Appreciation for my atheist friends.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. -Friedrich Nietzche

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin - more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. -Bertrand Russell

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs, Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet. --William Shakespeare

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. - Lord Alfred Tennyson

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form. --Albert Einstein

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.
--Jiddu Krishnamurti

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. --Goethe

Like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams of my motor. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally I would have given for that one which I had wrestled from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence.--Nikolai Tesla

Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance. --Epicurus

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. --Anais Nin

The joy of life consists in the exercise of one’s energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.--Aleister Crowley

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. --Thomas Alva Edison

The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.
--Pablo Picasso

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. --Ayn Rand

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.--Steven Hawking

Appreciation for my atheist friends.

Jan 03 |20:09 PM

I feel that atheists are often quite malaligned. OK, some of my atheist friends think what I do is a little wacky. That's cool. I think they often don't see the bigger picture and are needlessly limiting their perceptions. That's cool, too. However, I find that on about 85% or more topics, I am in complete alignment with the way they view and approach things. That's WAY better than anyone else!

I think in a way, they appreciate having a thinking, skeptically-minded theist (eh, I don't know if theist is the right way to describe me, but I'm not atheist. I have a philosophic explanation that I am seeking which reconciles both.) However, so much of that relies upon the freedom to question, to make a fool of yourself (so that you can learn from the Trickster!), to accept and then to deny after re-assessing the acceptance. Freedom to express, to blaspheme, to question, to mock, to celebrate, to exalt anything and everything which comes from your own connection with what you see as Divine (or if you're a non-theist, what you see as Pretty Awesome But Not Divinely Inspired Whatsoever.) - these are all as important to me and my seeking as they are to the atheist.

Atheists often only pick on Christians (and often Islam, for the same reason) because they seek to deny that freedom to everyone - their followers included. So with that, they're my best friends politically and socially speaking. I often invoke Dawkins' quote, "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." I add, "and I just go a few gods less." I don't often see atheists griping about Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, or Sufis... or Pagans, or Witches, or Chaos Magicians, or Hermetics or Thelemites or even Satanists! That's because they typically don't cause any trouble... they're happy to live and let you live as you see fit. Again, I have a very moral fit. Like them, freedom is one of my most treasured virtues.

I often find myself thankful to the conversations I have with them because they keep me on my toes. They point out my nonsense. Sometimes I say, "Well, that's my mystical nonsense, and you just wouldn't get it because you don't accept the power of belief. So we have to agree to disagree on that." And the conversations go on. I realize that certain things I do will not ever be a part of a conversation we can have to any depth. That's fine - I do have theist friends too. Sometimes they point out my nonsense and I realize that what they are saying makes great sense... and I grow as a result of it.

It's typically the hard-headed ones they don't care for - who start referencing some ancient text as the ultimate guide for truth, completely unwavering. I think that as a magician, it is very important to keep attacking my own beliefs. "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him." To keep questioning and examining - that is the great work.