Talks

The Will that Cannot be Willed: Primordial Trust, Alchemical Salt and the Dynamics of Integral Volition

Where: Hofstra University, New York (School of Communication), 39th Annual International Jean Gebser Society Conference (Identity, Civilization, Consciousness)
Dates: 15th October 2009 - 17th October 2009
When: 16th October 2009

Jean Gebser, in his unfinished biographical writings, speaks of the life-threatening experiences which crystallised into a primordial sense of trust (Urvertrauen) in the power-sources of being and existence (Kräftequellen des Daseins). This primordial trust formed the essential Haltung which enabled him to achieve liberation by embracing circumstances of danger and uncertainty as crucial to the realisation of the liberating integral consciousness—a liberation which enables the supersession of the egocentric ontology and its desperate clinging to empirical certitude. Through the formative power of certain “beneficial obstacles,” Gebser realised that “what we [actually] do has nothing at all to do with what we want (willen)” (Gesamtausgabe 7, 363). By this remark, Gebser alludes to the perception that the will of the ego is merely the limited, visible and perspectival aspect of a deeper volition which is grounded in the invisible—the spiritual origin. This paper seeks to explore the relationship between this “deeper” will and its “surface” counterpart in order to flesh out the dynamics of an “integral volition.” To do this we will firstly situate the concept of integral volition in the broader but homologous context of “integral teleology”—in Gebser’s parlance: Evolution alsNachvollzug—which entails the perception of “evolution” as an Auskristallisierung, a “crystallisation”of the visible “out of” the invisible (Gesamtausgabe 5/2, 71). We will then correlate Gebser’s perceptions with two seemingly disparate but deeply related concepts: (i) the Taoist phenomenon of Zhi Yin (“esoteric” volition, the polar complement to Zhi Yang, “exoteric” volition); and (ii) the hermetic salphilosophorum (the salt of the philosophers), understood, following the alchemical writings of René Schwaller de Lubicz, as the axial nucleus or kernel which is simultaneously the invisible, determining “seed” as well as the visible, determined “fruit” of any phenomenon. Drawing these threads together, we hope to demonstrate that what we have called “integral volition” and “integral teleology” both express one single reality, and that a self-reflexive relationship exists between the invisible and visible aspects of this reality in a way that cannot be reduced to the perspectives of linear teleology or rational volition. Like the zen art of archery, when the “target” towards which any process is “directed” is found to exist integrally within, the linear unfoldment, the empirical execution, is merely the fullfilment of what has already been achieved invisibly (hence integrally). In exploring these motifs, we hope to address the theme of this conference by demonstrating how identity, according to an integral perception, is consistent with the process by which the spiritual (Gebser’s das Sich) reveals itself to itself via the mutations of human consciousness, and that in the end, our identity is rooted not in the body, not in the soul, not in the mind, but like all these things, in the invisible.

Waters Animating and Annihilating: Apotheosis by Drowning in the Greek Magical Papyri

Where: The University Of Queensland School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, AMPHORA (Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Hellenic or Roman Antiquites)
Dates: 2nd October 2008 - 4th October 2008
When: October 2008

In PGM I. 1-42 the verb apotheóō is used to describe a rite of drowning. Here, deification by drowning follows the model of the eternally rejuvenated Osiris, and is further assimilated to the Egyptian solar cosmology where to descend into the primordial waters (West, decline, death) is necessary to rejuvenation (East, incline, life). As among early Pythagoreans and southern Italian mystery cults, continual renewal through death and revivification is mediated by a descent (katabasis) into the underworld (in Egyptian cosmology, the Duat). Apotheosis and drowning therefore cohere in the praxis of initiatory death, the sine qua non of rebirth into immortal life. This paper will examine some of the finer details of drowning in the PGM (in particular the materia magica—milk, oil of lilies—along with their connections to birth), and, upon this basis, trace the symbolic resonance of these motifs in classical and late antique texts (from the Orphic renatus who falls “into milk” in order to become a god, to the immortalising Hermetic krater which is “filled with nous”). Ultimately, the overarching logic at the heart of these symbolic registers will be emphasised in terms of a Heraclitean “harmony of contraries” seen to exist between the chthonic and the ouranian: like the lightning bolt, drowning deifies because the power which kills is deeply bound to the power which animates and enlivens.

In Shakti’s Leftward Flow: The Left Hand Path, East to West

Where: The University Of Queensland School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, Alternative Expressions of the Numinous
Dates: 15th August 2008 - 17th August 2008
When: 17th August 2008

Originally rooted in Kula (i.e. clan-based) practices based in cremation grounds, the origins of tantra have been shown to develop out of a conflation of the erotic and the horrific with an emphasis on the role of yoginis and female deities as initiatrices. In seeking to literally
embody or manifest divine feminine power (Shakti) in the human microcosm through a ritual methodology of worldly power and pleasure, tantra envisioned the medium of human-divine interaction as proceeding via sexual fluids in which the essence of numinous power was instilled. Thus the tantric adept sought to engage sexually with divine feminine entities in a reciprocal exchange of sexual fluids for the mutual gain of supernatural powers. However, sectarian differences culminating in the Shrividya tantra of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries resulted in a process of ‘Brahminisation’, whereby the assimilation of the divine element to sexual fluids was intellectualized and hence sublimated into a symbology of photic and acoustic representations (e.g. yantra and mantra). We argue that it is precisely this dichotomy between the ‘wet’, feminine Kula practices and the ‘dry’, masculine Shrividya practices that is at root of the distinction in tantra between the vamacara (left-hand path) and the dakshinacara (right-hand path). Moreover, given that these terms gained wide currency in Western occult parlance in the nineteenth through twentieth centuries (Blavatsky, Crowley, LaVey, Aquino, et al.), it is imperative to distinguish the original tantric meanings from the various (mis)interpretations proliferated in modern Western occult contexts. To do this we seek to emphasise, through the methods of cunning linguistics, the essentially feminine nature of the authentic left hand path.

Trust in Mad Strife: Primordial Trust (Urvertrauen) in the Power-Sources of Existence (Kräftequellen des Daseins) in the Life and Work of Jean Gebser (1905–1973)

Where: LaTrobe University, Victoria, 38th Annual International Jean Gebser Society Conference
Dates: 19th June 2008 - 21st June 2008
When: 21st June 2008

In his uncompleted biographical writings, Jean Gebser describes the crucial experiences which crystallised for him into a deep-seated sense of primordial trust (Urvertrauen). Formative experiences such as near-death by drowning are described as ‘beneficial obstacles’ for they instilled in him the essential comportment (Haltung) by which he was able to place a visceral trust not in what is rationally certifiable but in complete and utter uncertainty. This fundamental trust would provide the concrete basis for what Gebser would later describe as the conscious participation in the invisible or spiritual—the conditio sine qua non of integral consciousness. This paper will explore Gebser’s early experiences in detail as an introduction to exploring the principle of Urvertrauen as articulated in Gebser’s mature work, to include the situation of Heisenberg’s famous ‘uncertainty principle’ (Unbestimmtheitsprinzip) as a manifestation at the quantum level of this self-same need to integrate uncertainty as an integral constituent of reality. As an epilogue, we will discuss the resonance of Gebser’s ideas with Empedocles’ notion of ‘trust in mad strife’ (neikei mainomenô pisunos) in order to demonstrate some of the deeper, initiatic undertones that pertain to Gebser’s work.

“The Breaking that Gives Birth and the Breaking that Gives Death” Seth-Typhon in the Greek Magical Papyri

Where: The University Of Queensland School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, Alternative Expressions of the Numinous
Dates: 17th August 2007 - 19th August 2007
When: 18th August 2007

Murderer of Osiris, divine criminal, enemy par excellence, disturber of the order which Egypt itself sought to exemplify, Seth-Typhon is nevertheless crucial to a cosmic ecology whereby the transitions between death and life can only be effected after the overmastering power of Seth has made a drastic fissure at the very threshold between existence and non-existence. Seth, as his epithets suggest, is the separator, divider and butcher. The reality embodied by Seth ultimately instigates the very rupture between the chaos of non-existence (represented by the primordial serpent Apep) and the existent cosmos itself (represented by the cosmogonic solar theophany). As such, Seth is the violent initiator who threatens both the created and the uncreated; the incarnation of the killing and vivifying limen at the edge of reality. This paper seeks above all to evoke the true spirit of Seth-Typhon by focusing on the most detailed evidence of his cult—the typhonian invocations preserved in the Greek Magical Papyri.

Salt, Thighbone, Palingenesis: René Schwaller de Lubicz and the Hermetic Problem of Salt

Where: The University Of Queensland School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, Alternative Expressions of the Numinous Conference
When: August 2006

Since Paracelsus (1493-1541), salt has played a role in alchemy as the physical “body” which remains after combustion, the corporeal substance which survives death to reinaugurate new life. It was both “corruption and preservation against corruption” (Dorn); both the “last agent of corruption” and the “first agent in generation” (Steeb). As such, the alchemical salt functions as the fulcrum of death and revivification.

The Alsatian hermeticist, alchemist and esoteric Egyptologist René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961) held that an alchemical salt exists in the human femur (thighbone). This “salt” was a mineral nucleus upon which the most vital moments of human consciousness could be permanently “inscribed.” Because it was physically indestructable, the salt was seen by Schwaller as “more permanent than DNA” and was accorded a key a role in Schwaller’s esoteric theory of evolution (genesis). Contrary to the Darwinian theory (where only the characteristics of the species are able to be preserved through genetic transmission), Schwaller maintained that the salt located in the femur was the precise mechanism by which individual characteristics—the vital modes of  consciousness—are able to be preserved and transmitted beyond the death of the individual. The salt was therefore central to the alchemical process of rebirth (palingenesis).

To the rational-empirical consciousness, this position appears thoroughly absurd. However, we hope to show that the logic which operates at root of the motif “salt—thighbone—palingenesis” is not only consistent with an entire complex of ancient initiatory symbolism, but that, ultimately, a deeper consciousness—with its own epistemology—is implicated in the esoteric perception of reality. To understand this on its own terms, rather than advance the one-sided reductions peculiar to academia, efforts to see beyond our own “logic” must be made.

 

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