Potentialities
and the Occult
“What is
potential can both be and not be, for the same is potential both to be and not
to be.” –Aristotle-1050 b10 ‘Metaphysics’ Book Theta
The liminal manifests itself in a
myriad of ways. As a transitionary state of Being, it lends itself to the
bizarre and macabre. The liminal is an intermediary between what was and what will be. This lends itself perfectly to occult work because, as
every practitioner knows, what is ‘becoming’ is more important that what once
was and what currently ‘is’. This being said, the concept isn’t exactly new. For
example, the stoics also identified an intermediary step between thought and
being. They called this state the ‘lekton’ or ‘expressible’. This was a state
that was incorporeal or without presence. Lacking ontological form, the state
also referred to language itself. The lekton was the event or expressible
capacity in-between thought and being. It was liminal. This is exactly the same as the liminal state in an occult
rite of passage. In evoking the particular state, the occultist literally
communicates the ‘expressible’.
But there must be a method that
transmits the expressible from the occult practitioner. Curiously, the method
takes the form of ritual checks and balances. As Benjamin remarked, “Origin,
although an entirely historical category, has, nevertheless, nothing to do with
genesis. The term origin is not intended to describe the process by which the
existent came into being, but rather to describe that which emerges from the
process of becoming and disappearance”. [1]
In other words, the ritual or ‘interaction’ between the existent and the
practitioner is more important that the description of the event. This is
because of the ritual checks and balances that forms a permanent empathetic
bond between evoker and evokee. Benjamin went so far as to suggest that part of
the creator dies in the ritual process. He states that, “The origin of the
great work has often been considered through the image of birth. This is a
dialectical image; it embraces the process from two sides. The first has to do
with creative conception and concerns the feminine element in genius. The feminine
is exhausted in creation. It gives life to the work and then dies away. What dies
in the master along-side the achieved creation is the part of him in which the
creation was conceived…In its achievement, creation gives birth anew to the
creator”. [2]
Although a part of the magician is lost to the entity summoned, in turn the
entity gives something back to the evoker. This something is a gift. In its
presence, the magician is re-embodied or renewed by the supernatural exchange.
Ritual checks and balances is also
implied in Aristotle’s ‘ethos anthropoi daimon’. The usual translation of this
phrase is “for man, character is the demon.” But ethos originally referred to
what is proper in the sense of “dwelling place, habit”. Daimon also meant
etymologically “to divide, lacerate”. So daimon was he who lacerates or
divides. However, we shouldn’t consider this a negative connotation of the word
daimon because only in ‘what divides’ can the daimon also be what destines or
threads a fate. The word daiomai first means to “divide” then to “assign” which
has the same semantic development as the root “demos”-which meant “division of territory”,
and “assigned part”. So ethos anthropoi daimon translates into ethos, the
dwelling in the ‘self’ that is what is most proper for him, is what lacerates
and divides, and assigns and destines. In other words, for man to be himself,
he must necessarily divide himself.[3]
This is reminiscent of the renewal Benjamin discussed but
more accurately relates to Cabalistic thought. Gershom Scholem has discussed
prophesy as it was described by Jewish mystics in the 13th century. In
his ‘On The Mystical Shape Of The Godhead’, he writes that in a Cabalistic
anthology called the Shushan Sodoth, prophesy appears as one’s own doppelganger:
“The complete secret of prophesy consists in the fact that the prophet suddenly
sees the form of his self standing before him, and he forgets his own self and
ignores it…and that form speaks with him and tells him the future. [4]
As it is necessary for the prophet to “divide” in order to “assign fate”, the
occultist must also separate from himself to exact a successful ritualistic
interaction. Also, many occult traditions embrace the idea of the double as
part of their teachings. For example, the idea of qliphoth “shells of the
sephiroth” is common to many students of the occult. Acting as reversals or
inversions of the Judaic ‘Tree of Life’, these dark embodiments are akin to the
folklore of a doppelganger.
Philosophically, the double also plays the role
of non-being. It is the difference between actuality and potentiality or what ‘is’
and ‘what could be’. As Agamben has remarked, “what is essential is that
potentiality is not simply non-Being, simple privation, but rather the existence
of non-Being, the presence of an absence; this is what well call “faculty” or “power”.
[5]
The point being potentiality has an ontological status. It is something. This
faculty that is spoken of is ability. For example, a ritual specialist has the
ability or potentiality to perform ritual. But he also has the ability to
not-ritualize-or not pass into actuality. It is these changes from potentiality
to actuality that embody ontological trajectories of the supernatural.
Aristotle also discussed potentiality and actuality. In fact, he asserted that
their ontological changes are a harmonizing part of nature. He states that “actuality
(energeia) is light and potentiality is darkness (skotos), what is sometimes
dark and sometimes light is ‘one in nature’.[6]
Even in realms of the supernatural, what is and what could be are integral
aspects of status. Moreover, describing these statuses in terms of light and
dark is also something very reminiscent of descriptions of those in a liminal
state. Victor Turner says that “in many societies the liminal initiands are
often considered to be dark, invisible, like the sun or moon in eclipse or the
moon between phases, at the “dark of the moon”.[7]
As we’ve been discussing then, those in a liminal state are traversing what ‘is’
and what ‘could be’. Their existence explores areas of potentiality and
actuality. This is also why the liminal is so conducive to studies of the
paranormal and occult. Birthing entities is ritualistic settings goes hand in
hand with comparing those in a liminal state to ghosts and gods. These supernatural
personages are only critically understood by exploring their ontological
changes as they interact
[1] Walter
Benjamin. Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 1 Pt. 1 pp226
[2]
Walter Benjamin. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 4 Pt 1 pp438 ed. Rolf Tiedemann
& Hermann Schweppenhausser. Frankfort am Maini Suhrkamp 1974-89.
[3]
See Giorgio Agamben’s ‘Potentialities’ for a more detailed account of Aristotle’s
‘ethos anthropoi daimon’.
[4] Shushan
Sodoth-quoted in Scholem. Pp. 253.
[5]
Giorgio Agamben. Potentialities. Stanford University Press. 1999. Pp. 179.
[6]
Aristotle. Physics. 418b-419e I
[7]
Victor Turner. From Ritual to Theatre. PAJ Publications. New York. 1992.
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