The Yugas

Today I want to start a reflection on the ages of the world. There have been many models of such ages, including the aforementioned psychohistory model, but one that I find to be of particular interest is the traditional Indian understanding of cyclical yugas. In my studies I have not come across any source on this which I trust more than the Aghora trilogy by Robert Svoboda. Skeptics may decry this but in the field of spiritual knowledge it would be absurd to put oneself solely in the hands of modern academia.

I begin by quoting two sections from the second book of the trilogy. For those unfamiliar with the books, they are in the form of discussions between the author, Robert Svoboda, and his mentor, the tantric master Vimalananda, during the 1970's and 80's. (In fact, the first book in the trilogy is all monologues by Vimalananda, the second book changes the format to dialogue.)

The first section discusses the four yugas. The second section discusses the ten avataras in relation to Kali Yuga. In both sections, I use bold type for key paragraphs. 

"Each period of creation, or 'day' in the lifetime of the Creator, is called a kalpa. [...] Each kalpa lasts for billions of years, and is divided up into fourteen periods called manvantaras [...] Each manvantara is made up of about seventy cycles of the Four Yugas. The Four Ages are Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and our era, Kali Yuga. We are now living in the twenty-eighth Kali Yuga since the beginning of the current manvantara."

"At the end of Kali Yuga there is a pralaya, a period when all societies and communities are destroyed, usually bu natural calamities. Then there is a period of rest, and Satya Yuga begins again. At the end of each manvantara there is a more extensive destruction, and at the end of the kalpa the entire cosmos is temporarily resolved into its elements while the Creator 'sleeps'. When He wakes, the cosmos is again recreated by His thought. We are all actors in the Creator's dream" 

[...]

"Now, in Kali Yuga, only one-fourth of the normal amount of righteousness remains. [...] Everything is in flux and always changing, and you are likely to get contrary effects from any religious rituals you perform. But, the texts say that Kali Yuga is the best of all ages because it is the age in which everyone, regardless of caste or karma, can realize God. The problem is, most people are so overcome by Maya that they have no desire to know God."

"Kali Yuga eventually develops into the Ghora ('terrible') Kali Yuga, when things get really bad in the world, at which point the gutters are overflowing with filth. Nature then cleans out the gutters, by whatever means She sees fit to use, and Satya Yuga begins again."

Aghora II: Kundalini, p. 100, p. 101.

"After Krishna leaves the Earth Kali Yuga begins. Then comes Buddha. Buddhi means discrimination, and Lord Buddha represents the perfection of discrimination, though He is devoid of aesthetic experience. He is a man whose logical faculties are fully developed, but Who is trying to do without Maya altogether because of the many temptations of Maya, which increase in strength as Kali Yuga develops. He is not willing to live in the world and enjoy it; He wants out of the world. Lord Buddha is called the Compassionate One because even though He is no longer in the world He longs to to help others who are trapped in the cycle of birth and death to escape also.

The last Avatara is Kalki, who is yet to come. [...] When Kali Yuga is at its worst He will appear and will destroy all but a handful of people. Then He will change the consciousnesses of those whom He allows to live so that they will remember something of their true selves, and Satya Yuga will begin again." 

"So this whole business of yugas and avataras is basically one long loop of evolution from the extreme of intuitive consciousness to the extreme of intellectual consciousness, and then back again?"

"More or less."

"And it just keeps going on, over and over?"

"Yes, it does, but it is more like a spiral than a circle, since the events of one cycle act as a foundation for the events of the next. There is a continuous progression. Now, this idea of the Ten Avataras as reflections of the evolution of human consciousness is just the beginning; every concept should have many layers of meaning. Then Ten Avataras also reflect individual spiritual evolution."

- Aghora II: Kundalini, p. 228.

We will not here focus very much on the question of avataras, but on yugas. And we note that the movement of the yugas can be summarized as "one long loop of evolution from the extreme of intuitive consciousness to the extreme of intellectual consciousness, and then back again". This is a key explanation. From the sea of undifferentiated consciousness, we have moved to the dominion of razor-sharp intellect. Many people should be able to accept this perspective, whether they are religious creationists or darwinian atheists. (As for those who deny the reality of consciousness altogether, they are lost.) There should be no dispute then, if the model of the yugas is valid, that we are now in the last of the four yugas.

Now, we may question the model above with its explicit assumption that after the end of Kali Yuga, Satya Yuga will begin again. We could envision at least two other possible outcomes:

1) Kali Yuga never ends: Once Man has achieved his current level of extreme intellectual consciousness, he never returns to the undivided consciousness again. Rather, he keeps moving towards ever-sharpening forms of intellectualism and materialism. That would be in harmony with a standard account the development of the modern world: After Man has seen the light of Reason, why would he ever again start going "backwards"?

2) Kali Yuga does end, but it is not replaced by Satya Yuga, for how could Man suddenly go from extremely intellectual to extremely intuitive? Rather, Kali Yuga is followed by Dvapara Yuga (the third age), which is followed by Treta Yuga (the second age), finally followed by Satya Yuga. 

We believe that option 1) is unrealistic, if only because it is now very difficult to believe that Man will continue on his present course for many more hundreds of years, let alone thousands or millions of years. The break with the natural order has come so swiftly and had such disastrous consequences for the balance of nature that something now has to give. A defender of 1) may suggest that even if the state of the world is rapidly worsening and "the gutters are overflowing with filth", many humans will survive the coming centuries and go on live better than ever, with genetic upgrades and computer implants of various kinds. But even for such a hold-out of hypermodern posthuman civilization, it is unclear how long it could survive. Most likely it would continue to pollute its surroundings without any kind of faith in God or Nature, and with bigger toys come greater risks. Thus, in the long run - half a millenium or so - we question whether 1) is realistic. However, if such survival were coupled with true human enlightenment, the way many New Agers imagine, then perhaps such dangers could be averted, but then it would still not be Kali Yuga any longer, thus 1) would still be false.

Such a scenario - a hypermodern civilization joined together with some kind of collective spiritual awakening - seems more akin to option 2) above, and also more in tune with the psychohistory model. I believe this is more realistic, seeing as we have already left behind some of the darkest expressions of materialism (compulsory atheism in some countries) and now, possibly, we are heading towards the light. The defender of 2) still has to show how spiritual enlightenment can ever occur on a collective level, excepting new spiritual movements which quickly tend to become debased anyway. 

If both 1) and 2) are false, then the scenario described in Aghora II: Kundalini begins to seem more feasible, though it makes limited sense to the rational mind. Perhaps the only way a modern scientist could accept it is if we were to interpret it in the following way: modern, rational, intellectual Man will live until he has destroyed his world utterly and completely, at which point lower life-forms will take over the world again, and the planet will slowly heal. After many millions of years, more complex life-forms will again emerge, and finally something akin to humans. These "new humans" will go on to become more and more intellectual until they develop all the necessary technology to destroy the world once more, after which they too go extinct, and so on. 

This goes against the accounts given by Vimalananda in Aghora II: Kundalini in at least two ways:

1. Vimalananda speaks only of human evolution; there are humans in Satya Yuga also.

2. Vimalananda speaks of a progression of ages, where the events of one cycle of yugas builds on the events of a previous cycle. Though it is a somewhat obscure statement, in all likelihood this refers to something more than just the material artifacts left behind from the last cycle of yugas - something spiritual. 

Furthermore, the theory of avataras could of course never be accepted by the rationalist mind. In Vimalananda's account, the last avatar commonly known as Kalki is necessary for the transition from Kali Yuga to Satya Yuga.

More on the avataras in a future post.

Könsdysfori och godhet

Såhär är det alltså, om jag har fattat det rätt:

Det viktigaste är att vara en god människa. Egentligen är det inte så viktigt på en individuell nivå, eller ja, det beror lite på vad man lägger i begreppet. Men på en kollektiv nivå så är det jätteviktigt: tillsammans ska vi se till att upprätthålla det goda.

Detta är viktigt inte minst för att mota ondskan i grind. Bara genom att kollektivt stå upp mot ondskan, alltså för godheten, så kan vi hålla nere ondskan. Och detta måste göras igen och igen, ty ondskan riskerar att resa sitt huvud gång på gång - vi måste ständigt vara beredda att utkämpa Kampen.

På en individuell nivå är det också mycket viktigt att inte vara ond, betydligt viktigare än att vara god. När ondskan ligger lågt så kan vi också ta det lugnt med godheten, men vi måste vara redo att mobilisera oss när nästa strid nalkas.

Men hur är det då med sådana här saker som den explosionsartade ökningen av könsförändrande* kirurgi, varav många patienter i efterhand har ångrat sig? Hur ska vi kämpa mot det? Det är ju ingen konsekvens av ondska, utan möjligen av slapphet, förvirring, vuxnas oförmåga att sätta gränser. Så hur ska vi då demonstrera mot detta? Det finns inga mörkermän att peka ut som ansvariga (såvida inte vissa höjdare inom läkemedelsindustrin, men det vore i så fall knappast någon heltäckande förklaring), så hur ska vi då förhålla oss? Svaret verkar vara: Vet inte. Och om regeringen lägger fram ett förslag om att sänka gränsen för kirurgiska ingrepp i könsorganen till 15 år, och att ett sådant beslut ska kunna fattas utan vårdnadshavares godkännande, hur ska vi då förhålla oss till en sådan regering? Tja, eftersom det inte är ett uttryck för ondska, så kan det ju i grund och botten inte vara något fel på partierna som stödjer ett sådant förslag, även om förslaget som sådant kanske inte är helt genomtänkt. Ondskan vet vi ju av historien att den kommer från höger (eller möjligen från yttersta vänstern, fast då blir den ju typ höger), så det är nog ändå bäst att fortsätta hålla på de rödgröna partierna och fortsätta peka finger åt allt som är till höger om KD (eller kanske C).

Tillägger en av deltagarna i senaste Filosofiska rummet: René Guenon var en neo-fascistisk tänkare (09:30-10:30).
https://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/1261287?programid=793

Jag vet inte om hon menar att traditionalism per automatik implicerar fascism? Traditionalismen som ofrånkomlig bärare av mörkrets krafter, som ett slags inkörsport kanske... I så fall torde väl också Mikael Kurkiala som jag tidigare refererat till kunna räknas som "fascist". Men eftersom vi inte delar detta omdöme så tar vi oss ändå friheten att referera till en gammal men återigen aktuell recension av Kurkialas I varje trumslag Jordens puls:

Kurkiala finner att de postmoderna feministernas världsbild inte är ett radikalt brott mot den västerländska modernismens projekt, utan dess fullkomnande. De har drivit den moderna människans överordnade projekt - att underkuva naturen - till det absurda.
"När queerteoretiker och postmoderna feminister konstruerar ett jag, fristående från varje idé om det givna, naturliga och heliga, det vill säga från det som per definition inte är förhandlingsbart, så går de marknadens ärenden. Marknaden gnuggar händerna. För den individ som inte bara byter jeans och frisyr utan även identitet måste framstå som den idealiske konsumenten - alltid på väg, aldrig nöjd, bortom all förankring. Dagens radikalitet utmanar inte moderniteten, den är dess logiska förlängning."
Ja, Kurkiala går längre än så. Det moderna projektet handlar om att ta kontroll över naturen och det har resulterat i en människosyn enligt vilken vi finner det närmast oacceptabelt att vi själva inte skulle ha kontroll. Detta tänkande menar Kurkiala, "är en logisk förlängning av den nu månghundraåriga ambitionen att förjaga eller härska över det som vi känner oss hotade av. Det måste vara "vilden", naturen, kroppen eller könet. I grunden är alltså detta tänkande besläktat med det koloniala."

Om det idag är det könet, vad blir det då imorgon?


*Den officiella termen idag är förstås "könskorrigerande kirurgi", men vari består korrigeringen om individen i efterhand ångrar sig? "Könsförändrande kirurgi" respektive "könsbyte" framstår som mer neutrala termer. Inget av detta ska förstås tolkas som att jag ifrågasätter existensen av individer som blir genuint hjälpta av ett sådant könsbyte, det vill säga individer för vilka ett könsbyte de facto kan innebära en upplevd könskorrigering.

The Principle Of Explosion And The Paradox Of Creation

The principle of explosion is a rule of classical logic, which asserts that if a contradiction is true, then anything is true. This can be demonstrated in the following manner:

P1: P is true.
P2: P is false.
C1: Either P or Q is true (P1).
C2: Q is true (P2, C1).

The first two premises (P1 and P2) set out the contradiction, where "P" can be any statement, found to be both true and false. In the first conclusion (C1), we simply conclude from P1 that if P is true, then either P or Q is true. Thus if the sun is shining, it is also true that the sun is shining or that unicorns are real. However, we have also shown in P2 that P is false, and therefore Q must be true. Hence, unicorns must be real (or whatever else you want to put in the place of Q).

Perhaps this seems like mere sophistry to some, but I find the metaphysical implications to be rather interesting. It reminds me of the Rig-Vedic assertion that at some point there was neither existence nor non-existence, nothing was then that can be fathomed. From the initial paradox of being/non-being, everything simply is - though perhaps not unicorns.

1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
     What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
2. Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
     That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3. Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminate chaos.
     All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
4. Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
     Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
5. Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
     There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
6. Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
     The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7. He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
     Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rig_Veda/Mandala_10/Hymn_129

Postmodernism, post-structuralism and magic

To discuss "postmodernism" is a bit like entering a swamp: if you don't know the terrain, maybe you should not venture into it in the first place. There are many academics who would be quick to criticize what they perceive as straw man-critiques of "postmodernism", and I believe they are sometimes right to do so. At the same time, ordinary mortals can hardly be expected to shut up about everything that they do not fully comprehend at the academic level of sophistication.

Things get even more complicated when throw the term "post-structuralism" into the mix. These are related terms for a broader movement, but apparently they are not the same. So what is the distinction? Having at least taken a brief course in Discourse Analysis at my local university, I volunteer to enter the above-mentioned swamp and try to sort out the one from the other.

It seems fair to say the following: postmodernism is the name for a broader social (societal) movement strongly connected to art and literature,  and also the name of our current era as a whole, as in "the era after the modernist era". It rejected all the prevalent assumptions of the modernist era, such as the naive belief in never-ending progress and in quantified, objective truth. Post-structuralism is linked to postmodernism, but more associated with theory and philosophy. There is no "postmodernist" school of philosophy, but there is a post-structuralist one. I would suggest, then, that post-structuralism be understood as a kind of sub-category of postmodernism - its philosophical "superstructure", if you will.

What do the post-structuralists say? In brief, the following: there are no self-sufficient structures that uphold order and predictability in language or society. Everything is in a state of flux, and words cannot be taken to really refer to anything. Words are articulated in a discourse, but none of the words relate to anything but to other words. For instance, if I say: "Democracy is better than dictatorship", I have articulated the word "democracy" as something other than "dictatorship", and thus both words attain meaning. If I were to say, instead: "Democracy is better than socialism", another articulation takes place. By referring words to other words, we create a web of articulations which create meaning. But such meaning will never be stable, because words are never articulated in exactly the same way.

Perhaps a more pedagogical example is the priest who says: "I hereby declare you to be husband and wife." Such an articulation creates the reality it describes, and therefore it is performative. If I am not mistaken, this is also the position of post-structuralists regarding language as a whole. All truth claims are articulated within a discourse; no knowledge can be gained from outside of a discourse. Everything is situated, relative, contextual; but this also means that we have the power to create our own reality.

This last point, it seems to me, has been seized upon by post-structuralist philosophers, in both a negative and a positive way. The practice of deconstructing a discourse deemed to be biased or oppressive is the negative way, while the question of how to create a more liberating, subversive discourse that can also appeal to the masses is the positive way. Basically, the question is being asked: How can we use language to make it easier for people to think the way we are thinking (and perhaps more difficult to think according to other ways)? How can we, through language, articulate a kind of world which is more similar to how we would want it to be?  This, I believe, is a form of magic.

The magician is someone who creates his own reality. The ancient spell Abracadabra has been taken to mean "I create as I speak." That is what the magician does. That is what the priest does, when he pronounces a man and woman as husband and wife. If the psychohistory model is correct, then, we may be in for a surge in word magic in the future, and this will be at least one of the ways for the rise of the magic paradigm to manifest.

Given that we do not see a return to older modes of thinking, according to which words have actual, fixed meanings, of course - but that seems, to me, unlikely.

The Psychohistory Model: A Brief Sketch

Regarding the psychohistory model and the three paradigms of transcendentalism, materialism and magic that I discussed earlier, allow me to explain some of the examples given in this model more closely.

Carroll divides time into aeons, and each aeons into two sub-aeons. Anything before the religious aeon is more or less pre-historical, and so less interesting to consider in a historical discussion such as this one. Suffice to say that in the shamanic aeon, the transcendent is distant, the focus is on the here and now, magic employed for material gain, with little effort invested in living according to some high principle. As the shamanic aeon progresses, the materialist paradigm collapses while the magical paradigm becomes "oppressive" - hegemonic, exaggerated, characterized by more and more superstition and meaningless ritual. Thus we enter the religious era, where the fallacy of magic along with a contempt for the fallen material world creates a yearning for transcendence which is soon realized in the evolving phenomenon of religions of salvation focused on such things as Nirvana, Moksha, a transcendent God, an eternal afterlife.

Such transcendental religious movement initially rely on charisma and magic to attract followers, but soon thereafter magic becomes more and more suspect and more and more prophets and philosophers begin to question the legitimacy of magical thinking and polytheism as such. The Monotheist sub-aeon begins, and the preachers of transcendence now employ reason (the materialistic paradigm is once again starting to rise) to criticize the worship of idols and the performance of divination among other things. The transcendental paradigm has now entered its hegemonic phase and all eyes are focused towards the heavens: God, Truth, the Law, the Good, Salvation, Liberation is all that matters. Intolerance and various forms of millenarianism is greatly strengthened during this period and magic and science (representing the two defeated paradigms) are conflated with one another: the scientist is a magician, the magician is a scientist, and in any case both are suspect.

Next comes the atheist sub-aeon of the rationalist aeon. Matter begins to be redeemed as scientists and philosophers start to believe that the world can actually be improved upon. They are still guided by a clear sense of transcendence - Reason, the Good, Truth, Happiness, Humanity, Progress, Virtue and various other exalted principles, but these principles are no longer removed from the flesh - rather, they are realized in tandem with materialistic improvements. Magic now reaches its ultimate low point: it is unbelievable, incredibly primitive, irrational, a mere proto-science that can now safely discarded in the light of reason. Eventually, during this era, "modernism" arrives in full bloom: socialism, nationalism and liberal imperialism all want to tell the story of human progress, with Humanity or Man or the People as the transcendent subject who will forge destiny according to its will.
After the Second World War, the "grand narratives" were soon questioned (Michel Foucault comes to mind), the transcendent human subject was beginning to be seen as dangerous and therefore necessary to deconstruct. This was accomplished and the transcendentalist paradigm has now suffered a great defeat at the hands of postmodernist philosophy. The final nail in the coffin of the "atheist" sub-aeon was, I believe, the collapse of the USSR and the dream of socialism. Picture the difference between the world before and after this collapse, and the difference between atheism and nihilism should become clear.

After the fall of the atheist sub-aeon, materialism has started to become oppressive: reasoning has lost its transcendent anchor and has degenerated into mere babbling; people feel increasingly lost, lacking direction, except for that kind of "direction" offered by TV screens, smartphones, advertising, materialist attainments of various kinds. A sense of magic - i.e. "energy" - has become infused into the hitherto solid matter, and the Newtonian vision of a mechanistic universe has been completely undermined. Environmental destruction is rampant, since the here and now of material enjoyment and comfort is the only value that now commands any real respect.

Carroll claims (somewhat before his time; the book was published in 1992!) that while some people today like to speak of "the return of religion", this is not the case. Rather, it is magic that is making a belated comeback, and just as magic and science (materialism) were conflated in the hegemonic age of transcendentalism, so is magic and religion (transcendentalism) conflated today, united simply by their distinction from the all-encompassing materialism. But in the long run, these two paradigms will part ways: magic is on the way up, transcendence on the way down. The next age will be the "Chaoist" sub-aeon of the "Pandemon" aeon: "Chaoist" because of Carroll's affiliation with Chaos Magic, I assume. Thus we are back to where we started in the Shamanic aeon (Animist sub-aeon): materialism and magic in a practical union with one another, in a world where the Transcendent or the Absolute will be perceived in a similar way to magic a century ago: utterly and completely unbelievable. Not by everyone of course, but by many.


For a future post, I would like to discuss some of the ways I think signs of an increase in magical thinking are visible, and future prospects for an even greater increase in such thinking, in relation to postmodernist and post-structuralist philosophy.

Klimatstrejk

Okej, jag erkänner.

Jag var länge skeptisk till det här "Greta Thunberg-spektaklet", eller åtminstone ambivalent: det där kommer inte göra någon skillnad, hon blir bara utnyttjad, det är folk som drar i trådarna, och så vidare. Men efter att ha sett diverse filmklipp och bilder från manifestationer runt om i världen så måste cynikern i mig träda tillbaka och ge alla dessa ungdomar en eloge. Och faktum är, dessa strejker och manifestationer måste sammantaget få en effekt, om inte lagen om orsak och verkan är upphävd vill säga - det kan inte annat än påverka, om än i liten utsträckning, när så många unga går ut och kräver sin rätt till en framtid.

Invänder cynisk Vän av Ordning: "Jaha du, försök hålla sådana där manifestationer i Kina så får du ser vad som händer."

Invänder Thomas Gür (som jag under en period har följt) på Facebook:

Thunberg är varken det första eller det sista barnet som skjuts fram och bärs på axlar i massrörelser som präglas av starka inslag av religiös millenarism och apokalyptisk frälsningshysteri.

Och så lägger han upp en "passande" bild:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2346732998711546&set=a.140680919316776&type=3&theater

Vilken kan tyckas lite orättvist eftersom Greta är en livs levande flicka som sätter sin egen agenda och inte en "barnsymbol" som målats på en kommunistisk propagandaposter. Många av de som inspireras av henne/"bär fram" henne är också barn/ungdomar. Ironiskt nog så innebär i alla fall Gürs perspektiv att han sållar sig till dem som jämför Greta med Jeanne d'Arc, så i konsekvensens namn kanske han borde ta avstånd från hennes rörelse också...

Visst visst, jag raljerar. Men är det inte alltid ungdomarnas roll att våga drömma om förändring?

The Transcendental Paradigm: Its Downward Trajectory

One of the many reasons why modern academia is boring is that I cannot, for instance, while studying History of Religions, employ as a source a man who is not formally trained as a History scholar, even if he has developed a theoretical framework which could be very useful as a tool for working Historians of Religion. In this case, I am thinking of Peter J. Carroll, a modern occultist who in the book Liber Kaos presents a tripartite scheme for understanding the unfolding of human history. He claims that the "psychohistory" of mankind goes through stages based on the successive growing and diminishing in strength of three fundamental paradigms: the transcendental, materialist and magical paradigms. So in ancient "shamanistic" times, Man lived in the now, the world was full of spirits and he employed magic for material benefit, while the transcendental reality was unknown or not cared about. Eventually, the materialist paradigm retreated in favour of the transcendental one, and a new balance was reached between magical and religious paradigms, while the materialist paradigm retreated, and so on. There is much that can be said about this model - it if of course not something that can be proven as a fact, rather it is only intended to make sense of things and to predict future trends. The funny thing is that academics also develop such models, yet I am willing to bet quite a large sum that the psychohistory model would be greeted with disinterest or even scorn among a large section of academics, granted that its author is a "chaos magician" who does not hold any relevant academic degree.

I am bringing up all of this because I was just now reminded of how the transcendental paradigm is collapsing all around us - slowly, and silently, but nevertheless brutally. This is perhaps no evil in and of itself, it depends on your inclinations, but for people of a spiritual bent, it is bewildering, alienating and depressing. The reminder in question is a section from the website renaissanceastrology.com, where the author Christopher Warnock explains the differences between traditional and modern Western astrology:

The public and even many astrologers are unaware that there is any difference between modern and traditional astrology. But even more than the significant difference in technique and methodology, what really distinguishes modern astrology from traditional astrology are their widely variant worldviews. Traditional astrology follows the traditional worldview, where not only does the spiritual exist, but it is primary over the material. Traditional Hermetic and Neo-platonic philosophy sees the entire Cosmos as One unified being connected by bonds of spiritual sympathy and influence and everywhere embued with pattern and meaning.

Moderns, either consciously or unconsciously either accept or are highly influenced by the modern atheistic/materialist worldview, when inevitably tends to nihilism. The modern worldview is that only matter and energy exist and thus the spiritual is non-existent. Events are random, except when caused by material or energetic causes or direct human intervention and existence is meaningless except for meaning humans choose to put on it which is subjective and conventional. Even those that state that they believe in the spiritual tend to see it operating in a materialist and mechanistic way, e.g. spiritual fields, beams or rays, or look to materialist and energetic causes to explain astrology.

The last meaning is significant: even those who are "spiritual" in fact confuse the spiritual with "energy" and psychic phenomena. And as Carroll predicts, we are now in the nihilistic phase of psychohistory, where magic and religion (i. e. the magical and transcendental paradigms) are frequently confused and bundled together under the rubric of religion; they will soon part ways though, because magic is on the rise and the transcendental paradigm is spiralling downwards.

Regardless of whether one feels more at home with one paradigm or the other, I believe this model is so fundamental in what it captures that its complete lack of publicism is just a little bit weird according to my own highly subjective viewpoint. The trinity of Transcendence, Magic and Matter is fundamentally the same as the Christian trinity of the Father, the Holy Ghost and the Son. It is the same as the more secular partition of Consciousness, Energy and Matter, with the caveat that Consciousness is frequently not seen as fundamentally real, but as a byproduct of the brain (Energy and Matter again). Finally, it is also very similar to the three attributes of existence in Sankhya philosophy: Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. For those unfamiliar with this, it is one of the core teachings of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita and building block for traditional Hindu philosphies and worldviews. (Roughly speaking, Sattva represents purity and light, Rajas is activity and passion, Tamas is darkness and inertia. I cannot claim that Sattva corresponds exactly to consciousness, that would be the Purusha; nevertheless it is pretty close.)

Suffice to say, these observations do nothing to reimburse my wallet. Now off to work!