moon_custafer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer) wrote2012-11-06 12:32 am
moon_custafer) wrote2012-11-06 12:32 am
Lying Awake Again
I've got to stop reading interesting stuff before bedtime.
So, via a thread about neo-paganism on Ravelry's 'Lazy, Stupid and Godless*' forum, I wandered onto the Liminal Nation forum site. So far it's a pretty sane occult site, in that the members tend towards "well of course none of this is quantifiable, but on a subjective level here's what's worked for me."
Except now I'm all thinky and correlating Julian of Norwich with Harvey, and wondering whether the saint/shaman/superhero narrative of initiation by trauma/ordeal (or Wound as Superpower, as I've heard handful_ofdust call it) is really the narrative I'm most familiar with, or the just the one that resonates with me.
I hope it's not a case of being drawn towards the suffering-is-good-for-you end of things; I think it's more that I agree with the implication that anyone who *wants* to be a saint/shaman/superhero is probably someone who shouldn't be one. The numinous finds you, and God help you if it does; for one thing it's more responsibility than power, and for another it works by taking you apart and reassembling you. Or perhaps it gets in after other circumstances have taken you apart, and while you're trying to reassemble yourself, I'm not sure.
There's a novel that's a kind of alternate take on this: I can never recall the title, and looked it up just now to find that coincidentally it's called Lying Awake. I say it's an alternate take, in that the protagonist's ordeal was, initially, the twenty-odd years she spent in a convent waiting for enlightenment to strike; and at the end of the novel, her decision to have the brain tumour removed that turned out to be the cause of her long-hoped-for religious fervor; because she concludes that both faith and intellectual honesty demand she reject false visions and go back to the daily grind of waiting in the dark for a real one. Even if it takes the rest of her life.
(Wasn't around for the name's origin, but they usually call themselves LSG, while admitting they're generally neither L nor S, and not necessarily G.)
So, via a thread about neo-paganism on Ravelry's 'Lazy, Stupid and Godless*' forum, I wandered onto the Liminal Nation forum site. So far it's a pretty sane occult site, in that the members tend towards "well of course none of this is quantifiable, but on a subjective level here's what's worked for me."
Except now I'm all thinky and correlating Julian of Norwich with Harvey, and wondering whether the saint/shaman/superhero narrative of initiation by trauma/ordeal (or Wound as Superpower, as I've heard handful_ofdust call it) is really the narrative I'm most familiar with, or the just the one that resonates with me.
I hope it's not a case of being drawn towards the suffering-is-good-for-you end of things; I think it's more that I agree with the implication that anyone who *wants* to be a saint/shaman/superhero is probably someone who shouldn't be one. The numinous finds you, and God help you if it does; for one thing it's more responsibility than power, and for another it works by taking you apart and reassembling you. Or perhaps it gets in after other circumstances have taken you apart, and while you're trying to reassemble yourself, I'm not sure.
There's a novel that's a kind of alternate take on this: I can never recall the title, and looked it up just now to find that coincidentally it's called Lying Awake. I say it's an alternate take, in that the protagonist's ordeal was, initially, the twenty-odd years she spent in a convent waiting for enlightenment to strike; and at the end of the novel, her decision to have the brain tumour removed that turned out to be the cause of her long-hoped-for religious fervor; because she concludes that both faith and intellectual honesty demand she reject false visions and go back to the daily grind of waiting in the dark for a real one. Even if it takes the rest of her life.
(Wasn't around for the name's origin, but they usually call themselves LSG, while admitting they're generally neither L nor S, and not necessarily G.)
no subject
There actually was a major cult whose theology derived from a brian tumour. Elizabeth Claire Prophet's Church Universal Triumphant was a mainstay of the occult economy for over a decade. Her visions foretold an imminent apocalypse and her minions were ready in the (literal) trenches outside the desert compound headquarters of C.U.T.: armed to the teeth. They bought tonnes of advertising in all of the occult journals, such as the Fortean Times, for an incredible array of tapes and books things like "The Lost years of Jesus" and "How to develop your E.S.P.". Eventually though, she started having visions 7/24 and started to loose motor control. After the operation to remove the tumour though, she didn't see the Satanic Armies anymore and pretty much retired.
Only a few more hours till the blue horror of dawn....
no subject
Sort of like how I felt about Machiavelli's The Mandrake -- it was written at the dawn of door-slamming bedroom farce, so the whole elaborate scheme to get the woman in bed goes off as originally planned by the protagonist. It's so weird.
no subject
In other news, insomnia really does suck, doesn't it? I don't know if I want to go back to bed, or just make coffee and get on with it.