Edited by Ausonia Calabrese

An introduction and glossary

What cannot be said will be weeped. (Sappho)

No literature review or reading list on the topic of mysticism can be written without a discussion of the challenge this undertaking presents. Indeed, mysticism poses a problem for historians and scholars, and has for a particularly long time. As a word, mysticism is thorny — over the two-thousand years of its life, it has accrued a number of sometimes contradictory, even pejorative, meanings. It is at times, as for Bookchin, a sort of fideism, or reliance on faith and superstition. At other times, it is a pursuance of the ambiguous “union with the divine.” And yet other times, it is synonymous with esotericism, the occult, or magic. All of these definitions — even Bookchin’s — contain a kernel of truth. Mysticism is an experience, it is a literary tradition; it is a way of life, it is a disposition towards subtle energies. At the same time, it is none of these things.

Mysticism is related intimately to the word mystery. They are children of the Greek word μυστήριον (mustḗrion), a secret, ultimately from μῡ́ω (mū́ō), literally “I shut.” So then, mysticism is concerned with the hidden, the unspoken. The word occult, from Latin occultus, similarly means “hidden.” Therefore, to speak of mystical currents in anarchism is to speak of hidden, secret things underlying the skin of anarchism.

But this is an overly-literal interpretation. The secret is not what can be spoken, but merely isn’t; this is a vulgar understanding. Rather it is the “great” secret: the secret that cannot be spoken. It is that which cannot be said, that which dwells in silence. To speak the secret is impossible.

It can be said that mysticism is concerned with what is not rather than what is. Anything that can be spoken is not the secret. The initiator of mystical theology in the west, Pseudo-Dionysius, describes the cataphatic method (positive way, via positiva) as an angel going down to Earth, the mundane; whereas the apophatic method (negative way, via negativa) as an angel going up to Heaven, the divine. For the theologian, he writes, the negative way is more apt, as God is what is better defined as what he is not, rather than what he is. Central to the negative way is the contradiction — the negation of the negation is not the positive, but something else entirely. The law of noncontradiction does not apply to these “mystical languages of unsaying.”

Instead of attempting the fool’s errand of delimiting a mystical anarchism or, laughably, an anarcho-mysticism — I believe it is better to introduce a syllabus for the interrogation of mystical themes in anarchism. Of course, I am guilty of attempting the former in the not-so-distant past. As a criteria for inclusion, I have tried to isolate those anarchist works which carry the thematics of silence, secrecy, contradiction, or the unspeakable; as well as those which discuss mysticism outright. As bookends, I have appended ample preliminary and secondary texts to provide important context for those unfamiliar. This is not a canon, nor is it intended to be. It is simply a reading list, none of the texts mentioned are authoritative. Many are named only in passing. However, it is intended to foster a greater anarchist engagement with mysticism.

I have not included some works which were suggested to me. These include The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, various works by Michael Henry, and the entire output of François Laruelle. To include Stirner, I feel, would be to beat a dead horse — who among us is not familiar with Stirner? — as for the others, I am not sufficiently familiar to properly vouch for them. I mention them here for posterity.

Further, I have attempted to give a wider overview of mysticism, both East and West. But this list does speak to my personal biases, and any potential reader should take this into account. I am most familiar with the Western mystery tradition, next with Madhyamaka. I have clear influence from the Kyoto School, of course. This list reflects my specialties in these areas. An important interstice to recognize here is the lack of Indigenous (including Black) writings. Though I consider myself of Indigenous descent, and my understanding of my own ancestral spirituality has greatly influenced my development both as a practitioner and as a scholar, I do not believe I can fairly speak for the traditions of oral cultures; or the Black anarchist and spiritual traditions. With this being said, Unknowable: Against an Indigenous Anarchist Theory by Klee Benally (Navajo) and No Selves To Abolish: Afropessimism, Anti-Politics and the End of the World by K. Aarons seem to be good starting points for those interested, though neither really discuss mysticism head-on; perhaps those more apt for this discussion can begin there.

Very well, I contradict myself. (Nietzsche)

Preliminary texts and sources

• On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts. Volume 1 & 2, edited by William Franke
  • An anthology of apophatic theology with translations of work from the classical period onwards, along with critical essays. The second edition continues with sources up to the contemporary epoch. It is an essential sourcebook for anyone interested in negativity and negation even more generally.
• Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, translated by Paul Rorem
  • Pseudo-Dionysius, or Pseudo-Denys, is the father of apophatic theology in Europe. A Platonizing Christian, i.e., one who injected the legacy of pagan philosophy into the budding Jesus movement, he safeguarded the Neoplatonic practice of negation by situating it within a persona appropriated from the New Testament. Thus he is called the Pseudo-Dionysius, as he wrote centuries after the “genuine” Dionysius is thought to have lived. His Mystical Theology, a tract not even 20 pages, made waves throughout all the mystic traditions of his time, waves that can still be felt today.
• Mystical Languages of Unsaying, by Michael A. Sells
  • A wonderful collection of essays that discuss with the philosophy of Western and Islamic apophatics, from Plotinus to Ibn’ Arabi and beyond. Prescient to the anarchist project, Sells locates the “anarchic moment” at the center of apophatic theology. Sells writes, “[t]he meaning event with apophatic language includes a moment that is nihilistic or ‘anarchic’ — without arche or first principle […] To explain away the anarchic moment is to turn apophatic theology into conventional theology.” Overall, it is a wonderful volume. Sells gives special attention to the Sufi mystic tradition, his specialty.
• The Heart Sutra, translated with commentary by Red Pine
  • Red Pine is a strange character. An American Buddhist monastic, he has translated a number of Asian religious works including the Tao Te Ching, and discussed here, the Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom, or simply the Heart Sutra. It is a very short, though dense, Mahayana text of fourteen Sanskrit lines written sometime before 649 AD. It discusses the Buddhist notion of emptiness, famously announcing: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Red Pine’s translation and commentary are deeply technical and very well-written, though I take some umbrage to his rhetoric. It is undeniable, however, that Red Pine is a scholar of great worth. On a less related note, the Heart Sutra has been put to music countless times. I am partial to Imee Ooi’s Sanskrit rendition as well as the Mandarin version heard at the very end of Wu-Tang Clan’s Life Changes.
• Neither Lord Nor Subject, translated by Etienne Balazs
  • An enigmatic figure of early China, Bao Jingyan was a mysterious Taoist author, who Etienne Balazs calls “China’s first political anarchist.” Taoism is certainly fashionable within anarchism today. Around a dozen recent essays discussing “Taoist anarchy” and similar topics can be read on The Anarchist Library. In Wolfi Landstreicher’s introduction to The Unique and Its Own, he even suggests that Stirner may have read “Buddhist, Taoist, and other Eastern writings.” Personally, while I welcome nuanced anarchist analysis of spiritual traditions, I find much of this sentiment to seem suspiciously orientalist. With that being said — Neither Lord Nor Subject certainly exudes an anarchic ethos. If any example of ancient writing can be called proto-anarchist, it is this one.
• The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu, translated by Burton Watson
  • Of course, one can not speak of Taoism in any capacity and ignore the great sage Master Chuang, second only to the divine Lao Tzu, who is traditionally described as his teacher. Chuang Tzu is perhaps the greatest expositor of Taoism, and anyone wanting to explore the anarchic impulse within Chinese philosophy will be wise to start with his body of work.
• The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic Gospels, translated by Marvin W. Meyer
  • Gnosticism, like Taoism, has been called a forerunner to anarchism. Émile Armand discusses the Gnostics briefly in The Precursors to Anarchism, while Jacques Lacarrière’s The Gnostics is rightfully considered a classic. Strangely, socialists and communists (even state communists!) have been similarly attracted. The Order of Sophianic Marxists released a tract entitled Marx, the Alchemist, which, quite annoyingly, talks at length about the alchemy of the “Gnostic/Hermetic” tradition. Such a strange bracketing! Matt Christman, who’s more infamous exploits I shall not name here, has amusingly described capitalism as a sort of demiurge, in clear opposition to genuine Gnostic archonology. For those with legitimate interests in Gnosticism, and who would prefer to be better read than these previously mentioned Marxists, this short compendium of four manuscripts is a lovely start. Marvin W. Meyer is a gifted translator, and he has gone to great lengths to expunge gendered language from his most recent translation of the Nag Hammadi library. On an unrelated note: the similar apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, not in this volume, is a true work of art. Jesus straight up wastes children. Literally — “[I]mmediately that child withered away.”

Anarchist and adjacent literature

• The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, by Keiji Nishitani

  • In particular, the chapter headed as Nihilism as Egoism: Max Stirner, as well as the one titled Ownness and Property-All and Nothing. Keiji Nishitani was a student of Heidegger and a member of the Kyoto School, a group of philosophers at the University of Kyoto who radically reinterpreted the relationship between East and West. Nishitani wrote at great lengths on nihilism — in particular, the capacity of nihilism to negate, and thus overcome, itself. His reading of Stirner is unique (pun intended) and essential.
    

• Silence, by John Zerzan
  • Say what you will of Zerzan — his writing is enjoyable at a purely aesthetic level. His essay entitled Silence is a more surface-level exploration of the concept, but interesting and important nonetheless. I definitely recommend it over Silence and Beyond by Tiqqun, which is practically unreadable.
• Green Nihilism or Cosmic Pessimism, by Alejandro de Acosta
  • It took great self-control to not fill this entire literature review with works by de Acosta. To post-left and anti-civilization anarchists, this essay is probably the most accessible, discussing black metal and Desert in the same breaths, discussing the “climatological mysticism” of Eugene Thacker and the black universe of François Laruelle.
• Immediatism, by Hakim Bey
  • I am at a loss at how I should introduce Hakim Bey. Certainly, if anyone is a “mystic-anarchist,” it is him. A polarizing and controversial character — an ardent defender of, say, Greek love — his Immediatism is indispensable, especially for its discussion of secret societies and mysticism more broadly.
• The Nihilist Abyss, by Federico Buono
  • Federico Buono is an Italian insurgent and ecstatic. The Nihilist Abyss is a quasi-psychological exploration of “nihilist delirium,” the total negation of personality. Buono is the closest to a mystic poet that anarchism has — “The sign does not affirm anything because it is nothingness that eradicates itself in a nihilist delirium, and the destructive chaos destabilizes the belonging and nullifies the nothingness.” Mystic deconstruction of the self peeks through when it is least expected.
• Gravity and Grace, by Simone Weil
  • Simone Weil was a bonafide anarchist-mystic, in a literal sense, as well as a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. She at once wrote on the abolition of all political parties and on her ecstatic visions which she experienced since her youth. A decidedly…odd character, she is a fertile ground for innovative readings, and her seemingly-strained history with Judaism (her heritage so to speak) has been discussed at length for its supposed relationship to her work, even being accused of anti-semitism by none other than Susan Sontag.

Academic and supplementary works

• Derrida and Negative Theology, edited by Harold Coward and Toby Foshay
  • Derrida is of interest to anarchists at least in a roundabout sense. Saul Newman has discussed Derrida’s “deconstruction of authority” at length, while John Zerzan has taken an opposite stance, writing that Derrida interprets silence as a nihilist enemy of thought (Zerzan’s piece is discussed above.) Ironically Derrida is consistently derided as a nihilist enemy of thought himself among analytic and rationalist philosophers. Whether or not Derrida lives up to these charges, he is essential to the modern study of apophatic theology, and of no little importance to the anarchist tradition.
• The Wisdom of the Beguines: The Forgotten Story of a Medieval Women’s Movement, by Laura Swan
  • The Beguines were an idiosyncratic movement of lay monastics, firmly outside of church authority, who provided women with an avenue for economic and social independence in a deeply patriarchal society. Frequently the target of attacks by church leaders, for centuries they quietly lived at beguinages, and produced some of the most lovely mystical writing of the medieval era. Marguerite Porete, burned at the stake as a heretic in 1310, was one of these Beguines, producing an erotic “autotheist” work entitled the Mirror of Simple Souls, which has survived to us this day. Laura Swan, a feminist scholar and nun, has provided a comprehensive history and analysis of this movement, though it leaves a bit wanting. It is certainly not an anarchist book, though parallels can definitely be drawn.
• Creation and Anarchy: The Work of Art and the Religion of Capitalism, by Giorgio Agamben
  • Giorgio Agamben is perhaps the most important contemporary interpreter of Foucault, as well as a political theologian and, in some ways, theorist of anarchy (though perhaps not an anarchist himself.) I found it necessary to include Agamben — he is the major critic of apophatic theology, arguing that it was originally used to ground the church’s hierarchy in a transcendent, ineffable ground. Indeed, it was Denys the Areopagite who coined both apophatic theology and the very word hierarchy! Central to this analysis is the symbol of the “empty throne.” I will not counter these arguments here, but bring them to the forefront to provide much-needed balance to this list.