95. The cauldron (IV)

The will to push the boundaries of surgery to its limits contains a strong Nietzschean element, and so we find that alpha-type men often become transsexuals. For these men, the act is a manifestation of the will to power. The will to power has three aspects: the aristocratic-military vigour of physical and mental strength; the ability to expose yourself to new risks and experiences and grow from them; and, finally, the ability to remould and reshape people and ideas, so making them yours. For an alpha-type transsexual, having excelled in the first category, the transition contains elements of the latter two categories: it is a new risk and experience, and it is a way to bend womanhood itself to your will—and all must acknowledge your accomplishments, by law.

The deeper reality of transsexualism is that it is an attempt to become winged Mercury, the prince of the Hermetic arts—literally, the arts of the hermaphrodite. In this materialist age, conservatives can only use DNA and hormones to establishes sex; but even in terms of DNA and morphology, both sexes contain latent characteristics of the other: a man’s nipples are undeveloped breasts and a woman’s clitoris an undeveloped penis. The left and right side of the brain conform to the masculine and feminine principles, being devoted to intuition and order. We all know feminine men and masculine women, in different degrees, and not necessarily homosexuals. It is the conservatives, telling us that the sexes are so simply divided, who are detached from reality.

The true hermaphrodite is the product of alchemy; the marriage of the male and female principles was a symbolic, not a literal, operation. Jordan Peterson and Joseph Campbell both spoke of the heroic cycle whereby manhood is accomplished by the boy leaving home to slay the beast—the dragon of chaos, representing the feminine principle. What they neglected to say is that there is another path: not to slay the dragon, but to be bitten by the dragon and take on his powers.

This latter path is the path of the hermaphrodite: he does not kill the feminine; he is bitten by it and becomes the feminine man who can give birth to the novel, since he carries chaos within. He achieves the statue-like strength of man by taking on the watery aspect of woman; he is as hard as water, but he is completely flexible too. Vladimir Putin is such a man; he did not change sex, he took up judo and learned how to overcome by giving way. The operation was purely symbolic and took place on the judo mat. Hence his enemies see him everywhere, even when he never leaves home, because he has achieved the magic of subtle action.

Transsexuals are often prominent in the arts because they are seeking the power of Mercury. Yet, having grown in a profane society, they can only take this literally: they attempt an alchemical marriage by surgical sex change. This is autism. Thus the makers of The Matrix are both transsexuals; and, indeed, the radical right, so hostile to transsexualism, should probably ask why the terms “red pill” and “blue pill”, taken from that film, resonate so forcefully with them. It is, in part, because a form of Gnosticism—strictly alchemical—is connected to the oldest European religious traditions; hence the radical, sure that he is living in a false world, grasps at a profane representation of deeper wisdom. The radical right also takes Pepe the Frog as their symbol precisely because the frog is a dweller between two worlds; he is a hermaphrodite. There are some species of frogs that are literally so, and, a few years ago, Alex Jones observed that some frogs were changing sex—a symbolic manifestation of hermaphroditism. In a profane age, people are seeking the real Hermetic art, but there is no need for scalpels and drugs; just put down the sword and let the dragon bite you—though, be warned, not everyone survives this transformation.