Rogue Messiahs by Colin Wilson

Author:Colin Wilson [Wilson, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

Real women are not like this, as Yeats must have known, since he had sisters. Yet when he fell in love, he immediately imposed this idealistic, pre-Raphaelitic image on his “beloved.” In this, Yeats was like all other romantic young males, and even those who regard themselves as totally unromantic. The desire to possess is so great that it transforms the object of desire into an idealization.

Everyone must have noticed how, the first time we experience a vague attraction to a member of the opposite sex, we also notice his or her less attractive features. Then, as the acquaintance progresses, these are edited out, until they cease to exist, or no longer matter. The will to fall in love is itself a transformational system.

The same transformational system can be seen in Jeannie Mertle’s description of her initial revulsion towards Jim Jones, and how it changed over the course of a few weeks into devotion. The devotion of disciples is a kind of chemical reaction between the charisma of the rogue messiah and the transformational system of the disciples, like an Alka Seltzer dropped into water.

It is tempting to say that transformational systems are methods of deceiving ourselves, but this would not be entirely accurate. When a male is in a state of intense sexual excitement, he sees the cause of this excitement as a kind of archetypal female, as Yeats recognized:

When my arms wrap you round I press

My heart upon the loveliness

That has long faded from the world.

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