If you haven’t been following Michael’s recent postings, here’s a condensed summary of the most important breakthrough:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5649
Here he describes how he arrived at this breakthrough:
The Latin word that means ‘Emperor’ is imperator. A better English translation of this word is ‘Commander,’ not ‘Emperor’. The word ‘Emperor’ is the Old French equivalent of the Latin imperator. It’s not really an English translation of the Latin.
The translation ‘Commander’ for imperator brings cybernetics to the forefront.
‘Commander’ also highlights the connection with the military. In the Roman Republic, imperator was the title given to a general in command of troops. With Augustus, it became a title.
We might use ‘Emperor’ for convenience, but this translation obscures key cybernetic ideas and is not true to the Latin anyway.
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The Greeks called the Roman Commander autokrator. This word means ‘self-ruler’ or ‘one who rules by himself’.
It’s uncanny – I was thinking last night about the tree aspect of the Pentheus myth. I was thinking about how to respond to an imagined literalist saying that Pentheus was caught up in a tree because that’s just where the story took place, in the woods. Then Michael writes this and other posts in the thread this morning: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5630
I didn’t come up with a satisfying response of my own. I wonder why I didn’t. Ultimately, I don’t focus enough on these important problems. It’s funny how academic training in the field of the Classics is hindering me from focusing with my full attention on interpreting classical myth. This is the price I have to pay for access to the hallowed halls of the universities. Let no one speak of cybernetics, fatedness, mushrooms in these walls!
It’s not worth the effort to write a book on a subject so directly targeted by egodeath theory unless I can use egodeath theory explicitly. If I wrote a book that covertly brought in cybernetics, fatedness, and mushrooms under safe, approved jargon, I would just have to rewrite it later. Better to wait.
It’s a tragic mess. I might be able to get away with telling my professors that I want to write about how texts x,y,z are about self-control or about fatedness. But combining them? Self-control in the light of experiencing fatedness? They would look at me like I’m crazy. Don’t even mention mushrooms. I was nearly shamed out of the university for suggesting the ancients took mushrooms, only forgiven because, after all, I was just a naive, young graduate student.
I have a hard time imagining what of use I could contribute if I wrote a book about classical myth using the standard paradigm. Even if I covertly brought in cybernetics, fatedness, and mushrooms, the result would pale in comparison to the book I could write if I used the explanatory power of egodeath theory.
Michael has made so much progress in interpreting certain subjects, it doesn’t make sense to try to write about them using the standard paradigm. It’s better to make my own headway on other subjects in the Classics that Michael hasn’t covered so thoroughly. I’m not suggesting that I won’t use egodeath theory; it affects all subjects in the Classics. Nevertheless I can contribute more in the mainstream scholarship I have to write by focusing on subjects beside myth, mystery religions, and early Christianity. Michael has already laid those bare. My mainstream scholarship book on another subject can include hooks so informed readers can easily interpret the subject in light of egodeath theory.
Plus, I can’t keep up with Michael! His output since September has been incredible.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5602
From the above:
Religious knowledge is the perceiving of the uncontrollable source of one’s
thoughts, testing this dependency, and transforming one’s understanding of
personal control.Personal control is initially imagined as a single, independent center of
control. During initiation, personal control is perceived as dependent on an
uncontrollable, hidden source of thoughts, experienced as the unchangeable
universe or an unknown agency. Personal control tries to control and defend
against the revealed source of thoughts, demonstrating that personal control
power is dependent on and vulnerable to the source of thoughts.Personal control learns to trust the source of its thoughts. The mind discards
its assumption that personal control controls the source of thoughts. Personal
control becomes mentally integrated with the source of thoughts, and control
stability is established, in a newly explicit, 2-centered configuration of
control-power.The easiest model of spacetime to organize thinking about personal control-power
is that the person’s experiencing, including control-thoughts as a steering
agent, is laid out as a worldline-path embedded in a changeless space-time block
universe with time as a space-like dimension.Religious initiation is the use of mushrooms to loosen cognitive functioning and
make perceptible the dynamics of personal control cognition. This perception
and loose cognition disengages the previous mental model and helps construct a
revised mental model by subtracting, adding, and transforming ideas about
control.Myth, including Mystery Religions, is metaphorical description of the above.
Figures in religious myth are not historical, but are personifications of the
above.Perceiving and understanding the 2-centered control-power relationship that
propels the mind has been used as a political template for structuring society,
to purportedly follow the divinely revealed pattern:
o A power hierarchy with some people standing over other people in a
controller/controlled relationship, because each person contains a control
hierarchy.
o An egalitarian democracy with each person on the same level, because each
person contains the same relationship of the two aspects of control: personal
control thinking and the source of thoughts.Copyright (C) 2011 Michael Hoffman. All Rights Reserved.
I’ve been taking lots of pictures while traveling around Greece. Besides the striking scenery and archaeological sites, I’ve made sure to snap pics of ancient art and other objects that depict egodeath themes and entheogens.
Snakes appear constantly in Greco-Roman decoration. All the explanations I’ve heard from learned people on this trip sound so lame and incoherent in comparison to the cybernetic metaphor explanation: The snake is the fixed worldline, the fixed path of our thoughts and actions. It wavers and undulates as our perceptions do in the loose cognition state. Secondarily, it signifies visionary plants. However, known of the many snakes I’ve seen are biting someone. Some reach toward a cup of entheogenic wine or the libation bowl full of mixed wine. No images I’ve seen show the snake shedding its skin.
Snakes are especially common on funerary markers. Bodily death was intentionally seen in light of mystic state egodeath. Egodeath occurs when we see the snake, i.e. when we perceive the fixedness of our future thoughts and actions.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5470
Hoffman reproaches Rinella for incoherently asserting that the entire culture of antiquity was drug-saturated *except* for Philosophy. This just doesn’t make much sense. In my earlier posts about the book I missed out and didn’t make that point, though it seems glaringly obvious now. Before the book came out, I voiced concerns with Rinella’s argument that Plato had no use for the intense mystic altered state: http://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/michael-rinella-pharmakon-plato-drug-culture-and-identity-in-ancient-athens/
In his recent postings Hoffman has strongly encouraged us to stop writing and thinking for skeptics. Reviewing some of my posts, I can see that I often write far too cautiously. Look at how I wrote about Rinella’s book in the post I linked to above:
“I’m looking forward to reading his arguments that Plato had very little use for ecstatic state wisdom.” Please, was I really looking forward to reading that? Why should I? I knew that was bunk. I should have come out and said it, not given that idea an inch of credibility by saying I would wait to read the book.
“From what I’ve read, Plato’s writings show familiarity with the ecstatic state and many of his famous arguments and metaphors seem to be based on altered state experiencing.” Show familiarity with the ecstatic state? Seem to be based on altered state experiencing? Such bland language. Better: Plato’s writings, arguments, and images/metaphors are based in the intense mystic state of conscious / loose cognition.
Then I list out, off the top of my head, some examples from Plato’s writings that show it was altered state based. I missed out and didn’t point out the contradiction Hoffman points out.
I got less wishy-washy as I wrote. I just now inserted some comments in brackets as I reread:
“I suspect that [ugh!] Plato was against what he saw as a sloppy, anything-goes approach to acquiring transcendent knowledge typical of democratic Athens. Plato seems to have favored [cut that out!] what he saw as a more sophisticated, more systematic approach to transcendent knowledge. Plato seems to have been [again!] against conventional Greek morality at the time and argued for an ethics based on a certain interpretation of altered state insight.
Socrates’ ability (in the Symposium) to drink endless amounts of wine and not get drunk reminds me of the ideas of “elevated sobriety” and “sober drunkenness” used in later Christian writings. I need to read up more on this phrase at egodeath.com. The gist: mystics view drugs not as making them intoxicated but as making them truly sober. Viewed from a post-initiation standpoint, pre-initiation thinking and perceptions seem to be intoxicated, drunk – or fake, unreal – as opposed to post-initiation, which is truly sober – or real.
Plato was engaged in cultural combat against various other systems of describing and packaging ecstatic wisdom. He argues that all the other systems are lacking in someway when compared to his own. He criticizes them for their lack of coherence, their poor ethics, the societies and governments that result from them, etc. In place of them he defends Socrates, Socrates’ method of ethical dialogue, as well as his own arguments about the Forms, the ideal society, etc. [This paragraph is a hundred times better!]
I’m curious to see [were you? Why would you be interested in an argument like this?] if Plato argues against all forms of ecstatic state wisdom, against the idea of ecstatic state wisdom itself [who would argue against these things? certainly not Plato, the philosopher most revered by the entheogen, altered-state oriented ancients and pre-moderns], or against the systems of packaging altered state wisdom then predominant in the culture of ancient Greece, specifically Athens [yes - Philosophers were engaged in playful critique of other philosophers and other aspects of ancient culture. Plato's dialogues include humorous depictions of other philosophers and their systems and individuals who represent different aspects of Athenian culture].”
I should emulate Hoffman’s boldness when I write here. I should clearly and strongly state my position, not allow the reader to get the impression that I think anything else.
(11/5/11 update: I added another panel, second from bottom)
The doors of Santa Sabina in Rome are conventionally said to have been carved in the early 5th century.
The scenes carved on it are mostly drawn from the Old Testament and the Gospel story.
The carved scenes are bordered by grape vines, a symbol for entheogenic wine mixture and for the vine-shaped deterministic world line.
Here’s Elijah pulled up to heaven on the chariot, pulled or guided by an angel (themes of ascent, being pulled up, steersmanship). Note the mushroom tree:
Here’s the abduction of Habbekuk. He’s carrying loaves of bread/entheogens. This myth is typologically similar to the abduction of Ganymede by Zeus’ eagle. Ganymede is typically portrayed wearing the same sort of cap as Habbekuk is here. He was abducted while tending his flocks. Note the freewillist goat eating the wavy stalk topped by a mushroom head on the right.
Here’s Jesus with a wand (the magician) multiplying and creating the entheogens (bread, fish, wine), and restoring sight to the blind (experiential enlightenment, switch of mental world model):
Here’s Jesus appearing to two women, surrounded by waving, fruiting, mushroom trees:
From bottom to top: Moses confronts Pharaoh (king ego) with heimarmene snakes (fixedness of thoughts and actions); The horses (ego) drawing the chariot (control themes) are overwhelmed by the undulating waters (perceptual distortion in loose cognition); the people are led to the promised land and greeted by an angel (messenger of transcendent rationality).
Conventional scholarship says this is the earliest surviving depiction of Christ’s crucifixion:
There are more panels. Check them out and spot the altered state metaphor: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=santa+sabina+doors&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1030&bih=575
Relief sculptures of this sort adorned the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar in Rome.
I’ve seen Mithras slaying the bull hundreds of times, but never Cupids. These sculptures date from the 2nd century AD and adorned the temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar. Caesar began work on this forum and Augustus completed it after his assassination. Archaeologists think these sculptures came from a later embellishment and repair of the forum by the emperor Trajan c. 113 AD. It’s unclear whether this was the original decoration or not.
In literature and myth Cupid can control the desires of men and gods. Cupid implants a desire in his targets. His victims are unable to rule themselves, as Apollo in the story of Apollo and Daphne. His victims are drawn toward the implanted object of desire irresistibly, as if to a beacon.
During egodeath, the mind senses that its thoughts and desires are implanted in it from outside its normal source of control. Egodeath proves that the ego cannot rule itself. The ego is drawn toward egodeath irresistibly.
In this relief decoration, Cupid masters and slays the self-command bull, the egoic mental world model, just as Mithras does. The wings represent the sensation often encountered in the altered state that the mind is in flight.
The Cupids pictured here also stand with one leg on the ground and the other in the air. This represents the enlightened mind with one foot rooted to the ground, the determined world, and one foot floating free in the transcendent world. This image also suggests the one ‘footed’ mushroom.
This image shows the higher self in winged ecstatic flight subduing the animalistic lower self, which kneels in submission.
The similarities to the common Mithras tauroctony show the fluidity of ancient metaphorical art and thought. Different characters were plugged into standard themes drawn from altered state experiencing.
(Picture source: http://en.mercatiditraiano.it/percorsi/percorsi_per_sale/sezione_del_foro_di_cesare/decorazione_esterna_del_tempio_di_venere_genitrice)
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Now that Hoffman has cracked the imagery of the mystery religions, we can see the same altered state themes expressed in metaphor in other religious contexts. This is another piece of evidence that altered state metaphor was found in the center of Rome among the ruling class, attached to a temple sponsored by the emperors. Altered state metaphor was not confined to the mystery cults of Eleusis, Isis, Mithras, or Christ.
Here the altered state metaphor of Cupid’s tauroctony is used in support of the imperial ruler system. The temple of Venus Genetrix is a temple to Venus the Creator. This term has a few meanings in this context. Venus could be described as Genetrix because through her influence living things procreate, i.e. the lower self and the higher self join in union and produce the new control system. Venus was also said to be the ancestor of Caesar and Augustus, so through this temple her power is put to the service of the imperial system of Caesar and Augustus. Later emperors took the names of Caesar and/or Augustus to link themselves with the system begun by them. Trajan’s restoration or embellishment of the temple of Venus Genetrix is a sign of that deliberate homage and connecting to Caesar and Augustus.
Although I have wanted to, I have not dedicated time to a review of this book. I did, however, see it featured prominently in the window of a well-known academic bookstore in Rome.
