Emotional Traps

“Dionysus is the heart of the world, its rapture and its longing. Amid the ceaseless change of forms and modes of being his cry sounds without rest and spreads everywhere the thirst for the infinite and the unconditioned” (V. Shmakov).

Both fundamental principles of the Psychocosmos – the Principle of Feeling and the Principle of Intelligence – are realized in binary manifestations, the awareness and neutralization of which pose significant problems on the Way of the Magus.

The principle of Intelligence manifests as the Mind–Intelligence binary, while the principle of Feeling manifests as the Feeling–Emotion binary. Today we will speak of the second binary, since it is on the path of its neutralization that many Travellers have found their stumbling block.

The development of the Principle of Feeling is a plunge into the stream of worldly life. On this Way one is wholly engulfed by boundlessness; all barriers separating the self from the surrounding world vanish without a trace, everything in the world seems near and kin. Everything appears intrinsically connected and essentially one. And amid this triumphant principle of universal unity, the personal self is perceived as an unnecessary appendage.

At the same time, the meaning of an individual life remains distant and inaccessible, and interest in it fades. The whole being fills with a sense of universal unity and with a continuous flow of harmony. Immersed in this stream, the mind attains the deepest calm. There is no need to secure self or future, for everything is already revealed, everything seems complete.

But the deeper one plunges into this stream, the more the mind discovers menacing gulfs in which, although one may glimpse all the twists of universal life, everything is mingled together by an all-consuming chaos. In that process, the deep sources of being and life lose their vivifying power and become mere agents of destruction. If the mind cannot stop in time and oppose the all-annihilating Feeling with organizing intelligence, it fades.

As in any binary, its poles fully manifest only when they reflect each other; accordingly, in this principle of unity reflections are born: feeling shows itself in a range of emotions, and intelligence appears as a stream of feelings. (Unfortunately, linguistic limits make distinction difficult in distinguishing Feeling as a Principle and feelings as stable currents within it).

Magical myth calls emotions the reactions of the Principle of Feeling to disturbances external to it (though not necessarily external to the Psychocosmos) — that is, waves upon the Sea of Dionysus — while feelings are the currents that arise within that very sea for its internal reasons.

By their nature, emotions are directed at perceiving the surrounding world; they reflect an appraisal of a phenomenon’s “usefulness” or “harmfulness.” In other words, they express forces of “attraction” or “repulsion” that arise in the chaos of life’s cycles between its separate elements — transient and passing. Particular properties of objects and situations, by causing emotions, incline the mind toward corresponding behavior.

Feelings also reflect changes in the Psychocosmos, but these changes may not be connected to an external stimulus; moreover, they are more specific, since they arise in relation to someone or something rather than to a situation as a whole: “I fear this person” is a feeling, while “I am afraid” is an emotion. In other words, feelings are always directed, while emotions are situationally focused; a feeling is a vector; an emotion is a point; an emotion is situational, a feeling stable.

Emotions can arise without any psychic influence, due to chemical, medicinal, or hormonal causes. It is known that wine “cheers the heart of man”; with wine, one can “drown melancholy,” and thanks to wine, fear disappears — “to a drunk the sea is knee-deep.” Fly agaric can provoke fits of frenzy and a propensity to violence. An infusion of fly agaric was once given to warriors to induce a “bloodthirsty state.” Hashish can also trigger eruptions of savagery. Changes in the levels of sex hormones in the blood are accompanied by a vivid emotional backdrop. All manner of breathing exercises, which “bait” the brain with an excess or, conversely, a lack of oxygen, can also be accompanied by intense emotions.

Feelings, by contrast, always take root in the Psychocosmos itself, in the processes occurring within it, and cannot be induced by such “technical” means.

Emotions and feelings may not coincide and can even contradict each other (for example, a deeply loved person may in a certain situation provoke an emotion of displeasure or even anger); the same emotion may express different feelings, and the same feeling may be expressed in different emotions.

No wonder intoxication was considered Dionysus’s instrument. By absolutizing emotions to the detriment of feelings, the mind sacrifices its stability, falling into the ecstasy of the ever-changing principle; and in the instant of the highest tension of sweet union with life, it simultaneously drains the cup of death, consumed in those flaming embraces.

Striving for stability of the mind’s currents, the Magus naturally strives for stability of feelings as well. Yet despite the fact that from the perspective of the Magus’s development, emotions should not play the decisive role, a “substitution” often occurs: an emotion is taken for a feeling, its source is transferred from the external circle into the internal, and instead of passing, the emotion becomes “stuck,” fixed in the mind, eliciting a reaction to a stimulus whose action has already ceased. A vivid example of such a substitution is the fixating of an emotion of satisfaction as a feeling of love — in fact “I love you” very often means “you satisfy me,” or, not infrequently, “you satisfied me.” In pursuit of emotions born of sex and victories, achievements and power, Magi lose their Way.

Many Magi fall into this trap. It is precisely absolutized emotions that prevent one from stepping beyond the Principle of Dionysus; it is they that plunge the mind into the abysses of streams of the world that dissolve individuality. Only the ennobling action of Will, as a principle higher than Intelligence and Feeling, makes it possible to impart directed rather than chaotic motion to the Psychocosmos. Without this, fixation on emotions leads to immersion in a principle where flashes of action appear, but the creative stream immediately carries them away again, replacing them with darkness. And the triumph of repose and motion, of boundless possibilities and the futility of their realization, of being sated with power yet eternally thirsty, creates a peculiar rhythm — bizarre, inexpressible, bewitching to self-forgetfulness, but destructive of being.