Nelson Job
The whole universe as we conceive it is a
creation of the Hermetic Ones.
“The Unknown”
Fernando
Pessoa
To think is always to follow the witche's flight.
Deleuze & Guattari
To think is always to follow the witche's flight.
Deleuze & Guattari
 |
| Burrning man |
Deleuze & Guattari created the most potent
and open philosophy of recent times, and its unfolding is still hard to chart. While
they yearned for something new – something beyond academicism, vital
concepts emerging from life –, much of their philosophy was coopted by intellectuals
who stay in the academic environment, with Platonic and rational classes that
try to mimic their work. Even Structuralism and Psychoanalysis claim false
resonances.
However, in the 21th century a novel movement
began to emerge, bringing fresh air to the philosophy of Deleuze & Guattari
by putting it in resonance with sorcery.
Where did this come from? Let us consider
their work: Deleuze & Guattari (1997) yearn for forces, for
immanence. They fight against transcendences; they inhabit hordes instead of
individuals. And, more precisely, in their book A Thousand Plateaus, they
make clear references to sorcery.
First, the
famous sections of the chapter “Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal,
Becoming-Imperceptible”, precisely entitled as “we sorcerers”. There, the
authors ally themselves to the mystics, knowing that sorcerers conjugate/conjure
forces like no other group. Second, there are also the various citations of the
books by Carlos Castañeda, where the tonal and nagual resonate
intensely with the Bergsonian ontology so dear to Deleuze & Guattari. Yoga is
mentioned as an example of the creation of the Body without Organs. And, going
even farther, the Tao is put in resonance with the plane of immanence (DELEUZE e GUATTARI, 1992).
Now, if the work already is a kind of sorcery,
with concepts as spells, nothing more natural than its organic development in
more obvious sorceries. As expected, this movement began in England.
Author Mark Fisher (FISCHER; LEE, 2009), on
his 2000 book, Flatline Constructus, suggested relations between
the Deleuzian opus and sorcery. In 2003, British philosopher Matt Lee (FISCHER;
LEE, 2009) gave a great step forward, linking it to the magician Austin Osman
Spare, on his article Memories of a sorcerer: notes on Gilles Deleuze-Felix
Guattari, Austin Osman Spare and Anomalous Sorceries.
Spare (2010) was a British sorcerer and
artist born on the late 19th century. He created on his writings a magic opus
related to ecstasy and peculiar rituals, such as the Death Posture. His trance
brought insights and other significant results, as well as contributions to the
practice of sigil making, further developed by Chaos Magick (about which we
will speak below). Matt Lee links Spare’s immanent symbology with the concepts
of Deleuze & Guattari: a stepping-stone for a full-blown sorcery-philosophy
connection.
In 2002, in the alternative scene in Buenos
Aires, Argentina, the peculiar experimental collective Estación Alógena (Allogenic
Station) was created. In 2008, the compilation Nosotros, los Brujos (We, the Sorcerers) was published, with
many of its authors weaving, in a casual and unassuming way, connections
between Deleuze & Guattari’s philosophy with sorcery – including Spare’s – and
its various unfoldings: Pataphysics, Philip K. Dick, etc. The book was edited
by the collective member, Juan Salazano, who also published on Argentina
translations of the two British texts mentioned above, as well as a translation
of Joshua Ramey’s book.
In 2010, academic magazine SubStance published
an issue with Spiritual
Politics after Deleuze as its theme, with many authors discussing themes linked
to Deleuze and spirituality. The issue was edited by Paul A. Harris and Joshua
Ramey – the latter a British philosopher who, in 2012, published the book The Hermetic
Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (2012). On this book Ramey looked at Deleuze as
part of the tradition of the Hermetic philosophers, linking him mainly to
Plotinus, to the Medieval Hermetic philosophers, to Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano
Bruno – what should be obvious: a philosopher like Deleuze, who mentions Plotinus
many times on his works and who is intensely dedicated to Spinoza and Bergson, will
necessarily possess some resonance with Hermetic authors. Plotinus is the main
inspiration for the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum, the famous compilation
of Hermetic texts; Spinoza drank from this source, and Bergson pays tribute to Plotinus,
Spinoza and the entire mystic tradition of philosophy.
In 2013, I published my book Confluências
entre magia, filosofia, ciência e arte: a Ontologia Onírica [Confluences
between magic, philosophy, science and art: an Oniric Ontology] (2013), the
result of my UFRJ Doctor Degree thesis on the previous year, where the philosophy
of Deleuze & Guattari was the attractor of Hermetic principles related to
the functions of modern Physics.
My book is the result of a life in transknowledge,
that is, the practice of conceptualizing from life. Hermeticism has been
present as an orientation for my experiences with meditation, with Waldo
Vieira’s Conscientiology, Shamanism, the practice of Tarot and in my immersions
in Taoism and the Advaita Vedanta[1].
After publishing my book, which recently sold
out its first edition, many people contacted me (and still do) looking for
conceptual consistency in their passages by Esotericism. In the Transknowledge
group studies we practiced meditation, vibrational state, clairvoyance and
other experiments, which migrated naturally to courses and workshops. The
concept I created in Oniric Ontology,
the vortex, became not only the axis weaving together all the
transknowledges, but a new practice that is the confluence of all the practices
I cultivated in my life.
But the becoming – thankfully– is crazy, and
shows that there is a lot of work to be done. Where are the Deleuzian sorceries
and the vortex going?
Some authors are noteworthy: to think about
Esotericism with academic consistence, the work of Historian Wouter Hanegraaff in
his research group in the University of Amsterdam is invaluable. Never
Esotericism was taken so seriously, in books and articles that enlighten and
change the perspective on the theme, specially his masterpiece: Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in
Western Culture (2012).
In terms of Anthropology –
an inevitable study when magic is the subject –, it is important to get rid of
the taxonomic bindings of Structuralism, which only stir the nature-culture
dualism and result in more of the same under a thin veneer. British
Anthropologist Tim Ingold is weaving a mature and consistent anthropological
pattern with a vital immanence and critiques to Structuralism – because
Lévi-Strauss’ Mythologiques is nothing more than an Aristotelic
taxonomy of indigenous myths – and its disguised reincarnation: infamous “Latourism”,
which haunts certain academia cliques, anxious to find a new conceptual fetish,
using reversions that create a recurrence in thought, blocking the becoming. Ingold
calls Anthropology a “Philosophy with people inside”. To map the way how Ingold
further develops Deleuzian terms[2],
I wrote an article showing his main advancements (JOB, 2018).
To avoid this kind of
excessive rationalization, it is valuable to denounce the political
manipulation of the history of knowledge, which puts the origin of philosophy in
the years circa 600 B.C. in ancient Greece. According to the outstanding work
of the Portuguese scholar José Nunes Carreira (1994), Filosofia Antes
dos Gregos [Philosophy Before the
Greeks], it was found at least one anterior philosophy, among the
Egyptians – precisely the cradle of Hermeticism. The political manipulations manifest
by linking philosophy to a strictly rational process, without mystic leanings,
even considering that since Egypt mysticism was inherent to philosophy, and
even in Greece such purity never existed. Sorcerers, since always, produce a philosophy
of fire.
And what about sorcery
itself? If Matt Lee considers Spare the sorcerer most resonant to Deleuze, we
inevitably arrive at the contemporary unfolding of Spare’s witchcraft: Chaos
Magick. It appeared in the Seventies and has as it main systematizer scientist
and sorcerer Peter J. Carroll (2016), author of many books – among them the
milestone Liber Null and Psychonaut – and of a recent scientific
paper where he proposes a new cosmology [3] (CARROLL, 2018). Carroll, founder of the
Illuminates of Thanateros order, stands out as a rare case where the relations between
Esotericism and Quantum mechanics are consistently made. We know that Quantum
mechanics replaced the electromagnetism of the 19th century as the new
scientific icon, to corroborate the craziest notions of some esoteric authors
from the last century and in present times. In Chaos Magick it is different,
and besides, Carroll (2008) deftly quotes authors close to Deleuze, such as Giordano
Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz and Whitehead.
Chaos Magick developed to a
high degree the practice of sigils, which is the way of drawing symbols
in a certain trance to make wishes come true. And it is here that we must make
our greatest critique, problematizing the symbols, as immanent as they are, as
another attempt of “making wishes come true”. In a single immanence, in a
mature form, any rituals must be problematized. The ritual is a representation
born from an illusory separation between Nature and culture. Our greatest
challenge: how to cultivate a Deleuzian sorcery without falling into
representations?
To this end, the Indian
philosophy of Advaita Vedanta is of great help. Advaita is an
Indian spiritual philosophy whose meaning in Sanskrit is precisely “non-dual”: an
alternative to any spirituality that bows to some “superior” transcendent
entity. At the same time, this philosophy invites to a pragmatism based in a
self-inquiring meditation which makes us more intimate of unity – which, in our
case, is dynamic. I wrote an article together with Veetshish Om relating the
immanence of Spinoza to the Advaita Vedanta, systematizing the main elements to
produce this confluence (JOB; OM, 2017). Maybe Medieval witchcraft has lost
itself in an amoral mystique, without the recourse of an Ethics differing from an aprioristic transcendental moral. On the
other hand, the lens polisher offers praise to good encounters and the increase
of potency. In this sense, a Deleuzian sorcery has its “code of Ethics” in Spinoza
(2008).
What about the Devil? Will
it have any importance in Deleuzian sorcery? No, because we are interested in
going beyond images and language. If the Devil stops being important, it means
that no image has any importance, except for art works– which make evident the
capture of forces imperceptible so far, but up to this moment, no image is
considered in special. We want to settle in a meditative state of self-inquiry
where “culture” stops mediating our relations with Nature, allowing us to learn
with its direct and immanent part.
Then, how does Evil stands?
According to Spinozian immanence, which is our chosen perspective, we stop
dealing with transcendent entities such as Good and Evil, to modulate the
potency intensities, moving toward an increasing number of good encounters and
minimizing bad encounters.
Finally, how does a
Deleuzian sorcery presents itself politically? Through a sacred anarchy: as an uncentered, self-organized horde, a vortex. Facing
a worldwide Fascist ascension, it takes strategy, subtlety and velocity to better
disobey, that is, with ethics and cosmic responsibility. The best
strategy available is the Temporary
Autonomous Zone (TAZ) from the Sufi Anarchist Hakim Bey (2001). The
sorcery-becomings must self-organize, celebrate, love and flow together,
expanding intensities and potent energies to disappear in the next moment; reappearing
in another place, recognizing each other through our intuition. Let us be visible and invisible according to strategic
necessity. To make this politics more sophisticated, on one hand it is
pertinent that Saul Newman (2018) updates Anarchy with Deleuzian precepts,
freeing it from inefficient classic concepts – such as the idea of a “subject
good in itself” corrupted by society or the naive idea of an “artificial” state.
The Anarchy of the French counter-philosopher Michel Onfray[4] (2018), who is materially ontologizing the Cosmos, can also
help, as long as our new cosmos is unstable, lawless and solidary, as
proposed by Brazilian Cosmologist Mario Novello (2018).
In the transknowledge –
my unstable, Deleuzian magical act –, all this flows together in the. To
conceptualize-act in it is making me ever closer of its idiosyncrasies. The vortex-becoming
involves a new, pulsating conceptualization, that moves along the unnamable and
the sensible. Our community is extending itself, getting stronger, resonating. There
is much to do and, at the same time and paradoxically, nothing needs to be
saved and nothing must necessarily happen. Actions emerge spontaneously in us, without ideology; with a foot on mystery and
other on the concepts, we, the Deleuzian sorcerers, walk in the open whole, subject
to instabilities, but guided to intuition to the most potent works, toward
beautiful meetings, in the vibrant cadence of the vortex.
*We are using
"sorcery" here as a umbrella
word, interchangeable with "witchcraft" or "mysticism".
[1] We could
expand he theme and quote books and collections linking Deleuze to Theology,
Buddhism, etc., but this text’s scope will be limited to Esotericism.
[2] If the fungic rhizome of Deleuze-Guattari-Ingold
can give us intimacy with the plants, so present in Sorcery, we can make this
intimacy more sophisticated with the philosophy of Emanuele Coccia (2018) in The
Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture. However, it will be necessary to
add an Ingoldian animism to Coccia.
[3] Peter
Carrol offers many contributions to a Deleuzian witchcraft. His cosmological
proposal has relevant considerations, such as criticism of the Big Bang and
dark matter, besides evoking a vortex-like functioning. However, by postulating
a static universe, Carrol distances himself from an ontology of becoming. So,
the cosmology more appropriate to our purposes doubtlessly is Universo
Eterno [Eternal Universe], by
Mário Novello (2018).
[4] Onfray is
a radical critic of the idea of God; however, most of his wrath is destined to
transcendence. Here we defend the concept of an immanent God based on Spinoza’s Letter 43 (2014) sent to Jacob
Osten, where he affirms the need of keeping the God concept on his work.
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