THE ORDER OF THE CARDINALS

Ascesis is the primary cardinal.  This means that the primary task of thought is the intensification and enhancement of life.  The other three cardinals are necessary only because ascesis cannot do its job without them.  Pure ascesis leaves one vulnerable, weak, and perhaps overly sensitive - vulnerable to ideology, solipsistic, deluded.  The pure ascetic turns away from the world and loses his or her grasp on it.   The promise of transcendence that it offers - it is a lie.  It can only yield New Age solipsism or fundamentalist bigotry.  Thus catharsis, which is complete, potentially mathematizable knowledge of all there is to know,  ideally expressed in highly compressed form, is a grappling hook cast onto the edifice of the Real World - dispelling fantasy and illusion.  Although acceptance towards and engagement with the current state of the mathematics-scientific project is a key aspect catharis, there is another aspect as well - catharsis also represents a deep, existential and affective knowing of the horror of present reality (e.g. the refugee crisis).  In both cases, the knowledge attained is objective.   Given that catharsis is obviously not attainable in perfect form, Fervor follows:  the creative moment in thought, the iconoclastic urge to consolidate and synthesize in a new way.  Here is the "eternal return" aspect of thought in Deleuze's sense of the term.   It is difficult to accept the thesis that pure being really, actually, is becoming - perhaps it is more difficult to endorse an ethics of becoming in 2017 than it might have been in 1968 - nevertheless affirmation of becoming finds its place in Transcendental Qabala as its third cardinal.  Finally Majesty finds its place as the interface between thought and the world - expression in poetic form, engagement with pre-existing forms of thought and life - the skin of thought, its promotion and expression.  It is at this stage that the Artist is produced, HAELEGEN.