Bernard Conway

This post contains spoilers for the series Altered Carbon and the drama Faust . "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.” - Faust , Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” -Robert J. Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita while speaking of the atomic bomb   “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” -Robert Burns RECAP In the first post of this series, we looked at the Luciferian Myth, mostly through the lens of John Milton’s poem, Paradise Lost . The poem provides a nuanced origin story for the conflict between good and evil. Motivated by a vain sense that it was he who was meant to be in control, Satan rebelled against God, but failed. Evil then proceeds from his ongoing attempts to recover his exalted state. In Part II, we observed these archetypes playing out in a number of sci-fi films where human civilization is upended. In these films, however, it came to light t...

Myths became images and shadows of higher ideas, and by their mysterious character inculcated a profounder veneration. -Plutarch In the last post, we looked at of myth of Satan’s fall in order to articulate its unique characteristics. To restate: Satan is thrown out of heaven for insubordination. In Hell, he has a chance to make due. Instead, he feels compelled to continue seeking power, or at the very least, vengeance. This moves the myth beyond a simple schematic of good versus evil. But as the myth transforms into a more relatable form—incorporating universal themes of human drama—it becomes more difficult to recognize the underlying symbols.    We saw this in John Milton’s Paradise Lost . In Hell, Satan finds himself in the company of the other fallen angels who express a litany of emotions; doubt, fear, anxiety, and anger. They console and contest each other. The figure of Satan becomes relatable to the reader because he is able to interact with these other vo...

Prolegomena to the Luciferian Archetype and Myth There is no point in trying to write about anything related to the Devil as if it can be disinterestedly. The subject never fails to elicit certain reactions. As such, we may address the two most common of those reactions head-on with the further caveat that we are not interested in propagating either. The first is fairly well known. It is the kind of thought-process that also would see a ban on everything from Halloween to Charles Darwin. A bit like how normally solitary animals have a way of finding each other over long distances, nothing draws a particular type of Christian fundamentalist out quite like the suggestion that somebody is considering the myth of Satan with anything other than gut-wrenching revulsion. This creates an obstruction to deeper introspection that is not only wrong, but also increasingly futile in our own times. The second type of reaction is more modern, but less recognized. While many people have simply...

AlejandroJodorowsky’s film The Holy Mountain follows the journey of a Christ-like character known only as ‘The Thief’ as he comes under the tutelage of a Master Alchemist. His goal is to achieve a spiritual transmutation, or enlightenment, by seeking out the Holy Mountain. The Thief is accompanied by seven companions who travel with him through a series of spiritual revelations. Towards the end of the film, the group comes to a place called Lotus Island. There they are approached by a host who offers congratulations on a successful journey and invites them to join him at The Pantheon Bar where a raucous party is underway. The Host explains that this is where the spiritual masters gather to celebrate their achievements. The group is given a sampling of the party’s attendants. The group is first brought to an orator, who explains that enlightenment resides in his speech. He claims that his poems may manifest flowers and the bees would then come to suckle at his living poetry. But...

In a futuristic metropolis, calculated floods are used to build a sense of community in a yuppie neighborhood, but not all residents feel the same about it. (PDF) Available Here

“But Plato's greatness as a sociologist does not lie in his general and abstract speculations about the law of social decay. It lies rather in the wealth and detail of his observations, and in the amazing acuteness of his sociological, intuition. He saw things which not only had not been seen before him, but which were rediscovered only in our own time … Another example is Plato's sociological and economic historicism, his emphasis on the economic background of political life and historical developments; a theory revived by Marx under the name 'historical materialism'.” -Karl Popper, “The Open Society and It’s Enemies: Vol I, The Spell of Plato Was it really not until Marx that this idea was ‘rediscovered’? Compare Popper’s statement to the following excerpt from De Regimine Principum of Saint Thomas Aquinas , “Again, if the citizens devote their lives to trade, the way will be opened to many vices. For, since the aim of traders is especially to make money, ...

There is in every enduring spiritual legacy, an emphasis on ascetic practice. Why this occurs has been subject to much investigation. And while the investigations themselves may interesting, no single study will sufficiently describe all aspects of asceticism. Nor should we expect one to. For practical purposes, as it is experienced, the subject must be considered on a number of different planes. We will limit ourselves to three examples, along with some further considerations on the subject. A Final Break with Attachment Defined as the act of breaking an attachment, this view of asceticism may be the easiest to understand as that it can be easily translated into terms that require no consideration of its more transcendent features. Although a ‘break’ with some aspect of the material world often is often done in order to look beyond, this need not always be the case. The motivation can be more secular. Many students know well the feeling of what was intended to be five-minute ...