Hermetic Process and Art

To connect the artistic process to hermetic practice, to alchemy or 'magic', may on the surface seem like a gimmick, taken on for aesthetic fancy. While I don't feel comfortable conceding that following an aesthetic compass is a lowly or faulty way to "truth", this understanding doesn't wholly capture the artistic and hermetic co-extension.

If we were to crudely boil down the hermetic endeavor to a couple of maxims they would be something like 'the union of matter and spirit' (alchemy) and 'the union of the human and the divine' (theurgy). To properly lay out how these maxims could be said to resonate with that subtle thing that is artistic process we would need to give precise definitions of the terms involved, in particular what we mean by 'divine' and 'spirit' in this case. This text will forgo complete rigor for the sake of brevity; we should be fine with letting matter - spirit (mind) be approximated by that infamous Cartesian dichotomy, and the divine be cosmic will: the mind of God or Nature (more on this later).

I think any artist, and possibly philosophers and scientists as well, would agree that the highest, most desirable and productive mode of their process is when they enter what is commonly referred to as flow (Inspiration is related but not identical to this). This state is characterized by an almost thoughtlessness: the regular semi-linear narration chain is broken in favor of fragments and connections cascading at a speed higher than that of articulation, a phase-shift closely related to ego death - indeed, it is easy to have a sense of forgetting oneself in this state. Furthermore flow brings a certain visceral apprehension of the material the process engages with: you feel the flow of the paint, the form of the text etc. This intuitive entrainment with the material complicates the view of the artistic process as a transcendental artist-mind acting on matter, making it do it's bidding in a one-way sort of relationship. Rather we get a picture of a two-way relationship where circular causal chains entangle the matter with the mind in a sort of "ecstasy of communication", a mutual empathy that melts the divide between the two. You can probably see how this description aligns with the endeavor to unify matter and spirit, the more intensely and consistently artists are able to harmonize with their matter, the closer they get to actualizing this union. With this said, I think it is also absolutely crucial to sometimes clash with the material, arduously laboring with it, forcing it to go beyond it's nature (for the given circumstances), to search for new ways of resonance.

If we grant the connection between alchemy and art, I would argue that connecting art to the other maxim - 'the union of the human and the divine' - follows, at least if we specify the divine further in a certain way. Namely that we see material properties as expressions of the divine mind: how soap bubbles emerge as near-perfect spheres from local molecular interactions, how paint flows, how canvas rips, how syntax crystallize, all of these are expressions of the divine mind. Indeed, the divine mind becomes immanent: not really a transcendent thinking thing but rather the fluid logic-texture of space-time, of Being. With this definition we can be said to approach 'the union of the human and the divine' just by harmonizing with the material of our process: to let it express itself so to say, to not domesticate and forcefully impose a preconceived idea upon it, suppressing the nature of the material; but to let paint be paint, canvas be canvas. In this, art becomes a process of helping Nature (or God) express itself, rather than a process of pure self-expression. Now this is not to say that the self becomes nothing more than a stealthy catalyst. Rather the self (mind) as it is entrained with the matter according to the first maxim is a part of the divine as it is expresses itself.

The result and purpose of this endeavor are complex topics in themselves and sufficient exploration of these lay outside the scope of this text, but we can say for now that one supposed effect of this is re-enchantment, de-alienation. Indeed, this process seems to mysteriously conjure up a measure of meaning, akin to production of surplus value. Art becomes, if not the meaning of life then the meaning-machine of life.