Mandrake Speaks Newsletter
Compiled by Mogg
No 164
Monthly info for friends of leading occult publisher and bookseller Mandrake of Oxford
info on ours and other interesting publications, reviews and events.
All inquiries and contributions and are welcome if sent to: mandrake-owner@yahoogroups.com
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send an email to same if you'd like to become a regular subscriber to this free transmission.
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Contents
- The Genesis Meditations: A Shared Practice of Peace for Christians, Jews and Muslims (review)
- Mandrake Book of the Month: Nigel Bryant versus Dan Brown
- Treadwells - Lectures on witchcraft Voodoo.
- Yet More Rough Diamonds (updated)
- Bath Omphalos
- AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE 2005 Exhibition Borough Satyr
- The Grammar Of Witchcraft- Part I
- Groups
Scottish Golden Dawn
Leeds House Moot - Conferences:
Pagan Federation (cancelled)
Witchcraft Seminar (21-23rd October)
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@...
-----------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 26 October
Archaeological Evidence of English Cunning Magic
7.15 for 7.30 pm start £5.00
Brian Hoggard, Researcher
Friday, 28 October
Edwardian Ghost Stories for Halloween
7.15 for 7.30 pm start £5.00
Adam Nevill, Novelist, and Friends
Sunday, 6 November
CUNNING HEDGEWITCH WORKSHOP V:PLANTS AND ROOTS IN MAGIC
Christina Oakley
1-6 pm £18.00
Friday, 11 November
Cunning Women, Cunning Men: A Cornish Case
7.15 for 7.30
Jason Semmons, Author and Researcher
Wednesday, Nov 16 The Four Elements: A Secret History 7.15 for 7.30 pm start £5.00
Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, Astrologer and Scholar
London Secret Chiefs
8pm - at the Devereux Public House, 20 Devereux Court, London WC2, near Temple Underground)
The Secret Chiefs
Suite B, 2 Tunstall Road, London SW9 8DA
Tel (0207) 733 5400 Fax (0207) 733 4449
http://www.shahmai.org.uk/index.php/Secret_Chiefs
Wednesday 2nd November - Christina Oakley
"Aleister Crowley's London"
Christina Oakley is an academic and owner of Treadwell's Bookshop in central London. She will take us on a journey, using slides and anecdotes, through the London that the Great Beast knew and particularly some of Crowley's many London homes, haunts and temples.
Wednesday 16th November - Ghost Stories
So you thought you were safe, now that Samhain fades behind us? No, my friends, that's just what they wanted you to think. In this Stygian limbo, 'twixt thinnest veil and longest night, they gather once more: people and presences from many worlds, telling tales of terror, supernatural stories and fables of fear. Pray join us...
Wednesday 30th November - Odebitola
"Santeria: A Magical Perspective"
Odebitola is a practical Qabalistic Adept with nearly 30 years experience who is also a priest in the Cuban religion of Lukumi. Tonight he will look at the Cuban Yoruba religion of Santeria from a magician's perspective, concentrating on the role of divination, dead, the role of the Orisha and the iwin, the stages in initiation and the grade structure and the differences between the practices of Nigeria, Miami and New York. He will also tell us why he dislikes Santeria!
Top
Rough Diamonds Vol I (Review - updated)
A compendium of rare and unpublished manuscripts, typescripts and documents relating to the works of Aleister Crowley
1. Rituals2. Caliphate
3. Documents
4. Publications
5. Misc
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.
Comment: 'I am sorry you found the Wagnarianesque soundtrack a tad irritating (as a slight digression: Ride of the Valkyres came 'second'). Yes, Eric Coate's 'March of the Dambusters' is camp (as was Crowley! I did not know the man personally, but both my great grandmother and grandmother did), but what true Englishman's blood and soul is not stirred by the symbolism associated with those bombastic chords and the imagery of bouncing bombs on those damn Germans... Or, should that be 'German dams'? Perhaps the soundtrack offers a clue into the 'story behind what's going on sub rosa?'' The C.D. does also offer a jukebox with six alternate choices of background score.
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/SR
Comment:Top
'The subject matter of all B. F. titles is a bit heavy going (to say the least), Certain of the images bundled in the initial (Secret Rituals) release were intended as a 'one-off' bit of light relief. They proved to be extremely popular (for example: a well-know Crowley based web-site's image galleries has four of the images culled from the S.R. multi-media C.D. in its top six 'most viewed images' and hardly a day passes that I do not receive requests for larger versions, or for more). It seems pretty clear that individuals are aware of the nature of certain images, but nonetheless enjoy them for what they are: I will shortly be posting a selection of these on my web-page. Joking aside, and as I'm sure you are aware; the documents and related stuff presented in the 'Serious' sections of Rough Diamonds 'Kicks ass!' ( A vulgar, but apt euphomism I feel).'
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
View David Parry homepage for information on Caliban's Redemption TopNIGEL 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."
Click on title for more information on Nigel Bryant's young adult fiction novel Merlin's MoundTop
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 The God Seth: the personification of evil
Contemporary magical practitioners have always been interested in the 'problem of evil' - the nature of good and bad action. Take for example Helena Blavatsky's statement - 'demon est deus inversus' to be found in her highly influential and monument work 'The Secret Doctrine' (1888:1.411). This was later adopted by the poet W B Yeats as his magical motto in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Most practitioners believe that the ancient Egyptian god Seth is the prototype for the contemporary archetype of Lucifer, Satan or the Devil. I want to take a brief look, in context, at the famous image of Seth deriding Apophis, (the demonic / chaotic serpent of 'non-being') as a leitmotiv for the nature or 'personification' of evil in ancient thought.
TopAUSTIN OSMAN SPARE 2005 * Borough Satyr
31st October to 11th November 2005
at the Maas Gallery, 15a Clifton St London W15
(Exhibition Opening Hours: 10am–5.30pm (also open Saturday 5th November)
In fact a private exhibition sale of one collector's stash - so probably orientated more to the well heeled collector looking to buy - prices circa 2K. But nevertheless open to the public - and a good opportunity to view the works close up.
Press Release:
Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956) is now a cult figure, a mixed blessing which threatens to overshadow his unique talents as one of the strangest and most powerful artists London has ever produced. This show – Spare’s triumphant return to the West End after a seventy-five year absence – redresses the balance in favour of his art.
Son of a policeman, Spare was hailed as a prodigy and became the enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world. He was extravagantly praised by Augustus John and John Singer Sargent, who is said to have described him as England’s greatest draughtsman. More ominously, George Bernard Shaw reportedly thought “Spare’s medicine is too strong for the normal man.” Spare went on to become an official war artist and to edit the journals Form and The Golden Hind, but during the 1920s he parted company with fame and fortune and retreated south of the river to spend the rest of his life there, living (in his own words) as “a swine with swine”.
Living in tenements and finally a basement, Spare had gone underground, at least from the vantage point of the contemporary art world. But these were some of his most fertile years, whether he was drawing his fellow Cockneys or pursuing his occult and sorcerous obsessions. It is the latter that have made him legendary, and his life has been mythologised until the London Borough of Lambeth seems like somewhere out of H.P. Lovecraft.
Spare’s art, meanwhile, was also legendary. He was the man who could draw like Michelangelo, but sold his pictures for a few pounds apiece in local pubs. Excitable comparisons were made not just with Michelangelo but with Blake, Rembrandt and Durer, among others, often by viewers surprised to find that “real art” was still being made in the modern world.
Spare was an inspired figurative artist who straddled the centuries, moving from the aftermath of Beardsley, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Art Nouveau to become – at least in the eyes of critic Mario Amaya – the first Pop artist. One of the most remarkable things about his art is its extraordinary stylistic range, but it escapes any suspicion of pastiche by the sheer intensity with which he inhabits his different modes: all of them are unmistakably “Spare”, from hideous linear grotesques to radiant pastel nudes.
Spare experimented with automatic drawing some years before the surrealists adopted it, and later developed a technique of anamorphic distortion he termed “siderealism”, combining a sensuous line with an uncanny perspective to produce an exquisite Art Deco stylisation. He is impossible to pigeonhole, except as a genius; neither the Edwardian decadent nor the proto-Surrealist he has sometimes been presented as, he could almost have been invented to embody what Peter Ackroyd has called the “Cockney visionary tradition.”
The best of his work speaks for itself, especially seen in the flesh, with a finesse of touch and an auratic charge that all but defy reproduction. Reviewing a posthumous show, John Russell Taylor wrote “Dreamer of dreams or observer of film stars, Spare never seems to belong to the same world as the rest of us. He was at the very least a very rare and genuine eccentric; but so dazzling were his skills that he cannot be dismissed with the usual patronage.” His Times obituary noted “Of his technical mastery there can be no manner of doubt”, and very presciently added “The collection of his drawings may yet become a cult.”
Phil Baker
More info at http://www.maasgallery.com/Pages/exhibitions/spare2005.htm
To coincide with the exhibition Fulgur the following catalogue:Borough Satyr: The Life and Art of Austin Osman Spare
There can be few artists whose life was quite as extraordinary as that of Austin Osman Spare. Born the son of a City of London policeman, in 1904 he became the youngest ever exhibitor at the Royal Academy and was celebrated by critics and London society alike, but at the apex of his fame the First World War and a failing marriage prompted him to return to his roots in South London. There, inspired by strange visions and the lives of those around him he devoted his rare talents to recording his thoughts, dreams and the world as he saw it: sublime, haunting and magical.
Borough Satyr: The Life and Art of Austin Osman Spare is the long awaited full colour introduction to the work of this astonishing London artist. Accompanying an exhibition at The Maas Gallery (15a Clifford Street, London, W1) the book contains a comprehensive collection of his art complemented by a biographical introduction, a checklist of his exhibitions and essays by those who knew Spare well throughout his life, including classic recollections from Hannen Swaffer, Clifford Bax, Kenneth and Steffi Grant, Hadyn Mackay, Ithell Colquhoun, John Smith and others.
96 pages Landscape 4to Full colour Publication date: October 31st 2005 Hardback limited edition of 500 numbered copies £58.00 + p&p (£3.50 EU or £5.00 US) Paperback £29.50 + p&p (£2.50 EU or £4.00 US) http://www.fulgur.org/newbooks.html
TopThe 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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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
Top
'Oxford Talking Stick Pub Moot' meets every Thursday at The Port Mahon Pub (St . Clements st)Oxford. Each week we discuss a topic, using a talking stick, which we have collectively agreed upon the week before, we do so in fellowship and each person is free to speak or not as is their wish. Most folks get to the pub about 9:00 to start 9:30 ish. The Oxford Talking Stick moot is an independent group open to all pagans, witches, Tantrics, Druids, Wiccans, Shaman and magickians etc wishing to take part in the discussion. Prior knowledge of the weeks subject is not essential as these moots should and can be an opportunity for us to learn from each other. Contact JackDaw pendark@...
EOGDOS
I have the pleasure in writing to inform that I am revitalising EOGDOS (Edinburgh-Oxford Golden Dawn Occult Society) that I first established in 1997ce. (A Brief reference to that group was included at the foot of your newsletters of that time, together with others in Aberdeen, London etc)
The light was fairly dim then but bright it now shines.
A small group of us exist in Edinburgh as a beacon for the serious practitioner committed to the Great Work. Our portfolio for EOGDOS is primarily a Thelemic/Golden Dawn discussion group with the potential for occasional practical adhoc ritual at certain times of the year. Admission is by invitation only following their enquiry via email. The reasoning for this is that we are not for the curious or the friends/partners of an enquirant. Nor are we interested in anyone coming to one of our meetings who has a preference for the now new age wiccan movement shall we say - the Pagan Federation moots already exist to accommodate that avenue. We will be more a meeting place for the Ceremonial Magician. We shall not be publicly advertising the existence of EOGDOS rather I would very much appreciate if you could mention however appropriately that the Edinburgh! Group is active and contact may be made via email to ourselves through your newsletter (if you still produce one), or email, web site or word of mouth to like minded parties.
Informal meetings will be held on an adhoc basis and afford opportunity for those of a ceremonial persuasion to discuss magick in its various guises.
Our email address for contact is: eogdos@...
Leeds House Moot
An eclectic ritual magic working group with an emphasis on results magic, personal transformation and empowerment. Meeting fortnightly (normally on a Sunday Evening).
Interesting in joining us? Contact Lindsay on totalcontrol31@... or 0113 2175753 for more details.
The West Herts moot is held on the 2nd Sunday in every month. The next one will be on 11th May at 1pm onwards at the Fishery Inn, Hemel Hempstead.
Full
details including a map can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/westherts-moot/ or email Sophie at hintlemin@...
Milton Keynes
TMK Earth Lore Group, established 2002.
Pagan and Earth based spirituality group that holds monthly meetings; talks and guest speakers. All welcome in perfect love and trust. Contact Nick: 07766718633.
Norwich
Magician's Moot (moving to Plymoouth)
If interested join the egroups at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Magical_Plymouth/
http://www.geocities.com/open_tantra_group/
South West Scotland / Dumfries and Galloway Pagan Moot will be held at 7.30 pm on 24 March in the Imperial Arms, Castle Douglas.
Conferences
5th Annual Witchcraft Seminar 23rd October 2005
Wookey Hole Caves, Somerset.
Friday 21st, Saturday 22nd Sunday 23rd October 2005.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
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