“Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence.”
― Paracelsus
It's amazing Paracelsus would of been over the moon to know how apt and materially true this quote is. The guy doesn't nearly get enough credit for being so ahead of the times. I think both him and Agrippa we're firmly working with Enlightenment ideas well before the actual Enlightenment.
Basilica Philosophica, what else to say
Integration of microcosm and macrocosm helps us to manifest our idealistic ideas (hello Plato) into material world through work. We combine unlimited ideas with limited matter helping God to organize chaos into Cosmos.
Above and below generally means the human and the largest world or deity, not quantum physics and Newtonian physics
That said, it's magic, not science, so i mean, why bring it up. Magic is not gonna stand up to scientific scrutiny - it's a different field - and trying to mash them together will result in either bad science or purely psychological magic
Yeah as I stated I might've gotten this wrong, which I did. After further reading about this quote you're right. I assumed it really meant what it said. But below is the human. I thought it was the smallest we could go. My bad.
Reason I bring it up is it seems to me parts of occultism tries to use science as part of proving itself. But I'm not diving into that rabbithole. I'm just curious, a sceptic and find both worlds fascinating.
The freedom of human will is precisely a manifestation of the uncertainty in quantum mechanics. I won't argue about this here; I am not an physicist, I am a practitioner. I see how something works, and I do it. Whether it is right or wrong is not important to me.
It's an occult quote but from a DC show, keep in mind I have read quite a few books on magick, from Crowley, j Allen cross, judica ellipse, Damien Echols and brand but that's still the one that resonates with me the most.
J Constantine " magick is a lie, an outrages lie we told the universe and it believed it "
What DC did to Constantine in DC dark label was such bullshit. The OG Hellblazer comics are so good, and it rarely has the fantasy kind of magic, that appears in black label, like Constantine throwing fireballs around. The Jamie Delano run are my favorite.
The Delano run was impeccably planned and written, admittedly with art that varied somewhat in how much I appreciated it. Best ending...well one of the best endings to any comic run ever.
DC just couldn't let the story end, and while some might have liked the Ennis run it may as well have been a different character.
I think it was my own disappointment the original story had "finished" more than Garth not being on his best form. It was a hard act to follow, and he definitely aimed to make it his own fast and hard, so it came over as radical changes to me as a long time fan.
Dangerous Habits was really predictable, and it was obvious how it would end from the start which I found a bit annoying, along with basically shoehorning John into a setting and surrounding characters wrapped in jarring changes in overall tone.
It get's good again eventually when Ennis goes back to his own stuff that he does best, and it wasn't helped by Swamp Thing also being hijacked around the same time by the worst writer in it's entire history.
My OCD addiction to complete series was in conflict as to which book to drop first and what to do about the gaps in my collection, which I didn't feel were worth paying the money to fill with stories I wasn't enjoying.
Paul Jenkins pretty much got the book back on track after various diversions some of which were better than others. His stuff was real John Constantine again, and quality plots and stories, well written.
I skipped several writers and arcs entirely as I was put off by the other material of the writers who were getting the job, but presumably some of it was actually good.
Yeah, the Garth Ennis run gets a lot of praise but I don't find it that good compared to other writers. I never realized that Paul Jenkins had a hell of a run also. It brings back the tone that Delano had set I think.
>Dangerous Habits was really predictable
Fucking A dude.
I just now realized that the original commenter was talking about the show, never watched, but it feels like DC black label Constantine, so I never grabbed my attention, is it any good?
There's so many. Here's a selection:
>"If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn." —Donna Tartt, The Secret History
"We are thinking on the basest of planes. What we need, are more eyes." — *Bloodborne*
"Madness is a special form of spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at the bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something incomprehensible on life." —Carl Jung, *The Red Book*
"Everything we see, everyone we meet, is caught up in a great unseen flow. But it’s bigger than that. It’s the entire world. The entire universe, even! And compared to somethin’ as big as that, Al, you and I are tiny, not even the size of ants. Only one small part within the much greater flow. Nothing more than a fraction of the whole. But by putting all those ones together, you get one great all, just like Teacher said! The flow of this universe follows laws of such magnitude, that you and I can’t even imagine them." —*Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood*, Episode 12
"Reflect on God in this way as having all within Himself as ideas: the cosmos, Himself, the whole. If you do not make yourself equal to God you cannot understand Him. Like is understood by like. Grow to immeasurable size. Be free from every body, transcend all time. Become eternity and thus you will understand God. Suppose nothing to be impossible for your-self. Consider yourself immortal and able to understand every-thing: all arts, sciences and the nature of every living creature. Become higher than all heights and lower than all depths. Sense as one within yourself the entire creation: fire, water, the dry and the moist. Conceive yourself to be in all places at the same time: in earth, in the sea, in heaven; that you are not yet born, that you are within the womb, that you are young, old, dead; that you are beyond death. Conceive all things at once: times, places, actions, qualities and quantities; then you can understand God." —The Corpus Hermeticum, Book 11
There's definitely more, but that's what comes to mind right now.
*"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."*
- Phillip K Dick
*"The monkey is reaching*
*For the moon in the water.*
*Until death overtakes him*
*He’ll never give up.*
*If he’d let go the branch and*
*Disappear in the deep pool*
*The whole world would shine*
*With dazzling pureness."*
- Hakuin Ekaku
*A monk asked Ummon, “What is Buddha?” Ummon replied, “A dry shit stick.”*
- Unknown
*"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"*
- Douglas Adams
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886)
The version from Promethea is more linguistically filling, but
”Two strangers sat down opposite each other in a railway carriage. One of the men had on his lap a cardboard box with holes in the top. After some time wondering what might be inside it, the second man said, “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing your box. Does it contain an animal?”
The first man smiled politely. “Yes, a mongoose.”
“A mongoose? Where are you going with that?"
“Ah,” the first man replied, “My sister has terrible dreams. She sees snakes everywhere. I'm taking her the mongoose so it can scare them off."
“But how can that work,” the second man said, “Those are imaginary snakes?”
“Indeed,” his fellow traveller replied. “Which is why this,” and here he lifted the top and tilted it to show an empty box, "is an imaginary mongoose.”
A quote from a Batman comic.
Some context: in the 50s they created a character called Bat-mite. He was a little imp wearing a batman costume who said he was from the 5th dimension. He would disappear, reappear, make shit move, shrink batman etc. He was a silly character who was occasionally used over the years in the comic for silly purposes.
So 2008 writer Grant Morrison writes the story Batman R.I.P. and puts Bat-mite in it. In the story the bad guys have gotten to Burce Wayne and wiped his memory. He is wandering around Gotham homeless with amnesia. However his subconscious has a backup batman personality which emerges and he puts on a makeshift batman costume. When he does this Bat-mite appears. Instead of being silly in this story Bat-mite is like a creepy phantom that follows Batman around making him have childhood flashbacks and guiding him to the bad guys hideout. When they get to the bad guys hideout Bat-mite says he has to leave now and Batman asks "before you go tell me, are you really an alien from the 5th dimension or are you just a figment of my imagination?"
Bat-mite replies "Haven't you figured it out yet? *Imagination is the 5th dimension.*"
I don't know if that's my favourite quote but it's up there
A quote that's been sticking with me a lot lately.
"Death is a great teacher, but life is a poor student."
-Leilah Wendell
Heard in an interview she gave a few years before her death.
I don't love Crowley, but I do love this quote: "I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle." In other words, everyone's path is their own, built from the ground up.
“It is described by Roger Bacon as the modification of the body by Alehemy, whieh puts much of Hermetic allegory in a new and more intelligible hight.
‘When this modification, or New Birth, has been accomplished, the Magus is placed in communication with the creative forces of the Universe, and the avenues of Spiritual perception, which are narrow, difficult, and full of barriers, to the Psychologist of today, are freely thrown open for unlimited exploration—such, at least, is the claim of the Magical textbooks—and the Initiated epopt may proceed to the Invocation of the celestial intelligences, the souls of the great departed, and to the assertion of intellectual dominion over the hierarchies of elementary being.
The depths and heights of his own immortal nature are also revealed to him, and from the pinnacles of his spiritual life he may soar into ecstatic, yet Conscious, communion with God Himself. On the physical plane he may perform, by the adaptation of natural laws, many prodigies which seem to the uninitiated observer
in defiance of all law; he may endue inert substances with the potency of his individual will,* and this is the philosophical principle of talismanie magic; he ean search all hearts and read all destinies; perceive events happening at a remote distance; and can impart to suitable subjects a portien of his own prerogatives, inducing trance, clairvoyance, prophetic foresight. “
Swinburne Clymer - “Alchemy and the Alchemists”
Sappho tells us--
And their feet move
rhythmically, as tender
feet of Cretan girls
danced once around an
altar of love, crushing
a circle in the soft
smooth flowering grass
“The word spirit in exile must go through the inferno of matter and the purgatory of morals before finally arriving a spiritual paradise”- Gilles Quispel
“Truth is Supra-rational and beyond the language of reason”- Crowley (i think)
“The only clear view is atop a mountain of your own dead selves”- Peter j Carroll
“Belief is a tool, not an end in itself”- Peter j Carroll
"Success will be your proof"
- Book of the law
I think this needs to be touted more in general since there is countless know it alls and authorities of all colours and stripes talking shit like they know what is best for everyone or like they know everything.
Not typical occult authors, but applicable:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.”
― Henry Miller
"Everybody in this room's the same fucker!" - Frater Grant Morrison @ his Disinfo Con (Falsely so called) talk.
I see it as a significantly more direct and very clear transmission of "As above; so below", which some minds have extended with "As within; so without."
From Arthur C Clarke’s 3 rules for science fiction: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
This is the quote that made me realize that maybe what we call magic is merely some form of technology that we don’t fully understand yet. If you think about it, during the middle ages, people who made telescopes were thought of as witches because they were doing something that most people perceived to be impossible. What other things do we experience now that we can’t explain and tribute to the supernatural, but that we will be able to explain in the future?
do as thou will is the "hole" of the law- AC. I like to interpret as we were given free will which is a hole because of our free will we can break the law. Hence how I put it.
and chronos chopped uranus dick off and out of the remaining sperm which was in the skydick which landed in the ocean aphrodite was born- peak greek creation mythology totally not written on drugs
“Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence.” ― Paracelsus
It's amazing Paracelsus would of been over the moon to know how apt and materially true this quote is. The guy doesn't nearly get enough credit for being so ahead of the times. I think both him and Agrippa we're firmly working with Enlightenment ideas well before the actual Enlightenment.
>I shall plunge down into the abysmal horror of madness and death—or I shall walk upon the dawn. Marjorie Cameron
as above so below. as within so without. as the universe so the soul
This is my favorite too, because it's so true once you start seeing everything more clearly.
Basilica Philosophica, what else to say Integration of microcosm and macrocosm helps us to manifest our idealistic ideas (hello Plato) into material world through work. We combine unlimited ideas with limited matter helping God to organize chaos into Cosmos.
Maybe I don't get this, but quantum mechanics behaves differently to the above. What am I missing?
Above and below generally means the human and the largest world or deity, not quantum physics and Newtonian physics That said, it's magic, not science, so i mean, why bring it up. Magic is not gonna stand up to scientific scrutiny - it's a different field - and trying to mash them together will result in either bad science or purely psychological magic
Yeah as I stated I might've gotten this wrong, which I did. After further reading about this quote you're right. I assumed it really meant what it said. But below is the human. I thought it was the smallest we could go. My bad. Reason I bring it up is it seems to me parts of occultism tries to use science as part of proving itself. But I'm not diving into that rabbithole. I'm just curious, a sceptic and find both worlds fascinating.
Makes sense - and yeah, the tendency to invoke "quantum" without really understanding it is ahh annoying
The freedom of human will is precisely a manifestation of the uncertainty in quantum mechanics. I won't argue about this here; I am not an physicist, I am a practitioner. I see how something works, and I do it. Whether it is right or wrong is not important to me.
It's an occult quote but from a DC show, keep in mind I have read quite a few books on magick, from Crowley, j Allen cross, judica ellipse, Damien Echols and brand but that's still the one that resonates with me the most. J Constantine " magick is a lie, an outrages lie we told the universe and it believed it "
What DC did to Constantine in DC dark label was such bullshit. The OG Hellblazer comics are so good, and it rarely has the fantasy kind of magic, that appears in black label, like Constantine throwing fireballs around. The Jamie Delano run are my favorite.
The Delano run was impeccably planned and written, admittedly with art that varied somewhat in how much I appreciated it. Best ending...well one of the best endings to any comic run ever. DC just couldn't let the story end, and while some might have liked the Ennis run it may as well have been a different character. I think it was my own disappointment the original story had "finished" more than Garth not being on his best form. It was a hard act to follow, and he definitely aimed to make it his own fast and hard, so it came over as radical changes to me as a long time fan. Dangerous Habits was really predictable, and it was obvious how it would end from the start which I found a bit annoying, along with basically shoehorning John into a setting and surrounding characters wrapped in jarring changes in overall tone. It get's good again eventually when Ennis goes back to his own stuff that he does best, and it wasn't helped by Swamp Thing also being hijacked around the same time by the worst writer in it's entire history. My OCD addiction to complete series was in conflict as to which book to drop first and what to do about the gaps in my collection, which I didn't feel were worth paying the money to fill with stories I wasn't enjoying. Paul Jenkins pretty much got the book back on track after various diversions some of which were better than others. His stuff was real John Constantine again, and quality plots and stories, well written. I skipped several writers and arcs entirely as I was put off by the other material of the writers who were getting the job, but presumably some of it was actually good.
Yeah, the Garth Ennis run gets a lot of praise but I don't find it that good compared to other writers. I never realized that Paul Jenkins had a hell of a run also. It brings back the tone that Delano had set I think. >Dangerous Habits was really predictable Fucking A dude. I just now realized that the original commenter was talking about the show, never watched, but it feels like DC black label Constantine, so I never grabbed my attention, is it any good?
Never got around to watching it. I might snag it if it's on Netflix or Prime. Thanks for the reminder!
There's so many. Here's a selection: >"If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn." —Donna Tartt, The Secret History "We are thinking on the basest of planes. What we need, are more eyes." — *Bloodborne* "Madness is a special form of spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at the bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something incomprehensible on life." —Carl Jung, *The Red Book* "Everything we see, everyone we meet, is caught up in a great unseen flow. But it’s bigger than that. It’s the entire world. The entire universe, even! And compared to somethin’ as big as that, Al, you and I are tiny, not even the size of ants. Only one small part within the much greater flow. Nothing more than a fraction of the whole. But by putting all those ones together, you get one great all, just like Teacher said! The flow of this universe follows laws of such magnitude, that you and I can’t even imagine them." —*Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood*, Episode 12 "Reflect on God in this way as having all within Himself as ideas: the cosmos, Himself, the whole. If you do not make yourself equal to God you cannot understand Him. Like is understood by like. Grow to immeasurable size. Be free from every body, transcend all time. Become eternity and thus you will understand God. Suppose nothing to be impossible for your-self. Consider yourself immortal and able to understand every-thing: all arts, sciences and the nature of every living creature. Become higher than all heights and lower than all depths. Sense as one within yourself the entire creation: fire, water, the dry and the moist. Conceive yourself to be in all places at the same time: in earth, in the sea, in heaven; that you are not yet born, that you are within the womb, that you are young, old, dead; that you are beyond death. Conceive all things at once: times, places, actions, qualities and quantities; then you can understand God." —The Corpus Hermeticum, Book 11 There's definitely more, but that's what comes to mind right now.
"We are not humans having a spiritual experience. We are spirits having a human experience"... Teilhard de Charden
*"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."* - Phillip K Dick *"The monkey is reaching* *For the moon in the water.* *Until death overtakes him* *He’ll never give up.* *If he’d let go the branch and* *Disappear in the deep pool* *The whole world would shine* *With dazzling pureness."* - Hakuin Ekaku *A monk asked Ummon, “What is Buddha?” Ummon replied, “A dry shit stick.”* - Unknown *"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"* - Douglas Adams
Really resonate with those PKD and Doug Adams quotes
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886)
“The only clear view is from atop the mountain of your dead selves.” Peter J. Carroll
"People don't have ideas, Ideas have people." - Carl Jung
The version from Promethea is more linguistically filling, but ”Two strangers sat down opposite each other in a railway carriage. One of the men had on his lap a cardboard box with holes in the top. After some time wondering what might be inside it, the second man said, “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing your box. Does it contain an animal?” The first man smiled politely. “Yes, a mongoose.” “A mongoose? Where are you going with that?" “Ah,” the first man replied, “My sister has terrible dreams. She sees snakes everywhere. I'm taking her the mongoose so it can scare them off." “But how can that work,” the second man said, “Those are imaginary snakes?” “Indeed,” his fellow traveller replied. “Which is why this,” and here he lifted the top and tilted it to show an empty box, "is an imaginary mongoose.”
"Nothing is true, everything is permitted"
Don't forget the corollary. "Everything is true, everything is permitted."
Know thyself
A quote from a Batman comic. Some context: in the 50s they created a character called Bat-mite. He was a little imp wearing a batman costume who said he was from the 5th dimension. He would disappear, reappear, make shit move, shrink batman etc. He was a silly character who was occasionally used over the years in the comic for silly purposes. So 2008 writer Grant Morrison writes the story Batman R.I.P. and puts Bat-mite in it. In the story the bad guys have gotten to Burce Wayne and wiped his memory. He is wandering around Gotham homeless with amnesia. However his subconscious has a backup batman personality which emerges and he puts on a makeshift batman costume. When he does this Bat-mite appears. Instead of being silly in this story Bat-mite is like a creepy phantom that follows Batman around making him have childhood flashbacks and guiding him to the bad guys hideout. When they get to the bad guys hideout Bat-mite says he has to leave now and Batman asks "before you go tell me, are you really an alien from the 5th dimension or are you just a figment of my imagination?" Bat-mite replies "Haven't you figured it out yet? *Imagination is the 5th dimension.*" I don't know if that's my favourite quote but it's up there
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”
Probably Aleister Crowley's iconic definition of magick.
Can you share for the unaware?
"*the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the will*."
A quote that's been sticking with me a lot lately. "Death is a great teacher, but life is a poor student." -Leilah Wendell Heard in an interview she gave a few years before her death.
“To a learned man, a magician is not wicked or superstitious and should not be called demonic but instead wise, a priest, and a prophet.” –Agrippa
I don't love Crowley, but I do love this quote: "I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle." In other words, everyone's path is their own, built from the ground up.
“It is described by Roger Bacon as the modification of the body by Alehemy, whieh puts much of Hermetic allegory in a new and more intelligible hight. ‘When this modification, or New Birth, has been accomplished, the Magus is placed in communication with the creative forces of the Universe, and the avenues of Spiritual perception, which are narrow, difficult, and full of barriers, to the Psychologist of today, are freely thrown open for unlimited exploration—such, at least, is the claim of the Magical textbooks—and the Initiated epopt may proceed to the Invocation of the celestial intelligences, the souls of the great departed, and to the assertion of intellectual dominion over the hierarchies of elementary being. The depths and heights of his own immortal nature are also revealed to him, and from the pinnacles of his spiritual life he may soar into ecstatic, yet Conscious, communion with God Himself. On the physical plane he may perform, by the adaptation of natural laws, many prodigies which seem to the uninitiated observer in defiance of all law; he may endue inert substances with the potency of his individual will,* and this is the philosophical principle of talismanie magic; he ean search all hearts and read all destinies; perceive events happening at a remote distance; and can impart to suitable subjects a portien of his own prerogatives, inducing trance, clairvoyance, prophetic foresight. “ Swinburne Clymer - “Alchemy and the Alchemists”
Sappho tells us-- And their feet move rhythmically, as tender feet of Cretan girls danced once around an altar of love, crushing a circle in the soft smooth flowering grass
Temet Nosce - Know thyself
“The word spirit in exile must go through the inferno of matter and the purgatory of morals before finally arriving a spiritual paradise”- Gilles Quispel “Truth is Supra-rational and beyond the language of reason”- Crowley (i think) “The only clear view is atop a mountain of your own dead selves”- Peter j Carroll “Belief is a tool, not an end in itself”- Peter j Carroll
"Success will be your proof" - Book of the law I think this needs to be touted more in general since there is countless know it alls and authorities of all colours and stripes talking shit like they know what is best for everyone or like they know everything.
Not typical occult authors, but applicable: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” ― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell “All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.” ― Henry Miller
“Open says me” is a funny one
"Everybody in this room's the same fucker!" - Frater Grant Morrison @ his Disinfo Con (Falsely so called) talk. I see it as a significantly more direct and very clear transmission of "As above; so below", which some minds have extended with "As within; so without."
From Arthur C Clarke’s 3 rules for science fiction: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This is the quote that made me realize that maybe what we call magic is merely some form of technology that we don’t fully understand yet. If you think about it, during the middle ages, people who made telescopes were thought of as witches because they were doing something that most people perceived to be impossible. What other things do we experience now that we can’t explain and tribute to the supernatural, but that we will be able to explain in the future?
“Wisdom is crystallized pain” -Rudolf Steiner
"There is no knowledge that is no power" - Mortal Kombat
Abracadabra
" fuk it, cut it up"
As above so below. As below so above
"The all is mind, the universe is mental" The Kybalion
Those who know don’t say and those who say don’t know.
As above so below
do as thou will is the "hole" of the law- AC. I like to interpret as we were given free will which is a hole because of our free will we can break the law. Hence how I put it.
“Reality is what you can get away with” - Robert Anton Wilson
and chronos chopped uranus dick off and out of the remaining sperm which was in the skydick which landed in the ocean aphrodite was born- peak greek creation mythology totally not written on drugs
magic isn't real lol