RE: the Invisibles "this is a rescue mission" thing; it got me thinking. The point of that quote and the end of the series is that the two opposing forces at play are actually one and the same. They were stopping an act of self-destruction rather than an invasion or a war. But either side seemed so fundamentally divided that making that initial distinction was easy. When it comes to the heathen (or the general magic) community, and you see a sort of blurry "civil war" sometimes. What then?
2/2:(the word limit for asks is too small). What I’m getting at is that when you enter a place where your “enemy” already looks very similar to you, is it as simple as all that? There’s a sort of uncanny thing that happens where you’re no longer looking at a mirror image, but a shadow; a projection of what you are, only slightly altered and “darker” and impossible to uproot entirely without destroying yourself. Do you, at that point, just accept that your club is, say, somewhat fascist?
The key to bear in mind is that, in almost all cases, fear drives any ideology. Fear of the Other, or Fear of threat to Self/and/or/Those like me.The Invisibles fear the totalitarian world of the Archons, whereas the Outer Church fear the Absolute Uncontrollable Unpredictable Freedom of primordial chaos.What they have in common is Fear of Loss. The ending of the comic is quite clear in a sense - there is no loss, no gain. There is what there always was, and is and will be. This is non-dualism in a sense - there is no Other because All-is-Other. This is not, contrary to what some might say, suggesting that All-is-the-Same.
“I just met the Secret Chiefs of the Invisible Order. They’re as alien as the space between your bloody fingers and I mean that.”
So, within organizations, groups, tribes etc, we must accept that the impulses that give rise to things like racism, homophobia, fascism, misogyny, ableism etc, are pretty much universal.We must accept that fear is what it is to be human, even when we do not recognize it as fear.
If someone takes something from us, without permission, how do we feel? Attacked and or fearful. Even if we retaliate it is because we wish to re-establish that sense of self, or prevent further losses. If someone disagrees with us, why do we seek to correct them?Similarly, the blurry ‘civil war’ occurs because of clashes between group identities and senses of self. When one recognizes the shadow-self which you refer to, as a thing outside oneself, one also must recognize its antecedents within oneself.As an example, there are those in the Heathen and magical subcultures who are fascists, racists etc. The question then, is why is this so? We can, if we choose, simply regard them as horrible people and wish to excise them. That’s one option.Or, we can ask ourselves, strange as it may seem, what we have in common with them. What is it within us, and them, which sings from the same hymn sheet? In terms of Heathenry, it is often the need-desire-feel to be connected to larger ancestry, to establish a continuity between ourselves and others that-were-once-like-us.
The remark that [T]here is no enemy is telling, because what it means is that the enemy is not just apart from us, but is also us. As you’ve said “impossible to uproot without destroying yourself.”The next question to ask is, What is wrong with destroying yourself?
This is a process of self-examination which must be undertaken.
“Brutally shall I teach the gospel of soul-suicide, of contraception, not preservation and procreation.” Anathema of Zos, Austin Osman Spare
None of this is passive acceptance. I am in no way suggesting we should accept or condone homophobia, racism, fascism et al. Merely that we should understand where and how they come to be.We must descend into the underworld of it - to its beginnings and logical conclusion, and face it without flinching. To the Islamophobe, to the anti-Semite, to the racist et al, we must ask What is this for, what is your goal? If it is the destruction of their perceived threat, then how will they know it has been achieved, the fear conquered? How can you be safe? How will you know you are safe?(Asking these questions does not, of course, mean agreement, or that we should aid in manifesting these answers - far from it.)Then we ask the same question of ourselves.
We must ask ourselves, too, what right have I, to exist, both as I am, and also over another? (Hint: No right at all, and yet we still do. This has many hidden implications, powerful and strange, which are worth exploring.)These questions, if asked repeatedly, generate empathy and compassion. Note though, that this does not equate to ‘feeling sorry for’ or ‘accepting’. It does however generate an impetus towards the ‘rescue’ aspect.If we can ease the fundamental suffering of fear of loss, then what happens? Not through palliative platitudes, but by providing the necessary circumstances and situations to ameliorate that suffering, what then?This is not some touchy feely hippy lovefest or escapism. On the contrary, this is hard-nosed pragmatism. Suppose we found a way to answer the needs of those-like-us-but-not-us, so that the structures or racism, homophobia, fascism et al served no psychological purpose any more? Because they clearly do, in some fashion, for some people. Otherwise they would not exist.
To suggest a general solution is to misunderstand the nature of the psyche, the soul, and healing in general. Each situation and person must be treated as individual who is situated in a larger whole. The work is, admittedly, near infinite, but we can see how things like unemployment, social unrest, financial uncertainty, environmental change and increased stress can increase stimuli which leads to more extreme Othering and scapegoating.At root, these are about reinforcing or strengthening boundaries of the self or-ingroup as a protection measure against loss. Imagine then, if we could supply the needs so loss does not matter?This is what initiates have been teaching for millennia, in multiple variants - death is not the end, but that there is a form of existence which is accessed by death when alive because the essence of what we are (whatever that is) is beyond and within life-and-death, not life or death.In an ancestor based culture, even if an individual does not have an individual post-mortem personal existence, nevertheless, they join with the collective Ancestors, upon whose wisdom a culture draws, and is embedded.
If the living and dead are inseparable, indeed if the living depend on the dead for their knowledge and vitality, then the existence of those who can interact with/manipulate/participate with means that the individual is less important as a conception - the ‘I’ becomes more permeable, the ego more fluid. I becomes We. Therefore, individual destruction is less important. Fascism is a twisted version of this in that it externalises the collective as a singular entity, rather than in actuality being the constant interweaving of links between people, objects and entities.A people as collective becomes subservient to state wherein the state must be preserved, whereas I’m speaking of a people that is is aware that as long as there is continuity, preservation occurs. Ways may be lost, or may be changed, but they may be reconstituted by contact with the Ancestors/numinous from which the people first arose. So I suppose my ultimate answer, as pithily as I can make it, is to stick to removing the plank from our eyes before we attend to others. Or as @catvincent puts it: See to your own oxygen mask first.Ultimately, victory is achieved best when you don’t have to fight at all, so master yourself first by what others reflect back to you.
