cartesian

Welp I find myself with a bunch of books again, this time on what? numerology, occultism, Tarot, the I Ching, Carl Gustav Jung, Niklas Luhmann, systems theory, and a sundry on classical Greek society and science. Okay, I am not going to read half of these, but I have a nice selection to peruse from. I've already disposed of a few, and yet others.... Well, I added some old topics like computer arithmetic and number theory; starting to see a pattern here? I am joking, I am 100% devoted to aesthetic, you might say, form over function, appearance over substance, the fleeting, the impermanent. I have particularly enjoyed the exegesis on the I Ching (the yijing, 易經), and well, it links well to my ahem, main studies. But why Greece? Idk, they're contemporaries of sorts, they both shared the "axial period" when their cultures, along with others, flourished. Their cultures were born and to an extent* developed without mutual intervention for a number of centuries. I was born in one of those.

It has been particularly interesting, looking into this side of things. In the past, whenever someone on the internet mentioned an occult tradition (particularly those from the "west"), I always knew I was missing on something, but I just wasn't interested. As I have said before, my studies were usually of a technical nature. But I never disregarded the occult. To be honest, the primary reason for my interest in number theory was always beyond the mere mathematical, it always had some metaphysical aspect of it. But I think numerology is bullshit, for the most part. The fact that I have now downloaded some books on numerology is to see if I can find something that makes sense. But most books on numerology aim to "understand" a person's character through assigning arbitrary numbers based on the letters of their name. If numbers have intrinsic significance, it is in mathematics where we ought to look for them.

Despite my mostly technical incursions, I have always been of a metaphysical persuasion, moreso in the recent years, when I have been quite close to nature and tending to my own garden. I have been interested in the 易經 for a number of years already, and it's actually one of the things that inspired me to learn Classical Chinese. I still find in them the cosmological blueprint that is closer to my own persuasion.

The semitic influence in all this makes me a bit uneasy, with all the recent events going on. The same thing happens when the books allude to christianity in any way. I try to ignore my aprehensions with these, uh, faiths, and take them in for the value of their teachings, or at least as a window into a system of thought I would otherwise not know anything about. But the fact is that it would be absurd to neglect these two very powerful influences in the art, or dismiss them out of prejudice.

I struggle to understand why some people seem to be inclined entirely for one OR the other. How people of a religious persuasion can't usually be bothered to try and understand the analytic methods of modern science and instead choose to take crude analogies on quantum mechanics taken from pop-science tv shows about boxed felines. Likewise, those with a technical training are quick to dismiss everything outside academia as mere superstition. Whatever product of it's time it was, cartesian thought has become a real hindrance on the advancement of knowledge.

As such, my writings on the subject are destined to be dismissed by people on both sides. And given that most of my prospective readers, being technically minded people, will no doubt find my thoughts the ramblings of a lunatic, detached from reality, or maybe considered as a sort of escapism or self-delusion. I am okay with that. In fact, it makes me want to write more, and in a more obscure language at that, like the alchemists of the middle ages.

The journey has merely begun, and it'll be some time before I have anything to say, if I ever. I have never been much of an original thinker, and my ruminations I tend to keep to myself, for I am never good at putting things into words, particularly things that have forever stood at the back burners of my conscious thought.

Up next: The brain and the machine, or whatever.

*Never quite entirely, of course.