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Traces of the Daimonic
Oct. 4th, 2023 07:11 amGathered Accidents
A great many of the philosophers associated with the Platonic tradition either have names that begin with P, or else feature a P very prominently. This includes:
Pythagoras
Parmenides
Plato
Philip of Opus
Philo of Alexandria
Plutarch of Chaironeia
Apuleius
Plotinus
Porphyry
Plutarch of Athens
Proclus
And we might also mention Apollonius of Tyana and his biographer, Flavius Philosostratus. According to Grimm's Law, Ps and Fs are equivalent sounds in Indo-European languages, as in pater and father, so we're justified in including F-names in our survey.
Later, in the Renaissance, we have Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandala.
The exceptions to the rule include Iamblichus, Olympiodorus, Damascius, Simplicius and Syrianus in ancient times and Thomas Taylor in our own. On the other hand, two of the most important modern Platonist philosophers are Pierre Grimes and John Vervaeke, and V is also equivalent to P-- see the German Vater.
In a similar way, the genre of punk rock, which defined much of my (badly) misspent youth, exists in large part thanks to three men of Celtic origin named John.
John Lydon is an ethnic Irish Catholic from London. You might know him better by his stage name Johnny Rotten, under which he performed as lead vocalist for the Sex Pistols.
John Cummings was an American of Irish descent from Queens, New York. Performing under the name Jonny Ramone, he was the guitarist and leader of The Ramones.
John Mellor was the son of a Scottish diplomat who grew up overseas. In 1976 he was asked to join a band that would rival the Sex Pistols. He agreed, and, performing under the name Joe Strummer, became the lead vocalist for The Clash.
The Ramones, The Clash, and the Sex Pistols were the three most important bands of the early punk movement. It might be argued that the Damned were the first to release an album in the UK, but their success was limited-- probably due to a lack of Gaels or Johns. Oddly enough, medieval Christian theology was strongly shaped by two other Gaelic Johns, viz. John Duns Scotus ("John Duns, the Scotsman") and John Scotus Eriugena ("John the Scot, an Irishman"). But let us return to our subject. Prior to the Sex Pistols, John Lydon had lived with a group of men known locally as the "Four Johns," because there were four of them, and all were named John. One, Simon John Ritchie, would later join the Sex Pistols under the stage name "Sid Vicious."
In addition to "John" the related sounds "Joe" and "Jones" also featured prominently in the punk movement. The Ramones' vocalist, born Jeffrey Hyman, performed under the name "Joey Ramone." The Sex Pistols' guitarist was named "Steve Jones." The Clash featured both a Jones and a Joe, with John Mellor performing as Joe Strummer alongside lead guitarist Mick Jones (a Welshman). Influential on both the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were the New York Dolls, fronted by Johnny Thunders. Like the Damned, their success was limited-- perhaps because Thunders (John Gonzale) was of Italian and not Gaelic descent.
In addition to Johns, Joes, and Joneses, the early punk movement featured an outsized number of Jews, including Joey and Tommy Ramone, Johnny Thunders (1/4 Jewish), Richard Hell, Mick Jones (half Jewish), Bernie Rhodes (Jewish manager of the Clash and the Sex Pistols), and the ill-fated American Jewish groupie, Nancy Spungen. One must be careful about saying such things these days, lest one run afoul of online Jew haters such as E. Michael Jones (an Irish Catholic).
What Does It All Mean?
Patterns like this aren't limited to Platonism or to Punk. You'll find similar patterns in other currents. Following Aristotle there was Al-Kindi, Avicenna, Averroes, and Aquinas. Averroes and Avicenna were actually named Ibn-Sina and Ibn-Rushd, but received the Perpipatetic "A" in translation. After punk came grunge, but rather than sharing a letter or an ethnicity, its major exponents shared an early death by drug or suicide. See: Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, Lane Staley of Alice in Chains (dead on the same day, 10 years apart), Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone's Andrew Wood, and Chester Bennington of Stone Temple Pilots. Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder escaped this fate, but the young actor who played the role of "Jeremy" in the band's most famous video seems to have been taken in his place.
To some, the accumulation of coincidences like these are like little calling cards, left by the sinister conspiracy of freemasons or Satanists or Cabalists or Pagans or Occultists-- or, often enough, Jewish Freemason Satanic Pagan Occultists-- who control our world through endless, public, magic rituals.
To others, these are the signatures of the archons, those Demonic Entities who rule our material world, or, rather, those Space Aliens who control life on Earth, or, rather, that cabal of sinister Nerds who have programmed the computer simulation that we take for reality.
I myself am nowhere near sufficiently advanced in mental illness to accept these sorts of explanations. But neither am I a believer in "coincidence." The theory of coincidence states that there can be events without meaning. But in the occult tradition, such a thing is not possible, because the level of reality on which "meaning" exists is higher than material reality, and relates to it as cause to effect. You can have meaning without matter, but you can't have matter without meaning.
In the fully developed theology of Iamblichus and Proclus the work of the gods is carried out upon the material plane by the aid of the daimones. Daimones are intermediary beings, greater than men or heroes, less than the gods themselves. Unlike gods, daimones are capable of evil; they can also appear very frightening to us. Saint Augustine didn't like the daimones at all, which is why the word "daimon" or "demon" now means "evil spirit."
One of the best books on paranormal phenomena in general is Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality. Harpur points out that the daimones always have a strong trickster element. Trickster? By that I mean the archetype of deception and magic, the thinning of boundaries, the liminal. From our perspective, the daimones don't really make sense, and there is often an element of deception or confusion when they act. One of the other great contemporary books on paranormal phenomena, The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen, makes this case in great detail. Hansen points out that elements of the Trickster archetype are always associated with the paranormal, and the paranormal is often associated in some way with trickster phenomena. As daimones mediate between the divine and human worlds, they are naturally always gathered under the Trickster. In the Grecian theology the trickster is Hermes, the god of magic, the market, and thieves, the conveyor of the will of Zeus and cunductor of souls to (and from) the Underworld. The great ancient patron saint of the daimonic, Iamblichus, tells us that all magicians have share Hermes as a patron. Now, every particular daimon is suspended from one of the particular Gods, and its job is to mediate between the God and the material world. But the daimones as a genus and the entire shifting, liminal, gray boundary area that they rule-- that is governed by Hermes.
And so I wonder if accumulated coincidences like those documented above this aren't meaningless, but are instead traces left by the daimones, hints of their role in channeling a particular current of ideas into reality. One of those currents is the high philosophical tradition represented above all by Plato. This is a great current which has endured for millennia. But there are other currents with briefer shelf-lives. Genres of modern pop music are the easiest to identify. Notice how "punk" refers to not just to a form of music but to an aesthetic, a range of social behaviors, a sub-culture and even a political stance. These together form a current in the Astral Light into which one can easily be swept. The particular songs, on their own, are just collections of chords; typically based around the I-IV-V chord progression, they're not dissimilar to other forms of Western folk music, going back generations. And yet somehow the encounter with this set of chords, in this setting, can quickly transform an ordinary adolescent into someone who looks more like this:
Where else do we see the daimones moving? I don't know, but I suggest a criterion. Wherever we see at once great movements within the culture or the intellect, and accumulations of absurdities, with a hint of divine laughter in the background-- there they are.
(Disclaimer: Because this is the internet, I probably need to add... In the name of all the daimones, please take this post with a grain of salt.)
A great many of the philosophers associated with the Platonic tradition either have names that begin with P, or else feature a P very prominently. This includes:
Pythagoras
Parmenides
Plato
Philip of Opus
Philo of Alexandria
Plutarch of Chaironeia
Apuleius
Plotinus
Porphyry
Plutarch of Athens
Proclus
And we might also mention Apollonius of Tyana and his biographer, Flavius Philosostratus. According to Grimm's Law, Ps and Fs are equivalent sounds in Indo-European languages, as in pater and father, so we're justified in including F-names in our survey.
Later, in the Renaissance, we have Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandala.
The exceptions to the rule include Iamblichus, Olympiodorus, Damascius, Simplicius and Syrianus in ancient times and Thomas Taylor in our own. On the other hand, two of the most important modern Platonist philosophers are Pierre Grimes and John Vervaeke, and V is also equivalent to P-- see the German Vater.
In a similar way, the genre of punk rock, which defined much of my (badly) misspent youth, exists in large part thanks to three men of Celtic origin named John.
John Lydon is an ethnic Irish Catholic from London. You might know him better by his stage name Johnny Rotten, under which he performed as lead vocalist for the Sex Pistols.
John Cummings was an American of Irish descent from Queens, New York. Performing under the name Jonny Ramone, he was the guitarist and leader of The Ramones.
John Mellor was the son of a Scottish diplomat who grew up overseas. In 1976 he was asked to join a band that would rival the Sex Pistols. He agreed, and, performing under the name Joe Strummer, became the lead vocalist for The Clash.
The Ramones, The Clash, and the Sex Pistols were the three most important bands of the early punk movement. It might be argued that the Damned were the first to release an album in the UK, but their success was limited-- probably due to a lack of Gaels or Johns. Oddly enough, medieval Christian theology was strongly shaped by two other Gaelic Johns, viz. John Duns Scotus ("John Duns, the Scotsman") and John Scotus Eriugena ("John the Scot, an Irishman"). But let us return to our subject. Prior to the Sex Pistols, John Lydon had lived with a group of men known locally as the "Four Johns," because there were four of them, and all were named John. One, Simon John Ritchie, would later join the Sex Pistols under the stage name "Sid Vicious."
In addition to "John" the related sounds "Joe" and "Jones" also featured prominently in the punk movement. The Ramones' vocalist, born Jeffrey Hyman, performed under the name "Joey Ramone." The Sex Pistols' guitarist was named "Steve Jones." The Clash featured both a Jones and a Joe, with John Mellor performing as Joe Strummer alongside lead guitarist Mick Jones (a Welshman). Influential on both the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were the New York Dolls, fronted by Johnny Thunders. Like the Damned, their success was limited-- perhaps because Thunders (John Gonzale) was of Italian and not Gaelic descent.
In addition to Johns, Joes, and Joneses, the early punk movement featured an outsized number of Jews, including Joey and Tommy Ramone, Johnny Thunders (1/4 Jewish), Richard Hell, Mick Jones (half Jewish), Bernie Rhodes (Jewish manager of the Clash and the Sex Pistols), and the ill-fated American Jewish groupie, Nancy Spungen. One must be careful about saying such things these days, lest one run afoul of online Jew haters such as E. Michael Jones (an Irish Catholic).
What Does It All Mean?
Patterns like this aren't limited to Platonism or to Punk. You'll find similar patterns in other currents. Following Aristotle there was Al-Kindi, Avicenna, Averroes, and Aquinas. Averroes and Avicenna were actually named Ibn-Sina and Ibn-Rushd, but received the Perpipatetic "A" in translation. After punk came grunge, but rather than sharing a letter or an ethnicity, its major exponents shared an early death by drug or suicide. See: Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, Lane Staley of Alice in Chains (dead on the same day, 10 years apart), Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone's Andrew Wood, and Chester Bennington of Stone Temple Pilots. Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder escaped this fate, but the young actor who played the role of "Jeremy" in the band's most famous video seems to have been taken in his place.
To some, the accumulation of coincidences like these are like little calling cards, left by the sinister conspiracy of freemasons or Satanists or Cabalists or Pagans or Occultists-- or, often enough, Jewish Freemason Satanic Pagan Occultists-- who control our world through endless, public, magic rituals.
To others, these are the signatures of the archons, those Demonic Entities who rule our material world, or, rather, those Space Aliens who control life on Earth, or, rather, that cabal of sinister Nerds who have programmed the computer simulation that we take for reality.
I myself am nowhere near sufficiently advanced in mental illness to accept these sorts of explanations. But neither am I a believer in "coincidence." The theory of coincidence states that there can be events without meaning. But in the occult tradition, such a thing is not possible, because the level of reality on which "meaning" exists is higher than material reality, and relates to it as cause to effect. You can have meaning without matter, but you can't have matter without meaning.
In the fully developed theology of Iamblichus and Proclus the work of the gods is carried out upon the material plane by the aid of the daimones. Daimones are intermediary beings, greater than men or heroes, less than the gods themselves. Unlike gods, daimones are capable of evil; they can also appear very frightening to us. Saint Augustine didn't like the daimones at all, which is why the word "daimon" or "demon" now means "evil spirit."
One of the best books on paranormal phenomena in general is Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality. Harpur points out that the daimones always have a strong trickster element. Trickster? By that I mean the archetype of deception and magic, the thinning of boundaries, the liminal. From our perspective, the daimones don't really make sense, and there is often an element of deception or confusion when they act. One of the other great contemporary books on paranormal phenomena, The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen, makes this case in great detail. Hansen points out that elements of the Trickster archetype are always associated with the paranormal, and the paranormal is often associated in some way with trickster phenomena. As daimones mediate between the divine and human worlds, they are naturally always gathered under the Trickster. In the Grecian theology the trickster is Hermes, the god of magic, the market, and thieves, the conveyor of the will of Zeus and cunductor of souls to (and from) the Underworld. The great ancient patron saint of the daimonic, Iamblichus, tells us that all magicians have share Hermes as a patron. Now, every particular daimon is suspended from one of the particular Gods, and its job is to mediate between the God and the material world. But the daimones as a genus and the entire shifting, liminal, gray boundary area that they rule-- that is governed by Hermes.
And so I wonder if accumulated coincidences like those documented above this aren't meaningless, but are instead traces left by the daimones, hints of their role in channeling a particular current of ideas into reality. One of those currents is the high philosophical tradition represented above all by Plato. This is a great current which has endured for millennia. But there are other currents with briefer shelf-lives. Genres of modern pop music are the easiest to identify. Notice how "punk" refers to not just to a form of music but to an aesthetic, a range of social behaviors, a sub-culture and even a political stance. These together form a current in the Astral Light into which one can easily be swept. The particular songs, on their own, are just collections of chords; typically based around the I-IV-V chord progression, they're not dissimilar to other forms of Western folk music, going back generations. And yet somehow the encounter with this set of chords, in this setting, can quickly transform an ordinary adolescent into someone who looks more like this:
Where else do we see the daimones moving? I don't know, but I suggest a criterion. Wherever we see at once great movements within the culture or the intellect, and accumulations of absurdities, with a hint of divine laughter in the background-- there they are.
(Disclaimer: Because this is the internet, I probably need to add... In the name of all the daimones, please take this post with a grain of salt.)
