“Collectivization and mass-phenomena, for that matter, may well be nothing other than a reactivated magic clan-attunement in deficient form. Political parties are a compelling example, particularly the extreme ones dominated by the fanatically blind point-relatedness of the magical. And isolation or individuation may well be nothing more than the reactivated magic point-like unity become deficient.

While the beginnings of individuation and the clan formed a unity in the magic structure, they are today rationally torn asunder and, driven to extremes, have in their deficiency a destructive effect.

Or, stated differently, we might say that the hyperobjectification achieved by the »ratio» brings about isolation, whereas the hypersubjectivization—the over-emphasis of the Ego—leads to the limits of Ego-capacity where the ego, reverting to its psychic conditionality, rather than mastering the psyche, is itself ruled and condemned by it: it is absorbed by the unconscious, by immoderation, by the mass.

All remedies proposed to combat this danger turn out to be unsuitable. Political parties of “unity” or unified states attempt to regulate the problems of isolation or collectivization, although they reveal their own deficient character by their one-sided demands for power. The attempt is made to improve the circumstances of deficient magic by means of deficient magic, an attempt, as it were, to drive out the devil by invoking Beelzebub.

Let this one example suffice to show the basic point: wherever we encounter a predominance of insistent requests (and fanaticism is a request blindly elevated to a demand which not only petitions but compels); wherever we find a prevalence of the idea of unification in whatever form—a doctrine of unity, the establishment of an association, a huge organization, a one-party state and the like; wherever we encounter a stress on the concept of obedience, as in an overemphasis on the military, or belonging and belongings, as in the property claims of capitalistic trusts or family patriarchies; and in general wherever we meet up with overweening emotionalism as in mass assemblies, propaganda, slogans, and the like, we may conclude that we are dealing mainly with essentially »deficient manifestations of magic».

Their deficiency can be recognized by their very claim to »exclusivity, as if they alone had validity or worth in contrast to the validity of other structures and forms of manifestation. Yet one may well ask what is to be gained by our classification of these phenomena as being deficiently magical. The answer is that because we know how they come to be, and recognize their conditionality, we no longer have to face them unaided. Even though we may not be able to do anything against such phenomena, we can at least avoid becoming submissive to them. We can view them with a certain detachment, secure in the knowledge that a deficient acquisition of unity does not lead to strength but rather of necessity, and naturally, to brutal power and, ultimately, to impotence.”

— Jean Gebser, The Ever Present Origin, Mutations as an Integral Phenomenon, p. 153-154