THE THINGS WE FEAR

No human emotion is as potent as fear. Fear is certainly a major part of human civilisation and instinct. Even going back to animist, tribal societies, fear seemed to be fundamental to placating the ‘spirits’ in the ‘pact’, the basis of spiritual understanding, as we know it.
Everything is so huge in the universe, and fear drives us on to become bigger, to define knowledge to overcome fear. Present scepticism of the paranormal can be seen as rational people expressing fear – maybe of the unknown, maybe of the confusion that could follow the fall of a paradigm.

I don’t think we could live without fear.

Have you noticed that the popularity of horror fiction and crazy antics such as bungee jumping seem to increase when the world seems peaceful?
It seems to be a survival instinct; an emotion we need. But the danger comes in fear being manipulated, or in over-reaction. This comes from governments using fear to control us, to an overly active fear that leads to phobias.

Fear can be vanquished – in the heroic act; in human determination to do something.

Interestingly, fear can also be reduced through spiritual enlightenment, especially in the eastern model. But is this removing oneself from ‘human’ society and influence and entering another state?
Maybe if we could truly understand this state, fear would be reduced. But would we be truly human if we did? Maybe it is better to retain our conspiracy theories and phobias, and accept them as the downside of an emotion that is essential to who we are.
Oh dear, that sounds as if I fear not having the ability to be afraid.

© Anthony North, October 2007

This post comes from a comment I made on The Daily Grail.

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Fiction Xtra – THE WARRIOR ON THE HILL – An archaeological mystery.

It was Hyram Zimmerman, pseudo scholar and psychical researcher extraordinaire, who tipped me off. ‘Dirk, boy, I’ve got a great tale for you. Just up your street.’ And when he told me, I had to admit I was intrigued.
I’d always had an interest in local folklore. Although the archaeological establishment hated them, I knew only too well that they were often remembrances of ancient events. And one thing you could guarantee about an ancient event is that it would leave archaeological remains …
… read more …

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CULT SUICIDES

Occasionally the most tragic of events can hit the headlines. When it happens, we all wonder why. But all too often a cult can explode into violence upon itself, the result being mass suicide.
Why does it happen? What social forces are involved in this will towards self-destruction? This essay is an attempt to understand. And we need to begin with a few examples.

ORDER OF THE SOLAR TEMPLE

For instance, on 22 December 1995, sixteen corpses were discovered on a plateau in the French Alps in the shape of a star. This was the second mass suicide of the Order of the Solar Temple, a cult formed by fraudster Joseph di Mambro and homeopath Luc Jouret. The first had been fourteen months earlier, involving infernos in two Swiss chalet complexes, proceeded by the suspicious deaths, by fire, of five members including a young mother and child in Canada.
The Solar Temple was based on a mix of Knights Templar mythology and new age mysticism, with a distinct apocalyptic nature that would lead to a new spiritual existence. But what brought their apocalypse so soon?
It is interesting that Di Mambro had a daughter called Emanuelle, known as a Cosmic Child. However, the child that died in Canada was a boy called Emmanuel. Di Mambro was known to be affronted by this boy being named after the Cosmic Child, branding him the antichrist. Whether out of revenge, or the naming being a signal for Armageddon, the suicides seem to be mixed up with the boy.

HEAVEN’S GATE

Such are the mad reasons for mass suicide. The Higher Source computer cult, better known as Heaven’s Gate, killed themselves over three nights in March 1997 in their ranch near San Diego. Made up of short-haired, zombie-like computer wizards, they went out for a final meal and then helped each other to take vodka and drugs aided by strangulation.
They were led by elderly, white haired Marshall Appplewhite and his wife, known together as Bo and Peep. He had met her in 1975 after she nursed him through mental illness, and they had set up many cults previously.
However, they did not see themselves as dying over those nights. Rather, they were simply shedding their bodies to go to a flying saucer that was hidden in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet, thus surviving the coming end of civilisation.

GREAT WHITE BROTHERHOOD

Another suicide cult of the time was the Great White Brotherhood, a term often used in the Occult, and originally thought to be an ancient, ethereal group of spiritual masters.
However, a Ukranian physicist called Yuri Krivonogov utilised the name when he began a cult in which he and his wife were the incarnations of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
The cult grew and spread into Russia as it was declared that the world would end by mass suicide on 24 November 1993. As the date approached, Yuri went into hiding as some five hundred disciples were taken to prison or hospital after showing signs of
brainwashing.
To prevent the remaining thousands committing mass suicide, Yuri and his wife were found and put in a cell, and some twenty thousand police patrolled the streets of Kiev, where the cult had its centre. They successfully stalled what could have been the largest mass suicide in cult history.

PEOPLE’S TEMPLE

Without doubt the most famous mass suicide was that of the People’s Temple in November 1978 at Jonestown, Guyana. Headed by the Rev Jim Jones, US Congressman Leo Ryan had gone there with journalists to investigate claims that the thousand strong congregation was being held in slavery.
On the fateful morning, whilst travelling to a local airstrip with a handful of members who had decided to leave, Jones’s henchmen gunned them down. Many died, including Ryan. Meanwhile, back at Jamestown, vats of poison were brought out and they killed themselves. Those who refused were gunned down.

JIM JONES

Jones was born in a small farming community in Indiana in 1931. A poor but deep thinking boy, he turned to the Bible at an early age, preaching to passers-by by the age of twelve.
Appalled to discover his father was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, he suffered much abuse by standing up for racial minorities. Gaining a small following, the People’s Temple began with good intentions in a ghetto in Indianapolis.
Determined to set up a socialist community based on the Bible, Jones’s growing power began to corrupt. Moving to California, and eventually Guyana, he became a fake healer and abuser. By the time Jonestown was set up in 1977, he had become a dictator.

THE RIGHT MAN

The Science fiction writer A E Van Vogt would have understood the impulses that drove Jim Jones and other cult gurus. Popularised by the writings of Colin Wilson, Van Vogt had a rather excellent, though unorthodox psychological theory known as the ‘Right Man’.
Having a fascination with authoritarian figures who used savagery to achieve their aims – particularly those involved in death camps and their like – he observed that a similar mentality existed in society as a whole. There are men, he argued, who are driven by a manic need for self-esteem.
Such people have an obsession with being ‘right’ to such an extent that they will never accept that they could ever be wrong, and would use violence to guarantee their rightness, often becoming high dominance individuals.
Such a person becomes the central figure in his life. He is the selfish, narcissistic person, full of love for himself. He cannot grasp any form of real meaning in the world other than his own meaning. However, Van Vogt noted that the Right Man had to be fuelled by a cause. He particularly noted this among some married couples.
Most people will know such a couple. The wife tends to be obedient and forever put down by the husband. He, on the other hand, will often be a violent philanderer, often beating his wife if she steps out of line or questions what he is getting up to.
In such a husband, the wife has become the focus of his self-esteem. The more he puts her down, the greater he feels, and the more powerful he thinks he becomes, the process often leading to the high murder rate of wives.

TOWARDS THE END TIMES

This relationship is directly analogous to the guru-disciple relationship. And in identifying it, we can begin to understand how it is so easy for such cults to end in mass suicide.
For the self-esteem of the Right Man husband is a delusion. Should the wife leave him, his focus of self-esteem deserts him, leaving him aware of what he really is – a vulnerable, insecure person. And this can destroy him.
Such a person heads towards psychosis, becoming an alcoholic, a depressive, or, quite often, suicidal. And this point is the key to the cult that self-destructs.
Joseph di Mambro had no reason to doubt his self-esteem until a cult member had the audacity to name her son Emmanuel. For in doing so she challenged his supernatural status and his insecurities flowed.
Jim Jones never doubted his self-esteem, until Ryan appeared and twenty of his followers were prepared to defect, showing his fallibility. And when the guru collapses, so do the followers.
Just as Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son to God, the followers were prepared to kill themselves too. Especially as for years they had been told that death was not the end, but a transition to a greater existence, as found in the tail of the comet Hale-Bopp.

© Anthony North, October 2007

For more of my posts on cults, click Cult Watch on Blogroll.
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TONY ON BABIES AND OTHER NEWS

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: Middle class babies are planned is remarkable ways … PLUS … the true answer to knife culture. Banish the Scottish vote in England.
POSTED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY – from a real voice of Britain and the world.

MIDDLE CLASS BABIES

There is a higher chance in the UK today of a new middle class baby being born in the autumn. Why is this? Is it because somehow the middle class feel more broody at Christmas? Could it be that cold nights make them more intimate for warmth?
No, afraid not. Nothing so simple. Rather, they have worked out that this means the child will be among the oldest in class when he/she goes to school, thus increasing chances of getting the most out of education.
On the one hand, we could say this is good of them to be thinking about their children so far ahead, but am I alone in finding this relentless middle class need to thrust their children to success from birth rather sickening?

© Anthony North, October 2007

KNIFE CRIME

Knife crime is in the media again in the UK. Stabbings are on the rise, causing a new plague throughout the country. And what is the immediate reaction? Ban knives. So that’s it, then. If people will stab others, make sure no one ever has a knife …
… read more …

BAN THE SCOTS

Tory leader, David Cameron, is calling for Scottish MPs to lose their vote over English matters. Addressing a problem that has been around since Scotland got its own Parliament, why should Scottish MPs be able to vote on English affairs when English MPs cannot vote on Scottish …
… read more …

Have you clicked Diary of a Writer on Blogroll? Meet me, up close and personal.
Inde-Pol

MONEY AND BELIEF

I don’t know whether God exists or not, but this is irrelevant regarding belief. All that is needed is the idea for God to exist. I base this on a simple sociological reality. I ask the question: what would society be like if people believed God existed?
Such a belief shapes everything a Christian does. Hence, everything a Christian does would be as if God existed. As such, everything in a Christian society would be how it would be if He did. So in social terms, a belief leads to a definite reality.

Sceptics would say this is not true.

But they would, wouldn’t they. But more than this, they say society is such, now, that such beliefs do not affect society in this way. Rather, we are rational beings, released from such stupidity. But is this really the case?
The overall western system, today, is not a belief in God, but an economic system that I call ‘super-capitalism’. This system appears to have produced great affluence, giving us the impression that we are rich. But a question:

What would happen if we all had to pay off our debts today?

The only answer is, we couldn’t. We couldn’t do so because super-capitalism is not based on real wealth, but ‘confidence’ in the system. Take away that confidence and there is nothing left.
Like the above appreciation of God, super-capitalism creates a society with nothing at its centre. In effect, it is based on a belief. So when skeptics say that God cannot exist, they must also come to the conclusion that neither does modern affluence.
Rather, it is the greatest confidence trick in history.

© Anthony North, October 2007

Click Tony On, on Blogroll, for my current affairs blog.

IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?

This essay is on Spiritualism, and I doubt if any subject has had so many essays written with the same title. This is because the question is fundamental to the practice. When a medium attempts to contact the dead, she asks a double-edged question.
So IS there anybody there? Is the question a general inquiry as to if anyone has come through yet, or is it more fundamental? Or is it a skeptical inquiry, trying to decide whether there could be anyone there in the first place?

GLADYS LEONARD

A typical medium was Gladys Leonard. When her mother died, Gladys opened her eyes one night and found her standing by the bed. It wasn’t a shock to her, for she had been having heaven-like visions since she was a child.
But it was the final piece of the jig-saw which turned this Lancashire woman into one of Britain’s most famous Spiritualist mediums. Going on to work for forty years with her spirit guide, Feda, her greatest fame came during World War One, when she would contact the war dead.
Amongst those she spoke to was the recently departed Raymond Lodge, son of Society for Psychical Research founder Sir Oliver Lodge. Of course, she was often accused of being a fraud. But despite repeated investigations by private detectives, when she died in 1968, Gladys Leonard’s reputation was intact.

ROOTS OF SPIRITUALISM

Despite claims to the contrary, the medium is the world’s oldest profession. Identified from the earliest known pre-history he, or she, can be identified as the instigator of hysterical tribal ritual, known throughout history as the shaman, witch-doctor or medicine man. However, in the Spiritualist medium, the talent came into its own. But how did Spiritualism begin?
Fundamental to the beginnings of Spiritualism was American clairvoyant Andrew Jackson Davis. During the 1840s he toured America arguing that upon bodily death the spirit remained alive and moved into another existence. Hence, since it was not dead, communication with the living should be possible.

THE FOX SISTERS

Davis set the scene. Then, in 1848, two daughters of a farmer called Fox, from Hydesville, New York State, claimed to have contacted the spirit of a dead pedlar through a code of rappings.
Such spirit contact was not rare, and there is even evidence that this contact was fraudulent. However, showman PT Barnum heard of the case and took the two sisters to New York.
Becoming a sensation, within weeks housewives by the hundred began organising their own sitting room séances, no doubt spurred on by recent controversies that began modern feminism, and Spiritualism had been born.

FRAUDULENT MEDIUMS

Spiritualist mediums have always come in for claims of fraud. Escapologist Harry Houdini dedicated much of his time to attacking Spiritualism. Alternatively, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was an avid believer, even writing a huge history of Spiritualism in 1926.
One sceptical answer to their ability to glean information is ‘cold reading’. Through a series of clever questions and psychological prompting it is argued most clients can be induced to believe that messages can come from the afterlife when infant they have provided the information themselves.
Several mediums were caught cheating. Typical was surgeon’s wife, Mina Crandon, who, as Margery the Medium, turned her American home into a form of psychic circus with regular seances during which physical phenomena would manifest and she would contact the dead through her spirit guide, her deceased brother.
During one seance her ‘brother’ provided his spirit-fingerprint in wax. It turned out to be the print of a previous client.

SPLIT-BRAIN CONCEPT

Is there any physiological phenomena that could account for mediumship – in particular, the voices that are said to manifest in the medium’s head?
We are all prone to a disturbing physiological anomaly known through the ‘split-brain concept’. First identified in the 1930s when surgeons cut the nerve fibres connecting the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain to restrict the electric storm of epilepsy to one half of the brain, it was discovered that the two hemispheres had separate functions, the operation leading to a lack of co-ordination in the patient.
On-going research led to an understanding that the left hemisphere is responsible for logical function, whilst the right hemisphere seems to be the seat of emotion and insight. In the main, we are left brain people, but when emotion or intuition rises to dictate our illogical actions, this is the effect of the right brain.
This effect is most noticeable when we do something wrong and feel guilty. We all know the analogy of the little voice of conscience at the back of the mind. This right brain effect is thought not to be an analogy in particularly fantasy prone people.
Rather, more open to right brain influence, these people are thought to hear a real voice, similar to the voice heard in schizophrenia. However, rather than being perceived as coming from the mind, it is perceived as coming from some outside source.

APPROACHING AN ANSWER?

It is attractive to place this ‘outside’ voice within mediumistic talents. However, in doing so, we face a further possibility. We must return to the practice of cold reading.
It is always assumed that the medium practices cold reading as a blatant fraud, and no doubt in many cases it is. But we must also consider the possibility that, once the ‘outside’ voice is heard in the mind, the medium is genuinely persuaded that the voice is from beyond the grave, and her ability to cold read provides ‘genuine’ information from this same source.
This idea seems to fit into the mentality of many mediums, in that they genuinely believe in the phenomenon, and also have a natural perceptiveness to the moods and problems of the sitter. Indeed, it has often been noted that a good medium is an excellent bereavement counselor. Hence, they would naturally pick up signals as in cold reading.
So we can perhaps conclude that Spiritualism does not really deal with the dead, but anomalies of the human mind. Of course, there is much more to mediumship than this – and I will no doubt be returning to the subject from time to time – but at this stage I think we can say, no, there isn’t really anybody there.

© Anthony North, October 2007

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Find many more mysteries on my Mysteries page, above.

WHY BEYOND?

When I first began to blog in late 2006, I did so initially for a simple reason. I had become fed up of publishers turning me down. Hence, I decided to publish myself and find an audience.
Since then, I’ve met some great friends and blogging has become a way of life for me. However, my initial attempts at blogging seemed to fail. Basically, I started a blog for every subject that interested me.

But no one seemed to be interested in me.

At the beginning of 2007 I realized what the problem was. I was attempting to reach small specialist audiences, when I should really aim for a mass readership. Hence, I conceived the idea for Beyond the Blog.
I see this blog as more than a blog. On the pages, above, I link to scores of essays on all my subjects of interest. Further, on the Blogroll I link to numerous sub-domains and mini-blogs, all within this one blog, which has become a blog AND a website.

As such, I have lots of home pages, where people enter this site.

In this way, I brought all my small specialist audiences to one medium, and by inter-linking different subjects together, I hope I’ve done my bit to bring new subjects to readers who otherwise wouldn’t bother.
Hence, Beyond the Blog is just that – beyond the normal idea of the blog. In this way, the ‘whole’ means influence, especially on search engines. But regardless of the ultimate aim of Beyond the Blog, the one thing this site has taught me is this:
Of all the hopes I have for this site, I’ve realized that I’m now a writer who blogs. And whether I finally get success with publishers or not, I’ll always do this.

© Anthony North, October 2007

Click Tony On, on Blogroll, for my current affairs blog.

TONY ON CHINA MOON AND OTHER NEWS

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: China, phallic symbols and going to the Moon … PLUS … Moore speaks on Blair. When will ‘grown-ups’ realize capitalist con?
POSTED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY – from a real voice of Britain and the world.

CHINA GOES TO THE MOON

China has sent a probe to the Moon. Sent up by a nice big rocket, it will orbit our orb for a year, sending back data as part of a plan to place Chinese spacemen on the Moon within ten years.
Well bravo for them! Just like the west, they have now launched their own huge phallic symbol; and equally like the west, it is being used to rape space in the name of politics. China, too, can now say: look, I’m a big boy.
One day this ridiculous one-upmanship will come to an end, and people will realize that space exploration is not about politics, but the next phase of human evolution. And as a ‘human’ endeavour, that means the species, as one!

© Anthony North, October 2007

THIRTY SOMETHING AND NOT FREE

The UK thirty somethings are increasingly not as free as they had once hoped. Modern living has landed them with high expenses, student loan repayments and ridiculous mortgages …
… read more …

MOORE AND BLAIR

Michael Moore was interviewed on British TV on Wednesday night (ITN – 10.30pm), and advised that Tony Blair was more responsible for the Iraq War than Bush Jr – and I must admit, I tend to agree …
… read more …

Have you clicked Diary of a Writer on Blogroll? Meet me, up close and personal.
Inde-Pol

REFORMATION

The Renaissance and Humanist movement were important milestones on the road to intellectually empowering the middleclasses, and moulded a new European outlook to such an extent that the tide against the Church and Medievalism could no longer be held back. And in 1517 the dam was about to burst.
In this year the priest, Martin Luther, nailed 95 propositions against the sale of indulgences by the Dominican Johann Tetzel to the church door of Wittenberg Castle in Germany.

AFTER THE PROTEST

The reason, in the broader perspective, was as a protest at the increasing interference of the Catholic Church in worldly affairs and the Italian government, leading to a decline in moral standards. Spurred on by Humanism, this was the birth of the Reformation, leading to the creation of a Protest-ant Church separate from Catholicism.
Both the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, reacted strongly against this abomination and Luther was called before the Diet of Worms in 1521, where he was excommunicated.
However, he gained political support from many of the German princes, making the movement too strong to be crushed. Hence, in 1555 the Diet of Augsberg decided that it was up to each German prince to decide which religion would be acceptable to individual principalities.

CALVIN AND CO

The Reformation spread – spurred on by the writings of Jean Calvin – from Germany to Switzerland, Britain (with Henry VIII claiming independence from the pope to divorce his wife), Sweden, the Netherlands and France.
Calvin was a Swiss theologian who set up a strict religious community based on Protestantism, many ideas defined by him. At its heart, Protestantism moved the authority of God from ritual (the main element of Catholic worship), to the words of the Bible. To the Protestant the Bible is the authority above all other forms.
In this ideal, a reader of the Bible can claim greater authority than a priest enacting ritual, thus disclosing the great political coup over Catholicism involved in the movement.

PRESBYTARIANISM

To hammer the point home, Calvin went on to introduce the idea of Presbyterianism, which was to become the ethic of Protestant church management, placing religious governing bodies in the hands of lay-elders.
A Protestant church was to be overseen by a committee at all levels from the local to the national General Synod. These new elders were to be the emerging middleclass. Hence, in the Reformation we see the beginnings of middleclass revolt. However, Protestantism also let something else loose.

REVOLUTION

In all social systems revolt is enacted to move power from the top of the social hierarchy to lower and lower levels. But in gaining power a particular member of a particular class uses this power to express their individuality.
Up to this point in Europe only monarchs, aristocrats and bishops had the power to express individuality within the Church. But in taking the authority of God from ritual to the Bible, it was soon realised that the Bible itself could be interpreted in many ways.
It seems the authority of God did not lie in the words of the Bible, but in the interpretation of the particular leader expressing middleclass power. In other words, the Bible could now be used to express and enforce a particular person’s individuality.

PERSONALITY

As Protestantism advanced, we can see in its ongoing history the rise of a distinct middleclass cult of personality, with particular preachers using the Bible to express individuality.
Hence, in order to further degrade Catholicism’s hold on society, and to put down any expression of individuality in a particular preacher’s flocks, Protestantism became austere and dictatorial, best represented by the Puritans, before moving on to split into scores of different denominations from state Anglicanism to non-conformist, chapel-based denominations such as the Methodists and Baptists.
In each, we see a new Church birthed from the cult of personality of a particular preacher. In this sense, Protestantism was flawed, not having the ability to inspire a nation. It could only fragment a nation into multi-faith existence.
Indeed, when the 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, later attempted to crush the Puritans and reinstate Anglican authority, his attempt failed and fuelled greater outflow of non-conformist movements.

© Anthony North, October 2007

For more posts in this series, click History of Man on Blogroll.
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TAOISM

A recent comment about Taoism has prompted me to write about it. But not as one would expect. Personally, I think there is something profound and as yet unknown about this endemic Chinese religion, but I want to place known western ‘facts’ upon it.
Fundamental to the system are the forces of yin and yang, which form a balance between preservation and destruction. These form ch’i, a force that permeates everything from the body to the land.

Balance is fundamental to the Taoist understanding of everything.

Such a concept allows inclusion and compromise in a way western systems have not yet learnt. Everything is part of a whole and should be cherished. But more than this, the forces permeating the body can be channeled towards cures through acupuncture.
Whether acupuncture actually cures illness is irrelevant to this understanding of Taoism in western terms. The important thing is a believer thinks it works. Hence, even using the placebo effect, a 30% effect is almost guaranteed through the practice.

Forces also permeate the environment.

This is practiced as feng shui. Such forces must not be impeded. Hence, ancient Taoist societies were totally in tune with the environment. Such total balance meant that abundance and proper diet could be almost guaranteed.
Essential to Taoism is the I Ching – a system of divination, which, in reality was a form of questioning the ‘fates’ in regard to future action. In one sense, this is a classic case of therapy, guaranteeing that decisions are correct for the person.
Taoism could never have produced a thrusting, specialized world. But even by western standards, it produced a balanced society that was as one with itself and the environment – something else we have yet to learn.

© Anthony North, October 2007

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Fiction Xtra – www dot saucer – a fantasy science fiction tale

There were many reasons why he was called Puck. The obvious reason was his small, thin stature, over-large eyes and strangely pointed ears. If anyone could be a descendant of fairies – perhaps even a changeling in modern clothes – then it was Puck …
… read more …

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Click Tony On, on Blogroll, for my current affairs blog.

PLATO’S ATLANTIS

One of the most written about mysteries is that of Atlantis. What does it mean? What is it? Where is it? What influence does it have on us? Does it exist in the first place? So many questions, so many ideas.
For this essay I thought I’d go back to source and see if we can learn anything about its conception. And the beginning of the myth takes us back to that great philosopher, Plato, who first wrote about it. But can we find hints in Plato’s life and mind itself?

EARLY LIFE

Being nothing less than the father and instigator of western philosophy, Plato was born in Athens in 428BC to one of the great political families of his time. His actual name was Aristocles, Plato being a nickname which means ‘broad and flat’, referring to his shoulders which he used to great effect as a wrestler.
Indeed, it was thought that Plato would be a great wrestler. But his talent was shown to be inferior and he tried being a poet, but was equally lacking in talent.
Stuck for a profession, Plato began to think about his future. Statesman or philosopher were uppermost in his mind, but once he had heard Socrates speaking, he knew where his future lay; in philosophy – particularly in the ideas of Pythagoras.

PYTHAGORAS AND FORMS

Pythagoras had been an enigmatic figure. On the one hand a philosopher and on the other a mystic who was believed to have performed more than the odd miracle, he is seen today as the instigator of the quasi-religious cult of the Pythagoreans.
Believing that behind the chaotic world of appearance there existed a harmonious world of numbers, he is seen as the father of mathematics.
Plato was fascinated by this harmonious world below the consciousness we appreciate. He developed it into his philosophy of ‘Ideal Forms’. To Plato this fundamental realm was a world of ideas and forms.
Existing in an eternal state of unchanging reality, everything that could be conceived in the conscious world already existed as an idea or form in this other world. Hence, nothing could be invented, merely rediscovered. The true reality was one of images which fed the conscious mind.

FIRST HINT OF ATLANTIS?

We can immediately see here that Plato was more concerned with a world of images and symbols than with the world we experience. And it is attractive to suggest that Atlantis was not a true reality of the conscious world, but a symbol within the abstract inner-world of ideas.
But why would he possibly want to create such an image …

This essay has now moved to Anthony North’s new website. Read more of it here, including his own theories and more data.

© Anthony North, October 2007