THE FLESH OF GOD: A Study in Liminality
Psilocybe mexicana is the name of a fungus native to Guatemala, Mexico, and Costa Rica. It was called by the Aztecs teonanácatl meaning fungus of the god. Modern Urban dictionaries claim the words “God’s flesh” are used in contemporary sub-cultures with reference to this hallucinogenic mushroom.
One traditional “gift” associated with its use, is the ability to see through living human flesh. This penetrating visualisation was particularly prized because it allowed the Viewer to scan for organic signs of sickness . It was a tool of healing. Maybe; but I suspect the gifts yielded by god’s flesh were multivalent. It is unlikely the gift would be under human control for solely beneficent purposes. A visitation from the god or gods could well be mind-blowingly scary.
One traditional “gift” associated with its use, is the ability to see through living human flesh. This penetrating visualisation was particularly prized because it allowed the Viewer to scan for organic signs of sickness . It was a tool of healing. Maybe; but I suspect the gifts yielded by god’s flesh were multivalent. It is unlikely the gift would be under human control for solely beneficent purposes. A visitation from the god or gods could well be mind-blowingly scary.
The United States' Department of Agriculture website is a mine of information about the mushroom and its history. In the cartoon above, what seems to me a very intimidating god visits the mushroom eater. A hungry, if not blood-thirsty, god approaches from behind oblivious to the sitter, naively concentrating on his fungi delight.
Whatever the purposes of this mushroom in Aztec cultures, there are a number modern counterparts worth commentating upon. First is the notion that others -be it people (living or dead), aliens, jinns, gods, animals, technocrats, machines, robots, technologies- can see through my body. Nothing is hidden. Viewing my “inside” means the intimately private and hidden becomes inspectable -viewable- without permission, control, consent. There was an outbreak of anxieties about such "penetrative vision" when medical x-ray machines were first introduced; only to reawaken yet again when x-ray body checks were introduced at airports. Be that as it may, medical x-rays usually involve consent and manipulation by a whole team of medical operatives. Airport body scans tend to be hurried with conveyor-belt rapidity and seem somewhat banal.
what do passport control officials see?? are the images stored??
But nevertheless there are terrifying and irrational aspects of being scanned: i) what is going to be seen -is the New-Viewed going to be nasty for me, others, the world? ii) what dangers occur if the scanner-technology malfunctions and, for instance, teleports my internal organs to iii) what happens to the New-Viewed content -is it destroyed, stored, retrievable, and by whom? Such fears were brilliantly exploited by David Cronenberg 's movie released in 1981 called Scanners. In this terrific movie the scanners were not machines, but human beings with a host of highly developed special gifts: empathy, telekinesis, psychokinesis, mind control, thought-reading. The scanner people could use their gifts to help maintain "security" both for one's Others as well as other's Others. They could also function aggressively, offensively to eliminate subjects. The New-Viewed are liquidated in the very act of penetration by viewing within a mere ten seconds of the initial gaze. A majestic -explosive- advertising poster plays mercilessly with all these fears. The earth is populated by billions of humans, but a mere 237 scanners could take-over and control the entire planet.
thoughts and viewings can terrify, control, kill, subjugate.
Opposing beneficent creativity, the New-Viewed are transfigured into oblivion by a creative act of annihilation. A theme already well-explored in religions and therapies promising new creation is reversed.
Fantasies of inspection and surveillance are incredibly important for human groups: they bind, control, and destabilize. They also perform similar offices for individuals. Being watched over by beneficent gods, teachers, sate leaders -to name but a few- may be supportive of subjectivity. But the performance of such stabilisation is creaky and subject to the logic of fantasy whereby the scanner changes into its terrifying opposite. Enantiodromia is worthy of considered restatement -not only at the level of phantasy- but socially and politically as western democracies crave populist leaders who will become the new Beneficent Ones. Cronenberg's Scanners needs to be watched alongside The Lives of Others by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck: scanning is ambivalent. Surveillance technology can thankfully be subverted and even used against itself. Two great hesitations about scanning and surveillance theories are prompted by the observation, first, that both demand great consistency in the workings of real things. This belief in the uniformity and reliability of things -natural or otherwise- is a folk belief. Conspiracy and surveillance theories depend upon regularity -even if that regularity is a perverse one set up to intimidate, subjugate, harass. Second the expectation of consistency of human agents is an even bigger folk belief. The notion that surveyors and scanners can implement a state mechanism that will endure for ever by subduing and subjugating populaces or groups, is short-sighted. It severely lacks historical perspective which inevitably turns state surveillance into farce. Surveyors themselves become bored with their operations, envy their viewed, become slip-shod, forget about unpredictables. Serendipities and human fashions undermine such grand designs. As do unpredictable events of nature. The great mistake of paranoid surveillance theories, like their cousins conspiracy theories, is they desire assured knowledge of the paranoid status quo much that their own subjectivities become its chief architect. Hence the fascinating serious of uncartesian equations:
I am surveyed therefore I exist
I exist therefore I know
I know therefore the surveyors, scanners, and surveillance apparatchiks exist.
Surveillance needs Others,
Jules Cotard was a minor figure in the history of medicine, Astonishingly the delusions he interrogated are now enjoying an unpredicted renaissance in both clinic and culture. The fantasies collected by this nineteenth century neurologist coalesced to form a very particular set, best called in English delusions of nihilism. The nihilism in question is a fundamentalist, unshakable, belief that one's "inside" is dead -or at the very least has severe organ-deficits, irredeemable malfunctions, enormous craters, black holes, hidden defects. These are destroying, tormenting and killing their bearer alive.
Jules Cotard 1840-1889
It is worth considering what ones “insides” might signify. Associations will naturally vary from culture to culture and person to person. Inside and outside, like purity and danger, are rich foundation structure in most anthropologies. Being loved by a Kurdish speaker, for example, involves sharing one’s offals and tripes with one's beloved. Kurds will love their darling’s liver or kidneys. A devoted couple will desire to share lungs -as well as kidneys and various other internal organs. None of this is at all sinister. In this culture eating ones beloved's innards is as natural a desire as relishing a fine-dining experience.
On the other hand there are terrifying sets of beliefs about one’s “insides”. For instance ones body might have holes, omissions, gaps. A limb or organ might be missing. One’s insides may be disappearing at such an alarming rate that one’s own very existence is becoming attenuated, compromised, threatened. May be I am rotting from the insides-out Such were the narratives described by Cotard's researches about somatic delusions. So fascinating was he to French society that he makes an appearance in À la Recherche du Temps perdu. . Miss X was the first patient this Parisienne doctor met with nihilistic delusions, she claimed to have no brains, no nerves, no chest, no stomach, no intestines. Her predicament was greatly magnified because Miss X was convinced she was eternal and would live for ever in this condition. This is not too far removed from the modern horror territory of the living dead. Miss X eventually starved herself to death.
Whatever the purposes of this mushroom in Aztec cultures, there are a number modern counterparts worth commentating upon. First is the notion that others -be it people (living or dead), aliens, jinns, gods, animals, technocrats, machines, robots, technologies- can see through my body. Nothing is hidden. Viewing my “inside” means the intimately private and hidden becomes inspectable -viewable- without permission, control, consent. There was an outbreak of anxieties about such "penetrative vision" when medical x-ray machines were first introduced; only to reawaken yet again when x-ray body checks were introduced at airports. Be that as it may, medical x-rays usually involve consent and manipulation by a whole team of medical operatives. Airport body scans tend to be hurried with conveyor-belt rapidity and seem somewhat banal.
 |
| what do passport control officials see?? are the images stored?? |
But nevertheless there are terrifying and irrational aspects of being scanned: i) what is going to be seen -is the New-Viewed going to be nasty for me, others, the world? ii) what dangers occur if the scanner-technology malfunctions and, for instance, teleports my internal organs to iii) what happens to the New-Viewed content -is it destroyed, stored, retrievable, and by whom? Such fears were brilliantly exploited by David Cronenberg 's movie released in 1981 called Scanners. In this terrific movie the scanners were not machines, but human beings with a host of highly developed special gifts: empathy, telekinesis, psychokinesis, mind control, thought-reading. The scanner people could use their gifts to help maintain "security" both for one's Others as well as other's Others. They could also function aggressively, offensively to eliminate subjects. The New-Viewed are liquidated in the very act of penetration by viewing within a mere ten seconds of the initial gaze. A majestic -explosive- advertising poster plays mercilessly with all these fears. The earth is populated by billions of humans, but a mere 237 scanners could take-over and control the entire planet.
 |
| thoughts and viewings can terrify, control, kill, subjugate. |
Opposing beneficent creativity, the New-Viewed are transfigured into oblivion by a creative act of annihilation. A theme already well-explored in religions and therapies promising new creation is reversed.
Fantasies of inspection and surveillance are incredibly important for human groups: they bind, control, and destabilize. They also perform similar offices for individuals. Being watched over by beneficent gods, teachers, sate leaders -to name but a few- may be supportive of subjectivity. But the performance of such stabilisation is creaky and subject to the logic of fantasy whereby the scanner changes into its terrifying opposite. Enantiodromia is worthy of considered restatement -not only at the level of phantasy- but socially and politically as western democracies crave populist leaders who will become the new Beneficent Ones. Cronenberg's Scanners needs to be watched alongside The Lives of Others by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck: scanning is ambivalent. Surveillance technology can thankfully be subverted and even used against itself. Two great hesitations about scanning and surveillance theories are prompted by the observation, first, that both demand great consistency in the workings of real things. This belief in the uniformity and reliability of things -natural or otherwise- is a folk belief. Conspiracy and surveillance theories depend upon regularity -even if that regularity is a perverse one set up to intimidate, subjugate, harass. Second the expectation of consistency of human agents is an even bigger folk belief. The notion that surveyors and scanners can implement a state mechanism that will endure for ever by subduing and subjugating populaces or groups, is short-sighted. It severely lacks historical perspective which inevitably turns state surveillance into farce. Surveyors themselves become bored with their operations, envy their viewed, become slip-shod, forget about unpredictables. Serendipities and human fashions undermine such grand designs. As do unpredictable events of nature. The great mistake of paranoid surveillance theories, like their cousins conspiracy theories, is they desire assured knowledge of the paranoid status quo much that their own subjectivities become its chief architect. Hence the fascinating serious of uncartesian equations:
I am surveyed therefore I exist
I exist therefore I know
I know therefore the surveyors, scanners, and surveillance apparatchiks exist.
Surveillance needs Others,
Jules Cotard was a minor figure in the history of medicine, Astonishingly the delusions he interrogated are now enjoying an unpredicted renaissance in both clinic and culture. The fantasies collected by this nineteenth century neurologist coalesced to form a very particular set, best called in English delusions of nihilism. The nihilism in question is a fundamentalist, unshakable, belief that one's "inside" is dead -or at the very least has severe organ-deficits, irredeemable malfunctions, enormous craters, black holes, hidden defects. These are destroying, tormenting and killing their bearer alive.
Jules Cotard 1840-1889
It is worth considering what ones “insides” might signify. Associations will naturally vary from culture to culture and person to person. Inside and outside, like purity and danger, are rich foundation structure in most anthropologies. Being loved by a Kurdish speaker, for example, involves sharing one’s offals and tripes with one's beloved. Kurds will love their darling’s liver or kidneys. A devoted couple will desire to share lungs -as well as kidneys and various other internal organs. None of this is at all sinister. In this culture eating ones beloved's innards is as natural a desire as relishing a fine-dining experience.
On the other hand there are terrifying sets of beliefs about one’s “insides”. For instance ones body might have holes, omissions, gaps. A limb or organ might be missing. One’s insides may be disappearing at such an alarming rate that one’s own very existence is becoming attenuated, compromised, threatened. May be I am rotting from the insides-out Such were the narratives described by Cotard's researches about somatic delusions. So fascinating was he to French society that he makes an appearance in À la Recherche du Temps perdu. . Miss X was the first patient this Parisienne doctor met with nihilistic delusions, she claimed to have no brains, no nerves, no chest, no stomach, no intestines. Her predicament was greatly magnified because Miss X was convinced she was eternal and would live for ever in this condition. This is not too far removed from the modern horror territory of the living dead. Miss X eventually starved herself to death.
Such imaginings are not the sole prerogative of psychosis. They are present in dreams and everyday fantasies too.....with varying degrees of intensity or terror. For example, one's body might be rotting from the inside out. Reproductive organs maybe defective or compromised in someway, neural mechanisms missing. More commonly people go to doctors convinced they are suffering from cancer, HIV-related illnesses, brain tumour or some other life- threatening malady.
Contemporary psychotherapeutics have focused upon external body “image”; with increased demands to alter or improve one’s body with tattoos, cosmetic procedures, or even quite radical and dangerous surgery. Cotard warns there are internal body images too with equally devastating impacts for individuals. These should never be neglected at the expense of external body images and fantasies. Human beings are bodily entities that are vulnerable and destructible: it is not surprising that anxiety is one of the great factors in human living.
The French word "délire" (as in délire des négations) posses more subtitle nuances than the English nihilistic delusion. Whereas the English delude is derived from Latin meaning play, deceive, cheat or fraud, the French delire posses less moralistic overtones. In before the invention of modern agricultural machinery, using the plough was- and still is- a somewhat hazardous and unpredictable undertaking. To delire occurs when the plough jumps its furrow (lire) - an everyday experience in the lives of agricultural workers and no great tragedy. On the other hand, when horses were used with the plough, there was the occasional terror when -in the Lancashire dialect of my grand father- a horse took boggart, that is became wildly out of control; a truly dangerous situation. In a future writing I intend to write more about the word delusion and its modern usage which privileges insanity, psychosis, florid phenomena.
Suffice it to say here that "delusion" itself is a liminal concept. It is often used to demarcate different dimensions. Its's philological root is that of a "threshold" or thresholds (limen). There are also transformational liminal states such as dusk and dawn during which day disappears into night; and then dissolution of the night by day. One of the most notable sculptural achievements of liminal a process, is that of dawn and dusk situated appropriately in the funeral chapel of the Medici in Florence. Michelangelo's sculptures are such an appropriate memorial for a place marking the transition between life and death.
The notion of a liminal concept, or a liminal category, fluctuates at thresholds. Delusion is one such concept. It supposedly demarcates the area of normality (neurosis) from that of madness (psychosis). How easier it would be for mental health practitioners if that were the case. For actual subjects, however, becoming and being shade into one another. This was excellently commented upon in a BBC documentary about depression. It featured the former Blair media spin doctor Alistair Campbell. Campbell's supportive elder brother suffered from schizophrenia; this was a great source for upset, gratitude and loss in Campbell's life. In the BBC Documentary Depression and Me he told of period in his early professional career when his behaviour distressed colleagues so much that he was visited by two policer officers. He was then taken to a psychiatric hospital in London for treatment. Looking back at that time Campbell identifies his states then, with that of his bother. He wondered whether he too was becoming schizophrenic, like is bother. Campbell calls these distressing events his one -and only period of psychosis- despite continuing to experience periods of profound melancholia from time to time. Why doubt his testimony?
Before leaving Cotard there is one more weighty consideration. The delusions discussed here involve other liminalities, namely the boundary (or boundaries) between inner and outer. Instead of being a reliable "container" with its "contained contents": both container and contents become compromised, permeable, insecure, fragile. What should belong "inside" and "hidden" is in danger of leaking out, becoming visible, infringed, or impinged.
To my way of thinking, this is central to "trauma". Insides and outsides become confused, uncontrolled and disarrayed. Decades ago I heard a nurse speak of a patient in Winwick Psychiatric Hospital. He had eaten hallucinogenic substances like the mushrooms mentioned above, but had experienced "a bad trip". His body was now an orange. He was terrified of any physical contact with humans. Why? They might want to peel him. The operative notion here is extreme vulnerability. Basic, elementary, protection is easily flayed; leaving an individual exposed, raw, penetrable. There is no defence, security, personal safeguarding for the internal jelly-like substance of conscious oozing matter.
Why do you tear me from myself?
Marsyas in Ovid Metamorphoses VI
One of the most violent scenes in the entire opus of Titian's art was painted in his eighties. Here the satyr Marsyas is being flayed alive. The torture is being inflicted because of his liminality. As a satyr in mythology he was already liminal with both human and animal characteristic. Satyrs also lived in the wild woodlands, eyrie places, and mountains. They loved cavorting, sex and drinking. Marsyas' offence was to liminize a crucial ontological boundary -that between gods and non-goods. In Ovid's series of poems about transformations, the Satyr, who possessed exceptional musical abilities as a flute player, invited Apollo to become contestant in a musical play-off. Perhaps he was drunk at the time. The outcome was gruesome.
Such imaginings are not the sole prerogative of psychosis. They are present in dreams and everyday fantasies too.....with varying degrees of intensity or terror. For example, one's body might be rotting from the inside out. Reproductive organs maybe defective or compromised in someway, neural mechanisms missing. More commonly people go to doctors convinced they are suffering from cancer, HIV-related illnesses, brain tumour or some other life- threatening malady.
Contemporary psychotherapeutics have focused upon external body “image”; with increased demands to alter or improve one’s body with tattoos, cosmetic procedures, or even quite radical and dangerous surgery. Cotard warns there are internal body images too with equally devastating impacts for individuals. These should never be neglected at the expense of external body images and fantasies. Human beings are bodily entities that are vulnerable and destructible: it is not surprising that anxiety is one of the great factors in human living.
The French word "délire" (as in délire des négations) posses more subtitle nuances than the English nihilistic delusion. Whereas the English delude is derived from Latin meaning play, deceive, cheat or fraud, the French delire posses less moralistic overtones. In before the invention of modern agricultural machinery, using the plough was- and still is- a somewhat hazardous and unpredictable undertaking. To delire occurs when the plough jumps its furrow (lire) - an everyday experience in the lives of agricultural workers and no great tragedy. On the other hand, when horses were used with the plough, there was the occasional terror when -in the Lancashire dialect of my grand father- a horse took boggart, that is became wildly out of control; a truly dangerous situation. In a future writing I intend to write more about the word delusion and its modern usage which privileges insanity, psychosis, florid phenomena.
 |
Before leaving Cotard there is one more weighty consideration. The delusions discussed here involve other liminalities, namely the boundary (or boundaries) between inner and outer. Instead of being a reliable "container" with its "contained contents": both container and contents become compromised, permeable, insecure, fragile. What should belong "inside" and "hidden" is in danger of leaking out, becoming visible, infringed, or impinged.
To my way of thinking, this is central to "trauma". Insides and outsides become confused, uncontrolled and disarrayed. Decades ago I heard a nurse speak of a patient in Winwick Psychiatric Hospital. He had eaten hallucinogenic substances like the mushrooms mentioned above, but had experienced "a bad trip". His body was now an orange. He was terrified of any physical contact with humans. Why? They might want to peel him. The operative notion here is extreme vulnerability. Basic, elementary, protection is easily flayed; leaving an individual exposed, raw, penetrable. There is no defence, security, personal safeguarding for the internal jelly-like substance of conscious oozing matter.
|
| Why do you tear me from myself? Marsyas in Ovid Metamorphoses VI |
One of the most violent scenes in the entire opus of Titian's art was painted in his eighties. Here the satyr Marsyas is being flayed alive. The torture is being inflicted because of his liminality. As a satyr in mythology he was already liminal with both human and animal characteristic. Satyrs also lived in the wild woodlands, eyrie places, and mountains. They loved cavorting, sex and drinking. Marsyas' offence was to liminize a crucial ontological boundary -that between gods and non-goods. In Ovid's series of poems about transformations, the Satyr, who possessed exceptional musical abilities as a flute player, invited Apollo to become contestant in a musical play-off. Perhaps he was drunk at the time. The outcome was gruesome.
For centuries plays about Satyrs were important and highly popular in Greek theatre. They were staged alongside tragedies and comedies in classical times. In fact they could well be termed tragicomic plays -or perhaps burlesques and even farces. Strange how much of this, popular and liminal genre of drama is now lost
*****************
In Catholic Christianity monks and nuns treasured a very special hymn at Ascension-tide; the feast commemorating what seemed to be the final journey of Jesus and his body. Already he had been tortured and put to death. Astoundingly his tomb was empty and he appeared with a recognisable, but different resurrected body, to his former associates. Eventually this resurrected body disappeared from view; put positively it/he "ascended"
The ancient hymn for the Ascension of Christ, Aeterne Rex Altissime, contains this remarkable verse:
Tremunt vidéntes ángeli
versam vicem mortálium;
culpat caro, purgat caro,
regnat caro Verbum Dei.
Translated into English in the nineteenth century by a remarkable priest-scholar called John Mason (1818-1866), these verses read:
Yea, angels tremble when they see
how changed is our humanity;
that flesh hath purged what flesh had stained,
and God, the flesh of God, hath reigned.
However there is something odd here. The Latin text speaks of the Word of God reigning; there is no reference to God's Flesh. After much research, it can be safely concluded that there was a Latin text which contained the audacious anthropomorphism for centuries. First citied in the ninth century It is well attested in the three main traditions of Latin Catholic worship -Roman, Sarum, and the Visigothic Mozarabic tradition of Iberia.
Tremunt videntes Angeli
Versa vice mortalium:
Culpat caro, purgat caro,
Regnat Deus, Dei caro.
*****************
In Catholic Christianity monks and nuns treasured a very special hymn at Ascension-tide; the feast commemorating what seemed to be the final journey of Jesus and his body. Already he had been tortured and put to death. Astoundingly his tomb was empty and he appeared with a recognisable, but different resurrected body, to his former associates. Eventually this resurrected body disappeared from view; put positively it/he "ascended"
The ancient hymn for the Ascension of Christ, Aeterne Rex Altissime, contains this remarkable verse:
Tremunt vidéntes ángeli
versam vicem mortálium;
culpat caro, purgat caro,
regnat caro Verbum Dei.
Translated into English in the nineteenth century by a remarkable priest-scholar called John Mason (1818-1866), these verses read:
Yea, angels tremble when they see
how changed is our humanity;
that flesh hath purged what flesh had stained,
and God, the flesh of God, hath reigned.
However there is something odd here. The Latin text speaks of the Word of God reigning; there is no reference to God's Flesh. After much research, it can be safely concluded that there was a Latin text which contained the audacious anthropomorphism for centuries. First citied in the ninth century It is well attested in the three main traditions of Latin Catholic worship -Roman, Sarum, and the Visigothic Mozarabic tradition of Iberia.
Tremunt videntes Angeli
Versa vice mortalium:
Culpat caro, purgat caro,
Regnat Deus, Dei caro.
This verse is attested in all of them and even managed to withstand the liturgical revisions of Urban VIII, a cultured but militaristic pope, with only minor amendment.
Tremunt videntes angeli
Versam vicem mortalium:
Peccat caro, mundat caro,
Regnat Deus Dei caro.
Even here in Urban's rendition, the flesh of God still manages to reign.
NOTES
There are a variety of scans and scanners used in contemporary medicine; some for diagnostic purposes, some in treatment, others for both. These are MRI, CT, PET/CT, X-ray, Ultrasound, Bone Density, Fluoroscopy.
British Broadcasting Corporation 2018 A History of Delusions
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001d95
British Broadcasting Corporation 2019 Alistair Campbell: Depression and Me https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005btv
Chandra Kiran and Suprakash Chaudhury 2009 Understanding Delusions Industrial Psychiatry Journal Volume 18 India
Versions of the Ascensiontide Hymn Æterne Rex Altissime are published online by Saint Augustine's Lyre https://tosingistopraytwice.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/aeterne-rex-altissime/
See further "Aeterne Rex altissime." The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press, accessed June 4, 2019, http://www.hymnology.co.uk/a/aeterne-rex-altissime.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001d95
See further "Aeterne Rex altissime." The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press, accessed June 4, 2019, http://www.hymnology.co.uk/a/aeterne-rex-altissime.
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