Meltdown Bhāṣya: Verse 1.1.1 (Part 4)

Libidinal materialism and the concept of God in Bataille and Land

| Part }}{{ | Part }{ | Part {} | Part {{}} |

---

Libidinal materialism and the concept of God in Bataille and Land

As we have seen, Land draws a great deal on the traditions of the last two thousand years of occidental civilization. It is clear that Land’s understanding of God is shaped by Christianity, especially in its Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic variants. In particular, Nietzsche’s influence is obvious, given that the ‘death of God’ serves as the start-point for Land’s work. This cultural patrimony (an ironic term to use in connection with Land, as we shall soon see), along with the works of Bataille lead him to define God and religion as:

“The (inevitable) return of constricted energy to immanence is religion, whose core is sacrifice, generative of the sacred. Sacrifice is the movement of violent liberation from servility, the collapse of transcendence. Inhibiting the sacrificial relapse of isolated being is the broad utilitarianism inherent to humanity, correlated with a profane delimitation from ferocious nature that finds its formula in theology. In its profane aspect, religion is martialled under a conception of God; the final guarantor of persistent being, the submission of (ruinous) time to reason, and thus the ultimate principle of utility.” (Land, 1992b, p. xiii)

Despite Land’s all-encompassing atheology, the majority of his critique is reserved, understandably, for the Christian religion and its secular descendants. For example, he criticizes Hegel as not having a very novel imagination because his philosophy replicates the crucifixion of Christ for humanity as a whole (Land, 1992b). More specifically, he takes aim at monotheism, which he sees as integral to a spirit of optimism, in contrast to pessimism, which he calls the philosophy of desire:

“Optimism is the general form of apology; at once the key to the metaphysical commitments of theology and the protection of these commitments from vigorous interrogation. Monotheism, with its description of the world as the creation of a benevolent God, or at least, of a God that defines the highest conception of the good, justifies an all pervasive optimistic framework for which being is worthy of protection. For the optimist revolt, critique, and every form of negativity must be conditioned by a projected positivity; one criticizes in order to consolidate a more certain edifice of knowledge, one revolts in order to establish a more stable and comfortable society, one struggles against reality in order to release being into the full positivity which is its due.” (p. 12)

Land (1992b) is largely correct that it is the core of religion and that which generates the sacred (literally, generating the sacer — the priest, the brāhmaṇa from The Sacrifice of the Puruṣa). One could also argue that religion (or at least the practice thereof) could be understood as the return of energy to immanence; however, this is where it becomes constricted, bound by the three modes of matter until it forms concretized, individuated, and variegated substances. As regards servility and ‘liberation’ from this state (whether violently or not), the only sort of sacrifice that actually achieves this goal is the renunciation of the fruits of one’s actions, as explained in the third adhyāya (chapter) of the Bhagavad Gītā. The telos of desire is thus annihilated in its own fulfillment and desire, now unfettered from the sense-objects, is truly free to return back to its own supremely effulgent origins.

For Bataille, this violent, self-annihilating sacrificial ‘liberation’ was perhaps best ‘personified’ by the figure of the Acéphale, ‘the headless one’, also the name of his eponymous philosophical review. The acephalic god of Bataille is a naked, humanoid figure, who, as the name suggests, is naturally without a head joined to his neck. He stands upright with his feet shoulder-length apart. In his outstretched arms, he bears a burning heart spewing five tongues of flame on the right while the left hand clutches an upraised dagger. Each breast is covered with a single star, and his coiled guts can be seen through a window in his stomach, while a human skull obscures his genitalia. As he explains in La conjuration sacrée (‘The Sacred Conjuration’ or ‘The Sacred Conspiracy’), for Bataille (1936) this state of ‘headlessness’ was a rejection of having to serve as “the head and reason of the universe”, which to him was tantamount to accepting serfdom.

Acéphale was also the name of a secret society—essentially a new religious cult—founded by Bataille around the same time as the publication. Although no records seem to exist of their meetings or activities, likely as a result of Bataille’s secrecy surrounding their operations, it seemed to have included other surrealists and political fellow-travellers, united in their desire to rescue and rehabilitate both a philosophy of aesthetics and the ideas of Nietzsche from “the three-headed monster of Fascism-Christianity-Socialism” (‘Introduction’, Acéphale, Contagion Press). Bataille’s firm entrenchment in the current of the Western intellectual tradition is undeniable. However, what many of those who try to tell the tale of Bataille’s life seem to forget, overlook, or simply not know is how many of his ideas about religion and sacrifice were influenced by the Dharma. In the introduction to Illumination Illuminated: An Annotated Translation of Jean Bruno’s “Illumination Techniques of Georges Bataille” Jacquelynn Baas (2021), writing on Bataille’s life suggests that a terrible childhood with a suicidal mother and a father suffering from blindness and syphilis whom they abandoned led him towards a “complex lifelong project of regeneration and atonement” (p. 508). In his autobiographical note from 1958, Bataille remarked that “Bataille in fact had begun yoga exercises in 1938, in truth without closely following the precepts of the traditional discipline, in great disorder, and in an extreme tumult of mind” (Bataille, 1958). Without getting into the weeds of the matter, Baas thinks that in time, his search led to him being initiated into some form of modernized or westernized Kashmiri Śaiva-sampradāya. though, as she admits this is some creative speculation on her part based in part on thematic or conceptual comparisons between Bataille’s work and Kashmiri Śaiva sources as well as her own involvement in the tradition through a western teacher. Bruno, though less specific in his attribution of adherence to specific tradition, offers clear biographic detail regarding Bataille’s readings and conversations informed by having worked together at the National Library with the man and later, following Bataille’s resignation due to sickness, checking out and returning books for him (Baas, 2021). Bruno (1963) explains that some of Bataille’s meditation practices were influenced by certain Sthaviravādi techniques, so while we cannot neglect the Bauddha influence on him, there is more to suggest a Dharmic influence of equal or greater weight, For example, when talking about Bataille’s practice of gliding “from shimmering external multiplicity into a sudden and profound absorption”, Bruno (p. 530) explicitly connects this to a Kashmiri tantra, the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, which posits two states of consciousness: Bhairava, the still or empty (śūnya); and Bhairavī, the energetic (śakti). We will return to these concepts of a dual, hypercosmic passive male and active female principle later, in relation to the Lakṣmī Tantra.

For now, let us think upon the lore of the Pravargya, as spoken of in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, which is deeply bound with the innermost mysteries of Śrīman Nārāyaṇa. In the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, Śrī Viṣṇu is said outright to be one and the same as the sacrificial rite itself (yajño vai viṣṇuḥ, SBr 1.1.2.13).

At the very ‘head’ of this yajña is an offering of hot milk and ghee (Gharma) boiled in a clay pot in called the mahāvīra. The origins of these names are explained in a story from the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. which tells how the Devas won their power from this rite and why Kurukṣetra, the battlefield of the Great Kuru Civil War described in the Mahābhārata, is a holy land of such great weight (dharma-kṣetre kurukṣetre, BG 1.1), thereby foreshadowing the sacrificial nature of that war.

It is said that Agni, Indra, Soma, Makha, Viṣṇu, and the Viśvēdēvas (All-the-Devas) minus the two Aśvins gathered together in Kurukṣetra to perform a yajña to attain excellence, glory, and food, henceforth making that land one suited for the worship of the Devas (SBr 14.1.1.1-3). They said that whosoever amongst them would first see the end of the yajña would become the greatest among them and the one in common to them all, and as it was Śrī Viṣṇu who attained it, He became the most excellent among them (viṣṇurdevānāṁ śreṣṭha iti, 4-5). It reaffirms that Śrī Viṣṇu was the sacrifice (sa yaḥ sa viṣṇuryajñaḥ sa) and identifies the sacrifice with the sun (sa yajño'sau sa ādityaḥ), before saying that Śrī Viṣṇu could not control His love of glory, as a result of which not all can control their desire for glory (6). Here we have a clear identification between sacrifice, glory, and the sun, quite remarkable in light of Land’s reading of Bataille. Let us see if this connection can be further deepened. After attaining to the fullness of the yajña, Śrī Viṣṇu, rested His head atop the end of His bow, and the other Devas, not daring to attack him, made an agreement with some nearby upadīkā ants: for biting the string of Śrī Viṣṇu’s bow, they would be given the boons of every enjoyment of food and finding water even in the desert (7-8). When the ants cut the thread, the ends of the bow straightened with such force that they cut off His head (9).

The head fell with the sound “ghṛṅ” and became the sun (explaining how exactly the yajña is the sun) while the body lay stretched out (pra-vṛj) towards the east, and this, it is said, is why the hot milk offering was named the Gharma and the rite was named the Pravargya (10). And so it was that the pot in which the gharma is boiled was called the mahāvīra, because the Devas said that their great hero (mahān vīra) fell. With their hands they wiped up (sammṛj) the nectar (rasa, a term of great importance in later Vaiṣṇava literature, which Eggeling renders as “vital sap”) from whence arose the sovereignty (sammrāṭ); Indra, who reached Him first, “applied himself to him limb by limb” and won that glory (yaśa), the knowledge of which wins for its knower the same glory (11-12). Thus, by possessing Makha, the sacrifice (which is to say, Śrī Viṣṇu), Indra became known as Makhavān, but since the Devas love that which is parokṣa (‘mysterious’ or ‘subtle’; lit. ‘beyond-the-eye’), he is known more commonly as Maghavān (13)—‘the free-giving’ or ‘the great’—a name he is often called in the Vedas (e.g., RV 10.116.7, which also calls him ‘imperial’, samrāj). Similarly, the story given for the origin of the Sun in this section of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa might well reflect another Vedic verse. The fourteenth sūktam of the fourth maṇḍala of the Ṛg-Veda, a hymn dedicated to Agni, also mentions many other Devas, especially the Sun:

“This sun, not far removed and unobstructed, whether looking downwards or looking upwards, is harmed by no one; what is the power by which he travels? who has (truly) beheld him who, as the collective pillar of heaven, sustains the sky.” (4.14.5)

Our greatest hint is that this ṛk speaks of the Sun as the “pillar of heaven” (divaḥ skambhaḥ). In the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, when it says that Śrī Viṣṇu rested His head atop the end of His bow (sa dhanurārtnyā śira upastabhya), the latter half of the word meaning ‘rested’, upastabhya, derives from the same root as the words skambha, both meaning ‘pillar’ or ‘support’. In the Vedic vision of the world, the Skambha is the cosmic pillar upholding and sustaining all the worlds. Taking these two accounts into consideration, we might then say that it is the sacrifice of Śrī Viṣṇu to Himself which upholds all that is and brightens it, filling it with the all-pervading light of the sacrificial fire.

After the Devas divided Śrī Viṣṇu, which is to say, the yajña into three portions (SBr 14.1.1.15), they had to worship and work with that headless sacrifice (tenāpaśīrṣṇā yajñena devā arcantaḥ śrāmyantaśceruḥ, 17), but Ṛṣi Dadhyañc Ātharvaṇa, knew how to put the head of the yajña back on to make it complete (18) and was told by Indra-deva that the Deva would cut off his head should he teach this knowledge to another (19). As mentioned at the beginning of this tale, the twin-gods, the Aśvins, who are associated with, among other things, the knowledge of horses, were excluded from the yajña of the Devas. They went forth to the Ṛṣi and sought this hidden knowledge from him (21), and in order to safeguard him from Indra-deva’s word, cut off his head and replaced it that of a horse in order to learn the secret, and, after Indra-deva made good on his vow, put his own head, which they had hidden, back on again (22-24). This is then the madhu-vidyā, the honey-knowledge, referred to in the Ṛg-Veda:

“tad vāṃ narā sanaye daṃsa ugram

āviṣ kṛṇomi tanyatur na vṛṣṭim

dadhyaṅ ha yan madhv ātharvaṇo

vām aśvasya śīrṣṇā pra yad īm uvāca

O manly twins, that awful wonder-act of yours [done] for gain,

I make widely known, as thunder [announces] rain,

indeed Dadhyaṅc Ātharvaṇa spoke to you two

that which is “honey” through the head of a horse.” (RV 1.116.12)¹

Lastly, the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa gives a ritualist the rules and regulations that must be followed to teach this knowledge as well as their macrocosmic significance, such as only teaching it to a pupil who lives with the master for one year for the year is that which shines and the Pravargya is the Sun (27), to drinking hot water as tapas (29), and not coming into contact with polluting substances, creatures, and persons so as to not “mingle excellence and sin, light and darkness, truth and untruth” (31), lest Indra-deva reap the toll of the sinner’s head (26). The fruit of this rite, properly performed is is given meaning thus:

“And, verily, he that shines yonder is glory; and as to that glory, Āditya (the sun), that glory is just the sacrifice; and as to that glory, the sacrifice, that glory is just the Sacrificer; and as to that glory, the Sacrificer, that glory is just the officiating priests; and as to that glory, the officiating priests, that glory is just the sacrificial gifts: hence, if they bring up to him a dakṣiṇā he must not, at least on the same day, make over these (objects) to any one else lest he should make over to some one else that glory which has come to him; but rather on the morrow, or the day after: he thus gives it away after having made that glory his own, whatever it be--gold, a cow, a garment, or a horse.” (32)

The association between the Aśvin twins, whose very name alludes to their connection with the horse (Skt. aśva) and Śrī Viṣṇu can both be gleaned un-bainly from those ṛks of the Ṛg-Veda which mention Him together with the Maruts (who are often called Śrī Rudra’s sons, just as the Aśvins are at times) who form the troops (gaṇa, a term used also for Śrī Rudra retinue) led by Indra-deva in the war against the snakelike Vṛtra in the Vedic dragon-slaying myth (e.g., RV 1.85.7, 2.34.11) as well as more straightforwardly in others, such as this one which calls upon the twins together with Śrī Viṣṇu:

“asya devasya mīḻhuṣo (‘)vayā

viṣṇor eṣasya prabhṛthe havirbhiḥ ।

vide hi rudro rudriyam mahitvaṃ

yāsiṣṭaṃ vartir aśvināv irāvat ॥ RV 7.40.5

The appeasement of the god who is bountiful (Rudra)

[is done] in the ritual of the swift Viṣṇu with oblations;

for Rudra knows his Rudrian might.

May you Aśvin-s drive on your food-bearing orbit.” (RV 7.40.5)²

As mAnasa-taraMgiNI says, this verse is notable for calling out to both Śrī Viṣṇu and Śrī Rudra, which is an uncommon pairing, especially given Śrī Rudra’s lack of direct involvement with the Vṛtra Cycle. The author links this verse together with the more common linkage made between Śrī Viṣṇu and the Maruts, such as in the Maruta-sūktam of Evayāmarut (‘accompanied or protected by the quick Maruts’), a Ṛṣi of the Atri clan, which begins with a ṛk (RV 5.87.1) hailing Śrī Viṣṇu accompanied by the Maruts:

“pra vo mahe matayo yantu viṣṇave marutvate girijā evayāmarut | pra śardhāya prayajyave sukhādaye tavase bhandadiṣṭaye dhunivratāya śavase ||

‘May the voice-born praises of Evayāmarut reach you, Viṣṇu, attended by the Maruts; (may they reach) the strong, the adorable, the brilliantly-adorned, the vigorous, praise-loving, cloud-scattering, quick-moving company of the Maruts.’”

Of weight is that the seventh verse this hymn also names them Rudras (te rudrāsaḥ) as well as sumakhā, a plural masculine noun meaning ‘good to worship’ derived from Makha, a name we should have a deep ken of by now. We ought also to note that the name Evayāmarut itself means ‘accompanied or protected by the quick Maruts’ and is an adjective used several times throughout the Ṛg-Veda to refer to them in the context of their sallying forth to battle with Śrī Viṣṇu. Lastly, let us note that Sāyaṇa-ācārya’s commentary says that the use of the word viṣṇu (or its derivations) in this hymn actually refers to Indra-deva. This is an understandable conclusion given that it is he who is most hailed for slaying Vṛtra. Of course, given what the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa says about how Indra-deva attained his sovereignty, this may be reconciled through the understanding that it was by taking up Śrī Viṣṇu’s glory that gave Indra-deva the strength to overcome his foe (see BG 7.11, “I am the strength of the strong”), but we shall defer this question to the truly knowledgeable ones.

Coming back to the earlier Vedic verse (RV 7.40.5), we should note that mAnasa-taraMgiNI’s translation differs quite a bit from that of Wilson (1886): “I propitiate with oblations the ramifications of that divine attainable Viṣṇu, the showerer of benefits; Rudra, bestow upon us the magnificence of his nature; the Aśvins have come to our dwelling abounding with (sacrificial) food.”, as well as from the exegesis of Sāyaṇa-ācārya, who says that this verse centers on the use of the word vayāḥ, which has the standard meaning of ‘boughs’, implying that the other deities are akin to offshoots from the trunk of the tree that is Śrī Viṣṇu, who is all the other Devas (referring to Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 1.1, “Viṣṇuḥ sarvā devatā”).

It is this food which bonds the Divine Horse Twins to Śrī Viṣṇu. The Puruṣa Sūktam calls Him “the lord of immortality” (utāmṛtatvasyeśāno) because He “mounts beyond (his own condition) for the food (of living beings)” (yad annenātirohati, 10.90.2)*. The sixteen ṛks of that hymn are, in chanting, often recited together with a series of verses called the Uttara Nārāyaṇa (‘The Later Nārāyaṇa’ or ‘The Higher Nārāyaṇa’) found in several Yajurvedic texts such as the Vājasaneya-Saṁhitā (31.17-22). The name itself comes from the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, (13.6.2), which is also associated with the same Veda. These verses continue the outworldly greatnesses within that Eldmost Man, the Puruṣa. What should draw our eyes in the Uttara Nārāyaṇa is that it specifically refers to the Aśvins as the jaws of the Puruṣa (aśvinau vyāttam), with the connotations of ‘vast’, ‘wide-open’, and ‘open-mouthed’.

As we can see, the Aśvins thus link together Śrī Viṣṇu with the horse as far back as the Vedic period, while also linking together the figure of the horse-headed man with wisdom, death and rebirth, and the knowledge of the Vedas. As such, it should come as no surprise that a horse-headed form of Śrī Viṣṇu should come to prominence linked to precisely those qualities in Hindu tradition.

Hayagrīva, simply means “horse-necked”, and appears as the name of several figures in Dharmic texts. Most famously, it is the name of a deity connected with the transmission of sacred knowledge in both Vaidika and Bauddha sampradāyas. Specifically, within Vaiṣṇava tradition, He is the horse-headed avatāra of Śrī Viṣṇu who slew the fiends Madhu and Kaitabha before taking the Vedas back from them and giving the holy knowledge to Brahmā-deva. What might be slightly less well-known is the deep bond between this form and the Pravargya we spoke of before.

In the foreword to Hayagrīva - The Horse-headed Deity in Indian Culture (Babu, 1990), Dr. Georg von Simson points to the deep thematic echoes between the Pravargya-lore and that of the Hayagrīva-avatāra:

“It is one of the merits of Dr Babu's book that it. makes us understand the particular features of the horse-headed god on the basis of his origins in Vedic religious imagery, i.e. the idea of Viṣṇu, the god who in the Brāhmaṇas is identified with sacrifice (yajña) itself, being decapitated and furnished with the head of the sun-horse, This myth, connected with the Pravargya ceremony, shows on the one hand Viṣṇu's connection with the sun (to be explained, as I believe, as the moon passing the sun during the new-moon period and thereby being converted into the sun) and explains on the other hand the special function of Hayagrīva as a deity of wisdom and learning: The horse-head is the sun as symbol of illumination, the sun as destroyer of the darkness of ignorance. Dr. Babu draws also our attention to the fact that in the Vedic myth of Dadhyañc Ātharvaṇa the horse-head is connected with the idea of secret knowledge.” (p. i)

There are, however, several other figures in the Hindu texts by the name of Hayagrīva also connected to Śrī Viṣṇu. One of these is Hayagrīva the Dānava, son of Danu and enemy of Dharma who stole the Vedas from Brahmā-deva during the time of pralaya. In His avatāra as Matsya (the ‘Fish’), Śrī Viṣṇu slew the horse-headed fiend and took back the Vedas to bequeath them unto King Manu, the forefather of our race. As Anindita Adhikari (2019) points out in Lord Hayagriva in Sanskrit Literature, in the Matsya Purāṇa, Śrī Matsya speaks of His own horse-headed form and the reasons for His descent into the world:

“Nirdagdheṣu ca lokeṣu vājīrūpeṇa vai mayā

Aṅgāni caturo vedāḥ purāṇaṁ nyāyavistaraṁ

Mīmāṁsāṁ dharmaśāstrañca parigṛhya mayā kṛtaṁ

Matsyarūpeṇa ca punaḥ kalpādāvudakārṇave

When the entire region was devastated by fire at the great dissolution, I in the form of a Horse took the four vedas with the six vedāṅgas, as well as the purāṇas, the manifold nyāyas, the mīmāṁsās and the dharmaśāstras. Thereafter in the beginning of a new age I assumed the form of matsya immersing myself in the furious water at the time of dissolution of the universe and explained them fully to Brahmā.” (MP 53.5)

As the blogger at mAnasa-taraMgiNI explains in his post ‘The legend of king hayagrīva’ (Sept. 11, 2014), the idea of war as a sacrifice was already spoken of in the Mahābhārata as an old one, long before Bataille ever put pen to paper. The blogger suggests that the antiquity of this view is hinted at by the fact that while the first two verses leading into the tale are in the Anuṣṭubh (a metre found very rarely in the Vedas but more often in the Itihāsas, particularly in its ‘Epic’ form, the śloka, which makes up over nine-tenths of the Mahābhārata’s verses) the tale itself is shaped in the Triṣṭubh (perhaps the most archaic Hindu metre, and the one in which just under half of the Ṛg-Veda ṛks are sung). In these verses, Śrī Vyāsa-deva, the ‘literary avatāra’ of Śrī Hari and the shaper of the Mahābhārata (among many other works), tells Yudhiṣṭhira, eldest of the five Pāṇḍava brothers, victor of the Great Kuru Civil War, and suzerain of Bhāratavarśa, who had fallen into a deep sorrow from the bloodshed of the war of the legendary King Hayagrīva, whose death upon the battlefield, bow in hand, fighting against the Dasyus cutting at him with their weapons, won heaven (svargaṃ jitvā) and went to the hero-world (vīralokāṃś ca gatvā). In this brief summary alone we can see the likenesses between how our forefathers thought of the holiness of warfare as spoken of in the Mahābhārata and those of our cousins such as the Greeks with their Elysium of Heroes and the Norse with their Valhǫll of the Einherjar. Perhaps the most outright joining of the gear of war with those of the rite are given in the fifth verse of this tale:

“dhanur yūpo raśanā jyā śaraḥ sruk

sruvaḥ khaḍgo rudhiraṃ yatra cājyam

ratho vedī kāmago yuddham agniś

cāturhotraṃ caturo vājimukhyāḥ (12.25.22)

[At this sacrifice] his bow was the sacrificial stake, his bowstring was the rope [for tying the animal victim], his arrows the offering ladle, his sword the scooping ladle, and the blood [spilled in it] the ghee. His chariot was the altar, his unrestrained movement in battle the [ritual] fire, and his four foremost horses his four Vedic ritualists.”

Finally, upon that fire King Hayagrīva offered up the lives of his foes (hutvā tasmin yajña-vahnāv athārīn) as well as his own life-breath, like the final bath at the end of a yajña (prāṇān hutvā cāvabhṛthe raṇe sa) and now rejoices in the Deva-world (modate devaloke).

The head of the horse is the Sun. The head of the horse is the Sacrifice. The head of the horse is the Knowledge. The head of the horse is Honey. The head of the horse is War. The head of the horse is Death. The head of the horse is Rebirth. Through this one tale, the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa builds a divinity-producing assemblage linking all these things together to make the three worlds holy, filled with His light.

Although Bataille may have founded his secret society driven by a wish to guard his land against the invading Śūla-jana-senā, like our king, it seems to have been naught but mere play-acting. That the Headless-men could neither find a head-taker though all of them were seemingly ready to give up their own heads seems to cut right to the heart of the matter. Unwilling to take the last step into the heart of utter sacrifice, bound as they must have been by the fetters of modernity, theirs was a movement that seems unable to have really left the head of Bataille, the sickly librarian, and attain true glory, whether in this world or the next. In the end, this is perhaps the best example that without a firm foothold in the śāstras, true teachings from a guru, and a strong belief in their God, all ones strivings are liable to fall apart, as stillborn and sterile as the dead oak the Headless-men gathered around.

1. Translation from ‘A brief note on animal heads, Celtic human sacrifice, and Indo-European tradition’ (mAnasa-taraMgiNI, Aug. 23, 2015)

2. Translation from ‘Viṣṇu, the Marut-s and Rudra’ (mAnasa-taraMgiNI, May 25, 2020)

---

Works Cited

Adluri, V. (2018). Nārāyaṇīya: Translation, Introduction, and Philosophical Commentary (dissertation). Shodhganga : a reservoir of Indian theses. INFLIBNET. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10603/223485.

Bataille, G. (1976). Georges Bataille: Oeuvres complètes (Jacquelynn Baas, Trans., Thadée Klossowski, Ed.; Vol. 7). Editions Gallimard.

de Rosnay, J. (1997, January 6). Feedback. Principia Cybernetica Web. http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/FEEDBACK.html

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2009). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (R. Hurley, M. Seem, & H. R. Lane, Trans.). Penguin. (Original work published 1972)

Georges Bataille, & Jacquelynn Baas. (1976). Notice autobiographique. In Thadée Klossowski (Ed.), Œuvres complètes(Vol. 7, p. 462). essay, Gallimard.

Hesiod. (1914). The Theogony. In H. G. Evelyn-White (Trans.), Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica (pp. 78–153). essay, Harvard University Press.

Jankowiak, T. (n.d.). Immanuel Kant. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/

Lakṣmī Tantra: A Pāñcarātra text: Indian edition (S. Gupta, Trans.). (2000). . Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. (Original work published 1972)

Land, N. (1988). Kant, capital, and the prohibition of incest. Third Text, 2(5), 83–94. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/09528828808576206

Land, N. (1992a). Circuitries. Pli—the Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 4(1/2), 217–235.

Land, N. (1992b). The thirst for annihilation: Georges Bataille and virulent nihilism (an essay in atheistic religion). Routledge.

Land, N. (1993). Machinic desire. Textual Practice, 7(3: Desire), 471–482. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/09502369308582177

Land, N. (1997). Virtual Futures (1994). In Abstract Culture (Vol. 1 (first swarm)). Coventry; Cybernetic Culture Research Unit.

Land, N. (2012). Fanged Noumena (R. Mackay & R. Brassier, Eds.; 2nd ed.). Urbanomic ; Sequence Press.

Land, N. (2017, May 25). A quick-and-dirty introduction to accelerationism. Jacobite. Retrieved from https://www.scribd.com/document/453371407/A-Quick-and-Dirty-Introduction-to-Accelerationism-Jacobite-pdf.

Ramaswamy, K., De Nicolás, A. T., & Banerjee, A. (2007). Invading the sacred: An analysis of hinduism studies in America. Rupa & Co.

Smith, D., Protevi, J., & Voss, D. (2022, June 3). Gilles Deleuze. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/

Spandrell. (2013, March 26). Lee Kuan Yew Drains Your Brains for Short Term Gain. Bloody Shovel 4. https://spandrell.ch/2013/3/26/lee-kuan-yew-drains-your-brains-for-short-term-gain

Stoljar, D. (2021, May 25). Physicalism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entrieS/physicalism/

Taylor, M. (2021). The Viṣṇu Purāṇa: Ancient annals of the god with lotus eyes. Australian National University Press.

Vyāsa. (1991). Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa (K. M. Ganguli, Trans.; Vol. 12). Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.

Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. The Technology Press.