Modernity as Prophylaxis, or, What is Orphic Initiation?
Modernity as Prophylaxis, or, What is Orphic Initiation?
A queer screed on being penetrated by the World
Prophylaxis, Queerness, and Cosmic Penetration
Modernity is an attempted prophylaxis against the inter-penetration of human and cosmic. That is: The modern capitalist narrative tempts us with the promise that by smoothing and containing our contours, by doubling down on our discrete identity, by keeping our most secret and intimate parts to ourselves, we can be healed or even better, achieve our “highest self.”
But here’s the thing: we are always already interpenetrated. Always already pregnant with becoming other. This is a fundamentally queer state of being. The queerness of loving earth, sky, stones, plants, and animals. The queerness of language that speaks not in straight lines of prose, but in circular, even spherical cadences. In story, myth, and song.
As interpenetrated queers, we humans can take a life note from the figure of Orpheus, who, according to Greek myth, was the first poet. Overcome by grief (for his wife, Eurydice, and for his male lover and fellow argonaut, Kallios), Orpheus took himself to the woods, where he sang songs so beautiful, so dazzling, that he could command the very stones, plants, and beasts.
A fabled traverser of realms (he had descended to the underworld and lived to tell the tale, after all), Orpheus came unarmed (save with a lyre) before monster, beast, and even the dread King and Queen of the Underworld themselves. Rather than gird his soul, he laid it bare in song. In so doing, he opened up the possibility of being touched (or even attacked) by the other. But paradoxically, by allowing his soul-song to become inflected/infected by the other-than-human,1 Orpheus found his power.
Orphic Speech as Ouroboros
To sing, to rhapsodize, to enchant: these are the modalities of Orphic speech. It characterizes all the “Orphic” writings we have from antiquity—inscriptions on gold leaves for placement in graves, lapidaries full of advice on the healing power of stones. And, of course, the Orphic Hymns. In each case, words are vectors of passage, thresholds that allow us to pass back and forth across different modes of being: animal/human, plant/human, stone/human, monster/human, earth/underworld, earth/heavens.
Orphic speech works on many realities simultaneously, so that the word turns back on itself and eats its own tail. A spherical ouroboros. The word-world-sphere.2
To sing the word-world-sphere is to open oneself up not just to penetrating the world with one’s word, but to being penetrated by its voice in turn.3 Our speech vector proceeds from the mouth, but trickster-like, reveals itself to be a multi-dimensional highway, a twisting and twisted road that splays our soul to receive the caress of the anima mundi.
Some call this mode of communication "poetry." Others, "esoteric writing." Still others, the “Language of the Birds,” or “Green Language.”4 Because of its deep roots in ecological inter-being, not to mention its connections with other-worldly travel, I prefer "Orphic Speech."
Being Sung by the Cosmos
What would it be not just to sing of rocks, trees, and birds, but to be sung BY them? This is a mantic art. An art of allowing the animal, vegetable, and mineral to penetrate our world with their own songs. To read the swallow that falls out of the sky dead at my feet one morning as an omen of impending heartbreak. To listen to the willow tree in the park tell me her tricksy grandmother tales. To feel the strengthening forces the beach sand—composed of trillions of tiny mineral heartbeats—imparts to my feet as I walk the shore.5
There is a trust required here, to be sure. A trust that in the penetration, in the laying bare of our souls and senses to the beauty and horror of this world, we will not cease to exist. Or, at least, in ceasing to exist, we do not so much die as become immortal.
Our narrow, would-be impermeable self-sheath is cast off prematurely, before our physical death, to allow the interpenetration of the elements to occur here, to occur now, and not solely in the soil of our grave.6
But here’s the undeniable truth: we were always already splayed open. The question is simply to what end? And for whom?
The modern prophylactic self is a faulty condom
Modernity has fed us the myth of the prophylactic human, predicated on a false promise—the promise that in being a self-contained entity, in being shielded from impregnation by the cosmos, we are better able to “be ourselves.” But this false self-sheath is full of holes. Holes that facilitate our impregnation with the lie that we are not enough, that we are alone, and that in our solitude, our consolation is to be found in the all-consuming desires of the capitalist, colonialist state.
The great irony is that when we put on the false self-sheath, we bear the nation-state’s children: greed, environmental destruction, misogyny, white supremacy, homophobia, and a thousand other “isms.”
So the question is not whether or not our bodies are splayed open for penetration. They always have been and continue to be so at this very moment. The question is to whom do we entrust our tender vessel of interpenetration?
For the Orphic, the answer is clear.
I will sing to the stones, trees, beasts, and stars and be sung, in turn, by them.
I will open myself to the queer desire aroused in me by the beating heart of the cosmos, and allow its love-songs to rip off my self-sheath to birth a new manner of human.
This is the Mystery of Orphic initiation.
Yours in ecstatic Orphic interpenetration,
Kristin
Many thanks to astrologer, star-speaker, & mantic witch Sasha Ravitch for teaching me that the term “other-than-human” is perhaps more appropriate than the more popular phrase “more-than-human.” Sasha’s insistence that we allow for the possibility that we are neither more nor less than other beings is inspirational. (Sasha’s Linktree)
My notion of the spherical nature of Orphic speech is informed not only by ancient notions of celestial spheres, but also by contemporary critical theory—most notably Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres series, which looks at the failure of the Modern, Capitalist self-state through the lens of bubbles and foam. A good, brief review of his thought is found in this LA Review of Books review.
My thinking here is informed by the many conversations and readings I have undertaken with the anthropological collective Oscillations, and the members of its weekly reading group. (Link to Oscillations Website) In particular, the musings of Justin Shaffner (Twitter: @fractal_person), Adam Louis-Klein (Twitter: @bjaguar_aL), and Tom Sullivan (Twitter: @anthropologyjpg) have been invaluable to developing my thought on all things poetic and cosmological.
Scholars of esoterica (ancient and modern) have developed terms to describe the sort of speech that simultaneously reveals its true meaning to initiates, hides it from the uninitiated, and also (and this is important) performs some essential world-creating work. Some of the most common are “Green Speech” (favored by many contemporary esotericists), “Tree Leaf Talk,” (a Melanesian phrase), “argotique” (the favorite term of European alchemist Fulcanelli), or “Twilight Talk” (used in Javanese tantra). A brief but very helpful discussion of how esoteric language functions can be found on pages 31-34 of Peter Levenda’s book Tantric Temples: Eros and Magic in Java, 2011.
I bow to my brother and teacher Bayo Akomolafe here, whose words and conversation have modeled not just a way of talking about human experience, but also a mode of being-in-the-world that allows for true interpenetrative community. (Link to Bayo’s website)
Anyone who has read the lyrical prose and poetry of eco-feminist Sophie Strand will see that her work has deeply informed my own thinking on notions of composting, graves, and mycorrizal networks. (Link to Sophie’s website) Similarly, adrienne maree brown’s work on what starlings and ants can teach us about emergent organizations and organisms has also been vital to my thinking. (Link to adrienne’s website)