On the question of strength

Strength is associated with Mount Olympus in the Derveni Papyrus, linked to time, height, mind and the separating of things by a mind that has understanding and knowing of the ways of nature (reason.)

The question of what is meant by strength has always been troubling to me in philosophy.  Amongst the Celts the coward is the reverse of strength, the cauldron never boils food for the coward, and the strongest gets the champions portion at the feast.  Likewise, the Celtic Hercules is different from the Greek Hercules, because the Celtic version has the power of eloquence, which is to say by the power of speaking a clever individual can have thousands of people fighting for them and thus is strong.

The Derveni Papyrus has assisted me in putting to rest this question about strength.  I will quote a small section:

 

[? She] proclaimed an oracle about all that was right to him to hear.
he made clear that… the things that are…
and to take away (sc. his rule). And the next line goes like this:
so that he may rule on the lovely abode of snowcapped Olympus

Strength in the Derveni Papyrus is associated with speaking, teaching and assisting by an oracle, who through this speaking gives strength to two named gods: Zeus and Kronos. Strength thus is understanding, knowing or wisdom born out of senses, reason and experience.  Strength has nothing to do with muscles or war, but to do with mind, since if an individual is unable to understand a thing, they have no ability to do that thing.  If the individual is unable to give name, meaning or relationship to those things sensed in nature, then nothing can come of it.  I am learning a new computer language, and in learning this skill, I have gained strength in manipulating my computer to do things that a few months ago, I could not have imagined.

The Derveni Papyrus describes an initial reality of one dimension, with the qualities of width, night, oneness but having a voice. The Derveni Papyrus makes clear that this voice does not order or instruct things to happen, neither does those that are aware of this voice hear it, but do understand it by way of knowing, which then gives them strength to act upon it.  The voice teaches, speaks and assists to all who are open to it.  The Derveni Papyrus says:

“..both for those who work the land, and for those who sail when they have to sail, and for the former the seasons. For if there were no moon, people could not have discovered the counting either of the seasons, or of the winds…”

The original ruler of the reality of one dimension called Ouranos or Uranus, son of Night (Nyx) encountered the proclaimed oracle by his mother, designed so that paradoxically his rule would be taken away, but that he could rule Olympus.  The Derveni Papyrus says that time, height and Olympus has the same meaning, but it is different from width, which is to say the understanding that the substance or entity known as Ouranos gained from the teaching, assisting speaking voice of Nyx resulted in the formation of a second dimension, a dyad, now reality had width and height.

Things move quickly in process, Ouranos vanishes, the Derveni Papyrus says:

“Naming Mind that strikes (? the beings) against each other Kronos, he says that it did a great deed to Ouranos; for (he says that) he (sc. Ouranos) was deprived of his kingdom.”

Ouranos becomes Kronos, the association with Olympus means as well as time, height, but also strength because Ouranos now understands or knows what was spoken to him, and is transformed by it, the monad becomes dyadic.

“Zeus takes the strength and the daimon from his father.”

The use of daimon in the original context means a cause, has nothing to do with spirits or demons.  The cause is called Kronos, and is a process describing the separating of things.  With Kronos the sun is separated from the earth and the moon, all things are separate and apart as longs as Kronos continues to act.  A second thing comes out of Ouranos, called Zeus, associated with mind.

Zeus creates a third dimension, where whilst Kronos in the second dimension separates things, Zeus can join and spit out things that have previously been mixed together into a new dimension of the material world, thus all things such as ants, trees and human beings come about.  Example, man and woman join together, create a baby, which whilst retaining some part of both parents, is separated from them and becomes a new thing in the world.

Zeus becomes both the mind (strength) and cause (daimon) and now is king of everything, and all things will move, change and evolve according to this mind known as Zeus.

The writer of the Derveni Papyrus is not promoting gods but using gods as metaphors to describe processes and dimensions.  Strength means mind, understanding, knowing, a quality that cannot be gained by hearing, but by way of reason through observing the ways of nature, which in the material realm is manifested through experience, sense and demonstration.  The “voice” speaks by signs, and it requires an enquiring mind to see these signs manifested in nature, translating them into understanding and knowing, and therein by this means does the individual gain their strength.

On the North Korea crisis

I personally hope this latest Kim and Trump showdown ends in a major war, the human race needs a wake up call.

Kim Jong-un, the obese spoilt play boy leader of North Korea has recently indulged in attention-seeking again, this time provoking President Trump of the USA.  Many people think this will come to nothing, but the rules have changed, nothing is certain in this unstable world.

Jong-un has the mentality of a teenager needing attention, he seeks to keep his image in the limelight, showing his people, associates and world leaders he is a big boy by poking the USA and its leader.  Trump is the type of guy, who if you troll him, he punches you in the face.  Trump listens to nobody, and he is currently in a corner with a lot of people seeking to expel him from the White House via an investigation of his connections to Russia.  Like any leader on the backfoot, a war is useful to win votes and take attention away from any naughty deeds he has been up to.

So now we have two men who are in a public muscle showing contest, unfortunately for both, this is a situation neither can withdraw from, bad news for the world.  Jung-un will have to carry through with his threat to fire missiles, Trump will have to show strength by answering in strong terms.  Both leaders and nations have managed to get themselves into a situation that if either lose face, the political consequencies are dire.  Thus to say, this political facedown has all the signs of flying out of control.

I personally welcome this crisis, I think a great war will be useful to wake up the vast population of lazy, stupid and inert sheep that make up the human race.

Source material for your philosophy

The Derveni Papyrus is a recommended text for anyone in the LHP.

As a student of the philosopher Heraclitus I was most excited to come across two new sources, which I think everyone who is a LHP thinker or magician might be interested in.

 

 

 

These are: Book 9 Chapter 1 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

and

Derveni Papyrus

The first source deals with Heraclitus, the second with an ancient text that mentions Heraclitus.  Both Heraclitus and the writer of the Derveni Papyrus are grounded in the Orphic mysteries tradition, with Heraclitus living within reasonable travelling distance from two ancient oracles.  They are agnostics, who reject superstition, reject belief in mythological entities, and promote a type of process theory based upon the empirical method of what they sense and experience in the natural world.  Their world-view lacks the input of satellites and telescopes, for instance thinking the stars are bowls that catch fire from evaporating water, or the insight that the Earth is one small part of a vast cosmos of planets, stars and galaxies.

The Derveni Papyrus is around 2300 years old, written around 200 years after the death of Heraclitus, the writer influenced by Heraclitus.  The text was found in 1962 in the tomb of a Macedonian, conserved by an attempt to burn it on their funeral pyre.  Only in recent decades has technology become available to recover and then translate a large portion of what this text says. The Derveni Papyrus is described as one of the most important and oldest texts found of Western philosophy.

All the ideas in the LHP and the Western philosophical tradition are founded upon the ideas of thinkers such as those who wrote the Derveni Papyrus, but because of lack of texts from these writers, ideas have been misunderstood and incorrectly applied.  I draw attention to the above texts in order to give my readers a source of original definitions, which might cause a paradigm shift of thinking, as has happened to me after I read them.

As an example, does the reader understand the relationship of the elements of water, fire, earth and air to each other, especially in a step-by-step process, for instance that fire becomes moisture as it cools, becomes concentrated as water, then further solidifies as earth.  How there might be a significant difference between terms of air, winds and moisture, that air may not be in fact an element, rather moisture is.  That a daemon is not a demon, but a cause, that is the process of striking causing multiple opposites to spin and mix together to form something new.  How chaos may not be watery or water.  Why all things have inherent order, even though  everything is randomly smashing into each other.  Potential is those things that always exist, but come about in a kinetic state after they are driven and joined together by strife.

My future articles will be on the insights I have made from reading the Derveni Papyrus.

Military strategy and Game of Thrones

Those that want to avoid the fate of the dodo are well advised to heed simple strategic advice from philosophers such as Sun Tzu.

I am currently watching Game of Thrones series 7, supporting Queen Daenerys  Targaryen and her dragons.  How frustrated I am at simple military strategic errors by Daenerys, strategy anyone in the LHP and business can learn from.

At the start of series 7 Queen Daenerys has a winning hand of cards, her opponent Cersei Lannister at her weakest point, only saved by a competent adviser in Qyburn.  Daenerys makes her first mistake by failing to attack Kings Landing and destroying Cersei with all her combined forces, arguing that it would cause the deaths of thousands of civilians.  If Daenerys had moved immediately with all her forces, in one battle the war would be ended, but her error causes instead the war to become prolonged, losing her advantage, and resulting in the deaths by a multiple of ten or a hundred.  The greatest killer of civilians in war has always been famine and disease, which always follows in the wake of war.

Second error, Daenerys splits her forces, they are then eliminated piecemeal, her navy is destroyed, three principle allied forces are wiped out, one of her main armies are cut off.

Third error, Daenerys acting without use of spies and intelligence, resulting in being taken by surprise in three major battles.

Fourth error, having no scouts or their equivalent, so the enemy take her navy and armies by surprise.

Fifth error, failing to create lines of supply and communication, thus one of her armies has been cut off and faces obliteration deep in enemy territory.

This might be a work of fiction, but the formerly intelligent advisers to Daenerys look like a bunch of incompetent idiots.

All these errors are reasons why businesses can fail or succeed: keeping everything focussed; acting on good intelligence; retaining strong lines of supply and communication; striking at an opportunity fast and hard; having eyes and ears on the ground in advance of the main business actions to warn of changing market conditions.

After episode 3 of series 7, the Daenerys business brand is heading in the same direction as Twitter, towards extinction, due to simple strategic errors.

An opinion on degree education

Major debate in the media about students leaving degree courses with huge loan debts, a burden that will impact them the rest of their lives. Yes, in the corporate world a degree might open doors, but degree inflation means hundreds of students chasing one graduate level job, they are required to bring to the table extra selling qualities such as work experience, most lack. In my opinion degrees are worthless.

I have Attention Deficit Disorder, meaning I cannot handle the left-brained linear education system, thus I avoided the well walked path of the masses to college and university degree courses. I went straight into the world of work, eventually becoming CEO of my own business.

As an employer I favour meritocracy based upon ability and results. A paper qualification such as a degree means nothing to me, it only shows that the student can think in a certain way, often in a mechanical restrictive way which is utterly useless to my business needs. Often, degree students flood onto the job market with limited work and life experience, entertaining foolish entitled opinions of expectations, for instance that they should be instantly rewarded larger salaries on account of their degree education over a worker with five years experience in the job. Employers such as me are being instructed that I must mollycoddle a bunch of self-entitled infantile products of helicopter parents, who will get a rude awakening when I reject them.

Experience matters to me. Who am I going to employ? The business degree student with no experience, or the individual of two failed businesses? The challenge of the degree student is that they come to the table with worthless opinions and theories, untested by real life experience, whereas the individual of the failed businesses has been on a steep learning curve from raw experience, thus has gained wisdom, lacking in the degree student. I prefer to pull in students from High School as apprentices and teach them on the job, this way I can shape someone in the ways of my business rather than having to fight against someone who is already shaped by useless preconceptions based on theory untested by experience.

In the Left Hand Path, wisdom based on experience, knowledge based on senses, and the value of the individual based upon results and ability is a recognisable set of traits in the path, no different than what I expect and demand in my business.

The modern education system in the West sucks, turning out unthinking robots suitable for a bygone age of corporate production line mediocrity. The students that are thrown out of the education factories are utterly useless for the needs of the modern businesses such as mine that require multi-skilled creative and flexible employees. The degrees are worthless, and added to the challenges the student has is a debt they will never repay. The Western modern education system is an unsustainable, worthless dead-end.

Master or slave to technology?

Choice, master or slave to technology?

The Satanist is the master of their own life above all external authorities.  The Satanic path is where self is master and never slave, this includes technology.

Everyone thinks they are liberated compared to the past, the truth is technology for most people has made them more the slave.  How many people are slaves to their smartphone and Facebook?

I purchased my smartphone a year ago, within a month I had been subject to a theft of £50 by a third party app called tap4fun that had taken money from my telephone provider without my knowledge and consent.  I lost trust in smartphones after that.  When my contract ends in a year, I will stop using smartphones altogether.

I have two Facebook accounts.  Recently, my business Facebook account started sending spam to all my customers.  What pissed me off was I did not know how that happened, nor did my investigations enlighten me.  I closed down both my Facebook accounts, including my Satanist Facebook account.

As Satanist, if I am going to use any technology, I am the master, if I feel the service or product is forcing me into a slavish position where I am the loser, it is gone.  Technology is complicated, flawed with security issues, and works against the user, as a Satanist I have low tolerance for the shit I have experienced with smartphones and Facebook, and I manifested the black flame of my will to banish them from my life.

I am the only god in my life.

Every challenge is an opportunity

Regardless of what unexpected challenges a path in life throws up, those that act in a positive and honorable way harvest beneficial opportunities.

Life is an adventure, if the individual walks the Left Hand Path, more so.  This path has many twists and turns, unexpected events manifest, throwing the unwary into chaos.

One challenge this morning has thrown me into chaos, but from it four opportunities emerged which will put me in a better position in the long run.  I however don’t feel very jolly about this, I am having to bridge a crisis between now and the long-term opportunities.

In another part of my life a business investor has come on board for a product that has been in limbo for lack of capital investment, but they want the product to go down a path that is not as I had planned.  I have decided to let the product run to wherever it will go, using this product as a stepping stone for something else I have planned.

Since so much is going on right now, this blog will be taking a holiday for a month whilst I travel through uncertain terrain in my life, home and business.  I am now on a road that is unknown, I do not know where the road will go. Experience has taught me that when the individual hits challenges in their road, as longs as they have acted in thought and deed in a positive and honorable manner, then what is sown comes back as a harvest of beneficial opportunities.

See everyone in a month.