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all-consuming love may carry one into the power of the mystic
void.
(Glyphs: a weapon, embracing)
Passionate devotion to one's mate, offspring, and tribe is as
natural as the impulse to give battle to thieves, enemies,
competitors and predators. Now that society's aggression has
been institutionalized on the national scale, it has to be
ritualized on the personal and regional scale as sport.
(Glyphs: anger turned inward, useless appendage)
The condition of loathing results from being unable to forget,
avoid, or destroy an object of hate. That is, one is unable to
break one's attachment to it. Attachment itself is a form of love
in which the loved becomes a mere useless appendage when
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passion is baulked of fulfillment and a partial reaction, an
element of loathing, ah entered on.
(Glyph: concealed at the center of the mandala)
Rejected by science which cannot explain it away, derided by
religion whose piety it deflates, used only to embarrass
pretention in art and philosophy, verily it is a tool of magic. In
the ecstatic laughter of men I see their volition toward
release.
(Glyph: downward flashing lightning splitting asunder)
Shattering of one's expectations is the device of all the best
humor. The Archbishop loudly farts; the free energy of our
destroyed beliefs manifests as laughter. This function is
protective. If we did not laugh at our broken expectation, we
would go mad eventually. By the amoral cultivation of
laughter, the magician can shrug off all losses and avoid entering
averse states altogether if he wishes. Crying is an infantile form
of deconceptualization, laughter, designed to protect the eyes
and summon assistance.
(Glyph: a receptacle for conception)
Another form of wit, the pun, depends on forging a connection
between two ideas. An infinite series of weak jokes of this kind
relies on liberating the free energy of surprise when the penny
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drops. The "aha!", "eureka!" reaction of discovery is the same
emotion, and its enjoyment is what impels people to meddle
with sciences, kabbala, and even crossword puzzles. This
functional mode impels us to thought and discovery; it is the
motivation for intellection.
(Glyph: double upward flashing lightnings of cancellation)
The ecstatic laughter of divine madness is the sweeping up of
every perception into a vortex of surprise at its very existence.
Everything is suddenly and amazingly not as it was. Yet
simultaneously it seems more exactly as it was than before!?
Conceptualization and deconceptualization occur
simultaneously. Language descends inevitably to the paradoxical
as one is swept up into the ecstacy.
Such usually accidental paroxysms may be cultivated by
forms of the death posture and by willful evocation of laughter
on encountering all things.
Some emotional states depend more on the activation of the
purely physiological rather than the psychological responses.
These are dealt with in a supplementary alphabet. The
supplementary alphabet of the somatic emotions (shown in
figure 10) corresponds to the four elements: earth, air, fire
and water.
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Figure 10. Supplementary Alphabet in Malkuth,
the somatic emotions
No emotion is a purely mental event; all emotions are
dependent on complex chemical and nervous reactions to
environment. The somatic (body) emotions however may be
recognized as having a more direct relationship to the senses
and general tone of the nervous system. The ecstatic functional
and negative modes of each state will be discussed under general
headings. The somatic emotions are intimately associated with
the larger alphabet. Depression is linked with many of the
earthly modes, and pain or pleasure with most of the functional
modes. These linkages are two-way, in that a stimulation of
one may evoke the other and vice versa.
(Glyphs: penetration, gentle touch)
Instinctive movements toward or away from stimuli of various
types and intensity are linked with the emotions of pleasure and
pain. The range of such instincts is very limited  attraction
toward softness, warmth, and bland tastes; repulsion from
injury, temperature extremes, and acrid tastes.
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Over-stimulation of these emotions leads to ecstatic states.
This is difficult to achieve for pleasure, but pain has magical
application in rites of initiation, purification and sacrifice.
Complete agony is ecstacy.
Hedonism, the search for gratuitous pleasure, inevitably
leads to an epicurianism of pain. The hedonist rapidly falls
back into indulging progressively more poisonous, revolting,
and debilitating pleasures to provoke a reaction from his
exhausted senses. Hedonism and masochism exhaust
themselves uselessly into the numbed greyness of dulled
faculties.
(Glyphs: sagging, rising upon itself)
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Figure 11. This shall be my Kabbala.
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The general condition of the nervous system depends on
health and the emotions going on within it. Emotions of the
ecstatic mode enliven the system and cause a general elation.
Those tending toward the earthy model of baulked or
frustrated emotions cause a general depression.
Such feelings are generally called happiness or misery. The
"dark night of the soul" which follows after certain forms of
mystic exaltation is simply the general tone of the
neuroendocrine system swinging wildly from elation to
depression.
Mere ideas follow suit.
By the alphabet of desire is explained our "inability to make
progress in emotional terms." We are ever confined by the
dualities of pleasure/pain or happiness/misery, no matter how
ingeniously we manipulate our environment.
Lament not that men suffer war, fear, pain, and death, for
these are but the inevitable accompaniment to love, desire,
pleasure, and sex. Only laughter can be gotten away with for
free. Some have sought to avoid suffering by avoiding desire.
Thus they have only small desires and small sufferings, poor
fools. The wise seek satisfaction in that which repels as well as
that which attracts. Plunging into experience thus, we may be
partakers of the dual ecstacy forever and ever. (See figure 11.)
Even if satisfaction of some emotion be baulked and we are
unable to rise above it to ecstacy, then it is possible to
transmute the trapped energy for other purposes. Whatever it is
that we were emotional about should be forgotten, and another
desire, magical or mundane, should be substituted for it. Even [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]