207 The Book of the Law: Thelema Beyond Crowley

Discussing these questions and much more, and celebrating the reception of The Book of the Law, the Conference takes place at the Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1 on Saturday, 10th April 2004, 10am - 8pm. Reflecting the diversity of Thelema and the force and fire of the Aeon of Horus, a variety of international speakers will be taking up the themes of the Conference. They include Martin Starr, Margaret Ingalls, Andrew Collins, Mary Hedger, Lionel Snell, Carl Abrahamsson, Christina Harrington, Mogg Morgan, and Michael Staley. The Conference will end with a discussion, involving speakers and audience, drawing conclusions from what we have heard during the day. A social event will follow later in the evening.

212 TREADWELL'S BOOKSHOP events

34 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden
www.treadwells-london.com Telephone 0207 240 8906
Shop open seven days a week, noon to 7.00 pm

MAGIC IN TUDOR AND STUART ENGLAND
A Lecture by Alan Thorogood
9 March (Tuesday) 7 - 9 pm
Early modern England was a heyday of the magicians. Most famous of all was John Dee and his scryer, Edward Kelley, but many others practised the arts magical. This talk covers the main branches of early modern magic in England, and looks at some of its most celebrated practitioners. Astrology, necromany, geomancy, scrying, angelology, physick, and the summoning of angels and demons…. all get a look in at this talk. The world of the Elizabethans is wider, deeper and weirder than you think. The lecture will be followed by discussion and questions. The speaker, Alan Thorogood, is a long-term student of Elizabethan magic. £3.00

ALCHEMY IN OUTLINE
With Paul Cowlan
11 March (Thursday) 7.30 pm
This talk outlines the history and basic symbolism of alchemy, together with an account of the speaker's personal experience of it over the past two decades. Alchemy is an essentially western system, with roots reaching back the ancient world. Obscure and strange as some of the symbolism may seem at first glance it soon becomes not only comprehensible, but startlingly relevant, for contemporary personal exploration and development.

211 Featured Website

Those interested in Holy Guardian Angel are encouraged to check it out and, if you so desire, buy the book. http://www.psychicsophia.com/YourGuardianAngel/

210 Dedalus Book of the Occult

Gary Lachman aka Gary Valentine formerly of 80s band, Blondie, has written four books in as many years, including Turn off Your Mind: the dark side of the age of aquarius, Secret History of Consciousness, New York Rocker and now this 380 odd page study of occult thought. Crowley's masterwork, Liber ABA: Magick, provides what is probably one of the most interesting reading lists of any occult course. Strangely this list is omitted from the new Weiser 'blue brick', which is yet another reason to search out the Symonds Grant edition (appendix 1 p306sq). All occult life from Bhagavad Gita to Zanoni is there. Professor Ronald Hutton has even praised it as a pemmican of humanist education. In many ways Gary's book is a useful companion to that reading list, filling in many fascinating biographical details and giving a taste of what joys to expect. At the end is a short sampler of the work discussed, with extracts from Blavatsky and even Crowley itself. It has to be said that Lachman's work doesn't move much past the 1930s, there is pretty much nothing from occultists after Crowley, nothing from Kenneth Grant or Gerald Gardner, no Charge of the Goddess or Marilyn Manson. In his defence Gary writes that it isn't intended as a history of the occult or occultism, but a study of writers and poets influenced by the occult. Perhaps its too early for that although I suspect the author's has a slight bias towards the american view of occult history. Apart from the absence of either index or contents page, this is an excellent, indispensible book and well worth the extremely modest price of 10 pounds. - mogg

Gary will be speaking about the book at London's Secret Chief's on 25th March.

209: THE DARK-EYED WARRIOR: Tales of Hidden Bulgaria

In the shadowy world where truth lies, can the hero Doichin ever lay down his weapons? A gripping tale from the heart of Bulgarian myth and folklore about a warrior's search for second sight. Unique British Bulgarian performing arts company, A Spell In Time, presents powerful primal theatre in a brilliant blend of storytelling, folk ritual, evocative music and divine Bulgarian singing.

TOUR DATES

TUESDAY 16 MARCH 2004, 7.30pm: Storytelling Cafe, Wednesbury Library.

WEDNESDAY 17 MARCH 2004, 7.30pm: Storytelling Cafe, Midlands Arts Centre, Cannon Hill Park Birmingham. Tel. 0121 440 3838

THURSDAY 18 MARCH 2004, 7.30pm: Storytelling Cafe, Good For You Cafe, Firs Parade, Matlock, Derbyshire. Tel. 01629 584304 / 826939

FRIDAY 19 MARCH 2004, 7.30pm: Storytelling Cafe, Solihull Arts Complex, Homer Road. Tel. 0121 704 6962

207. Flowers

This poem was inspired by the work of Georgia O’Keefe, an American artist whose paintings of flowers are particularly famous. While O’Keefe herself never admitted to the obvious sexual imagery evoked by her paintings, it is noted by many critics and fans of her work that sexuality, especially female, is portrayed through her close-ups of flowers. Because I was shown her work when I was very young, I always regarded the paintings simply as portraits of flowers, until I reached my twenties and began to see the underlying eroticism of her subjects. Two particular works, “Grey Line” and “Calla Lily Turned Away”, inspired me to write about the sexual images produced by O’Keefe’s flowers.

Georgia

Flowers—
preposterously feminine in their folds, she waits for the rest of the world
to see the wombs of the earth, and life expelled like pollen-
stamens shuddering with life,
slide into the velvet folds of the calla lily—
the most primordial of pleasures.

If you're interested in erotic poetry you might like The Erotic Journal's Poetry Club. The Journal currently has a second edition, even better than the first. The club is for lovers and writers of Erotic Poetry. The Erotica Poetry Club, (so we don't get muddles with porn) we will be charging just 20 pounds a year for a monthly newsletter featuring some of the best erotic poetry from around the world. We are also looking for submissions - writers interested in both exhibiting and publishing their work, and in contacting other erotic poets around the world. Submissions can range from the simple and classical to the more complex, sensual and sexy.

For details of this and the club take a look at http://www.diversepublications.co.uk/.
First newsletter will be out end Feb.

206. The Gnostic Philosophy By Tobias Churton

A review by Paul Newman

Readers may remember Tobias Churton’s 80’s Channel 4 series The Gnostics, which I certainly enjoyed, and his follow up book The Gnostics (Wiedenfield & Nicholson, 1987; US Barnes & Noble, 1997). It was thus with some pleasure I embarked on a review of this book, a pleasure which soon evaporated on being faced with a book where the meaning of the phrase Gnostic Philosophy is barely discernable.

What do we mean by Gnostic? Historically the word has described an elite group of Christians, who believed themselves possessed of a knowledge (gnosis) and which made its adherents believe themselves above the restricted understanding and petty morality of their peers and especially other Christians. In its day, Gnosticism was a vibrant philosophy, fully able to engage with its peers. Its practitioners were able to argue their case cogently not only from an intellectual standpoint but also from a perspective imbued with a spiritual experience which led them to find themselves possessed of an insight denied other men. It is this experience, rather than the intellectual position, which defines the Gnosis.  It is true that the word Gnostic now refers to a wider spectrum of groups than simply Christian Gnostics, but I had been hoping that it was continuity of spiritual practice that was to be examined in the book, and which might have justified the title Gnostic Philosophy.  Instead, Tobias Churton seems to take the view that any underground, counter establishment group, which allows its participants to believe they have a secret or forbidden knowledge is to be called Gnostic. This allows almost any esoteric group to be included and this book is a potted history of most of them: Templars, Cathars, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, and more - all the usual suspects are there.

The book starts promisingly enough with a review of Zoroastrian cosmological theory, and especially the nature of time. It then reviews rapidly Jewish speculative theology in the late Hellenistic period before embarking on a review of Gnostic thinking as it emerges in the early Christian period. There is an awful lot of interesting material to be covered in this subject but the book attempts to cover so much ground that most of the material is covered only superficially, and a great deal follows the authors’ personal prejudices. Why this should be so, I cannot imagine. The list of advisors to the book reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary Gnostic research (and the transcripts of interviews with them are an attractive feature of the book). The main points of Gnostic thinking (as we think we understand them) are given but surely they deserve more than bullet point treatment. We are given the almost obligatory quotations from the Nag Hammadi corpus but, now the enormous theological implications of these texts has sunk in, it must be time to seriously question the extent to which they represent uniquely Gnostic thinking. Whilst striking in the foreignness of their theology from contemporary Christian teaching, there is actually little which seems to be purely Gnostic in outlook, some is even pagan. Are these then documents representative of Gnostic teaching or of a Christianity once normative (called by Gnostics psychic) but now lost to us?   Also, material from ancient authors is given, but so much is missed out.  For example, there is a lot of extant material covering the radically different interpretations Gnostics put on the Pauline Epistles. Absence of any discussion of this material is surprising, not the least for being the subject of a whole book on the subject by Elaine Pagels (for whom the author shows only the highest regard), but which is not even referenced. This would have allowed readers to assess Gnostic thinking in terms of passages with which they may be presumed to be familiar.

My reservations notwithstanding, this section is, in my opinion, the most successful of the book. The material given is generally accurate and a coherent account is maintained providing a wide, if personal, account of Gnostic thinking up to Late Antiquity.

The book then skips merrily through the centuries with reviews of Sufis, Qabalistic Magic, the Troubadors, the Knights Templar, Jacob Boehme, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and a final part on 20^th Century magical thinking. Can so much be encompassed in 379 pages of text? Sadly, in my opinion, the answer is no. Each chapter attempts a pen sketch of its subject, but really, too little information is given to make any chapter wholly satisfactory. Reviewing this, I asked myself: for whom is the book intended? You might think it addressed to intelligent laypersons interested seeking an overview of the material, but no single chapter adequately covers its subject matter. This struck me most in the chapter on the Troubadors, about which I know the least. I found after reading it, I did not really understand the Troubadors any better. Indeed, the impression I got was more of an essay designed to impress a university examiner than an introduction to the subject. In other words, if you already know the subject matter these essays may, perhaps, give an interesting slant on known material.

Aleister Crowley merits a whole (long) chapter and the author gives a very positive account of his life and philosophy. He is at pains to point out: Aleister Crowley has something important to say to all of us. I feel sure Mandrake readers will echo this sentiment, but, will they enjoy the attempt to write a life history of the Beast in 47 pages? I leave it to readers to come to their own conclusion. The rather fulsome tribute paid to A.C. may explain the rather perfunctory sketch of Jung’s life and thoughts, perhaps an attempt to keep a long book to reasonable lengths. A strange omission, though, given Jung’s vastly more influential work and his interest and important insights offered into Gnostic thinking.

If I have dwelt thus far on what I believe are the less desirable aspects of this book, it is not without merit. More positively, some of the topics discussed in the book have been the subject of a considerable number of recent speculative books. This book is actually free of such speculation, indeed it is quite sober in its approach, and the material presented is generally trustworthy. It represents a genuine antidote to the unfettered speculation so rampant nowadays.

I wish I could say the same about Chapter 9: Gnosis and the New Physics. A lot has been written about supposed parallels between some aspects of modern physics and mystical experience, a great deal of it drivel. Unfortunately this book manages to reproduce most of the same material found in countless New Age books on Spirituality and the New Physics. For example, early on in the chapter Churton states that in 1904 “Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity”. He didn’t, it was the Special Theory published then. The General Theory came later in 1916. He goes on “he proved mathematically that space and time were relative, not absolute conditions of the universe. Relative, that is, to the speed at which the observer or observing apparatus was traveling”. This really misses the point. It is true that Relativity theory shows that as components spatial and temporal coordinates vary, but Einstein was properly pleased to discover that the space-time interval (now properly recognized as the fundamental scenario of physical reality) is invariant under transformation, i.e. an Absolute of the theory! Einstein had wanted to call his theory The Theory of Absolutes but was dissuaded from doing so by his friend Minkowski. Think how different history would have been if Einstein had gone with his original intention. The facts of the situation are widely available and, considering the book purports to be an intelligent and articulate presentation of deep questions, I find the fact that the author reproduces such half baked ideas repugnant. The next paragraph is really excruciating and the rest of the chapter doesn’t do much better. It would be impossible to identify any more misconceptions for this review, there are so many. Frankly, given the poor grasp of the subject shown by the author, the book would be much better for the omission of this chapter.

In conclusion, I would say that, with such a large selection of material, it would be surprising if a reader did not learn something new. The main influences on the book are scholarly, and I welcome this as a genuine alternative to much speculative writing currently published. However, since the book fails as a first introduction to the subject and is inadequate for use as a reference text, I would recommend borrowing it, rather than buying.