As usual, there's a lot of grist for the brain mill in this one and the comments. I've responded with rather a lot, but I've used headers to try to organize it helpfully.
Frame of Reference I might look at the "Frame of Reference" argument as something of a combination of the "tracks in space" Fortune talks about and as a support for the vividness of imagination in support of will in the style of Levi (both as pretty heavily filtered through JMG in my case). I can see how living life a certain way, knowing certain myths, performing certain rituals, all in ways that reinforce and strengthen one another could lead to easier and/or stronger magic-working through a handful of means. On the other hand, you run more risk of sticking with less effective methods or being closed off to conceptually useful notions (for example: if your exquisitely complete frame of reference didn't include reincarnation, a whole swath of spiritual knowledge and technique would be closed off to you). A broader frame of reference solves this problem, as you mention in the post, but it is also likely harder to make as emotionally intense and doesn't have the support of others laying down the same tracks in space ahead of you.
The Allure of "Purity" As someone who somewhat fell for this and finds some aspects of it enjoyable and interesting, I kind of get it, but recent experience and the influence of JMG have also led me to think very differently about it. I think the core of the problem is a pair of patterns of thought wrapped up in modern rational materialism: Legibility and Coherence.
Legibility So, this concept originates with Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, but I learned about it (and absorbed certain interpretations) from the blog sam[]zdat: https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/ Sam[]zdat is an interesting case of a rationalist who is appropriately skeptical of much of rationalism, but struggles to try to find a way. Anyhow, "Legibility" is the idea that those of a rationalist bent, most of all organizations based on supposedly rational aims and methods, seek to understand through simplification and abstraction. "Purity" is attractive from this point of view because it makes things much simpler if you can whittle down to the "real" or "original" core and ignore all of those pesky local details and nuances. It also gives you a "justification" for making decisions "well, I do it this way because it's the oldest/purest/most authentic. Do you know anything older/purer/more authentic?"
Coherence This is my own term. When you try to engage with spiritual/religious/mythological material from a rationalist-materialist viewpoint, it's hard to find a foundation or grounding for why to go with any one set of beliefs over another. "Coherence" can seem like a justification to go with a tradition - "well, it all hangs together, which means it's true enough to base my beliefs on". A broad polytheist few cheerfully blows this up: "it all works! For some folks in some places at some times. So find what works for you here, now."
Identities of Gods This is one I've struggled with as well, and continue to do so. As a practical example, I was convinced by the historical scholarship that worship of Freyja and Frigg derived from earlier worship of a single Goddess, and so began by looking for ways to worship a Goddess who somehow made sense as both, or maybe that they were aspects of the same Goddess the way Zeus Polieus is not the same as Zeus Hyes. Intellectually it makes a certain amount of sense, but my experiences praying and meditating have convinced me that I need to give worship to two different personalities and treat them like different beings. I'm thinking about digging into Neoplatonic theology to try to get some traction with this particular head scratcher.
Linking Traditional Western Occult Philosophy with the Heathen Tradition This is also something I've been thinking about over the past few months as well. One example is looking for links between the planes and the "multipart soul" that Thorsson, Krasskova, and others have elaborated on. I'd be interested to hear your and other's takes on this: - Physical Plane: Lich/Body, maybe some of Aethem/Ond - Etheric Plane: Aethem/Ond, Wod/Odhr, Hama/Hamr - Astral Plane: Hyge/Hugr? Minni? - Mental Plane: Hyge/Hugr, Minni? - Spiritual Plane: Fetch/Fylgja, Hamingja, Wyrd/Orlog?
Clearly, the biggest snag I ran into here was distinguishing between the Astral and Mental plane, but there were many concepts that seemed to span more than one plane (I originally worked this out on paper with dotted lines extending into planes I was less sure about)
Origins of Aesir/Vanir Merger slithytoves123, I have not read about the proposed Phoenecian link with Proto-Germanic, but that's interesting. One theory about the Aesir/Vanir split I find delightfully intriguing, but perhaps impossible to pin down is that it goes waaaaay back to the formation of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Dumezil was one of the first to point out that several IE cultures have a "war of the functions" myth where the wizard kings and warriors fought the farmer-craftsmen, and either won or negotiated a settlement that included keeping large swaths of the farmer-craftsmen culture intact. There is solid archaeological evidence (and now genetic evidence as well) that groups we're pretty sure were directly ancestral to/spoke early version of PIE moved from the Ukrainian steppe into one of the river valleys of eastern europe (I want to say the Danube?), became overlords of the established rich farmers there, and that the culturally and genetically blended folks from there proceeded to re-blend with the originating steppe people and spread into what look archaeologically like the root cultures for the various PIE migrations (this is somewhat simplified, of course).
Now, what's intriguing to me about the semitic hypothesis is that these "first farmers" of Europe started out in Anatolia way, way back, around the agricultural revolution (modern day highland Sardinians are the most closely related group alive today). It's not crazy at all to think that they might have had cultural or linguistic links with the proto-Semitic speakers and their gods, but this is so far back that there's lots of speculation involved. If the hypothesis argues for literal historical Phoenecian, that's a bit of a taller order to link that far back.
no subject
Frame of Reference
I might look at the "Frame of Reference" argument as something of a combination of the "tracks in space" Fortune talks about and as a support for the vividness of imagination in support of will in the style of Levi (both as pretty heavily filtered through JMG in my case). I can see how living life a certain way, knowing certain myths, performing certain rituals, all in ways that reinforce and strengthen one another could lead to easier and/or stronger magic-working through a handful of means. On the other hand, you run more risk of sticking with less effective methods or being closed off to conceptually useful notions (for example: if your exquisitely complete frame of reference didn't include reincarnation, a whole swath of spiritual knowledge and technique would be closed off to you). A broader frame of reference solves this problem, as you mention in the post, but it is also likely harder to make as emotionally intense and doesn't have the support of others laying down the same tracks in space ahead of you.
The Allure of "Purity"
As someone who somewhat fell for this and finds some aspects of it enjoyable and interesting, I kind of get it, but recent experience and the influence of JMG have also led me to think very differently about it. I think the core of the problem is a pair of patterns of thought wrapped up in modern rational materialism: Legibility and Coherence.
Legibility
So, this concept originates with Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, but I learned about it (and absorbed certain interpretations) from the blog sam[]zdat: https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/ Sam[]zdat is an interesting case of a rationalist who is appropriately skeptical of much of rationalism, but struggles to try to find a way. Anyhow, "Legibility" is the idea that those of a rationalist bent, most of all organizations based on supposedly rational aims and methods, seek to understand through simplification and abstraction. "Purity" is attractive from this point of view because it makes things much simpler if you can whittle down to the "real" or "original" core and ignore all of those pesky local details and nuances. It also gives you a "justification" for making decisions "well, I do it this way because it's the oldest/purest/most authentic. Do you know anything older/purer/more authentic?"
Coherence
This is my own term. When you try to engage with spiritual/religious/mythological material from a rationalist-materialist viewpoint, it's hard to find a foundation or grounding for why to go with any one set of beliefs over another. "Coherence" can seem like a justification to go with a tradition - "well, it all hangs together, which means it's true enough to base my beliefs on". A broad polytheist few cheerfully blows this up: "it all works! For some folks in some places at some times. So find what works for you here, now."
Identities of Gods
This is one I've struggled with as well, and continue to do so. As a practical example, I was convinced by the historical scholarship that worship of Freyja and Frigg derived from earlier worship of a single Goddess, and so began by looking for ways to worship a Goddess who somehow made sense as both, or maybe that they were aspects of the same Goddess the way Zeus Polieus is not the same as Zeus Hyes. Intellectually it makes a certain amount of sense, but my experiences praying and meditating have convinced me that I need to give worship to two different personalities and treat them like different beings. I'm thinking about digging into Neoplatonic theology to try to get some traction with this particular head scratcher.
Linking Traditional Western Occult Philosophy with the Heathen Tradition
This is also something I've been thinking about over the past few months as well. One example is looking for links between the planes and the "multipart soul" that Thorsson, Krasskova, and others have elaborated on. I'd be interested to hear your and other's takes on this:
- Physical Plane: Lich/Body, maybe some of Aethem/Ond
- Etheric Plane: Aethem/Ond, Wod/Odhr, Hama/Hamr
- Astral Plane: Hyge/Hugr? Minni?
- Mental Plane: Hyge/Hugr, Minni?
- Spiritual Plane: Fetch/Fylgja, Hamingja, Wyrd/Orlog?
Clearly, the biggest snag I ran into here was distinguishing between the Astral and Mental plane, but there were many concepts that seemed to span more than one plane (I originally worked this out on paper with dotted lines extending into planes I was less sure about)
Origins of Aesir/Vanir Merger
Now, what's intriguing to me about the semitic hypothesis is that these "first farmers" of Europe started out in Anatolia way, way back, around the agricultural revolution (modern day highland Sardinians are the most closely related group alive today). It's not crazy at all to think that they might have had cultural or linguistic links with the proto-Semitic speakers and their gods, but this is so far back that there's lots of speculation involved. If the hypothesis argues for literal historical Phoenecian, that's a bit of a taller order to link that far back.