Surrealism: The memory of the future - Social and exploratory possibilities in the 21st century

                                                                            

Emblem of the feminine & masculine and Ouroboros, from Atalanta Fugiens

Surrealism: The memory of the future - Social and exploratory possibilities in the 21st century

ENRIQUE DE SANTIAGO

If someone goes down to the well and breaks the images of his memory, throws down the voice,  breaking the echo in every stone that speaks, the polished surface moves and the prodigious body rises free of scales.

-Ludwig Zeller

Surrealism today, faces new challenges in this century, on the one hand there is the state of always remaining insubordinate and alert to the changes or social transformations that come with the new crisis of world capitalism, which in its most advanced phase called neoliberalism has begun to show signs of weakening. And on another front, surrealism reviews its foundations and glimpses the new discoveries that add to its vast equipment in the knowledge of the marvellous.
    Thus in the first point, as surrealists we have been participants and witnesses of a moment in which human beings have taken to the streets to mobilize and protest, tired of the conditions imposed by the governments servile to the bourgeoisie. These new manifestations in different countries and continents force the surrealist movement to join in and understand events which can develop, of which we still do not know in what kind of changes it can conclude. This upward curve of events is motivated by the persistence of governments to maintain their socio-economic policies, which have proven to be unsuccessful. But what society do we want in the future? In this sense we surrealists aspire to one of full freedom, where the dominion and significance of money and the vices that come from the selfish practice of capitalism are suppressed in their entirety and that is where we must act to install our opinion in reference to these sensitive topics.  A world where all the carrots are ours and distributed to all, in a place that is also free from oppressors and their bureaucratic agents as Franklin Rosemont tells us.1
    But this new challenge also brings with it a change in seeing the world, where society shifts to weave a new reality different from the one characterized by the escalation that the massification of the culture of the “individual dedicated to self-serving narcissism” had, 2  where the object looses its previous meaning, transforming itself into an object signifying something that represents the individual, where the essential self is no longer important, but what becomes the most relevant is the object that one owns. Moreover, the average individual today is unable to distinguish some kind of meta-language within himself. “Beauty will be convulsive or it will not be at all” 3 , Breton told us as a premonitory phrase, to keep as a lifeline until today, without thinking that the anti-cultural saying of his time would sound with even greater force in our own, where what little is left of man’s ancient natural relationship with the magical-surreal, has been countered with an avalanche of objects and signs resulting from Cartesian-mercantile-positivism, an ideology that has banished and stifled the true freedom of the spirit, calling it a utopia or “chimera”. 4  Thus, object worship, as a signification of power, is an idea that is very entrenched in modern societies, especially in Western ones, so to think that the only political and economic crisis that neoliberal capitalism suffers today will immediately bring with it a pronouncement of rejection of consumer culture and a turning of the masses towards the marvellous, is merely illusory, since this requires walking a long course, which may take decades, but even so it is necessary to start it and push today to contribute to the collapse of bourgeois-capitalist society.
    But as I said before, not only the rebellion of the masses will bring deep transformative winds, they must be taught to look and feel in a new way, making us ‘the inner guerrilla to give birth to a new man’—to paraphrase Matta. In this sense, the re-encounter with the feminine must be one of the key pieces to achieve this transformation, as Breton himself cites: The time has come to value the ideas of woman at the expense of those of man, whose bankruptcy is coming to pass fairly tumultuously today. With these words in his book  Arcane 17, he emphasizes what is urgently required in our present, as a way to save the world and turn around the current state of affairs. In this phrase he makes reference to the feminine, present in the myth of Melusine, in which the urgency of looking to the past emerges, specifically to an age lost in time, an era in which the relationship of man and woman obeyed a harmonious state that was a replica of what happens in nature. He takes the myth of Melusine aware of what it represented for the hermetic-magical-alchemical world, because she was a mythical character, who tells us of a lost relationship where the knowledge of the feminine, or said in another way, the wisdom of the goddess, governed the relations of human beings with each other and  with nature. This state of affairs was brutally supplanted by the philosophy of the solar-warrior men, very far from participatory solidarity-based thinking, which was known before the invasions of the patriarchal tribes coming from the peripheries of the world. Melusine, whose name supposedly came from the evolution of the word that identified Lugine, the companion of the god Lug in ancient Liguria, 5 represents in the myth the gylanic society that failed to survive such invasions, its last manifestations being in ancient Crete or gnostic Languedoc, to which Nancy Joyce Peters also refers, who adds that it is also in surrealism, which “from the beginning has progressively expanded its invitation to women to participate in its extraordinary adventure”. 6
    So what happens causing the moon to separate from the sun? And what is the true meaning of this mythological allegory?
    The moon rules everything feminine in the case of our human species, but also, let it be understood, everything that has life on earth, animal, vegetal, the fungi kingdom - and why not - the mineral, because the stones have their own souls that give them life and to a greater extent this is androgynous. In the mountains, in addition to the unique life of the stones, the beings that our original peoples of the “Southern Cone” knew as the “Pillán” 7 or the “Hohuen” living in the Southern zone, also have a hermaphroditic character. 8 The French writer Malcolm de Chazal, argued that in his ancient Mauritius, ancient beings from Lemuria, had moved to inhabit the island and their nature would be feminine-masculine, since this condition represented the ancient human races. These stories can also be seen in Vedic texts, Greek mythology, and in the bible (myths inherited from ancient Sumer), where the Titans are part of the ancient existence that populated the earth. The alchemists and the hermeticists also knew these stories and they are recorded in numerous books on the occult. The Hopi say that these androgynous ancestors inhabit deep caves, as do the Mayans who place them in the “cenotes”. 9 The condition of these Titans, at least in the early ages, was androgynous - hermaphroditic, as in the Adamic myth, Primordial Adam, who possesses both characteristics for he was in the One. 10  A passage from the Zohar says: “A night without day, a day without night, they do not deserve the name of One.” (the Aleph).
    The act of Adán, who mutates the letter M into the N separated the Kether from the Malkuth, the first Sephiroth from the tenth - this indicates that the blessed saint separated from the Shekinah (the creator mother) - , the masculine and the feminine, the sun and the moon.
    Thus it is possible that the separation of the feminine-masculine occurs only in this dimensional plane, the one that is accentuated by a patriarchal culture and that in reality we must aim to distinguish from another supra-reality, to understand each other and reunite in our former primordial state, as shown in the Emerald Tablet.

The endless and inexhaustible surreality

When the “Hopis”, the “Mapuches” and all the ancient peoples, the “Ligurians”, Celts, the “Senoi” of Mindanao, the Vedas and the surrealists say: “the dream is reality”, they are talking about the “Ein Soph” not emanated (Kabbalah), and it is this dream state that contains much of the information of the occult. Because the waking state is a minimal fraction of the whole, yet to access the other plane one must dream, it is there that the self is and is-not at the same time, and to be it must not-be which is also quantum mechanics in its so-called law of superposition. When you see, you determine a ubiquity, when in reality, what you see is a multi-ubiquity, therefore, what happens is that the subject as observer is the one who actually gives the object a space-time value, by choosing a single point, and granting it an illusory reality.
    When the physical reality arises, it is born from a point, smaller than any known measurable point, therefore everything comes from the same matter, the same unity - but where does so much matter come from? - and if we think of twin particles, they would all be the same particle and the universe would be our construct (as observers), one we make in which the other is another person, another me, another bird, where you see your micro and macro-physiology as your own, yet apparently unrelated to you. So what is this all, an illusion? The Maya of the Vedic texts? Or a holographic projection? In this sense, the objects that Western society so eagerly pursues, are also illusory. This concept of the illusory, known from ancient and arcane hermetic knowledge, is the same that the surrealists have been proclaiming for almost a century. Our interest in ancient alchemy, tarot, magic, mediumship or madness is not strange then, because as the alchemist Eliphas Levi indicates, there are only three states in which man is capable of seeing the other reality: when he is embryonic, when he dreams deeply, or when he is in delirium. 11
    In this sense, just as Kabbalah and hermeticism did in its time, today Quantum Mechanics opens up an unsuspected world, where there is no projection to define it in terms of its possibilities, it is as a scientist says, like asking a jar “what is your marital status?”, the universe is a great formula of indeterminacy, according to the homonymous theory of Physics (Heisenberg’s theory of uncertainty). This implies that particles, in their movements, do not have a defined trajectory associated with them, as they do in Newtonian physics. To understand this: the particles do what they should not do, it is as though they think or act by themselves.
    When the Tao Te Ching speaks of knowledge in “non-being”, it is because this makes a lot of sense, as we will see below with the following examples: there are several proven experiments, one of them is the test of shooting a particle  through two slots, to determine the impression of these in a plane, it happens that the experiment gives different results, the first by not perceiving it with the human eye (given the speed of the shot) and the second by trying to film it with an ultra-speed camera, which results in two different behaviors. The point is that the experiment works one way when it is observed (it is recorded with a video camera) and another way when it is not observed, that is, it gives an expected and an unexpected result, in the unobserved one the particles are aligned according to the parallel grooves that they pass through, in the second (when filmed), such particles spread randomly throughout the containing wall. What happened there? There is only one answer, everything depends on the observer, he is the one who determines this or that reality given as a result. This experiment demonstrates what in physics is called the “entanglement phenomenon”, what in Kabbalah is known as the immeasurable essence of the Aleph (the one). Another experiment corresponds to two particles that are separated from the same electron, we place one on the earth and the other at the end of the universe and if we apply a thermoelectric stimulus to the first one, the other will respond in the same way without being touched, it seems that they are interconnected, this is known as the law of correspondence of twin particles, or the law of superposition. I do not mean a projection, but the superposition of something onto the other part of that something, you make a movement and influence your “one”. Thus it should not be said that it is projected, since there is no projective medium and that something responds in that way, since the “one” is equal to and different from the other, and whether or not it is far away is not decisive either, since it is interconnected and it is itself, and it is the other. It is true that it seems difficult to understand, but to see it more clearly, it is not that one emits a wave, one chooses the wave or vibration to allow oneself to be in that vibration and not in another one - but one which is in turn the same - because a certain vibration will separate me from something, even when it simultaneously unites me to that something, known as dimensional otherness, because we live several simultaneous lives. I am the primary observer and without belief in this phenomenon I can only use a few million bits of my mind, a minimal percentage of the total of its capacity, and it is not a matter of physiological limitation, it is a matter of faith, of believing that it is true and knowing the how? This was the quintessence of which the alchemists and hermeticists spoke. Hence, transcendental meditation takes us to the same point, just as the surrealist way does. As a paradox, we can add that what you do in the present can influence the past, this is possible according to equations of quantum mechanics. It is very complex and almost unintelligible, but it is like that, remember it is said that the curve of time is straight and we still do not know if time itself is an illusion, so that the same curvature of that line would also be illusory, and so would the gravitational effects, this could reverse the truths as we know them from positivist mechanics. The same thing happens when we imagine the concept of infinity outwards, but now I invite you to think about it inwards. It is like the myth of the “Great Transparents” that both Matta and Breton raised at the time and that has many similar references in the ancient search of the human being, as in alchemy, what is above is like what is below.
    The unconscious is repressed or repressed by this consensual social pressure, in other words the longest truth or the most extensive reality is limited by the self, the crystallized ego, what we know as conciousness, that is to say: the immediate in the extensive cartography of being. To break and unlock this bridle, everything must be done spontaneously (writing, painting, or practicing the derivé) the faster and more chaotic these acts are performed (from chaos a reality and a world arose according to myth), the more new realities will emerge from these exercises in a kind of quantum regression-progression, but expressed in a greater breadth, that is, the being is re-knowing itself without limits, because in turn, it becomes broader than the self, since it travels in a vehicle of greater existential thickness, and the being expands from its corporeal limits towards its etheric and astral body. 12 Thus you open space and break the concept of time, this is your inner journey, which connects with the exterior-interior, it is like the logarithmic spiral, where the edge of the gyro is the exterior and interior simultaneously, which is the most effective route or shortcut to cross through time.
    I am thinking about how to explain what the spiral says of itself, in terms of what happens beyond the simply formal, I mean its virtual formation, which is informal, invisible, it is what I call non-matter with its non-energy attached to matter-energy where one sustains and shapes the other. On this point I have such a clear concept (because I perceive it with the surreal eye) but it is difficult for me to express it with words (here I try to approach the most arcane) and it can certainly only be explained with the ancient language of the birds. 13
    The alchemists recognized the four physical elements, fire, air, earth, and water, but they also knew of the existence of another aspect of these elemental forms, which is the quintessence, the one that posses the gift of materiality and immateriality, this vision, according to quantum physics, would correspond to the vibratory capacity of matter, which is a look at the hidden and more complex part of reality that is united with surreality, since this vibratory capacity consists in everything that is, exists and ceases to exist in a permanent state of existence and non-existence, thus the question is, where does matter go when it is not present? This represents new challenges in the incessant search for true knowledge, where new data is provided on these topics of study, in search of the truth of existence or non-existence where new forms of micro-material also appear, since the atom is no longer the smallest known form, in recent times the discovery of the quark or the leptons have been added as the smallest forms of matter (in the future surely another nano-form will be discovered). Today we also know about pockets or wormholes in time, or the presence of temporal shortcuts, located in transversal connectors in a linear and at the same time extended form of the reality of time. Another topic is that of the holographic reality of the universes, and I say universes because I speak of several, since there must be another something that supports the physical universes, and these in turn must have their own supports, consequently each universe, perhaps has some kind of dimensionless pillars that support it in such a way that the whole is a dialectical and dynamic entity, where matter coexists in proportion to non-matter. When I said that the universe arose from a point, I wonder what was behind that point? another expanded universe that contracted? leaving an empty place for the next big-bang to take over the space left by the outgoing universe.
    And in this succession of universes of reality and non-reality, where we find our well-known surreality, the same one posed by the “shaman” in his astral journey to the upper, middle, and lower world, or the one indicated by Matta, when referring to his works : “psychological morphologies are what I call these transformations which are the absorption and emission of the energies of the object from its initial appearance to its final form in the geodesic psychological medium.” 14
    Matter, objects, and all measurable phenomena would each have a particular or individual aspect that distinguishes them, according to us “observing subjects”, who in consenting to be a fragmented part of the “one”, have only a very partial vision of reality, which would be seen as it is (in its vast and infinite form ) by breaking the psychological bonds. This detachment from the known world would only be possible in the three states mentioned above by the alchemist. Lets add to the above other data, such as the alchemical phrase that says our stone is composed of body, soul, and spirit. 15  In this regard we surrealists know that there is a border between the gnosis of reality and surreality, and that this line becomes moveable as we go deeper into our exploratory navigation, so that surreality becomes the new reality, even if it was previously invisible, since when perceiving it or making it visible, the mechanism is discovered to see that which remained non-visible. Thus  the horizon where there are no limits expands for us, constituting an attractive invitation for our avid surrealist spirits. Now it remains to continue exploring to enter the new open sea of the marvellous, where a fleece awaits each “transparent argonaut” of this journey, one very similar to that of an old navigator who said: “A ship had just hoisted all of its sails to get away from this place”16

Translated from the Spanish by Erik Volet, Lo Que Será, Almanac of the International Surrealist Movement, Brumes Blondes, 2014                                                                                                                                                                         

NOTES  1 Franklin Rosemont, Bugs Bunny. 2  Gilles Lipovetsky, La era del vac. 3  André Breton, Diccionario del Surrealismo. 4  André Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism. 5 Louis Carpentier, Los gigantes y su origen. 6  Nancy Joyce Peters, From Gnostics to Surrealism: Love as a Revolutionary Force. 7  In the culture of the Mapuche people, Pillán (in Mapudungun, the Mapuche language) is a powerful spirit, which refers to the ancestors. 8  According to the myth of the Selk’Nam, Southern people of Tierra del Fuego (Chile-Argentina) at first there were the hohuen, immortal beings. Cuanyip (the world-shaper) suppressed immortality so that the huhuen would not accumulate an exaggerated knowledge of the world and would not succumb to corruption. Upon death, the hohuen became forests, oceans, rocks, birds, cliffs etc. 9  From the Maya ts’ono’ot: cavern with water. It is a depression flooded with water found in some deep caverns, as a result of the collapse of the roof of one or more caves. There the underground waters meet, forming a more or less deep pond. 10 The Zohar,  Volume I. 11  Eliphas Levi, The Great Secret of Occultism Unveiled. 12  Rudolph Steiner, Life Between Death and Rebirth. 13  Within the occult it is a mystical or magical language used by the birds to communicate with the initiate. The famous Sufi book The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq at-tair) is a mystical poem of 4647 lines by the 12th century Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar. 14  Roberto Matta, Morfologias Psicologicas.  15  Nicolas Flamel, Theory and Practice of the Philosophers Stone. 16  Comte de Lautremont, Maldoror & The Complete Works