“I AM, I cried” – now to be found actively at wizard of eutopia

Thanks, Neil Diamond… Remember that strange passionate song in the ?60’s? …’and no one heard at all, not even the chair’… sounds like much of my blogging in the scattered outposts of my blogging empire 🙂

I tried to portray my own ‘chair’ at that time in a painting. It’s hard for a young human to have a clear coherent vision of themselves and the world they have found themselves in…

Note the chair is a swivelchair – a sign of things to come? Indirection and vacillation? It still isn’t ‘finished’, either…

For those who wish to follow the uncertain pilgrimage, my swivelchair is now at:

www.wizardofeutopia.com

I’ll probably keep this free blog up just for the history, but if you would be so kind, take a cybersecond  and click on the link above and go to wizardofeutopia where you can click follow and get the latest and greatest progress a little to one side of the 21st Century from the Great Anachronism of Kaiwaka, Peter Harris, aka the Wizard of Eutopia. Much of it will now be news of his latest foray, back to his future of 1970, when he went to art school – for six weeks. There will be sculpture, at least – oh yes, there will be sculpture… I just hope I will have the Time to create a magnum opus here at Cafe Eutopia…

Seagull Cafe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

something that makes concrete the yearning for Avalon and real magic in life and a new Camelot, a new Eden, and a Brave New World (in a good way – not another Dystopia, please! They’re so easy to do, and such a dead end, and have been done to death! – pardon the pun) summed up in an image of the Possible Human, Sheman, or Overman. What will that look like? I’m not sure. But the David of Michaelangelo inspires me that it is possible to make manifest a particular conception of human qualities. Also, in a less sublime form but heroic in scale, the statue of Liberty.

Intrigued? I hope so! It is the Age of surfeit, yet there is a terrible poverty of spirit as we consume ever more low-sustenance web gruel on Facebook and Twitter. It seems everyone is saying ‘I am’ online, but then the vast majority go on to tell us – what they had for breakfast! When we could be talking about the possible human, and the possible society which this new world makes reachable, if we could only believe it together and so talk and work towards it. To quote Nietzsche, ‘Astronomers of the Ideal, where are you?’

The link again:

www.wizardofeutopia.com

“If you’re so smart, how come you ain’t rich?”

Happy New Year – wo it’s what year?? 2013!?

Sooo… After a particularly rocky patch and some strong reproaches from a spouse who shall remain nameless here, I’ve been thinking about my various lamentable failures to break through to ‘success’,  ie having financial abundance, without sacrificing the ‘soul’ of what i am about.

my breakthrough is this – a big realisation it is too! – Like many natural ‘intellectuals‘, I have been labouring under a fatal assumption all my life: the assumption that folk are more or less like me in how they see the world, in this one key respect: the degree to which they live in and are aware of the intellectual level. i have seen (or finally faced)  how little they actually perceive of that, and how much they see things through the social lense, which is all about celebrity, praise/blame, socially accepted norms and beliefs, patterns of fashion and tradition old and new. So, my efforts have almost always been aimed at a an (almost) non-existent group i thought was the majority of people, and any market success I had was (almost) purely accidental. like poor old charles peirce, marketing a correspondence course on practical symbolic logic for everyman.

i am now re-adjusting my approach. (Better late in life than never!)

They call me (some of them!) a ‘wizard‘. but what (myths aside) IS a wizard? A wizard (in my book),  is one who sees many things clearly, through the lense of the ‘third eye’ aka holistic intellect (not just the left-brain analysing mind), and then uses the insights thus obtained to do seeming magic within a social order (or disorder), bringing new clarity vision and success to that social order, or at least a better mousetrap or silicon chip, without necessarily ever being understood on his own accustomed level (which is definitely the intellectual/abstract/universal/mystical). It is a lonely life, being perceived, even recognised, on the social plane yet essentially unseen in the level that really matters most to him, where few walk and even fewer meet in the flesh.

So, one year older and maybe 10 years sadder, I see more clearly closer to home, how I appear to the world, and this does open up better alternatives for interacting, and therefore ‘succeeding’.

And my first little project right now is to write a simple report for an ebook, probably called

“If You’re So Smart, How Come You Ain’t Rich?”

– a money manual strictly for the Nerds

Epistle the first.

What gives me the qualifications to write such a guide? Well, I’ve been smart for 58 and a half years now, and I still ain’t rich. But I have given the grey matter a lot of thought lately, and i put two and two together, and it came out forebrain.

Terrible cerebral puns aside, I have tried a lot of things, on the concrete and the abstract levels, and so have a lot of – Data. and it HAS been coming together lately.

So, watch this space. A link will appear to a new little free ebook which could change your life if you act on it. but only if you’re a nerd, compulsive thinker, pundit, intellectual, perennial student, scholar or suchlike.

If you’re too smart for your own good, i think I can help you.

(And me too, even, especially if i charge for further installments…)

[newsflash next morning: fellow-nerds: it’s here already! Very short, very punchy, very free: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/270995

In other news: i really AM editing volume IV of the epic (Blue Knight, thank you!), but this little message is burning in me and i am going to practice the ‘One Sitting, One Problem, One Solution’ info product formula i read at product creation secrets by jason fladlien, former rapper, hare krishna monk, etc, turned internet marketer. So it won’t take long, brother Knight, and the Pillars of Aeden shall be edited. Then if my friend Ian’s advice is good, it’s time for the wizard to go to LA and hawk the epic and the Defence of the True West  to hollywood for the film rights. And film the hawking adventure anyway. Crazy idea but why not.  Applying my revelation: think intellectual (write a eutopian epic, for example) but act social (wear a pointy hat, make a spectacle, entertain people even, for example, by pretending to be what you are…

and hey, what a liberating thought that is – to give myself permission to pretend to be what I am! It kind of short-circuits the self-censoring parts of the brain…

My brothers, this new lawtable i set over you: pretend to be what ye truly are! (apologies to Nietzsche)

Mad Hatters Tea Party has begun

Well life has a way of happening while I’m making other plans. Yesterday the dismay at our MAD council’s 56% rates rise for cafe eutopia and the ark here (and lots of other homes and businesses in the kaipara) came to a head. When desperate, we sometimes come to the point where we just say NO! and then we try and work out how to do NO. or just begin it.

After four years of the ‘forever recession’, this was a bridge too far. I’ve gone ‘MAD’. I am starting the Mad Hatters Tea party in kaiwaka to protest the mad bureaucrats and their illegal and immoral shenanigans and passing on the fallout to us, the poorest (? i’m told) district in New Zealand, the bill in the biggest rates rise I’ve ever been subjected to in my long history of fiscal struggles.

So, in the name of TRUTH and FREEDOM, we are witholding rates until the 13 demands of the first ones to strike (in Mangawhai, a richer enclave of our district)  are met. The TRUTH must be found and told, and lies exposed. The FREEDOM to say no to corrupt and unjust representatives. This is one small part of the defense of the true west: to say no to corruption in our democracies.

And we are going to have some fun doing it!

I plan with friend Ian’s help to set up our 7 metre tent in front of the Ark, and paint on it

MAD HATTERS TEA PARTY HQ 

Saying no to mad rates

[now done – 8:07 pm]

and folk can drop in for tea, and we will sell or give out top hats and read Hafiz and some other mad divine poets, and rejoice in life and the sanity of sunshine and rain and gardens and friendship, and mock at the grownup madness of the local tinpot bureaucrats who schemed and raked off and lied and… you know, the usual.

The price of Liberty and sanity is eternal vigilance.

There will be dancing in the streets of Kaiwaka before this is over.

[now added: the blog of the mad hatters tea party is now up: http://madhattersteapartykaipara.wordpress.com/ ]

Oh, and meanwhile, thanks to all you who have been to the smashwords site and downloaded my FREE ebook of volume one of my eutopian epic apples of aeden. pass the word on! It too is part of the return to sanity and the Balance.

The putting out of the shingle – at last! I did it. AND wrote a book.

Well today I just finished the painful process of hauling my stuff out into the open. I actually put out that sign tonight when i was sure enough I would have the advertised free book.

I actually wrote that book TODAY! Alright I did quote myself a bit – put in some of my blog posts. But it is 74 pages long, A6 (‘passport’) format, and it is my long-postponed How to be a Wizard. Here is the cover as of last night:

 

 

and the back:

Now I’d better wind down for the night… Exciting in a sober sort of way – this is to be a free book for people who call in and meet me at the ark or customers at Cafe Eutopia, a kind of extended ‘business card’ for all I do, especially the School of wisdom and wizardry I guess. Oh and the flow rainbow and Personal Process Profiling service…

So, the best thing in writing the book today i got into what it IS to me to be a ‘wizard’, a believer in the Transcendental Order and synchronicity,  and a would-be Defender of the True West. That is priceless. of course, especially when one has not gone there for a while due to immersion in mechanical details world weariness and a little too much coffee and not enough meditating and exercise….

 

 

The Labyrinth and the Compass

English: AM 28 8vo, known as Codex runicus, a vellum manuscript from c. 1300 containing one of the oldest and best preserved texts of the Scanian law (Skånske lov), written entirely in runes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been carving a staff for Gary Cook for his upcoming opening night for the documentary on faery folk in New Zealand, ‘Voices from the Forest’. (See www.faeryrealms.com for news of this.) The task has been challenging, as not only is there the labyrinth of aesthetics to negotiate, and materials etc, but also the labyrinth of values, mythology and symbols. I have been learning a bit about the Norse runes,

Runes (Photo credit: spratmackrel)

and the mythology behind them. Odin was an heroic seeker of the runes, impaling himself on the World Tree Yggdrasil for nine days and nights in order to get the runes. It struck me after reading the Women’s encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets that indeed he didn’t invent them, but ‘won’ them (by imitating the travail of women in childbirth, traditionally 9 days being the time of a mother’s seclusion, the article tells us). So, wheels within wheels… Did he supplant the goddess, wrongly? Or does every artist have to sacrifice ‘himself to himself’ as Odin says of himself on the Tree? In order to win for himself the runes of true art? Or should we emulate Bragi, who became the greatest bard of all by letting Idunn his wife carve the runes on his tongue?

An 1886 depiction of the indigenous Norse God Odin by Georg von Rosen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, we can’t blindly trust any hero to tell us what to do, no matter if they are the ‘All-father’ Odin himself. We must bring our moral compass as well as an open mind, to all our encounters with gods and goddesses, no less than with ‘ordinary’ mortals. We are in a labyrinth – it is called Life on Earth. That’s an exciting adventure, the stuff of page-turning epics. We need that compass, though.

I think this is what makes a good Story: it has the twists and turns and blind alleys of a labyrinth, but also the author is showing the heroes and heroines using their moral compasses, trying to steer a straight course morally while dealing with the chaos of the unfolding multi-dimensional labyrinth of life.

I was up to here this morning in my (re)reading of Lord of the Rings. Gandalf at the last debate says:

“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

So, we have it from the greatest wizard of all Middle Earth: the defense of the True West is a matter of weeding the fields set before us. And we need that moral compass, to tell what may be weed and what be wheat – or some other good plant!

 

Calling all wizards: It is NOT too late to defend the True West!

I still haven’t hung out my ‘shingle’ at the front of the Story Ark where I reside and create and plan unrandom acts of creativity, but something has come up, calling me to action.

My son Daniel sent me links to a certain noble but pessimistic thinker and prolific blogger, who has written a major paper critiquing what he calls  the  current Western secular ‘religion’ – ‘PC’ (political correctness). In that paper:

Thought Prison: the fundamental nature of Political Correctness

Bruce G Charlton

University of Buckingham Press, Buckingham, MK18 1EG, UK, 2011
ISBN: 798 0 9563953 45

which he posted here: http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.nz/ he quite rightly attacks PC as being anti-rational and destructive of the West –  but he goes on to say its errors are intrinsic to Westernness itself. I strongly disagree! PC  is a sickness of the reason, a reason turned (irrationally) against itself. But to me the true foundation of the West – what makes it so strong in spite of all its parasites and viruses – is  acknowledgement of the transcendental reality of Truth – and Ethics. And dammit, Beauty. And yes, of course, Love.

But there were false steps in the course of its pursuit of Truth, and ugly ideas took root, bad arguments were believed,  that were undermining of this acknowledgement. Perverse philosophers did deviously use the tools of the reason to undermine reason. Scepticism and relativism did become entrenched, and became the dominant paradigm. And the social forces, still all too powerful in the universities and other bastions of intellectual culture, entrenched this scepticism and relativism. They became the fashion, no less! The Spirit of the Age.

We are at a time of tidal change where we are reaping the results of this undermining of Reason – but does this mean the tide cannot be turned? NO! Why? because it is not inevitable like the brute forces of physics. It is a tide of human minds all tuned to certain false ideas – ideas which were created by us and can be just as easily revised by us, or refuted. The human tide of ideas that could destroy the West is definitely flowing; but WE CAN turn it  back. We are part of it, and our ideas can spread, if they are worthy and carry the power of truth.

But I was about to quote Bruce Charlton’s paper, lest I be accused of misrepresenting him:

“By secularizing knowledge, by creating The University – by making philosophy autonomous of the Church (instead of having learning institutionally focused in monasteries) the West eventually made political correctness – which is now everywhere and inescapable.

And PC is the West’s Nemesis, because the West cannot decisively overturn PC without overturning that which made it The West.

The West cannot overcome PC without ceasing to be The West.

Yet, if this overturning of PC does not happen, then the West will itself be subverted by PC.

In other words, The West is built upon error: its strength is also its weakness; its power is also that which is self-destroying; even as The West built its great structures it was simultaneously gnawing at their foundations.

*

Here is the double-bind:

To be anti–PC is to be anti-The West (always in tendency, albeit not by intention)

Yet at the same time, to be pro–PC is to be anti-The West (always in tendency, and also by intention)

And/ So/ But The West never was sustainable.

*

Looking back, The West was a blip on the graph of history – albeit a thousand year ‘blip’! –with a hundreds year long, gradual up-tick and the rapid decades long collapse looming ever-closer.

Just so soon as The West began to implement its assumptions towards completion (which is political correctness), just so soon The West began actively (as well as passively) to destroy itself.”

What? ‘The West cannot overcome PC without ceasing to be The West‘?  No! By BEING TRUE to our heritage of clear and fearless RATIONAL INQUIRY we can overcome the sickness, which is at root a sickness of ideas. Who said the arguments of relativism and physicalism are irrefutable? When were they truly proved? How could they have been, when they are inherently, logically, self-contradictory? ‘Dear me, what do they teach them in these schools?’ (Professor Kirk, Chronicles of Narnia).

‘How shall a man judge what to do in such times?’

‘As he ever has judged,’ said Aragorn. ‘Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among elves and Dwarves and another among men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his won house.’

So, calling all wizards in the tradition of Gandalf the Grey: become what you are, servants of the True West and ‘Numenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and ever will be.’ (- Faramir, in the wonderful chapter ‘The Window on the West’ in The Two Towers.)

Cast off the grey rainments of doubt, throw down the Balrog of fear, and become what you are,  white riders of the True West!

Which all leads me to think, we need those Schools which teach the true foundations. If they can be founded physically, all to the good, but even if virtual – they are needed! My Schoolofwisdomandwizardry.com is, in intention at least,  such a place.

PS: I haven’t addressed a major, major issue in all this: the vexed question of whether we need a religious underpinning in order to be the True West, or be good – many would say we do, including Bruce Charlton, who is I gather a Christian. Or he would presumably say that the good things the West has enjoyed have come from its association with the tradition and beliefs of Christianity. I can’t agree. I think an acknowledgement of the transcendental Truth and Ethics and the Good, IS enough: all else falls into place if we honour these. We can benefit from open-minded study of any sacred texts, or any secular ones too, but the evidence for any one religion having the monopoly on the Truth does not seem at all convincing to me.  This doesn’t make me a relativist, of course: They take the irrational step of saying all religions and teachings are EQUAL – ie equally meaningless, at bottom – they say there is NO truth of the matter. I say all religions, like all scientific theories, are better or worse – more (or less!) valuable GUESSES at the truth of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

 This doesn’t make me a sceptic, because although the complete theories are guesses, some truths ARE self-evident. The ones about logic and ethics. We cannot build a complete irrefutable theory of everything on these truths, I guess, but we can build a glorious and wise civilisation on them.

That possible civilisation is what I call the True West.

Unabashed ENTHUSIASM! for Brendon Burchard and The Charge

I’ve been undercover for a while now, uploading people’s ebooks, printing a few books – and absorbing the ten ‘charges’ in this book from someone I consider a kind of modern-day ‘wizard’.

Why did I go with Brendon’s work rather than any of the other 100’s of self-help and human potential programmes? Mainly – almost entirely – because I SAW the man on several of his free videos, and he is so ‘charged’ himself, so caring and ‘present’ as he urges us all to be, that I was inspired – that, and the content made sense. But really it’s mainly about ‘the vibe of the thing’ – and do we not need the vibe and the charge in our whole being as much as the right ideas in our minds? I say this as one who believes in the power of ideas to change everything… I know that without the ‘fire in the belly’ the fire in the head will die down and leave the ashes of cynicism.

so, i got the free hardback he was offering and that helped too. the physical presence of a book. Anyway, this is his picture-promo he asked his subscribers to post wherever they like. Whoever gets 50 likes for it gets to go to a free live seminar, so…:)

From The Charge by Brendon Burchard http://www.TheChargeBook.com

So, go there, see if the unabashed enthusiasm of young Brendon doesnt do something for/to you. If not, find someone who is on your planet, as it were, and let THEM inspire you. I feel the biggest challenge we face almost, is the overwhelm and the ‘seen-it-all’ attitude which leads to resignation and passivity while all around us the world goes slowly downhill. We need to shake off the slumber and wake up, and be whatever kind of charged human we can naturally be, and help turn around the slow decline of the West. At the very least, to create our own little ‘bubble’ of energised positive creative living, for us and our families and friends.

And when we’ve begun that and got enthused at the results, maybe we will also feel the urge to go out and make a dent in the greater world somehow. For me, the latest manifestation of that urge is my vision of FLOWFUNDER – investing in the Flow. If you don’t like Brendon, for whatever reason, try Flowfunder – here’s an idea that could change the way the world invests and creates. www.flowfunder.com I don’t know the next steps from here, but with enthusiasm I know they will appear. Any comments welcome.

Naming the Rose, manning the walls

I just spent an hour watching a talk by Greg Habstritt, from his website. In gratitude I wrote this comment there:

Greg, great! I am about to start something new, a school of wisdom and creative wizardry. Thinking of names, had been focussing on the what and how, suddenly now you fill me with a new emotion, yet of course familiar in other contexts – the emotion of my WHY. I am now yearning to communicate my WHY in the very foundational stuff – if possible, in the name itself. And like you, to attract people who give a damn, kindred spirits. Thank you – from my heart! – and i rarely say that 🙂

here it is:

http://www.simplewealth.com/2012/04/27/creating-a-movement-selling-hearts-not-minds/

Long, and yes it does have a business focus, but it applies to any cause or enterprise, and WILL warm your heart in the deepest WHY level..

So now I want to go away and go deep into the Why cave of my heart and bring out, if not THE name for the School, at least a list of the things that I yearn for it to be and do in the world.

What could we not make this world if we all knew our true mainspring and deepest passion, owned it fearlessly, felt it and  – communicated it? We would at least ourselves be truly alive, truly connected with people who – give a damn. Wow! Now that’s a novel thought!

What for a start, before going into the cave, can I say I care about most in this School idea?

– I care about the highest human potential and the ‘Possible Human’.  ‘O brave new world, that has such people in it!’ creating and loving and overcoming…

– I care about the unfolding and actualising of the possible humans.

– I care about the renaissance this would bring about.

– I care about the best in our culture – the ‘True West’ – and restoring the vision of what it is, and the potential contained in it never yet truly realised except in brief glimmerings.

– I care about its defense against the ideas, addictions, follies and forces that are undermining it as we speak.

– I care about the terrible, terrible waste that ignorance of our magical human potential is causing – the suicides of our young men who have their lives ahead of them and yet see nothing to live for, no hope or meaning. Gallipoli was nothing to this. They are not being killed by bullets or shells or poison gas, but by the poison of the decadent worldview of the present West, the relativism, ‘postmodernism’, consumerism and materialism. As the leader of  the atom bomb project said after the first blast, ‘The physicists have known sin’.  But way before that, the philosophers had known sin. And now the people, having absorbed their ideas by osmosis, are perishing in the Wasteland. (Now it is time to do penance, to start rebuilding the foundations, repairing the walls, and calling for people to man them. The West may be falling. Long live the True West!)

– I want to take some of those young men (and women!) who were falling – or jumping – off the edge of our world, and turn them into ‘wizards’ – those who know their true creative powers and have a vision of the meaning of the earth.

Do you get stirred by any of this? make contact! Let’s start this school, this movement! Or, if you just want what I am speaking of, come and be a student! Email me, comment here, let me know you exist! Oh, and if you’d like some fiction to inspires with this vision, and at all like my style or ideas, do get my Apples of Aeden volume one for only 99 cents on kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Guardian-Apples-Aeden-ebook/dp/B003FMUXPM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1335600380&sr=1-1

and if you like it, write a review/comment on amazon, and rate it with some stars. At the moment it is one of the best-kept secrets in the entire kindle cosmos.

If you didn’t get stirred by MY vision, what is it that does have that power to move you? Go, do that.

 

 

 

 

The Long-Awaited School of Wisdom and Wizardry

As promised in the last post, I will now jot down what i have glimpsed so far of the ‘once and future’ school of the perennial wisdom.

I was walking in Albert park by the university while raewyn did her psychology seminar. It is a mythic place, with great trees and a fountain in the middle. And lots of potential wizards walking and talking in it and sitting on the grass. Poppy the doglet loves it too. (Note to self: make sure it isn’t highly ‘illegal’ to walk doglet in said park.) I was intending to read ebook on ebook publishing, on my phone (how cool is that? Smartphones are like libraries too). But the trees seemed to trigger the inner conversation about the school. That and the flashcards Rae was talking about for concept learning in autistic children. We are all autistic, sleepwalking through life, part or nearly all of the time. To awaken, we need to see our life (and all life) as a limited whole, like a tree, with a beginning a growth flourishing and fruiting, and a death.  So, i got that the school can be simple. it can be like what it teaches: that life is a tree. So the school and the curriculum is a sign of itself, displayed fractally as a tree of process. But wait, said my higher self, there’s more! I saw how the tree of life Staff, the vertical axis of all humans, made in the image of the tree of life, gives us the two remaining pieces, added to the Five Aspects of all process, of a simple Diagram of  Everything:

1 THE STAFF  The vertical axis, trunk of the Tree of Life,  rests in the Earth, the Immanent actual divine unfolding. The Universe. Gaia.

2-6 THE ‘TREE OF LIFE’ ROUND TABLE  (and Game, aka the Wheel of Wisdom). The five aspects of the unfolding entity (ourselves, societies, all life) grow from and within it, and are of course part of it. the roots go into the Earth (Love and receptivity), the branches form the beautiful framework (Beauty, novelty), the leaves diversify and articulate the potential of the tree (truth, logic and planning), the fruit (Freedom, action, output, fulfillment) is the output of the tree and its reproduction and defense against extinction; and finally the Fifth Element is the sum of all these four dynamic phases – the status quo, growing and thriving in balance.

7 The staff, at its ‘crown’, links the tree with the Sky, the infinite Continuum of Possibility, possibility space. And that itself is contained within the Absolute Infinite (Cantor’s phrase) of the Neccessary Reality, which is logical and ethical truth. (As Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus, ‘Logic is transcendental… Ethics is transcendental.)

The curriculum simply traces these seven aspects of Reality, and can be drawn as a simple diagram of a staff and a table of five sectors. Then each sector and level can be explored in depth, as suits the individual. The Red individual will focus on the Red phase, the Green on the Green, and so on. Thus there will be five main Houses in the school.

LOVE: Blue House.

BEAUTY: Green House.

TRUTH: Yellow House.

FREEDOM: Red House

THE BALANCE: Purple House.

The other two, EARTH and SKY, I see as serving a minority:

Earth for the true empaths/poets/intuitives of the immanent divine, Gaia, the Goddess.

Sky for the natural mystics, the visionaries and prophets.

But all these must know and experiance that we are ALL needed, the Tree of Life needs all seven. That is why the school is a Wisdom school – it is about the Balance, all present and in right order, so that it actually works as life is meant to work, unfolding powerfully and creatively, not at war with itself, but synergising at all times in a constant flow of creation, love and beauty.

If such a Tree is to be demonstrated at this time of threatening chaos and the downfall of the West, it will surely be a School. A tree that the birds of the air and can shelter in and build their nests and weather the storm. And carry the seeds to the four corners of the Earth. Perhaps then there will be a new vision of civilisation, and the True West may return – or emerge from the ashes of the false. We have never yet really seen a true Renaissance. As C.S.Lewis says in That Hideous Strength (Christian but respectful of much pagan wisdom too i feel, and well worth reading), all lands are ‘haunted’ by their true potential natures. In the case of Britain, he calls that haunting ‘Logres‘. It almost broke through at the time of Arthur and Camelot (in his story), and when it does break through in any land, then Spring will have come at last…

If you are moved by this vision of the school, contact me! or comment here. Or come to the Story Ark and see me. Also, see my epic which has a lot of the vision in it, including (as I see clearly now!) the model of the school. In the Apples of Aeden it is called the hidden faery refuge and school of Urak Tara. The ebook of Volume one, the Girl and the Guardian, is now only 99 cents at the Kindle store: http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Guardian-Apples-Aeden-ebook/dp/B003FMUXPM/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

As to the How of it, at the WOW  gathering I had a great lesson from young Adam, who expounded the Why What Who When Where and How sequence. (and challenged me to state my Why and What there and then. It was Be a real wizard, know the wonders of it all and my own place in it,  and Teach others to be the wizards of their own lives…)

Note that the How comes last, and is not reachable at first. We have to go through the other stages first… I have got my Why and What, I think. And the Who in a way – ME! But there have to be others, of course! And I don’t know Who you are – yet.  As I say, if you want to go to this School, or help build it, or just follow it, help name it, donate books, whatever, do get in touch! For a start, subscribe to this blog. I will start another one for the School when I know what to call it… So meanwhile, this is where to come! (Now it is the 8th of May, and happily I have a name AND a logo.  And a website: Eutopian School of Wisdom and Wizardry http://www.schoolofwisdomandwizardry.com

here is the logo:

and my PJH ‘stamp’ for good measure

Peter Harris    wizardgifts.wordpress.com.

The need for personal manifestos and a collective “wisdom mindmap”

This post is based on one i put on the WOW! website just now.

An idea struck me today as I answered an email from my son who is taking a fundamentalist position about a contentious family issue over his gay cousin banned from the christian grandparent’s 90th birthday celebration. I said,

“…let’s say it’s not written in stone or a priori self-evident that one set of laws carved in stone (and there are many, as you know!) is completely reliable and true. Then we need to question, dont we? IF there was no other form of reasoning than to deductively explore consequences of premises fixed by irreversible cultural trends, then we would indeed be stuck.

But there is: charles peirce showed there are three kinds of reasoning. the other two are induction and abduction(or ‘retroduction‘, or hypothesis-formation). It seems clear to me the only way to reliably approach truth in our beliefs is to form hypotheses and test them, including by deductive logic, to explore their consequences and see if there’s an absurdity, an abhorrence  or a conflict with observation of any kind.

…what is hard about fundamentalism is it does protect certain combinations of morality and ethics, so to let it go or challenge it does invite a fear reaction. But there is a sane, wise and godly alternative to fundamentalist acceptance of a set of laws written in stone thousands of years ago. What is it called? That’s one of the problems. All the labels are problematic. It’s not liberalism as commonly understood, or rationalism, or holism, theism deism or platonism… maybe we need a new term and a new manifesto?  And write THAT in stone? Then maybe you would see it as an alternative to this bible-based fundamentalist morality. If i wrote a draft of such a credo or manifesto, would you look at it?”

So, I really felt moved to give it a go. Not to bow down and worship the stone tablets, but to have them there as a (family?) discussion document, a working map of the territory as I currently understand it. Labels are necessary. Anything not labelled conveniently has a kind of shadowy existence in our human minds. imagine if we had to say, ‘i’, taking the thing with four wheels  and a motor on the blackish open strip to the usually four-walled structure where there are these things we like to eat usually squarish and put into transparent bags…’ etc., instead of ‘I’m taking the car to the dairy to buy some bread.’

So I suggest we all would all do well to jot down our own credo, to be as persuasive and clear as possible, to share and of course to edit, adapt or rip up as life (and other people) opens us to new understandings. Oh yes, and label it!

Let’s nail our colours to our masts!

I’d like to think that whole groups could take the manifestos of all their members and order them around the most commonly accepted propositions, and make a kind of ‘Wisdom mindmap’ of their collective understanding as it is – for discussion and clarification, and conscious, considered evolution of their beliefs. It would go with the Wheel of Wisdom game perfectly…

We need to fight back against the well-labelled holy scriptures taking the place of our hard-won freedoms and yes, ?liberal/rational/ethical wisdom. Not by attacking their scriptures, but by creating our own, but with built-in amendment clauses and procedures for amendment. That is really what constitutions are. But we need them in our personal and group lives, not just in the national constitutions. The alternative is either a dangerous vagueness or appearance of ‘wishy-washy liberalism’ – or a return to some atavistic cultural ‘static latch’  – a fundamentalism and a scripure that says ‘he who alters or questions me shall be damned’.

To defend the True West we need a manifesto – or a convergence of manifestos. A wisdom mindmap.

 There IS a Wisdom of the West, which must not be allowed to perish by default. We need to codify it, not as a new fundamentalism, but as a newly articulated state of the art reference point for our collective evolving wisdom here in the (relatively) Free West.