readoldthings

 Okay, I wanted to say one last thing about The Art of War.

Ove rhte last 5 months I talked about a lot of different things, from fighting demons to getting laid, using Sun Tzu as a springboard. But the thing I keep coming back to is the Great Work, defined by Eliphas Levi as:

I have described this as the conquest and command of our own souls. 

In some schools of Christianity, there is a great deal of confusion around the state of one's soul. The Catholic Church claims that extra ecclesiam nulla salus-- in English, "outside the Church, there is no salvation." It also claims that certain sins totally break one's relationship with God, and require the intervention of a priest to be forgiven.

Rather more appallingly, John Calvin claimed that some souls are damned eternally, and others saved eternally, by God for no particular reason other than because he can do it. 

I do not accept these claims, or any claims like them. In fact, they are sheer nonsense, and we can know that they are nonsense for this reason:

You always know the state of your own soul.

The soul, let us remember, is the animating principle (from Latin "anima," root of our words "animal" and "animated") of an organism. Your soul is you: The sum total of your actions and your mental states.

Do you spend all of your time locked in internal arguments against imagined enemies, lashing out at other people who remind you of those enemies, and occasionally soothing yourself with booze or videogames or masturbation or drugs?

You are damned. Not after death, and not eternally. You are a slave to your passions, and you are in Hell right now. 

Do you have self control, and is your resting mental state one of quiet poise and emotional balance? Are you able to enjoy the pleasures of life without being overcome by them and to respond to adversity without being shattered? 

You are saved. Not after death, and maybe not eternally. You have gained control of your faculties and your future, and the goodness which is divinity is manifest within you. You are in Heaven, right now.

Now, the purpose of spiritual practice is to lead us to salvation. If a spiritual practice is leading us in the direction of self-control, emotional balance, and an awareness of the presence and activity of the divine in our lives, then it is working. No matter what it is, and no matter who thinks it isn't working, doesn't work, can't work, or shouldn't work.

Conversely, if a spiritual practice is leading us in the direction of neuroticism, Manichaean thinking, subordination of the mind to contemporary fashions (either slavishly accepting or unthinkingly rejecting), and either enslavement to the passions or a constant internal struggle with them, it isn't working. No matter what it is, and no matter who thinks it does work, can work, must work, or should work. 

Are you winning the battle for your soul? Ask yourself the question, be honest about the answer, and persevere in the struggle!

I want to close with a fragment from the Alcibiades. This is one of Plato's dialogs, and was the first that a student would be given to study in the philosophical school founded by Iamblichus. (It's worth mentioning that the Alcibiades was believed to have been a forgery by 19th century scholars, but no one in antiquity believed that, and the 19th century had a mania for thinking that everyone who lived prior to the birth of Queen Victoria was dumb.) The setting is a conversation between Socrates and his former lover, Alcibiades.

 Chapter 13 of The Art of War concerns the use of spies. Sun Tzu opens by telling us that 


This is a simple principle, but well worth keeping in mind. For the sake of our personal goals-- any goal-- we need information. For me personally, one of the things that I hate most in the world is going into any situation unprepared. If I have to do a job interview, go to a party, make a formal speech, or anything that involves dealing with other people, my imagination runs wild and comes up with ways that it can go wrong.

The absolute worst thing for me is to be put into a crowd of people that I don't know and told to "mingle." If you do that to me, I will not mingle. I will find a dark corner and I will hide in it until the people go away. 

On the other hand, I'm usually the life of any party where I know at least 40% of the other attendees, and I can handle a crowd of any size as long as I have a defined role. Fear of public speaking is one of the most common phobias out there. I do not have that phobia. I love public speaking, and I'm good at it. On the other hand, public dancing-- where "dancing" is defined in the contemporary sense of "unscripted sexual gyration"-- is basically impossible for me. 

All this comes back to foreknowledge. If you're at all like me, the best thing you can do when heading into a new situation is to talk to someone, get the lay of the land as thoroughly as possible, and have a clear idea of what you're getting into before you act. 

Of course, I'd differ with Sun Tzu in that I'd also heartily recommend the use of divination and consulting with spirits. Provided you keep in mind their limitation, these practices can be of immense value. 

 Chapter 12 of The Art of War discusses the use of fire in warfare:




I want to suggest that in our case, fire can be a metaphor for the passions. In many esoteric systems, the fire element has a kind of dual nature, ruling the will in the awakened individual, the passions in the unawake. 

Rather than talking about how to use fire to burn the enemy, then, I want to reverse the terms and talk about how fire may be used against us, and how to counter that.

First, a quick reminder about the passions. These are the simplest, and yet often the most powerful, drives in the human psyche. They are the rage that burns uncontrolled; the need for sex without regard to the object; the need for social acceptance that causes us to betray a friend in order to gain status; the desire for food or drink that pays no attention to the consequences of eating or of alcoholism; the terror of violence, death or rejection that overwhelms our courage and leads us to run from our duties. 

To attack an enemy by fire is to arouse his passions to the point that they consume him. Under the control of his passions, and not his reason or his will, he can then be directed toward anything you choose. 

This is the essence of evil magic. It is also the essence of advertising and political propaganda. As such, we are suffering under the attack by fire pretty much continuously in this culture. 

I'm not going to talk about how to use fire against an opponent. Rather, I want to talk about how to counter it.

The first thing to know about fire-- regular, physical fire-- is that it's both extremely useful and extremely dangerous. It provides light and heat and allows us to cook our food. There are no cultures without fire; lacking it, human beings literally could not exist on this planet. It's a raw, primal force, harnessed for specific purposes. And yet, out of control, it can destroy us, and for that reason it can be used as a weapon against us. 

The passions are the same. We need them-- without a desire for food, there is no life; without a desire for sex, there is no reproduction; without a desire for social acceptance, there is no society; without a fear of danger, there is no safety. And yet, out of control, they can destroy us, and for that reason they can be used as a weapon against us.

So how do we use our passions, without being destroyed by them?

The same way we use fire: First by containing it, and second, by limiting its fuel sources. We don't let fire burn just anywhere; we contain it within a hearth. And we don't keep feeding it wood without end; we give it just enough fuel to be useful. 

The first is obvious, or should be. Buy food that is good for you, learn to cook it properly, and eat at meal times. Don't drink alcohol before 5pm or after 9pm. Share your sexuality with one person only. Choose your friends and your social circles wisely. That's your hearth.  

And then, feed it only what it needs. The best way to do this is to create space. The classic piece of advice is to wait 24 hours before making any major purchase, and to wait 24 hours before saying anything in anger. This same idea works with any of the passions. If you want a drink, wait 10 minutes; if you still want it and it's after 5pm, go ahead and have one. When you finish it, you might want another one right away. That's a signal that you shouldn't have one. Wait 15 or 20 minutes, and see if you still want it. If so, go ahead. Then stop. You don't keep a fire burning all night.

Remember that fire-- that is, the passions-- is constantly being used against you. Know that, and be prepared to counter it. 

Sun Tzu closes Chapter 11 by sharinga series of aphorisms, much of which we've heard before already. One idea comes up over and over that I'd like to discuss:


In war, this looks like driving deep into enemy territory, or burning bridges or ships behind you. Your soldiers know that there is no way out, and so they will fight to the death. 

But this idea is useful in life, as well. It's often the case that we want to accomplish something but we're afraid to, or we're not ready, or we're waiting for just the right conditions. If we continue in this state, we never achieve anything! One way to overcome these sorts of blocks is to force the issue, but doing the equivalent of marching deep into enemy territory or burning your ships behind you.

But what does that mean? 

Consider the following example:

A man wanted to be a musician, but he was afraid he wasn't good enough. So he booked himself a series of gigs, billing himself as a singer/songwriter. With the dates already scheduled and the audience lined up, there was no backing out, and no way forward but to succeed as a musician. 

Or another one. Some friends and I were discussing going on a road to do a kind of speaking tour. I expected nothing to come of it, but then one of the guys, who had contacts in various underground music scene, went ahead and booked 7 dates for us around California. With absolutely nothing at all prepared, there was nothing to but go forward with it. 



It's very often the case that if you're hesitant about something, or afraid to go forward, you can force the issue on yourself. In a worst case scenario, you fail-- but that's better than never trying, or, worst of all, not trying out of fear of embarrassment!

 More on The Nine Situations:


He then tells us,


How can we understand this?

First, open ground. What I take Sun Tzu to be saying here is identical to the occult maxim "Only resist what you want to strengthen." On open ground, the advantage can go to either side, and forcing an engagement will only freeze us in one location and keep us from being able to occupy a stronger position. 

We can think of many equivalents in daily life. A rather common and stupid one is engaging in arguments on social media or the comments sections of blogs. A personal example: Yesterday morning I noticed two friends of mine discussing the Cabala on a Facebook group. One claimed they don't work with the Cabala because of racist statements by Jewish Cabalists against gentiles; the other claimed they don't like hte Cabala because it's just "Neoplatonic pantheism." This irritated me, so I waded in and posted a lengthy essay defending the following points: 

A. The Tree of Life, Four Worlds, and notarikon are components of the Cabala which are derived from Neoplatonism, not Judaism, and so non-Jews can make use of them without either being beholden to the racism of certain Jewish Cabalists or committing so-called "cultural appropriation";
B. Cabala is not necessary, but it is very useful for anyone interested in the Western Magical Tradition, because
C. The Tree of Life, Four Worlds and so on are ways of presenting the basic concepts of Neoplatonism in a way that is much, much simpler than (say) slogging through Proclus, which is important because
D. The Western magical tradition simply is Neoplatonism-- oh, and by the way, Platonism isn't the same as pantheism. 

These were good points. I was correct, and I made them well. But when I woke up yesterday, do you think my goal was to write an essay on Cabala that would be read by 6 people on Facebook or to write this blog? We both know the answer to that. Don't engage the enemy when it isn't necessary.

Okay, let's talk intersecting highways. 

Sun Tzu was writing at a time when the Chinese empire was divided into a number of smaller, warring states; "intersecting highways" are territories which give access to a number of these states. Here we "join hands with our allies." Grounds of intersecting highways, then can be any situation in which we can gather with like-minded friends or colleagues to advance our mutual ends, especially our spiritual development. Churches and Druid groves, rotary clubs, Masonic lodges, AA meetings and karate dojos can all be intersecting highways; at all of these we can find support on the spiritual journey.

Jesus said that "wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am." Participants in spiritual communities find that the power produced by the group is greater than the sum of the individuals involved.

Of course, that also means that when a group goes toxic, it can exert an outsized destructive influence,

And then there's serious ground. This is when we're deep in the enemy territory-- and here we engage in plunder.

How do we do this in life, in the struggle within?

That requires some thinking.

First, what is the enemy? Everything that distracts us from our goal, the total conquest of our faculties and our future.

What is plunder? Anything taken from the enemy which nourishes our army.

Where can we find serious ground, then?

In all those places, times, and conditions that are usually under the control of the enemy-- but which are also not desperate situations.

Let's have an example. I'm sitting at a computer, and the baby is sleeping. I have a strong desire to play a video game right now, but I'm not going to. What will I do instead. Well, I was thinking of practicing tai chi. But should I? I mentioned the other day that I have a professional exam coming up that I have to pass if I want to ever support myself and my family. I love tai chi and I can't stand studying textbooks, but at this moment, tai chi is the enemy, just as much as video games. Time to hit the books! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Sun Tzu tells us of the failings of the general:


A few principles underlie all of these.

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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


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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

Sun Tzu continues to give us advice on military maneuvering: 



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

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

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

How do we do this?

Two different ideas come to mind. 

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Patience, which allows us to endure provocation;

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

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