readoldthings

My apologies for the light posting lately. I'm studying for a professional exam that I have to pass, and that's taking up a bit of my time. There's something else, though, that's kept me from writing, and it's something that I really don't like to talk about-- but it directly bears on the theme of this whole series of posts. So I'm going to try discussing it and making sense of it in light of the ideas of Sun Tzu that we've ben discussing here.

Three years ago, I went through a series of traumatic experiences, one after the next. I say three years ago, but that's just when it began. It went on for an entire year-- a series of disasters, one after the next after the next. By the end of that time I'd moved twice, lost a job that I loved and that paid me very well, and lost one of my cats. And those were not the worst things that happened, not by far.

Again, the worst of it was over after a year-- in April 2019, to be precise, when my cat disappeared. Shortly thereafter, we found out my wife was pregnant, and it's been uphill since then. But the ill effects of the year of hell have stayed with me. Emotional pain, intrusive thoughts and memories seem to erupt out of my solar plexus and take over my psyche; when it happens, it's all that I can do to make it through the day intact and take care of the kids. Writing, reading anything not found on a cell phone, or complex thoughts of any kind are not really possible.

For a while, this was pretty much the constant condition of my life. I'd swing back and forth in terms of which memories and which emotions would overtake me, but it was always something. Always. Gradually, over time, things have mellowed out. It went from every day to once or twice a week, and from there to a few times a month. Now it's every few months. Every time the mental storm passes I think "Well, that's probably the end of it." And every time, it returns-- but the gaps are longer each time.

Now, how can I make sense of this all, from Sun Tzu's perspective?

Well, first of all, we need to start with our goal. For me, the goal is the accomplishment of what Eliphas Levi calls the great work:

That is to say, the total conquest of the soul. The soul, remember, consists of all of our actions and mental representations. 

When the Mental Storm comes over me, I lose this. I retain control of my actions, but only enough to accomplish the bare minimum of is required of me. My representations are clouded. It's like a thin, grey film is placed over my eyes, coloring how I see the world. 

The terrain of battle is my mind, especially my emotions and my representations. Certain external terrains seem to have an impact, including anything that triggers memories of the Lost Year. The cycle of time appears to be every couple of months, now; I've been unable to correlate to any particular lunar or astrological cycle. Every night before I go to bed I do a tarot card reading for the next day, and one card in particular tends to indicate that the Storm is coming.

What of the general, and what about method and discipline? 

We could think of the general as me, or as whatever spiritual powers I call upon for aid. I tend to prefer the latter, and to view myself as the sovereign. Here, things become more complicated. Certain spiritual powers that I work with, whatever their merits are otherwise, have been not merely useless but altogether counterproductive. Doing certain magical rituals seems to reliably bring on the Storm, for reasons that are not at all clear. I don't want this to be the case, because I like doing magic, but at this point it can't be denied. 

So it looks like I need a new general, and a new, or additional, behavioral strategies and coping mechanisms. I have some thoughts on that, but I'm going to keep them to myself for now, keeping in mind the virtue of Silence.

Finally, we need to keep in mind Sun Tzu's dictum that we must know ourselves, and know our enemy. I've done my best to know myself, and to outline that knowledge in the foregoing. What of the enemy? Based on this list of symptoms, what I'm talking about is clearly some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder. I don't like admitting that. It feels like weakness. But it is what it is, and just because you don't want to admit that the enemy's forces are at the gate, doesn't mean they aren't there.

Tomorrow, I'm going to begin wrapping up the Sun Tzu posts with the final 3 chapters of The Art of War. I will probably be more personal in the posts that follow, and discuss Sun Tzu in relation to the war going on in my own psyche. See you then. 

 Sun Tzu tells us of the failings of the general:


A few principles underlie all of these.

Flight occurs when a general sends his army against another without adequately assessing the enemy's strength. Disorganization occurs when a general fails to give clear orders and organize clear divisions in his ranks. These two both result, then, from inadequate preparation. Rout is an extreme form of flight.

Insubordination occurs when a general fails to be sufficiently firm with his subordinates; collapse occurs when he is too harsh with them. Ruin occurs when he is so harsh that his various officers rebel and do their own thing. 



Sun Tzu tells us that these are the six ways of courting defeat, and they apply to life as well as to war.  In life as in war, the basic principle is to determine what your goals are, determine how they may be accomplished, and keep a unified focus on them.

It is easy to see how one can bring ruin upon oneself by any of these means. 

Let's have an example from my personal history, shall we?

When I was 24 I took an AmeriCorps job in Oregon. I was living in Pittsburgh at the time, 50 miles from where I grew up in Western Pennsylvania; I had never been further west than Chicago, and that only once. I had, on the other hand, worked for AmeriCorps before, in Pittsburgh. I enjoyed my first AmeriCorps year, which I spent teaching English as a Second Language to visitors from East Asia, and I thought that this would be similar. My knowledge of Oregon came from meeting a group of anarchist tree-sitters from Eugene several 5 years previously-- from what they told me, I figured the whole state would be a hippie Mecca.

As it turns out, I was 100% wrong about everything. Where my first AmeriCorps job was fun and exciting, this one was to consist of sitting in an office in a homeless shelter writing grant proposals all day. That would be bad enough, but it was made even harder by the fact that I did not know then (and do not know how) to write a grant proposal. 

The town that I was sent to, meanwhile, was exactly the opposite of what I expected. I assumed that since it was about an inch away from Eugene on a large map, it would be similar to Eugene in culture. Nope. The town turned out to be a burned out, meth-addled ruin, as most towns outside of the few bigger cities are. (Call it White Privilege in Action.) 

Oregon in the winter is also the gloomiest place in the entire world, and I arrived in mid-January. The town I was living in is in a valley. During the day, the cloud would raise up to the top of the surrounding mountains; at night it would settle back down again and become a blanket of fog, but never did it part and let the sun's raise through.



So I found myself with no friends, nothing to do, and a job I hated, in a town I hated, under a perpetual black cloud. Within two months I was suicidally depressed within 2 months. The job was a failure and remains a black mark on my work history and my life history, 14 years later. That is what comes from inadequate preparation.

Why was I there? What did I want? I didn't know. When I found out how different it was from my expectations, why didn't I leave? Well, I didn't want to offend anybody. But I offended them anyway by being a shit employee. That's how you bring ruin on your army. 

Chapter 9 of The Art of War continues to give us more details regarding the reading of terrain and its application to warfare, including:


While most of us are unlikely to find ourselves in the position of watching for signs of advancing chariotry, we can understand the basic principles here as understanding and making use of terrain and watching for signs of the enemy.

Let's consider these ideas from the perspectives of Heaven and Earth. By Heaven, of course, I mean Astrology, and by Earth I mean the astral reflection of the physical environment. When it branches out in different directions, it shows that parties have been sent out to collect firewood. A few clouds of dust moving to and for signify that the army is encamping.

First, the Heavens. Here is an astrological chart taken for my current location at the time that I'm writing this blog:




If you don't know how to read charts like these, now is a good time to learn. The main event, dominating the Heavens, is currently the square between Saturn and Uranus, representing (broadly) the conflict between Order and Chaos. At this moment, the Sun is conjunct Uranus, while the Moon is conjunct Saturn. This is not an especially good day for activities involving any of those planets-- or much else, for that matter. On the other hand, Jupiter and Mercury are both about to move into signs which they rule, which will lend considerable strength to both planets.  

More important than the details of this specific chart itself are the ways that it relates to your own natal chart-- and if you don't have a copy of that, now is a good time to get one. You can find any number of astrological programs online that will give you your chart if you input your time, date, and location of birth. Most will come with interpretations of your planets. I do NOT recommend paying much attention to these; just get the image of your chart. Then look at how it relates to the chart above. If Uranus or Saturn is impacting any planet in your chart by an opposition, square, or conjunction, that means trouble for activities related to that planet and to whatever house that planet rules in your chart. If, for example, your natal Venus is placed at 11 degree of Taurus and is the ruler of your 10th House, you can expect serious challenges to both your love life and your career over the next year or so. (And they probably began some time last year.)

And then there's Earth, which I defined above as the astral reflection of the physical environment.

Astral reflection? The simplest way to understand that is that the astral reflection of a place literally is the way that it feels to be in a place. Have you ever walked into a church or a deep forest and felt a sense of abiding peace that stayed with you after you left? That was an astral experience. Have you ever driven past a graveyard and felt a sense of creepiness and nausea? That was a different kind of astral experience. 

Learning to open up and then rely on the astral senses is a key component and fruit of every system of magical training. Many people are born with strong astral senses, too, and there are other things, from drugs to yoga, that can open them. There's also a bit of a danger, because to be able to sense astral phenomena is to be affected by them-- it's very hard for a lot of sensitive people to both detect the presence of astral filth and to remain unaffected by it. This is why traditional magical systems teach protective rituals right away--  when you start becoming sensitive to the astral environment, you need to be able transform it and stop it from impacting you in a negative way. 

If you aren't able to see or feel what's going on in the astral, it can and will still affect you. Learning to read physical terrain is very helpful. I've been using the term "astral reflection" to describe the astral environment, but that isn't really correct. It's really the physical that's the reflection of the astral environment. We can therefore read the astral environment to a certain by paying attention to the physical. A broken down dive bar reeking of cigarettes and old booze is the reflection of a particular type of astral environment-- even if you can't see the spirits that hang around there, you can know what they are just by looking at the place, and avoid it, as Sun Tzu's army avoids an ambush in tall grass. 

Sun Tzu continues to give us advice on military maneuvering: 



We discussed the meanings of "mountains" yesterday. To recap-- in military affairs, mountains are problems because they are void of sustenance for men and animals. If you get stuck on a mountain, your army will starve. On the other hand, as Sun Tzu says here, mountains have a certain value-- we should camp in high places, for defense.

So, as discussed yesterday, we need to not linger in places-- jobs, cities, lives and lifestyles-- in which there is no nourishment for our souls.

On the other hand, we can make use of undesirable places, the equivalent of mountains, in order to protect ourselves.

How do we do this?

Two different ideas come to mind. 

First, it's a very useful thing to avoid whatever is popular. Especially in moments like these, in which the collective mind of the fashionable classes is insane and the spirit of the times is a ravening, two-headed demon, every place that's fashionable is likely to be psychically toxic. I live in a more or less working class or lower middle class neighborhood in a small, rural town. There are no political signs in peoples lawns, nobody wears a mask on the trail in the woods, and kids play together, outside, on bicycles and skateboards, and the neighbors are relaxed and friendly. I spent a bit of time in a fashionable, higher end suburb of Washington, D.C. yesterday, and the contrast could not be more clear. There everyone is in a mask, no one talks to you, and they all have signs in their lawns going on about how tolerant they are. From my perspective, those neighborhoods are high, cold mountains, the sort of places where travelers get snowed in and resort to cannibalism. From their perspective, though, my neighborhood is the mountain-- the sort of place they wouldn't be caught dead in. And so I camp my army here.

But then there is also the issue of magical defense-- rendering your home and other places you spend your time defensible, like a mountain. This can dovetail nicely with the first approach-- a place that looks unfashionable on the outside, and so unappealing to the fashionable, but which is an astral paradise on the inside is a very nice place indeed!

I've gone on a bit longer than intended, so we'll see if we can come up with a meaning for "rivers" tomorrow. 

I plan on going quickly over the final chapters of the book, because I want to move on to something else. What's next? Either a detailed read-through of the Gospel of Matthew, analyzed as though it were a magical text in the tradition of Eliphas Levi, or else Iamblichus's canon of Platonic dialogs read in order. Or both. Stay tuned!

 Here is a useful selection from Chapter 8 of The Art of War:


Let's see if we can reframe these in terms of the inner struggle for control of one's own soul and destiny. Some will be the same, but others must necessarily differ. The five dangerous faults might be called:

1. Impulsiveness. This means acting from the internal passions and from outside impulses like TV or social media, without reflecting on consequences and without reference to principles or goals.

2. Cowardice. This specifically means living from fear, and is very common these days, to judge by the number of people I see wearing masks while driving their own cars. 

3. Irascibility. This also means what it does in Sun Tzu-- living from wrath, which can be easily provoked. Social media and TV news thrive by provoking both fear and wrath, leading the subject to lash out wildly, like a trapped animal. 

4. Conformity. This is the fourth of the major passions, along with lust, fear, and wrath, that are targeted for manipulation by news media, advertisers, politicians and other modern techno-magicians. All human beings are social animals. We want to be part of the group, and we don't want to be ostracized or spoken badly of. 

5. Laziness.  It's the case that many of us want to accomplish great things in our lives, but we don't want to have to endure the difficulties involved in doing so. If we want to achieve anything, we need to be willing to sacrifice our comfort for it, in the same way that a good general, even as he does his best to preserve his army, must be willing to sacrifice such men as are necessary to achieve victory. 

It was common in earlier times to oppose a saving virtue to every vice. In our case, we might overcome these five dangerous faults with the following list of virtues:

1. Reflection, which leads us to act only if it is right and in our long term benefit to do so;

2. Courage, which allows us to do what is right in spite of danger;

3. Patience, which allows us to endure provocation;

4. Independence, which allows us to do what we choose, regardless of the opinions of others; and 

5. Industriousness, which allows us to work to achieve our goals in spite of difficulty.

Sun Tzu says




In other words, we need to be flexible. Learn to roll with the punches, and change our tactics accordingly as circumstances change.

That sounds simple, but it's often quite difficult, because we very frequently confuse means with ends. You see this quite often in politics and in charity work of every kind. People believe that they are organizing to achieve a particular goal, but somehow the goal itself is never achieved, and the organization becomes an end in and of itself. And then you'll often find that if you criticize the organization, people accuse you of criticizing the goal-- even if the organization is the thing standing in between the goal and reality!

We can apply this lesson to our daily lives as well. If you want more money, you can try to get a different job and work longer hours. Or, you can cut your expenses-- now you have more money. Even better, you can ask yourself what you actually want. It's very often the case that you can enjoy a higher standard of living if you simply do things yourself. My favorite example is bread. A loaf of "artisan" bread at the store will set you back at least five dollars. I bake all of my family's bread at home. Every day we eat a loaf of "artisan" bread whose total cost, factoring all ingredients, is a little over a dollar. And it's only that much because I use King Arthur flour. If we were really low on money I'd spend $8 on a 25 pound bag of flour from Costco, and each loaf would cost around 35 cents. And it would still taste better than most stuff you can get at the store.

In any situation, ask yourself what end you really want to achieve, and don't become attached to any one set of means. Or, if you have become attached to the means, realize that they are, in fact, your real goal!

Sun Tzu continues to give us advice about terrain:


If you remember, way, way back in Chapter 1 we discussed terrain as a component of "Earth." For our purposes, terrain includes all those locations-- whether actual physical locations, mental locations, cultural locations, digital locations, astral locations or spiritual locations-- in which we must act to achieve any particular goal. 

The essence of the advice here is: Don't set yourself up for failure. If you have a problem with internet pornography, arrange your day so that you're not spending all your time alone with a computer-- that's the definition of a dangerously isolated position, for you. If you find yourself in that kind of position, don't encamp-- that is, find something else to do, don't just hang out. 

Joining hands with your allies is useful advice for anyone, provided that it's possible. Addicts very often find that it's much easier to get over their addiction if they join forces with others. This is true for addicts of every kind-- which includes many, perhaps most of us-- not just substance abusers. Alcoholics are better off at AA meetings than barrooms; home shopping addicts would often be better off getting together with their friends at a park than spending time on Etsy or Amazon.

Set yourself up for success, and you will succeed.

Chapter 7 of The Art of War ends with the following words:

The points here are not to give the enemy the courage and tenacity that desperation provides. Give them an out; don't attack them when they're retreating. 

In my view, a major part of the problem with American politics is that no one is willing to understand this. Let's consider the Social Justice movement for a moment. I personally see this as the worst poison in American public life today, and I see its major exponents as different from Hitler and Stalin only in degree, and not in kind. I expect that difference in degree to even out if the SJWs ever gain the total power that they crave.

That said, I would be more than happy to compromise with them on any number of areas. Do you want reparations for slavery? Fine-- as long as we can also get reparations for the opioid crisis, and as long as it's not being paid for by people who didn't benefit from and had nothing to do with slavery. Do you want to mandate ethnic studies in the schools? That's okay, but not if it fails to include discussion of any European ethnic groups. Do you want identity politics? Okay, I don't, but if we're going to have it, it's got to be identity politics for all, not our current regime of "identity for me, but not for thee." 

And I can think of any number of other areas where I'd be willing to compromise-- but this is never allowed. Are you descended from Irish Catholics? Pennsylvania Germans? Scots-Irish Appalachian coalminers? Italians who arrived in the early 20th century and faced lynching in the South and bigotry from the Irish-dominated Catholic Church in the North? It doesn't matter-- you're just as "white" as an old money family whose ancestors arrived at Jamestown in 1630, and just as culpable for anything that ever upset a black person. 

Under such circumstances, the only possible result, and one that I predict that we'll see before the decade is out, is going to be a massive resurgence in white self-identity, white solidarity, white pride and white power. And no, I don't like this result, at all. Like the great majority of ethnic-white Americans, I would have been perfectly happy to see "whiteness" eliminated as a form of collective identity. I'm proud of who I am, who my family is and who our ancestors are, and "white" has never been a part of that. But if you don't give me any way out, what do you expect to happen? And so I fully expect that by 2030, if I'm still writing this blog or something like it, I'm not going to be talking about how to avoid being attacked by SJWs, but how to avoid being co-opted by white identitarianism. 

What about our internal struggles, against our own addictions, bad habits, and unruly passions? Are there ways that we can allow them to retreat?

I think so. One great way to do this is simply not to focus on them. If you try to eliminate a habit-- watching television, say-- by getting rid of it, you're likely to fail. Instead, focus on doing something else with your time. If you usually watch TV from 7:00 until bed time, but you want to get in better shape, don't cut the TV out. Instead, find a workout to do from 7:00 to 7:30. You can watch TV after that. Eventually, you'll probably find that the amount of time you spend watching TV gets smaller and smaller, as the feeling of doing something you've chosen, rather than something that's been chosen for you, inspires you to do more of what you want. Once it's finally become irrelevant, you can eliminate it entirely. 

As our translator notes, the point of all of this 

More on the same note:


It's unfortunately the case that in life, we have to deal with other people. Their whims, their moods, their traumas and circumstances-- these things affect us all the time. Someone cuts us off in traffic because they're in a hurry; a cashier at the grocery store is rude to us because we look like a villain from a TV show or the evening news; a romantic partner flies into a rage because of something that reminds them of a childhood trauma; a boss belittles us because he was bullied in middle school and now has the chance to do the same thing to someone else. 

In the end, self-possession is the only way we can make it mentally and emotionally intact through the storms of life.

But how do we find it?

We can't rely on other humans; they aren't reliable. And that means we can't rely on ourselves either because we are also human. 

We need, then, to reach beyond the human-- to the divine. That includes that small spark of divinity within that is our own higher self, of course. But above all, we need a relationship with God-- our God, whatever God is appropriate for us. At the end, only God does not fail, and it is only by standing always in the divine presence that we can remain unmoved at all times. This is why St. Paul says, "Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all things give thanks."

 Let's back up a little bit, and discuss some of Sun Tzu's previous selections from The Book of Army Management.


To this the later commentator Chang Yu helpfully adds:


I've been focusing my commentaries on personal development and habits for the last little while. Today I want to shift attention back to the Spiritual Warfare. 

I've recently learned, via JMG's blog, that the latest absurdity in the world of the demoniac Social Justice movement is an attempt to prevent white people from using tarot cards, because they're "cultural appropriation."

Now, reading that, I had the following reactions:

The first was anger.

The second was a mental debate.

The third was an attempt to figure out why the hell anyone would think anything like that, which led me to a pagan site on Reddit where some very concerned 22 year old was explaining the ways that white people can appropriately use tarot cards.

The fourth was a lengthy comment about the whole matter on JMG's blog, which comment was promptly devoured by the Internet when the site went down for a half hour.

Now, the thing is-- all of this was a waste of time. 

There is no reason whatsoever to debate the Social Justice movement. The essence of that movement is racialized socialism enforced by surveillance, censorship, indoctrination and mob violence. We don't need to talk about whether or not that works or what outcome it produces. We have the whole history of the Twentieth Century to look at if we want to know. If you are driving in a car and your passenger tells you to drive into oncoming traffic, you don't argue about the reasons why you shouldn't do that, and you don't consider their point of view. You just don't drive into oncoming traffic. If they grow increasingly shrill and start shrieking about how you have to drive into oncoming traffic because they are an epileptic and don't have their medicine available, you still don't drive into oncoming traffic. You drive to a psychiatric hospital and have them committed. Later on, once their psychosis is under control, you can find out if they are actually epileptic and if you can help them get access to treatment. 

To engage with insanity is to allow yourself to be robbed of your presence of mind. To engage with a public insanity, such as the Social Justice movement, while it is still at the peak of its enthusiasm is to engage the enemy's soldiers while their spirit is at its keenest. Only do it if you can get something out of it besides rage at the insanity of it all and a sense of powerless at being unable to stop it. Most of the time you can't-- so don't follow my example. It's best to avoid learning the news of the latest outrage, if all it will do is outrage you; if you are unable to avoid learning about it, it is still best to ignore it and do something constructive. Only engage with it if the force of the outrage will be sufficient to rally yourself or your own side to actually achieve something.