Zarathustra

[deviadah]

Have a look at this quote from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche:

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going. I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.

I see Nietzsche as an Alchemist... perhaps a Fullmetal Alchemist (since he is so Hard)!

[Anibis]

I think of him in a similar way. Crowley and Nietzsche were certainly surfing the same current. He stands as one of the pre-Crowlian Thelemites, IMO. I particularly liked the threeforld alchemy of the Camel, the Lion and the Child as described in the first chapter of Zarathustra.

In brief: from a state of bearing the burden of our unconsciously held values, the Camel, we awaken into a state of Refusal to blindly accept. The Lion is the radical affirmation of the positive power of self assertion through negation. The Lion clears a space wherein it eventually becomes possible for the creation of novel ideas and also where one is free to Will purely. After the combustive frenzy of the Lion, the child plays in the ruins, and discovers new values which are truer to the reality of our world as it is. The threefold alchemy follows the pattern of Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury, in that it begins with a base material, combusts it, and maked use of the free energy and resulting material to synthesize new and rarer materials. Nietzsche conjures a philosophical and social Alchemy that forces us to rethink what 'the World' means on a fundamental level. Perhaps the result is philosophers stone of the social order. It seems to be very much 'in the works' at the moment.... It was a work begun and that remains unfinished. But it will be finished. And unfinished still...
-Anibis

[deviadah]

Some nice points there Anibis... I am re-reading Thus Spake Zarathustra (first time around I wasn't ready...)!

Although sometimes it is better to be unknowledgable than wise... the latter tend to cloud the mind - at times!

[Gunderic Mollusk]

I'm of a mindset that knowledge rarely confers wisdom. I feel that wisdom comes from experience, which is learning something at the exact moment after you need it. Knowledge can be gained secondhand and thirdhand, without context. Think of how wise a shaman in an isolated mountain setting is, without access to the vast array of information that we have bombarding us in metropolitan first world settings, in comparison to the university professor who has chosen to sit immersed in knowledge his entire life out of fear of actual experience.

[deviadah]

Perhaps you should try Stand-Up?

I find your words funny...

Truth is often a joke anyway. Paracelsus said, and I paraphrase, that housewives have more knowledge than an educated doctor (he also stated that his hat had more knowledge than most physicians)!

What he meant was that housewives (in his time) applied their knowledge from experience with various herbs, whereas educated doctors read about it in books (often written by Galen who was wrong about most things anyway). No wonder Paracelsus burned his books!

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