THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
	a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.

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From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (boboroshi)
Subject: COE: Science/Religion: THE SECRET VAULT AND FRANCIS BACON
Date: 24 Apr 1996 02:23:11 -0700

49960423 kaos day

tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva):
|> Where can we read of the excised magical and astrological texts of the
|> scientific masters?  Is there a central source for this?  I did not see
|> it in my science manuals and I'd rather not go searching through the
|> various overviews of their texts for skewed materialist dismissals.

ramey@math.msu.edu (Wade Ramey):
|We scientists are keeping the magical and astrological texts of Newton and
|Galileo hidden in a secret vault. 

Intellectually I believe this is entirely true within the modern Scientific
tradition, yes.  You've got it hidden over, much as political groups hide
the history of a former, plundered culture from occupying invaders 
(Americans omitting the atrocities of Christopher Columbus within modern
educational facilities, for example).


|These writings are of such power that they put a trembling into the dark 
|heart of every scientist. 

If only the scientists would read them.  Perhaps we'd get out of the silly
paradigm that is gripping Science's collective testicles.


|For we know that if such treasures ever see the light of day, the entire 
|scientific community will soon find itself standing in unemployment lines. 

That is usually the claim of the left, liberals or anarchist anti-
establishment types, and I can see how it would fit in quite squarely
with coveted norms, such as the idea that that which is real is what
can be measured, for example.

And yet I was never, in my passing experience my college background
(physics major courses, including engineering technicals and theoretics
such as thermodynamics for aeronautics and tensile strengths which I barely
enjoyed), provided with texts doing better than referring to magic and
alchemy (if that) as 'historical elements of the scientific tradition which
were left behind through discerning material facts in empirical tests 
(consistently implying magic is based upon a false paradigm -- delusional,
illusional and/or only sociological as compared to something ontological
and/or mystico-religious).

What's weirder is that these texts haven't been cited by many occultists
in Usenet (except, perhaps deep within the caverns of Jon Gilliam's
Ubermind, which strikes me as quite odd given the focus on thaumaturgy
and the control of spirits/fortune/matter which fills the imaginations 
of modern and previous magicians' minds (cf 'The Sorceror's Apprentice'
and its focus on 'low' magic which controls the material/physical).

Not only this but the first book in a compilation I pulled out of our
pop/hard/science section put together by Martin Gardner, one of my
favorite editors and authors (see his _The Whys of a Philosophical
Scrivener_) and his debunking of various psychics and spiritualists
like Uri Geller within such publications as 'The Skeptical Inquirer',
concerned the Riddle of the Sphinx (whom masonics and occultists
sometimes say has four mysterious powers) and its application in the 
nature of the scientific inquiry (natural world versus man):  

I'll quote that below with some other material from the CoE.


|...we cannot allow this to happen, hence the excisions from your 
|chemistry-set manuals. 

Very clever. 


|To this day we guard the secret vault with our lives as well as skewed 
|materialist dismissals. 

This is of course standard rhetoric from rosicrucians, who also ally themselves
with 'secret sciences' and 'spiritual workings of scientific splendor'.  At
least that's the flavor I get out of reading redcross texts.  Consult the
'Chmymycal Wedding of Christian Rosencruentz' for more on the Vault associated
by these esotericists.


|Someday, perhaps, we will relent, and then peace will guide the planets 
|and love will guide the stars--but not until we see a big wad of moolah, baby.        
I don't care about your moolah.  I am content to sit here and discuss with 
you something of an art and science, perhaps learning more of it in the 
process.

I think it is important that modern scientists understand that not all
magicians are charlatans or cheap psychics out to scam an audience.
There is even a focus upon vows of poverty and mystical or beneficent 
social roles (Patriarch, Heirophant, Savior and Saint).

Lest you think these be but primitive or irrational mechanisms of
religious practice, consider the likely future as portrayed by 
modern Scientists (of ourselves but moreso of our species and the
planet).  Ascetic means are symbolic of a conservatism which
Occam himself praised.


Here, have a batch of sci-magick-anti-ecology:

"Now of the Sphinx's riddles there are in all two kinds;
 one concerning the nature of things, another concerning 
 the nature of man; and in like manner there are two kinds
 of kingdom offered as the reward of solving them; one
 over nature, and the other over man.  For the command
 over things natural -- over bodies, medicines, mechanical
 powers, and infinite other of the kind -- is the one
 proper and ultimate end of true natural philosophy;
 however the philosophy of the School, content with
 what it finds, and swelling with talk, may neglect or
 spurn the search after realities and works."

 Francis Bacon, 'The Sphinx', quoted in Martin Gardner's
  _Great Essays in Science_, p. 3.
 _______________________________________________________

I did enjoy Mr. Rifkin's assertions about Bacon and would
love to see if they are accurate, since you hold the secrets
in your concealed and sacred vaults:

 From Church of Euthanasia's Esermons at:

			http://www.envirolink.org/org/coe/

'An Afternoon With Jeremy Rifkin' 

"...Francis Bacon led off the charge. He's the father of modern science. 
 He's the father of modernity. How many have read the 'Novum Organum'? 
 Founding document of modernity.... most scientists I know, and I spend 
 a lot of time with them, have never read their founding document.  It's 
 sort of like, what if you went to the family priest, and you said 
 "Father, have you read the good book?" "No, but tell me a little about 
 it." (laughs) Francis Bacon took on the ancient Greek scholars, and the 
 Medieval schoolmen ... the church ... and he said look: the Greeks are 
 always sitting around the bathhouse asking *why*. He said I'm not 
 interested in why, I'm interested in ... *how*.  ....
   
 Francis Bacon, ...said we could detach ourselves from nature, and become 
 neutral observers. Well, there we severed the relationship with the 
 commons, didn't we ... intellectually speaking.  And as neutral 
 observers from the outside in we could force nature to do what we want 
 it to do. Francis Bacon said "knowledge is ... *power*."

 The more power we amass over nature, the more control we exercise, the
 more progress we make, the more secure we become. That's the geopolitics 
 of the modern era. The philosophy of geopolitics is based in the 
 enlightenment tradition of the scientific method. How do we go beyond 
 the scientific method?   ...the eco-feminist historians are a little 
 right about Francis Bacon.

 This man was a misogynist. He said nature was his *common little harlot*. 
 We've got to *tame her excesses*. These are exact words, we have to *squeeze 
 and mold her*. ...." [end of Rifkin rant].

Sounds an awful lot like magic to me. ;>
boboroshi
---------
 
...zen practice has no goals, steps, hurdles, barriers or milestones.  
There is just mindfullness and that is the practice.

bsmart@ix.netcom.com (Bill Smart)