PART I
I had just received my latest treasure: L’Histoire
Des Imaginations Extravagantes de Monsieur Oufle. Purchased from a
seller in the United States, I marveled at the life of this little book.
Printed in Paris circa 1700s, the ‘Histoire’ is a stunning piece of
occult literature and a beautiful work of art. “What did it say?” I wondered. I
knew it was about the occult. Perhaps a grimoire or first-person account of
supernatural happenings. I knew it had traveled far. This little book has
traveled the world since its publishing. And I imagined the many readers who
had caressed this book. “Was it a favorite?” “Who loved this book a hundred
years ago? A hundred and fifty?” I wondered at the many bookshelves it has
rested upon. And I imagined it criss-crossing the globe. I watched it form its
own net in evidence of a life lived. I opened the leather-bound cover and heard
the faint sound of a binding once again doing its job. I could smell the pages.
I glanced to the cover page and beheld the most incredible engraving I had ever
seen. How glorious! This little book was a treasure-trove! I wondered at what
it meant. How did this beautiful artwork fit into the occult themes of the
book? “What did it mean?”
It was then that I decided to study the etching. I became engrossed in
identifying what the image meant and what information is relayed. What was its
message? I wanted to know what it had to say to me. And it was at this moment
that our journey together began. A surface inspection of the engraving yields a
cacophony of the bizarre and wondrous. As I sit at my desk and run a magnifying
glass over the image, a cursory examination shows a plethora of folkloric
motifs all vying to be the focal point of the image. (See Figure 1)
In the top-left portion of the engraving, dragons or sprites can be seen
zipping through the air and gazing down at the unfolding scene below. Just adjacent
to the dragons, a horrifying abduction is taking place! Three demons or devils
have taken hold of a man and are carrying him away as he exudes some form of
ectoplasm or smoke. As the substance billows out of his mouth, he throws his
head back in dismay. Infant demons or devils seem to be created within the
smoke. Were they using his body in parasitic fashion? Are the three abductors
now taking him home to hell? Directly below the abduction, another devil
appears to be brushing a horse while a woman stands bewildered near the center
of the image. Was the abductee her lover? And were they riding a horse when
they were accosted? Her look of shock and outstretched arms imply horror at the
scene. Another horse watches the abduction as it takes place while a robust man
in the background seems to point at something further down the road. His smile
seems to indicate being privy to something neither the abductee nor his
terrified love are aware of. The woman also appears oblivious to the
gargoyle-esque apparition that sits nearby. In the foreground, a stately
gentleman seems to be witnessing the scene as it occurs. His outstretched left
hand and docile facial expression makes us wonder whether he is in trance or
enchanted in some way. Ominously, a jester holding a scepter is poised to touch
the gentleman with two fingers on the back of the neck. Interestingly, only the
jester directly breaks the fourth wall and stares directly at the viewer. What
new horror is about to befall the gentleman? Or is the jester an instrument of
awareness who will wake the man from his slumber? To the right of the pair and
in the immediate foreground, a jinn trapped in his bottle sits next to some
kind of conjuring demon. Perhaps the orchestrator of the entire episode, this
winged creature has a horrifying face and some kind of mysterious power.
Another woman stands behind the conjurer and is nearly obscured by the binding
of the book. She is robed and wears a look of complete shock. Is she a nun? Is
she the only representative of light in the entire image? The engraving is ripe
with occult themes and characters. These entities saturate the image in symbol
and allegory and serve as a perfect platform with which to study the network
and associations of occult thought.
One way to track the movements of occult is to study it in
terms of circulating reference and worldmaking. I don’t intend to rehash past
conjectures of occult thought or practice. As an anthropologist and folklorist,
I’m not required to address the ontological status of theoretical entities
portrayed on the engraving. Officially, it’s not my job to substantiate the
images as relevant non-entities or question whether they are no more than
symbolic presentations of occult themes. However, I do have a profound respect
for metaphysics and actor-network theory. Please indulge my philosophical
meanderings while we examine occult agency and the many mediations that appear
on account of its action.
In the past, any philosophical mention of the occult relied on the dichotomy of
dualism and materialism. Were occult happenings a product of the affects mind
has on the external world or was the entire phenomenon in the mind. And
when I say in the mind, I don’t mean the practitioner is delusional
but that the imagination is utilized as a tool and vehicle of perception. These
base metaphysical questions are essential to understanding the many agencies at
work in occult study but not the only avenue of research. I have chosen the
craft of etching and engraving as a platform with which to study occult and
hope to show just some of the many actors in the phenomenon.
I’m not an artist. I’ve never had any profound artistic skill nor studied Art
History in any critical way. My interest in engraving stems from my love for
the printing process. However, for purposes of this study, I was to put plate
etching in a laboratorial setting. An actor in a network, I coupled the
creation of plate etching with the engraved image to show the many
substitutions possible in occult thought. By substituting an interplay of ink,
designs, and paper into articulations of meaning, I have identified a shift
from etching to creation. This shift shows the tendency for actors
to be re-situated in their associations. Therefore, we can’t merely superimpose
the various movements onto one another, they must move and be
moved- substitutions must occur.
One possible avenue of associative research can be found in transporting the
viewer into the etching and into the etching’s creator. What was the train of
thought in the engraver when he produced furrows on the surface of the plate?
Did he imagine a process of becoming that the viewer will also
experience albeit in a purely spiritual way? As Dyson has remarked, Engravers
saw themselves as translators rather than imitators; and in an important sense
they were. [i] But
what was being translated? With the novice image barely discernible on the
plate, did our creator then dust it with resin and plate it on a Bunsen Burner?
Like an alchemist, the heat on the plate melts the resin into tiny globules
that act as a protective shield. And this is an important part I want my
readers to understand. It is the space between the globules that is
effected in ‘the bite’ of the acid. A liminal place where transformation takes
place. This is the same Ordeal that the viewer/initiate experiences when moved into
the piece. In being betwixt and between, the engraving and its viewer are both bitten
into by an agent of change. Through a succession of immersions, the
acid is a baptism by fire. A purifying catalyst for re-presentation, the plate
has changed forever. When our engraver then brushes the ink within the crevices
and sends it through the press, it is the inked image that stands to re-present
the new plate. No longer what it was, the plate has taken on a new ontological
status. An entity has come to life. Multiple immersions only serve to give
detail to this new form and it has taken on a state of viewer and initiate. In
this regards, the creator affects the image just as the image affects the
viewer. The new entity is epistemologically re-situated when the viewer is
changed or made anew by associative circumstance.
It is worth being said that charting an engraving’s production is not
necessarily structuralist. Although reducing the process into its constituent
units can be an attribute of action displacement, the entire point of
evaluating the etching is to identify where action is re-distributed or, at the
very least, to indicate where movement has occurred. Nor is
the plate a strict metaphor for the occult initiate. That would be too easy.
Indeed, the image re-presents but not in the archaic formulated way of
symbolizing something else. The engraving makes use of an ecology of action. By
reallocating its various attributes, a network is formed that distributes
action. In this circumstance, the whole is not the sum of its parts. Whether we
are talking of the chemical processes within hydrochloric acid that ‘bites
into’ the plate, or the molecular makeup of ink that allows it to adhere to
paper, these parts give substance to the entire network. So much action
circulating in a myriad of ways! And all of this must be taken into account
when we study occult thought. The connections that interlink the network make
use of all the actors whether it be the contents of the image
or the sciences involved in producing the plate.
I hear the inevitable question. “Why? Why Preston-must we give a hoot about the
mechanical and chemical processes that give rise to etching? Is it not the
image and interpretation of the image that counts?” I don’t deny the image is
important. It is one of the attributes that give meaning to a
non-entity. But by affirming the entire network that surrounds an occult
engraving, the piece becomes self-contained and autonomous. It exists
independent of the occult (in the form of art), the viewer (it doesn’t wholly
depend on symbolic systems for existence), and even its role as fetish object.
We make a distinction between the image and the engraving. One is purely
epistemic whereas the other is ontological. The former we ascribe meaning
to, the latter requires no external meaning or explanation. It is a product
of combining certain methods to create a specific object. However, manufactured
objects always have a life and fate of their own. Often times, the trajectory
or destiny of the object serves multiple purposes and functions. Such is the case
with our engraving. As well as being a beautiful work of art, the etching is
also a mediator for the occult. An inanimate object endowed with mystical
qualities, the fetish is a supernatural happening. Similar to sacred stones or
ancient Grecian curse tablets, the engraving itself is talismanic. In
principle, it wouldn’t matter what the image on the engraving was, the object
as amulet is what is important in negotiating mystical agency. Charles de
Brosses brought this into sharp focus in his Culte des dieux
fetiches (1760) in which he reexamines the etymology of the word
“fetish”, linking it to the Portuguese fetiso, “fairy thing”, in
other words, “magic spell”, “spell object.”[ii] A
contemporary of our engraving, it’s not difficult to discern the occult
attitude towards fetish objects in 18th century France.
We can take this line of thinking into occult ontology as well. If each actor
is examined in terms of its associations in the network, we are given much more
information about the movement that flows from the sum to its
parts and visa versa. Now I know the common reaction to this theory is one of
horror and shame. “You’re asking us to grant being to non-entities! You want us
to ‘really believe’ in ghosts, daimons, and aliens!” And I say, “Why not?” If
it works for electrons, protons, and quarks, why can’t it work for spiritual
entities as well. After all, do we not accept the idea of
gravity or evolution? Of course we do! And as Harpur states in regards to
non-entities, the daimons or subatomic “innerspace” are called particles,
although strictly speaking they aren’t- electrons, for example, are both
particles and waves at the same time. They are paradoxical, both there and
not-there, like fairies.[iii]
The only thing that makes me any different from a run-of-the-mill folklorist or
anthropologist is in the fact that I grant non-entities actual existence. To
me, the creation of reality and everything in it is analogous to the creation
of our etching and the occult image it contains. A contextual theory of
meaning, these theoretical terms are given substance based upon implicit
definitions of terms. Saying nothing empirical about the observable world, our
theory of the entities is neither true nor false. If again you’ll bear with me
to draw analogy to subatomic entities, the movement of an
electron can be used as a bridge gap or correspondence rule with occult
entities. As electrons move out of an atom, a wavelength of light is emitted.
There is no way to test it and it holds no reference to the observable world.
Because there is no empirical content, scientists tie it to correspondence
rules in the observable world. In this case, color lines in a spectrum. We
identify a range of wavelengths in light that are emitted by an atom. We can
perform the same procedure with occult entities. If we posit a wavelength of
light, separate dimension, or timbre of sound where these entities can be
experienced, we ascribe a bridge gap in the theory that will provide meaning.
We once again invoke Heisenberg’s ‘Uncertainty Principle’ and say that these
entities are both there and not-there.
What sets occult agencies apart and ensures a constant flow of mediations is in
the fact that it is always on the run. Not just moving, the occult has been
forced to flee not only more accepted religions but lawmakers and legislators
who perceive some nefarious agenda or conspiracy within the occult. Occult
agency moves because it must. Have you not noticed that
wherever the occult crops up in the media it always appears under the strangest
of circumstances? It’s always a surprise! Some bizarre event such as
crop-circles or ceremonial magic and “voila!” the occult is running for its
life. But what if instead to trying to find a niche to cohabitate, the occult
ran forward and deliberately into the array of entities that sought to
discredit its thoughts and practices? Would the movements burst
open and explode into a multitude of new movements and
colorful discourse? If the occultist were allowed and even encouraged to
undergo transformation, would we, for example, witness apparitions of the Holy
Virgin Mary undergo a shift from paranormal entity, to religious icon, to
anthropological informant? What would be the chain of interactions and what
kind of inertia would she generate by being transformed through agency? It’s
time we as occultists began to explore these questions as a means to better
understand the networking capability of our chosen thought forms.
[i] Dyson,
Anthony. Etching and Engraving-Technique and Tradition. Longman
Publishing, New York.1986.
[ii] Harpur,
Patrick. Daimonic Reality. Penguin Press, New York. 1995.
[iii] Ibid.
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