The World Is A Vampire
One gets the sense that Marcus was feeling frustrated. He seems to have had one of those days when you put your head in your hands and say, “What do I know?” and “What is the use of things, anyway?” and even, “When will this all be over?”
Judging from the contents of his famous notebook of meditations, he seems to have had a lot of days like this.
Being Emperor of the Roman Empire, apparently, is not a great career choice for those who want to enjoy life.
“Things are so veiled, as one might put it, that quite a few philosophers, and not the least eminent ones at that, claim that it’s impossible for us to achieve the slightest degree of cognitive certainty about them, while even the Stoics regard things as hard to grasp with certainty.”
So he begins.
“Every assent we give to our perceptions is liable to change; after all, there’s no such thing as a man who isn’t liable to change. And then what about the actual objects of the world, which underlie our impressions? See how transient and worthless they are, and how they can belong to perverts, prostitutes, and thieves.”
“And then what about your acquaintances, character-wise? See how even the most refined of them are hard to tolerate—not to mention how difficult it is to endure even oneself.”
Feeling cheered up yet? Wait, there’s more:
“Given all this gloom and grime, given the great flux of being and time, of movement and moving things, I cannot begin to comprehend what there is to value or take at all seriously. On the contrary, one should console oneself with the prospect of natural release, without being impatient at its delay….”
Ok, so nothing is certain, things can’t be relied on and have no intrinsic value, and people are generally almost impossible to tolerate, even oneself. There is, however, the solace to be taken that one will eventually die.
If that was all Marcus had to say I wouldn’t be writing this essay. What he next goes on to say, though, is very interesting, especially after the opening paragraphs, which give a vivid sense of what a shit day he must have had.
One should not be impatient for death, he continues, but rather “find solace only in the following thoughts. First, that nothing will happen to me that isn’t in accord with universal nature; second, that it’s impossible for me to do anything that goes against my inner god, my guardian spirit, because no one can compel me to contravene its will.”
Aside from more evidence that Marcus would be less out of place in a new age bookstore then one might think, what he says here is fascinating. First, as we saw in my last post, for Marcus everything that happens to us is part of the interconnected web of the whole: natural, essential, and fated. To kick at the pricks is to be a petulant little sod who is complaining about the logic of the great cosmic weave.
Second, Marcus finds consolation in the fact that no one can force us to go against our inner daimon. One might remember this creature from Plato, who wrote that Socrates always obeyed his inner daimon, and was in fact driven by it to confront the people of Athens about their ignorance.
The inner daimon has quite a history, showing up in ancient cultures as an inner god or guardian spirit, then resurfacing in the Abrahamic faiths as one’s “guardian angel.” In Western Esotericism magical practices were undertaken to contact one’s “holy guardian angel” (as in The Sage Abramelin), a pursuit that none other than the Great Beast, Aleister Crowley, would put at the heart of his system of magic, Thelema.
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