Treadwells and Secret Chief Talks

Hello from Treadwells, Here's a selection of talks at Treadwells. Full descriptions of all events are to be found now on website, http:www.treadwells-london.com. Treadwells 34 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London Places booked on 0207 240 8906 or by email info@...

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Tuesday, October 11
Issues in Sexuality and Magic, from Tantra
7.15 for 7.30 pm start £5.00
Phil Hine, Practitioner and Writer

Wednesday, October 12
Planetary Magic in the Renaissance: Marsilio Ficino
6.15 for 6.30 start £5.00
Dr Angela Voss, University of Kent
NOTE early start time

Friday, 14 October
Surrealism Night: Readings, Art More
7.15 for 7.30 pm start £3.00
The London Surrealist Group

Tuesday, October 18
The Symbols in Alchemy
7.15 for 7.30 pm start £5.00
Paul Cowlan

Wednesday 19th October - George Sieg
"Cainite Gnosis And The Left Hand Path"
George, author of the recently-published Cainite Grimoire 'Liber Niger Legionis' (Black Book Of The Legion) comments on antinomian gnosis in historical and modern manifestations, as well as its influence on, and relationship to, the magickal tradition of the LHP. The talk includes practical suggestions on demonology and magick and remarks on the creation of the grimoire.

Rough Diamonds Vol I (Review)

A compendium of rare and unpublished manuscripts, typescripts and documents relating to the works of Aleister Crowley

If there is a story behind this continuing series of CR-Rom releases of material that is supposed to be 'under the seal', I don't know it. But my guess is that this is the work of a disaffected OTO member with an 'access all areas' pass to the OTO archive. The producers feel entitled, given the service they are rendering to the sum total of human knowledge, to have some fun at the same time - hence the Wagnerian soundtrack - which frankly I found a bit irritating - I'd prefer something a bit more modern - and I'm a fan of Wagner - but in this context it's a bit camp - come to think of it, maybe that's the idea. I also wasn't too sure about the photomontage of, for example, Leah Hirsig's head on the body of a soft porn star? There are definately some interesting pictures bundled with the CD but little tricks like the above made me worry about the authenticity of the whole package. But quibbles aside - well worth the price - to get your copy you need to go to the black flag productions website, which was at: http://www.tobew.com/

The Grammar Of Witchcraft

David w. Parry M.A.

Copyrights © 09/2005

Preface

It is with a certain sense of trepidation that I begin this opening comment, since so many dear friends have helped me write this tale of theological witchcraft. Some have already passed into the Summer Land and are so illustrious that I scarcely dare to mention them, although it is impossible to compose modern English letters without their influence. My debt to these ancestors is overwhelming, which is why I name their names while genuflecting in due reverence to; Christopher Marlowe, Charles Dickens, Robert Graves, D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf and Iain Sinclair, being ever mindful of their pre- eminence. Others are theologians, and although perhaps as illustrious in their own way are less formidable for that very reason. I include; William Law, Dean Inge, Alex Saunders, Dr. Robert McTeigue S.J, along with the incomparable Alan Watts. Still other friends have helped me with their expertise, patience, proof-reading abilities as well as personal generosity, including Piotr Brzuziewski (without whose loyal friendship life in London would be radically depleted), Katon Shual, Elizabeth Armstrong-Rosser, Glyn Paflin, Anthony Gideon, Luke Rutherford, the Reverend Presley Sutherland and his husband David Bedella, Colin Wiscombe, Sergey Ponomarenko - my inspiration and sparring partner, and Master of the strict observance, Ms. Jacqueline Hackett. Lastly, I need to mention the unfailing support of Mr. Michael Gray who, through every trial and tribulation, has remained a steadfast companion.

I have no further initial remarks to make except that the grammar of witchcraft is a key to the Universitas Litterarum, which allows us to penetrate into the mysteries of the Pleroma itself. Blessed be Jessie Thompson, wherever you are.

Spirits are like numbers. They are both in nature and above nature. English witches have known this since the time of Good King Bladud. It was the type of unsettling knowledge that kept us constitutionally separated from the heavily industrialised cities. Separate and close to the forests. Apart that is from the city of Liverpool where nearly everything seems visceral. Even the overpoweringly Christian architecture embodies a rare and richly dynamic quality. Perhaps that's why entering Liverpool always feels like a threshold experience.

For Caliban this city continually held unexpected initiations. On this occasion he had been invited to a lesbian wedding because of his apparently ironic belief that love and sex were antithetical. Strangely enough the happy couple thought he had a point. But at that precise moment in time it didn't really matter. He was early. Hours early as usual, and the wrong side of the river Mersey. From where he stood, he could see the Liver-birds glinting in the sky like phoenix twins already aflame with regeneration. Burning and aflame. That's why they personified a community which still had all the restless tactile energy of adolescent libido, even after all these centuries. It was then, with a similar sense of energised frustration that Caliban passed an hour or two by walking along the rivers embankment, trying to find a bench to sit on and orientate himself. Possibly this was the entire problem, apart from his fucking hang over. His gaydar needed a sense of provincial perspective.

As if by coincidence, he noticed a Scouse mother and young daughter also looking for a seat. "Christ!", they were a sight more than a vision. Mother Scouse was as pale as unused parchment. Little light lingered in her weary eyes. She looked old, decades before her dotage and was physically bent double like Shakespeare's crone Sycorax.. It was as though her own body was trying to finally break the years of bad fortune in two, like a dry forgotten wishbone. Brittle dirty hair protruded from her head, similar in colour to the tethered twigs of a bisom broom and with roughly the same texture. From a distance it looked as though evil forces nestled there, settled and twisting in their surly incarceration. Once they would have been called "elf locks" and treated with a slight revulsion. Nowadays it just seemed unfashionable. These powers took their revenge however, by making Mother Scouse's legs puffy with oedema, grotesquely contrasting with her spindly upper half. To cap it all, she wore a faded football scarf around her neck smelling of rancid defeat.

Her daughter, on the other hand, was immaculate. A fairy creature from a nursery- rhyme world. Not a single speck of dust settled on her. She was clean, sallow skinned, blue-eyed and with hair like reddening autumn leaves. Caliban wasn't certain whether it was a case of gentrification or parental projection. "Coooohhh!". He heard the girl begging her mother to feed the single bedraggled pigeon nearby, so after finding a corporation bench to sit on, they threw some bread at the ground to attract the birds' balding attention. Almost out of nowhere a flock of plump, moth-eaten pigeons were soon staggering in their direction. The girl gurgled with delight and threw some more bread at the ground. Then she noticed that one of the pigeons had very distinctive markings and stood out among the rest:

"Look mummy, that one's ugly and not like the others. Its different".

The young mother peered over:

"That's the evil one. Be careful. Run away quickly."

The girl squealed with mock horror and ran back to the false comforts of her mother.

Caliban was stunned at the remark and stared at them. They didn't notice. He suddenly realised that this was one of the ways in which crippling intolerance was passed on by morally bankrupt parents from one generation to the next. Their own unresolved bile unconsciously expressed in ways that were bound to blind the next generation to compassion. After all, ignorance could be transmitted as well as wisdom, under the guise of kisses and cuddles. Mother Scouse wanted someone to be on her side. Anyone really. She wanted life to be fair but had never thought about its intrinsic inhumanity. Perhaps he should say something? He looked in their direction but it was already too late. Daughter scouse had tired of pigeons and so, collecting themselves, they waddled further down the river side.

Being different has always been considered evil. Caliban knew that natural witches have had to endure this thoughtless prejudice for centuries. As homosexuals and lesbians, we were seen as sexual deviants, even though everything that made us alien to Christendom gave us power. In a sense, our sexuality offered an unspoken challenge to the repressed communities surrounding us, while saving us from the self-contempt plaguing our neighbours. They were like the bushes of a poorly planted hedgerow, whose roots vengefully strangled and painfully suffocated each other in a desperate fight for survival. Their branches haunted by back biting weasels and bickering bats, ready to astrally scratch and claw anyone who disturbed them. Every now and again their inherited anxieties oozed out the poisonous sap of persecution. First it tainted the Jews, then us, finally staining their own speculative books. But our magic protected us from the domestic vacuity stifling their unpleasantly intertwined lives. Our very strangeness insulated us from the inauthenticity that mutilated their pleasures. We had distinctive rules about gender equality, cleanliness and food, which told us their groundless ways would lead to madness. As witches we insisted that placing solar consciousness on a pedestal above nature necessarily led to a radical disrespect for the Greater Family of Life, and we have been proved right. The Church Fathers ignored our warnings at their peril. Centuries ago, Sir Francis Bacon rebelled against them to save our Coven from further threat, and in the due course of time Charles Darwin himself took up our Naturalists torch. We adapted, while their insincere world was only postponing its inevitable decay.

Musing on this ancestral paradox, Caliban wondered why it seemed that everyone these days thought they were different. Maybe particularly in Liverpool. In reality they were only different like everybody else. Another irony. To add insult to injury, if someone was actually different, in the sense of kind hearted or generous like his lesbian friends, their distinctiveness somehow overshadowed the light of their virtue to the people around them. "Oh, sweet Jesus", his head wouldn't stop pounding as though a Scots military band in full procession was marching through his brain. He felt vaguely nauseous. Fuck this hang over and f**k history, he needed to find the girls and get a hair of the dog at this f**king wedding.

Continued next time

NIGEL BRYANT versus Dan BROWN

MERLIN'S MOUND author Nigel Bryant appeared on ITV's much-publicised programme The Grail Trail (25.9.05) to attack the vision of the Holy Grail in Dan Brown's THE DA VINCI CODE.

"It may seem strange," he says, "that I laid into Brown for using the Grail as a symbol of the womb, of the sacred feminine, when that very thing is central to MERLIN'S MOUND. But the difference is that I'm using it knowingly as a symbol. And I don't claim that MERLIN'S MOUND is anything more (or less) than a story.

"The trouble with Brown's book is that it's a prime example of a dire new literary genre of pseudo-fact. Unfortunately, in THE DA VINCI CODE Dan Brown has swallowed hook, line and sinker the central thesis of a best-seller of two decades ago - The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail - which can be demolished in 30 seconds.

"The theory depends entirely on a mistake caused by astonishingly sloppy scholarship. The play on words by which the SANGREAL (the Holy Grail) is supposedly a code for SANG-REAL ('royal blood') - leading on to the hilarious notion (after all, let's just stop and think about it for a second) that a child born of Jesus and Mary Magdalene was the start of a bloodline which kept going in secret for 2,000 years - simply doesn't work. Dan Brown lists a series of 'facts' at the start of his book; well here's a fact he doesn't mention: the spelling SANGREAL doesn't exist in any French work. It's a pun that works only in French, but no French writer ever used it. In French it's invariably written SAINT GRAAL. The only person who ever did write SANGREAL was the 15th-century Englishman John Hardyng whose French wasn't very good, so he heard 'saint graal', didn't know how to spell it, had a guess and wrote 'sangreal'. And on that simple mistake, almost akin to a typing error, is the whole wild theory based.

"I've no problem with it, actually - the Mary Magdalene / bloodline of Christ idea's a fun story - but claiming it (and other supposed 'facts' in Dan Brown's book) to be 'true' is sad in the extreme. We've got to be able to distinguish fact from fiction. Pseudo-fact does no favours either for fiction or for history or, for that matter, for the world of symbols.

"I'm seriously interested in the medieval Grail stories - hence my book The Legend of the Grail [Boydell Brewer, 2004], which brings together the eight great French grail romances of the 12th and 13th centuries and creates from them a single, coherent narrative. Womb imagery is nowhere to be seen. But that doesn't mean I can't use the Grail's potential symbolism and work it into a story of the sacred feminine in MERLIN'S MOUND. But I'm not going to do a Dan Brown and claim it to be 'true' in the sense of being a 'fact'. Let's all grow up a bit. The Grail doesn't exist and never did. But it's there even though it's not there. It's absolutely 'true', profoundly 'true', when you take it as a symbol."

Omphalos (Bath alternative moot) Talks

All talks held at Batheaston Scout Hall, School Lane, Northend, Batheaston 7.30 til 9.00 p.m
Take the Bath turning from the M4 (jct 18) and follow A46 to Bath. At the Bath roundabout take the first left onto the A4 to Batheaston. This becomes Batheaston High St, look for a sharp left up Brow Hill. Continue for about 1/4 of a mile, until you find School Lane. Park at the top and walk down past the Gothic looking school - the Scout Hall is the large modern building straight ahead, although the entrance is up and around to the left. It's easy to find - map on request

Nov. 12th. 2005 Mogg Morgan on Seth: the personification of evil

Mystical Vampire: The Life and Works of Mabel Collins

by Kim Farnell, 238pp, illustrated. £12.99/$23.99

Reviewed by Mogg

The Theosophical Society still presents many of us on 'the path' with a highly instructive narrative concerning the vicissitudes of magical organisations or 'Orders'. Founded, in the year of Crowley's nativity, it has outlived many of its rivals, although in these, its twilight years, it has become a hereditary clan (See K Paul Johnson 'Hereditary Successors').

One of the Theosophical Society's best selling guides to its ideals is and was Mabel Collins' Light and the Path. This book even made it into the curriculum of Crowley's Argentinum Astrum. Old Crow was obviously a serious admirer, saying of Collins' novel The Blossom and the Fruit, that it was 'probably the best existing account of the theosophical theories presented in dramatic form'. With such admiration I wonder if there is any link between Crowley's 'Star Sapphire' ritual and Collins' novel of the same name, published in 1896? But in the words of this recently published and first ever biography: 'who was Mabel Collins?'

It surprisingly easy for someone as magically connected as Mabel Collins to suddenly sink without trace, submerged by a pseudo-scandal cooked up, in this instance, by the larger than life founder of the Theosophical Society, H P Blavatsky or HPB for short. HPB was the archetypal 'charlatan and magus', setting the theosophical ball rolling, and at the same instance a magical current that eventually gave birth to the Hermetical Order of the Golden Dawn and all of its neo-pagan successors. Cantankerous and addicted to celebrity, she recognised Mabel Collins' talent but eventually dropped her in favour of an even brighter star called Annie Besant. In hindsight many might now wonder how different the fortunes of the TS might have been, if Collins had been able to fulfil her destiny to lead it after the death of its founder. Perhaps even Crowley would have abandoned his own secret pretensions to take over the reins of power (see The Unknown God/Starr 2004)?

I very much liked the Mabel that emerged from this bitter-sweet biography. Of humble origins, she rose far above what the Victorians might have considered her natural station, to become a popular sensationalist novelist. Later she developed her distinctive brand of the spiritual writing - selflessly signing over the copyright to the Theosophical Society, and this, despite their later callous rejection of her. Undaunted, she soldiered on, still writing and campaigning on the related spiritual issues such of anti-vivisection. That animal welfare is a good barometer of a culture's spiritual health is a truth first attested by the rise of Buddhism. It's a remarkable fact that 2500 years ago, the Buddhist emperor Ashoka built hundreds of dispensaries all over his kingdom for human and veterinary medicine - it should tell you a lot about that civilization.

In the end, Mabel was laid low by the vagaries of the publishing world, especially the ad hoc nature of American copyright law, which seemed to allow any number of pirate copies of her novels - at the same time driving her into bankruptcy. Tolkien suffered a similar fate!

Mabel sunk into genteel poverty and obscurity, eventually dying of heart disease, in the Cheltenham home of one of her remaining admirers. If you think she deserves more than that, why not read her story and in the words of the bard:

'So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.'

The Genesis Meditations:
A Shared Practice of Peace for Christians, Jews and Muslims

Neil Douglas-Klotz

Quest Books, 2003

Reviewed by Tom Bland

At first sight, this may seem a strange book to review for a newsletter dedicated to postmodern magic, but it is a book that is full of magic. It is magic in a devotional sense, meaning that it is an opening towards the divine. It is the divine in a specific sense embodied in the Aramaic word for God, Alaha, meaning Unity. This word comes from the Hebrew root word, Elohim, meaning ‘the one and the all.’ It is the word used for God in the first chapter of Genesis, and signifies the unfolding of unity into multiplicity.

This is the paradox at the heart of Neil Douglas-Klotz’s book, The Genesis Meditations, which seeks to open out the story of creation as a spiritual practice. He writes that the story of creation was not intended as the subject of theology, but as a mythic description of the origin of the world. He says that originally it was an oral story that would have been told in a group gathering, allowing each participant to engage with the story in an experiential sense. To open the first chapter of his book, Douglas-Klotz writes in a poetic fashion:

‘B’reshith Bare Elohim…
In the beginning of time…’
Gathered around a campfire,
the storyteller begins to move and chant.
Through her gestures and expressions,
her enthusiasm and feeling,
she catches the attention of young and old.
She amazes her audience with a story
they believe they are hearing for the first time,
even though they have heard it hundred times before. (p13)

Douglas-Klotz takes on the role of storyteller, leading us through a story we have indeed heard hundred times before - the story of creation. Instead of relying on previous translations, he turns back to the original Hebrew version, and finds in it a story we know only in an incomplete form. He discovers in the Hebrew a multiplicity of meaning that has not previously been opened out in prior translations, such as in the King James Bible. For example, he translates the first word of Genesis, B’reshith, in the following way:

To begin with…

Genesis 1:2
‘In the beginning…’ (KJV)
In the Beginningness,
In a time before time begins,
In the rest before movement begins,
In the space where nothing but
Elohim is, was, and will be.
It all unfolds and moves
like the wings of a bird taking flight,
like a spark turning to flame,
spreading to fire in all directions.
From this centre everything travels
toward its purpose,
somehow moving together and yet
each with its own kernel of destiny
known only to the Holy One. (p108)

This translation is interpretative, but also literal in the sense that Douglas-Klotz is translating what is inherent in the word. It is a mystical vision of the word, which he believes is inherent, integral and implicit in the word itself. This way of translating the word opens out the poetic, mythic and mystical dimension of the term. In his interpretation, Douglas-Klotz has clearly been influenced by the Kabbalah. His translation recalls the Kabbalistic concept of Tzimtzum.(1) In his work, he explicitly calls upon Kabbalistic, Sufi and mystical Christian concepts, in his opening out of the Genesis myth.

Douglas-Klotz seems to propose in the book that Genesis cannot be simply understood as a doctrine, but as a contemplative text that is practical in nature. In his translation of the term B’reshith, he has not only relied upon sound scholarship, but has also sought to understand the word as a living breathing reality. He outlines in the book a meditation on the word, using it as a chant, to open out each possible meaning through speech. It is a specific type of speech that is hard to describe. Martin Buber writes, ‘This speech has no alphabet, each of its sounds is a new creation and only to be grasped as such.’(2)

The Genesis Meditations provides the theory and practice of creation mysticism in the context of Jewish, Christian and Islamic doctrine. Douglas-Klotz seems not so much concerned with institutionalised religion, but more with the ecstatic and visionary aspects of these traditions. He writes:

In the last hundred years, much scholarly attention has been devoted to the area of myth and ritual. I propose here that there is a missing link in this study: the individual visionary. Without individuals whose spiritual experience originated, revived and relived the sacred story, there would be ritual. (p55)

The book is designed to allow the reader to cultivate their own vision of creation, origin and becoming. He does this through examining the creations stories inherent in the three religions, in the Torah, the Gospels and the Qu’ran, before looking at the concept of creation mysticism in the work of the mystics of these traditions. He then provides his own translations of the source material with a selection of meditations to enable the concepts to come alive in practice.

The purpose in these meditations can be seen in a passage Douglas-Klotz quotes from the work of the twentieth-century Kabbalist, Abraham Isaac Kook.

An Epiphany enables you to sense creation not as something completed, but as constantly becoming, evolving, ascending. This transports you from a place where there is nothing new to a place where there is nothing old, where everything renews itself, where heaven and earth rejoice as at the moment of creation.(3)

I can only say now that this is a book I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in creation, origin, meditation and mysticism. It is a remarkable book.

References:

1) See Aryeh Kaplan’s Innerspace: Introduction to the Kabbalah, Meditation and Prophecy, Moznaim, 1991, pp. 120-128 for an outline of the concept.

2) Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, Routledge, 2002, p. 19.

3) The quote is from Daniel C. Matt’s The Essential Kabbalah, Castle Books, 1997, p. 99.

Tom Bland is a student of the theoretical and practical Kabbalah. He leads a reading group on Daniel C. Matt’s The Essential Kabbalah in Chelsea, London. He can be contacted at inward@....

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Conferences

5th Annual Witchcraft Seminar 23rd October 2005

Wookey Hole Caves, Somerset.

Speakers include Cassandra Eason, Rae Beth, Jack Daw, Julian Vayne, Teresa Moorey,

Ian Read, Cassandra Latham, Damh the Bard, Melissa Rufus Harrington and Hollow Bones.

For more information phone Adrian on 01749 674712 or visit our web site at www.witchcraftseminar.com