Liber Null & Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic - Peter J. Carroll 1987

The Alphabet of Desire The Millenium
Liber NOX

Except for the curious condition of laughter, which is its own opposite, emotion follows a dual pattern—love and hate, fear and desire, and so on. The following Alphabet of Desire includes all the basic root emotions arranged as complementary dualisms in a form suggestive of the classical gods, or Ruach of Kabbala.

Pagan philosophers saw human qualities mirrored in nature and cast these giant reflections of themselves as gods. It is therefore unsurprising that most pagan cosmologies contain a complete spectrum of our psychology in god form.

The main divisions of emotion have been equated with planetary god forms. Each of these principles manifests in three important forms represented here by the alchemical principles of The Mercurial (exalting, spiritual) form indicates the cathartic, ecstatic, gnostic mode. Over-stimulation of any emotive function creates a mental paroxysm in which the whole consciousness may be caught up. This is experienced as a great release or catharsis, and at higher levels, ecstasy. Finally, the one-pointed consciousness essential to mysticism and magic may supervene in which the life force can act directly. The gnostic condition is also the key to radical changes of belief or conversion. Any belief presented in this condition is likely to be retained due to the hypersuggestibility of the vacuous state of the mind.

The Sulphurous (quickening, active) form indicates the ordinary basic drives to copulate, to destroy, to be attracted by favorable stimuli and repelled by harmful ones. This is the normal functional mode of the emotion from which the ecstatic and earthly modes are derived.

The Earthy (heavy, sluggish) form is evoked when an emotion is baulked of expression or becomes tainted with an admixture of its opposite. It turns in on itself rather than seek fulfillment in action or esctacy.

Table 2. Emotional Duality

The greater duality which rules all emotions is shown in Table 2. Figure 9 on page 78 shows us that the root of every emotion is always its opposite.

Armed with this self-knowledge, the magician may ever ride the shark of his desire across the ocean of the dual principle to a gratuitous ecstasy. Anticipating the earthy disfunctional modes, he may transmute their energies and obtain his satisfaction in other forms. (An alternative desire or its sigil is made the focus of concentration in the climate of a negative emotion, it will soon be realized.)

The twenty-one principles have each been given a simple pictorial glyph and a one word mnemonic. The glyphs can be employed in various spells and sigils, but the words are mostly quite inaccurate attempts to capture a feeling. The twenty-one principles can be equated with the Trumps of the Tarot if desired. Kia is equated with the Fool.

Figure 9. The root of every emotion is always its opposite.

There is additionally a supplementary alphabet of four principles to cover the somatic emotions of the pain/pleasure and depression/elation dualities.

The force which creates is also that which destroys. The cellular mechanisms which make reproduction and growth possible are also those which cause ageing and death.

(Glyphs: escape from the dual condition, implosive conjunction)

The death posture includes all trances intended to bring the mind to complete stillness. Concentration on a single stimulus, a thought, an image, a sight or a sound may hasten the effect of removing all other stimuli. At the moment of the most profound and utter stillness the magician controls his universe.

Sexuality most often brings man a fleeting glimpse of ecstacy. The magician first observes chastity for a period. Then he takes every measure to bring himself to the highest point of excitation. Ordinary lust is transcended, having served its purpose; the consciousness soars to new peaks of excitation and may pass into something else altogether.

(Glyphs: antagonism, sexual conjunction)

Lust, the impulse to seek sexual union, is a necessary function of the organism and remarkable only in the staggering variety of fetish objects to which it can be directed. Blood-lust and the urge to wanton destructiveness serve few useful purposes. Their existence is inexplicable except in dual terms. The desire for union with various things and persons is co-existent with an equally strong desire for separation from various phenomena. In extreme forms this manifests as the desire to lay waste to certain aspects of one's universe with a frenzy which parodies sexual lust.

(Glyphs: loss of form by dissolving, failure of conjunction)

As frustration is baulked lust, so is the boredom, laziness, depression, and self-disgust of atrophy a failure to destroy or separate oneself from undesirable events. The attempt to capitalize one's lust or destructiveness by indulgence for entertainment is also a sure evocation of frustration and atrophy.

May it not be that our wished-for treasure islands lay precisely within those images of horror and revulsion we normally reject ?

(Glyphs: black pit of fear, upward, outward leaping)

Fear, if pushed to a high pitch rapidly, will paralyze the mind. Strange alternative magical perceptions may then sometimes be glimpsed; and the will, if focused on a single objective, is mighty. Terror as a tool of magic is an essential ingredient of many initiatory and mystic schools.

The gnosis of joy is more difficult to attain, but a flight of geese against a sunset, contemplation of religious imagery or intense nostalgia, have, for some, been enough to tip the scales of mystic perception.

(Glyphs: being attacked, coming together)

The normal reactions to threatening or inviting stimuli. Such commonplace feelings require little comment save that in a civilization such as ours far removed from natural phenomena, almost all fears and desires are socially induced or imaginary.

(Glyphs: inescapable unpleasantness, engulfing)

As a sage once observed, desire is the cause of sorrow. These are important dualities for “civilized” society. Aversion designates the anguish, misery, sorrow, grief or embarrassment of being unable to separate oneself from phenomena of fear because of past desire. Conversely, greed is the condition of being unable to satisfy desire because of past fears. Daily do our greed and fear assume grotesque and bizarre proportions.

Seeking to avoid violence we have made a virtue of suppression of anger. This damages the emotional constitution. Denying oneself anger, one loses all the rapture of love. Be ye men and women of great passions.

(Glyphs: transcending rage, flame of passion)

Raging anger is rarely violent and never effectively violent. Ask any warrior. Giving vent to mild anger is cathartic; the head is cleared of tensions, and the body relaxes. Raving blind rage is a magical state of mind. It is useful for casting one's will upon the universe and may, for skilled practitioners, be a gateway to trance states.

Entrancement is also a feature of rapture. Bhakti yoga, the way of love of a god, has parallels in Western mysticism. The force of all-consuming love may carry one into the power of the mystic void.

(Glyphs: a weapon, embracing)

Passionate devotion to one's mate, offspring, and tribe is as natural as the impulse to give battle to thieves, enemies, competitors and predators. Now that society's aggression has been institutionalized on the national scale, it has to be ritualized on the personal and regional scale as sport.

(Glyphs: anger turned inward, useless appendage)

The condition of loathing results from being unable to forget, avoid, or destroy an object of hate. That is, one is unable to break one's attachment to it. Attachment itself is a form of love in which the loved becomes a mere useless appendage when passion is baulked of fulfillment and a partial reaction, an element of loathing, has entered in.

(Glyph: concealed at the center of the mandala)

Rejected by science which cannot explain it away, derided by religion whose piety it deflates, used only to embarrass pretention in art and philosophy, verily it is a tool of magic. In the ecstatic laughter of men I see their volition toward release.

(Glyph: downward flashing lightning splitting asunder)

Shattering of one's expectations is the device of all the best humor. The Archbishop loudly farts; the free energy of our destroyed beliefs manifests as laughter. This function is protective. If we did not laugh at our broken expectation, we would go mad eventually. By the amoral cultivation of laughter, the magician can shrug off all losses and avoid entering averse states altogether if he wishes. Crying is an infantile form of deconceptualization, laughter, designed to protect the eyes and summon assistance.

(Glyph: a receptacle for conception)

Another form of wit, the pun, depends on forging a connection between two ideas. An infinite series of weak jokes of this kind relies on liberating the free energy of surprise when the penny drops. The “aha!”, “eureka!” reaction of discovery is the same emotion, and its enjoyment is what impels people to meddle with sciences, kabbala, and even crossword puzzles. This functional mode impels us to thought and discovery; it is the motivation for intellection.

(Glyph: double upward flashing lightnings of cancellation)

The ecstatic laughter of divine madness is the sweeping up of every perception into a vortex of surprise at its very existence. Everything is suddenly and amazingly not as it was. Yet simultaneously it seems more exactly as it was than before!? Conceptualization and deconceptualization occur simultaneously. Language descends inevitably to the paradoxical as one is swept up into the ecstacy.

Such usually accidental paroxysms may be cultivated by forms of the death posture and by willful evocation of laughter on encountering all things.

Some emotional states depend more on the activation of the purely physiological rather than the psychological responses. These are dealt with in a supplementary alphabet. The supplementary alphabet of the somatic emotions (shown in figure 10) corresponds to the four elements: earth, air, fire and water.

Figure 10. Supplementary Alphabet in Malkuth, the somatic emotions.

No emotion is a purely mental event; all emotions are dependent on complex chemical and nervous reactions to environment. The somatic (body) emotions however may be recognized as having a more direct relationship to the senses and general tone of the nervous system. The ecstatic functional and negative modes of each state will be discussed under general headings. The somatic emotions are intimately associated with the larger alphabet. Depression is linked with many of the earthly modes, and pain or pleasure with most of the functional modes. These linkages are two-way, in that a stimulation of one may evoke the other and vice versa.

(Glyphs: penetration, gentle touch)

Instinctive movements toward or away from stimuli of various types and intensity are linked with the emotions of pleasure and pain. The range of such instincts is very limited—attraction toward softness, warmth, and bland tastes; repulsion from injury, temperature extremes, and acrid tastes.

Over-stimulation of these emotions leads to ecstatic states. This is difficult to achieve for pleasure, but pain has magical application in rites of initiation, purification and sacrifice.

Complete agony is ecstacy.

Hedonism, the search for gratuitous pleasure, inevitably leads to an epicurianism of pain. The hedonist rapidly falls back into indulging progressively more poisonous, revolting, and debilitating pleasures to provoke a reaction from his exhausted senses. Hedonism and masochism exhaust themselves uselessly into the numbed greyness of dulled faculties.

(Glyphs: sagging, rising upon itself)

Figure 11. This shall be my Kabbala.

The general condition of the nervous system depends on health and the emotions going on within it. Emotions of the ecstatic mode enliven the system and cause a general elation. Those tending toward the earthy model of baulked or frustrated emotions cause a general depression.

Such feelings are generally called happiness or misery. The “dark night of the soul” which follows after certain forms of mystic exaltation is simply the general tone of the neuroendocrine system swinging wildly from elation to depression.

Mere ideas follow suit.

By the alphabet of desire is explained our “inability to make progress in emotional terms.” We are ever confined by the dualities of pleasure/pain or happiness/misery, no matter how ingeniously we manipulate our environment.

Lament not that men suffer war, fear, pain, and death, for these are but the inevitable accompaniment to love, desire, pleasure, and sex. Only laughter can be gotten away with for free. Some have sought to avoid suffering by avoiding desire. Thus they have only small desires and small sufferings, poor fools. The wise seek satisfaction in that which repels as well as that which attracts. Plunging into experience thus, we may be partakers of the dual ecstacy forever and ever. (See figure 11.)

Even if satisfaction of some emotion be baulked and we are unable to rise above it to ecstacy, then it is possible to transmute the trapped energy for other purposes. Whatever it is that we were emotional about should be forgotten, and another desire, magical or mundane, should be substituted for it. Even the desire for laughter can be substituted. It will soon be realized.

There is no escape from the cycle of desire, but armed with such knowledge a measure of freedom of desire may be won. The Alphabet of Desire may be called the Arena of Anon, for when Kia attains complete anonymity—freedom from identification—it may wander the alphabet as it wills.