{"id":81,"date":"2018-11-13T18:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T18:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/13\/the-old-ways-2\/"},"modified":"2018-11-13T18:00:59","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T18:00:59","slug":"the-old-ways-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/13\/the-old-ways-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Old Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"

emergentanimism<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
<\/figure>\n

\u201cCrow Seidr\u201d Trollwood Art, Nov 2016<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You may have figured out that I am a huge fan of history.
\nThat obsession with learning stories of our past has been with me my entire
\nlife. In the past fifteen years much of that research has been pre-history.<\/p>\n

Let me throw at you an impressive set of numbers. By conservative
\nestimates, Homo sapiens have been around for about 315,000 years. The Home
\ngenus has been on this planet at least .5 million years, and some say up to 2.5
\nmillion years. Some of the oldest indication of any type of spiritual practice
\nis 300,000 years old, being grave goods buried with a Neanderthal. So our
\nspecies started all this before we even evolved into our current iteration and
\nthe first known practice was some form of belief that life continues after
\ndeath. By comparison, the first civilization started 5,000 years ago. That\u2019s
\n310,000 years of human existing on this planet before cities. As the Oracle at
\nDelphi says, \u201cKnow Thyself,\u201d and to really know who we are as a species we need
\nto have some understanding of how we lived for the majority of our time here.
\nEvidence shows that we believed in some kind of life after death, and we were
\nanimists. We believed in and had dealings with spirits.<\/p>\n

People debate endlessly whether or not our species took a \u201cwrong
\nturn.\u201d Whether agriculture, or domestication, or if you believe Socrates, even
\nwriting itself were bad ideas. I have my own opinions. But outside of that we
\nstill must accept that knowledge does indeed get lost. While most scholars don\u2019t
\neven like the term Dark Ages anymore, all will admit that some knowledge was
\nlost in the West. We lost the recipe for Roman concrete. We lost the recipe for
\nGreek Fire. Judging by how people seem to feel strongly about spiritual
\npractice, you can bet that much of what was discovered on that topic has been
\ndestroyed. Think about what must have been lost in those 300,000 years? The
\nvoices of those elders lost to time. I truly hope that Babbage was right and
\nwith enough computing power we can go back reconstruct every vibration that
\never occurred in our atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Another point, why do we even care? Certainly our species
\nhas made great advances in the creation and retention of knowledge. Haven\u2019t we
\ngone well past what our ancestors knew? Maybe, maybe not. One thing that I
\nthink can be said is that the focus of that knowledge, and the uses for the
\nintellectual capacity of our civilization, has changed. Spiritual matters take
\na back-seat to science and economics. Not that those are bad things. But what
\ndoes that say about magick? Has the art of magick advanced?<\/p>\n

Yes, yes it has. Albeit at a much slower rate and with much
\nfewer resources. Many ancient cultures believed magick to be the highest form
\nof learning. All of the intellectual, economic, political, and temporal
\ncapacity went towards the study of magick in a big way. Why am I obsessed with
\nthe Ancient Egyptians? One need only look at the Pyramids and know that their
\nculture spent a lot of its time thinking about magick. The huge portion of the cultural
\nrecords that survive focus on preparing for one\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

The point of all this, besides raising some even more
\ninteresting questions, is how it effects our relationship with the spirits. One
\nquestion you have to answer for yourself is, are spirits immortal? Many of them
\nclaim to be, and I have no reason not to take them at their word. One can
\nresearch the names of many spirits through the gimoires and all the way back to
\nancient cultures. Are these the same spirits? Maybe, but at the very least the
\nspirits seem to have knowledge of those ancient names. So even if the spirits
\nare not immortal they certainly know their history and the history of their
\ninteraction with us.<\/p>\n

What did that interaction look like for the vast majority of
\nour time on this planet? It seems to have involved a lot of drugs and
\njourneying through trance states. It certainly didn\u2019t involve brass seals and
\ncontracts written on virgin paper, because we didn\u2019t have any of those things
\nthrough the majority of our history. Although maybe those methods are a
\nrefinement of the communication process, a sort of updated technology. But this
\ndoes prove that those methods are not absolutely necessary. That the spirits
\ncan be contacted by other means. So while grimoire purists may be advancing the
\nart, it may not be the only way or even the best way to contact those spirits.<\/p>\n

In the end, it is best to remember the magick of your
\nancestors. The spirits certainly remember, and what has been said and done to
\nthem in the past will reflect on how they interact with us today.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

emergentanimism: \u201cCrow Seidr\u201d Trollwood Art, Nov 2016 You may have figured out that I am a huge fan of history. That obsession with learning stories of our past has been with me my entire life. In the past fifteen years much of that research has been pre-history. Let me throw at you an impressive set … Continue reading “The Old Ways”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}