When courses on the Occult are among the most
well attended at universities (Sontag, 1986), it is somewhat unwise to eschew
these topics or fail to recognize what makes them so attractive. Given the explosion of Occult and New Age
book stores since the 1980s, cultural critics should explore how Occult
discourses may either reinforce dominant ideologies or possibly subvert
them. This explanation, in turn, would
presumably involve an analysis, both semiological and historical, of past
manifestations of Occultism. Mere
critique of the Occult as a reactionary practice steeped in religious
ideologies, trapped as it is in the demystifying practices that Max Horkheimer
and T.W. Adorno (1993) refer to as the "dialectic of enlightenment,"
may be insufficient because "the only kind of thinking that is
sufficiently hard to shatter myths is ultimately self-destructive" (p. 4). By artificially dividing facts from values,
Horkheimer argues, such modes of thinking separate knowledge from human
interests (Bottomore, 1986). This
self-destructive quality is all the more apparent in cultural studies, of
course, given its implicit goal of attaining knowledge about human
behaviors. If, as the publishers in
Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum (1986) discover, Occultism tends
to thrive in cultures marked by confusion and the decline of traditional
authority, then it is all the more important to sift through this confusion for
new cultural directions. Although, with
Occult-influenced media and television shows such as Charmed and Buffy
the Vampire Slayer becoming more and more prevalent, Occultism may have
become a largely commodified set of mythologies, it pays to remember that
Walter Benjamin (1999), in his study of 19th-century Paris, has envisioned more
utopian uses of the commodity. For if
capitalism has reified Occultism, this "standstill is utopia and the dialectical
image, therefore, [a] dream image. . . . afforded by the commodity per se: as
fetish" (p. 10). In other words,
the spectacle of Occultism cannot be dismissed out of hand because its utopian
element is precisely its ability to lead (however indirectly) to the
unconscious networks of culture. Another cultural critic of the 1930s, Georges
Bataille, suggests that the religious rhetoric and imagery utilized so
effectively in 1930s fascist discourses might represent an essential social
impulse that the left must address if it is ever to garner true popular support
(Stoekl, 1989). Bataille's general style
of investigation, in fact, could be labeled as appropriative. Rather than the more traditional leftist
posture of trying to avoid those practices which might be
"bourgeois," "fascist," or otherwise, he instead looks to
the successful deployment of these systems for tools that might serve a more
progressive cause. In fact, a
fundamental advantage that European fascist politics has maintained over
socialist practices, according to Bataille (1990), is that the former
"leaves no social faction inactive" (p. 154). When one contrasts the 1930s successes of
fascist governments with the Frankfurt School's chagrin over Marxism's lack of
popular reception, one can't overlook this difference. Viewing Bataille in such a light, his
interest in such seemingly diverse topics as religion and eroticism makes more
sense. In his "Preface to the
History of Eroticism," Bataille justifies his focus on eroticism by stating,
"Human reflection cannot be casually separated from an object that
concerns it in the highest degree" (Botting, 1997, p. 238). Thus, it is of the utmost importance that
Bataille not only writes about eroticism, but often writes in an erotic (what
some would call pornographic) mode. One
can not merely write about the erotic and religious functions, but must
activate them within one's cultural production.
The spectator must be sufficiently aroused in order to be roused to
action of any kind, especially those acts which embody the so-called altruistic
impulses. This does not mean, however,
that the writer/critic/artist supports the reactionary interpretations of these
human compulsions. Instead, he or she
acts with the fundamental disrespect of Bertolt Brecht's Messingkauf who
approaches the proverbial brass band to purchase their instruments as brass
(Ray 1995). In many ways, the cultural critic as Messingkauf
is the critic as trickster figure. The
trickster, like the Messingkauf, "helps us reshape, validate,
revolutionize, subvert, or reinforce cultural categories by re-instituting
their very semiotic properties" (Spinks, 2001, p. 9). In the case of the Messingkauf, one cultural
category to be reshaped is the brass band, but this can only be done by returning
to the very materials (brass) that allowed the band to exist in the first
place. Brass as an element has far more
potentiality than any one of its specific manifestations. The scandalous, disrespectful nature of the
Messingkauf's request is ensured by culture's conservative tendency to perpetuate
its modes of operation. To combat this
tendency, one might draw upon the rhetorical possibilities of Occultism not by
allegiance to either its traditional or commercial formulations, but instead by
seeking the discursive (and subversive) possibilities of its basic materials,
its "brass." This critical
mode might be imagined in its object of study, in figures who might be labeled
as "Occultists" by many, but who in their own ways are better labeled
as appropriators rather than as followers of Occult practice. Hence, one should focus on the elements of
Trickster associated with thievery; indeed, critics should steal from figures
who are themselves thieves. In this
process, it is not so important to deliberate as to whether a given figure is
or is not a Trickster; instead, one should look for moments where the critic
may adopt the tools of Trickster by looking to others who have behaved in a
similar manner though in other contexts.
Thus, cultural critics could move towards the popular by stealing from
it in various ways. If critics envision
themselves as a sort of avant-garde which transforms art in political
directions, they must acknowledge the fate described by Andreas Huyssen (1986):
"mass culture, not the avant-garde, has transformed everyday life"
(p. 15). Taking Huyssen's cue that the
"most promising art [or criticism] might combine modernism and mass
culture" (p. 43), one might explore how an Occult critique would replicate
and expand the successes of more popular figures. Such an approach would neither eschew mass
culture as a tool of capitalist propaganda nor court pop culture as the newest
site of subversion, but instead recognize how mass culture has enabled the
success of certain political systems in this century as opposed to others. How can one appropriate the recent popularity
of Occult discourses for the purposes of cultural studies? This latter goal should rephrase the
Frankfurt school's disillusionment with mere critique while also echoing Nietzsche's
desire in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1976): "that somebody might make
my 'truths' appear incredible to me"(p. 441). Interestingly, that archetypal trickster Hermes
combines thievery and Occultism (Hermeticism) in his founding narrative and his
subsequent cultural significance. Upon
his birth, Hermes' first act is to invent that archetypal instrument of charm,
the lyre. His second act, of course, is
to steal Apollo's cattle. After his
theft is revealed, Hermes quiets Apollo's anger by playing the lyre in his
presence. When Apollo expresses his
admiration for the song, Hermes charms him further by giving him the lyre as a
gift. Henceforth Apollo's wisdom may be
accompanied by aesthetic beauty; but what if cultural critics, as contemporary
representatives of Apollo, were to accept a similar instrument from Hermeticists? If they did, no doubt,
they would never be the same, for rhetorically speaking, Hermes is "[s]ly,
slippery, and masked, an intriguer and a card. . . he is neither king nor jack,
but rather a sort of joker, a floating signifier, a wild card, one who
puts play into play" (Derrida, 1991, p. 122). Their criticism would be unpredictable, like
the divination methods Apollo gave to Hermes, and ultimately uncharacterizable. A truly unpredictable, divinatory criticism
would greatly contrast the deductive tendencies of contemporary cultural theory
by opposing them with the "slide rule of intuition" (Ulmer, 1994, p.
206) and deliberate cultivation of contingencies that would prevent an
identifiable method from congealing.
This very absence of essential identity would align Hermes with the Fool
in the tarot deck, "who is always on the road, always in the process of
becoming" (Semetsky, 2001, p. 59), and hence allows nothingness to acquire
a positive value. Perhaps more than any other hermeticist,
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) embodies Hermes' values of generative
absence. Stealing from Crowley or others
like him, however, involves viewing him simultaneously as concept, character,
and metaphor; furthermore, it involves applying this knot of perspectives
to particular critical situations in a
manner that Gregory Ulmer (1994) compares to method acting. Certain types of individuals, of course, lend
themselves more easily to this approach, one which places greater significance
on allegorical possibilities than biographical certainties, than others. Perhaps a prerequisite of individuals who
lend themselves to allegorical readings can be summed up in Oscar Wilde's
statement about himself, "I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the
art and culture of my age" (Kohl, 1989, p. 1). Surely Aleister Crowley, whom the English
press dubbed "The Wickedest Man in the World"(Sutin, 2000, p. 307),
also stood in some symbolic relation to his age. Key to such fascination, however, is an individual's
symbolic mutability. Neil Sammells
(2000), for instance, remarks that Wilde's cultivation of the
"inauthentic" in its own ironic way authorizes the
interpretive licenses that have been taken with him (p. 123). Likewise, Crowley was described in 1914
magazine article as "a man about whom men quarrel. Intensely magnetic, he attracts people or
repels them with equal violence. His
personality breeds rumors" (Sutin, pp. 242-3). In the framework of theft as a form of
allegory, the heuristic device of rumor acts as both penman and postman,
creating and disseminating creative possibility. This is also the heuristic of Trickster, who
works with "masks, laughter, and freedom from social laws and inhibitions"
(Rosier, 1997, p. 12) to assume more identities than would be available through
conventional means. This disregard for social laws, however, is
seldom tolerated en masse. As was the
case for Wilde, Crowley's controversial demeanor aroused great resentment
which, among other things, led to sodomy charges being brought against him in
1911. Even though Crowley was innocent
of these particular charges, he was not called to the stand in his own defense
because his counsel realized that "Crowley might behave in such an
outrageous way in the witness-box that the jury's sympathy would be
alienated" (King, 1974, p. 101).
Considering the lack of success carried by Oscar Wilde in his brilliant
witness-box sarcasm a few years earlier, this was probably a wise decision. Trickster's rhetorical hijinks, almost by
definition, do not have a ready place in official culture. As Lewis Hyde (1998) explains, trickster
figures "uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based
on" (p. 9). While these acts may
very well be instrumental in maintaining necessary cultural flexibility,
institutions as a rule do not welcome such disruptions with open arms. Rather, official institutions, what Louis
Althusser (1995) calls
Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA's), ensure their production by reproducing
the conditions of their existence (p.
101). While Crowley and Wilde both embody trickster
roles in their legal affairs, Crowley's failure to appear before the court
symbolizes a more general silence in his character, an opacity that can be
attributed to the mystery of Occultism itself.
The extent of this opacity can be sensed in Crowley's encounters with
another famous Occultist of the period, William Butler Yeats. Both Crowley and Yeats were members of the
London-based society called The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This order, created in 1887 by William
Westcott and MacGregor Mathers, was based on a manuscript found in a secondhand
bookstore that Westcott determined to be "an extended skeletal outline for
a series of five initiatory rituals" (Sutin, p. 58) designed to prepare
initiates for a life of magic. By the
time Crowley joined in 1898, the Golden Dawn consisted of more than 300
members. Two years later, the Golden
Dawn was split by dissension. Upon meeting Crowley, Yeats almost immediately
developed an antipathy for him (Coote, 1997).
Perhaps this attitude was due to, among other things, their differing
views of magic. Yeats once referred to
Crowley as "a much worse Captain Roberts" (Hutchinson, 1998, p. 77),
alluding to a magician who once convinced Yeats to take part in animal
sacrifice. Apparently the affair was so
traumatic that Yeats' face "turned a bilious green" (p. 78), and
thereafter Captain Roberts became a reverberating image of black magic's dangers. From Yeats' perspective, Roberts could have been
the first of Crowley's many guises, one whose association with animal sacrifice
alludes to Crowley's mercurial identity.
Cats, to take one example, have long been associated with transformative
abilities, and this may be the reason that when one of Crowley's acolytes died
of gastroenteritis, it was assumed he got it from drinking cat's blood. There are numerous tales of villagers
cudgeling cats and then finding bruises on a mysterious woman (i.e. a witch)
the next day (Darnton, 1999, p. 94).
Nevertheless, the issue is not so much sacrificial tendencies per se as
Yeats' association of Crowley with animality.
For Yeats, Crowley is always in the process of
"becoming-animal," and all such processes "are absolute
deterritorializations" (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986) from traditional
notions of humanism. Or, as Crowley
himself describes in The Book of the Law (1976), the Beast is an
"apostle of infinite space" (p. 20), one who disseminates the idea of
dissemination. It is such a lack of
identity, such a moving-away, that Yeats feared in Crowley. Crowley proved time and time again that this
fear was not unfounded as he shifted selves and befuddled Yeats with with
"any number of false names" (Hutchinson,
p. 72). The process perhaps had already
begun by the time Crowley's mother began to call him "The Beast," a
title he would adopt, valorize, and (dis)embody for the rest of his life. In claiming the name, Crowley also identified
with the mercurial messenger god of thieves, exemplar of tricky change. Despite the other historical and mythic
meanings of Yeats' famous poem "The Second Coming" (1921), Crowley
could not have been far from Yeats' mind as he composed the famous question,
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards
Bethlehem to be born?" (p. 187).
Although Crowley, upon joining the Golden Dawn, took the name Perdurabo,
which means "He who endures till the end," as far as Yeats was
concerned, Crowley should have been called Perturbado. Yeats' Golden Dawn name, in turn, meaning
"The Devil is the converse of God," should have been changed to
"Crowley is the inverse of Yeats."
Other than witnessing animal sacrifices, in
fact, Yeats' other great fear surrounding Occult practices was the possible
loss of identity. When Yeats felt the
possibility of possession at one séance, he stayed away from spiritualist
ceremonies for months (Coote, 1997). By
contrast, Christopher Isherwood describes Crowley's almost Nietzschean
infidelity to everything in vivid, if negative terms: "The truly awful
thing about Crowley is that one suspects he didn't really believe in
anything. Even his wickedness"
(Hutchinson, p. 7). While intellectual
infidelity presents itself as a nightmare to a leftist writer like Isherwood,
one wonders to what extent it might be valuable to those individuals with more
right-wing, hierarchical convictions (of whom Yeats would be one of the more
benign manifestations). Especially in
the context of the inter-war period, one could argue that as much harm was
caused by an abundance implacable convictions as a complete lack of them. Cultivating a mercurial personal identity
would in effect help institute an aesthetic of revision rather than fidelity, a
mode of being that could be applied to politics as well as personality. This is the sort of aesthetic André Breton
describes in presenting Robert Desnos as the most superior of Surrealist
mediums not due to an immense effort or talent, but due to his mercurial
experimentation "in the course of the multiple experiences to which he has
lent himself" (Caws, 1977, p. 8).
For Yeats, whose most nightmarish vision of history involves watching a
rough beast slouch inevitably onward, the self-styled Beast Crowley might have
proved useful. In all of his practices,
including the alleged animal sacrifices, The Beast was always sacrificing
himself in order to become something else.
Rather than recognizing this
fact, Yeats began to develop fantasies that he was the object of Crowley's
sacrificial tendencies. When MacGregor
Mathers sought to wrest control of the Golden Dawn from William Westcott,
Crowley fought for Mathers' cause by traveling to London and staging a coup of
its inner sanctum, the Vault of the Adepti.
Crowley appeared at the Vault in "Highland dress, a black mask over
his face, and a plaid thrown over his head and shoulders, an enormous gold or
gilt cross on his breast, and a dagger at his side" (Hutchinson, p. 71),
yet neither the costume nor the weaponry was enough to stop Yeats and an
associate, who were lying in wait. Accounts vary as to what happened next, but
the most interesting one has Crowley being physically thrown out by the two
defenders. However the expulsion
actually took place, it did not have a psychological counterpart. After failing to enter the Vault by force,
Mathers sued for control of the Golden Dawn while Crowley gained control over
Yeats' mind. In a letter to Lady
Gregory, Yeats expressed his concern over the outcome. If Westcott loses the case, Yeats writes,
"it will give Crowley, a person of unspeakable life, the means to carry on
a mystical society, which will give him control of the consciences of
many" (p. 73). As things wore on,
Yeats expressed fears that Crowley had thugs on retainer to maim or slaughter
him. Yeats' fears were, to say the
least, overdetermined, even "unspeakable." As such, they allude to disruptive forces one
would do well to explore. Robert Anton Wilson, friend of Timothy Leary and
Crowley devotee, does just this in a novel entitled Masks of the Illuminati
(1981). Like many postmodern novels, Masks
of the Illuminati intertwines historical fact and fiction, taking advantage
of this hybridity in order to discover Crowley's "symbolic relation"
to his age. Wilson trades on Crowley's
star status, a combination of alienation and outrageousness that is not
unsimilar to the "bad boy" rock star image inaugurated by Elvis,
perfected by The Rolling Stones, and made archetypal thereafter. Indeed, if The Stones invoke Oscar Wilde in
their public personae (Kohl, 1989, p. 122), then Crowley's rock star
counterpart might be Marilyn Manson, who quotes Nietzsche in his defense of the
AntiChrist as a necessary archetype while posing for photographs with Anton
Lavey, founder of the contemporary Church of Satan. In all these figures, both past and present,
one witnesses what Benjamin Buchloh (2000) refers to as "the travesty of
the artist=s aspirations to
construct the critical act of avant-garde intervention in the guise of rock and
roll" (p. 333). In Wilson's novel,
Crowley's interventions (many of which are based on actual Crowley anecdotes)
are simultenously vampiric and cupidian.
Chopping the fig leaves off statues and circulating rumors that nursery
rhymes have Satanic power, Crowley provides one model for an avant-garde that
refuses to be ignored precisely because he turns people not into the
traditional toad, but into camels(p. 111).
Wilson suggests the virtues of such playfulness by adding a cast of
characters who either act as foils to Crowley or are wise enough to interpret
him in the proper light. Of course,
there is Albert Einstein whose scientific mind can find the rational
explanation for unusual events but whose explanations are so bizarre as to defy
traditional notions of credibility. Then
one has James Joyce, a writer with the creativity to appreciate Crowley yet the
consummate novelist's distrust of hocus-pocus.
He speaks disparagingly, in fact, of overly sincere Occultists like Yeats, of whom Joyce specifically complains that he sees the world "as a
spiritual adventure full of Omens and Symbols" (p. 172). When protagonist Sir John (an English version
of the schlemiel figure) feels suffocated by a magical transformation-room
Crowley has prepared, however, Joyce is willing to admit, "We're just
being expelled. . . to a new world" (p. 329). Sir John, in fact, represents everything that
an Occult Trickster aesthetic might wish to avoid. He is simultaneously the most naive character
in the book and the most enslaved to Occultism.
Investing massive amounts of time and energy into spiritual
enlightenment, Sir John is also the most susceptible to Crowley's nursery rhyme
jokes. Ironically, John dismisses people
like Joyce and Crowley as libertines who cannot tell right from wrong (p. 314). This judgmental attitude grows more invidious
in John's associates, most notably in Reverend Verey's account of a
"sinister Oriental gentleman" (p. 157) who haunts his town and
accompanies a string of mysterious events.
With this revelation, Wilson seems to equate pat judgments either for or
against the Occult with the oversimplified prejudices that Said critiques in Orientalism
(1978). By contrast, Wilson strongly implies that
time in the transformation-room
provides key inspiration for those people, namely Joyce and Einstein, who enter
it with a proper openness. For Wilson, then, Crowley is an agent or enabler
of the transformative properties associated with Trickster. These transformations may be produced by, as
Joyce terms them, "shaman's tricks," but they are tricks which give
Joyce and Einstein the respective germs of Ulysses and relativity (pp.
352-3). What gives Crowley this
power of transformation? To answer this
question, one must move beyond Wilson's novel to the most important document
Crowley ever produced, The Book of the Law. Concerning the composition of this book,
Crowley writes in his Confessions (1989), "My entire previous life
was but a preparation for this event, and my entire subsequent life has been
not merely determined by it, but wrapped up in it" (p. 393). In understanding the significance of this
book, it is important to note that it is, as Crowley calls it, an
"event." Unlike an inert,
reified object, like a book, an event represents an open, unpredictable intersection
of space and time that extends beyond authorial control. In an event, "the category of intention
will not disappear; it will have its place, but from this place it will no
longer be able to govern the entire scene and the entire system of utterances"(Derrida,
1991, p. 104). Thus, a true event is a
space in which extreme otherness can always enter, which would seem
indispensible in the turning of self into other that constitutes, discursively,
the art of transformation. From the outset, the circumstances of The
Book of the Law, as narrated in Crowley's Confessions, were
characterized by the intrusion of otherness.
On a trip to Cairo with his wife Rose, whom Crowley had originally
married merely out of "Shelleyan indignation" (p. 364) when he
learned, shortly after meeting her, that she was forcibly betrothed to another,
the newly-met newlyweds began an even stranger relationship. At first Crowley was annoyed at Rose's
reiterated insistence, "They are waiting for you" (p. 393). Attempting to impress Rose with his magical
skills in an exotic environment, Crowley was not in the mood for her to
"offer independant remarks" (p. 394).
As previously suggested, however, such otherness is an indispensable
element of all transformations, be they physical, mental, or spiritual. An event can only take place, or even steal
place, when that place has been made open to intrusion. Yet, Crowley was eventually convinced to allow
his wife's input, thanks not only to her insistence but also to the intrusion
of coincidence. Wandering through a
museum which they had never previously visited, Rose identified an
"obscure and undistinguished stele" as the god who was transmitting
communications through her. The
coincidence which the Beast could not ignore was the catalogue number of this
stele, 666. Dismissing
such a coincidence as a mere product of chance is not really material in this
case or, for that matter, in any case, since chance itself is the means through
which the coincidental comes to appear miraculous. When one submits to its principles, he or she
is admitted "to an almost forbidden world of sudden parallels, petrifying
coincidences. . . flashes of light that would make you see, really see, if only
they were not so much quicker than all the rest" (Breton, 1960, p. 19). This form of superstition is progressive to
the extent that it operates beyond the level of individual control, thereby
encouraging one to move in unpredictable directions, outside one's habitual
horizon of movements. Following his wife's directions, Crowley entered
a designated room at noon on three successive days, April 8,9, and 10 of 1904,
and left exactly one hour later each day.
Crowley was instructed to "write down what I heard" (p. 395),
not what he thought. This designation is
crucial, even if it only refers to a state of mind, since it prepares one for
the intrusion of the aleatory. As John
Cage said of his famous piece 4'33", "What [the audience]
thought was silence. . . was full of accidental sounds"(Hyde, 1998, p.
150) coming from the environment of the auditorium. Lewis Hyde devotes an extended section of Trickster
Makes This World to Cage's idea that by submitting to the dictates of
chance--for instance in the use of the I-Ching to determine musical
compositions--one is able to escape the confinements of the ego. Such an escape would seem indispensable to
all but the most superficial of transformations. The text of Crowley's Book of the Law
does indeed show evidence of operating, at least somewhat, according to the
logic of chance. The dictator of this
spiritualist transmission, called "Aiwass"(which could be a pun on
"I was" i.e. a speaker in transition), declares that spelling
"is defunct" (1976, p. 39) and that worship occurs in "the
ill-ordered house" (p. 40), thereby suggesting an aesthetic similar to
dadaist collage. Furthermore, Aiwass
demands that his utterances forevermore be published "always with the
original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters
and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall
divine" (p. 47). In this missive,
the paradoxical coincidence of chance and magic is formulated. Yet, just as the content of John Cage's
individual coin tosses are not so important as the general subversion of the
ego instigated by use of the I-Ching, so
also is The Book of the Law relatively unimportant in comparison to
Crowley's willingness to programmatically follow the dictates of chance. Crowley submitted to chance throughout his
life, even if for the most part he referred to his activities as
"Magick." Crowley's infamous
home on Loch Ness, eventually purchased by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, was
found "by chance" on an excursion through Scotland (Cammell
1962). In an excursion from
Boleskine manor, Crowley met Rose by chance as well. That this house was reputed to cause
dizziness, one might dare say, was more due to the vertiginous presence of
Crowley than anything else. Crowley is
like a ghost who haunts the very notion of the stable dwelling place with
contingency, reminding one that the German words for "uncanny" and
"to haunt" are unheimlich and heimsuchen respectively,
words situated around the German root heim or "home." While Cage may have tossed the I-Ching in
order to structure his musical compositions, Crowley tossed the I-Ching in
order to determine where he would place his infamous Abbey of Thelema, a place
that, despite its relative insignificance, aroused so much suspicion that
Crowley was actually kicked out of Italy by Mussolini. To hear Crowley tell it, he escaped with his
life by passing unseen through a group of fascists, a trick performed by
directing their attention away from him toward a "random" object (Cammel 1962). But, to return to Ulmer's idea of method acting as a model for research, how might cultural studies (in its broadest sense) inaugurate the transformative powers of figures like Crowley? Or, to take an example even more immanent to Trickster's Way, should criticism be merely about Tricksters, or might it in some way adopt Trickster's own hermeneutics, heuristics, and other sundry tools, the truly disruptive ones as well as those that are more easily assimilated? The answers to the two previous questions would be both ethical and methodolical in nature. While some of the ways in which Crowleyanity and Tricksterism might be incorporated have already been suggested in this essay--procedures that involve some element of theft, a commercial and culturally symbolic shock value, and chance--the ethics are perhaps even more tricky. As already stated in reference to Althusser, ideological apparatuses do not readily accept the presence of radically heterogeneous elements, and there is no reason to suspect that academic discourses, even Trickster studies, would necessarily be any different. It does seem that by reversing the subject-object relations of traditional research, allowing Trickster to possess us, we might be closer to getting beyond the either-or logic that C.W. Spinks wrestles with in Issue 1.2 of Trickster's Way. To Spinks' list of "Doing Trickster, Studying Trickster, Telling Trickster, or Being Trickster" one might add the possibility of "Being Possessed By Trickster." The results of such possession no doubt could be as unpalatable as they are to Crowley biographer (and friend) Charles Richard Cammell, who more than once alludes to receiving texts from Crowley that were so blasphemous he burned them after one reading. Yet, the proper response to fears of possession is not running away after the manner of Yeats (and I am not claiming that he always ran, for he credits his later and best poetry to the visions dictated by his wife Georgie), but, as Wilson tells us in Masks of the Illuminati, the art of bibliomancy, which involves "opening the Bible at random, sticking in a finger, and reading the verse so discovered" (p. 123). For my part, I know that the next time I hear coins jingling at the stroke of noon, I won't immediately assume it is nothing but spare change.
Works
Cited Althusser, L. (1995). Ideology and Ideological
State Apparatuses (Notes
Toward and Investigation). In S. Zizek (Ed.),
Mapping Ideology (pp. 100-140). New
York: Verso.
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