[Main Blog Post] Understanding Spengler's Decline of the West Bit 3: The Soul Image

[jprussell]

I've gotten to one of the juicier bits of Decline of the West - the "Soul Image" that defines different Great Cultures. Here's the post.

Comments

[jprussell]

Well, one thing I didn't bring up in my post is JMG's theory that North America is actually in the pre-Cultural phase and we're currently undergoing a Faustian pseudomorphosis. If true, those of us in the US (including Manly P. Hall) would not be true Faustians and all, and might be likely to mess it up when we try to express its Soul Image.

Progress, of course, is another topic that JMG has much to say on, and it's somewhat surprising to me that Hall was obsessed with it, given the quality of his Occult writing and recommended practice. I can note, though, that Hall was alive at what might have been the Spiritual high point of the religion of Progress, if not the point of its greatest scope and power (which is probably right now, or coming very soon). What I mean is that up until the 70s or so, you could look at the world through the lens of Progress and still pretty credibly believe it was happening, so I think you got a more sincere belief with less of the negative baggage than those who cling to it in the face of mounting evidence against it.

Altogether, though, something I need to think more about, so thank you for sharing the perspective!

[sdi]

Well, I don't mean that Hall bought into the secular religion of Progress (with its technological trappings and medical sacraments): in fact, he's quite clear that these steps come at the cost of spiritual progress and will come back to bite us someday soon. Rather, I mean that he seems to believe in the notion of progress in the abstract, but he applies it to the spiritual destiny of mankind.

But as you note, I'm probably not in on the game—I think the whole notion of progress of any sort is as weird as the whole male body thing that the Greeks totally had going on. So it's a little difficult for me to grasp!

[jprussell]

Thank you for the clarification, I was slightly conflating some distinct (but I think related) notions of "Progress," and you are right to point out that Hall was not a follower of the secular religion of Progress JMG most often means when he talks about that.

Basically, I believe that the modern secular religion of Progress is a Christian heresy with all the explicitly religious bits filed off. I'll back up and try to explain what I mean a bit more. The Soul Image of Faustian culture is moving toward a point infinitely far away - always visible as a goal, but always on the horizon, forever out of reach.

Okay, so that's one thread. Another is that many/most of the Middle Eastern/Magian religions had/have a view of time that it is going to a definite end with some kind of fulfillment. Early Faustian culture took this on, but I'd argue with a bit more, hmm, enthusiasm(?) for being on the right side of the end times, because they naturally used the idea of the Apocalypse to express the Soul Image of the far-off goal. Over time, the teleological obsession with moving toward perfection fused with the increasing focus on the material world (politics, science, technology) and less on the religious, though for most of its history it was expressed religiously.

So, all of that is to say that even religious folks from Europe and America for the past few centuries have taken for granted that everything is going somewhere for some purpose. I think Hall was expressing that through his own very idiosyncratic lens. I think the secular religion of progress is another way that tendency gets expressed.

Happy to expand on or clarify any of this.

[sdi]

Yes—I think we're on the same page!