[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on The Idea of the Holy

[jprussell]

I just wrapped up Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy and decided to organize my thinking a bit with a post. As always, I'd love to hear what you think.

Comments

[jprussell]

1) Being pretty ignorant of the Tarot, I'll have to take your word for it!

2) Indeed!

3) Fair enough, but that depends a bit on what you believe is going on with divination (meaning roughly "fortune telling") metaphysically: is it only a tool for spurring subconscious insights, a method for revealing the obscure will of the Gods, a window into the non-personalized forces of fate, or some combination? With the links he made with Cabala, Levi clearly intended it as a vehicle of religious symbolism and meaning, but lots of modern practitioners see it very differently.

Cheers,
Jeff

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for your reply. The Tarot improves understanding regardless of subject. When using pompous language, you could say it "reveals the obscure will of the Gods". I do not think of that as religious in and of itself. An atheist can use the Tarot to analyse a motorcycle problem.

The Cabala and Levi are unknown areas to me, so I'll have to take your word for that! Looking forward to next week's post.

[jprussell]

Sorry, reviewing the thread, I realized I wasn't as careful in my statements as I ought to have been. In my first reply to you, I said "Otto's use of the term for "coming to sense the numinous and better understand it" is basically what divinatory tools like Tarot Cards or Runestaves are for." and later, in response to you saying that for you, the Tarot is not religious, I said "Fair enough, but that depends a bit on what you believe is going on with divination (meaning roughly "fortune telling") metaphysically," the former of which slightly assumes a conclusion from the second, as well as taking a historical development for granted, so let me try to re-state more clearly.

When methods of what are commonly called "divination" (i.e. "fortune telling" or helping with questions where the answer is not obvious) were developed, the dominant understanding of what was happening was that the tool was a way to get more information from the Gods, hence the name, which contains "divin(e)." As such, I wasn't trying to be pompous when I said "revealing the obscure will of the Gods" - I meant that some people (especially historically) literally believe that is what is happening when you do divination - when you pull a Tarot spread and lay it out, or throw the Runestaves, or draw up a horomancy chart, or whatever, what is actually happening, according to these folks, is that the Gods are communicating with you through this medium.

Now, these days, there are more theories as to what makes divination work: the subconscious reacting to random, symbolically-rich images or concepts, impersonal forces like Fate or Wyrd being seen more clearly by focusing on those things they most directly control ("random" events), some form of communication from the Gods, or whatever else. An atheist who finds Tarot useful would likely believe the first is what's happening, whereas a theist might believe one of the others, or some combination (I tend towards "some combination" as the most likely explanation, but for purposes of this discussion, I'm not trying to convince you, just putting my cards on the table (heh)).

All of which means that, to the degree "divination" (with cards, lots, or whatever) is seen as "communication from the Gods," the semantic link between Otto's use of the word and the common use of it is more clear and direct. If, on the other hand, non-divine factors entirely explain what's going on with "fortune telling," the common use of the word "divination" is only linked with Otto's use of the word through a historical mistake (e.g. ancient people believing that which random symbols you got were influenced by the Gods, who are trying to talk to you, and hence naming that practice with a word to means "communicating with the divine"). The common factor is that the word has been applied to different behaviors thought by those using the word to mean "better understanding the Gods," and that's how we ended up with the same word for such outwardly disparate behaviors.

Hopefully that makes what I was trying to get at a bit more clear.

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for putting your cards on the table! I assumed "revealing the obscure will of the Gods" was a quote from Levi, the French writer known for his pompous language. So apologies for appearing to call your writing pompous.

[jprussell]

No worries! It is certainly a phrase that would be at least a bit bombastic, and quite possibly pompous, if being used for something like "what's going to happen" (and might still be).