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Brideshead Revisited: Initiatic and
Entheogenic Themes
What is
the relationship between Joyce and egodeath?
What is the potential for Joyce studies being on-topic in this
discussion group? I haven't studied
Joyce.
>Ulysses
... like many great works of art ... gets at the cosmic Nothing, the Ayn Soph
at the heart of everything -- I literally had a crushing kind of
"mini-ego-death" experience toward the end of reading it and
alternated between being elated & depressed for days.
>Have
you seen this potential in art -- to evoke altered states?
Alex Gray
covers that subject.
When I'm
pulled away from books and made to watch a movie, sometimes when I return to
the books afterwards, I'm in an altered, stimulated mental-association space
for about 20 minutes.
>As I noted in an earlier post
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/2846 --
>-----Original Message-----
>From: jamesjomeara [mailto:jamesjomeara~at~yahoo.com]
>Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 5:49 PM
>To: egodeath~at~yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [egodeath] Re: "Flexible pattern perception"
>Simon Whitechapel has written of the possible involvement of Evelyn Waugh in black magic and Crowleyism.
>The pudgy little reactionary had many unsuspected depths. For example, he anticipates Michael Hoffman's distinction between enlightenment and moral behavior, when, responding to a woman who asked why such a faithful Catholic acted like such an ass: "Madame, imagine how bad I would be without my religion."
>Also, Auberon Waugh, the son, was quite public in his support of latterday Crowleyite Genesis P-Orridge during latter's persecution in the UK.
>Here, at the conclusion of Brideshead Revisited (being run as a marathon by the Trio cable channel this weekend) we find his version of Hoffman's candy-bar wrapper that's a message from God/semi-delusion of reference:
>"Something quite remote from anything the builders intended, has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame-- a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones."
>The whole romantic novel mechanism of BR: Sebastian, sodomy, alcoholism, Anthony Blanche ("I'll introduce you to Cocteau" = opium), adultery, etc. is designed by God to bring Charles Ryder and Lord Marchmain "back to the faith of my fathers." All are puppets ("He seems a perfect poppet," says Julia about Charle's annoying father; perfect = Cathar perfecti?) to serve the enlightenment of the pre-destined saved.
>Is there entheogenic significance to a "small red flame"? The "old stones"?
>The "deplorable design" we learned at the begining is specifically Pre-Raphaelite; the Marchmains convert to Catholicism like many aesthetes, and add a PR chapel; allusion to drugs and decadence? ("Stay away from Anglo-Catholics," Ryder is warned at the begining; "they are all sodomites with deplorable accents." Note repetition of adjective to tie this in. Sodomy = Buggery = Gnosticism (from Bulgar, Boromil, etc.)
>Note the rather unmotivated reference to Jerusalem. (The other Flyte family members, we just learned, are in various parts of Palestine. Sure.) "Jerusalem or Acre": Allusion to the Templars and their secrets? We've just been told that occupying soldiers have beheaded a statue. The head of Bathometh, which the Templars worshiped? Breaking open the head?
>The repeated mention of soldiers, stones and tombs irresistably calls to mind Mithras (the God reborn from the rock, later adapted by Xtians as the rock tomb, whose stone is rolled away, "as I found it this morning").
======= end of James' original post ==============
>>this is the overall theme of block universe determinism, which Charles articulates in his final vision.
Transcript/scan/photo?
>>Charles and Sebastian meet when the latter, drunk, stumbles up to Charles' ground floor window and vomits into the room.
Vomiting indicates entheogenic nausea.
>>he is one of those Greeks who can't hold their wine, as scholars tell us in explaining why wine was mixed down with water.
This crock and balderdash is found on the Web, this assumed reason why water had to be added; in fact what it was was double-mixed wine: first mix visionary plants into wine as we know it, then mix water into that mixture. It's really water mixed with mixed wine.
>>There follow a series of "incidents" and "unfortunate occurrences" involving Sebastian becoming wildly drunk, and his family's efforts to "control" him
The vulgar, nonmetaphysical loss of control in alcohol inebriation, due to mere disinhibition, is a metaphor for the more profound entheogenic metaphysical loss of control.
>>"Oh no, Charles. One can have no idea of how he must suffer, to be maimed as he is, no dignity, no power of will."
>>The initiate does not learn a doctrine but suffers an experience, the loss of will, of dignity [kingship].
>>the narrator (Charles today) notes that now,after his experience of timeless determinism at the end of the book, when Brideshead is "revisited" (time is a space-like dimension, and all places can be revisited
>>experiences the timeless determinism of the block universe, and the narrator of the book, Charles writing down all these things, including the experience, as a book, Brideshead Revisited. The latter is presumably the ego now identified with the God's eye perspective.
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