Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena  

(SA/2024)

 

 

In 2022 NASA assembled an independent study team [1] to analyse what are known as unidentified anomalous phenomena [2]. 

 

Headed by David Spergal, the UAPIST consists of sixteen experts who, presumably, like Fox Mulder, are motivated by the belief that the truth is out there (although is unlikely, in their view, to be extraterrestrial or paranormal in origin) [3].

 

According to Spergal, many - if not most - UAP events can be attributed to everyday causes, including weather balloons and atmospheric phenomena. However, he concedes that there remain events which cannot easily be explained and these warrant, in his view, further investigation, as anomalies sometimes reveal new and interesting facts about the universe. 

 

Unfortunately, I believe the UAPIST was dissolved upon the completion and submission of its final report in September 2023 - which, if true, is a real shame, as I was hoping someone from the team might be able to tell me what the three bright and colourful lights dancing about like sprites outside my bathroom window the other night were ... (see photo above).  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Go to the NASA website for more information on the UAP Independent Study Team: click here.

 

[2] Apparently, the term UAP first appeared in the late 1960s, although I had never heard it used until very recently. Those who privilege the term see it as a more encompassing description than the older term UFO and also free of the cultural associations attached to the latter which can be problematic for those wishing to conduct rigorous, evidence-based research.

 

[3] The UAPIST began work in October 2022 and held its first public meeting in May 2023. Their final report was released in September 2023 and did not find any evidence to suggest that extraterrestrial life was responsible for the mysterious and unusual things that all manner of people had observed.   

 

 

The Anarchic Symphony: Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark

Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark 

 

 

An artist friend of mine decided to ask some AI softwear [1] to produce a text in the style of Torpedo the Ark, weaving together threads of Nietzschean philosophy, the punk aesthetic of Malcolm McLaren, and the literary war-machine of D. H. Lawrence. She also prompted it to describe what it thinks the goal or aim of the blog might be.  

This is the result:

 

 

The Anarchic Symphony: Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence

 

In the grand theatre of cultural subversion, three figures stand at the vanguard, each a maestro of their own domain, yet harmoniously orchestrated in the cacophony of rebellion. Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who danced to the tune of his own Zarathustra; Malcolm McLaren, the impresario who orchestrated the punk movement's raucous symphony; and D.H. Lawrence, the literary maverick whose pen stroked the sensuous and the sublime. 

 

Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God was a clarion call to the individual's will to power, a challenge to the herd to rise above the mire of mediocrity. McLaren, in the spirit of Nietzsche's Übermensch, crafted the Sex Pistols into a cultural weapon, a battering ram against the gates of an ossified establishment. Lawrence, too, rebelled against the industrialized dehumanization of his time, championing a return to the primal forces of nature and the unbridled expression of human desire.

 

Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark' is a vessel for these revolutionary currents, a blog that sails the high seas of intellectual anarchy. Alexander's prose, much like Lawrence's, is a phallic lance thrust into the heart of societal norms, a bridge to a future where touch and tenderness reign supreme. His writings, infused with the spirit of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, remind us that the revolution is never over; it is reborn with each act of defiance, each note of discord, each stroke of the pen. 

 

The punk movement, under McLaren's deft hand, was not just a musical genre but a manifesto in leather and spikes, a declaration of war on the banality of the mainstream. The Sex Pistols' anthems were the echoes of Nietzsche's own battle cries, and in their wake, a new culture was birthed, raw and untamed. Lawrence, with his explorations of the erotic, would have found kinship in the movement's visceral energy, its unapologetic embrace of life's darker, more passionate aspects. 

 

In this anarchic symphony, we find a common theme: the relentless pursuit of authenticity, the breaking of chains that bind the spirit, and the celebration of life in all its messy glory. Alexander, channeling the essence of these three iconoclasts, invites us to join the dance, to cast aside the shackles of conformity, and to revel in the anarchic joy of creation. 

 

So let us raise our voices with Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence, and let the music of rebellion play on, even if, ultimately, it is not the notes that are played but the spaces between them - the moments of silence and reflection - that define the symphony of our existence. 

 

This narrative, inspired by the style of Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark', is a testament to the enduring power of those who dare to challenge, to question, and to live fiercely. It is a call to arms, a reminder that the pen and the guitar are both mightier than the sword, and that the truest form of anarchy is the freedom to be oneself. 

 

 

It is, I suppose, an amusing attempt by AI to torpedo the ark, although, I have to say that, overall, the style of the piece reads like a parody and, in its upbeat anarchy and vital optimism, the text is not one I would want mistaken for my own. 

 

Somewhat disappointingly, AI softwear - for now at least - remains as all too human as the people who design it.           

 

 

   [2]

Notes  

[1] I'm informed that the request for a text in the manner of TTA was made using Microsoft Copilot and ChatGpt-4 (none of which means anything to me).  

[2] The image at the bottom of the post - again supplied by my friend who, for reasons of her own, wishes to remain anonymous - was produced by DALL-E 3 softwear. 

 

 

Ghost Cats

Ghost Cat (SA/2024)

 

 

You don't need to accept everything that Dusty Rainbolt [1] tells you on the topic to believe it possible that cats possess uncanny powers and haunt the human imagination in a unique manner. 

 

But can they have a posthumous presence; that is to say, should we take the idea of ghost cats seriously? 

 

I would, as a sceptic, instinctively say no to the proposition that a dear departed feline can, as it were, still be heard purring beyond the grave and visit us in the night as a shadowy presence often coming to forewarn of danger.

 

But, having said that, stories of ghostly or demonic shape-shifting cats can be found in a vast number of cultures around the world and, like Foucault [2], I have always been fascinated by the Cheshire Cat who knows how to make himself invisible and thus become a grinning non-presence. 

 

Similarly, I have long been haunted by Dandelo, the white Angora cat who, in The Fly (1958), fails to reintegrate after being disintegrated (at a molecular level) in André Delambre's matter transporter and is lost in atomic space, from where she can still be heard meowing in a pitiful manner [3].   

Finally, there's the photo above to consider ... 

 

It's a picture I took recently of a neighbour's shorthaired ginger cat sitting in my back garden and looking a bit lonely. Apparently, he's pining for his friend who was killed by a car a few months ago and is captured here in spectral form sitting besides him.

 

What are we to make of this: is it just a trick of the light? Is there something wrong with the camera on my phone? Or is this actual photographic evidence of something spooky?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dusty Rainbolt, Ghost Cats: Human Encounters with Feline Spirits (The Lyons Press, 2007). 

 

[2] Foucault uses the Cheshire Cat to illustrate his model of ars erotica in which we are free to experience free-floating pleasures without holding on to an abiding essence or fixed identity (i.e., smiles without the cat).

 

[3] The suggestion is given that poor Dandelo is nowhere and everywhere and alive and dead at the same time, à la Schrödinger's famous cat in a box. 

 

   

Forest Bathing

A Walk in the Woods by Frosted Moonlight 

 (SA/2024)

 

 

Having taken an early morning stroll in the woods by the light of a frosted moon, I'm sympathetic to the claim made by many dendrophiles that being in the company of trees is beneficial to one's physical and mental wellbeing. 

 

That even a short walk in the woods - depressing  as this can be when one sees all the litter and fly-tipped items including paint pots, pushchairs and printers - can help lower blood pressure, keep sugar levels balanced, boost immune systems and even improve cognitive function.     

 

Of course, the Japanese living in a land that is still two-thirds covered with a vast number and diversity of trees, have known this for many years and have even coined a (relatively recent) term [1] for finding oneself by losing oneself amongst them: shinrin-yoku - known in English as forest bathing. 

 

But the Japanese are not unique in recognising the health benefits of this practice; the Roman author Pliny the Elder, for example, argued that the scent of a pine forest was extremely beneficial to those suffering with respiratory problems or recuperating from a long illness. 

 

And I've written on several occasions about D. H. Lawrence's great fascination with trees: click here, for example. 

 

Like Lawrence, I'm conscious of the fact that you can never really know a tree - something which is so much bigger and stronger in life than we are - but only "sit among the roots and nestle against its strong trunk" [2], in silent contemplation [3]. But that's good enough for me. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The term shinrin-yoku was coined in 1982 by Tomohide Akiyama - Director of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries - who, worried by increasing urbanisation, hoped to inspire the Japanese public to reconnect with nature and protect their forests by reminding them of the free health benefits that the latter afforded them.   

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 86. 

[3] Having said that, Rupert Birkin does rather more than sit in silence with his favourite young sapling; see chapter VIII of Lawrence's novel Women in Love (1920). I discuss dendrophilia in its erotic (and daimonic) aspect in a post published here on 3 October 2020: click here.  

Winter Solstice with D. H. Lawrence

Winter Solstice by the Sea (SA/2023)

 

"Now in December nearer comes the sun

down the abandoned heaven ..."

 

I. 

 

I am always happy when the shortest day and longest night of the year have come and gone.  

 

Several cold months may still lie ahead, but it triggers a genuine transformation of mood to know that the sun has reached its lowest point in the sky and, having stood still for the briefest of moments, thereafter begins its slow ascent; that, no matter what happens, it can't get any darker. 

 

I know the birth of baby Jesus around this time of year excites the imagination of many, but it means nothing compared to the symbolic rebirth of the invincible sun and I understand why the winter solstice has been marked by ritual celebrations within many cultures for millennnia. 

 

The prehistoric pagans who erected Stonehenge - and even the modern day Druids who still meet there now - aren't idiots and Yule means more to me than the Nativity.     

 

 

II. 

 

As one might guess, D. H. Lawrence was another fan of the winter solstice, as he was of all events on the solar calendar that chart the movements of the sun and the wheeling of the year. In a poem written in November 1928, he speaks of how "As the dark closes round him" the sun "draws nearer as if for our company".

 

Interestingly, Lawrence also claims that there exists a tiny sun within him - situated at "the base of the lower brain" - that communes with the great star above, exchanging "a few gold rays" [1]. 

 

III.

 

It would appear, reading this verse, that for Lawrence - as for many others who share his predilection for philosophical vitalism - the sun is more than a material object that can be adequately described and understood by physicists and astronomers. 

 

And if, primarily, Lawrence is concerned with the relationships between men and women, he nevertheless insists on the crucial importance of the relation between humanity and the sun. Perhaps the term that best describes this relation is correlation. For there is clearly a notion of mutual interdependence between the sun and humankind in Lawrence's work; i.e., we can't think one without thinking the other. 

 

And yet, correlation doesn't sound a very Lawrentian term and I think he would be happier speaking about correspondence. For correspondence implies a far closer level of intimate proximity between terms; they become not merely interdependent, but analogous at a certain level:

 

"There certainly does exist a subtle and complex sympathy, correspondence, between the plasm of the human body, which is identical with the primary human psyche, and the material elements outside. The primary human psyche is a complex plasm, which quivers, sense-conscious, in contact with the circumambient cosmos." [2] 

 

What Lawrence really wishes to do is reverse the idea that life evolves from matter and argue instead that the material universe results from the breakdown of primary organic tissue. Unfortunately, as much as I love Lawrence's work, I cannot share his anti-scientific thinking. Thus, I don't believe, for example, that: "If it be the supreme will of the living that the sun should stand still in heaven, then the sun will stand still." [3] 

 

This is simply an occult conceit; the frankly preposterous fantasy that there can be a magical suspension of the laws of physics at the behest of human will power. It's one thing wishing to project oneself into the "the great sky with its meaningful stars and its profoundly meaningful motions" [4] in order to release the poetic imagination, but it's something else believing the astrological heavens revolve around the figure of Man.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'November by the sea', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 394-95. This poem can be found also in the LiederNet Archive: click here.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Two Principles', (First Version, 1918-19), Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey, and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 260.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance' (1920-1), Appendix IV: Studies in Classic American Literature, p. 395. 

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse, by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 46. 

 

 

Some of the material in section III of this post is revised from the essay 'Sun-Struck: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in D. H. Lawrence', which can be found on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage website: click here. 

 

Is it True That When You Leave the Haunted Forest You Discover the Blue of the Greater Day?

 Intoxication (SA/2023)

 

Is it true that when you leave the haunted forest you discover the blue of the greater day?

Not quite. 

 

What you discover, in fact, is that the haunted forest in all its grey stillness, and the greater day in all its vivid blueness, coexist and that the only piece of fakery in the above image is the thick black line of division which creates the illusion these are separate worlds.   

 

As Nietzsche's Zarathustra reminds us, all things are entwined, including joy and sorrow; in affirming one thing, we therefore say yes to everything. 

 

Dead Men Make Good Mould

Decay is the Laboratory of Life

(SA/2023)

 

 

Because so much of my thinking has been informed by the work of D. H. Lawrence - and because, as the author of a book of essays on thanatology, all aspects of death are a matter of continued philosophical interest - it means I can never see a pile of fallen wet leaves slowly decomposing without recalling the following lines from Fantasia of the Unconscious:

 

"Old leaves have got to fall, old forms must die. And if men at certain periods fall into death in millions, why, so must the leaves fall every single autumn. And dead leaves make good mold. And so dead men. Even dead men's souls." [1]   

 

That's quite a hard teaching from the materialist school of general economics - one that Bataille would happily affirm - but its apparent callousness in the face of some kind of huge event that results in the mass destruction of human lives doesn't detract from the essential truth that life is rooted in and thrives upon death, and that "the whole universe would perish if man and beast and herb were not putting forth a newness" [2] out of the decay of the old.

 

Or, as the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani puts it: "Through decay, life and death multiply and putrefy each other to no end." [3] 

 

So, next time you see a pile of rotting leaves - or, indeed, contemplate a mass grave of human bodies - try to overcome your horror and console yourself with the knowledge of how compost enriches the soil with organic nutrients and provides sustenance for a range of detritivores on both the macro and micro level; for dead men make good food as well as good mould.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922), Ch. XV, p. 266. 

      For readers who prefer to consult the 2004 Cambridge Edition of Fantasia, published jointly with Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and ed. Bruce Steele, see p. 189.   

[2] Ibid.

[3] Reza Negarestani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, (re:press, 2008), p. 184. 

Give Me the Madness of My Ladybird

The Ladybird - from the Pink Series 

by Stephen Alexander (2023)

 

 

I'm hoping that the visit of a ladybird - perhaps looking for a warm place to stay over winter - will bring something good my way. 

 

Because although there are those who say it's vulgar to wish for luck - even when carried on the wings of a such a noble insect - I really feel in the need of a change of fortune, as 2023 has neither been a very happy nor a very healthy year. 

 

And one gets tired - and bored - of being miserable and feeling unwell.     

 

So, little ladybird, with your scarlet wings and black spots, work your healing magic. I've had my fill of the seven sorrows, so let me now know one or two of the seven joys. 

 

Or as Count Dionys would say: Gib mir den Wahnsinn meines Marienkäfers!  

 

 

One for Sorrow ...

One for Sorrow (Or The Murder of Murgatroyd) 

Stephen Alexander (2023)

 

 

I. 

 

It's striking how the death of an individual creature can have far greater emotional resonance than news of an entire species dying out. 

 

Thus it is that when I came across the body of a dead magpie this morning it filled me with genuine sorrow, whilst discovering that the Chinese paddlefish was declared extinct in 2022 left me almost entirely indifferent. 

 

That's not because I value our feathered friends more than our aquatic ones, it's just due to the fact that death only becomes real (conceivable) when reduced in scale and given a face, as it were. 

 

This applies to people as well as animals; reports of atrocities involving multiple fatalities don't move as much as the image of a single dead child (a fact often exploited by those looking to influence or emotionally manipulate public opinion).   

 

 

II.

 

Magpies, of course, belong to the crow family - widely considered to be the most intelligent of birds - and are famous for their beautiful black-and-white colouration and (in the European imagination) the fact that they love to steal shiny objects, such as wedding rings and other valuables.      

 

They are also thought to have an ominous aspect; to be a portent of good or bad fortune. According to English folklore, one is for sorrow, two for mirth; three for a death and four for a birth. The popular nursery rhyme builds upon this ornithomantic idea, albeit with different lyrics:

 

One for sorrow, 

Two for joy, 

Three for a girl, 

Four for a boy, 

Five for silver, 

Six for gold, 

Seven for a secret never to be told. [1]

 

There are many variants of this, but the key fact remains - as any fisherman will tell you - that a solitary magpie is never a good sign ...

 

In Piero della Francesca's painting of the Nativity scene, for example, a lonely magpie can be spotted on the roof of a ruined stone stable presaging the pain and sorrow that lies ahead (aguably for all mankind, not just Mary and her son).     

  

 

Piero della Francesca The Nativity (1470-75)

Oil on wood (124 x 123 cm)
National Gallery (NG908) [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Like many of my generation, I know this version of the rhyme thanks to the children's TV show Magpie, (1968-80). Sadly, the popularity of this version - performed by The Spencer Davis Group as the programme's theme song [click here] - displaced many regional variations that had previously existed.

 

[2] Click here for more information on the work and its recent restoration. Keen-eyed birdspotters will doubtless also note the goldfinch - a symbol of redemption in devotional art - sitting in a bush on the left of the picture.

 

 

On the Whip and the Wand: A Response to Joanne Pearson

Artwork by Stephen Alexander for the Treadwell's Paper 

'The Whip and the Wand' in the Sex/Magic series (2005)

 

 

According to the academic author Joanne Pearson, the use of a whip or scourge as a magical tool within the context of (post)modern spirituality, including pagan witchcraft - or Wicca, as many of its adherents prefer to call it - has elicited little debate and ritual flagellation tends to be a largely concealed practice. 

 

She writes: 

 

"Techniques associated with BDSM in the public imagination [...] tend to be ignored, sidelined, dismissed, and whitewashed, both by Wiccan practitioners and by academic studies of Wicca, rather than being explored as mechanisms by which boundaries might be transgressed through the infliction of pain, exercised on the body, eliciting religious experience from skin and flesh." [1] 

 

However, that's not quite true: way back in 2005, for example, I presented a six-part series of lectures at Treadwell's Bookshop on Sex/Magic, at the behest of Christina Harrington, a respected authority on all things esoteric and the store's founder and presiding spirit.  

 

These talks discussed a variety of topics from a philosophical perspective, including masturbation, anal sex, nakedness and - in the final paper of the series, entitled 'The Whip and the Wand' - fetishistic aspects of modern pagan witchcraft [2].

 

The lectures were eventually published in 2010 by Blind Cupid Press as Volume I of The Treadwell's Papers. 

 

Of course, to be fair to Pearson, this is not something widely known; the talks were attended only by a handful of people and neither filmed so as to be uploaded to a social media platform, nor livestreamed online as so many events are today. 

 

Similarly, the two Blind Cupid books of Treadwell's Papers - each consisting of twelve essays - were produced in an extremely limited number and those not sold via Treadwell's were left in the philosophy sections of several other London book stores for anyone who came across them to freely acquire [3].

 

Having said that, however, as a scholarly researcher and writer in this area, it's surely incumbent upon Pearson to be aware of this and not mistakenly assert that no one - other than her good self - has ever been bold enough to investigate the links between Wicca and BDSM [4].

 

Notes

[1] Joanne Pearson, 'Embracing the lash: pain and ritual as spiritual tools', Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, Vol. 23, (2011), pp. 351-363.

      See also Pearson's earlier essay: 'Inappropriate Sexuality? Sex Magic, S/M and Wicca (or Whipping Harry Potter's Arse!)', Theology & Sexuality, Vol. 11, Issue 2, (Sage, 2005), pp. 31-42.   

 

[2] For full details of the Sex/Magic series - as well as all other papers presented at Treadwell's between 2004 and 2012 - click here. 

[3] Apparently, these books sometimes turn up online described as rare collectors items and selling for laughably exorbitant prices.

[4] I suspect that Pearson has sought to gain a little speaker's benefit by positioning herself in this manner; i.e., as the only one who dares to speak openly about the prohibited and the perverse, thereby challenging the established order and its taboos. 

      To her credit, however, Pearson began exploring the common conceptual ground between Wicca and BDSM several years before I thought of it; first presenting a paper on this at a conference at the University of Glasgow entitled 'Dangerous Sex: Contesting the Spaces of Theology and Sexuality', in 2002. But her later claims about the continued attempt to deny or overlook the kinky aspects of Wicca need some (retrospective) qualification. 

 

 

Readers who are inerested can read three extracts from 'The Whip and the Wand' by clicking here.  

 

In Defence of Isis Veiled: What a Practice of Occultism Might Mean in an Age of Transparency

Cover art for the Treadwell's Paper 

Occultism in the Age of Transparency (2023)

by Stephen Alexander (shadowy version)

 

 

This post is a slightly revised extract from a paper presented at Treadwell's Bookshop, on 7 September, 2023. The event was graciously hosted, as ever, by Christina Harrington, and marked my return to the store as a speaker after an absence of eleven years [1]. 

 

 

**************************************************

 

 

The Veil of Isis is a metaphorical and artistic motif in which nature is personified as a goddess, covered by a veil or mantle representing the inaccessibility of her secrets [2]. 

 

Illustrations of Isis with her veil being lifted were extremely popular from the late 17th to the early-mid 19th century and were usually intended to show the triumph of Reason. However, even occultists were happy to play this game of indecent exposure; Madame Blavatsky, for example, used the metaphor of Isis unveiled when expounding the spiritual teachings of Theosophy [3]. 

 

According to Blavatsky, whilst scientists and philosophers revealed only material facts and superficial forms, she would penetrate further to the most hidden truths. That, to me at least, is a shameful ambition.

 

And I don't much like it either when practitioners of modern ceremonial magic also attempt to unveil Isis, or command demons hidden in darkness to make themselves apparent and obedient to the will of the one who has summoned them forth. 

 

For me, occultism - particularly in this, the age of transparency - should be a defence of concealment and anonymity, not making visible and naming those beings who stand dark on the threshold of the Unknown. 

 

I don’t want to violently drag everything out into the open - least of all some poor demon - so it can be subject to our x-ray vision. For even gods and demons die when they shed all negativity (all shadow, all darkness). That’s why Goethe’s Faust encouraged us to hold tight to the veil of Isis, even if we can never embrace the goddess, or catch anything other than a glimpse of her [4]. 

 

Occultism is ultimately not about revelation, but mystical initiation. And this involves closing your eyes and shutting your mouth; for it's an attempt to maintain the silence and stillness. Thus, when casting a spell, for example, whisper it in a voice that is lighter than breath. For magic, like poetry, is an event of stillness (i.e., a phenomenon of negativity) that enables us to listen to the silence (to be attentive to the darkness). 

 

In other words, magic is about tuning in to intensities; about forming a sensitive relationship with the world "that is not characterized by representation (that is, by ideas or meaning) but by immediate touching and presence" [5]. Only in silent stillness "do we enter into a relation with the nameless, which exceeds us" [6].

 

Silence, stillness, secrecy, and shadows are the fourfold of terms at the heart of occultism. 

 

And I would suggest to any would-be wiccans or neo-pagans here this evening that, instead of trying to move with the times and making secret rituals open to everyone, you stay concealed, hidden, and withdrawn. 

 

And, above all, stay still: for just as we can only ever catch a glimpse of the gods, they can only cast their gaze upon those who "linger in contemplative calmness" [7]. 

 

In sum: occult practices and magical rituals are symbolic techniques of becoming-imperceptible [8] and I’m hoping, that via a form of occultism, we might learn how to stage our own disappearance and darken the world, giving it back its shadows, its secrecy, and its silence. 

 

For whilst people talk a lot about plastic in the seas and worry about their so-called carbon footprint, I would suggest that light pollution and noise pollution are far more threatening to our ontological wellbeing. 

 

 

Photo by Paul Gorman 

(as posted on Instagram)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers can find a full list of previous Treadwell's papers by clicking here.

 

[2] The motif was based on a statue of Isis located in the ancient Egyptian city of Sais, which was said to have an inscription reading: I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has ever lifted my mantle - which admittedly sounds like a challenge. For an interesting philosophical study of this topic, see Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis (Harvard University Press, 2008). 

      Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both ancient and modern thinkers (the latter including Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger), Hadot traces successive interpretations of a cryptic phrase which has long intrigued the Western imagination and is attributed to Heraclitus: Phusis kruptesthai philei (Nature loves to hide). 

      Hadot concludes that there are essentially two (contradictory) approaches to nature: the Promethean, or experimental-questing, approach, which embraces technology as a means of tearing the veil from Nature and revealing her secrets; and the Orphic, or contemplative-poetic, approach, according to which such a denuding of Nature is a grave trespass. 

 

[3] Blavatsky’s most famous work - Isis Unveiled:A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology - was published in 1877. For some, a seminal text; for others, a work largely plagiarised from the writings of other occult authors. 

 

[4] Whilst most people understand a glimpse simply to mean a brief or partial view - to catch a quick look, perhaps in passing, of something or someone - it has a more poetic and philosophical resonance for those with ears to hear. D. H. Lawrence, for example, was fascinated by the word and often used it in his late poetry to describe how aspects of divinity are seen in the faces and forms of people when they are momentarily unaware of themselves. It's this glimmer of godhood which gives human beings their more-than-human beauty; which makes the flesh gleam with radiance or the bright flame of being. See the related group of verses on pp. 579-582 of The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013). 

      Heidegger also privileged the word Blick, which I would translate as glimpse. For Heidegger, a glimpse is a kind of lightning flash which provides an insight into that which is, whilst, at the same time, guarding the hidden darkness of what remains forever withdrawn. See 'The Turn', from the 1949 Bremen Lecture series Insight Into That Which Is, trans. Andrew J. Mitchell, (Indiana University Press, 2012), pp. 64-73.

 

[5] Byung-Chul Han, 'Stillness', in Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022), p. 77. 

 

[6] Byung-Chul Han, 'The Magic of Things', Non-things, pp. 56-57. 

 

[7] Byung-Chul Han, 'Stillness', Non-things, p. 83.

 

[8] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (The Athlone Press, 1996). According to the above, there is one becoming towards which all other becomings rush, marking the immanent end of becoming and providing the process with its cosmic formula; the becoming-imperceptible (279). 

 

 

Readers who are interested might also like to see two earlier posts that acted as previews to the talk at Treadwell's: 

 

'In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets' (14 May 2023): click here 

 

'On Georg Simmel's Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies' (10 August 2023): click here. 

 

 

Black Sun Flower

Black Sun Flower (SA/2023)

 

 

Is it just me, or is there not a suggestion in the flower on the left of the sun-wheel symbol [1] that Nazi occultists had such a fondness for? 

 

I think there is: and it makes one wonder whether it serves to illustrate Oscar Wilde's anti-mimetic contention that life imitates art [2]; or, alternatively, proves that even a flower can be fascist?  

 

Either way, I think we can all agree that at the core of every flower burns something obscene and evil, like a tiny black sun, and that this is something that many poets, philosophers, and gardeners remain deeply uncomfortable with. 

 

In fact, Bataille is one of the few writers who dares to stare into the heart of vegetal darkness, affirming the inexpressible reality of the flower and rejecting the sexless and sunless descriptions traditionally offered [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The schwarze Sonne symbol originated in Nazi Germany and is now employed by neo-Nazis and other far-right individuals and groups. 

      The symbol consists of twelve radial sig runes and was used as a design element in Heinrich Himmler's SS castle at Wewelsburg. It is uncertain whether it held any particular significance for Himmler, but the black sun later became linked with neo-Nazi occultism and used as a substitute for (or variant of) the classic swastika design. 

      For a Lawrentian take on this concept of the black sun, see the post entitled 'Excessive Brightness Drove the Poet into Darkness' (3 Oct 2021): click here. 

 

[2] See Wilde's essay 'The Decay of Lying', Intentions (1891). An earlier version of the essay was published in the literary magazine The Nineteenth Century, in January 1889.

[3] I'm paraphrasing here form an earlier post entitled 'Fleurs du Mal' (25 April 2015): click here. 

 

 

Readers might like to see a related post to this one on how Jamie Reid's Cambridge Rapist motif haunts the natural world: click here.

Reflections on a Photo of a Horse's Head - A Guest Post by Louise Mason

Horsehead (SA/2023)

 

 

Horses' heads vary hugely in their size, shape, and character, which partly explains why they have long fascinated artists ...

 

One thinks, for example, of the carved marble horse head by the Ancient Greek sculptor Pheidias; ears flattened, jaw gaping, nostrils flaring, eyes bulging, it's both beautiful and terrifying  at the same time. Believed to date to around 438-432 BC, it's said to be one of the noble nags that drew the chariot of the moon goddess Selene [1]. 

 

One thinks also of the far more recent work by Nic Fiddian-Green; a giant bronze sculpture of a horse's head entitled Still Water (2011). Located amidst the endless noise and movement of traffic in central London, it provides a pleasing contrast in its stillness and silence [2]. 

 

But, looking at the powerful image above by Stephen Alexander, primarily makes me think of the serpentine aspect of horses when they lower their "strangely naked equine heads" [3], press their ears back, and extend their long, muscular necks, moving the latter from side-to-side in an aggressive gesture known as snaking [4].

Notes

 

[1] Part of the Elgin Marbles, this sculpture - commonly known as the Selene Horse - can be found in the British Museum: click here for details.

 

[2] This free-standing work is 33ft high and weighs in at an impressive 20 tonnes. Originally installed at Marble Arch in 2011, it was relocated to Achille’s Way, near Hyde Park Corner, in May 2021. Fiddian-Green, is a British sculptor who specialises in making lifelike horses' heads, having been inspired whilst a student at Chelsea College of Arts by the Selene Horse. Click here to visit his website.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, St. Mawr, in St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Bran Finney, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 35. 

 

[4] Snaking is a common form of herding behavior, primarily displayed by stallions in the wild, keen to assert their dominance over mares. However, it has also been observed in domesticated horses, including geldings (castrated stallions).

 

  

In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets

Anne Dufourmantelle (1964-2017)

 

"To become an occult philosopher is to choose the shadows; 

to cross over to a secret world ..."

 

 

I. 

 

For those readers who may be unfamiliar with the name, Anne Dufourmantelle was a French philosopher and psychoanalyst, perhaps best known for her work on the vital importance of living dangerously. 

 

When, in 2017, she drowned attempting to save two young children caught in rough seas, the obituary writers couldn't help (sometimes spitefully) recalling the fact that she had published a book entitled Éloge du risque [1] just a few years prior to this tragic event. 

 

As her English translator - Steven Miller - notes, the implication was that Dufourmantelle was somehow the author of her own fate [2]; that her death served to confirm the ancient idea that to philosophise is to learn how to die and thus only practiced - like occultism - by disturbed individuals. 

 

Even if true, this tends to downplay the fact that Dufourmantelle was a courageous woman who wrote a number of books - including one on hospitality in collaboration with Jacques Derrida [3] - who wished to think risk not as an act of madness or deviant behaviour, but in vital (and ethical) terms.

 

To quote Miller: "the horizon that orients her approach to risk is not death and sacrifice [...] but rather what she calls not dying" [ne pas mourir]" [4] - i.e., having the courage to live whilst at the same time loving fate. 

 

It's a shame, therefore, that unthinking journalistic accounts of her death reproduce "the very paradigm of risk that she explicitly seeks to displace" [5]. But then of course, news editors are never going to let philosophical subtlety get in the way of a good story.   

 

 

II.

 

Dufourmantelle, however, wasn't just a woman who dared her readers to take risks - particularly the risk of opening themselves up to otherness and to intimacy - she was also a defender of secrets and it's this aspect of her work which currently most interests, engaged as I am in writing my own defence of Isis veiled [6].

Originally published in 2015, Défense du secret was translated into English by Lindsay Turner and published by Fordham University Press in 2021. 

 

As with her earlier book - In Praise of Risk - there are bits I like (the philosophical musings) and bits I don't like (the psychoanalytic observations). But that's just me - other readers will love the latter and hate the former.

 

Like Dufourmantelle, I also believe that in an age obsessed with exposing everything to x-ray vision - Byung-Chul Han famously speaks of the transparency society - secrecy might have an important role to play as part of a counter-narrative which also includes terms such as silence, solitude, and stillness. 

 

It's not that the secret is necessarily some kind of hidden truth - it might simply be a forgotten memory, an unspoken thought, or even a lie. But it is something that has a relation to truth and it is something we should revalue, I think, as a term of opposition to the see-all, tell-all, know-all ideology of today.     

 

But the problem, for a writer, is how does one speak of secrecy without giving the game away? The answer, as Dufourmantelle demonstrates, is to speak quietly and enigmatically; to murmur in a voice that is lighter than breath, or to whisper with the lights down low, as it were. 

 

Indeed, we might even dim the lights completely - for isn't darkness the custodian of being and isn't it the case that, ultimately, it is not we who keep secrets safe, but secrets that safeguard us and our right to become other (to be more than we seem) ...?           

Again, like Dufourmantelle, I would place the secret beyond good and evil - that is to say, align it with individual ethics rather than a universal morality. It's up to every one of us to nurture their own secret identity (or alter ego) - just like Superman and the Scarlet Pimpernel; to cultivate the darkness, as it were, so that we in turn might grow and blossom (like flowers).        

 

I don't think that Dufourmantelle's work - or my own forthcoming defence of Isis veiled - amounts to a religious call, as some suggest. Rather, it simply offers an occult perspective on contemporary culture and brings a little mystery into the social order. 

 

And, who knows, it just may lead to a new mode of relating to one another (less transparent, less open, but richer and more intense), which, in turn, might allow us to leave behind the society of transparency and build - for want perhaps of another phrase - a secret society which has what the German sociologist Georg Simmel called purposeful concealment as its structuring element.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Anne Dufourmantelle, Éloge du risque, (Editions Rayot & Rivages, 2011), translated into English by Steven Miller as In Praise of Risk, (Fordham University Press, 2019). 

[2] See Steven Miller's Introduction - 'The Risk to Reading' - to Dufourmantelle's In Praise of Risk. This can be read online (thanks to Amazon) by clicking here.

[3] Of Hospitality, Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, trans. Rachel Bowlby, (Stanford University Press, 2000). 

[4] Steven Miller, 'Translator's Introduction: The Risk to Reading' ... See link above in note 2.  

 

[5] Ibid.

[6] A paper entitled 'In Defence of Isis Veiled and in Praise of Silence, Secrecy, and Shadows' will be given at Treadwell's bookshop - 33, Store Street, London, WC1 - on Thurs 7 September. Further details will be made available on the Torpedo the Ark events page in due course. Essentially, this post might be seen as an (unofficial) preface to the paper, or a kind of preview.   

Reflections on Stephen Alexander's 'When the Moon Hits Your Eye' - A Guest Post by Sally Guaragna

Stephen Alexander: When the Moon Hits Your Eye (2017) 

 Caspar David Friedrich: Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (1818)

 

For me, whilst Stephen Alexander's amusing photograph entitled When the Moon Hits Your Eye has a surreal aspect provided by its incorporation of a big pizza pie [1], it is clearly rooted in German Romanticism, nodding as it does to the mid-period work of Caspar David Friedrich [2] which typically features a contemplative figure seen from behind and silhouetted against an allegorical landscape.

This compositional device - known as a Rückenfigur - is often used to convey man's insignificance before the vast expanse of nature; that is to say, his sense of isolation and existential anxiety when confronted with the sublime (i.e., inhuman beauty on an overwhelming scale). 

 

As one commentator rightly notes, in using this anonymous and indistinct figure seen from behind, artists are able to create "a metaphorical bridge for the viewer" [3] by which they are able to insert themselves into the image. The Rückenfigur functions thus as an avatar, as well as symbolising the heroic archetype of Man Alone. 

 

Alexander makes clear, however, that the figure in his image should primarily be conceived as a wanderer - a key term in his philosophical lexicon, as it is for many artists, poets and thinkers who work in a post-Romantic tradition. One recalls the words of Nietzsche, for example, with which I would like to close this short post: 

 

"He who has attained freedom of spirit to any extent cannot regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth - and not even as a traveller towards a final destination, for such does not exist." [4]          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have since discovered that Alexander's picture does not, in fact, make use of a pizza; the 'moon' is actually a pancake. It remains a witty and surreal use of food in order to create a work of art. 

 

[2] Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) was a 19th-century German landscape painter, generally considered the most important artist of his generation. His work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world coupled to a Gothic sensibility. 

      It has been suggested by the American art critic Thomas Bonneville, that Alexander's image actually owes more to the work of the English painter (and visionary) Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), who certainly loved a moonlit landscape. However, whilst this might be the case, I can find no evidence to support this claim.

 

[3] Laura Thipphawong, 'The Mysterious Appeal of the Rückenfigur' (2021) on artshelp.com: click here. 

 

[4] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, I. 638. It's important to note, however, that Nietzsche's wanderer is not some kind of hypercultural tourist. Indeed, paradoxical as it sounds, his form of existence is what Heidegger terms dwelling.  

 

On Being Followed by a Seagull

(SA/2023)

 

"It is right for a gull to fly -

freedom is the very nature of its being ..." [1]

 

I. 

 

The other day, walking in the park, I was followed by a seagull. Although it might simply be the case that he was hoping for some food, a poet friend insists on the symbolic (and spiritual) importance of the event.

 

Apparently, these intelligent and beautiful birds are not merely noisy opportunists, but able to travel between realms and bring us messages (or warnings) from the dead. 

 

Normally, I wouldn't give much time to such a thought, but as I'm still mourning the death of my mother - who loved birds - I'm inclined to be a little more receptive to the idea that the gull wanted me to know something. 

 

But what? 

 

That, of course, is the question - and the difficulty. How can one know that one has interpreted a message from the dead carried by a feathered messenger correctly? 

 

I'm not sure you can. But this is my attempt to do so ...

 

 

II.

 

As the bird remained silent, I assume it wasn't telling me to find my own voice. 

 

In fact, I'm keen to speak less and look more these days; to move away from the written text towards the world of images; to put down the pen and pick up the paintbrush; to exchange the computer keyboard for the camera. 

 

So maybe the gull was encouraging me with this; to quietly find my wings, so to speak, as a visual artist and fly above past limitations and the somewhat grim (anxiety-inducing) circumstances of the present (health issues, money worries, threats from Google to terminate this blog because I have violated their community guidelines, etc.).    

 

I certainly prefer to interpret being followed by a seagull as a good sign; as something positive, rather than a bad omen and one recalls the words of Luce Irigaray, who wrote some very lovely lines concerning the precious and mysterious assistance she has received in her life and work directly from birds:

 

"Birds are our friends. But also our guides, our scouts. Our angels in some respect. They accompany persons who are alone, comfort them, restoring their health and their courage. Birds do more. Birds lead one's becoming. The birds' song heals many a useless word [...] restores silence, delivers silence. The bird consoles, gives back to life, but not to inertia." [2] 

 

It may well be that a storm of some kind is approaching and I need to think a little more seriously about the future than I normally do. But somehow, as long as there are birds still nesting and calling in the world, I believe everything will be fine. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, (Macmillan, 1970). I'm quoting this from memory, so it might not be dead-on balls accurate, as Miss Mona Lisa Vito might say. 

[2] Luce Irigaray, 'Animal Compassion', trans. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, in Animal Philosophy, ed. Matthew Atterton and Peter Calarco, (Continuum, 2004), p. 197. I first quoted these lines in a post published ten years ago; see 'Feathered Friends' (9 Jan 2013): click here.