Human beings are never going to be perfect. The best we can do is keep asking for help and accepting it when you can. If you keep doing that, you will always be moving towards better.
Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly and Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso, s03e12, “So Long, Farewell”
This is not to absolve the world of its ugliness, or to deny that truly fearful things exist in it. But some of these things can be overcome–on the condition that we build an aesthetic on the overcoming rather than the fear.
I recently attended a gay dance/poetry performance of uncompromising hipness: the one black dancer in the troupe had to pretend to fuck a dead sheep.
Part of my self-induced stupidity, I confess, is to believe (& even feel) that art can change me, & change others. That’s why I write pornography & propaganda–to cause change. Art can never mean as much as a love affair, perhaps, or an insurrection. But…to a certain extent…it works.
Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Against the Reproduction of Death
they believe that Bush was chosen by God to lead the country against the infidels or whatever the fuck it is. Power needs a narrative to operate even if it only exists for its own sake, and this story never ends no matter how old it is.
Some believe any and every thing is symbolic, and can be transcribed, and explain the occult, but of what they do not know. (Great spiritual truths?) So argument a metaphor, cautiously confusing the obvious which developes the hidden virtue. This unnecessary corpulency, however impressive, is it not disgusting? (The Elephant is exceeding large but extremely powerful, the swine though odious does not breed the contempt of our good taste.) If a man is no hero to his servant, much less can he remain a mystic in the eyes of the curious; similarity educates mimicry. Decorate your meaning, however objectionable (as fact), after you have shown your honesty. Truth, though simple, never needs the argument of confusion for obscurity; its own pure symbolism embraces all possibilities as mystic design. Take your stand in commonsense and you include the truth which cannot lie; no argument has yet prevailed. Perfect proportion suggest no alteration, and what is useless decays.
Austin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure
it has been shown that much of the work of Trithemius, Agrippa’s mentor and the progenitor of European ceremonial magick, was actually veiled cryptography, a brutal and embarrassing truth that much of the occult and neopagan revival, which ultimately stems from Trithemius, has never assessed.
Jason Louv, The Angelic Reformation: John Dee, Enochian Magick & the Occult Roots of Empire
God is never so turned away from man, and never so much sendeth him new paths, as when he maketh ascent to divine speculations or works in a confused or disordered manner, and as it adds, with unhallowed lips, or unwashed feet. For of those who are thus negligent, the progress is imperfect, the impulses are vain, and the paths are dark.
Zoroaster, quoted at The Herb Dangerous, Part II: The Psychology of Hashish by Oliver Haddo (Aleister Crowley)
If only to keep the supply of food and books flowing in, I would have to fake some sort of participation in a human environment that had never really made much sense.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Living With a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth About Everything [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
I was never that interested in organised games or religion because someone else had already worked out what all the patterns were.
J M R Higgs, KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money [Amazon, Publisher]
He never trusted nondrinkers. They either didn’t know how to enjoy life or they were self-righteous. Either way meant they were difficult to work with.
Andy Weir, Randomize
Probably this chronic mutual suspicion of our neighbour’s capacities—suggesting, in effect, a hierarchy of competence with respect to human consciousness—will never be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.
Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye
