[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on Devotional Polytheism

[jprussell]

This week, a fairly quick rundown of my thoughts on Devotional Polytheism by Galina Krasskova.

As always, let me know what you think!

Comments

[causticus]

Jeff, I think it's mostly inconsistency. One thing he does a lot (that I struggle with greatly) is totally compartmentalizing each of the different systems of teaching he works with. On the contrary, I'm always inclined to try and synthesize every teaching of seeming worth that I come across in my mental travels.

[sdi]

I actually think compartmentalization is good practice.

There's a famous saying in statistics, "all models are wrong, but some models are useful." JMG is swift to point out (following Kant) that models are all we have access to, and Plotinus would say Objective Truth only exists at the level of the Intellect (which we're two hops away from)! Here in the material world, we're merely the blind men and the elephant: any teaching we have access to can only encapsulate one small nugget of Truth, and it isn't possible even in theory to reconcile them all.

It is good to learn to use a tool when it's appropriate, but it must also be kept in mind that no tool can be universal!

[jprussell]

Yeah, I think epistemic/intellectual humility of this sort is useful - maybe a helpful meta-lesson from JMG, even if we might disagree with some of the specific applications. It's a lesson I find especially hard to swallow, since I tend to want to synthesize everything into an intellectually satisfying, comprehensible framework, like causticus mentions - which likely means that learning to get comfortable with such ambiguity is exactly what I need.