Mina Loy - Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

To this is due religion’s war against the flesh. It may seem to the layman, that perhaps, according to atomic physics, there is no actual flesh.

A true mystic genius would never have snubbed the Creator with derogation of “the Flesh”—for also our desire, not of our own contriving, is from the Creator broadcast to us— He had merely ceased to function within range of our desiderata . He would have no more imposed chastity on the common man than would Bach have forbidden him to play the concertina. 7

Rather, the ancient must have understood the electric incitement of Eros — –

“They twain shall be one flesh,” described the sense of a tangible bond, a vibrational co-identity of perfectly married people, as if the Eros union bequeathed to them a continuous reciprocal radiation that distance does not disrupt.

“Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,” undeniably confirms the derivation of Eros from the divine abstraction, delimiting the self in the peace of participation, of being no longer contactless in a mysterious universe.

The “man of flesh” phrase in evolution is giving way to the “man of electronic vitality” largely through the accelerated life-tempo characteristic of the United States.

His manner of being in a state of transition, with Eros most evidently involved.

Due to this evolutional transition, for the modern human the merely fleshly approach to Eros becomes inconclusive.

The approach to Eros of the future subordinates mere flesh to vibrational co-ordination promoting release of the intrinsic electrification inducing Eros-Bliss.

A co-ordination imposing on the individual, as in psychic science, self-control, inversely to the bursting (again explosive) excitement induced by the filth-bliss confusion of the sin-centuries.

It is no longer a sub rosa rumour that numerous devotees of Eros — at present are disappointed.

How mysterious his own potentials remain to man. Adolescents are motivated by an ardent anticipation of Eros, while intellect is unaware of the sensate manifestation towards which their ebullience urges them, for when successfully experienced it overly surprises with the realisation that one, in his ordinary state of consciousness, could never imagine, or even subsequently, evoke.

Between the brain and the spirit lies some intermediary sentience receiving the broadcast of our instincts.

ELECTRIC EROS

Even as there exist scaled approximations in the universe, such as a once-assumed structural similarity of astronomic constellations to the invisible atom, so, comparable to the mystic’s electrical suffusion by the infinite élan , Eros is also an electric release (The “Flesh” again, like the terrain, an instrument.) Safety valve for an electro-neural system in its stress of sensitizing the human organism. Eros recharges the electric battery of the nervous system.

Further similitude to mystic principle: the release of Eros is the closing of the circle of all emotions fused to one emotion in instantaneous consummation. A flash of attainment to infinite sentience, resulting in perfect relaxation. Replica in reduction of the mystic’s ecstasy in illumination.

Connective likeness of mystic electrics to the electric charge of Eros was either suppressed or forgotten.

The serpent in Eden is symbol of the extreme imposture — –

The substitution of “sex-morality” for humane morality.

Compare the demoniacal tortures inflicted on sentient human beings all through the ages, in the guise of religious correction, to the intimate doings of two fair adolescents coerced by the glow of the moon — — search diligently for any wrong they have wrought upon their fellows ; yet not long more than a century since Religion stuffed them each into a barrel lined with excruciating points of nails, and rolled them, sanctimoniously down-hill to death.

IMMORALITY CONSISTS IN CRUELTY— IT HAS BEEN THE PRETENSE OF CRUELTY TO ENFORCE MORALITY. The explanation of this anomaly reverts to the risk of “explosion” on the frontiers dividing the secret from the overt realities.

Eros is the one transmission from the power universe to cross those frontiers unmodified — metaphysically intact, yet available to sensate experience.

Even as esoteric religion, esoteric Eros exploded in the human mind, leaving a debris of sadism to infiltrate religious institutions.

Originally erected around a prop of sublime significance, such institutions, the prop long since, through misinterpretation, withdrawn from them, are becoming meaningless; as though a spurious agitation had been “touched off” on the disappearance of a serene reality.

In apology for this loss of power — incomprehension through our spiritual disability was camouflaged in the scapegoat personification of Satan, changing all God’s beneficiencies to man, to menaces.

CONFUSION OF SATAN WITH EROS

The channels of discard discharge coursing alongside the avenues of Eros, an anomaly challenging our aspiration to purity (Purity — consciousness concerned only with the beautiful outcome of functional life) to ignore disintegrated human psychology with the filth complex — — sanitative for the aboriginal — but with the coming of modern plumbing the Kingdom of Satan is submerged.

Freud, training a bright light of analysis on such psychological terrain, illuminated all but a blind spot, THE ELECTRIFICATION OF BLISS — that terrain, exploited by his followers, is become an infinitely extensible maze of introversion in search of Eros — — the little man who isn’t there — — –

Freud is unnecessary to the future. His utile achievement lay in his solution of the problem, “To mention or not to mention.” By making it, aided by the scientific aegis — — fashionably polite to mention. Clearing a way out for inhibition. 8

While the sphinx retains her secret, who shall reveal the unconsummated significance of the asterisk—

Notwithstanding that the secret of the sphinx is not conveyed in words — the asterisk is an assumption that the secret is possessed by each of us and therefore need never be mentioned—

the asterisk is the signal of a treasure which is not there.

Is it possible asked the sphinx of the sphinx—

have we not also that pornographic literature, distributed under the rose—

Exactly — it is that very pornographic literature — which has exposed—

The secret — that the sphinx does not know her own secret—

Impossible — it would have been remarked upon ere now—

— Not so — for the sphinx has never spoken. The passive sphinx who has put up with everything — has never given a sign—

It was my womanly modesty, said the sphinx—

Not that — said the sphinx, it was your corroding misapprehension that the other women were not with yourself, in the same case.

“Woman—” said Havelock Ellis to the sphinx, “put up with what she got and she got nothing !”

I dared not lose my literature — sobbed the sphinx — it was so lo-o-o-vely!

Your literature — let us examine it your literature—

It was written by the men—

And the sphinx never gave a sign.

Even James Joyce in the introspective finale of Mrs. Bloom to his cosmic day — writes—“ ‘would he give me’ if I let him ‘retire’ on my ‘bases’ ”

but said the sphinx, there was in this case a biological interference to account for her sacrificial suggestion — at the same time — you remember that at Gibraltar under the blue bedspread of the sky it was a lawn kerchief that substituted the sphinx—