207 The Book of the Law: Thelema Beyond Crowley (review)

London, 10^th April 1904ev

First thoughts by way of a review

As one of the speakers, and indeed publisher of two other speakers you can hardly expect an objective opinion from me – maybe just my random interactions with various people who were there.  Anyways it all started a bit too early for me with a reading of the first chapter of the Book of the Law. Eleven is the number of magick and it wasn’t till about then that I was ready for the likes of Nietzsche and Orpheus. Things really started to swing when Ramsey Dukes wove a fine matrix out of a seemingly barren subject like O & 1.

I didn’t make it back into the hall until Nema/Margaret Ingalls was telling us about the Maat network, building into a reading of her revised Liber Pennae Praenumbra. Now I’ve had a number of exchanges on that all week. Frater Tabs wrote

‘I attended the Thelema Conference in London on the 10th April, where Nema was one of the  speakers. I listened to her presentation of the histrionics of the HML (and as an historian I found it interesting). I had listened to all the speakers that day with an open mind and as a Thelemite.

    . . .     As the reading progressed, visual changes took place. Nema began to change. She grew taller, younger and her hair seemed to grow and flash between black and flame red. Her eyelids grew heavy and raven black/blue. Her apparel flashed between gold and the richest blue I have ever seen, the blue that you always want to paint, yet cannot seem to create on your pallet.

     Her words seemed to reach each ear at slightly different times, as in a Doppler effect as if she was moving nearer and farther away at the same time. At this point the words melted away and seemed to become less important than the experience they initiated.

     At several points I moved in my (very hard) seat and rubbed my eyes, thinking it was fatigue or eyestrain, yet these physical (visual?) and audible changes persisted.     I also felt a buzzing throughout my torso, and my legs trembled (continuing even after the 20 min break we had later on, thus negating cramps / spasms in my mind).

    I don't know what happened during that reading, but it is something I will remember for a long time, possibly forever. I had not heard of Nema before, as I have been practicing Thelema / Magick on my own for some years now, in somewhat of a Magickal vacuum / bubble, with only my Wiccan sister as a sounding board. All I know is something profound happened to me that day, something I will have to meditate on, so as to figure out my next step and what it meant.’

     Its funny how at these things people, amongst whom I include myself, can be completely enchanted by the reading of a Liber whilst others are completely turned off. Another friend wondered why she had bothered when both versions were published in books?  

The other night I went to hear The Mission with ex Sisters of Mercy's Wayne Hussey and his fellow musicians (great tour and tightly packed gig BTW) and in the break fell into a conversation about this Liber Pennae Praenumbra – I protested that the function of a Liber was to be read out frequently and how privileged I was that in my magical ‘career’ there had been several new Libers, all by women and perhaps for that reason not as valued? Perhaps that’s why the role of Rose Kelly in the reception of Liber Al is often downplayed – was she not the actual voice of Aiwass?  My friend Tanith (see www.mandrake.uk.net/solstice.htm) taught me that the writing of a Liber was no ordinary thing - a privilege that should never be taken for granted. It’s like an ancient folk tale that is repeated each year even though we all know it backwards - that’s maybe how I see it.

I shared my spot with Mary (History of Fun) Hedger whose sequel ‘Occult High’ was published on the day of the conference (although only had one copy available!!)  After I’d done my bit Mary read from her new one – but not before rocking the audience back in their seats with some uncomfortable revelations about Kenneth Grant. Not that they should have been that uncomfortable – if you read the books – there is this definite tension between Crowley the Magus and Crowley the flawed perhaps failed lover – viewed through a woman’s eyes. Kenneth Grant has been incredibly supportive of Mary’s writing, so I assume that to his credit he wants this territory to be explored honestly. In my own books I’ve written a little about the sahajivan way followed by some Thelemites such as Kenneth Grant. I also mentioned how these strange astral connections often do end badly as the ‘Dharma Mudra’ revolts against the role.

Kenneth Grant has championed the writing of fiction as a more feminine way of magical exposition and many women have willingly accepted the challenge. Perhaps the more Masonic minded has to allow some space in their hearts for this kind of magical creativity. Woman may prefer a more narrative account of how they see things rather than the traditional set piece lecture that men tend to like. And afterall fiction is in itself a form of magick - one that is growing in intensity of late - indeed it was probably the preferred manifestation of the magick for Crowley and indeed Kenneth Grant whom both began this thing as poets. 

So well done to the Typhonian folk who did the organising – the conference caused some ripples. So maybe it wasn’t a classic gathering but it was a really good one. Being 100 years since the reception of Liber Al, there certainly was a will amongst the occult community that such a thing should happen so merry meet, merry part, merry meet again.

Mogg
PS there are two rather nice commoratory editions of Liber Al still
available - including a weiser special hardback at 15 pounds

212 Snoo Wilson's Pig Night

Apart from his thirty year obsession with Aleister Crowley, author and playwright Snoo Wilson has a day job. Some of his strange fruit may be viewed in this new production of Pig Night at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Described as 'a sizzlingly good night out with a fantastic cast Paul Freeman, Gary Kemp and the author himself. A schizoid German POW returns to the Yorkshire pig-farm he worked in during the 1940s to find that his step parents have fled and the business has been taken over by gangsters. More info at menierchocolatefactory.com

Snoo has written a fist full of novels including the controversial 'I, Crowley: almost the last confession of the beast'. His new one chronicles the rise and fall of another grotesque villain, the Oxford publisher and wannabe media plutocrat Robert Maxwell opps i mean Ernest Melmont. Its amazing to think that Melmont really was for a time a Laaaabour MP whose maiden speech 'said nothing in a display of overblown, tendentious horse manure which lasted over half an hour.' This time a political satyr in the fullest sense of the word - a pageturner that reminded me of Tom Sharp's Wilt. The first edition hardback, limited to 1000 signed copies is available via good bookshops including Mandrake (Tales of Melmont ISBN 0954613600).

211 Featured Website

Les Visible/The Dark Splendor

isbn 1869928-695, £ 9.99

‘Billy Joe thought of himself as beyond the restrictions of the common herd. He was free to do his own will as no other was, above limits and laws, past apprehension, un-reachable, untouchable, an entity unto himself alone. This is what he thought. But this is not what he was. Everything he did served the will and the interests of a force far older and deeper than he would ever reach. In comparison, he was like a child playing with blocks. He served a master who was loyal to no one, just as he was loyal to no one . There were many men like Billy Joe in the world, less accomplished in their evil, but moving deliberately down that ancient staircase into the Dark Splendor.’

One part crime novel and one part occult thriller, The Dark Splendor takes us behind the veil of appearances into a world where nothing is what it seems. Set against the backdrop of the island of Maui, the pacing grips us from the first page and sends us at a gallop on a white-knuckled ride featuring serial killers, drug dealers, horrific murder, martial artists, reincarnation, ceremonial magic, a black magician and an immortal Tibetan Master. For pure enjoyment and surprise this book is guaranteed to remain in your thoughts long after you have finished reading.

Les Visible is a writer and recording artist. He has had a lifelong love affair with the Hermetic Sciences and the Martial Arts. He is a seasoned traveler in psychedelic realms and prefers the Devic Kingdom over the suffocating confinements of the Sub-Matrix. Along the way he has matriculated from the military to prisons and the maximum security wards for the criminally insane. A collection of his works in various media can be found at www.lesvisible.com. He lives somewhere in Europe with his wife Susanne and his memories.

209: The Unknown God (Review)

Starr, Martin. P. (2004). THE UNKNOWN GOD: W. T. SMITH AND THE THELEMITES, Teitan Press, Inc. ISBN 0-933429-07-X $49.95 hardback. 432 pages, over 44 photographs and illustrations

That's got to be one of the most interesting books on magical history I've read in a long while, perhaps ever. Martin Starr debut book is a documentary study of the North American followers of the English mystic Aleister Crowley told through the life of their defacto leader, Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885-1957). The author is fairly well known as one of the owners of Teitan Press, who for many years have produced fine, authoritative editions of the master's more obscure works: books like the beautiful facsimile of Konx Om Pax; the pornographic classic, Snowdrops from a Curate's garden (of which I'm told there are many) and Crowley pastiche of Sufi sexual mysticism The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz.

Starr tells the story of Wilfred Smith's and I suppose what one might call the second generation of Thelemites who set about to promulgate the Crowleyan teachings in 1930s Hollywood. Perhaps the following quotation from the books terminus ad quem, might give some idea of the ups and down of the Thelemic movement:

'With Germer expired the last chance for Thelema to take root in the United States, and the propects internationally were no more bright. Or so one might have thought. Germer had successfully accused Mellinger of being an FBI agent and kicked him out of the house, expelled Grant for blasphemy, dismissed McMurtry as a slave to his wife and ceased corresponding with Metzger over differences in the Crowley translations in German the latter had published. Motta had fled the United States for his native Brazil after having been arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in February 1961 on suspicion of drug trafficking; while in jail he confessed that the source of the drugs found in his compartment was none other than his OTO Brother, Louis T. Culling. In the following year Germer refrained from giving Motta a charter to open the OTO in Brazil, mindful of the fact that Motta, in his experience only "switched temporarily back into sanity." Yet on his deathbed what faith Germer had in a future for Thelema he chose to vest in Motta, telling Sasha to inform Frater Adjuvo that he was "The Follower." What this may have meant was the subject of speculation that was never satisfactorily resolved. The issue of Germer's heir to the headship of the OTO remained an open question to the few who knew or cared about it.' (Starr 2004: 343)

For those perhaps less familiar with some of the above names let me tell you that were talking about all the main players in the subsequent history of Thelema - here laid low by the mind games of Crowley and his successor Germer. And that's not counting the ones that had already expired in scene two - i.e. Crowley's co-superior in the OTO Frater Achad, Jack Parsons and the books hero Wilfred Smith. It reminded me of the first act of the Mahabharata when Vatsyanana tells the audience that the character who represents the ancestor of all humanity is at that point rendered permanently barren - what can possibly happen next??

Well that's would take another book, but its seems to me that the modern stop go progress of Thelema is in part made more comprehensible by reading this fascinating history of its first days. In a way it really is act two of the same play. When Crowley had trouble with his frater superior Theodor Reuss he upped and gave him the sack proclaiming himself head of the order (Starr 2004: 112.) It was a tradition he was to recommend to others with the words of John Bunyan: 'my sword to him that can take it'. And indeed, according to this book, if Crowley could have proved his right to the OTO crown he might also have succeeded in imposed his control over the Theosophical Society and AMORC - and then how differently the magical world of the 80s might have looked. I could go on but hopefully that's more than enough to wet your appetite for this highly recommended masterpiece. - MMM

[Ps this is quite an expensive book at $49 - so why not ask your local library to get one in?? PPS: Martin is speaking at upcoming Liber AL centenary on 10th April]

The Sethian,

By Billie Walker John
Ignotus Press, 2003 (£9.99)

Thats a welcome reprint with additional material of Walker-John's monograph on the Egyptian god of confusion and demonic initiation - Seth. Its one that as a publisher I would very much have liked to done myself. In fact I wrote to Billie Walker-John when i first read the material in a little known occult magazine called Twenty-two. What I didn't know was that Billie was dying and would not live to finish off the project - that was left to the hands of Melusine Draco, who added an introduction by Alan Richardson, Walker-John's co-author on an earlier project The Inner Guide to Egypt. Draco has done a fine job although its a shame some of the pictures were omited and there is no bibliography. The book has more to say on egyptian history than it does on Sethian magick, for example some of the correspondences seem wrong to me - ie surely, despite Kenneth Grant's theorising, everyone now knows that Sothis is associated with Isis rather than Seth, whose star, if any, is Mercury, his constellation Ursa Major? The associations with S.O.L. will probably not impress many. But these quibbles aside, i'd say, for anyone interested in a subject largely dealt with in expensive academic tomes, this is a handy introduction to some of the main aspects of the cult.

Mogg

206. The Erotic Verses

David W. Parry

Publishers, rather like ordinary mortals, are occasionally plagued by the necessity of making executive decisions. This distasteful intrusion into the peace of their professional lives may take many forms and whether to add poetry to their invariably conservative catalogues appears to be one of the most irksome for them. Yet even this baleful choice pales into commercial insignificance, if the manuscript in question is a collection of erotic verses. Political satire or new age mysticism are usually considered more suitable subjects for a quick return. To be fair, this is not entirely the fault of an industry which has obviously lost its cognitive grasp of poetry as a product. After all, poets themselves rarely seem to realize that the poetic act raises language to its most sophisticated and sensual level. Indeed, almost by definition poetry deepens human communication and is by no means merely the pastime of a few angst adolescents.

It is therefore, quite strange that an intelligent celebration of the flesh still makes so many people uneasy. This is partly due to the fact that an untamed eroticism evokes semi-conscious folk memories surrounding poets as members of the 'devils crew'. A title fully deserved when one considers that for centuries there was a clear distinction between mere entertainers and those elite souls who strove to articulate the spirituality of desire. As William Blake muses when reflecting upon the vocation of a poet:

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom".

Curiously, both cleric and cartesian had a vested interest in ignoring the evidence that poetic lore was grounded in erotic principles, the rudiments of which formed closely guarded religious secrets in ancient times. Moreover, the occult power of image and symbol gave some commentators an unpleasant feeling that they were playing with imaginal fire even in our post modem period.

Lingering legends concerning the Marquis de Sade are largely responsible for this intuitive caution. His debauched life and sexually experimental works deliberately juxtaposed poetry, prose and the esoteric arts. Assuredly, as an author, de Sade single-handedly establishes the ebony aspirations of literature noire. Moreover, his genius developed simultaneously with a vigourous cultivation of ever new erotic pleasures in his private life.

An example of this comes to the light of history in 1772 when de Sade was accused of attempting to murder Marguerite Coste. Now it is true, according to the testimonies of the time, that she was taken severely sick, although madame Coste was not diagnosed as being under any serious medical threat.

The true inheritors of this sulphurous tradition in recent times were, of course, the decadents. As a 'movement' it was anarchic and the lifestyle of individual members frequently haunted by the spectre of scandal or public censure. However, some of the decadents attempted to turn their social misdemeanours into rebellious virtues, presenting themselves as explorers on the edge of forbidden pleasures. Now and again they would even draw on orthodox literary sources to show that the Prince of Darkness had always been a dedicated patron of the arts. Consequently, it was far trom unusual to find John Milton's portrayal of Satan hailed as a brilliant depiction of the ultimate seducer. Perhaps more understandably Baudelaire's explicit litanies in praise of the evil one as well as Carducci's sinister nocturnal hymns were presented as a defence of the tree imagination by the decadents to their opponents. What is more, certain leading decadent theorists pointed to the inspiration granted by Mephistophilis to the hell-raising Christopher Marlowe and the visionary Goethe. Even Shakespeare, they contended had written phrases such as :

"the devil hath power t'assume a pleasing shape"

to widen the intellectual horizons of his audience. In which case, the Bard himself was guilty of blurring the boundaries between decadence anddecency. Contemporary critics tend to agree that the greatest decadent and occult poet was the notorious Aleister Crowley. As a youth he seems to have modelled his poetic career on that of the remarkable Algenon Swinburne, whose sado-masochistic verse outraged the hypocritical sensibilities of his Victorian peers. Certainly, Crowley's early poems may be seen as a tribute to his mentor, especially when we read stanzas such as:

'all degradation, all sheer infamy,
thou shalt endure, thy head beneath the mire,
and dung of worthless women shall desire'

Yet the Edwardian luxuriance of Crowley's early style never really evolved into a much more spiritually significant or lascivious form of versification. Sadly, as his sorcerous persona developed Crowley's cavalier use of narcotics, alcohol and copulation were used to enhance his failing attempts to wrestle with the theoleptic process of poetic union with the absolute. This becomes increasingly evident when examining one of his more successful poems dedicated to the Great God Pan:

'Come, 0 come
With the lonely lust of devildom
Thrust the sword through galling fetter
All devourer, all begetter :
Give me the Sign of the Open Eye
And the token erect of the thorny thigh
And the word ofmaddness and mystery,
o Pan, 10 Pan!'

The sensual imagery of this verse is effective even though it is hardly a subtle song of evocation in the manner of previous decadent poets. However, it is one of the few Pagan Hymns to have deeply offended Brighton town councellers when it was chanted at Crowley's Cremation in 1947. On that concluding note, all one can add is that hardly any higher praise may be given to a man than he lived with humour and died with panache.

Publishers, rather like ordinary mortals, must bear some of the blame for the unfortunate fact that the full power of erotic poetry is both suppressed and virtually invisible in our highly sexed society. This is ironic as well as a continual commentary on the dumbing down of liberal western values. The obvious contribution to the second great tradition made by poets such as Baudelair, Swinbume, and Paul Verlaine is beyond doubt, but the absence of published poets following this path can only be lamented by a readership starved of spiritual sustenance. In the final analysis, desire is not simply a physical need satiated through living well and loving skillfully. The highest form of desire is a search for transcendence discovered through erotic expression.

David Parry's collection Caliban's Redemption, isbn 186992875x, is published by this month by mandrake

Groups

Bath Omphalos, a Moot for LHP magicos in Bath area. For more details contact omphalospaganmoot@.... Essentially a discussion group at the moment, open to all. The first speaker meeting is 8th May Houngon Richard Voudoun

Tesseract: The Side Unseen

A conference for magical practitioners.

An altered space created as a forum to stimulate and share ideas, perspectives and techniques, from traditional to postmodern magic.

September 4 5, 2004. Lancaster University Conference Centre

Like the Hydra, the Occult Underground is a many-headed beast. The Tesseract Projekt plans to present a conference that will allow practitioners from a wide array of traditions, schools, paths and approaches to benefit from a mature sharing of experiences. Based in Lancaster a small northern city with a pleasantly surprising amount of history and culture, the weekend will consist of a day of talks, lectures and workshops on the Saturday, followed by an evening of relaxed socialising and insidious plotting. On the Sunday there will be a chance to spend time at some noted, mysterious and hidden sacred sites in the area, guided by local folk.

All are welcome. At this first event we can guarantee something of interest for magicians (of chaos and hermetic persuasions!), witches, Thelemites Setians...and all those with a passion for magical places and landscape, be they druids, heathens or modern antiquarians.

Confirmed speakers so far:
Rufus Harrington
Nathaniel Harris
Jaq D. Hawkins
Ian McNicol
Mogg Morgan

Tickets - £15 (£20 on door) Send cheque payable to 'Tesseract Projekt' and an SAE to: Tesseract Projekt 61 Park Road Lancaster LA1 3EJ

For further information visit our web site: www.tesseract.org.uk Or contact us: gimp@... and ask to sign up to our information list.