AUTOMATIC THEOLOGIESsignificance in the hierophany are ‘‘transformed into something supernatural—or, to
avoid using a theological term, we may say that [they are] transformed into something
superreal [sure ́el], in the sense of being superefficacious while still remaining a part of
common reality.’’^24 The theological concept of the hierophany and the surrealist chance
encounter are indeed similar, even to the point of suggesting that automatism’s products
are so many hierophanies, manifestations of, if not the numinous element of the sacred,
then at least its secular counterpart. Yet there remains a central point of divergence be-
tween these concepts in that each implies a different notion of ‘‘presence.’’ The Eliadian
hierophany suggests that the sacred may manifest itself in any object, at any time, without
warning. But surrealism’s central theory seems to be a step ahead: the numinous ele-
ment—not God, but at least the potential for earthly redemption—alreadyexists in every
object; what is at stake is finding a way to experience what is already present.
‘‘Everything I love, everything I think and feel,’’ Andre ́Breton wrote in 1941, ‘‘predisposes
me to a particular philosophy of immanence according to which surreality would be
embodied in reality itself and would be neither superior nor exterior to it.’’^25 Though
Breton would only articulate the relationship of the real and the surreal as one of internal-
ity late in the Parisian movement’s development, the concept of surrealism as a mode of
communication and as a tool for the understanding of reality is present throughout the
Paris years. It becomes even stronger in the later incarnations of surrealist epistemology
in the 1960s and 1970s outside of France. Breton continues, ‘‘And reciprocally, too, be-
cause the container would also be the contents. What I envisage is almost a communicat-
ing vessel between the container and the contained.’’^26 The image of the communicating
vessel is an important one, in part because it later frames and entitles one of Breton’s
most self-revealing texts, written in 1955, but more interestingly because it indicates a
sensitivity to ‘‘the natural sweep of a merging universe, where an element from one field
crosses over into the next like the elements in surrealist games’’ or like the flow of water
and potential energy between vertical tubes in the elementary-school science experiment
that shares its name with Breton’s text.^27
The image of the communicating vessel also indicates one of the most serious diver-
gences between surrealism and the religious forms with which it shares the most attri-
butes. Messianism—even when unorthodox and heretical—may be loosely defined as
seeking to rebuild a lost unity between antinomous concepts; surrealism’s aim is, con-
versely, not so muchunityasequality. Just as in the communicating vessel, unity, or
the potential for communication across the boundaries between binary oppositions, is
presupposed in the surrealist world, but equality between divergent concepts and, impor-
tantly, equality in the access one may have to the beyond from within the here and now,
is yet to be won. For the messianic thinkers closest to the surrealist project, Benjamin
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