Armistice Day isn’t celebrated in the US, but its distant cousin Veterans Day is.  On this day, many people celebrate that two sides to a war finally decided to stop sacrificing millions.  The word “sacrifice” is often used in this context, and it is no wonder.  Moloch is hungry, you know.  If it isn’t Moloch, then perhaps the Tree of Liberty is hungry, thirsting relentlessly for the blood sacrifice to appease itself.  Perhaps it is to be noted that these deities or ideologies requiring periodic blood sacrifice will never stop requiring blood sacrifice.

Oh, I see, you thought war was just about materialistic death and fighting over materialistic “things” such as land, oil, gold, or other resources?  Well, perhaps it was.  Is material reality all there is?  Or is everything illusion and a hologram and nothing is real?  Well, look at that.  That looks like a philosophical false dichotomy to me.  As with all old and deep truths, the answer must be a paradoxical “both.”  The material is all we see, yet the numinous animist spirits are all that is.  Which means that the rocks are alive, because everything material is connected with red threads in the tapestry of spirit.

What then are we to make of declining physical health?  When my body betrays me and refuses to heal, is that because of the physical causes of degeneration and inflammation and infection?  Or is it because of a spiritual problem such as stress and carrying too much worry and feeling too much sadness and hatred and loneliness?  And why would we need to know which one caused the other anyway?  Isn’t the answer “both”?

Untangling monism from dualism is tricky when you’ve got skin in the game.  Obviously, there is a mind-body connection.  A hyperthyroid condition can cause anxiety instead of the other way around.  But a connection between two things, no matter how much overlap there may be between them, does not necessarily mean that they are the identical thing.  Am I my body?  Have I identified with this meat-bag so much that I have forgotten who I am?  Or is there a difference?  Am I more than this body?  Am I a spirit instead merely wearing a body temporarily?  Am I Ik or Oversoul 7, inhabiting all material objects at once yet unaware of myself in others?  What are we to make of telephone telepathy or precognition if the material is all that there is?  What are we to make of being very limited in psychic powers if the spirit and the hologram is all that there is?

Perhaps, then, the War In Heaven is much more than a myth.  If what is bound on Earth is also bound in the heavens, then can peace on Earth cause peace in the Heavens?  Is that what happens when billions of humans get together and all think about one thing?  Perhaps such things are what magic and prayer are about.  The physical affects the spiritual, and the spiritual affects the physical, even though they are not the same thing.  Knowing which one to use is not necessary, because you’re supposed to use both!