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The Platonic End Run

The goal of this series of posts has been to describe the theory of transacational analysis, and to demonstrate how it makes sense of human sin and human suffering. Basically, transactional analysis shows us that most of our actions and our mental states are not chosen. Rather, our actions are chosen for us, by patterns rooted in social custom and in the experiences of our childhood, often (though not always) traumatic. I have presented the Platonic model of the soul and a set of practices for its purification. The reason for this is to do a kind of end-run around modern psychology and psychotherapy. By returning to older models and alternative conceptions of the soul, we can circumvent the Parent-Adult-Child system and the three toxic categories of the rescue game.

Let's take a moment to return to transactional analysis as such, and see what Eric Berne thought about the means of overcoming games.

In Games People Play, Berne writes that the goal of transactional analysis is the attainment of autonomy by the individual. He then defines autonomy as the capacity for awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy.

By awareness, he means the capacity to experience reality on its own terms, unconditioned by cultural expectations. Above all, he means the capacity to be present.

By spontaneity, Berne means the capacity to choose one's own actions.

And by intimacy, the capacity to have relationships with other individuals uncorrupted by games.

The first two terms refer to the individual's relationship with himself, the second to the larger social world in which he participates. In our terms, all three relate to the development of virtue, to justice within the soul and the purification of the nous.

Notice that none of these concepts are foreign either to the Platonic tradition or other, related, traditions of spiritual development. The capacity for an unconditioned experience of reality is precisely the goal of Taoist internal alchemy. The unconditioned child, capable of present awarness and active relationships, is identical to the yuan shen (元神) or "original spirit." For Plotinus, the present is the closest one can come to eternity while incarnate; the past is one step, the future two steps removed. True awareness of the present is thus the closest one can come to awareness of eternity.

Of course, for Berne, as a trained psychotherapist, freedom from games is attained on the psychotherapist's couch and in the group therapy session. Now, this is where Berne's system seems inferior to the work of the ancients. We are used to these sorts of things. The therapist's couch appears banal, the therapy group, somewhat ridiculous. But is it really so? Can't we rather see in the therapist's couch an analogue to the dialogues of Socrates? And aren't the collective dialogues of the Republic and the Symposium-- and even the Laws-- akin to group therapy? And we might an earlier and more effective echo of the Socratic practices in the private Confessional and the group Confiteor of the Christian Church.

The one practice derived from Plato that I haven't discussed explicitly, then-- but which is just as important as the others-- is the dialogue. This is too large and important a concept to go into here, and so we'll save it for a future post, or series.

The Path to the Child is Through the Adult

Although mainstream psychotherapy seems to have minimized Eric Berne in favor of medication and odd techniques like EMDR, many of his ideas have gotten loose into the popular culture. Among the most harmful of these is that of the Inner Child, and I want to talk about this for a moment.

Like many things, the idea of the Inner Child isn't harmful in its natural habitat, that is, the process of transactional analysis. Here the capacity to reveal the Natural or Unconditioned Child is the goal of a therapeutic process which includes coming into awareness of the games that one plays, healing the Conditioned Child, and learning to reason as an Adult. On its own, the Inner Child seems to have escaped especially into New Age circles, where he does a great deal of harm.

So let us be clear: The Inner Child isn't Peter Pan. Peter Pan lacks the capacity to grow up, and so he lacks the capacity to either reason as an Adult or to make rapid judgments as a Parent. Don't get me wrong, he's great fun to be around-- as long as everything's going well. But what happens when disaster strikes-- as it always does, in human life? In a crisis, we need to be able to make snap judgments rooted in trained opinion, and then we need to reason as to the best course of action. To take an extreme example, imagine an EMT coming upon a mass casualty event. (Don't imagine it too strongly, as we don't need to bring it into manifestation.) But suppose it's a plane crash, or a train derailment. Our EMT must immediately take stock of the injured and sort them into three categories. Light injuries need to be ignored for now-- but so do mortal injuries. The first will keep, and the second can't be kept. Priority must be given to those whose injuries are life-threatening but amenable to treatment. Hard choices must be made, and discipline maintained in the face of danger. The Child ego state cannot do this. An adult reasons, a parent opines, but a child emotes. In a crisis, the Child's response is the temper tantrum.

And as our society has careened from crisis to crisis for two decades, we've also seen our capacity for resopnse to crisis reduced to screaming and wailing. At best we manage to shift into a Parental state, judging and condemning, but directing our judgments only at others, the other side, our perceived enemies. This lasts for a time, and then we're back to bawling again. At times the Parent and Child ego states are indistinguishable-- which makes perfect sense, given that many of us have been raised by people who are themselves permanent children.

Here again we can turn to the Platonic tradition for guidance.

Four, Three, Two, One

Inscribed above the entrance to Plato's Academy were the words "Let no one enter who is ignorant of Geometry." This seems reasonable enough if we think of the Academy as a modern school, but rather odd if we consider it to have been more akin to an ashram or monastery. The latter are centers of spiritual development-- what has geometry to do with God?

For us, nothing. For the ancients, everything.

In keeping with the usual custom of the ancient world, Plato's inner teachings were kept secret, not revealed to the public or in the dialogues. We have only hints of what these teachings may have been, but these are very suggestive. Among the best sources for Plato's inner teachings is his wayward student Aristotle, whose work is peppered with sideswipes and direct attacks at his longtime teacher. From the Republic, we know that Plato divided the powers of the soul into four: sensation, opinion, reason, and intellection, in ascending order from the purely physical to the purely intellectual. From Aristotle, we know that each of these was assigned to the numbers of the tetrad:

Mind [that is, noesis or intellection] is the monad, science or knowledge [reason] the dyad (because it goes undeviatingly from one point to another), opinion the number of the plane, sensation the number of the solid; the numbers are by him expressly identified with the forms themselves or principles, and are formed out of the elements; now things are apprehended either by mind or science or opinion or sensation, and these same numbers are the Forms of things.

In the teachings of Plato, we must ascend from the sensory to the spiritual, the outward to the inward, the complex to the simple, step by step. And there is no skipping steps. We must move from the Four, the sensory knowledge of the world of the Four Elements that we share with the animals, to the Three, the capacity to govern our perceptions by traind opinions. We move from the Three, the world of opinions that we share with the other members of our society or our group, to the Two, the capacity to think original thoughts and acquire knowledge directly for ourselves. We move from the Two, which is knowledge in process and knowledge of objects, to the One, which is the nondual state of union, where there is no distinction between knower and known, subject and object. Now this unitive state is the state of our original existence, as we have declined from the One, the state of union with the Divine, to the Two, the realm of Ideas, to the Three, the phantoms of the collective soul, to finally settle in the Four, the world of matter. To ascend to the unitive state is to return to our original condition, in which we have the capacity to choose, to create, and to relate. This, then, is the true Inner Child, the true Yuan Shen. But it is not reached through the world of sense or opinion, but only by cultivating the trained opinions of the Parent, and the reasoning capacity of the Adult.

To put it in archetypal terms, the Conditioned Child is Peter Pan. He is incapable of maturity, incapable of relationships; he can only play or pout when his fun is spoiled. The Natural Child is Mabon, the Child God. Now Mabon is imprisoned below the Earth, and is only freed after a series of arduous adventures. His prison is Neverland; to be stuck there is to be stuck in the world of Sense and Opinion. (This is also the imprisonment of Ulysses on the island of Circe.) His freedom is the attainment of sovereignty over the reason and union with the noetic realm.

Becoming Non-Contingent

And another way of saying this is that our goal is to become non-contingent beings. In traditional theology, the argument from contingency states that for everything that exists, there is a cause; therefore everything is contingent upon the existence of something else. But it is impossible for there to be an infinite number of contingent things, because if everything requires something else to exist, nothing could ever come into existence. Therefore there must be a non-contingent being. Moreover, there can only be one such being, as, if there were more than one-- even if there were only two-- then both would have to share some third thing in common in order to both be said to "exist." They would, therefore, depend upon that third thing for their existence, and that would be the actual one non-contingent being.

The goal of the spiritual life is union with God, and, as Plato wrote in the Theaetetus, to become like God. And this is another way of saying, to gain the capacity to choose our actions, rather than having them chosen for us by our cultures, backgrounds, and childhood circumstances. Our work, then is-- insofar as it is possible-- to become non-contingent beings, dependent for our actions and our choices upon nothing-- save God alone.

The End

In these posts, I've outlined a perspective on human psychology that derives from Transactional Analysis, especially the work of Eric Berne and Stephen Karpman. But the the approach that I have suggested in response is rooted in a far older model, rooted in magical theory and practice, but more deeply in ancient and medieval Christianity, and ultimatley in the philosophy of Plato. I want to briefly review what we've said so far, and then conclude with some notes for future study and practice.

The Theory

Eric Berne writes that every individual has within them three possible ego-states.

The Parent is the ego state derived from their own parents. When the Parent acts directly, the individual behaves as if they were one of their own parents. When the Parent is indirect, the individual acts as their parent instructed them to act. The Parent is especially concerned with judgment, opinion, and (naturally) the rearing of children.

The Adult is the ego state which is capable of reason and objective analysis of facts.

The Child is the ego state which is preserved from childhood. The Child has two forms: the Natural Child and the Adapted Child. The Natural Child is intuitive and capable of creativity and spontaneity. The Adapted Child is an ego state typically formed by the child in response to adverse circumstances; we might call it the Hurt Child or Traumatized Child. The Child is primarily emotional, for good or ill.

Relationships between individuals are relationships between ego states, and not always consciously. Two adults-- make them husband and wife-- complaining over a beer about the problems of the world these days are relating Parent to Parent. The same two adults carefully reviewing their finances and deciding how much of a certain amount of money should be directed toward investments versus paying down debts are relating Adult to Adult. Finally, the same two Adults, getting dressed up to go out for the evening, with expectations of still more fun upon their return, are relating Child to Child.

The existence of each ego state is necessary. The Parent ego state allows for actual parenting to take place; the Adult for serious problem-solving; and the Natural Child for joy in life. Problems arise when a particular state takes over inappropriately. If Wife says to Husband "Let us review our finances," (Adult-Adult) and Husband responds, "You're always hassling me!" (Child-Parent), a crossed relationship has taken place.

Many social interactions are basically scripted and ritualized. This is okay. But social games are particular scripted interactions which result in drama and emotional turmoil. The turmoil appears to arise unintentionally through the interaction, but it is actually the purpose of the interaction. Moreover, this purpose is hidden from one and often both of the participants. This is what makes it a game.

Finally, the Karpman Drama Triangle is a model which accounts for many of the problems we face in social life. This describes a type of game with three roles. The Victim is always innocent and always under attack. The Persecutor is always guilty and always attacking the Victim. The Rescuer is here to save the Victim. All of these roles are pathological.

The Platonic Psychology

In the Republic of Plato, the soul is divided into three parts:

The Nous is what we usually think of as the "mind." It includes the capacity for thought and opinion, sensory knowledge, and contact with spiritual realities.

The Thymos is sometimes translated "spirit" or even (poorly) "anger"; we might better think of it as "vitality." The Thymos is the seat of courage and aggression, social emotions and the drive for status and success.

The Epithymia is the seat of the passions and appetites.

As in the Berne model, none of these is "bad" or "good," each simply has its proper role in the functioning of the soul. The Republic of Plato is an extended analogy which compares the soul to a city. A properly ordered soul is akin to a kingdom in which the nous governs the epithymia with the aid of the thymos. A disordered soul is akin to a democracy in which the thymos and epithymia use their majority to rule the nous.

Justice is the proper order of the soul. In order to establish Justice, we suggested several practices designed to purify each part of the soul. For the nous, prayer and religious ritual. For the thymos, charitable giving and forgiveness. And for the epithymia, fasting, delayed gratification, and quiescent or apophatic meditation.

Notice that there is a meditative practice appropriate to each. For the nous, both discursive meditation and what is called "contemplative" meditation. For the thymos, forgiveness meditation and loving-kindness meditation. For the epithymia, quiescent meditation.

I want to now suggest a couple of additional practices, which may be controversial, and then discuss the ways that the Berne model and the Platonic model interact.

Give Your Cattle A Large Field

In the Daode Jing we read "To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him." As in the case of the Republic, passages in this text referring to politics are usually interpreted as actually, or additionally, describing psychic and meditative practices. And we can apply this advice here. The nous is meant to rule, but it need not rule by repression. Thymos and epithymia have their proper place. Simply try to destroy them and problems will immediately follow.

In the case of the thymos, the natural aggression and team-spirit must be allowed to direct itself toward a socially and personally constructive, or at least harmless, end. We can see how this works by preferring again to C.S. Lewis's description of the psychic economy as a whole:

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who hadbeen brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato.

As Lewis shows, the emotions, trained in the spirit of cooperation and comeradery, can be critical for the survival of an individual and an entire nation. The thymos is compared to a warrior, because it is, ultimately, especially concerned with war. And so we must give it a war. Men in particular, and young men especially, seem to literally need war, and to die of despair without it. But to start a war is among the worst of crimes, and to start a war for reasons that amount to "because I was bored" is monstrous evil. What can we do?

Freeing the Thymos

Let me give three suggestions.

Spiritual Warfare. By this I do not necessarily mean exorcisms or the struggle against spiritual powers. Rather, by "spiritual warfare" I mean any activity which engages the thymos, along with others, in a struggle toward a particular end, where the end is moral or spiritual rather than temporal, and especially rather than physically violent. What this looks like will vary from individual to individual. Those fortunate enough to be caught up in alcohol or drug addiction can find a brotherhood of fellow-sufferers in places like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Others can find the same degree of meaning and purpose in organizations like the Freemasons or the Knights of Columbus. (Knights-- notice the martial symbolism.) For others, organizations like the Lions or the Rotary Club will do.

The requirements are as follows: First, we need an organization; second, we need a obstacle to overcome; third we need a method to overcome it. If at all possible, it should have a religious or spiritual outlook; secular or atheistic organizations have a limited shelf-life and tend to turn toward the poison of ideology to overcome their failure of faith.

I've come to think that we need a new type of fellowship, one suited for people who are geographically dispersed, open to members from different spiritual traditions. Perhaps a Druidic organization, with martial symbolism, but distinct from the organizations which currently exist. Maybe we should talk about this in a later post.

Sports. By "sports" I'm including a broad range of physical activities, from marathon running to martial arts to yoga. The thymos is the strength and the vitality, and the vitality needs to be exercised regularly. Discussing the training of the future rulers of the Republic, Plato begins with music and gymnastic as the training of the soul and the body. (Both are understood more broadly than we would today-- "music" also includes poetry and literature, and "gymnastic" refers to all the forms of physical training which took place in the Greek gymnasium, and not simply to tumbling and the like.) Again, the specific form will vary from person to person, but some form of physical exercise which allows the individual both to train his or her body and to cultivate their vital spirit (qi, prana, nwyfre) is necessary.

Professional Sports. Yes, I know, this will probabyl be the controversial one. But the exact same sort of trained sentiment that Lewis describes as the salvation of soldiers on the battlefield can be channeled into professional sports teams. Indeed, this is the point of professional sports: to allow cities to go to war with one another without anyone having to be killed. I especially recommend this as an antidote should one be inclined to become too involved with politics-- take at least part of the time you would normally spend reading about what those lousy Democrats or those awful Republicans are doing, and watch a football game instead. You will be doing the exact same thing-- participating in the shared emotions of struggle-- but without having to add in the dangerous delusion that the people you hate are evil and need killing, or that your team is here to save the world. There are two symbols which produce a very specific swelling of emotion in my heart; one is an American flag. This the other:

The advantage to the second is that when the Steelers play the Ravens, I'm not likely to convince myself that the Steelers are fighting for justice and goodness and that the Ravens are an unimaginable evil which must be killed.

Of course, this is precisely why the introduction of politics into professional sports a few years back is such an unmitigated evil.

Freeing the Epithymia

The epithymia is simpler than the other two, including as it does those instincts which we share in common with the simplest animals. As such, its care and feeding is somewhat simple, as caring for a pet lizard is comparatively easier than caring for a cat or a dog. The Epithymia simply neds to be indulged.

This is best done at intervals, and it is here that the traditional customs of Christian civilization come in handy. In the old way of doing things, the year is punctuated by fasts, in which the epithymia is restrained, add feasts, in which it is liberated.

Now fasting and feasting both refer, traditionally, to food, and also, often, to drinking alcoholic drinks. Obviously the epithymia has desires beyond those for food and booze. And it is here that the traditions we've inherited often fail, or at least seem to fail. In most of us the desire for sex is nearly as strong as that for food and, in most of us, stronger than the desire for alcohol. And in the Roman Catholic tradition, this desire is specifically regarded as evil, and attempts are made to totally suppress it!

...Or so it seems. And so you would learn if you spoke with a Catholic of the "Traditionalist" school. They would be happy to tell you that sexual intercourse must be limited to the most obvious acts, between husband and wife, and with minimal enjoyment. They'd then explain that this is the "tradition," and that it's only "modernists" who disagree.

One thing you learn when you study older writings-- that is, when you read old things-- is that most of what people think of as an unbroken tradition is anything but. These days, in fact, very often what is called "traditional" in any field of life-- from religion to working out to learning music and languages-- turns out, upon examination, to have been an invention of the Nineteenth Century. The "Traditionalist," in other words, is usually just a partisan of the revolution before the last revolution.

And so it is in this case. In fact, the Church's teachings on sexuality have varied widely over the centuries. Some authorities taught that whatever two married people are doing with their free time is fine, and a priest-confessor shouldn't ask them about it. Others taught that all sexual pleasure is evil, and sex should be as brief as possible and no one should enjoy it. One pope-- I'm afraid the name escapes me-- actually taught that it's only the man who shouldn't enjoy it! And then, very recently, Pope Leo XIII in the 19th Century taught that parish priests ought to grill their parishioners in the Confessional, find out every nasty, dirty little detail of their sex lives that they could, and assign them penance for it (or threaten them with hellfire if they continue).

Obviously I don't support the latter approach, either in the life of a church or the life of an individual. With limited exceptions, training the epithymia needs to include some level of indulgence. There are obviously a few appetites that shouldn't ever be indulged, and these tend to create a cascading series of problems. Here again, though, a measure of indulgence is often better than simple suppression. The obvious example is the addict who goes to the methadone clinic in order to help themselves get off of heroin. Notice that, under ordinary circumstances, methadone use is an evil. As an aid in heroin recovery, it becomes a lesser evil and so, in this case, a good. On the other hand, if you had-- oh, I don't know-- a doctrine which insisted that methadone and heroin use were both equally and mortally sinful, and that if you happened to be hit by a bus upon exiting the methadone clinic you'd go straight to Hell, well... I'm sure you can see the problems this would cause.

And so this is my suggestion for epithymia: For legitimate desires, such as those for food, lovemaking, minor intoxicants and screen usage, a period of abstinence should be balanced by a period of indulgence. For less legitimate desires-- again, strong intoxicants such as heroin are the primary example, but my guess is that the worst forms of screen addictionw ould fall under this as well-- we should be willing to allow ourselves a lesser evil as a stepping stone toward the good. Ignore your inner Pope Leo; he was a jerk who also believed tha

As usual with these posts, I've run out of time, and so we will have to-- really, actually, seriously-- wrap this up tomorrow. See you then!

(I'm not sure why this is an image of Typhon, but there you have it.)

The Many Headed Monster

The difficulty with the Epithymia is simply that it wants, and wants, and wants-- without limit. Left to its own devices, it will spend its time eating, drinking, and having sex and sleeping. A human under the rule of Epithymia is an animal.

As a brief aside, there is a notion found in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite that is worth exploring further in a future post. For Dionysius, the creation of the universe proceeds upward from the simplest to the most complex-- and this is also a moral evolution. What this means is that, for beings at a certain, lower, level, certain qualities are simply not present. But for beings at a higher level, the presence of these qualities is their good, the absence, their evil.

For example: Life is not present in a stone, and its absence does not harm the stone. But if life is not present in a plant, the plant is dead. To say it another way, it has fallen to the level of a stone. Similarly, movement is not present in a plant. But if movement ceases in an animal, it soon finds itself either eaten by something else or starving to death. This is why the long-term comatose were referred to as "vegetables." Finally, in an animal, morality is simply not present. A cat kills a mouse, a chicken pecks another chicken to death, a male dog forces itself on a female. No harm is done. But a human who torments a animal as a cat torments a mouse, or bullies and murders a weaker human, or violates another sexually, has fallen to the level of a beast. To be ruled by Epithymia is to be bestial.

Don't suppose for a moment that the writings of Dionysius are foreign to the traditions we are discussing here. While his identity was unknown, it seems likely that he was a member of Proclus's school, and there are some who have suggested that he was actually the late Classical pagan philosopher Damascius in disguise! His Christianized Platonism, or Platonized Christianity, was the light of the Christian world for 1500 years, and his partial loss (or total loss, if one is Protestant) in the West has been part of our disaster. Moreover, I am fairly certain that I see Dionysius, along with Origen and John Scotus Eriugena, lurking in the background of Iolo Morganwg's Christian Druidry. More on this at a later date.

For now let us return to the topic, and suggest another way to master the Epithymia. This is the way of Fasting.

Fasting

The word "fast" traditionally refers only to food. Historically, Christians kept either one, two, or even three fasting days per week, every week, and several major periods of fasting throughout the year. What these latter were varied by region. Lent-- the forty days prior to Easter-- and Advent-- the four weeks prior to Christmas-- were always major fasts. Other fast periods included:

Ember Days. This was a series of 3 days around the Solstices and Equinoxes kept as fasts in the Roman Catholic Church. In the older literature, the purpose of these fasts is explicitly to harmonize the soul with the energy of the season-- that is, the Airy energy of the Spring, the Fire of Summer, the Earth of Autumn and the Water of Winter. (You may be used to another arrangement; this is the older one, from what I can tell.)

St Michael's Lent. This is the period from the Feast of the Assumption of Mary on August 15th to the Feast of Saint Michael on September 29th. (Happy Michaelmas, everybody!)

Rogation Days. This was a day, or several days, of prayer and fasting in early Spring, associated with agricultural fertility.

The Dormition Fast. This refers to the 14 days prior to the Assumption of Mary-- or, as the Feast is known in the Orthodox Church, the Dormition (Falling Asleep) of Mary.

Periods of fasting are traditionally followed by periods of feasting. I've written on this topic at length, and so I won't try to recapitulate the whole discussion here. But I do want to make a few additional points.

Traditional fasts in the Orthodox Church are basically time spent as a sober vegan. Fasting rules in the Catholic Church-- which the modern Church in its wisdom, has abrogated-- allow for fish to be eaten, but greatly restrict the quantity of food one intakes; traditionally, the rule was "one meal of no more than 8 ounces plus two snacks; you can also have plain bread and coffee in the morning." For most of us today, however, I believe that the primary focus of fasting need not be food. What I recommend above all is fasting from technology.

The trouble with technology is that it acts upon the epithymia, but it has effects which cascade up through the entirety of the soul. We hear a great deal, these days, about pornography addiction, and a bit about videogame addiction, but in my view the problem is less the content of the screen than the screen itself. To my own mind, it doesn't matter whether a person is addicted to social media, online politics, shopping on Amazon, World of Warcraft, or pornography. The effect on the soul is the same.

And so I strongly recommend regular periods of abstinence. These need not be periods of total withdrawal from all screen or internet use-- though they may be. Instead, they should target whatever form of technology wasts the most of your time. As I wrote,

The nature of the new fast will vary for every person, as everyone's engagement with technology differs, as does their ability to abstain from it. A computer programmer will both have more need and more difficulty in fasting from technology than a professional wilderness guide!

Those who are Christian or willing to work with Christian symbolism can simply use the traditional fasting periods. In addition to providing a regular structure, these also have the advantage that you won't be working alone-- Christians around the world will be fasting in one way or another at the same time. Remember that the thymos is basically social; participating in a fast with others will allow you to tap into the lion's strength. Non-Christians will need to come up with fasting periods on their own. A fasting calendar based on the pagan Wheel of the Year would probably be very helpful, as it would-- like the Christian liturgical calendar-- allow for group participation. At minimum Saturday would work quite well as a day for fasting from technology. Saturn governs discipline, and he is also associated with agriculture. Saturn is equally the planet of Ceres, the Grain Mother; her day is a fine day on which to disconnect from the virtual and reconnect with Nature.

Nor do food and technology exhaust the possibilities for fasting. A 40, 90, or 365-day period of abstenence from alcohol can be very helpful, especially for people who want to learn to drink socially, rather than having to commit to teetotaling. I'm sure that a similar period of withdrawal from caffeine would be of great benefit as well, and if anyone is capable of it, I'd be glad to hear it. (In a fine synchronicity, the hot water pot just finished boiling as I was typing that sentence; time to go pour a cup of coffee). There is a large and growing literature on the benefits of temporary abstinence from sexual activity, and there are entire traditions of internal alchemy based on re-purposing sexual energy for magical and spiritual attainment.

The Capacity for Delay

Like meditation, fasting is as a form of training. Just as a weightlifter develops strength which can be used, and is meant to be used, outside of the gym, so the faster develops the capacity for refusal.

But notice: Traditionally, every fast ends with a feast. Fasting isn't the culinary equivalent of celibacy. During the long stretches of Lent and Advent, the most rigorous and committed faster knows that a long period of feasting is coming. When it comes to taming the Epithymia and mastering addictions, delay is one of the most powerful tools. The way this works is simple: When the Appetite asks for something, rather than telling it "No," tell it, "Okay, but only if you still want it in 30 minutes." Or ten minutes, or an hour, depending on what it is.

This is how I drink alcohol most of the time. I enjoy beer, but when I was younger I tended to overdo it badly. These days, after I drink a glass of beer, I tell myself, "You can have another one if you want it in an hour." Most of the time, it turns out I don't want it anymore. Sometimes I do, and in that case I have it. I do my online shopping the same way. Left to my own devices, I'd have the Amazon truck pulling up to the house every single day, and almost always to bring me still more books. So if I want to buy something online-- or to make any major purchase-- I force myself to wait 24-48 hours. If I still want it, then, okay. But it turns out that I usually don't.

That's all I've got for today.

Join me next week, and we'll wrap up this discussion, and move on to something else which I've wanted to write about here for some time. See you then!

...Or, Epithymia, Part II

Let's pick up where we left off yesterday.

Overcoming the Passions

The Epithymia, as we have seen, may be compared on the one hand to the peasantry or working class of the kingdom of our souls, and on the other to a monstrous enemy who must be overcome.

The monster may be compared to the Greek Typhon. Tyhpon was the child of Gaia and Tartarus-- that is, the Earth and the pit of Hell. He contended with the Gods, and was only overcome by the thunderbolt of Zeus.

Stillness Meditation

Among the most useful exercises for anyone hoping to gain mastery over their passions is the practice of quiescent meditation. I am using the term "quiescent" meditation, or its equivalent, "stillness" meditation, as a catch-all for all of those forms of meditation which work by emptying the mind of thoughts. In some cases, one places one's attention on the breathe, or on a mantra; in others, one simply endeavors to focus on nothing at all; in still others, one repeats, with intention, a prayer such as "I take refuge in Amida Buddha" or "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me," or "There is no God but God."

In certain circles to which you and I belong, mindfulness, zazen and other forms of "mind-emptying" or "stillness" meditation tend to get short shrift. I'm going to address this before we continue.

It is true that Buddhist meditation techniques are, in the modern world, often ripped from context and applied as a form of antidepressant. It is also true that meditation intensives such as those offered by the Goenka organization do more harm than good (I can say this from experience.) Here again, though, the old injunction holds good:

Abusus non tollit usum.

The abuse of any technique does not take away its legitimate use.

Meditation and Me

I'm going to speak from personal experience here, and for a good reason. All of the techniques that I'm discussing have been developed by groups, in a group context. But each of us has to do the work primarily within our own soul. Under ordinary circumstances, it is only our own personal soul which we can directly experience. I can tell you that I have experimented with working exclusively with discursive meditation, and I have experimented with combining regular discursive meditation with regular mindfulness meditation. For me, the latter works much, much better. The fruit of discursive meditation on its own is that I become much smarter. It also exacerbates my natural tendency to be a space cadet. Once I emerge from a session of discursive meditation, I find it very hard to connect to my physical surroundings, or to the people in those surroundings. Worst of all, I find it more, not less, difficult to control my passions, habits, and reactions. This is precisely the opposite of what I seek from meditation. To put the matter plainly: I'm already smart enough. What I need to develop is self-control, gentleness toward others, and physical coordination.

I've studied and practiced a number of styles of mind-stilling meditation, including vipassana, zazen, and Taoist zuowang. These are all Asian methods, but there are Western and Christian methods of stillness meditation as well. The most prominent are Catholic centering prayer and euchraristic adoration, and, from the Orthodox tradition, hesychasm.

The way that I learned quiescent meditation, and the most common form that I practice, is to sit upright, place my attention at the lower dantien (two inches below the navel), and count my breaths. Inhale 1, exhale 2. I do this for a set length of time-- a timer is crucial for this sort of practice. Buddhist and Taoist traditions have specific mudras, which is to say, positions for the hands, which are designed to cultivate energy in particular ways. Sometimes I use these; other times I place my hands on my thighs. Ultimately I'm going to develop a system of mudras based on the Golden Dawn tradition, but that's a story of another time.

Now, every form of stillness meditation has its own ultimate aim, which is framed within its particular tradition of metaphysics. This is as it should be. At one time, the word "Philosophy" referred as much to a way of life as to a set of mental exercises, and far more to a way of life than to a set of opinions. Each school of philosophy had its own meditative disciplines, appropriate to it. In Taoist zuowang, the ultimate end is to observe the way that things arise and resolve of themselves, by the ongoing activity of the Tao. In hesychasm, the end is the experience of the Uncreated Light. In this post, I don't want to talk about the metaphysical end of meditation, but only of its immediate effects upon the soul and its relationship to the passions.

In any form of quiescent meditation, the first thing that happens when you start is simply that you want to stop. One begins by taking an uncomfortable posture, with the spine held upright and very often the legs crossed. The body immediately rebels. It figits, it itches, it's thirsty. The mind rebels. You need to make a grocery list; you're sure you left the oven on. Best get up and check it. Every time you refuse to give in to impulse, you are practicing self-control. Self-control, or Temperance, is the virtue which Plato associates with the abdomen, the seat of the passions.

Meanwhile, at the same time you are refusing to act from passion, you practice acting from intention. This is the other half of self-control-- acting from choice, rather than from desire. This is also a component of the virtue of Courage, which includes the refusal to turn aside from a rightly chosen end either to avoid pain or to seek pleasure.

Finally, the regular practice of meditation leads to self-knowledge. In meditation, we watch our thoughts, impulses, and desires arise, and we watch them subside again. The first fruit of regular practice is to break our identification with our thoughts. We typically assume that if we think something, or if we feel something, or if we want something, we are that thought, that emotion, or that desire. By watching our thoughts, feelings, and desires arise and subside on their own, without acting on them, we discover that we ourselves are neither thought, nor emotion, nor desire. Going further, we discover that each of these things has causes which are rooted in our bodies, our physical environments, our past, our history, and our circumstances. We watch the behavior of thought and desire exactly as we might watch the activity of birds in a forest or the growing cycles of plants. Just as patient observation of forest over time leads to knowledge of that forest and its residents, so patient observation of the mental processes over time leads to self-knowledge. This is a key to the virtue of Wisdom.

Finally, by the simultaneous practice of observing of all of our internal processes while acting according to a rightly chosen end, we cultivate Justice.

Thus we see that meditation, directed primarily toward the virtue of Temperance, results in the other three virtues as well, and thus to Virtue as a whole. Remember that the words for "ethics" and "morality" come from Greek and Latin roots which both mean "habits."

And so that's my first recommendation. Practice a form of meditation, especially one that forces you to stop doing anything, including thinking. Tomorrow I'm going to discuss fasting, building on our discussion of meditation. Then I'm going to circle back around to discuss something I missed in the post on purifying the Thymos. Finally, I'll wrap up the whole discussion with some final thoughts on social games.

...At least, that's the plan as of right now. But I've noticed that when I set out my plans here, things tend to go differently from what I expected. So we'll see where it goes!

Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew an hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at anothers, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods been quick to perceive it.

Hesiod, Theogony

The Monster

We come at last to the purification of the Epithymia, the appetite.

In the Republic, Plato compares this part of the soul to a monster with many heads. In his certainly had the image of Typhon, the hundred-headed offspring of the Earth and Tartarus, the pit of Hell.

The task of overcoming the Monster is not an easy one, and in a real sense is the work of a lifetime. And it's also something that everyone must do for themselves; no one came into this world with your particular stack of appetites, desires, passions and vices, and no one else accumulated the habits that locked those things in place in the same way that you did. And so all of the advice I give must necessarily be general, and some of it may not work for you. That said, I want to give a couple of suggestions here. But first, I want to start with a discussion of what-- in my experience-- does not work.

What You Resist, You Strengthen

In the Republic, as we've seen, the three parts of the soul are compared to a man, his trusty lion, and a monster; but they are also compared to a king, his warriors, and the peasantry. And so the work of overcoming the appetites and establishing Justice in the soul may be compard at once to a battle, and to ruling a population.

We will do well, then, to look for advice both from military and political science. To that end, I want to share a few selections from a pair of Chinese sages.

First, Laotze, from the Daode Jing:

To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him.

Next, Sun Tzu, from the Art of War:

In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment, or a company entire than to destroy them.

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

The highest form of generalship is to baulk the enemy's plans; the next best policy is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

Very often, when people take on the work of overcoming their appetites-- their passions, in the older way of speaking-- they do the exact opposite of what Sun Tzu tells us here. We all know what our worst habit is, and we know that it consists in the regular indulgence of our strongest desire. If you want to change your life, the way to begin is usually not to make a direct assault on this behavior, whatever it is.

Unfortunately, this is an area where the Christian tradition can be unhelpful and even counter-productive. I don't happen to know if this concept, or a related one, exists in Eastern Christianity, but in Roman Catholicism the concept of mortal sin stands directly in the way of any productive approach to the passions.

Mortal sin is the belief that there are certain sins that simply can't be repented without the help of a preist; die after committing one of these but before getting to the Confessional, and it's straight to Hell with you. The net effect of this belief is to turn the process of overcoming the passions into a dire emergency, which is exactly the opposite of the frame of mind that you actually need to maintain in order to do it. And this in turn produces varying levels of neurosis, starting with what's called "scrupulosity."

The Twelve Step tradition is another one for which I ordinarily have a great deal of praise. Here again, though, a very uhelpful habit prevails, similar to the idea of mortal sin. This is the concept of "going out." If you aren't familiar, in groups like AA or NA, a recovered alcoholic or addict who takes a single drink or drug is said to have "gone out." This is usually expanded to include even things like "near beer," which is 0.5% alcohol, or taking a second painkiller if one is prescribed one a day. Once a recoveree has "gone out," all of the "Time sober" which they had accumulatd immediately evaporates. Upon returning to their regular meeting, they have to identify as a "newcomer" in their "first 30 days of recovery." The negative effect of this attitude should be obviously, and I've seen it work its destructive magic more than once. A person accumulates a fair amount of time sober, and then in a fit of pique or an absent moment takes a single drink or, perhaps a second oxycodin. Well, now they've "gone out"-- and so they now give themselves permission to go on a bender. They turn up a month later, having drunk or drugged themselves nearly to death.

Needless to say, these are not the approaches I recommend.

But what do I recommend?

Ask And it Shall Be Given You

...I'm afraid that's a discussion that's going to have to wait for tomorrow. Last night I received a call that my grandmother had suffered a bad fall and was in the E.R. She's home today but could use somebody to come and help around the house. If you read yesterday's post, the significance will be obvious. I'm out of time for today and should in fact have left the house a half hour ago, so I'm going to have to end the discussion here. We'll pick this up tomorrow. In the meantime, if the readers here wouldn't mind offering a prayer for the health and recovery of Mrs. Sylvia Mandes, I'd be very grateful.

The Nature of Thymos

In order to talk about purifying the thymos, we first need to discuss exactly what the thymos is. Yesterday's discussion was a bit incomplete-- I was in a rush, and realized later that I hadn't finished writing out the definitions of each part of the soul. (I suppose I could go back in and revise that post without mentioning it, Ministry of Truth-style, but honesty is one of the themes of this series of posts, so we'll just leave it as it is.)

The difficulty with translating "thymos" into English is that it combines concepts in a way that we are not used to. There is another difficulty as well, which we'll come to. The easiest way to understand thymos is simply to think of it as the social emotions. In terms used by contemporary evolutionary psychologists, you can think of the epithymia as the "lizard brain," concerned with basic animal wants and needs, and the nous as the human "forebrain," which is capable of reasoning. Between these two is the "mammalian brain," which allows us to form social groups.

But the thymos is not just that. It's also associated with spirit, courage, energy. By spirit, mind, I don't mean the same thing as either "immortal soul" or "elemental Spirit." When one refers to a "spirited horse," the spirit in question is thymos; when you tell someone "You're in good spirits today," this also is thymos.

The Parts of the Soul and the Energy Centers

In traditional anatomy, the nous was centered in the head, the thymos in the heart, and the epithymia in the abdomen. If you're familiar with Chinese internal alchemy, you will notice that these correspond exactly with the three dan t'iens or energy centers. If this suggests to you that there is a half-lost system of energetic anatomy native to the Western world, well, it does to me too, and recovering it is one of my long range projects. For now, though, it's enough to know that this image was a commonplace at one time, and it is preserved in our language to this day.

The Cosmographia is a 12th Century poem written by a one Bernardus Sylvestris, which describes the creation of the world and of mankind. Cosmographia was, at one time, considered orthodox enough to have been read before the Pope. Here is how it describes the creation of the three energy centers in man:

Physis carefully divided the bodily material into three portions... The first she called the head, the second the breast, and the third the loins, according to the properties she found in them. These three in particular of the body's many parts, these narrow chambers ouf ot its general extensiveness she chose to receive the brain, the heart, and the liver, the three foundations of its life. Physis knew that she would not go astray in creating the lesser universe of man if she took as her example the pattern of hte greater universe. In the intricate structure of hte world's body, the firmament holds the preeminent position. The earth is at the lowest point, the air spread between. From the firmament the godhead rules and disposes all things. The powers who have their homes in the ether and the atmosphere carry out its commands, and the affairs of the earth below are governed by them. No less care is taken in the case of man, that the soul should govern in the head, the vital force established in the breast obey its commands, and the lower parts, the loins and those organs placed beneath them, submit to rule. So Physis, skilled artist as she was, prepared the brain as the future seat of the soul, the heart as the source of vitality, and the liver as the source of appetite...

Yes, "Physis" is the Greek world for Nature or the Physical Plane (see how that works?), and in this work, she is explicitly given the role of a goddess. Actually it's almost all goddesses in the Cosmographia; the story opens with Nature complaining to Nous about the Chaos (Silva) that exists before creation, and God, entirely off stage, giving the ladies permission to form the chaos into a universe. One is tempted to read a work like this and dream about a Catholicism that might have been; Sancte Bernarde Silvestris, ora pro nobis.

In any case, the point is that the thymos is located at the heart, and you can hear echoes in our language today when a sports team is described as "having enough heart" to win the game.

Given its social rule, it seems clear that the purification of the thymos is especially important in this discussion of becoming free of social games.

Justice and Thymos

Justice, as we have seen, is that state in which each part of the soul performs its own task in correct relationship to the other parts. The nature of that relationship is stated clearly by Sylvestris above: "the soul should govern in the head, the vital force established in the breast obey its commands, and the lower parts, the loins and those organs placed beneath them, submit to rule."

And so the nous rules from the head, but only with the aid of the thymos; epithymia, as Sylvestris says, "submits to rule."

But why should this be so?

The answer is simply that, left to its own devices, nous is basically powerless against epithymia. In the Republic, Plato gives us an image of each of these parts of the soul. The nous is like a man. Epithymia is a many-headed monster. Alone, the man is powerless against it. He needs help. He gets it in the form of a lion, the thymos. Note that the lion symbolizes at once strength, sociability, and kingship. With the aid of the lion, the man overcomes the monster. Were the lion to serve the monster instead, the man would be devoured. This is the condition that we find oursevles in when we submit to our passions.

In a well-known essay that deserves regular re-reading, the redoubtable C.S. Lewis explains the matter very succinctly:

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who hadbeen brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato.

One of the tales collected in The Mabinogion concerns a Sir Owain, cousin of King Arthur. After a series of adventures, Owain finds himself wandering in a wasteland.

And as he journeyed, he heard a loud yelling in a wood. And it was repeated a second and a third time. And Owain went towards the spot, and beheld a huge craggy mound, in the middle of the wood; on the side of which was a grey rock. And there was a cleft in the rock, and a serpent was within the cleft. And near the rock stood a black lion, and every time the lion sought to go thence, the serpent darted towards him to attack him. And Owain unsheathed his sword, and drew near to the rock; and as the serpent sprang out, he struck him with his sword, and cut him in two. And he dried his sword, and went on his way, as before. But behold the lion followed him, and played about him, as though it had been a greyhound that he had reared.

From then on the lion serves Owain, and helps him in battle against fearsome giants. The implication is that Owain has established Justice in his soul, and I believe that teaching this is part of the purpose of this particular tale. Our goal is to become like Owain ourselves. But how? Let's look at a few different practices intended to train and purify the thymos.

Charity, Forgiveness, Blessing

One of the most important teachings of our occult tradition is that our souls are not isolated to our bodies. Material science teaches us that "consciousness" is isolated to individual brains. Now, none of us here believe that sort of thing, but the truth is we tend not to be very far off. Most of us, most of the time, believe in or act like we believe that our consciousness is trapped inside of our individual bodies. Occult philosophy teaches that this is not so. Every time humans come together in a group, we form a group consciousness-- a group soul-- sometimes called an egregore. Each of our psyches is a participant in a larger psyche. Critically, that group soul is not limited to the sum of the individuals who compose it. It has its own life, just as you have a life which is not reducable to the individual lives of your cells. Just as an individual soul can become neurotic or even psychotic, so too an eregore can become toxic.

In fact, this is precisely what the games of Eric Berne, the Victim Triangle of Stephen Kartman, and similar models are referring to. If there is a Rescue Game afoot within a group, that group's soul has become neurotic. When games, especially the Rescue Game, reach their peak in intensity, an egregore can go psychotic. Genocides and civil wars, school shootings and murder-suicides are the results of egregores large and small going insane. This work is very serious.

Fortunately, we are not without recourse. A Long before the development of social psychology, our Western tradition included a number of techniques for the purification and healing of collective souls.

Charity is a word that we all use often enough; say it and people usually think of either donations to nonprofits or of soup kitchens. I recommend a regular practice of charity, and I recommend making certain seasons and certain days of the week to devote especially to charity. But I am not talking about donating to NGOs, or to working at soup kitchens. By all means, do these things if you feel called to them-- but they are far from the only opens available.

There are other ways to do charity. Leave a $100 tip at a restaurant, and I promise you will make a difference in someone's life. Do this even if you don't get great service. (Do not do this if you find your server attractive, or if they flirt with you. That will ruin it.) If you don't have $100... well, honestly, I think that you do; put aside $20 every first Friday for the next 5 months, and at the end of that time go out to dinner.

Or think of somebody you know who might be lonely, or who you just haven't connected with in some time. Think about a way that this person has helped you. Give them a call, or visit them. You might simply talk to them for a while, connect, catch up. But if you can, you might bring up a way that they've helped you, and express your gratitude.

Group souls aren't limited to human beings, by the way. We participate in every collective of which are are a part. In the Middle Ages, a common way to refer to someone's entire household was to add the phrase "mouse, cat, and dog." The animals, the plants, and even the physical structures that you spend time around are parts of the collective soul in which you participate.

In the Druid tradition, we are encouraged to spend time in nature, and, especially, in getting to know the particular land we our selves live on. What we are doing is becoming active participants in the collective soul of the land, along with the animals and plants, the rocks and the water. You can direct your charity toward Nature as well as toward people. Here again, the things people usually think of aren't very helpful. I'm not talking about donating to Greenpeace or fretting over your "carbon footprint." I bet that there is a trail or a park or a patch of woodland near your house. Go there with a pair of gloves and a trash bag, and pick up all the litter you find. I promise the spirit of the place will appreciate it. Don't ask for permission to do this, and don't make sure everyone sees your big group trash pickup. Just go do it yourself. Don't even tell anyone.

Forgiveness is a central feature of the Christian tradition, and it is one of that tradition's great contributions to world spirituality. Of course it is found in other traditions too. It's worth taking a moment to consider just what it means. The words of the Lord's Prayer in English are usually rendered "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." This is too vague. What precisely are "trespasses"? Are we only talking about not getting mad at people who wander onto our lawns?

The Latin is more precise. Here the words are Dimite nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimitus debitoribus nostris. That is, Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

When we forgive someone, we aren't accepting their bad behavior, or inviting more of it. We're simply letting go of any idea that they owe us anything. We erase their name from our internal ledger. We stop trying to collect. Most social games go on and on, round after round, precisely because each player is trying to make up for the last game. You victimized me, so now I'm going to victimize you. Oh no, I've been victimized yet again! Well, I'll get you back later. Social games are more like 500 Rummy than Go Fish. If you're down a few points, there's always another round. Forgive, and you walk away from the table entirely.

Blessing as a regular practice is somewhat less well known, though many in our circles are familiar with the idea via the Modern Order of Essenes. The practice of that organization includes the "Blessing Walk." This consists simply in taking an ordinary walk, and mentally directing a blessing at every person you meet.

This is a very good practice, and it's not necessary to be part of the Order of Essenes to put it to use. Actually, it's not even necessary to go out of your way to do a special walk. take any time during the day when you will encounter a number of people. Perhaps it's a walk, perhaps a commute, perhaps a trip to the grocery store. Especially if you would be tempted to become frustrated with people or mentally curse them-- people driving 50 mph in the fast lane, grocery store clerks taking their sweet ass time at the checkout line-- bless them instead. Bless everyone, silently, without them knowing it, and without judgment or exception. Just look at them and silently say a prayer. "God bless you" is enough. If you're squeamish about "praying for people without their permission," you can say "May God bless you," or "May you be blessed."

Most of the world outside of the modern West-- and many within it-- is familiar with the idea of the "evil eye." This is a kind of curse that we can pass onto people when we direct jealousy, anger, or hatred toward them, especially if we do so while looking at them. The unfortunate truth is that platforms like Facebook and Instagram give us the opportunity to look at each other with jealousy on a regular basis. Thus we may find ourselves constantly cursing others and being cursed in our term. Imagine the impact on our collective psyche and our personal karma!

As every (normal) culture knows about the evil eye, so every culture has its remedy. In Ireland of old, it was the custom to say "God bless you" any time you glanced at someone's farm or their house-- or their wife or their daughter, one supposes-- in order to avoid placing the evil eye upon them. I believe that this custom is the origin of the Essene Blessing Walk. Either way, it's a very good habit to get into. I don't know about you, but often when I'm out driving I look at houses and think about what I'd like to buy after we sell our current place. Knowing that the gaze and the thoughts have power, what effect might I have on a home and its residents if I simply look at it and think "I want to live there"?

Another Forgiveness Practice

Unless I'm very wrong, methylethyl is already thinking about another practice, one found within the Orthodox Church at the beginning of Great Lent, in which every member of the parish from the bishop on down to the little children get together and ask one another forgiveness for every sin they have committed against one another over the preceeding year.

This is an excellent practice. I've never experienced it myself, but I can only imagine the profound effect that it must have on the collective soul of the church and its people. We don't need to be Orthodox or even Christian to recognize its value. Imagine if the United States had a similar institution, and there was a certain point-- perhaps just prior to, or just after, every election-- in which every representative in Congress, plus the Supreme Court and the President, ceremonially asked forgiveness from another, for every sin commited since the previous election, by themselves and their constituents. Imagine if this request for mercy was especially directed at the other political party and the representatives of other states and districts. Can you imagine the effect this would have? Now, it would only work if everyone was required to do it. People on the radical Left sometimes have parodies of this practice in which white people have to beg forgiveness from black people or Indians. This is not forgiveness. This is just another form of the rescue game.

On the other hand, I heard of an event some years ago in which American Indian elders from-- I believe-- the Cheyenne or Lakota tribe went on tour simultaneously teaching people about the massacre of their people by American soldiers, and begging forgiveness for massacres that their people had committed against white settlers. Events like that, on a regular basis, and with any group (racial, ethnic, regional, religious) invited to partcipate, would go a long way toward healing the country. Don't hold your breath.

In the meantime, we can adopt a version of this practice, and there are two possibilities. First, we can transfer it to whatever group we happen to be a part of, be it familal, religious, or otherwise. A family can sit down and let every member ask one another for forgiveness once a year-- at the beginning of Lent, if Christian; during another appropriate season, if not. A church or spiritual organization can do it the same way. In ancient times, the Census was originally not just a way of counting people so that bureaucrats could tax them. The purpose of a census was to gather together every citizen in order to make amends to the God of the city. This was always a ritual, and modern pagans might do well to study these sorts of rituals and see how they could be re-worked for modern times. The ancient city was always a spiritual organization, never merely a political one, and the ancients were well aware of the polluting effects of sin upon the collective psyche.

If you are unable to get a group together, you can work with this practice on your own. Pray, enter into a meditative state, and then call to mind, in succession, every member of a group in which you participate. One at a time, imagine any offenses that you are holding against each member of that group. Picture the scenario from their perspective. Imagine yourself saying to them, "I understand why you have acted as you have, and I forgive you." Then tell them, mentally, all the ways that you have sinned against them-- again, remember that sin or hamartia is not an exclusively Christian concept, and we can simply define it as "acting against the Good." How have you acted against this person's good? How have you acted against your own Good? How have you acted against the Good of the group as a whole? Ask for forgiveness, mentally, from eacdh person. Picture the spirit of the group, perhaps as its guardian angel or daimon, or its patron saint if appropriate, and ask for its forgiveness as well.

Penitence and Amendment

In 12 Step programs, the Fifth Step consists of "admitting to God, ourselves, and one other person the exact nature of our wrongs." But the Ninth Step consists of making amends to every person that one has harmed. Now, in popular culture, this is often represented as "apologizing to everyone." But that isn't it, exactly. Sometimes apologies are very helpful, but oftentimes druks and addicts are experts at saying "I'm sorry." Far more helpful is the idea of the amendment, which means a change in behavior. Here again, we will have to examine ourselves carefully. If we have discovered that we like to play the Victim, say, in our family, and initiate rescue games by telling our spouse how awful our child has been to us, we now need to consciously practice a contrary mode of behavior. The sorts of prayer and self-examination we have already engaged in will help us. And so will other techniques, which will also aid us in purifying the Epithymia. We will discuss these tomorrow.

Over the course of this series, we've examined the transactional analysis model of social psychology created by Eric Berne. We've looked at the Drama Triangle of Stephen Karpman. We've discovered that much of our lives, and above all our relationships-- or what we consider to be relationships-- can be understood as destructive social games. These games play out unconsciously, without our control, all the time, and are responsible for a great deal of the misery that we experience.

Now it's time to talk about what we can do about it.

...And here, it feels necessary to hedge a little bit. The work of un-learning the sorts of behaviors that we're talking about is the work of a lifetime. In a real sense, it is the goal of all real spiritual practice, as it is identical with what Eliphas Levi called the Great Work: "The creation of a man by himself, especially the total conquest of his faculties and his future."

This is a tall order, and precisely how to do it is not going to fit into a short blog post. What I propose to do in this post is to provide a rough

Psychic Anatomy

I'm going to use Plato's tripartite model of the soul in this post. I've discussed this so many times that readers here are probably sick of hearing about it by now. In case anyone is tuning in for the first time, the soul can be divided into three parts:

Epithymia. This consists of all of our instincts and appetites; everything that we share with the lower animals. When you're hungry or tired or "in the mood," that's the Epithymia at work.

Thymos. This consists of the social emotions, including the desire for success and the instinct toward honorable conduct. C

Nous. This is the reasoning part of the soul. The nous itself is further divided into mere sense-knowledge ("I see a three-sided object"); opinion ("All three-sided shapes are triangles"), reason (Given the height of the triangle and the length of its base, its area is x); and intellection (knowledge of higher realities, inexpressible in language.)

Each of these has its proper role, both individually and in relation to one another. The state in which each part of the soul performs its correct function in relation to the other two is the definition of Justice give by Plato in the Republic; a Just man or woman is precisely that person whose soul is properly ordered. In the discussion to follow, I'm going to suggest specific practices aimed at the purification of each of the parts of the soul. Let's take these in order.

The Purification of the Nous

Let us begin with the nous, as it is is the highest part of the soul.

Prayer and Ritual

We will find that we get nowhere without divine aid. This aid must be encountered in two ways: Prayer and Ritual.

By prayer I mean the direct invocation and communication with divine beings. Most of us know what prayer is, and so I don't know that I need to say a great deal about it. One thing that may be helpful to note: Many people from Protestant backgrounds have been raised to believe that prayer must be spontaneous, "from the heart." They make Jesus's condemnation of "vain repetitions" into a condemnation of all repetition, and therefore refuse to engage in formal or liturgical prayer. Often, cradle Protestants carry this attitude with them when they convert to other religions, or to liturgical forms of Christianity.

And then they sit down to pray find that they have no idea what to say.

If that's you-- whether your religious orientation is Christian or otherwise-- let me suggest another approach. Liturgical prayer is a technology; its intention is to invoke the presence of the Divine, in whatever form. Once invoked, the right thing to say is--

Nothing at all.

Remember that the highest part of the soul extends beyond the reasoning mind; it extends, therefore, beyond the sorts of thoughts that can be formed into words.

A simple but very effective form of prayer is to simply light a candle, say or sing a liturgical prayer out loud, and then be silent. Feel the presence of the god or power you have invoked. Don't feel the need to ask them anything; simply be aware of their presence. If you feel nothing, that's okay. Just be silent. Pay attention to whatever thoughts come into your mind. Remain in stillness for a few minutes, and then blow out your candle.

This is where prayer bleeds into the second of the two practices, ritual. Rituals are best when performed with two or more persons, but very often this isn't possible. If you happen to be a part of a large religious organization, then you're in luck, and all you need to do is to attend services regularly, but for many of us, ritual is something that we have to do by ourselves. In either case, though, the purpose of ritual was neatly expressed by Carl Jung as "the externalization of the archetypes of the Collective Unconscious." The archetypes, in Jung's theory, are those universal forces that lurk deep in the background of the human mind, and typically act through us without our knowledge or our consent. (If that sounds familiar, given our recent discussions, stay tuned; I hope to discuss Jung at length sometime in the near future.)

It is important not to treat prayer or ritual as a way of getting God or the gods to do something for you. God is not a genie, or a vending machine. The purpose of prayer is not to change God, to get Him to do what you want-- it's to change you, to make you more like him.

Study and Self-Examination

These work on the next two faculties of the nous, the dianoetic and doxastic powers-- that is, the reason and the opinion.

By Study, in this context, I especially mean studying those sorts of texts which help us to understand and unlock the hidden parts of the soul. Books like Berne's Games People Play, or books discussing Stephen Karpman's work (there are very many available these days) are one option. There are others, depending on the approach you prefer.

Develop the habit of reading slowly, and then setting aside time to carefully reflect upon what you have read. This can be blended into prayer through the practice of lectio divina (divine reading). Lectio divine is a traditional mode of meditation taught in the Roman Catholic Church, but it can be profitably employed by anyone; you can find simple instructions here. Some books, like modern fiction novels, can be read in the way that you watch a movie-- quickly, passively, and for entertainment. These sorts of books will not do the work of purifying your nous or changing your behavior, at least not in a way that you can choose consciously. The sorts of books I recommend here must be studied and considered carefully, and in so doing, they become initiations into higher modes of thinking. In this context I especially recommend Plato's Republic. Please, no abridgements or just extractions of the Allegory of the Cave-- read the entire thing cover to cover.

We must study the works of others in order to gain knowledge of how to work with the soul and a model for how to approach it. Whether you're reading Eric Berne or Plato or smething else, however, what you are reading is a map. One cannot become an explorer, much less a conqueror, by simply studying maps. We must venture into the territory. And the territory, of course, is your own soul, your psyche. Once we have a model of how the psyche works, we need to spend time in self-examination. Read Berne, and carefully go through his "Thesaurus of Games." Do any jump out at you? These are the ones that you're probably playing. Reflect on your own life, and see how the game is playing out, how it's doing its work. Then, learn to watch yourself play. This is the first step to quitting the game. Do the same with Stephen Karpman, Carl Jung, or Plato. If you are a Christian, there are countless books describing the process of "examination of conscience." If you aren't Christian, read them anyway; you still have a concience.

Next Time, On Life Without Games

The nous is the highest part of the soul, but it does not function in isolation. Alone, against the world of the animal instincts, it fails. It needs the aid of the thymos, and ultimately the appetites must be brought under its power. How do we do this? We'll discuss that tomorrow.

Tolkien famously wrote that the Lord of the Rings was a tale that grew in the telling. If you've ever read any of his early drafts, you know that this is true. The story was initially conceived as another light-hearted adventure for older children, but over the course of his writing it grew into a multi-volume epic far more suited for adults.

In the same way, this series of posts has grown far beyond what I had intended. Today's post was intended as the point of the series. In fact, it was the only thing that I had originally intended to say. But as I've read and thought more on the topic, I believe I've uncovered something larger and deeper, so that today's post will be more of a digression, or perhaps a side-quest. Think of it as the Scouring of the shire sequence at the end of The Return of the King. Can the story go on without it? Yes, as Peter Jackson demonstrated. But something is definitely lost without it-- again, as Peter Jackson demonstrated.

You Cannot Love A Victim

I wrote yesterday that one of the major issues with Karpman's "Dramatic Triangle" is that it makes real relationships impossible. When someone is acting the part of the Victim, or the Rescuer or the Persecutor, the real person is not present, and it is impossible to relate to them. We can only relate to their role. And, crucially, we can't really relate to that either, because it's being performed subliminally. The Victim is posing as someone in need of help, and so we respond to that posture. But the posture is false. The Victim does not want help. They either want to remain in a Victim role permanently, feeding off of the energy of their would-be Rescuer, or else they want to rope in a sucker and "flip the scripts" at the right moment, so that the Rescuer themselves becomes a Victim, and the Victim a Persecutor. In neither case do we have a true relationship. A true relationship requires honesty about intentions; self-awareness on the part of the participants; and respect both for oneself and the other person.

Now, to a certain extent, we are all always roleplaying. This is just a part of human life. Right now I'm playing the role of "blogger." A moment ago I was at the grocery store, playing the role of "shopper." Prior to that I was dropping my daughter off at her school, playing the role of "parent." Before the children woke up I was seated in meditation, playing the role of "occultist." The trouble is not even the roleplaying as such, it is, again, the dishonesty. It is worth recalling Berne's words here:

Procedures may be succesful, rituals effective, and pastimes profitable, but all of them are by definition candid; they may involve contest, but not conflict, and the ending may be sensational, but it is not dramatic. Every game, on the other hand, is basically dishonest, and the outcome has a dramatic, as distinct from a merely exciting, quality.

Moreover, we need others to play roles. When you're sick, you need someone playing the role of "Doctor." The trouble is that, these days, a great number of people who seem to be playing "Doctor" are actually playing "Con Artist" or "Loan Shark."

Small Talk and Dancing

This may be a digression from a post which is already a digression, but I think it's worth discussing. I've had two readers comment already that they don't like "small talk." I suspect there are more out there who simply haven't said anything. Small talk feels flat and inauthenic, and for a lot of people, we simply don't know what we're supposed to say. How do you respond to an obviously-fake question like, "How are you doing today?" or, worse, "Hot enough for ya?"

Now, I don't have that problem. At one time I did-- I was socially awkward enough as a teen that I probably could have been diagnosed with some form of autistic spectrum disorder, had anyone been interested in performing such a diagnosis (thakfully no one was.) But I spent a number of years forcing myself to learn how to talk to people in different sorts of situations, how to read social cues, and, above all, how to read body language. Now I get along with most people, and I have no problem with the sort of idle chitchat that makes social cohesion possible.
You see, the key to "small talk" is understanding that it's a ritual. I mean this in the usual sense, and also in the technical sense that Berne uses in Games People Play. Rituals, again, are defined as "a series of simple complementary transactions programed by external social forces." Most forms of small talk are highly ritualized. American small talk, in truth, is as structured a ritual as a Japanese tea ceremony. The trouble is that, here in the United States, we don't admit this fact, either to ourselves or to anyone else. Children may be taught politeness, but they are rarely taught, "Because this is the Northeast, our people greet one another with a ceremonial nod of the head, to indicate respect and awareness. After ten to twenty such exchanges, it is customary to add an additionl, 'How are you?' By no means are you to respond to 'How are you?' with any personal details, as this is the height of disrespect. Instead, you must say, 'Doing all right, how about you?' It is acceptable to leave the second question unanswered; if the other person is walking you must not stop them."

I suspect that if "small talk" were framed to us this way, as a ritual of social cohesion, it would make a great deal more sense. We are the sorts of people, after all, who gravitate toward highly ritualized spiritual practices, from the pentagram ceremony of the Golden Dawn to the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church. I'd bet I'm also not the only one here who has practiced East Asian martial arts extensively, and found their formality greatly preferable to the more informal atmosphere found in boxing gyms and the like.

As I was saying, I personally have no problem with small talk, or with talking to people of any kind.

I do, however, have an absolute terror of dancing.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love music. The constraints placed upon my time by work, fatherhood, and the 80 other things I like to cram into my day don't allow me much time to practice these days, but I can play any instrument in the guitar family reasonably well, and I enjoy doing so. And I also like to move, and I'm good at it. The issue isn't one of "not getting" music, or of being uncoordinated. One of the absolute worst experiences for me is when someone tries to force me onto a dance floor. Women often do this to men that they think are "shy," and a number of former girlfriends of mine used to try to do it to me. I hated it. I'm not shy, and I don't mind making a fool out of myself. Many people list "public speaking" as their greatest fear-- but public speaking doesnt' scare me. Dancing scares me. And the reason is simple: When people start dancing to contemporary music, I have literally no idea what to do.

And, what's worse, they all seem to know exactly what to do. They switch seemlessly between pantomiming an epileptic fit, having sex in public, and pretending to be lawn equipment, as though they had some invisible companion telling them exactly what to do. "All right everybody, act like you just washed down 25 sleeping pills with a bottle of vodka. Okay, now we're doin' it doggy style. Now it's time to be a malfunctioning sprinkler system. Back to doggy! Grandpa's lawnmower! Ride 'em cowgirl! Kid staring at a videogame for too long in the 1990s!" All the while whatever appalling music bangs on, Boonta-boonta-boonta-boonta-boonta-boonta...

On the other hand, on those rare occasions when I've participated in more formal dancing, I've enjoyed it greatly. It's structured, it's as graceful as a taijiquan form, the music is pleasant and, best of all, you're told exactly what to do, and exactly when to do it.

I'd like to suggest that contemporary dancing is similar to American small talk. Both are highly structured rituals with their own grammar and their own intended result. But both are, for whatever reason, informal, covert, and even subliminal. I managed to figure out the grammar of small talk a long time ago, though it took far more conscious observation than I suspect it's supposed to. I expect the grammar of modern dancing to remain forever beyond me. Oh well.

You Cannot Love A Victim, Part II

But back to the topic at hand.

As I was saying, it's impossible to truly relate to someone when they're playing a covert role, especially a destructive role like those found in the Victim-Rescuer-Persecutor triangle.

And you also can't relate to someone when you are projecting the role onto them. I want to emphasize this. It's very easy to talk about other people acting like Victims, or like Persecutors or Rescuers. It's important to look inward and realize that we ourselves are often very comfortable playing these roles. And, like everyone playing a role in a drama, we go looking for others to play the other parts. Every Othello needs an Iago, a Cassio, and a Desdemona, and if no one is volunteering he'll assign the roles himself.

Now, most of the time, the people we choose to play the other parts in our drama are other human beings. This is natural enough, of course. But the trouble with people-- living, conscious, ordinary people, people who can talk back to us-- is that they're capable of figuring out the game, and of refusing to play. And so it frequently happens that we go in search of nonhumans to play the parts we need. This is very helpful, because nonhumans either cannot talk, or else talk in a way that it's easy for us to ignore, or in a way that we can easily substitute our own delusions for their actual communications. And this becomes a very big problem indeed, because the combination of the dramatic triangle with personal delusion also goes by the name of religion.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am obviously not saying that all religion is false, or destructive. I am saying two things. First, many people substtitte a combination of drama and delusion for actual religion and actual spiritual practice. Second, for the sake of this post I am taking a very expansive view of the word "religion," to include any form of relationship to or belief in the Unseen. I am not a member of any church-- not really-- but for the sake of this post I must be considered as highly religious, since I spend a considerable amount of time in prayer, meditation, and ritual every single day. People who call themselves "spiritual but not religious" are highly religious, and often the most prone to delusion.

And so for the remainder of this post I'd like to give some examples of beings that are not Victims, and ought not to be treated as such. In each section I will describe the game, and give a rough assessment of the Roles. Then I will give an antithesis. In Berne's work, every game has an antithesis, which is a means by which the game may be stopped. In this case, I intend the antithesis to be a way of thinking about things which should short-circuit the Dramatic Triangle.

The Gods Are Not Victims

The Game: Although it's somewhat less common today, it has for many years been fashionable in pagan circles to see the "Old Gods" as victims of the wicked persecutor, Christianity. Sometimes, as in the case of American Feminist Wicca, this is also wrapped up in another Rescue Game which sees women as the victims of men. Ground zero for this point of view is the 2001 TNT mini-series version of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon.

In this version of the Game, the Ancestors were peacefully worshiping the Old Gods, and everything was fine. But then along came those dastardly Christians, and they pulled down the statues of our gods, and put churches in their places. And now the Old Ways are lost, and our people suffer under the oppression of the Pale Galilean and his priests and ministers.

This unfortunate point of view has been helped along by many Christians who quite enjoyed playing Persecutor in the Rescue Game, delighting in tales of-- for example-- Saint Boniface cutting down the sacred oak tree of Donar, or mocking "hippies" who "worship trees." (More recently, Christians have shifted into the Victim mode in the Rescue Game, on which more later.)

Antithesis: The pagan philosophers of ancient times all agree that the world is governed by the Gods and overseen by their benevolent providence. If this is the case, is it really possible that the gods could be "defeated" in this way? The truth is that early Christianity in many parts of Europe made a conscious effort not to destroy the pagan cultures it encountered, but to "baptize" them. And so seasonal festivals remained, but they were given a Christian significance. Pagan philosophers like Plato and Aristotle were preserved. Often the gods themselves continued to be worshiped explicitly-- but now they were seen to be under the final dominion of the Holy Trinity. Later, of course, their worship was transferred to saints with suspiciously similar names. Even the Sacred Oak of Donar was not cut down to make toilet paper by greedy lumber barons; its wood was used to make a church.

Moreover, there may be a very good reason why things turned out the way they did. In much of the Old World, pagan worship meant human sacrifice. It isn't pleasant to think about these days, but it's a fact and it's unavoidable. One of my favorite illustrations of this point is recounted in Michael Enright's Lady With A Mead Cup, and concerns the Christianization of Norway. The Norwegian people, it seemed, were reluctant to abandon the worship of the Aesir in favor of Christ. And so the Christian King Olaf made them an offer-- They could remain pagan, he said, but the number of human sacrifices would certainly need to be increased, and the gods would no longer be satisfied with slaves or prisoners of war. Once their own heads were on the chopping block, the nobles were much quicker to accept the new way of doing things. What would you have done?

Now, the immediate temptation is to continue to play the Rescue Game, but to switch roles around, so that now the Christians are Victims. Way back when, the Christians were persecuted by the wicked pagan worshipers of the demonic Old Gods, and now those old devils have made a resurgence and begun persecuting the Christians again! This is a view that has become very popular in certain Right Wing circles in the last few years, thanks to the efforts of a few irresponsible Christian and Jewish authors who I won't name here. What I'm suggesting here, though, is not a conflict between either Innocent Victim Old Gods and Persecuting Christians, or between Victimized Christians and Persecuting Old Gods. What I'm suggesting is that if the world as a whole is governed by divine providence, and if the focus of human religious life changes with the ages (as it seems to), then those changes are themselves overseen and even dictated to us by the Divine. By God, the Gods, or (as I see it) God and the Gods. The Old Ways give way to the New, and then with time they become the Old Ways, and another New Way emerges. Today it seems that the cycle of ages has come round again. The New Ways have become Old again, as they always do. And now another New Way is being born.

This is all as it should be.

The Earth is Not A Victim

Related to and often directly caught up in the idea that the pagan gods are Victims is the idea that the Earth Herself is a Victim. Again, this is often wrapped up in both paganism and feminism. Many ago, I attended an activist gathering in the Pacific Northwest specifically organized around the ideas of radical feminism, radical environmentalism, and Wicca. For these people-- including for myself, at the time-- the Earth, both feminine and divine, was the ultimate Victim. Of course, our thinking was greatly helped along by the fact that the Earth does not speak English and so was unable to say "Shut up, kids, I'm a lot older than you and I'll be here long after you're gone."

Of course, these days, the great Persecutor of the Earth is "Climate Change," which has the added advantage of being highly abstract and difficult to prove. This makes it a perfect vector for the most theatrical sorts of games. As I wrote a little ways back, "invasive species" are another favorite of the defenders of the Earth. Oddly enough, one rarely hears about serious issues like industrial pollutants, the prevalence of artificial carcinogens in the environment, or the decline of world fisheries from the Earth's defenders these days.

Around the time I was attending the radical get-together described above, I was also working for a conservation organization, leading crews on behalf of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in various backcountry locations in the Pacific Northwest. One of the projects to which I assigned was billed to the public as "habitat restoration." It seems that the snowy plover, a little bird who lives on the Pacific Coast, was in danger, and we were there to rescue it. How? By combing the beach for miles, pulling out every last stalk of European beach grass that we could find. Oh, and also Scotch broom, and Himalayan blackberry.

You see, it seems that, unlike the native dune grasses of the Pacific Northwest, the European beach grass tends to grow upward and then die, creating dense piles of organic matter. This matter then forms pockets of soil, which become home, in succession, to shrubs and to trees, finally culminating in forests of Sitka spruce and shore pine, where once there had been only empty sand dunes.

Are you thinking, "Okay, what's the problem? Aren't forests good?" Of course you are, but that's because you're not an environmentalist. You see, the trees and the thick shrubbery beneath them then become habitats for owls, racoons, foxes, skunks, and feral cats. And those no good predators go down to the beach and they eat the poor snowy plovers! Now there are no more empty beaches fully of scattered dune grass and little white birds, but dense forests full of birds and animals, and even more undesirable plants like (fat, juicy, delicious) Himalayan blackberry. it's just awful! Surely we need to spend millions of dollars in federal grants to remove all this grass. At once!

As we used to loudly proclaim at Earth First rallies, "The Earth isn't dying, the Earth is being killed."

Antithesis: The antithesis to this game is simply to become aware of hte fact that the Earth, and the living world of Nature, is much bigger and much older than you, and will be here long, long after you're gone. One of the best ways to do this is to find a piece of woodland or another natural place near your house and really get to know it. Learn the animals, the trees, the plants, the natural history, the water cycle, the geology. Learn to love this place, on its own terms. As you grow in knowledge you'll find out that much of what you considered "nature" is considered "invasive species" by environmentalists. Go into the woods and snack on some Himalayan blackberries, or gather some garlic mustard, dandelion, and plantain greens for sandwiches or spring salads. Or just watch some honeybees at work. Then decide whether or not you care.

The Ancestors Are Not Victims

This goes along with the discussion of the gods above. In this version of the Game, it's not the gods, but our own ancestors, who were irreparably harmed by those dastardly Christians. Or perhaps those dastardly Englishmen, or white people, or whoever.

For the sake of this discussion, I want to focus on the religious dimension of this particular Game. Another day we can talk about the racial/ethnic side. Here again, the story is that the Christians (or perhaps the Muslims, or the Jews, or even the Buddhists, depending on where your particular ancestors are from) came along, and they destroyed all of our beautiful ancient traditions, and now our people live in subdivisions and worship Jesus. It's such a shame.

Now of course, there was in fact a concerted effort to forget much of our traditional culture in the Twentieth Century. This is true for almost every version of "our traditional culture." There is nothing wrong with etiher recognizing this or attempting to reverse it. It becomes a problem, as always, when it becomes a Game. That is, when we ourselves become Victims of the great destruction, or Rescuers looking to save our ancestors, or Persecutors looking for some no good Christians (or whatever) to give a piece of our minds. In one version of this Game, our people are traditional ethnic Roman Catholics, who lived in tightly-knit ethnic neighborhoods in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. But then along came World War II, and the dastardly Jews got into the government and decided that they would need to break up the ethnic neighborhoods, especially identifying the Irish, Germans, Italians, and Poles for this round of ethnic cleansing. And so-- in an alliance with the lousy Protestants and a few sneaky Catholic Fifth Columnists-- they conspired to import hordes of Southern Blacks to Northern cities, while simultaneously building up faceless, soulless suburban neighborhoods. The suburbs were the carrots, the blacks were the sticks. And here we all are, living in subdivisions while our churches lie in disrepair in the old cities.

Of course, the pagan version has the Christians marching off to Ireland and Germany and Scandinavia and destroying Our People's ancient traditions and converting them, entirely against their will, to a new religion and a new way of life.

Antithesis. The antithesis to this game is to recognize that, as hard as it may seem to you, your ancestors chose their way of life on purpose, for reasons that seemed good to them.

An anecdote may help illustrate the reason they would have done so.

A friend of mine is a member of an American Indian tribe whose reservation is in Texas or Oklahoma. This tribe is now Roman Catholic. The reason? In the 19th century, a terrible drought struck the people's land, and they began to suffer from want of water and food. They did rain dances and prayed to their Sun God, but to no avail. Finally, they went to a Christian missionary for help. He agreed to pray for them, but only on the condition that they take down the statue of their god in the center of their village and allow him to put up a crucifix instead. This was done, and the droubt promptly ended.

Accounts like this are very common in the literature. Valerie Flint's excellent study The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe makes this case in great detail. The fact is, many of the ancient pagans converted to Christianity because the Christian bishops were better at magic than the pagan priests!

Now, it remains to be seen whether this will persist. I personally see very little power in the rituals of the Novus Ordo Catholic Church, for example. Not "no power at all," mind, but little. Here again, though, we mustn't fall into the trap of seeing the modern Catholic Church as the victim of the Novus Ordo or of Vatican II. There's a reason that the overwhelming majority of the world's gigantic Catholic population went along with the reforms, as awful as they might seem to us and, again, if we believe in Divine Providence, we have to see its hand here. My own view is that the burning of the Notre Dame cathedral was an omen of the final denouement of European Christendom. Something new will rise in its place-- perhaps something which looks Christian, perhaps something very different.

That's all for today. Tomorrow I hope to wrap up this series-- but we'll see. Again, it's a tale that is growing in the telling.