$80,000,000 Thursday, Mar 13 2008

At the Aristasia Diaries, Miss Adele Poppy posed everyone some searching questions including this one: If you had $80,000,000 what would be the first 5 things you would do?

Here is Sushurichan’s thoughtful answer:
Such a large sum of money would require careful planning. It could make Aristasia-in-Telluria a much stronger deployment. A lot of it would be spent on making far more people aware of the Motherland and on installations. I am no strategist, but here are things I would think of doing:

1. Make and publicise a full-length fictional kinema powerfully conveying Aristasia and its glory and beauty. One that no true daughter of the motherland could see without realising that this WAS her home.
2. Establish settlements in different parts of the world where Aristasians could live in together in Telluria.
3. Endow several worthy pettes to work full-time for Aristasia instead of needing to work for survival.
4. Establish a real-life College where pettes can learn to be Aristasians and which will be a refuge.
5. Establish businesses that Aristasians can run so that the $80,000,000 will be replenished. At the rate we will be deploying it, it will need to be.

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On Sentimental Religious Art Tuesday, Mar 11 2008

Miss Annya Miralene wrote:

In many Catholic religious pictures and statues, as well as many modern Hindu pictures, we see a sentimentality that is absent from earlier iconographic works. These have been criticised as “sentimental” both by traditionalists who deplore their lack of intellectual content and by modern “realistic” rationalists who dislike “prettiness” and prefer the dark and stark as part of their inverted aesthetic. Once again we see the Law of Tamasic Inversion — both the Sattwic and the Tamasic mentality attack Rajasic sentimentality, one from above and the other from below.

Now clearly the traditionalists are right and the modernists are wrong. But what we must reply to the traditionalists is simply that this is the latter end of Kali Yuga. The majority of people are ruled by sentiments and it is important to direct those sentiments upward rather than downward.

To say that sentimental religious pictures are devoid of intellectuality is true on one level. But one must also remember that it is intellectuality that discriminates, intellectuality that decides whether to direct our sentimentality toward images of Dea or (as almost every modern women’s magazine seems to do) toward images of sexuality and impure thoughts.

In my view, as a modern, sentimental person, I find sentimental religious art attractive. I like to see pictures of my loving Mother looking sweet and beautiful. I have on my shrine a very pretty picture of Sri Lakshmi that even has little bits of glitter. I also have more traditional icons. I understand that some people genuinely do not like the more sentimental pictures for reasons that are traditional or artistic rather than modernist and cynical. They have more sophisticated tastes than I have. That is quite all right.

What should be remembered is that such sentimental images, for those who do appreciate them, serve only good purposes. They are there to direct the heart upwards, toward Dea. In short, they are Good.

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Beauty and Civilization Monday, Mar 10 2008

Modern scholarship, often to its own surprise and consternation, finds itself continually making discoveries that undermine the evolutionist prejudices with which it approaches its task, and confirm again and again the wisdom handed down from the earliest times: that Primordial Maid represented not a lower, but an immeasurably higher state of humanity and that her increasing involvement with the world of matter, the progressive ‘consolidation’ of herself and her environment, while leading to ever greater developments on the horizontal plane — from language to art, from art to cities — was bought at the cost of a steady decline on the highest plane of all: that of pure Intellect and spiritual vision.

But let us recall that in these relatively early times — let us say, the period of maid fully acclimatised on earth in the first Silver-Age cities — we are still speaking of a state of spiritual refinement, of subtlety and beauty almost inconceivable from our position toward the dark end of the historical cycle. The life of maid, as all traditions agree, was much longer than the hundred years or less enjoyed by the people of the Iron Age, and her wisdom, though descended from its primordial pinnacle was yet majestic. Her vision, while now fixed upon ‘things’ rather than the Principle, was far subtler than ours, seeing always, though at an ever lower level, the immaterial essences behind material manifestation. Much of what later ages achieved by material force, she accomplished by subtle means which a later age might call ‘magic’; and the essential harmony of her being with nature as a whole (being at one with the essence behind it) allowed her to live with but minimal “struggle for existence” and great concentration upon the higher things.

What might strike a modern visitor most about life in these early times would be its beauty — especially if she were enabled, as the people of those times were, to see the subtle forms as well as the outward physical shell of such a civilization. Beauty has always been considered primarily a feminine quality, and as the patriarchal age progressed has been more and more relegated to the position of an inessential and trivial part of life: increasingly the first thing to be sacrificed when ’serious’ practical or economic considerations conflicted with it, yet, until very recently, preserved carefully and at times fiercely by the female sex, in her surroundings, her home and her personal appearance.

Plato, so often the spokesman for the traditional consciousness to the early patriarchal West, by no means thought beauty trivial or unimportant. He used to kalon — the Beautiful — as a term for the Absolute, expounding the primordial knowledge that all earthly beauty is such only because it participates in the absolute Beauty of the Divine. Beauty is not, as the modern dogma would have it, a mere subjective product of the human brain, but a universal quality that predates the very existence of earthly humanity.

From Primordial Maid

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The Question of Evil Sunday, Mar 9 2008

Miss Annya Miralene wrote:

The Question of Evil is a decidedly Western question. Not because it does not exist elsewhere, but because it tends elsewhere to be formulated in other terms. The post-classical Western mind has had an increasingly “moral” orientation, tending to formulate questions in moral terms.

Where Christianity speaks of the Problem of Sin, both the Hindu and the Platonist would tend to talk of the Problem of Ignorance. A bad person, essentially, for both traditions, is one who is ill-instructed.

The Filianic strand in Aristasian thealogy identifies Khalha as the personification of evil. Others would identify the separation of beings from Dea, which is manifestation, as the source of what is termed “evil”, while again others would point out that evil things that happen are the results of werde (karma). None of these explanations contradicts the others - they are all complementary perspectives. All would also agree with St. Augustine that evil is privatio boni - that is a void or negative: the absence of the Good.

That the principle of evil lies in matter might seem to be an extension of the idea that “evil” is inherent in manifestation itself, but it is a rather unsubtle one, and can lead to dualism of the Manichaean sort. Actually there is an ambiguity in manifestation that can be seen in much orthodox thought (cf. the commentaries on the Angelic Hymn). Manifestation is both delusion and mercy - a conundrum that cannot be resolved wholly in discursive terms (which themselves belong to manifestation) but only from the point of Enlightenment beyond manifestation.

This is only a very brief canter over a highly complex subject, but I hope it gives food for thought.

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Life Theatre Friday, Mar 7 2008

Life Theatre is the key to much of what happens in Aristasia. Life Theatre, as the name implies, means acting out roles - not for the benefit of an audience but as part of our own lives. In Life Theatre we explore the different people we could be in Aristasia. The same girl may play a blonde and a brunette, a schoolmistress and a schoolgirl, an eastern noblemaid full of ancient dignity and courtesy and a Vintesse Jazz Baby or Quirinelle Jive Bunny.

Life Theatre helps us both to realise our own inner possibilities and populate Aristasia with many different characters. Personae are not merely the products of casual roleplay. Some may be adopted merely for a single appearance, but others may take on a life of their own, becoming characters in their own right.

The Aristasian novel Children of the Void is the locus classicus for Life Theatre. In this book there are some 22 characters but only seven physical bodies. The whole action of the book consists of the interplay between these characters.

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Hail Holy Mother Thursday, Mar 6 2008

What is the right way for we who love Our Lady? Who understand the value of tradition and the wrongfulness of the Pit, and yet cannot cease to love the Mother? Outside the West there are countless millions who know Her and love Her. In the West even the most traditional are holding to tradition only by the slenderest thread.

They say that in this Kali Yuga, chanting the name of Dea is the best way. Some say one should be initiated to do so, but I have heard that there are certain mantras that everyone may use. One for those who love the mother is

OM SRI MATRE NAMAH

This means “OM Hail Holy Mother”. OM is the primordial syllable that contains all things. It goes as near as we can go to the root of sacred language - to the unheard Word from whence all words proceed.

So let us set up a picture or statue to Her. Let us light candles and incense to Her. Let us chant:

OM SRI MATRE NAMAH

Let us simply offer prayers and incense to the Mother and chant Her mantra, and in our very simple way (for we are very humble children in a very low and foolish age) are we not one with the Ladies of Jerusalem who offered honey-cakes to the Queen of Heaven? With the Collyridians who offered cakes or bread to Her? With Her ancient worshippers through the millennia that are not written down? With the millions who love Her still in the East?

All of us may be united in the love of Dea, the pure and perfect heart of our tradition, which is the oldest tradition of all.

OM SRI MATRE NAMAH

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The Legend of the White Buffalo Calf Maid Wednesday, Mar 5 2008

Mengxia Yu adapted this story from a traditional Tellurian legend:

One day, two huntresses were out hunting for food in the Black Hills. They saw a white buffalo calf approaching them, and as they drew nearer it transformed into a beautiful maiden.

One of the huntresses had bad thoughts in her mind, so the maiden told her to step forward. The huntress did, and a black cloud descended over her body. When it dissipated, the huntress’s body had become withered and old.

The other huntress knelt and prayed to Dea. When she did this, the maiden told her to return to her people to tell them: “In four days, I shall bring you a sacred object.”

The second huntress did just as she was told. She immediately returned and gathered the elders, leaders, and all the maids in a circle. She told them what she had seen, and what the maiden had instructed her to do.

As promised, the maiden returned four days later. A cloud descended from the sky, and a white buffalo calf stepped from the cloud. The white buffalo calf stood up and transformed into the beautiful young maiden carrying the sacred object, the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, in her hands. She entered the circle of the maids, singing a sacred song.

The maiden remained for four days, teaching the maids. She taught them seven sacred ceremonies: The purification ceremony, the child naming ceremony, the healing ceremony, the adoption ceremony, the marriage ceremony, the vision quest, and the sun-dance ceremony. She taught them songs and the traditional ways. She taught them that as long as they remembered these ways, took care of the land, and served Dea, their people would never die, but always live.

When she had finished teaching the maids, she told them that one day she would return for the White Buffalo Calf Pipe. She gave them another gift, a prophecy: The birth of a white buffalo calf would be a sign that she would soon return. When she returned, she would purify the world, bringing back spiritual harmony and balance.

She departed the way she came, transforming into a white buffalo calf that stepped into a cloud which rose into the sky.

The birth of every white buffalo is a sign of Dea’s support for maidenkind against the Forces of Darkness. She is with us in these times of great danger.

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Jnana - Knowledge and Beauty Tuesday, Mar 4 2008

One of the more important Sanskrit words is jnana. Jnana means literally knowledge, and specifically the Supreme Knowledge: that which delivers from avidya (ignorance). Therefore pure jnana is nothing other than Realisation itself. Normally the term is used in such phrases as jnana marga (the Path of Knowledge) or jnana yoga (the yoga of knowledge — which is normally equivalent to the Path of Knowledge). These terms differentiate the way of Knowledge from the ways of Love (bhakti marga) and of (ritual) action (karma marga).

The root of the word is a fundamental Indo-European one, kn or gn, which gives us the English knowledge as well as the Greek gnosis. It also forms the basis of the Germanic word kennen, to know, and of course the English/Scots form, ken, and related words such as cunning and canny. Thence it is a short step from knowledge to ability. To say that one can do a thing is originally to say that one knows how to do it. So this fundamental word encompasses all knowledge and ability from the highest to the most everyday.

Interesting also is the fact that the root is connected with the idea of beauty. Cunning is used dialectically to mean “beautiful” as is quaint, another form of the word. Here we are conceptually rooted in the essential connexion between the Absolute, Realisation and primordial Beauty (Plato’s to kalon).

What is most interesting, however, is that the same root also gives us some fundamental words related to femininity, such as queen and a now-obscene term for the female genitalia. The Sanskrit word for woman is the related jani and the Greek is gunos (which gives us our gynaecology, etc.)

From Jnana and Femininity

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What is Myth? Monday, Mar 3 2008

Sushuri Novaryana wrote:

Some members of a Western Hindu group recently raised objections to the teaching of Hindu sacred stories as “myths”. This was presumably because the word “myth” in modern Tellurian terminology is often used as a synonym for “something untrue” - truth being here defined as correspondence to material or factual realities.

Sri Ananda Coomaraswamy, on the other hand, begins his essay “The Vedanta and Western Tradition” with the words: “There have been teachers such as Orpheus, Hermes, Buddha, Lao-tzu and Christ, the historicity of whose human existence is doubtful and to whom may be accorded the higher dignity of mythical reality.”

No doubt this was intentionally provocative to his Western readers. Its aim is to challenge them to consider an important truth. Myths are not mere factual inveracities. To quote from The Feminine Universe:

“We may say that history tells of events that might or might not have happened, while myth tells of ‘events’ (or rather transcendent Realities couched in the form of events) that cannot not be.”

A pupil recently asked me “But why do we need to be told things in the form of myths? Why don’t traditions come right out and say what they mean?”

Now this question really brings us to the crux of the whole question, and to the problem of modern (i.e. Rajasic) rationalism. The question firstly confuses myth with allegory, or parable. An allegory is a story which tells us - in narrative and parabolic form - things that could just as easily have been stated by discursive explication. It has its uses and has been used by great teachers, including those mentioned by Sri Coomaraswamy, but it is something quite different from myth.

Allegories and parables are of human creation. Myths are not. Allegories and parables put into story form things that can be paraphrased in “plainer” words. Myths tell of things that cannot be paraphrased. Things that are not prehensible to discursive reason.

The reason that the modern world finds this so difficult to understand is because of its underlying doctrine of rationalism. When one criticises rationalism, people sometimes suppose that one is speaking against reason. Quite the contrary. Reason is of the utmost importance, and we can do little without it. But the doctrine of rationalism goes much further than this. It states - or assumes that only those things that can be grasped by the reason exist. That anything we can know must be possible to be stated in discursive words. Hence the assumption that if myths tell us something, we should be able to “come right out and say” that something.

Myths and Archetypes are, as Plato taught, and as every tradition teaches, pointers toward the Truth that lies beyond the sensible world: and even such a statement as that risks being undervalued by the modern mind. Until we are realised beings, until we reach final Enlightenment, Myths and Archetypes are the closest approach we have to Truth. And even when we are Enlightened we shall not cast aside those Myths: we shall see them in their true Reality.

Thus, when patriarchal religions return to the Vision of the Mother in the precise forms in which She has always manifested Herself (for example, when Mary is hailed by the title Queen of Heaven - the very name against which Jeremiah inveighed against the Hebrew women for honouring with prayer and ritual), we are seeing the inexorable return of names and forms that are in the very fabric not only of our consciousness, but of the cosmos itself: and ultimately are the name and form of She from Whom the cosmos proceeds and to Whom it will return in the fullness of time.

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Many Devotions Sunday, Mar 2 2008

In Aristasia Pura, one will find many devotions. One will find temples to Sai Raya, the supreme Spiritual Sun, to the Divine Love, known in many places as Sai Sushuri, to the Divine Wisdom, known as Sai Mati. To the pure and consuming Fire of the Spirit, known as Sai Annya, to Dea as the Great Ruler of the Cosmos and the Sacred Harmony of being, known as Sai Thamë. One will find maids devoted to the Path of Pure Love and others to the Path of Intellect and contemplation. Others to the path of ritual and works. One will find whole peoples devoted primarily to the Sacrificial Daughter and others who seem only to know the Mother.

Now none of these are “different religions” in the Western sense, or even opposing sects. They are simply different Ways.

Do they all agree on anything? Yes. They all agree that there is one supreme Spirit, our Mother, who is everywhere called Dea (or Dia). And furthermore — and this is important — they disagree (in the Western way) on nothing. No one disputes that the other Ways are Ways. No one “disbelieves” in another’s view of Dea.

The concept of “religion” in the Western sense comes closest to being realised in Western Aristasia Pura where the worship of the Mother in some places and of the Mother and Daughter in others (the latter being the closest Aristasian parallel to Christianity — though the superficial similarities are in some ways deceptive) takes place in “churches” organised with some similarity to those of Western Tellurian religions. Even here, though, the exclusivism of Tellurian religion is unknown. The most dedicated follower is aware that hers is one Way among others (even if she considers it the Greatest Way).

From The ‘Religion’ of Aristasia

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