I wasn't going to have one of these 'guest posts', which for the benefit of the uninitiated are usually by someone fictional or dead, at this point. However, rather than wait for the 50,000 page views mark I will leap in since something perfect has come up. Not many witchcraft blogs can surely have guest posts by dead Jesuits, but de Chardin had the highest compliment I can imagine paid hI'm by the Roman church :
' Admonition
'"Several works of Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, some of which were posthumously published, are being edited and are gaining a good deal of success.
'"Prescinding from a judgement about those points that concern the positive sciences, it is sufficiently clear that the above-mentioned works abound in such ambiguities and indeed even serious errors, as to offend Catholic doctrine.
'"For this reason, the most eminent and most revered Fathers of the Holy Office exhort all Ordinaries as well as the superiors of Religious institutes, rectors of seminaries and presidents of universities, effectively to protect the minds, particularly of the youth, against the dangers presented by the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and of his followers.
'"Given at Rome, from the palace of the Holy Office, on the thirtieth day of June, 1962.
'Sebastianus Masala, Notarius"
( http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=3160&CFID=123131122&CFTOKEN=66204630)
Of course one can see why he was not considered suitable food for the faithful, since his ideas in the quote below seem to me to embody much magical theory, and to veer more towards Paganism than Christianity:
' Where are the roots of our being? In the first place they plunge back and down into the unfathomable past. How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls ! How impossible to decipher the welding of successive influences in which we are for ever incorporated! In each one of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected. And however autonomous our soul, it is indebted to an inheritance worked upon from all sides — before ever it came into being — by the totality of the energies of the earth: it meets and rejoins life at a determined level. Then, hardly has it entered actively into the universe at that particular point than it feels, in its turn, besieged and penetrated by the flow of cosmic influences which have to be ordered and assimilated. Let us look around us : the waves come from all sides and from the farthest horizon. Through every cleft the world we perceive floods us with its riches — food for the body, nourishment for the eyes, harmony of sounds and fullness of the heart, unknown phenomena and new truths, all these treasures, all these stimuli, all these calls, coming to us from the four corners of the world, cross our conscious- ness at every moment. What is their role within us ? What will their effect be, even if we welcome them passively or indistinctly, like bad workmen ? They will merge into the most intimate life of our soul and either develop it or poison it. We only have to look at ourselves for one moment to realise this, and either feel delight or anxiety. If even the most humble and most material of our foods is capable of deeply influencing our most spiritual faculties, what can be said of the infinitely more penetrating energies conveyed to us by the music of tones, of notes, of words, of ideas ? We have not, in us, a body which takes its nourishment 6o THE DIVINE MILIEU independently of our soul. Everything that the body has admitted and has begun to transform must be transfigured by the soul in its turn. The soul does this, no doubt, in its own way and with its own dignity. But it cannot escape from this universal contact nor from that unremitting labour. And that is how the characteristic power of under- standing and loving, which will form its immaterial individuality, is gradually perfected in it for its own good and at its own risk. We hardly know in what proportions and under what guise our natural faculties will pass over into the final act of the vision of God. But it can hardly be doubted that, with God's help, it is here below that we give ourselves the eyes and the heart which a final transfiguration will make the organs of a power of adoration, and of a capacity for beatification, particular to each individual man and woman among us.'
Source: https://archive.org/stream/TheDivineMilieu/The_Divine_Milieu_djvu.txt pp. 59 - 60.
Do you see the cobbles on the streets? Everywhere you look, stone & rock. Can you imagine what it feels like to reach down with your bones & feel the living stones? The city is built on itself, all the cities that came before. Can you imagine how it feels to lie down on an ancient flagstone & feel the power of the rock buoying you up against the tug of the world? And that's where witchcraft begins. The stones have life, & I'm part of it. - adapted from Terry Pratchett
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Yes, the Pagan element does seem far clearer than that of Christianity in that final quote. Broad of mind and broad in spirit.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations of the 45,000 views!