[...]itive-experiential awareness (gnosis)

subject caught-between

sitophobia --> the fear of eating anything
aquaphobia --> the fear of drowning everywhere

between lamenter and euphoriac

islamic insistence on the concealed (unseen face of God) ==> profuse dissension, variance, discord, agitation (infinite faces)

lohe mahfuz
the guarded tablet
quantification
institutionalized record
universal finitude

1. artifacts of hell
◦camphor --> link between the demonic and the aromachological (mastery of the psychological effects of fragrance)
◦chain --> experience of ligatures, cords, shackles
◦nail --> impalement potential
◦stones --> crushing effect
◦drink boiling water (hamim) and filth (ghislin)
◦devils force-feeding them Zaqqum
◦demons were placing fiery bits of corpses into their mouths
◦ichor was dripping from their tongues --Mohaghegh--> ichor interestingly refers both to the mythic substance that runs in the veins of pagan gods and the putrid discharge that oozes from fresh wounds
◦hell-dweller: scorpion, ideal killing-machine, back-biter, poisoned tips
--> ***nonstop leaking of the inward outward***
2. body parts of hell
3. topographies of hell

Mohammad's night-journey's hellscape, vivid orchestration of space
[...]in one direction, a “river of bile, blood, worms, and fire[...] boiling together, putrid and revolting” alongside another “black and rippled with fire[...] growling at itself with clamour and terror”

experimental cuisine (demand a certain oblique consciousness from the participant)

angel physiognomy (multi body, collective chant) ~= underworld scorpions
atonal angelic larynx ==> non-harmonic, anarchic, cacophonous image of the heavens (--Mohaghegh--> divinity as noise)
•prophetic listener (body became organs of hearing, schizophrenic audition of شش جهت six directions)

wind of barrenness
rih al ‘aqim (from the species of criminal wind bad-e dabur, God sends it to destroy things)
•blows throughout the placeless realm
•particular condition of absence (in taxonomies of ruin and chasm)
•their moon-like faces
•innumerable

[*]veil: transcendent invisibility, receptacle of competing backstories (of shame, conspiracy, superiority, covert, elite)

galleries of self-covering demonic beings

Gabriel: angel of revelation (oversees:)
•khasf خسف sinking into the ground
•maskh مسخ disfiguration of features


astigmatism (a type of refractive error, retinal tearing)
cartographical layerings



(Mohaghegh reading a Babylonian nocturnal prayer)

(old) god [divinity cults of ancient worlds]: signposts of an extra-human imaginary ==> consciousness trespass beyond itself

in the face of the night's obscurity (when the all-seeing shuts its eyes)
pastoral life turns murderous (at dark)

signaling the absence of fairness...
blurring of omniscience...
delay of verdict...
aimlessness of quest

•blindness to fill the void of divination
•wandering, detour, or stillness to fill the void of odyssey


Sin
moon-god
•enigma (“he whose heart cannot be read”) --> epistemic
•futurity (remote: “could see farther than all the gods”) --> temporal

somnolence خواب و بيدارى
==> branches of nonsense pervade (disbanding of the herd)

(cypress سرو) tree
inspector of cosmological space


in theo-terrestrial plane:
1. alluvion: the wash or flow of water against a shore --> inundation
2. alluvium: a deposit of clay, silt, sand, and gravel left by flowing streams in a river valley or delta --> detritus [residuum alone is left to control the universe?]


Ishtar
guardian of prostitutes
surrounded in myth by death and disaster
goddess of contradictory connotations and forces (fair play & enmity, etc,)


Lillith (derived from the Akkadian lilitu: evening creature, specter, or monster)
kidnapping sleeping children

(according to the Babylonian cosmology) night requires (non-identitarian) gods capable of abomination (backstabing)
-recognized by their tangible outlines as actual constellations in the night sky
-related to the more expansive domains of animality, vehicles, and objects
-emanate from a perceptual faculty closer to the child's imagination of cloud-shapes (=/= archetypal meaning)


Tiamat
primordial goddess of the salt sea, darkness, chaos, and creation
from the time of permanent nightfall
a destroyer-deity and yet whose sliced body parts form the heavens and earth
represented as unconscious, reckless annihilation and yet also holding diabolical intelligence
bathed in eternal blackness and yet known as “the glistening one”


Girra
dystopian potentials of technological invention
figure of wicked logos (undoing words)
(leader of the terrible)


non-metaphysical and equally nonhumanist devotion to the artificer (apparatus)

cosmic ballistics: scientific field of mechanics concerned with the launching, propulsion, flight, and effect of projectiles (trajectory and impact)


nocturnality and contagion

snakes and dragons of constellations

paradox (the beast)
instrumentality (the builder)
unleashing (the despoiler)


death-spell
نابودی gesture of *extispicy: ancient Mesopotamian practice of reading animal organs (often a sheep's liver) spattered upon a wall's surface
-a discipline involved less with knowing than with watching



The Egyptian Book of the Dead
philosophy of night, dusk, shadow

egyptian night-deities
-with astounding narrative-theoretical flexibility
-some slither, hunch, fly, or remain seated
-not residing on Olympian heights but rather in the subterranean below
star-covered nude woman
cow arching over the earth
--> night does rule from transcendent distances but rather envelops (or swallows) whole the existent into its gut (or uterus) [<-- digestion?]
[metaphysics:] (away from) patriarchal gaze --into--> maternal stomach

Khonsu
•bloodthirsty (eating the organs of royal opponents)
•merciful --> [its creative epithets:] traveler, embracer, pathfinder, defender, “He Who Lives on Hearts”
one who resembles his own waning moon

Nephthys
tied to the night of the soul's traversal
sepulchral
(endow pharaohs) with the vision for “that which is hidden by moonlight”

Apep =/= Ra (the light-god)
giant sea-snake said to lurk again in the primordial gloom
evil lizard, *world encircler*
•defeating Apep: basematerial outputs (spit) --to--> elemental properties (fire) --to--> man-made weaponries (lance, knife) --to--> fetishistic physiologies (the left foot) --to--> sympathetic magic (tearing apart of effigies


(sectarian logic?)
desire for clear reactional materiality [=/= sadistic or paranoiac serial killings]

teratological and semi-demonological turn
interjecting thingness, fiendishness, and monstrosity into our midst

night: indefinite definite ~=> nihilistic force of closure

(from) orthodoxy --to--> dramaturgy


(Mohaghegh's theory of) fanatical sovereignty in pagan thought --> ultimate keeping & violation of the law ~= obsessive form & apocalyptic formlessness
(reconciling) *the toxic dialectics of presence & absence* behind every theo-political order : gods walk among us in immanent ambush, hiding in night's open view (of many faces, masks, tongues, robes, tastes, proportions, and gestures), adopt infinite visages, apparels, pseudonyms, and dialects [=/= monochrome trappings of daily identity]


Ahriman =/= fire-god
omnimalevolent side
first destructive spirit
twins of the primeval choice
==> crises of perception
dwelling in non-being
shape-stealer
self-cutting (cooking of his own paranormal tissue)

earthly creation = ruse, net, and temporary prison (a decorative window-dressing to lure the false god away)

a sunless place

mortal transactions (of civilizational, philosophical, religious, and moral trials)


night-raid
nocturnal fierceness
asceticism of the warrior
asceticism of the night-watchman


(Goda riding with the) exponential disinformation of legend

learn to talk with night <-- not indicative of a knowing subject
--> to become both hypnotized & hypnotic whisper

language of mood (subtle movements of):
•temperature drops
•intermittent gusts of air and wind
•snapping of tree branches
•shooting comets of sky


Bronze Age eschatologies

queen of riddles
cosmic idolater
her language never argues, only propositions



dark thoughts

evanescing moon

...guerilla leader who fled into the mountains and froze to death beneath the night sky

thoughts of
•obvious separation (from family, lovers)
•potential victory and loss (fatalistic struggle)
•futility of human experience amid insects and animals creeping in his midst (transfigured)

*night <--tied--> wondering*
*night <--tied--> uprising*
*night <--tied--> possession + dispossession*
*night <--tied--> countdown* شمارش معکوس
*night <--tied--> disappearance*
*night <--tied--> abdication*
*night <--tied--> dismay* جبن
*night <--tied--> obscenity* جبن

***night --to--> bring the mind elsewhere***

Mirza Kuchak Khan
Jangali

...once the leader of the jungle movement; now the jungle will confiscate him


(tactics of the willed unknown)
inspiration <--> madness
horoscope <--> puppetry


sensitivity to lower-grade intimation ==> gaining of subtle lunatic powers (in the arts as well #feedback):
•slight paranoiac ability
•slight manic ability
•slight delusional ability
•slight schizophrenic ability
•slight obsessive ability
•slight melancholic ability


when dreams replace sleep
when the dead pass into the deep of the night
when night's deep appears in those who have disappeared
Blanchot

...................................

Mohaghegh on Blasim's The Madman of Freedom Square
the story of two foreigners known as ‘the blondes’, identical twins of fair hair and complexion who come each morning (their place of origin and purpose unknown) to roam down the main street of a neighborhood called the ‘Darkness District’. This quarter of the capital city is thus named for being the only sector still lacking electricity, and our nar- rator describes the residents there as physically gaunt and existentially worn down. This is an unwell place, and so the sudden arrival of the blondes represents a contrast, a radical anomaly and an enchantment-in-waiting for a zone that otherwise wants nothing more than to lay down and give up forever. We are told that the ambiguity of their circadian walk has an immediate transformative effect on the district; though these figures never speak, they cast gentle glances upon the inhabitants on either side of the street, and this courtesy soon bears miraculous fruit as the wishes of each person, young and old, man and woman, find themselves granted. By day and by night, the Dark- ness District escapes its former wretchedness to become an increasingly scenic area, with the government finally bringing electrical power and the locals planting flow- ers and showing acts of kindness to one another…all in honour of their two strange visitors (with whom we read that everyone has grown enamoured). They even build a stone monument in veneration to these silent newcomers. But then one morning the blondes do not materialize, as a violent coup is underway that sets the district on fire with bombs and missiles; amid the fighting, our narrator is flung against a wall, his life then saved by one of the blondes (their statue since demolished), and awakens in a mental asylum railing about the speechless aliens who rescued him (and the others)—only to find that no one has any memory of such beings or any trust in his recol- lections of them; he later finds himself strapped with a detonative suicide vest (the final light-bracketed image).

...................................

Morton on Weber --> sociology is itself (the logistics of) disenchanted in exploring disenchantment

charisma-based society ~=> disenchanted bureaucratic society

charisma: (paranormal) force field that surrounds and penetrate us with *healing + destructive* consequences
(<-- this is super ok as long as that force field is not curated by wannabe spiritual philosopher human)

bestiary: paranormal excluded by religion

agricultural societies monopolized charisma (--> king) --> logistical functioning of the world of agriculture ==> global warming

neolithic privatization of enchantment ==> monotheism

Holocene --> strategy of survival at any cost

(Morton echoing the cliche of artists wanna do magic:) “art is demonic”: it emanates (not designed) from beyond sense that the artist is not in charge of, dangerous causative flicker
~ ‘art = charisma’ [= cause & effect]
--Morton--> (bad idea of) art ==> charismatic causality

force-like animal magnetism

magic = causality + illusion

appearance and essence are two different sides of Mobius strip

(pre-neolithic -->) *we live in a world of tricksters* (raindrops are tricksters,,,)

incomprehensible charisma of kitsch

(the objects in my room contain a palpable enjoyment that is without me, found objects that spray charismatic causality [without devotion or trust])

...................................

(Zizek's) Lacan four discourses via porn actress facial stages:
1- ecstatic state --> overwhelmed
2- serious --> hard work, instrumental control
3- boredom --> ignorance, indifference
4- mocking --> is this all you can do, smile


...................................

body...
how to feed it
when to fast
how to soothe
moisturize
let go
heal
you can't grasp your body once and for all --> one can only bear witness and offer testimony (<--Avital-- this is why writing is so often bound up with illness, “writer = invalid”)

cultural phantasms of bodily mutation

the body never stays put long enough to form self-identity --(this is why)--> our ancestors used to fast-forward and just lose it [transcending the body]


in Dostoevsky
body is variously insulted and humiliated --> subjected to injury (an injury capable of language and disclosure)
--> idiocy offered a delicate conflagration of soma + psyche

illness: the stealth master (the teacher whose lesson is unremittingly opaque yet purposeful)

(when you get hurt -->) body: “Honey, I’m home, I am your home.”

your body fighting for you
healing without cure

illness --Avital--> essentially related to the experience of injustice ~= your Geworfenheit
• illness visits you at will and does what it wants to your body (stinging surfaces you didn’t know you had)
•illness gives access to the devotional mode of surrender (abandoning to itself something other than the self)
•illness brings with it an alternative system of ecstasy and meaning
•*illness: an inescapable condition of being*
-

(Dostoevsky's Myshkin) suffers a sacred illness

[your?] heritage -->
backed up by literature
backed up by philosophy
claimed by mythology


*epilepsy* (has a place in the history of thought) --> the Idiot's illness
•between psyche & soma
•between the *theory of trauma* (which focuses the history of the subject) & the *theory of fantasy* (which refers to transference and countertransference)
•the only illness to have its own mythological figure -->
•madness
•visionary excess

herald of epilepsy: Hercules, Buddha, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoléon, Lord Byron, Pascal, Van Gogh, Dostoevsky, etc.


foolishness
drunkards
maniacs
the pathologically resentful
the envious
a rapist
a crowd of cheaters
classic neurotics
subjects of delusional rantings
subjects of criminal intent

[...]