[MD] philosophers stone

[MarshaV]

At 02:11 PM 8/20/2008, you wrote:
>[Marsha]
>Wow!  I admit to making it a quick read, but that introduction made 
>me dizzy.  Seems there was a lot of flip-flopping.  Was there a SOM 
>thread running through the last 2,500 years?  I didn't get that there was.
>
>[Arlo]
>I don't think Hall's vision was on pinpointing an SOM demarcation. 
>That said, I think there is quite a lot of overlap between the time 
>Hall points to as "losing" its esoteric center and the time Pirsig 
>points to as the onset of an SOM paradigm. Certainly Hall's 
>sympathies are with the very Sophists that Pirsig also champions, 
>and as a self-professed "Neo-Platonist" he distances himself from 
>the Aristotelian school. "Briefly described, Neo-Platonism is a 
>philosophic code which conceives every physical or concrete body of 
>doctrine to be merely the shell of a spiritual verity which may be 
>discovered through meditation and certain exercises of a mystic 
>nature." (Hall). I'd contend that that "spiritual verity" is Quality 
>itself, by the way.
>
>As I said, I think the demise of esoteric understandings coincides 
>with the arrival of a dominant SOM paradigm (and also the erosion of 
>any mythological frames). They may not be the same thing, of course, 
>and one may very well be the "cause" of the other, or they could 
>both be symptomatic of a larger malady. Hall may support the idea 
>that the loss of esoteric, mystic thinking left people with two 
>polar choices; unquestioned "faith" or purely logical reason. 
>Western Philosophy championed the latter, while Western Religion 
>championed the former, and the science and religion we see in 
>America today evidence this schism.
>
>By the way, as a quick note... Hall wrote this entire book at the 
>age of 27! And it was written in 1928. Hall also founded the 
>Philosophic Research Society (http://prs.org/).

Hi Arlo,

Well, the introduction did make my head spin.  It was a whirlwind 
tour.  There still seems to be, in "acceptable social circles", only 
those two choices: religious faith or science.  Anything that strays 
too far from one or the other gets labeled "new age" and dismissed as 
gibberish.  Not fair, and I hope it continues to be artfully ignored.

I'm sure Hall is brilliant, but I've read too many books on this 
subject already.  Soon will be the time of Mabon, the second 
harvest.  It's at the autumn equinox.  Creating a day's celebration 
for this event is as esoteric as I want to get these days.  But I 
will make it something special.

Marsha




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Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
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