The Circle of the Same - A Platonic Practice

Therefore, at all times remember Me with your mind and intellect fixed on Me. In this way, you shall surely come to Me...

Bhagavad Gita

The Platonic dialogues are not systematic and in this are so rich that they provide essential material for a range of philosophical – or, as we might say, spiritual – paths. Socratic dialectic offers an intellectual path of realisation whereby the very nature of thinking becomes a path back to the font of thought itself. The theory of Forms leads to the Vision of the One and the Good. To live as a philosopher for three incarnations in a row, we are told, leads to liberation from birth and death – a Platonic Nirvana. Then there is also a path of Love – Divine Eros – as described in several dialogues, and elsewhere a path of imagination and the metaphor of “growing spiritual wings” and the textual foundations of the Plotinian path of “becoming one’s Guardian Angel”, which is to say realizing the Form of one's Self. Plato offers many paths. Arguably, they all amount to the same thing, but they are suited to people of various temperaments and dispositions.

In the cosmological dialogue Timaeus a further path is outlined. We are told that man is the microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmic order, but that this parallel is disturbed or ruptured at birth. In the greater cosmos are the circles of Sameness and Difference – the great cosmic motions obeyed by the planets and the stars. These same motions, we are then told, prevail in the spherical cosmic form of the human cranium, and thus in the mind, and distinctions of sameness and difference form the very bedrock of mental activity. The travail of childbirth, however, knocks the internal circles of Sameness and Difference from their pre-natal alignment with the cosmic order. The inner cosmos is knocked out of its alignment with the outer cosmos – and such is the nature of mortal life. The objective of man in his life, therefore, is to mend this misalignment and to bring the inner circles of Sameness and Difference back into orbits aligned with the circles of the heavens making micro- and macrocosms unison and whole again.

This schema is the rationale for all conceptions of Platonic astrology. It is through the study of the stars, we are told, that we come to learn of the inner cycles of the mind. On this basis astrology is a philosophical path of self-knowledge and self-realisation. But there is also another method at least implicit in this dialogue of Plato’s, and implicit elsewhere in Plato as well. The mind, we are told, has become unruly and disordered. The challenge that the philosopher faces is to bring the mind back into order. This is the same task as being able to discern the Forms – the ordering of all intellectual structures then reveals the Form of the One and the Good, the Thought of Thoughts. In terms of the cosmological system given in the Timaeus, as already noted, this entails restoring the proper relation between the Circles of Sameness and Difference. The disordered mortal mind, in particular, is overcome by the erratic motions of the Circle of Difference. Cosmologically, this is the motion of the ever-wandering planets and their chaotic alternations of progression and regression. Beyond them lies the steady reliability of the fixed stars. In the heavens, the Circle of the Same counters the chaotic diversity of the Circle of the Different. It is from the steady, eternal motions of the Circle of the Same that the mortal microcosm has become dislodged. In life we are thrown around this way and that as our thoughts become dragged around in the Circle of the Different. 

Many, or perhaps most, spiritual methods make the same diagnosis, albeit in different terms. The human problem, it will be said, is the so-called “monkey mind” and its incessant chattering. In Plato’s terms, this is the product of the primal misalignment between inner and outer cosmos. We are carried along with the erratic motions of the Circle of the Different. Our thoughts move back and forwards in time, never able to fix upon the eternal present. The cure, then, is to still the chatter of this “monkey mind”, to learn to concentrate, to be in the present and no longer a victim of our own errant thoughts. Nearly all systems of meditation have this as their objective. Typically, for example, the meditator will fix their their hearing upon the ever-same rhythm of their breath. Then they are instructed to let all wandering thoughts wash past without participating in them. The objective is to eventually still the mind, to stop the inner chatter, to bring the mind back to clarity. In Platonic terms, the meditator finds a stillpoint – the steady rhythm of the breath – which then represents the Circle of the Same. By fixing upon such a stillpoint, in its sameness, it is possible to calm the raging inconstancies and vagarious meanderings of the Circle of the Different and to restore the cosmic order. The mortal condition is fitful and in flux. Meditation cures us of this “monkey mind” condition.

Exactly the same process is used in the so-called “perpetual prayer” found in various religious traditions. Its most ancient form is the “japa yoga” of the Hindoos. This consists of fixing the mind upon one of the Divine Names and repeating it, silently or aloud, over and over and over. The most famous case is the divine syllable OM which practitioners of japa chant or intone, within or without, unceasingly. Once again, in Platonic terms, this is to be understood as fixing upon a Circle of the Same in order to bring order back to the rambling irregularities of the Circle of the Different. The Divine Name is installed as an enduring foundation of sameness in the mind. Throughout the day our thoughts wander back and forward. We are sitting on the bus – our thoughts rove from snippets of old conversations, to anxieties about future events, to bits and pieces of advertising jingles, images from TV, our desire for new shoes, the argument with our neighbour... We have no control over this endless stream of mental junk. This, various traditions assure us, is the cause of all our miseries. We are rudderless in a raging river of rubbish. In this, we are divorced from the reality of the present. To steady the Circle of the Different we need to bring ourselves back into alignment with the Circle of the Same.

We can do this through japa – the deliberate fixation upon an appropriate mantra. It is, therefore, a Platonic method. The Mohammedans call it “dhikr”, meaning rememberance, a strikingly Platonic title. Rememberance, ἀνάμνησις, anemnesis, is the Platonic path par excellence. We live submerged in a state of forgetfulness, removed from the One and the Good. The Mohammedan dhikr consists of remembering God – the One and the Good – through the deliberate recital of His revealed Names. The very same method is also found among the Christians – the rosary and the hesychasm - and in other traditions besides. Typically, though, religious traditions construe this method as a ‘prayer of the heart’, a dedicated devotion, a mode of bhakti. In the Platonic understanding it is an essentially intellectual method. It is the means by which the structures of the mind are rehabilitated to the innate structures of the cosmos. Other metaphors, though, lend themselves to the Platonic presentation. The cosmology of the Timaeus has presiding over it the Demiurge, a figure modelled upon the mythological figure of the blacksmith god Vulcan. The dhikr of the Musselmans, the japa of the Hindoo, the hesychasm of the Christian, the anamnesis, is sometimes described as beating upon metal or else polishing a bronze mirror, metallurgic metaphors that invoke the notion of alchemical transformation. The method has a more noble and arcane philosophical heritage than what is commonly found in the sentimental presentations of religious devotionalism. 

Historically, its simplicity has recommended it to simple people, but in fact it is a method especially adapted to the intellectual temperament. The man of intellectual disposition, more than anyone else, is likely to fall in love with his own thoughts and with thinking and ruminating. The intellectual, the mentalist, loves the parade of errant thoughts that drift through the mind. This is exactly why such a person should pursue an intellectual (jnana) path, rather than a path of devotion, and why the anemnesis (dhikr/japa) is an ideal element of such a path. No one needs a Circle of Sameness as much as the head-bound and scatter-brained intellectual! But it is just for this reason that he will find it difficult. He resents being drawn away from his own thoughts. He hates the interruption. He likes ruminating, not meditating – and they are precisely opposite things. Intellectuals make bad meditators. Methods that ask them to stop thinking, though, are, in this, unreasonable. Many methods of oriental meditation are actively anti-intellectual. It is unreasonable, and finally futile, or even dangerous, to ask a person of intellectual and philosophical temperament – a thinker by nature – to stop thinking and to “surrender to the Void.” The better strategy is to ask them to think on one thought alone. Relevant to this, the present author recalls a conversation with a psychologist friend who reported to him that she often encounters occidental people who are driven to madness – actually damaged - by many forms of Boodhist meditation. The Boodhist emphasis on Emptiness, she said, can drive intellectualized Western people insane. There are hazards in japa too – bringing one’s inner cosmos back into alignment with the greater cosmos, rectifying the very rupture of one’s nativity, is no casual feat. When one challenges the mind’s addiction to its own wobbling, reckless, self-indulgent Circles of Difference the mind will, at length, resist. But it is still a more concrete and structured method than embracing Nothingness, and safer in that respect. 

For the Platonist, in any case, this mode of anemnesis – within or without a religious context - can be recommended. It is a matter of redefining the Circle of the Same in the mind and thereby bringing it back into alignment with the Circle of the Same in the great cosmos as a whole. This is the same, as it happens, as finding an axis, a centre, for the Circle of the Same defines the cosmic axis whereas the Circle of the Different wobbles and shifts here and there in a never-repeated dance of difference. For the Platonist, this mode of anemnesis entails fixing upon the thought of the One and the Good in the form of some suitable Name or formulae. The method consists, as explained above, of repeating this Name or formula over and over and over and over as a mantra at all times and in all circumstances. (We will call it the anamnesis, the ‘remembrance’.) It is not always easy – the very nature of man is to forget – but eventually it can be installed as a fixture of the mind, the very best of habits. Strictly speaking it does not matter what the Name or formula might be, but in a Platonic context it should represent the One and the Good. Usually, some form of Divine Name from an appropriate religious tradition is in order, although let us recall that the philosopher is not, after all, a religionist. His motives in regard to this may have more in common with the astrologer than with the religious devotee. For the philosopher, there is truth in religion – Socrates is meticulous in respecting popular religious observations - but it is very often like a pearl buried in a pile of dung. In this case, the pearl is a Name that acts as an auditory icon encapsulating the Form of Forms.

The effect of this practice of amenesis is to recontextualize all thinking. The Circle of the Same in the human microcosm is strengthened and reinforced, and this brings stability to the Circle of the Different. The objective is not to crush the "monkey mind" but to tame it. The method, therefore, is not anti-intellectual but rather it aims to bring a coherent order to the disturbed pertubations of the common mind. It is, superficially at least, a remarkably easy practice and can be done anywhere at anytime, and better yet it can be done in secret, quietly, as silent as a thought. It is, all the same, transforming. No one should underestimate its potency. Over time, it transforms the entire psychology. We cannot know if Plato himself knew exactly such a method - it is very ancient, as we know from its use among the Hindoos, and it is found in virtually all spiritual climates - and yet we can be sure that he was acquainted with its impact, for many of his dialogues are nothing less than an exploration of the mental processes that unfold in the course of diligent application to this method. In some later religious traditions, moreover, - most notably the cosmological whirling dance of the Soofis of Konya - exactly this method is directly linked to the name of Plato. There can be no doubt that the strength of the tradition of hesychasm in Greek Orthodox Christianity is built on Platonic foundations. Let us also mention that the beads often used as a prop to assist in this method - so-called japa mala - typically consist of one hundred and eight beads strung on a string, and this number, one hundred and eight, is not chosen at random but is in fact a key figure in the calculation of Plato's Nuptial Number, for 108 x 120,000 = 12,960,000. This should suggest to us that what we have here, in Plato's dialogues and in various religious traditions, are remaining elements of what was once a universal understanding. 

The japa-mala, or string of 108 beads, is typically used to assist in the practice of anamnesis (remembrance) in many religious traditions. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Strange Temple on Monkey Hill

Three figures. The Three Pure Ones. Supreme deities of the Taoist pantheon. White, red, black. 

Monkey Hill - also called Telegraph Hill - on the outskirts of Phuket Old Town is so named because the forests on the slopes are infested with vicious, invasive, rabid monkeys. Lest tourists find them cute, signs along the steep three kilometer track to the summit warn walkers that the monkeys are dangerous and not to feed or go near to them. The present author – getting into shape for a forthcoming tour of the Wudang mountains in China – made the trek up the hill recently, dodging marauding packs of monkeys (and stray dogs) all the way.

At one of the stopping points on the journey up the hill is one of the strangest and most eclectic temples the author has yet witnessed. Its official name is Po Ta To Sae. It defies categorization. It is clearly a Chinese shrine in its structure and organization, and in that, it is Taoist (or Chinese folkish) rather than Boodhist since it contains few images of the Boodha or other signs typical of Boodhism. There are the usual altars and the usual offerings, along with large supplies of joss for devotees. But rather than the usual cult images such as one finds in other Chinese temples throughout Phuket Town, Po Ta To Sae features unusual images and strange iconography which, incongruously, seems to have Mohammadan associations. The temple itself is guarded by an excessive array of tiger figures, and small shrines are dotted throughout the forest on one side of the main building. One of these shrines features an image of Christ, but this again is in a Mohammadan context or with Mohammadan associations. What, exactly, is going on here? one wonders. Who is being venerated, and as what, and why? There are few guiding clues, no useful signs, and the attending staff only speak Thai. 

Most Chinese temples are guarded by tiger figures. In this case there is a profusion of tigers all throughout the temple and lined up along the road. 






Examples of the very eclectic iconography found in the various side shrines. 

The figures on the main altar are the strangest. Upon inquiry, and some subsequent research, one is informed that they are – apparently – personfications of the three colours red, white and black. They are marked such in Thai, but each of them is also marked with a Mohammadan hilal, which is to say the Islamic symbol of crescent and star. Or so it seems. See thus:

The three figures on the main altar: Red, White and Black. Each marked with the Mohammadan crescent and star. 

All the same, they are worshipped as gods in the usual Chinese manner, as we see in the picture below, with a young woman offering prayers with joss sticks:

This Mohammadan symbolism is also found in the accompanying shrines. In this small shrine near the road, for instance:

Here we seem to have a Chinese deity - one of the Three Pure Ones? -, flecked with gold, wearing, it seems, a Muslim prayer hat and again marked with the Muslim symbol of crescent and star. 

The colour symbolism, however, is distracting. In fact, the three figures are - or so the present author is led to surmise - the Three Pure Ones of the Taoist pantheon - the supreme gods of Taoism. In previous posts we noted the popularity of the Eight Immortals in Chinese iconography and spiritual symbolism. Here we find the Three Pure Ones - the Primordial Heavenly Worthy, the spiritual Treasure Heavenly Worthy and the supreme Way Heavenly Worthy. They are celestial (heavenly) figures who have a higher status than the Eight Immortals. The full significance of the colour symbolism is unclear to this author, although he notes that the three colours - red, white and black - feature in the European alchemical tradition and are likely to have an alchemical significance here too. In other renderings, the Three Pure Ones are associated with the three primary colours, red, blue and yellow. Why each figure is marked with the star and crescent - and whether this is intended to have a Mohammadan association or not - is unclear. 

As noted, one of the shrines, far from the road, includes an image of Christ. As attentive readers will notice, the image of Christ is accompanied by a calligraphy bearing the name ‘Mohammad’ in Arabic, along with an image of an unidentified Muslim sage - or is it the Sihk's Guru Nanak? The latter possibility would make some sort of sense, in which case we have: 1. Jesus, 2. Mohammad, 3. Guru Nanak, representing the three religions Christianity, Islam, Sihkism. (The author, by the way, was obliged by the rules to take off his shoes to access this shrine, and then had to walk across an area strewn with broken glass. He literally walked over broken glass for these pictures!)

It is, frankly, most strange. It is worth noting, though, that the main temple in Phuket Town – also the oldest – includes some Mohammadan calligraphies in the context of far more orthodox Taoist symbolism, so it would appear that some elements of Taoist/Islamic syncretism are a feature of the Phuket Chinese tradition. Even so, the temple on Monkey Hill offers an extremely unusual blend of iconography and calls for a fuller explanation. The most likely explanation would seem to be that the shrine is sacred to the Three Pure Ones of Taoism, and that since these three are supremely lofty they are above, and therefore subsume under them, all other divine figures. Accordingly, the accompanying shrines include figures from all other religions, each of them subservient to the Three Pure Ones. 

The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things. 

- Tao Te Ching

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Eight Immortals and the Imaginal

The Eight Immortals, figurines on a mantel in a Chinese private residence. 

The octagon, the number eight and the symbolism thereof features throughout Chinese spirituality. This eightfold symbolism takes both abstract (which is to say geometric) and iconographic (pictorial) forms. On a visit to any Taoist temple one will be surrounded by examples of each at every turn. Octagonal patterns and architectural features – such as octagonal windows – abound, and various groupings of eight are to be found on the altar and throughout the temple decorations. As noted in a previous post on this subject (see here) the most basic signification of this preponderance of eightfold symbolism is essentially alchemical. There is no religious tradition more overtly alchemical than that of Taoism; Taoist symbology is replete with alchemical themes and motifs. The octagon – and by extension all parallelisms of the number eight – signify regeneration. In the plain figure of the octagon – to explain it in its simplest terms - we see the square (earth) regenerating into the circle (heaven). In this sense it is preeminently number of the third term in the Great Triad of Chinese spiritual philosophy: man.

The present author has encountered this profusion of eightfold symbolism everywhere he goes in his journeys through the historic centres of the Malacca straits Chinese. Every temple, every clan house, and also every shop and private dwelling is marked by symbols of eight. Two orders of symbols are especially conspicuous: the eight trigrams of the I Ching, and the eight immortals of the Taoist pantheon. These feature in temples, but are also found on the mantels of private houses, over doorways, or in personal insignia. These are the two great instances of orders of eight in typical Taoist symbolism. Accordingly, they are often set in parallel. The eight trigrams are abstract and mathematical. The eight immortals are figures of fantastic mythology. One trigram belongs to each immortal and one immortal belongs to each trigram. 

The eight trigrams

The immortals call for a few extra comments. As a set they represent the following polarities: Male/Female, Old/Young, Rich/Poor, Noble/Humble. Their significance can be seen in the ‘Bridge of the Immortals’ display at the oldest of the Chinese temples in the old trading port of Phuket Town. The bridge illustrates four immortals on each side, and together they represent the bridge between mortal life and the immortal state which is the objective of Taoist spirituality. 

Four on each side of the bridge, the eight immortals are depicted seated on clouds. Clouds, in this context, signify the imaginal realm. The immortals are figures of the imaginal.  

That is, this symbol – the bridge – informs us, quite clearly, that the traditional hagiographies of the eight immortals, along with their accompanying iconography, is a body of knowledge that forms a bridge from one state to the other. The immortals – all of whom are supposed to have once been mortals, and all of whom attained immortality through various techniques or adventures which are the stuff of folklore and legend - are exemplars, paradigms of the Taoist path albeit rendered into fantastic forms. In other respects, they are the embodiment of the primal forces encapsulated in the eight abstract trigrams of the I Ching. 

The Eight Immortals are sometimes shown on a checkered floor, invoking, amongst other things, the (8 x 8) symbolism of the chessboard.

This symbolism, that is to say, spans from pure mathematical abstraction to the most fecund, elaborate folk mythology which needs to be understood as imaginal in the Corbinian sense. That is, the immortals are figures of the intermediate or imaginal realm. They are not gods in the fully celestial sense. They are mortals who have ascended to the imaginal world, usually symbolised by clouds (whereas the fully celestial realm is symbolized by stars.) Like imaginal figures in other traditions, they are often said to be still alive on earth or to visit earth in bodily form from time to time. The imaginal is of great importance in Taoist spirituality. Just as it is the most directly alchemical religious tradition, so Taoism is the most directly imaginal. It is a strongly visual tradition with an emphasis upon spiritual imagination. The group of Eight Immortals are the main denizens of the Taoist imaginal realm. 

The most popular depiction of the Eight Immortals in Chinese sacred art has them at sea, travelling by boat to the Conference of the Peach. Imaginal figures - beings of the imaginal realm - let us note, are invariably associated with the airy and watery elements. 

The Eight Immortals decorating the awning of a Chinese temple. 

The Eight immortals - postage stamps of Thailand.

The Eight Immortals as superheroes - from the Singaporean TV series. 

________________________________

Below, the pictures of the eight immortals are matched to the trigrams of the I Ching according to the customary arrangement. There is an elaborate folklore connected to each figure, and every motif in that folklore is explicable in terms of alchemical symbolism. To decode it, though, is a ponderous undertaking - it is a subject for later posts. Only the barest outlines are offered below. 

* * * 

LAN TSAI-HO 

A 'Holy Fool' figure and so directly cognate with the 'Fool' in the Tarot cards of the Occidental tradition. He became an immortal when he was sixteen years old. He represents the pure yang power - the phallic energy of spring. 

* * * 

HO HSIEN-KU 

Pure yin. She became an immortal at fourteen years old after eating the Peach of Immortality and ascending to heaven in full daylight. She attained the power of stopping her menses and thus conserving her feminine energy. Associated with herbs and healing, she is able to live of heavenly dew and pure chi. 

* * * 

ZHONGLI QUAN

Often counted as the chief of the Eight immortals, he is usually shown as fat bellied and scantily dressed. He was formerly an army general who took up residence as a hermit in a mountain cottage. One day, a stone wall in his dwelling collapsed, revealing a jade box that contained instructions on attaining immortality. During a great famine her transmuted copper and pewter into gold and silver to give to the poor. 

* * * 

LU TUNG-PIN 

Known to the Chinese as 'Ancestor Lu'. A friend to the poor and oppressed, he was a Confucian scholar who attained the secrets of immortality, lived 400 years on earth and reappears from time to time. 

* * *

CHANG KUO-LAO 

An old man and hermit. After he died and was buried, his coffin was found to be empty. He assists souls to reincarnate, so the Chinese place his image in bedrooms to help with the conception of children. 

* * *

HAN HSIEN-KU

He was expelled from a Boodhist temple for being rude and rowdy, but studied the Taoist arts and attained immortality. He was shown the top of the World Tree, fell from it but quickly revived himself. He carries a flute upon which he plays the Six Healing Sounds of Taoism. 

* * * 

TSAO KUO-CHIU 

One of two brothers, he was so ashamed that his brother was a murderer and a hedonist that he retired from the world to live as a hermit. One day, he met two of the immortals who were so impressed with his learning they invited him to join them. He plays casanets in a gentle rhythm wherever he goes. He is believed to still live on earth among mortals. 

* * * 

LI TIEH-KUAI 

Called 'Iron Crutch'. A beautiful but vain youth, his soul temporarily departed from his body but when it returned his disciples had cremated his body. He therefore occupied the form of a lame beggar who hobbles with an iron crutch. Cognate to various figures in European folklore and mythology and such figures as the lame smithy god Hephaestus in Greek mythology. Accordingly, his trigram is the element Fire. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Three Painters: Evola, Crowley, Schuon

There are serious painters – artists – and then there are dabblers, those who paint as an aside to their major occupation, and it is often the dabblers who are more interesting than the bona fide artists. A previous posting to these pages (see here) concerned the watercolours of three notable amateurs, Prince Charles, Winston Churchill and Chancellor Herr Hitler. The present posting follows much the same format, but we will be contrasting the paintings of three purported spiritual luminaries: Baron Julius Evola, hero of Right-wing perennialism, Frithjof Schuon, touted by his followers as the ‘Messenger of the Religio Perennis’, and the English occultist Aleister Crowley, the self-declared ‘Master Therion’, Prophet of the Aeon of Horus. All three of these characters - men of spiritual pretensions - took to the canvas at certain junctures in their lives, and as well as the writings for which they are better known left behind a legacy of visual art. Largely, such works are of concern only to devotees, but all three conducted official exhibitions during their lifetime and in all three cases their work continues to be exhibited and can command healthy prices whenever they go to market. They are assuredly very different thinkers, and accordingly very different artists, as we shall see:

* * *

BARON JULIUS EVOLA

In his misspent youth, before he had discovered the writings of Rene Guenon and realized his vocation as a spokesman for political perennialism, Baron Evola dabbled in Dada. In fact, he was a major force in bringing the Dada avante guard to Italy in the 1920s. He exhibited in Rome and caused a stir with his brash radicalism. His paintings, however, now appear to be quite ordinary examples of Dadist abstraction, though here and there we find hints of symbols and motifs that foreshadow the esoteric interests to which the Baron later devoted himself with distinction. 

In truth, though, many of his paintings are beneath ordinary and fall into the category of horrible. It is only die-hard Evola enthusiasts who find much in them that is redeeming. The present author, in any case, only likes one or two – indicated below – even though he is a reader of Evola’s writings and has a high regard for them. Indeed, Baron Evola’s books and essays become more prescient and relevant every day; they are worthy of every attention. But the paintings? No. And the Baron recognized this himself and, to his credit, later dismissed Dada as decadence. His paintings, unfortunately, are ill-matched to his written ouevre. He dabbled in poetry as well - equally undistinguished. 

Senza titolo 1921

Composition No. 3.

Paesaggio interiore

For whatever reason, this is the Evola painting that takes the present author's fancy. Colour, composition, intensity. It is not entirely successful, but it is, all the same, almost musical. 

Nudo di donna (afroditica) - a painting with no redeeming qualities at all!

La libra s’infiamma e le piramidi

In this work we see the appearance of the alchemical symbol for sulphur. The painting itself has no great qualities. It is a completely undistinguished attempt at Dada abstraction. But it was in this period that Baron Evola began delving into esoteric symbolism. Thankfully, he turned away from painting and embraced esotericism instead. 

A Bunch of Flowers, 1918. There is, perhaps, something to be said for this composition. Lyricism, like Kandinsky. 

Paesaggio interire, aperture del diaframma 

(“Interior landscape, the opening of the diaphragm”

“Piccola tavola (vista superiore)” (“Small table (upper surface)”) 1920

Dadist composition (1920s)

There is perhaps something to be said for this composition as well. 

Portrait cubiste de femme, 1919-20

This is a genuinely horrid painting. Many of Evola's paintings are bland or contrived but some, such as this, are manifestly ugly. 

Abstraction

The Generator of the Universe. (What can one say about this? It is hard to believe that any follower of Rene Guenon could ever have painted such a thing!)

* * * 

ALEISTER CROWLEY

Numerous posts to these pages feature or make mention of Mr Crowley, often in unflattering terms. The present author is clearly not a Thelemite (follower of Crowley’s ‘Law of Thelema’) and in fact has a suitable disdain for every effort Mr Crowley made to concoct a religion around himself. His so-called ‘Book of the Law’ is bunk and his creed of ‘Do what thou wilt’ is libertarian nonsense dressed up as ancient Egyptian profundity. Moreover, Crowley – diametrically contrary to his own inflated regard for himself - must rate as one of the worst poets in the English language. W. B. Yeats – one of the best – once quipped that Crowley had managed to write maybe three or four lines of decent verse. This is to be generous. Although, he was a very fine – and always entertaining – prose writer and his edifice of occultism can be seen as a remarkable creative endeavour in toto. He also turned his hand to painting, adopting a sort of expressionist style. Examples can be seen below. And, in fact, they are rather good. Of recent times they have attracted the attention of the art cognoscenti, and rightly so for they are quirky, mysterious, potent, raw, amongst other qualities. They illustrate the strength and power of Mr Crowley’s personality and his unique, though always dark, vision. 

Landscape with Coral & Jade Pagodas. One of Crowley's better paintings. 

May Morning. A typically macabre theme. Crowley wrote: "The painting represents the dawning of the day following a witches' celebration as described in Faust. The witch is hanged, as she deserves, and the satyr looks out from behind a tree."

The moon, study for the tarot. It is a great pity that Crowley did not complete a set of images for tarot designs. He later employed the services of Lady Freda Harris and instructed her to design his tarot cards, subsequently published as the 'Thoth' deck. Although Lady Harris' designs are widely admired, the present author finds them typical of a type of turgid modernism that is not to his taste. Crowley's own tarot paintings are somewhat more interesting and would have revealed much more of his magickal personality. 

Van Gogh-like expressionism. Despite being derivative, it is nonetheless a potent painting, a vision driven by the overtly phallic-solar cultus that Mr Crowley constructed around himself.

Self-Portrait. Like most self-depictions, this flatters him. He was actually a flabby Englishman wiuth beady eyes and a whiney high-pitched voice - here depicted as a phallic-headed hero from another dimension. 

Ladies of the Liberal Club

Crowley's vicious satires of middle-class respectability are always entertaining and incisive. (Read, for example, his short work entitled 'How to Fake Horoscopes'). He shows a piercing ability to stare into the empty pit of blank souls. In that respect, there is something to be said for this portrait of 'Ladies of the Liberal Club'. Such ladies populate liberal clubs to this day! 

The BABALON door. Many of Crowley's paintings remain on the doors and walls at his so-called 'Abbey of Thelema' in Cefalu, Sicily, which is today dilapidated and ramshackle. It is a pity - and quite remarkable - that no great effort has been made to preserve these works. 

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FRITHJOF SCHUON

The Swiss-French Soofi religionist Monsieur Schuon was a trained fabric designer by profession, and so he brought a degree of artistic expertise to his painting lacking in the case of the two other completely amateur artists considered above. His work is more polished and technically competent, but also far less revealing for all of that. It is steady and controlled, iconographic rather than expressive. Schuon relocated to Bloomington Indiana in the 1980s to take up residence as pontificating guru to a community of well-to-do Americans. But he had always felt a strong affinity for the American native traditions, and the relocation brought him into contact with representatives of the Plains Indians. This becomes the central preoccupation of his paintings, with a particular emphasis on naked Indian girls rationalized as a metaphysical concern for the ‘Divine Feminine’. 

Schuon penchant for nudism led him into morally dangerous terrain, however, and he was, late in the piece, investigated for inappropriate dealings with minors. All charges were dismissed, but critics maintain that his well-to-do clientele used their wealth to rescue him from legal proceedings. There are, even so, photographs circulating privately on the Internet – always subject to legal threats by the same wealthy followers – of Monsieur Schuon and his various wives (vertical and horizontal) involved in some odd naked antics which suggest at very least that things became quite strange down there in Bloomington towards the end of his life. There is a stolid dignity in his paintings – a quality the present author admires – although it must be admitted that it is, all up, just a passable imitation of Gaugin (who also had a thing for the exotic flesh of native girls.) Some of the more explicit paintings of Schuon, which the present author has seen, and which betray a somewhat lurid eye are not easily found on the Internet (again because his followers keep a very tight control upon his legacy.) He is, finally, a painter of quasi-Amer-Indian icons with New Age appeal. 

It is surprising that there is so little Mohammadan content in his work, but it underlines the fact that, once in Bloomington, the interests of the self-initiated ‘Sheihk Jesus’ shifted increasingly to a neo-paganism of his own invention, complete with quasi-Indian rituals and pow-wows, and drifted further and further from any mainstream version of Soofism. The present author has been a reader of Schuon's works, and values them in many respects, and admires many of his paintings too. Like Evola and Crowley as well, Schuon fancied himself as a poet. Like them, his poems are terrible. 

The flatness and above all the silence of these works - well-rendered, it must be said - is strongly reminiscent of the works of Gaugin (with both artists showing a strong philosophical debt to Rousseau's "noble savage" ideology.)

Although not obvious in this work, Schuon's depictions of the horned elk are conceived as types of self-portraits. He took the elk as a "totem" in the Indian manner and the proud male elk guarding the females and young of the herd was Schuon's fantasy of his role as leader of his followers in Bloomington. There is a series of such works with this sub-text. 

Laylat al-Qadr. The Night of Power. One of the few overtly Mohammadan paintings in the oeuvre of Monsieur Schuon. He spent time in the company of Soofis in North Africa and through those associations later promoted himself as "Shayk Isa (Jesus)", although his credentials and claims to a genuine Soofi lineage are widely disputed. 

The Virgin Mary meets Pocahontas - a quintessentially Schuonian conflation. 

Schuon was a lover of the feminine, and should not be faulted for that. His depictions of the female form show great insight into feminine archetypes and the contemplative nature of female beauty. This, more than the "noble savage" theme, is one of the strongest recommendations for Schuon's paintings in the opinion of the present writer. 

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Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black