Riotous Beginnings
Hello, again all. While, we have missed the exact date on the anniversary of the start of this publication, I’d wished to do something special for that, anyways. Hopefully, the lengthy, but (in my eyes) insightful Basis of Love has made up for that. Originally, in our first review Bi-Annual (circa May, 2022) we drew up a narrative over the past half year. At the time I was still in my old apartment and have since changed careers and gotten a new place all to myself. Much has changed in my life and so has my thinking.
The first big step was our Bi-Annual Review. From there we entered into a different, more actionable series of articles. We began, here at Mag’s Monthly, focused on primarily setting the tone of our publication and doing some preliminary research. Covering institutional fields (Nonlinearity, Suicide Prevention, Eric Gans), American history (American Politics P. I and II, Housing in America) certain forms of explicit power dynamics (Lugal, Think Tanks) and implicit (Language and Identity, Merrell Wolff Notes).
As we entered into the second phase of our writings, I took a more direct approach, confident in my analytical ability. It reminds me much of geologists who understand the process of finding gems, and how they must be refined to acquire value; when they see fraudulent “findings”—where a random guy supposedly finds this illustrious magnificent gem, arbitrarily—they take it immediately into suspicion. Once you spend enough time in the mines, analyzing intellectual articles (like gemstones), you become sensitive to whenever a consultant, who’s marketing their analytics and translations, makes a bad faith, ideological argument or poor procedure.
The Heart of the Magazine
The secondary swab of articles were focused on a positive emancipation of that view. Outlining theories and procedures that can be followed to let others who read the work develop their own sense for “faux-gemstoning”. This follows in the tradition of Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s conscious-introception; as we mentioned in Franklin Merrell Wolff Notes, conscious introception is ‘the knowing of the knowing, and the knowing of the how of the knowing.’ It is as much the conscious understanding of the journey to the knowledge as the knowledge itself. My gemstone analogy comes from the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, where one imagines a Buddha descending into the heart, emanating a crystalline light; it is an magisterial attempt at conscious introception, or Gnosis. I give a profane metaphor above to try and illuminate that aspect in my own work. I’ve desacralized it precisely because I am not offering the teachings of Buddhism, per se.
If I were, then how could I live with myself? There are many Buddhists today but politics is not their strong suit. Yes, I’m looking at you, those Buddhists who castrate their entire being—the ones who destroy their potential in self immolation, lighting themselves ablaze for some petty, small political goal. Clearly, that cannot be an end game and misses the exact war-games politics abides by.
My gripe with Wolff, himself, is that he borders on solipsisms at times. I think there is much he ignores politically, and thus Aurobindo had a better practice with not Consciousness-as-ultimatum (Gnosis as we’ve described) but that we dedicate the identity to becoming one with the Divine. It is an aspiration to the Divine which is primary, as he would say. This is not to diminish the teachings of the great Wolff, who howls at his knowledgeable moon goddess (“consciousness without an object or subject”), but Aurobindo accomplished much politically. He was the beginnings of the Indian nationalism movement, after all. I don’t think it is a mistake that Wolff, himself—being the mathematician— doesn’t accomplish much in the political realms. A great mind, nonetheless and one the most influential on my thoughts. His dedication to his Gnosis is his greatest accomplishment and has provided exact tools to it in the ways hardly anyone ever has had the idea of doing. He’s as clear thinking and emblematic as the Buddha-as-crystalline-light—a shaman with vision powerful, but most of us poorer in circumstance and disposition may have trouble relating to it.
Hence, the goal of the second half of this journey and the “heart” of my work. I hope to help build that gap between sacred and profane through my own “theory” of agency. One that can couple up to these other modes of analysis and transcendental consciousness, and disseminate great teachings from that. As I’ve outlined in The Basis of Love, we can bring love into this work through a pure dedication; an orientation of discipline to the Divine. With this, I hope we can expand our historical perspective so that we can better enable moral and good people to gain power. Power not just in the vain, profane way, but the ways in which those in power can live good lives—as men, women, leaders and all professions in the disciplines.
We began translating in this way through an essay on organizational principles in very rudimentary form, through our article aptly titled Organization. Then, establishing a decent ground built off of those principles—as useful in political organizations as the ordering of your room and life—to demonstrate possible ways to morally engage with your local people. We did this in Political Dissent.
The Refined Process
Finally, we reached our Eclipse, where the moon of knowledge reaches through the sun of existence, the spirit of my work: Theories of Agency. In this I make my fully-fledged argument for the base of theories of agency as an invention that allows me to fully realize a broader meta-political objective. In Agency this was done through a gaze at Gans’ The End of Culture. While waiting for an idea to flourish in my head I published Study Notes, an easy article that allows the more ambitious among you to study on your own—a chance to apply some self-disciplining techniques, to journey how I did—if you wanted a broader view untainted by my narrative, that is. (Even if you accept it as true.) It also served as a good place for fellow independent researchers to take a look at my “data”. This could have only been a good thing in my eyes; as it allows duals to potentially take place, in case I, myself, lose my way. I can only ever be grateful to any of you that come to take me down a peg; for I likely would have stagnated in some way and deserved the jolt.
When the waiting was up, and the idea fully formed I wrote the skeleton for The Basis of Love. The bones of the work was written in a matter of a day or two, relatively unchanging; this is considered with the exception of the Digital Map, a necessary consequence and loose end that I added to the infrastructure. From there, in the passage of the entire month of November I had written Parts I, II, III, and IV. Here, I wasn’t necessarily pushing myself (pointlessly, relativistically) but battling my more disparaging instincts. Ones of laziness and the like. I think I am much better for it and have refined my technique further.
Originally my process in starting this magazine was one of hatred and weariness. It was brought to my attention, recently, by a close acquaintance that I “wasn’t having fun.” I’ve known this for a while—my first articles I wrote untimely, and usually quickly at the end of the month, procrastinating the “dreaded” act. I had many moments much like the Pilgrim in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; moments that seemed designed to lead me away from my path. It brings to mind what Rudolf Steiner mentions in his How to Know Higher Worlds; that the initiate must come to realize that with many of these “rules” the soul can never force upon itself. Once he becomes initiated to life—which he as well mentions that life is often the greatest teacher—the soul no longer views these as rules but takes them upon itself, for the betterment of its own constitution. Willingly so. Sentimentally this was my focused directive in writing the Basis of Love, and found myself enjoying it all the more.
Indeed, it was another tombstone marking another moment in my life where I bury old my tendencies. Perhaps we recall the Western history of Alchemy—wherein various esoteric traditions (not necessarily reoffering the Jungian interpretations) the philosopher’s stone is regarded as a spiritual metaphor for the soul. One in which the noetic value is attained—a better descriptor of this is that the soul has become organized and equanimous to all of life with its own disposition—a true, unsullied love. To use my own framework, it is the transformation of the relative into the transcendental mode of agency. I describe the intricacies of this in Basis of Love more thoroughly.
Hopefully we’ve all challenged and grown through this year. I am eternally thankful to those of you that continue to stick around; nevertheless putting up with my strange rhetoric and unique style—even back when all I had to offer were weird and odd shamanistic visions of what would come. Here we are, again. This time with a vision emanating clearer than last. I have many projects coming up. For we are in a Golden Age. Rejoice! There is always no better time to be alive than the moment you are right now; remember that.
A Chronology of our First Excursion:
Year One, Half One, 2021-2022:
Welcome
Nonlinearity
Merrell Wolff Notes
Directory
Suicide Prevention
Eric Gans
Language and Identity
Housing in America
Early American Politics P. I
Early American Politics P. II
Think Tanks
Lugal
Bi-Annual Review
Year One, Half Two, 2022-2022:
Organization
Political Dissent
Theories of Agency
Study Notes
The Basis of Love P. I
The Basis of Love P. II
The Basis of Love P. III
The Basis of Love P. IV
Year in Review
If you want to explore any of the previous articles that have caught your attention, you can read Bi-Annual Review for a synopsis of the first half. For the second half, I outlined above the structure and content as coherently as I could. If you want my suggestions for reading structure, and how I categorized them, please refer to the Directory as always.
Merriness and tidings to all; see you all Christmas, fuckers.