If you are new to the Band, occult imagery posts are shorter looks at the background and patterns in occult images. For more posts on occult symbolism, click here. For an introduction to the Band and the Dismantling Postmodernism series, click the featured post to the right or check out the archive.
In the last occult post, following automatic writing into the present led us to Ouija, a low-rent gateway occult of the kind that works to subtly shift the Overton window over time. It's insidious because its easy to dismiss as silly - the frivolousness is the cover it uses to normalize the not-so-cutesy theme of spiritual possession. Automatic writing also leads in the opposite direction, towards a widely-respected venue with more concealed occult ties: Psychology.
Giant of Psychology and raving occultist Carl Jung and a Gnostic cosmological image.
To see the connection we have to look very broadly. Some more on two graphics from the last post:
The first represents the basic historical understanding of metaphysics with the material, and transcendent worlds at the poles, and an intermediate space in-between. This is where we find all the immaterials: gods, djinn, spirits, angels, devils, etc.
We are all familiar with the material level - its where we are. This is where science, meaning verifiable empirical knowledge, is at home as well. The ultimate reality level is understood by faith, though there are patterns that suggest transcendence in the material world for those with eyes to see them. The occult is based in the intermediary stage because it seeks consort with and favor from things that are immaterial, but not absolute divinity. Automatic writing - like other forms of divination - tries to induce entities from this region to take possession of someone and compel unconscious action. It is called automatic because there is no conscious effort or even awareness - with the spirit driving it it just seems to happen automatically.
The second graphic shows the impact of the Enlightenment way of thinking known as "Rationalism". This can be summed up as 'whatever the elites declare to be "rational" must be taken as an absolute law of nature'.
Because the supernatural is by definition "above nature", it had no place in the rational universe of the Enlightenment and was waved away.
Keep in mind that this rationalism was never proven - the truly amazing thing about the Enlightenment is that a handful of people declared that we will decide the nature of reality, and human vanity is so extreme that the West basically went along. This pattern should look familiar. The result is that all levels of reality are reduced to the material world.
June 8, 1987 cover of Time.
Marxism is a really good example of this. They justified their monstrous crimes by declaring that history follows a predetermined path, or what philosophers call teleology. If something is directing history and we cannot perceive empirically, it is by definition outside the natural world, or supernatural. But as post-Enlightenment "intellectuals", Marxists reject the supernatural. The solution? Just state that the material world has metaphysical properties. This is a case of the collapsing levels of reality in fits "All this becomes This" graphic above.
Logically, this is ridiculous, but it has other benefits. Since they just made this up, it can justify any crime. The ends - the teleology - are whatever the monsters want.
Psychology moved other metaphysical things into human mind. Like Marx, Freud simply declared that supernatural phenomena can be kept around because he made up some terms, but at least Freud had some insightful observations. He's most famous for his notion of the unconscious and subconscious minds - the idea that most of our mental activity is outside of our conscious awareness. We catch glimpses of this in experiences like dreams and deja vu, where the subconscious bubbles over into the conscious world.
Freud's iceberg with the different levels of consciousness. It's comical to search this and see how many versions of the iceberg assign percentages to the different levels, as if they were measurable. The numbers differ.
This is most useful when you think of it as an allegory rather than something scientific. You can't empirically observe, measure, or falsify the subconscious, but as a concept, it categorizes a number of things that we can observe in a convenient term and clarifies the distinction between our thoughts and feelings/impulses. It's useful for day-to-day understanding - hypnosis and programming tactics are built off of subliminal implants and alterations. In that regard - as a way of recognizing we have conscious and unconscious sides - it is a valuable concept.
Sigmund and daughter Anna.
But Freud pretended it was a universal principle that served as the foundation of our psychological realities, and not a projection of his own twisted desires.
Pretended here isn't just rhetoric. From a review of an excellent deconstruction of this sorry turd:
Freud was a despicable person with multiple character flaws. He betrayed his scientific training in a tour-de-force of self-deception, succumbing to all sorts of irrational beliefs. His vaunted psychoanalyses never objectively helped a single patient. It is astounding that his ideas and his cult were so influential for so long. Freud was a fraud, a liar, a bad scientist, and a bad doctor
The "evidence" for the quote on the right? The fraud noticed people tend to revisit traumatic experiences.
There is no empirical evidence for a subconscious as an actual physical structure. It is just an description applied to a group of mental processes that may involve different parts of the anatomy. A description. A title given to a bundle of things so we can talk about them as a group. It's qualitative, not something that can be observed directly and measured. This is not the same as the heart pumping blood - that can be observed in action. The "subconscious" is no more the reason for mental processes than "involuntarism" is the cause of the heart contracting. But wave that away, pretend that psychoanalysis is Science!, and you have an excuse for all impulsive, emotional, and unconscious behavior.
Of course in Freud world, the unconscious is king. Reject the rational processes that build healthy societies to indulge in cocaine-fueled perversion. The idea that there are conscious and unconscious processes has nothing to do with the sick fantasy world of libidos, death drives, and child sexuality that titillated Freud.
Leftist materialism always ends in an obsession with debased things.
And of course - the predictable attack on religion from a debauched liar peddling fake science for profit (and blow):
It would be boring if it hadn't been so destructive. Freud lied compulsively, but physiognomy is more truthful. Look at this face if you have eyes to see. Soulless psychopathy. It's monstrous.
But so is the fact that this freak is still spoken of with respect.
The notion that subconscious impulses drive us is where we can see an occult concept being translated into something "natural". Not that the subconscious isn't a useful metaphorical basket for our emotions and impulses, but the idea that we are governed by intangible voices that need a "priest" to decode. Freud wanted to access the unconscious, trying hypnosis before settling on free association, where the patient blathers a stream of consciousness. This brings us close to automatic writing.
Astrid Rusquellas, Free Association at Bergasse 19, Freud and Dora II, ceramic
Inner voices, outer voices - it's all about stripping you of your will and placing you in the hands of an "expert".
How about the next pillar of the "science"? Carl Jung built his idea of archetypes - mystical patterns in our "collective unconscious" - on the idea that the subconscious rules us, only extended to a group level and readable through symbols. Seriously. But he was also a full-fledged occultist, and built his archetype theory around a Gnostic, anti-Christian metaphysics. Click for a Band occult post on Gnosis. Click for a long excerpt from The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead - an excellent study of Jung's occult beliefs.
Jung's Red Book detailed his personal journey through occult spaces with a spirit guide called Philemon, and climaxed with his Seven Sermons to the Dead, where he meets a Gnostic divinity Abraxas. The last was written "semi-automatically" and published under the pseudonym Basilides of Alexandria.
Jung's paintings from The Red Book: Philemon, p. 154; Snake Erupting, p. 54. The latter is interesting for its primordial snake imagery.
Most people think of Jung as an important figure in the history of psychology, if they think of him at all. The idea that his "school" flowed seamlessly into automatic writing of unconscious messages is generally left out. Ask yourself why he is still taken seriously by anyone? Or better still:
Speaking of subconscious messages, here's a word from the Church of Satan:
Typical nonsense, but telling for the transplanting of our in-between occult level of reality to the mind. Note how they make up their own metaphysics of will projection. If this is based in our physical minds, there should be some empirical sign of it.
Guess where else subconscious messaging comes in?
It is not surprising to find automatic writing, under the same name, as a respected therapeutic tool in modern psychology. Remember the seances and oracles from the last post, think of Jung's Red Book, then read this:
In other unsurprising news, recovered memory charlatans also included hypnotism and automatic writing in their bag of tricks.
It's in the Arts too.
The occult, psychoanalysis, and automatism bled into the arts in the form of surrealism. The idea here, as with all forms of Modernism, was to tear down the structures of Western culture - in this case rejecting rational thought by unlocking the subconscious. Think about that for a moment. This is taken seriously in "intellectual" circles.
Andre Breton's influential Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 defines it:
Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.
Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.
There were different ways to do this, but they pretty much break down to randomness (objects, flinging paint, etc.) and weird looking abstracts with a creepy or, as Freud would say, "uncanny" look.
Max Morise, Max Ernst and André Masson, Cadaveri eccellenti (Cadavre exquis), 1927, Art Institute of Chicago
Robert Delaunay cover of Yvan Goll's Surréalisme, Volume 1, Number 1, October 1, 1924
The appearance of shattered randomness and a form of collective unconscious picture making that invariably winds up perversely off-putting. The artists draw themselves.
Max Ernst, Pietà or Revolution by Night, 1923, oil on canvas, 116.2 cm × 88.9 cm, Tate Gallery, London
The other choice - composed pictures meant to recall dream and other subconscious subjects. These also invariably depict perverse, dyscivic, or anti-religious topics.
This Ernst is a good one for the disconnect between the image and the interpretation:
Ernst replaces the classic image of the Virgin Mary holding the crucified body of Jesus (pietà) with his father as Mary and the artist himself as Jesus. The expressions on both faces are blank as though in a state of sleepwalking.
The expressions are blank? This is the "subconscious vision" that these revolutionaries have in mind.
Unleash the subconscious, tear down reason, and somehow a new, perfect order emerges. If this idiocy hadn't been repeated so many times and destroyed so much human potential, it would be depressing. As it stands, it is repulsive. Is anyone surprised to learn that politically, the Surrealists were Trotskyite believers in perpetual revolution?
What exactly is the subconscious? If it is to be our spirit guide in a material world, shouldn't have a track record of success, or at least be measurable in some way, first? Rational thought has allowed us to elevate above material impulses and seek fulfillment as individuals while delivering unprecedented material security as a group. It allows us to temper our destructive passions and plan strategically.
Ask yourself who would champion the overthrow of rational thought in the name of unleashing uncontrollable impulses?
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