furore at the centre of their relationship was exploited by Rimbaud as a means of further weakening his prey. It is doubtful that Rimbaud ever loved anyone; but at the time he needed Verlaine as a companion on the road, and as someone on whom he could vent his fury. Despite Verlaine’s having made a small name for himself amongst his Parnassian contemporaries, Rimbaud had already overtaken his friend’s achievements, and it was obvious to him that Verlaine lacked the inner credentials and mental ferocity needed to become a seer.
Something of the hysterical nature of Rimbaud and Verlaine’s relationship at this time is recounted by Porché in ‘Verlaine tel qu’il fut’. Porché tells us that, one evening at the Café du Rat Mort, Rimbaud asked Verlaine to place his hands flat on the table. When the latter had done so, Rimbaud pulled a knife from his pocket and quickly slashed Verlaine’s hands. Not content with that, he followed Verlaine out into the street, and again set about him with the knife. The scandal of their relationship spread, and Rimbaud, who cultivated a propensity to shock, was gratified to see Verlaine’s marital relations irretrievably ruined.
And there is reason to believe that Rimbaud was too powerful at this time, and that there was an imbalance in his adept’s oscillation between light and dark. The magician’s attraction to the black art, to a concourse with evil and the authoritative power it generates, must have appealed to Rimbaud with his desire for overreach through sensory disturbance. It is unlikely that Rimbaud had the money, discipline or knowledge to practise alchemy in the manner of following through the metallurgical permutations from black to white, to yellow to red. His method was to raid books rather than read them. But there is every sign in his work of his being acquainted with the potency of alchemical symbols, and of having undertaken the alchemical mutations on a spiritual level. Rimbaud was searching for a state of madness which could be translated into poetry. Alchemical gold is contained within the black or, as it is termed, the nigredo. Rimbaud at this time of his life seems to have situated himself within alchemical black.
And the sex he practised with Verlaine by way of the dark passage was another process towards ultimate mystic illumination. Rimbaud who advocated the abdication of the ego — `Je est un autre’ — pursued a schizoid search to inhabit a tenable double. And it is well known in magic that the imagination excited by sexual currents can be set to function at astral levels. It can work for the poet independent of him, and serves as a reservoir of radioactive energies. This emptying out, this voluntary letting go a hold on reality that the poet achieves in order to be in touch with inspirational forces, or for Rimbaud dementia, entertains the risk of possession by good or evil. It is a form of transference. The poet or adept is waiting for an energy build-up which he would not otherwise have been able to achieve. And when the current builds, the effect is one of shock. Rimbaud must have appeared devastating at such times, reified by an image, manic in his assertion of unmediated occult ambience. In his book Cults of the Shadow , Kenneth Grant tells us:
Radioactive energies released by magicians using the Ophidian Current are so potent that when functioning to the full extent of their magical capacity few people can support their physical presence. Crowley’s aura, for instance, was highly charged in this way; it inspired in some people a quite inexplicable dread. MacGregor Mathers described his encounter with High Adepts in terms suggesting similar conditions, and it is well known that Eliphaz [ sic ] Levi inspired panic-terror in the spirit-medium, D.D. Home.
It is this characteristic that must have been the root cause of Rimbaud’s
Something of the hysterical nature of Rimbaud and Verlaine’s relationship at this time is recounted by Porché in ‘Verlaine tel qu’il fut’. Porché tells us that, one evening at the Café du Rat Mort, Rimbaud asked Verlaine to place his hands flat on the table. When the latter had done so, Rimbaud pulled a knife from his pocket and quickly slashed Verlaine’s hands. Not content with that, he followed Verlaine out into the street, and again set about him with the knife. The scandal of their relationship spread, and Rimbaud, who cultivated a propensity to shock, was gratified to see Verlaine’s marital relations irretrievably ruined.
And there is reason to believe that Rimbaud was too powerful at this time, and that there was an imbalance in his adept’s oscillation between light and dark. The magician’s attraction to the black art, to a concourse with evil and the authoritative power it generates, must have appealed to Rimbaud with his desire for overreach through sensory disturbance. It is unlikely that Rimbaud had the money, discipline or knowledge to practise alchemy in the manner of following through the metallurgical permutations from black to white, to yellow to red. His method was to raid books rather than read them. But there is every sign in his work of his being acquainted with the potency of alchemical symbols, and of having undertaken the alchemical mutations on a spiritual level. Rimbaud was searching for a state of madness which could be translated into poetry. Alchemical gold is contained within the black or, as it is termed, the nigredo. Rimbaud at this time of his life seems to have situated himself within alchemical black.
And the sex he practised with Verlaine by way of the dark passage was another process towards ultimate mystic illumination. Rimbaud who advocated the abdication of the ego — `Je est un autre’ — pursued a schizoid search to inhabit a tenable double. And it is well known in magic that the imagination excited by sexual currents can be set to function at astral levels. It can work for the poet independent of him, and serves as a reservoir of radioactive energies. This emptying out, this voluntary letting go a hold on reality that the poet achieves in order to be in touch with inspirational forces, or for Rimbaud dementia, entertains the risk of possession by good or evil. It is a form of transference. The poet or adept is waiting for an energy build-up which he would not otherwise have been able to achieve. And when the current builds, the effect is one of shock. Rimbaud must have appeared devastating at such times, reified by an image, manic in his assertion of unmediated occult ambience. In his book Cults of the Shadow , Kenneth Grant tells us:
Radioactive energies released by magicians using the Ophidian Current are so potent that when functioning to the full extent of their magical capacity few people can support their physical presence. Crowley’s aura, for instance, was highly charged in this way; it inspired in some people a quite inexplicable dread. MacGregor Mathers described his encounter with High Adepts in terms suggesting similar conditions, and it is well known that Eliphaz [ sic ] Levi inspired panic-terror in the spirit-medium, D.D. Home.
It is this characteristic that must have been the root cause of Rimbaud’s
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