Symbols I: Action at a Distance

The affairs of men are conducted by our own, man-made rules and according to man-made theories. Man’s achievements rest upon the use of symbols. For this reason, we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule symbols, rule us."                                Alfred Korbzyski, Science and Sanity, p. 76.

“Magic” may be defined as symbol manipulation. Symbols sent via any medium, from ink markings on parchment to bits and bytes on the Internet, can be defined as action at a distance.

My shopping list affects primarily myself and the merchant with whom I do business, but it also affects his supplier(s) and his/their supplier(s), and so on, back to the origins of what I bought and what they were made or grown from.

This may seem self-evident in the case of food or other products, but this kind of mutual affection also applies to non-tangibles like thoughts and ideas, and of symbols of all sorts, especially those things to which any kind of emotional charge of affectation can be attached. The symbols of mathematics exist almost entirely without emotional content, having only semantic content, while symbols associated with religious or political groups can have an immense amount of emotional content with little or no semantic content.

The disassociation of symbols from any emotional content is difficult, even if the affect is solely personal and not communal. There exist ways to diffuse these emotional bombs, but this may take isolation for the community to keep the process from being sabotaged, either accidentally or deliberately. This is becoming harder to do because of the ubiquitousness of mass media and the ham-handed collectivism of the modern state.

Symbols can affect the reptilian brain, the most primitive part of the human central nervous system, and thus often affect us without our being conscious of it. This seems especially true with symbols dealing with boundaries and tribal identification. Patriotism often exists as the last refuge of the unaware. The alpha dickhead barks, and the rest of the troop falls into line. This barking often references symbols associated with tribal identity, either internal cohesion or a threat, real or imagined, from another troop with different identifying symbols. The “enemy” troop can be within the same physical territory as well as external to it, and the “territory” may be internal or mental as much as geographical.

Being cognoscente of symbols and their manipulation qualifies as a basic necessity for rational thinking which would exist independent of emotionally charged symbols and their influence. The psychological effect is probably similar to the physical effect of standing in the eye of a hurricane: an uncanny feeling of stillness and the effect of the abnormally low pressure. But, like being in the eye of a hurricane, there is a lot of debris flying around in the periphery, and one must take care not to be hit by any of it.

A Conversation with Fr. Probolé

A brief interview with Fr. Probolé, one of whose sermons I posted here. I've added  Wikipedia links to the technical terms.

You self-identify as a “Neo-Sethian”. Could you explain this a bit?

Of course. The Sethians were a Gnostic sect whose theology we know fairly clearly from the heresiologists and some of the Nag Hammadi texts.  They believed that the material universe—the Cosmos—was imperfect, if not evil, and the True God was totally separate from the Cosmos. The phrase “true god” is an  awkward term, and I use the word Pneute, which means “the god” in Coptic for the one god who is separate from the Cosmos. Pneute didn’t create the physical world. That was done by a lesser god or demigod, the Demiurge. Since he was imperfect, the Cosmos is itself imperfect, since an imperfect being could hardly create something perfect.  The story is too complicated for me to give a brief retelling here. You can find a good summary in Bentley Layton’s The Gnostic Scriptures.

But the major difference between the Sethian and orthodox forms of Christianity is in the person of Christ. Christ, because he came from Pneute, is completely a spiritual being, and there is no part of him which is material. Literally, it is not possible that he entered into matter as described in the orthodox belief in the Incarnation. The Jesus whom the apostles know was a completely spiritual being and he came to us to teach us how to transcend the material world. He did not enter into a physical body but assumed the apparent form of a man so as to be able to discourse with the apostles and other people. 

In the Gospel of John the idea that Jesus was a human sacrifice is always in the foreground. He is the “lamb of God”, a sacrifice for the sins of humans.

Correct. The belief that Jesus’ death was a human sacrifice “for the remission of sins” is really evil. It amazes me that more orthodox Christians don’t overtly reject this belief. The German theologian Rudolf Bultmann believed that the Fourth Gospel was written in response to a Gnostic teaching. We don’t know if this is true or not, but it seems reasonable to me. In the other gospels the crucifixion is an event inn Jesus’ life. In John’s Gospel it is the primary reason for his life.

Is there any way to get any good out of the bloody story of the crucifixion?

Yes. What is teaches us is that it is possible to transcend the material world, the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”, as Shakespeare puts it, and enter into the spiritual world. All the sufferings of Jesus, the public humiliation, the flogging, the hanging out in the hot sun, all are symbolic of the trials and work one has to do to transcend the limitations of the physical world. The apparition of Jesus at Pentecost showed the apostles the form of someone who had transcended the physical Cosmos by crucifying the world.

By “crucifying the world” do you mean physical austerities?

Yes and no. If by “physical austerities” you mean hair shirts and self-flagellation, that’s certainly been done in the past. But walking down a street whipping yourself will get you thrown in a mental hospital these days. There are, however, less abusive ways. The physical desires are controllable through self-discipline, prayer, and meditation. Most people have to live in society as a whole, and not in a monastery.

The thing that one has to realize is that that there is an existence beyond the physical, that attaining this is possible, and that this is what we mean by “salvation”, and that it is, in theory, attainable by all.

You don’t have a regular communion service like orthodox Christians, do you?

Correct. We had a yearly celebration that is similar to Pentecost of other Christians. It is a celebration of Jesus’ coming to us to show that we are not prisoners of the material world, and that we can free ourselves and return to Pneute. There is normal foodstuffs and wine, but it is still a religious celebration with hymns and rituals.

And you don’t have a Eucharist service like you find in orthodox Christian churches?

No, we don’t. Hannibal Lecter’s culinary tastes aren’t a part of the means of salvation.

That’s a witty but extremely harsh criticism of the Christian Eucharist.

Thanks. We’re living in the 21^st century, not the Bronze Age, and human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism should not be a part of our rituals, not even symbolically. 

In orthodox Christianity guilt is the Archons means of controlling people. They believe that people must be controlled because they—that is the Archons spiritual and temporal—only want to have power over others. This desire for power comes from the Demiurge, who wants to rule the entire Cosmos. The teaching that humans are basically sinful, perhaps evil, is the greatest means that have to keep humans impure. We become impure, however, by our actions, and not because we are humans. We begin with the handicap that we are spiritual beings living in material bodies, but we are able to overcome that handicap. The Archons, however, teach us that we are imperfect, and that there is nothing that we can do about it.

That is what the French theologian John Calvin thought.

Calvin was an extremist of this line of thought. This belief, however, is a basic part of Christian theology, and has been since Augustine of Hippo, from whom Calvin got this belief. There is no salvation that only comes through belief. One makes the soul pure through various exercises. It is only important to believe that salvation is possible, and that Jesus came to us a model of the means of salvation. The rest comes from one’s own efforts.

Is there salvation outside of your church?

Yes. One is able to find salvation in other organizations and churches—or on one’s own. Jesus is a model and key who came in a certain time and place. Only the arcontic churches say, “outside of us there is no salvation.”

I thank you for your time. Please come again.

Thank you. I will.