I've never been one to mix words. It’s a cold soul full of
self-deprecation and rot that will say things others want to hear just to avoid
conflict. Sure, you might have a life of tranquility and peace but in the end you’ll
be a broken old miser with a heart of hate. You’ll be a wound. The same goes with governance. Being at the top of the
pyramid just isn't what it used to be. Sixty seven years ago a jangly old dope
fiend found himself under the headlamp of one of those filthy saucers and
whisked away like a leper or convict. And it was just five months previous that
one of those silvery shiny disks dropped to earth like a fiery space-rock
vomiting tiny spacemen all over the New Mexico desert.
They said that 1947 would be the year we immanentize the
eschaton. They said all power would be given to the people and a perfect utopic
society would bloom into being. Instead, we got irradiated by an unholy
leviathan in the Pacific. A monster so vile so incredibly inhuman and evil that
it could end the world as we know it. And to think that it could have gone
differently.
There was so much promise coming into the 20th
century. When the little beast Aleister Crowley received his transmission from
Aiwass in 1904, things were looking up for occultists. We had momentum on our
side. We were tearing through the cosmos in a scarlet red chariot called
BABALON ripping through portals and shredding the old paradigm with ‘Do What
Thou Wilt’ etched into the bow of our stallion. It was powerful and
frightening.
These were fast times. Back when a magical operation could
produce an ill-tempered bastard of a demon. Something so inherently foul that
it would crouch darkly in the corner of a room and lay in wait for the poor
dumb sucker who wasn't prepared. These creatures aren't made to stay long in our
reality. They have rotten dispositions and whether it’s the altitude or
temperature, no good can come from an ‘extended’ visit. Most come from the
Semitic peoples of Assyria, Ysra-el, Babylon- places where Jinn run freely
along rubble-strewn streets and can be seen in between tracer fire. I once
watched a YouTube video of a demon caught on camera in Aleppo. Amidst mortar
shelling and bomb sirens, this entity could be seen walking past an old busted-out
window and disappearing. A sniper on the footage saw it too. Nothing needed to
be said. It was supposed to be here.
When gods go to war, they’re fueled by the people.
It just isn't how it used to be. Oh sure, we can invoke in
this day and age and maybe it’s just the idea of having a room full of OTO
heavy-hitters lustfully performing ancient rituals while kicking in some new
ones just for good measure. But the Occult of the early 20th century
was an exciting time. Anything could take form at any moment. And maybe it was
the otherworldly madness of the rituals or the macabre spectacle of going out
and being treated like Satan in public. But the birthing of the Aeon that
Crowley and his flock worked so hard to create was aborted by none other than
they themselves. No one knows quite why yet but the period of renewal that
should have accompanied a change in social and spiritual governance was botched
so expertly as to appear the work of some strange cosmic archon or dunce
criminal.
Systems of governance make up a large part of our social
structure and it’s really no surprise. There has to be some way in which
populations interconnect and relate to one another. Coinciding with social
complexity, different forms of organization earmark the many interactions
people have both on the micro (local) and macro (global) levels. The two
predominant methods of governance are hierarchical and network. A hierarchic
model is ecclesiastic. It is a fixed system structured in a top-down format.
Communities are divided into classes, orders, families and so on. Stemming from
the Greek ‘Rule of a High Priest’, all the values and categories are arranged
in an order that emphasizes ‘higher’, ‘lower’, ‘same as’ in terms of importance
or authority.
On the other hand, a network is a system of
interdisciplinary scholarly collaboration that views knowledge as largely
cumulative. The process emerges from a bottom-up format and individuals
function as autonomous nodes, negotiating their own relationships, forging
ties, coalescing into clusters. Each node is equal and self-directed.[1]
Usually, hierarchical and networked systems coexist. There is often some formal
organizational structure plus a network of personal colleagues or confidantes
that have no representation in the hierarchy.
Anyway, the differences between hierarchical and networks is
clear. Linnaeus’s ‘Systema Natura’ classified living things into classes,
orders, families and so on. Based on earlier folk taxonomy, this system
hierarchically classified organisms so as to make them easily identifiable. In
contrast, George- Louis Leclera, Comte de Buffon’s ‘Histoire Naturelle’
included other characteristics in addition to anatomy to classify entities. He
considered schemes that would take into account an animal’s physiology,
ecology, functional anatomy, behavior, and geography.[2]
Buffon considered the entity’s entire network when approaching classification.
In addition, he held that entities were constantly changing and could devolve
under adverse conditions. The Comte de Buffon was a natural networking
occultist. His approach in the natural sciences isn't unlike the idea that
deities and demons also evolve or devolve in certain circumstances.
Although hierarchy seems like a static and effective system
for occultists, there is an inherent problem that keeps organizations stagnate
and dismays potential members from even joining. In the Masonic or
pseudo-Masonic structure of nearly all magical orders, we have a hierarchy that
elevates those at the top to guru status while those at the bottom are left
with virtually no voice at all. It’s not Freemasonry’s fault. They took their
cues from even earlier orders such as the Knights Templar. And it was a working
system for a while. But the problem is that culture evolved to match its
technological and especially communicative advances whereas magical orders kept
the fixed Masonic structure that it has practiced for hundreds of years. Nowadays,
it is difficult or even impossible to transmit information on the local
problems and potential solutions to central decision makers; and if
transmission could somehow be improved, the accumulated local knowledge could
never be effectively utilized at the center.[3]
It is virtually impossible for Minerva level neophytes to reach top-level
members of initiatory orders. And that is the irony of the situation. The world
is smaller now than it ever has been. Methods of communication such as email,
Facebook, and text messages have made the world more interconnected than it
ever has been. Yet the orthodox hierarchy of magical orders has remained a
dogmatic aspect of occultism stubbornly resistant to change.
The occult hierarchy tries to assert that there is no
‘problem’. They assert that the local micro-level acts as a network while the
hierarchical centralized macro-level stays in the background. But the micro-level
is exactly as abstract as the so-called ‘macro’ one from which they came and
they now want to leave again for what holds the situation together. And so on
infinitum.[4]
The fact of the matter is that both the local and macro levels of occult
hierarchy have become obsolete. And its most egregious oversight is in omitting
the non-human actors, that are, in many ways, the focal point of their
operations. Entities hold ‘degree centrality’ when performing an operation
because it is they who are contacted during an interaction. If the hierarchy
were to be set up truthfully, non-human entities would be the top tier of the
system. Moreover, leaders like Frater Sabazius or Hyperion or Alden Jones act
as surrogate proxies to beings given form and attributes through interactions
with other entities. In the transformations or translations that occur when
identifying what provided an entity’s consciousness, subjective experience, and
actions, we let loose a network of corresponding assemblages.
This is the failure of Crowleyanity in modern occultism. In
their stubborn attempt to break away from the orthodoxy of mainstream religious
and Masonic systems, they set up a hierarchy that mirrors its sins almost
identically. They have deliberately and blindly denied non-human entities in
the system. In so doing, they have undone the creating and empathy they
achieved during the ontological process. By negating the very entities with
which they seem to communicate, their hierarchy is made null and void. It’s not
entirely Crowley’s fault but his claim to be the harbinger of a new Aeon was
immediately suspect when he utilized a pseudo-Masonic hierarchical system. A
new Aeon implies a new paradigm. A system so innovative, so utterly alien to
what came before that it changed the game completely. What Crowley ‘received’
was a compelling method and theory made corrupt
by a socio-political structure really no different from the infrastructures of
the past.
So where do we go from here? What weird course and
trajectory gives credence to the past while charting a path that breaks new
ground and takes us to undiscovered places. Perhaps a way to coexist is via
peer to peer goal-oriented network. Following the ‘Histoire Naturelle’,
considering all aspects of an ‘interaction network’ or magical operation will
shape a dynamic set of translations and transformations between occultists and
their non-human counterparts. Consistent with a perpectivistic philosophy
(McGuire 2004), network theory provides a complementary approach that attempts
to make parsimonious predictions that generalize across settings, disciplines,
and levels of analysis whenever possible.[5]
I’m not suggesting that magical orders need no leadership.
Nor am I implying that administrative duties should be left to some boozed-up
malcontent. It wouldn't be a bad gig. Somebody has to organize functions and
get-togethers or what are we even doing? I’m simply saying that there is no
need to advance through any sort of degree system. Nor should there be a Grand
Master and Lesser Master and Treasurer etc within the inner workings of the
magical order. People frequently ask me whether this lack of structure is just
a call to anarchy. They howl that it’s the order that keeps things tidy and if
we can get some tax-exempt status or pilfer something from the Federales, well
that’s good too. After all, just ask L. Ron-somebody has to get rich from this deal.
No, I’m just throwing it out there. How about we dump this
hierarchical lunacy and focus our efforts on a system that encourages true
correspondences. By knowing the perspective of an entity along with its
relation to the initiate, other entities, the operation, witnesses to the rite,
the liturgy, the temple architecture, and interested third parties, we are
given the information needed to achieve the ultimate goal of interaction. This
goal-directed network will be brought about by a peer to peer organization.
Exactly like Wikipedia or the Torrent network that drove record company
executives insane, the network would facilitate a system where occultists
interact to form an efficient distribution of information. Peer to peer
organization will lay waste to the step-ladder approach of hierarchical
structure. No longer will there be a steady climb of Minerva to Adeptus minor
to Adeptus Major etc culminating in a 33rd degree Ipsissimus secret
chief grand poobah pontiff and king of the Jews level of coronation. Instead,
there will be a sharing network of peers all acting as circulating references
in an organelle of knowledge. Now the mysteries will lay in the movements and
interactions between networks. As Latour remarked, “This empty space
‘in-between’ networks, those terra incognita are the most exciting aspects of
Actor Network Theory because they show the extent of our ignorance and the
immense reserve that is open for change.
[1]
Alex Wright. GLUT: Mastering Information Through The Ages. Joseph Henry Press.
Washington DC. 2007. pp.7
[2]
Buffon’s ‘American Degeneracy’. Philadelphia, PA; Academy of Natural Sciences- http://www.acnatsi.org/museum/jefferson/otherPages/degeneracy-0.3.php;-
[3]
Ed. Fritz Scharpf. Games in Hierarchy and Networks: Analytical and Empirical
Approaches to the Study of Governance Institutions. Campus Verlag Westview
Press. Boulder, CO. 1993. pp. 135
[4]
Bruno Latour. ‘On Recalling ANT’. In Actor Network Theory and after. John Law
and John Haggard. Blackwell Publishing. Oxford. 1999. pp. 17
[5]
James D. Westaby. Dynamic Network Theory: How Social Networks Influence Goal
Pursuit. American Psychological Association. Washington DC. 2012. pp. 7
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