On Genius & Lust

I. THE SIDDHI OF UNUSUAL AROUSAL

One of the central features of occult wisdom that Xagick needs to clarify is its deep interest in excessive creative energy.

There is a blurry boundary between intellectual, artistic, sexual & magical arousals. These are not identical domains of activity. It is reductively trite to treat all creative motivation as sexual but many of the underlying dynamics of surplus production in the human nervous systems are quite similar. Futhermore the subjective experience of a magical body, an erotic body or a artistically fervent body have many similar contours. More importantly for this article, the occult networks, both ancient and modern, have continuously inspect an shifting pattern of overlap between these forms of human arousal.

The immediate goal of Xagick is not to make definitive claims about the relationship between the re/productive energies of spirit, sex, and creativity. What we must first do is to clarify that the inspection of this overlap is itself a prominent of feature of esoteric theory The new discourse of magical thinking must clarify this indeterminate conjunction of interests without rushing to remove the indeterminacy or to collapse the conjunction into a monolithic assertion.

There has been tendency in mainstream spiritual traditions to ignore or devalue this murky cluster of relations. This tendency may be linked to cultural difficulties with sexuality and with institutional suspicion about the neurodivergent qualities of the artistic temperament. Such traditions also commonly devalue “siddhis” in general. This old Pali/Saskrit term denotes the emergence of peculiar competencies and creative arousal states that are often explained in terms of the activation of particular subtle energies.

It is, of course, good advice not to get too obsessed with arising ideas and sensations. And the possibilities of anxiety, mania or delusion should be taken seriously. However, we also find in this territory many of the most interesting phenomena related to the transformation of life through indivually-inflected intention.

So the conservative spiritual advice (to maintain a principled disinterest in our creative passions, idiosyncratic prompts, and intriguing arousals) is not sufficient in order to understand the whole phenomena of the human inner life. Conversely, the so-called occult paths (including magick, tantra, shamanism) have always considered it highly significant, and socially progressive, to experiment with the genius of reproduction & the production of genius.

Genius is a contested term — especially so when it is considered as a facet of our spiritual being rather than simply a mixture of talent and expertise in some professional field. Many vocal supporters of the concept of genius appear to be arrogant, adolescent and indifferent to general human well-being. However many critics of genius become mired in a reactive, humorless and purely social conviction that all individual human creative will-power is nothing but an ideological extension of patriarchy’s “great man” theory.

Xagick does not subscribe to (or negate) either view. Nor does it require the 19th-century terminology like “genius” anything other than a plaything and prompt for pondering. We could call it something else but we are nonetheless deeply interested in how human spiritual lives are related constructively to an ancient project of generating new insights, peculiar cultural artifacts, and states of overflowing idiosyncratic and creative “emotional energy.”

In Jeffrey Martin’s attempts to map “the finders” (consciousness mutants), he has noted a series of different locations or attractor conditions. What he calls “location 5” migrates toward a transcendental sense of freedom coupled to non-agency, while “location 4” discovers ever deeper access to human complexity, emotion, growth & change. While some people assume that going further is always superior we must also consider that sweet spots between extremes are often where new territories are discovered.

The occult is interested in the most radical phases of consciousness but it is also convinced about the relevance of ongoing exploration and experimentation on what Martin calls the Path of Humanity. Included in that exploration is the matter of the creative transmutation of the desire, drive, passion, and angst that we associate with unusual phases of creative intensity.

As we remind ourselves to be curious about these openings, what (if anything) can be gleaned upfront from the folk wisdom of modernity? We inherit numerous aphoristic conceptions about the production of genius. Here are a few:

• genius is childhood consciousness reproduced at will

• talent hits a target no one else can hit, genius hits a target no one else can see

• If you don’t think you are a genius, you probably aren’t

• genius is lateral thinking & insight-by-analogy

These are suggestive and worth contemplation. However, they also leave out a great deal. In particular, they ignore (a) zeitgeist, (b) concentration exercises, and (c) arousal. Occult approaches have historically explored all three but this essay will explore, collect, and reframe the pertinent issue of arousal.

Key queries that open new explorations while also connecting us to the theory and praxis lineages of the occult might include: How do we produce more of this largely subconscious bio-psychological condition? How do we distinguish between different versions in terms of their productivity? How do we become better somatic containers to tolerate higher levels of creative urgency? How do we entrain the polarized energy of biological passions so that they redirect into creative endeavors?

Perhaps “eros” simply provides an enhanced or additional mechanism for cognitive discernment. By focusing on, sensing, or valuing certain qualities of excitability in ourselves, we may alter our movement through symbolic search spaces. We may increase the probability of encountering behavioral solutions that express the pleasurable surplus elan vital. It seems fairly self-evident that by focusing the nervous system and the attentional faculty on creative urgency and the aesthetics of quivering potential, would entrain us to favor more “charged” interpretations and actions.

Certainly F. Nietzsche’s focus on the will-to-power and W. Reich’s interests, first in Freudian libido and later in atmospheric Orgone energy, seem to have sculpted their conclusions about reality in particular directions. Notably toward a perception of the cosmos as highly vigorous and creative, and toward intense creative output as normative response to being part of a teeming dynamism.

We find new thought communities today that are highly focused on “leading-edge emerge,” and “eros,” and the idea of an ethical devotion to curiosity and allurement.

More speculatively, but perhaps also more excitingly, the existentialist, phenomenologist, and multi-genre author Colin Wilson developed an interesting theory, that was spelled out in his books The Occult and Beyond the Occult.

In Wilson’s model, the human brain exhibits two kinds of access to super-arousal and super-functions. The first is an atavistic retention of paranormal perception and extreme action that would have served the survival priorities of our genetic ancestors. These can be reawakened by intense experience, drugs and immersion in archaic environments.

His second type consists of the emerging future capacities of imaginative and erotic beings. He believes peak experiences are a form of premonitory access to the future modes of being human — and that an evolutionary threshold is crossed when we learn to use attentional pressure, imagination-driven somatic stimulation, and exaggerated evaluation in order to generate these states intentionally. In Wilson’s reading, these emerging pathways show up among people who are often endowed with high levels of imagination, surplus sexual agitation and/or an obsessive interest in their own supranormal states. He calls these people “cultural outsiders.”

In unhealthy social conditions, they may pursue their paranormal glimpses through destructive transgressions. Under more enriched conditions they might attempt it through artistic and scientific pursuits. Others may go directly at the problem through independent philosophy or involvement in esoteric training schools.

Interestingly — especially for people familiar with varieties of tantric practice and so-called “sex magick” — Wilson speculates that the invention of masturbation is a crucial functional shift in evolutionary history. It marks the threshold at which imagination begins to predominate over survival. The libidinous drive escapes from genetic reproduction and begins to improvise a world of symbolic and imaginative re/productions. Like the pornographic sharing and commerce that fueled the rise of the internet, we see some relationship between the exaptation of sexuality, the intentional use of imaginal faculties, and the growth of access to additional realms of creative actions.

Wilson’s work is useful because it tries to think the key occult matters using new terminology and more recent concepts. Xagick must emulate him in undertaking fresh speculation in these matters but first we should examine the two main alternative explanatory approaches used in occult discourse…

II. MANUFACTURING AMRITA

One of the basic explanatory paradigms in this sub-field of occult studies involves the idea of genius as subtle substance.