Mandrake Speaks Newsletter

The Key to Solomon's Key:

Secrets of magic and masonry
by Lon Milo Duquette,

£12.99, isbn 1888729147

Now I have to say this isn't the sort of area I'm normally interested in at all but as soon as I started to read this book I just couldn't put it down. It is written with a clarity and intelligence one rarely encounters in books covering this subject area. Duquette uses archaeological evidence, reasonable and informed speculation in a manner rare indeed amongst semi-popular books dealing with controversial aspects of biblical history.

When was first asked to review this book I thought it might be yet another version of that well known magickal grimoire The Key of Solomon of which there appear to be so many of late. But to my delight and not a little relief I found this not to be the case.

The first chapter of the book is titled 'I confess, I'm a Freemason' and it is in many ways the mysteries of freemasonry and their connection, mythic or historic, with the Knights Templars that provides the central theme of the book.

In his youth the author was a member of the 'Order of DeMolay' a Masonic organisation for young men between the ages twelve and twenty one, a sort of youth section of freemasonry. It was while a member of this organisation that his interest in such matters was first sparked. DeMolay it should be noted was apparently the last Grand master of the Knights Templar.

One of the first questions addressed in the book is the supposed lie at the heart of the church's teachings. Did this goad the Masons to make the leap from religious to mystical point of view and so become an order with a mystery tradition at its heart? Did they possess a truth so dangerous that it could only be passed on in secret among themselves? Was it a secret that both liberated them from religious slavery and also gave them, for a time at least, some leverage over the Catholic Church?

So what was this secret I can almost hear you screaming out? Ha! well dear reader I wouldn't want to spoil that discovery and couldn't do it justice in such a short review, so you will just have to read the book!

Duquette points out how Freemasonry is full of clues to what the secret was/is, might have been. He suggests that it is this tradition of mystical liberation that Freemasons have inherited from the Templars even if they failed to preserved the secret itself. But then again maybe it is the effect of the discovery that is more important than the secret itself?

The final section of the book gives excerpts from The Goetia, The Lesser key of Solomon or Clavicula Solomonis Regis including the list of the seventy-two traditional spirits with their attributes and abilities together with their magickal seals. Here the author connects this liberation mysticism born or maybe rediscovered by the Knights Templar or Pauvres Chevaliers du Temple to the so-called Solomonic grimoires. Could the clue be in their name and or their foundation myths? Recommended - Jack Daw

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John Symonds

John Symonds lived a very long life despite authoring a controversial biography of Aleister Crowley that made him the target of hatemail. He died, aged 92 on October 21 2006. 'The Great Beast: the life of Aleister Crowley’ (also published by Rider) first appeared on 20 November 1951 just a few months after the repeal of the UK's notroious Witchcraft Act. This was probably the most radical book of the times. It was a time bomb that finally blew in the sixties.

‘The head of the OTO at the time, Karl Germer was shocked when he read ‘The Great Beast’. The Order of Oriental Templars (or Order of the Templars of the East) is a small international body of adepts who practice sexual magic. Germer said that the book would set the Order back a thousand years. He was mistaken. There is no doubt that the widespread interest today (1973) in Aleister Crowley stems from ‘The Great Beast.’ (Preface to 1979 edition of The Great Beast)’

Symonds is certainly right that it did no such thing, the very opposite in truth. It's interesting that the book has gone through many incarnations and rewrites and is in the words of Colin Wilson ‘a kind of appalling classic’ (on the back cover of 1989 reprint as ‘The King of the Shadow Realm: Aleister Crowley: his life and magic’). Did the 1951 act have any effect on the publication of this book? Yes I think it did, notice that there is no mention of magick on the cover of the first edition. Symonds says in another edition that at the time this sort of things couldn’t be too obviously cited on the cover and that in later works he was able to add more of the sexual magick stuff. Indeed the more magical material was not published until 1958 and then by another publisher called Mullers, whose output also included the books of Crowley’s disciple Kenneth Grant. It was not until 1973 that a complete revised edition of the Great Beast appeared in various cheap paperback editions licensed by Duckworth.

Symonds biography ‘The Great Beast’ has never been popular with occultists although its impact on popular culture has been, imo, immense. I remember reading one of the shlock horror editions given to me by a climbing friend. I must say I found the book a revelation, as did countless others. Since then other more ‘sympathetic’ writers have tried their hand at writing a more ‘balance’ biography but few have really matched Symond’s panache. When Cecil Williamson, the owner of the witchcraft museum read it, it was a revelation and he immediately decided he needed to know more about the subject. So I say RIP John Symonds.

Here is a selections of other reviews this week - most, as my muse opines, a bit disrepectful:

From the Daily Telegraph@

' a prolific author of imaginative, quirky fantasies, though he was better known
as the literary executor and biographer of the voluptuary, occultist
and megalomaniac Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).

Symonds met Crowley a year before his death, at a Hastings boarding
house where the self-styled "Beast 666" was eking out his squalid
final months as a spent mage on a diet of gin and heroin. Crowley's
will, which he apparently concocted himself, vested the copyright of
his works in Symonds and made him his literary executor.

Symonds was initially fascinated by Crowley, but as time went on and
his own political outlook moved from Left to Right, he became
increasingly critical of the occultist's lifestyle and ideas,
particularly his advocacy of drugs and unrestricted sex. Although he
edited and published (with Kenneth Grant) Crowley's Autohagiography,
and other books by Crowley, he provided an antidote to Crowley's
swashbuckling swankiness in his own four lively books on him: The
Great Beast (1952), The Magic of Aleister Crowley (1958), The King
of the Shadow Realm (1989) and Beast 666 (1997).

Although it did little damage to sales of his books,
Symonds tended to deplore the recent public fascination with
Crowley: "It's strange that this wicked chap — and he was an evil
fellow — should become, with the breakdown of society, a cult hero,"
he said. "Crowley would have been shocked — he was a Victorian — by
the extent to which the world has taken up his doctrine and rites.
The lack of magic propriety would have shocked him."

While he made no secret of his own disapproval, he enlivened his
accounts of Crowley's life with humorous anecdotes, recalling, for
example, how, after his move to Boleskine House overlooking Loch
Ness, Crowley had written to the local Vigilance Society complaining
that "prostitution is most unpleasantly conspicuous" in the area.
The society sent round an observer who found no evidence. Crowley
wrote back: "Conspicuous by its absence, you fools!"

Why "the wickedest man in the world" entrusted Symonds with his
literary legacy and reputation was a little puzzling, though it is
possible that Symonds was the only sane and reliable person whom
Crowley would have known. Possibly, too, Crowley sensed something
sympathetic in Symonds's unconventional and sometimes disconcerting
imagination, which he expressed in a series of novels, plays and
children's books published after the war.

John Symonds was born on March 12 1914. His father, Robert Wemyss
Symonds, was an eminent architect and an expert on antique furniture
and clocks. His mother was a woman of Lithuanian origin with whom
his father had had an affair. Because of his illegitimacy, John had
a difficult childhood. His father, who later married "respectably",
refused to acknowledge him as his son and he was raised by his
mother, who kept a boarding house in Margate.

Aged 16 John moved to London, where he set about educating himself
at the British Museum Library. He then became a journalist working
for Hulton Press on the Picture Post, writing reviews, poetry and
short stories, and working as an editor on Hulton's literary
magazine Lilliput. He got to know George Orwell, Dylan Thomas,
Stephen Spender and Bill Naughton, and became the confidant of Peggy
Ramsay, Joe Orton's literary agent. He also re-established some sort
of relationship with his father, who made use of him to research his
books on antiques — research that provided Symonds with the
background for some of his subsequent novels.

Exempted from military service, Symonds established his reputation
as a biographer with The Great Beast, though fiction became his main
genre. His first novel, William Waste (1947), a gothic fantasy, was
followed by The Lady in the Tower (1955), a macabre love story set
among antiques, clocks and curio collections. Another love story, A
Girl Among Poets (1957), set in bohemian London, won praise from
John Betjeman, who noted its author's "gift for describing farcical
situations".

Among several children's books, The Magic Currant Bun (1953, with
illustrations by André François) concerns a boy chasing a magic bun
through the streets of Paris. Isle of Cats (1955, with illustrations
by Gerard Hoffnung) was a magic fantasy about felines; Lottie
(1957), the story of a foundling dog and a speaking doll, was
illustrated by Edward Ardizzone. Ardizzone also provided the
illustrations for Elfrida and the Pig (1959), about a clever little
girl who is not allowed dolls.

Symonds returned to biography in 1959 with Madame Blavatsky, Medium
and Magician, an entertaining account of the life of the founder of
Theosophy, a sharp-tongued medium who is said to have levitated her
17-stone self to a chandelier to light her cigarette. Thomas Brown
and the Angels (1961) concerned a Methodist who, in 1798, was
attracted to the Shakers, a prophetic celibate sect, hovering on
their edge and making converts while never quite managing to
convince himself.

Bezill (1962), a gothic fantasy, was followed by Light Over Water
(1963), about a young journalist who delves into the world of magic
and the occult. In With a View on the Palace (1966), a Russian
highbrow film director suffering from basilicomania (fascination
with the Royal Family) rents a flat overlooking Buckingham Palace,
from where he can observe King George V from the window of his
lavatory.

The Stuffed Dog (1967) concerns two girls who discover, in an attic,
a life-like doll which has a man's voice, stolen from her former
ventriloquist. In Prophesy and the Parasites (1973), a wealthy and
still-attractive widow waits for prospective suitors to come and tap
her wealth. The Shaven Head (1974) concerns a dysfunctional
household riddled with Freudian complexes. In Letters from England
(1975) a humble German veteran of Stalingrad answers an
advertisement to work as an au pair for a London doctor — who turns
out to be female and a sado-masochist. In The Child (1976) a young
girl founds her own religion.

Symonds also became friend and literary executor to Gerald Hamilton,
an adventurer and reprobate whom Christopher Isherwood used as his
model for Mr Norris in Mr Norris Changes Trains, the classic novel
of Berlin in the Weimar era. In 1974 Symonds published Conversations
with Gerald, an entertaining account of Hamilton's scandalous
adventures.

Symonds could be an intellectually aggressive man, and he was
fiercely protective of his status as Aleister Crowley's literary
executor and copyright owner. This led to problems when publishers
or film directors sought to ride the wave of Crowley's notoriety,
and led to a number of actual or threatened lawsuits. It was
rumoured that Symonds once threatened to turn an eminent publisher
into a frog, though he claimed, when asked, that the threat had been
issued "in the friendliest possible way".

Symonds was more successful as a novelist and biographer than as a
playwright, and although he wrote a total of 26 volumes of plays
published by Pindar Press, very few were ever performed. In 1961 he
won critical praise for I, Having Dreamt, Awake, a play for ITV
about a prodigal son and con-man who dreams up a fortune in America
and returns home to dazzle the rest of his down-at-heel family in
the London suburbs. His last play, The Poison Maker, about incest
and occultism, was performed at the Old Red Lion Theatre, Islington,
earlier this year and produced by his son Tom.

After a brief marriage to Hedwig Feuerstein, Symonds married, in
1945, Renata Israel, who survives him with their two sons.

From the Guardian:

'Teller of charming children's tales who made a devilish friend'

Christopher Hawtree
Wednesday November 22, 2006
The Guardian

The death at 92 of idiosyncratic man of letters John Symonds might vindicate the twin virtues of a teetotal jogger; this moral overlooks subsidy from the grave of that most louche of men, Aleister Crowley, described by Cyril Connolly as "the Picasso of the Occult. He bridges the gap between Oscar Wilde and Hitler."

Crowley and Symonds' postwar acquaintance lasted 18 months until the death of that free spirit whose worldwide womanising and ritualistic practices landed him in a Hastings residential hotel, where he excused himself from lunch with Symonds and went to his room for a customary repast of heroin and double-gin chaser. Their rapport was such that Crowley made him literary executor. Over six decades, royalties from those satanistic volumes fuelled Symonds's dozen novels, many children's stories and a score of plays; several of his biographies unflinchingly chronicle his unlikely benefactor.

Symonds was born in Battersea, London, and brought up in the Margate boarding-house run by his mother Lily Sapzells, a Lithuanian Jew. He had been sired by Robert Wemyss Symonds. An architect with a deep knowledge of furniture and clocks, he would not marry Lily, and ignored them for some while.

At 16, Symonds chose a literary life. The British Museum reading room made good Kent's shortfalls. It recurs in such novels as With a View of the Palace (1966): "before the war, the design of the reading room of the British Museum was still intact, and the harsh fluorescent lighting hadn't made its apperance; its Victorian architecture was bathed in a restful Victorian atmosphere, that is to say in an equal mixture of light and shade."

Part funded by research work for his reconciled father, Symonds enjoyed a Fitzrovian life with Orwell and Dylan Thomas. For a short while he was close to Peggy Ramsay, the future dramatic agent. Picture Post and Lilliput provided regular work. He edited the latter for a while during the war when, exempt from military service, he briefly married Hedwig Feuerstein.

In 1945 he married again, to Renata Israel, and in 1947 published a children's book, William Waste. Meanwhile, he had met Crowley whose "head, in spite of tufts of hair on the sides, seemed no more than a skull... the wickedest man in the world looked rather exhausted - whether from wickedness or from old age I did not then know". After his 1947 funeral at a Brighton crematorium, the town council was outraged to discover pagan texts were recited on its premises.

Crowley books apart, Symonds found his widest audience among children. These books' enduring charm is independent of illustrations by (among others) Ardizzone and Hoffnung. Dolls' houses and cats with telescopes recur; felines wrestle in ring beneath the sign "definitely no scratching" while a pig "looked in the moonlight even paler than he was: the moonlight has that effect on people, pigs, and things". The Magic Currant Bun (1952) is wonderful. A boy is chased through Paris after taking from a shop window a bun whose wish-granting currants bring forth 27 and a half policemen. Very short, the half one stands on a chair to arrest people but - after the Bastille becomes a huge, rat-delighting cheese - the final currant buys off that policeman, who promptly towers over the others.

A dwarf animates one of Symonds' arcane adult novels, The Hurt Runner (1968): he "spent a great deal of his time reading books on magic, phallic and snake worship, and torture, sexual perversities". There are also echoes of great Russians devoured in the reading room, which reappears in Letters from England (1973). Symonds could contrive brilliant images, such as "she was tall and nicely proportioned, except that her breasts were inconspicuous, probably as tiny as the nests of house martins" (Light Over Water, 1963), but can be hobbled by his ambition. Symonds' father inspired the rival loves of The Lady in the Tower (1955): neither woman is a match for antiques; fancifully, a film of that novel animates With a View of the Palace.

That novel's obscure word "basilicomania" - excessive love of royalty - reappears in Conversations with Gerald (1974): another reprobate, Gerald Hamilton, inspired Christopher Isherwood's Mr Norris. These entries might herald a fascinating unpublished diary, its chronicle including his difficulty in having plays performed. These were, however, issued by Symonds' son in hardback.

Television should have recognised the possibilities in a man whose characters declare "from what I've read about Sweden in the newspapers and seen of Swedish films, it's a land of mystery where everything goes wrong" and "you're thinking of becoming a politiician? What sort of politician? I wouldn't waste myself in politics. It's too much of a scramble. How can one be a politician and retain one's dignity?"

CATHARSIS - POETRY AND HEALING

The literary vocabulary is peppered with metaphors of food and eating. We talk of 'good taste', 'to savour something' or of 'food for thought'. In this article I hope to show that this use of language is not accidental and in fact leads us to the heart of poetry. The contention that the mental feelings of enjoyment are indebted to bodily or physiological feelings may be difficult for some people to accept. We are inclined to draw a strict dividing line between mind and body; but this has not always been so, nor need it be in the future.

Aristotle in his Poetics speaks of 'Catharsis' which is also a medical term meaning cleansing or purging; a crucial component of the medical practice of his time. Aristotle was a physician as well as a philosopher and in the system of healing he practiced, which was based upon the Humours, Catharsis would have brought the sick person back to a state of psycho-somatic equipoise or isonomia

The similarities between Greek ideas and those of ancient Indian aesthetics are so striking that it is highly probably that they derive from a common source.

The oldest system of Indian medicine is called Ayurvedic, which is a compound of two words, 'ayur' meaning longevity and 'veda' meaning knowledge [anglicised spelling]. The main textual sources of Ayurveda go back to about the beginning of the present era. Many of its ideas are much older and derive from a very creative period in Indian culture at around the sixth century BCE. Ayurveda views the world rather like a vast organism, in which all the parts are interconnected. The essence of this organism is a constantly changing liquid called 'rasa', and so one analyses all its various parts by the sense of taste, which in Sanskrit is the same word - 'rasa'. This homonym has a number of interesting and related meanings, including sap, liquid, essence, elixir, serum, chyle, mercury, semen, taste, feeling, and sentiment. Therefore the sense of taste is the connecting link between an individual and the larger whole; an idea that has very wide implications in art and culture. In this system there are said to be six varieties of taste: Sweet, Sour, Saline, Pungent, Bitter and Astringent.

Crowley first day cover

Here's fun. It looks as if Mr Crowley is about to appear on a UK 1st class stamp. On 9 January, the Post Office issues six stamps celebrating The Beatles, each depicting one of their album covers. One of the two 1st class stamps is of the Sgt Pepper album, which shows The Beatles surrounded by a collage of other famous figures - including Mae West, Lenny Bruce, Jung, Poe, Stockhausen, Fred Astaire, H.G. Wells, Marilyn Monroe, Stan Laurel - and AC.

At least this gives acolytes the chance to really lick the backside of the Great Beast!

- Mark from Wormwood Magazine

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