Understanding Auto-Fellatio, etc.

[Michael Joseph]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Glenn  Scheper wrote:

> That was a good link! Three iterations of Surf
> hauled in 1940 Files, 33Mb. Here's a real gem:
>
> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/alchemy.html
> Romanticism On the Net 5 (February 1997)
>
>  The introspective, radically symbolic and mythic language of
>  hermetic philosophy of all ages, as well as its affirmation
>  of a meaningful correspondence between mind and Nature, puts
>  it - alongside Romanticism and the Platonic tradition -
>  within a mode of thought and perception which draws its
>  creative inspiration from a perennial substratum of innate
>  archetypal ideas. Western alchemy, which flourished in
>  Europe through to the end of the Renaissance, gradually
>  faded into obscurity during the eighteenth century as a
>  result of its incompatibility with the hypostasis of reason
>  that characterised the spirit of "enlightenment."
>  Romanticism, then, as a metarational reaction to empiricism,
>  entails a reconnection to the archetypal realm and a
>  corresponding reactivation of alchemical themes and symbols.
> ...
>  The quest for unity or wholeness central to both alchemy and
>  Romanticism thus replaces the moralism of a redemption
>  grounded in reasoned theological belief systems. In
>  Romanticism and alchemy redemption is, in other words,
>  displaced from the rational by a reassertion of an innate
>  capacity to redeem oneself through the attainment of
>  wholeness. This averment of self-perfection is, then, an
>  instance of the "de-moralisation" of the religious quest,
>  which characterises the subjection of the self to the
>  morally neutral archetypal realm.
>
Yet if one actually reads alchemical texts or the writings of 15-16th
century magi, one finds them very like the texts of contemporary
Humanists, with whom they knew and frequently consulted, in their
scholarly interest in getting the texts right. (See Anthony Graton on
this.)  For them apparently the quest for "wholeness" was no less a
rational enterprize, although ultimately concerned with praxis. Moreover,
I'd challenge the hypothesis that they sought to replace "moralism," or
conceived of their project in a way that superceded the prevailing general
principles.


Michael