MDDM Ch. 50 As Above, So Below

[Dave Monroe]

   "'By the time of Columbus, God's project of
Disengagement was obvious to all,-- with the terrible
understanding that we were to be left more and more to
our own solutions.'" (M&D, Ch. 50, p. 487)

   "'Another case of, "As above, so below."'"
   "'No longer, Alas, a phrase of Power,-- this Age
sees a corruption and disabling of the ancient Magick.
 Projectors, Brokers of Capital, Insurancers, Peddlers
upon the global Scale, Enterprisers and Quacks,--
these are the last poor fallen and feckless inheritors
of a Knowledge they can never use, but in the service
of Greed. The coming Rebellion is theirs,--Franklin,
and that Lot,-- and Heaven help the rest of us, if
they prevail.'" (M&D, Ch. 50, pp. 487-8)


God's project of Disengagement

"Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of
Israel, the Saviour."  Isaiah 45:15

http://www.bartleby.com/108/23/45.html#S69

The term Deus Absconditus means "hidden God" in Latin
(Isaiah, 45:15 in the Vulgate Bible), and refers to
the view (shared by the Protestant Luther and the
Catholic Pascal) that God had become inaccessible,
hiding himself from the view of sinful humans, and
therefore demanding a challenging existential act of
faith. Predestinarian theology held further that most
people were incapable of perceiving the hidden God,
whose gift of grace permitted the minority of the
"elect" to know him.

http://icg.harvard.edu/~laa72/glossary/deus_absconditus/

http://www.solideogloria.ch/calvin/italiano/deusabsconditus.htm


"As above, so below"

This phrase comes from the beginning of The Emerald
Tablet and embraces the entire system of traditional
and modern magic which was inscribed upon the tablet
in cryptic wording by Hermes Trismegistus. The
significance of this phrase is that it is believed to
hold the key to all mysteries. All systems of magic
are claimed to function by this formula.  "That which
is above is the same as that which is below ...
Macrocosmos is the same as microcosmos. The universe
is the same as God, God is the same as man, man is the
same as the cell, the cell is the same as the atom,
the atom is the same as ... and so on, ad infinitum."

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/a/below_above.html

The most significant part of The Emerald Tablet is
within its opening: "That which is above is like that
which is below and that which is below is like that
which is above, to achieve the wonders of the one
thing." Therefore, "This is the foundation of
astrology and alchemy: that the microcosm of mankind
and the earth is a reflection of the macrocosm of God
and the heavens."

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/emerald_tablet_the.html

"Due to the relation between microcosmos and
macrocosmos, man is influenced by the planets, the
'hieroglyphs of nature'." 

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bph/hermgnos-44.html


"a corruption and disabling"

>From Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977) ...

"The world of modernity, Weber stressed over and over
again, has been deserted by the gods. Man has chased
them away and has rationalized and made calculable and
predictable what in an earlier age had seemed governed
by chance, but also by feeling, passion, and
commitment, by personal appeal and personal fealty, by
grace and by the ethics of charismatic heroes." (pp.
233-4)

http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Weber/WEBERW9.HTML

http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm#Rationalization

>From Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1930, 1958 [1904-5]), Ch. IV, "The
Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism" ...

"The great historic process in the development of
religions, the elimination of magic from the world
which had begun with the old Hebrew prophets and, in
conjunction with Hellenistic scientific thought, had
repudiated all magical means to salvation as
superstition and sin, came here to its logical
conclusion. The genuine Puritan even rejected all
signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried
his nearest and dearest without song or ritual in
order that no superstition, no trust in the effects of
magical and sacramental forces on salvation, should
creep in." (p. 105)

http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm#words

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/world/ethic/pro_eth_4.html


"Franklin, and that Lot"

"Now, all Franklin's moral attitudes are coloured with
utilitarianism. Honesty is useful, because it assures
credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and
that is the reason they are virtues. A logical
deduction from this would be that where, for instance,
the appearance of honesty serves the same purpose,
that would suffice, and an unnecessary surplus of this
virtue would evidently appear to Franklin's eyes as
unproductive waste. And as a matter of fact, the story
in his autobiography of his conversion to those
virtues, or the discussion of the value of a strict
maintenance of the appearance of modesty, the
assiduous belittlement of one's own deserts in order
to gain general recognition later, confirms this
impression. According to Franklin, those virtues, like
all others, are only in so far virtues as they are
actually useful to the individual, and the surrogate
of mere appearance is always sufficient when it
accomplishes the end in view. It is a conclusion which
is inevitable for strict utilitarianism. The
impression of many Germans that the virtues professed
by Americanism are pure hypocrisy seems to have been
confirmed by this striking case. But in fact the
matter is not by any means so simple. Benjamin
Franklin's own character, as it appears in the really
unusual candidness of his autobiography, belies that
suspicion. The circumstance that he ascribes his
recognition of the utility of virtue to a divine
revelation which was intended to lead him in the path
of righteousness, shows that something more than mere
garnishing for purely egocentric motives is involved.

"In fact, the superior good of this ethic, the earning
of more and more money, combined with the strict
avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is
above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not
to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so
purely as an end in itself, that from the point of
view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single
individual, it appears entirely transcendental and
absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making
of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of
his life. Economic acquisition is no longer
subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction
of his material needs. This reversal of what we should
call the natural relationship, so irrational from a
naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a
leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to
all peoples not under capitalistic influence. At the
same time it expresses a type of feeling which is
closely connected with certain religious ideas.... The
earning of money within the modern economic order is,
so long as it is done legally, the result and the
expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling; and
this virtue and proficiency are, as it is now not
difficult to see, the real Alpha and Omega of
Franklin's ethic, as expressed in the passages we have
quoted, as well as in all his works without
exception." 

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/world/ethic/pro_eth_2.html#ben-fra

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