Diablerie

“Until modern times, the goal of men was to access divinity or deliverance from the mortal plane, during their life or after death. More than anything, they wished their souls would merge forever in divine light. The spiritual matters were handled by severe priests and philosophers, for who it was natural to focus on the forces of the spirit. For them, the body was but a decomposing shell, and their own aging carcasses felt far removed from God. Indeed, our perceptions are limited, our mundane intellect is deluded, our flesh is weak. If we only listen to our ordinary needs, hunger or lust, we can easily choose to slither in meaningless and vanishing pleasures. Theologians tried to break the gates of heavens through sheer knowledge and mind power. Their theories, more and more refined, more and more elaborate, were their tools. Instead of experiencing divinity, they were hoping to understand it, “solve” it.

 

But for most of our ancestors, not as educated or not privileged enough to access these treasures of subtlety, deliverance was something they were expected to *live*, not just a concept. For them, the key to the other world can be found in our world. There’s no access to divinity without corporeality. Life is sacred. Death is sacred. Nature is full of silent but powerful entities. The reality is full of signs. Dreams, asceticism, sex are sacred mysteries and can weave a path to heaven.

 

The reconciliation of the flesh and the soul happened in many cases on the left-hand path, in hidden margins of the society, in forbidden cults, through the voice of eremitic gurus or persecuted heretics. Instead of hymns and treatises, they developed rituals, sometimes strange, sometimes unacceptable. Hypnotic meditations, tantras, bacchic dances and orgies, sacrifices, ritual martyrdom, sabbats… This specific spirituality was claimed by mad men and witches, and followed by thousands.

 

For those of us who still try to understand or experience transcendence, the soul and the body are one and the same, a vessel towards transcendence. The real obstacle is individuality, this illusion of identity that partition each one of us in our own little reality. By removing the ego, everything that makes us what we are, by stripping ourselves of our human delusions, we step on the path. By surpassing the mortal condition, by accepting suffering and sickness, by welcoming death, we walk on it. And we can finally open our eyes to the eternal, impersonal bliss.”