Magical Madness
Neurosis / Enlightenment...
Is one exclusive to the other? A question that is often bought to mind when studying prominent Occultists, Yogis, etc. more commonly from the ‘outside view’ yet, certainly at times, from the ‘inner view’ as well.
This question was recently bought to light again while I was reading Gerald Suster’s book; ‘Crowley’s Apprentice – The Life and Ideas of Israel Regardie.’. p.90 ;
“If neurosis could co-exist with the highest illumination, then Magic alone wasn’t enough. Psychoanalysis was perhaps an essential preliminary, even a necessary accompaniment. And if, on the other hand, neurosis and illumination were mutually exclusive, what on earth was one to make of Aleister Crowley?”
[Aside: Not that I want to start up the debate about Crowley again! – well, not here. I ask that we at least agree that Crowley had some degree of illumination and at least some degree of neurosis. {Eg. On the first hand, I cite Crowley’s writings, system and tarot and on the other hand I quote Regardie (although there are numerous incidences) as his example demonstrates my point; Suster says when people visited Regardie and put Crowley down Regardie would demonstrate Crowley’s genius. On the other hand, if the person seemed unrealistically praising Crowley, Regardie would respond with a comment like, “Yes, yes, a shame though that the old boy couldn’t resist getting his women to shit on him as he lay on the floor.”.]
Let’s go back a bit to the beginnings of when magic and modern psychology first met.
I feel Regardie is the pioneer here – not the pioneer of the idea but a pioneer of applying a holistic practical blend of the two and using the result to help and treat himself and others.
Regardie did extensive preliminary study before he took up the practice of magic. He encountered Crowley’s works and studied them and began putting them into practice. He then went to study directly under Crowley, but, ended up being his secretary. (Regardie was too shy or embarrassed to ask Crowley for magical instruction and appeared to wait for the ‘Master’ to approach him. Crowley assumed Regardie was practicing magic and meditating and would ask him a question if he got into difficulty. It appears there was no direct magicalcoaching.) Eventually there was a falling out, bought about by an outburst of Crowley neurosis (the defamatory and slanderous letter Crowley distributed about Regardie’s low-class and Jewish background). Later Regardie joined The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and studied and practiced there but also encountered the neurotic egos of the magicians involved in his group. http://www.amazon.com/What-Should-Know-About-Golden/dp/1561840645 He left the G.D. and concentrated on his own practices.
Regardie then began studying psychoanalysis under Dr. E. Clegg and Dr. J.L. Bendit and trained in the Jungian system. Somehow Regardie avoided the trap and realized he himself had a neurosis and knew THAT had to be addressed BEFORE he could seriously and realisticly consider himself advanced in magic and illumination. One reason Suster gives for Regardie doing this is the primary Hermetic maxim; ‘KNOW THYSELF’, and that is also the purpose of psychoanalysis.
[it appears Regardie had introverted problems where Crowley’s seemed somewhat the opposite]. Regardie underwent Freudian analysis and became a lay analyst. Then, when that was accomplished and understood, the 2nd principle could come – BE THYSELF.
Regardie had noticed that in the schools of magic and enlightenment he observed many of the members and leaders had not addressed basic issues within their own selves from a psychological perspective, and in fact it can be observed that magical studies can actually accentuate these problems if the student does not achieve a preliminary balance.
Freud had come up with some (then) radical notions; our conscious mind is only a small part of our selves, our motivations and our make up, what REALLY drives us, of which we are unaware, is our unconscious. Freud argued that we are really driven by instincts, just like animals are, and the strongest of these is sex, this drive Freud called the Libido. Freud also used dream analysis – the expression of the unconscious.
Our uncoordinated instinctual desires Freud called the Id. These desires of the Id are repressed during our upbringing to mould us to whatever society we are in. This, in turn, creates a moralizing faculty Freud termed the Super-ego.
The conscious mentation Freud called the Ego, which is continually trying to find balance and harmony between the Id and Super-ego.
The Oedipus Complex, Freud said, was the result of infantile sexuality projected on to the mother and in later life the guilt from this became a type of castration complex (the Super-ego groping at ways to stop the Id expressing itself). This results later in life in masochistic tendencies in an attempt to relieve guilt and suffering by self punishment. (Or punishment and/or degradation at the hand of another.) Many have suggested that Crowley suffered from a similar neurosis
[Apparently Regardie loved telling this joke;
One Jewish woman says to another,” I have terrible news! My son – he’s just been to the psychiatrist and now he says my son has an Oedipus complex!”
“Ach! Oedipus schmoedipus!” says the other one, “As long as he is a good Jewish boy and loves his mother.”]
Now here we get to a crossroads and , I feel, an essential part in understanding the essence of Thelema (Crowley’smagical philosophy about the self and self expression and the purpose of individual incarnation) and how it can best be interpreted.
Freud came to terms with the issue of Id / Super-ego by advocating sublimation, that is, he believed that the (dangerous?) energies of the Id and its desire to express its urges needed to be consciously directed to benefit society and be productive. Regardie had his doubts about this and, I believe, Crowley had virtually the opposite opinion.
At this stage Regardie was still considering Crowley’s interpretation of how psychoanalysis slotted in with Thelema.
“Professor Sigmund Freud and his school have, in recent years, discovered a part of this body of Truth, which has been taught for many centuries in the Sanctuaries of initiation. But failure to grasp the fullness of Truth, especially that implied in my Sixth Theorem (‘Every man and every woman is a star’) - and its corollaries, has led him and his followers into the error of admitting that the avowedly suicidal ‘Censor’ is the proper arbiter of conduct. Official psychoanalysis is therefore committed to upholding a fraud, although the foundation of the science was the observation of the disastrous effects on the individual of being false to his Unconscious Self, whose ‘writing on the wall’ in dream language is the record of the sum of the essential tendencies of the true nature of the individual. The result has been that psycho-analysts have misinterpreted life, and announced the absurdity that every human being is essentially an anti-social, criminal insane animal. It is evident that the errors of the Unconscious of which psycho-analysists complain are neither more nor less than the ‘original sin’ of the theologians whom they despise so heartily.” (Liber Abba).
In some cases, and at certain times it appeared that Crowley related the expression of the True Will to the expression of the unconscious. (Without getting too deep into it here, examine the ideas behind his Thoth Tarot ‘Devil’ card.) But the True will implies more than following the unconscious and instinctual drives and forces, I believe there is an important link there but the issue is not as simple as one being the other. Crowley’s definitions of the True Will implied a specific incarnatory purpose or career, an expression of a specific individual genius and a learning and molding experience. The essential, to Crowley’s initiation system, at the beginning, is a structuralisation and formation of energies into their specific roles and places. The Expression of the True Will is not just blindly following your impulses or desires … or unconscious desires (desire being a conscious product of unconscious will), it is much more.
This seems to be at the root of many peoples misunderstanding of the Thelemic concept of the True Will. Firstly, Crowley postulates ‘Every man and every woman is a star.’ That is their essential nature. When restrictions are removed the True Will shines forth. That’s one school of thought and relates to similar concepts such as put forward by Rousseau and those that advocated the theory that if you left man by himself his natural good qualities would emerge. The other school of thought was pretty much the opposite, acknowledging the power of the Id (or more correctly, the suppressed Id) they thought if you left man to himself he would revert back to an animal state. Their ideas were somewhat supported by scientific studies of feral children (small children bought up in the wild by wild animals. – But these studies have left out the social element, and man is a social animal, being a primate).
Crowley’s ideas at some stage seemed to have played with the idea that the True Will was expressed by the unconscious desires and by following these one would get to the essence of the True Will, but he must have realized this was not enough, as evidenced by his other writings. Enacting his unconscious desires, not always in private company, seemed, for him, a way of dealing with his troubles … a type of therapy. Eventually one must realize that as well as the unconscious containing the root and drive of the True Will it also contains a whole lot of other stuff, depending on what type of upbringing we have had. And separating one from the other, in the depths of the unconscious is not an easy task (especially when science has shown that even things like memory can not often distinguish between real events, dreams and imaginings, laid down in the memory in the past).
For Regardie, Freud’s lack of occult approach led him to delve into the ideas of Jung.
Suster quotes James Webb;
“Jung can be seen as the culminating point of the late 19th centaury occult revival. He put into a terminology to which those bought up on the new and exciting language of Freud could respond, the insights into the psyche which the occultists and mystics of all ages had once expressed intelligibly – but which had been veiled and to all intents and purposes lost by the development of a vocabulary of modern science that excluded the areas of experience of which they spoke …”
Jung rejected Freud’s idea that the sex drive was THE primary force, he postulated 3 major drives; the will to live, the will to create (the sex drive), and the social or herd instinct. Later he added a fourth, the religious instinct, unique to humans which “… urges one to seek transcendental meaning in the data presented by life.” (Suster)
Also Jung developed the idea of the Collective Unconscious, “…it is as old as humanity and contains our collective needs, fears and desires, it inspires all true art, and it is the realm of dreams and the repository of all the symbols of mankind.” (Suster).
Now we are getting even closer to a magical world, here we have a concept like the Astral Plane, and contacting this plane had been done in Regardie’s system with exercises like ‘Scrying in the Spirit Vision’ to comprehend understand and adjust oneself within the ‘interior worlds’. Some Jungian therapy uses a very similar technique but Suster warns that they omit precautions against self-deception (apparently so did the G.D.?)
Suster then goes on to describe certain parallels between magical and Jungian psychology. The idea of psychoanalysis is individuation, journey into the knowledge of the self and the Unconscious or underworld. The stages are, encountering the shadow or Id – The Dweller on the Threshold of Initiation (see the two figures either side of the Thoth Moon Trump), painful processes of self-realization and acceptance – Portal Grade, death of the illusory self and the ‘resurrection’ of a deeper individuality – The Adeptus Minor G.D. initiation (or any similar initiation).
For Regardie all of this fair enough but what about the question of the Will? Freud saw it as one – the Libido, Jung saw it as four. Regardie saw many situations where these four could be at conflict, there had to be some overall moderating force. Also, in psycho-analysis where is the drive for a man to become MORE than he thought he could, to go beyond his previously foreseen potential. Magic seems good for that, but does it really create an absolutely stable base on its own?
Is one exclusive to the other? A question that is often bought to mind when studying prominent Occultists, Yogis, etc. more commonly from the ‘outside view’ yet, certainly at times, from the ‘inner view’ as well.
This question was recently bought to light again while I was reading Gerald Suster’s book; ‘Crowley’s Apprentice – The Life and Ideas of Israel Regardie.’. p.90 ;
“If neurosis could co-exist with the highest illumination, then Magic alone wasn’t enough. Psychoanalysis was perhaps an essential preliminary, even a necessary accompaniment. And if, on the other hand, neurosis and illumination were mutually exclusive, what on earth was one to make of Aleister Crowley?”
[Aside: Not that I want to start up the debate about Crowley again! – well, not here. I ask that we at least agree that Crowley had some degree of illumination and at least some degree of neurosis. {Eg. On the first hand, I cite Crowley’s writings, system and tarot and on the other hand I quote Regardie (although there are numerous incidences) as his example demonstrates my point; Suster says when people visited Regardie and put Crowley down Regardie would demonstrate Crowley’s genius. On the other hand, if the person seemed unrealistically praising Crowley, Regardie would respond with a comment like, “Yes, yes, a shame though that the old boy couldn’t resist getting his women to shit on him as he lay on the floor.”.]
Let’s go back a bit to the beginnings of when magic and modern psychology first met.
I feel Regardie is the pioneer here – not the pioneer of the idea but a pioneer of applying a holistic practical blend of the two and using the result to help and treat himself and others.
Regardie did extensive preliminary study before he took up the practice of magic. He encountered Crowley’s works and studied them and began putting them into practice. He then went to study directly under Crowley, but, ended up being his secretary. (Regardie was too shy or embarrassed to ask Crowley for magical instruction and appeared to wait for the ‘Master’ to approach him. Crowley assumed Regardie was practicing magic and meditating and would ask him a question if he got into difficulty. It appears there was no direct magicalcoaching.) Eventually there was a falling out, bought about by an outburst of Crowley neurosis (the defamatory and slanderous letter Crowley distributed about Regardie’s low-class and Jewish background). Later Regardie joined The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and studied and practiced there but also encountered the neurotic egos of the magicians involved in his group. http://www.amazon.com/What-Should-Know-About-Golden/dp/1561840645 He left the G.D. and concentrated on his own practices.
Regardie then began studying psychoanalysis under Dr. E. Clegg and Dr. J.L. Bendit and trained in the Jungian system. Somehow Regardie avoided the trap and realized he himself had a neurosis and knew THAT had to be addressed BEFORE he could seriously and realisticly consider himself advanced in magic and illumination. One reason Suster gives for Regardie doing this is the primary Hermetic maxim; ‘KNOW THYSELF’, and that is also the purpose of psychoanalysis.
[it appears Regardie had introverted problems where Crowley’s seemed somewhat the opposite]. Regardie underwent Freudian analysis and became a lay analyst. Then, when that was accomplished and understood, the 2nd principle could come – BE THYSELF.
Regardie had noticed that in the schools of magic and enlightenment he observed many of the members and leaders had not addressed basic issues within their own selves from a psychological perspective, and in fact it can be observed that magical studies can actually accentuate these problems if the student does not achieve a preliminary balance.
Freud had come up with some (then) radical notions; our conscious mind is only a small part of our selves, our motivations and our make up, what REALLY drives us, of which we are unaware, is our unconscious. Freud argued that we are really driven by instincts, just like animals are, and the strongest of these is sex, this drive Freud called the Libido. Freud also used dream analysis – the expression of the unconscious.
Our uncoordinated instinctual desires Freud called the Id. These desires of the Id are repressed during our upbringing to mould us to whatever society we are in. This, in turn, creates a moralizing faculty Freud termed the Super-ego.
The conscious mentation Freud called the Ego, which is continually trying to find balance and harmony between the Id and Super-ego.
The Oedipus Complex, Freud said, was the result of infantile sexuality projected on to the mother and in later life the guilt from this became a type of castration complex (the Super-ego groping at ways to stop the Id expressing itself). This results later in life in masochistic tendencies in an attempt to relieve guilt and suffering by self punishment. (Or punishment and/or degradation at the hand of another.) Many have suggested that Crowley suffered from a similar neurosis
[Apparently Regardie loved telling this joke;
One Jewish woman says to another,” I have terrible news! My son – he’s just been to the psychiatrist and now he says my son has an Oedipus complex!”
“Ach! Oedipus schmoedipus!” says the other one, “As long as he is a good Jewish boy and loves his mother.”]
Now here we get to a crossroads and , I feel, an essential part in understanding the essence of Thelema (Crowley’smagical philosophy about the self and self expression and the purpose of individual incarnation) and how it can best be interpreted.
Freud came to terms with the issue of Id / Super-ego by advocating sublimation, that is, he believed that the (dangerous?) energies of the Id and its desire to express its urges needed to be consciously directed to benefit society and be productive. Regardie had his doubts about this and, I believe, Crowley had virtually the opposite opinion.
At this stage Regardie was still considering Crowley’s interpretation of how psychoanalysis slotted in with Thelema.
“Professor Sigmund Freud and his school have, in recent years, discovered a part of this body of Truth, which has been taught for many centuries in the Sanctuaries of initiation. But failure to grasp the fullness of Truth, especially that implied in my Sixth Theorem (‘Every man and every woman is a star’) - and its corollaries, has led him and his followers into the error of admitting that the avowedly suicidal ‘Censor’ is the proper arbiter of conduct. Official psychoanalysis is therefore committed to upholding a fraud, although the foundation of the science was the observation of the disastrous effects on the individual of being false to his Unconscious Self, whose ‘writing on the wall’ in dream language is the record of the sum of the essential tendencies of the true nature of the individual. The result has been that psycho-analysts have misinterpreted life, and announced the absurdity that every human being is essentially an anti-social, criminal insane animal. It is evident that the errors of the Unconscious of which psycho-analysists complain are neither more nor less than the ‘original sin’ of the theologians whom they despise so heartily.” (Liber Abba).
In some cases, and at certain times it appeared that Crowley related the expression of the True Will to the expression of the unconscious. (Without getting too deep into it here, examine the ideas behind his Thoth Tarot ‘Devil’ card.) But the True will implies more than following the unconscious and instinctual drives and forces, I believe there is an important link there but the issue is not as simple as one being the other. Crowley’s definitions of the True Will implied a specific incarnatory purpose or career, an expression of a specific individual genius and a learning and molding experience. The essential, to Crowley’s initiation system, at the beginning, is a structuralisation and formation of energies into their specific roles and places. The Expression of the True Will is not just blindly following your impulses or desires … or unconscious desires (desire being a conscious product of unconscious will), it is much more.
This seems to be at the root of many peoples misunderstanding of the Thelemic concept of the True Will. Firstly, Crowley postulates ‘Every man and every woman is a star.’ That is their essential nature. When restrictions are removed the True Will shines forth. That’s one school of thought and relates to similar concepts such as put forward by Rousseau and those that advocated the theory that if you left man by himself his natural good qualities would emerge. The other school of thought was pretty much the opposite, acknowledging the power of the Id (or more correctly, the suppressed Id) they thought if you left man to himself he would revert back to an animal state. Their ideas were somewhat supported by scientific studies of feral children (small children bought up in the wild by wild animals. – But these studies have left out the social element, and man is a social animal, being a primate).
Crowley’s ideas at some stage seemed to have played with the idea that the True Will was expressed by the unconscious desires and by following these one would get to the essence of the True Will, but he must have realized this was not enough, as evidenced by his other writings. Enacting his unconscious desires, not always in private company, seemed, for him, a way of dealing with his troubles … a type of therapy. Eventually one must realize that as well as the unconscious containing the root and drive of the True Will it also contains a whole lot of other stuff, depending on what type of upbringing we have had. And separating one from the other, in the depths of the unconscious is not an easy task (especially when science has shown that even things like memory can not often distinguish between real events, dreams and imaginings, laid down in the memory in the past).
For Regardie, Freud’s lack of occult approach led him to delve into the ideas of Jung.
Suster quotes James Webb;
“Jung can be seen as the culminating point of the late 19th centaury occult revival. He put into a terminology to which those bought up on the new and exciting language of Freud could respond, the insights into the psyche which the occultists and mystics of all ages had once expressed intelligibly – but which had been veiled and to all intents and purposes lost by the development of a vocabulary of modern science that excluded the areas of experience of which they spoke …”
Jung rejected Freud’s idea that the sex drive was THE primary force, he postulated 3 major drives; the will to live, the will to create (the sex drive), and the social or herd instinct. Later he added a fourth, the religious instinct, unique to humans which “… urges one to seek transcendental meaning in the data presented by life.” (Suster)
Also Jung developed the idea of the Collective Unconscious, “…it is as old as humanity and contains our collective needs, fears and desires, it inspires all true art, and it is the realm of dreams and the repository of all the symbols of mankind.” (Suster).
Now we are getting even closer to a magical world, here we have a concept like the Astral Plane, and contacting this plane had been done in Regardie’s system with exercises like ‘Scrying in the Spirit Vision’ to comprehend understand and adjust oneself within the ‘interior worlds’. Some Jungian therapy uses a very similar technique but Suster warns that they omit precautions against self-deception (apparently so did the G.D.?)
Suster then goes on to describe certain parallels between magical and Jungian psychology. The idea of psychoanalysis is individuation, journey into the knowledge of the self and the Unconscious or underworld. The stages are, encountering the shadow or Id – The Dweller on the Threshold of Initiation (see the two figures either side of the Thoth Moon Trump), painful processes of self-realization and acceptance – Portal Grade, death of the illusory self and the ‘resurrection’ of a deeper individuality – The Adeptus Minor G.D. initiation (or any similar initiation).
For Regardie all of this fair enough but what about the question of the Will? Freud saw it as one – the Libido, Jung saw it as four. Regardie saw many situations where these four could be at conflict, there had to be some overall moderating force. Also, in psycho-analysis where is the drive for a man to become MORE than he thought he could, to go beyond his previously foreseen potential. Magic seems good for that, but does it really create an absolutely stable base on its own?
