From: eddie@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Edward M. Averett)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: My answers on "evil"
Summary: Don't think, just do it.
Date: 3 Jan 93 00:43:15 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

In article <83950163@otter.hpl.hp.com> cal@otter.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low) writes:
>Le Grand asks:
>>Is it possible that one could have a non-a non-b black 
>>magic, one that would not seek a forbidden end or use 
>>forbidden means, but that might itself, in some eldritch 
>>way, be .... That Which Ought Not Be?
>
>Catastrophic:
>   The creation is a fuck-up. The quality of evil (i.e. being able to
>Free-Will:
>   God wanted created beings to have free-will, to be able to choose between
>   one act and another, to be able to comprehend what is good and what
>Deterministic:
>   The cosmogenic process is simply not possible without the quality of
>   Din (strict Judgement). Evil is a natural outcome of our ability to
>Oppositional:
>   The  En Soph (the infinite abstract unmanifest God of Kabbalah) contains
>   two currents; that is, the germ of the creative act created duality
>history, as the general flavour of ideas that people develop intuitively.
>been beings aligned with the Light Wot Finks Not. Sometime, thousands of
>billions of years ago, around the time when the globular clusters were
>
>Colin 

(stuff above truncated)

Hi guys. Just me checking in.  The above looks ok, Colin.  In our attempts to
determine anything about any given concept, I believe that each perspective
is like a facet of an infinitely faceted gem. Trying to see what is inside is
frequently both better and more interesting if we can see through the facets. 
Some of the facets on evil are listed above.  Some facets are worse or better 
than others, some very illuminating, some reflective, some just not useful.

I'll stick in another cosmological parable:  

The universe is composed of spirit and matter.  (We'll leave out the energy
part for the moment).  Spirit is absolute and unchanging.  Matter is relative
and transitional. Beyond a certain level of "beingness" or "power", spirit
cannot manifest as matter, so it'll have to break itself up or reduce its 
manifestation in some way to do so.  All things of matter come from spirit. 
Matter is spirit's way of changing, growing, transforming, but it's a give
and take situation cause matter is so . ..so . ..transitional, impermanent.
So to the spirit in us, matter appears to be imperfect. 

As material things, we cannot see clearly of the motivations of spirit, even
our own when we were just spirit.  That's cause we're matter, which is 
imperfect.  

Evil is when spirit tries to remain permanent as matter, or refuses to ever
become matter, or spirit which tries to eliminate the matter phase, or otherwise
when someone tries to mess with the structure of the system.

This is my current working model of things, (when I think about them), and it
seems to fit pretty well with the history of the universe as we know it, and
the diversity and odd ideas that people have about what is what and why. 
I've been trying it on for size for a bit now, and so far it works ok for me, 
as such models go.  The last paragraph on evil is just to justify this posting,
and is only an opinion on the model, not part of the model itself. 

Ta-ta, 

					Eddie
Newsgroups: alt.magick