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projectfaust · 5 years ago

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Satanic Lockpicking

Locks are fascinating contraptions. They date back further than ancient Assyria and have provided the means to keep untold amounts of secrets, delights, and horrors hidden throughout history. Despite how far our technology has evolved, by and large we still employ the same basic principles from thousands of years ago to protect some of our most valuable and guarded assets. For those who know the mechanics, the exploits of these systems are glaring and are the perfect illustration of the illusion of security. They provide a sense of protection when, in reality, they are so easily manipulated against the owner’s intent that their benefit is largely psychological. This benefit is protected by the ignorance of most who have never stopped to take an even rudimentary look at how a lock functions – if they did, their shortcomings would be too obvious for even Joe Average to miss. Locks also take a prominent position in one of Anton LaVey’s most insightful treatises on magic, which happens to be one of his most overlooked.

The Combination Lock Principle appears on page 35 of The Devil’s Notebook and explores a comparison of the mechanics of magical process with the functions of a lock. Despite its humble length of 2 pages, LaVey does this in a way that provides us insight into a novel model of magical operation. He paints the magical process as being similar to the processes that cause a lock to open, namely the falling into place of pins that allows a lock to turn. The combination, he insists, changes depending on the magician and their intent. As LaVey points out, it is not possible to know precisely what the combination is – but the falling of each pin does reside within 3D space. Examples of pins falling into place are reading the right book at the right time, happening upon an old friend and remembering something you need, finding that particularly elusive trinket at an antiques shop, and the list could go on. These phenomena seem to be rooted magically in time and, as LaVey theorizes, this fourth dimension is the locale of all magical phenomena. If you have the three-dimensional actions performed correctly, this fourth pin falls into place. If you are an even somewhat competent magician, you will be familiar with the peculiar coincidences that fall into place to provide you with the opportunity for your working to succeed. They are opportunities because, as LaVey continues, one must be open to recognize these pins as they are made available to us – something far easier said than done. Why? When one looks for the combination they need, it is impossible to see in the midst of it. As is true with the rainbow, there can be no sight of it while standing inside of it. Beyond the rainbow is where we need to cast our eyes.

I have always been drawn to information that one is not supposed the have, information that has the potential to turn upstanding corporate citizens into pesky, independent ones. Lockpicking is one of the troves of PG-rated forbidden material available and it doesn’t take much time to learn to pick some of the most widely used locks on the market today. The ability to see past the surface of things and learn how to make them work to your advantage is an inherently Satanic concept and, similar to how we act as magicians, we are trying to open locks without knowing the combination and without having a key. It’s more apt to look at the magical process through the lens of picking a lock as opposed to merely opening it, and more accurate to consider the function of a pin tumbler lock than a combination lock. Before we can do this, it will help to briefly explore how locks function in a bit more detail.

While locks vary in their size and less so in their base mechanism, when we conjure an image of a lock in our minds what we are likely thinking of is the cylinder. This is the outer casing that houses the plug, the part of the lock that turns with the correct key when inserted into the keyway. Inside the plug there are 2 sets of pins – driver pins and lower pins. Driver pins have springs above them that push them down onto the set of bottom pins. When the correct key is inserted, the combination of grooves on the key raise each lower pin to the correct height that aligns the driver pins above them. When aligned, the driver pins are just above the plug and no longer prevent the plug from turning. This line formed just above the plug by the driver pins is called the sheer line. When picking a lock, you use tools to move the lower pins into place so is that the driver pins rest on the sheer line. Raise the lower pins any further however and they themselves prevent the plug from turning. While I’m sure you’re grateful for this short tutorial, you must be wondering how this can help us expand on LaVey’s theory.

Unlike with a key, the lockpicker cannot simultaneously raise each lower pin to the correct height. The first tool inserted to pick a lock is a tension wrench, this usually ‘L’ shaped tool applies torque to the plug to keep pins from being pushed back down after they are correctly set at the sheer line. Most magic materializes outside of the ritual chamber, at least most magic worth doing anyway. As the magician enters her ritual chamber to perform her work, if the appropriate ingredients for magic are present (see The Book of Belial), the working acts as a tension wrench of sorts. The working provides magical torque that allows the pins to be manipulated and is the first step towards having the world change in accordance with your will. This torque resonates with and allows the entry of fourth-dimensional elements, setting the stage for pins to begin to be picked. The importance of ensuring the magical ingredients are in place with the correct measurements cannot be understated, as without torque applied no pins will move and no lock will turn.

A combination lock metaphor suggests that the spinning of numbers into place by chance or process of elimination is equatable to magic. I disagree. Here again the pin-tumbler lock gives us better insight. With torque applied, our would-be lockpicker uses a myriad of tools at their disposal to push up on the lower pins. Consider these tools similar to the opportunities LaVey talks about, they come in different forms and you have to be able to recognize them when they appear to make the most use out of them – but not all lead to the pin being picked into place. We’ve already established the correct combinations cannot be seen when looking for them, so what do we do? Well, we don’t look for them – we look at them in retrospect after they’ve come into being. They say hindsight is 20/20 and as magicians this is one of our most useful tools. An important component of lockpicking is understanding The Binding Principle. In short, the binding principle states that one must manipulate the pins in a particular order. That order is specific to the combination of pins for that specific lock. As magicians, we are effectively trying to pick our own locks. The combination of pins is unique to each witch or warlock and is unique to the goal they are trying to accomplish. Part of being a successful magician is understanding your lock’s special nuances, the patterns in combinations you find as you go about your magical work. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, be it destruction, compassion, or lust, patterns will emerge that will be visible after the fact. Examine the order of magical coincidences that set into place and what factors they involve after your chamber work is complete. Is the first pin usually an encounter with a person when desiring compassion, or is it a piece of literature? Do unexpected travel opportunities appear when seeking lust, and what appears before and after? Once established, look into the deeper significance of each correct tool and investigate the undercurrent running through it. Deciphering the recurring order of magical phenomena after successfully accomplishing your goal will open your eyes for future magic, allowing you to see the rainbow from memory while inside of it. There will of course always be differences as no magical attempt is the same as the last, but there will be similarities. This will help you to notice the tools and discern which ones are needed depending on your goal.

It is not necessarily the events or phenomena themselves that make the magic, but when they occur that does. LaVey got it right when he said timing is everything. Understanding your own binding order will help you direct your attention to the right opportunities at the right time, leaving you to use them and push the pins as appropriate and find your combination with greater ease than groping around aimlessly. This is not an excuse to shut yourself off from opportunities that fall outside of your newly formed paradigm, instead it provides you with a workable rubric to guide your attention and efforts. Always remember that patience, a gentle touch, and a sensitive ear will help you crack even the most daunting of safes.

- Hook

#satanism #antonlavey #churchofsatan #templeofset #magic #blackmagic #witchcraft #devil #magick #lavey #666 #satan

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setemheb · 9 years ago

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The Unnaturalness of Human Nature

The Unnaturalness of Human Nature by Eric Hoffer

(Excerpt From: The Ordeal of Change 1952, Harper and Row)

1. In the early days of modern science we find outstanding scientists expressing their wonder and delight that the prodigious variety of nature should be the work of but few, simple laws. Galileo saw it as "a custom and habit of nature" to achieve its ends by means which are "common, simple, and easy." Kepler was convinced that "nature loves simplicity," and Newton wrote feelingly how "nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes."

During the same period, the men whose preoccupation was with human nature spoke not of simplicity but of incredible complexity. Montaigne never wearied of expatiating on the inconstancy, lack of uniformity, involuteness, and unpredictability of human manifestations. It seemed to him that every in us plays every moment its own game, and that "there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others." Pascal, a student of both nature and human nature, contrasted the simplicity of things with man's double and complex nature. He saw man as a mass of contradictions: an angel and a brute, a monster and a prodigy, the crown and scum of created things, the glory and the scandal of the universe. Whatever harmony there is in us is "fantastic, changeable and various." He concluded that "men are of necessity so mad that not to be mad were madness in another form." He it quite in order that Plato and Aristotle should have written on politics as though they were laying down rules for a madhouse.

In the study of nature an explanation must not only be consistent with the facts, but also as simple and as direct as possible. Where several explanations are advanced, the rule is followed that the one which is more simple is also more nearly correct. To choose the more complex explanation, says a recent writer on the nature of science, would be as sensible as "traveling eastward around the world to reach your neighbors house which is next door to the west."

In human affairs the sensibleness of the direct, simple approach is by no means self evident. Here it is often true that the simplest ends are reached by the most round about and extravagant means. Here even the predictable comes to pass in unpredictable ways. To forget that man is a fantastic creature is to ignore his most crucial trait, and when contemplating human nature the wildest guesses and hunches are legitimate.

2. The fantastic quality of human nature is partly the product of his unfinishedness. Being without specialized organs, man is in a sense a half-animal. he has to finish himself by technology, and in so doing he is a creator - in a sense a half god. Again, lacking organic adaptations to a particular environment, he must adapt the environment to himself, and re-create the world. The never ending task of finishing himself, of transcending the limits of his physical being, is the powerhouse of his creativeness and the source of his unnaturalness. For it is in the process of finishing himself that man sloughs off the fixity and boundless submissiveness of nature.

The unnaturalness of human nature should offer a clue to the central meaning of mans ascent throughout the millennia: it was the result of striving to break loose from nature and get out from under the iron laws which dominate it. The striving was not conscious, and it did not start from an awareness of strength. the process of reflection - of self awareness - which fueled mans ascent was to begin with an awareness of helplessness: man the half animal became poignantly aware of his unfinishedness and imperfection. He worshipped the more favored forms of life; worshipped their specialized organs, their skills and strength. He probably first killed animal, and ate their flesh, and put on their skins, not to still his hunger and keep warm but to acquire their strength, speed, and skill, and become like them. Naked, unarmed, and unprotected, man clung desperately to an indifferent mother earth and passionately claimed kinship with her more favored children. But the discovery that he could create substitutes for the organs and inborn perfection's which he lacked turned worship and imitation into a process of vying - into a striving to overcome and overtake nature and leave it behind. By finishing and making himself man also remade the world, and the man made world no longer clung to nature but straddles it. Instead of claiming kin-ship with other forms of life man now claimed a descent and a line apart, and began to see his uniqueness and dignity in that which distinguished him from the rest of creation.

Seen thus, the human uniqueness of an aspiration or an achievement should perhaps be gauge by how much it accentuates the distinction between human affairs and nonhuman nature; and it should be obvious that the as-aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human man-manifestations. Freedom from coercion, from want, from fear, from death are freedom from forces and circumstances which would narrow the gap separating human nature from nature and impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By the same token, the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness is that of absolute power. The corruption inherent in absolute power derives from the fact that such power is never free from the tendency to turn man into a thing, and press him back into the matrix of nature from which he has risen. For the impulse of power is to turn every variable into a constant, and give to commands the inexorableness and relentlessness of laws of nature. Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. the benevolent despot who sees himself as the shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.

3. To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is, and treat human nature as a mere aspect of nature. The theoreticians do it by limiting the shaping forces of mans destiny to nonhuman factors: providence, the cosmic spirit, geography, climate, economic or physiochemical factors. the practical men of power try to eliminate the human variable by inculcating iron discipline or blind faith by dissolving the unpredictable individual in a compact group, by subjecting the individual's judgment and will to a ceaseless barrage of propaganda, and by sheer coercion. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past. There is an element of misanthropy in all determinists. To all of them man as he really is a nuisance, and they strive to prove by various means that there is no such thing as human nature.

Even in the freest society power is charged with the impulse to turn men into precise, predictable automata. When watching men of power in action, it must always be kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual - the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker - and that every de-vice they employ aims at turning man into a manipulatible "animated in-instrument" which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.

On the other hand, every device employed to bolster individual free-freedom must have as its chief purpose the impairment of power. The indications are that such an impairment is brought about not by strengthening the individual-dual and pitting him against the possessors of power, but by distributing and diversifying power and pitting one category or unit of power against the other. Where power is one, the defeated individual, however strong and re-resourceful, can have no refuge and no recourse.

There is no doubt that of all the political systems the free society is the most "unnatural". It embodies, in the words of Bergson, "a mighty effort in a direction contrary to that of nature." Totalitarianism, even when it goes hand in hand with a modernization of technique, constitutes a throwback to the primitive, and a return to nature. It is significant that the "back to nature" movements since the day of Rousseau, though generous and noble in origin, have inevitably tended to terminate in absolutism and the worship of brute force.

Considering the complexity and unpredictability of man, it is doubt-doubtful whether effective social management can be based on expert knowledge of human nature. Societies are likely to function tolerably well either under a dictatorship, which need not take human nature into account, or when least interfered with by government. Both absolute government and nominal govern-government are ways of avoiding the necessity of having to deal with human nature.

4. Power, whether exercised over matter or over man, is partial to simplification. it wants simple problems, simple solutions, simple definitions. It sees in complication a product of weakness - the tortuous path compromise must follow.

Now, whereas in the realm of matter the great simplifiers are the great scientists and technologists, in human affairs the great simplifiers are the great coercers - the Hitlers and Stalins. To some extent, Hitler and Stalin were scientists of man the way physicist and chemist are scientists of matter. Their policies and crimes were motivated as much by the scientists predilection for simplification, predictability, and experimentation as by doctrinaire tenets or sheer malevolence, Even their murderous intolerance of dissenters had a "scientific" aspect: a dissenter is to the absoluteness of power what an exception is to the validity of a formulated scientific rule - both must be dealt with and somehow eliminated.

It is no coincidence that the men of absolute power in Soviet Russia have been so intrigued by the social implications of the Pavlovian experiments on dogs, and that concentration camps in Germany and communist countries be-came factories of dehumaniztion, in which men were reduced to the state of animals, and were experimented on the way scientists experiment on rats and dogs. Absolute power produces not a society but a menagerie became even if it be what D'Argenson called a "menagerie of happy men".

It is an awesome thing that the most breath taking example of daring we have witnessed in the second quarter of the twentieth century was the daring to think low enough of human beings. Both Hitler and Stalin displayed this daring to an unprecedented degree, and they caught the world unawares and almost overwhelmed it. The full savor of power comes not from the mastery of nature but from the mastery of man. It is questionable whether he who can move mountains and tell rivers whither to flow has as exquisite a sense of power as he who can command the multitude and turn human beings into animated automata. Hence we find that a spectacular increase of man's power over nature is likely to be followed by a passionate attempt to master man to use the power gained by victory over nature in the enslavement of men. Such a diversion is first discernible in the transition from the Late Neolithic to the totalitarianism of the ancient river valley civilizations. In the Near East, as pointed out earlier, the Late Neolithic saw something like an industrial-trial revolution; the era of civilization that followed was mainly pre-occupied with the taming of man by coercion and magic.

The scientific and industrial revolution of modern times represents the next giant step in the mastery over nature; and here, too, an enormous increase in man's power over nature is followed by an apocalyptic drive to subjugate man and reduce human nature to the status of nature. Even where enslavement is employed in a mighty effort to tame nature, one has the feeling that the effort is but a tactic to legitimize total subjugation. Thus, despite its spectacular achievements in science and technology, the twentieth century will probably be seen in retrospect as a century mainly preoccupied with the mastery and manipulation of men. Nationalism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, militarism, cartelization, and unionization, propaganda and advertising are all aspects of a general relentless drive to manipulate men and neutralize the unpredictability of human nature. Here, too, the atmosphere is heavy laden with coercion and magic.

5. It was not the least part of the ancient Hebrews that they were the first to enunciate a clear cut separation between man and nature. In all ancient civilizations there was a feeling that a profound relationship existed between the things that happen in nature and the course of human affairs. The whole structure of magic was founded on the assumption of an identity between human nature and nature. The Hebrews were the first to reject any close ties or kinship between man and the rest of creation. Since their day, sun, stars, sky, earth, sea, rivers, plants and animals have no longer been the seat of mysterious powers and the arbiters of man's fate. They have been but the handiwork of a one and only God who created both nature and man, yet made man in his own image a fellow creator. Since the Hebrews, history rather than cosmic phenomena has been the meaningful drama of the universe.

The ancient Hebrews were also the first to demonstrate that man can defy and put to naught the law of the survival of he fittest which rules the rest of life. They set in motion an alchemy of the soul which transmutes elements of weakness into potent substitutes of all the attributes of the strong. They invented fanaticism, the distant hope, and boundless dedication; and equipped with these substitutes the weak not only survive but often confound the mighty.

On the whole, the unnaturalness of human nature is more strikingly displayed in the weak species than in the strong. The strong, as a rule, are more simple, direct, and comprehensible in a word, more natural. The indications are that in the process of tearing loose from nature it was the weak who took the first steps. Chased out of the forest by the strong, they first essayed to walk to walk erect, and in the intensity of their soul first uttered words, and first grabbed a stick to use as a weapon and tool. the weak's singular capacity for evolving substitutes for that which they lack suggests that they played a chief role in the evolvement of technology.

Man is most peculiarly human when he cannot have his way. His momentous achievements are rarely the result of a clean forward thrust but rather of a soul intensity generated in front of an apparently insurmountable obstacle which bars his way to a cherished goal. It is here that potent words and explosive substitutes have their birth, and the endless quest, and the stretching of the soul which encompasses heaven and earth.

Since it was man's unfitness his being an outcast and outsider on this planet which started him on his unique course, it should not seem anomalous that misfits and outsiders are often in the forefront of human endeavor and the first to grapple with the unknown. The impulse to escape an untenable situation often prompts human beings not to shrink back but to plunge ahead. Moreover, it is in accord with the uniqueness of the human pattern that the misfits of the species should try to fit in not by changing themselves but by changing the world. Hence their bent for reform, innovation tinkering, and plunging. Thus we find misfits in the vanguard of the settlement of new lands and the elaboration of new ways and methods in the economic, political, and cultural fields.

It is the unique glory of the human species that its rejected do not fall by the wayside but become the building stones of the new, and that those who cannot fit into the present should become the shapers of the future. Those, like Nietzsche and D.H. Lawrence, who see in the influence of the weak a taint that might lead to decadence and degeneration are missing the point. It is precisely the peculiar role played by the weak that has given the human species its uniqueness. One should see the dominant role of the weak in shaping man's fate not as a perversion of natural instincts and vital impulses, but as the starting point of the deviation which led man to break away from, and rise above, nature not as degeneration but as the generation of a new order of creation.

The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness: and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements. Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs often show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They become responsive to grandiose schemes, and will display unequaled steadfastness, formidable energies and a special fitness in the performance of tasks which would stump superior people. It seems paradoxical that defeat in dealing with the possible should embolden people to attempt the impossible but a familiarity with the mentality of the weak reveals that what seems a path of daring is actually is actually an easy way out: It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings. For when we fail in attaining the impossible we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task.

The inept and unfit also display a high degree of venturesomeness in welcoming and promoting innovations in all fields. It is not usually the successful who advocate drastic social reforms, plunge into new undertakings in business and industry, go out ad tame the wilderness, or evolve new modes of expression in literature, art, music, etc. People who make good usually stay where they are and go on doing more and better what they know how to do well. The plunge into the new is often an escape from an untenable situation and a maneuver to mask one's ineptness. To adopt the role of pioneer and avantgarde is to place oneself in a situation where ineptness and awkwardness are acceptable and unavoidable; for experience and know how count for little in tackling the new, and we expect the wholly new to be ill shapen and ugly.

Now, to point to the discrepancy between questionable motives and imposing achievements is not to decry humanity but to extol it. For the outstanding characteristic of man's creativeness is the ability to transmute petty and trivial impulses into momentous consequences. The alchemist's notion about the transmutation of metals is absurd with reference to nature. There is in man's soul a flowing equilibrium between good and evil, the noble and the base, the sublime and the ridiculous, the beautiful and the ugly, the weighty and the trivial. To look for a correspondence between the quality of an achievement and the nature of the motive which gave it birth is to miss a most striking aspect of man's uniqueness. the greatness of man is in what we can do with petty grievances and joys, and with common physiological pressures and hungers. "When I have a little vexation," wrote Keats, "it grows in five minutes into a theme for Sophocles." To the creative individual, all experience are equidistant from new ideas and insights - and his inordinate humanness shows itself perhaps mainly in the ability to make the trivial and common reach an enormous way.

6. The significant fact is that the attributes which are at the root of man's uniqueness are also the main factors in the release of his creative energies. As we have seen, it was man's unfinishedness his being an incomplete animal which started him on his unique course, This unfinishedness consists not only in the lack of specialized organs and organic adaptations, but also in the imperfection of man's instincts, and in an inability to grow up and mature. Now, each of these defects plays a vital role in the release of the creative flow. If the lack of specialized organs started the groping toward tools and weapons, then the lack of instinctual automatism introduced into man's behavior the seminal pause of hesitation. In animals, action follows on perception mechanically with almost chemical swiftness and certainty, but in man there is an interval of faltering and groping; and this interval is the seedbed of the images, ideas, dreams, aspirations, irritations, longings, and forebodings which are the warp and woof of the creative process. Finally, the retention of youthful characteristics in adult life endows man with a perpetual playfulness so fruitful of insights and illuminations.

It is to be expected that the pattern of unfinishedness should be most pronounced in the autonomous individual. Nothing on earth or in heaven is so poignantly and chronically incomplete as the individual on his own. In the individual totally integrated with others in a compact group, human uniqueness is considerably blurred. Fusion with others completes, stabilizes and defuses. A compact collective body displays a submissiveness, predictability, and automatism reminiscent of nonhuman nature. Thus the emergence of the unattached individual must have been a crucial step in the attainment of human uniqueness. Yet the indications are that this step was not the end of a slow process of social growth and maturing but the by product of catastrophe and disaster. The first individual was a lone survivor, a straggler, an outcast, a fugitive. individual selfhood was first experienced not as something ardently wished for but as a calamity which befell the individual: he was separated from the group. All creative phases in history were preceded by a shattering or weakening of communal structures, and it was the individual debris who first set the creative act in motion. Fugitives seem to have been at the birth of everything new. They were the first free men, the first founders of cities and civilizations, the first adventurers and discoverers; they were the seed of Israel, of Greece, of Rome, of America.

The severing of the individual from a compact group is an operation from which the individual never fully recovers. The individual on his own remains a chronically incomplete and unbalanced entity. His creative efforts and passionate pursuits are at bottom a blind striving for wholeness and balance. The individual striving to realize himself and prove his worth has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science, and technology. The individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own is a breeding cell of frustration and the seed of the convulsions which shake a society to its foundations. These convulsions, being in essence a flight from the burdens of an individual existence, often terminate in totalitarian bodies dominated by absolute power.

It is a strangely moving spectacle this: the individual wearying of the burden of human uniqueness, shifting the load on his shoulders, and finally dropping it. For as he turns about to walk back, he finds himself one of a vast army with flags flying and drums beating, marching back to unbounded submissiveness and certitude back to being a crumb of the rock of ages and an anonymous particle of a monolithic whole.

Yet it is part of the fantastic quality of man's nature that this passionate retreat should have often turned out to be but a stepping back preliminary to a leap ahead. In the modern Occident there has been a continuous tug of war between individualist and anti-individualist tendencies. The chauvinist and Socialist collectivism of the twentieth century is to the individualism of the nineteenth what Jacobinism was to the age of the Enlightenment and what the Reformation was to the Renaissance. And every time, until now, the resourceful Occidental individual somehow managed to reassert himself and come out on top. He managed to convert the enthusiasm released by the anti-individualist movements into a stimulus of his own creative capacities, and an aid in his striving for self realization and self advancement. Thus we see gain and again the past four hundred years how the aftermath of every anti-individualist movement was marked by an outburst of individual creativeness in literature and art, and an upswing in individual venturesomeness and enterprise. It is true that the unprecedented ruthlessness displayed by contemporary anti-individualist drives makes one wonder whether this time, too, the individual will be able to come out on top. One wonders whether with their fearful instruments of coercion and control the contemporary mass movements may not at last succeed in bludgeoning the Occidental individual for good into collectivist submissiveness.

7. Nothing so baffles the scientific approach to human nature as the vital role words play in human affairs. How can one deal with the physio-chemical complex in which reactions are started and checked, accelerated and slowed down, by the sound or image of a word usually a meaningless word?

It is interesting that the practice of magic where nature is concerned-the attempt to manipulate nature by words-rested on the assumption that nature is not unlike human nature, that methods of proven effectiveness in the manipulation of human affairs may be equally potent when applied to nonhuman nature. It can be seen that such an assumption is the mirror image of, and not infinitely more absurd than, the assumption implied in the scientific approach that human nature is merely an aspect of nature.

We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight and die for the word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feeling, and beget action; they kill, they revive, corrupt and cure. The "men of words" priests, prophets, intellectuals have played a more decisive role in history than military leaders, statesmen, and businessmen.

Words and magic are particularly crucial in time of crisis when old forms of life are in dissolution and man must grapple with the unknown. Normal motives and incentives lose then their efficacy. Man does not plunge into the unknown in serrate of the prosaic and matter of fact. his soul has to be stretched by a reaching out for the fabulous and unprecedented. He needs the nurse of magic and breath taking fairy tales to lure him on and sustain him in his faltering first steps. Even modern science and technology were not in the beginning a sober pursuit of facts and knowledge. Here, too, the magicians alchemists, astrologers, visionaries were the pioneers. The early chemists looked not for prosaic acids and salts but for the philosophers stone and the elixir of life. The early astronomers and discoverers, too, were animated by myths and fairy tales. Columbus went looking not only for gold and fabulous empires but also for the Garden of Eden. When he saw the Orinoco he was sure it was Gihon, one of the four rivers of Eden. He wrote back to Spain about all the tokens and virtues and mathematical calculations which forced him to the conclusion that "Paradise is to be found in these parts."

It is, indeed, questionable whether we can make sense of critical periods in history without an awareness of the role words and magic play in them. This is particularly true of the century we live in a century dominated on the one hand by the scientific spirit and a superb practical sense, and on the other by the black magic of chauvinism, racialism, Fascism and Communism. The rapid transformation of millions of peasants into urban industrial workers, which often meant a leap from the Neolithic Age into the twentieth century, could not be realized without soul stirring myths and illusions about an impending national, racial, or social millennium

There is a widespread feeling at present that mankind has come to a fateful turning point. The feeling stems partly from the threat of a nuclear holocaust and partly from the fear that in a drawn out contest with the Communist powers we shall unavoidably be shaped in the image of the Totalitarianism we loathe, and slay our hope even as we battle for it. More ominous perhaps are the signs that the weal of the species are about to be elbowed out of their role as pathfinders and shapers of the future. The new revolution in science and technology which has so enormously increased man's power over nature has also enormously reduced the significance of the average individual. With the advent of automation and the utilization of atomic energy it might soon be possible for a relatively small group of people to satisfy all of a country's needs and fight its wars too without the aid of the masses. Man's destiny is now being shaped in fantastically complex and expensive laboratories staffed by supermen, and the new frontier has no place for the rejected and unfit. Instead of being the leaven of history and the mainspring of the ascending movement of man, the weak are likely to be cast aside as a waste product. One is justified in fearing that the elimination of the weak as shaping factors may mean the end of history and the reversion of history to zoology.

Yet there is the possibility that the weariness and dejection induced in us by the present crisis are clouding our vision and impairing our capacity for prognosticating the future. For even as we enumerate the forces which threaten to cast out the weak to outer darkness, there are things happening in every part of the globe which should make us pause, wonder and hope. Precisely at this moment, we see everywhere backward countries unimaginably poor in worldly goods, knowledge, and skill awakening from a paralysis of centuries and vaulting themselves onto the stage of history to re-enact the immemorable drama of the most poignant significance; and if we can savor it's full import we shall not be discomfited by the crudity, arrogance, hostility savagery, and hysteria of the performers. Our most ardent hope should be that this be not a last performance.

It is difficult to see how without an awareness of the unnaturalness of human nature one could make sense of the goings on in the underdeveloped parts of the world. Why should the sober, practical task of modernizing a backward country require the staging of a madhouse? Here certainly is an outstanding example of the fantastic discrepancy between means and ends often observed in human affairs. Incantations, myths, and the preposterous illusions are required to release the energies which enable the weak to vault over or explode the obstacles athwart their path. The untrained and unequipped masses in the backward countries cannot be stirred to utmost effort by self interest or logical persuasion. nor can they be induced to learn and advance step by step. For learning is to them one more proof of their inadequacy, and a gradual advance but a flailing of the arms in the morass of the present. They want not a prosaic step ahead but a miraculous leap out of a mean present into a glorious future. They need the illusion that in trying to catch up tomorrow with other people's yesterdays they are actually running ahead and showing the way to the rest of mankind. The practical task of industrialization must figure as a momentous undertaking in the service of a holy cause. Potent words, communion with the faithful, and flaunting defiance are as essential as technical training, adequate equipment, and satisfactory food and housing. The backward masses clambering up the steep incline of history must see themselves as the vanguard of humanity, the bearers of a one and only truth, the chosen instrument of human destiny. The march out of backwardness must be as the march of conquerors.

#Human Uniqness #Gift of Set #Temple of Set #TempleofSet #Eric Hoffer #Xeper

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