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esowteric.bsky.social
Esowteric
@esowteric.bsky.social
810 followers 590 following 4.4K posts
Interested in Illuminationism; the Sufi Way; Western tradition; Renaissance; Romanticism; Idealism; Panpsychism; Imagination; contemporary depth psychology; resistance; etc.

Author of mystical adventure and soft scifi. Blog: mystical-faction.blogspot.com
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esowteric.bsky.social
Esowteric @esowteric.bsky.social · Dec 19
“Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt” and “The Dissidents (Extended 2025): A novel” are freely available at the Internet Archive's library & in full at the FB group Mystical Faction.

Links in comments.

#PostTrust #PostTruth #Materialism #Disenchantment #Resistance #Underground #Survival #Dystopia #DarkAges
Front covers of The Dissidents and Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, by H.M. Forester.
esowteric.bsky.social
“The world indeed is sacred; but paradoxically, one cannot see the sacredness of the world until one discovers that it is a divine play.”

~ Mircea Eliade.

Image: Dante's Divine Comedy / Giovanni di Paolo / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.

#Dante #DivinePlay #Sacred #Eliade #MirceaEliade
On the left is a person in a grey-green hood and robe, standing at a large wooden structure like a pulpit. On the person's shoulder is a thin, dark, winged, demonic creature with horns. In front of them, facing this person, seated on a long wooden bench, are three men in blue, red, and pink clothes respectively, and red and blue hats. Behind them are seated three women in hooded robes, one in green, the others in blue. And behind them is a man in grey-green, knee-length robes with a matching hat, a thin staff in his right hand, a dark-coloured hog caught by the rear leg in his left hand. In the background, above a plain wall, we see blue sky with long, thin wisps of cloud.
February 10, 2026 at 4:59 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
Going Underground: Building a Caring Alternative Parallel Society – while we are still at liberty to do so ...

esowteric.vivaldi.net/2026/01/15/g...
February 10, 2026 at 4:59 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
Going Underground: Building a Caring Alternative Parallel Society – while we are still at liberty to do so ...

Link in comments.

Image: Underground Resistance Movement.
In a dimly-lit basement or bunker, a male member of the underground resistance movement, wearing a flat cap, sits at a laptop with his fingers on the keyboard, his features illuminated by the soft glow of the computer screen. Another man sits to his right, wearing headphones and typing on a keyboard. To his right stands a man reading a document. Behind him, a young lady stands checking a mobile phone. Both she and the first man have distinctive armbands, with a red cross on a white background, signifying that they are medics. Near the far wall, close to a large map of Europe, a third man sits working. Above their heads, a single lamp hanging from the ceiling casts a little light in the room.
February 10, 2026 at 4:59 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
Source: David Tacey, How To Read Jung.

Image: Inner Voices / James Tissot (1836–1902) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Three men rest and sleep in a ruined building amidst much rubble. In front of them is a bundle of belongings tied to a long stick which one of them presumably carries over his shoulder, suggesting that these men are taking a rest from their travels.
February 10, 2026 at 9:51 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Between [the] extremes, of identifying with the inner figures and alienating them, lies the desired response, which is that of creative dialogue. Through dream analysis, active imagination, journal work and reflection, the ego enters into dialogue with the interior figures ...”

~ David Tacey.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from David Tacey, How To Read Jung, reads: Inner Dialogue: “Between [the] extremes, of identifying with the inner figures and alienating them, lies the desired response, which is that of creative dialogue. Through dream analysis, active imagination, journal work and reflection, the ego enters into dialogue with the interior figures, thus befriending them and drawing them into a circle of friendship. Only in this way, in which the inner figures are incorporated into an expanded consciousness, are we able to break the deadlock between conscious and unconscious and move into a creative exchange.”
February 10, 2026 at 9:51 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
Source: Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works volume 9i.

Image: A lotus bud / Subhrajyoti07 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.
Close-up of a lotus bud against a varied and featureless green background. The as-yet-unopened petals are clearly seen in many colours: white, yellow, pink, blue, and purple.
February 10, 2026 at 9:37 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“When the summit of life is reached, when the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges ... and the greater figure, which one always was but which remained invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of a revelation.”

~ Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
An image containing a text quotation, with a white lotus blossom and green leaves in the lower left-hand corner. Text, from Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. CW 9i, reads in part: When the Bud Unfolds: “When the summit of life is reached. When the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges, then, as Nietzsche says, ‘One becomes Two’, and the greater figure, which one always was but which remained invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of a revelation. He who is truly and hopelessly little will always drag the revelation of the greater down to the level of his littleness, and will never understand that the Day of Judgment for his littleness has dawned. But the man who is inwardly great will know that the long‐expected friend of his soul, the immortal one, has now really come, “to lead captivity captive”; that is, to seize hold of him by whom this immortal had always been confined and held prisoner, and to make his life flow into that greater life – a moment of greatest peril!”
February 10, 2026 at 9:37 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
Available at The Internet Archive's library:

archive.org/details/@eso...

And in full, as a PDF, at the Facebook group Mystical Faction.

www.facebook.com/groups/mysti...

Image: Unemployed men during the Great Depression [with added border] / bec / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.
A handful of men in uniform during the Great Depression, walking from right to left in front of a large, white, rectangular roadside sign bearing the message "Jobless men, keep going. We can't take care of our own, Chamber of Commerce" in block capitals.
February 9, 2026 at 6:45 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
Source: James Hollis, Through the Dark Wood: Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life.

Image: Newcastle Eccentrics / Henry Perlee Parker / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
The painting shows fourteen ‘eccentrics’ - locally known characters, mainly paupers from the streets of the Quayside area of Newcastle - assembled in ‘The Flying Horse’ drinking house.
February 9, 2026 at 6:30 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“To become a person does not necessarily mean to be well adjusted, well adapted, approved of by others. It means to become who you are. We are meant to become more eccentric, more peculiar, more odd. We are not meant just to fit in. We are here to be different ...”

~ James Hollis.
An image containing a text quotation, with a cartoon of the Mad Hatter in the bottom left-hand corner, wearing a top hat and dashing along. the text, from James Hollis, Through the Dark Wood: Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, reads: Be As You Are: “To become a person does not necessarily mean to be well adjusted, well adapted, approved of by others. It means to become who you are. We are meant to become more eccentric, more peculiar, more odd. We are not meant just to fit in. We are here to be different. We are here to be the individual.”
February 9, 2026 at 6:30 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not the 1950s, but further ...”

~ H.M. Forester, Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt.
Text from H.M. Forester, Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt that reads: An Unholy Vision: “Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not back to the 1950s, but further back: to Dickensian times and to (corporate) feudal fiefdom. They want to wind the clock back to a time before the hard-won battles for civil rights, social reforms, and worker representation. A time long, long before the ‘woke virus’, ‘illegal immigrants’, and gender identity, when life was more conservative and white lives mattered; though with a new, fundamentalist, Christian nationalist (or Islamist, or ultra-Zionist, or even atheist) and isolationist twist. And some will go to any lengths – and I do mean any desperate, violent, draconian lengths – to bring this vile and unholy vision about.”
February 9, 2026 at 6:24 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
Source: Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Collected Works 18. Quoted in Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul.

Image: WW1 battlefield at night / F. J. Mears / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Painting of a World War One battlefield at night, showing four soldiers moving at night along a wooden boardwalk, surrounded by remnants of trees in a bleak and desolate landscape.
February 9, 2026 at 3:07 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger. Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious ...”

~ Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life.
Image containing a text quotation, with the grey silhouetted profile of a man like Jung lighting his pipe, in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Collected Works 18, quoted in Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul, reads: The Supreme Danger Facing Humanity: “The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger. Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious. The greatest danger of all comes from the masses, in whom the effects of the unconscious pile up cumulatively and the reasonableness of the conscious mind is stifled.... It is therefore in the highest degree desirable that a knowledge of psychology should spread so that men can understand the source of the supreme dangers that threaten them. Not by arming to the teeth, each for itself, can the nations defend themselves in the long run from the frightful catastrophes of modern war. The heaping up of arms is itself a call to war. Rather they must recognize those psychic conditions under which the unconscious bursts the dykes of consciousness and overwhelms it.”
February 9, 2026 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Esowteric
humanjourney.bsky.social
January 30, 2026 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Esowteric
meidastouch.com
Bad Bunny’s closing messages during his Super Bowl performance:

“The only thing more powerful than hate is love”
“Together, we are America”
February 9, 2026 at 1:51 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
Image: Café de Flore / Arnaud 25 / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Colour photo of the Café de Flore on a corner of two streets in Paris. Many people are sitting outside on tables, beneath a large white canopy. Above the canopy is a profusion of green plants
February 9, 2026 at 10:57 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“You started your question with the matter of the visibility of study institutions. But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school ...'”

~ Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way.
An image containing a text quotation, with an eight pointed grey icon in the lower left-hand corner, formed by a circle of eight interlinked squares, and forming an eight-pointed star in the centre. The text, from dries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way, reads: The School: “You started your question with the matter of the visibility of study institutions. But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school. Remember the words of Maghribi, who said to a monkish individual: 'What you are seeking in your retreat/I see clearly in every road and alleyway.'”
February 9, 2026 at 10:57 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
Source unknown. Perhaps lectures.
February 8, 2026 at 7:17 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
Opening Doors
~~~~~~~~
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”

~ Joseph Campbell.

Image: Through the open door / ManelSallem / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0.
An open doorway at Temple de Pluton, Dougga, which opens into ruins.
February 8, 2026 at 7:17 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
Image: InasvionOfTheBodySnatchers1956 [sic] / Allied Artists / Wikimedia Commons / Presumed to be public domain.
Color lobby card for the American science fiction movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Allied Artists, 1956. To the left and along the bottom we see the main male and female characters running from some unseen danger on a yellow background transitioning sharply into red at the top. Most of the card, to the top right is taken up with a still taken from the film showing two male and two female characters in a greenhouse, one of the men armed with a sharp pitchfork, confronting something ahead of them, their faces showing shock at the encounter.
February 8, 2026 at 10:39 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind... All of us – a little bit – we harden our hearts, grow callous ...”

~ Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film).
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956 film), reads: Humanity Draining Away: Dr. Miles J. Bennell: “In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind... All of us – a little bit – we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.”
February 8, 2026 at 10:39 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
Image: Wyjście ludzi z miast* (2010) 03 / Zbigniew Libera / Wikimedia Commons (from the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw) / CC BY-SA 3.0.

* "People leaving the cities".
February 7, 2026 at 10:07 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
Available at The Internet Archive's library:

archive.org/details/@eso...

And in full, as a PDF, at the Facebook group Mystical Faction, in the Files section:

www.facebook.com/groups/mysti...

#Resist #Resistance #DarkAges
Image: Wyjście ludzi z miast* (2010) 03 / Zbigniew Libera / Wikimedia Commons (from the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw) / CC BY-SA 3.0. * "People leaving the cities". A scene showing three people dressed for wet weather trudging over rough ground away from the camera. One has a backpack on, followed by what looks like a woman with a lighter load and an unfurled umbrella, while a third, wearing a rainproof plastic overcoat, and with his head turned to the camera, is wearing a large backpack and pushing a shopping trolley with a suitcase in it. In the foreground to the left, two young girls dressed for the cold are looking out of a car, with their heads poking out of two wound-down windows. Ahead of the walkers is what looks like an abandoned car in front of a large advertising poster, partly obscured by mist, which shows a woman's head, rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise with a worried look on her face and her mouth open perhaps in terror. Across the poster is written the word "relax" in white capital letters.
February 7, 2026 at 10:07 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not the 1950s, but further ...”

~ H.M. Forester, Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt.
Image containing a text quotation, with a man in manacles in the bottom left-hand corner. The text, from H.M. Forester, Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, reads: An Unholy Vision: “Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not back to the 1950s, but further back: to Dickensian times and to (corporate) feudal fiefdom. They want to wind the clock back to a time before the hard-won battles for civil rights, social reforms, and worker representation. A time long, long before the ‘woke virus’, ‘illegal immigrants’, and gender identity, when life was more conservative and white lives mattered; though with a new, fundamentalist, Christian nationalist (or Islamist, or ultra-Zionist, or even atheist) and isolationist twist. And some will go to any lengths – and I do mean any desperate, violent, draconian lengths – to bring this vile and unholy vision about.”
February 7, 2026 at 10:07 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
Source: Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.

Image: Allegory of Wisdom [Cropped] / Anonymous (Late 16th–early 17th century) / Wikimedia Commons / Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.
Allegory of Wisdom, painted by an anonymous artist in the late 16th to early 17th century. A woman in a long flowing skirt and cape carries a hand mirror, on which are entwined two snakes, in her raised right hand. In her left hand she holds a large open book. Beneath her is grass and under her right foot is a globe with a cross embedded in it.
February 7, 2026 at 9:45 AM