I hope it runs with what I am saying, as the experiences I've had with most intelligences I could consider "alien" or "occult" would have been in altered states. Not just entheogens, but cocaine, marijuana, meditation, visualisation exercises, or coming out of or entering sleep. Or night terrors, in particular.
I think the experience can be terrifying because for them to be able to make any sort of communication with the person, the person must be in an altered state. This could diverge into a conversation about EEGs and consciousness, but let's not here. The one thing to point out is that ideas and the interaction with data is different at different brainwaves, so if one spends most of their time in and around the waking 14–17 Hz (12–13 Hz while relaxed, watching tv and what not, however), then these would be the states we're most accustomed to. Being drawn through some sort of entrainment of vibration to co-exist with an intelligence in a state below or above these common brainwaves would be frightening for most.
It's not that language can't wrap around the contexts of these entities, but English will certainly have problems. And a meta-language is necessary, perhaps such as Austin Osman Spare's "Alphabet of Desire" and sigila.
On this, I wanted to post this quote from this research material I am going through for an article I am currently writing, concerning Japanese spirituality in design practise:
Contrary to Kuki’s attempt to seek a “strict meaning” of iki, iki is a relative, flexible value but not an absolute, exclusive value.
Iki is an etymologically flexible word. If not futile, it would be very difficult to give precise definition of iki, it being a colorful concept. When a Japanese word is written with different ideograms, the same single (phonetically identical) word can carry dozens of different nuances, sometimes quite different meaning. When a Japanese word is written with phonograms, either hiragana or katakana, the word leaves the possibility of interpretation opened. Takeuchi lists fourteen examples of different ideograms appeared in Edo literature and popular songs, each one of them having different nuances, used for this single word, iki. Kuki himself lists four different connotations of iki. If iki is written with phonograms, as Kuki did for the title of his book, the precise meaning of the word become almost indeterminable. Manifestations of iki oscillate depending on the context. For example, Kuki recognized iki in stripes, especially vertical rather than horizontal ones. However, as Kuki admits himself, horizontal stripes can be iki when the sensation and emotion is insensible to vertical stripes.
That a word can exist and be so prevalent in Japanese culture, yet be so open to interpretation and use. That is more along the lines of how a language would maybe work when with these intelligences. These same qualities are found also in the use of symbols and glyphs when working with evocations and invocations.
English words are too rigid, and thus we find our thinking perhaps structured similarly.
ps — The italic font on Barbelith by default is really difficult to read. Someone should make the default typeface something else specifically designed for proper www legibility. |
