“Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? For even Gods putrefy!”
God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!’
Can you get more left-hand than that? Let’s see…
Hello everyone, I’m Angela, and welcome back to my channel. Your online resource for the academic study of magic and magic-practising traditions and religions.
Today we will explore the possible connections between the philosophy of Nietzsche and that underlying Western Esotericism, more specifically Left-Hand Path traditions.
There are two main premises to make before I dive deeper into the topic. First, Nietzsche is a philosopher who has been differently interpreted – sometimes misinterpreted – by many thinkers and philosophers. In the worst case, to fit a certain political agenda during the second world war. This is facilitated by Nietzsche’s writing style, which is quite poetic, aphorismatic, and fragmentary. Thus, if you’re passionate about his philosophy, I’d highly recommend you read his books and make up your mind about his philosophy. I’ll leave Nietzsche’s books and the referenced academic analyses, as always, in the info box.
Second, comparisons are always a dangerous ground to navigate for scholars but I still want to venture there and discover the liaison points between the Western Esoteric currents falling under the umbrella of the Left-Hand path and Friedrich Nietzsche.
After all, the Nietzschean philosophy has had a massive cultural influence throughout the 20th Century, and – esotericism, being a cultural and a social product, could have not escaped such a philosophical tsunami!
Let’s crack on, then.
In ‘The Gay Science’, Nietzsche talks about the death of God. This is an often-misunderstood concept as Nietzsche was not referring to God per se but to the metaphysical realm at large. For Nietzsche what had actually died was every metaphysical foothold people seek to justify their behaviour, morals, and worldviews. Not only is God dead, but even the question around God, where God represents the sphere of influence over our lives which is not related to the empirical world but to the speculations around it (Wininger, 1997, pp. 47–48).
It is, therefore, the death of objective morality and world theories, whether they be secular or religious.
As you know from my previous video, we also find this attitude in Chaos Magick, and more generically in Left-Hand traditions. We find here the concept that, whether deities exist or not, from an ontological standpoint, does not matter anymore, as Gods become instrumental to the Will and purposes of the magician. The metaphysical world, both in Nietzsche and in these Western esoteric traditions, is not set in stone out there – but negotiated, and this whole process gravitates around the Will of the perceiver.
Even science becomes an “idolatry of facts” when – instead of focussing on providing a method to order the chaos (Payne and Roberts, 2019, p. 363)- it assumes that truth is something solid and real to be grasped rather than a constant flux, subject to our interpretations.
In ‘The Birth of Tragedy’, Nietzsche introduces the concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian, seen as the two basic aesthetic states and forces found in human enterprise (Golomb et al., 2015, p. 83). The Apollonian belongs to the image world of dreams, ruled by illusion and deception (Schrift, 1990, p. 39). It’s also cosmos, order, language, and symmetry. Basically, every human endeavour is aimed at harnessing and controlling the wild and primaeval chaos of the Dionysian.
The Dionysian, being its counterpart, is the ‘creative-destructive world of rapture’(Schrift, 1990, p. 39). The Dionysian is sexuality, animal instincts, and all the wild impetus which pre-dates any form of control.
So, the idea usually conveyed by practitioners is, “See all those people who follow rules, traditions, dogmas, and an Aristotelean thinking, based on non-contradiction? Those follow the Right-hand Path, while we reject all of the above to embrace the chaos of the wildest undetermined unsettling self-determining creative state!” Well, this is quite close to the Nietzschean idea of the Dionysian!
Moving on to the ethical views, we find in Beyond Good and Evil that Nietzsche distinguishes between the Slave or Herd Morality and the Master or Noble Morality. Once again, a dualistic view. Slave morality is driven by a reactive force and belongs to those who are weak and cannot endure suffering. As a result, they make up and follow moral rules. Master morality is driven by an active force and belongs, instead, to those strong individuals who are able to affirm themselves, cope with the tragedy of life and make up their own moral values (Woodward, 2014, p. 12). Moreover, in ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’ and in ‘The Will to Power’ Nietzsche upholds the idea of a transvaluation of all given values which are dictated by the outside to encourage the creation of your own (Tevenar, 2007).
These ideas are quite reminiscent of what occultists, following a Left-Hand path would believe. An esoteric practitioner of one of such traditions would usually reject dogmatic rules, not only because they were forced upon rather than chosen but also because they restrain and confine the kind of agency indispensable to pursue the goal of knowing who they are. How can you really ‘know thyself’ if before that process of chaotic wandering even begins, you’re already confined within the tiny space dictated by what you’ve been told you’re allowed to be based on your age, gender, size, ethnic background, and so on?
It is by becoming who you are – beyond every theoretical, religious, or metaphysical conviction – that you can exert your Will (with a capital W) and behave in accordance with your Self (with a capital S), not because of rules of any sort but as a result of flowing with the flux of your becoming. Am I the only one who sees here the precursory elements of what Aleister Crowley really meant by his ‘Do what Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law’?
Lastly, in ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra‘ and ‘Ecce Homo’ (Spinks, 2003, p. 115) we find the philosophical concept of the Übermensch, translatable as ‘Overman’ – or, to be more gender-inclusive – ‘Over human.’ The Nietzschean Over-human is the person who has overcome the human state, a higher being who has survived the death of God and is not reacting to the world any longer. He/she has become a creator, by embodying the active force which creates and perpetuates life itself. The disposition of the Übermensch is to affirm life as a form of art, crossing over humankind as if it were a bridge to a beyond-state.
Well, I don’t know if you are with me on this, but I do see the disposition of a Left-hand magician or witch over here. That yearning for some kind of self-deification and the aim of ascending beyond the human state – or what the latter is presumed to be – is very much present among Left-Hand practitioners as well as in some Yoga and Tantra traditions from which Western esotericism has taken inspiration. The deities, the Gods, are not seen here as ontologically existing beings to be worshipped but as a conceptual expedient to grasp a state of being – or rather a state of becoming – above what we know to be human, a trajectory to move forward and the longing for whatever it is that lies beyond.
So this is it for today’s video. I hope you liked it and I look forward to reading your comments. As always, I reply to each and every one of you, as you well know. So do let me know what you think and you will-or ask me a question if you want, and you will always get a reply in the comment section.
Also, I’m elated to report that our Inner Symposium, the community of my patrons, is growing and with the Magus-level patrons, we will start soon a study on primary sources i.e esoteric texts and books to analyse them, as always, through an academic lens. So heartfelt thanks to R2Walker, Dylan lewis, Nadia Regina Silver, Adam N., Joao Lopez, Scott Bilby, Mike Newton, Trevor D Chenoweth, Jesse Ephraim, Thomas Dolcelli, Jacob McCarthy, and Zeferina. Thank you so much for pledging to my Patreon. I will chat with you guys later.
So this is it for today’s video. Hope you liked it and if you did SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel, activate the notification bell so that you will be always notified when I upload a new video, and, as always, stay tuned for all the Academic Fun.
Bye. for now.
REFERENCES
Nietzsche’s cited works:
The Gay Science
The Birth of Tragedy
Beyond Good and Evil
On the Genealogy of Morality
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Ecce Homo
Academic Analyses:
Golomb, J., Santaniello, W. and Lehrer, R. L. (eds.) (2015) Nietzsche and Depth Psychology, SUNY Press.
Payne, C. A. and Roberts, M. J. (eds.) (2019) Nietzsche and Critical Social Theory: Affirmation, Animosity, and Ambiguity, BRILL.
Schrift, A. D. (1990) Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction, Routledge.
Spinks, L. (2003) Friedrich Nietzsche, Routledge.
Tevenar, G. V. (ed.) (2007) Nietzsche and Ethics, Peter Lang.
Wininger, K. J. (1997) Nietzsche’s Reclamation of Philosophy, Rodopi.
Woodward, A. (2014) Understanding Nietzscheanism, Routledge.
First uploaded 20 Jul 2020