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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
“... Ouspensky came to understand that this world was a gigantic hieroglyph, a symbol for a higher, more intensely meaningful world that lay beyond it but radiated its significance through the most mundane items.”

~ Gary Lachman, A Secret History of Consciousness.
Image containing a text quotation, with the small figure of a woman sensing an aroma in the air, in the bottom left-hand corner. The text, from Gary Lachman, A Secret History of Consciousness, reads: Behind the Everyday World: The Russian esotericist P. D. Ouspensky had a central insight, that: “‘There is no side of life which does not reveal to us an infinity of the new and the unexpected if we approach it with the knowledge that it is not exhausted by its visible side, that behind this visible side there lies a whole world of the “invisible,” a whole world of new and incomprehensible forces and relations.’ “Ouspensky came to understand that this world was a gigantic hieroglyph, a symbol for a higher, more intensely meaningful world that lay beyond it but radiated its significance through the most mundane items.”
February 12, 2026 at 1:56 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
Fabricating Truth
~~~~~~~
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

~ Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Image: The fin de siècle newspaper proprietor (cropped) / Frederick Burr Opper / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain. A cartoon of newspaper reporters or owners running with sheafs of paper to the printing press, and dressed in jackets or capes and bowler hats, showing them in several different poses and with different titles on the papers, such as "fake news", "humbug news" and "cheap sensation" written on them.
February 12, 2026 at 9:19 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“We are experiencing a rise in so-called dissociative disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, conditions in which the sense of one’s own identity is weakened or lost altogether ...”

~ Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, reads: Loss of Identity: “We are experiencing a rise in so-called dissociative disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, conditions in which the sense of one’s own identity is weakened or lost altogether. In the modern world the individual may experience himself or herself as no longer having a role and a place in a close-knit community on a human scale, and therefore as engulfed in the mass – of the populace, of the city, of bureaucratic organisations and global corporations – relatively powerless. No wonder people emphasise (with tragic and damaging results) something called ‘identity’, in which, ironically, their true identity is swallowed up.”
February 11, 2026 at 7:28 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare ...

~ William Henry Davies, “Leisure”.
Image containing a poem, with a bouquet of bright yellow and orange flowers in the lower left-hand corner. The poem, “Leisure” by William Henry Davies, reads: What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty's glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.
February 11, 2026 at 4:51 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
The Muse
~~~~~~~
“For many artists, the Muse is projected onto a real woman who serves as an anima figure, as Jung put it, opening the gate to inspiration. But the Muse does not have to be embodied in human form... The Muse may be nature. Wordsworth’s poetry was inspired by nature.”

~ Liz Greene.
Ніжний ранковий світло (Gentle morning light) / Balkhovitin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0. National park "Sviati Hory" (Holy Mountains), Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. It shows sun-lit trees by a more distant and misty river or lake, with more trees barely visibly over the far side.
February 11, 2026 at 9:13 AM
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 ...

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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
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
“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
“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
“The purpose of learning to work with the unconscious is not just to resolve our conflicts or deal with our neuroses. We find there a deep source of renewal, growth, strength, and wisdom. We connect with the source of our evolving character ...”

~ Robert A. Johnson.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, reads: Our Inner Resources: “The purpose of learning to work with the unconscious is not just to resolve our conflicts or deal with our neuroses. We find there a deep source of renewal, growth, strength, and wisdom. We connect with the source of our evolving character; we cooperate with the process whereby we bring the total self together; we learn to tap that rich lode of energy and intelligence that waits within.”
February 7, 2026 at 9:45 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Reflecting ‘On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings’, [William] James implied that the malady was an inability to appreciate some invisible but magnanimous order, some dimension of being that eludes without invalidating scientific or rational investigation.”

~ Eugene McCarraher.
Image: Through the darkness into the light (22157238549) / See1,Do1,Teach1 / Wikimedia Commons (orig Flickr) / CC BY 2.0. A winding path made with spaced-out crazy paving stones threads its way, with a stone wall to the left, through the shade of low trees, toward the light.
February 6, 2026 at 6:06 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“When the time comes for the ego to set forth on its journey towards wholeness, strange and paradoxical things happen; fate chooses strange emissaries. But when we grow wiser we learn that the disasters of life are often the genius of the unconscious ...”

~ Robert A. Johnson, We.
Image containing a text quotation, with two dark clouds, a bolt of lightning, and raindrops in the upper right-hand corner. The text, from Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, reads: When Disaster Strikes: “When the time comes for the ego to set forth on its journey towards wholeness, strange and paradoxical things happen; fate chooses strange emissaries. But when we grow wiser we learn that the disasters of life are often the genius of the unconscious, forcing our egos into a new experience of the self.”
February 6, 2026 at 9:13 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
The 7 Levels of the Ego: A Sufi Map of Death and Awakening

Video (25 min 32 sec).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq26...

#SufiWay #SufiPath #Sufism #Sufis #Nafs #CommandingSelf #Ego #Self #Individuation #Awakening #DepthPsychology
The 7 Levels of the Ego — A Sufi Map of Death and Awakening
YouTube video by The Alchemist’s Heart
www.youtube.com
February 5, 2026 at 12:00 PM
esowteric.bsky.social
“[N]othing short of super-extraordinary measures must be taken to ensure that we make it through this interregnum and ensure our survival and that of the natural world we inhabit.”

~ Preface to H.M. Forester, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt. #Free #eBook

esowteric.vivaldi.net/2026/01/15/a...
A Little Something for Your Ark, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt
In these increasingly dire times we have plenty of warners, but what we desperately need right now are more arks. As Michael Ventura wrote: “[A]ll of this passing things on, in all its forms…
esowteric.vivaldi.net
February 5, 2026 at 9:34 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in ...”

~ Thomas Hardy, “The Self-Unseeing”.
An image containing a poem, with a grey-roofed, yellow house and some trees and bushes in the bottom right-hand corner. The poem, Thomas Hardy's, “The Self-Unseeing”, reads: Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. . She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. . Childlike, I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a gleam; Yet we were looking away!
February 5, 2026 at 9:25 AM
esowteric.bsky.social
“Einstein said that we cannot solve a problem from the level of consciousness that created it. We have to create the new context in which the solution to a problem can appear ... the idea that consciousness ... is the ground of reality ...” ~ Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos.
An image containing a text quotation, with a white lotus blossom and green leaves in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul, reads: The Ground of Being: “Einstein said that we cannot solve a problem from the level of consciousness that created it. We have to create the new context in which the solution to a problem can appear. The new context to which the formidable discoveries of science may be aligned is the idea that consciousness rather than matter is the ground of reality and the creative force that has brought the universe into being. Like the prince in the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty, this idea is opening a way through the hedge of thorns thrown up by centuries of entrenched beliefs, whether religious or scientific. It has the power to awaken our soul, nurture our imagination, and arouse in us a deeper capacity for relationship with each other and our planetary home.”
February 4, 2026 at 8:30 PM