readoldthings

Sun Tzu tells us:

The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals. Hence his ability to pick out the right men and to utilize combined energy.

When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones. For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope; if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped, to go rolling down.

Sun Tzu began this chapter by discussing the need to divide a large force into smaller, more manageable units. I suggested that this can be applied to any task, by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable components. I want to say something more about this in a moment.

First, though, I want to say something about the overall perspective I'm working with. Eliphas Levi writes that:

The Great Work is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will.

I've talked about applying Sun Tzu's work to: individual goals; the formation of habits; the overcoming of defects and bad habits; and spiritual warfare. All of these are components of the Great Work, which can also be called the total conquest of our souls.

The Enemy is everything which resists us in this task, and can be divided into three components:

The Enemy Within, consisting of all of our passions, addictions, internalized bad habits, lack of will, destructive thought-chains, and harmful ideas;

The Enemy Without, consisting of all those external forces which act against us achieving the Great Work, including our physical surroundings and other human beings; and

The Great Enemy, which is the larger spiritual force which acts to keep us enchained.

Of course, there are not hard and fast lines between these. The Great Enemy may propagate a destructive idea in society, such as the cult of victimhood. One's friends and family may take up this idea and repeat it constantly. Hearing it all the time, we may then internalize it and view our own lives through its lens.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu is discussing the way that, by achieving perfect discipline among the components of our army, and by selecting the right men for the right task, we may apply the army with maximum force against the Enemy.

I'd like to suggest that in the Great Work, we are also aided by dividing our own forces into components, and by selecting the right men for the job. As we've discussed, one of the ways that we can do this is by breaking a larger goal down into smaller, more manageable goals, and then turning these goals into daily habits.

Another way that I put this idea into action is to apply a multiplicity of approaches to my own spiritual life. This contradicts the idea that most spiritual teachers push, which is to pick one path and stick with it. That idea isn't wrong-- in fact, it's probably right. But I've never been able to do it. Religiously, I'm a kind of Neoplatonic Catholic Pagan Taoist, and lately I've been learning a great deal by studying Tibetan Buddhism. I've tried to just be one thing-- I really have. Everyone says you ought to. But I find that, by limiting myself to a single path, I lose too many things which I've come to need. I connect to the powers of the natural world via Druidry, and I also practice a form of Celtic-Druidic ceremonial magic. On the other hand, I regularly feel the need to turn to the spiritual world for guidance in virtue, moral conduct, and human affairs generally, and I really haven't had much luck asking the Celtic gods for help. In the Druid revival, Esus, chief of tree spirits, is an important deity, and I can attest that he is very real and very powerful. But he doesn't really have much to say about human affairs-- appropriately enough; it's not his department. When I need help with parenting, or being a good spouse, I go to Saint Joseph, and get the help I need.

And there's something else involved, something I can't quite explain because it's ineffable. When I invoke the Celtic gods, I get the impression of a bright golden light and excited singing. When I invoke Catholic saints or the Trinity, the impression I get is one of a deeper light, quieter and calmer. I seem to need both the calm that comes with the invocation of Christ, His Mother and His saints in a traditional context, and I need the delight that comes from the invocation of the Druid gods. Taoism feels like a cool, blue-grey wind blowing through; it's peaceful and it's refreshing, and I need that too sometimes. On its own though, it's just too cold for me.

Again, the usual advice is: Pick one path and stick with it. I have no doubt this works for many people, probably most people. But if you're like me, consider ignoring the usual advice, and recruiting men for your army from any of the spiritual world's great traditions that speak to you.

Chapter 5 of The Art of War continues to challenge me, and that's a good thing. Let's discuss the following passage:

Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions.

Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act.

By holding out baits, he keeps him on the march; then with a body of picked men he lies in wait for him.

Here again we see Sun Tzu illustrating the importance of deception, as we've seen before. Today he's also talking about something we haven't discussed as much-- forcing your enemy to act first, and to act on false information.

It's easy to see how this applies to actual warfare. The later commentator Chang Yu describes a situation where the Hsiung-nu people, upon discovering spies of the Han emperor, made sure that they saw only old cattle and weak or infirm soldiers, while concealing their horses and fighting men. The emperor acted on the bad intelligence and his army was surrounded and destroyed.

In actual combat, this is often a good strategy. Feign weakness or provide your opponent with an opening; when he comes at you, close the trap.

Other times, of course, the opposite approach is necessary. Feigning weakness while walking through a bad neighborhood at night is a great way to get yourself mugged. On the other hand, you might be feigning weakness because you're an undercover police officer, looking to draw out gang members.

Even animals employ this strategy.

Once, when I was about 12 years old, an unfriendly cat turned up in the neighborhood and started beating up my cats. I had three cats, but none of them were big enough to beat this cat on their own. One day, I was playing in the yard with the smallest of my cats, a little black cat named Sylvester. All of a sudden his ears perked up, and he started slinking toward a nearby ravine. Intrigued, I picked up a Nerf football and followed him.

At the bottom of the ravine there was a drainage pipe leading under a hill. And at the drainage pipe were my other two cats. Sylvester went over to Stripey, a big tomcat and the leader of their group, and appeared to talk with him. Then he crawled into the ravine.

A moment later he came tearing out again, the orange cat hot on his heals. As soon as the orange cat emerged from the drainage pipe, Stripey pounced and knocked him back on his haunches.

Sensing that it was time to act, I threw my football. The orange cat turned and ran into the pipe. The football flew in after him. Neither cat nor football were ever seen in that yard again.

Beyond warfare or physical combat, though, are there other situations in which we want to get the "other side" to make the first move?

I can think of a few. The obvious one, of course, is dating.

It's often the case that you find yourself interested in someone, but you don't know if they return your affections. Of course, the easiest way to find out whether they do or not is simply to ask them on a date. Sometimes, though, this isn't advisable. It may be that you work together or go to school together, and if you admit your affections and they are not returned, you might be setting yourself up for years of awkwardness that you'd rather avoid.

This is where the indirect approach comes in. In order for it to work, you have to have the self-control to not admit your real feelings, and sufficient ability to read people that you can draw theirs out without awkwardness. Often the best way to do this is to arrange to meet socially, for coffee or drinks with friends, and simply pay attention to the other person's body language. (Again, this requires the ability to read body language. For some this comes naturally; others have to learn, but it isn't as hard as you think. Cats and dogs are 100% body language; if you can tell when your dog needs to go for a walk, you can learn to tell if someone's attracted to you.) A ten minute conversation is usually enough to tell you whether to move forward or move on, without ever having to tip your hand.

So far, so good. But are there ways that we can apply this idea to the largest of goals-- the conquest of our inner selves and all our faculties that is the Great Work and our great overarching goal?

Yes, I think so.

To a great extent, the conquest of our souls means the creation of good habits and the elimination of bad ones. We can see our bad habits as forces of the Enemy Within, and good habits as our own armies. Assume that, during any given day, you will be triggered to act on your bad habits. Of course you will-- That's why they're called "habits," after all. Christians call these moments "temptations," and see them as the work of demons, while in Chinese Buddhist and Taoist thinking, they're often seen as the work of "鬼," that is, ghosts. This can be a useful way to think about things even if you don't take it literally. In any case, the demon or the ghost or the trigger is going to show up today, like it did yesterday, and like it will tomorrow. Instead of fighting against it directly, use it as an incentive to do something useful.

That is: Don't struggle against the desire to read the news or watch internet pornograpy or whatever it is. Instead, when you feel the temptation to do so come up, allow it to build until you're near your breaking point, and then use that energy as the incentive to do something useful instead. Don't read your Facebook feed-- go on a walk in the woods. And do this every time you want to look at Facebook. Eventually you might even find yourself welcoming the temptation to look at Facebook, because it gets you out into the woods!

Sun Tzu tells us that:

Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.

This simple passage is straightforward enough if we're talking about warfare or combat. Sun Tzu is telling us to divide our army down into the smallest manageable units and to institute perfect discipline among them. Having done that, we can move in any way we want on the battlefield, including simulating disorder and retreat to entice the enemy into attack.

But how can we apply these ideas to our lives outside of a military context? How do they apply to the battle for our own souls?

I can think of two ways. Perhaps you can think of more.

First, there is the issue of deception with regard to what I've previously called the Enemy Without. The Enemy Without are all those people in our lives who stand between us and our goals. Very often, they are friends and family members who don't want us to change in ways that are good or healthy for us, because they're comfortable with us the way we are. Sometimes they're larger outside forces, or people acting on their behalf. That could be an online group trying to suck you into the sort of political argument that accomplishes nothing but the general raising of blood pressure, or a newly mandated political entrainment program at your work.

Now, deception in these cases need not mean outright lying, and in most cases shouldn't. In most cases, Silence is sufficient. Silence, like simulated disorder on the battlefield, requires perfect discipline. Most of us want to blab, and for a lot of us, our favorite thing to blab about is ourselves. If we're taking up meditation, trying a new workout regimen, writing a novel, learning an instrument, or applying for work, the first thing we want to do is to tell everyone in our lives about it. This is very often a mistake. As we've discussed here before, telling people about your projects is often a very good way to take all the energy out of them.

How do you learn to keep silent? One way is to remind yourself of your actual goal. Are you trying to get social status for working out, writing a novel, or getting a job? If so, by all means tell everyone about it. On the other hand, if your goal is just to do these things, the only way to do them is to do them.

The second point is something of an elaboration of the first. I've lately been reading the book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia by Joseph Pistone. Pistone was an FBI agent who spent 6 years infiltrating the mob in the 1980s. Doing this required him to create a completely different identity, to maintain that identity at all times, and yet to also retain his actual identity as an FBI agent at all times. Writing about what it means to live a life like this, Pistone says:

It means you have an ego strong enough to sustain you from within you, when nobody but you knows what you're really doing and thinking.

It means you don't forget who you are, not for a day, not for a minute...

You have to be an individualist who doesn't mind working alone. really alone, more alone than being by yourself. You're with bad guys continually, pretending to be one of them, cultivating them, laughing at their jokes, keeping feelings and opinions and fears to yourself, just like your true identity. You do this all day, every day.

I read this and immediately identified with it. While I've never gone undercover in the mafia, Pistone's words remind me very much of what it's like to try to live a spiritual life while also making a living in the modern world.

We're all undercover, all the time. We're constantly surrounded by people who may not be bad guys, but are, at minimum, unawakened. And, in this era of vastly heightened spiritual warfare, really can morph into bad guys-- that is, transmitters of demonic ideas and energies-- at any given time. Manly Hall called the life of the initiate "The Way of the Lonely Ones," and many of us discover that it is exactly that. Some of us are fortunate enough to have a romantic partner who is also on the Path; others have to make do with one or two friends, often long distance or internet-based, who are members of the same esoteric order or spiritual society.

Whatever the case may be, Pistone's words apply, and dovetail nicely with Sun Tzu's. We need to be able to build an ego-- that is, a self-concept and vessel for our soul-- that is strong enough to sustain us in every day life. We need to be the kind of people who can remain ourselves when subjected to an internet meme, a political rally, a Super Bowl, a diversity and inclusion seminar, a crowded store full of true Believing Covid fanatics, and very often to do so without giving away our lack of participation. To do this requires, as Sun Tzu tells us, perfect internal discipline.

How do we cultivate this discipline? That's something I want to talk more about, as we go along.

I'm finding that working with The Art of War becomes more difficult as we proceed. I've tried to make this a daily blog, barring exceptions for weekends; lately it's probably been more like 3-5 entries per week. I sometimes find that a particular passage will jam me up, and taking a break from it for a day is what allows it to marinate in my unconscious mind and become more clear.

Today I've discovered another block. I wrote on Sunday that the hardest time to do a daily habit is the day after you failed to do it. For me there's another difficult time, and that's the day after I come up with something that I really like. I liked Sunday's post. Yesterday I stared at the text until my eyes went bleary, and then some set of convenient distractions (toddlers are very good at providing these, as are cats) allowed me to step away from it.

Now, was my goal in starting this series of posts to always write a lengthy reflection; to always write something I like at the time; or was it simply to write something, provided that it be true and, from my own perspective, reasonably useful?

The answer is the third option, of course.

I'm going to guess that I'm not the only person that manifests this kind of pattern. "Yesterday was great, how could I possibly top that? I couldn't, I couldn't-- Oh, look! The cat needs to go outside. Break time!"

The Enemy within is cunning; its goal above all else is to stop you from becoming.

Sun Tzu writes:

The good fighter will be terrifying in his onset, and prompt in his decision.

Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of the trigger.

For "energy," read "potential," which we create by preparation. This passage highlights several themes which we've returned to more than once in these reflections. The first is practice: We need to prepare ourselves by regular practice of whatever art or craft or path we've chosen. The second is watchfulness: If our goal involves any kind of specific change, like getting a job, a home or a romantic partner, we need to be vigilant for opportunities.

And there is a third theme, which I haven't talked about before here: Decisiveness.

If you want to know the truth, I probably haven't discussed it because it's one area where I'm somewhat deficient. It's honestly not very easy for me to make decisions. Upon reflecting on this, it occurs to me that the reason for it is that I'm just not very clear on what I want, most of the time. I keep returning to the point of unity of purpose. Sun Tzu tells us it's necessary in warfare. Plato tells us that it's necessary in the government of our souls. Who can doubt that they're right?

If we are able to be decisive, it will be because we have formulated our goals ahead of time; prepared to achieve them by daily practice; and kept vigilant for opportunities to put them into action.

Sun Tzu tells us:

That the impact of your army may be like the grindstone dashed against an egg -- this is effected by the science of weak points and strong.

This relates to an issue we've discussed more than once in these posts:

Don't attack your Enemy where he is strongest!

For any given goal, we need to identify when the Enemy is strong and weak. The Enemy, remember, is any sort of resistance we will face-- very much including our own internal resistance to change, as we saw yesterday.

Astrology can be helpful for this, if it's something that you're interested in-- Mercury conjunct Venus in Gemini is an auspicious time to sign a lease or apply for job; Mercury retrograde in Pisces conjunct the Sun is a very bad time for the same things. This falls under "Heaven" in Sun Tzu's first list of constant factors. Similarly, Mars in Aries is good for beginning a workout regimen or starting military service; Mars in Taurus is not so good.

But not everyone is going to be an astrologer, and Astrology isn't sufficient on its own. Your workout routine, begun on a Tuesday while Mars is in Aries conjunct Jupiter and trine the ruler of your fifth house, can still fail, if you let your own internal resistance get the better of you. That's why I suggested a few tricks, yesterday, for overcoming this. Give yourself a basic minimum practice. Don't tell yourself your plans. Don't tell anyone else, if it comes to that.

Here is one more trick:

If you're trying to create a daily habit, there is a right time to do it, and a wrong time to do it. The wrong time is the enemy's strong point; the right time is their weak point. And what is the right time to do it:

When you'll do it.

Very often, especially with spiritual practices like meditation or prayer, or semispiritual practices like magic or yoga, we think that we have to practice either first thing in the morning or right before bed-- or both.

For many people, this is the absolute worst time possible.

Why?

Well, how do you feel in the mornings? Do you roll out of bed, bleary-eyed, and make a beeline for the coffeemaker, and then try to get enough caffeine in you to last you through the drive to work? If so, how will you feel about waking up a half hour earlier? Do you shudder just imagining it? If so, that's probably not a great time to learn meditation.

The evening is often just as bad, especially if you have kids. By the time dinner is made and cleaned up again, all the little people are convinced that, yes, they really do need to bathe and go to sleep again today and no, not at midnight, meditation is often the last thing you want to do. I know that, for me, that hour at the end of the day after the last of the little ones falls asleep but before I drop off is one of the few times I get alone with my partner during the weekday. I don't want to go off in another room and meditate!

If you identify with any of this, forget morning and night. Try your lunch break at work instead. Or find somewhere to sit for a half hour at the end of the day, before you drive home. Or meditate after dinner-- Yes, you're allowed, whatever the book said.

At one time-- long ago-- I had a 9-5 office job, and I was training to be a massage therapist in the evenings from 5-10. That left very little time to myself! At work I had the standard 15 minute breaks twice a day, and I could get away with an hour lunch. During my breaks I'd often run to the park around the corner to do 10 minutes of qigong, and 3 days a week, at lunch time, I'd ride my bike to the dojo for an hour of karate. I could have tried to do these things in the morning, but, well, I just wouldn't have. The best time to do it is when you'll do it.

Now I ought to mention that these days, I do my magical practice first thing in the morning, around 6am. This routine works very well for me, but there's a reason for that, and it's not because I suddenly became a morning person. Far from it! My wife has to be at work very early, and I like waking up with her and helping her get out the door. Everyday the alarm goes off at 5, and I drag myself to the kitchen and make coffee, her breakfast and lunch for the day, and then I start the car if it's cold outside. Wife leaves at 6, and then I have an hour to myself before the kids get up.

Once the kids get up, all bets are off. Since Covid, I've been a full-time househusband, and it's more work than I ever guessed it might be. From 7:00 onward I'm going pretty much continuously, chasing baby around the house, helping my older kid with his schoolwork, making food, cleaning up the kitchen, making more food, cleaning up again, doing laundry, making dinner, cleaning up the kitchen for a third time. If I tried to fit a magical practice or anything else into that time, it just wouldn't work. But during that hour from 6 to 7-- sometimes, when the gods smile on me, 7:30, or, rarely, 8:00-- I can do whatever I want. So that's when I practice magic, meditate, and so on.

So keep that in mind. The Enemy Within has a weak point, and it's whenever you will actually have time to do whatever it is you want to do-- even if it's not the time the book said to do it. If you find yourself saying, "Well, I can't meditate now, it's 1:30 in the afternoon, and I heard you have to do it first thing in the morning, I guess I'll look at Facebook instead" just tell yourself to shut up.

Chapter 5 of The Art of War contains some difficult and interesting material. Here is verse 3:

To ensure that your whole host may withstand the brunt of the enemy's attack and remain unshaken -- this is effected by maneuvers direct and indirect.

Our translator devotes a long section to the interpretation of this verse, including commentaries by many later interpreters. The difficulty centers around the two Chinese characters being rendered here as "direct" and "indirect." The character being rendered "direct" is 正, "zheng," which in other contexts can mean "correct" or even "orthodox." Indirect is 奇, "qi," meaning "odd."

A few of the commentaries will help illustrate the difference:

Wei Liao Tzu says, "Direct warfare favors frontal attacks, indirect warfare attacks from the rear." Tsao Kung says, "Going straight out to join battle is a direct operation; appearing on the enemy's rear is an indirect maneuver." Li Wei-kung says, "in war, to march straight ahead is 正, turning movements, on the other hand, are 奇."

Our translator adds:

To put it perhaps a little more clearly: any attack or other operation is 正, on which the enemy has had his attention fixed; whereas that is 奇, which takes him by surprise or comes from an unexpected quarter. If the enemy perceives a movement which is meant to be 奇, it immediately becomes 正.

I've written before here that the most important battles take place within our own souls, defined, as always, as the sum total of our actions and our mental representations.

Now, it's a commonplace that if you attempt to make a change in your life, you will encounter resistance from two sources. The first is the people in your life who are used to you being the way you are, and don't want you to change. Call these people the Enemy Without. Even friends and family can be the Enemy Without, and not because they don't like you or want to hurt you. It's just that they're used to you being the way you are, and if you change, it means that, in some way, they will have to change.

It's easy to see how to apply the principle of indirect warfare in such cases: If you have people in your life who don't want you to change, you can avoid them. They don't need to know about what you're doing, they don't need to hear about your plans or your habits, and they definitely don't need to know about what you're hoping to do in the future. If they can't be avoided-- if you live with them, or work with them-- then don't tell them what you're doing. To tell them is to set yourself up for sabotage.

The second and by far the more difficult source of resistance comes not from without, but from within. How many times have you attempted a new habit, only to give up after a few days or weeks-- or, even more commonly, after the first time you miss a single day? In every case, the enemy was within you. And it won.

But the principle of indirect warfare can be applied to the Enemy Within as well as to the Enemy Without. All you have to do is to not tell yourself your intentions.

Let's say you want to get in better shape, and so you've taken up running every day. Then one day something comes up during your usual running time. Maybe you get a phone call from an old friend, or a work emergency comes up, or maybe you just sleep in that day. Either way, you end up not going. Now, for any daily habit, the hardest day to do it is always the day after you don't do it. This is when you'll hear the voice of the Enemy Within saying things to you like, "I already skipped yesterday. What's the point? I'm clearly not a runner." "My 100-day streak is over, so why keep going?" "I guess I don't run every day after all."

(Incidentally, I think that this is why a lot of people who try to recover from drinking or drug use fail-- they treat any minor relapse as the equivalent of returning to addiction full-time. I knew a girl who was sober from alcohol for a year. Then she got a tooth infection and had to go to the dentist. The dentist prescribed a narcotic for the pain. After filling her prescription she took a pill, and then took a second pill-- thus exceeding the prescribed dose. Having done so, she told herself, "Well, I'm already 'out,' so I might as well get drunk." She did so, and then fell into despondency, in the belief that her one-night bender had undone the work of the entire previous year. In fact, it had not-- she was sober for all the days before she went out, and for all the days after she dried up again. Unfortunately, the culture of most 12-step groups is to focus on accumulating continuous days, months, and years of sobriety, and so treats any relapse as a return to Day 1.)

Where were we?

Oh yes. Don't tell yourself your plans.

If you find yourself resisting a habit, do it anyway-- but don't tell yourself you're doing it. Tell yourself you're doing something else, and make yourself a deal. If you don't want to go running today, tell yourself you're not going running. You're just putting your shorts and shoes on. And once they're on, hey, you can sit back down and watch TV if you want-- but you're going to do it in running shorts. Most of the time you'll find that once you're dressed for a run, you're ready to go running. But sometimes you're not. In that case, you tell yourself-- Look, Self, I don't feel like this today either, so we're just going to do a quick run around the block. Five minutes around the block-- that's barely a commercial break. We can do that, can't we?

Do that, and you'll usually find that the resistance crumbles; you've done five minutes, so why not do five miles?

Every now and again, the resistance doesn't crumble. And so you just do five minutes that day. But what will happen in that case is that, the next day, you won't have the same level of resistance. The Inner Enemy won't say "We didn't run yesterday, so why bother today?" Instead, the momentum built up by your five minute run yesterday will propel you to a ten minute run, a twenty or a thirty minute run today.

You can apply this to any habit.

One of the tricks that you can use is to set a basic minimum. A basic minimum is whatever the smallest amount of practice is necessary to maintain a given habit. It could be that five minute run around the block. In martial arts, it could be a basic kata or form, or a short workout on a heavy bag. In music, it could be working through a scale or a song.

This is one of the reasons that Banishing Rituals are so useful in magical practice-- on the one hand, they are useful for the obvious purpose of clearing one's aura and physical surroundings of unbalanced energies. But they also function as a minimum. They rarely take more than 5 minutes, and it's very easy to tell yourself, when you find yourself resisting practicing on a given day, "I'm just going to do a banishing ritual." Most of the time, you'll find that you want to keep going after that with your other practices and meditations. On the rare occasions that that doesn't happen, you've still got the effects of the banishing ritual.

So there you have it. Apply the principles of 正 and 奇 both to the Enemy Without and to the Enemy Within, and find yourself on the path to victory...

Or as the saying has it, "Never tell the Devil your plans."

Let's move on Chapter 5 of the Art of War.

Sun Tzu said: The control of a large force is the same in principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.

This bit of advice is common enough to be a cliche, but it's a cliche for good reason. You can accomplish any task you set yourself to, no matter how great, by dividing it into manageable pieces.

People who try to quit drinking or drug use are often given the refrain "One day at a time." And there's a good reason for this. If you're 25 and trying to stop using heroin, you have, assuming an ordinary human life expectancy, at least 50 years ahead of you. That's a lot of time to not use heroin! Try thinking of it in those terms, and you're very likely to give up. On the other hand, staying clean for one day is a much easier task; all you have to do is not use between now and the time your head hits the pillow tonight.

I think about this with parenting a lot. My youngest child is a year old. If I try thinking of the next 18 or 20 years, it can become very overwhelming, and I wonder how I can do it. And, well, of course it's overwhelming-- When I think in those terms, I'm trying to do kindergarten, elementary school, driver's license, first date, graduation, off to college, wouldn't you rather do a trade school, now you need a job, on and on and on-- all at once. The mind shuts down; it simply can't be done. On the other hand, I am more than capable of doing what I need to do for my kids where they're at right now, in this moment, this hour, for this day. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

Martial arts have taught me this more than anything else. Years ago, when I attended my first taijiquan (tai chi) class, I was terrible. I mean honestly, sincerely bad. These days I can't even figure out how to replicate the movements I used to do, they were so uncoordinated, weird-looking, and physically painful. It would have been easy to compare myself to my instructors, notice the enormous gap between us, and give up. Instead-- for whatever reason-- I decided that I would be teachable, and believe that a modest amount of daily practice would lead to great improvement over time. And it has. I am not a master, but I am an instructor-- and believe me, you would not have thought that that was possible fi you'd seen me on Day 1, twisting about like some bizarre skeleton thing.

Finally, it's worth noting that Sun Tzu is referring specifically to the management of an army. Most of us are not now and will not be commanding large armies, but many of us may find ourselves leading groups of one sort or another, whether it's managing a team at work, moderating an internet forum, or teaching a class. Here the same rule can be applied. Break large and unmanageable groups down into smaller and more manageable groups, in the same way that you break large tasks into smaller and more manageable tasks. A simple idea-- but a very useful one!

Today, a more difficult passage. Sun Tzu tells us that:

In respect of military method, we have, firstly, Measurement; secondly, estimation of quantity; thirdly, Calculation; fourthly, Balancing of chances; fifthly, Victory.

Measurement owes its existence to Earth; Estimation of quantity to Measurement; Calculation to Estimation of quantity; balancing of chances to Calculation; and Victory to Balancing of chances.

I struggled to figure out what to do with this one, which is why this is being posted later in the day than usual. It finally came together when I remembered the title of Chapter 4, which is (in translation): Tactical Dispositions.

Now, in military terminology, tactics refers to methods of winning specific engagements, strategy to an army's overall goal. Keeping that in mind, we can see that Sun Tzu's methods given here are not intended to refer to our overall goal, but to those individual steps along the way.

For example:

A goal might be to-- oh, I don't know-- write a daily blog whose subject is ancient authors and how their wisdom may be applied to life in the modern world. This is part of strategy.

On a particular day, one might come across a difficult passage in an older text, and struggle to figure out how to apply it. Sun Tzu tells us that we begin our engagements with Measurement, but that Measurement "owes its existence to Earth." Earth, let us recall, refers to the terrain on which any given engagement will take place: In this case, a Dreamwidth blog.

Having surveyed the terrain, we engage the method, first by Measurement. Our translator, Lionel Giles, tells us that this refers to a general survey of the ground-- we've already done this, by naming our ground as "a blog post on Dreamwidth." Estimation of quantity derives from this and refers to an estimation of the size of the Enemy's force. Since our goal is a daily blog post, our Enemy is time; we can see that, as the current time is ten til 7, EST, the enemy has a little more than 5 ours at his disposal.

Distinguishing between Estimation of quantity and Calculation is a bit difficult, as both our English translator and earlier Chinese commentators noted. It may be worth mentioning that I was hoping to knock this post out during the brief open time available while my wife was giving the baby a bath. I failed, and just prior to these sentences I had a one year old girl attempt to jump up onto my computer and steal my mousepad. (This is her new favorite game). A better Estimation of quantity would have factored the baby in among enemy forces, as a source of distraction, while Calculation would have noted that there is, at the present time, only one baby.

Finally, we are able to balance our chances. My wife is currently putting a diaper and pajamas onto the baby on the other side of the living room; to judge by her cries, she has never worn clothes before and finds the entire affair to be some sort of torture. Oh, nevermind, one of her toys is playing a song, all is well. I have, perhaps, half a minute before she remembers the mousepad. Can I do it?

If you are reading this blog post, then we have achieved Victory.

Today a short selection from Chapter 4 of Sun Tzu:

The consummate leader cultivates the Tao, and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is in his power to control success.

We keep returning to this idea, don't we?

Cultivate the Tao by:

1. Connecting with the Divine.
2. Establishing a goal.
3. Focusing on that goal with all your faculties.

Adhere to method and discipline by:

1. Establishing a spiritual practice, so that you can come to know yourself and to know God, and also to cultivate your will.
2. Having cultivated a strong will, direct it toward your chosen goals by the same method of incremental, daily action, proceeding step by step toward victory.

Whether you want to get married, buy a house, or become an exorcist, the process is the same.

Today, a somewhat difficult passage from Sun Tzu:

To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.

Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, "Well done!"

To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.

What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage.

So we have, on the one hand, to be able to win in spite of insurmountable odds; and, on the other hand, to win so effortlessly that no one would look on and cheer our victory.

Think about the plot of the Rocky movies. If you're unfamiliar, in every single case, it goes like this: Rocky sets out to win a fight against an unbeatable opponent. He trains and trains and struggles within himself while '80s workout music plays. Then the big fight comes. After a grueling battle, Rocky eeks out a win in the fifteenth round. The crowd bursts into wild applause as Rocky staggers to his corner.

This is exactly the opposite of what Sun Tzu wants for us. Our victories should appear effortless. A single punch and the opponent goes down; the crowd is left wondering why they paid $100 a ticket for a 30 second fight.

And so we're left with a question: How can we, on the one hand, struggle and win against seemingly impossible odds, while, on the other hand, seem to do so effortlessly?

This will be the third time I've used the following example, but I keep coming back to it because it really seems important.

In the 1960s, Archbishop Fulton Sheen denounced the hippies, Beat writer Jack Kerouac denounced the hippies, and the only effect was to strengthen the hippies.

In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the early punk movement denounced the hippies, and the hippies were overthrown.

Moreover, the punks didn't come out and give televised rants against hippie immorality (as Archbishop Sheen did) or debate hippies on the Ed Sullivan show (as Kerouac did). They didn't need to. They sneered at the hippies and dismissed them with a contemptuous flick of their wrist. In a promotional video for the Clash from the early '80s, Joe Strummer barks, "From now on, anyone who takes a drug is a hippie. And hippies can shove off." There's no debate necessary, no discussion, just a curled lip and a snort of contempt. Hippie is out, punk is in, and that's the way of things.

The so-called "Woke" movement in American political culture is the worst thing that has happened in my lifetime, and there is nothing that I would like more than to see it destroyed, ruined, and utterly purged from our public discourse so that scarcely a memory of it remains. I imagine that I feel about it roughly how Fulton Sheen felt about the hippies. It's stunningly, breathtakingly immoral, and built on a foundation of logic so fallacious a two-year old should be able to see through it. And yet we see it sweeping through every major institution in American life. To illustrate the point, I just deleted a paragraph detailing the power of the Black Lives Matter movement, out of concern that any public criticism of that organization could lead to this blog being taken down.

They must be beaten. But how? The situation seems impossible; the odds insurmountable.

And that's how you know that it's doable.

I'm going to go out on a limb by making a prediction. Within 10 years, the "Woke" movement will have as much cultural power as the Christian Ladies for Decency did in the middle of the 1970s. By 10 years after that, it will be as hated as McCarthyism.

How can we know this?

By observation-- today's Wokesterism is a cultural fad akin to prior authoritarian cultural movements. It will, therefore, share a similar lifespan. The key moment to watch for is the moment when it seems to be at the height of its power-- that is the moment when the reversal begins. Picture a yin-yang (taiji) symbol-- Yin begins when Yang is at its height, and vice versa. I'm not sure if we have already reached that point or not, but I think we're close. I can't currently interact with any major American institution without being treated to Black Lives Matter propaganda. That tells me it's either at or nearly at full saturation. Now is not the time for direct confrontation. Now is the time to prepare a replacement worldview; a punk rock to BLM's hippiedom. Soon Wokesterism will begin to fade and withdraw all on its own. And at hte right moment, it will be easy enough to dismiss it with a snort and a curled lip.

My apologies for the light posting lately. I've been feeling very unwell.

As The Art of War continues, it becomes increasingly technical and increasingly focused on very specific military matters, such as the employment of spies or of fire in warfare. It would be tempting to leave it for that reason, and let this series of posts end with a conclusion about the first few chapters of the book. But I don't want to do that. If for no other reason than to exercise the will in seeing the entire effort through to its conclusion, I want to follow this book to the end.

Chapter 4 continues:

Security against defeat implies defensive tactics; ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive.

Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength.

The general who is skilled in defense hides in the most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.

In order to make sense of this passage, I want to return to something that we discussed earlier. On February 3rd, I wrote that we should:

Be aware of psychic currents, and don't set yourself in opposition to a current that you can't resist. Whether it's a new trend in politics, religion, art or culture, psychic currents have a force behind them. That force is by definition easy ground for the powers behind that current, and if you set out to directly oppose that force, you will lose-- unless you have a superior force. Right-wingers and Christian pastors may have railed against the hippies in the middle of the '60s; it did no good, and in fact strengthened the hippie movement. Fifteen years later, the energy of the hippie movement was exhausted, and the early punk movement was able to conquer most of its territory in the alternative cultural space. Fulton Sheen condemning hippies in 1968 only strengthened them; Joe Strummer publicly declaring that "Hippies can shove off" in 1983 had quite a different effect.

My current, overarching goal is to remain free of the demonic powers that are sweeping through American society. My view is that these powers manifest themselves in the collective delusions which constitute our politics. Although my own political views are more or less conservative, I don't view this as a right-left issue. Rather, the structure of the demonic delusion is the following formula:

1. Society is divided into two groups.
2. One of these groups consists of victims, who are always innocent.
3. The other consists of perpetrators, who are always guilty.
4. We must protect the victims from the perpetrators by any means necessary.
5. Since the perpetrators are always guilty, they have no rights; since the victims are always innocent, they have no responsibilities.

This simple formula, especially when combined with the constant bombardment of the senses with distractions, advertisements, memes, TV shows, blinking lights, and spells meant to draw forth the passions and silence the reason, is sufficient to drive people mad.

But how to fight it? Right now, these toxic ideas, dressed up in left wing or right wing packaging, are nearly ubiquitous; political disagreements usually take the form of identifying different groups as victims and perpetrators.

And the answer, of course, is quite simply that it can't be fought right now. Not openly. In the American collective psyche, the demons have the field and they rule the day. This is their hour; theirs is a superabundance of strength. Right now, it is necessary to remain on the defensive; to focus on yourself and your immediate acquaintances; and to build networks of spiritual resistance slowly, carefully, and, above all, secretly. Hide in the deep recesses of the Earth. The day will come when the Enemy has exhausted himself. Then we will flash forth, like thunder from the Heavens.

Let's look at Sun Tzu's Fourth Chapter. The following text can be a bit hard to take, but it's important:

Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.

Hence the saying: One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.

In order to understand this passage in terms of our ongoing discussion, we're going to need to modify our terms a bit.

Our goals can be divided into two types: those which are confined to our own soul, and those which impact upon the souls of others. Now, for the sake of this discussion, the soul can be divided into two parts, for which we can use the Greek and Latin words which are translated as "soul" in English. The anima is the will, or the sum total of all our actions; the psyche is the mind, which is the sum total of all our representations.

Within the context of our own soul, our will can be unified, and, indeed, the unification of the whole soul under the divinized will is the goal of the spiritual life. To do this is to place ourselves beyond the possibility of defeat.

When we begin to act beyond the confines of our own soul and upon the larger world, in which many souls push back against our own, victory is not always possible. We can teach ourselves to become disciplined, follow a schedule, and learn the details of a trade; this is a victory within ourselves. But it doesn't guarantee that we will get this or that specific job; that lies in the hands of others. We can get ourselves in good shape, learn to dress sharp, become charming and charismatic, and this is also a victory within ourselves, but it doesn't guarantee that this or that woman or man will fall in love with us.

And we can devote our lives to God, spend time in meditation, prayer and charitable works, and obtain the complete mastery of our passions. This is the total victory within-- but it doesn't guarantee that any other human being or any other physical space besides our own will be liberated from the power of the Devil.

Of course, this calls to mind the constant refrain of the Stoic philosophers: We must come to understand what is under our control, and what is not.

But it also raises a question. Within each of us is a multitude of sometimes conflicting, sometimes harmonious goals, ideas, thoughts, emotions, passions and memories. So many of these components of our psyche seem to war with one another-- and yet, we know that they can indeed be brought into harmony. We also know that the unity of our bodies is just an illusion-- from a microscopic perspective, we are universes, inhabited by countless billions of living creatures. Our bodies are not unities, and neither are our minds. To what extent, then, are we, in fact, composite beings? To what extent is every living being a composite? And if we are composites, aren't we also cells in larger composites? Families, clans, tribes, towns and cities, nations, ethnic or cultural or religious groups, even high schools and colleges, sports fandoms and music fandoms and countless other collectives that we participate in all seem to have their own wills, just as we do. Those wills will impact us and move us, entirely unconsciously unless we do the work of bringing them to light. And then we have a choice-- for any given collective will, do we go along passively, participate voluntarily, or work to release ourselves, partially or entirely?

Are there beings within our own psyche that are asking themselves the same question?

Sun Tzu ends Chapter 3 will the most well-known quotation from all of his work:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

What is there to say here? This is the key to the whole work and to success in any field of endeavor. Know yourself as far as you can and in particular as it pertains to your goal. Know your enemy, which is the sum total of all those forces that stand between you and your goal.

Now, in Sun Tzu's context, self-knowledge means knowledge of one's army, its composition and disposition, its fighting ability, its logistical needs, and so on. The enemy is the opposing army, its country, and every other detail pertinent to winning a war.

For us, self-knowledge means knowledge of our particular capabilities and weaknesses as they pertain to accomplishing our objectives. To give an example-- I know that I do very well at jobs in which I have to work with people, speak in public, or manage a team. I also do manual labor very well. Give me a difficult task and leave me alone, or put me in charge of a project with a crew under me, and I'll get the job done. But I am absolutely terrible-- I mean unbelievably, hilariously bad-- at any kind of office job in which I'm to be left alone in a room with a computer connected to the internet. You can put me in that room at 9:00 in the morning with a single task to accomplish, and I won't get it done. Come back at 4:30 and I'll have 30 browser tabs open, ranging from news and political analyses, classic works of philosophy, tips on cooking and homebrewing, guitar tabs, histories of my favorite sports teams or UFC fighters, Google street-view explorations of countries I'll never go to-- anything but that one boring online task that happens to be my actual job.

(Even these posts, which are both short and enjoyable to write, are hard for me to focus on from beginning to end. Right now, I have 16 tabs open, including my email, 2 Facebook conversations, 3 articles on election fraud, a youtube video of a mass at a Catholic church in New England, two Amazon kindle books, Sallust's On the Gods and the World and chapter 4 of Machiavelli's The Prince. I think the technical term for this is "ADD." )

The point, though, is that I know this about myself. If I decide that I need a new job, I'm going to look for either something where I'm either in charge of a group or doing manual labor, or both. Most types of office work are just not for me-- not unless I want to commit to getting fired after a month or two, anyway.

This is a rather quotidian example, but underneath it lies a very important principle. Eliphas Levi wrote:

The Great Work is, before all things, the creation of a man by himself. That is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future: it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will, assuring him the universal dominion over Azoth and the domain of Magnesia, in other words, full power over the Universal Magical Ancient.

The conquest of the self is precisely that conquest of our own soul, its liberation from the rule of passions and external and chaotic forces, its placement under the rule of the spirit and the gods, that we've been discussing over and over in these posts. And in order to achieve this conquest, we must have two things: knowledge, and the capacity to act on that knowledge.

Who are we really? How are our actions constrained by our innate capacities and the weight of our habits? What do we want to achieve, and how can we work with our innate capacities to do so, and how can we expand those capacities?

Those are the great questions, the answers to which are the work of a lifetime and the heart of spiritual development.

Sun Tzu's fifth and final essential is as follows:

He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign

For our purposes, there are three points we can derive from this.

1. First, we have repeatedly emphasized the need for both training and goal-setting. Training is all of our regular preparation; it results in "military capacity." Goal-setting allows us to orient all of our faculties toward a particular end, so that one part of us is not interfering with another. The will divided against itself achieves nothing.

2. Second, get out of your own way. One of the ways people fail at any number of things is by criticizing their actions at the same time they're doing them. This is a common experience for writers, or people who want to write-- and as far as I can tell, most "writing programs" are designed to induce this sort of paralysis. But you see it in many different areas of life. I knew a guy whose dream was to become a landscaper. Finally, he was given the task of designing a waterfall area at the homeless shelter where he was living. He knew how to do it and had the skills to do it. What did he do instead? Panicked, got drunk, and got kicked out of the shelter.

As much as possible, avoid self-criticism or worrying about others' opinions until the job is done. For any given task, this is much easier if you practice regularly-- that is, build your military capacity.

3. Third, "interference by the sovereign" is known, in magical terminology, as "lust for results." If you do a working of any kind, and then spend all day and all night fretting over whether it's going to work, imagining what you're going to do when it works, dreading whether it might not fail, and so on, it is going to fail. All of the energy that could be out there achieving your goal is instead being pulled into the vortex of your own psyche and grounded out in your own daydreams. In this case, your general is the god, spirit, angel, saint or other power you've invoked to accomplish your particular end, and you are the sovereign. Do the working and shut up about it.

Tomorrow I'm going to wrap up the third chapter of the Art of War. See you then!

Sun Tzu's Fourth Essential for victory is as follows:

4. He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.

How can we understand this in the context of life goals, magical operations, or spiritual warfare?

First, we once again see the importance both of goal-setting and of training. In our context, "training" means regular practice of any appropriate kind. These two together are preparation.

Next, when we have our goal, we need to be vigilant for opportunities to achieve it. This is an issue we haven't discussed as much, but it's important. Just because you have a goal in mind and the ability to achieve it, doesn't mean that you have the opportunity to achieve it at any particular moment. And so you need to look for opportunities. This is "taking the enemy unprepared."

If you want a date, you need to be the kind of person anyone would want to date-- this is preparation. Then you need to seize the opportunity when it comes up, by asking someone on a date. (That's "regularly check your Tinder," for the under-30 crowd.)

If you want a job, you need to have or to get the right experience and training for the job you want, you need to have your resume prepared-- and then you need to be on the lookout for job openings.

People who practice astrological magic are probably more familiar with this idea than most. In order to consecrate a talisman of a particular planet, you need to look for times when that planet is dignified. Depending on the planet, this can mean a very long wait. Jupiter will be in Pisces, which he rules, for 2 months later on this year, and then for most of 2022; then he'll be in Cancer, the sign of his exaltation, in 2025. If you want to create a Jupiter talisman, you'll need to wait for one of these times and then make sure a number of other factors line up. As anyone familiar with astrological magic knows, it can be a very long wait!

And what of the Spiritual Warfare? Here again, training is critical, as we've discussed at some length. But what of opportunity? Well, now it depends on what specific goal you're trying to achieve. We've defined the overarching goal of the Spirtiual Warfare as "to live in peace," that is, under the rule of the Divine and our own higher selves, and free of the influence of the demonic and the lower passions.

The specifics of what that looks like are going to vary from individual to individual. But we can all benefit by staying focused on our goals and staying vigilant for opportunities. A year ago I found out at the last minute that a world-renowned taijiquan instructor was coming to town for a 3-day workshop. I had the money for the workshop, and because I was regularly training on my own, I was able to get the most out of it.

It occurs to me, though, that the best application of this principle is to look at every situation we encounter as an opportunity for growth. This includes very difficult situations-- "Disaster is virtue's opportunity," as Seneca tells us. When the Covid Lockdown started, my wife and I were both bodyworkers, and so our places of employment were closed on Day 1. This was a disaster, but an opportunity too. For years we'd wanted to leave California, but we'd been unable to do so. With no work and no prospects of work in sight, it was much easier to move. Now we're happily settled on the East Coast.

That's a personal achievement, but this goes beyond that. We're facing hard times in the United States. Anger, hate, and fear are rampant. No, it isn't fun-- but it is an opportunity. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those that curse us, that to do so is to become like unto God. Well, isn't it a lot easier to do that if we actually have enemies, and people that hate us?

Give your lower self over to the Divine, focus on becoming the person you are meant to be, and look for opportunity in every situation. This is the way to victory!

Today we'll look at the third of Sun Tzu's five essentials for victory.

He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.

This is a simple one-- deceptively simple, maybe. But it recalls the idea that we've been pushing over and over and over again in this series of posts: Before any undertaking, you must be clear on your goal.

Whether you want to become the mayor of your town, write a novel, or free your mind from the grip of addictions and demons, if you know beforehand what you want to achieve, you will know what you need to do. Or, to say it another way, you will know what victory conditions will look like. You also need to be clear to yourself why you want to undertake this, and that it really is in alignment with your real desires and your real values-- and the will of your gods. That will allow you to apply all of the resources of your own soul-- all the ranks of your internal army-- toward achieving your goal.

Another way to illustrate what this looks like is to consider the opposite. Have you ever known someone who was always talking about what they would do "if they had the time"? Have you ever noticed that the same someone spent a very great deal of time looking at their phone, checking social media, or watching television? That is someone's whose inner army is divided against itself.

Focus on what you want to achieve-- and before you do, make sure that you really do want to achieve it!

Here is Sun Tzu's second essential for victory:

He will win who knows how to handle superior and inferior forces.

To which our translator adds:

This is not merely the general's ability to estimate numbers correctly, as Li Ch'uan and others make out. Chang Yu expounds the saying more satisfactorily: "By applying the art of war, it is possible with a lesser force to defeat a greater, and vice versa. The secret lies in an eye for locality, and in not letting the right moment slip. Thus Wu Tzu says: 'With a superior force, make for easy ground; with an inferior one, make for difficult ground.'"

Now, how shall we understand all of this in terms of Spiritual Warfare? I suggest five ways:

1. The soul is its own place, and it is nearly always difficult ground for the Enemy-- if we make it so. To do this, we can't wait until the hour of need. Remember that Levi says that each of us carries Heaven or Hell with us, in our aura. To dwell in Heaven, we need to establish the Kingdom of God within us. We can do this only through regular devotional practice. (What practice? That's up to you. There are many valid paths and many valid traditions. How do you pick one? Ask yourself the question: Who do I want to be? And then learn about different traditions, gods, and spiritual practices. Does this sound like it could lead you in the direction you want? Okay, now meet as many people who follow that path as you can. What do they act like? What does it feel like to be around them? Do you want what they have? Follow their path, and you will have it.)

2. Let us remember, though, that "soul" in Latin is "anima," "the animating principle," "that which moves." The soul is a place, and it is also an activity. It often happens that we find ourselves defeated on our own ground, and we descend into addictive behavior, rage or lust or despair, or that kind of grayed-out, emptiness that characterizes much of life. How do we find safe ground then?

By doing something. The saying to remember here is "Move a muscle, change a thought." And we will often find that one of the very best things that we can do, when we ourselves are at our worst, is to go find someone else that we can help. Bill Wilson employed this principle when he was in early recovery from drinking. Out of town and down on his luck, he found himself pulled toward the bottle, but overcame it by phoning a local branch of the Oxford society and asking them if there were any alcoholics in town that he could go and help. It works!

3. The soul is not, of course, isolated, but impacts and is impacted by the surroundings. Knowing this, we can use it to our advantage. When we find ourselves in hostile ground, we can retreat within ourselves-- provided we have created an inner space we can retreat to. We can use defensive magical techniques, and we can connect with our deities, and we can pray silently for ourselves and those around us.

The same is true in reverse. When we find our minds overthrown by the Dark Powers and Hell manifesting within our auras, we can go to a place that is Heaven-like, and restore ourselves. Simply stepping into a healthy woodland, garden, church, or shrine is often enough to do the trick.

In Santa Barbara, where I used to live, the local Franciscan mission had the Stations of the Cross, a traditional Catholic devotional, set up along a walking path in a large and beautiful olive grove. Interspersed among the olives were many rosemary bushes, yarrows and sages. I used to go there regularly after work, when my mind was at its most chaotic. I'd gather a bit of rosemary, which is strongly purifying, and walk the way of the cross. After the 14th station, which is the burial of Christ in the tomb, I would sit on a bench and spent 5-10 minutes or so in meditation. The effect of this practice on my consciousness was profound. Often I'd go back to my car and turn on whatever podcast or radio program I'd been listening to, which is usually political in nature, and immediately turn it off in horror as the contrast between it and the peace I'd found was so extreme.

It can be easy for those of us who like to live in our own heads to forget the outside world. Make use of holy places for spiritual regeneration-- that's what they're there for!

4. Be aware of psychic currents, and don't set yourself in opposition to a current that you can't resist. Whether it's a new trend in politics, religion, art or culture, psychic currents have a force behind them. That force is by definition easy ground for the powers behind that current, and if you set out to directly oppose that force, you will lose-- unless you have a superior force. Right-wingers and Christian pastors may have railed against the hippies in the middle of the '60s; it did no good, and in fact strengthened the hippie movement. Fifteen years later, the energy of the hippie movement was exhausted, and the early punk movement was able to conquer most of its territory in the alternative cultural space. Fulton Sheen condemning hippies in 1968 only strengthened them; Joe Strummer publicly declaring that "Hippies can shove off" in 1983 had quite a different effect.

In Chapter 11 of Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, Eliphas Levi writes:

Every enthusiasm propagated in society... produces a magnetic current that is also conserved or augmented by that current. The effect of the current is to enchant and often overly stimulate impressionable and weak persons, excitable constitutions, and temperaments predisposed to hysteria or hallucinations. These persons soon become powerful vehicles for magical power and strongly project the astral light in the same direction as the current; thus to oppose oneself to manifestations of power is in a way to fight destiny.

Levi goes on to describe how the Pharisee Saul set himself in the path of the incoming Christ Current, and so was transformed into Paul, the apostle. The Emperor Diocletian accomplished much the same thing-- though he did not convert himself, the effect of his persecutions was to convert many others. Our latter-day Diocletians are likely to accomplish the same thing.

It's worth noting that many, many of the people involved in our entertainment industry qualify as "impressionable and weak persons" and "temperaments predisposed to hysteria or hallucinations." To consume their products is to expose yourself to their enthusiasms. Do so with caution.

5. Finally, I want to suggest that the internet is nearly always easy ground, and social media is the easiest ground. Direct, person-to-person communication, without the mediation of technology is difficult ground. As the new censorship regime tightens, those of us who dissent from the prevailing order of the day will do well to stay out of the way of the big tech giants, and to move our operations to smaller, more obscure websites and, especially, in-person contacts.

A blessed Calan Myri, Imbolc, Candlemas, and, most importantly of all, Groundhog's Day, to one and all.

Sun Tzu tells us:

There are five essentials for victory:

1. He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.

2. He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.

3. He will win whose army is animates by the same spirit throughout all its ranks

4. He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.

5. He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.

I want to take these one or two at a time, over the next few days.

Let's look at the first essential now.

He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.

To this, our translator appends the following commentary:

Chang Yu says: If he can fight, he advances and takes the offensive; if he cannot fight, he retreats and remains on the defensive. He will invariably conquer who knows whether it is right to take the offensive or the defensive.

Let's consider this with regard to the spiritual warfare we've been discussing. (I have half a mind to start describing this as a war against the Powers of Chaos, and I may start doing so. Why? Because it sounds cool. If I think something sounds cool, I'm going to want to keep doing it; in this way, the general inspires his army and unites their will to that of the sovereign.)

When and where are we able to take the offensive, and when should we retreat and take a defensive position? And what do these look like?

Someone mentioned on the Ecosophia blog that public places run by either the government or nonprofit agencies seem to be especially bad these days, in terms of hysteria around Covid. This is my experience as well. Last week, my wife and I went to a local thrift store run by members of the Episcopalian Church, a church which is, at this point, little more than the spiritual auxiliary of the Democratic Party. The energy was so bad I felt dizzy and nauseous and had to leave after a few minutes. A while later I went back in to check on my wife, and found her being lectured about Covid safety protocols by the woman behind the cash register. Both of us felt energetically drained and moody for the rest of the day.

The Powers of Chaos were strong in that place. Retreat was the best option, and in the future I will simply avoid going in that store.

On the other hand, in our own homes and personal spaces, fighting is nearly always the best option. And it can look like many things. The simple act of tidying up and sweeping the floor can do a great deal all on its own to purify the energy of a room. But there are many layers that can be added to this: Essential oils or a mix of salt and vinegar can be added to water to create a magically effective cleanser, incense and simmer-pots can be added to cleaning, and candles dedicated to saints or deities can be lit to bless a home. Of course, for those involved in ceremonial magic, a greater range of options exists.

Most physical spaces exist between these two extremes, and the balance of forces will vary depending on the presence of other people, ongoing news events and astrological phenomena. There is a time to fight and a time to take the defensive.

Regarding defense-- there are times when public places and energetically toxic spaces and people are unavoidable. Given this, it's very useful to have a basic knowledge of magical defensive techniques and the ability to apply them. More on this as we go on!

Sun Tzu tells us that the third way that a ruler can bring misfortune upon his army is

3. By employing the officers of his army without discrimination, through ignorance of the military principle of adaptation to circumstances. This shakes the confidence of the soldiers.

Probably the best way to illustrate this point is to think of any time you've ever been in charge of a group of people, however small, for whatever purpose. You learn quickly that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. One person is a workhorse behind the scenes, but freezes up if they have too many eyes on them; another is incapable of self-starting, but will work hard at any task where you lay out the details for them; a third can talk to anyone in the room and have them eating out of their hand, but if you leave them alone in a room with a computer they'll spend 7 hours staring at Facebook and 30 minutes frantically trying to get something done.

Very often in our daily goals, our team consists of ourselves, and the different components of our psyche. Here, too, the lesson applies. I have a lot of energy in the morning, lose steam in the afternoon, and pick up again around 5:00. I try to do anything that requires my mind in the morning. I know I don't have much energy in the afternoons, so I try to schedule things for then that I can do while zoning out. Tai chi and writing before noon; housework, cooking and grocery shopping (in other words, anything I can do while listening to a podcast) after 1.

In magical operations, we very often have a team, though most of its members aren't incarnate beings. And here, too, we need to employ our teammembers with discrimination. One doesn't invoke a spirit of Venus to get a job, a fire elemental for emotional stability, or a virgin martyr saint to get laid.

Both of the foregoing points apply to the spiritual warfare. I know, for myself, there are times when I'm especially susceptible to psychic attack. This is when to avoid social media, political podcasts, or spending time in crowds or in energetically unhealthy places. Similarly, when working with spirits or gods on these matters, there are right ways and wrong ways to go about things. This might be obvious, but if you're hoping to avoid demonic obsession, Goetic magic is not for you. But there might be other powers who are good in and of themselves who are not for you, either. Some deities simply aren't interested in human affairs, or in areas outside their particular purview. I personally have relationships with both Christian saints and Welsh Druid deities because I find it very difficult to hear the saints' voices in the woods or the gods' voices in the city! And of course, there are particular powers who specialize in spiritual warfare, like St. Michael the Archangel. Some will work with you if you're not a member of their particular tradition, but others will not, and you need to know what you're doing before invoking them.

Let's continue to look at the ways in which, Sun Tzu tells us, a ruler may bring misfortune upon his army.

2. By attempting to govern an army in the same way he administers a kingdom, being ignorant of the conditions which obtain in an army. This causes restlessness in the soldier's minds.

Our translator appends to this the following notes from later commentators:

Tsao Kung's note is... "The military sphere and the civil sphere are wholly distinct; you can't handle an army in kid gloves." And Chang Yu says: "Humanity and justice are the principles on which to govern a state, but not an army; opportunism and flexibility, on the other hand, are military rather than civic virtues."

The point of all of this is to understand the situation that you're in and act appropriately. You can't govern an army as a kingdom, and you also can't govern a kingdom as an army.

How can we apply these ideas to our goals in general, and the specialized topics we've been discussing?

For general goals, the lesson is, again, to govern our conduct according to the situation that we are in. Different virtues are appropriate to different circumstances. This morning I was attempting to write this post and my 1 year old daughter grabbed hold of my pantleg and started screaming. Now if anyone else had done that-- a random person at a coffeeshop, say-- the appropriate conduct on my part might have involved a physical confrontation; since this is a toddler we're talking about, the appropriate response was to change her diaper!

In a similar way, many people from more or less difficult backgrounds-- ex-cons and addicts, or people who grew up in poverty-- who attempt to transition into a law-abiding, mainstream way of life find that the virtues that served them well in their former life are hindrances now. A willingness to fight is a ticket to safety on the street and termination in the office.

The same lessons apply when we approach the spiritual life, especially in its practical applications. One of the most amusing things to me about modern paganism is just how thoroughly Protestant most of it is. Go find any popular pagan internet forum. You'll almost always find a bunch of people getting saved by Odin, Zeus or The Goddess, and then spending half their time insisting that they and they only are practicing the right form of Paganism, as proven by a bunch of references to contemporary academic scholarship.

There is, in fact, one religion which comes down to us from the ancient world which bases its beliefs on getting saved by a rigid adherence to a series of texts compiled by scholars of dubious sincerity, but its name is not "Paganism."

At the more practical level, this kind of mixed-up approach to the spiritual world can cause serious problems. Different types of spiritual beings have different requirements from those that work with them. If you're going to work with demons-- I'd prefer you not, but if you are going to-- you will be well-advised to use all of the binding and protective methods found in the old grimoires. On the other hand, if you're going to work with angels, those kind of methods are not at all advisable. I once read a book of Christian magic which involved commanding the obedience of saints and angels, and even the Archangel Michael! At that point, why not just command God himself? Needless to say, this is not at all an appropriate way to work with higher beings. They may at times respond, in the same way that I respond to my cat when he scratches at the door, but this isn't the same as obedience, and the effect on one's own ego of playing God in this way can be disastrous.

Finally, there is the matter of the ongoing Spiritual Warfare that I've been discussing here.

This is one area, it seems to me, where it would be very easy to make exactly this mistake. I'm referring to it as "warfare"-- but really "warfare" is just a metaphor. We could just as well refer to it as "Astral Weather Conditions." I prefer to say "war" because that makes it sound and feel more interesting to me-- my favorite movies include Patton and Braveheart, but you'd have to pay me to watch Twister. That said, there are right and wrong ways to approach this war, appropriate and inappropriate virtues for the spiritual warfare.

In an ordinary conflict, the martial virtues are critical. We've said that many of our fellows, and often enough ourselves, are obsessed or possessed by evil spirits. To the extent that this is the case, the martial virtues are often entirely counterproductive. Getting into an online debate, a screaming match, or, worst of all, a physical confrontation with a demoniac will usually do nothing but inflame your own passions and feed the demon. To the extent that actual conflict of any kind is necessary-- and it sometimes is-- it should be conducted quickly, decisively, and passionlessly. It should aim at a specific goal-- the removal of a person from an internet forum or your living room might be examples-- and it should cease entirely once that goal is attained. The person in question should then become an object of prayer.

In the Spiritual Warfare, the virtues of patience and endurance, religion and philosophy, compassion, and even humor, are as important as courage and discipline, and perhaps more so. And in order to achieve victory, we need to conduct ourselves and discipline ourselves according to these virtues, and to discipline ourselves accordingly.

Profile

readoldthings

December 2024

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Feb. 4th, 2026 07:22 am

Recent Entries

Daily Reflection 2.26.21

Daily Reflection 2.25.21

Daily Reflection 2.24.21

Daily Reflection 2.23.21

Daily Reflection 2.21.21

Daily Reflection 2.20.21

Daily Reflection 2.18.21

Daily Reflection 2.17.21

Daily Reflection 2.16.21

Daily Reflection 2.15.21

Daily Reflection 2.14.21

Daily reflection 2.10.21

Daily Reflection 2.9.21

Daily Reflection 2.8.21

Daily Reflection 2.5.21

Daily Reflection 2.4.21

Daily Reflection 2.3.21

Daily Reflection 2.2.21

Daily Reflection 2.1.21

Daily Reflection 1.29.21