Tag: literature

Identical Mental Stimulation Mechanism

Curious lines from this Aleister Crowley, in Eight Lectures on Yoga:

Suppose I want to evoke the “Intelligence” of Jupiter. I base my work upon the correspondences of Jupiter. I base my mathematics on the number 4 and its subservient numbers 16, 34, 136. I employ the square or rhombus. For my sacred animal I choose the eagle, or some other sacred to Jupiter. For my perfume, saffron—for my libation some preparation of opium or a generous yet sweet and powerful wine such as port. For my magical weapon I take the sceptre; in fact, I continue choosing instruments for every act in such a way that I am constantly reminded of my will to evoke Jupiter. I even constrain every object. I extract the Jupiterian elements from all the complex phenomena which surround me. If I look at my carpet, the blues and purples are the colours which stand out as Light against an obsolescent and indeterminate background. And thus I carry on my daily life, using every moment of time in constant selfadmonition to attend to Jupiter. The mind quickly responds to this training; it very soon automatically rejects as unreal anything which is not Jupiter. Everything else escapes notice. And when the time comes for the ceremony of invocation which I have been consistently preparing with all devotion and assiduity, I am quickly inflamed. I am attuned to Jupiter, I am pervaded by Jupiter, I am absorbed by Jupiter, I am caught up into the heaven of Jupiter and wield his thunderbolts. Hebe and Ganymedes bring me wine; the Queen of the Gods is throned at my side, and for my playmates are the fairest maidens of the earth.

The parallel with art is perfect. That is to say: both the magician and the artist possess identical mental stimulation mechanism. Following the steps described by Crowley, that is, progressively inciting oneself around the same objective, no doubt it is to be expected a kind of ecstasy, of psychic overflow in the act of materialization of this long sequence of efforts. Turning the lens back to the artist, or rather the poet, it is laughable to sit before the blank sheet of paper waiting for “inspiration”. Certainly, a poet who does this is unprofessional. Sitting down, in art, is what the ceremony is in magic: the serious artist must do it only after completing the necessary preparation and when he feels inflamed, exploding by the expression of a certain idea or feeling. Thus he reaches, after scientific meticulousness in the preparations, the propitious state of mind so that the brilliance and fairness in the expression may spring up in his mind.

Vocation Demands Regular Affirmations

Thanks to Fernando Pessoa, I have traveled paths I never imagined. I am moving forward over repulsions, over fears, over lack of interest, and I find myself oscillating between indifference and curiosity. An intellectual curiosity, it is true. And then? Then possibilities opened up for me, so to speak, and the intellectual horizon of the poet proved to be wider than I thought. A vocation demands regular and variegated affirmations, it has to strengthen itself through diverse elements of reality, that is, it has to affirm itself by them, absorbing them into itself. And it seems to me that Pessoa’s unusual paths contributed greatly to his becoming what he is—in other words, to his achieving a very rare degree of affirmation.

The Multiplicity

In art, the trait that perhaps most impresses and most characterizes true geniuses is the multiplicity. If we take the example of a Fernando Pessoa or a Shakespeare, and analyze their work, it seems incredible that such varied manifestations have come from the same mind. That is to say: if, while we read, we pay attention not to the work, but to the mind that generated it, trying to understand its motivations and intentions, we are impressed to notice how it contains oscillations that are sometimes antagonistic, and how it manages to express them clearly and powerfully. It is as if, confronting it with an ordinary mind, we notice that, on one side, there is a vicious and lukewarm character, and on the other side, there is a limitless creative potentiality.

Written Lines Are the Record in Time of Lasting Impressions or Not

The careful reading of several volumes in sequence by Mário Ferreira dos Santos impacted me so strongly that I had the impulse to go through all my notes looking for nonsense. However, this is an impulse I cannot allow. To revise my past is to destroy what I was, to erase the traces of a possible evolution. Written lines are the record in time of lasting impressions or not: but they are, nevertheless, the evidence of the path traveled. To suppress what I was is to distort what I am: a justifiable action, not in the minds of those obsessed with perfect coherence, but in the minds of impostors and scoundrels.