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Don't Equate Live and Evil

To: alt.magick
From: glass@panix.com (Robert Scott Martin)
Subject: Re: Don't Equate Live and Evil
Date: 24 Apr 2002 16:41:56 -0400

In article ,
Lisa Gardner  wrote:

>> Old Lot's fate is instructive. Once his wife crystallized out of the
>> family and was left behind (having fixed her gaze), he hid out in a cave
>> to have sex with his two daughters while the brimstone fell.
>
>So what does this mean?
>
>was this a 'turning back upon something previous' by Lot's
>daughters?

That's the difference between you and the old alchemists, Lisa.

The old boys network would tell you that the whole story is just a puppet
show, an excuse to talk about the Great Work. They'd pat you on the head
as they drone on about how the "family" is "actually" simply a way of
personifying the Essentials, about how it's easier to extract the sulphur
together with the mercury, collecting all the volatile elements at once
while the salt is left behind for its own purification. And how once you
get the sulphur alone with the (double)  mercury, the trick is then to
transmit the "golden seed" to the philosophical mercury, which then
becomes a whole different animal, a second daughter if you will.

Those cold equations aren't your style, so let's dispense with them. 

As characters in themselves, what we know about the girls indicates that 
they weren't looking back toward Sodom any more. Nobody looked back after 
their mother fell behind; from there on out, everyone seems to be trying 
to figure out the future.

When the girls seduce Lot, it's to ensure that the family continues into 
the future, that his "seed" is "preserved" into future generations. 
Admittedly, the plan they come up with (bearing dad's sons) is on the 
conservative side, but the motivation is forward-looking, and there's even 
an element of suspense -- the event that makes them decide to go through 
with it is when they finally accept the fact that their father is getting 
old, and so they're not going to have (what they believe is) their sole 
source of babies much longer.

Sometimes we step back in order to go forward. That's where "live" 
sometimes bumps up against "evil".

Furthermore, for the purposes of your allegorical framework, we note that 
nobody is "turning back" into an absence of "water" any more. Nobody is 
turning into salt. Nobody is having dry, cruel, emotionless sex any 
longer. If anything, what happens in the cave errs on the side of being 
overly fluid -- generational and genetic barriers have dissolved, Lot is 
so drunk (the opposite of "dry") that he can't tell what's going on. 
Having lost our "salt" -- mom -- we are now in the realm of dangerous 
volatility.

What were the girls thinking? Why did they decide that babies were more 
important than the incest taboo? 

>> The product of this incestuous double union was the "People of Moab" and 
>> the "People of Ammon", who fought Israel through the reign of the Kings 
>> and afterward.
>
>they still had some of the old propensities, I guess.

Some say the "incest in the cave" story was actually Israelite propaganda, 
a negative campaign against their Ammonite and Moabite rivals.

Since it's their holy book, I'm inclined to agree, but if so the 
instructive thing is the way in which Lot and his daughters "fail" (or 
succeed, according to their own terms).

>> The god "Zeus" Ammon having spiral or ram's horns. 
>
>do you think that Lot, was/is Zeus?

It hadn't struck me, actually. I made the reference because (a) Lot's
younger daughter was the mother of the Ammonites (b) the etymology of that
name apparently stretches back to the Egyptian god Ammon, who was later
identified with Zeus (c) the "ram" has enormous significance in the torah
[Michelangelo sculpted Moses with ram's horns] and in alchemy.

The question then becomes very interesting. If Lot is Zeus, who was his
brother Abra[ha]m?

>I think I have met some of this thirsty salt in the dream realms.
>It seems sometimes sad, I think.

The salt is indeed terribly thirsty, and sad. How can it drink its fill, I
wonder.

>Was there a relation between sodom and ancient greece?
>
>I know that it is said that these things repeat themselves
>in cycles - and that that which happened in the previous cycle
>happens again in a slightly different form (and time span,
>maybe?) in the next cycle.

The spiral horns of Zeus Ammon.


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