Thursday, April 5, 2007

Thomas Lowe Taylor -- Where no claims are put forward, no resistances arise

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At times one has to deal with hidden enemies, intangible influences that slink into dark corners and from this hiding affect people by suggestion. In instances like this, it is necessary to trace these things back to the most secret recesses, in order to determine the nature of the influences to be dealt with. This is the task of the priests; removing the influences is the task of the magicians. The very anonymity of such plotting requires an especially vigorous and indefatigable effort, but this is well worth while. For when such elusive influences are brought into the light and branded, they lose their power over people. (I Ching, Wilhelm note)

In certain transactions with the immaterial, more energy is released than is actually used in the process itself; with nomadic attentiveness i'm thinking that duration of attention on one thing isn't so much what matters as duration of heightened attention in and of itself. this may be a means of getting at the decay you have mentioned. Think of writing a poem, how attention flits and leaps, is everything but fixed. That might be a good part of what we're working towards and with. i think that's it about the void. it's not void. it's full, with a radically different order of Being. sometimes something comes across, something "immaterial", almost out of reach, but not quite out of reach. what do we do with that? consciousness, somehow, experience, the sensorium, has access to that. that rattles the cage a bit. ephemerality as opposed to ethereality, yes, that's exactly what i'm talking about. palpable presence passing. no angel flakes floating in the lovely ether