The difficulty with joy is that it lies in the slippage between metaphysics and normativity.
Andrew Culp, Dark Deleuze [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
Tag Archives: joy
green of the honeyed muse, green of the rough caress of ritual, green undaunted by reason or delirium, green of jealous joy, green of the secret holy violence of the thyrsos, green of the sacred iridescence of the dance
Anne Carson and Euripides, Bakkhai [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
These are the things that life is all about. These moments. It’s not about the rituals. It’s not about getting by. It’s about the stack of tiny little moments of joy and love that add up to a lifetime that’s been worthwhile. You can’t measure them; you can only capture them, like snapshots in your mind. All that joy, all that greatness, that’s God.
C Robert Cargill, Sea of Rust: A Novel [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
O nameless splendour of the Gods,
Begotten hardly of Heaven!
Unspoken treasure of the abodes
Beyond the lightning levin!
No misery, no despair may pay
The joy to hold thee for a day!
Aleister Crowley, The Argonauts
“You think one of the two’s yours—joy or misery,” Margaret said, “or both. Why, if you don’t, should you mind?”
Charles Williams, Descent Into Hell [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world.
Aleister Crowley, Liber Al vel Legis, II:21
And how could the Soul lend itself to any admixture? An essential is not mixed. Or of the intrusion of anything alien? If it did, it would be seeking the destruction of its own nature. Pain must be equally far from it. And Grief- how or for what could it grieve? Whatever possesses Existence is supremely free, dwelling, unchangeable, within its own peculiar nature. And can any increase bring joy, where nothing, not even anything good, can accrue? What such an Existent is, it is unchangeably.
Plotinus, The Six Enneads, The First Ennead
Duty and joy go hand in hand. Duty is there so you can continue to pursue your happiness. And joy is there so that you have something real to fight for.
Star Trek: Discovery, s03e07, written by Kirsten Beyer [Amazon, Paramount+]
Joy is replaced by drudgery and individuality surrendered to the social collective. Thus is life passed in stupidity.
Christopher S Hyatt, Black Book Volume 1: Principles of Extreme Living
My muscles flexed and movement was a joy, a dance. The wind was whispering against my face. I am wolf.
J Damask, Wolf at the Door
