SubStance, Issue 121 (Volume 39, Number 1), 2010, pp. 125-140 (Article)
Published by University of Wisconsin Press
DOI: 10.1353/sub.0.0069
For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sub/summary/v039/39.1.behum.htmlThe Body of Light
and the Body without Organs
William Behun
Among the most problematic of the main concepts of Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking is the Body without Organs (BwO.) This paper un-dertakes to examine the BwO in the light of another body from a radically different tradition, the Body of Light or Subtle Body that is the object of several forms of magical, mystical and alchemical practices, including Buddhism, Theosophy, and Hermeticism. Juxtaposing these two con-cepts will allow them mutually to explicate one another. I submit that the practices involved in the discipline of the construction of the subtle body may be appropriated as techniques for the construction of the BwO.
The formation of the body of light can be accomplished a number of ways, with an equally vast number of possibilities that emerge from its formation, including possibilities of death and madness. In this sense, the one body is much like the other. Underlying the juxtaposition is more than simply a similarity in terminology. Both “bodies” are predicated on the subordination of theoretical discourse to praxis, the empowering nature of the smooth rather than the stratified, and the consubstantiality of the spiritual and material. The realm of magical and alchemical work can be a fruitful place for further research into the dynamic and fluidic modes of thought that typify Deleuze and Guattari’s work.
What then is the body of light, and how do I get one? Do I already have one, and if so, how do I develop it? We begin by exploring the quali-ties of the body of light in several traditions in order to clarify in what ways this body may be compared to the BwO, and how the magical and alchemical techniques associated with the subtle body may be deployed in order to open up fields of human practice that offer a profoundly different relationship to the world. The magical and esoteric tradition is often understood to be specifically individualistic, in contrast to the work of Deleuze and Guattari which is strongly oriented towards the political and social aspects of transformation. I suggest that a certain kind of cross-pollination is possible here: that both traditions can make use of the terminologies and technologies of the other in order to account for these limitations.
Many forms of magic make note of what is alternately called the body of light, the body of glory, or the subtle or astral body. In order
to understand how this phenomenon and its associated practices may relate to the work of Deleuze and Guattari, we must consider some of the literature concerning magic and esoteric practices. At times the con-nections that I am seeking to make will be immediately obvious to those more familiar with Deleuze and Guattari’s work, while at other times the tradition may seem too deeply bound up with individualistic and dualistic notions of the self and world. Much of the terminology used by writers on alchemy, initiation, and magic appears at first glance strongly dualistic, even Manichaean. However, I think it is perhaps more accurate to suggest that these writers understood such dualisms more in terms of difference in intensity, rather than as opposition.
While the terms used by various traditions vary wildly, there is a remarkable consistency of character and qualities among them, suggesting a singular phenomenon. For the magus, the body of light is the vehicle through which he practices his art. Without developing or creating for himself a body of light, there is no question of his being able to act upon the spiritual world in any but the most rudimentary way. Invocations, conjurations and prayers are worth nothing unless they are performed by the spiritual body of the operator. The material body is too closely tethered to the plane on which it operates to exercise magical power. Therefore, the magus must develop his astral or spiritual body in order to exercise power on that plane. Just as the musician must train and develop the material body in particular ways in order to practice his art, so too does the magus need to train and develop the body of light to practice his.
The body of light in its simplest form is described as an ethereal substance whose appearance more or less corresponds to the material body of the magician, but is diaphanous or vaporous. G.R.S. Mead, whose Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition (Mead, 1919) was the most influential text in bringing the concept of the subtle body or body of light into contemporary magical practice, states that perhaps erroneously the subtle body was “envisaged as a thin replica of the gross body, as a diaphanous double of the dense frame” (4). In dreams, in astral travel, in “out of body” experiences and even in divination and conjuration, it is this body that acts, rather than the material one, even if the material body gestures along with it.
The body of light represents that part of the human being that cor-responds to his life. To use medieval or Renaissance terminology, it is the spirit, as distinguished from both the soul and the body. In alchemical terms, it is the Lunar-Mercurial aspect, whereas the soul represents the Solar-Sulphuric aspect, and the body, the saline aspect. No less a mystical authority than Jacob Boehme writes, “Whatever grows, lives and moves in this world consists in Sulphur, and Mercury is the life of Sulphur” ( 52).
For the most part, this Mercury is dominated by salt, fixed in its corporeal form and bearing the indelible stamp of simplistic materiality and limita-tion. Here we see that there is no question of materiality as something fundamentally different from Spirit; the two are always inexorably inter-twined. Mercury is not simply spiritual and salt material; rather, these represent the orientation of something that is always simultaneously both spiritual and material. The aim of magical practice as it pertains to the body of light is to liberate this body from its lower form.
While I intend to focus primarily on the Western tradition here, the body of light does appear in Eastern traditions as well. Parallels to both the theory and the practices that lead to the formation of the body of light can be found in Yoga, Taoism, and Buddhism. We see this particularly in the emphasis on the heart as the seed and source of the spiritual body. Luc Benoist, in his summary of the Guénonian corpus entitled The
Eso-teric Path, notes that “according to the Chinese this [spiritual heart] is the
embryo of the immortal one” (31). The idea of not only a spiritual heart, but an entire spiritual body, is one that recurs within Oriental traditions in a number of forms, some of which do not parallel the idea of the body of light in the Western tradition. On the other hand, some are described in such similar terms that it is hard to imagine that a singular phenom-enon is not being described. In Mahayana Buddhism, we find detailed descriptions of the “body of transformation,” designated by the term
nirmanakaya, which can stand for both to the physical body and the body
through which one achieves enlightenment (Evola, 2001, 200). Certain basic notions of Buddhism also dovetail with Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas regarding the pre-subjective quality of the BwO. Again, Benoist writes “even the individual self has no essential reality; it is only the temporary meeting place of changing influences” (67). If in fact we can link the BwO and the principle of the body of light or spiritual body, this Buddhist no-tion may prove an interesting juncture.
Mead’s text, which we have already characterized as one of the most important sources for understanding the subtle body within Western esotericism, examines a number of variations on the idea of the body of light and its development from an historical perspective, identifying it in its guises as the “spirit-body,” the “radiant body” and the Gnostic Christian “resurrection-body.” In each case, what he is describing is the body of the initiate that is either created or liberated through a series of arduous practices or trials. It is through this body that the initiate has contact with the spiritual world, and can thus act within that sphere. In one sense, the body of light is always present as that which vivifies the material body, just as Spirit enlivens all things within the material Cosmos. As Mead puts it, “all things in the Cosmos are ‘made quick’ by Spirit” (39).
Similarly, the ground of the material body cannot be something material, but is something incorporeal that gives the material body its form: the material body is formed on the basis of something nonmaterial. Again, to quote Mead, “this ground is the spirituous body” (53). Mead describes a subtle body that is created through a series of practices that seem unique to the initiate. When referring to this body of light, Mead lists some of the terms are used to identify it across varying traditions: “the celestial or luciform body, or organon of light, the augoeides or astroeides, as it was called by our philosophers” (34). The spiritual body or “vesture of the soul” (Mead, 57) is precisely what distinguishes the initiated from the profane. Especially when referring to the body of resurrection--unique to those who will not suffer the second death—Mead states that the righteous will undergo a “resurrection of the body of the righteous, only this ‘body’ is to be a garment of light, and those who possess it are to be angelic” (92) It is interesting to note that Mead and another great commentator on the body of light, Julius Evola, both connect the astral and resurrection bod-ies in much the same way, and therefore powers such as astral travel or projection are intimately linked to the resurrection body (Evola, 1995,156).
Julius Evola’s work with the UR Group in the late 1920s in Italy (Evola, 2001, xi) was oriented primarily toward developing and practicing techniques that would lead to the development of the body of light and the acquisition of magical power.1 Evola (writing under the pseudonym
“Ea”) and another member of the UR Group, Giovanni Colazza (whose articles are signed with the pseudonym “Leo”) (ibid., xxv, xxvii) provided the most explicit references to the formation of the body of light. The name of the organization is explicitly tied to both the kundalini and to the body of light; the formation or liberation of the subtle body was at the center of their attempts to generate and harness magical power. (ibid., 202). It is mainly through Evola’s writings that we discover the ultimate goal and hermetic elements of the body of light.
The formation of the body of light is not an end unto itself. Rather, it is a means to acquiring a variety of magical powers, and is the source of--or the possibility of action within--the sphere of spirit. In fact, Evola says of the body of light that “one might say that it is made of conscious-ness and power” (ibid., 199). Only through the development of the subtle body is it possible for the magician or initiates to experience the freedom to act in the world, which is the hallmark of the sorcerer or thaumaturge. By mastering the “subtle energies,” wide vistas of activity are opened up to the magician. Evola states that in the formation of the subtle body “the consciousness of the body is transported into the full expression of those energies by which the body lives” (ibid., 155). If he makes use of this “life energy,” nothing is impossible for the magician: no law, custom
or dictum is binding upon him. The initiate is at this point an “Adeptus Exemptus,” the Adept Without, exempt even from the law of karma, from the law of cause and effect. Even in the early stages of the development of the subtle body, there is a profound feeling of freedom that is concomitant with the return to the material world from the journeys that the astral body undergoes. Colazza writes that “once the relationship with our body is reestablished, we will feel free and mobile within it. This is the birth of the so-called sense of the subtle body” (ibid., 63). It is not only the 20th-century Italian sorcerers of the UR Group who understand the
body of light as a structure and source of personal power. Mead too writes that “the spiritual body was a ‘glory,’ a body of power” (99). While at first glance it may seem that these practices have much in common with meditative or contemplative practices, Evola is adamant that the goal of the formation of the body of light is not merely enlightenment for its own sake, but for use. He warns the potential adept not to “fall into passive mystic-ecstatic states” (1995,117).
Two powers closely associated with the creation of the body of light are astral travel and the practice of immortality. Mead emphasizes the former, associating it with the revelatory journeys that form the basis of so much magical practice, for example in the case of Jewish merkabah vi-sions in the Book of Revelation, and Ezekiel’s wheels within wheels. He writes that “the subtle vehicle leaves and returns to the body in certain mystic experiences” (61). It would seem that in order to experience these vision quests, it is necessary to have a body capable of traveling among these realms. Evola, on the other hand emphasizes immortality, which seems more in keeping with his affinity for the concept of conditional immortality, wherein the survival of the soul after death is not a given, but dependent upon certain magical actions and knowledge. Probably the best-known example of conditional immortality is found in the Egyptian
Book of the Dead, a manual to prepare the soul of the deceased for the trials
and obstacles that would devour it. This is in marked contrast to Christian and Platonic notions of the immortality of the soul. In particular, within Christianity, the soul must be immortal so that it can receive punishment or reward after death. According to Evola’s system of conditional immor-tality, the vast majority of people will simply dissolve after death; only the initiate, the one who has formed a body of light, is capable of surviving death and experiencing immortality. In the Corpus Hermeticum, the initi-ate announces that “[I] have clothed myself in a body that does not die” (Evola, 1995, 146). Only the creation of an appropriate body of light offers the initiate the possibility of “real survival after death” (Evola, 2001, 196).
The body of light is formed by undergoing specific initiatory prac-tices. There is within the literature no clear consensus on whether the body
of light is something that is formed or liberated; whether it is something that is created in the initiatic practices that the candidate undergoes or something that is already present and is empowered and loosed from the bonds of the material body. By making use of certain mystical disciplines “our subtle body… maybe awakened to consciousness” (Evola, 2001, 60). It seems fair to say that whether the subtle or spiritual body is created or liberated really amounts to the same thing.
Given that one of the powers attached to the acquisition of a body of light is the experience of immortality, it follows that initiatic death is one of the means by which the spiritual body is formed. In almost every initiatic tradition, there is some rite of passage that is analogous to physical death, representing the death of the profane personality and the rebirth of the adept. The death and resurrection ritual of the third degree of Freemasonry, the mythologies of the “slain God,” the image of Christian Rosenkreutz’s tomb, even the symbolism of baptism all point to this fundamental initiatory process. Evola says in this regard that “he who really wants to live must first die” (2001, 198). He writes that “the starting point, technically speaking is the state of ‘nakedness’ realized through the initiatic death and then transferred from extra-bodily states to the earthly state of the initiate” (ibid., 201). Through meditative and dream practices, the limitations of the material body on the spiritual body are slowly whittled away. The initiate learns to live in the subtle body and uses it to empower the physical one. The practice of control over sleep is a significant part of this, since sleep is analogous to death. In the dream world, we live in the astral body. “[A]t the breaking of the chains of every bodily thing in the state of sleep it [the heart, the ground of the body of light] becomes light itself” (ibid., 127). By assuming control over those dreams, we begin to live in the body of light while still in the waking state. However, in order to do this, the spiritual body must be purified. Mead emphasizes the importance of certain moral practices along with the meditative work that goes to form the body of light. “Together with the discipline of virtue and the recovery of truth he [the candidate] shall also be diligent in the purification of his radiant body, which the oracles also called the subtle vehicle of the soul” (Mead, 65). These disciplines lead to the “purifications of vapors” (ibid., 50) that allow the subtle body to act unhindered by any force either internal or external. Colazza gives a very specific practice: the body of light “is attained by experiencing the head to be removed from and above us, almost as if it were external to us” (Evola, 2001, 61). One must train oneself to experience the body of light as something connected to, yet different from the material body.
The alchemical tradition as well speaks of the way in which the body of light is liberated from its maternal prison. Alchemy as understood by the UR Group and many others is never about material transmutation, but
rather about spiritual and psychic transformation. The symbolic language of the hermetic tradition points to the ways in which the gross, leaden forces of materiality may be transformed into spiritual, golden power. The spirit is characterized by the “lunar and mercurial force” (Evola, 1995, 44) that is unbounded and not determined in advance by any molar qualifications. The spiritual body or the body of light is watery, mercurial, protean. It has not been fixed; it is still volatile, open to all possibilities--nothing can limit it. The watery body “derives from the Word of God or the heavenly Sophia (symbols equivalent to the heavenly Waters)” (ibid., 156). The purpose of alchemical transformation is to make oneself spiri-tual, to make oneself infinitely flexible, infinitely adaptable, unlimited.
Within the alchemical tradition itself, there are differing paths to the creation of the body of light, with no single way held out as superior to all others. One distinction that can be made is between the wet path and the dry path. The dry path is the path of asceticism, characterized within the alchemical tradition by the use of nitre. By disciplining the material body, the spiritual body or life principle may be released. The weakening of the material pole allows the spiritual pole to become dominant. On the other hand, the wet path is characterized by the use of Cinnabar or Vinegar. This more active path operates through empowering the spiritual body so that it may overcome the limitations of materiality (Evola, 1995, 115). The former generally corresponds to the idea of the body of light as something preexistent that is liberated or freed; the latter to the idea that the body of light is something that is created or constructed.
The whole range of ideas concerning the subtle body or the body of light points toward the formation of a vehicle wherein the possibilities of action become limitless. Potentialities, intensities and flows are allowed to take their own courses without being predetermined by physical, moral, or karmic law. This bears a marked similarity to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the BwO, which when properly developed, opens up the field of agency in profound and potentially startling ways.
Deleuze and Guattari situate their chapter “How to Make Oneself a Body without Organs” by association with Antonin Artaud’s declara-tion of the war on the organs, November 28, 1947 (Deleuze & Guattari, 150). This is a battle cry of antinomianism. As Deleuze and Guattari say, “The enemy is the organism” (158). The BwO is a way of experiencing the world that is not determined in advance by any system of lawfulness. It is a body of freedom, free even from the determination of the dichotomy between freedom and determinism. In the process of making a BwO, one experiences oneself no longer as a molar person but rather as a molecular event, a smooth plane in which intensities and flows pass without restric-tion or limitarestric-tion.
The image of a body systematized and territorialized by a deter-minate system in which every part, every organ plays an appointed, predetermined role permeates modern culture. Challenges are reappro-priated, co-opted and confined within the system of organs. It is against this image, this confinement, that Deleuze and Guattari contrast the BwO. As they say, “to the strata as a whole, the BwO opposes disarticulation… experimentation… nomadism” (159). The world is no longer experienced as a lawfully determined system, as a cosmos, but rather as a chaos of possibility liberated from the construction of laws systematically imposed by capital and its allied systems of power.
Concomitant with this liberation is a sense of joy or pleasure that comes with the opening of possibilities. Deleuze and Guattari describe it as having “achieved a state in which desire no longer lacks anything” (156). This does not mean that all desires have been satisfied, since that would be a different kind of emptiness. Rather, desire itself becomes desirable. Desire is not simply a lack to be filled, but itself a positive intensity. The authors describe it as “a joy that is imminent to desire as if the desire were filled by itself and its contemplation, a joy that implies no lack or impossibility….” (155). Turning back for a moment to Evola, in a description that seems to apply perfectly to the BwO, he writes “these bodies… are not other bodies, but rather other ways to live that which is commonly understood as a body” (2001, 196). This new way of living, this new way of experiencing the world is an inherently joyful one, “full of gaiety, ecstasy and dance” (Deleuze & Guattari, 150). The making of the BwO is an act that transforms our way of engaging and living in a world. Nevertheless, it is not easy, nor is it without pitfalls.
Inasmuch as the BwO represents the positive liberation of human agency within both the personal and the social sphere, there are dangers present in making such a body. Deleuze and Guattari identify a number of forms of the BwO that are either empty or cancerous--negative, diseased, corrupted forms. The kind of far-reaching freedom that comes with mak-ing oneself a BwO is not without risks and dangers. The examples they give are the hypochondriac body, paranoid body, schizo body, drugged body, and masochist body (150). There are many opportunities for the process to go wrong. There is always the danger in any drastic approach to human agency that the dismantlement of strata, the erasure of deeply ingrained structures leaves one paralyzed, unable to act; there is the risk that one will empty out the BwO rather than filling it with possibilities (152). The practice must never be purely one of destruction. Deleuze and Guattari describe those who go astray as having “emptied themselves
of their organs instead of looking for the point at which they are patiently
organism” (161). Even within the field of wild experimentation and de-stratification, “you have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn” (160).
So what then is the value of this practice? Why should we run the risk of making a BwO? Deleuze and Guattari themselves say “staying stratified… is not the worst that can happen” (161). The answer is em-powerment, with the emphasis on the word power. Our experience of the world and our ability to act within it become increasingly defined by mo-lecularity, increasing our options by failing to restrict them to recognized or recognizable patterns. The BwO is unique, unrepeatable, not simply the result of a predetermined set of causes. When we fail to suppress and begin to recognize those possibilities that lie outside of the sphere of molar self-similarity, anything becomes possible for us. The very category of the impossible can become our chosen sphere of action.2 The romantic
ideal is a process of theosis, becoming God, identifying oneself with the storm and the lightning and the flood. The romantic hero is unconquer-able. Deleuze and Guattari recognize this parallel when they comment that “a freeing of the molecular was already found… in romantic matters of expression” (346). To make oneself a BwO is precisely to take on this power of the romantic hero. In making oneself a BwO, one identifies with “the potential totality of all BwOs, the plane of consistency” (157). In this sense, the BwO is something cosmic, something universal, something transpersonal. The BwO cannot be restricted to any particular identity, property or ownership. However, we are still locked into the main prob-lem of this paper: what do these two bodies have to do with each other? What progeny comes from their congress?
In describing both the body of light and the BwO, I have focused on those elements and characteristics that I think draw the two together, and certain similarities are immediately obvious. In fact the subtle body is described by several sources as lacking internal structure, and some-times explicitly as having no organs. Mead cites the patristic tradition in emphasizing the uselessness of organic structure for spiritual endeavors: “What, Origen begins by asking, is the use, in the resurrection, of a body of flesh, blood, sinews and bones, of limbs and organs?” (Mead, 84). The subtle body as a spiritual reality cannot be reduced to the mechanical or systematic. Evola states this in particularly strong terms, writing “the immortal body is first of all a simple body, not composite (2001, 198; my emphasis). Despite its connection with the heart or the cardiac center, the subtle body according to Mead “is not provided with organs” (50). As with the BwO, the orientation moves from the directional to the dimensional.
Deleuze and Guattari’s description of the BwO is not of a spiritual phenomenon in the religious or even theological sense-- something that
is spiritual over and against something material, or somehow “purely” spiritual. When we think of the BwO as the plane of consistency or smooth plane over which intensities flow, we are using terminology that bears a marked similarity to descriptions of spiritual unity given within the religious tradition. It is something prior to and infinitely greater than the individual. Mead might well be describing the smooth plane aspect of the BwO when he calls the body of light nothing less than the “inte-rior economy of the world soul” (9). Both a body of light and a BwO are necessary preconditions of our experience of the world. As Deleuze and Guattari write, “you can’t desire without making one” (149). Like the body of light, it can be seen as something already present, but in need of liberation. It is the fundamental substratum of identity--that which is before what I recognize as myself. It is something spiritual that has become rigidified and sclerotic, thus becoming understood as a merely material thing. As Evola describes it in alchemical terms, “in the ‘petrifica-tion’ of the spiritual world created by the bodily senses, in the breaking of contact, in perception conditioned by the dualistic law of I-not-I… it is the power of salt that operates” (1995, 45). It should be noted that it is not petrification that makes a thing material, but rather petrification that prevents us from understanding the material thing in its spiritual potentiality. When it can be freed, we have the possibility of becoming greater than ourselves. Neither the subtle body nor the BwO is simply a mirror or double of the physical body, nor does it belong to the physical body. Deleuze and Guattari point out that the BwO is more originary than our sense of “me.” “It is not ‘my’ BwO; instead the ‘me’ is on it, or what remains of me, unalterable and changing in form, crossing thresholds” (161). The BwO is prior to organism and subjectivity. They describe it as, using a symbol that ultimately represents the radix of spirit, “the full egg before the extension of the organism” (153). Mead describes the body of light in almost identical terms, calling it, “the source of every possibility of embodiment” (101). A full BwO becomes a totality in which the func-tions previously performed by systematized organs are performed by the whole because there is nothing other than the whole. Deleuze and Guattari seem to be describing both the means by which one makes a BwO and also the result of those practices when they write that it becomes possible to “see through your skin, breathe with your belly” (151). Mead again cites Origen in a parallel passage: “in that spiritual body the whole of us will see, the whole hear, the whole serve as hands, the whole as feet” (86).3
In neither the BwO nor the body of light is there a hierarchy of functions and operations allotted to specific parts according to a pre-given schema.
The schools of thought that give rise to the concepts of both the body of light and the BwO seem to share an understanding of the relationship
between spirit and matter that is in stark contrast to the Platonic metaphys-ics that informs most philosophy and magical practices. Matter and spirit must be understood as contiguous. For Deleuze and Guattari, the dis-tinction between matter and spirit is best understood in molecular terms; the difference between matter and spirit is one of intensity, rather than a structural opposition. Matter and spirit are not two separate individuals, but exist along a range of intensity wherein we understand matter as so-lidified or fixed spirit, and spirit as rarified matter. In this, we understand a single individual in its material aspect as always already spiritualized. Given the traditional milieu from which most practices concerning the body of light spring, this might appear to be more of a contrast, suggesting that these two phenomena are not so closely linked as we had hoped to imagine. However, looking at the alchemical tradition in particular, we see that the rigid distinction between spirit and matter becomes distinctly flexible. Evola refers to “the body as a completed, organized, and stable nature [which] is a ‘fixed’ thing as opposed to the instability of psychic principles or the volatility attributed to ‘spirits’” (1995, 37) and gives this contiguity of the body and soul a central place when he writes that “in any case, the formula--to release the corporeal and to embody the non-corporeal –as we have said, is a recurrent and central theme of the whole tradition” (ibid., 157). Mead is even more explicit: for him the “subtle body is of the material order, but of a more dynamic nature than his physically sensible frame” (3). Ultimately, there is not spirit and matter, but rather “frozen waters and flowing waters: forces individualized and fixed… and forces in the elemental state” (Evola, 1995, 36).
The achievement of (or return to) this elemental state is the object of the “other without organs” and of the body of light. Philosophically, this unfreezing is nothing other than the emergence of a real concept of freedom--in line with what Schelling refers to as the “feeling of freedom [that] is ingrained in every individual” (1992), which cannot be accounted for by Augustinian notions of freedom as the turn to or from God or the Kantian notion of freedom as rational autonomy. Schelling’s precursor in this, to whom he acknowledges the most profound debt, is Spinoza, for whom freedom is understood as indifference in our approach to all things and the ability to face all possibilities with equanimity. It may seem ironic that the fatalistic Spinoza should be the model of radical freedom; however, it is first in Spinoza that we see the idea of freedom as absolute compossibility. Deleuze and Guattari recognize this fundamental relation-ship and write that “all BwOs pay homage to Spinoza. The BwO is the field of immanence of desire, the plane of consistency specific to desire” (154). Whether understood in philosophical or esoteric or magical terms, the purpose of the formation of these bodies is to expand one’s range of
possibilities and allow for a wider field of action, action that runs the risk or opens the possibility of open defiance to the socially and economically limited sphere of the possible or acceptable.
The magical practice of the body of light falls well within the cat-egory of traditional magic that reaches back into shamanic and priestly practices despite its seemingly intellectualized and formalized structure. The sorcerer, witch-doctor, shaman or hoodoo always stands in opposition to the law of the tribe or community. The magus, by virtue of his power, is exempted from law--even from the law of cause and effect, produc-ing phenomena by the power of will. In fact, this antinomian element is one of the defining characteristics of the initiate: one can point to the accusations of libertinism that were leveled at the ancient Gnostics and the initiatory rites in which the Templars were said to have participated, that included denying Christ and spitting on the cross (Spence, 406). In fact, it seems that violation of community law is both the method and the result of initiatory work. In this sense, the development of the body of light parallels the making of the BwO in that it opens up possibilities not determined in advance by law and custom. In doing so, both allow for engagements with our experience of the world that are not defined by our logo-nomo-centric paradigms. This radically undermines systems of power and social organization both in its practice and in its results, even if those results verge into the realms of so-called perversion, madness and criminality.
Again--and it bears repeating--the goal and the method of both the BwO in the body of light (and arguably all initiatory action) are one and the same. Evola tells us that “we must embody the spirit and spiritual-ize the body in one and the same act.” (1995, 156). There can be no easy or ready-made distinction between means and ends; attainment is the method. The focus in both cases is always upon action and practice. If the end is the radical freedom to which we have referred, then the means is the practical dismantlement of the obstacles to our liberation, whether they be understood as physical, mental, or spiritual. From the philosophical and psychological perspective that Deleuze and Guattari take up, this is understood as a dismantling of the self: “the BwO is what remains when you take everything away” (151). Evola, however, speaks of it in remarkably similar terms when he writes that “the way leading to it lies in becoming free from all real and possible determinations, from conquest of conquest, from nudity to nudity….” (2001, 197). But as we said regarding the negative or empty BwO, it is not enough simply to dismantle our hollow out the self. The practice is ultimately one of build-ing a “process of regeneration” (Mead, 31). The set of practices that can lead to the formation of a body of light or a BwO require one “to re-create
one’s body, to retrace the obscure and mystical process in virtue of which it organized itself [initially]” (Evola, 2001, 198). The formation of this new body that is open to all forms of activity and therefore radically powerful takes place through a process of destruction and rebuilding, understood in traditional esotericism as purification. This purification transforms the fixed body into its more elemental state so that it might reform itself along its own trajectory of desire. “Hierocles tells us practically that the object of the whole of the purificatory degrees… was nothing else than the restoration of this quintessential embodiment to its original state” (Mead, 64). However, this never happens simply through contemplation or through mystical union with God. Nor does it happen as a result of external grace or through the will of God or the gods. Moreover, it is cer-tainly more than simply a philosophical construct; “it is not at all a notion or a concept but a practice, a set of practices” (Deleuze & Guattari, 150).
Ultimately, though, no prescribed set of practices can guarantee the formation either of a body of light or a BwO. If the two phenomena are linked by any essential characteristic, it is that they are absolutely unique to the individual. Perhaps this is why Deleuze and Guattari remain so vague in their methodology for the formation of a BwO. The de-territorialization of the psyche or the liberation of the mercury from the domination of salt is not something that can be accomplished simply by following a standard-ized procedure. Alchemy has no cookbook; psychology has no assembly manual. What works, what is effective in de-stratifying the body in one instance, can be disastrous in another. The path that leads to liberation and power for one magus may be an utter failure for another or even lead to madness or death. This is the reason that so much esoteric and magical literature insists on the necessity of training with a master, or receiving hand-to-hand initiation. The danger always looms that one who is too deeply steeped in theory, who learns magic as from a textbook, is liable to misconstrue its meanings and will be unable to unlock them without the proper key. The danger of this approach is that it shuts off possibilities for experimentation, and throws up obstacles for desire. On the other hand, magical work is practical, and uses specific techniques and prescriptions, formulas and rites to achieve its goals and aims. It is on this point that I think there is room to critique Deleuze and Guattari, who in their desire to maintain the radical uniqueness of each BwO, failed to provide even the most rudimentary guides along the path to its construction.
We should not be overly hasty to identify these two bodies, however. There are significant differences, and certain dangers in drawing too close a parallel. The most obvious is indulging in a kind of dualism that stands in stark contrast to the main thrust of Deleuzean thinking. Rather, the danger lies in seeing that dualism as having an ontological status, rather
than as a mechanism for destratification. The literature surrounding the body of light is strongly dualistic--either in a philosophical sense in which the mind or soul is understood as radically different from and superior to the body, or in the Manichaean sense, in which the body is seen in a purely negative light. To take either of these too much to heart in our attempts to construct a body of light would serve only to re-instantiate the limita-tions that both the body of light and the BwO seek to overcome. The very notion of the body of light is embedded in a tradition which, whatever its orientation toward mainstream Christianity or onto-theological metaphys-ics, still retains vestiges of its contact with those powerful philosophical streams. Attempts to extract it from this embeddedness are likely to be met with hostility on the part of esotericists and magicians. However, it seems preferable to understand the sources of one’s practices, without necessarily taking them to be truth. Put simply, the map is not the terri-tory; the practices and technologies deployed for the construction of the body of light are precisely that, and nothing more.
Similarly, we must be careful about terminology, including “tran-scendence” and “immortality” which play a significant role in the rhetoric surrounding the body of light. If we are to use these notions in the context of the BwO, we must not think of transcendence as a “moving beyond” the body, desire, or politics into some purely spiritual realm by means of asceticism. The same is true of “immortality,” which should not be understood as the survival of the individuated ego after the death of the body. Immortality is understood, at least in the alchemical tradition, as the experience of eternity while still alive. This is reflected in the pronounce-ment of twentieth-century esotericist Aleister Crowley, upon achieving the grade of “Master of the Temple”: “V.V.V.V.V.” (“Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici”).4 If we are to use metaphysically informed traditions in
understanding Deleuze, we must avoid these terminological pitfalls. In dealing with the question of the BwO, terminological carelessness can lead to constructing a truly cancerous body.
With these caveats in mind, I ultimately do believe that the tech-nologies associated with the formation of the body of light can be used effectively by the Deleuzian to accomplish the construction of a BwO that allows for both individual and political action that is unrestricted by pre-established norms and structures. Certain allied practices in fact seem deeply Deleuzean their intent and form. I give here but one example. Aleister Crowley prescribes the following practice in one of his instruc-tions to his students, entitled “Liber III vel Jugorum:”
By some device, such as the changing of thy ring from one finger to another, create in thyself two personalities, the thoughts of one being within entirely different limits from that of the other, the common ground being the necessities of life. (429)5
This seems very much in keeping with the practice that Deleuze and Guattari are gesturing toward in both Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand
Plateaus. All of the practices associated with the formation of the body of
light are oriented toward identifying oneself not so much with the physi-cal body and its ego matrix, but rather with something transpersonal and more primordial than the individual or the organism. By embracing this aspect of the body of light (while avoiding the pitfalls mentioned above), we are given a useful set of tools for understanding ourselves and our actions in a less stratified way, and can hope to experience ourselves in the de-territorialized, molecular way that Deleuze and Guattari propose.
Likewise, I believe that the thinking around the BwO can be of use to those engaged in magical or esoteric practice. It gives us a language not embedded in a theological or philosophical tradition, which would be counterproductive to the kind of work we are trying to accomplish. It also suggests a relationship to political and social life, often lacking in the overly individualistic methodologies of sorcerers and magicians. Furthermore, much of magic depends upon the psychological and mental state of the practitioner. Since many understand magic as volitional ma-nipulation of one’s own psychology in order to produce desired results, then an understanding of the psychological viewpoint most effective for this can only make magical practice more effective. Preconceived notions, theories, and worldviews can often be obstacles to esoteric work, and much of the purificatory and initiatory practice of the tradition is intended to remove these sorts of obstacles. If we can smooth out our own psyche by using practices oriented towards the creation of a BwO, we accomplish much the same thing. By looking at magical or esoteric work through the lens of schizo-analysis, we can use the Western metaphysical tradition as a toolkit, rather than experiencing it as a received and unquestionable system.6 We should pause before dismissing out of hand the whole of the
Platonic or metaphysical tradition, which includes technologies that can be deployed for liberatory purposes. Even Oedipal structures can form part of the toolkit of the BwO, and there is no reason not to turn these drives against themselves by reading them in a more nuanced fashion.
Ultimately, I believe that the writings surrounding the body of light can offer us a more complete, or at least more fully suggestive set of tech-nologies for building a BwO of a particular sort. Such writings may assist us in overcoming obstacles to modes of desire that prevent or curtail free action in the individual, political and cosmic spheres. They may merely add to the repertoire of Deleuzian schizo-analysis, or may become a vital tool for opening us up to a vastly wider arena of compossibility.
Works Cited
Benoist, L. The Esoteric Path. Trans. R. Waterfield, Trans. Wellingborough, UK: Crucible, 1988. Boehme, J. The Signature of All Things. Cambridge, UK: James Clarke Company, 1987. Crowley, A. Magick in Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Dover, 1976.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. B. Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Evola, J. The Hermetic Tradition. Trans. E. E. Rhemus. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1995. ---. Introduction to Magic. Ed. M. Moynihan, trans. G. Stucco. Rochester, VT: Inner
Tradi-tions, 2001.
Mead, G. R. The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in the Western Tradition. London, UK: John M. Watkins, 1919.
Schelling, F. Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom. Trans. J. Gutmann. Peru, IL: Open Court, 1992.
Spence, L. The Encyclopedia of the Occult. London, UK: Bracken Books, 1988.
Notes
1. It is very much in keeping with Evola’s sense of this word to think it in terms of puis-sance rather than pouvoir. Despite Evola’s fascist political leanings, his sense of both “action” and “power” seems strongly more liberatory than oppressive. It would be easy to simply dismiss Evola because of his political orientation and activities at the end of the Second World War while employed by the Nazi Ahnerbe. However, I think that this would be unwise, as his writings on esoteric matters are profoundly insightful and offer real liberatory potential.
2. There is a certain parallel here to the romantic notion of the “aorgisches” to draw a term from Hölderlin. By this he means that which typifies Nature understood as a chaos, something spiritual and therefore unconstrained. This stands in diametrical opposition to Hegel’s understanding of Nature as purely mechanistic, the sphere of causation and repetition, radically distinct from the world of Spirit and freedom.
3. Despite the use of the term “whole” here, which suggests a structure very different from the BwO, which cannot really be thought of as a “whole,” I suggest that what Origen is claiming here is that the body of light is conceived in such a way that actions or functions are not relegated to any particular organ or part, which is much closer to the conception of Deleuze and Guattari.
4. This can be translated as “I have, by truth, while living, conquered the universe.” It refers to Crowley’s claim that he had achieved a state of absolute liberation without the heretofore assumed necessary step of casting off the physical body. This living victory may be thought of in opposition to Christ’s victory, which requires his death, and which manifests itself in his risen body, which is fundamentally different from his physical frame.
5 I am indebted to Juliana Eimer for her suggestion of this as an especially appropriate reference as well as many other insights here.
6. Certainly so-called “Chaos Magick” attempts to do this explicitly. The pantheon or religious system that makes use of rituals and rites in this form of magic are adopted on an ad hoc basis, neither taking them as absolutes for one’s personal work, nor even attributing to them any real validity.
