Oculus Apex Temporalis

Demiurge & Superego in the Acts of Consecration

(Note - This article will be available for two weeks for free subscribers.)

I. Sacramental Performance

All rites are staged. A stage implies a spectator. We are discussing a particular kind of spectator who haunts even the solitary and isolated rituals of the priest or priestess. Who is this enjoyer of sacrificial gestures & invocations?

Sincere there may or may not be an external human audience for the acts of consecration, this spectator, the One-Who-Acknowledges-The-Rites, must be either:

(a) part of the performer (psychological interpretation)

(b) an imaginal or supernatural being (visionary interpretation).

Xagick lurks between these options. We are not especially interested here in claims about cosmos & psychology but rather we wish to gain skill in using the implied phenomenological architecture. We want to make use of the tempo (temporalis) that emerges as we coordinate ourselves with the One Above (apex) Who Recognizes (oculus) the Gestures of Consecration.

Ritual practice involves a form of mindfulness in which the “mind” is not directly identified as the personal Self but is displaced toward the peak of the imaginal amphitheater in which our subjective, objective, and intersubjective experience is co-enacted. This kind of embodied mindfulness is mediated through the idea of a liminal-but-maximal & eternalized seer who urges, or summons, or entices, us into our sacralizing modality.

Is it really there? Does it actually have preferences? Is it eternal? Is eternity even thinkable? We are not particularly interested in these ultraphilosophical questions. Our aim is more practical. It is, as said above, to make use of the imaginal scaffolding of our perceptual and cognitive experience to enter more deeply into the mode of sacred participation.

Sacramental performance is invoked and coordinated by a function that is commonly described as an encouraging & acknowledging overseer. It is very abstract. It hovers on the threshold. More specific descriptions of this function are variable. They include both the idea of a Spirit and the idea of the Superego.

This function (site, node, pattern, structure, vanishing meditator) seems to have the following characteristics:

• it looks down upon us in our field of interactions

• it urges us to use discipline and attention to enjoy sacrificial repetition

• it evaluates the quality of gestures and tempo

• it operates as our own selfhood displaced into transjective space

• it can be clothed in various psychological and sociological forms

• it is not quite a singularity and not quite a plurality

• it orients our attitude of “offering”

These characteristics could describe either the superego or a religio-ontological assertion of a Great Being. In both cases, the description can skew positively or negatively. We can get an obscene/suppressive version or else a cleaner, minimalist, and functional version.

Xagick requires us to get better at acknowledging this Acknowledger.

What does better mean? It means that we must both increase our ability to tease this structure apart from its specific social and psychological forms & we must be able to recollect and invoke its functions to empower the state (and “stage”) in which our experimental rituals are enacted.

II. The Half-Real Act

Xagick is dramaturgical but not theatrical. Acting derives from shamanism (not the other way around) but the shamans are not actors in the usual sense. A special balance must be found between really performing & being yourself. This is not professional thespian craft. Consecration is not entertainment and transfiguration is not a pep rally. In fact, a pathway of self-narrowing “dark magic” can result from becoming overly motivated toward the intensity and persuasiveness of the spectacle. Social mentality continually attempts to recapture the sacred.

Yet it nonetheless is performance. A chant is not simply whatever you feel like saying. An altar is not the normal arrangement of objects. A sexual rite is not the indulgence of your usual proclivities and anxieties. It is a service and demonstration. It “wishes” to be registered into the repetitions of eternity.

Sacramental performance haunts a threshold between the authentic & the formal. This threshold appears in a distorted form on Reality TV where life and entertainment become entangled and ambiguous. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan observed that telecommunications satellites have turned Shakespeare’s poetic dictum (“all the world’s a stage”) into a physical reality. We are all on a stage in our daily lives. A great Eye surveils us from above and communicates our acts to unseen audiences. This contemporary technological circumstance duplicates an implied structure found anciently etched upon the individual’s perceptual field and within society’s patterns of self-regulation. This shape can be oppressive but it might also be used to enter a nondual blending of un/reality that orients our experience toward sur-realisme.

Oculus Apex is a whimsical term for this “satellite” that gazes down from the North Pole of our cognitive torus of perceptions & relationships. It is a pure reference point that wants to see the ritual enacted.

Orienting properly to this referent (a focal amplification of the plural they who surround us) enables us to access a certain sensibility, tempo & orientation. This is highly useful in enacting the sacramental mode of non-theatrical performance.

Liber Legis I: 52 —

If this be not aright; if ye confound the space-marks, saying: They are one; or saying, They are many; if the ritual be not ever unto me: then expect the direful judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit!

Under ordinary circumstances, we truncate our experience of being Self’d Others & Other’d Selves. The “dividual” relationships that generate the “I” experience for the multidimensional organism operate like a semantic loop. It traces through the Other to produce the (team of) Self. This happens just outside the normal foreground of our awareness. Living ritual brings all this scaffolding onto the stage by recalling it, envisioning it, and acting in response to it.

Ritual must demonstratively regenerate full awareness of the circuit that underlabors the “I” by making space for its presence through uncontracted devotional attention.

As we decontract, to include the full subliminal structure of this experiential moment, Oculus Apex appears. The membrane expands to include this node. He watches. It evaluates. They encourage. She looks down on the organism with a sublime excess of meaningfulness, request & delighted recognition.

But these characteristics are balanced on a knife’s edge between ordinary and extraordinary, between healthy and degenerative. It slides too easily into the obscene agency of the Freudian superego or the Gnostic demiurge…

III. The “Top Devil” Unveiled

Sigmund Freud was brilliant in his idiosyncratic interweaving of Nietzsche, hypnosis, free association, 19th-century neuroscience, dreamwork & hermeneutic insights into the alternative “communications” hidden between our phrases.

It is no wonder that he gave birth to a new discourse that altered civilization and attracted the brightest young geniuses of his era. They also criticized him. They were repulsed by his pessimism, conformism, emotional discomforts, control fixations, reductionist superficiality, and biased views on normal family relations.

His student Wilhelm Reich complained that Freud had rejected the body, misunderstood pleasure, and mistook toxic civilization for the only and inevitable form of culture. Carl Jung complained that Freud rejected the mythic, neurogenetic, alchemical, and synchronistic dimensions of reality. Later, Jacques Lacan would say that we must try to rescue Freud’s structures from Freud’s attitudes. And this involved rethinking the Freudian superego.

It is not simply the case that our organizational self-identity (ego) must obey the moral discipline of the social overseer (super-ego) to stave off the horrifying sexuality and sadism of the grotesque, incestuous animal (id). That is very old-fashioned. Such a view purports to be modern but still conspires with traditional cults and cultures who enforce the suppressive pretense that we should subordinate ego in the service of judgemental, “all-knowing and superpotent” monarchs, presidents, mothers, fathers & founders.

Critical postmodern thinking cannot ignore that this internal “voice” is also an obscene hypocrite who is responsible for social and domestic abuse, and who takes pleasure in the anxiety that its moralizing evaluations inflict upon the ego-organism.

The boss is a creep.

Certain strands of Gnostic mysticism drew a similar conclusion. They provoked the violent wrath of conventional Christendom by saying that God is not good.

Divinity, for them, was not embodied in the creator, law-giver & sky-enforcer. That iconic figure was a pernicious devil whom they called the “demiurge.” Its purpose is to keep us contracted, enslaved, agitated, and isolated from the true Divine Power. This self-proclaimed ‘God’ was a being of irrational violence, unnecessary control, and bewildering vanity. He (or She) gushes endlessly in pseudo-moral complaints about your lack of perfect obedience.

You must therefore get busy trying to enjoy yourself through efforts of self-overcoming or else you will never live up to the self-sacrificing unconditional love of your parental “maker.”

In both Gnostic and analytic thought, we are not menaced solely by a subconscious lower organism that (legitimately) requires us to exert egoic control to regulate its tensions. We are ALSO undermined by a top devil who uses language and idealism to enforce a weird melange of conformity, reactivity & indulgence.

The Voice of Law is ambivalent. It has useful, smart, and necessary forms, certainly, but it also has corrupt, indulgent, and arbitrary forms — habits that seem to “get off” on enforcement while hinting about secret possibilities of protected criminality. This is a social, psychological and spiritual issue. Lacan argues that underneath the moral order of Kant’s categorical imperative is a pre-moral law — the command to Enjoy! (volonte de jouissance). Good. An important critical insight. But we should also feel into the ways that this structure can be redeemed or made useful. We must think about how we can save the Superego from itself.

Religious literature is full of such hints. From Thelema (Love is the Law, Love Under Will) to Vedic mysticism:

अहं हि सर्वयज्ञानां भोक्ता च प्रभुरेव च ।
न तु मामभिजानन्ति तत्त्वेनातश्‍च्‍यवन्ति ते ॥ २४ ॥

Lord Krishna: I alone am the enjoyer of all sacrifices. Those who do not know that the ritual is ever to Me will fall.

The mystics have described a version of the overseer/judge/commander/enjoyer who specifically provides the orienting psychotechnology for ritual modes of engagement.

So the first step is clarity — the recognition that our anxiety to obey and praise the superego/demiurge must be destabilized by a critique of its irrationality and perversity. The second step is to utilize a version of this implicit structure that is not characterized by the stressful voice of our ethnic, familial or idiosyncratic top devil. We want it to stop bedeviling us and start enabling our cultural and psychological conversion of organic energies into peak states.

Thus in Xagick we could say that there is a “fallen” and a “redeemed” way to perform rites under the view of Oculus Apex.

IV. The Rite of Serpent & Fruit in Eden

The Biblical, Talmudic and Quranic “fall” is a (many times translated & mistranslated) scriptural memory of an ancient oral vignette. It describes an event or rite that illustrates the difference between successful or failed performance in relationship to the Oculus Apex.

Myth is potent precisely because its symbols simultaneously encode multiple types of truths. Mythological fragments are meta-narrative, trans-epistemological patterns that span cosmology, psychology, sociology, history, surrealism, autobiography, etc. Students of Xagick should ponder what it would be like to compose such scenarios. They should also make a habit of creatively decoding mythic vignettes to reveal the principles by which psychotechnologies operate. The legendary Christian god-man Yehushva (whom some Gnostics claim was a cleaned-up version of the occult shaman Simon Magus) famously suggested that Biblical parables contain a hidden set of instructions for those with “eyes to see.”

Conventional social readings usually present a trite cartoon that produces useless arguments about whether we should treat it as historically accurate (because everyone has heard it!) or historically misleading (because it contains preposterous elements for which there is no sold external proof!). The divisive cartoon version leads people to say things like, “The first woman in history was named Eve and she was seduced by a snake into eating an apple.” This naivete represents the social recapture of the sacred. Myth operates outside of history (and via descriptive words — not “character names”).

We come closer to the mythocolloquial dimension when we think in terms like: The Earthling (terrestrial, being-of-earth, adam) and the Living Force (mother of life, chavah, “eve”) were together in the thriving (abundant, eden) biosphere (garden).

We could say mythically that humanity lived with creatures in the garden of nature’s bounty before the Fall. Or that mind and body were together in their rich naturalness. This could also be understood as gesturing toward a thriving proto-civilization in which anthropological and ecological patterns were well balanced until a period of crisis set the generations into a long slog. There are many ways to read the basic hieroglyphs of the story and we should be accustomed to thinking and feeling many overlapping interpretations simultaneously.

In Xagick we must also “hear” a very personal and practical set of instructions for engaging properly in the Event. An individual or couple is gathered. They are reciprocally related. Left and right are aligned. Mind and living energy are moving together. They stand in the suprahistorical mode as if they were the first and primal beings. Their selfishness and generosity are in harmony, their gentleness and their assertiveness are working in tandem (i.e. the wolf and the lamb).

Together they can access one or another “tree”.

The special “fruit” of the tree-choice will either give them the immortal condition of wisdom OR the collapsed and agitated mortal simulation of wisdom. This depends on how they are related to Oculus Apex.

When it speaks in commands, it incites both anxiety and the urge to violate the ritual boundaries. This forces them into the mode where they pretend they are not seen. Oculus Apex is excluded. Responding to this fallen/pro-falling version, the participants end up mortal, ashamed, unnatural in their feelings, and excluded from the sacred theatre of peak experience.

This is a cautionary tale. To perform the rite of the serpent and fruit requires them to be properly aligned with the one who “sees them.” They become desacralized when they move into the mode “as if they are not seen by the One.” That One becomes the pernicious judge and exiles them. Before it was the omnipresent witness who bade them enjoy the garden.

The issue is not the serpent or the fruit itself, those can be handled in different modes. The issue is the adversary (satan), the narcissistic adversarial position, the logic of the “thwarter” who seduces our feeling-attention aware from the expanded condition of the rite into the contracted and troubled mortality feeling.

From the viewpoint of Xagick, we should treat the “characters” as priests and priestesses — not merely naive village waifs. In this case, the events are merely a cautionary narrative for all people but rather an important point about performing sacred ritual dynamics.

V. The Registrar of Indefinite Extension

The job of the superego is not to talk. A tongue may speak or taste — let it taste. An eye may scorn or behold — let it behold. Sacred (non-fallen) performance of the ritual requires that the Superego operates as the empowering witness rather than as the obscene giver of the anxious law. So some preparatory time should be taken in a rite to facilitate this attunement of the mode of the “for whom” or the “before whom” the consecrated gestures occur. This also helps us to establish the proper timing.

What is this timing?

The living camera above/around is an interested party that senses, receives & encourages the events of ritual enjoyment, the civic ceremonies, the futurescaping rites. It is the contact point between the ritual event and the imaginal pantheon in a feedback loop that enables a special kind of timing. Think of it as similar to the way that “tai chi” movements adapt to a tempo through the feedback between the neuromuscular movement & the nervous system that is tracking its flow.

The history of philosophy has its organic, somatic, poetic and developmental anti-philosophers who enable the circulation between the living thought and the shamanic or occult lineage. One example is when Nietzsche gives voice to the Eternal Recurrence — and this may tell us something interesting about timing. The Eternal Recurrence need not be a cosmological proposal about the nature of Time but an option for relating differently to intention, perception, and action. A philosophical principle for consecration as the willed establishment of sacredness (overflowing affirmation) in our postures and gestures of being-in-the-world.

Let us change the phrasing slightly and say, instead of eternal recurrence — indefinite extension. The time of the sacred act extends indefinitely into the future, past, and all sideways worlds. It echoes into eternity exactly like this.

So we begin to move — to raise the feather or place the stone — with just enough time to feel our gesture moving in the suprahistorical realm. That amount of time helps us to establish our tempo. But to accomplish this we must make peace with repetition itself or we will affectively hesitate in front of the eternalization of our experiences.

Before we learn our particular desires from each other, we have an urge, an impulse, a drive that is (as Slavoj Zizek says) undead. It goes and goes. It does not complete and perish. We desire again — we are driven to desire.

This endless proto-desire is a serpent that must be made to rise up and be exposed. It must be seen, thought, felt and tolerated. Its endlessness must not be endlessly escaped. To do so is to return to the ordinary gameboard of the symbolically active psyche. But there are phases to our ability to handle indefinite extension and unknown boundaries of repetition. Initially, the sensitive person may be disgruntled with superficial habits and pursue of life of agitated novelty-seeking. Good. It leads to much knowledge and experience. The uniqueness of oneself gains tools for expression. Eventually, however, we must overcome (i.e. make space for) the anxiety/energy that drives us through the need to escape the repetition.

We turn out to be trapped in an endless circle of attempts to deviate from repetition which keeps us trapped in a loop of ordinary (sacredness-degrading) participation. What else can be done? We must intentionally enter the circle more deeply. We must will the repetition.

The most potent embodied intention of indefinite extension is to want THIS to go forever (regardless of how long it lasts). Hence Nietzsche’s absurd happiness about the potential of the concept of Eternal Recurrence.

Returning from philosophy to Xagick, we see that each phase of the ritual must want to go on endlessly. Exactly as it is. This voluntary gesture establishes the tempo. You do it at the speed of the clarified will to it just like this forever.

That puts the Temporalis in Oculus Apex. The Acknowledger-of-Rites is watching for this tempo and this gesture of the will. This is contrasted both to pleasureless repetition & the anxious attempt to achieve novelty. Acts of ritual consecration depend upon the will to a mode of suprahistorical time in which the eye-like implication of our generalized phenomenology serves to coordinate our attention and action correspondingly. Or:

Sacred pleasure is the will to endless repetition performed for the natural Gaze of the displaced Overseer.

---

PRAXIS & PROTOSKILLS

(described in the first person)

(i) Breathing for the One (2min)

I am present and relatively untroubled. I observe that the world around me is filled with forces, powers and categories of various kinds. These others can also observe me — in fact or imagination. I allow them to inspect me as though they were one great entity looking down from the ceiling of my world. Now I am on stage. I straighten up slightly and attune my feelings respectfully the unknown purpose of that One. And I take a sacred breath — extended, slowed down just enough so that One can track every part of the gesture of breathing. When my lungs are full, I inwardly offer the vitality of the air to Whatever Is Looking from Above. I take a tiny bit more air into my lungs and let it out easily. As the air goes out, I tell myself that the One Who Decides Whether Gestures are Sacred can have the easeful pleasure of my exhalation.

(ii) The ur-Ritual (5min)

I am sitting or standing in a place where I will not be disturbed. I imagine that I am an alien who has been invited to perform a blessing in front of a community. They do not understand my words and I have no knowledge of their traditions. It is not clear to me whether they have “religion” or not. I imagine that Something Overhead & All Around sees me completely and knows what is in my heart. As it watches me, I raise my hands into the air and make a gesture. I do not know what this gesture means but I intend that it should point at Meaning. I reach upward toward the Gaze that Confirms Meaning. I reach downward to show that Meaning emerges from within the world. I reach widely to show the expanse of the possibility of Meaning and I gesture toward the assembled community — hoping that they will understand Meaning is within their grasp. I make a noise to show that I respect them as beings capable of experiencing meaningfulness. I make another noise that only Meaning Itself will comprehend. Bowing, I step back and take a moment to the style and tempo that I have been approximating. I attend to my body. What is the chemistry and mindset that it is holding now?

I imagine what it would be like to make observed gestures toward Meaning for 30 min.

(iii) From Repetition to Ritual.

I select a procedure that I perform semi-regularly. Perhaps it is eating, walking around the block, making love, washing the dishes. I vow to enjoy the fact of its repetition. Inwardly, I imagine One Above who rejoices in performing action without change. I offer a breath to this One and begin. Each subphase of the process could last forever. I move through the steps as if each ought to last eternally — as if the One longs to absorb every positive, negative, or neutral nuance. I go a titch slower than usual to allow the Feast of the Acknowledger. I let it see every detail of what I am doing and beholding. I slip into this tempo & attitude. I am doing this now so that it is done in all worlds and for all times. That is how long each touch should last. When the event is completed, I offer another breath inwardly to the One Before Whom.