No superman I;

Mind at the end of its tether: I can guess what some of you are thinking - his mind is at the end of its tether - and this could be: it scares me but deters me not. The alternative to mind is certainly madness. Our greatest blessings, says Socrates in the Phaedrus, come to us by way of madness - provided, he adds, that the madness comes from god. Our real choice is between holy and unholy madness: open your eyes and look around you - madness is in the saddle anyhow. Dionysus has returned to his native Thebes; mind - at the end of its tether - is another Pentheus, up a tree. Resisting madness can be the maddest way of being mad.

And there is a way out - the blessed madness of the maenad and the bacchant: "Blessed is he who has the good fortune to know the mysteries of the gods, who sanctifies his life and initiates his soul, a bacchant on the mountains, in holy purifications." It is possible to be mad and to be unblest; but it is not possible to get the illuminations without the derangement. Derangement is disorder; the Dionysian faith is that order as we have known it is crippling, and for cripples; that what is past is prologue; that we can throw away our crutches and discover the supernatural power of walking; that human history goes from man to superman.

No superman I; I come to you not as one who has supernatural powers, but as one who seeks for them, and who has some notions which way to go find them.

Apocalypse: The Place of Mystery in the Life of the Mind; Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis, Norman Brown, University of California Press, 1991

ascend

May 10th, 1996