The Exalting Emotions
What are the eight foundations? Not difficult: the four exalting emotions and the four foundational energies. What are the exalting emotions? Not hard; victory, glory, freedom, and familiarity. What are the foundational energies? Not hard: studium, chthonia, inspiration and vitality. These are said to be foundational because the exalting emotions are what we feel when we are thriving so are the basis of a life well-lived, and the four foundational energies are the motivational forces necessary for life … The heart is the soul’s throne and when the secret of its inner love is couched within its beating, it moves through the exalting emotions as the earth moves through the seasons. As the fili says: rún do chroí air do chuisle; the mystery of your heart upon your pulse.
— From Chapter I of the Liber de Fundamentis
Mapping the Emotional Landscape
Contrary to popular invention, the energies of our awareness align along specific axes that then define our character through our various reactions. When we thrive, we experience exaltation: an uplifting of the mind and awareness through four key emotions. Freedom is our sense of curiosity, energy and expectation. Victory is our sense of agency, accomplishment and celebration. Glory is our sense of beauty, appreciation and gratitude, and Familiarity is our sense of security, belonging, and mutual identification: we belong to the familiar and it belongs to us.
Challenges to our exaltation result in darker, less pleasant versions: Freedom turns to Fear, Victory to Anger or frustration, Glory to Sorrow and Grief, and Familiarity to Loneliness. If we experience such challenges for too long, we experience emotions that indicate to use that we are not thriving but actually wilting or suffering diminution of self: the debasing emotions. Fear gives way to an enervating Disdain, a sense that there is no point to exerting any kind of energy as it will make no difference. Anger turns to Opposition and Hatred for what challenges us. Grief turns to bitter Spite, seeking to assuage our pain with the suffering of others, and Loneliness turns to a self-destructive egotism, either in thinking too little or too much of ourselves.
How to Access All the Exalting Emotions
There are two places where you can go to find the whole story on these with strategies for cultivating exaltation in our modern world. You can download the whole book The Exalting Emotions: A Study in the Anatomy of Happiness here from the link below. Over the coming months, there will be much more concerning the Exalting Emotions accessible here, but if you commit to the Mantichorium Patreon page then for almost the same cost as the individual download you can gain access to everything that the Mantichorium produces.
Being a manual for emotional experience and the navigation out of misery into resilient joy.