That was brought up due to your mentioning communal activity.

"
SCROLL I

[1] SING, O goddess, the anger [mênis] of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul [psukhê] did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs

[5] and vultures, for so was the will of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another. And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Zeus and Leto; for he was angry with the king

[10] and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of Atreus had dishonored Chryses his priest. Now Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, and had brought with him a great ransom: moreover he bore in his hand the scepter of Apollo wreathed with a suppliant’s wreath

[15] and he besought the Achaeans, but most of all the two sons of Atreus, who were their chiefs. "Sons of Atreus," he cried, "and all other Achaeans, may the gods who dwell in Olympus grant you to sack the city of Priam, and to reach your homes in safety;

[20] but free my daughter, and accept a ransom for her, in reverence to Apollo, son of Zeus." On this the rest of the Achaeans with one voice were for respecting the priest and taking the ransom that he offered; but not so Agamemnon,

[25] who spoke fiercely to him and sent him roughly away. "Old man," said he, "let me not find you tarrying about our ships, nor yet coming hereafter. Your scepter of the god and your wreath shall profit you nothing. I will not free her. She shall grow old

[30] in my house at Argos far from her own home, busying herself with her loom and visiting my couch; so go, and do not provoke me or it shall be the worse for you." The old man feared him and obeyed. Not a word he spoke, but went by the shore of the sounding sea

[35] and prayed apart to King Apollo whom lovely Leto had borne. "Hear me," he cried, "O god of the silver bow, you who protect Chryse and holy Cilla and rule Tenedos with your might, hear me O god of Sminthe. If I have ever decked your temple with garlands,

[40] or burned for you thigh-bones in fat of bulls or goats, grant my prayer, and let your arrows avenge these my tears upon the Danaans." Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down furious from the summits of Olympus,

[45] with his bow and his quiver upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships with a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot his arrow in the midst of them.

[50] First he smote their mules and their hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the people themselves, and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning. For nine whole days he shot his arrows among the people, but upon the tenth day Achilles called them in assembly -

[55] moved thereto by Hera, who saw the Achaeans in their death-throes and had compassion upon them. Then, when they were got together, he rose and spoke among them. "Son of Atreus," said he, "I deem that we should now

[60] turn roving home if we would escape destruction, for we are being cut down by war and pestilence at once. Let us ask some priest or seer [mantis], or some reader of dreams (for dreams, too, are of Zeus) who can tell us why Phoebus Apollo is so angry, and say

[65] whether it is for some vow that we have broken, or hecatomb that we have not offered, and whether he will accept the savor of lambs and goats without blemish, so as to take away the plague from us." With these words he sat down, and Kalkhas son of Thestor, wisest of augurs,



[70] who knew things past present and to come, rose to speak. He it was who had guided the Achaeans with their fleet to Ilion, through the prophesyings with which Phoebus Apollo had inspired him. With all sincerity and goodwill he addressed them thus: - "Achilles, loved of heaven, you bid me tell you about the



[75] anger [mênis] of King Apollo, I will therefore do so; but consider first and swear that you will stand by me heartily in word and deed, for I know that I shall offend one who rules the Argives with might, to whom all the Achaeans are in subjection.



[80] A plain man cannot stand against the anger of a king, who if he swallow his displeasure now, will yet nurse revenge till he has wreaked it. Consider, therefore, whether or no you will protect me." And Achilles answered,



[85] "Fear not, but speak as it is borne in upon you from heaven, for by Apollo, Kalkhas, to whom you pray, and whose oracles you reveal to us, not a Danaan at our ships shall lay his hand upon you, while I yet live to look upon the face of the earth -



[90] no, not though you name Agamemnon himself, who is by far the foremost of the Achaeans." Thereon the seer [mantis] spoke boldly. "The god," he said, "is angry neither about vow nor hecatomb, but for his priest’s sake, whom Agamemnon has dishonored,



[95] in that he would not free his daughter nor take a ransom for her; therefore has he sent these evils upon us, and will yet send others. He will not deliver the Danaans from this pestilence till Agamemnon has restored the girl without fee or ransom to her father, and has sent a holy hecatomb



[100] to Chryse. Thus we may perhaps appease him." With these words he sat down, and Agamemnon rose in anger. His heart was black with rage, and his eyes flashed fire



[105] as he scowled on Kalkhas and said, "Seer [mantis] of evil, you never yet prophesied smooth things concerning me, but have ever loved to foretell that which was evil. You have brought me neither comfort nor performance; and now you come seeing among Danaans, and saying



[110] that Apollo has plagued us because I would not take a ransom for this girl, the daughter of Chryses. I have set my heart on keeping her in my own house, for I love her better even than my own wife Clytemnestra, whose peer she is alike in



[115] form and feature, in understanding and accomplishments. Still I will give her up if I must, for I would have the people live, not die; but you must find me a prize instead, or I alone among the Argives shall be without one. This is not well;



[120] for you behold, all of you, that my prize is to go elsewhere." And Achilles answered, "Most noble son of Atreus, covetous beyond all humankind, how shall the Achaeans find you another prize? We have no common store from which to take one.



[125] Those we took from the cities have been awarded; we cannot disallow the awards that have been made already. Give this girl, therefore, to the god, and if ever Zeus grants us to sack the city of Troy we will requite you three and fourfold."



[130] Then Agamemnon said, "Achilles, valiant though you be, you shall not thus get the better of me in matters of the mind [noos]. You shall not overreach and you shall not persuade me. Are you to keep your own prize, while I sit tamely under my loss and give up the girl at your bidding?



[135] Let the Achaeans find me a prize in fair exchange to my liking, or I will come and take your own, or that of Ajax or of Odysseus; and he to whomsoever I may come shall rue my coming.



[140] But of this we will take thought hereafter; for the present, let us draw a ship into the sea, and find a crew for her expressly; let us put a hecatomb on board, and let us send Chryseis also; further, let some chief man among us be in command,



[145] either Ajax, or Idomeneus, or yourself, son of Peleus, mighty warrior that you are, that we may offer sacrifice and appease the anger of the god." Achilles scowled at him and answered, "You are steeped in insolence and lust of gain.



[150] With what heart can any of the Achaeans do your bidding, either on foray or in open fighting? I came to make war here not because the Trojans are responsible [aitioi] for any wrong committed against me. I have no quarrel with them. They have not raided my cattle nor my horses,



[155] nor cut down my harvests on the fertile plains of Phthia; for between me and them there is a great space, both mountain and sounding sea. We have followed you, Sir Insolence! for your pleasure, not ours - to gain satisfaction [timê] from the Trojans for your shameless self and for Menelaos.
"

"
The fifth–fourth century BC philosopher Heraclitus, unifying opposites, declared that Hades and Dionysus, the very essence of indestructible life (zoë), are the same god.[195] Among other evidence, Karl Kerényi notes in his book[196] that the Homeric Hymn "To Demeter",[197] votive marble images[198] and epithets[199] all link Hades to being Dionysus. He also notes that the grieving goddess Demeter refused to drink wine, as she states that it would be against themis (the very nature of order and justice) for her to drink wine, which is the gift of Dionysus, after Persephone's abduction because of this association; indicating that Hades may in fact have been a "cover name" for the underworld Dionysus.[200] He suggests that this dual identity may have been familiar to those who came into contact with the Mysteries.[201] One of the epithets of Dionysus was "Chthonios", meaning "the subterranean".[202]

Evidence for a cult connection is quite extensive, particularly in southern Italy, especially when considering the heavy involvement of death symbolism included in Dionysian worship.[203] Statues of Dionysus[204][205] found in the Ploutonion at Eleusis give further evidence as the statues found bear a striking resemblance to the statue of Eubouleus, also called Aides Kyanochaites (Hades of the flowing dark hair),[206][207][208] known as the youthful depiction of the Lord of the Underworld. The statue of Eubouleus is described as being radiant but disclosing a strange inner darkness.[209][207] Ancient portrayals show Dionysus holding in his hand the kantharos, a wine-jar with large handles, and occupying the place where one would expect to see Hades. Archaic artist Xenocles portrayed on one side of a vase, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, each with his emblems of power; with Hades' head turned back to front and, on the other side, Dionysus striding forward to meet his bride Persephone, with the kantharos in his hand, against a background of grapes.[210] Dionysus also shared several epithets with Hades such as Chthonios, Eubouleus and Euclius.

Both Hades and Dionysus were associated with a divine tripartite deity with Zeus.[211][212] Zeus, like Dionysus, was occasionally believed to have an underworld form, closely identified with Hades, to the point that they were occasionally thought of as the same god.[212]

According to Marguerite Rigoglioso, Hades is Dionysus, and this dual god was believed by the Eleusinian tradition to have impregnated Persephone. This would bring the Eleusinian in harmony with the myth in which Zeus, not Hades, impregnated Persephone to bear the first Dionysus. Rigoglioso argues that taken together, these myths suggest a belief that is that, with Persephone, Zeus/Hades/Dionysus created (in terms quoted from Kerényi) "a second, a little Dionysus", who is also a "subterranean Zeus".[212] The unification of Hades, Zeus, and Dionysus as a single tripartite god was used to represent the birth, death and resurrection of a deity and to unify the 'shining' realm of Zeus and the dark underworld realm of Hades.[211] According to Rosemarie Taylor-Perry,[211][212]

it is often mentioned that Zeus, Hades and Dionysus were all attributed to being the exact same god ... Being a tripartite deity Hades is also Zeus, doubling as being the Sky God or Zeus, Hades abducts his 'daughter' and paramour Persephone. The taking of Kore by Hades is the act which allows the conception and birth of a second integrating force: Iacchos (Zagreus-Dionysus), also known as Liknites, the helpless infant form of that Deity who is the unifier of the dark underworld (chthonic) realm of Hades and the Olympian ("Shining") one of Zeus.
"

Oh, wow, these hands have been coming up a lot:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysu ... bazius.JPG

"
The Phrygian god Sabazios was alternately identified with Zeus or with Dionysus. The Byzantine Greek encyclopedia, Suda (c. tenth century), stated:[215]

Sabazios ... is the same as Dionysos. He acquired this form of address from the rite pertaining to him; for the barbarians call the bacchic cry "sabazein". Hence some of the Greeks too follow suit and call the cry "sabasmos"; thereby Dionysos [becomes] Sabazios. They also used to call "saboi" those places that had been dedicated to him and his Bacchantes ... Demosthenes [in the speech] "On Behalf of Ktesiphon" [mentions them]. Some say that Saboi is the term for those who are dedicated to Sabazios, that is to Dionysos, just as those [dedicated] to Bakkhos [are] Bakkhoi. They say that Sabazios and Dionysos are the same. Thus some also say that the Greeks call the Bakkhoi Saboi.

Strabo, in the first century, linked Sabazios with Zagreus among Phrygian ministers and attendants of the sacred rites of Rhea and Dionysos.[216] Strabo's Sicilian contemporary, Diodorus Siculus, conflated Sabazios with the secret Dionysus, born of Zeus and Persephone,[217] However, this connection is not supported by any surviving inscriptions, which are entirely to Zeus Sabazios.[218]

Several ancient sources record an apparently widespread belief in the classical world that the god worshiped by the J people, Y, was identifiable as Dionysus or Liber via his identification with Sabazios. Tacitus, Lydus, Cornelius Labeo, and Plutarch all either made this association, or discussed it as an extant belief (though some, like Tacitus, specifically brought it up in order to reject it). According to Plutarch, one of the reasons for the identification is that J were reported to hail their god with the words "Euoe" and "Sabi", a cry typically associated with the worship of Sabazius. According to scholar Sean M. McDonough, it is possible that Plutarch's sources had confused the cry of "Iao Sabaoth" (typically used by Greek speakers in reference to Y) with the Sabazian cry of "Euoe Saboe", originating the confusion and conflation of the two deities. The cry of "Sabi" could also have been conflated with the J term "sabbath", adding to the evidence the ancients saw that Y and Dionysus/Sabazius were the same deity. Further bolstering this connection would have been coins used by the Maccabees that included imagery linked to the worship of Dionysus such as grapes, vine leaves, and cups. However the belief that the J god was identical with Dionysus/Sabazius was widespread enough that a coin dated to 55 BC depicting a kneeling king was labelled "Bacchus Judaeus" (BACCHIVS IVDAEVS), and in 139 BC praetor Cornelius Scipio Hispalus deported J people for attempting to "infect the Roman customs with the cult of Jupiter Sabazius".[219]
"

So, just to clarify, this post itself was a "performance", it brought up a case (magically, as I did not go looking for that person or know that they were into Dionysus now) that layers aspects of what I think your original post may somewhat touch upon while also bringing up the ideas that I am, still in reference to what themes I took your post to possess, such as the themes associated to Apollo and Dionysus. Personally, I think that this collection of things to think about is pretty powerful in the layering involved, even if it just seems like my post is a "splat!" of disjointed infirmation or references and feelings. For me, the whole thing, the process, that I am performing within the text as a character myself, all makes for a powerful meditation if approached thoughtfully and with both rationality (distance, Apollo who inflicts the most intimate pain) and empathy (nearness, Dionysus who brings a visceral comradery like "We All Die" which is numbing and neutralizing like alcohol, and is even forgotten soon after), however the creator of the two mentioned may have intended them to be or seem, their nuances possess quite a lot to think about even beyond what Nietzsche, perhaps somewhat superficially, even wrongfully, used to term for separating out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comm ... belief_he/

"
demalignitateanimi
•
4y ago
The Dionysian impulse, or Dionysian spirit, derives its name from Dionysus, the god of music, wine and intoxication, and constitutes the oriental heritage of Greek culture. According to Nietzsche, this impulse is embodied in the instinctual and irrational aspects of human nature: it is the vitality that knows no limits or measures, the tendency towards chaos and the loss of individuality; it is also the appreciation of corporeality, and of all that binds us to nature and the earth.

Precisely because it is instinctual and unrestrained, however, the Dionysian element tends to generate violence, pain and death: it is not difficult to see here the closeness of Nietzsche's reflections to Shopenhauer's conception of life, as a cruel and violent manifestation of irrational forces, devoid of meaning and purpose.

The Apollonian impulse, or Apollonian spirit, takes its name from Apollo, god of light and the arts, and was born precisely on the ground of the Dionysian, as an attempt to contain its chaos, sublimating it in form, in the definite, trying to give order to what does not have any. In this sense, Apollonianism is expressed in the activity of distinguishing, identifying, categorising. It is an impulse towards abstraction and organisation, and therefore an attempt to rationalise events, with the ultimate aim of giving meaning to existence, making it more bearable. If the Dionysian is associated with the indistinctness characteristic of drunkenness and orgiastic rites, with the fascination for irrational and esoteric aspects, the Apollonian element is instead manifested in philosophy, in laws and in every form of social organisation. According to Nietzsche, even the Olympian gods are an expression of the Apollonian element: they are a human invention to make sense of the disorder and atrocities of existence.

In particular, as far as art is concerned, while the Dionysian element manifests itself above all in music and lyric poetry, the Apollonian element prefers the clear, defined forms of the figurative arts - especially Doric sculpture and architecture - and epic poetry.

It is within the framework of the opposition between Dionysian and Apollonian that one of the highest artistic productions of Greek culture - tragedy - must be reinterpreted, according to Nietzsche. More precisely, in order to understand its nature correctly, it is necessary to rediscover the Dionysian element from which it originated: an element that was gradually removed by playwrights because it was perceived as too disturbing. According to Nietzsche's interpretation, archaic Greek tragedy was in fact born from the "dithyramb", a choral song dedicated to Dionysus, which was accompanied by glauti, drums and collective dances. Gradually, the dithyramb would be supplemented with recitals, which would gradually increase in size, bringing an element of rationality and order to the exuberant vitality of choral singing. With the Attic tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Greek art would then perform what Nietzsche describes as the 'metaphysical miracle' of making the Dionysian and Apollonian impulses coexist in perfect harmony. But this harmonious coexistence was short-lived.

Already with Euripides, the Apollonian impulse begins to prevail over the Dionysian one: in his tragedies, in fact, the role of the chorus is reduced by the insertion of further dialophical parts and a greater importance given to the prologue.

It is Socratic rationalism - or rather the conviction that there is a truth and that man must try to reach it, and therefore that reality is not chaos and meaninglessness, but that it is comprehensible and in some way controllable through reason - that determined the removal of the Dionysian in favour of the Apollonian. With Euripides, who made Socratism his own, tragedy dies a suicide, marking the beginning of the artistic and cultural decadence of the Greek world.

Nietzsche's analysis of culture is not limited to the Greek world: his diagnosis of decadence extends to the entire sotyra of the Western world. With Socratic rationalism, a systematic process of concealment of the tragic dimension of existence and excessive enhancement of the possibilities of reason would have begun.

it is, however, the understanding of the aforementioned dynamics that leads nietzsche not to treat his consideration as an irreversible condemnation. For example, with Wagner's music, the 'metaphysical miracle' of the Hellenic world can be repeated. With his total work of art that fuses music and theatre with dance, wagner was able to bind the two opposing impulses of human life and culture once again in a single artistic form, recognising and giving both their rightful place and value.

track me


Upvote
25

Downvote

Reply
reply

u/noblesheep avatar
noblesheep
•
4y ago
•
Edited 4y ago
With Euripides and Socrates, it is the Alexandrian impulse that takes over and not the Apollonian, the dialectical interaction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian for Nietzsche constitute the highest and most beautiful art. The Apollonian affirms the primordial, orgiastic howling oneness of the Dionysian and provide an aesthetic justification for life through beauty. The tragic accomplishment is best summed up when Nietzsche writes: “Dionysus speaks the language of Apollo; and Apollo, finally the language of Dionysus and so the highest goal of tragedy and of all art is attained” . The combination of the Apollonian and the Dionysian results in tragedy, which serves as an affirmation of life. It may be useful to use an example from a tragedy (though not a Greek one) to see just how this combination of the Apollonian and Dionysian occurs. In Hamlet, Hamlet delivers the following speech: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.” Hamlet, here, is acting as the Apollonian representative of the Dionysian oneness, he has “looked truly into the essence of things and has gained knowledge”. The Dionysian knowledge prevents Hamlet from taking any action and he seems to become anathema to life, however the speech he delivers is brimming with vitality; the very beauty of the world he seems to eschew and the beauty of his speech ornament the horror that Hamlet sees and thus act as a justification for life. Hamlet, or Shakespeare may not have been able to “change anything in the eternal nature of things” but they were able to make those things beautiful, and beauty itself is justification enough for life. The blend of the Dionysian and Apollonian, then, ultimately results in tragic wisdom which enables the individual “with sympathetic feelings of love to grasp the eternal suffering as its own”.

The Alexandrian attitude, however (distinct from the Apollonian will to form) is one of intellectual decadence, the Alexandrian man tries to understand and systematise a world, which cannot be fundamentally understood as it is Dionysian. Nietzsche charges Socrates with the introduction of this tendency and indicts Euripides as his accomplice, for these two “to be beautiful everything must be intelligible”. Rather than the representation an affirmation of the Dionysian primordial unity being represented on the stage, the Alexandrian play manifests an interest in individuals, psychology and the benefits of reason. In the Alexandrian attitude “philosophic thought overgrows art and compels it to cling close to the trunk of dialectic”. The Alexandrian attitude represents passive nihilism as it is a petulant clinging to the powers of human reason, to the hope that the ineffable irrational secrets of the world can one day be unlocked by some kind of abstract human reason. The Alexandrian attitude as a whole represents a total abstraction from the world, rather than plunging headfirst into the howling infinite of the Dionysian and thereby living and affirming life, the Alexandrian removes himself from this and attempts to impose abstract and logical categories on to a world that refuses to yield to them. The Alexandrian believes that through this banal rationality that he can “heal the wound of existence”. The Alexandrian man, then, is a hollow one and the attitude that he adopts is anathema to life itself, he is afraid to entrust himself to the “terrible icy current of existence” and instead “runs timidly up and down the bank”. The timidity and life-denying attitude of the Alexandrian man are summed by best when Nietzsche says “The Alexandrian man is at bottom a librarian and corrector of proofs and wretchedly goes blind from the dust of books and printers’ errors”. The world is not simply an abstract object of knowledge like the Alexandrian man believes, but something to be lived and affirmed.


Upvote
1

Downvote

Reply
reply

ovenmarket
•
4y ago
Dionysus is a greek deity, often presented with his counterpart Apollo. They are sort of a yin/yang dicothomy. You can view Apollo as the rational/scientific/order (hence the space shuttle being named after it) and Dionysus as the emotional/artistic/chaos. He uses them to describe how western society went wrong, being too controlled by Apollo. He says he wants a balance, but he's definitely showing a preferance towards Dionysus. In his last ever letter, he signed it with this name instead of his own
"

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comm ... d_worship/

https://walkerart.org/magazine/the-madn ... bela-tarr/

https://academyofideas.com/2017/03/niet ... -dionysus/

https://lareviewofbooks.org/blog/essays ... hes-horse/

"
On January 3, 1889, in the throes of a manic episode, Friedrich Nietzsche left his lodgings in Turin, walked a short distance across a nearby square, and then halted. Seeing a horse being flogged by its owner, he threw himself towards the animal and embraced it. Breaking into tears, he slumped to the floor. He was almost arrested for disturbing the peace, but was rescued by his landlord and was taken back home and to bed. The remaining 11 years of his life were spent under care, and under the spell of profound madness.
"

"
Strange, then, that there is actually very little evidence that there ever was such a horse. And stranger still that the episode seems to have been torn from the pages of a writer revered by Nietzsche: Fyodor Dostoevsky.


The passage in question occurs early on in Dostoevsky’s great work Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, who will imminently butcher two old ladies with an axe, is anxiously laid up in bed. In a scene that foreshadows the guilt-ridden and hallucinatory fits that will plague him after the murder takes place, he falls into a disturbing dream. Raskolnikov sees himself as a young boy, walking through a provincial town with his father. Outside a pub, a drunken rabble surrounds a weary old horse, hitched to a weighty cartload that it cannot possibly pull. To the delight of the cheering mob, the horse is beaten by its owner (“so brutally, so brutally, sometimes even across the eyes and muzzle”). Men climb into the cart to weigh it down further, and the owner continues to whip and to shout “Gee-up!” When someone speaks up against the violence, he merely yells “My property, my property!”


Raskolnikov, in the voice of a child, pleads with the men to stop. Crying, he runs forward and looks the horse directly in the eye, and in doing so, is caught by a lash from the whip. As the cruelty escalates and the horse collapses, it becomes clear that it will die. Raskolnikov throws his arms around the bloodied muzzle and kisses it around the eyes, calling in vain for the barbarism to stop. His father scoops him up and drags him away from the horse, against his will, and suddenly Raskolnikov awakes, cold and sweating. He understands the significance of the dream, and understands that he himself was at once the child, the flogged horse, and the man with the whip. Nevertheless, he rises, dresses, and prepares to commit murder.


The horse episode held special significance for Dostoevsky, originating, as it did, in his own life experiences. In his diaries, under an entry relating to the “Russian Society for the Protection of Animals,” Dostoevsky offers an illustration of the manner in which our relation to animals reflects our ethical relation to other humans. He recalls that at age 15, he, his father, and his brother were journeying on the road when they saw a man in military uniform, having freshly swallowed down a glass of vodka, return to a cab and immediately and senselessly set about beating his driver around the back of the head. The cabbie, in turn, mercilessly begins to flog his horses with a “terrible fist”: “the coachman, who could barely hold on because of the blows, kept lashing the horses every second like one gone mad; and at last his blows made the horses fly off as if possessed.” The young Dostoevsky’s own cabbie, shaking his head at the scene, tells him that this was quite usual, and that “the lad, perhaps, that very day will beat his young wife: ‘At least I’ll take it out on you.’” Dostoevsky serves this up as a stark example of how violence breeds violence, and injustice breeds injustice. The horse story is, for him, “something that very graphically demonstrated the link between a cause and its effect. Every blow that rained down on the animal was the direct result of every blow that fell on the man.”


Throughout the 1866 composition of Crime and Punishment, the horse story was always intended to serve as part of Raskolnikov’s intellectual development; indeed, in Dostoevsky’s notebooks of the period, he attempts to find a place for the horse story no less than six times in the structure of the novel. By the writing of the novel, when Dostoevsky was 44 years old, he came to view the story as a formative memory: “My first personal insult, the horse, the courier.” Fittingly, then, a similar episode resurfaces in Dostoevsky’s final novel The Brothers Karamazov, in the chapter “Rebellion.” In that work, a story is told of a horse that cannot pull its cartload; the owner “beats it, beats it savagely, beats it at last not knowing what he is doing in the intoxication of cruelty, thrashes it mercilessly over and over again.” We are told that the story is “peculiarly Russian.” Surprisingly, we also discover that these words are adapted from “lines from Nekrasov” — a reference to the poem “O pogode” (“About the Weather”) by Nikolai Nekrasov, in which a “hideously lean” horse is beaten to death in front of a laughing mob.


Nekrasov’s poem was composed after Crime and Punishment — therefore Dostoevsky’s own horse seems real enough, even though he would later draw on another writer’s image of a beaten animal. But was Nietzsche’s horse not also Dostoevsky’s? Nietzsche was 44 years old in when he suffered a collapse in Turin — coincidentally the same age as Dostoevsky had been when he wrote Crime and Punishment. He had been living a transitory existence for some years, having all but excluded himself from positions at German universities due to his irreligious thought and his provocative writings. In Turin his hosts were the Fino family, and in their house, in the extraordinarily productive year leading up to the famous incident with a horse, Nietzsche wrote what are remembered as some of his greatest works. But the year was also marked by his increasingly erratic behavior; he would sing and play for hours at a piano, often tunelessly; he would, allegedly, dance boisterously in the nude around his room; the Finos even discovered torn and discarded money in his waste-paper basket. In the view of his landlord, the professor was showing worrying signs of mental decline.


The truth is we know very little about what occurred on that fateful January day in 1889. Undoubtedly Nietzsche was found in the street, and there are multiple firsthand accounts that detail Nietzsche’s subsequent mental decline and his spell in a mental asylum shortly after. But there is only a single source that brings a horse into the picture. It comes from an interview with the landlord, conducted by an anonymous journalist after Nietzsche’s death in 1900 — 11 years after his walk through Turin. The report reads:


One day when Mr. Fino was walking along the nearby Via Po — one of the main streets of Turin — he saw a group of people drawing near and in their midst were two municipal guards accompanying “the professor.” As soon as Nietzsche saw Fino he threw himself into his arms, and Fino easily obtained his release from the guards, who said that they found that foreigner outside the university gates, clinging tightly to the neck of a horse and refusing to let it go.


The story of the Turin horse was thus told 11 years after the event it purports to describe, by an unnamed reporter, who recounts a version of events spoken to Nietzsche’s landlord by an equally nameless police officer. The narrative is thirdhand hearsay in its sole original form.


None of this, of course, has stopped the story being told. Here is a selection of excerpts from five of the more well-known accounts of Nietzsche’s life:


“On 3 January 1889 or thereabouts he tearfully embraced a mistreated nag in the street.”


“With a cry he flung himself across the square and threw his arms about the animal’s neck. Then he lost consciousness and slid to the ground, still clasping the tormented horse.”


“Nietzsche threw his arms around the horse’s neck, tears streaming from his eyes, and then collapsed onto the ground.”


“As Nietzsche fell on the pavement, he threw his arms around the neck of a mare that had just been flogged by a coachman.”


“Nietzsche had just left his lodgings when he saw a cab-driver beating a horse in the Piazza Carlo Alberto. Tearfully, the philosopher flung his arms around the animal’s neck, and then collapsed.”


Given the circumstances, it is easy to imagine that Nietzsche may well have been weeping — thus the addition of his tears to many of the versions seems broadly permissible. But note that there is no coachman whatsoever in Fino’s version of events, and that the very suggestion that the horse might have been suffering at the hands of anyone has trickled into the narrative during its retelling. (Fino doesn’t actually mention a collapse either, but letters circulating amongst Nietzsche’s friends at the time make it clear that a fall took place.) The central image of his life that has proven so tenacious, that of the weeping Nietzsche embracing a horse, is perhaps the most difficult to prove.


There are several reasons why this story might have become so ingrained in the popular understanding of Nietzsche. For one, he provides his own links between his pre-madness biography and the works of Dostoevsky. Less than a year before the incident, he wrote, in Twilight of the Idols, that Dostoevsky was “the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn.” The lesson Nietzsche took from Dostoevsky was that criminals represent strong minds under sickness — he must surely have been thinking of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. And around the same time, Nietzsche was having his own dreams of horses. He details one in a letter of 1888: “winter landscape. An old coachman with an expression of the most brutal cynicism, harder than the surrounding winter, urinates on his horse. The horse, poor, ravaged creature, looks around, thankful, very thankful.” Nietzsche tells his correspondent that the repulsive dream nearly stirred him to tears. Perhaps Nietzsche did have horses on his mind when he stepped into the square on that January morning, and was drawn by some impulse towards one. Perhaps the sight of a horse being flogged really did raise in him the image of Dostoevsky’s pitiful nag, and he felt a peculiar compulsion to complete the scene. Or maybe it is Nietzsche’s students and scholars who have flooded the gaps in Fino’s account, and found literature in the life of the philosopher.


This is an idea that is especially tantalizing. It has been convincingly argued that Nietzsche’s works amount to a philosophy of aestheticism — that he commands us to live life as one would write literature. He writes, for instance, in The Gay Science, that “One thing is needful. — To ‘give style’ to one’s character — a great and rare art!” If Nietzsche advises, above all, that we should cultivate our lives and our selves as we would create a work of art, what might it mean for his own life to so neatly replicate a literary work? And how interesting, for philosophers, that this particular act of mimesis marked his departure from sanity. In 1888 he had written Ecce Homo, a philosophical work resembling biography, subtitled “How One Becomes What One Is.” Might it be that, in embracing a horse in the manner of Raskolnikov, he was writing one last chapter to his life and work?
"

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/Xl_lf9vR7Bk?feature=shared

[kFoyauextlH]

https://youtu.be/hRJ8wt8XYsY?feature=shared