New Age spirituality has become a cesspool of garbage

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I always hear it's not necessarily atheists but rather the 'nons' which are taking over in terms of numbers (John Vervaeke brings this up in a lot of his conversations with people when they're discussing his 'meaning crisis' and relevance realization work).

Here's a song by Aviators that's a reference to the game Fallout 4, but I feel like in a weird way it describes my spirituality crisis...

"Where can I pray when nothing means anything?"


https://youtu.be/MMiBlu-Qwh4

One has to find one’s own “meaning.”

Relying on other people, or on God or some other deity, is a recipe for disaster.

That's a true point.

You can use deistic / polytheistic models as a bit of a pharmacopeia (for example Hermetic Golden Dawn style Qabalah) where each of the spheres from Binah thru Yesod resembles a god or goddess of one of the 'seven planets'. What I do like about the tree is you can get the sense that they didn't do a bad job of putting different relatively opposite concepts on either side of the central sphere (Tiphareth) and so they tend to balance Saturn vs. Moon, Mars vs. Venus, Jupiter vs. Mercury, but they do so with caveats such as Venus and Mars having a kind of synergistic link.

All of this really points to something like an ancient depth psychology and when you think about a world where they had little but constant war and constant famine, the only direction you could go for adjustment was in.

A while back I was really interested in what kinds of DIY software could be done with this and started thinking about something like a Franz Bardon elemental model where you'd have a kind of 'guide' that matched each of the four Greek elements - ie. fire, air, water, earth, and using Bardon's Universal Master Key (really a collection of aphorisms on each one of these) as a way to inform the way each functions and assists. That would be at least one non-Qabalistic approach.

That's actually interesting that you mention that. You see I own 7 antique Japanese figurines of the 7 Gods of Luck known as the Shichifukujin. My late grandparents left them to me from when they lived in Japan because they knew I have a fascination with Japanese culture. I rarely tried to work with them as deities on my altar though because I'm not Japanese nor am I familiar with Buddhism. I feel that i could do more research into them though.

But anyways regardless of that I got the idea to arrange these 7 deities in the order of the 7 traditional planets of astrology. Some of them matched perfectly with the Western Gods whom the planets are named after.

I compared Daikokuten the God of Commerce who weilds a golden hammer with The Sun.

Ebisu the God of Fishermen with The Moon (because of the tides which effect fishing)

Jurojin the God of Wisdom with Mercury.

Benzaiten the Goddess of Art and Beauty with Venus

Bishamoten the God of War with Mars

Hotei the God of Joy with his big belly I compared to Jupiter

And Fukurokuju the God of Longevity I compared to Saturn.

^
More likely Shinto, than Buddhist. Buddhism doesnt really have deities.

Most Japanese are a combination of Shinto and Buddhist (and they all celebrate Christmas too).

Buddhism was imported from India by way of China centuries ago. But Shinto is the millennia old native religion of Japan- a combination of nature worship, spirit worship, and pagan deities. A rare case of that type of creed surviving into the modern day, and thriving alongside imported 'world religions' like Buddhism, and Christianity. Imagine if modern Greeks still prayed to Athena at the Parthenon while also attending Greek Orthodox church every Sunday.

But you're right that you have to be steeped in Japanese culture to know how to actually worship the figurines to get 'good luck'. And you would need good luck if you did that...because doing that would piss off your Christian neighbors!

That's a really common thing with western pantheons as well - whether Greek, Roman, even Nordic.

The real gold in Qabalistic work is what's referred to as pathworking (ie. guided / formulated visual 'traveling' meditations). There are ways you can use fantasy, rather than simply escape, to tinker with your own code and the whole idea of initiation (organization administered or self-administered) is taking a step or two out of your comfort zone in one given direction or another, particularly when it's a step that you know needs to be taken but haven't had the outside world means or available opportunities to try certain things on. In the past few years I've worked a bit with Asenath Mason and Bill Duvendak's Temple of Ascending Flame material, it's odd for me to say that as someone who wanted to be a priest back in jr high as it's very much Lilith and Lucifer centered but I also realize I'm someone who historically wasn't well grounded, and I see the Qliphoth or Tree of Death as something like the tree of matter or tree of nature, where as I mentioned previously - Lilith is analogous to the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland (stated very crisply - in my kingdom you have to run twice as fast to stay in the same place) which is analogous to the state of nature, and realizing that protective circumstances can yield critical vulnerabilities you sometimes have to work out your own war games, or work with a god or goddess of war to tune your own dials a bit for better survival odds.

On a side note - I was an only child. While there's less peace having siblings you also get something to have a brother or sister the same age which is outside-world opponent processing, and opponent processing is needed for growth. I didn't have enough opponent processing in my early years, or at least what was there wasn't trying to make me a stable source of competition but tended more to be people just trying to dominate me - which caused me to opt out, which to some degree helped me get my mental health back a bit but also took me off the race track and meant that other people's capacities for competition, Machiavellianism, etc. far surpassed my own for lack of constant practice. I'm learning that setting up my own internal friendly competition is a useful supplement for the lack of that.

I'm on Mark Stavish's mailing list (alchemist, traditional Hermeticist and author) and he dropped this really neat short story about what he does as a teacher, which matches a lot of what I've heard John Michael Greer say on what the goals of esoteric practice are:

Oh ok, lol well from what I read these 7 deities were a combination of other Asian deities brought over to Japan from other religions in Chinese Taoism and Indian Hinduism. Only Ebisu is unique to Japan but for example Benzaiten was originally an Indian Hindu Goddess and Hotei is actually based off the Laughing Buddha with the round belly and big smile (thought to be based on a real life person).

I guess it gets very complicated like all things related to religious syncretism... so i wasnt sure if these 7 deities of luck were part of Shintoism or Buddhism as I'm not really familiar with either.

Anyways here is an interesting website about them for anybody interested in the Shichifukujin?

https://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/seven.shtml


And I think that's very cool that Shintoism is essentially a form of Paganism that is still worshipped to this day. I kinda wish that we had Greeks and Romans today that would still honor their ancient gods and goddesses.

I think you're right but I'm not sure if there's a difference between an atheist and a 'non'? Is there? Can you explain it?

It includes 'spiritual but not religious' and pretty much any DIY outside-the-box that isn't specifically neopagan or some other sizeable group. I'd probably qualify that way if I were surveyed.

Ah right, thanks!

I must confess that despite feeling closer to "pagan" deities than the Abrahamic one, I never really followed actual neopagan traditions... like celebrating the traditional holidays such as yule instead of christmas or samhain instead of Halloween.

So maybe I fall into this category too? Perhaps that explains why I never felt welcomed in Neopagan communities?

I must admit you are rather losing me. I was brought up as an atheist so I don't know anything about religion. What is Abrahamic? What is neopagan? Is that different to pagan?

'Abrahamic' refers to the God worshipped by the religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Like Abraham who is mentioned in the bible. They each worship the same deity but have different views on him (which has arguably led to so much violence and bloodshed among these three religions... go figure)

"Pagan" was what early Christians called any religion that was not a Christian religion. Like the Greek and Roman religions that worshipped gods like Zues and Athena, or the Ancient Egyptian deities, etc.

They kinda link it to devil worship because of their personal belief that to worship anybody other than Jesus Christ meablns you are worshipping a 'false' deity. They used to burn people alive as heretics among other nasty things for holding onto their non-Christian beliefs and refusing to convert.

'Neo'paganism is a more modern spiritual movement which is where people have reclaimed the Pagan title and it focuses on trying to revive some of the ancient gods and goddesses that were destroyed over time by Christian persecution.

There are a variety of neopagan groups, one of the most well-known examples is Wicca which is a religion based on witchcraft founded by Gerald Gardner in the UK back in the 1940's I think.

There are examples like Heathenry and Hellenistic religions that arent so much focused on witchcraft as they are just honoring the old gods of Europe and the Middle East.

It's kinda hard to explain because despite wanting to be a part of the neopagan culture its pretty hard because I live in the American Deep South which is dubbed "The Bible Belt", and every time I tried to join a neopagan group online I felt like I was chased away for all kinds of reasons.

But basically Abrahamic Religions are the monotheistic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Neopaganism is not really a true religion but a spiritual movement to try and reclaim and rebuild the Polytheistic Gods of these old religions that were given the "Pagan" label by Christianity.

And for the record, I think Catholics and Protestants used to accuse each other of being both Pagans and Heretics while they were burning each othet at the stake. So the Pagan thing wasnt just limited to religions outside Christianity. I wouldnt be surprised to learn if they said the same about Jews and Muslims too given their long history of oppressing these groups.