Ideology
An Ideology is an organized set of excuses that provide justification for the actions of individuals or groups. Ideology is a belief or set beliefs that justifies and allows something that we wouldn’t otherwise justify or allow. Ideologies are never neutral, rationale, or empirically based but instead are based on the requirements of whatever actions they justify. For example, the oppression and exploitation of women in underpaid (or unpaid) labor, their exclusion from significant decision making power, and the application of violence in all it's forms, requires a significant and interrelated set of justifications (i.e. gender ideology). These justifications range from "naturally based" ideologies like the notion that women are, in genetic terms, the "weaker" sex, to "divine based" ideologies which emphasize God's will or the cosmic order of things. That is, God created women in man's image, from a rib of his body, and therefore she is naturally inferior, subordinate, and tainted.
This world has many ideologies developed to justify and explain the callousness and inhumanity of The System, the outrageous inequalities, and the unending violence and suffering which occurs on this planet. These ideologies all depend, however, on certain core Old Energy Archetypes. Many of these archetypes can be found in the Old Energy Masonic Tarot. The Halo/Sharp tarot provides a New Energy alternative.
Continued faith in ideological explanations of the world often requires significant mental and emotional repressions in order to avoid simple awareness of fact. That is, it takes a lot of physical energy devoted to the repression of empathy and awareness to justify and then act out the violent stoning of a female, or to allow a single parent female to exist in poverty and despair despite a world of obscene wealth. Nevertheless, in order that we might benefit from the world "as it is," and an in order to avoid the responsibility of changing things, we adopt ideologies even in the face of obvious and contradictory evidence.
Notes
The Halo/Sharp Tarot provides a tool useful for unpacking, exposing, and replacing Old Energy ideology
See Also
The Book of the Triumph of Spirit
The Book of the Triumph of Spirit Master Key
Sharp, Michael (2012). Ideology. The SpiritWiki: http://www.thespiritwiki.org/index.php/Ideology [Accessed: May 20, 2012]
