Sexual Revolution- the Seed of Fear
In the Prince, Machiavelli makes a claim which caught my attention the other day. I wish I could say that it was because I was reading the Prince, but sadly that book has been packed away, so I am forced to paraphrase.
“Because the two can hardly exist simultaneously, it is better to be feared than loved.”
Or words to that effect.
But what’s this? Can’t love and fear exist simultaneously? I think that if we look behind what motivates many of the psychological impulses, libidinous connections, and neurotic repression that Freud talks about in his analysis of the mind, we discover that fear is a necessary component of love. This is rooted in the awakening of the sexual instincts in early childhood...
It is the failure to reconcile love with fear which results in what Freud calls the Oedipus complex, which is not just a romantic attachment to the mother, but a homicidal hostility to the father. As Fromm later pointed out in Escape from Freedom, the fact that the physical size of the parents gives them the ability to thwart the child’s wishes as they please, combined with the fact that they provide shelter, nourishment, and emotional comfort, creates a difficult contradiction in the child’s mind. Although they naturally want to overcome the obstacles to their desires (in the cases of healthy families, the parents) they also experience love and affection from those obstacles. This is difficult to deal with, and so the image of one’s parents as obstacles is often repressed until puberty, at which time the sex drive becomes more fully manifest, and the problem presents itself again, this time in terms of romantic attachments (one would hope) to individuals or images outside of the family unit. The imprint, however, has been made.
This imprint resurfaces frequently in female love for males of the species. The male is typically in possession of the same superior physical strength that the parent has (although not always to the same scale) in comparison with the child. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but then again, there are a lot of ways to be dangerous. This early impression of sexuality is evoked again by the element of danger. I would submit that this is why dangerous guys are sexy, and also why some women remain with partners who are at times affectionate, and at times abusive. In the latter case we see a grim parody of the parent/child relationship, in the former, a very healthy attitude toward the propagation of the species. A dangerous man is a good man to have on your side, after all.
I would add that this is part of the reason that middle-class values lead to sexual dysfunction and perversion. When you value safety, security, and sure-bets, your values directly contradict the very nature of the sex drive, in a much more essential and profound way than traditional Old Aeon values. The sex-negative Old Aeon restricted sexuality, but it did not contradict it. Indeed, these restrictions could often heighten the sense of danger, and therefore arousal, in many sexual acts.
But what about men? It seems that there is little in male/female sexual relations to invoke the same image. Of course, we all love being nailed with a strap-on from time to time (or am I projecting?), and this CAN help to achieve the same goal. At the end of the day though, unless restraints are employed (and why shouldn’t they be?), the male’s physical strength is still, in a typical case, superior.
This bring us back to the issue of male homophobia. In a previous post I asserted that this phenomenon emerges from a latent fear of rape. The idea of male sexual desire, and the possibility of it proceeding from a man of superior physical strength, evokes the same image which keeps women going after dangerous men. Equally, the idea of being desired sexually by a man of inferior strength creates the same shock that repressed people experience when they see someone enjoying, without reservation, something that they are afraid to experience. The crucial difference is found in the socially installed values which tell us that our sex-roles define our social identity. One might argue that biology creates a difference as well. Women need men who can protect their children, but I am not certain that this is as significant a factor as it might first appear. A question for another time, perhaps.
I can’t help but see this as a fantasy which serves the interests of the black school’s effort to mock the sacred. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, it makes for some great bedroom games, but taking that fantasy seriously and using it to define our identities creates a society in which how we have sex determines how we are treated, and what respect we are given. Crowley was radically opposed to the idea that someone’s sexual proclivities should be allowed to interfere with their social standing. We see the fruits of this in our own society, where men desperately chase after their next sexual conquest, western modernity’s version of social-climbing.
Which brings us back to the origin of this post. Someone left a copy of Maxim magazine in the bathroom at work, and I flipped to a section where there was some collection of quotations that included the Machiavelli one above. I tend to regard Maxim with the same morbid fascination as I have for all magazines. I will not pay money for them, but if they’re around I will sneek away and read them, in an effort to marvel at the depths to which western civilization has fallen.
One of the old G:.D:. mottos that Crowley held to was “fear is failure, and the forerunner of failure.” Whether it is the passive attainment of the Holy Guardian Angel, or the act of crossing the abyss (in which male and female desire are resolved into one), these unexamined fears create an aversion. A hesitation. A jostling of the motion which must be as straight and swift as an arrow, that will cause that arrow to fall short of its target. Fear is part of the power of attraction, but by embracing it, fear is resolved into love.
The unexamined fear within love is, to wax poetic, the jaws of Choronzon. When a person’s ego is “annihilated” by the process of crossing the abyss, what is meant is that the apparently contradictory elements of one’s constitution (in terms of essence, memory, and perception) unite and neutralize themselves. This is the “two becoming zero” which is the attainment of the mystic path. Crowley tells us that we have to destroy our ego before we attempt this, because if we don’t, the hidden seeds of fear that exist within love will blossom, we will resist the resolution as the aversive effect of fear manifests itself, and by trying to turn back, be hurled headlong into the clutches of the often-imitated, never-duplicated, Lurker at the Threshold. There is a reason that Crowley wrote about the myth of Orpheus in his poetry.
The seed of fear is a captivating image. I close with lyric.
The Dark'ning Flower
out of the trackless abyss
out of the void all consuming
spreading out like an eclipse
the dark'ning flower is blooming
out of the venomous empty
out of the bornless beyond
the pollen that poisons so gently
that sickens ‘till healing is gone
out of the love of the lady
out of the immortal coil
the petals all fall when they hear the call
and all that they touch they will spoil
out of the trackless abyss
out of the void all consuming
taste of it’s withering kiss
the shadow of sickness is looming
out of the venomous empty
out of the boundless beyond
the call of the emptiness tempts me
with its sweet sultry silence of song
out of the the love of the lady
out of the immortal coil
beyond the boundary forbade me
this is the test of the royal
infected by the power
that nothing does contain
poisoned by the flower
that from nothing came
the dark'ning flower’s in bloom
the blood of the land stains the knife
the call is the herald of doom
bringing my fear to life
“Because the two can hardly exist simultaneously, it is better to be feared than loved.”
Or words to that effect.
But what’s this? Can’t love and fear exist simultaneously? I think that if we look behind what motivates many of the psychological impulses, libidinous connections, and neurotic repression that Freud talks about in his analysis of the mind, we discover that fear is a necessary component of love. This is rooted in the awakening of the sexual instincts in early childhood...
It is the failure to reconcile love with fear which results in what Freud calls the Oedipus complex, which is not just a romantic attachment to the mother, but a homicidal hostility to the father. As Fromm later pointed out in Escape from Freedom, the fact that the physical size of the parents gives them the ability to thwart the child’s wishes as they please, combined with the fact that they provide shelter, nourishment, and emotional comfort, creates a difficult contradiction in the child’s mind. Although they naturally want to overcome the obstacles to their desires (in the cases of healthy families, the parents) they also experience love and affection from those obstacles. This is difficult to deal with, and so the image of one’s parents as obstacles is often repressed until puberty, at which time the sex drive becomes more fully manifest, and the problem presents itself again, this time in terms of romantic attachments (one would hope) to individuals or images outside of the family unit. The imprint, however, has been made.
This imprint resurfaces frequently in female love for males of the species. The male is typically in possession of the same superior physical strength that the parent has (although not always to the same scale) in comparison with the child. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but then again, there are a lot of ways to be dangerous. This early impression of sexuality is evoked again by the element of danger. I would submit that this is why dangerous guys are sexy, and also why some women remain with partners who are at times affectionate, and at times abusive. In the latter case we see a grim parody of the parent/child relationship, in the former, a very healthy attitude toward the propagation of the species. A dangerous man is a good man to have on your side, after all.
I would add that this is part of the reason that middle-class values lead to sexual dysfunction and perversion. When you value safety, security, and sure-bets, your values directly contradict the very nature of the sex drive, in a much more essential and profound way than traditional Old Aeon values. The sex-negative Old Aeon restricted sexuality, but it did not contradict it. Indeed, these restrictions could often heighten the sense of danger, and therefore arousal, in many sexual acts.
But what about men? It seems that there is little in male/female sexual relations to invoke the same image. Of course, we all love being nailed with a strap-on from time to time (or am I projecting?), and this CAN help to achieve the same goal. At the end of the day though, unless restraints are employed (and why shouldn’t they be?), the male’s physical strength is still, in a typical case, superior.
This bring us back to the issue of male homophobia. In a previous post I asserted that this phenomenon emerges from a latent fear of rape. The idea of male sexual desire, and the possibility of it proceeding from a man of superior physical strength, evokes the same image which keeps women going after dangerous men. Equally, the idea of being desired sexually by a man of inferior strength creates the same shock that repressed people experience when they see someone enjoying, without reservation, something that they are afraid to experience. The crucial difference is found in the socially installed values which tell us that our sex-roles define our social identity. One might argue that biology creates a difference as well. Women need men who can protect their children, but I am not certain that this is as significant a factor as it might first appear. A question for another time, perhaps.
I can’t help but see this as a fantasy which serves the interests of the black school’s effort to mock the sacred. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, it makes for some great bedroom games, but taking that fantasy seriously and using it to define our identities creates a society in which how we have sex determines how we are treated, and what respect we are given. Crowley was radically opposed to the idea that someone’s sexual proclivities should be allowed to interfere with their social standing. We see the fruits of this in our own society, where men desperately chase after their next sexual conquest, western modernity’s version of social-climbing.
Which brings us back to the origin of this post. Someone left a copy of Maxim magazine in the bathroom at work, and I flipped to a section where there was some collection of quotations that included the Machiavelli one above. I tend to regard Maxim with the same morbid fascination as I have for all magazines. I will not pay money for them, but if they’re around I will sneek away and read them, in an effort to marvel at the depths to which western civilization has fallen.
One of the old G:.D:. mottos that Crowley held to was “fear is failure, and the forerunner of failure.” Whether it is the passive attainment of the Holy Guardian Angel, or the act of crossing the abyss (in which male and female desire are resolved into one), these unexamined fears create an aversion. A hesitation. A jostling of the motion which must be as straight and swift as an arrow, that will cause that arrow to fall short of its target. Fear is part of the power of attraction, but by embracing it, fear is resolved into love.
The unexamined fear within love is, to wax poetic, the jaws of Choronzon. When a person’s ego is “annihilated” by the process of crossing the abyss, what is meant is that the apparently contradictory elements of one’s constitution (in terms of essence, memory, and perception) unite and neutralize themselves. This is the “two becoming zero” which is the attainment of the mystic path. Crowley tells us that we have to destroy our ego before we attempt this, because if we don’t, the hidden seeds of fear that exist within love will blossom, we will resist the resolution as the aversive effect of fear manifests itself, and by trying to turn back, be hurled headlong into the clutches of the often-imitated, never-duplicated, Lurker at the Threshold. There is a reason that Crowley wrote about the myth of Orpheus in his poetry.
The seed of fear is a captivating image. I close with lyric.
The Dark'ning Flower
out of the trackless abyss
out of the void all consuming
spreading out like an eclipse
the dark'ning flower is blooming
out of the venomous empty
out of the bornless beyond
the pollen that poisons so gently
that sickens ‘till healing is gone
out of the love of the lady
out of the immortal coil
the petals all fall when they hear the call
and all that they touch they will spoil
out of the trackless abyss
out of the void all consuming
taste of it’s withering kiss
the shadow of sickness is looming
out of the venomous empty
out of the boundless beyond
the call of the emptiness tempts me
with its sweet sultry silence of song
out of the the love of the lady
out of the immortal coil
beyond the boundary forbade me
this is the test of the royal
infected by the power
that nothing does contain
poisoned by the flower
that from nothing came
the dark'ning flower’s in bloom
the blood of the land stains the knife
the call is the herald of doom
bringing my fear to life