Talks
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Where: Manchester Metropolitan University
http://notebookeleven.razorsmile.org/2007/10/28/to-survive-daath/
In the 'Western Kabbalah' – that version of the Judaic tradition which underlies large portions of the work of Western Hermetic magicians – one of the central concepts is that of 'da'ath', a non-existent 'sephiroth' encountered in the experience known as 'Crossing the Abyss'. This experience constitutes one of the central initiatory experiences of the various traditions of Western Hermetic magic. It can be understood as the point at which the practitioner succeeds in their aim but in doing so find themselves caught within a paranoiac machine. The 'abyss' is the point at which everything in the universe is to be understood as directly speaking to the individual – it is an exercise in constituting a paranoiac machine of intense and immense over-determination.
The core practice of magic, as a 'body-spirituality', involves a continual process of learning, the aim of which is 'knowledge'. The particular understanding of knowledge, however, is transformed from a possessive content or object (a 'know-that') into a transformative apprenticeship – but an apprenticeship to what? It is, I will argue, an apprenticeship to the event and the experience of the 'abyss' is a salutary lesson or warning in the power and anger involved in such an apprenticeship. Deleuze warns that the task with regard the event is to be worthy of it, to be able to sustain it or bear it, a theme that directly relates to the encounter with the demon of the eternal return in Nietzsche's most important presentation of that concept.
In Nietzsche's eternal return, Deleuze's call to be worthy of the event and Western magical practice of 'crossing the abyss' this underlying theme of danger, of death, abounds. Is the event, then, always an event of death, rebirth, loss? Is this the central aspect of what it means to encounter the event – to lose something, to lose our selves, to die in some way or another? Does this suggest that perhaps the event is a hidden encoding of the transcendent? Is the purity of the event, the cry of affirmation, merely another way to regain what is lost with the death of god.
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