Technic and Magic by Federico Campagna

Author:Federico Campagna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Second hypostasis: Person

The first principle of the ineffable as life emanates the second hypostasis in Magic’s cosmogonic chain: the person. This is the first instance of the ineffable dimension of existence, pouring out of itself a linguistic entity. Until this point, language existed only potentially within the ineffable – here, for the first time, the ineffable speaks. The unspeakable speaks, while remaining unspeakable.37 By speaking, ineffable life creates a distance from itself. What used to be the absolute localization of an ineffable ‘here’, becomes the first displacement of a ‘there’ that can be grasped linguistically.38 The ineffable speaks, and the first word that it utters is ‘this’ – the linguistic edge of its first distance. In our own individual experience, we hear the ineffable dimension pronouncing such original words as ‘I’ – but we shouldn’t think that we are now entering a ‘psychological’ phase in Magic’s cosmogony. We remain firmly grounded on a metaphysical and cosmological level – though a form of metaphysics whose roots are entangled with those of epistemology.

In the Vedas, this original word is described as Ka (who). Ka is the first name through which the original god Prajapati first recognizes himself, thus creating a distinction within himself – him, who was the origin of everything, who was everything and who contained everything in a state of perfect unity.

In the beginning, Prajapati didn’t know who he was. Only when the gods issued from him, when they took on their qualities, their profiles, when Prajapati himself had seared their shapes, forgetting none, sovereignty and splendour included, only then did the question present itself. Indra had just killed Vrta. He was still shaken by the terror of it, but he knew he was sovereign of the gods. He came to Prajapati and said: ‘Make me what you are, make me great.’ Prajapati answered: ‘Then who, ka, am I?’ ‘Exactly what you just said,’ said Indra. In that moment Prajapati became Ka. In that moment he understood, understood it all. He would never know the joys of limitation, the repose in a straightforward name. Even when they had recomposed him, in the ten thousand, eight hundred bricks of the altar of fire, he would always be a shape shot through by the shapeless.39

At this stage in the chain of emanations, we witness a double movement, at once ontological and epistemological. Ontologically, the ineffable pours out of itself the first word, ‘this’ (or ‘I’), and then retreats into itself. The relationship between the ineffable and its first word remains asymmetrical: the former can utter the name of the latter, but not vice versa.40 At the same time, we have an opposite epistemological movement, as the first word – the first linguistically defined entity, ‘this’ or ‘I’ – looks back at its own ineffable source and then looks again at itself. This is a continuation of the experience of the miraculous, once the ‘I’ has acquired sufficient metaphysical stability to be able to look back at itself. But if ‘this’ or ‘I’

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