The Problem With Electricity: An Analysis of Meditations On The Tarot, Letter XI

Obsession, electricity, and biological Luddism in Meditations On The Tarot, Letter XI (Force)

Many of us walk around completely unaware of the obsessions that conquer our minds. Or at least, we underestimate the number of times a particular obsessive thought pops into our field of thought, even if it is quickly eclipsed. It’s like those statistics about how many computer mouse clicks an average person does a day. Thoughts shuffle fast, like mouse clicks.

Obsessions are not just a neurosis of the mentally ill. Diseases of obsession, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, are mostly pathological to the extent that they are marked by fear and loathing. Being afraid of an obsession not only amplifies the obsession further than normal, but more distressingly, makes one obsessed with the obsession, building layers of self-awareness of the obsession(s) which causes great distress. I can say this from experience. But it is entirely possible, and I would argue common, that human beings naturally have obsessions as frequent as one with OCD might have, but are unafraid of, and possibly unaware of them. Think of the sexual and pornographic obsessions often suffered by males — they are generally experienced with tolerance or even acceptance, dismissed with excuses such as their being “natural” to male sexuality. Or, think of many’s obsessions with their careers, with personal image, or with vague notions of happiness or “self-fulfillment.”  

Obsessions are completely electrical in nature. It is electricity without the healing warmth of fire, but rather, the exhaust of smoke. In fact, it is the phenomenon of obsession that vindicates the electrical nature of the nervous system. Like a battery, the electrical nature of obsession accelerates its current by looping in on itself. Obsession feeds on itself to cause further obsession. Therefore, it creates no life outside itself. It does not reproduce, but rather goes in circles until it burns out.

Sin, of course, follows the same pattern, but in the moral dimension. Sin is electrical action, purely electrical and therefore unmediated by love. And since our nervous system is electrical, and our nervous system is the emperor of our everyday consciousness, it follows that an imbalance of the nervous system’s electrical circuit — which manifests as obsession — would reach our consciousness and lead to an electrical action proportionally imbalanced — which I would name sin, the moral output of the electrical phenomenon of obsession.

Through the Hermetic teachings of the anonymous writer of Meditations On The Tarot, the direct relationship between electricity and sin is shown in their common ancestor, Adam-Eve, who precipitated the Fall of Man:

“The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—the fruit of the polarity of opposites—is therefore electricity; and electricity entails fatigue, exhaustion, death. Death is the price that is paid for the knowledge of good and evil, i.e. the price of life amidst opposites. For it is electricity—physical, psychic and mental—which was introduced into the being of Adam-Eve, and thereby into the whole of life-endowed Nature, from the moment that Adam-Eve entered into communion with the tree of opposites, that is to say with the principle of electricity. And it is thus that death entered into the domain of life-endowed Nature.” (Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XI, Pg. 278)

The electrical nature of our nervous system is therefore a sort of physical scar that shows our fallen past. It is fascinating to look at illustrations of the human nervous system and see how it resembles a lightning strike. A lightning strike, just like the nervous system and just like the Fall, points downwards, away from Heaven, towards the Earth.  

If the Christian gospel had one piece of good news for the specific realm of human psychology, it is this: by following Christ, you may be freed from obsession. To be in control of what comes to your forum of consciousness, and therefore, to be in control of all your moral actions — what a dream! Who, except the saints, can even comprehend what this would be like? 

The Sermon of the Mount provides the tools needs to replace the electrical nature of obsession and sin with life. And by “life,” I am not being vague and wishy-washy, as we shall see in the bit. As the writer of Meditations On The Tarot tells us,

“Life and electricity must be clearly distinguished. Thus, today there is a tendency to confuse them, and to reduce them to electricity alone. However, electricity is due to the antagonism of opposites, whilst life is the fusion of polarities” (Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XI, pg. 277)

Any worthwhile spiritual system always offers a replacement for a negative spiritual force or habit, never saying “just get rid of it.” Christianity is no different. The Sermon on the Mount (and much of Christ’s teaching, but we’ll zoom in on this for now) functions by replacing the electrical friction of opposites with the fusion of opposites. Those who are hungry will be filled, those who mourn shall be comforted, those who are empty shall be filled. Enemies will be treated as friends. All that is secret will be revealed. The frictions of fear, caused by a mistrust in God’s plan, are likewise fused — anxiety about what to eat and wear are replaced by the imagery of the bird who has no problems receiving food and clothing from the Lord.

We are able to receive and act on this gospel because, despite what materialists say, we are not merely electricity. The Gospel of our Lord functions to remind us of this, by offering the possibility that opposites can (and will) be fused, and therefore opening our souls to a new form of life we are currently unable to even imagine. We are not computer data that can be uploaded to the cloud, like the transhumanists claim. Hallelujah! We are not just a consequence of synaptic firings of dopamine and serotonin. Thank God! But, we are free to claim our identity as purely electrical, if we choose. But such an identity crisis is clearly caused by an incorrect relationship with the technology and media of one’s time. How much is our perception of how our memory functions is influenced by, for instance, the existence of computer hard drives?

Let’s return to the notion of “life.” The original Greek of the Scriptures has three words for “life” as used in various ways in Christ’s teachings: zoe, bios, and psuche. We won’t get into the details of how these appear in the Bible — instead, in order to further distinguish human electricity with the replacement Christ proposes, let’s see what the writer of Meditations On The Tarot has to say. Firstly, he defines bios as in the same “serpent” domain as electricity, but unlike electricity, bios never dies — a tree is pure bios, never dying but always sleeping, only killed by external forces. It is life in the horizontal, passed from generation to generation biologically. Zoe, on the other hand, is the vertical life that links the heavens with the earth, the Above with the Below. The writer then ties it all together:

“There is above all division according to the preponderant roles played by bios, electricity and Zoe. The soul of life-endowed Nature in which bios is subordinated to electricity is the “woman Babylon” of the Apocalypse. Life-endowed Nature in which bios and electricity are in equilibrium is the “suffering creation” of which St. Paul said that it “sighs for deliverance” (Romans viii, 19-23). And, lastly, life-endowed Nature in which bios dominates electricity—and therefore is itself dominated by Zoe—is non-fallen Nature. Its soul is the celestial Virgin—the high priestess of natural religion. This is what constitutes the Arcanum of the eleventh Card of the Tarot.” (Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XI, pg. 278)

The writer quotes St. Paul here because St. Paul, of all the apostles, seems to know the most about the relationship (and antagonism) between electricity and life. St. Paul’s story begins with a clear exposition of his electrical antagonism towards Christians. His hatred for Christians was an obsession, as he is described as “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). He is never given a motive beyond blind hatred. Then, on his way to Damascus, “suddenly a light from heaven shone around him” and he falls to the ground (Acts 9:3-4). The Scriptures don’t describe it this way, but can’t one can imagine a strike of lightning and thunder bringing Saul to the ground? It is fairly obvious to me that God reached St. Paul according to his nature. He was converted suddenly and electrically, because he behaved in a like matter in his persecution of Christians. It wouldn’t make sense for him to go through the gradual, literary conversion of, say, a C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton.

In the final instructions of St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, we receive what closely resembles Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. But as Christ speaks in terms of prophecy (that is, by using the future tense “will,” as in, “the meek will inherit the earth”) St. Paul speaks in terms of present-tense action, telling the Thessalonians what to do right now to achieve the Sermon’s promises. St. Paul writes to “encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient” (1 Thess 5:14), which corresponds to the Beatitudes; “see that no one repays anyone evil for evil” which corresponds to Christ’s call to turn the other cheek; “Rejoice always” corresponds with Christ’s call to be salt and light; “Do not despise prophesies” corresponds with Christ’s message that he has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not abolish them. 

Finally, and most importantly, is the famous call to “pray without ceasing,” (1 Thess 5:17) which corresponds to Christ’s instituting of the Lord’s Prayer. With this tool — St. Paul often addresses his subjects practically, to create order in the Christian communities he writes to — he is giving us the antidote to obsession: prayer. Prayer is the antithesis of obsession. The only alternative to praying-without-ceasing is obsessing-without-ceasing. The only alternative to having the same thought over and over again is to say the Hail Mary over and over again. All purification, teaching, and renewal happens in the scale, level, and location in which the need for purification exists in. Christ speaks to farmers about seeds, and fishermen about fish. Our souls are baptized with water, for the same reason our bodies are cleansed with water.

The Christian sacraments, indeed, are all antidotes to obsession. Baptism allows us to be born again, free from the ouroboric cycles and loops of consciousness of the past life, and the asperges at the beginning of Mass reminds us to be born again and cleansed daily, in the prayer of Psalm 51 that God “shall wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Confession allows obsessions caused by shame or guilt to be nipped in the bud before they ripen into greater sin, isolation, and despair. And finally, the Eucharist. Christ teaches us that if we do not eat his flesh and drink his blood, we have no life in us (John 6:53). But, surely we still walk around and live even without the Eucharist, as much of the world does, right? Well, if we are to trust Christ, if what he says is true, we can only believe that, if we were to encounter the true “life” promised by Christ in the celestial kingdom, we may look back on what we once knew as “life” seeming merely as alive as an electric stove heating a pot of water, or a television playing static.

Perhaps we are called to unplug the television of our consciousness, always on and bright all day long, so we can see what from the world, from the Beyond, reflects on the black screen.