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Mandate of Heaven

Connor Campbell

“For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. […] He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.”

- BLAISE PASCAL

 

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At the end of their track ‘Made Me Realize’, the band My Bloody Valentine flies into what is called the Holocaust section[1]. The screeching guitars become fuzzed out beyond recognizability, all instruments swirl and meld together in the same wall of noise. Drones and oscillations and feedback blurs into an amorphous beast that works its way through the audience. Pushing through all, flooding every crevice, the entire crowd falls in on itself, the ego collapses into Godhead. 


Disruption:

 

wherein the metaphysical moves its ephemeral hand and grasps the material.

 

                                    Ripping and tearing at the cotton-thin fabric of reality,

 

                                                                                     resulting in penetration.

 

                                                                                                                            Rupture.

 

How can you go back to who you were when you realize what you are. When you’ve come face to face with the

                         sublime?

                                        When the emptiness of everything casts itself over you and everything you know.

 

THIRST FOR ANNHILATION
 

whether through:\\

drugs

sex

loud music

 

 

we try to cast off our shell

                                  (self)

 

despite this, there’s a difference between the willing resignation of identity, and having it forcefully jerked from possession.

 

The beast consumes,

 

the sun is not known merely for sustaining itself on helium, it's known for its expansion, for the light that floods the land, that feeds the crops and supplies man and beast with life and light.

[It giveth]

 

eclipse = definition by way of subtraction,

all that is seen is, for a brief moment, wiped from the face of the earth, through negation, one finds out what they are:

 

A small cog in a monolithic machine they can barely get a glimpse of. 

 

TO LOOK UPON THE SUN IS TO BECOME WITNESS[ED]

TO LOOK UPON THE SUN IS TO BE TRANSFORMED

 

Bataille writes about

Gaston F

 

after staring into the sun,

                                        the man promptly

wrapped his teeth around

                                         his index finger before

                             sinking

                                         them in and

                            severing

                                         connection.

 

[ EXPENDITURE-EGO_DISOLUSSION-DIVINITY ]

 

The sun disrupts on its own time, consuming the space around it and expending pure heat, it gives life and melts flesh in equal measure. Proximity to sublimity renders reality gnawed. Once one is introduced to existential disruption very rarely is returning an option.

 

One enters into a position

of       religious   ecstasy.

 

When the borders of the body make themselves known it’s hard to become unaware of such things.

 

WHERE DOES A BODY END?
 

 

under totality

                      all is pushed

                                          into the same melting pot

                                                                                   of

                                                                                       blackened

                                                                                                        sludge,

                                                                                                                    one

                                                                                                                          loses focus                                                on                                                                                           physical borders. 

                                                                                                              

The world becomes one shrieking mass. 

 

Superego-Blowout                                                                             

 

In ancient China, the Mandate of Heaven was a cultural philosophy that helped determine how well a dynasty was functioning,

 

Its other function was to

foretell when a revolt

should re-render the dynasty.

 

Once the dragon swallows the sun, the land swallows its tyrant.

 

                                                                                                        The disruption on its own has a

                                                                                                        momentary effect on the people,                         

                                                                                                        but the rupture itself is not

                                                                                                        merely forgotten, the ripple

                                                                                                        spreads out, affecting not only          

                                                                                                        the water's surface,

 

but the body itself

 

 

It is hard not to feel like the world

 

is

              collapsing

                                         in

                                 on

   itself,

 

as if the arc of the universe

bends

          towards

oblivion.

 

[1]  From Greek Holokautein, or ‘Burnt Offering’, wherein the sacrifice is completely consumed by fire. Nothing is left.

Land Acknowledgement
The land on which St. Thomas University is located is the traditional territory of the Wolastoqiyik, WÉ™lastÉ™kewiyik / Maliseet whose ancestors along with the Mi’Kmaq / Mi’kmaw and Passamaquoddy / Peskotomuhkati Tribes / Nations signed Peace and Friendship Treaties with the British Crown in the 1700s. 

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Contact : Philip Lee - Executive Director  plee@stu.ca

©2023 Frank McKenna Centre for Communications and Public Policy.

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