Religious Re-newal: Eros, Alchemy and "Love-Speak"

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Karl Jaspers once wrote, “A look at the beloved is like a look at Being itself.” I never forgot that bit. It is in the rapture of love, of Being in the grip of it that we gift presence to an ‘Other’. Latour called it a form of renewal. He has reiterated time and again that religious affirmation has been lost on those who go through the motions of ritual without consciously ‘renewing’ the love that makes gift of presence possible. He likened it to “love-speak” in couples. I think everybody would agree that humans innately know when a partner’s love-speak is sincere. It’s when these words evoke chills or the hair on the back of your neck stands up; that filling of absolute affirmation when your lover expresses words of love. Likewise, we also know, sometimes inexplicably, when these same words are counterfeit. There are times when loves-speak is said without the feeling of renewal.

It’s utter affirmation of sincerity that we should strive for in our religious ritual. It’s that renewal that is the basis for ideas of the ‘alchemical wedding’ and marrying the Sophia in godhead. Our religious rites are designed to evoke ‘love-speak’ and in doing so grant metaphysics of presence to our deities. But often times, religious ritual is a monotonous droning of liturgy and unfelt, unconscientious habits that fail in delivering the evocation of presence. Being cannot erupt into existence without a conscious interaction between Man and the beloved. It is these interactions that Couliano described as Eros and should be the goal of any so-called religious person. 

Peer Polity Interaction & Numinous Experience.

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Much of modern academia and science ignores the societal nuances of supernatural experience. However, there are cross-cultural features that make numinous experience universal. It goes without saying that if these events were culturally specific and developed solely within each separate culture, then each account would be wholly unique. But we find shared features and universal similarities. This stems from the experiential nature of the supernatural experience. Social accounts across cultures are based upon the dialogue that is created when perceiving the experience.

Cross-cultural dissemination also occurs through a process anthropologists call peer polity interaction. Traditionally, PPI refers to exchanges of social behavior and material goods that are appropriated (for lack of a better term) as separate polities interact with one another. They both symbolically and literally begin to take on attributes of one another. This happens in ritual as well. Both material artifacts and symbolic artifacts share characteristics through an intermingling of separate cultures and their gods. We see this in the uncanny resemblance between ancient mystery religions in the Greco-Roman world. In both ritual and in ritual paraphernalia, there are clear features of peer polity interaction at work. It’s left to us to examine how and to what extent PPI affects the legitimacy and dissemination of supernatural folk belief in the modern world.

What is Occult Renewal?

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I hear people continually ask whether occult has become obsolete in this day and age. I always wonder what trajectory they refer to. Belief is always alive and well. The operator recognizes the invisible work that instills autonomy in the divinities while recognizing the forces that drive his or her own renewal. Symbiotic relationships are the key to these interactions. Occult has never been simply about invocation or summoning but contact. In many ways, the UFOlogists are more occult than traditional occultists. Whereas the occultist will construct elaborate circles and perform complex ritualization, the UFO searcher knows instinctively that invisible strings are being plucked every time he aims a telescope at the sky or traverses a crop circle. The ritual is the method. Occult is not dead it just manifests in a variety of ways. You perform occult renewal every time you engage in love-talk while lying in bed with a significant Other or when composing a piece of music to be heard by no one but your Self. Renewal is in the inter-action.