“Don’t speak ill of the dead.”

My mother said that many times. It might be an old Irish warning before they broke out the whiskey at the wake.

OK, but I am not going to join the chorus of praise for the pope emeritus either. And it has begun in full force. I will bet money that the cause for his canonization has already been written and is a foregone conclusion. He was probably not the pernicious conservative rat that the neo-libs want to portray, but he was no angel. He loved his cats, so not all bad, but he was a little too gay for most conservatives. There might be a fight between cat lovers and opponents of those crazy red pumps. 

I just listened to an interview with the neo-conservative George Weigel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-B24f34jUU. He talks about the bromance between John Paul 2 and Ratzinger. According to Weigel, this is the heart of their argument: “The Council had really been the work of the holy spirit, but its implementation had been less than satisfactory because it had not been properly understood. It was not seen in the context of the church’s settled tradition.” So they set out to give the Council an authoritative interpretation. Their contention was that the Council was not a paradigm shift; it was not starting the catholic church over again. 

This is my view. When the fathers in charge surveyed the work of Vatican 2, and realized that it spelled the end of the monarchy that their power and livelihood depended on, they began the process of limiting the damage. Paul 6 was the harbinger. Still in the thrall of John 23, he was neither a visionary nor a strong man; either would have been a disqualifier for the enclave that elected him. John Paul 1 may or may not have unleashed a hornet's nest by starting an audit of the finances of the Holy See, and he didn’t live long enough to even really begin the work. However the scare was enough to propel the unlikely, and extremely conservative Wojtyła to almost 3 decades of fomenting and leading a backlash, hounding Arrupe and all the liberal Jesuits who were involved in social action and, god forbid, liberation theology, the list goes on, but he had an amazing team of supporters, Subito Santo. He anointed the man who just died to continue the work of “reinterpreting” Vatican 2. 

I was elated when Ratzinger resigned. He lived on and had a nice retirement. But my gut feeling is that he became a kind of Silenced Saint. Support for an all-powerful papal monarchy has become more entrenched, and perhaps even increased. Look at how tired and worn out Francis looks after 10 years.

How much support could we gather for a “Get back to Jesus” movement in the Roman church? Well, at least Ratzinger is no longer available to write a compelling list of reasons against it while pretending that it’s already in place.

The word for the day is “bowdlerize,” as in he was great if we can just cut out the offensive parts, or why in hell didn’t he consult the damage control consultants beforehand? Here are some of my favorite bits from the life of Ratzinger et al:

Regarding the rehabilitation of neo-Nazi Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Pius X  by lifting his excommunication. https://truthspinners.blogspot.com/2009/02/problem-with-benedict.html

And moving right along, his pandering to sex abusers mixed in with his nifty red slippers, https://truthspinners.blogspot.com/2021/07/no-sackcloth-and-ashes-for-these-guys.html

Francis is not going to win the cold hearts of the neo-con's with this less than regal pic.

What in the name of god were we thinking?

What did we imagine we were doing? 

A woman friend from Claudio Naranjo’s early Berkeley SAT groups called and asked if I would be interested in joining her for some kind of spiritual event. I can’t remember if there was any real information about the evening other than it was being organized by a friend of a friend, a Chinese-American woman whom my friend had met in Scientology. She lived in the predominantly Asian suburb of El Cerrito.

It was just before dusk when we began looking for street parking between the driveways of the ordinary middle class, very non-descript track homes. Most of the neighbors were already home from work so it took some time. We eventually found our way into a large two car garage, complete with neatly arranged storage boxes. My memory tells me that there were more than 50 people sitting on the folding chairs, but my rational mind won’t admit more than 35 into the space. There was as I recall a slightly raised platform where the speaker sat. He was introduced by our hostess. 

After he told us who he was, and I think some history of his spiritual lineage, he said that he was going into a semi-trance and the spirit of Rasputin would be speaking through him. Though he, or Rasputin, would not invite questions, he said that if we paid attention, and held a question in our hearts, we would find an answer.

‘

Actually our medium had been a used car salesman as I recall who found his way to Dianetics. Apparently a bit of clearing opened the way for a Russian mystic gone rogue who could now proffer valuable advice so that we need not repeat his tragic mistakes. I found no answers but maybe I didn’t have any good questions except where did our semi trance medium pick up the Russian accent. It was pretty hilarious. Yes, he did more than a full hour sounding like a drunk Boris Yeltsin. 

I held my tongue, paid the requested donation of 5 bucks, it might have been as high as 10, and left rather unenlightened other than knowing that finding parking in El Cerrito hills after 6 PM was not a piece of cake. I think it turned to my friend and said, well that was something. I don’t know what the financial arrangement was between the host and the medium, but the take could have been anywhere for 350 to 500 dollars, or more--in 1990 dollars. Not bad, better than hanging out trying to sell beat up Toyotas or Volgas.

The Enneagram, “Histoire de Jour”

"What's your soup du jour today?" "Cream of tomato, just like every day."

Yuval Harari notes that while it’s difficult to get 20 baboons to coordinate any organized effort that would produce a widespread effect, homo sapiens has been successful in creating narratives that have allowed our species to organize large-scale efforts to subdue and exploit every inch of the universe that we can reach. Propaganda for the superiority of the human race.. If 20 baboons had been able to listen to a convincing narrative and organize themselves, ”The Planet of the Apes'' might be our reality.

In the history of religions, creating and propagating a supernatural narrative spearheaded the seemingly invincible superiority of monotheism. Stories of the resurrection of Jesus follow Moses’s Exodus, which scholarship has shown to be a rabbinic creation after the destruction of Jerusalem’s temple. Then about 600 years after Jesus, the Prophet was visited by the Archangel Gabriel and set the course for the world to experience a more militant version of monotheism. In another part of the world, stories about the Enlightenment of the Buddha touch on another side of the human psyche that propelled the practice of meditation to legitimacy.

There are many narratives in the political sphere from Mao Zedong’s Long March to Lincoln’s studying law by candlelight; they also help solidify support of large numbers of people to secure a common goal.

The Origin of the Enneagram

As one of Dr. Claudio Naranjo’s first students when he introduced the system organized as a nine-pointed diagram that he’d learned from Oscar Ichazo, I’ve had a long-standing interest in what’s become known as the Western transmission of the Enneagram. Though I’ve written about it before, recently I’ve become fascinated by competing narratives about its esoteric roots. There is really very little difference here from the phenomenon that Harari describes. The proponents of particular styles of Enneagram work have crafted creation narratives to take their products to the marketplace. At least one side effect of enlightening mankind is to separate you from your money.

This brand of histoire de jour is, at best, self-serving, pieced together from bits and pieces of hearsay evidence, and in some cases, outright fraud.

Here is a preposterous statement on the first page of Helen Palmer’s website for her Narrative Tradition.

With a history of centuries, the Enneagram is arguably the oldest human development system on the planet. During the past decade, the system has undergone a renewal of scholarly attention within the context of current personality typologies.

In the interest of the scholarly attention that Ms. Palmer lauds, here’s the clear, distinct, identifiable historical beginning of the Narrative tradition of the Enneagram. The history of centuries condensed into something a bit shy of 50 years. I was present, voila!

In the late Spring of 1975,. I found myself in a large living room of a nondescript house on Berkeley’s Arlington. Kathy Speeth had organized a series of nine evening presentations about the Enneagram for the “therapeutic” community. In attendance were approximately 15 therapists interested in the Enneagram but not members of Naranjo’s SAT group. Among them was Helen Palmer, who had been hearing about the Enneagram from Claudio’s students in her own practice of psychic readings.

I remember these conversations quite clearly. They were a departure from the usual work of Naranjo's SAT group. Speeth and Bob Ochs had asked me to be on a ‘panel’ of Seven’s, ego ‘Plan’ as both Ichazo and Naranjo referred to the point “Gluttony.” This was the first time several people of the same fixation spoke in front of a group and answered questions (the identical format of Narrative Tradition). There was at least one evening for each of the 9 major fixations.

Naranjo directed the sessions, laying a foundation with descriptions of the 9 points. In itself, this was not unusual, but his comments were definitely tailored for an audience of trained psychologists, and not the more conversational tone aimed at a student’s personal work that he normally used. The authentic tone of self-observation may have been present, but I felt that the obligation of explanation (perhaps performance) distorted the feeling of each point.

Other enneagram enthusiasts proffer other histoires and sources. For example:

Egyptian Gnosis, apparently because in Heliopolis, the center of worship of the Ennead, there were nine deities of ancient Egyptian Mythology about which we know next to nothing.

Some proponents of the system trace the variations of the Enneagram symbol to the sacred geometry of Pythagorean mathematicians and mystical mathematics, but Pythagoras left no clear teachings, though apparently he once went to Heliopolis with its nine gods, or something.

Plotinus’s Enneads. There! A use of the Greek word for 9. However, we have to credit a dude named Porphyry for the somewhat artificial division of Plotinus’s writings into six groups of nine. Thus, I think that connecting the Enneagram with Neoplatonic thought is a stretch too far.

Adam and the Kabbalistic Trees--leave no stone unturned, and rope in Jewish seekers.

The Secret Teachings of Jesus (via the Desert Fathers)--sure, why not, but far more persuasive is the Jesuit connection. The frontispiece of the Arithmologia by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher(1601–1680), published in 1665, shows a figure not identical but somewhat similar to the Enneagram.

“Originally created in 1915 by philosopher George Gurdjieff.” This historian sources G. I Gurdjeiff and the Naqshbandi Sufi order a little more than 100 years ago. However, there is absolutely zero evidence in the voluminous writings of Gurdjieff that he ever used the Enneagram in the way the Naranjo, Ichazo et al use it. Zero.

I am particularly fond of the story that a book fell from a shelf in the esoteric library of Ocsar Ichazo’s uncle in Bolivia and opened to a page with the 9 pointed diagram.

Claudio Naranjo claims his source of the teaching were mystical experiences in the Arican desert. He claims the historic origins of the Enneagram are esoteric gnosticism and occultism from channeled material gained from automatic writing and then verified through observation.

While I am persuaded by Professor Harari’s embrace of history as a means of coordinating mass human efforts. I am equally suspicious of lesser enterprises employing the same methodology. These people are selling snake oil. They are using the “histoire de jour” like a fine French restaurant, getting rid of yesterday’s leftovers for a profit.

“Something is missing” is a constant storyline running through all these narratives. We lose our connection with the divine and have to reconnect, and in most cases, are unable to complete the circuit without some assistance that costs money. It is one answer to a felt experience of the human condition, but it is just the most accepted answer. There are others, but their popularizers were not as adept as the ones that captured humankind’s attention.

At best, these histories are "Cream of tomato, just like every day." But probably they’re closer to yesterday’s leftovers..

The Pope's baritone

On Christmas Eve, I started watching this bit of fluff, “Inside the Vatican, episode 1” on YouTube. Suddenly, a rather handsome man with a lovely voice was singing up a storm. He was Mark Spyropoulos, a British baritone with Greek roots, who found himself in the oldest church choir in the world, the personal choir of the pope, Cappella Musicale Pontificia.

Mark started talking about singing the Nicaean Creed solo during the televised mass that goes out to millions upon millions. One day he realized how many people had heard him make this profession of faith. He’d sung it at every papal mass for 3 years.

He quoted the Latin: Credo in Unum Deum. “I believe in One God.” He went on, “I didn’t sing, ‘We believe in One God.’” It was he, Mark, who made a very personal profession of faith. He asked himself: Did he really believe in the One God? And what did that even mean? “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like a fraud. I’ve just declared the beginning of the Nicaean Creed in front of the Pope; surely I should be sure of what I’m saying. Sometimes I know what I'm singing and sometimes I don’t.”

“If you ask me if I believe in God, my reply is that I don’t understand the question. What do you mean by God? These are massive questions.”

“I’m a baritone. What do I know?”

And apparently it became a kind of personal crisis of faith. Aside from the musical insider joke, he really didn’t know. Then he told a story of a rather beautiful personal revelation; I think it was while singing a Bach piece, the 1747 version as opposed to the earlier 1745, the one that Francis preferred. Apparently, Francis is a kind of hands-on boss when it comes to certain details.

“Well, what do I know? I'll tell you what I know. I can tell you that when I am immersed in this music, I feel in touch with something.”

Singing, he got that he really believed in a power greater than himself. He was actually far more eloquent than my Jesuitical argument.

Medici Archive Project, Music Program. Vox Medicea (directed by Mark Spyropoulos).