THE ANGEL MOST HIGH, PART 2; The fourth article on the work of Andrew Chumbley

As I mentioned before, the word "occult" simply means "hidden," and the word "esoteric" means "inner" (its opposite is "exoteric," the outer appearance of things).  These definitions must always be kept in mind by those approaching literature of this kind.  The really great occultists, and I think Chumbley belongs in this category, write passages like Russian matryoshka dolls.  If you look at the surface of what is written, you are missing what is hidden inside.  You need to dig, dig again, and then dig some more.  The reasoning behind this sort of thing is not merely to encode it--something that was desperately necessary in the centuries when the Church had the power to execute those who questioned its doctrines--nor to keep it from the eyes of the 'profane.'  The fact is occultists are often trying to communicate something incommunicable, or more to the point, something that the reader must seek for himself.  Once more, the world of magic is a mirror, and in digging through a layers of a passage like this, the reader is looking deeper and deeper into himself.  You cannot simply be "told" any meaningful secret...it has to be discovered and earned.  My purpose is unpacking this 300-word passage of Chumbley's is not only to illuminate his philosophy, but to demonstrate to the reader the intricacy of this kind of work.

You cannot simply be "told" any meaningful secret...it has to be discovered and earned. 

And so Chumbley has given us a recycled version of the myth of Lucifer, simultaneously drawing us deeper and earlier to the Hebrew "fallen angel" myth that precedes the Christian retelling.  In doing so, he has tipped his Gnostic hand.  There are at least two deeper levels ahead, but we need to stop a minute and consider the meaning of what we have already discovered.  We need to dwell on "Gnostic" for a bit.

"Gnosticism" is an umbrella term for hundreds of sects, but what they all share is an approach to truth if not the same conclusions on what the "truth" is.  The Indian subcontinent, which gave rise to some of the richest philosophical and religious traditions in the world, often employs the word yoga when discussing spiritual practices.  This is not merely stretching and breathing exercises; in India it is synonymous with "religion."  In fact, the word yoga is connected to the English "yoke," both Sanskrit and English being descendants of a common Indo-European tongue.  They both mean the same thing; something that "joins" two things together.  This is exactly the meaning of "religion," from the Latin re ligio (to bind two things together; "ligature" comes from the same source).  

India recognizes many types of yoga, or religious approaches, three of the most common being bhakti yoga (joining yourself to the divine through love and faith), karma yoga (joining yourself to the divine through good works and proper conduct), and jnaya yoga (joining yourself to the divine through knowledge and direct experience).  Historically, the Christian Church in the west decided early on that bhakti was the official method of coming to God, with karma running second.  But Christianity has always been uncomfortable with "knowledge," a word again linguistically related to both the Sanskrit jnaya and the Greek gnosis through those same Indo-European roots.  It is a matter of historical record that the Church tried relentlessly to eradicate any knowledge that contradicted its teachings--the Renaissance only could occur after prolonged contact with Islamic civilization, which had preserved classical writings instead of destroying them.  The church discouraged seeking direct knowledge of the divine in favor of serving as the sanctioned intermediary between man and God.  The Gnostics, as their name implies, rebelled against this.  What joins all the various Gnostic sects is the doctrine of initiation, of discovery, of knowledge and personal experience as the road to truth.

Who the heck are these "Elder Gods" Chumbley is talking about?

We cannot blame the Church entirely for its discomfort with knowledge...it inherited this from the Hebrew priesthood it is modeled upon.  In retrospect it was probably Islam's lack of an institutionalized religious authority that left it more open to knowledge; there was no Islamic church or temple that needed a monopoly on knowledge to justify is existence.  Twice in the Hebrew myths connected to this passage we have seen God frown upon "leaks" in heaven's knowledge monopoly.  First in the passage's reference to Eden and the serpent (the fall of Man caused by eating the fruit of knowledge) and second in its reference to the fall of the Watchers in 1 Enoch (damned for teaching the arts and sciences to men).  Ironically, the Church seems to have inherited its "we have all the answers" mentality from the very priesthood that Christ accused of not having all the answers.  But the Gnostics were having none of it, and Chumbley is throwing his lot in with theirs.

Which brings us to the part where we must lift the next veil.

Who the heck are these "Elder Gods" Chumbley is talking about?

While many readers are familiar with the story of Lucifer and the that of the serpent in Eden, and careful readers of the Bible are aware of the Watchers and their dalliance with the daughters of men, this notion of gods existing before (G)od probably comes out of nowhere to them.  Well buckle those seat-belts gentle reader, this is where the real fun begins.  

Let's start with the most obvious.  I cannot say with absolute certainty, but I would be more than willing to wager, that Chumbley is sneaking in a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's fictional brood here.  Lovecraft--who was himself a materialist and atheist--wrote weird fiction and horror tales that often included the "Old Ones" or "Elder Gods."  These were vast and incomprehensible alien beings who reigned over the cosmos long before man evolved, and fell into decline before the first human civilizations appeared.  Now they are somehow locked "outside" of our universe, and much of his fiction deals with them trying to get back in.  These Elder Gods were purely fictitious, but--as we shall see--reflective of genuine mythological beings.  More importantly, they found their way into occultism around the mid-20th century.  Anton LaVey--who like modern Chaos Magicians viewed belief as a tool and all gods as symbols--published two rituals dedicated to these Elder Gods.  Several other occultists, most notably the anonymous "Simon" and more recently Donald Tyson, have published their own versions of the Necronomicon, a book Lovecraft invented detailing these Old Ones.  But the reason I am quite comfortable in linking Chumbley with them is that Chumbley was a member of Kenneth Grant's British offshoot of Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis from 1993-1999.  While Grant is a fascinating figure in his own right, what matters here is that he wrote extensively about Lovecraft's prehistoric gods and included them in his magical teachings.  I have no doubt this is how Chumbley comes to incorporate them.

We need to remember the mask and the mirror, the lies that point to truth.  

Am I telling you that Chumbley is now talking about fictional entities in his occult teachings?  Yes, and no.  We need to remember the mask and the mirror, the lies that point to truth.  I spoke at length in my article on Qutub on the Qabalistic concept of zero, of nothingness, and the true nature of God (ultimate reality).  Basically, the "real" God is by definition ineffable and incomprehensible.  Anything less and it could not be God.  Yahweh, like all gods, is a human invention, an attempt for the sake of convenience to put a face and a name to that which is nameless and faceless.  Yahweh is thus no more real than Lovecraft's gods; but God being omniversal, these gods can tell us something true about God's nature just as surely as Yawheh can.  In fact, from the Gnostic point of view, the Elder Gods are closer to an accurate conception of God than Yawheh is because Lovecraft's deities are themselves incomprehensible.  By being outside our ability to understand, the Elder Gods are more reflective of real ultimate reality.  Further, the Gnostics believed that the "true" God existed outside of the universe, something we touched on in talking about the Azoetia.  For them, the universe was far too imperfect to be the handiwork of a perfect being, and thus ascribed Creation to the "Demiurge," a manifestation of the true God with delusions of grandeur.  In their conception, this tyrannical God manufactures the universe and traps humanity within it.  Having fashioned the cosmos and shut himself away from the True God, the Demiurge becomes the "jealous" god of the Old Testament, convincing himself he is the one and only god and setting himself up as a despot.  The Gnostic path was to escape our prison and return to the True God outside of it.  Chumbley is clearly merging Lovecraft's extra-dimensional deities with the Gnostic one.

Again, he has a sound reason for doing this, but before we get there a moment must be taken to scratch our heads over his cryptic "Those who are without number and yet are numbered as Eight."   The first half should be easy to understand by now; without number is 0, the Qabalistic conception of nothingness.  The Eight is a bit more problematic.  I will submit three points for your consideration.

It is possible that Chumbley is taking a page from Crowley's play book, and that this "Eight" is a sly reference to the "infinity" symbol (an 8 on its side).  Those who are without number and yet are infinite.

It is possible that Chumbley is nodding his head towards Chaos Magicians, another group he had close contact with (having written for the journal Chaos International).  Without getting distracted now--I plan on talking about Chaos Magic in a future entry--it is enough to say now that this school uses Chaos as a way to describe the same idea as the Qabalistic Zero, and that the unofficial but widely used Chaos symbol is an eight-pointed star.  We will come back to Chaos at the close of this entry, so keep it in mind.

Or it could be that he means the Qabalistic "Eight."  Qabalah is another topic that demands an essay (or a hundred essays) unto itself, but to summarize here Qabalah ascribes symbolic meaning to numbers, especially the first ten, which form spheres of experience on a diagram called The Tree of Life.  We have already discussed the meaning of zero, but to fully grasp what Chumbley is telling us we need to breeze through the next ten.  I will use a model created by Aleister Crowley, the elegant and succinct "Naples Arrangement," to summarize for you. 

After the infinite, indescribable perfection of Qabalistic nothingness, we arrive at One.  This is the mathematical point, or Qutub, again.  It is the "I" and the "eye," a mystery we will save for later.  The point is the first manifestation of nothingness, positive yet undefinable.  It has position but nothing else.  It is the number of the Demiurge, the god who thinks it is the first to exist and the source for the rest of the universe (ie numbers).  "With the conception of the Universe was the Beginning and the Fall of the One, the One that men have named falsely," Chumbley tells us.  One thinks it is the first, but Nothing was before it.

In short, if all the pairs of opposites in the cosmos are viewed from a distance, everything vanishes into zero.  Observer and observed, hot and cold, light and dark...all of the positive "n" plus the negative "n" balance out to 0

"At the side of the One there was the Secret One, the Angel Most High, Emissary of the Elder Gods."  Here is the number Two, who Chumbley identifies with the Elder Gods (Zero).  Why?  The answer again is Crowley, who attempted to reconcile the old mystical question of whether the universe was dualistic, monistic, or nihilistic with an elegant equation.  The "dualistic" universe is that wherein God creates the universe but stands outside of it.  The monistic universe, most famously seen in the Indian Advaita Vedanta school, postulates that "all is One" and separateness is illusion.  The nihilistic school is typified by early Buddhism, and says the nature of the universe is nothingness.  This is also the Qablastic position.  Crowley stood forward and said "2=o," that the universe appears dualistic and is simultaneously nihilistic.  In short, if all the pairs of opposites in the cosmos are viewed from a distance, everything vanishes into zero.  Observer and observed, hot and cold, light and dark...all of the positive "n" plus the negative "n" balance out to 0 (n + -n = 0).  It was a cornerstone of his system of Thelema.  "One" is leap-frogged over because it is not as perfect as Zero and cannot be defined without Two; "...position does not mean anything at all unless there is something else, some other position with which it can be compared.  One has to describe it.  The only way to do this is to have another Point, and that means one must invent the number Two..."  Here then is Chumbley's Angel Most High, the number Two that is secretly the true manifestation of Zero and the "Secret One" that the One needs to even exist.

Then comes Three, a number that is necessary for the universe to begin.  Two points makes a line, but we cannot even say how long that line is without a third coordinate to measure it.  Three gives us the first geometric shape, the Triangle (the circle belongs to Zero), it gives us the synthesis that reconciles thesis and antithesis.  It is the child of the Mother and Father.  

Four is the manifestation of Matter, a point defined by three coordinates, the birth of the Third Dimension.  The first Pythagorean solid, the three sided pyramid, now is possible.  Five introduces Motion, and therefore "time."  Six is said to be where the Point becomes conscious, able to define itself by position, direction, and form.  Now the next three are forms of experience drawn from Indian philosophy, Ananda, Chit, and Sat.  These are the things the conscious and manifested point experiences on its journey.  Ananda is "bliss" or "sensation," and is associated with Seven.  Sat is "being," the awareness of existence.  That is number 9.  But the number 8, which I skipped over briefly, is "Knowledge."  And this brings us back to Chumbley's "Those who are without number and yet are numbered as Eight" and the third possibility.  

Knowledge is the union of two points.  One point-event experiences another when they collide.  If it helps, think of "knowledge" in the Biblical sense.  But this is 2=o again.  In knowing each other, two points become one and difference is erased.  The third possibility is a very Gnostic one, and ties up our entire discussion neatly.  The Eight could be Chaos, it could be Infinity or it could be Knowledge, all of which are expressions of the Qabalistic Zero or how to attain the ultimate reality of the Qabalistic Zero.  My suspicion is that it is simultaneously all three.

Next, in the third and final essay on this simple three-hundred word passage, we will tie up the lose ends and pull back the final veil on this deceptively simple myth.

THELEMA AT A GLANCE

For roughly the last two decades, one of the philosophies that has most influenced my thoughts and actions has been "Thelema," formulated by the late Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). As a guy who majored in religious studies, I thought I would turn the microscope on Thelema for a brief summary.

Ontology:

Only two qualities exist, the Observer and the Observed. These entities are not independent of one another, but polarities of the same thing. The Observer is the active pole. It actively engages with the Observed and in doing so defines it. The Observed plays the passive role, being shaped and defined by the attention of the Observer. Thelema tends to associate the Observer with the integer +n, the individual human consciousness, and the center of a circle. The Observed is associated with -n, the infinite universe, and the circumference of the circle.

Theology:

“God” (and by this term we mean the sum total of all that was, is, or could ever possibly be) cannot be perceived or defined directly. To say “God” is male robs him of being “female,” and thus limits him. To say “God” is “spirit” removes the possibility of his being “matter,” etc. Thus, Thelema understands “God” by the integer 0. It neither exists not does not exist, and contains all opposites within it. Thus, the Thelemite focuses on two opposite faces of “God,” the personification of the Observer, Hadit, and the personification of the Observed, Nuit. Hadit is the Divine Within, the spark of consciousness in every human being. Nuit is the Divine Without, the universe that human consciousness reaches out to touch and merge with. Hadit is generally seen as a “god” and Nuit as a “goddess.” Again, Hadit would be represented by the center of the circle and the integer +n, while Nuit would be the circumference and -n. Their union, +n + -n, is equal to 0, the undefined and unknowable “God.”

Cosmology:

The Universe (Nuit) is understood as being infinite. In such a situation, any single position (Hadit) within the body of the infinite would be the center. Thus both Nuit and Hadit are infinite qualities. Anything that exists in the body of Nuit can be understood as a “point-event,” a position and phenomenon in time and space. Nuit is imagined as being space, with Hadit as the stars that fill space. In all other respects, Thelema embraces all the realities embraced by the physical sciences; atomic particles, the four fundamental forces, etc. It is a strict rule in Thelemic philosophy that nothing in it must contradict logic and observation. Where Thelema differs slightly from modern materialistic science is in the notion that our ideas and thoughts are just as “real” as external, observable phenomena. These mental or “psychic” point-events are simply of a different character than the physical ones. Thus Thelema would allow for the existence of all sorts of gods, demons, angels, and thought-forms as a certain class of being, distinct from animals and plants.

Anthropology:

Thelemic anthropology divides the human being into roughly three layers of being. There is the “divine” level, or “Hadit.” This might be understood as pure consciousness. It would be the pronoun “I” in an English sentence, stripped of defining characteristics like actions or attributes. In such a case, each individual “I” is indistinct from every other, points whose only distinction is where they exist in time and space. At the next level, which we might call “angelic,” is the human's sense of individuality and self, the “I am I and not you” level. This is also the center of our True Will (see below). Finally, there is the “animal” level, the human being as a flesh and blood creature with instincts, needs, and drives.

Epistemology:

On one hand, Thelema would insist that reason, observation, and above all else, direct experience, are the only viable means of gaining Knowledge. On the other, there is a core belief that all Knowledge is essentially false, being the product of the Observer interacting with (and therefore shaping) the Observed. Like all things, Thelema prefers to tackle Knowledge in levels. For example, on one level a table can be proven to be a table. But on another, a table is just a physical object (“tableness” being a human concept imposed upon it). On another, the table is just an arrangement of chemical components, on yet another, atomic forces, etc. Thus the Thelemite is urged to used objective reason as the base of his understanding, but to simultaneously explore altered states of consciousness in the search for the experience of infinite nothing that the Buddhists would call “nirvana” (and the Thelemites, “crossing the Abyss”).

Special Qualities

1. Magick

   Thelema defines Magick as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will". In short, any time the Observer defines the Observed as a self-willed action, it is Magick. Acting is Magickal, reacting is not. Thelema vigorously strives to remove notions of the supernatural from Magick. Brushing your teeth, writing a sonnet, and balancing your checkbook are all Magickal acts. So, however, is conjuring a spirit to “visible appearance” (essentially causing yourself to see and interact with a thought-form). Everyone does Magick all the time. The only difference is that some are better than others at shaping the world in accordance with their Wills.

2. True Will

   Central to Thelema is the notion of True Will, and the highest law is do what thou wilt. It must be clearly understood that this is NOT synonymous with “do as you please.” For the Thelemite, every individual is his or her own god, a sovereign being, a sun in his or her own solar system. However, even gods and suns possess defining characteristics and functions. Your True Will is essentially your role and place in the universe. It is “who you are” and what you are “meant to do.” True Will is the result of genetic, social, and other factors, the trajectory given to you when you manifested as a point-event in space. Discovering your True Will is essential to any Thelemite. Further, it is felt that the only sin is to interfere with the True Will of another (see Liber OZ for expansion on this).

Further reading; http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Thelema

"A" IS FOR "ART"

Rejecting the notion that people come with a predestined life purpose, Anton LaVey once said; “people don’t ‘find’ themselves, they ‘create’ themselves.” His corollary of course, might have been that if they don’t create themselves, someone else will do the creating for them. There is considerable truth in this. All human concepts and cultures are manufactured, pre-packaged, and sold to children who put them on and wear them as if they natural to the human condition. But most of the things we blindly assume are innate and natural are in fact inventions and fictions, no more or less valid than the inventions and fictions of other peoples. It is unfortunate that so few people realize this fact, because the first step towards enlightenment and liberation is the recognition that truth is entirely relative.

When you get right down to it, all Truth is Art, and I mean this in the most basic sense of the word, as something manufactured, “artifice” and “artificial.” Truth—to shamelessly paraphrase a wonderful line in True Blood--like “morality” and “money” exists only in the human brain. This is neither to say that it is worthless nor in some way not real. Rather, it hints at the great secret of the human condition. If we say with the 12th century Isma’ili mystic Hassan-i Sabbah, “nothing is true, everything is permitted,” we are not necessarily being nihilists as much as grasping the concept that each and every life is a completely blank slate, an unwritten book, an undiscovered country. The purpose of human existence, if there is such a thing, is Art; the process of imbuing experience and sensation with “meaning.”

This is as natural to people as breathing. Consider children lying on their backs looking up at a summer sky. In the clouds they see horses and elephants, great castles and leering faces. What they are doing in fact is taking an experience—in this case, a mass of water vapor—and given it meaning and definition. This is the human condition in a nutshell. The world around us may in fact be a swirling cloud of minute particles, but we ourselves shape it into trees, and mountains, and microwave dinners.

To my mind, the key difference between science and tradition is that the former understands this fact and the latter denies it. Science is well aware that its truths are artificial and temporary, which is why when new data or experiences come along it is able to revise itself and change. Tradition—and I include religion in this category—makes the mistake of assuming the truths it clings to have any intrinsic reality, weight, or value. They may of course be meaningful or beautiful to the individual, but they are not half as universal as one might wish to believe.

Take for example the notion that women are subservient to men, and that their place is in the home, raising children. For countless generations this was assumed as fact, but all along, of course, it was merely “fashion,” like thin neckties or disco. But where disco, despite all of ABBA’s best efforts, was never forced upon children as Truth, the inequality of the sexes was. And this is especially apt when it comes to religion. The differences between Christ, Allah, the Buddha, or Krishna are all of the same character as those between jazz, hip-hop, the blues, and classical music. The only difference being that the parents do not raise children to believe 70s Easy Listening is the One True Music.

I can think of nothing more profound or important as this fact. That humans create their gods, taboos, laws, rules, and fashions, that all these things are transitory and artificial, is the single most powerful notion any person can grasp. Where traditionalists may see this as nihilism, I see it rather as license to create ex nihilo. By recognizing the essential meaninglessness of existence, one is given permission to create meaning that has real value for them. It is to be given the conscious choice of being the artist or the consumer, rather than simply being forced into the latter category.

MY OBJECTION TO "OBJECTIVISM"

Don’t get me wrong; I am a fan of Ayn Rand.

Though a mediocre and exceedingly long-winded novelist, Russian born Rand (1905-1982) made a name for herself primarily via her books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. These works reflected and put before the public her personal philosophy, a system which eventually became known as Objectivism. When famously asked by a reporter to define her philosophy while standing on one foot, Rand replied; “Metaphysics = Objective Reality; Epistemology = Reason; Ethics = Self-interest; Politics = Capitalism.” Or to put it another way, reality exists independently of human thought or existence, reason is the only way to understand reality, the purpose of human existence is to find happiness and self-fulfilment, and a hands-off free market society facilitates the rest. For Rand, the most important thing was to think for oneself and never let those in authority—government, religious, or otherwise—dictate truth. Her “rational self-interest” included within it full respect for the individual rights of others, and encouraged people to take their ideals and through the manipulation of reality imbue them with physical form—art in the highest sense. Rand’s is an attractive, reasonable philosophy that would do away with a great deal of the idiocy we live with today. It is hard NOT to agree with her.

But the problem with Rand is that she died before the Gospel According to Bjork;

If you ever get close to a human, and human behavior, be ready to get confused. There’s definitely no logic to human behavior…

That Rand spectacularly misjudged the human animal is clear from her own personal life. For her, human beings could be taught to rationally judge their actions and act in their best interests. What she failed to consider is that a substantial portion of human behavior, quite possibly even the bulk of it, is instinctual, and that our actions tend to be dictated by subconscious impulses rather than rational and considered responses. I would submit before the court exhibit A, Rand’s own infamous affair with Nathaniel Branden.

Twenty-five years her junior, Branden was a follower of Rand’s and one of the arch-advocates of Objectivism. The two became close, and then romantically involved, despite the fact that both were already married and the considerable age gap between them. Both managed to convince their spouses, however, that their affair was supremely logical. It was only reasonable that two intellectuals of their calibre be drawn to one another. Thus the relationship went forward with spousal consent, and Branden rose to become Rand’s second-in-command and “intellectual heir.”

Nothing wrong with this; everyone seems happy. But wait…here comes the punch line.

Eventually similar “logic” convinced Branden it was time for him to take up with an attractive younger model, in addition to his wife and Rand. Furious, Rand made a public spectacle of disowning Branden and villifying him, the Ur-Objectivist proving the old cliché about hell, fury, and scorned women holds true for even the supremely rational. Her pain and rage devastated the organization they had built together, causing a rift amongst Objectivists. To my mind, there is no clearer indication that Objectivism is deeply flawed when its two highest advocates were incapable of acting in their own rational self-interests.

Message, Spock? “Humans, Ayn, ain’t Vulcans.”

No system of philosophy can succeed so long as it fails to take into account our animal natures. Behaviors demonized by religions and ignored by Objectivism have in fact contributed to the survival of our species, otherwise, either they would no longer exist orwe wouldn’t. Even the most basic understanding of natural selection bears this out. We may tell ourselves that our territoriality, violent impulses, and over-powering sexual urges are—like the appendix—useless vestiges of a primal past, but very little in human history or current events bears this out. As uncomfortable as “civilized” people are with the fact, there is very little in modern human behavior that is functionally any different from other pack-mammals. Like chimpanzees or wolves we have hierarchically organized packs, we remain fiercely territorial, will kill to defend our territory, and once our bellies are full spend considerable amounts of time thinking about breeding. If modern Americans, ancient Romans, and a band of gorillas all have much the same behaviors, perhaps it is time to acknowledge they are vital aspects of our being.

Rand also makes the mistake of assuming everybody wants to be “John Galt.” The truth is, there are many types of people, some of whom are fiercely independent, some who want to lead, and some to whom the idea of standing out fills them with mortal terror. Again, we see the same in other species, and it may be something in our DNA. I’ve heard the arguments that if we teach people to think for themselves, they all would, but such egalitarianism excludes the possibility that many people like to be told what to do. And while I would agree that our current education system is designed to create workers rather than free thinkers, isn’t it odd that some free thinkers still emerge from the system? Perhaps free-thinking is something inherent in their natures, something that cannot be beaten out of them even through the banality of modern education.

It would be nice to think that everyone could learn personal responsibility and act rationally. But there are a great many people who will have sex without that condom knowing the dangers, people who smoke knowing it might kill them, people who reach for the sixth or seventh drink before they have to drive home. Surely they have been educated to the dangers, but the fact is the urge to feel good often triumphs over reason. It may well be that before we can improve the human condition, we need to figure out some way to safely satisfy and indulge our animal behaviors. Ignoring them hasn’t seemed to have worked so well, not for Rand or anyone else.

THE MATERIALIST MAGICIAN

While I await the appearance of Alan Moore’s “Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic” (which judging from his magnificent “Promethea” comic series is bound to be the best thing to hit the occult since Crowley, Spare, and LaVey), I thought I might spill a bit of virual ink on the subject myself

In his rather amusing Screwtape Letters, Christian apologist C. S. Lewis writes that Hell’s greatest achievement would be a “materialist magician.” That’s rather flattering of him, actually. It gives me a warm feeling inside.

It is not difficult to be a “materialist magician” if you have an understanding of what “magic” is and how it works. Indeed, atheism, materialism, and sorcery go very well together, the way strawberries compliment champagne. If you were to put me in a room, for example, with Richard Dawkins and Pope Benedict, I can guaruntee that two of us would find common ground, while the third would remain convinced we were both going to Hell. You do the math.

Naturally, we are not talking “Harry Potter” here. Before we go any further, it might be useful to define our terms. A definition of “magic” that would satisfy everyone from Yanomamo tribesmen to comic-book writing sorcerors like Grant Morrison and Alan Moore would be this; “the idea that ritual action produces specific results.” Essentially, magic is what prayer (“the idea that ritual action moves spiritual beings to produce specific results”) might look like after Ockham took his razor to it. It cuts out the middle-man. This is not to say that magic does not occassionally include the participation of spiritual beings, but the fundamental difference is that the magician is telling the spirits and not asking. In other words, the magician is the cause of the change, and not the spirit. This is significant because for prayer to work, the spirit must literally exist. It must have objective reality to hear the supplicant and grant the wish. For magic to work, the spirit need not “really” exist at all. Rather it can be understood as a symbolic device, an aspect of the magician’s own consciousness, or a pleasant hallucination. Indeed, the magicians who get themselves into trouble are the ones who start to believe the spirits are real. It’s a rookie mistake, but a lot of people make it.

The other rookie mistake is to expect too much from magic. The people who “do not believe in magic” are invariably those who A) never tried it, or B) tried it expecting the wrong effect. The shy, pizza-faced nerd who stands in a magic circle, chanting for the girl-next-door to fall madly in love with him, will inevitably become one of those who do not “believe in magic” when his spell fails. He will probably never understand what he did wrong.

To understand this, let’s first be clear that magic can be divided into two broad categories; the practical and the psychedelic. The two are not mutally exclusive, and often cross paths. By “psychedelic” we mean “a mental state characterized by heightened or altered perceptions,” from the Greek psyche or “mind” and delos or “manifestation.” By practical I mean something intended to produce a specific result. Where people usually fail in magic is concentrating too much on the psychedelic elements, losing sight of the practical.

Again with our nerd. After reading some New Agey books, he stands in a seven-sided heptagon drawn in green chalk on his basement floor, on a Friday night, scattering rose petals. He is calling upon Venus, the goddess of love, to deliever the girl-next-door to him, and the book said all those elements (the number 7, the color green, Friday, rose petals) are sacred to her. He recites some incantations, declares what he wants (“…I want Becky to notice me”), and then sits around on pins and needles waiting for the lovely Rebecca to dump her jock boyfriend and go head over heels for him. The problem, of course, is that all his ritual actions are geared towards the psychedelic experience of Venus, and have no real connection to getting into Becky’s knickers. He will achieve neither because he failed to differentiate between the two.

What he should have done was stew around for a week without jerking off, letting his libido build up to painful levels. Then on whatever night he decided to set aside for his magic, he should engage in some ritual activity that recreates the effect he wants. Forget Venus; our geek should vividly recreate in as much detail as possible mind-blowing sex with the girl of his dreams. Let him verbally describe all the naughty things he’d like to do with her, or draw pictures of them, or even just concentrate intensely on them in his mind. Let him wank off until he can’t see straight, until ever ounce of his pent-up emotion and frustration is expended. Then he should burn all the ritual materials, put Becky out of his head, and act as if he already had her. Done properly, Becky should be out of his system. If she should suddenly see him in a new light, wonderful. But if not it shouldn’t matter. He has scratched that itch. The real power of ritual magic is not in external effects, but in internal ones.

Now, there are certainly tricks of the trade--a cocktail combination of applied psychology, cold reading, and chicanery dubbed by the late Anton LaVey as “Lesser Magic”—our nerd could use to get closer to Becky and make her notice him. But ritual magic is meant to affect the subject, not the object. This is where most people get confused. Used in conjuction with each other, these two sorts of magic can have surprising results. But to rely exclusively on ritual magic to affect your object is a sure path to frustration.

It is this critical misunderstanding that spawns the whole “black” and “white” magic nonsense. A great number of practicing magicians out there whole-heartedly believe it is wrong or “evil” to do things like cast love spells or throw curses. They advocate only magic that helps or heals others. They have spectacularly missed the point. Down through history, magic has been the last recourse of the downtrodden, the held back, and the repressed because it gets negative emotions out of your system. You cannot take a gun into the office and blow your idiot boss away, but there is nothing wrong with fashioning a voodoo doll of him, visciously and vividly dismembering it while reciting all the horrible things you want to happen to the man. It is percisely this sort of thing that magic works marvellously for. It purges the system, and if some tragic accident does befall the rotter, so much the better!

It takes a certain type of personality to do this, of course. If you are not the type of person able to engage in an unihibited release of emotions, magic is not for you. But in reality, magic demands nothing from you that Mardi Gras or really good sex doesn’t. You just have to let yourself go within certain pre-defined parameters.

And there is, of course, the odd coincidence factor. Looking back, I think I can safely say that magic has appeared to reproduce objective results for me roughly 75% of the time. Naturally, such results may have occurred anyway, and I only attach importance to them because of the ritual connection. Further, I have seldom relied on ritual alone, prefering to follow ceremonial magic with positive action. But I’ve never really felt the need to dissect these things, and am comfortable with “happy coincidence.” And though I have had some extraordinary encounters with “spirits,” I have never seen anything to convince me that I am not dealing with projected elements of my own psyche (On some occassions I was tempted to go the opposite way, as one autumn when a “spirit” delivered messages to me in a complex numerical code. Never good with numbers myself, it took me some time to decide whether I was in contact with “something” or whether I had tapped into some part of my head that could produces number puzzles spontaneously. Ever a fan of William of Ockham, I decided the latter was probably the case).

Perhaps what Lewis meant about the materialist magician being Hell’s greatest achievement is that such a fellow would have no use for God. Armed with science to explain how we got here, and magic to fill the gap of “making us feel better” that prayer is supposed to, the Old Boy becomes a bit irrelevant. One can have all of the weird and wonderful fruits of mysticism without really being a mystic at all.

THE REAL WORLD

I overheard two mothers at a PTA meeting this week. One of them was discussing her son. A student of mine, he is bright, articulate, and inquisitive. He comes at problems from odd angles and his quirkiness is much appreciated in my class. His mother, however, was expressing concern over the fact that he reads so much. He enjoys novels, comics, etc. And like all kids his age he also enjoys video games, particularly the story-oriented role-playing ones. She told her friend—who nodded with great sympathy—that she wished her son would put away his books and live “in the real world.”

I have definite opinions about this. By the “real world” I can only assume she means the one in which he studies for the required exams, gets into the right schools, lands the correct job and makes a lot of money, all while paying his taxes and being a good little member of society. The only problem with this is that all of that—tests, schools, careers, and money—are just as fictitious as the novels he reads. They were invented by people too.

If there is a “real world,” it is the one of nature. The one where people eat, sleep, make babies and die. All the rest of it is, as Shakespeare observed, a man-made theatrical production in which we are all conditioned to play our parts. Politics, economics, borders, marriage licenses, and property are rules of a game we invented, dreaming it all up in our little human brains. They are no more intrinsically real than Middle-earth, Narnia, or Never-Neverland.

Much like “good” and “evil,” “real” is a damn tricky word. In a sense, we could define it as “physical things, things we can all see, hear, feel, taste, and touch.” Of course this excludes economics, politics, mathematics, and a million other things we generally accept as “real.” We could define it as “something we all agree exists,” but this is equally problematic. If the entire population of planet Earth suddenly decided we had two suns in the sky, there still would be only one. And perhaps the best definition, “something that is useful,” opens the door to all sorts of issues. Useful to whom? Useful why? Although, given the etymology of the world (“real” means “property,” as in “real estate”), this slightly sinister definition is probably the most accurate. Surely this is what the mother meant when she spoke of her son. She wants him to be useful.

People generally expect me to be an atheist, since I am so against fundamentalist religions. The thing is, I think the atheists are deluding themselves as well. I do believe in God, and Allah, an Vishnu, and Thor, and Santa Claus, and fairies out in the garden. I believe in them as ideas, which exist just as surely as quantum physics and geometry. I tend to think there are different levels of reality, by which I mean “categories” and not necessarily metaphysical planes. The stone in my garden may be “real” on a concrete level, but something like Santa Claus or God, which touches the lives of millions and motivates all sorts of human behavior, is definitely more “real” in the other sense. I tend to think that our private, inner universes are just as “real” as the outer one we all bumble around in together. Thus, if someone accepts Jesus as a personal reality, I have no issue at all with that. The trouble I have is with those who try to force him to be part of my personal reality as well. Where I take on the role of Adversary is when someone expects others to play by the rules of their own reality, and it doesn’t matter to me if that person is Pat Robertson, the Pope, Osama bin-Laden, Richard Dawkins, or a mother urging her son to live in the “real world.” The arrogance of thinking the nonsense you believe is better than someone else’s nonsense just gets under my skin.

And we all believe in a lot of nonsense. Some of us are just willing to admit it.

I do live in the “real world.” I pay taxes, rent, and teach little Japanese kiddies some skills I hope will serve them well down the line. But I have always found this “real world” dull in comparison to the landscapes that exist in my imagination. Whether it is a good novel, Second Life, a film or my writing, I spend a considerable amount of time getting out of the “real world” and feel no shame in it. This “real world” was, after all, invented by other people to box me in, confine me, and make sure I play by their rules. How could I not prefer to spend time in domains where the rules are mine?

There’s a pair of old esoteric terms that applies here; macrocosm, or the “big universe,” andmicrocosm which is the “little universe.” I believe in the big universe, in gravity, magnetism, electricity, and strong and weak nuclear forces. I believe in DNA and biological drives. But if you think your politics and economics, your religions and your rules are also part of the big universe, you are dead wrong. They are all features of our own inner little universes that mistakenly get lumped in with aspects of the big universe, but they are no more real than any fiction or personal belief.

They’re just more useful to someone else.