Ragnarök, The Magic Of Capitalism, & The Transformation of Consciousness

"Odin is recruiting for Ragnarök"

I have heard this statement from more than one source in the past few days. This is often the case for me with statements that resonate in my soul as strongly as this one did when a friend of mine uttered it and I heard it. When consciousness hears a resonant idea for the first time, it will often see iterations of that same idea all around, and would otherwise remain hidden without the spark of the initial idea feeding it.

Perhaps, therefore, I am keener to the idea; since it is already in my consciousness, I more easily recognize it. My inner psychologist concurs.

Or perhaps it is the will of the gods, manifesting themselves & their wills in specific patterns discernible to those sensitive to such things. My inner gnostic concurs.

Or perhaps it is delusion, and a sure sign of mental illness. My inner atheist concurs.

Or perhaps it is mere coincidence buttressed by wishful thinking, with the always-yearning consciousness assigning meaning to the coincidence that has no correspondence "in the real world." My inner skeptic concurs.

In other words, there are a variety of ways to interpret the statement, and through the process of interpretation, creating truth. All of these interpretations have some element of truth to them. Philosophers speak of epistemology as the theory of knowledge creation, but for me, another word is more applicable for this phenomenon.

The Magic Of Capitalism

It's a controversial word, magic, as in "the art of changing consciousness at will." For me, magic is the correspondence between what one holds in one's mind, and what happens outside consciousness, in the world. It is not superstition, delusion, wishful thinking, or illusion.

You can see magic in operation every day, indeed every moment.

For instance. one man this week had an idea in his head, that People of Color are "the biggest problem for Americans," that they are "stupid and violent" (oh, the irony), and "inferior." These ideas did not originate with this man, but he accepted them as true, and they certainly manifested from consciousness into the world, in Charleston.

Interestingly, magic has many different connotations for most people these days. Most of them aren't particularly positive: prestidigitation, illusion considered real by naive observers, conjuration, deception. And it can be these things.

But capitalism has its magic. It has its thought-forms that seep into our consciousness. In some ways, the contents of an accountant's spreadsheet are more real to many of us than a homeless person starving or freezing to death in an alley. These ideas govern the very fabric of society, of resource allocation, of comfort & suffering for every living thing on the planet. The world is seen through the lens of quantification, reduced to a mere number, and capitalist wizards work their arcane lore to manipulate these numbers to their favour, manifesting their will to profit in the real world.

And the costs are externalized, as always. This is part of capitalist magic and privatization in general. When the numbers come in, they belong to the owner-wizards. But when the numbers need to go back out, it's everyone's problem.

Have you ever been to a corporate training seminar? They are really common these days. They cover a lot of areas, like exemplary customer service, or sexual harassment in the workplace, or assertiveness training for women in business, or techniques for results-oriented communication, or effective employee motivation, or really just about anything that a "limited liability" corporation needs to sign off on, so they can create the appearance that their employees know all about the topic the seminar covers.

Whether or not all the employees actually do understand these things is not important; what is important is that the corporation is no longer liable if trouble ensues when an employee acts in a way that clearly shows he does not understand. Usually when these conflicts occur the liability shifts from the corporation to the employee, who is disciplined or simply fired. And then everyone pretends this is normal, and as it should be.

But here's the thing. There is a key component missing from a lot of the capitalist magic going on out there: will. The most important task for an occultist is to turn inward, into the self, beyond the veils of illusion, and learn to discern what the will is. The will is not whim, it is not passing fancy, it is not going along with what everyone else around you is doing. By suppressing and thwarting the ability of millions of people to discern their will, and choosing to move forward and defend the very system that oppresses them and benefits their oppressors, capitalism works its magic.

So we resist, those of us who reject the received will of capitalism. We struggle to find new social relations within paganism, though it's difficult to resist assimilation of our spirituality into capitalism.

Capitalist magic is particularly prone to what Whitehead called the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness, which is "merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete." The problem is, the abstract & the concrete (or theory & practice, seen from another angle) are not always two separate worlds, forever cleaved in half. One influences the other. The abstractions we carry in our minds usually regulate our behavior. If we focus on changing behavior without addressing the fundamental thought patterns that underlie it, we will forever be chasing small fires that keep arising. Overthrowing capitalism will require a transformation of human consciousness -- the very essence of magic.

Ragnarök & The Transformation of Consciousness

So yeah, Ragnarök. For those unacquainted, it is the end of the world in Norse mythology, the twilight of the gods, deaths, disasters on a vast scale. It's not difficult to imagine in the 21st century, where sensitive souls can see the damage being perpetrated on the planet. We are now in an extinction event, where some scientists think that humans will be extinct within a century. And many of the most ardent radical anti-capitalists feel hopeless to stop it, that there is nothing we can do.

But if we follow the example of my polytheist friends and take the statement — Odin is recruiting for Ragnarök — literally, there is plenty we can do. This perspective not only shows that Gods are aware of the problems we are facing, but that they are fighting against it and recruiting help. This is comforting.

Or, we can take the statement metaphorically, and realize that the machinations of capitalism also have their opponents in those of us who would protect the precious ecosystems of the planet against capitalist exploitation and destruction. We can re-enchant the world, but we must also re-enchant consciousness.