A Reviewer's Hunch--Wings of Desire--Rilke's Angels--Angels of Lubeck

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

MalignD at aol.com:

>He's not an amateur novelist; which is to say he knows how mine a vein.
>that's what is availlable from the novels. It is not available that he >believes
>in any of it.

no, but occasionally he describes things in terms of Tarot or 
astrology, spiritualism, in a way that shows more than casual study

>"the occult" -- I think I'm using your term, is a ludicrous crock of shit.

that's how I feel about sports, mostly...doesn't prevent a lot of
people from spending a lot of time on it...I refuse to believe
they are all idiots, just because their pursuit doesn't speak to me
...occasionally even I appreciate a sports moment...

If you count mainstream religion, along with all the smaller lodges
and temples and fellowships, it's at least as big a phenomenon as sports.
Of all the words spoken from all those pulpits on any given holy day,
couldn't there be at least a few sensible ones?

>There is no occult knowledge outside the heads of the idiots who believe in >it.  There is not one claim that is objectively verifiable. Name one. But .. >oh right: objective verification is just another value system.

I don't know about Robin, but I'm not about to reject objective
verification.  I'm relieved that virtually all of your ectoplasmic 
emanators have been debunked, for instance.

OTOH, TMers have done pretty good studies showing desirable movements
in blood pressure, alpha waves & so forth during meditation, and
intensification of these effects with practice.

People can definitely be hypnotized.

People can certainly develop powers of imagination and visualization
which prove useful in the external world (Kekule's serpent dream)

Churches and Masonry and Buddhism and so forth -
groups of energetic people who share a system of symbols -
tend to build out a set of artifacts corresponding to them.
Some pretty cool stuff, too, sometimes: mosaics, cathedrals, church music...
and some not so cool stuff - sacrificial rites atop pyramids...