Showing posts with label endurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label endurance. Show all posts

31 Oct 2020

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.  
 
 

29 Oct 2020

Perdurabo (Notes from a Hard Knock Life)

Becoming hard is the really distinctive sign 
of a Dionysian nature
 
 
One of the things I hate being asked - usually in relation to my role as a full-time carer for an elderly parent with Alzheimer's - is: How are you coping? 
 
It's a question that entirely misunderstands my situation and reveals that the questioner has failed to grasp the fact that, for me, this is not about finding a way to cope, but is, rather, all about endurance ...
 
What's the difference? 
 
Well, I suppose we might say - borrowing a term privileged by Nigel Baines - that coping is the attempt to stay afloat when feeling all at sea; i.e., learning how to deal effectively with a set of challenging circumstances in order to manage and minimise one's own stress and keep one's head above the water. 
 
Endurance, on the other hand, is the ability to withstand an extended period of trauma and fatigue; an affirmation of suffering and a willingness to go under - at the risk of drowning - in order to explore the depths and confront the horrors thereof.   
 
In other words, whilst coping is a psychological technique for self-preservation, endurance is a philosophical test of one's physical, mental, and emotional reserves in the face of danger. That's why Nietzsche valued only those individuals who could endure: 
 
"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]
          
That's a diamond-like teaching from Zarathustra's school of hard knocks. But perhaps my favourite quote in relation to this topic and the providing of care for a loved one, comes from a letter by the American writer Willa Cather to her younger brother in 1916:
 
"The test of one’s decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found out that one can never please the people they wanted to please." [2]
 
Precisely! And those charcoal souls - always planning how best to cope - will never understand this ... 
  

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

[2] Willa Cather, letter to Charles Douglas Cather (8 July 1916), in A Calendar of Letters of Willa Cather: An Expanded, Digital Edition, ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis P. Stout, The Willa Cather Archive: click here.    
 
Surprise musical bonus from the soundtrack of my life: click here.