Devotion in the Age of Pisces
Aug. 8th, 2020 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
causticusThis is a bit of a follow-up on my last post, in addition to a very-related discussion with violetcabra I was having the other day about the Devotional Method of spirituality and its excesses that became so commonplace during the previous two millennia.
The Devotional Method of the Piscean Age (roughly, 250 BCE - 1900 CE) uses the same basic sales pitch, i.e. "chant this magic word/phrase, and/or do this prayer over and over and you'll be saved!!"
This is basically a semantic hack that has been very effective in bringing spirituality and spiritual life to the unwashed masses; people who are generally too busy/overworked/distracted, and/or lacking in intellectual horsepower to use more intense, mind-oriented, and time-consuming methods of accruing wisdom and merit. To some degree I consider this a genius innovation, but since were are mere fallible humans after all, the leaders of devotional sects often take their pet approach too far and end up crowding out other methods of spiritual practice, and in much worse cases, using violence and coercion to snuff them out of existence with untold amounts of fanatical vigor. One of the most potent ego trips is that of a religious or spiritual leader having mobs of unthinking followers on their knees and treating them as if they are a god incarnate.
We are now in Aquarius -- even if it's just the opening act of Aquarius -- and thus we are afforded the opportunity to look back on Pisces with a more objective and detached set of eyes. And perhaps we could now chalk up the single-minded insistence that simple verbal formulae can cause salvation, as being 'the Great Snake Oil' of the Piscean Age. Ultimately, I would say that this one-size-fits-all spiritual prescription is the product of the aforementioned ego trip of each prophetic figure who founds their own religious group based on the "devotion uber alles" premise, a premise that has been mirrored to at least some degree across all the major traditions of the Piscean Age, where it's in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the more devotional sects of Hinduism (think, 'Hare Krishna!'), and in the Pure Land sects of Mahayana Buddhism.
In summary, I see the "say this magic word/phrase over and over again and you get into heaven, guaranteed!" as a comforting lie at best, and a surefire means of brainwashing the credulous and perpetually-fearful and turning them into mindless followers of an opportunistic, power-hungry religious demagogue (or conclave of them), at worst.
Having said all of that, I do believe prayers and mantra recitation can be a very helpful tool in purifying one's soul and raising one's consciousness level. It's just in the Age of Pisces, this approach has been taken to the extreme, and usually at the detriment of other approaches to spirituality. As JMG likes to say all the time, "the opposite of one bad idea is most often another bad idea." And thus, the solution now in Aquarius is not to shun or avoid devotional practices (no, I think that would be quite stupid and short-sighted), but rather to re-frame Devotion in its proper context among all the other methods of spiritual attainment (see my last post), and keep the good/helpful aspects of Devotion and jettison the neurotic excesses of it that we saw run so rampant during the past 2000 years or so. In short, we could see Devotion as an effective method of taming the worldly ego and reminding us ultra-fallible humans that we are indeed ultra-fallible beings and that there are powers/forces/beings out there much greater and wiser than us, and thus it would be in our best interest to adopt a humble and respectful attitude toward our cosmic parental figures. And by this simple logic, we shall learn to differentiate 'Healthy Veneration' from Devotional Fanaticism.
Perhaps Devotion in the Age of Aquarius will be the simple act of each individual venerating the deities on their own terms.
violetcabra I was having the other day about the Devotional Method of spirituality and its excesses that became so commonplace during the previous two millennia. The Devotional Method of the Piscean Age (roughly, 250 BCE - 1900 CE) uses the same basic sales pitch, i.e. "chant this magic word/phrase, and/or do this prayer over and over and you'll be saved!!"
This is basically a semantic hack that has been very effective in bringing spirituality and spiritual life to the unwashed masses; people who are generally too busy/overworked/distracted, and/or lacking in intellectual horsepower to use more intense, mind-oriented, and time-consuming methods of accruing wisdom and merit. To some degree I consider this a genius innovation, but since were are mere fallible humans after all, the leaders of devotional sects often take their pet approach too far and end up crowding out other methods of spiritual practice, and in much worse cases, using violence and coercion to snuff them out of existence with untold amounts of fanatical vigor. One of the most potent ego trips is that of a religious or spiritual leader having mobs of unthinking followers on their knees and treating them as if they are a god incarnate.
We are now in Aquarius -- even if it's just the opening act of Aquarius -- and thus we are afforded the opportunity to look back on Pisces with a more objective and detached set of eyes. And perhaps we could now chalk up the single-minded insistence that simple verbal formulae can cause salvation, as being 'the Great Snake Oil' of the Piscean Age. Ultimately, I would say that this one-size-fits-all spiritual prescription is the product of the aforementioned ego trip of each prophetic figure who founds their own religious group based on the "devotion uber alles" premise, a premise that has been mirrored to at least some degree across all the major traditions of the Piscean Age, where it's in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the more devotional sects of Hinduism (think, 'Hare Krishna!'), and in the Pure Land sects of Mahayana Buddhism.
In summary, I see the "say this magic word/phrase over and over again and you get into heaven, guaranteed!" as a comforting lie at best, and a surefire means of brainwashing the credulous and perpetually-fearful and turning them into mindless followers of an opportunistic, power-hungry religious demagogue (or conclave of them), at worst.
Having said all of that, I do believe prayers and mantra recitation can be a very helpful tool in purifying one's soul and raising one's consciousness level. It's just in the Age of Pisces, this approach has been taken to the extreme, and usually at the detriment of other approaches to spirituality. As JMG likes to say all the time, "the opposite of one bad idea is most often another bad idea." And thus, the solution now in Aquarius is not to shun or avoid devotional practices (no, I think that would be quite stupid and short-sighted), but rather to re-frame Devotion in its proper context among all the other methods of spiritual attainment (see my last post), and keep the good/helpful aspects of Devotion and jettison the neurotic excesses of it that we saw run so rampant during the past 2000 years or so. In short, we could see Devotion as an effective method of taming the worldly ego and reminding us ultra-fallible humans that we are indeed ultra-fallible beings and that there are powers/forces/beings out there much greater and wiser than us, and thus it would be in our best interest to adopt a humble and respectful attitude toward our cosmic parental figures. And by this simple logic, we shall learn to differentiate 'Healthy Veneration' from Devotional Fanaticism.
Perhaps Devotion in the Age of Aquarius will be the simple act of each individual venerating the deities on their own terms.
