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Death, Darkness and Disruption: the Necronoctist Revelation

Contents

• Opening Note
• The Nature of Death
• The Imagery of Darkness
• The Nature and Image of the Angel of Disruption

Opening Note

Within the world of my novel, Necronoctism is the name I've given to the religion to which the gothic-inspired Tenebrae race adheres. "Necro" refers to death and "nox" to darkness. A few people have asked me recently, in the context of my own spiritual and occult beliefs, why it seems that I myself have an unusual degree of spiritual fascination with death and darkness. This article is an effort to answer that question. Philosophically, my own beliefs (at least right now) are in some ways not far off from the religion I've invented. Thus the ideas that follow re: the spiritual significance of death and darkness, while not identical to everything I have in mind for the novel, may nonetheless be referred to as "Necronoctist doctrine."

The Nature of Death

Why my spiritual fascination with death? Because I believe that all things - living creatures, objects, ideas, systems, etc. - are ultimately mortal in the sense that none of them endure forever. Living creatures die, objects decay/break/etc., ideas cease to be relevent or fall out of favor, systems cease to apply, etc. Because of this belief, I have no interest in immortality as a spiritual goal, for the notion of eternal life strikes me as wishful thinking.

Similarly I have no interest in perfection as a spiritual goal, because I believe that flaws are part of one's experience of anything real, and so to seek perfection is to mentally deny the thing as it really is and replace it with an abstraction of itself. This is not to say that I have no interest in improving things, only that I do not believe there is a timeless, objective, abstract ideal that any given thing should aspire to. Placing people, gods, things, ideas or interpretive schemes on pedestals of perfection only distorts them and makes one a slave to a delusion. Also, I do not distinguish sharply between the body and the mind, as I think one's consciousness is intimately tied to one's physical self. Thus, while possibly the mind is capable of distancing itself from the body as in trance states, this consciousness will not survive the body's death.

From these beliefs, it follows that I do not subscribe to a spirituality that embraces the need for humans to be supernaturally saved or redeemed from their sins, their fallen nature or whatever. Such a scheme would depend on the comparision of humans as they are with a redeemed, "perfect" state of the kind that I see as delusional. In my view, there is nothing inherently "sinful" in humans as such - the primary binary is not good/evil in this conception, but mundane/sublime, as I will explain below. Furthermore, it is not so much a binary but a spectrum, in which one can be more or less creative, engaged, interesting, etc. without there being a distinct pass/fail point. Because of these features, I think my conception of spirituality tends to merge the moral and the aesthetic.

From beliefs to implications about behavior then, my line of thinking is as follows:

1. Death is inescapable.
2. It does not follow from the inescapability of death that one should despair, or that humans are defined solely by their mortality. Instead, one should realize the significance of the time one has - significant precisely because it is singular, finite and unrepeatable - and make the most of those features that distinguish life from death, i.e. consciousness, sensation, thought, feeling, experience.
3. Based on the foregoing list, making the most of life thus consists in seeking out both breadth (variety) and depth (intensity) of experience (where experience includes thought, emotion, sensation, etc.). This notion of breadth-and-depth may also be called novelty or fullness of life. This does not mean sheer hedonism though, because:
• Without some degree of planning, intent, and responsibility, one will unwittingly stifle one's own access to additional experiences. For example, overindulgence to the point of destroying one's body results in a shorter life and hence fewer opportunities.
• Negative experiences can be spiritually significant as well as positive experiences. This does not necessarily mean one should go seeking out negative experiences, but that one should try to make something of the negative experiences one has. E.g. appreciation of the intensity of one's anguish/despair, use of these emotions for artistic inspiration, realization that by losing one opportunity one has gained others, etc.
• (Note: some people may find that seeking self-destructive experiences is in some way a fulfilling element for them spiritually. I don't necessarily rule out this possibility. The choice of what experiences to pursue and which are more valuable depends upon the individual and is thus highly subjective, dependent on one's desires, interests, etc. Spiritual malaise lies not in the wrong desires or wants, but in the absence of any desires or wants, as elaborated on below.)
4. Despite what one might think from the foregoing comment, the conception I am expressing is not completely relativistic. If, on my view, one assumes that all humans are thus entitled to make the most of their potential via seeking novelty/fullness, then one is called to the following moral/aesthetic imperative:

   That which encourages human flourishing via fostering and increasing novelty/fullness is good and worth seeking out, and that which hinders human flourishing via stifling novelty/fullness is evil and worth fighting against.

   Thus, although breadth and depth of experience are prized, some behaviors will be ruled out as morally/aesthetically unacceptable.
5. I call the imperative "moral/aesthetic" because it calls upon one to not only do the good (i.e. in terms of rightfulness) thing but also to do the good (i.e. in terms of excellence) thing. As I said, there is nothing "wrong" with humans as such. However, given the possibilities of a human life, it is a horrible waste (i.e. aesthetically offensive) to spend one's limited existence in boredom, frustration, unfulfilled dreams, goals that one assumes out of conformity rather than because one really wants them, etc. Furthermore, while this is not a quest for perfection, the more fullness one squeezes out of life, the better. Looked at this way, life is analogous to a work of art which one can put more or less work or thought into and which as a result turns yields greater or less satisfaction - hence the reference to the aesthetic. One has a moral obligation not to hinder others, and an aesthetic obligation to make the most of oneself. The moral and aesthetic overlap, however, in that inasmuch as one neglects one's own life, one may also be denying others; for example, inasmuch as excessive drug addiction alienates one's friends, one loses those friends, but the friends also lose out on oneself.
6. Examples of applications of the moral/aesthetic imperative: (This is admittedly a "quick" treatment that takes a number of other assumptions for granted, but it is intended to provide a rough idea of what the imperative actually amounts to.)
   • Murder is wrong because it deprives the victim of all further experiences. Thus war, being murder on a mass scale, is even more wrong. Suicide and euthanasia are wrong in a great many cases, but may be acceptable where the person's future access to fullness of life is extremely impaired anyway, e.g. in cases of incurable disease and chronic pain.
   • Torture and rape are similarly wrong because the trauma they cause impairs the victim's potential to live a full human life.
   • Crimes against property are wrong unless they serve a higher purpose, e.g. furthering a political cause that promotes flourishing more than does the status quo. Even in this case though, it should be acknowledged that despite the good done to members of the cause and those affected by the cause, the crime itself is STILL an EVIL AGAINST the person whose property was harmed or taken, inasmuch as they had their own plans for that property which have now been frustrated (see the second-last point below for more on this). And inasmuch as the crime fails to accomplish anything for the cause and is just a juvenile expression of frustration by those involved (which in my admittedly-cynical opinion is the usual case), it is wrong.
   • Deception is wrong inasmuch as it distorts one's view of the world and thereby cuts one off from potential experiences. For instance, it is thus wrong for the news media to present a biased viewpoint as unbiased.
   • Censorship is almost always wrong. Even in cases of promoting hate and so forth, the imperative implies that a better response would be for those offended to write/create a refutation, thereby producing an increase in discussion, as opposed to the decrease inherent in censorship.
   • Lifestyle choices such as sex, drugs and rock and roll are all fine so long as one is not engaging in self-destructive behavior (of a mundane sort, as opposed to of a spiritually fulfilling sort) and thereby preventing oneself or others from flourishing. For example, casual sex is not wrong, but irresponsible casual sex causing one to contract STDs is. Drinking is not wrong but drinking and driving is.
   • Abortion is acceptable when it protects the mother's access to fullness of life, but should be avoided because it destroys the fetus' chances. That said, the mother has priority over the fetus because she is fully a part of the human world and affects the lives of many others, whereas the fetus is more of a potential part of the world.
   • Charity is encouraged inasmuch as it gives others more access to fullness of life, but should not be encouraged to the point that it impoverishes the giver and prevents any plans they may have for themselves.
   • The "positive" aesthetic implication of the imperative: according to the imperative, conforming to a lifestyle that one doesn't really want is wrong, and broadening one's horizons via a variety of means (some examples include education, career change, meeting new people, travel, artistic expression, experiences of altered reality and other forms of both external and internal exploration) is to some extent obligatory. This is partly why property theft and destruction is wrong: people require resources for their various personal projects.
   • The "disturbing" aesthetic implication of the imperative: in all of the above examples, the creativity displayed in a wrong act does not absolve the act, but it does contribute something to novelty that a mundane act does not. Examples of acts of this kind include original methods of torture and murder, elaborate and unusual confidence schemes, and vandalism with artistic qualities. In these cases, the act itself is still reprehensible, but the philosophical, political, legal and artistic events that it spawns all constitute increased novelty and fullness of life. By contrast, examples of acts that are more seriously wrong due to the imperative than they would be traditionally include domestic violence, date rape and drunk driving, all of which tend to have a strong "but I didn't mean to" element of idiocy to them on the perpetrator's part.
   • A clarification regarding the spawning of novelty: inasmuch as the individual makes good come wrongs against them, e.g. via artistic creativity and the like, this is a testament to the inner strength of the individual but not a justification of the crime itself.

In this manner then, contemplation of death furnishes me with a conception of the spiritual, the moral and the aesthetic. For such reasons, I both find valuable and enjoy such contemplation.

(A final point: my thoughts here on death and spirituality: I do not think I am guilty of what Jantzen calls necrophilic imagery, at least not in the same way as she accuses Western culture in general. Although I do dwell upon death [and, also in the Western tradition, put some emphasis on what I "believe"], it seems to me that the problems Jantzen identifies with doing so have more to do with afterlife fixation and the "possibility" of escaping from death and transcending the physical. If one accepts that death is final and turns one's attention then over fully to the importance of life and of improving life here and now, I think my conception is not so different from hers in its practical outcome. I only choose to emphasize death instead of birth because of personal aesthetic preference. But I will explain this further in my discussion of darkness.)

Back to the top The Imagery of Darkness

For fairly obvious reasons, I think, it is more intuitive to link death and darkness than death and light - linking death and light makes sense primarily on the premise of some sort of afterlife ("seeing the white light"), so the connection wouldn't work for me by virtue of my previously-explained views. Whereas darkness is associated with many aspects of death: the extinguishment of consciousness, the burial of the body underground, funeral garb as already traditionally established (probably on the basis of these other considerations), etc. (Note: Amongst Necronoctists in my novel, the connection between darkness and death is partially manifested in their ritual requirement to wear black at all times so as to remind them of death's inescapability. While this is not the reason I myself dress in gothic style - which I don't always do anyway - the idea was largely inspired by the gothic subculture.)

All of that said, my interest in darkness isn't solely related to death. I associate light with life, but I associate darkness with both birth and death, i.e. life as an emergence out of and ultimately a return to darkness. Thus darkness isn't only a reminder of death's finality, but also of the potentiality of birth. Darkness is also representative of uncertainty, which, rather than being strictly something to be feared as potentially dangerous, to me is something to be celebrated as a prerequisite of choice. i.e. If everything were certain, things would also be pre-determined, and so there would be no need to choose anything. Choice in this context is valuable in that it opens the possibility of novelty. That is, choice presents an ability to, in at least some ways, determine in what directions one will further one's experiences. Darkness then is the void from which novelty can emerge, and the unexplored zone that one's sole subscription to a single interpretive scheme will prevent one from even perceiving.

I also find an appealing association between darkness and feminine power. This makes sense to me because I don't think the female body is as straightforward as the male: consider that instructions with tampons feel the need to point out which hole is the vagina, for example. There's also the parallel between female periods and phases of the moon (which is out at night, when it's dark), a child's emergence from the darkness of the mother's womb, etc. Inasmuch as occultism requires the use of resonant symbols, I find this association works well for me.

Feminists may complain that patriarchy has long oppressed women by aligning them with darkness, emotion, absence and so forth. Inasmuch as these terms are the "inferior" half of such binaries as male/female, light/darkness, reason/emotion, presence/absence, etc. there is something to be said for this complaint. But while I can understand the perspective of feminists who want to reverse and/or overcome these binaries (e.g. Jantzen), I cannot help but notice that mythologically, "dark" female figures tend to behave in a much more liberated fashion than "light" female figures. Lilith and Eve provide the most obvious contrast. As another example, inasmuch as chaos monsters are envisioned as female (e.g. Tiamat) they seem to me very powerful indeed - as evidenced by the "need" to have some deity of order (who is male) triumph over them, thereby reassuring male adherents of the religion that they are "safe," at least until next New Year when the monster revives and needs to be defeated again.

It is not that "light" goddesses lack power, but their power is generally associated with some typical female province that doesn't interest me (e.g. the hearth, childbirth, agriculture, etc. Trivia: I did one of those "which Greek goddess are you" things and wound up mostly with Athena, who is fairly masculine, and Persephone, who is associated with the underworld.) Therefore I myself tend to relate more to "dark" goddesses, and thus I choose to wield that already-established paradigm to effect my own magickal ends and leave the development of strong "light" goddesses to those so inclined.

All of that said, I don't think that interest in darkness dictates interest in death, or vice versa. I just find that in my case, the two are aesthetically compabile with one another, and hence darkness to me is imaginatively evocative of the implications of death.

Back to the top The Nature and Image of the Angel of Disruption

I do not associate death and darkness strictly with chaos. For one thing, to me it doesn't make sense to talk about chaos in terms of binaries because chaos is chaos, i.e. disordered and hence intrinsically beyond such notions. I do think however that inasmuch as order, beauty and moral goodness align themselves with life and light (which is traditionally typical), chaos, ugliness and moral evil by default are associated with death and darkness. In this case, as I implied with my comments above about "dark" goddesses, I can see the need to destabilize these binaries, but at the same time I think there is a certain power that can be derived from things as they are, and this power should not be neglected when it comes to pragmatic occult goals. I don't think I am the only person who thinks this way either, as I've known a rather suspicious number of chaos mages who tend to dress in black...

It is not my intention, within the bounds of my interests in death and darkness, to promote moral evil, aesthetic blight or even chaos as such. (Inasmuch as my morals do not cast aspersion on "alternative lifestyles," I probably do promote certain kinds of "vice" though.) Despite what I have probably said elsewhere about everything emerging from chaos and a need to rise up against the tyranny of order, I think that total chaos equals entropy, i.e. the breakdown and absence of morality, aesthetics and all other significant human projects. It is not order itself that promotes evil (e.g. in the form of addiction to systematic behaviors) but the tendency of excessive order to stifle creativity.

I tend to picture chaos in terms of a creative chaos that seethes with possibility and continually manifests novelty. I could have made more of an effort in my mythology to stress the dangers of excessive/entropic chaos (e.g. the tendency for its purposeless to either prevent or destroy all projects - in which case perhaps the Angel of Disruption might also act to disrupt that purposelessness) but I think that this point is already overemphasized in both mythology and religion, whereas the converse point - the one I make about the dangers of overemphasizing order - is neglected. One exception that I can think of off the top of my head is the Taoist myth of Hun Tun. Hakim Bey's brief elucidation from his essay on Chaos Myths is as follows:

"Chaos is Hun Tun, Emperor of the Center. One day the South Sea, Emperor Shu, & the North Sea, Emperor Hu (shu hu = lightning) paid a visit to Hun Tun, who always treated them well. Wishing to repay his kindness they said, "All beings have seven orifices for seeing, hearing, eating, shitting, etc.--but poor old Hun Tun has none! Let's drill some into him!" So they did--one orifice a day--till on the seventh day, Chaos died."

As mentioned above, the inescapability of death for me carries moral and aesthetic implications. Inasmuch as ordering forces deny impermanence and change, they are trivializing human life by trumpetting the importance of an illusory otherworld-life (whether an afterlife or the rational mind detached from the body) - a tendency that is likely to result in neglect issues of justice in this world, a narrowing of human choice and hatred of the (nonetheless inescapable) physical world and body. Inasmuch as these tendencies result in misery and the stifling of human potential, they are both morally and aesthetically reprehensible. Hence, acceptance of death is indirectly implied in the Angel of Disruption's opposition to (stifling, oppressive forms of) order.

Regarding darkness, I conceive of the Angel of Disruption as a "dark" angel primarily because traditional "light" angels are in the service of heavenly powers, especially the Western God, who is in many ways a prototype for my (more explicitly negative) version of God. One could argue that inasmuch as my God bears more resemblance to the Gnostic Demiurge, he is dark whereas the "true" God (in whose place I have put chaos) is light. I can see something to be said for this, but I don't get along with Gnosticism very well because I think it is very otherworldly in its anti-physical tendencies and thus likely to foster the kinds of abuses I mentioned in the last paragraph. Hence my preference for my own symbolic approach.

Moreover, turning to aesthetic considerations, I was a LaVey Satanist in my teen years, and I still find there is something in the concept of a "dark" rebel angel that appeals to me. That is, such a being seems like an intuitive opponent vs. my version of God, for although allegiance to chaos implies something much broader and less limited than darkness, inasmuch as the Angel is against God it will seem that the Angel promotes all those things that God seeks to repress - in constrast to God's light, it is darkness. Because it promotes an opening to potentiality though, the Angel is not evil, although it probably is decadent and perverse from a traditional perspective. (For more about the Angel of Disruption, see The Disruptive Archetype.)

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Last Update: December 3, 2003

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