On the Rise and Fall of Because

Image adapted from the sleeve to the Killing Joke album 

What's THIS for ...! (E.G. / Polydor Records, 1981) [1]

 

"He shall fall down into the pit called Because,

and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason." [2]

 

 

I. 

 

Although the Age of Reason didn't really establish itself until a few hundred years later, it was already assembling its vocabulary in the late 14th-century, including that crucial term because, which enters into English at this date modelled on the French phrase par cause. 

 

It's one of those words that people who love the abstract concept of causality - i.e., the capacity of a to determine b - often use to close down further discussion: There's no point arguing because the facts clearly demonstrate ... 

 

Because is thus the ultimate explanation - the metaphysical answer to the equally metaphysical question why? - and it has become implicit in the logic and structure of everyday language. Indeed, one might even, like Nietzsche, suggest that it betrays the presence of God within language ... [3]

 

 

II.

 

However, those of us who have long been anticipating the fall of because - by which we mean the overcoming of metaphysics, rather than the abolition of reason - are amused by a recent development in the English speaking world that has got some grammar nazis upset ... 

 

For it seems that because is now being used in an ironic manner by the young to convey a certain vagueness about the exact reasons for anything. Thus, whereas traditionally, because is a subordinating conjunction which connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other, now it's being used as a preposition (i.e. placed before nouns, verbs, adjectives, and interjections). 

 

And this new usage, not yet widespread but increasingly common - because social media - in some sense subverts the word's old grammatical function and authority, exposing the fact that we realise there's nothing we can really refer back to as a causal agent or fixed and final explanation of the world's chaos and mystery; i.e., that we know our rationale is often - like God - just a linguistic fiction that we hold on to because convenient and because comforting [4].   

 

As Megan Garber writes in The Atlantic, the word because hasn't fallen so much as exploded; it can now be used however the speaker chooses to use it, limited only by the confines of their own imagination: "So we get [...] people using 'because' not just to explain, but also to criticize, and sensationalize, and ironize [...]" [5]

 

 

 

III.     

 

So, what does all this signify exactly? That we're living in a post-Nietzschean (and post-Derridean) universe? Or that the Aeon of Horus has arrived as Aleister Crowley announced? 

Possibly. 

 

Or it could just mean that a generation who have grown up texting and tweeting are so lazy (and self-absorbed) that they can't be bothered to finish their thoughts and sentences, or waste time providing long and complex explanations: because emoji and the will to abbreviate ...?   

 

Notes

 

[1] The Killing Joke album What's THIS for ...! (1981) is one of the great post-punk albums and the opening track of Side A - 'The Fall of Because' - is a personal favourite. I'm assuming they took the title of the song from a line by Aleister Crowley (see note 2 below). Click here to listen to the 2005 digitally remastered version provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group.    

 

[2] Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (1909), II. 27. See also III. 20, where Crowley actually uses the phrase 'fall of because'.

      For those who don't know, this work - often referred to by enthusiasts with the Classical Latin title Liber AL vel Legis - is the central sacred text of Crowley's new religion (Thelema). According to Crowley, it was dictated to him by a supernatural being who called himself Aiwass, speaking through his new wife, Rose Edith Kelly, during their honeymoon in Egypt, in 1904. 

      With publication of this text, Crowley announced the arrival of a new phase in the spiritual evolution of mankind, to be known as the Aeon of Horus. The key teaching of the book - and this new age - is: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, meaning that adherents of Thelema should seek out and follow their own singular path in life (like a star). 

      As for what Crowley means by the fall of because, I suspect he's simply indicating that the Age of Horus is post-Enlightenment and thus open to the possibility that there are more things in heaven and earth than are understood within the framework of modern science, or Western reason.       

 

[3] See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, where he famously writes in the chapter entitled 'Reason in Philosophy' (5): "I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar ..."

       For Nietzsche, our faith in causal relationships (as a form of agency) is based upon a number of mistaken beliefs and correcting these four great errors will play a significant part in what he terms the revaluation of all values. 

      The reason, says Nietzsche, that we like to think events have causes (and actions have actors behind them), is because it's reassuring. Further, to trace something unknown (and thus threatening) back to something we can explain and make familiar is empowering. Essentially, we look to find ourselves in everything (even in God). See the chapter entitled 'The Four Great Errors', in Twilight of the Idols.   

   

[4] See note 3 above.

 

[5] Megan Garber, 'English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet', The Atlantic (19 Nov 2013): click here to read online. Readers interested in this topic might also like the post entitled 'Because and effect' (21 July 2014) by Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman on their Grammarphobia blog: click here.

 

 

Reflections on the Verb to Be

To stamp Becoming with the character of Being - 

that is the supreme will to power ... Nietzsche

 

 

I've seen it said that fascism begins with the verb to be. And, in fact, I may even have used the phrase myself in order to conclude a past post with a polemical punch line [1]. Whether it's true or not is, of course, debatable.  

 

However, it's certainly the case that false (and often pernicious) beliefs derive from mistaken values that are rooted in language rather than any underlying reality; something that Nietzsche demonstrates in his writings on metaphor and grammar (the latter defined as the presence of God within language) [2].   

 

Thus it is that I'm extremely wary of anyone who in wishing to declare their existence or express their identity asserts: I am (X,Y, or Z) in an ontologically sincere manner (i.e., unaware of the game they're playing). 

 

And I really loathe that Broadway musical number composed by Jerry Herman and famously recorded by Gloria Gaynor - I Am What I Am [3] - and which has since become a global gay anthem, regrettably reinforcing (the paradox and irony of) queer essentialism and the even more regrettable consequences that follow from the belief that sexual identities are innate and come with certain immutable characteristics or necessary attributes.

 

I can't help thinking that such idealism gives rise to all kinds of reductive, reified, discriminatory, and extremist ideologies - which returns us to where we began: fascism begins with the verb to be. Which is unfortunate, particularly if D. H. Lawrence is right and Hamlet's question is still the one that preoccupies us and the ache for being remains the ultimate hunger [4].  

 

Still, as every good ascetic will tell you, there's no need to heed every ache and pain and surrender to every yearning; I seem to recall that Aleister Crowley once adopted the admirable practice of cutting his arm with a razor every time he said 'I' and took false pride in this word [5]. 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Actually, it was the recently published post of 1 August 2022 - 'Dead Dreams Fly Flags' - click here. 

 

[2] See Twilight of the Idols, where Nietzsche writes: "I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar." Walter Kaufmann's translation of this text can be found in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Penguin, 1982), p. 483. 

 

[3] 'I Am What I Am' was a song featured in Jerry Herman's Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles (1983). It was recorded by disco queen Gloria Gaynor and released as single in the same year, quickly becoming one of her biggest hits. The song also appears on the 1984 album I Am Gloria Gaynor (Silver Blue Records). Click here to watch Ms Gaynor perform a live version of the song at an awards ceremony in Germany in December 1984.

 

[4] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Manifesto', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 218. 

[5] In 1920, Crowley and followers moved to Sicily and founded a community that would operate on the principles set out in The Book of the Law. The Abbey of Thelema, as it was known, was basically a restored farmhouse, not far from the beach and next to the ruins of an ancient Roman temple. Here, daily rituals were performed and all social conventions abandoned. Any one who used the word 'I' was obliged, like the Great Beast himself, to self-administer a cut on their forearm with a razor blade. It's possible that this practice was inspired by Crowley's reading of Nietzsche and that his hope was that Thelemites might resurrect the greater intelligence of the body, which does not speak its selfhood, but, rather, physically enacts or performs it. 

      See 'Of the Despisers of the Body', in Part One of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

Rawdon Lilly: Notes Towards a Character Study

Adapted from the cover of Henry Miller's  

Notes on 'Aaron's Rod', ed. Seamus Cooney, 

(Black Sparrow Press, 1980)

 

 

I. 

 

"It is remarkable", writes D. H. Lawrence, "how many odd or extraordinary people there are in England." [a]

 

And I suppose we might number Rawdon Lilly amongst this queer set; Lilly being the character in Aaron's Rod (1922) who, like Rupert Birkin before him (in Women in Love) and Richard Somers after him (in Kangaroo), serves as a kind of avatar for the author, often expressing his philosophical views, although he is not the novel's protagonist and doesn't enter the story until chapter five when the action moves from Eastwood to London ...

 

 

II. 

 

Lilly is an artist of the literary variety who hangs around with posh bohemian types; dark and ugly of feature as well as (arguably) of character. He thinks he's terribly witty, but he's no Oscar Wilde; he thinks he's terribly clever, but he's no Nietzsche. A strange mix of sarcasm, snobbishness, and self-regard, it's no wonder he often provokes others to violence [b] and irritaes the hell out of Tanny, his blonde-haired, half-Norwegian wife.

That said, he seems to like Aaron Sisson, the flute playing ex-miner - and the latter seems to like him; they glance at one another "with a look of recognition" [61], which is always a good sign in Lawrence's world. Unlike the look of love, because love, says Lilly, is a vice. Like alcohol. Having met and been introduced (at the opera) - and having exchanged their look of recognition - Lilly invites Aaron to visit him and Tanny for lunch one day, at their house in Hampstead (an invitation that was never taken up, as far as I recall).     

 

Despite living in Hampstead - and also owning a "labourer's cottage in Hampshire" [73] - we are asked to accept that Rawdon and Tanny were poor [c]. Perhaps this adds to Lilly's self-image as a saviour. But it doesn't explain his (racist) dislike of the Japanese, whom he thinks demonic; a quality that one might have thought he'd find attractive, since he despises Christianity and moral humanism [d].

 

He also dislikes those who can't - or won't - stand upright on their own two feet; those, like Jim Bricknell, who stagger and stumble like a drunk; "or worse, like a man with locomotor ataxia" [81], as if lacking all power in their legs. According to Lilly, it's an obscene desire to be loved which makes the knees go all weak and rickety - that and a sloppy relaxation of will. 

 

For Deleuze, "the spinal column is nothing but a sword beneath the skin, slipped into the body of an innocent sleeper by an executioner" [e]. But for Lilly (as for Lawence), the backbone is crucial and should be stiffened from an early age, so that one can affirm oneself into singular being and kick one's way into the future [f].  

 

When Tanny goes off to visit her family in Norway, Lilly stays in London, on the grounds that it's "'better for married people to be separated sometimes'" [90] and that couples who are "'stuck together like two jujube lozenges'" [91] are hateful.

 

He takes a clean and pleasant room, with a piano, in Covent Garden; above the market place, looking down on the stalls and the carts, etc. Mostly he liked to watch the great draught-horses delivering produce: "Funny half-human creatures they seemed, so massive and fleshy, yet so cockney" [86]; an amusingly absurd description. 

But Lilly also has his eye on a "particular page-boy in buttons, with a round and perky behind, who nimbly carried a tea-tray from somewere to somewhere, under the arches beside the market" [86]. When reading Lawrence, one can pretty much take it as given that his leading male characters will be what we now term bi-curious (to say the least). 

 

So no big surprise to find that when he gets (a poorly) Aaron up to his room, he soon has the latter undressed and tucked up in bed: 

 

"Lilly pushed Aaron down in the bed, and covered him over. Then he thrust his hands under the bedclotes and felt his feet - still cold. He arranged the water bottle. Then he put another cover on the bed." [90] 

It's kind, of course, of Lilly to nurse the flu-ridden Aaron. But does a respiratory illness usually require an erotically-charged massage with oil - and we're not talking here of a quick chest rub with Vicks VapoRub:

"Quickly he uncovered the blond lower body of his patient, and began to rub the abdomen with oil, using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion, a sort of massage. For a long time he rubbed finely and steadily, then went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort of incantation. He rubbed every speck of the man's lower body - the abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed it all warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing the toes swiftly, till he was almost exhausted." [96] 

 

Anyway, it seems to do the trick: "The spark had come back into the sick eyes, and the faint trace of a smile, faintly luminous, into the face" [96]. But afterwards Lilly wonders why he did it, worried that when Aaron is fully recovered and realises what was done to him it will result in another punch in the wind: "'This Aaron [...] I like him, and he ought to like me. [But] he'll be another Jim [...]'" [97] 

 

Poor Lilly! So full of resentment - including self-resentment. But he no sooner swears to stop caring for others and interfering in their lives, than he starts darning Aaron's black woollen socks, having washed them a few days previously.   

 

When Aaron recovers enough to sit up in bed and eat some toast with his tea, Lilly explains his thoughts on marriage - "'a self-conscious egoistic state'" [99] - and having children: '"I think of them as a burden.'" [99] He fears being suffocated "'either with a baby's napkin or a woman's petticoat'" [101] and dreams of men rediscovering their independent manhood and gathering his own soul "'in patience and in peace'" [104]. 

 

But this isn't some kind of Buddhist desire for an end to all desire: 

 

"'It's what you get to after a lot of fighting and a lot of sensual fulfilment. And it never does away with the fighting and with the sensual passion. It flowers on top of them, and it would never flower save on top of them'" [105] 

 

In other words, it's what Oliver Mellors would term the peace that comes of fucking [g], or Nietzsche a warrior's peace. Whether Aaron understands this idea, is debatable: Lilly irritates him rather. But, having said that, he seems in no hurry to leave, even when well enough to do so: "They had been together alone for a fortnight only: but it was like a small eternity." [106]

 

Thus, the two men share the room in Covent Garden, bickering like Felix and Oscar in The Odd Couple [h] and drinking endless cups of tea. They have, we are told, "an almost uncanny understanding of one another - like brothers" [106], despite the mutual hostility. 

 

Lilly, of course, plays the traditionally feminine role: "He mashed the potatoes, he heated the plates, he warmed the red wine, he whisked eggs into the milk pudding, and served his visitor like a housemaid." [106] And when the food is ready, Lilly draws the curtains and dims the light so they can enjoy a rather romantic-sounding meal for two. Then he does the washing-up. 

 

Of course Lilly and Aaron part on rather bad terms: for the latter, the former is too demanding; he wants something of another man's soul, or so it seems to Aaron. Anyway, Lilly heads off; first to Malta, then to Italy (and out of the novel for several chapters). Eventually, Aaron follows, with no definite purpose but to join his rather peculiar friend ... 

 

 

III. 

 

The two men, Aaron and Lilly, Lilly and Aaron, finally reunite in Florence. 

 

Lilly doesn't seem particularly surprised to see Aaron again; or particularly fussed. For he's come to believe that there's a time to leave off loving and seeking friends; that each man has to learn how to possess himself in stillness and not care about anything or anyone. Essentially, decides Lilly, at his very core, he is alone: "'Eternally alone. And choosing to be alone. Not sentimental or lonely. Alone, choosing to be alone, because by one's nature one is alone.'" [246] 

 

He continues:

 

"'In so much as I am I, and only I am I, and I am only I, [...] I am inevitably and eternally alone, and it is my last blessedness to know it, and to accept it, and to live with this as the core of my self-knowledge.'" [247]

 

Thus, for Lilly, even the heart beats alone in its own silence - and anti-idealism. For above all else, it's anti-idealism that defines Lilly (philosophically and politically):

"'The ideal of love, the ideal that it is better to give than to receive, the ideal of liberty, the ideal of the brotherhood of man, the ideal of the sanctity of human life, the ideal of what we call goodness, charity, benevolence, public spiritedness, the ideal of sacrifice for a cause, the ideal of unity and unanimity - all the lot - all the whole beehive of ideals - has all got the modern bee-disease, and gone putrid, stinking.'" [280-81]

His alternative is - after sufficient extermination - a "'healthy and energetic slavery'" [281] in which there is "'a real commital of the life-issue of inferior beings to the responsibility of a superior being'" [281] and enforced with military power. At least that's what he tells his interlocutor. Until then admitting with a gay, whimsical smile that he would "'say the opposite with just as much fervour'" [282].

Finally, Lilly delivers that which he believes to be the real truth: "'I think every man is a sacred and holy individual, never to be violated." [282] Which is pretty close to Aleister Crowley's great teaching that: Every man and every woman is a star [i]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

So, in closing what then are we to make of Rawdon Lilly? 

 

Aaron comes to the following conclusion:

"He had started by thinking Lilly a peculiar little freak: gone on to think him a wonderful chap, and a bit pathetic: progressed, and found him generous, but overbearing: then cruel and intolerant, allowing no man to have a soul of his own: then terribly arrogant, throwing a fellow aside like an old glove which is in holes at the finger-ends. And all the time, which was most beastly, seeing through one. All the time, freak and outsider as he was, Lilly knew. He knew, and his soul was against the whole world." [289]

 

Still, if forced to choose, Aaron decides he'd choose Lilly over the entire world; if he has to submit and give himself to anyone, then "he would rather give himself to the little, individual man" [290] than to the quicksands of woman or the stinking bog of society. 

 

Personally, I'm not so sure. For whilst I agree with Lilly that we should finish for ever with words like God, and Love, and Humanity and "'have a shot at a new mode'" [291], I don't think I'd fancy placing my life in his hands. Nor do I share his to thine own self be true credo, which is ultimately just another form of idealism. 

 

As for his insistence on the "'great dark power-urge'" [297], I'd take that a little more seriously if in comparing this to Nietzsche's concept of will to power he didn't misunderstand the latter so completely (equating it, for example, with consciousness). Lazy and erroneous thinking like this causes me to doubt much else that Lilly says. 

 

And, finally, I don't want to submit to the positive power-soul within some hero, thank you very much: I don't have any heroes, they're all useless, as Johnny Rotten once memorably said [j].   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 26. All future page references to this novel will be given directly in the text. 

 

[b] I'm thinking here of the scene in Chapter VIII, when Jim Bricknell gives Lilly a punch in the wind. To be fair, although it's arguable that Lilly provoked the assault - as Tanny believes - there's really no justification for Bricknell giving him "two or three hard blows with his fists, upon the front of the body" [82]. But there you go; those who claim to act in the name of Love - and so desperately want to be loved - are often the most vicious and violent people on earth.  

 

[c] Perhaps the Lilly's were only renting the house in Hampstead - or that it belonged to a friend who had kindly allowed them to live there rent free. Later, Lilly tells Aaron that he only has "'thirty-five pounds in all the world'" [103] and so is far from being a millionaire. (£35 in 1922 would be equivalent to around £1700 today). 

 

[d] And, indeed, Lilly does later praise the Japanese for their ability to be quiet and aloof and indifferent to love: '"They keep themselves taut in their own selves - there, at the bottom of the spine - the devil's own power they've got there.'" [81] Although, shortly after this he dismisses "'folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs and orientals altogether'" [97], a quality which makes them vermin in his eyes.

      Readers interested in knowing more about Lawrence's fascination with Japanese male bodies, are advised to see my post from June 2019 on the subject: click here. 

 

[e] Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: the logic of sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith, (Continuum, 2003), p. 23. 

      Like many of his ideas and phrases, Deleuze is borrowing this from a writer of fiction; in this case, Franz Kafka. See: 'The Sword', in Diaries 1914-1923, ed. Max Brod, trans. Martin Greenberg with Hannah Arendt (Schocken Books, 1949), pp. 109-10. 

 

[f] Readers who are interested in this topic might like to see my post from April last year on encouraging a straight back: click here. Alternatively, see Lawrence writing in Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922).  

[g] See the Grange Farm letter that Mellors writes to Connie at the end of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) for an explanation of this phrase. And see the post from December 2021 on the Lawrentian notion of chastity: click here.

[h] The Odd Couple is a 1968 comedy directed by Gene Saks and written by Neil Simon (based on his 1965 play of the same title), starring Jack Lemmon (as fastidious Felix Ungar) and Walter Matthau (as easy-going Oscar Madison), two divorced men who decide to live together, despite being extremely different characters.   

 

[i] See Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (1909), 1:3 

 

[j] Rotten said this in an interview with Janet Street Porter for The London Weekend Show, a punk rock special broadcast on London Weekend Television on 28 November 1976 (i.e., three days before the notorious Bill Grundy incident). Click here to watch in full on YouTube. The remark quoted is at 8:13 - 8:16.       

 

 

The Great Beast is Dead (In Memory of Aleister Crowley)

 

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)

 

"We must conquer life by living it to the full, 

and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige."

 

 

On this day, December 1st, in the year of our late Lord 1947, the self-styled Great Beast and wickedest man in the world, Aleister Crowley, died, at a guest house in the seaside town of Hastings on the English south coast, of myocardial degeneration (aggravated by pleurisy and chronic bronchitis), aged 72. 

 

One suspects that financial hardship and heroin addiction didn't much help matters, healthwise, either. But there you go: and besides, isn't it better to die poor but still chasing the dragon, than rich and with your feet up, hoping for a peaceful end after a quiet, uneventful life ...?

 

To be honest, Crowley's magickal writings don't particularly excite my interest. But I do admire his outrageous nonconformity and the fact that he subscribed to the view that it is better to be a spectacular failure in this life, than any kind of benign success; and better to be hated than loved.*    

 

Crowley's funeral was held at a Brighton crematorium on the afternoon of Friday, December 5th. Around a dozen people attended, and various excerpts from his works, including The Book of the Law (1909) - the sacred text of Thelema - were read.

 

Naturally, the death of England's most notorious occultist generated press interest and some of the tabloids insisted on describing Crowley as a Satanist and his funeral service (somewhat absurdly) as a Black Mass. 

 

His ashes were sent to his successor, the German occultist Karl Germer, new head of the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis) in the United States, who buried them, rather quaintly, in his garden in Hampton, New Jersey.  

 

And may he rest in Holy Chaos ...

 

 

* Note: Malcolm McLaren, born a year before Crowley died, would also subscribe to this philosophy of spectacular failure and often mentioned the latter in conversation. McLaren also possessed a silver ring with occult markings that had once been owned by the Great Beast, but threw it into the ocean one day having become convinced that it was bringing him bad luck (or at least that is what he told me when I asked him why he had stopped wearing it). Paul Gorman mentions this ring in his excellent biography, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 416.  

From the Archives ... On My Dealings with Channel 4

My application for a job as an Assistant Editor 

(Youth and Entertainments Features) at Channel 4

 

 

I.

 

My first dealings with Channel 4 were in the autumn of 1983, less than a year after the station started broadcasting. Rather naively, I believed that they fully intended to stick to their public service remit and provide a genuine alternative to the shit served up by the BBC and ITV. 

 

That is to say, provide 'a broad range of high quality and diverse programming which [...] demonstrates innovation, experiment and creativity in the form and content of programmes; appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society; exhibits a distinctive character.'

I was then collaborating with a spiky-haired student of Communications, Arts and Media called Gillian Hall on various projects and, encouraged by Alan Fountain - an independent producer hired by Channel 4 as a commissioning editor and mentor to new filmmakers - we submitted a proposal for a series that would be profoundly anti-Christian in nature and feature music, dance, witchcraft, sex-magick, and Satanic ritual.

 

In other words, we basically assembled ideas and images from all the usual suspects - from Aleister Crowley to Killing Joke (the album Fire Dances had just been released and I was under its spell all summer) - and visualised a kind of postmodern black mass with a post-punk soundtrack. It may well have been catastrophically bad had it ever been made - but it wouldn't have been Songs of Praise.

Alas, whilst initially intrigued by the proposal, Fountain lost his nerve somewhere along the line and Gillian and I were politely informed by letter that our Pagan TV show was not something that Channel 4 would be willing to commission, not least because many of the ideas that the show intended to explore were ones that the vast majority of people would find profoundly offensive.  

 

 

II.

 

Several years later, I again had dealings with Channel 4 - and again suffered the pain and disappointment of rejection (although these feelings were alleviated by the fact that I didn't give a shit).

 

Having failed to land a role as a presenter on the 24-hour cable and satellite TV channel the Music Box (a sort of naff pan-European version of MTV), Malcolm had advised me that I needed to be a 'little less Johnny Rotten and a little more Simon Le Bon'. With that in mind, I decided to apply for a job as an Assistant Editor (Youth and Entertainments Features) at Channel 4, which I had seen advertised in The Guardian. 

 

The ad for the post (reference number BH01) made clear that applicants should have 'definite opinions regarding youth programmes, journalism and the youth entertainment market in general'. 

 

Well, I definitely had opinions regarding these things; unfortunately, they were largely (if not entirely) negative and, Sex Pistol that I remained at heart, I basically just wanted to destroy everything and cause as much chaos as possible. (Of course, I didn't list this under career goals and ambitions on my CV, though I suspect that something of my underlying nihilism shone through the bullshit that I did write.)

Instead of the requested covering letter to accompany the CV, I sent the above poster which clearly illustrated who and what they would be getting if they hired me. The text on the poster, which paraphrased Zarathustra and referenced a favourite song by Bow Wow Wow reads: 

'If culture is, before all things, unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people, then barbarism is surely a lack of style; or a chaotic jumble of all styles. Thus we postmoderns, we parodists of world history and plunderers of the past, are the new barbarians: we are the TV savages! We are that hybrid breed, without meaning, substance, or style: we are Youth!'

 

I don't remember if anyone ever bothered to reply: if they did, I don't have the letter or recall its contents. 

 

And that, pretty much, was the end of my dealings with Channel 4 - a short (and not particularly spectacular) history of failure and rejection (but no regrets).

 

 

On Magical Names and the Nietzsche-Crowley Connection (A Post for Halloween)

Aleister Crowley aka Frater Perdurabo 

aka the Great Beast 666 

 

 

The practice of adopting a magical name or motto by a newly initiated member of an occult order - including members of the Golden Dawn, probably the best-known of all secret societies - has an amusing quaintness to it. 

 

The names, usually in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, are intended to express the neophyte's highest ideal towards which they aspire, or perhaps contain some esoteric allusion. Fellow members address them by their new identity so as to create a special bond and to help foster the feeling that they were leaving their old selves behind - even if those old selves were highly accomplished and respected in the everyday world. 

 

W. B. Yeats, for example, one of the foremost figures of twentieth-century poetry and a pillar of the Irish literary establishment, was still obliged to take on a new name when he joined the Golden Dawn by which he would be known; he initially chose the classical adage Festina Lente, though later changed his motto to Demon est Deus inversus. 

 

As for the Hermetic Order's most notorious member, Aleister Crowley - the wickedest man in the world and much despised by Yeats and other members of the Golden Dawn for his libertine lifestyle - he took the name Perdurabo when initiated by MacGregor ('S Rioghail Mo Dhream) Mathers, in November 1898. 

 

It's an interesting choice: and one wonders if Crowley was at all influenced by his reading of Nietzsche, for whom the idea of endurance was central to his Dionysian philosophy: 

 

"To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures." [1]

 

We know that Crowley thought highly of Nietzsche, describing him as a Gnostic Saint, a prophet of the Aeon of Horus, and an avatar of Thoth, the god of wisdom. Crowley even wrote a short essay on Nietzsche (c. 1914-15), in which he attempted to vindicate the latter's work. 

 

So it's possible that Crowley was influenced by Zarathustra's incitement to become hard and learn how to endure like the diamond. I like to think so, at any rate ...

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1968), section 910, p. 481. 

 

It should be noted, of course, that this fragment by Nietzsche was published after Crowley joined the Golden Dawn; the first English translation of Der Will zur Macht came out in 1910 as part of the Oscar Levy edition. It's probably impossible to know for sure what books Crowley read by Nietzsche - and if he read them in the original German - but it's likely he was familiar with The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Anti-Christ. Readers who are interested in knowing more about the Nietzsche-Crowley (or, if you prefer, Crowley-Nietzsche) connection should visit the Thelemic Union website: click here. 

 

This post is for Christina.  

 

 

My Pagan Self Revealed (Reflections on a Mexican Devil Mask)

I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus 

and would rather be a satyr than a saint

I.

I have already written elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark about how, for me, the way to move beyond the ruins of the late 1970s was not via a poppy new romanticism or a shameless embrace of free market capitalism, but, rather, towards a post-punk paganism inspired by a wide range of influences including Nietzsche, Lawrence, Jung, Crowley, McLaren, and Jaz Coleman.*

Thus, after 1982, I defined myself less as an anarchist and more as an anti-Christ and the task, as I saw it then, was to aggressively confront Occidental reason and Christian morality with its absolute Other by promoting a pessimistic vitalism tied to an anti-modern politics. 

In other words, safety pins were replaced by horns on head and the vintage Mexican devil mask that I can be seen holding in the photo above became the face of my soul; i.e., my essential self is a concealed self, a disguised self, the product of playful dissimulation. This is what Wilde refers to as the truth of masks and those who are profound enough to be superficial will understand the philosophical importance of this fact.  

II. 

The native peoples of Mexico have had a thing for the making and wearing of masks for millennia; i.e., long before the Spanish arrived - or the tourists. Obviously, the masks had a ritual and magical significance and were worn during religious ceremonies and festivals. Sometimes they had human features; sometimes animal.

And sometimes they incarnated deities, demons, or devils; the latter often having real horns and images of snakes, lizards, or frogs added to the usually grotesque facial design.

Although my mask is hand-carved from wood, traditional masks were also made from other materials including clay, leather, and wax. After the Conquest of Mexico (1519-21), the Spanish outlawed indigenous beliefs, but Christian evangelisers were happy to exploit the love of masks, dance, and spectacle to propagate their faith amongst the natives.

Often, however, rather than successfully replace old cultural traditions with entirely new forms, masked events became a strange amalgamation of paganism and Catholicism. It was Carnival - but not as the Europeans originally understood it.

Today, masked festivals remain very popular and prevalent in parts of the country with large numbers of native peoples and old customs and beliefs live on, if only in a commercialised and aestheticised form.           

* Note: Readers interested in this earlier post to which I refer - with my reflections on Pagan Magazine - can read it by clicking here. And for another post on the truth of masks, click here. 

Further Reflections on a Black Cat

Gino Severini: The Black Cat (1910-11)
Oil on canvas (54.4 x 73 cm)

Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Black Cat (1843) not only influenced many other writers, but also those working within the visual arts, including, for example, the Italian Futurist Gino Severini, whose painting above was included in the first Futurist exhibition, held in Paris, in 1912. 

But perhaps the most interesting work drawing inspiration from Poe's disturbing tale of alcoholism, animal cruelty, and domestic violence, is the 1934 film, The Black Cat,* directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi (the first of eight films to pair the gruesome twosome).

Actually, despite listing Poe's name in the credits, Peter Ruric's screenplay (based on Ulmer's scenario) has no resemblance to the narrative events of Poe's story and the film gets its real inspiration from the life of Aleister Crowley, particularly Karloff's character, Hjalmer Poelzig, a mad Austrian architect with a penchant for chess and black cats, who comes to a grisly end shackled to an embalming rack and skinned alive. 
 
Although it was a box office hit, the film didn't much impress the critics upon its original release, who mostly found it, in the words of one reviewer, more foolish than horrible.

However, Ulmer's movie is now recognised as a bizarre and stylish masterpiece; one that unfolds with the crazy logic of a nightmare and brilliantly develops the psychological horror genre with its creepy atmosphere, sinister soundtrack and an emphasis on the darker (more perverse) elements of the human psyche; including the propensity for incest, sacrifice, necrophilia, and devil worship.

Click here for the trailer

Notes

* Not to be confused with the 1941 film also entitled The Black Cat, dir. Albert S. Rogell and starring Basil Rathbone, which also claims to have been inspired by Poe's short story and also features Lugosi in a cameo role.  

Readers might be interested in a sister post to this one, Reflections on a Black Cat (In Memory of Pluto): click here. 

This post is for Anna, the Italian dental nurse.

On the Scintillation of Being

Sagus93: Every man and every woman is a star (2014)

(Acrylic on canvas 140 x 70 cm)

sagus93.com 

Every man and every woman is a star, says Crowley in The Book of the Law (1:3) and I suppose by this he references the singular nature of human being; the fact that, at the very last, one is not only unique, but also isolate and alone, beyond love or any personal relationship.

That's certainly how I've always understood the remark, in a very Birkinesque manner. But perhaps we might consider the idea of astro-ontology - or what Baudrillard refers to as the scintillation of being - in a bit more detail ...   

People like to think of stars as luminous objects reliably twinkling in the night sky. Look up, and there they are! But it's worth remembering that most of the individual stars in the universe - including all of the stars outside our own galaxy - are invisible to the eye, even when we gaze into space through powerful telescopes.

And, strange as it may seem, our own sun also retains something of its invisibility or, if you like, essential darkness ...

Count Dionys, the initiated occultist of D. H. Lawrence's novella The Ladybird (1923), teaches that true fire is invisible; that it burns with its back to us and is therefore always hidden from view. The golden light of the sun is, he says, only epiphenomenal; "the glancing aside of the real original fire".

This being so, continues the Count, even the sun is black: "It is only his jacket of dust that makes him visible. [...] And the true sunbeams coming towards us flow darkly, a moving darkness of the genuine fire. The sun is dark, the sunshine flowing to us is dark. And light is only the inside-turning away of the sun's directness that was coming to us."

He concludes that we have, therefore, a mistaken understanding of the world - and of love. That just as the "true living world of fire is dark", so too true love is "a throbbing together in darkness" and not something luminous or fully visible. What he terms white love is only an ideal surface effect. 

I don't know if this constitutes good science (I suspect not). But it nicely anticipates those object-oriented forms of philosophy which are full of strange speculations of this nature and concerned with the play of reality and the essential illusion of the world.

If nothing else, it's always amusing to think what follows from the fact that light from the stars can continue to shine for billions of years after they have disappeared from the heavens (that things - including people - are never quite what they seem).


See:

Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law, (Red Wheel/Weiser, 1976). Or click here to read online.  

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Ladybird', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992). 

The above work by Lawrence can also be read online thanks to Project Gutenberg Australia: click here.

The Wisdom of Solomon 2: On the Grain of the Voice and Further Remarks on Lunacy

Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas)

simonsolomon.ink 

Dublin-based poet, critic and translator, Simon Solomon, has been kind enough to leave several lengthy comments on recent posts and I would like here to respond to some of his points, hopefully demonstrating the same intelligence, humour, and breadth of reading as this rather shadowy figure ...

I: On the Grain of the Voice [See: Bootylicious]

As a matter of fact - and I'm not entirely convinced I said anything in the Bootylicious post that implied otherwise - I'm not affirming "the beauty of male Welsh choirs for their proximity to the coal pits and the dust of Mother Earth". Barthes may love what he terms the grain of the voice, but I don't want to hear the blackness of the lungs, or the phlegm in the back of the throat, thank you very much.

In short, I don't like earthiness: but nor do I like those big, booming voices which tremble with powerful emotion and technical brilliance, or have what people like to think of as soul. If people absolutely must break into song, I prefer they do so quietly in a non-expressive, non-showoffy, slightly hesitant, slightly shy manner (perhaps not always hitting the right notes).

I don't care whether someone has a talent for singing because, ultimately, like Larry David, I can't stand the sound of the human voice; a trick of the larynx that, as you rightly point out Simon, is no longer so impressive in a predominantly visual culture.  

II: Further Remarks on Lunacy [See: On Lunacy]

I'm perfectly happy for you to number yourself amongst the lunatic fringe, Simon. And it's clear from some of your - shall we say more poetic - comments made in response to my post on the Moon and it's supposed effect upon human biology and behaviour, this is where you belong ...

So whilst, obviously, I'd rather be beneath the stars with Sylvia Plath than Roger Scruton, I'm not sure I'd want to attend a dinner party made up of "myth-making mavericks". Nor would I choose to consult with the latter if I wanted to learn something factual about the Moon (i.e., about the real body orbiting the Earth and not the spooky object that some think is made of cheese).

Can you not at least concede the possibility that one might discover something more amazing about the Moon from astronomers and physicists, than from artists and poets? Or do you really believe that even William McGonagall has more to offer us than, for example, Brian Cox?

Actually, despite the two studies you cite, there really is scant evidence for any significant lunar effect on either surgical or criminal activity and the thirty-three-year old article by C. P. Thakur and Dilip Sharma is - I would have thought - clearly nonsense. See Eric Chuder, Bad Moon Rising: The Myth of the Full Moon (2014), which explains why this is so.

As I indicated in the post, there are many people - including politicians, doctors, and police officers - who believe in the lunar effect; just as there are many otherwise perfectly respectable and perfectly reasonable individuals advocating alternative therapies, including homeopathy.

Your argument from intuition that because the Moon's gravity "can move something as vast as an ocean" it must be able to affect "our small and frangible human bodies", is the exact opposite of how things actually work - a kind of pataphysical denial of reality or, at the very least, a misconception regarding the laws of physics in relation to scale.

(Just so you know, the gravitational pull of the moon on a human body is less than that exercised by a mosquito on your arm; measurable, but bordering on the infinitesimal. Or, to put it another way, when a mother holds her new born baby in her arms, she exerts approximately twelve millions times more tidal force on the infant than the moon overhead.)  

Finally, yes, of course, the human body is an open system; otherwise, as you rightly say, we'd "all be living like autists, psychotics and sad, solitary sacks" (in fact we'd not be living at all, as we obviously need to eat, breathe, and excrete waste materials to sustain our existence and these activities require openness and exchange).

But it's quite a leap to then say there are "no such things as individual bodies" and humanity is "one collective cosmic contagion"... This may be true at a philosophical-libidinal-psychic level, but it's certainly not the only truth. For there's also the truth of singular being; that I am I, you are you, and I am not you, you are not me, and that the Universal Oneness of Humanity is a lie (and a dangerous one).

Every man and every woman is a star, wrote Aleister Crowley. Which means, according to Lawrentian protagonist Rupert Birkin:

"'At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of love. There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any emotional relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude ourselves that love is the root. It isn't. It is only the branches. The root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that does not meet and mingle, and never can.'"

- D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love

In other words, if you want to live a cosmic life, burning like a tiny sun or as cold and mysterious as the Moon, then you must become starkly inhuman; beyond speech and feeling, beyond responsibility and obligation, beyond understanding ...

We don't need to open ourselves up to others, Simon, or serenade them by the light of the silvery moon; we need, rather, to come into a strange conjunction or equilibrium with them as singular beings. Or something like that ...

Note: readers interested in part one of this post - On Sincerity, Authenticity, Black Sheep and Scapegoats - should click here.

Post 777: Three Sevens Clash

Party flag of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB)

For those who believe numbers carry symbolic weight and magical significance, the number 777 is loaded with cultural, religious and political symbolism. 

Kabbalists, for example, consider three and seven as perfect numbers, thus three sevens side-by-side suggests a form of hyperperfection, which, surely, must be a way to describe God. Christian mystics develop this idea with their insistence that 777 represents the threefold nature of the Holy Trinity. Either way, it's seen as a divine number that counters and eventually triumphs over the Number of the Beast (666).

The esoteric traditions of the East also get excited whenever the number seven appears, as they believe it's the fundamental number underlying (and holding together) the entire universe; thus they babble on about the seven heavens, the seven planes of creation, and the seven sacred openings of the body - 777.

Of course, Aleister Crowley couldn't resist subscribing to this mystical nonsense and absorbing it into his Golden Dawn inspired teachings on the Law of Thelema; a collection of his papers, edited by Israel Regardie, was given the title 777 (first published anonymously in 1909).

Even today, in this modern secular age, 777 is thought to be lucky and signifies a jackpot on many fruit machines. Some readers, however, may recall it being used in a far more sinister context by the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement; the black numbers arranged on their party flag in a menacing triskelion design so as to resemble a swastika and set on a pure white disk against a blood-red background. 

It's always interesting to note, is it not, how occult mumbo-jumbo and dubious theology invariably sustain a reactionary and authoritarian form of politics ... 

Post 666: Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

As numerical phobias go, fear of  666 - the number of the Beast - is certainly right up there within the cultural imagination; perhaps only the number 13 frightens or discomforts more people.    

Let those who have understanding reckon with this number, entreats the author of Revelation. And trying to puzzle out the precise nature and identity of the Beast has been something generations of scholars, theologians, artists and occultists have spent their lives doing. Aleister Crowley famously declared himself to be the Beast 666 and the number is key within his magickal system of Thelema.

According to Crowley, it's an important solar number; though whether this refers to the Ideal sun of Plato radiating Truth, Beauty and Goodness, or the malevolent sun of Bataille that decays and incites acts of sacrificial madness, I don't really know and, if I'm honest, don't really care - 'cos Crowley always rather bored me.     

Thus if, when young, I painted the number 666 on the collar of a shirt emblazoned with the words I am an anti-Christ / I am an anarchist, I was being more Rotten than Beastly ...       

Post 333: Invocation of Choronzon

Club Choronzon 333, by deadguy333

www.deviantart.com

According to Pythagoras, three is the first genuine number - as well as the first natural number and first male number. It is also the noblest of all figures, as it uniquely equals the sum of all the numbers before it. 

Even if we might challenge its authenticity and its engendered high status, it nevertheless remains an important number within mathematics, philosophy, and many of the world's religions; think of the Christian Trinity, for example, composed of the consubstantial expressions Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (i.e. three distinct entities, but sharing one divine essence). 

Or, for that matter, think of what our friends in the neo-pagan community refer to as the Triple Goddess - i.e. three female figures portrayed as Maiden, Mother, and Crone symbolizing different stages in the female life cycle or phases of the moon, who are nevertheless aspects of a greater single deity. For like many other hypostatic idealists, including Christians and Platonists, neo-pagans share a profound belief in the fundamental unity of being. 

In other words, whilst the number three has a certain magic and mysticism to it (three's a charm, as they say), it's the number one and an instinctive hatred for plurality which ultimately determines the thinking and theology of the religiously-minded - including Jung and Robert Graves, who are responsible for much of what passes for goddess worship in the modern world.               

For those of us who loathe monotheism and metaphysical notions of synthesis, stability, and identity, however, the will to oneness is - to paraphrase Nietzsche - the one great folly, the one great lie, the one great intrinsic depravity which betrays a lust for revenge upon life; the latter understood as a demon of chaos and innumerable becomings and called by Crowley Choronzon, the Dweller in the Abyss, whose number is 333.