The Cathar View
Dayle in Limoux – Day #34
August 8, 2022Another 37 C day in Limoux! 98 Fahrenheit. The heat is cumulative and defeating. Makes it difficult for hiking and exploring…depleting. Some days it feels as though there just isn’t enough
Thoughts…
Bored male leaders massaging their EGO’s and need for greed contemplating annihilation for the win.
Euronews
‘UN Chief Antonio Guterres has called for the end of military operation around Europe’s largest nuclear plant, hit with a series of bombardments since last Friday, with both Russian and Ukrainian forces blaming one another for the attacks. “Any attack on nuclear power plants is a suicidal thing,” the UN’s secretary-general told reporters in Tokyo. “I hope that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] will be able to access the power plant.” Nuclear risks to humanity are only “a misunderstanindng” way from nuclear annihilation.’
History is an endless argument.
And.
Tipping points go both ways.
From Marianne Williamson,
‘May my eyes be open, that I might see more beauty; may my ears be open, that I might hear more truth; may my spirit be open that I might feel the tender touch of [Gaia].’
~
There are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on, and it makes me wonder.’
-Lez Zeppelin
The 7th Generation Principle is based on an ancient Iroquois philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.
‘Oxford philosopher William MacAskill offers one such outlook, zooming out on the timeline of human civilization to put this moment into context. The story of humanity, Oxford philosopher William MacAskill argues, is just beginning. In fact, if history were a novel, we’d still be in the prologue.
This is encouraging. It means that we have both the power and the responsibility to aim the trajectory of civilization in a positive direction, the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.’
-Cornelia Channing, Editorial Assistant, NYTimes Sunday Opinion
“Here in Japan, paper cranes symbolize the hope for a future without nuclear weapons. There is only one solution to the nuclear threat: not to have nuclear weapons at all.”
-António Guterres, Security-General of the U.N.
R
E
T
R
O
Let’s make more paper cranes, and use old telephones, and refrigerate without Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), compounds released into the atmosphere since the 1930s through air-conditioning, refrigeration, blowing agents in foams, insulations and packing materials, propellants in aerosol cans, and as solvents.
‘How to Relive the Pleasures of a Landline’
OUI!
Art work from Getty.
From The New Yorker’s Rachel Syme.
“If you call me and I am at home, chances are you are going to reach me on an actual, old-fashioned, dial-’em-up telephone. The one that currently sits on my desk is a putty-colored rotary model circa the nineteen-sixties, with a weighted handset and a long, sproingy, yellowing cord that scrunches pleasantly between the fingers like al dente fusilli. I purchased this particular phone last fall, on eBay, for $19.99. You can find far pricier vintage telephones on that site, of course—retro phones in Instagram-friendly colors such as avocado green and Barbie pink.”
Barbie.
“It makes me feel glamorous and put together to grab my vintage receiver, even if I am still in my pajamas.”
C’est possible!
Most of what we encounter is driven by emotions, and our emotions are always relative. When we’re shopping for a car or an avocado, we’re buying the way it makes us feel, not how it would make someone else feel. -Seth Godin
Emotion, perhaps why grace and forgiveness, although the Universe’s natural default, or so difficult for humans to feel, and choose.
Dualism…non-dualism. Reading and researching on the tenets of the Cathar philosophy, their way of living and belief, versus, the Nicene Council Christianity begat in the 4th century anno domini by then Roman Emperor Constantine.
Fr Richard Rohr, whom I adore, gets in the weeds, I think when he promotes non-dualism in religion.
“The body is rightly reasserting its goodness and importance. Can we somehow honor both body and spirit together? When Christianity is in any way anti-body, it is not authentic (?) Christianity. The incarnation tells us that body and spirit must fully operate and be respected as one.”
He then tries to forward his argument with behavioral psychology.
“Many Christians falsely assumed that if they could “die” to their body, their spirit would for some reason miraculously arise. Often the opposite was the case. After centuries of body rejection, and the lack of any positive body theology, the West is now trapped in substance addiction, obesity, anorexia, bulimia, plastic surgery, and an obsession with appearance and preserving these bodies. Our poor bodies, which Jesus affirmed, have become the receptacles of so much negativity and obsession.”
Juxtapose this with the Cathar belief, and the reason they were massacred, often burned at the stake, by the hundreds of thousands, most likely a million murdered. The writing offered by Nick Lambert, from the book, ‘The Cathar View.’
“The eternal battle of good and evil deities is at the centre of the Cathar worldview and although this belief came in a variety of forms, they were very similar to the dualistic faiths were specifically prohibited by orthodox Christianity (Constantine): the Gnostics, the Manichaeans, the Paulicians and the Bogomils of the Balkans. It is upon the issue of dualism that much of the excitement and controversy around the Cathars rests. Absolute dualism is the position adopted in the Book of Two Principles:
‘The good God is not the creator of the base and tangible elements of this world; another creator is responsible for them. God is alright but not in the sense that He can create evil; what He does not desire He cannot do. He is omnipotent over all good things, but there must be another creator form whom all evils flow, who in no way derives from the good God. The evil one is eternal, as are his works.’
The key word being ‘works.’ Works, in humanity, through the body, choices and behaviors, are from the material world, and the material world is the ‘body.’ Pretty sure when the body dies, the body and soul are separated. Otherwise, yikes. Christians, beginning in the 4th century, start dancing around this and never stop. For the Cathars, it wasn’t that confusing. And most were absolute.
More.
“The dualist explanation of good and evil gods was less equivocal than this compromise, and the spread of the Cathars show how compelling it for many people. It was silly more consistent, given the state of the world, to attribute equal powers to the contending gods. Another factor was the ‘jealous god’ of Moses and the Israelites, and the peaceful philosophy of Jesus and his Apostles. […] Strong echoes of this cosmology are found centuries later in William Blake’s radical interpretations of the Bible, (like the) Old Testament’s Jehovah, and Blake cast him as an implacable figure, conveying something of his antithetical and flawed creative powers as the Cathars one saw them.”
“Dualism, then, was the fulcrum about which the rest of Cathar beliefs turned, informing their eschatology (they did not, it seems, subscribe to an apocalyptic Day of Judgment because they did not believe in the resurrection of the body). This belief in reincarnation likely derived from Neo-platonism and the ancient Greek philosophy of metempsychosis. The transmigration of souls was specifically opposed in Christianity but became a central tenet of Catharsis, and the ascension that they aimed for was a liberation from the constant cycle of death and rebirth, rather similar to Buddhist beliefs. and Manichaeism.”
Dualism, the reason Bérenger Saunière included the ruler of earthly evil, Rex Mundi, in his church dedicated to Mary Magdalene after he made his parchment discoveries hidden away for centuries on the grounds of Rennes-les-Chateau.
[Rex Mundi now behind protective plexiglass because someone tried to destroy it once. If you don’t agree, then annihilate. Your thoughts, Pope (not so) Innocent III.]
When you V O T E in the U.S. midterms, remember these faces and names. These are the senators, men, who cow-tailed to their dark money lobbyists. This is who they show allegiance, not their constituents, who are in need and in diabetic health crisis.
‘The past is past; nothing can change it. But the future depends on the present; we still have the opportunity to shape it. This is not a matter of employing technology or spending more money, it’s a question of developing a sense of concern for others’ well-being.’
-Dalai Lama
8.8.22
Dayle in Limoux – Day #32
August 6, 2022
BBC
‘The Notre-Dame Cathedral is on track to open its doors to worshippers and the public in 2024, says France’s culture minister.
The 13th Century Paris monument caught fire in April 2019, sparking a vast outpouring of emotion.
Since then, a huge restoration project has been carried out aiming to restore it to its previous design.’
Wonderful news! In time, too, for the Summer Olympics in Paris.
UN
Today, remembering the anniversary of Hiroshima, particularly poignant after the startling reminder from the UN chief that humanity is ‘one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.’
“It is totally unacceptable for states in possession of nuclear weapons to admit the possibility of a nuclear war,” António Guterres underscored early on Saturday in Japan at a ceremony marking the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Land grabs, borders, and bored male leaders who are pained by their quest for power and greed and violence.
From Dorothy Day:
“Mr, Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True man; what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; “jubilant” the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese.”
—Dorothy Day, editorial following Hiroshima bomb [Posted on social media by Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books]
‘God is that which promotes life, evil is that which destroys it.’
-Albert Schweitzer [1875-1965]
‘Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ –Bhagavad Gita
D I V I N E F E M I N I N E 🥀
‘There is no day on which I grow not
Finer and more pure,
For this world holds no nobler lady
Than she whom I do serve and I adore.
And these – the words I speak –
Come singing from an open heart.’
-Troubadour Arnaut Daniel, 1180-1200
(Translation by Henry Lincoln.]
‘Throughout history, the quest for beauty, loe and truth has struggled to survive amid the quest for dominance and greed. During the medieval era, the dominant powers of church and state burned the last Templars. They burned thousands of Cathars, and they burned Joan of Arc, who tried to liberate her people from foreign rule. They even tried to ban the poetry and songs of the troubadours. But the spirit of truth would not be silenced and rose again and again, from the dust and ashes, rising from the half remembered promise patterned in the blood, held in the heart. Always they return, with the flame of hope for a better world filled with compassion, beauty and a song of love returning to the land […] a new earth and return to Beauty.’
-Ani Williams, harpist and singer, who has recorded more than two dozen albums of original sacred music based on ancient spiritual traditions.
Bonne nuit.
🌙