The emergence of Aleister Crowley (and
immediately before him, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), more than four
centuries after the era of Giordano Bruno and John Dee, had a profound impact
on the return of the phantasmic in European culture. In the foundations of the
worldview of British and French occult circles of the late 19th century, tarot
played a key role. Another figure who significantly influenced the mass shaping
of the phantasmic is the cult American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Crowley and
Lovecraft brought forth raw content from unknown depths, like magical
psychonauts who, from distant destinations, brought astonishing and terrifying
samples of unknown worlds into our world and into the 20th century. Their
influence on our imagination is far greater than most people are aware of.
Kenneth Grant, at the beginning of his book
Outside the Circles of Time, interestingly connects the year 1947, the year of
Aleister Crowley’s death, with the beginning of widespread sightings of
phenomena known as "Unidentified Flying Objects" – UFOs. A few years
prior, nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the city of
Dresden was destroyed by fire, showcasing the destructive power of mankind that
looms over civilization in our time. Grant compared this threat of nuclear holocaust
to the fate of the mythical Atlantis. Never before in history, or since the
presumed Atlantean cataclysm, has humanity faced such a widespread and tangible
danger as during the nuclear threat. The sinking of Atlantis, which could
theoretically be attributed to the will of God or the gods, was allegedly
caused by the corruption of its ruling caste. The looming nuclear catastrophe
is also a sign of the corruption of today's elites. Thus, we have the threat of
destruction by fire caused by the madness of the elite; we have visible
unexplained phenomena in the atmosphere; and most importantly, we have a shift
in the imagination of the masses, triggered by popular culture, which reflects
phantasmic forms shaped or evoked by great artists, writers, and occultists who
act like prophets or mediums. Their sensitive minds have brought images of
extraterrestrial locations, unknown and often frightening worlds, into the
imagination of broader social strata. Their visions, descriptions, reports,
achievements, and "astral imprints" of their actions have found ways
of embodiment through art and so-called popular culture, penetrating the
imagination of an increasing number of people. Now, more people are receptive
to emissions of phantasms, visions, voice messages, dreams, or the transmission
of consciousness content from distant cosmic points, primarily those whose
seats or transmission stations are associated with Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, and
beyond. These three planets are ambassadors and messengers from worlds beyond
the solar system, but are also the abodes of those forces that, according to
mythology, were defeated and expelled by the solar gods. There, those who were
once here, so that we could exist as we are today, were banished. It seems that
we are witnessing a return of ancient exiles, a return of ancient magic, which
heralds some troubled times.
Humanity is in a situation of projecting the end
times, but also new beginnings. The end times refer to the world as we know it,
but what do these new beginnings refer to? I would link this new beginning to
the discovery of planets beyond Saturn, primarily Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto
(although Pluto has since lost its status as a planet). It seems that these
planets do not belong to the solar system but act as embodiments of some
foreign influence. They do not have analogies in traditional systems of planetary
natures. Tradition recognizes seven ancient planets, including the Sun and the
Moon as planets. In fact, the Sun and the Moon are considered super-planets
from the human perspective, as they are the largest and have the strongest
influence. In a sense, the world on Earth and its human consciousness are
defined by the existence and influences of the Sun and the Moon, and then by
the other five planets visible to the naked eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn). Together, they form the seven celestial spheres, above which lies
the eighth sphere belonging to the stars. In this traditional view of the
universe, there is no Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, or anything else that might have
been discovered in the meantime. They simply stand somewhere far away, hidden
in darkness, which in itself is somehow laden with dread and ominousness, but
it does not necessarily have to be so. The traditional planetary cosmic
arrangement lasted for millennia until Uranus was discovered in 1781, followed
by Neptune in 1846, and Pluto in 1930. These discoveries coincide with the
major changes occurring in humanity at that time, as well as with the birth and
death years of many significant individuals responsible for the forthcoming
changes in human consciousness and the course of history.
Let us recall, Lovecraft, in a story written or
completed in the year of Pluto's discovery, a planet he named Yuggoth, described strange extraterrestrial and
magical beings and their colony there. In that story, he announced that this
colony from Pluto would attempt to establish a mental connection with the human
world. According to Lovecraft, Yuggoth is only one step, as the majority of this extraterrestrial
population inhabits bizarrely organized abysses completely beyond the reach of
human imagination. This droplet of spacetime that we consider the entirety of
cosmic existence, Lovecraft says, is merely an atom in the true infinity, which
is theirs. Moreover, within this worldview, non-human extraterrestrial entities
were here long before us, but they are not compatible with human consciousness,
unlike the inner planetary belt from Saturn to the Sun. The five planets, along
with the Sun and Moon, have their microcosmic analogies, whereas the outer
planets do not. However, it is not that the contents related to their
frequencies have not reached humans. Instead, they have taken on terrifying
forms through various monsters, gods, and demons. And now this boundary is
slowly melting away, with trans-Saturnian contents increasingly pressing upon
everyday human consciousness, imagination, and the realm of predominant dreams.
These contents were once repressed into the deeper universe, physically,
archetypally, and psychologically, by the victory of solar gods, to develop
historical humanity. Saturn stood as the guardian of the solar world's gates
and a kind of scarecrow, assuming the non-human contents of distant worlds and
the role of neutralizing those influences. That boundary has today been
loosened, and prominent individuals act as mediums or prophets of this return,
bringing cosmic horror.
This phenomenon accelerated at the beginning of
the 20th century, coinciding with the publication of Aleister Crowley's The
Book of the Law, and now we already have a significant phantasmal charge in the
collective imagination of humanity. In the meantime, two world wars have
occurred, there is a nuclear threat, sightings of UFOs, channeled messages, and
an explosion of irrationality in an era of rational dominance intended to seal
the old world of the Great Seven. Yet, the spirit of the time had different
plans. The forthcoming turbulent era does not merely signify a general
confusion in the state of mind and consciousness of people and their
interpersonal relationships, but it primarily represents a kind of mixing of
frequencies as an echo of the influences of different time cycles and impacts
from distant realms. Human beings are increasingly exposed to influences not
only from distant realms but also from those existing in other times. For
example, when we dream or find ourselves in a state of vision or intense
daydreaming, we are not locked within our minds but are exposed to the influx
of the boundless space and abyss of time, even beyond every space and time.
Reading H.P. Lovecraft, one cannot help but
notice a certain similarity between his view of the world as presented in his
horror stories and the perspective of Carlos Castaneda. Although Lovecraft and
Castaneda have no direct connections, they share a view of the nature of the
world into which we are immersed through the process of life. Both describe the
fragility of this world and the human position in the universe, and ultimately,
the fragility of human beings themselves. For both, the world has a deep, terrifying,
and insidious backdrop. Our world, in this sense, is a very fragile illusion,
beyond which yawns an incomprehensible abyss from which unspeakable terror can
seep into our confined reality through the cracks of the same reality we are
snugly wrapped in by our habits, opinions, and perceptions. While horror is
only tangentially present and integrated into the mechanism of his worldview in
Castaneda's writings, Lovecraft places the emphasis squarely on horror. In
Castaneda's work, the bearers of terror are inorganic beings, flyers, twisted
old seers, and generally anything related to what he calls the nagual, whose
nature is inscrutable. The very idea of the tonal and nagual, and reducing our
world to a limited tonal opposed to the infinite nagual from which terrifying
contents can always penetrate, is a significant element of horror in
Castaneda's oeuvre. Similarly, both Lovecraft and Castaneda highlight the
impotence of reason in the face of magical and supernatural forces, infinity,
the nagual, and cosmic horror. In Castaneda's work, everyday reason often
hinders the paths of awareness and enlightenment. In Lovecraft's work, reason
is powerless against the onslaughts of horror. They also share the observation
that, in times of advanced civilization, its technical and technological
wonders protect the small human world, protecting the tonal. In the story
"The Haunting of the House," Lovecraft says that his hero is
protected by high-rise buildings just as modern material things protect our
world from ancient and unhealthy wonders. In Castaneda's explanation, modern
man, surrounding himself with technology, has solidified the position of his
collective point, which is both a protection and a hindrance to the
consciousness's escape from the narrow confines of human form.
