Gooey Things II -- Prelude
It occurred to me that there are a few points about the powers of context - and text - that are appropriate for a discussion of occultism in literate cultures.
One of my favorite alternative process photography gurus has noted that there's no such thing as "Photography". Rather, there is "Photography-As-We-Know-It". She recognized that any sort of meaningful dialog or discussion is founded on the paradigms that the self-identified group (in this case a computer mailing list) holds to be valid. There are tacit if unspoken agreements that are necessary for dialog to occur. Construction of a narrative is the act that may best reveal the strengths and weaknesses of our species. We are tool using, story telling primates with opposable thumbs and agendas. In looking at source documents that tell the tales of any subject, it helps to remember that:
1. Not everything important was put into print. Conferences, Chataquas, Lyceums and Assemblies were major vehicles for sharing information prior to the era of cheap newsletters and books. Very few of these left footprints.
2a. Not everything in print survived into the present day.
2b. Not everything in print that survived is of equal value. Some of it was and is rubbish.
2c. Information makes a great circuit from the West to Asia and back again. Chinese authors of the late 19th and 20th century would read New Thought, Physical Culture, Martial Arts and Spiritualist books as source documents. In turn, these books from the East were translated into English, completing this circulation of information, with the serial numbers conveniently ground off at each point of the exchange. Our 18th century "magnetic healing" is 19th Century Chinese chi kung, and vice versa.
3. From the point of view of a practitioner, there is no single globally valid history that can subsume all events into a coherent narrative that reflects what happened.
4. History, like politics, is local and based on a variety of experiences that are unique to a biome, era, region or group.
5. No author is free from bias. All of them that aren't reference librarians writing bibliographies "cherry pick" their data.
There's this belief that excreting ink onto paper (to paraphrase the late, lamented author Robert Anton Wilson) grants a sort of authority to ideas. Within the subculture of the occult this is generally if unknowingly expressed as the quest for the "black book".
The basic notion is that someone, somewhere,somehow got hold of a book that holds all or many of the secrets of the Universe. In Iceland it was said that such a book was written in luminous ink on black paper, was only visible at night and could be given to a wizard or sorceress by the devil or some similar agent of evil, like Interlibrary Loan. This notion seems to hold greater importance in the Americas than in Europe.
Not only is such a book an item of power, its use crosses into the realm of talismanic operations--the rumor that such a book being possessed by someone is oftentimes as esoterically potent as the book itself. To use a hypothetical example, if I were to claim, say, that I had all of the documents from an early 20th century Rosicrucian lodge in England and other participants in the occult community believed this to be true, this belief in a book by members of the Body Esoteric would generate usable power for me, without any additional work on my part. Acceptance of the assertion in a community is oftentimes as potent as ownership of such a work.
Now, there was no shortage of grimoires to choose from in 19th century America. The 6th and 7th Books of Moses were two of the most used additions to this corpus. An old standby filling a similar niche would be an antique or antique looking bible. Bibles were used for bibliomancy and had other less common uses, such as removing warts by smacking them with that Good Old Book. The psalms were held in high regard as well. Carrying the text of a psalm on a piece of paper in one's garments was a frequent custom. The German community would contribute to this literature, giving us "Pow-Wows: Long Lost Friend, a Collection of Mysteries and Invaluable Arts and Remedies by John George Hohman. This volume would become a staple for occult practitioners in the New World, where its influences would be present from the Pennsylvania "Dutch" settlers who were the book's audience to the blossoming of hoodoo in the Deep South. Other texts would include the "Oraculum" also known as Napoleon's Book of Fate. If a printer didn't have one of these works in stock, putting a custom cover on whatever volume they did have and titling it the 6th Book of Moses was a commonly accepted practice.
Gooey Things II
Returning to the early days of Spiritualism, it is important to remember that this particular manifestation of religious activity took the Americas and England by storm. The Fox Sisters had their experiences in 1848. By 1849 there were Spiritualist conferences, books, tracts, lectures and the establishment of its preferred mode of operation, that of the "Home Circle". While damned few books were written on how to organize a home circle,its presence is a given in spiritualism/spiritism in the Americas. Small groups were the preferred format for participation in occultism. Spiritualism is more about the living than the dead---don't think of those who have passed on as "dead" think of them as differently embodied. If these folks were to manifest it was thought that these bodies would be composed of "ectoplasm", or spirit-force goo.
At least in this world, living things need water. Not too surprisingly, NASA has adopted a similar search strategy in looking for life on Mars, Europa or elsewhere. "Follow the water!" is the rallying cry for exobiologists, at least in this era. Similarly in spiritualism, we "follow the ectoplasm".
The term "medium" is revealing. It suggests transmission of a force through space and demands an interaction between the medium, the spirit realm, and the members of the home circle. For lack of a better term, the assemblage of the home circle, its spirit band and the rest of the local environmental manifestations determines the sort of information that can manifest.
The first consistent messages through mediums were interpreted as a call for Women's Suffrage and the abolition of slavery, with a small but vocal minority advocating "free love" as an innate Spiritualist doctrine. Spiritualists were oftentimes criticized for being involved in the abolitionist movement, possibly because spiritualism was widely and quickly accepted by large numbers of slaves in the South. This adoption would help to shape the emerging folk culture of hoodoo. In Brazil, Cuba, and almost any other place in the Americas where slavery was present, Spiritualism began influencing the interpretation and practice of Afro-diasporic practices. Allen Kardec would write a series of books and hymns on Spiritism that ultimately formed the basis for Brazilian espiritismo and the 20th century Brazilian religions of Candomble and Umbanda, along with many similar manifestations in the New World.
Spiritualism arrived on the British, American and other New World religious scenes with an inherent stubborn practicality that did not depend on formal institutions, leaders or theological training. It proved to be an omnivorous faith, gladly swallowing elements of virtually any other spirituality it encountered. Native American motifs and spirit guides were adopted in quite early, and there was a lot of material to be had in the 19th century Americas. Any cross-pollination that could happen with religions, spiritualities and cultures basically did happen.
At this point it would be appropriate to discuss a seance. From the French term "to sit" a seance consists of several people sitting, including a medium and a control or conductor.
As noted in "Gooey Things I" there are three distinct phases--"Entering the Silence", "Concentration" and "Meditation or Manifestation".
The initial state needed for a successful home circle is the ability to "Enter the Silence". Tons of printer's ink were sacrificed in an attempt to teach this concept to 19th and 20th century Spiritualists. In short, the "monkey mind" needs to quiet down and the doors of perception need to creak open a bit. (Please see "Tools for Druid Companions I" for further information.) Seances facilitated this by providing a stable context--the same songs, prayers, members of the circle, positioning of the chairs and hands, position of the head provide us with a Western asana, mudra and mantra. Spiritualists scheduled meetings at the same time every month. It might have been the third Wednesday at seven pm. Regardless of their choice, they felt that the spirits liked keeping to a regular schedule.
In examining the procedures of Spiritualism and Mesmerism, I offer the following analysis. This is not the only way to parse the data, but it is one that offers quite a few benefits in describing the activities of occult practitioners of the Americas from the 19th to the 21st century.
After summoning the Spirit Band (those positive entities that have ties to members of the home circle), there are three components in any sort of working.
The first component of an early Mesmeric or Spiritualistic working is intention. There is a definite desire or purpose to accomplish that is held by the Mesmerist (or Control) and the medium.
The second component is motion--Mesmer used gestures in his working and initially manipulated metal crosses or other objects over the body of the Subject. Mesmer abandoned the use of objects and used his hands in later years.
The third component is a sub-set of the second---sound. Seances began with a song or other music. Shape-note hymns were a favorite, taken right out of the Primitive Methodist hymnal. Later Spiritualists used the inspired volume from Peebles, titled "The Spiritual Harp", available as a Kessinger reprint.
The glass harmonica was used in seances through the 1850's where it lost popularity reportedly because it was considered too spooky. I've never heard one in person, but I have a cd by Thomas Bloch, entitled "Music for Glass Harmonica" that conveys some of the power of this instrument. Spiritualists weren't limited to the glass harmonica, of course. They were at home with church organs, pianos, guitars, drums, trumpets, sistrums and other instruments. A quick read of the literature from the mid-19th century suggests that the oboe, bassoon, mouth harmonica and accordion were the only musical instruments that Spiritualists didn't use in a seance.
There are frequent allusions to music in Spiritualist writings. Andrew Jackson Davis titled one of his works on Spiritualism "The Great Harmonium". This lies at the heart of Spiritualism as a discipline--the notion was that there is a medium of forces that flow between the Cosmos, the Mesmerist and the Subject or medium. This medium or "aether" will be characterized as "animal magnetism", at least early in the 19th century. It was viewed as an energy that could be produced, directed, absorbed and was capable of altering the subject or their perceptions. Again, the notion of a flow of energy is the basic concept, one that is found in virtually every society on earth. These energic systems are not all the same--the ways that they are characterized are as varied as the terms for this energy. There's more than one chakra system from India, these don't neatly equate to the tan tien centers used in China, and neither are of any help in discussing the energies directed by members of the Native American Shaker churches in Washington State. Pick one or none, and don't worry because they do things differently in Maine.
At heart Spiritualism can be characterized as a a system of practical and happy esoteric discipline that is founded on the subtle worlds that have intercourse with our realm, accessing it through sound, movement and directed intent. These elements will form the base of much occult teaching in the Americas for the next two centuries.
There are just a few other points to make. Spiritualists had (and have) quality control measures to weed out ectoplasmic posers. Quite frankly, there were "humbugs" in the 19th century just as there are in the 21st. Some spiritualists just put on shows. They could palm objects, alter photographs, throw their voices, tip tables, blow horns and rig elaborate mechanical hoaxes in a fashion that would have impressed Rube Goldberg. The existence of wigs does not prohibit the existence of head hair, it just makes it harder to find.
In the midst of these religious innovations, hermetic and alchemical doctrines brought over from Europe were not forgotten. Many of the Founding Fathers of the US were Masons and had connections to various esoteric groups. Our ambassador to France, Ben Franklin, founded the US Postal System (possibly as a way to more easily coordinate Hellfire club parties), mapped the flow of the Gulf Stream, invented the bifocal, popularized an almanac that is still being published, and experimented with electricity, a frequent pastime in that era. As noted earlier, there were more than a few magical manuscripts circulating among folks interested in such things.
Here is a list of generally recognized principles of spiritualism. Although this was compiled c. 1900, it reflects fairly accurately how earlier spiritualists felt and operated.
Many Spiritual Churches accept the Seven Principles of Spiritualism, of which principles, full individual liberty of interpretation is reserved to each member. This set of principles was delivered through the medium Emma Hardinge Britten:
The Divine Eternal Parenthood (sometimes called "the Fatherhood of God")
The Family of Humankind (sometimes called "the Brotherhood of Man")
The Interconnectedness of all Creation.
The Communion of Spirits and the Ministry of Angels
The Continuous Existence of the Human Soul
Personal and Social Responsibility, including compensation and/or retribution hereafter for the good and evil deeds done "on Earth"
Eternal progress open to every Human Soul
Those of you with experience in Fraternal lodges may recognize some of this language. It isn't a coincidence.
Next time, Victorian Arts and Sciences, along with the only course in Magnetic Healing you'll ever need.
(Please see "Tools For Druid Comrades" for the technical materials for this weblog series.)
Showing posts with label Intro To Spiritualism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Intro To Spiritualism. Show all posts
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Prelude--"The Great Awakening"
While the earliest part of the 19th century is generally characterized as a period specifically rife with religious revivals and experimentation, truthfully it is difficult to find any period in history where folks haven't tried to modernize a religion or bring practices into accord with a newly invented (or rediscovered) yearning for an idealized past. As the westward expansion of the United States got underway, it should be remembered that none of these "new" lands were blank canvasses. To the contrary, these regions had permanent inhabitants who effectively lacked political rights. Native peoples were oftentimes resettled (The Cherokee were moved from Tennessee to Oklahoma) or as in the case of California during the Gold rush, became non-entities because they were perceived as an obstacle keeping miners from their gold fields. Some of these tribes were moved to lands deemed worthless due to the presence of smelly black substances oozing from the ground or yellow rocks that fogged photographic film.
This transition from the untamed wilderness of the Pilgrims (itself an interesting cultural construct) happened so fast and so thoroughly from the perspective of Western history that it is easy to not notice that North America had and has any number of sub-cultures existing alongside the one true and catholic vision of reality that CNN, Fox News and others reassuringly display sanctify and invoke 24/7. These sub cultures are regional and participatory in nature.
A slower and quieter approach is needed to find these Other Americas. There are sweat lodges and vision quests regularly held a few hundred feet from Interstate Highway 10 in west Texas with ceremonies conducted in Spanish and Nahautl. Not everyone in the Duwammish region of West Seattle has forgotten the Rock Too Terrible to View, and Thunderbirds still dance in the summer sky over the Great Plains, revealing themselves to those brave or foolish enough to visit them. There are shrines to Saints hidden in the desert of New Mexico, and Inuit traders still follow the routes from Siberia to Alaska, bringing trade goods and stories, just as their ancestors have done for countless thousands of years. These lands do not speak with a single voice, nor are these voices necessarily in English. As North Americans, our crops, festival traditions and language in America have been informed by these peoples, and it does not serve anyone well to forget that.
As is generally true, regions perceived as frontiers are occupied by people thrown out of more "civilized" society. The Clearances in Scotland would produce any number of sandy-haired Lakota speaking, kilt wearing Scots/Lakota cowboys who lived between their two cultures.
There are many, many places where the land has not been forgotten, nor has the land forgotten its children, but these realms cannot be found from an airliner or through traveling down a highway at 70 miles per hour. To borrow a phrase from an Anglican chaplain I know, these are "the thin places" known in other times and places variously as faerie, the lands of the small folk, the first folk, and by many other names.
Following the model that Brandy Williams articulated for the Seattle Pagan Scholars community (http://www.speakeasy.org/~bwilliam/scholars.html) almost a decade ago, here is my self-disclosure on this topic:
Any occultist who claims to not have an agenda probably can't have a pulse either. Look for the guy behind the visage of the "Great and Terrible Oz" in these instances. I don't know if I believe in spirits, but treating them as if they are at least partially external and real results in a shorter and simpler chain of logic than asserting their non-existence.
I have post traumatic stress disorder, courtesy of the NSA. The process of dreaming brings with it the risk of nightmares. Not all of my dreams are terrors, though that is true for the vast majority of them. Many evenings I cannot go to sleep until the sun comes up for fear of what sleep brings. Of those relatively harmless dreams I do have, most of them consist of the normal flotsam and jetsam of the day's happenings leavened with absurdities. Yet there are others...
The dream comes sharp and crisp as the salt spray of the cold Pacific ocean. I breathe, open my eyes, and find myself in the City, the real Seattle.
I've walked its cobbled brick streets for almost two decades now. The city is built on the edge of a desert, a place where the Great Northern Forest of conifers stretches from Mexico to Alaska and converges with two rivers that flow to the Sea. The City rests comfortably in this spot and has been here always in Forever Years.
My oak floored, glass-enclosed second story loft has a view of both rivers and the market, a place where Gods and spirit beings shop for food and exchange stories. There's a visiting spirit from the great plains standing on a corner, dancing and singing to a music that carries the message of thunder beings from far away. Next to him Fox woman minds her children as they wait for a bus to take them home. Past the row of neat "Painted Lady" Victorian houses on my block stands a community theater, owned and operated by an extended family of ritual magicians who have married lodge magic with English drama. My computer, a 2001 Amiga Deskpro's screen glows faintly as I pause to make breakfast for the day.
I'd thought that this place was a fairly private manifestation until I met others who have inhabited the same place. Imagine my shock at finding a Pioneer Square comic book artist who draws this creation that I inhabit but did not invent.
The real Seattle isn't the only place in this realm--I've visited the etheric double of Chicago where a ceremonial magician I know tends to the needs of the Dead in the labyrinthine mausoleum complex that lies at the heart of that metropolis. And there's another person I know whose close spirit companion inhabits a flat in ethereal Atlantic City.
What are all of these places, and how do they relate to esoteric practice? I have no firm idea, save that they exist and exert influence on those of us who wander through them. The phrase that has come to mind is the notion of "an ecology of spirits". One of the great breakthroughs of 19th century New Thought and Spiritualism is the concept that the complexities of the webs of life are in some fashion mirrored in the more subtle realms. I have no clue as to their ultimate origin. Spiritualists that I know assert it is simply enough to know that the spirit realm is tangible, and all other speculations are best saved for after hours discussions with bread, cheese and a bottle of wine gracing the table. From my experiences the inhabitants of the subtle realms are as varied as slime molds, willow trees and elephants.
But back to the Great Awakening of the early 19th century. I'm not sure how many of my readers are familiar with tent style revival meetings. They are much less common now than thirty years ago. For many participants these are visceral, gut wrenching encounters with some of the scariest, most repressed and most hoped for experiences imaginable. And there's almost always a sensual undertone that many people experience as a sort of sexual awakening to their concept of God. Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggert are cousins after all, and the energies of Elvis and Fabian performing in person caused thousands of otherwise perfectly healthy teenage girls to writhe in spasms of ecstasy that equal anything that Teresa of Avila or a Python priestess in classical Greece could have described. And folks in the heartland of early and mid 19th century America were getting salvation on a regular basis. (As for me, my Mennonite grandfather revival-proofed me before the age of eight, and I find Tridentine masses to be more meaningful than the tent based church services.)
The preachers of the 19th century were as adept at manipulating these emotional interactions as any Roman general leading troops into battle. Out of this stream of revival events the seeds of the Noyes' Oneida Colony and the Church of Latter Day Saints were planted, fertilized and harvested. Joseph Smith was one of many folks who were puzzled by the origin of Native Americans. Could they be descended from one of the lost tribes of Israel? Did they leave a cache of golden treasures somewhere nearby, and was he enough of a diviner to find it? What Smith produced was an amazing myth that was strong enough to get folks to move from relatively civilized regions to a desert and build a nation.
So why did spiritualism take the Anglo portions of North America by storm? Forensic sociology is a wide open field, and anyone can play. I suspect that the desire for a personal experience of divinity coupled with populist sentiments was enough to launch and sustain the movement. From my perspective it is a mistake to view the popularity of spiritualism as something that was inevitable, it was simply one of any number of possibilities in the astral gene pool.
The defining moment in Spiritualism as seen by historians was the sequence of events that began with the Fox sisters on March 31st in 1848, just outside of Rochester New York. The three sisters claimed to have heard an insistent rapping that was not explicable, and further, the entity responded when addressed as "Mr. Splitfoot". Said entity described his life before death, resulting in the excavation of a basement. Current opinions on this matter seem to fall into one of two camps with some shades of grey between them.
The noise was either made by one of the girls cracking the joints of her foot or hand, or a differently embodied person was talking to the sisters from beyond the grave.
Modern day spiritualists I've spoken to have proposed a third alternative--why not hold seances and determine for yourself the truth of the claim that spirits can manifest or communicate with the living?
There are three classic phases to a seance (meaning "to sit" in French). The first stage is referred to as "holding the Silence". This is the basic underlying state of consciousness common to most esoteric workings in the over-subcultural Anglo esotericists, the remaining stages being "Concentration" and finally "Meditation".
Considerable differences of opinion exist as to the best means of attaining the Silence. The recitation of a prayer by the group or the singing of a hymn often precedes the working. Flowers and live plants seem to positively influence the spirits, and Subdued lighting is considered beneficial as well. The method I recommend is to consciously listen to the tides of blood and breath and attentively wait for the quiet places between breaths that can allow for manifestation of the Silence. Sit comfortably upright in a favorite chair or couch. Some modern spiritualists use recorded music as an aid to the Silence. Experiment and see what works for you.
The first few dozen or so times it is likely that you'll encounter your own inner chattering rather than an express message from inhabitants of the hollow earth or Zeta Reticulans who have chosen you as their spokesperson. It is possibly a good idea to hold off for a while on writing that multi-volume book series that explains the deep structure of the universe.
The women's movement and the anti-slavery movement were nurtured by spiritualists who tended to view equal rights as a logical consequence of their world view. The foremothers of the Physical Culture movement were involved in spiritualism, magnetic healing and kindred fields up to their eyeballs as well.
"Other Powers" by Barbara Goldsmith is an excellent in depth presentation of the interplay of these social movements, and I highly recommend this book.
Next time--"Gooey Things II" and the arts of storytelling.
While the earliest part of the 19th century is generally characterized as a period specifically rife with religious revivals and experimentation, truthfully it is difficult to find any period in history where folks haven't tried to modernize a religion or bring practices into accord with a newly invented (or rediscovered) yearning for an idealized past. As the westward expansion of the United States got underway, it should be remembered that none of these "new" lands were blank canvasses. To the contrary, these regions had permanent inhabitants who effectively lacked political rights. Native peoples were oftentimes resettled (The Cherokee were moved from Tennessee to Oklahoma) or as in the case of California during the Gold rush, became non-entities because they were perceived as an obstacle keeping miners from their gold fields. Some of these tribes were moved to lands deemed worthless due to the presence of smelly black substances oozing from the ground or yellow rocks that fogged photographic film.
This transition from the untamed wilderness of the Pilgrims (itself an interesting cultural construct) happened so fast and so thoroughly from the perspective of Western history that it is easy to not notice that North America had and has any number of sub-cultures existing alongside the one true and catholic vision of reality that CNN, Fox News and others reassuringly display sanctify and invoke 24/7. These sub cultures are regional and participatory in nature.
A slower and quieter approach is needed to find these Other Americas. There are sweat lodges and vision quests regularly held a few hundred feet from Interstate Highway 10 in west Texas with ceremonies conducted in Spanish and Nahautl. Not everyone in the Duwammish region of West Seattle has forgotten the Rock Too Terrible to View, and Thunderbirds still dance in the summer sky over the Great Plains, revealing themselves to those brave or foolish enough to visit them. There are shrines to Saints hidden in the desert of New Mexico, and Inuit traders still follow the routes from Siberia to Alaska, bringing trade goods and stories, just as their ancestors have done for countless thousands of years. These lands do not speak with a single voice, nor are these voices necessarily in English. As North Americans, our crops, festival traditions and language in America have been informed by these peoples, and it does not serve anyone well to forget that.
As is generally true, regions perceived as frontiers are occupied by people thrown out of more "civilized" society. The Clearances in Scotland would produce any number of sandy-haired Lakota speaking, kilt wearing Scots/Lakota cowboys who lived between their two cultures.
There are many, many places where the land has not been forgotten, nor has the land forgotten its children, but these realms cannot be found from an airliner or through traveling down a highway at 70 miles per hour. To borrow a phrase from an Anglican chaplain I know, these are "the thin places" known in other times and places variously as faerie, the lands of the small folk, the first folk, and by many other names.
Following the model that Brandy Williams articulated for the Seattle Pagan Scholars community (http://www.speakeasy.org/~bwilliam/scholars.html) almost a decade ago, here is my self-disclosure on this topic:
Any occultist who claims to not have an agenda probably can't have a pulse either. Look for the guy behind the visage of the "Great and Terrible Oz" in these instances. I don't know if I believe in spirits, but treating them as if they are at least partially external and real results in a shorter and simpler chain of logic than asserting their non-existence.
I have post traumatic stress disorder, courtesy of the NSA. The process of dreaming brings with it the risk of nightmares. Not all of my dreams are terrors, though that is true for the vast majority of them. Many evenings I cannot go to sleep until the sun comes up for fear of what sleep brings. Of those relatively harmless dreams I do have, most of them consist of the normal flotsam and jetsam of the day's happenings leavened with absurdities. Yet there are others...
The dream comes sharp and crisp as the salt spray of the cold Pacific ocean. I breathe, open my eyes, and find myself in the City, the real Seattle.
I've walked its cobbled brick streets for almost two decades now. The city is built on the edge of a desert, a place where the Great Northern Forest of conifers stretches from Mexico to Alaska and converges with two rivers that flow to the Sea. The City rests comfortably in this spot and has been here always in Forever Years.
My oak floored, glass-enclosed second story loft has a view of both rivers and the market, a place where Gods and spirit beings shop for food and exchange stories. There's a visiting spirit from the great plains standing on a corner, dancing and singing to a music that carries the message of thunder beings from far away. Next to him Fox woman minds her children as they wait for a bus to take them home. Past the row of neat "Painted Lady" Victorian houses on my block stands a community theater, owned and operated by an extended family of ritual magicians who have married lodge magic with English drama. My computer, a 2001 Amiga Deskpro's screen glows faintly as I pause to make breakfast for the day.
I'd thought that this place was a fairly private manifestation until I met others who have inhabited the same place. Imagine my shock at finding a Pioneer Square comic book artist who draws this creation that I inhabit but did not invent.
The real Seattle isn't the only place in this realm--I've visited the etheric double of Chicago where a ceremonial magician I know tends to the needs of the Dead in the labyrinthine mausoleum complex that lies at the heart of that metropolis. And there's another person I know whose close spirit companion inhabits a flat in ethereal Atlantic City.
What are all of these places, and how do they relate to esoteric practice? I have no firm idea, save that they exist and exert influence on those of us who wander through them. The phrase that has come to mind is the notion of "an ecology of spirits". One of the great breakthroughs of 19th century New Thought and Spiritualism is the concept that the complexities of the webs of life are in some fashion mirrored in the more subtle realms. I have no clue as to their ultimate origin. Spiritualists that I know assert it is simply enough to know that the spirit realm is tangible, and all other speculations are best saved for after hours discussions with bread, cheese and a bottle of wine gracing the table. From my experiences the inhabitants of the subtle realms are as varied as slime molds, willow trees and elephants.
But back to the Great Awakening of the early 19th century. I'm not sure how many of my readers are familiar with tent style revival meetings. They are much less common now than thirty years ago. For many participants these are visceral, gut wrenching encounters with some of the scariest, most repressed and most hoped for experiences imaginable. And there's almost always a sensual undertone that many people experience as a sort of sexual awakening to their concept of God. Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggert are cousins after all, and the energies of Elvis and Fabian performing in person caused thousands of otherwise perfectly healthy teenage girls to writhe in spasms of ecstasy that equal anything that Teresa of Avila or a Python priestess in classical Greece could have described. And folks in the heartland of early and mid 19th century America were getting salvation on a regular basis. (As for me, my Mennonite grandfather revival-proofed me before the age of eight, and I find Tridentine masses to be more meaningful than the tent based church services.)
The preachers of the 19th century were as adept at manipulating these emotional interactions as any Roman general leading troops into battle. Out of this stream of revival events the seeds of the Noyes' Oneida Colony and the Church of Latter Day Saints were planted, fertilized and harvested. Joseph Smith was one of many folks who were puzzled by the origin of Native Americans. Could they be descended from one of the lost tribes of Israel? Did they leave a cache of golden treasures somewhere nearby, and was he enough of a diviner to find it? What Smith produced was an amazing myth that was strong enough to get folks to move from relatively civilized regions to a desert and build a nation.
So why did spiritualism take the Anglo portions of North America by storm? Forensic sociology is a wide open field, and anyone can play. I suspect that the desire for a personal experience of divinity coupled with populist sentiments was enough to launch and sustain the movement. From my perspective it is a mistake to view the popularity of spiritualism as something that was inevitable, it was simply one of any number of possibilities in the astral gene pool.
The defining moment in Spiritualism as seen by historians was the sequence of events that began with the Fox sisters on March 31st in 1848, just outside of Rochester New York. The three sisters claimed to have heard an insistent rapping that was not explicable, and further, the entity responded when addressed as "Mr. Splitfoot". Said entity described his life before death, resulting in the excavation of a basement. Current opinions on this matter seem to fall into one of two camps with some shades of grey between them.
The noise was either made by one of the girls cracking the joints of her foot or hand, or a differently embodied person was talking to the sisters from beyond the grave.
Modern day spiritualists I've spoken to have proposed a third alternative--why not hold seances and determine for yourself the truth of the claim that spirits can manifest or communicate with the living?
There are three classic phases to a seance (meaning "to sit" in French). The first stage is referred to as "holding the Silence". This is the basic underlying state of consciousness common to most esoteric workings in the over-subcultural Anglo esotericists, the remaining stages being "Concentration" and finally "Meditation".
Considerable differences of opinion exist as to the best means of attaining the Silence. The recitation of a prayer by the group or the singing of a hymn often precedes the working. Flowers and live plants seem to positively influence the spirits, and Subdued lighting is considered beneficial as well. The method I recommend is to consciously listen to the tides of blood and breath and attentively wait for the quiet places between breaths that can allow for manifestation of the Silence. Sit comfortably upright in a favorite chair or couch. Some modern spiritualists use recorded music as an aid to the Silence. Experiment and see what works for you.
The first few dozen or so times it is likely that you'll encounter your own inner chattering rather than an express message from inhabitants of the hollow earth or Zeta Reticulans who have chosen you as their spokesperson. It is possibly a good idea to hold off for a while on writing that multi-volume book series that explains the deep structure of the universe.
The women's movement and the anti-slavery movement were nurtured by spiritualists who tended to view equal rights as a logical consequence of their world view. The foremothers of the Physical Culture movement were involved in spiritualism, magnetic healing and kindred fields up to their eyeballs as well.
"Other Powers" by Barbara Goldsmith is an excellent in depth presentation of the interplay of these social movements, and I highly recommend this book.
Next time--"Gooey Things II" and the arts of storytelling.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
I had intended to start this series out with a brief nod in the general direction of Emmanuel Swedenborg and Francois Mesmer, then proceed without delay to the sad tale of a failed alchemist and diviner, just before arriving at the house of the Fox sisters and their new friend, Mr. Splitfoot.
Along the way to that very brief post, the Universe intervened and persuasively argued for a more complex narration of some of the days before the Victorians. In October, I had some extreme chest pain that didn't subside during an asthma attack. After an hour or so of this, one of my friends drove me to the hospital, where I spent approximately four hours hooked up to an EKG machine, an iv, and a pulse oxygen meter. Between the fuzzy consciousness that the hypoxia of an asthma attack brings while listening to the beeping sound of an EKG in a room with very bright light and the sight of the iv dripping fluids into my arm, I was led inescapably to the Romantic era, alchemy, and the places deep inside us where monsters are kept under lock and key, at least most of the time...
"Gooey Things Part I"
The roots of the Frankenstein story include European alchemy, Taoist healing practices, and the tales of European explorers who'd come back from the New World and Siberia.
1816 was the year "without a summer", due to the Tambora volcano eruption of 1815 . Saying "It was a dark and stormy night" is completely appropriate here, for deep from the mountains of Europe, possibly from Castle Frankenstein itself, stories about 18th century alchemists like Dippel and the electrical experiments of Ben Franklin and Volta would seamlessly fuse in Mary Shelly's mind. Her monster was "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" . The first vampire novel, "The Vampyre" by Polidori was written at the same time as Frankenstein, so both Hollywood staples were born together.
Most folks know the Frankenstein story mainly from the Universal films starring Boris Karloff (and others playing the monster) or the British Hammer Films versions of the 1960's that usually starred Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. The impact of the original novel is generally lost on movie audiences who rarely read the original story. The horror the protagonist Victor Frankenstein faces is one, literally of his own making. Shelley's description of the exact means used to create the monster, (called "Adam" by Shelly in one oral telling of the tale) are left disappointingly vague to those of us who were brought up expecting spark gaps, lightning, and the rest. (The earliest film treatment of the Frankenstein story by the Edison film company in 1910 has the monster created in a bubbling alchemical retort, which is possibly a better fit for the 18th century origins of the monster).
Victor Frankenstein, a student of classical alchemy and naturalism, studies bones in his charnel house, working late into the night by the illumination of a single gutting candle. Once his work is done, the yellow eyes of the monster open and fix on their creator, and he knows he has broken a law of nature in bringing this monstrosity to life and sins further by not destroying it immediately. He compounds his error by creating a second being. (The James Whale sequel to the Universal version of "Frankenstein" titled "The Bride of Frankenstein" is considerably closer to Shelley's tale than any version before or since its time.)
Shelley's monster was of course, not the first artificial being in literature. Most creation myths involve someone or something sculpting the first humans out of dust, the body of a dead god, or something similar. There were many examples of these stories in Europe, including the golems of Jewish mysticism and the homunculus of the alchemists.
Within almost every culture, there's a long tradition that connects breath and bodily fluids with health and the processes that sustain and create life. The classic study of this for the Indo-European world is by Richard Onians, titled "The Origins of European Thought: About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate". An exceptionally deep book, bring your Latin and classical Greek lexicons and a grammar, as many of the text sections aren't in English.
In brief, Onians notes that most European cultures connect cerebro-spinal fluids, tears, semen and blood with expressions of vigor and life. These notions are reflected in the mythologies of Europe as well, giving us the "ichor" that flowed through the veins of Greek deities, the hydromel (sacred honey drink) of the Norse, the wild, rushing torrential streams of poetry from the third cauldron of the ritual poet in the Irish text referred to as "The Cauldron of Poesy", and possibly the soma of the Vedas. For those with access to a really good library or very deep pockets, read "Lady With a Mead Cup: Ritual Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from LA Tene to the Viking Age"by Michael J. Enright. This book is one of the very few deep discussions of the socio-magical role of women in parts of northern Europe, tying together the role of poetry, Sovereignty, political and economic power, sacrifice, the position of women in society and sacred myths.
In modern fiction, there's the crazy General in "Doctor Strangelove" who is very concerned with preserving his vital body fluids and the possibility of theft of same by a woman, raising the possibility he was influenced by Taoist thought.
European alchemists didn't just try to make gold. They would pioneer studies of minerals, acids, and herbal healing. Many alchemical processes simulate fermentation or the natural growth in an organism. The world of an alchemist was a complex place, filled with aetheric fluids as well as influences from the planets and stars. One of the most famous alchemists of the 18th century was Anton Mesmer, born in 1734 and educated in Vienna. He is known to have attended the hypnotic healing sessions of the priest Johann Gassner, who held a metal crucifix while hypnotizing his patient. Mesmer popularized this healing method that operated through hand passes, the intent of the healer, suggestions to the patient, and the playing of a musical instrument, in this case, a glass harmonica. (Mesmer's notebooks reflect his use of a notation set that used more than seventy symbols, something characteristic of many alchemists of that era.)
This second major influence on medicine and popular culture in Europe c. 1800 was Chinese medicine. French Catholic priests in Asia were writing down accounts of the mysterious "magnetic" healing art of China, known to them as "Cong-fou". The healing modalities of the "Cong-fou" as understood by academics and popular writers of the time embraced acupuncture, massage, breathing, and a series of postures and movements that improved the flow of life energy through an organism. By 1817 this had been formalized into the "Swedish Health System" of P. Ling, which would be so popular in books, medical practices and gymnasiums that it would give rise to the military calisthenics in most European armies, and form the base of exercise regimens that were prevalent in the West until the 1930's (It is almost certain that Ling would infuse Delsarte theory into his system, given his use of triads.) Kellogg, the inventor of cold breakfast cereal and the five station health vibrator, would describe this "Cong-fou"as the discipline of moving energy flows through a body, directed by intention. (I'll cover this in greater detail in "Gooey Things II and III")
The third sources for Victorian healing modalities are from unexpected places: Siberia and North America. As Gloria Flaherty has so aptly demonstrated in her book "Shamanism in the 18th Century", popular and academic writers were fascinated by tales of the healer-priests in these diverse "primitive" societies. Algonquin first peoples and the shamans of Siberia used gestures, massage, dancing, and other techniques that resembled not only European alchemy but this exotic Chinese import "Cong-fou" as well.
One convergence point for all of this is Shelley's Frankenstein.
What's interesting is that in the almost two centuries between the publication of this novel and our time, it has come to be regarded as the first science fiction novel, more so than any work by Verne or other 19th century authors. So the prototypical cultural story of science and mankind gone wrong was penned by a Romantic writer and based on the principles of alchemy.
Before we get to the Victorians proper there are two more actors in this drama to consider--Emmanuel Swedenborg and John Chapman. Swedenborg (1688 to 1772) was an influential mystic and prolific writer. While it would take too long to get into his metaphysics here, there's one bit of relevance to the lifestyles of many later Victorians--Swedenborg believed in spirit wives. Swedenborg was not the only person to hit on this notion-- there are strong implications in the lives of many of the Catholic saints who had "Christ for a Bridegroom". Teresa of Avila, to cite one, and described her ecstatic experiences in fairly earthy sensual terms. Contemporary Korean mu dongs (priestesses) have spirit spouses, as do tribal healers all over the world. Virtually all of the spiritists, spiritualists and New Thought authors will cheerfully refer their readers back to the voluminous writings of Swedenborg for details on this, as will I.
John Chapman, aka "Johnny Appleseed" (1744? to 1845?) was a Swedenborgian arborist who was wealthy enough to roam the frontiers of the Ohio Valley and Illinois, planting apples as he wandered and distribute tracts by Swedenborg. Chapman never married on this plane of existence, preferring the company of his two spirit wives.
Next time I'll introduce a God-fearin' treasure seeker and the Fox sisters with their controversial friend, Mr Splitfoot.
Along the way to that very brief post, the Universe intervened and persuasively argued for a more complex narration of some of the days before the Victorians. In October, I had some extreme chest pain that didn't subside during an asthma attack. After an hour or so of this, one of my friends drove me to the hospital, where I spent approximately four hours hooked up to an EKG machine, an iv, and a pulse oxygen meter. Between the fuzzy consciousness that the hypoxia of an asthma attack brings while listening to the beeping sound of an EKG in a room with very bright light and the sight of the iv dripping fluids into my arm, I was led inescapably to the Romantic era, alchemy, and the places deep inside us where monsters are kept under lock and key, at least most of the time...
"Gooey Things Part I"
The roots of the Frankenstein story include European alchemy, Taoist healing practices, and the tales of European explorers who'd come back from the New World and Siberia.
1816 was the year "without a summer", due to the Tambora volcano eruption of 1815 . Saying "It was a dark and stormy night" is completely appropriate here, for deep from the mountains of Europe, possibly from Castle Frankenstein itself, stories about 18th century alchemists like Dippel and the electrical experiments of Ben Franklin and Volta would seamlessly fuse in Mary Shelly's mind. Her monster was "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" . The first vampire novel, "The Vampyre" by Polidori was written at the same time as Frankenstein, so both Hollywood staples were born together.
Most folks know the Frankenstein story mainly from the Universal films starring Boris Karloff (and others playing the monster) or the British Hammer Films versions of the 1960's that usually starred Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. The impact of the original novel is generally lost on movie audiences who rarely read the original story. The horror the protagonist Victor Frankenstein faces is one, literally of his own making. Shelley's description of the exact means used to create the monster, (called "Adam" by Shelly in one oral telling of the tale) are left disappointingly vague to those of us who were brought up expecting spark gaps, lightning, and the rest. (The earliest film treatment of the Frankenstein story by the Edison film company in 1910 has the monster created in a bubbling alchemical retort, which is possibly a better fit for the 18th century origins of the monster).
Victor Frankenstein, a student of classical alchemy and naturalism, studies bones in his charnel house, working late into the night by the illumination of a single gutting candle. Once his work is done, the yellow eyes of the monster open and fix on their creator, and he knows he has broken a law of nature in bringing this monstrosity to life and sins further by not destroying it immediately. He compounds his error by creating a second being. (The James Whale sequel to the Universal version of "Frankenstein" titled "The Bride of Frankenstein" is considerably closer to Shelley's tale than any version before or since its time.)
Shelley's monster was of course, not the first artificial being in literature. Most creation myths involve someone or something sculpting the first humans out of dust, the body of a dead god, or something similar. There were many examples of these stories in Europe, including the golems of Jewish mysticism and the homunculus of the alchemists.
Within almost every culture, there's a long tradition that connects breath and bodily fluids with health and the processes that sustain and create life. The classic study of this for the Indo-European world is by Richard Onians, titled "The Origins of European Thought: About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate". An exceptionally deep book, bring your Latin and classical Greek lexicons and a grammar, as many of the text sections aren't in English.
In brief, Onians notes that most European cultures connect cerebro-spinal fluids, tears, semen and blood with expressions of vigor and life. These notions are reflected in the mythologies of Europe as well, giving us the "ichor" that flowed through the veins of Greek deities, the hydromel (sacred honey drink) of the Norse, the wild, rushing torrential streams of poetry from the third cauldron of the ritual poet in the Irish text referred to as "The Cauldron of Poesy", and possibly the soma of the Vedas. For those with access to a really good library or very deep pockets, read "Lady With a Mead Cup: Ritual Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from LA Tene to the Viking Age"by Michael J. Enright. This book is one of the very few deep discussions of the socio-magical role of women in parts of northern Europe, tying together the role of poetry, Sovereignty, political and economic power, sacrifice, the position of women in society and sacred myths.
In modern fiction, there's the crazy General in "Doctor Strangelove" who is very concerned with preserving his vital body fluids and the possibility of theft of same by a woman, raising the possibility he was influenced by Taoist thought.
European alchemists didn't just try to make gold. They would pioneer studies of minerals, acids, and herbal healing. Many alchemical processes simulate fermentation or the natural growth in an organism. The world of an alchemist was a complex place, filled with aetheric fluids as well as influences from the planets and stars. One of the most famous alchemists of the 18th century was Anton Mesmer, born in 1734 and educated in Vienna. He is known to have attended the hypnotic healing sessions of the priest Johann Gassner, who held a metal crucifix while hypnotizing his patient. Mesmer popularized this healing method that operated through hand passes, the intent of the healer, suggestions to the patient, and the playing of a musical instrument, in this case, a glass harmonica. (Mesmer's notebooks reflect his use of a notation set that used more than seventy symbols, something characteristic of many alchemists of that era.)
This second major influence on medicine and popular culture in Europe c. 1800 was Chinese medicine. French Catholic priests in Asia were writing down accounts of the mysterious "magnetic" healing art of China, known to them as "Cong-fou". The healing modalities of the "Cong-fou" as understood by academics and popular writers of the time embraced acupuncture, massage, breathing, and a series of postures and movements that improved the flow of life energy through an organism. By 1817 this had been formalized into the "Swedish Health System" of P. Ling, which would be so popular in books, medical practices and gymnasiums that it would give rise to the military calisthenics in most European armies, and form the base of exercise regimens that were prevalent in the West until the 1930's (It is almost certain that Ling would infuse Delsarte theory into his system, given his use of triads.) Kellogg, the inventor of cold breakfast cereal and the five station health vibrator, would describe this "Cong-fou"as the discipline of moving energy flows through a body, directed by intention. (I'll cover this in greater detail in "Gooey Things II and III")
The third sources for Victorian healing modalities are from unexpected places: Siberia and North America. As Gloria Flaherty has so aptly demonstrated in her book "Shamanism in the 18th Century", popular and academic writers were fascinated by tales of the healer-priests in these diverse "primitive" societies. Algonquin first peoples and the shamans of Siberia used gestures, massage, dancing, and other techniques that resembled not only European alchemy but this exotic Chinese import "Cong-fou" as well.
One convergence point for all of this is Shelley's Frankenstein.
What's interesting is that in the almost two centuries between the publication of this novel and our time, it has come to be regarded as the first science fiction novel, more so than any work by Verne or other 19th century authors. So the prototypical cultural story of science and mankind gone wrong was penned by a Romantic writer and based on the principles of alchemy.
Before we get to the Victorians proper there are two more actors in this drama to consider--Emmanuel Swedenborg and John Chapman. Swedenborg (1688 to 1772) was an influential mystic and prolific writer. While it would take too long to get into his metaphysics here, there's one bit of relevance to the lifestyles of many later Victorians--Swedenborg believed in spirit wives. Swedenborg was not the only person to hit on this notion-- there are strong implications in the lives of many of the Catholic saints who had "Christ for a Bridegroom". Teresa of Avila, to cite one, and described her ecstatic experiences in fairly earthy sensual terms. Contemporary Korean mu dongs (priestesses) have spirit spouses, as do tribal healers all over the world. Virtually all of the spiritists, spiritualists and New Thought authors will cheerfully refer their readers back to the voluminous writings of Swedenborg for details on this, as will I.
John Chapman, aka "Johnny Appleseed" (1744? to 1845?) was a Swedenborgian arborist who was wealthy enough to roam the frontiers of the Ohio Valley and Illinois, planting apples as he wandered and distribute tracts by Swedenborg. Chapman never married on this plane of existence, preferring the company of his two spirit wives.
Next time I'll introduce a God-fearin' treasure seeker and the Fox sisters with their controversial friend, Mr Splitfoot.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Samhain Interlude, 2006
I've been reading poetry aloud as a devotional practice for a while, following John Plummer's discussion of the use of this technique by Rudolph Steiner. John Plummer's book "Living Mysteries" is an excellent point of departure for folks wondering what to do once the veil between the worlds has been dropped.
Here is one of the selections I chose for this Samhain, reading it aloud in my nemyss.
From God's Drum by Hartley Alexander---
The Last Song
Let it be beautiful
when I sing the last song-------
Let it be day!
I would stand upon my two feet,
singing!
I would look upwards with open eyes,
singing!
I would have the winds to envelope my body;
I would have the sun to shine upon my body;
The whole world I would have to make music with me!
Let it be beautiful
when thou wouldst slay me, O Shining One!
Let it be day
when I sing the last song!
----------------------------------
O Mitakuye Oyasin Pahizi. May you dream well with the thunderbirds.
I've been reading poetry aloud as a devotional practice for a while, following John Plummer's discussion of the use of this technique by Rudolph Steiner. John Plummer's book "Living Mysteries" is an excellent point of departure for folks wondering what to do once the veil between the worlds has been dropped.
Here is one of the selections I chose for this Samhain, reading it aloud in my nemyss.
From God's Drum by Hartley Alexander---
The Last Song
Let it be beautiful
when I sing the last song-------
Let it be day!
I would stand upon my two feet,
singing!
I would look upwards with open eyes,
singing!
I would have the winds to envelope my body;
I would have the sun to shine upon my body;
The whole world I would have to make music with me!
Let it be beautiful
when thou wouldst slay me, O Shining One!
Let it be day
when I sing the last song!
----------------------------------
O Mitakuye Oyasin Pahizi. May you dream well with the thunderbirds.
Victorians and Color
Before getting into the pre-history of the Victorian Era, I thought it relevant to discuss several related topics: Colour and images of the Victorians. Prior to the advent of coal tar dyes, the available color choices for artists were fairly dull. True, chromium compounds produced a vivid (and toxic) yellow color, but intense reds, purples and blues were either so expensive they were financially out of reach or not possible with the pigments an artist could grind from minerals at the end of the 18th century.
All of this was to change when a chemistry student botched an attempt to syntheisize quinine. What he produced was mauvine, a purple-red dye that was the first of the synthetic dyes. Mauvine is no longer available commercially, but if someone asks I can forward them the procedure for making a batch of it at home in the sort of lab that a moderately competent alchemist would have available to them. There's a certain amount of evidence that mauvine was the dyestuff used to back mirrors of the sort used by mystics in the middle to late 19th century, so this would be a useful choice for folks looking to make tools with a sympathetic resonance factor.
The Victorian Era brought us multi-colored houses --"Painted Ladies". The use of color in the Golden Dawn reflects their interest in vivid colors. Extending this notion to the 21st century, one arrives at new options for sigils and symbols. There's no reason that a lodge could not use neon signage to make glyphs, and the Golden Dawn discovery of flashing colors could be more fully realized on computer screens. It is certainly possible and useful to consider constructing Ogham glyphs that unfold in fractal patterns, mutating into a second, third and fourth iteration on a screen as foci for meditations. Transitions between concepts, words or letters can be easily managed with the same sort of software that results in the image display function in Itunes.Computer graphics would allow a similar treatement of alchemical symbols. This can naturally be joined to audio as well.
Photography begins with the 18th century discovery that silver nitrate blackens on exposure to sunlight. It was not much of a stretch for inventors to put paper coated with silver nitrate into a camera obscura or similar device and produce an image. The difficulty was that the image inevitably degraded when viewed in sunlight. Hershel, the great scientist of the 19th century would discover the fixative agent sodium thiosulphate ("hypo") as the result of a mistake in the lab. By 1819 at the latest, semi-permanant images were available to inventors. (There's a strong possibility that a fiber artist named Fulghame (spelling may be wrong) invented photo textile processes prior to this date.) Once Fox Talbot, a failed artist, married Hershel's hypo to his camera obscura and lenses, art and science united for a time through the medium of photography. Later processes (no longer very popular) would include gum bichromate and casein bichromate. The cyanotype process (blueprint for those of you over the age of 40) was another invention of Hershel's. Rather conveniently he also invented stainless steels, which proved useful in lab work.
Photography was a hazardous business early on, and photographers had short lifespans. Bending over pans of heated mercury, rinsing images in cyanide compounds and potassium oxalate took a toll, and I suspect for this reason, many 19th century photographers were fascinated with Spiritualism.
Silver photographic images were and are subject to fading. A Victorian Committee ("The Fading Committee") looked into the matter circa 1870 and discovered that images could be made archival by replacing the silver salts in the paper with gold, platinum or palladium salts. These prints aren't black and white--they reveal themselves in subtle shades of purplish blacks and rich browntones. (What we think of as black and white photographs date roughly to the 1930's and the "F64" school of photography in the States. )
At roughly the same time aniline dyes were being invented, physiologists and toy makers were discovering and applying the phenomenon known as "persistence of vision". There were any number of toys like the zoetrope that could show a small cartoon figure or line drawing move from position to position. Joining this understanding with celluloid film resulted in the invention of motion pictures in France. (Even color film was possible via handpainting of single frames.)
Next time, I'll get into the prehistory of the Victorian Era. I'd like to say a big "Hello!" to the founders of my fan club in West Bremerton, Violet, Ivy and their friend Captain Morgan. Keep those cards and letters coming.
Before getting into the pre-history of the Victorian Era, I thought it relevant to discuss several related topics: Colour and images of the Victorians. Prior to the advent of coal tar dyes, the available color choices for artists were fairly dull. True, chromium compounds produced a vivid (and toxic) yellow color, but intense reds, purples and blues were either so expensive they were financially out of reach or not possible with the pigments an artist could grind from minerals at the end of the 18th century.
All of this was to change when a chemistry student botched an attempt to syntheisize quinine. What he produced was mauvine, a purple-red dye that was the first of the synthetic dyes. Mauvine is no longer available commercially, but if someone asks I can forward them the procedure for making a batch of it at home in the sort of lab that a moderately competent alchemist would have available to them. There's a certain amount of evidence that mauvine was the dyestuff used to back mirrors of the sort used by mystics in the middle to late 19th century, so this would be a useful choice for folks looking to make tools with a sympathetic resonance factor.
The Victorian Era brought us multi-colored houses --"Painted Ladies". The use of color in the Golden Dawn reflects their interest in vivid colors. Extending this notion to the 21st century, one arrives at new options for sigils and symbols. There's no reason that a lodge could not use neon signage to make glyphs, and the Golden Dawn discovery of flashing colors could be more fully realized on computer screens. It is certainly possible and useful to consider constructing Ogham glyphs that unfold in fractal patterns, mutating into a second, third and fourth iteration on a screen as foci for meditations. Transitions between concepts, words or letters can be easily managed with the same sort of software that results in the image display function in Itunes.Computer graphics would allow a similar treatement of alchemical symbols. This can naturally be joined to audio as well.
Photography begins with the 18th century discovery that silver nitrate blackens on exposure to sunlight. It was not much of a stretch for inventors to put paper coated with silver nitrate into a camera obscura or similar device and produce an image. The difficulty was that the image inevitably degraded when viewed in sunlight. Hershel, the great scientist of the 19th century would discover the fixative agent sodium thiosulphate ("hypo") as the result of a mistake in the lab. By 1819 at the latest, semi-permanant images were available to inventors. (There's a strong possibility that a fiber artist named Fulghame (spelling may be wrong) invented photo textile processes prior to this date.) Once Fox Talbot, a failed artist, married Hershel's hypo to his camera obscura and lenses, art and science united for a time through the medium of photography. Later processes (no longer very popular) would include gum bichromate and casein bichromate. The cyanotype process (blueprint for those of you over the age of 40) was another invention of Hershel's. Rather conveniently he also invented stainless steels, which proved useful in lab work.
Photography was a hazardous business early on, and photographers had short lifespans. Bending over pans of heated mercury, rinsing images in cyanide compounds and potassium oxalate took a toll, and I suspect for this reason, many 19th century photographers were fascinated with Spiritualism.
Silver photographic images were and are subject to fading. A Victorian Committee ("The Fading Committee") looked into the matter circa 1870 and discovered that images could be made archival by replacing the silver salts in the paper with gold, platinum or palladium salts. These prints aren't black and white--they reveal themselves in subtle shades of purplish blacks and rich browntones. (What we think of as black and white photographs date roughly to the 1930's and the "F64" school of photography in the States. )
At roughly the same time aniline dyes were being invented, physiologists and toy makers were discovering and applying the phenomenon known as "persistence of vision". There were any number of toys like the zoetrope that could show a small cartoon figure or line drawing move from position to position. Joining this understanding with celluloid film resulted in the invention of motion pictures in France. (Even color film was possible via handpainting of single frames.)
Next time, I'll get into the prehistory of the Victorian Era. I'd like to say a big "Hello!" to the founders of my fan club in West Bremerton, Violet, Ivy and their friend Captain Morgan. Keep those cards and letters coming.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Sacraments of Many Colors
Those of us who identify as druids have inherited many of our notions of civilization from Rome. Emotionally, I suspect that we unconsciously yearn for the temples of Magna Mater, the Rites of Eleusis, and sometimes fancy ourselves residents of Alexandria so we can celebrate the mysteries of Isis on the Nile.
Our cultural models of priestcraft largely derive from Egypt, either through writers of the New Testament who couched their discussion of Christianity in terms of the Mystery cults of the Roman world, or from Moses, who was supposedly trained in the court of the Pharohs. Individually and collectively, we move through life seeking supernal experiences, the whispers of voices heard in the mists, as we pursue a Lover that we rarely see yet are never far from.
The processes of inquiry and research should not be conflated with gnosis, or we risk the creation of new and less obvious myths based in some small corner of academia. As an example of this, suppose that recent scholarship in Celtic studies revealed that a figure generally celebrated as a deity in the druidic community turned out to be a late and post-Christian borrowing, a linguistic hat trick, as it were. Oops.
Does this mean that those folks in the druidic and CR communities who have held festivals in honor of this figure now have to ignore those experiences, editing them out of consciousness with the ruthless efficiency of a Kremlin historian of the 1940's? Would folks working within an academic paradigm have to now insist that all of these ritual experiences were irrelevant or didn't happen? This doesn't mean that all assertions possess the same value--insisting that my Irish great-grandmother was secretly a shamaness in Dublin a century ago still won't make it so.
As participants in the neo-Romantic movement (which is turf generally, if unconsciously occupied by Euro-Pagans) our methodologies embrace a sense of poetry, mystery and esthetics. It has occurred to me that much of what Ross Nichols articulated in his discussions of druidry in his volume "The Cosmic Shape" were attempts at sacraments of the living earth. One of the presentations of this is in Western culture is through what Hildegard called "viriditas". The published literature in most Euro-Paganism is directed towards celebrating the mysteries of the Green. In reflecting further, there are at least three ways in which life is embodied and celebrated within the modern neo-Romantic movement:
There is the Green, or the world of plants, the source of oxygen that we metazoans rely on for life. We consume the Green, and it in turn consumes us and our waste products. This isn't all that there is, however. There are sacraments of the Red, Mysteries of animal life, including birth, death and expressions of sexuality. We also have the Mysteries of the Grey, the fungus of the world, which offer us Sacramental experiences that can alter consciousness profoundly, as in the case of Aminita muscaria or Ale. (Yes, this description is incomplete, as I've entirely ignored the Archaea and the Protista. This model isn't perfect, just a point of departure for personal and group exploration.) If one finds the adoption of the notion of Gaea as an organism useful, I think that there is poetry and utility in viewing these three realms as sentient beings. In attempting to find and celebrate these sacraments, there's much to be learned from the traditions of the Catholic Church as well as the priests of Shinto, Shingon and other faiths around the world.
These are three of the Lovers that we pursue in ritual and dreams. I suggest that one of the goals of a druid lies in the quest for these Divine Ladies, clad in Green, Red and Grey. While these entities never appear as discrete beings in the natural world, there's no reason to suppose that they don't have an egregore or over-spirit that we can touch. One of the useful benefits of this paradigm is that the mechanisms of evolution become, at least on this planet, an expression of Process Theology. In a very real sense, the embodied Supernal evolves and changes over time.
Next time, I"ll discuss the pre-history of the Victorian Era and introduce my readers to a crazy arborist with two wives.
Our cultural models of priestcraft largely derive from Egypt, either through writers of the New Testament who couched their discussion of Christianity in terms of the Mystery cults of the Roman world, or from Moses, who was supposedly trained in the court of the Pharohs. Individually and collectively, we move through life seeking supernal experiences, the whispers of voices heard in the mists, as we pursue a Lover that we rarely see yet are never far from.
The processes of inquiry and research should not be conflated with gnosis, or we risk the creation of new and less obvious myths based in some small corner of academia. As an example of this, suppose that recent scholarship in Celtic studies revealed that a figure generally celebrated as a deity in the druidic community turned out to be a late and post-Christian borrowing, a linguistic hat trick, as it were. Oops.
Does this mean that those folks in the druidic and CR communities who have held festivals in honor of this figure now have to ignore those experiences, editing them out of consciousness with the ruthless efficiency of a Kremlin historian of the 1940's? Would folks working within an academic paradigm have to now insist that all of these ritual experiences were irrelevant or didn't happen? This doesn't mean that all assertions possess the same value--insisting that my Irish great-grandmother was secretly a shamaness in Dublin a century ago still won't make it so.
As participants in the neo-Romantic movement (which is turf generally, if unconsciously occupied by Euro-Pagans) our methodologies embrace a sense of poetry, mystery and esthetics. It has occurred to me that much of what Ross Nichols articulated in his discussions of druidry in his volume "The Cosmic Shape" were attempts at sacraments of the living earth. One of the presentations of this is in Western culture is through what Hildegard called "viriditas". The published literature in most Euro-Paganism is directed towards celebrating the mysteries of the Green. In reflecting further, there are at least three ways in which life is embodied and celebrated within the modern neo-Romantic movement:
There is the Green, or the world of plants, the source of oxygen that we metazoans rely on for life. We consume the Green, and it in turn consumes us and our waste products. This isn't all that there is, however. There are sacraments of the Red, Mysteries of animal life, including birth, death and expressions of sexuality. We also have the Mysteries of the Grey, the fungus of the world, which offer us Sacramental experiences that can alter consciousness profoundly, as in the case of Aminita muscaria or Ale. (Yes, this description is incomplete, as I've entirely ignored the Archaea and the Protista. This model isn't perfect, just a point of departure for personal and group exploration.) If one finds the adoption of the notion of Gaea as an organism useful, I think that there is poetry and utility in viewing these three realms as sentient beings. In attempting to find and celebrate these sacraments, there's much to be learned from the traditions of the Catholic Church as well as the priests of Shinto, Shingon and other faiths around the world.
These are three of the Lovers that we pursue in ritual and dreams. I suggest that one of the goals of a druid lies in the quest for these Divine Ladies, clad in Green, Red and Grey. While these entities never appear as discrete beings in the natural world, there's no reason to suppose that they don't have an egregore or over-spirit that we can touch. One of the useful benefits of this paradigm is that the mechanisms of evolution become, at least on this planet, an expression of Process Theology. In a very real sense, the embodied Supernal evolves and changes over time.
Next time, I"ll discuss the pre-history of the Victorian Era and introduce my readers to a crazy arborist with two wives.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
This project has been fermenting for an awfully long time----my notes on Physical Culture go back to the controversial bits on Woodcraft that I've researched and discussed in other forums, and that work was done in the 1990's. My cross-check of data through the pages of "Physical Culture" Magazine (by Macfadden) revealed something interesting in the ad pages---there were lots and lots of ads for what John Michael Greer has termed "Self-Improvement" books, courses and retreat centers.
"Self-Improvement" embraces quite a few disciplines, many of which are enumerated in the list below. It has taken me about a decade to realize that how popular all of this was. If a minister of the 1880's would have predicted the Christianity of the 20th century, Fundamentalism wouldn't have been in the running. It surprises me that the Spiritualist Churches and New Thought didn't fare that well after WWI.
I've finally gotten somewhat of a handle on sorting through the messy history of Victorian spirituality of the 1890's. There were a lot of overlapping movements that many people participated in at the same time. The short list is:
Suffragette Movement
Public Health Movement
Physical Culture Movement
Spiritualism, including all derived techniques, (i.e."Magnetic Healing" "Practical Psychology" "Mental Alchemy" etc.)
The Rise of Psychology as a Discipline
The Closing of the American West
Folklore Movement
Discovery and publication of the Egyptian Book of the Dead Text and other works on Egyptian Mythology by many authors, includng Budge and Murray. (Yep, that would be Margaret Murray)
Fantasy Literature, with particular attention paid to the Goddesses in Fiction ("She" by Haggard was a best seller, and quite a few authors were writing about Goddesses, reincarnation, etc. at this time, as I have pointed out for the past 22 years)
The notion of evolution as progress
Fraternal and Sororal Lodges
Delsarte dance, statue posing and oration techniques
Archaeology as a scientific discipline
The "Rest Cure" and books on relaxation and the Will
The Parliment of World Religions Conference in Chicago in 1892
Victorian Pornography (Swinburne, the journal "the Pearl" gay and straight suggestive pictures)
Other Writers, including Walt Whitman and dozens of poets not as good as Whitman
The rediscovery of animal intelligence. (Prior to this time, science such as it was viewed animals as automotons lacking feeling or decision making ability)
Memory Training Courses
What is fascinating in all of this is how many women were active in quite a few of these activities as leaders. Mary Baker Eddy founds Christian Science in this timeframe, and quite a few of her cohorts were almost as successful in organizing churches that fall under the broad category of "New Thought", a movement resulting from the Spiritualist practices of Quimby in the 1850's. As one historian of physical culture has written, quite a few of the women involved in Physical Culture in the 1870's (earlier and later as well) were spiritualists or into kindred movements.
We can't forget other figures of the times, like Elsa Barker, who managed to be active in the Golden Dawn, New Thought, Mediumship, and Seton's Red Lodge in the Woodcraft League.
The prize for overlap, however, goes to Genevieve Stebbins, who provided a bridge between the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and Delsartism. As a bonus she spans the gap between the metaphysics of the 19th century and the 20th, as she was influential in helping the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) getting started, while her statue posing as Isis was the event that spurred Ruth St. Denis to dance Goddesses and found Modern American Dance with Ted Shawn, her sometimes husband and co-choreographer.
William Walker Atkinson, aka Yogi Ramacharaka, aka Magus Incognito, aka Theron Q. Dumont, etc., was one of the pivotal figures in this whole mess. Atkinson was originally a highly successful lawyer who suffered a nervous breakdown. New Thought practices proved to be healing for him, and he at some point started writing for Nautilus Magazine (the premier journal of New Thought in Chicago, IL). Sometime later he became involved with the Chicago Golden Dawn temple. His major contribution viewed from our time (but probably not his) was the almost seamless integration of classical Hermeticism with New Thought through the slender but deep book "The Kybalion".
I read Atkinson's writings as a corrective to the perspective held by many Golden Dawn initiates of the present day, which sees no Christian basis for the implementation of the HOGD other than the Church of England. New Thought played a role, certainly, in US Golden Dawn materials. I doubt few people have read all of Atkinson's works (he was prolific), but a glance at the list of titles should be enough to let folks realize that Clairvoyance, Gazing, the development of the Will, Magnetic Healing, etc. training programs and clubs were wildly popular from roughly 1860 through the 1920's. I'm working on appropriating, um, that is developing my own explication of all of this as the context in which the Golden Dawn would have been implemented by its first and second generation of practicioners. Folks did not show up in the H.O.G.D. empty handed---they would have had a better than nodding comprehension of all the fields of study mentioned above. Cementing this was the high participation in Lodges such as the Rebekahs, the Odd Fellows, Masons, and dozens of other organizations that didn't survive into the late 20th century. John Michael Greer has written an excellent and under-appreciated book on this topic of the connections between Fraternal and Ceremonial Lodges that the wise reader of this blog will seek out and purchase.
The Temperance Movement and the Battle for Women's Rights requires the drawing of yet more Venn diagrams between these communities as well. The Spiritualist, New Thought and derived philosophies were not just active in large cities like Boston, but rural communities in Kansas, California and elsewhere supported clubs or lodges that sponsored correspondence courses in quite a few disciplines.
I'm tenatively planning the release of my course in Victorian Self-Improvement for my 50th birthday (May of 2008), with a few days of lectures on the topic and simultaneous publication on a web site. Between now and then I'll need to plow through about six to seven thousand pages of source materials, spend a year or so sorting through all of it, before I can say much that is relevant on the subject.
This material will form what amounts to the first and middle third of my book on druidry, provisionally titled "Coming Forth By Star and Stone: A User's Guide to North American Druidry".
I've realized that I write well in short essays, so will continue that for the book. There's been some fairly enthusiastic reception of my article on Wild-Crafting your own Druidry, and hopefully folks who live in biomes other than the desert Southwest will communicate some of their results to me.
While not wishing to be considered anti-intellectual, I wish that more people in Druidry and kindred movements would consider the Book of Nature to be the primary source work. There comes a time when the texts, with all of their shiny credentials and copious verbage must be put aside as one sees a sunset, walks through the mists in the cool of Autumn or prunes rosebushes. "What has it done to you?" should be the final criteria for experience. One of the main problems with a previous body of work of mine that was co-created with another person was that people confused process for results. I'm going to be much more blunt with text and lecture this time around, and hope that it will result in less misunderstanding
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
