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Mapping Myth-Religion to Determinism and Its Transcendence

 

System

Lower Transcendence

Higher Transcendence

Egodeath theory

ego death, discovering timeless frozen block-universe determinism in mystic altered state of loose cognition, discover control-seizure instability problem resulting from agency nullity

transcending determinism transrationally, gain control stability by not restricting to rational systematic thought and by acknowledging practical need to logically jump out of the system of rational mental-model construction

Christianity

Crucifixion, slave of satan, child of satan, trapped and bound in hell-prison, hell, slave, sacrificed king, demon-possessed madman, paralyzed, blinded and incapacitated by light, the Jewish law

Resurrection, slave of god, adopted beloved child of god, heaven, free citizen, ruler, divinized king, alien new star exempt from heimarmene/fate, released from prison by angel, exorcised and purified, redeemed, fished out from world, grace (not subject to the law)

Hermeticism/Astrology/Astral ascent mysticism

Reaching the sphere of the fixed stars, Saturn

Penetrating beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, supernal light, sun behind the sun, empyrean, Emperor exempt from rule of fate, divinized

Gnosticism

high planetary archons, demiurge, the world, the body, the psyche, the rational mind, the soul

alien unknowable good god, escape the world. the spirit, the crown

Alchemy

black

gold

Magic

fear, demons, war in spirit realm

guardian angel

Jewish

non-blessed king, 7th chamber, lower angels, falling angels, Moses in basket, wandering in desert, judgment and condemnation and justice, wrestling with angel all night, captivity bondage egypt slavery

blessed king, vision of divine throne, entering promised land, forgiveness leniency and love, freedom after relig. meal and miraculous passage

Catholic

devil frozen in ice in hell, hands chained in purgatory prison

heaven

Apophatic theology

 

realization of unknowability of God, God is beyond being/nonbeing, logic/illogic

Platonism/Plotinus

perceiving being chained in cave

ascension to superheavens, supersun/One/Good

Mystery religion

trembling, lower initiation

peace, rest, higher initiation

Stoicism/cynics

heimarmene

divinization

Greek myth

heimarmene, fates, fastened to throne, chained to rock, fastened to wheel, caught up in tree, falling twin, falling son, spouse left behind in Hades', trapped and sacrificed in center/endpoint of labyrinth

rise to Olympus, divine child born, victory with divine help, spouse walk out of Hades', cheating trickster magic, riding flying magic sheep to escape from labyrinth

Mithraism

snake-wrapped zodiacal time-god, downward torch

ascending to sun behind sun, born out from cosmic rock-womb, upward torch, supernal empyrian light

Egyptian myth

embedded in tree

set free from tree, child horus born

Isis/Virgin Mary

Jesus as harshly strict legal judge

protective mother, king-influencing legal defender beseeching for mercy, protected under her cloak

Babylonian/Zoroastrian

serpent

(hypercosmic) sun god/celestial mother

Zen Buddhism

awakening to reality, mental lock-up and seizure

transcending the artificial man-made limits of reason/rationality

Buddhism

near end of series of rebirths, assaulted and threatened by Mara

nirvana, escape from the wheel of rebirths

Vajrayana Buddhism

wrathful deities, death deities, bardo series

compassionate deities, permissive-of-life deities, divine procreative coupling

Gurdjieff

awakening to fact of entrapment in prison

escaping the prison

Islam

 

 

Northern European

hanging on worldtree

 

Ken Wilber

Centaur?/trans-egoic

transrational/ultimate

Jung/ dream symbolism;  Campbell/ waking-life symbolism

did Jung know determinism is a key relig. issue? think not; typical 20th C offbaseness

 

Shamanism, Eliade

 

 

Rock lyrics

helpless, fear, frozen in ice, paralyzed, falling, flying too high, stoned, part of the machine, caught in underg. prison

magic, prayer, winning through breaking game rules, another pair of wings, pray to mother of all machines, released from underg. prison

Matrix movies

awakening to being sleeping and hooked up into machine network

stopping the machine war climax through transcendent light-filled reconciliation

 

TODO: Make sure my list of Rock lyric thematic categories has explicit categories for awakening to determinism and for transcending determinism.

Filling in this table requires broad knowledge and a grasp of esoteric metaphorical conceptual language.  

There was borrowing and overlap -- in particular, astral ascent mysticism was broadly popular, influential, and absorbed into many systems.


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