The Theophany of Place (A Post-Athiest Celebration)

Aside from having some Piscean-age issues, I will offer these suggestions...

I will say that this is not a "dissertation" nor is it a "denunciation," rather it is a celebration of an essential pagan exuberance in place, in the awareness of place.

It is an awareness of place that Cosmopolitain Christianism (evident from Alexander's concept of "world as Alexandria" onward) has attempted to eradicate any place for the sake of it's ideal: one place: the endless city. The adoption of christianity by the Roman empire meant nothing less than the corruption of the Christ image-- the face of Christ, the countanance, became the cold mask of Christ over the seething cynicism, the real-politik of the empire of Cesar. Further attempts to protestantize the problem, including all forms of Marxism and Communism take Christianity to it's logical conclusion: athiestic communitarianism. Where we are now deals with a world exacted upon to the brink of exhaustion/and cataclysmic extinction.

1. like I said, the age of Pisces is the astrological age of Christ, and it's attendant dangerous sentimentalism that leads to brutality. You got it right, it's the age of Aquarius (funny to think that water is becoming more and more precious, along with information: clean, clear and free)

2. I find dogmatic atheism tedious, particularly if it denies a sense of sacred on this planet, and in this place. It's more or less the same old saw on the "death of god." That's what christianity is all about. God dies, but it resurrected in charity towards others and community. That's what good old Marxism expounds: death of God, driving of life-force back to and through community.

3. Gods: pluralism: because there is a rather important leap away from "mono-" anything, including "mono-reality" or "mono-theism." The best experiences are full of diversity, why should God have to be simply one? Certainly it's problematic to say the least investigating Judeo-Christianity: it's fragmented all over the place: god and the devil and so on. So, many gods, enough said.

4. While we talk of spirituality, we neglect the place. Sense of place is critically important: it is a sign of hubris, arrogance, that we simply take the place we live in for granted: we regard it as simply space that is used, has utensile value: this to me is an abomination. The abomination of looking only at our world in terms of "use value" slates those who hold this premise to the rubbish heap of history, the sooner the better.

5. De-anthropomorpizing God, we find that the divine is many times more visible, and apparent through non-human perspectives.

6. It's about hearing and listening. It's about hearing and listening to the voices that aren't human in this world. We human beings talk the loudest, like the most stupid people at a party, we scream and shout.

7. Atheism is the logical extreme of Xtianity. (It might be interesting to consult Nietzsche's writings on "Western Nihilism" on this topic. These are entirely to the point. If you have any doubts as to Nietzsche's profound contributions, please read Walter Kaufman's biography and review) (W. Kaufman is a secular humanist, which is also a bit of a laugh for me, but he certainly reads Nietzsche in a humane light, and that I am in agreement with) (btw my cat is the most humane person in my house). It ("Western Nihilism" a la Nietzsche) points to an enervation of the symbolic structure, such that we are "stuck" in the secular world, the world of breeding and production of a human race on the brink of self-destruction through over-population. James Hillman is worthy to note in this link to his lecture on "the flight of the gods"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFkkQ9eq8qw

8. I am suggesting there is something beyond Xtian-Athiesm (which has done nothing but increase our making human beings and reason an unconscious divinity to the point of self-extermination).

9. What is beyond Athiesm? -The theophany of place. Oh, yes, in some ways it brings us full circle to polytheism, or pantheism. I really think that the holy presence is right in front of us, but that we have become blind. We need to look at the places we live in as part of an incredible artwork capable of being self-sustaining if we learn how to curb our numbers in time.

10. Theophany of place has something different to it: it is neither strictly embedded with the "country bumpkins" in their rigid beliefs, nor is it entirely a constituent of "rootless cosmopolitanism." Embedded culture in primitive community is essentially tribalism: it is the root of racism. This needs to stop.

Secular humanism alone de-sacralizes space: it becomes a matter of "capital gain." "Capital gain" as such is only good so long as you are a good thief and you can stab your brother, sister, lover in the back to get the gain (listen to Richard Thompson's "Put it there Pal". I don't think we need more treacherous back-stabbing thieves in this world, really, do you?)

Rather the theophany of place asks after the beauty of a given place: it asks after Downtown Los Angeles, and Skid Row, full of trash (sort of the opposite of the words "Hail Mary, full of grace"): where has the beauty gone? What can be done for it to return? -- IT'S ALSO FEMININE: we have created a masculine, transcendent sky god to project the problems of incest fantasy out into the universe: god has to be transcendent, it's what good dads do: they die off, they get out of the way and let the screaming horde of younger brats through. The allowing of feminine energy, Shekina, to inform place through our sense of "beauty" is perhaps one of the most important shifts. You say, "no accounting for taste," one man's beauty is another man's ugliness? Three Guidelines:

i) get it out of the box: boxes and grid patterns of our cities, "squaring things away" and ironing them out shows how human beings can mistake their rather limited concepts for the incredible "wiggly" (as Alan Watts calls it) reality (particularly the brains in our own heads-- wiggly):

Alan Watts: Conversation with Myself.

ii) keep it clean: waste papers, dirty diapers, used condoms, cigarette butts, empty cigarette packs, empty packages of candy are ugly. they need to be picked up and disposed of. Cleanliness IS next to godliness, but not sterility: allow "i" to inform cleanliness with DIVERSITY of life-forms

To think in terms of the theophany of place addresses the "trash-factor" spewing out of western culture, verifying the Native American curse upon European men: "they will die suffocating on their own excrement." Is there trash on your street? If so, pick it up, or forfeit your pride. Trash is the unconscious symbolic legacy of Western Culture (read Marcuse's One Dimensional Man, "a society dedicated to the production, distribution and consumption of waste"): it's time we took responsibility: when our fellow human beings dump trash, think on their inner despair that made them do this and pick it up. The last thing we need is to call other human beings "trash"-- as we know that is the stepping stone to genocide.

iii) Tao Te Ching: when all the world regards some thing as beautiful, this in itself is an ugliness. To think beauty means to think outside the box and to think deeply what has not been thought. This takes letting go of beauty as a stereotype, but entering into a natural, cultivated, elegant beauty in a non-strident manner.