The Dark Arts of Modernity and How to Overcome Them
Reflection #110: How real art burns away the evils of the dark arts and liberates souls through beauty
As we discussed in my last post, modern artists, wielding their magic power, are mages of light, but, if we are to finally admit that magic is real, then we must allow that this would include both light and dark magic and indeed, “mages” of darkness also exist and continually cast their spells upon the modern world. In fact, they are everywhere.
The mages of darkness are those who, lacking in mastery and denying the light, imitate and pervert the art of the light-mages, in service of their own egoistic ideals. These people sometimes call themselves “artists,” though they are not artists-in-truth. They are only a simulacrum of real artists and they, like AI, produce only a facsimile of art.
Fortunately, the power of these “dark mages” has a fatal weakness: like the Jedi mind-trick, their “power” can only enspell the weak-minded, and, even then, only when the weak-minded voluntarily give these false mages their attention; for where attention flows, life-energy goes.
Unfortunately, modernity is full of people, the majority of people really, who have allowed themselves to become enthralled by the dark mages of The Modern Machine. You can see these people everywhere, shuffling like zombies, staring at little black-mirrors in their hands, oblivious to the magic and beauty of God’s world around them.
The perversion of true Art, in the hands of these dark artists, can rightly be called the “dark arts,” and you can recognize such charlatans when you see “art” that glorifies ugliness or, quite often, glorifies the artist himself.
True Art is a gift to the perceiver while false art attempts to channel all the benefit and glory to the artist himself.
Real Art serves to wake people up to the light of Truth, while the “dark arts” tend to lull people asleep, trapping them within a web of fears and falsehoods.
With that in mind, we can see that the poison apple of Sleeping Beauty can be looked upon as a symbol of such dark arts, while the “true love’s kiss” which awakens her is a symbol of the awakening power of True Art, which is always infused with the true love of the artist; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
These “dark mages” find the true substance of Art — beauty — painful; for beauty burns away false ambition, an effect that those who choose to live in darkness would prefer to avoid. Deep inside, they know that they have turned away from the light, and beauty, delivered to them through real Art, is simply too painful of a reminder to their tiny, fragmented, souls that they have willfully denied the good and are keeping themselves trapped in a prison of their own making. So they try to avoid beauty as much as possible.
This avoidance has manifested visibly on a cultural level in the modern world as an ongoing war against beauty. We see this avoidance of beauty everywhere: in modern “architecture,” in modern “art,” in “music,” in modern “media,” and in the everyday world around us. I, personally, when I venture out, find it almost physically painful to look upon the areas where we have mowed down beautiful trees to build endless miles of cheap, ugly CMU boxes — our shrines to The Modern Machine and its twin goals of “progress” and “profit.” If we’re going to scrape away the beauty of nature for a building, don’t we have a responsibility to make that building beautiful?
Real Art, on the other hand, always leads to True Reality — that mysterious realm I (and many others) call The Mystery. The light-mages we call true artists visit The Mystery regularly and drink of its living water to recharge their power. The Mystery, and hence its rejuvenating power, is off-limits to the “dark mages,” at least until they turn away (repent) from the darkness and turn back toward the light.
While the spells of the “dark mages” attempt to strip away the souls of the weak-minded, such spells are quite easy to avoid: One simply has to remember one’s true Self.
One only has to be truly and fully human, and the weak, perverted spells of the “dark arts” fall apart. We do this by undertaking human activities such as making art, enjoying beautiful music, spending time in nature, and learning to see the miracle of life all around us. These activities are the ones that lead us home to our True self and, when we reconnect with our true Self, such dark “spells” bounce off us harmlessly. The Bible calls this “the armor of God.” And this is the the truth behind the riddikulus laughter spell of Harry Potter. It’s easy to dismiss the Boggarts – false artists – when we realize that the only power they have is the power that we grant them. Dark artists can only use our own fears against us, and so, by laughing at our fears, we render them — both the fears and the ones who would use them against us — powerless.
The real light-mage-artists always transmit the magic power called virtue in the forms of truth, goodness and beauty. Fortunately, this power of truth and beauty burns away any and all falsehoods of glamour cast by the spiritually inept “dark mages.”
In fact, this is the most useful and important function of the modern artist and their Art: casting the counter-spells of beauty that awaken others. Modern artists, through the magic of their Art, have been granted the ability to awaken souls from the slumber of modernity and the power to remind humanity of the dangers of the machine-ruled world we are building.
In Tolkienesque terms, Artists are here to encourage us to choose the elves, the magic forests, and the hobbits over the marching machine armies of Isengard and Barad-dûr. Artists remind us to choose the magic of growing things, over the “magic” of metal and wheels:
“He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.”
―Treebeard, The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
This awakening function of Art is its most important function and thus, it is the most important function of Artists.
Your first order of business as an artist, is to awaken yourself. To liberate yourself by discovering, and then embodying, The Sovereign Artist within. And, then, as you awaken, you will discover your true artistic mission: liberating others.
How to go about this critical work is the subject of my upcoming book, The Sovereign Artist.
“A single smile of Beauty can bring about greater transformations of character than all the frowns of Righteousness.” — Sangharakshita
PS - This piece is part of my upcoming book, The Sovereign Artist. If you found it of interest, I encourage you to join the waitlist.
If you would like to support my writing, please take out a premium subscription (just $6 per month).
If you’d like to support my writing, but can’t join as a paid subscriber please click Like, or Restack which signals the algorithm and helps me reach new people. This also helps push back against the encroachment of AI because I do not write with AI and I only feature human artists (with proper links and attribution) in the images with my posts.
No AI Zone: Everything written in this post (and all my posts) is written 100% by me, Clint “Clintavo” Watson, a flesh and blood human seeking to grow my soul and come home my truest self; for that is the essence of creativity. Except for the rare brainstorming of ideas, historical research, or occasionally, character names and meanings, I do not use AI in my writing — that would deny me the very growth of my world through writing that I seek.
I only rarely use AI images with my (non-AI) writing. On the rare occasions I do use an AI image (usually fiction), I also feature at least one artwork by a human artist with image credits and links to their work or, if I can’t find a suitable image, I donate a free month of website service to one of our artist customers at my SaaS company, FASO Artist Websites.
Poetic expression, spiritual ideas, and musings upon beauty, truth and goodness should be free to spread far and wide. Hence, I have not paywalled the work on Clinsights. However, if you’re able to become a paid subscriber, I’d be eternally grateful. It would help, encourage and enable me to continue exploring these topics and allow me to keep it accessible for a world that is in desperate need of beauty, truth, goodness and love. — Creatively, Clintavo.
I loved this!
Thank you Clint. You keep us artists marching on in spite of the rejection, indifference and manmade judgment.