Matter and Imaginings
How do you imagine scenes of innocence?
How do you imagine scenes of depravity?
What do you know about beliefs relating to the sacred?
What do you know about beliefs relating to sacrilege?
What is your acquaintance with Lamia and the Empusa?
What is your acquaintance with Aidos and Pudicitia.
What is your acquaintance with Bona Dea and the Veneralia?
What is your acquaintance with the Sibylline Books and the subsequent influence of Sulpicia?
What is your acquaintance with pagan studies?
What is your acquaintance with Taoism and its Three Jewels?
What is your acquaintance with the concept of Fitra in Islam?
What do you know about sibyls and why they are depicted on the floors of Siena Cathedral?
What is your acquaintance with comparative religion?
What is your acquaintance with the concept of omnibenevolence?
What is your acquaintance with the concept of sexual ethics?
What is your acquaintance with mystagogues and sacred mysteries?
What is your acquaintance with ritualistic fasting?
Perhaps you would rather think about re-enchantment materially, whether through the use of paints on canvas, mosaics, sketches paper, aroma compounds, flowers and fruits, jewellery and beadwork, textiles and dyes, wreaths, chaplets and corolla.
Perhaps you have a New Age approach to re-enchantment.
Perhaps you have an interest in the concepts of spiritual evolution and/or spiritual transformation rather than enlightened re-enchantment.
What do you know about Venus Verticordia and how she has been imagined by later interpreters?
Perhaps you are more interested in the macabre and the gruesome and the grotesque.
Perhaps you are interested in Early Modern accounts of and by the benandanti.
Perhaps you are more interested in Stregoneria and/or Stregheria.
What do you know about the witches of Benevento?
Perhaps you are more interested in the history of lunar calendars and/or solar calendars.
Perhaps you are interested in relationships with the moon in indigenous cultures.
What do you know about the motif of Death and the Maiden, particularly in the art of Hans Baldung?
What do you know about that artist's depiction of witches?
What do you know about artistic depictions of an incubus?
What do you know about the evil eye?
What do you know about poltergeists?
What do you know about fanciful views concerning the moon?
What is your acquaintance with the lunar effect and research associated with it?
What do you know about the abilities of angels?
What have you discovered about Puritans and the cruelty associated with them?
What have you discovered about Christian demonology and its connection with sexuality?
What have you discovered about the history of claimed witchcraft in Italy, and in Ireland, and in Sweden?
What do you know about microhistory?
What do you know about the enlightened work of Balthasar Bekker (1634–1698)
What is your acquaintance with free thought?
What is your acquaintance with classical physics?
What is your acquaintance with general chemistry?
What is your acquaintance with historiography?
What is your acquaintance with the science of physical matter?
What is your acquaintance with the philosophy of matter?
What is your acquaintance with early modern philosophy?
What is your acquaintance with the history of science?
What is your acquaintance with the history of freedom?
What is your acquaintance with metaphysics?
What is your acquaintance with teleology?
What is your acquaintance with the history of thought, and of your own thoughts?
Everywhere, mental distress is still viewed as a problem to be addressed through punishment rather than through the contextual understanding of causality.
People are only truly free when they have the ability to think and express themselves reasonably, therefore in accordance with matters of fact. That ability is associated with freedom of thought, freedom of speech and cognitive liberty.
Yet many people fear losing the security blanket of delusion. Or they may not even know they possess that security blanket, especially if it allows them to experience hubris or hedonism, or both.
In the history of Western European art, goddesses could be represented as nudes and witches could be represented as naked but 'ordinary' women, and 'ordinary' men, could not.
How do you interpret the concept of ousia?
What is your acquaintance with ontology?
How do you usually interpret the meaning of femininity and masculinity, and why?
How do you interpret the philosophical terms of object and subject?
How do you assess the characteristics of subjects?
Formerly deluded people often become deeply distressed when experiencing disillusionment. They are frightened by the truth. They lose their sense of identity. They become painfully aware that their former identity was founded upon delusion.
Disillusioned people associate reality with endless mourning. And even when they superficially display outward confidence, particularly to strangers, their minds are in turmoil. They have deep, relentless angst. They are cynical. Their anxiety, and their inability to regard anyone as trustworthy, causes them to behave without compassion or civility.
Yet history itself can be appropriately re-enchanting, when it is explored both reasonably and imaginatively.
How do you distinguish between the acquisition of knowledge and the expression of authority?
How well do you use the grey matter and white matter in your brain, and how do you know?
How carefully have you assessed substance theory?
How carefully have you explored the mind-body problem?
How have you compared mind-body dualism with various forms of monism?
Perhaps you do not believe it is necessary to examine such matters if you are to express your problem-solving abilities appropriately.
But what causes that incompatibility if not unreasonableness?
An enlightened world is one without fear of superstitions, bullying and other expressions of unreasonableness.
How are you contributing to the second Age of Enlightenment, if at all?
Perhaps you have studied matter in philosophical ways.
There are, of course, many meanings of materialism and many meanings of property.
The unjustly powerful often claim evidence-based, analytical assessments are controversial. That is particularly the case when reasoning is examined systematically and skeptically, and facts are stated clearly.
What is your acquaintance with skepticism?
How do you know your own skepticism is not associated with cynicism?
To lack skepticism is to be gullible.
Tomorrow, a monthly series begins here on the enlightened re-enchantment of the world.
What will be your expectations in relation to it?
Engaging in controversies is necessary as a way to draw attention to charlatanism and address it.
Throughout history, tricksters have had much power. That is why they have been able to dupe the gullible into militaristic pursuits, (other) dangerous economic ones and other dangerous interpersonal practices.
Physical matter in the observable universe consists of mass in the context of spatial volume.
There are, of course, also massless particles and dynamic disturbances and many mysteries still to solve.
You may know something about the history of natural philosophy and modern philosophy and modern science.
You may even have expertise in relation to Cartesianism and hermeneutics.
You may know something about the theological concept of accommodation.
You may know something about the legal concept of reasonable accommodation.
You may enjoy developing scientific models.
You may know something about the history of fortifications and why they have been deemed necessary.
You may have a reasonable approach to assessing biographies and claims about the supernatural and spooky.
You may enjoy exploring museum collections and university collections.
You may agree with Balthasar Bekker in the denial that evil spirits exist.
But what does your imagination experience, and why?
How does your imagination interact with your awareness of the first Age of Enlightenment?
How does your imagination interact with the second Age of Enlightenment?
Perhaps you are frightened of all challenges to your own point of view.
Perhaps you regard protesters against injustices as being similar to common scolds.
Are you interested in learning about the long-term consequences of racist arrogance?
Are you interested in learning about ongoing corruption?
Do you like artificial skeletons?
Do you like learning about genies/jinns?
Do you enjoy dream visions?
Have you enjoyed The Legend of Good Women and/or The Romaunt of the Rose as translated by Geoffrey Chaucer?
Do you enjoy learning about valkyries?
Are you aware that many cultural representations of woman as warriors, rather than as worriers, have been by men?
If so, are you sure your worries are based on evidence?
Do you know the difference between a prediction and a schedule?
Have you prepared properly for tomorrow?
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