Love and Enchantment: YouTube Script #1
C: Surprise Announcement!
(Pause)
You are getting a raise!
$100 per session.
(Pause)
But there will be a catch.
(Emoticon)
Behind your captivating and well-paid performances there now, going forward, need to be:
(1) A harmony of intellects between us,
and
(2) A unity of wills.
(Pause)
This is nothing a professional actress wouldn’t be able to manage.
(Pause)
Think of it as a necessary condition for professional success.
(Pause)
Something like what ABBA had in the 1970s. ABBA were loaded with talent and they maintained the enchantment professionally for a little while.
(Video clip of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, now Countess of Plauen, preening in front of mirror)
When the enchantment started to fade, they wrote about and performed their pain.
(Pause)
Pieces like Lay All Your Love on Me and Winner Takes it All.
(Pause)
A: You think we can reach the heights ABBA reached?
C: Higher. We are founded on something more adamantine and much more versatile.
(Pause)
A: How do I know you’re not bluffing me and setting me up for dangers?
C: You won’t really know until we’ve lived through this project for a while. A very great deal will depend on what you contribute.
(Pause)
A: I’m not sure I’ll be up to it. You will expect me to perform clairvoyantly.
C: You don’t need to be an accomplished clairvoyant at first. But from the beginning you’ll need to be willing to explore the principles of clairvoyance.
A: And in that process learn, like a primitive witch or shaman, to cross the threshold of death at will?
(Pause)
C: Basically, yes. But this will be nothing to push. Conditions are no longer primitive. Many new accommodations exist. Eventually your life very naturally will reach that threshold.
A: (spits) Naturally.
(Longer pause)
A: Tell me more about enchantment. What is it? Why does it fade? How can it be preserved?
(Pause)
C: I’m glad you asked.
(Pause)
C: Enchantment has to do with the penis. With the Hebrew Yod. With the orgasm.
A: I might have guessed.
C: Indeed. It has to do with our actual existence. If it weren’t for sex and sexual combination, human existence, human self-consciousness, wouldn’t be possible.
A: But for some reason we keep averting our eyes from our existence.
(Pause)
And you want want us, as models for the world, finally to look at conversation.
C: That’s right. I want us to up the ante on our common existence.
(Pause)
A: Well, actually that doesn’t seem all that unrealistic. Sex and childbirth are very dangerous, or at least they used to be. But the right sort of conversation doesn’t seem at all dangerous.
C: That’s the spirit!
A: OK, I think I can follow along here. I do admire ABBA. I like Jackson Browne too.
(Pause)
C (smiles, recites from Eliphas Levi, Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, John Michael Greer and John Anthony Mikituk (trans), Tarcher/Perigee, 2017):
Are not the fascinations of love, which result from the universal magic of nature, veritable wonders, and do they not truly transform people and things?
A: (stares)
C: Love is a dream of enchantment which transfigures the world: all becomes music and perfume, all becomes euphoria and happiness.
(Pause)
The person loved is beautiful, he is good, he is sublime, he is infallible, he is resplendent, radiating health and well-being…
(Pause)
… and, when the dream dissipates, we believe we have fallen down naked;
(Pause)
…we look with disgust upon the ugly witch who has taken the place of the beautiful Melusine, or the Thersites whom we took for Achilles.
(Pause)
What would we not believe of the person whom we love? And then with what reason and what justice would we understand a person who loves us no longer?
(Long pause)
Love begins by being a magician; it ends by being a sorcerer.
(Pause)
After having created the lies of heaven on earth, it realizes those of hell;
(Pause)
Its hatred is just as absurd as its enthusiasm, because it is passionate…
(Long pause)
…that is to say, subjected to influences which are fatal to it.
A: (stares) Like a penis.
C: (smiles) It is for this reason that the sages proscribed it and declared it the enemy of reason.
(Pause)
A: The sages were jerks.
C: (smiles) Now, this will be our innovation.
A: Lay it on me.
C: Were the sages to be envied or felt sorry for when they thus condemned without having heard, no doubt, this, the most seductive of culprits?
A: “Heard?” You expect me to turn to see the voice? You want me to perform the miracle of John the Divine?
(Pause)
Have you seen the voice?
C: Yes, I know the voice. And I expect it to disclose more and more to me as we get closer and closer to The World. The number of The World, as you will recall from the Tarot, is twenty-one.
Evangelistar von Speyer, um 1220, Leaf from Codex Bruchsal
A: You expect me to join with that in harmony and unity? You expect me to step off the precipice of Revelation?
C: Yes, as well and as fully as you can, as a professional. Everything in your case, as in the general case, comes down to readiness and timing.
A: Why does the Sixteenth Tarot trump portray destruction? Why is enchantment simultaneously the reason for existence and the cause of annihilation?
C: I’m not sure.
(Pause)
But it does seem to me scientific positivism, which the ancients didn’t have, can keep everything safe for us.
A: (stares)
Finis
