The Mad Erosophical Sage: Whirling Words Beyond Words

There is a question I frequently ask myself: How do I whirl words beyond words? How do I send words flying beyond themselves, reaching for, straining towards, that infinite, chaotic, unspeakable beauty that I am, that I desire, that this Earth and the cosmos are? I am speaking here of ecstatic expression ... Words dancing beyond reason, with no fear of nonsense, a sensuous speech that yet flows beyond the senses, flowering in the fertile soils of imagination. This is the speech, the expression, I desire, an outflow, a flooding filled with magic, with poetry, with beauty, with violence, with humor, a godless glossolalia filled with meanings that cannot be reduced to dogmas or reasons.

Is there a place for the speech of reason? Of course, there is. To seek its suppression itself bears the mark of the sort of censorious dogma that is too often the mate of reason, when reason is accepted as the lord of thought and speech.

But I have explored this realm of reasonable speech and have found that its apparent clarity is often a fog of the deepest obscurity, hiding all that words can merely point to, all that ever dances beyond words.

This is not surprising. The central tool of reason is analysis, and analysis refers to mental dissection or vivisection, cutting whatever one is thinking about into pieces and so draining it of all life ... No wonder it is associated with precision, the art of making sure that whatever one is talking about is cut up before one thinks or speaks ...

But I am not at all interested in analyzing reasonable speech, in making a reasoned argument for how little it actually reveals. No, I'd rather play with myths, those poetic theogonies. Let's consider one of the ancient Greek gods of reason ... Apollo (I may play with Athena, the Greek goddess of reason -- especial in its form as strategy for war or -- another time, who knows?). Somehow, Apollo, this god of order, reason, everything in its right place, was also thought of as a god of poetry and music! Well, maybe of Gregorian chants ... or Bach at his most mathematical ... But even there, I have my questions. You know that lyre that Apollo always carried around? Did he make it himself? No! A one-day old trickster, Hermes, as a barely-born babe, made it for him! Hermes, the trickster, the thief, the mischief-maker! And ever on the wrong side of Apollo!

In Nietzsche's worldview, Apollonian reason and its limits are opposed to Dionysian ecstasy. Lewis Hyde, in his understanding of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, sees another opposition -- that between Apollonian limits and Hermetic possibilities, that is to say, the possibilities that emerge from playful mischief. For me, this raises the question of what relationship there is between Dionysian ecstasy and Hermetic possibilities. I perceive in both a deep connection to magick, to sorcery, to witchcraft, to whatever you prefer to call this way of playing with pluriverses. In other words, what I like to call wonderplay surges through both! Ecstasy is when you go out of or beyond stasis; it is embracing transformation, ever dancing beyond. The Trickster's playful mischief, from which Hermetic possibilities flow, intends to break through stasis so that you can dance beyond it. And so the actual question for me becomes: How do I live these two together as a single polytropic, infinite game that is always dancing beyond every attempt to define it and so remains filled with the flow of living poetic meaning? Reasonable Apollo may well have invented the rhyme and meter sometimes used in poetry, but to make it poetry, he had to get drunk on Dionysus' wine and pick up the lyre that Hermes created, and let himself dance beyond reason. Any meaning that can be put into the dull words of definition is not a living meaning, but merely a reasonable explanation (ho hum!). One can only find living meaning in poetry, in the voice and speech of erotic passion. And even here, I question just how far words can take us, because ultimately words will eternally fail unless you understand how they play.

Yes, words will eternally fail, if you don't understand that, by their very nature, they are tales, not truths. Truth itself is a word, and so, a tale. There are no words for each Unique that in each moment, for a moment, actually is. Yet we have reached a time (another word that is a tale that is a lie) when words, or worse, utter(ed) abstractions, numbers, measures, algorhithms, are taken as the deepest truths, believed in with the most fervent faith. Perhaps, in such a world, at such time, it is time for me to go ... But I don't believe in time, or algorhithms, or numbers, or even words! Even the pressure in my head raises questions. Besides, once rid of time, it all becomes a matter of timing.

As you see, I've been writing these words. And I've noticed over time that written words all want to be:

Scriptures

Let all scriptures be fire.

Let the words of all gods be ashes

blowing on the winds,

howling beyond letters and meanings,

beyond all that may bind them to dogma,

religion caught up in the sorcerous storm

of glorious godless glossolalia,

beautiful and bewitching and terrifying.

When you and I become the gods

who have no need for worship,

how then could we have a need for words?

Words will be no more than decorations,

poetic babblings flowing out from mouths

into which, for now, no wine is flowing ...

And why must there be words at all

when howls and laughs and roars and clicks and whistles

and blown kisses

make a music much more marvelous

and wild?

And yet the words still flow

and poets smile.

These are the tones through which

their music flows until,

divine and godless,

the poets fly beyond

[and here the poets break into a wild glossolalia, howling, roaring, babbling, tongue-clicking, laughing, blowing kisses, turning somersaults, and dancing ... ]

But there is a bit more, a way to twist even written words away from their tendency toward becoming scripture ... It involves sorcery and a tendency to mock what is taken seriously:

Everything that's written

will find ecstasy

only when it transforms

into blasphemy,

mad heresy,

the wildest mockery

of every word,

the alchemy that transmutes

every word into a flame

and every scripture into ash

from which the fragrance

of oblivion arises,

aphrodisiac of divine annihilation ...

Take the book and as you read,

forget the words!

Rip out each page

and throw it on the flames.

As words and meanings disappear,

wild sorceries and marvels

rise into the winds

and gather you into a storm of chaos

in which Eros roars

a wild androgyny that needs

no more than this moment

to flower in the glory of loving wonderplay

and embrace the mad, true dream

of ever being no-thingness.

Well, my words, for now, are done whirling. And don't believe a word of it! Ha ha ha!