If you haven’t yet, I suggest exploring the writings of Anton Szandor LaVey and Peter H. Gilmore (The Church of Satan, https://churchofsatan.com, https://mobile.twitter.com/ChurchOfSatan). I think you’ll find very similar perspectives on the psychological power of rituals, etc.
I myself have a bit of the opposite problem: Enough is proven or patently obvious (when observing the world around me) about the psychological effects that I should believe in some, yet my brain steadfastly refuses to do so beyond verbal acknowledgement, e.g. the preceding “should”. In a similar vein I’ve never felt awe or any similar quasi-religious emotions (e.g. when entering a cahedral, or seeing art), the closest I get is a strong giddyness when seeing how a mathematical proof will work out or a complicated story might resolve. I presume these are a consequence of my being on the autistic spectrum.
Thank you kind sir for answering and sharing your experience.
I’m only vaguely familiar with satanism and all the form it can take, I assumed it was about bringing the human back at the center of the Universe “as a God” at the center of its own experience, dismiss him from its function and raise the human to a realistic and powerful place : We’re not Gods but we’re not a nothing, and we have strengh. I did not know that my claims about a “rational symbolic magic” could find followers here, i’ll take a look !
Regarding your disappointment and desillusion of what’s real I can relate somehow, most of the time reality can appear boring when you realize there is no unicorn, no telepathy, no quantum therapy of vibration (Damn my head hurts just saying these words together) and no attraction laws. At this point we can conclude that we know things and that we don’t know other things but it’s just a matter of time, and it can be pretty boring.
I suggest you consider two (three) points :
-The inner beauty of what’s already there. I’m in the middle of a heat wave here in France and butterflies are everywhere, go grab one (don’t hurt him) and just consider it for a short period of time : Try to grasp the amount of complexity of it, the billions of billions of atoms that compose it, the millions of year of evolution that leads to it. These same atoms that compose this little moth, try to think about (you can’t actually but try to create an idea of it) the travel this atoms made, from the core of a star to maybe the liver of Napoleon and then the cigar of Churchill, then try to picture yourself, your scale in front of the scales of the universe, Time, Space, Lenght Etc… And all of it is here in your hand.
this won’t bring you a religious feeling but maybe something like a spiritual one, a vertigo and a strange feeling that you are dimensionless, a point on a line and that everythings unravel around you, and that you can’t actually grab any of this, because a point can’t reach his arms much further than the point itself.
-The strange nature of what we don’t know. I just gave up on psychology for a simple reason, Every question is basically the same at the end of the “why” string. Every question if you question it as long as you can will end in a space when there’s no word to describe things. There are still a lot uncanny abysses, think about what sleeps behind the door of consciousness, is it an illusion your brains simulate or is there something here we still can’t grasp, think about what waits behind the big bang or at the dawn of life itself.
You seem to like math, think a bit about the Number and the Logic door, what we consider to be the bottom of math, what is it ? Why is this the bottom ? Because it is obvious ? Logic is obvious ? tautology.
There’s another vertigo i can suggest. I have the sense that we have moved a lot on these questions since the dawn of humanity but that we can dig as long as we want there is still more to dig (kinda looks like Aquinas’ argument)
-Finally, just consider you, your fellow humans and other living things being at a center (and not the center) of these two worlds, and here i’ll let you do the job.
This is for me, somewhat of a spirituality in itself, and all these things makes me look at the world in a lot of different ways. Entering a Cathedral I don’t think God I think about all the humans that have been in there, that have worked in there, about the centuries of symbols that show up to you here on the walls (Maybe this is thinking about God who knows). And after all i remind this story of a king who asked for perfect happiness, the magus give him a simple ring, but on the inside of it was an inscription : This too, will pass.
When i think about it i realize I could think all day about what “pass” can mean here, And this I love, This I contemplate… And this is close to magic to me.
Asperger is a strange thing really, I think we all have our wonders, The Autsim spectrum allows you to dig in your wonders till some depths neurotypic people won’t even see but unfortunatly sometimes it closes some doors too yes… Maybe some wonders will stay mysterious to you forever, like maybe music, but in the end as a psycho student and a philosophical jester I believe we all have a wonder in common and this the ontology… And we find new ways to ask the question everyday.
If you haven’t yet, I suggest exploring the writings of Anton Szandor LaVey and Peter H. Gilmore (The Church of Satan, https://churchofsatan.com, https://mobile.twitter.com/ChurchOfSatan). I think you’ll find very similar perspectives on the psychological power of rituals, etc.
I myself have a bit of the opposite problem: Enough is proven or patently obvious (when observing the world around me) about the psychological effects that I should believe in some, yet my brain steadfastly refuses to do so beyond verbal acknowledgement, e.g. the preceding “should”. In a similar vein I’ve never felt awe or any similar quasi-religious emotions (e.g. when entering a cahedral, or seeing art), the closest I get is a strong giddyness when seeing how a mathematical proof will work out or a complicated story might resolve. I presume these are a consequence of my being on the autistic spectrum.
Thank you kind sir for answering and sharing your experience.
I’m only vaguely familiar with satanism and all the form it can take, I assumed it was about bringing the human back at the center of the Universe “as a God” at the center of its own experience, dismiss him from its function and raise the human to a realistic and powerful place : We’re not Gods but we’re not a nothing, and we have strengh. I did not know that my claims about a “rational symbolic magic” could find followers here, i’ll take a look !
Regarding your disappointment and desillusion of what’s real I can relate somehow, most of the time reality can appear boring when you realize there is no unicorn, no telepathy, no quantum therapy of vibration (Damn my head hurts just saying these words together) and no attraction laws. At this point we can conclude that we know things and that we don’t know other things but it’s just a matter of time, and it can be pretty boring.
I suggest you consider two (three) points :
-The inner beauty of what’s already there. I’m in the middle of a heat wave here in France and butterflies are everywhere, go grab one (don’t hurt him) and just consider it for a short period of time : Try to grasp the amount of complexity of it, the billions of billions of atoms that compose it, the millions of year of evolution that leads to it. These same atoms that compose this little moth, try to think about (you can’t actually but try to create an idea of it) the travel this atoms made, from the core of a star to maybe the liver of Napoleon and then the cigar of Churchill, then try to picture yourself, your scale in front of the scales of the universe, Time, Space, Lenght Etc… And all of it is here in your hand.
this won’t bring you a religious feeling but maybe something like a spiritual one, a vertigo and a strange feeling that you are dimensionless, a point on a line and that everythings unravel around you, and that you can’t actually grab any of this, because a point can’t reach his arms much further than the point itself.
-The strange nature of what we don’t know. I just gave up on psychology for a simple reason, Every question is basically the same at the end of the “why” string. Every question if you question it as long as you can will end in a space when there’s no word to describe things. There are still a lot uncanny abysses, think about what sleeps behind the door of consciousness, is it an illusion your brains simulate or is there something here we still can’t grasp, think about what waits behind the big bang or at the dawn of life itself.
You seem to like math, think a bit about the Number and the Logic door, what we consider to be the bottom of math, what is it ? Why is this the bottom ? Because it is obvious ? Logic is obvious ? tautology.
There’s another vertigo i can suggest. I have the sense that we have moved a lot on these questions since the dawn of humanity but that we can dig as long as we want there is still more to dig (kinda looks like Aquinas’ argument)
-Finally, just consider you, your fellow humans and other living things being at a center (and not the center) of these two worlds, and here i’ll let you do the job.
This is for me, somewhat of a spirituality in itself, and all these things makes me look at the world in a lot of different ways. Entering a Cathedral I don’t think God I think about all the humans that have been in there, that have worked in there, about the centuries of symbols that show up to you here on the walls (Maybe this is thinking about God who knows). And after all i remind this story of a king who asked for perfect happiness, the magus give him a simple ring, but on the inside of it was an inscription : This too, will pass.
When i think about it i realize I could think all day about what “pass” can mean here, And this I love, This I contemplate… And this is close to magic to me.
Asperger is a strange thing really, I think we all have our wonders, The Autsim spectrum allows you to dig in your wonders till some depths neurotypic people won’t even see but unfortunatly sometimes it closes some doors too yes… Maybe some wonders will stay mysterious to you forever, like maybe music, but in the end as a psycho student and a philosophical jester I believe we all have a wonder in common and this the ontology… And we find new ways to ask the question everyday.
Thank you again for sharing ! This means a lot.