Review of Of Cosmogonic Eros

[Iranian Buddha No.21305207]

Part 1/2
"The external is an internal raised to a level of mystery." -- Novalis
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." -- William Blake
"These sudden intimacies with Immortality, are expanse - not Peace - as Lightning at our feet, instills a foreign Landscape." -- Emily Dickinson

Klages' Of Cosmogonic Eros (translated by Mav Kuhn) is a very dense and rewarding life-affirming work. As a result of studying The Biocentric Worldview, a collection of Klages' essays translated by Joseph D. Pyrce, I came prepared with a great deal of background knowledge. I also read the introduction by Paul Bishop multiple times, and I found watching his video interviews to be very helpful. In his vitalistic philosophy, Klages criticized 'logocentrism', which emphasizes the fixed and discrete and its need to segment, separate, and categorize everything.

Klages describes Eros as the ever-renewing cosmic force that generates life out of chaos. Like the Dao, Eros involves the complementing of polar opposites (i.e., coming and going, growing and fading, illuminating and extinguishing), and the continual transformation of bringing together and tearing apart primal images. During the ecstasy brought on by Eros, one's sense of self is shattered, and one experiences primordial images, which are metamorphoses that do not have conventional existence since they are non-corporeal, non-touchable, and non-conceptual. Ecstasy liberates the soul (the primordial image of life) from the shackles of spirit (reason, concepts, ideas, abstractions, will, purposefulness).In one of Bishop's interviews, he noted that while spirit has a monotonous machine-like beat, soul's primal images have variety built into the patterns of beats, the rhythm of push and pull, where elasticity is life. In authentic ecstasy, you are transported beyond yourself ('unselfing') to experience the primordial image as a living and breathing ensouled universe where All is meaningful. Despite their transience, these experiences reveal a life-pulsing, ever-renewing reality of images.

Klages argues that the "soul is the meaning of the body, the image is the manifestation of the soul". Elsewhere in his magnum opus The Spirit of Adversary of the Soul (not yet fully translated), he stated, "Body and soul are poles of the life-cell which belong inseparably together, into which from outside the spirit, like a wedge, inserts itself, in the endeavour to split them apart, to 'de-soul the body, to disembody the soul, and in this way finally to kill all the life it can reach." The intellect devalues and mechanizes life, making it hostile (e.g., an administrative mindset that emphasizes statistics and a psychoanalytic mindset of slotting people into overarching categories). In Klages' view, the pre-classical Pelasgians were the roots of Western civilization and a symbol for indigenous communities as far back as we can trace, and... [continued]

[Iranian Buddha No.21305208]

>>21305207
Part 2/2

he considers the analysis of symbols superior to reason when conveying man's downfall from soul to spirit (from the soulful Pelasgians to the modern technocratic age of spirit). As Klages argues, the ego is infiltrating into our being more and more and becoming who we are. Spirit and ego are like vampire invasions outside of life, which separate us from our soul and devitalize us.

According to the book, there is an "Eros of Distance", which decouples the spirit's 'I' from the soul, leading to a sense of "fullness" and being outside oneself: "Eros is 'cosmogonic' because it is 'a state of fullness pouring out of itself, according to which the inner -- inasmuch as it gives birth to itself -- becomes in a moment something external, world, and phenomenal reality... [it] is [a] continual revelation of something that continually flows forth from the most hidden part of the soul." There is no way to grasp or touch an image, so it remains at a distance, hence the term "Eros of Distance". In other words, we enjoy things from afar; we observe them without trying to grasp them or doing violence to them. When we observe them, enjoy and appreciate them, and recognize their uniqueness, we can view the world as art in our own idiosyncratic way (such as when we see an awe-inspiring image of a glowing wood, bathed in a setting sun on a particular day, at a particular time).

During an ecstatic rite, a mystes can engage in a divine marriage (hieros gamos) with a daemon in order "to be inspired by, or possessed by a god". This leads to the experience of the "Eros of Distance" through unselfing. A lot of what he said reminded me of a quote from Taintong Rujing: "The sky tips over like a jar flooding the inner vision."

Life and death are vital forms to be celebrated, and "Eros of Distance" applies to the present and past, not to the future which Klages considers a fabrication of the spirit. Past and present are interconnected, and the past matters because it lives on and is meaningful. Klages spends a lot of time analyzing ancestor worship from a hylozoist perspective. He argues that "time is the soul of space".

The book felt like a nice blend of Greek mystery schools and German philosophy. Eichendroff's sublime poem, quoted in the book, captures Eros' essence:

Whoever has deeply and thirstily drunk,
Is pulled down to the wondrous source,
And melodically swims along as a wave,
On which the world breaks into thousands of sparks.

With yearning grows the holy well, crashes,
Shines intoxicated, jubilant within,
At times forging through the chasm to dazzling light,
At times rushing cool then sunken in night.

So let it eagerly roar and rush!
For upon it floats the poet in golden bark,
Himself a holy sacrifice in songs.

The ancient rocks split with a crack,
From yonder greet us kindred ballads,
He guides us back to the eternal sea.

[Anonymous No.21305250]

Very cool, thanks for sharing.

Your notes on Eros made me think of Reality by Peter Kingsley and his work there on Empedocles. Here are a fraction of my notes from reading Reality that paint a negative picture of Eros, and raise up Strife as the natural state of being.

"The universe works like this. There is an endless cosmic cycle of uniting and separating, coming together and moving apart. The uniting is the work of Love. The separation is done through Strife: the power of hate and fighting and hostility. And there are four fundamental "roots" of all existence-earth, water, fire and air. They blend and merge with each other through the power of Love. Then they divide again under the influence of Strife until earth is left alone and heavy at the center, embraced by water and then by an envelope of fire, with purest air surrounding everything on the outside. Nothing else exists. And this process of uniting and moving apart is all that ever has happened or will happen. Absolutely anything and everything is a part of this endless cycle."

This process is fractal and occurs at all levels. Earth is in the middle because it is where we are, and we are reality. Also, all is divine.

4 divine elements separate and pure, with aither in the heavens above the others. There was an oath: when one element came into its full power it would withdraw. So Strife retreats and Love expands from its place in the centre. The divinities then become mixed and united by Love, lost to themselves, and become mortals.

"And Love has her final victory, her total domination over all there is. Whatever exists has been subdued, denied the expression of its own nature, stripped of all its dignity and power for the sake of an oppressive union; "has been brought under," to use one of Empedocles' expressions, as if into some gigantic underworld or cave; "is firmly fixed, hidden in dense obscurity.""

This was 'harmony'. Harmony back then was a concrete state of union. Kingsley says the consistency of the substance of the union is like blood and that Love in this respect had killed the elements by joining them.

[Anonymous No.21305284]

>>21305207
>>21305208
Nice, thanks for this OP. Keep up the good work

[Anonymous No.21305307]

>>21305207
I asked for an anon to give me a summary of this book on a shelf thread some days ago. Thanks for the effortpost, will read when I become sober.

[Anonymous No.21306499]

>>21305208
Klages is one of the most brilliant and underread philosophers of the last century. So glad he's getting translated again. I used to push him on Bronze Age Pervert hard when we were in a Twitter group years ago, and now he mentions him often on his show. I bought this one as soon as it came out, Thieon actually had to do another printing to meet demand.

[Anonymous No.21306508]

>>21305207
Stfu

[Anonymous No.21306788]

good thread, have a bump

[Anonymous No.21307634]

>During an ecstatic rite, a mystes can engage in a divine marriage (hieros gamos) with a daemon in order "to be inspired by, or possessed by a god". This leads to the experience of the "Eros of Distance" through unselfing. A lot of what he said reminded me of a quote from Taintong Rujing: "The sky tips over like a jar flooding the inner vision."

And there it is. All sorceries, all mysticisms, are worthless bahalooey garbage wastes of time which all boil down to one singular thing - you're not living until you become a tool for an unclean spirit.

*spits on your sorceries*

[Anonymous No.21307645]

>>21307634
Bitch, even in your desert death cult you have such experiences. It doesn't matter if you cope by saying theirs is unclean and yours, that you call "being touched by the holy spirit", is clean and kosher, it's the same fucking principle.

[Anonymous No.21307789]

>>21307645
>it's the same principle
Perhaps there is a same mechanical principle, in that every human is concatenated the same way and exists relationally as a point in the same physico-spiritual world, but your sorceries and the power of the Holy Spirit have nothing in common.

*spits on the folly of esotericisms*

>The fancy possessed me that the man behind it had dissolved away like salt in water, and that it laughed and sighed, appealed and denounced at the bidding of beings greater or less than man. 'This is not Michael Robartes at all: Michael Robartes is dead; dead for ten, for twenty years perhaps,'

[Anonymous No.21307792]

WHERE'S THE FUCKING PDF AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Anonymous No.21307793]

>>21307789
>My imaginary ghost is better than your imaginary ghost
Never change christcucks

[Anonymous No.21307794]

>>21307793
>imaginary
You know nothing of what you speak.

[Anonymous No.21307882]

It's ironic that someone who promotes an intoxicating Dionysian irrationalist philosophy should write such autistically dry slogs of books. A bit more Blätter and a bit less menthone, Ludwig!

[Anonymous No.21307895]

>>21305207
Tl;dr?

[Anonymous No.21307901]

>>21307895
Stop being a autitic book rat and start doing drugs, dancing like you are possessed and organizing orgies.

[Anonymous No.21307921]

>>21307901

[Anonymous No.21307930]

>>21307921
More like this. He actually looks like he gets pussy on the regular, contrary to Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.21307993]

>>21307930
He certainly has the possessed eyes they all have - intelligent, slightly delirious, and overwhelmingly misanthropic. It gets more and more pronounced the deeper they go.

[Anonymous No.21308004]

>>21307993
They sure do.

[Anonymous No.21308014]

>>21308004
He actually looks quite normal, save the obvious need of a dentist, and certainly does not fit my description. If anything he looks like awkwardly warm and possibly midwit - though I'm not asserting it.

Blatvatsky, on the other hand...

[Anonymous No.21308983]

>>21307634
>not understanding the difference between daemon and demon

[Anonymous No.21310287]

>>21308983
That there is a difference, is mere illusion.