mysticism

Against Individualism: The Individual Is Not So, by Ausonia Calabrese

Egoism -- at least, egoism as it appears as a discursive formation -- concerns a very particular ontology of the individual. Apio Ludd, known under many names, is perhaps the most well-known living egoist-theorist, and describes this ontology thusly: ...most of today’s young “insurrectionary” communists believe that you and I don’t really act, but are simply the puppets of invisible, bodiless actors like society, social relationships, movements, various collective forces that apparently come out of nothing but themselves, since if you try to bring them back to an actual source, you have to come back to individuals acting in their worlds and relating with each other. And that won’t do, because then you’d have to recognize not “the commune,” not “human community,” certainly not that mystical absurdity “species being,” but yourself here and now – a unique individual capable of desiring, deciding and acting – as the center and aim of your theory and practice. And a whole lot of the theorizing that communists carry out seems to be aimed precisely at avoiding this.

Mortification of the flesh: fragments towards a mystical anarchy

Illustration to Tennyson's "St. Simeon Stylites" by W. E. F. Britten, depicting the Saint on top of a pillar

This work is unfinished. It is a composite of several essays that began, in some places, as condensations of longer and more academically-tinged works. In other places, they have their origin in my notes while trying to construct an imperative logic (hence, the stark change in tone between my discussions of mystical practice, and my discussions of logical truth.)

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