ThoTh
01-26-2009, 11:38 PM
[ II ] The Theory of the Beast
In the realm of Black Magic it is often useful to borrow metaphors or terms from sources such as Psychology. I shall now aim to represent a psychological foundation for the ideas I have encountered: but I must impress upon the reader that this theory and the use of its constituents may lie outside of conventional Psychology. It is important to address this theory now however, for Psychology has its roots in Alchemy, Alchemy is a highly relative notion to THEM because of its emphasis on Change, and part of Alchemical Change involves knowing thyself. I will give a crash course in Psychological terms and concepts and then relate why I believe suppression of the part of the psyche called the Id, personified and demonized, gave rise to the origin of Satan, to Demons, and to the concept of Evil.
Our minds, when being formed, are protected from psychic harm by a container called the Ego. The ego is a vitally important function of our total Psyche that stores for us the unique, stable set of conditions we each live by, with our actions motivated toward keeping those conditions just right or in ‘homeostasis’. It is also the aspect of us that generates our sense of control and security over our behaviour, thoughts, and environment. When the ego is first formed it is malleable, elastic in its growth and able to take on new ideas and information, but as it reaches maturity it hardens and becomes brittle and resistant to change. For this reason, once set, the beliefs of people are often unchangeable. Entwined as they are with their world-view, the ego’s protective mechanisms, and sense of identity; the beliefs of a person are a hyper-extension of the ego that can sometimes take control over the organism like an autopilot. Ego is the part of us that will fight like a cornered animal to re-assert its view of reality if it is questioned or challenged.
Another function of the ego is to act like a dam holding back a vast lake of water. It acts as a division in our mind that holds back the contents of our animalistic “Sub-conscious” or “Id”. The Id is a separate compartment of the mind that originally dominated our Being. In order to have an individual sense of identity to separate us from our previous animalistic instincts, the ego developed by repressing (blocking out) the subconscious. The content and role of the Id is an on-going matter of speculation; however it is best known for its capacity to act as a psychic waste-land ruled by unknown dimensions; a primeval enigma that contains contents highly disturbing to the logical, rational mind. It is a subliminal pool that contains among other things: our dark secrets, wishes and desires, our irrational urges and impulses expressed without restraint, intense anxieties and repressed memories of fear and pain, the surfacing of which can be extremely dangerous to our fragile well-being. Our ego helps to deceive us about our innate fragility and keep up protective illusions of safety, conformity, normality, control, security and “Reality”. It essentially tries to ignore the Id and takes great pains not to disturb it. Those in the field of Analytical Psychology (Qv. Carl Jung) are painstakingly aware of the care that must be taken when allowing content from the Subconscious of a client to emerge; and Psychopaths and the impulsive/compulsive individual embody examples of the ability of the contents of the unconscious to interfere in sane growth. As well as guarding against internal pressure the ego also helps us to deal with threats from outer forces we face in our external environment. Because it is subjected to enormous psychological and physiological pressures it is important that its development is properly executed. If the Ego is damaged during crucial stages of its development, it may crack and cause unpredictable leaks of content from the subconscious to occur. A significant crack can enable a large flow or even a flood of subconscious content into our consciousness allowing what is called ‘the Abyss’ in magickal terms or ‘the Collective Unconsciousness’ in psychological terms, to be released onto what we know as ourselves: the “I “ resulting in madness or severe psychosis. This theory closely parallels our biological evolution.
Before we gained the level of consciousness that allowed us to recognize ourselves as individual thinking beings separate from each other and the rest of the world, in fact before we were “humanity”, proto-man was ruled by base desires and savage primal instincts. At some point in our evolution we were able to suppress our ruling animal instincts long enough for Consciousness to arise. We eventually achieved a state of self-awareness that allowed us to appraise and wonder at our own existence. This unique state of self-awareness is referred to as the ‘I’ in Psychology and has long been regarded as the single-most fascinating achievement of the human organism. But the emergence of the ‘I’ came at a heavy price. In exchange for Consciousness, we had to forcefully drive our natural, raw instinct of what we were (the Collective Unconscious) back from the fore of our minds and forge a new artificial conscious collective agreement (the Collective Consciousness) on what we wanted to be.
To help do this, over time our species created, and then instilled, Values, Group Obligations and Right Conduct into and onto each other, further suppressing the raw state of our natural being to further the aims of our artificial one – which was a mass social form of indefinitely deferred gratification (having to wait for set conditions to arise before one can gratify ones natural desires). So long as we kept our primal dark forces [The Id] in check, we were able to get along with each other relatively well enough to develop groups and societies – usually ruled by a few, who used fear, violence etc., to enforce Law, Order, and instill conscious conduct.
Over a vast span of time, and as Consciousness spread, the majority of people developed an Ego strong enough to contain the Id indefinitely, or productively released it via outlets of creativity, dance, music, language, symbols, etc. A whole social matrix was built upon the attempts to keep the subconscious out so that our new state of independence could thrive and we began to cloak immediate needs and base desires within respectability and glamour. Such glamour is artifice; all humans contain the Id and all Conscious human beings are scorpions.] We also began to give names and labels to things to begin dispelling fear. The more names we created the more complex the world became. Today, there are so many names for things, and so many institutions to perpetuate more names, that we have forgotten its original point as an exercise in control. Because there are so many concepts and names and ideas that have been layered onto what really Is apparently there [which is geometry] and nameless, there are now millions of illusions that must be broken before a grasp of genuine reality can be achieved. Owing to the hardship required to break free from such illusions most cannot help but be entrapped by the deception of authority and the webs of the matrix.
But, those that made a religion of suppression were ill-prepared for the strength of their new enemy. The Id or “Beast” could not be tamed and the forces of the subconscious proved powerful beyond their wildest dreams. Although punishment was meted out to those unable to hold back the advancing forces of our primal being as a social admonishment to discourage others from releasing what was imprisoned within; suppression did nothing to sate our desires and urges to behave naturally. While some adopted the new Conscious collective agreement and joined the religion of holding back their impulsive urges, some followed only in part by practicing its release in private (or in public granted certain power); and still others refused (or were incapable) to suppress it at all, continuing to embody our original natural state of being that sought instant gratification.
In the realm of Black Magic it is often useful to borrow metaphors or terms from sources such as Psychology. I shall now aim to represent a psychological foundation for the ideas I have encountered: but I must impress upon the reader that this theory and the use of its constituents may lie outside of conventional Psychology. It is important to address this theory now however, for Psychology has its roots in Alchemy, Alchemy is a highly relative notion to THEM because of its emphasis on Change, and part of Alchemical Change involves knowing thyself. I will give a crash course in Psychological terms and concepts and then relate why I believe suppression of the part of the psyche called the Id, personified and demonized, gave rise to the origin of Satan, to Demons, and to the concept of Evil.
Our minds, when being formed, are protected from psychic harm by a container called the Ego. The ego is a vitally important function of our total Psyche that stores for us the unique, stable set of conditions we each live by, with our actions motivated toward keeping those conditions just right or in ‘homeostasis’. It is also the aspect of us that generates our sense of control and security over our behaviour, thoughts, and environment. When the ego is first formed it is malleable, elastic in its growth and able to take on new ideas and information, but as it reaches maturity it hardens and becomes brittle and resistant to change. For this reason, once set, the beliefs of people are often unchangeable. Entwined as they are with their world-view, the ego’s protective mechanisms, and sense of identity; the beliefs of a person are a hyper-extension of the ego that can sometimes take control over the organism like an autopilot. Ego is the part of us that will fight like a cornered animal to re-assert its view of reality if it is questioned or challenged.
Another function of the ego is to act like a dam holding back a vast lake of water. It acts as a division in our mind that holds back the contents of our animalistic “Sub-conscious” or “Id”. The Id is a separate compartment of the mind that originally dominated our Being. In order to have an individual sense of identity to separate us from our previous animalistic instincts, the ego developed by repressing (blocking out) the subconscious. The content and role of the Id is an on-going matter of speculation; however it is best known for its capacity to act as a psychic waste-land ruled by unknown dimensions; a primeval enigma that contains contents highly disturbing to the logical, rational mind. It is a subliminal pool that contains among other things: our dark secrets, wishes and desires, our irrational urges and impulses expressed without restraint, intense anxieties and repressed memories of fear and pain, the surfacing of which can be extremely dangerous to our fragile well-being. Our ego helps to deceive us about our innate fragility and keep up protective illusions of safety, conformity, normality, control, security and “Reality”. It essentially tries to ignore the Id and takes great pains not to disturb it. Those in the field of Analytical Psychology (Qv. Carl Jung) are painstakingly aware of the care that must be taken when allowing content from the Subconscious of a client to emerge; and Psychopaths and the impulsive/compulsive individual embody examples of the ability of the contents of the unconscious to interfere in sane growth. As well as guarding against internal pressure the ego also helps us to deal with threats from outer forces we face in our external environment. Because it is subjected to enormous psychological and physiological pressures it is important that its development is properly executed. If the Ego is damaged during crucial stages of its development, it may crack and cause unpredictable leaks of content from the subconscious to occur. A significant crack can enable a large flow or even a flood of subconscious content into our consciousness allowing what is called ‘the Abyss’ in magickal terms or ‘the Collective Unconsciousness’ in psychological terms, to be released onto what we know as ourselves: the “I “ resulting in madness or severe psychosis. This theory closely parallels our biological evolution.
Before we gained the level of consciousness that allowed us to recognize ourselves as individual thinking beings separate from each other and the rest of the world, in fact before we were “humanity”, proto-man was ruled by base desires and savage primal instincts. At some point in our evolution we were able to suppress our ruling animal instincts long enough for Consciousness to arise. We eventually achieved a state of self-awareness that allowed us to appraise and wonder at our own existence. This unique state of self-awareness is referred to as the ‘I’ in Psychology and has long been regarded as the single-most fascinating achievement of the human organism. But the emergence of the ‘I’ came at a heavy price. In exchange for Consciousness, we had to forcefully drive our natural, raw instinct of what we were (the Collective Unconscious) back from the fore of our minds and forge a new artificial conscious collective agreement (the Collective Consciousness) on what we wanted to be.
To help do this, over time our species created, and then instilled, Values, Group Obligations and Right Conduct into and onto each other, further suppressing the raw state of our natural being to further the aims of our artificial one – which was a mass social form of indefinitely deferred gratification (having to wait for set conditions to arise before one can gratify ones natural desires). So long as we kept our primal dark forces [The Id] in check, we were able to get along with each other relatively well enough to develop groups and societies – usually ruled by a few, who used fear, violence etc., to enforce Law, Order, and instill conscious conduct.
Over a vast span of time, and as Consciousness spread, the majority of people developed an Ego strong enough to contain the Id indefinitely, or productively released it via outlets of creativity, dance, music, language, symbols, etc. A whole social matrix was built upon the attempts to keep the subconscious out so that our new state of independence could thrive and we began to cloak immediate needs and base desires within respectability and glamour. Such glamour is artifice; all humans contain the Id and all Conscious human beings are scorpions.] We also began to give names and labels to things to begin dispelling fear. The more names we created the more complex the world became. Today, there are so many names for things, and so many institutions to perpetuate more names, that we have forgotten its original point as an exercise in control. Because there are so many concepts and names and ideas that have been layered onto what really Is apparently there [which is geometry] and nameless, there are now millions of illusions that must be broken before a grasp of genuine reality can be achieved. Owing to the hardship required to break free from such illusions most cannot help but be entrapped by the deception of authority and the webs of the matrix.
But, those that made a religion of suppression were ill-prepared for the strength of their new enemy. The Id or “Beast” could not be tamed and the forces of the subconscious proved powerful beyond their wildest dreams. Although punishment was meted out to those unable to hold back the advancing forces of our primal being as a social admonishment to discourage others from releasing what was imprisoned within; suppression did nothing to sate our desires and urges to behave naturally. While some adopted the new Conscious collective agreement and joined the religion of holding back their impulsive urges, some followed only in part by practicing its release in private (or in public granted certain power); and still others refused (or were incapable) to suppress it at all, continuing to embody our original natural state of being that sought instant gratification.