The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist
The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist
The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist
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‘GOOD’ AND ‘EVIL’<br />
sets about copying this model. At best this mode of action will achieve a kind<br />
of training of the conditioned reflexes in which the negative impulses will be<br />
inhibited in the interests of the positive; but it is evident that such an<br />
evolution is incompatible with intemporal realisation, which presupposes the<br />
conciliatory synthesis of the positive and negative poles, and the fact that<br />
these two poles, without ceasing to oppose one another, can finally<br />
collaborate harmoniously.<br />
<strong>The</strong> conception of the two inferior principles, when the idea of the<br />
Superior Principle is lacking, necessarily leads the man to bestow on these<br />
two inferior principles a nature at once absolute and personal, that is to say to<br />
idolise them. <strong>The</strong> positive principle becomes 'God' and the negative 'Devil'.<br />
When the apex of the triangle of the Triad is lacking the base of the triangle<br />
cannot remain horizontal; it swings a quarter of a turn: the inferior positive<br />
angle becomes 'God' and rises up to the zenith ('paradise'); the inferior<br />
negative angle becomes 'Devil' and falls to the nadir ('hell'). 'God' is<br />
conceived as a perfect anthropomorphic positivity, he is just, good, beautiful,<br />
affirming, constructive. 'Satan' is conceived as a perfect anthropomorphic<br />
negativity, he is unjust, wicked, ugly, negating, destructive. Since this<br />
dualism of the principles contradicts the intuition that man has, in other<br />
respects, of a Unique Principle which unifies everything, the existence of<br />
'Evil', of 'Satan', opposed to 'God', poses to man a problem that is practically<br />
insoluble and forces him into philosophical acrobatics. Among these<br />
acrobatics, there is an idea which we will see presently is well-founded, the<br />
idea that 'God' wills the existence of the 'Devil' and not the other way round,<br />
an idea which confers an evident primacy on 'God' in regard to the 'Devil';<br />
but nothing in this dualistic perspective can explain why 'God' has need to<br />
desire the existence of the 'Devil' while remaining perfectly free.<br />
Let us note the close relationship which exists between this dualistic<br />
conception 'God-Devil' and the aesthetic sense which distinguishes the<br />
human animal from the other animals. <strong>The</strong> aesthetic sense consists in<br />
perceiving the dualism, affirmation-negation, in 'form'. 'Satan' is deformed,<br />
that is to say of negative form, form in the process of decomposition, tending<br />
towards the formless. Man has an affective preference for formation<br />
(construction) as against deformation (destruction). <strong>The</strong> form of a beautiful<br />
human body is that which corresponds to the apogee of its construction, at the<br />
moment at which it is at the maximum distance from the formless and has not<br />
yet begun to return thereto. It is not astonishing that every morality should be<br />
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