Abstract
This chapter argues that we should think of Aldous Huxley as a political theologian, but that in order to do so we need to take literary aesthetics seriously with respect to political discourse and crises in liberal democracy. This is an echo of the broader argument about aesthetics in Chap. 1. Largely focusing on Huxley’s work, there is a digression on the concept of “soma” and an argument that academic interest in soma codes aspirations toward liberalism and globalization that are still entrenched within a European phantasy structure. Returning to Huxley, it argues for a deeper reading of Huxley’s works to show how he uses characters to display aspects of metempsychosis and incarnation. Such readings offer deliberative insight into current crises.
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- 1.
Peter Manly Scott, Future Perfect? God, Medicine and Humanity, New York: Continuum, 2006, 77.
- 2.
Nicolas Langlitz, Neuropsychedelia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013, 3–4.
- 3.
Ibid., 4.
- 4.
Aldous Huxley, The Complete Essays, London: Ivan R. Dee, 2001.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means . New Brunswick: Transaction, 2012, xvii.
- 7.
Ibid., xviii.
- 8.
Ibid., xxi.
- 9.
Ibid., xxii.
- 10.
William M. Curtis, “Rorty’s Liberal Utopia and Huxley’s Island .” Philosophy and Literature 35 (2011): 91–103.
- 11.
The documentation of this source is flawed on YouTube. It is not Watts interviewing Huxley. I cite is because it is electronically available, easily accessible and clearly Huxley himself speaking. “Huxley Interviewed: Part 1” youtube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oInatjbMkw4
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Aldous Huxley, The Complete Essays, London: Ivan R. Dee, 2001, 172.
- 14.
Mitch Horowitz, Occult America: The Secret History of Hoe Mysticism Shaped America. New York: Bantam 2009, 107.
- 15.
David Dunaway, Huxley in Hollywood. New York: Harper & Row, 1989, 2.
- 16.
Ibid., 14.
- 17.
David Dunaway, “Introduction,” Eyeless in Gaza. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009, vii.
- 18.
Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009, 68.
- 19.
Herodotus, the Histories, New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004, 2.182.
- 20.
Ibid., 3.40
- 21.
Ibid., 3.122.
- 22.
Ibid., 183.
- 23.
Ibid., 3.125.
- 24.
Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009, 9.
- 25.
Ibid., 10.
- 26.
Ibid., 79.
- 27.
Ibid., 89.
- 28.
Ibid., 96.
- 29.
Ibid., 106.
- 30.
Ibid., 107.
- 31.
Ibid., 109.
- 32.
Ibid., 109.
- 33.
Ibid., 110.
- 34.
Ibid., 343.
- 35.
Biswanath Mukhopadhyay, “Gita: The Song Celestial,” Journal of the Oriental Institute 41.1–2 (1991): 6.
- 36.
Ibid., 7.
- 37.
Ibid., 28.
- 38.
Ibid., 29.
- 39.
Jarrod L. Whitaker, “Does Pressing Soma Make You and Aryan? A Brief Review of susvi and asuvsi in the Rgveda.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft. 157.2 (2007): 417.
- 40.
Ibid., 425.
- 41.
Carl A. P. Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples and Clark Heinrich, The Apples of Apollo: Pagan Mysteries of the Eucharist . Durham: Carolina Academic P, 2001, 43.
- 42.
Huston Smith, “Historical Evidence: India’s Sacred Soma,” Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals. Ed. Huston Smith. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2000. 45–63.
- 43.
R. Gordon Wasson, Stella Kramrisch, Jonathan Ott and Carl A. P. Ruck, Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986, 33.
- 44.
Ibid., 16.
- 45.
J. R. Irvin, The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo- Christianity , Gnostic Media, 2008.
- 46.
James Arthur, Mushrooms and Mankind, San Diego: The Book Tree, 2000.
- 47.
John A. Rush, Editor, Entheogens and the Development of Culture (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books), 2013.
- 48.
Biswanath Mukhopadhyay, “Gita: The Song Celestial,” Journal of the Oriental Institute 41.1–2 (1991): 7.
- 49.
Huston Smith, “Historical Evidence: India’s Sacred Soma,” Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals. Ed. Huston Smith. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2000, 63.
- 50.
Carl A. P. Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples and Clark Heinrich, The Apples of Apollo: Pagan Mysteries of the Eucharist . Durham: Carolina Academic P, 2001, 23.
- 51.
Ibid., 43.
- 52.
Ibid., 41.
- 53.
Ibid., 69.
- 54.
Ibid., 211.
- 55.
Tzvi Abusch, “Sacrifice in Mesopotamia,” Sacrifice in Religious Experience. Ed. Albert I. Baumgarten. Boston: Brill, 2002, 46.
- 56.
Ibid., 45.
- 57.
Marvin W. Meyer’s The Ancient Mysteries, New York: HarperCollins, 1987, 10.
- 58.
Tzvi Abusch, “Sacrifice in Mesopotamia,” Sacrifice in Religious Experience. Ed. Albert I. Baumgarten. Boston: Brill, 2002, 45.
- 59.
Daniel Johannes Stokl, “The Christian Exegesis of the Scapegoat between Jews and Pagans,” Sacrifice in Religious Experience. Ed. Albert I. Baumgarten. Boston: Brill, 2002, 209.
- 60.
Ibid., 210.
- 61.
John P. Wright and Paul Potter, Eds. Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000, 7.
- 62.
Ibid., 7.
- 63.
Gundert , Beate. “Soma and Psyche in Hippocratic Medicine.” Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Ed. John P. Wright and Paul Potter. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000, 33.
- 64.
Ibid., 31–32.
- 65.
Ibid., 13–14.
- 66.
Ibid., 33.
- 67.
Heinrich von Staden, Heinrich, Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Ed. John P. Wright and Paul Potter. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000, 86.
- 68.
Ibid., 116.
- 69.
Wright, John P. and Paul Potter, Eds. Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000, 9.
- 70.
Azouvi , François. “Physique and Moral.” Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Ed. John P. Wright and Paul Potter. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000, 270.
- 71.
Carl Raschke, Fire and Roses: Postmodernity and the Thought of the Body. New York: SUNY Press, 1996, 120.
- 72.
Ibid., 130.
- 73.
Ibid., 156.
- 74.
David L. Spess, Soma: The Divine Hallucinogen (Rochester: Park Street Press, 2000), 92.
- 75.
Ibid., 161.
- 76.
Nicholas Murray, Aldous Huxley : A Biography, London: Abacus, 402.
- 77.
Scott J. Thompson, “From ‘Rausch’ to Rebellion,” http://www.wbenjamin.org/rausch.html
- 78.
Ibid.
- 79.
Arthur Herzog, “Who Enforces Utopia?” Nation 195.4 (1962): 74–75.
- 80.
Gorman Beauchamp, “Island: Aldous Huxley‘s Psychedelic Utopia.” Utopian Studies 1.1 (1990): 59–72.
- 81.
Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means , New Brunswick: Transaction, 2012, 8–9.
- 82.
Aldous Huxley, Island (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), 169.
- 83.
Ibid., 266.
- 84.
Ibid., 341.
- 85.
Ibid., 228.
- 86.
Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience. Ed. Michael Horowitz and Cynthia Palmer. Rochester: Park Street P, 1977, 246.
- 87.
Aldous Huxley, Island . New York: Harper Perennial, 2009, 43.
- 88.
Aldous Huxley, Time Must Have a Stop , (New York: Harper Perennial Classic, 1944), 276.
- 89.
Keith May, “Accepting The Universe The ‘Rampion-Hypothesis’ In Point Counter Point And Island,” Studies in The Novel 9.4 (1977): 418.
- 90.
Aldous Huxley, Island . New York: Harper Perennial, 2009, 216.
- 91.
Ibid., 219.
- 92.
Donald J. Watt, “Vision and Symbol in Aldous Huxley’s Island .” Aldous Huxley : A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Robert E. Kuehn. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974, 169.
- 93.
Aldous Huxley, Island (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), 139.
- 94.
Ibid., 140.
- 95.
Ibid., 262.
- 96.
Aldous Huxley, “Huxley Interviewed: Part 1.” YouTube. Posted June 6, 2011. Web. Dec. 12, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oInatjbMkw4
- 97.
Aldous Huxley, Island . New York: Harper Perennial, 2009, 217.
- 98.
Ibid., 202.
- 99.
Ibid., 205.
- 100.
Ibid., 208.
- 101.
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007, 129.
- 102.
Ibid., 135.
- 103.
Joshua Landy and Michael Saler, The Re- Enchantment of the World. Stanford, Stanford UP, 2009, 14.
- 104.
Aldous Huxley, “Introduction,” to Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, xvii–xviii.
- 105.
Leon Surette, The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and the Occult. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1993, 26.
- 106.
Ibid., xx.
- 107.
Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence. New York: Harper and Row, 1948, 137–38.
- 108.
Aldous Huxley’s Letters, 136–7, cited in Peter Washington, Madame Blavatsky ’s Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America. New York: Schocken, 1993.
- 109.
Of course, Aldous Huxley famously befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti, who was raised by Theosophists, though his departure from the group (or at least Annie Besant) remained amicable.
- 110.
Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization. San Francisco: Ignatius P, 2010, 52.
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Green, R.K. (2019). Aldous Huxley: The Political Theologian. In: A Transatlantic Political Theology of Psychedelic Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15318-2_7
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