The Body of Light and the Body without Organs

William Behum

SubStance, Volume 39, Number 1, 2010 (Issue 121), pp. 125-140 (Article)

Published by University of Wisconsin Press

DOI: 10.1353/sub.0.0069

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The Body of Light

and the Body without Organs
William Behun
Among the most problematic of the main concepts of Deleuze and
Guattaris thinking is the Body without Organs (BwO.) This paper undertakes to examine the BwO in the light of another body from a radically
different tradition, the Body of Light or Subtle Body that is the object of
several forms of magical, mystical and alchemical practices, including
Buddhism, Theosophy, and Hermeticism. Juxtaposing these two concepts will allow them mutually to explicate one another. I submit that
the practices involved in the discipline of the construction of the subtle
body may be appropriated as techniques for the construction of the BwO.
The formation of the body of light can be accomplished a number
of ways, with an equally vast number of possibilities that emerge from
its formation, including possibilities of death and madness. In this sense,
the one body is much like the other. Underlying the juxtaposition is more
than simply a similarity in terminology. Both bodies are predicated
on the subordination of theoretical discourse to praxis, the empowering
nature of the smooth rather than the stratified, and the consubstantiality
of the spiritual and material. The realm of magical and alchemical work
can be a fruitful place for further research into the dynamic and fluidic
modes of thought that typify Deleuze and Guattaris work.
What then is the body of light, and how do I get one? Do I already
have one, and if so, how do I develop it? We begin by exploring the qualities of the body of light in several traditions in order to clarify in what
ways this body may be compared to the BwO, and how the magical and
alchemical techniques associated with the subtle body may be deployed
in order to open up fields of human practice that offer a profoundly
different relationship to the world. The magical and esoteric tradition
is often understood to be specifically individualistic, in contrast to the
work of Deleuze and Guattari which is strongly oriented towards the
political and social aspects of transformation. I suggest that a certain
kind of cross-pollination is possible here: that both traditions can make
use of the terminologies and technologies of the other in order to account
for these limitations.
Many forms of magic make note of what is alternately called the
body of light, the body of glory, or the subtle or astral body. In order
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to understand how this phenomenon and its associated practices may

relate to the work of Deleuze and Guattari, we must consider some of
the literature concerning magic and esoteric practices. At times the connections that I am seeking to make will be immediately obvious to those
more familiar with Deleuze and Guattaris work, while at other times
the tradition may seem too deeply bound up with individualistic and
dualistic notions of the self and world. Much of the terminology used by
writers on alchemy, initiation, and magic appears at first glance strongly
dualistic, even Manichaean. However, I think it is perhaps more accurate
to suggest that these writers understood such dualisms more in terms of
difference in intensity, rather than as opposition.
While the terms used by various traditions vary wildly, there is a
remarkable consistency of character and qualities among them, suggesting
a singular phenomenon. For the magus, the body of light is the vehicle
through which he practices his art. Without developing or creating for
himself a body of light, there is no question of his being able to act upon
the spiritual world in any but the most rudimentary way. Invocations,
conjurations and prayers are worth nothing unless they are performed by
the spiritual body of the operator. The material body is too closely tethered
to the plane on which it operates to exercise magical power. Therefore,
the magus must develop his astral or spiritual body in order to exercise
power on that plane. Just as the musician must train and develop the
material body in particular ways in order to practice his art, so too does
the magus need to train and develop the body of light to practice his.
The body of light in its simplest form is described as an ethereal
substance whose appearance more or less corresponds to the material
body of the magician, but is diaphanous or vaporous. G.R.S. Mead,
whose Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition (Mead, 1919) was the
most influential text in bringing the concept of the subtle body or body of
light into contemporary magical practice, states that perhaps erroneously
the subtle body was envisaged as a thin replica of the gross body, as a
diaphanous double of the dense frame (4). In dreams, in astral travel,
in out of body experiences and even in divination and conjuration, it
is this body that acts, rather than the material one, even if the material
body gestures along with it.
The body of light represents that part of the human being that corresponds to his life. To use medieval or Renaissance terminology, it is the
spirit, as distinguished from both the soul and the body. In alchemical
terms, it is the Lunar-Mercurial aspect, whereas the soul represents the
Solar-Sulphuric aspect, and the body, the saline aspect. No less a mystical
authority than Jacob Boehme writes, Whatever grows, lives and moves
in this world consists in Sulphur, and Mercury is the life of Sulphur ( 52).

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For the most part, this Mercury is dominated by salt, fixed in its corporeal
form and bearing the indelible stamp of simplistic materiality and limitation. Here we see that there is no question of materiality as something
fundamentally different from Spirit; the two are always inexorably intertwined. Mercury is not simply spiritual and salt material; rather, these
represent the orientation of something that is always simultaneously both
spiritual and material. The aim of magical practice as it pertains to the
body of light is to liberate this body from its lower form.
While I intend to focus primarily on the Western tradition here, the
body of light does appear in Eastern traditions as well. Parallels to both
the theory and the practices that lead to the formation of the body of light
can be found in Yoga, Taoism, and Buddhism. We see this particularly in
the emphasis on the heart as the seed and source of the spiritual body.
Luc Benoist, in his summary of the Gunonian corpus entitled The Esoteric Path, notes that according to the Chinese this [spiritual heart] is the
embryo of the immortal one (31). The idea of not only a spiritual heart,
but an entire spiritual body, is one that recurs within Oriental traditions
in a number of forms, some of which do not parallel the idea of the body
of light in the Western tradition. On the other hand, some are described
in such similar terms that it is hard to imagine that a singular phenomenon is not being described. In Mahayana Buddhism, we find detailed
descriptions of the body of transformation, designated by the term
nirmanakaya, which can stand for both to the physical body and the body
through which one achieves enlightenment (Evola, 2001, 200). Certain
basic notions of Buddhism also dovetail with Deleuze and Guattaris ideas
regarding the pre-subjective quality of the BwO. Again, Benoist writes
even the individual self has no essential reality; it is only the temporary
meeting place of changing influences (67). If in fact we can link the BwO
and the principle of the body of light or spiritual body, this Buddhist notion may prove an interesting juncture.
Meads text, which we have already characterized as one of the most
important sources for understanding the subtle body within Western
esotericism, examines a number of variations on the idea of the body
of light and its development from an historical perspective, identifying
it in its guises as the spirit-body, the radiant body and the Gnostic
Christian resurrection-body. In each case, what he is describing is the
body of the initiate that is either created or liberated through a series of
arduous practices or trials. It is through this body that the initiate has
contact with the spiritual world, and can thus act within that sphere. In
one sense, the body of light is always present as that which vivifies the
material body, just as Spirit enlivens all things within the material Cosmos.
As Mead puts it, all things in the Cosmos are made quick by Spirit (39).

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Similarly, the ground of the material body cannot be something material,

but is something incorporeal that gives the material body its form: the
material body is formed on the basis of something nonmaterial. Again, to
quote Mead, this ground is the spirituous body (53). Mead describes a
subtle body that is created through a series of practices that seem unique
to the initiate. When referring to this body of light, Mead lists some of
the terms are used to identify it across varying traditions: the celestial
or luciform body, or organon of light, the augoeides or astroeides, as it was
called by our philosophers (34). The spiritual body or vesture of the
soul (Mead, 57) is precisely what distinguishes the initiated from the
profane. Especially when referring to the body of resurrection--unique to
those who will not suffer the second deathMead states that the righteous
will undergo a resurrection of the body of the righteous, only this body
is to be a garment of light, and those who possess it are to be angelic (92)
It is interesting to note that Mead and another great commentator on the
body of light, Julius Evola, both connect the astral and resurrection bodies in much the same way, and therefore powers such as astral travel or
projection are intimately linked to the resurrection body (Evola, 1995,156).
Julius Evolas work with the UR Group in the late 1920s in Italy
(Evola, 2001, xi) was oriented primarily toward developing and practicing
techniques that would lead to the development of the body of light and
the acquisition of magical power.1 Evola (writing under the pseudonym
Ea) and another member of the UR Group, Giovanni Colazza (whose
articles are signed with the pseudonym Leo) (ibid., xxv, xxvii) provided
the most explicit references to the formation of the body of light. The name
of the organization is explicitly tied to both the kundalini and to the body
of light; the formation or liberation of the subtle body was at the center
of their attempts to generate and harness magical power. (ibid., 202). It is
mainly through Evolas writings that we discover the ultimate goal and
hermetic elements of the body of light.
The formation of the body of light is not an end unto itself. Rather,
it is a means to acquiring a variety of magical powers, and is the source
of--or the possibility of action within--the sphere of spirit. In fact, Evola
says of the body of light that one might say that it is made of consciousness and power (ibid., 199). Only through the development of the subtle
body is it possible for the magician or initiates to experience the freedom
to act in the world, which is the hallmark of the sorcerer or thaumaturge.
By mastering the subtle energies, wide vistas of activity are opened
up to the magician. Evola states that in the formation of the subtle body
the consciousness of the body is transported into the full expression of
those energies by which the body lives (ibid., 155). If he makes use of
this life energy, nothing is impossible for the magician: no law, custom

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or dictum is binding upon him. The initiate is at this point an Adeptus

Exemptus, the Adept Without, exempt even from the law of karma, from
the law of cause and effect. Even in the early stages of the development of
the subtle body, there is a profound feeling of freedom that is concomitant
with the return to the material world from the journeys that the astral
body undergoes. Colazza writes that once the relationship with our
body is reestablished, we will feel free and mobile within it. This is the
birth of the so-called sense of the subtle body (ibid., 63). It is not only
the 20th-century Italian sorcerers of the UR Group who understand the
body of light as a structure and source of personal power. Mead too writes
that the spiritual body was a glory, a body of power (99). While at
first glance it may seem that these practices have much in common with
meditative or contemplative practices, Evola is adamant that the goal of
the formation of the body of light is not merely enlightenment for its own
sake, but for use. He warns the potential adept not to fall into passive
mystic-ecstatic states (1995,117).
Two powers closely associated with the creation of the body of light
are astral travel and the practice of immortality. Mead emphasizes the
former, associating it with the revelatory journeys that form the basis of
so much magical practice, for example in the case of Jewish merkabah visions in the Book of Revelation, and Ezekiels wheels within wheels. He
writes that the subtle vehicle leaves and returns to the body in certain
mystic experiences (61). It would seem that in order to experience these
vision quests, it is necessary to have a body capable of traveling among
these realms. Evola, on the other hand emphasizes immortality, which
seems more in keeping with his affinity for the concept of conditional
immortality, wherein the survival of the soul after death is not a given,
but dependent upon certain magical actions and knowledge. Probably the
best-known example of conditional immortality is found in the Egyptian
Book of the Dead, a manual to prepare the soul of the deceased for the trials
and obstacles that would devour it. This is in marked contrast to Christian
and Platonic notions of the immortality of the soul. In particular, within
Christianity, the soul must be immortal so that it can receive punishment
or reward after death. According to Evolas system of conditional immortality, the vast majority of people will simply dissolve after death; only the
initiate, the one who has formed a body of light, is capable of surviving
death and experiencing immortality. In the Corpus Hermeticum, the initiate announces that [I] have clothed myself in a body that does not die
(Evola, 1995, 146). Only the creation of an appropriate body of light offers
the initiate the possibility of real survival after death (Evola, 2001, 196).
The body of light is formed by undergoing specific initiatory practices. There is within the literature no clear consensus on whether the body

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of light is something that is formed or liberated; whether it is something

that is created in the initiatic practices that the candidate undergoes or
something that is already present and is empowered and loosed from the
bonds of the material body. By making use of certain mystical disciplines
our subtle body maybe awakened to consciousness (Evola, 2001, 60).
It seems fair to say that whether the subtle or spiritual body is created or
liberated really amounts to the same thing.
Given that one of the powers attached to the acquisition of a body
of light is the experience of immortality, it follows that initiatic death
is one of the means by which the spiritual body is formed. In almost
every initiatic tradition, there is some rite of passage that is analogous
to physical death, representing the death of the profane personality and
the rebirth of the adept. The death and resurrection ritual of the third
degree of Freemasonry, the mythologies of the slain God, the image of
Christian Rosenkreutzs tomb, even the symbolism of baptism all point
to this fundamental initiatory process. Evola says in this regard that he
who really wants to live must first die (2001, 198). He writes that the
starting point, technically speaking is the state of nakedness realized
through the initiatic death and then transferred from extra-bodily states
to the earthly state of the initiate (ibid., 201). Through meditative and
dream practices, the limitations of the material body on the spiritual body
are slowly whittled away. The initiate learns to live in the subtle body
and uses it to empower the physical one. The practice of control over
sleep is a significant part of this, since sleep is analogous to death. In the
dream world, we live in the astral body. [A]t the breaking of the chains
of every bodily thing in the state of sleep it [the heart, the ground of the
body of light] becomes light itself (ibid., 127). By assuming control over
those dreams, we begin to live in the body of light while still in the waking
state. However, in order to do this, the spiritual body must be purified.
Mead emphasizes the importance of certain moral practices along with
the meditative work that goes to form the body of light. Together with
the discipline of virtue and the recovery of truth he [the candidate] shall
also be diligent in the purification of his radiant body, which the oracles
also called the subtle vehicle of the soul (Mead, 65). These disciplines
lead to the purifications of vapors (ibid., 50) that allow the subtle body
to act unhindered by any force either internal or external. Colazza gives
a very specific practice: the body of light is attained by experiencing
the head to be removed from and above us, almost as if it were external
to us (Evola, 2001, 61). One must train oneself to experience the body
of light as something connected to, yet different from the material body.
The alchemical tradition as well speaks of the way in which the body
of light is liberated from its maternal prison. Alchemy as understood by
the UR Group and many others is never about material transmutation, but
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rather about spiritual and psychic transformation. The symbolic language

of the hermetic tradition points to the ways in which the gross, leaden
forces of materiality may be transformed into spiritual, golden power.
The spirit is characterized by the lunar and mercurial force (Evola,
1995, 44) that is unbounded and not determined in advance by any molar
qualifications. The spiritual body or the body of light is watery, mercurial,
protean. It has not been fixed; it is still volatile, open to all possibilities-nothing can limit it. The watery body derives from the Word of God or
the heavenly Sophia (symbols equivalent to the heavenly Waters) (ibid.,
156). The purpose of alchemical transformation is to make oneself spiritual, to make oneself infinitely flexible, infinitely adaptable, unlimited.
Within the alchemical tradition itself, there are differing paths to the
creation of the body of light, with no single way held out as superior to
all others. One distinction that can be made is between the wet path and
the dry path. The dry path is the path of asceticism, characterized within
the alchemical tradition by the use of nitre. By disciplining the material
body, the spiritual body or life principle may be released. The weakening
of the material pole allows the spiritual pole to become dominant. On
the other hand, the wet path is characterized by the use of Cinnabar or
Vinegar. This more active path operates through empowering the spiritual
body so that it may overcome the limitations of materiality (Evola, 1995,
115). The former generally corresponds to the idea of the body of light as
something preexistent that is liberated or freed; the latter to the idea that
the body of light is something that is created or constructed.
The whole range of ideas concerning the subtle body or the body of
light points toward the formation of a vehicle wherein the possibilities of
action become limitless. Potentialities, intensities and flows are allowed to
take their own courses without being predetermined by physical, moral,
or karmic law. This bears a marked similarity to Deleuze and Guattaris
concept of the BwO, which when properly developed, opens up the field
of agency in profound and potentially startling ways.
Deleuze and Guattari situate their chapter How to Make Oneself
a Body without Organs by association with Antonin Artauds declaration of the war on the organs, November 28, 1947 (Deleuze & Guattari,
150). This is a battle cry of antinomianism. As Deleuze and Guattari say,
The enemy is the organism (158). The BwO is a way of experiencing the
world that is not determined in advance by any system of lawfulness. It
is a body of freedom, free even from the determination of the dichotomy
between freedom and determinism. In the process of making a BwO, one
experiences oneself no longer as a molar person but rather as a molecular
event, a smooth plane in which intensities and flows pass without restriction or limitation.

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The image of a body systematized and territorialized by a determinate system in which every part, every organ plays an appointed,
predetermined role permeates modern culture. Challenges are reappropriated, co-opted and confined within the system of organs. It is against
this image, this confinement, that Deleuze and Guattari contrast the BwO.
As they say, to the strata as a whole, the BwO opposes disarticulation
experimentation nomadism (159). The world is no longer experienced
as a lawfully determined system, as a cosmos, but rather as a chaos of
possibility liberated from the construction of laws systematically imposed
by capital and its allied systems of power.
Concomitant with this liberation is a sense of joy or pleasure that
comes with the opening of possibilities. Deleuze and Guattari describe
it as having achieved a state in which desire no longer lacks anything
(156). This does not mean that all desires have been satisfied, since that
would be a different kind of emptiness. Rather, desire itself becomes
desirable. Desire is not simply a lack to be filled, but itself a positive
intensity. The authors describe it as a joy that is imminent to desire as
if the desire were filled by itself and its contemplation, a joy that implies
no lack or impossibility. (155). Turning back for a moment to Evola, in
a description that seems to apply perfectly to the BwO, he writes these
bodies are not other bodies, but rather other ways to live that which
is commonly understood as a body (2001, 196). This new way of living,
this new way of experiencing the world is an inherently joyful one, full
of gaiety, ecstasy and dance (Deleuze & Guattari, 150). The making of
the BwO is an act that transforms our way of engaging and living in a
world. Nevertheless, it is not easy, nor is it without pitfalls.
Inasmuch as the BwO represents the positive liberation of human
agency within both the personal and the social sphere, there are dangers
present in making such a body. Deleuze and Guattari identify a number of
forms of the BwO that are either empty or cancerous--negative, diseased,
corrupted forms. The kind of far-reaching freedom that comes with making oneself a BwO is not without risks and dangers. The examples they
give are the hypochondriac body, paranoid body, schizo body, drugged
body, and masochist body (150). There are many opportunities for the
process to go wrong. There is always the danger in any drastic approach
to human agency that the dismantlement of strata, the erasure of deeply
ingrained structures leaves one paralyzed, unable to act; there is the risk
that one will empty out the BwO rather than filling it with possibilities
(152). The practice must never be purely one of destruction. Deleuze
and Guattari describe those who go astray as having emptied themselves
of their organs instead of looking for the point at which they are patiently
and momentarily dismantling the organization of the organs we call the

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organism (161). Even within the field of wild experimentation and destratification, you have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform
each dawn (160).
So what then is the value of this practice? Why should we run the
risk of making a BwO? Deleuze and Guattari themselves say staying
stratified is not the worst that can happen (161). The answer is empowerment, with the emphasis on the word power. Our experience of the
world and our ability to act within it become increasingly defined by molecularity, increasing our options by failing to restrict them to recognized
or recognizable patterns. The BwO is unique, unrepeatable, not simply
the result of a predetermined set of causes. When we fail to suppress and
begin to recognize those possibilities that lie outside of the sphere of molar
self-similarity, anything becomes possible for us. The very category of
the impossible can become our chosen sphere of action.2 The romantic
ideal is a process of theosis, becoming God, identifying oneself with the
storm and the lightning and the flood. The romantic hero is unconquerable. Deleuze and Guattari recognize this parallel when they comment
that a freeing of the molecular was already found in romantic matters
of expression (346). To make oneself a BwO is precisely to take on this
power of the romantic hero. In making oneself a BwO, one identifies with
the potential totality of all BwOs, the plane of consistency (157). In this
sense, the BwO is something cosmic, something universal, something
transpersonal. The BwO cannot be restricted to any particular identity,
property or ownership. However, we are still locked into the main problem of this paper: what do these two bodies have to do with each other?
What progeny comes from their congress?
In describing both the body of light and the BwO, I have focused
on those elements and characteristics that I think draw the two together,
and certain similarities are immediately obvious. In fact the subtle body
is described by several sources as lacking internal structure, and sometimes explicitly as having no organs. Mead cites the patristic tradition in
emphasizing the uselessness of organic structure for spiritual endeavors:
What, Origen begins by asking, is the use, in the resurrection, of a body
of flesh, blood, sinews and bones, of limbs and organs? (Mead, 84). The
subtle body as a spiritual reality cannot be reduced to the mechanical or
systematic. Evola states this in particularly strong terms, writing the
immortal body is first of all a simple body, not composite (2001, 198; my
emphasis). Despite its connection with the heart or the cardiac center, the
subtle body according to Mead is not provided with organs (50). As with
the BwO, the orientation moves from the directional to the dimensional.
Deleuze and Guattaris description of the BwO is not of a spiritual
phenomenon in the religious or even theological sense-- something that

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is spiritual over and against something material, or somehow purely

spiritual. When we think of the BwO as the plane of consistency or smooth
plane over which intensities flow, we are using terminology that bears
a marked similarity to descriptions of spiritual unity given within the
religious tradition. It is something prior to and infinitely greater than
the individual. Mead might well be describing the smooth plane aspect
of the BwO when he calls the body of light nothing less than the interior economy of the world soul (9). Both a body of light and a BwO are
necessary preconditions of our experience of the world. As Deleuze and
Guattari write, you cant desire without making one (149). Like the
body of light, it can be seen as something already present, but in need
of liberation. It is the fundamental substratum of identity--that which
is before what I recognize as myself. It is something spiritual that has
become rigidified and sclerotic, thus becoming understood as a merely
material thing. As Evola describes it in alchemical terms, in the petrification of the spiritual world created by the bodily senses, in the breaking
of contact, in perception conditioned by the dualistic law of I-not-I it
is the power of salt that operates (1995, 45). It should be noted that it
is not petrification that makes a thing material, but rather petrification
that prevents us from understanding the material thing in its spiritual
potentiality. When it can be freed, we have the possibility of becoming
greater than ourselves. Neither the subtle body nor the BwO is simply a
mirror or double of the physical body, nor does it belong to the physical
body. Deleuze and Guattari point out that the BwO is more originary than
our sense of me. It is not my BwO; instead the me is on it, or what
remains of me, unalterable and changing in form, crossing thresholds
(161). The BwO is prior to organism and subjectivity. They describe it as,
using a symbol that ultimately represents the radix of spirit, the full egg
before the extension of the organism (153). Mead describes the body of
light in almost identical terms, calling it, the source of every possibility
of embodiment (101). A full BwO becomes a totality in which the functions previously performed by systematized organs are performed by the
whole because there is nothing other than the whole. Deleuze and Guattari
seem to be describing both the means by which one makes a BwO and also
the result of those practices when they write that it becomes possible to
see through your skin, breathe with your belly (151). Mead again cites
Origen in a parallel passage: in that spiritual body the whole of us will
see, the whole hear, the whole serve as hands, the whole as feet (86).3
In neither the BwO nor the body of light is there a hierarchy of functions
and operations allotted to specific parts according to a pre-given schema.
The schools of thought that give rise to the concepts of both the body
of light and the BwO seem to share an understanding of the relationship

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between spirit and matter that is in stark contrast to the Platonic metaphysics that informs most philosophy and magical practices. Matter and spirit
must be understood as contiguous. For Deleuze and Guattari, the distinction between matter and spirit is best understood in molecular terms;
the difference between matter and spirit is one of intensity, rather than a
structural opposition. Matter and spirit are not two separate individuals,
but exist along a range of intensity wherein we understand matter as solidified or fixed spirit, and spirit as rarified matter. In this, we understand
a single individual in its material aspect as always already spiritualized.
Given the traditional milieu from which most practices concerning the
body of light spring, this might appear to be more of a contrast, suggesting
that these two phenomena are not so closely linked as we had hoped to
imagine. However, looking at the alchemical tradition in particular, we
see that the rigid distinction between spirit and matter becomes distinctly
flexible. Evola refers to the body as a completed, organized, and stable
nature [which] is a fixed thing as opposed to the instability of psychic
principles or the volatility attributed to spirits (1995, 37) and gives this
contiguity of the body and soul a central place when he writes that in
any case, the formula--to release the corporeal and to embody the noncorporeal as we have said, is a recurrent and central theme of the whole
tradition (ibid., 157). Mead is even more explicit: for him the subtle body
is of the material order, but of a more dynamic nature than his physically
sensible frame (3). Ultimately, there is not spirit and matter, but rather
frozen waters and flowing waters: forces individualized and fixed and
forces in the elemental state (Evola, 1995, 36).
The achievement of (or return to) this elemental state is the object
of the other without organs and of the body of light. Philosophically,
this unfreezing is nothing other than the emergence of a real concept of
freedom--in line with what Schelling refers to as the feeling of freedom
[that] is ingrained in every individual (1992), which cannot be accounted
for by Augustinian notions of freedom as the turn to or from God or the
Kantian notion of freedom as rational autonomy. Schellings precursor
in this, to whom he acknowledges the most profound debt, is Spinoza,
for whom freedom is understood as indifference in our approach to all
things and the ability to face all possibilities with equanimity. It may seem
ironic that the fatalistic Spinoza should be the model of radical freedom;
however, it is first in Spinoza that we see the idea of freedom as absolute
compossibility. Deleuze and Guattari recognize this fundamental relationship and write that all BwOs pay homage to Spinoza. The BwO is the
field of immanence of desire, the plane of consistency specific to desire
(154). Whether understood in philosophical or esoteric or magical terms,
the purpose of the formation of these bodies is to expand ones range of

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possibilities and allow for a wider field of action, action that runs the risk
or opens the possibility of open defiance to the socially and economically
limited sphere of the possible or acceptable.
The magical practice of the body of light falls well within the category of traditional magic that reaches back into shamanic and priestly
practices despite its seemingly intellectualized and formalized structure.
The sorcerer, witch-doctor, shaman or hoodoo always stands in opposition
to the law of the tribe or community. The magus, by virtue of his power,
is exempted from law--even from the law of cause and effect, producing phenomena by the power of will. In fact, this antinomian element
is one of the defining characteristics of the initiate: one can point to the
accusations of libertinism that were leveled at the ancient Gnostics and
the initiatory rites in which the Templars were said to have participated,
that included denying Christ and spitting on the cross (Spence, 406). In
fact, it seems that violation of community law is both the method and the
result of initiatory work. In this sense, the development of the body of
light parallels the making of the BwO in that it opens up possibilities not
determined in advance by law and custom. In doing so, both allow for
engagements with our experience of the world that are not defined by
our logo-nomo-centric paradigms. This radically undermines systems of
power and social organization both in its practice and in its results, even
if those results verge into the realms of so-called perversion, madness
and criminality.
Again--and it bears repeating--the goal and the method of both the
BwO in the body of light (and arguably all initiatory action) are one and
the same. Evola tells us that we must embody the spirit and spiritualize the body in one and the same act. (1995, 156). There can be no easy
or ready-made distinction between means and ends; attainment is the
method. The focus in both cases is always upon action and practice.
If the end is the radical freedom to which we have referred, then the
means is the practical dismantlement of the obstacles to our liberation,
whether they be understood as physical, mental, or spiritual. From the
philosophical and psychological perspective that Deleuze and Guattari
take up, this is understood as a dismantling of the self: the BwO is what
remains when you take everything away (151). Evola, however, speaks
of it in remarkably similar terms when he writes that the way leading
to it lies in becoming free from all real and possible determinations, from
conquest of conquest, from nudity to nudity. (2001, 197). But as we
said regarding the negative or empty BwO, it is not enough simply to
dismantle our hollow out the self. The practice is ultimately one of building a process of regeneration (Mead, 31). The set of practices that can
lead to the formation of a body of light or a BwO require one to re-create

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ones body, to retrace the obscure and mystical process in virtue of which
it organized itself [initially] (Evola, 2001, 198). The formation of this new
body that is open to all forms of activity and therefore radically powerful
takes place through a process of destruction and rebuilding, understood
in traditional esotericism as purification. This purification transforms
the fixed body into its more elemental state so that it might reform itself
along its own trajectory of desire. Hierocles tells us practically that the
object of the whole of the purificatory degrees was nothing else than
the restoration of this quintessential embodiment to its original state
(Mead, 64). However, this never happens simply through contemplation
or through mystical union with God. Nor does it happen as a result of
external grace or through the will of God or the gods. Moreover, it is certainly more than simply a philosophical construct; it is not at all a notion
or a concept but a practice, a set of practices (Deleuze & Guattari, 150).
Ultimately, though, no prescribed set of practices can guarantee the
formation either of a body of light or a BwO. If the two phenomena are
linked by any essential characteristic, it is that they are absolutely unique to
the individual. Perhaps this is why Deleuze and Guattari remain so vague
in their methodology for the formation of a BwO. The de-territorialization
of the psyche or the liberation of the mercury from the domination of salt
is not something that can be accomplished simply by following a standardized procedure. Alchemy has no cookbook; psychology has no assembly
manual. What works, what is effective in de-stratifying the body in one
instance, can be disastrous in another. The path that leads to liberation
and power for one magus may be an utter failure for another or even lead
to madness or death. This is the reason that so much esoteric and magical
literature insists on the necessity of training with a master, or receiving
hand-to-hand initiation. The danger always looms that one who is too
deeply steeped in theory, who learns magic as from a textbook, is liable to
misconstrue its meanings and will be unable to unlock them without the
proper key. The danger of this approach is that it shuts off possibilities for
experimentation, and throws up obstacles for desire. On the other hand,
magical work is practical, and uses specific techniques and prescriptions,
formulas and rites to achieve its goals and aims. It is on this point that I
think there is room to critique Deleuze and Guattari, who in their desire
to maintain the radical uniqueness of each BwO, failed to provide even
the most rudimentary guides along the path to its construction.
We should not be overly hasty to identify these two bodies, however.
There are significant differences, and certain dangers in drawing too close
a parallel. The most obvious is indulging in a kind of dualism that stands
in stark contrast to the main thrust of Deleuzean thinking. Rather, the
danger lies in seeing that dualism as having an ontological status, rather

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than as a mechanism for destratification. The literature surrounding the

body of light is strongly dualistic--either in a philosophical sense in which
the mind or soul is understood as radically different from and superior to
the body, or in the Manichaean sense, in which the body is seen in a purely
negative light. To take either of these too much to heart in our attempts
to construct a body of light would serve only to re-instantiate the limitations that both the body of light and the BwO seek to overcome. The very
notion of the body of light is embedded in a tradition which, whatever its
orientation toward mainstream Christianity or onto-theological metaphysics, still retains vestiges of its contact with those powerful philosophical
streams. Attempts to extract it from this embeddedness are likely to be
met with hostility on the part of esotericists and magicians. However, it
seems preferable to understand the sources of ones practices, without
necessarily taking them to be truth. Put simply, the map is not the territory; the practices and technologies deployed for the construction of the
body of light are precisely that, and nothing more.
Similarly, we must be careful about terminology, including transcendence and immortality which play a significant role in the rhetoric
surrounding the body of light. If we are to use these notions in the context
of the BwO, we must not think of transcendence as a moving beyond
the body, desire, or politics into some purely spiritual realm by means
of asceticism. The same is true of immortality, which should not be
understood as the survival of the individuated ego after the death of the
body. Immortality is understood, at least in the alchemical tradition, as the
experience of eternity while still alive. This is reflected in the pronouncement of twentieth-century esotericist Aleister Crowley, upon achieving
the grade of Master of the Temple: V.V.V.V.V. (Vi Veri Vniversum
Vivus Vici).4 If we are to use metaphysically informed traditions in
understanding Deleuze, we must avoid these terminological pitfalls. In
dealing with the question of the BwO, terminological carelessness can
lead to constructing a truly cancerous body.
With these caveats in mind, I ultimately do believe that the technologies associated with the formation of the body of light can be used
effectively by the Deleuzian to accomplish the construction of a BwO that
allows for both individual and political action that is unrestricted by preestablished norms and structures. Certain allied practices in fact seem
deeply Deleuzean their intent and form. I give here but one example.
Aleister Crowley prescribes the following practice in one of his instructions to his students, entitled Liber III vel Jugorum:
By some device, such as the changing of thy ring from one finger to
another, create in thyself two personalities, the thoughts of one being
within entirely different limits from that of the other, the common
ground being the necessities of life. (429)5

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This seems very much in keeping with the practice that Deleuze
and Guattari are gesturing toward in both Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand
Plateaus. All of the practices associated with the formation of the body of
light are oriented toward identifying oneself not so much with the physical body and its ego matrix, but rather with something transpersonal and
more primordial than the individual or the organism. By embracing this
aspect of the body of light (while avoiding the pitfalls mentioned above),
we are given a useful set of tools for understanding ourselves and our
actions in a less stratified way, and can hope to experience ourselves in
the de-territorialized, molecular way that Deleuze and Guattari propose.
Likewise, I believe that the thinking around the BwO can be of use
to those engaged in magical or esoteric practice. It gives us a language
not embedded in a theological or philosophical tradition, which would
be counterproductive to the kind of work we are trying to accomplish.
It also suggests a relationship to political and social life, often lacking
in the overly individualistic methodologies of sorcerers and magicians.
Furthermore, much of magic depends upon the psychological and mental
state of the practitioner. Since many understand magic as volitional manipulation of ones own psychology in order to produce desired results,
then an understanding of the psychological viewpoint most effective for
this can only make magical practice more effective. Preconceived notions,
theories, and worldviews can often be obstacles to esoteric work, and much
of the purificatory and initiatory practice of the tradition is intended to
remove these sorts of obstacles. If we can smooth out our own psyche by
using practices oriented towards the creation of a BwO, we accomplish
much the same thing. By looking at magical or esoteric work through the
lens of schizo-analysis, we can use the Western metaphysical tradition
as a toolkit, rather than experiencing it as a received and unquestionable
system.6 We should pause before dismissing out of hand the whole of the
Platonic or metaphysical tradition, which includes technologies that can
be deployed for liberatory purposes. Even Oedipal structures can form
part of the toolkit of the BwO, and there is no reason not to turn these
drives against themselves by reading them in a more nuanced fashion.
Ultimately, I believe that the writings surrounding the body of light
can offer us a more complete, or at least more fully suggestive set of technologies for building a BwO of a particular sort. Such writings may assist
us in overcoming obstacles to modes of desire that prevent or curtail free
action in the individual, political and cosmic spheres. They may merely
add to the repertoire of Deleuzian schizo-analysis, or may become a vital
tool for opening us up to a vastly wider arena of compossibility.
The Pennsylvania State University

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Works Cited

Benoist, L. The Esoteric Path. Trans. R. Waterfield, Trans. Wellingborough, UK: Crucible, 1988.
Boehme, J. The Signature of All Things. Cambridge, UK: James Clarke Company, 1987.
Crowley, A. Magick in Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Dover, 1976.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. B. Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Evola, J. The Hermetic Tradition. Trans. E. E. Rhemus. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1995.
-----. Introduction to Magic. Ed. M. Moynihan, trans. G. Stucco. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2001.
Mead, G. R. The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in the Western Tradition. London, UK: John M.
Watkins, 1919.
Schelling, F. Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom. Trans. J. Gutmann. Peru,
IL: Open Court, 1992.
Spence, L. The Encyclopedia of the Occult. London, UK: Bracken Books, 1988.

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Notes

It is very much in keeping with Evolas sense of this word to think it in terms of puissance rather than pouvoir. Despite Evolas fascist political leanings, his sense of both
action and power seems strongly more liberatory than oppressive. It would be easy
to simply dismiss Evola because of his political orientation and activities at the end of
the Second World War while employed by the Nazi Ahnerbe. However, I think that this
would be unwise, as his writings on esoteric matters are profoundly insightful and offer
real liberatory potential.
There is a certain parallel here to the romantic notion of the aorgisches to draw a term
from Hlderlin. By this he means that which typifies Nature understood as a chaos,
something spiritual and therefore unconstrained. This stands in diametrical opposition
to Hegels understanding of Nature as purely mechanistic, the sphere of causation and
repetition, radically distinct from the world of Spirit and freedom.
Despite the use of the term whole here, which suggests a structure very different from
the BwO, which cannot really be thought of as a whole, I suggest that what Origen is
claiming here is that the body of light is conceived in such a way that actions or functions
are not relegated to any particular organ or part, which is much closer to the conception
of Deleuze and Guattari.
This can be translated as I have, by truth, while living, conquered the universe. It
refers to Crowleys claim that he had achieved a state of absolute liberation without the
heretofore assumed necessary step of casting off the physical body. This living victory
may be thought of in opposition to Christs victory, which requires his death, and which
manifests itself in his risen body, which is fundamentally different from his physical
frame.
I am indebted to Juliana Eimer for her suggestion of this as an especially appropriate
reference as well as many other insights here.
Certainly so-called Chaos Magick attempts to do this explicitly. The pantheon or
religious system that makes use of rituals and rites in this form of magic are adopted
on an ad hoc basis, neither taking them as absolutes for ones personal work, nor even
attributing to them any real validity.

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