causticus: trees (Default)
I usually don't weigh in on mundane politics or timely new cycle happenings in general. But there's one hot button issue (person, actually) that I feel I need to briefly jot down my impressions on. It's regarding "Democratic Socialist" upstart Alexandria Ocasiso-Cortez (AOC). She seems to have been getting a seemingly-endless amount of free media attention ever since she first won that freak/fluke primary election in NYC and especially now that's she officially in congress. Of course there's going to be an esoteric spin thrown in here.

As we all know, AOC has become quite the meme as of late. The more psychic energy people keep feeding into her personage, the more her memetic presence grows and thus the more her psychic power levels expand outward. Her brand is what we would call an "egregore" in Occult lingo. An egregore is a sort of collective thought form that may eventually take on a life of its own, so to speak. This is literally how gods and goddesses are created.

On a more mundane level, I would wager that AOC is a lot smarter than how she lets on in interviews (endless daffy-sounding gaffes). And she may or may not have read Art of the Deal. After all, she is now the Left's version of Trump and her trolling A-game is pretty effective for such a young upstart. She seems to have a bit of the trickster archetype in her as well.

Easily-outraged people on the right (yeah, it's not just the left) need to tread carefully with her; the more attention she's continually fed, the bigger and bigger her brand grows. Remember that bad publicity is good publicity. But on a more positive note, we should realize that she may become her own worst enemy and become too bold and overconfident with her radical positions that certainly piss off corporate establishment Dems. If she defiantly refuses to kiss the ring she just might be out on her ass in two years. The more likely outcome however is that she gets a few potent tastes of power and quickly makes a point of coming back for more. She will sell out to the corporate Dem establishment; to the point where her "socialism" becomes little more than a fashion accessory. The establishment will basically use her in an attempt to patch up their own godawful branding problems. She sure has that idiotic youthful millennial appeal; there's no doubt about that.

But yeah, AOC has become a meme. Good thing there's probably nothing in the way of magicians at DNC HQ. Politics in general is a muggle realm.
causticus: trees (Default)
Let's forget the political categorizes for one moment. They're always shifting with the times anyway; what's "left" in one decade shifts to the center or even goes "right" many decades later. Though Left/Right political distinctions we know of today was somewhat a result of the French Revolution, there are indeed underlying metaphysical principles of Left and Right. The manifested cosmos is a constellation of various polarities and Left/Right just happens to be one of those polarities.

So, a rough outline:

Left: Dynamism, change, transmutation, flux, chaos, unpredictability, individuality, differentiation, exceptions.

Right: Order, stability, continuity, predictability, cohesion, conformity, rules.

When it comes to religious practices and beliefs, we can clearly see how this principles measure up in various systems. The most well-known explanation of this phenomenon is the Left hand vs. Right hand path distinctions we find in a lot of esoteric and occult literature.

Left-hand path: Self-actualization/realization, religion/spirituality as a means of individual enlightenment, individual > collective focus, individualized spiritual paths, syncretism, pluralism of beliefs and practices, decentralized or disorganized networks of practitioners as opposed to centralized priesthoods.

Right-hand path: group/collective religious activities, submission of individual ego to a common ideal or object of worship, religion/spirituality as a means of maintaining group order and stability, moralism, uniformity of beliefs and practices and consolidation into single canon or set of doctrines propagated and enforced by an organized priesthood.

Of course many mature spiritual practitioners will rightly state that these two paths are not mutually exclusive and that elements of both should be harmonized as a part of a complete spiritual system. The most advanced will simply tell you right away that, "there is no such thing as the left and right hand paths." This rigid bifurcation is really a distinctly Western problem. The many variants of Western esoteric and occult practices which emerged during the European Renaissance were forced to take a rather defensive (and often secretive) stance against the totalitarian attitudes and methods of mainstream institutionalized Christianity, a belief system that traditionally did not tolerate any deviance from dogma whatsoever. And thus and set of beliefs existing in Christian-dominated lands that did not agree 100% with Christian dogma was deemed by Christian authorities as being pejorative things like "Satanic" .. "Heretical" .. "Evil" .. "Demonic" .. "Devil-worship" .. ect. Ahh, the legacy of hyper-moralized cosmological dualism; but I digress.

This Left/Right polarity was never really a problem in Eastern systems like Hinduism and Buddhism, where both approaches to belief and practice easily coexisted side-by-side. For example, a practitioner of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) could choose Shiva or Krishna (or even Shakti) as their prime object God worship. Shiva generally represents the individual enlightenment path (Left), and Krishna (as an avataric proxy for Vishnu) as the self-sacrificing group-oriented worship path (Right). And thus we have the various Shaivaite and Vaishnava schools. Notice how the adherents of these schools don't violently attack or denounce one another; these approaches cooexist together as a harmonious whole. The West has quite a bit to learn from pluralistic religious traditions.

I would certainly agree that these Left/Right principles should be complimentary and never exist in conflict or opposition to one another.
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