Welcome to the forums Nathaniel. What's the story of your being a clown?
“The clown is the sole guide on the eleventh path, the path of magick or ‘energy tending to change.’ This is the key to the nature of all genuine exponents of the antique rites or masques that are figured forth in the antics of the harlequin, madman, or fool.. ..bestial undertones and currents that fuse into one dazzling image the ineffably wise and abysmally ignorant, the hideous beast and the beautiful god..”
Kenneth Grant - ‘Outside the Circles of Time’
My approach to 'clown' has developed alongside my 'magick' over much of my lifetime. Rather than tell the story of my life, it may be more valuable to give some explanation of my approach to clowning.
The clown is an extremely ancient character found in all cultures; a ‘psychologen’ haunting the mythologies of all ages, sometimes entirely unmistakable, sometimes disguised. It has countless names and no fixed form. Whatever manifestation the clown assumes it is a chaotic force, yet paradoxically a profound teacher, healer, and initiator. In all ways it seeks to overturn the established order, exposing hypocrisy, undermining authority, liberating those imprisoned through their own beliefs. The clown is the personification and embodiment of the Abyss of Chaos; when things make no sense, nothing goes to plan, the rules are reversed, anything that can go wrong does, and yet within which beauty and structure arise spontaneously. It is a primitive, atavistic figure who was originally autonomous and even capable of causing possession.
Consider the following excerpt from Michael Chekhov’s To The Actor, chapter 9;
“A really great and talented clown, like a tragedian, is never alone while performing. He also experiences a kind of “possession” by certain fantastic beings.. let us consider the humorous retinue of the clown as consisting of subhuman beings. To them he gives access to his body and his psychology. Together with his spectators he enjoys their whimsical, eccentric and odd appearances through himself. He is their instrument for the amusement of himself and others..
There can be one or many of these pixies, gnomes, elves, brownies, trolls, nymphs or other ‘good folk’ of that species who take possession of the clown, who make us feel that he is not quite a human being. But all of them have to be nice, sympathetic, lovable, mischievous, funny (and even risible in themselves!), otherwise the clowning might become repulsive. They must enjoy their temporary right to use the clown’s human body and psychology for their games and tricks..
By no means, however, is it permitted that the clown be inwardly untrue and insincere! Quite the opposite. He has to believe in what he feels and does. He has to trust the sincerity of all the ‘good folk’ working within and through him, and he has to love their peculiar games and whimsies with all his heart!”
The idea of ‘possession’ seems alien and frightening to most modern westerners. Surely Chekhov was speaking entirely in metaphor, and does not expect us to start performing Voudon style ceremonies to ‘summon’ our clowns? He is not actually asking us to ‘believe with all our hearts’ that giving our bodies and minds over to extradimensional trickster spirits is actually possible, or even wise? Surely not... ?
Before TV, before even circus or theatre, the clown was present in our religions, myths, and rituals; which in their day fulfilled most of those roles later taken up by ‘popular entertainment’. Even amongst the gods of pagan Europe we find the ‘clown’; the figure designated as the recipient and cause of laughter. It is Loki with his dick tied to a goat, cracking up the stony face of ‘Old Grim’. It is laughing Hermes Mercurius the flightfooted shapeshifter, half animal half divine, beloved of alchemists and healers. Dionysus avoiding capture by illusion and intoxication of the guards, exposed to all manner of tortures, approximating the figure of the ‘Saviour’. It is Eris, the rejected goddess, sowing the seed of Chaos through the simplest of actions, like the wings of a butterfly calling up a hurricane, and proving that none of us are insignificant. It is Mullah Nasrudin of Sufism, whose parables are also jokes, provoking laughter through revelation. It is the mischievous fairy of Celtic folk-lore, still guarded against in some parts of Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall.
It is the gatekeeper Exu-Legba of the African Diaspora, who tricked the Father God at the dawn of time and is exempt from all laws, natural or otherwise. It is Atu 0; The Fool of modern Tarot, identified by Crowley with Baphomet.
In ancient days, when the first theaters performed the Mystery Plays, those actors through whom the gods were known did not simply ‘play their role’. They were considered as living embodiments, with the play itself a sacred ritual. It was more than merely telling a story in actions and words. To perform the Satyricon, for example, was considered to literally call through the presence of Dionysus. That is to say that, although scripted, the actor was considered ‘possessed’ by the god. The purpose of the ritual- for one does not call down the gods on a whim- was to undermine authority through the limitless freedom of his cosmological laughter.
