Archaic Deity – Archaic Iconography…

Many depictions of deity are a tad dated. They arose in times when the power of kings and emperors was quasi absolute. The iconography has “radioactive” halos around sainted beings, chariots, swords and thrones. There are arguments about who stands or sits around the throne and on which side various beings are to be found. There are crowns and often a patrilineal succession of power. Humanity obsesses about organisational flow charts of the heavens and in the past who had career advancement amongst the Gods depended upon level of obedience and sycophancy. The celestial “human” resources department had severance packages to negotiate.

Fear of God put bums on seats and pennies on the collection plate.

These days the power of kings is much diminished. We don’t drive roman chariots all that much. The machete has replaced the short sword. The Heckler and Koch automatic has replaced the spear. The ultimate symbol of mundane power is a ginormous nuclear powered aircraft carrier equipped with stealth bombers. Thrones are old hat.

In constructing a deity and a pecking order of them, whether that be of Gods and angels or Buddhas and bodhisattvas, the notions are related to the mundane order of things. The iconography perhaps an aid for the illiterate. In many cases the “clergy” asserted power over flock and encouraged supplication therefrom. The “clergy” encouraged a notion that they were higher, perhaps better and more revered than the lay. The churches and temples extracted wealth and called it meritorious. It might help your journey in the afterlife to fund the claret of a bishop. It was a good pitch. People can read and think now.

I am not sure older notions of Gods and Buddhas wash as well these days. Despite what fragrances Unilever might add. Subscription to religious providers it probably falling all over the world.

There is a glaring difference in iconography between the seated tranquil garden statue Buddha and the tortured crucified Christ bleeding from his crown of thorns. This despite much similarity in their teachings. Man has emphasised the suffering of Jesus over his peaceful message. It prefers to show images of internecine cruelty and suffering rather than brotherly love. In our time there is much need both for tranquillity and for love.

Religious iconography is very often chavvy and overly ornate. It is showy and “look at me”.

“We have shit loads of gold! We the clergy must be powerful! Kneel pleb!”

Modern military power does not lend itself to very personal, even familial iconography. There is no big hearted daddy on the throne. Rather a couple of old men, fingers above a red button, ready to embody Shiva the destroyer aspect of deity. It is not an image of fatherly love. It is one of pendant wrath and nuclear winter.

Notions of deity need updating in a manner more suitable for modern mind, modern living. And no I do not mean a Marvel escapist universe. The sublime needs divorced from the family drama and the incestuous and the Machiavellian.

Spirit and consciousness needs to evolve away from the zoomorphic whilst retaining the feelings and value. A new form of understanding might spring from where we find ourselves now, so very obsessed with corporeal image and public relations spin-bullshit. Petabytes of images are quite a quagmire for the minds of mankind.

Yup…I think the old forms of iconography and depictions of deity are looking rather dated and may no longer be fit for purpose.

We may even need a thorough review of what we imagine deity and/or a God to be.

I wonder how might we imagine and create a God 2.0 ?

The So-called Externalisation

If you swing by this blog from time to time you may note that I write a little on the blue books opus. These are written, so the story goes, by Alice Bailey acting as a telepathic amanuensis for the master Djwhal Kuhl a.k.a. the Tibetan. Whether or not you believe this story or the contents of these books, it is fair to say that a great deal of effort was made and that the contents, should you read them in entirety, no mean feat, have a marked internal consistency.

He suggests that the spiritual “hierarchy” may incarnate and live among humanity as a whole in preparation for the New Age and the coming of the Christ given impulse by the Avatar of Synthesis. I personally am not fond of any nomenclature which uses the word hierarchy. His thesis is these beings have guided humanity for millennia. An incarnate example being perhaps Comte de Saint Germain {still} who was “seen” at various European courts around the time of the French revolution.

In the works the Tibetan became a master taking the fifth initiation in the body of an old man in 1875 yet still writing books telepathically in 1950s. Such a statement is prone to disbelief.

This is not “Assassins Creed” and nor is this a Templar plot.

Nowhere in his opus does he mention that such an occurrence would be welcomed with open arms by the powers that be. In fact he is very scant on what that might look like. He does speculate on future schools of meditation and that various experiments would be undertaken. He mentions that Roosevelt was a disciple of the white magic and hints that Hitler and his evil gang of henchmen were dark and evil, dark adepts even.

Before I go further, I want to drop in a piece of nomenclature. This is the term karmic clusterfuck. A karmic clusterfuck is the biggest mistake that one can make in terms of messing up karma. In front lies a truly golden sparkly and shiny opportunity which you completely fuck up out of arrogance, power craziness and stubbornness. In seeking to control everything you turn it in a right royal, grade A karmic clusterfuck of gargantuan near cosmic proportions. The causal karmic clusterfuck will have huge ongoing effects and consequences rippling forward in space-time. That karmic clusterfuck has personal, racial and national impacts moving forward. The impacts can be global, geo-political and planetary.

It is noteworthy to examine the different treatment of Siddartha and Jesus. The resultant effects from these two karmic causes have differed, one characterised by blood greed violence and oppression the other more benign. One can draw own opinion from careful study.

Given the current obsession with espionage and “intelligence” it is not far-fetched to assume a few things. If the blue books opus is not written by the fairy godmother and has some measure of fact, then should such an externalisation happen it will be monitored. The likelihood of an open arms welcome is low. No powerful human would enjoy the interference of a bunch of beings with unknown provenance {to them}. The fatted calf would not be killed and put upon the great barbecue next to the Wagyu. Behaviour might be to observe and/or persecute. If threatened then incarnations could be encouraged to be short lived, truncated. There could even be partisan attempts to on-side the incarnating adepts and initiates, should they be discovered. Most likely there will be large intellectual resistance and this likely to emanate from the so-called scientific community as well as from churches of all flavours and creeds. Those with vested interests are the least likely to offer a heartfelt “Bienvenue”.

In clear simple terms, there will be shenanigans.

The tendency to try to double guess and assume would be difficult to resist. The basic assumption might be of motive, that the new kids on the block want to take over the ‘hood. To an enlightened being the notion of power over is an anathema. A concept difficult to comprehend for your normal powerful human being.

What is safe to say is that if such an externalisation were to occur it would be totally new and there would be zero precedent on how to approach it. Locking up an initiate in Guantanamo Bay, would be karmically unwise. It is however likely that humanity, some of its leaders, would react in a non-measured way. The new and unfamiliar can stimulate fear-dramas into those already mildly paranoid. No way would these enlightened beings be after the job of prime minister, archbishop, ayatollah or president. But people may fail to appreciate this. There would be psychological transference of motive. People would see their own reflection in the mirror.

Although a positional organisational chart was given out in the last century it would not be clear how to approach. Contact details are not available for Kuhl on LinkedIn. In 2025 he would be well in excess of 150 earth years old which is a bit of a mindfuck. Who might be the receptionist, the organisational gatekeepers? Where is headquarters? Why is their web site not SEO optimised? What is the protocol? The organisation has probably changed and evolved.

Any conventional corporate approach probably would not apply. One could not meet and share corporate PowerPoint presentations, handing out business cards with roles like Quartermaster, CEO, Secretary of State on. The concept of dealmaking may have zero applicability.

The world has changed since Kuhl was writing in depth.

I don’t know if Kuhl had envisioned how it might play out, probably not because when he was writing it was a long way into the future, a dream yet to coalesce. It would be a metaphorical minefield given that the vast majority of humanity is in no way soul-infused. The overarching psychology is that of the personality and its self-ish orientation. The interconnectedness of The One Life is not uppermost and goodwill to all men has been sadly much eroded as of late. People are self-centred and do not feel the One Humanity all that much. Separation and division are currently rife. People are not working together to face the real incoming crisis of planetary climate change; they are squabbling as “Rome” burns. They have pressed snooze on their smartphone alarm clocks.

Is it even possible for humanity to engage in a calm intelligent fashion with such a putative externalisation were it to happen?

How would you bet?