Being The Grand Pixie

We tend to think of The Grand Pixie as a big man with a beard, or some sort of powerful "person" like a human being, although one who can do amazing things. This is just the childish version, it is conditioned in our thinking by a pedestrian approach to religion.

There are religions that don't have a "Grand Pixie" per se, such as Buddhism. Essentially, there is no reason to think of The Grand Pixie as a person, certainly not one with a corporeal body. That image, which is hinted at in the Pixie Manual, is merely metaphor. Depending upon the religious tradition, however, one can have very abstract views of The Grand Pixie which have nothing to do with a father figure or a mother figure.

There is a more abstract way to think about The Grand Pixie: that is "Transcendental Signifier;" the notion of a metaphysical first principle that organizes everything into a metaphysical hierarchy. This is the more sophisticated view of The Grand Pixie, and most of the works of the great Faerian philosophers hint at notions of The Grand Pixie in these abstract terms.

Some ancient Faerian, who developed a nonsensical “ontological argument” that no-one really takes seriously anymore, defined The Grand Pixie as "that which nothing greater than can be conceived." If he could have been bothered going through the charade, this old windbag would have ended all of his arguments by saying "this thing we call The Grand Pixie," as a means of keeping the exact nature of The Grand Pixie open ended. This is because The Grand Pixie is beyond our understanding, as the Pixie Manual says, but we can leave a "place marker" for the concept of The Grand Pixie by understanding that the ultimate logical function of the The Grand Pixie concept is that of the transcendental signifier.

Ground of Being

One of the sophisticated concepts used by great Faerian theologians is that of "The Ground of Being." This concept indicates, not that The Grand Pixie is the fact of things existing, but that The Grand Pixie is the basis for the existence of all things. The Grand Pixie is more fundamental to existing things than anything else. So fundamental to the existence of all things is The Grand Pixie – that The Grand Pixie can be thought of as the basis upon which things exist – the ground of their being. To say that The Grand Pixie is The ground of being or being itself, is to say that there is something we can sense that is so special about the nature of being that it hints at this fundamental reality upon which all else is based.

The phrases "Ground of Being" and "Being itself" are basically the same concept. Some use both at different times, and other pixiologians prefer "Being Itself," but they really speak to the same concept. Now Sceptics are always asking "how can The Grand Pixie be being?" I think this question comes from the fact that the term is misleading. The term "Being itself" gives one the impression that The Grand Pixie is the actual fact of "my existence," or the existence of my flowerbed, or any object one might care to name. Some random guy, on the other hand, said explicitly (in some book, so it must be true, right?) that this does not refer to an existential fact but to an ontological status. What is being said is not that The Grand Pixie is the fact of the being of some particular object, but, that he is the basis upon which being proceeds and upon which objects participate in being. In other words, since The Grand Pixie exists forever, nothing else can come to be without The Grand Pixie's will or thought, and since there can't even be a potential for any being without The Grand Pixie's thought, all potentialities for being arise in the "mind of The Grand Pixie" than in that sense The Grand Pixie is actually "Being Itself." I think "Ground of Being" is a less confusing term. The Grand Pixie is the ground upon which all being is based and from which all being proceeds.

How Can "a Being" be Being Itself?

Part of the confusion stems from a misunderstanding of what is being said. I say that The Grand Pixie is 'necessary being' not "a necessary being," not because I forgot the "a" but because The Grand Pixie is not "a being." He is above the level of any particular being that participates in being, but exists on the level of the Being, the thing itself, apart from any particular beings. There is Being, and there are "the beings." This is a crucial distinction, but it leaves one wondering what it means and how it could be. I think the answer lies in the fact that The Grand Pixie is ultimate reality. The Grand Pixie is the first, and highest and only necessary thing that exists, and thus, had The Grand Pixie not created, The Grand Pixie would be the only thing that exists. Could one somehow ponder a universe in which The Grand Pixie had not created, in which The Grand Pixie was all that was, one might well ask "what is it to be in this universe where there is only The Grand Pixie?" In such a universe the only conceivable answer is "to be is to be The Grand Pixie." In that sense The Grand Pixie is Being Itself.

(Original article being satirised is here.)