Birth Anniversary of a Heroic Poet: Lessons for Ourselves and Our Current Realities

by Sean Jobst

16 June 2021

Fernando Pessoa

June 13th was the 133th anniversary of the birth of the great Portuguese poet and writer, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). I wrote a three-part series of tributes to his life and work last year, but its time to highlight some new insights and information.... 

I. "His Metapolitics and Philosophy": https://sjobst.blogspot.com/2020/06/tribute-to-fernando-pessoa-1888-1935-1.html

II. "Psychological Lessons from Pessoa's Work and Life": https://sjobst.blogspot.com/2020/06/tribute-to-fernando-pessoa-1888-1935-2.html

III. "Paganism and Occultism of Pessoa (& His Heteronyms)": https://sjobst.blogspot.com/2020/06/tribute-to-fernando-pessoa-1888-1935-3.html

As I wrote at the time: "On 13 June 1888, the watchful eyes of the Dioscuri welcomed into this world a man whose words bounded him to his homeland while also admitting him amongst the immaterial. He was the Portuguese poet and writer Fernando Pessoa, whose interests ran from philosophy and metapolitics, to the esoteric and occult. Far more than a typical man of letters, he gave life to dormant aspects within himself and, doing so, can serve as a model for individual spiritual and psychological growth. From his writings we can also glean observations about his own time and place that can extend to our current realities."

Its no coincidence we are currently under Mercury retrograde in Gemini, from the end of May until after the Summer Solstice. This alignment presents to us many opportunities on a personal level which can then be manifested outwards. Whereas Mercury is about uncovering the specific issues that need to be addressed in someone's own life, Gemini is about the broader environment around us and how to go with the natural flow. Indeed, Mercury as the "planet of literature" was the common element of all seventy of Pessoa's heteronyms. It was not lost on him that the Mercury Archetype (and his equivalent in other cultures, such as Wodan and Lugus) is also associated with arts and crafts, and a shamanic, "traveling" one that is limitless in its abilities to traverse our current time-space realm. 

Its especially a time to double-down on higher spiritual truths, vis-a-vis the false belief paradigms imposed by the elites, accelerating with the lockdowns and shutdowns they imposed on a global scale this last year. Much has been uncovered, as we were presented with the education of a lifetime with the Rona. It was never about the virus itself (with its 99% non-fatality rate, and I had it myself at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021), but how governments and other self-imposed "authorities" would use it for their own purposes. I've uncovered some of these aspects in my six-part series about "The Rona and the Global Surveillance State", but that's merely scratching the outer surface. Its also about our reaction to these events, which is entirely within our area of control and not theirs despite their illusion of "power". The opportunities to know who we are, take responsibility so we can come into alignment with our destiny, and see various people for whom they revealed themselves to be this last year.

Diagram by Spanish artist Fernando Vicente

"What relationship can an age like this one have with a spiritual heir to the race of constructors, with a soul inspired by paganism’s glorious truths? None, except one of instinctive rejection and automatic scorn. We, the only dissenters from decadence, are thus forced to assume an attitude that, by its nature is likewise decadent. An attitude of indifference is a decadent attitude, and our inability to adapt to the current milieu forces us to just such an attitude. We don’t adapt, because healthy people cannot adapt to a sick milieu, and since we don’t adapt, it is we who are sick. This is the paradox in which those of us who are pagans live." - Fernando Pessoa / "António Mora"(1)

The "sicknesses" of this current milieu are varied, far more penetrative through Technik(2) and its subtle (hence more insidious) mass-propaganda techniques since Pessoa's era, but his forecast is even more pertinent now. Through Bernardo Soares, the most autobiographical of Pessoa's heteronyms as the introspective, melancholy office worker, he lamented the loss of spirituality for the same reason religious dogmas were previously followed: "without knowing why".(3) This natural yearning for the spiritual and mysterious is being misdirected to various illusions, a mass-binding ritual to increase their own control system and its paradigms rather than allow people to know themselves and their potential. 

The same governments that created the social and economic conditions present themselves as the "saviors" with the alleged "solutions" - the "cures" which have proved themselves far more deadly and lasting than the virus itself.(4) The Scientism of this age is a worship of false "authority" figures masquerading as "science" but actually selective, suppressing all dissenting scientists and upholding dogmas over the traditional scientific method. That these are all illusions is shown by the fact that it has relied on an unprecedented level of Big Tech censorship since their "truth" is clearly not self-evident. That they feed upon a consent manipulated by them through fear and using people's own psychology against them, to mask their own internal weaknesses is seen by the quick fall of several of their worshipped idols through recent scandals and revelations to the public.

Work by the Colombian illustrator Carolina Zambrano

In one short passage, Pessoa condemned all the tendencies towards leveling, conformity, and centralism that sums up the illusory "reality" and its false paradigms: "Reality, when it first appears to us, is multiple. By referring all received sensations to our individual consciousness, we impose a false unity (false to our experience) on the original multiplicity of things."(5) In his essay "The Return of the Gods", António Mora - the disciple of his other heteronym Alberto Caiero, who represented the humble animist Pessoa who yearned for deeper realities beyond his own urban life - considered how four spiritual views perceive objects. The Christian thinks only of its creation by God; the materialist reduces it to "a screen through which he atomistically peers"; the pantheist as a "window for perceiving the Whole"; but only the Pagan is capable of fully perceiving and appreciating it for itself.(6) 

One of these false paradigms is the delusion that everything can be quantified, nothing left to the mysterious. Many "mainstream" academics want to apply this to Pessoa's heteronyms, assigning various materialist causes to these heteronyms, but the reality is Pessoa reached the pinnacle of his own humanity by exploring various aspects of his Psyche and Personality. In Jungian terms, exploring his Subconscious and engaging in deep Shadow Work which was often hard, depressing and melancholic, but necessary for the growth that produced his great creative works. Indeed, Pessoa defined their creation as an "act of intellectual magic, a magnum opus of the impersonal creative power."(7) This going within himself was his Hero's Journey, his Initiation that brought repressed thoughts and personality traits into the light - the central goal of his own esoteric studies:

"What seems to have impressed him, in those books as well as in his spiritualistic experiences, was the 'evidence' of a hidden reality, more real than the daily and visible one. This leads us to appreciate the most characteristic aspect of Pessoa's thought: his strong dualism, which evidently verges on a sort of idealism. In Pessoa's view, reality is always composed of two opposite sides. This is reflected on any and all of its levels: the duality spirit-matter is just a mirror for other dualities, such as imagination-actuality, darkness-light, invisible-visible, unknown-known. The first term of these dualities represents for Pessoa the positive side, while the second one represents the negative side. In a sort of reversal, what is normally seen as real and concrete becomes illusory, whereas only what is hidden and invisible can be 'real.' Between these two poles of reality we find symbols that act like signs: they remind us of the existence of another dimension, which hides the real side of things, and push us towards it. Furthermore, if the symbol is a sign towards the hidden side of things, initiation is the path to reach it."(8)

Painting of Pessoa (1964) by his friend,
the painter José de Almada Negreiros

Aware of the magical properties of Words, taking the classic definition of magic as causing changes in Consciousness in accordance with one's Will, Pessoa saw his vocation as foremost spiritual: "I was a poet animated by philosophy, not a philosopher with poetic faculties."(9) He viewed the poet as an initiate, whose mastery of words replaced all "normal" routes of initiation.(10) Pessoa was influenced by the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle's concept of the "hero as poet" (1841). He embodied the words of the German philosopher Ernst Jünger whose "Anarch" concept closely parallels Pessoa's worldview: "There is only one freedom, which can put all this under checkmate: the freedom of the poet. It is for this reason that there isn't any space for it in Plato's State."(11) 

Pessoa's was the ultimate freedom achieved by the Hermit who withdrew within to achieve that inner freedom, knowing he must then manifest his own creativity outside himself: "Yet, in his lifetime, Pessoa seemed to have found a way to finally reach the state of an 'infinite Being' able to create itself. By giving life to his army of heteronyms, while at the same time remarking that 'Pessoa, properly speaking, doesn't exist', the Portuguese poet established within himself a space in which creation - and thus free will - could finally be possible."(12) The Hermit withdrew into his inner world to work on himself, knowing that at some point he would return to the outer world with more psychological and spiritual tools to deal with life's challenges. Caeiro never confused his outer persona for his inner purpose: "I have no ambitions nor desires. To be a poet is not my ambition; it is my way of being alone."(13)

Pessoa resolved his existential anxieties through Caeiro, who asserted his Sovereignty through an unmediated contact with Nature, finding himself in the process. "As for me, I write out the prose of my verses," Caiero writes in 'The Keeper of Sheep'. "And I am satisfied, because I know all I can understand is Nature from the outside; I don't understand it from inside because Nature hasn't any inside; it wouldn't be Nature otherwise."(14) His was a return to the intuitive, at a time of false over-rationalizing and denying whatever cannot be quantified: "If you want me to have a mysticism, then fine, I have one. I'm a mystic, but only with my body. My soul is simple and doesn't think. My mysticism is not wanting to know. It's living and not thinking about it. I don't know what Nature is: I sing it."(15)

Because Caiero's withdrawal sometimes leads to an escapism that simply runs from the world's challenges and isn't always possible due to personal obligations, Pessoa found another outlet through the Baron of Teive, who channeled his despair and disillusion by cultivating the detached attitude of the Stoic (as did his Epicurean heteronym Ricardo Reis). He was acutely aware of his own position within society, burdening him with certain expectations: "What made me furious at myself was the disproportionate weight of the social factor in my decision. I was never able to overcome the influence of heredity and my upbringing. I could pooh-pooh the sterile concepts of nobility and social rank, but I never succeeded in forgetting them. They're like an inborn cowardice, which I loathe and struggle against but which binds my mind and my will with inscrutable ties."(16) He dealt with this by knowing he controlled his reaction to the external factors, so it could never change his inner condition unless he allowed them to. 

Despair is a natural reaction when dealing with these human conditions. To remedy this we can draw on the insights of the German philosopher Max Stirner, who advocated a "positive freedom" of Ownness - unleashing the potential of the Ego, those factors which make the individual truly unique. The Ego has been demonized by the "Love and Light" delusion (which is merely another unbalance that denies The Shadow), but a healthy Ego is necessary for growth - the key is to tame and control it rather than suppress it entirely. Pessoa's rejection of the dogmas and trends of society, prone as they are to being manipulated by the elites, was never a selfishness: "My egoism is the surface of my commitment. My spirit constantly lives in the study and the care of Truth, and in the concern of leaving once I will have dismissed the clothes that bind me to this world, an opus which will be useful to the progress and the good of Humanity."(17) 

We can resolve this by accepting people as they are, focused more on those directly around us while seeing that people come in and out of our lives for reasons, and squashing any impulse or desire to be "saviors" which is most often a mask to control and manipulate. "How to reform society? It is simple: with a non-collective movement, that is with a purely individual impulse," Pessoa observes. "All social reforms have always originated from one man of genius. From this man of genius, they pass to a small minority, from this small minority to a larger minority, and finally to the whole of society."(18) The Individual is a private being closed in his own world, whereas Individualism is nothing but a symptom of the same rampant Nihilism the Individual rejects. Even the Anarch has a social component, willing to join with others who have the same inclination, but he is not necessitated or dependent upon this - so strong is his internal nature.(19)

I am convinced one of the purposes of the global lockdowns is to cut us off from this social element, which is just as necessary for an individual's growth as looking within - both aspects have their time and place in balance. Learning to see things in allegory and metaphor, and how much is occultic and ritualistic in society. For example, the mask - its no accident "mask" is a metaphor for the personas people project onto the world. Most communication is non-verbal, so masks covering these cues ensures less people will be able to relate to each other. The negative effect upon the psyche means people are more suspicious of each other, seeing each other as potential threats even when misplaced. This also makes people less sensitive to those non-verbal cues and behavior that actually would align them more with their natural instincts. On an individual level, masks cut off the throat chakra and the breath which was regarded as a divine life-breath, being the essential source of energy. We can also consider the implications of forcing people (although it was so often with their willful consent through manipulating their fears) to breathe their own oxygen rather than being connected to that of Earth. All of this qualifies as a Dark Occult ritual - changing people's Consciousness in accordance with the will of the elites.

Whenever we delve into the occult, we encounter all sorts of misconceptions from various people bringing their own preconceived biases and misunderstandings into it. Dismissing it all as "evil" or "dark" does not change the fact that occult knowledge is being used against us by the same elites who would demonize it for the masses, but it can also be harnessed by ourselves for the "good" of self-knowledge, growth, and true freedom of mind, body and spirit. Its about seeing the world as it truly is, opening up a world of opportunities. Pessoa delved into various occult topics, collecting and translating many esoteric works throughout his life, infusing his various heteronyms with different aspects of that worldview. Because he achieved the ultimate individuation through integrating the multiplicity within his psyche and personality, its not always clear what outer form his spirituality took. The Portuguese philosopher António Quadros distinguished between an earlier "pagan" stage and a later "gnostic" stage in Pessoa's intellectual development.(20) I suggest it was likely a combination of the two, some of his heteronyms tending more towards the other.(21) 

Pessoa cultivated a friendship with the English occultist Aleister Crowley, which began with his interest in astrology but quickly extended to the occult generally. Crowley is a controversial figure since much of what he did in his lifetime was purely for shock value. And his ideas infused too many Kabbalistic concepts for my liking. But other ideas of Crowley were empowering: That every man and woman is like a "star," carrying out their individual wills and following their own paths but ensuring it doesn't conflict with the will of another (similar to the Non-Aggression Principle). The two met when Crowley came to Portugal in September 1930. Pedro Monteiro, the son of Quinta da Regaleira proprietor António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro, received both men at that incredible spiritual place in Sintra, where the three performed a magical-occult ritual.(22) In a brilliant move that foreshadowed the powerfully-charged memes of recent Chaos Magicians, Pessoa helped Crowley stage a fake suicide stunt at the Boca do Inferno in Cascais, seeking to "recharge" his declining publicity. The two differed on how Initiation plays out in people's lives: "Being all, or rather feeling all in all possible ways seems to be for Pessoa the real path to initiation. This was by no means far from Crowley's views, with the difference that, for Crowley, the initiate was to have experiences in material, daily life as well, whereas for Pessoa everything happens on an intellectual and imaginative level."(23)

Just a few of nearly 150 pictures from my own trip
to Quinta da Regaleira, 30 June 2017. I planned to 
return last summer, now possessing a deeper awareness
and knowledge, but the lockdowns interrupted that
trip to this and other destinations.  

The poet advises us to be "gravely attentive to the mysterious importance of existing."(24) Knowing ourselves and our potential so that we may truly grow as individuals, in tandem with the similar growth of others around us. We have been cut off from knowing ourselves - and what it truly means to be human - by keeping us less sensitive of the deeper mysteries of this world. Using subtle means like increased energetic "noise" and various stimuli to keep us within false perceptions that are easier to manipulate. Pessoa stressed the importance of accepting a spiritual existence, no matter by what name one attempted to conceptualize: "We can only be responsible and free if we are responsible for that brain being as it is. That is to say to be responsible for our state, to be free we must have created our own [self] ourselves. But to create oneself is nonsense....Free-Will is the mode of existence of an Infinite Being (if such there be). It may, with incoherence or absurdity attributed to God. To man, only absurd and unthinkably."(25) 

Pessoa identified the Anarchist as the natural outgrowth of a Statist society, especially one that has extended its modes of control even into aspects of daily life and the psyche: "The anarchist is a product of civilization. Very much as smoke is the product of fire."(26) At times one must withdraw further from the sicknesses of society through apparently submitting to its outer demands which however never changed one's internal condition. Thus was created the figure of the "Anarchist Banker", an apparent oxymoron: "I had established that, in the true anarchism, each person had to create freedom and to combat social fictions by his own efforts....I couldn't destroy all social fictions; that could only be carried out by a social revolution....I would have to subjugate them, I would have to overcome them by subjugation, by rendering them powerless....The most important [social fiction], at least in our day and age, is money. How could I subjugate money, or to be more precise, the power and tyranny of money? There was only one way forward, I would have to acquire money, I would have to acquire money, I would have to acquire enough of it not to feel its influence, and the more I acquired the freer I would be from that influence."(27) 

His aspects of an anguish over past mistakes and a life not truly lived to its potential found its reflection in the character of Álvaro de Campos, who continued to give life to this anguish despite all his travels and Futurist art. Traveling has a paradox - it can help you to discover more about yourself, but in the process also causes you to confront harsh truths about your own life. Except for his formative decade in South Africa, Pessoa never left Portugal although he had such a yearning. I can relate personally to this as one whose own detailed travel plans last summer were disrupted by the lockdowns. Yet this forced many of us to look further within ourselves and manifest it without to our environments, just as it forced Pessoa to find the creativity within and likewise to explore the alma portuguesa (something a Lusophile like myself can respect). Cultivating that appreciation for the mysterious in life, to develop feelings of "Saudade", a life that can learn not only from past mistakes but also lost opportunities, and becoming more grateful for what we have despite life's challenges - perhaps Pessoa ultimately reminds us to look within before anything else.

Footnotes and Sources:

(1) António Mora, "The Return of the Gods"; quoted in The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, trans. Richard Zenith. New York: Grove Atlantic, 2001, p. 150.

(2) I refer to the coded term for this modern age and its basic assumptions, that have been used to control and bind the masses using various psychological and other techniques. See the writings of Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, and Jacques Ellul on this issue of Technik. Not to be confused with technology itself, which is neutral and depends on the intent.

(3) Livro do desassossego (The Book of Disquiet). Lisboa: Edições Atica, 1982, p. 192.

(4) The deaths from despair, suicides, and relapses, resulting directly from the lockdowns. Deaths from starvation on a global scale, people being denied access to essential food resources due to the shutdowns. People with cancer and heart diseases denied life-saving treatment because so many resources were redirected to a virus with a 99% non-fatality rate. All of this blood is on the hands of the governments, the sanctimonious civil servants and celebrities whose own jobs were safe and secure, the hypocrite politicians who violated their own orders, the dancing Tik-Tok nurses and doctors, and all appeal-to-authority cultists.

(5) The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, p. 148.

(6) ibid., p. 152.

(7) Poemas Completos de Alberto Caeiro, ed. Teresa Sobral Cunha. Lisboa: 1994, p. 292.

(8) Marco Pasi, "The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Fernando Pessoa's Esoteric Writings," The Magical Link (O.T.O. Ordo Templi Orientis), Fall-Winter 2002-2003, p. 5; reprinted from Ésotérisme, Gnoses et Imaginaire Symbolique: Mélanges offerts à Antoine Faivre, eds. Richard Caron, Joscelyn Godwin, Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2001, pp. 693-711.

(9) Pessoa. Páginas Íntimas e de Auto-Interpretação, eds. Georg Rudolf Lind and Jacinto do Prado Coelho. Lisboa: Edições Atica, 1966, p. 13.

(10) Pasi, op. cit., p. 6.

(11) Ernst Jünger. An der Zeitmauer. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1981.

(12) Federico Campagna, "Beyond the Anarch - Stirner, Pessoa, Junger," Anarchist Studies (London: Lawrence & Wishart), Vol. 21, No. 2, Autumn-Winter 2013, p. 16.

(13) The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, trans. Chris Daniels. Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2007, p. 15.

(14) Cited in K. David Jackson. Adverse Genres in Fernando Pessoa. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 122.

(15) Pessoa. A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, ed. and trans. Richard Zenith. New York: Penguin Books, 2006, p. 33. 

(16) The Education of the Stoic - the only manuscript of the Baron of Teive, ed. Richard Zenith. Cambridge: 2005, p. 10.

(17) Páginas Íntimas e de Auto-Interpretação, p. 68.

(18) Pessoa Por Conhecer, Vol. II, ed. Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1990, p. 72.

(19) Abdalbarr Braun, "Warrior, Waldgaenger, Anarch: An essay on Ernst Jünger's concept of the sovereign individual," 7 March 2002, <https://web.archive.org/web/20090604101629/http://www.fluxeuropa.com/juenger-anarch.htm>.

(20) António Quadros, "Prefácio," in A Procura de Verdade Oculta: Textos Filosóficos e Esotéricos. Algueirão-Mem Martins, Portugal: Publicações Europa-América, 1986, pp. 15-19.

(21) Although Paganism is world-affirming and Gnosticism generally associates the world with the "Deluge", there are many aspects of Gnosticism which could be seen as a transition point that carried over Germanic and Celtic Paganism in a Christianized veneer. I refer to writers who have explored this in depth: Otto Rahn who identified the Cathars as Germanic; Julius Evola who found Indo-European roots to the Grail mysteries; Guido von List who placed the origins of the Minnesänger within pre-Christian Germany; and contemporary writers who identify the medieval Troubadours as continuation of the Celtic Druids. 

(22) Vitor Manuel Adrião, "A Quinta da Regaleira e António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro," June 3, 2018, <https://lusophia.wordpress.com/2018/06/03/a-quinta-da-regaleira-e-antonio-augusto-carvalho-monteiro-por-vitor-manuel-adriao/>.

(23) Pasi, op. cit., p. 6.

(24) A passage from Pessoa's letter to the writer and ethnographer Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues, 19 January 1915, <http://arquivopessoa.net/textos/3510>.

(25) Pessoa. Philosophical Essays, ed. Nuno Ribeiro. New York: Contra Mundum Press, 2012, p. 41.

(26) ibid., p. 35.

(27) Pessoa, "O Banqueiro Anarquista," Contemporanea, May 1922; in The Anarchist Banker and Other Portuguese Stories, Vol. 1, ed. Eugenio Lisboa. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1997, pp. 107-110.