Mandrake Speaks Newsletter

Edited by Mogg Morgan

No 225

Monthly info for friends of leading occult publisher and bookseller Mandrake of Oxford
info on ours and other interesting publications, reviews and events.

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• Aleister Crowley: A Modern Master - New Title

• Grimoires By Owen Davies (review)

• Jean Overton-Fuller (Obituary)

• Equinox Festival (Review)

• Occult Spells / Frederich Hockley (Review)

• Lectures Talks

• Groups Meetups

• Conferences & Exhibitions (click to view)

  
  

Thelemic Symposium

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• Jean Overton Fuller Obituary
  

The author, biographer and Theosophist Jean Overton Fuller was born on 7th March 1915, of Captain John Henry Fuller and the artist Violet Overton Fuller. The posthumous child of her father, who was killed in East Africa in the winter of 1914, her mother brought the young Jean up, with an entourage of intellectuals and artists.

Jean Overton Fuller is known in the field of Ripperology for her book Sickert and the Ripper Crimes. A study of the enormously talented Edwardian painter Walter Richard Sickert, in which, using her artist eye she scrutinises the paintings he produced for clues about the 1888 Ripper murders. Sickert found thrill and inspiration in the music halls, and the murky regions of the demi-monde and its inhabitants. The man was an enigma, his obsession with the Ripper murders, and the atmosphere of impending gory death, with the nudity, garishness, the strong scarlet hues, and the threatening shadows depicted so disturbingly in The Camden Town Murder series of his paintings, have raised questions and suspicion about the nature of Sickert’s fascination.

Jean, through her mother, was a contemporary link to these events, and with. Sickert and the Ripper Crimes had generated a considerable amount of interest from the public as well from among her fellow writers, such as for instance the American best-selling author Patricia Cornwell and her contribution to the subject with her Portrait of A Killer: Jack The Ripper, Case Closed.

Paul Begg and Adam Wood of Ripperologist had invited Jean Overton Fuller to speak at the 2003 Ripper Conference in Liverpool. Mogg drove from Oxford to Wymington, a small locality in Northamptonshire to collect Jean.en route to the Conference. This weekend in August was one of the hottest in the year. After the nightmare journey of the A5 to Liverpool with cars slowly moving head to tails, they were rewarded and arrived at the gigantic and labyrinthine Britannia Adelphi Hotel, a venue specially chosen for this Conference because of its Ripper connection. Jean greatly enjoyed this event and the very good and erudite company of the international Fraternity of Ripperologists. The late Jeremy Beadle was the Master of Ceremony and introduced Jean to the audience, and she came alight on stage and spoke entertainingly for about half an hour, without notes.

This was one of Jean’s last public engagements. The last being Jean’s talk on C.W. Leadbeater, at the 2005 Theosophical History Conference in London.

Jean was hard of hearing which at times made her appear distant. She was a great English eccentric, humorous, kind, highly intelligent with a far ranging culture. She was extraordinary.

Her friends and those who met her will remember her with great warmth and affection. When you met Jean, even though the age gap, there was no sense of an age barrier. She was a rare soul.

Dear Jean rest in Peace and enjoy Devachan with your loved ones who departed before.

‘Om Mani Padme Om, the Sunrise comes!
The dewdrop slips into the shining sea!’
(From The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold)

Jean Overton Fuller,
Author, Astrologer, Biographer, Theosophist, Ripperologist,
Born London, 7th March 1915, Died Kettering, Wednesday 8th April 2009.

Occult Spells, A Nineteenth Century Grimoire

Compiled by Frederick Hockley, with an Introduction by Silens Manus
ISBN 978-0-933429-17-8
Published by The Teitan Press (2009)

This is one of two neat little books sent for review from Weiser's. Grimoires not exactly being my thing, but I'm always willing to know more, and with this in mind I especially enjoyed the introduction, although wished it were longer. From it I learned that Occult Spells is in effect a 'Book of Shadows' - ie Hockley's own compilation or edited highlights from rare and expensive books in the collection of the London bookseller John Denley. Nineteenth century magi were able to make a little extra cash by making fair copies of expensive printed grimoires, and this is Hockley's own pick of the crop. I thought the introduction a bit biased where is says "the crudest examples of folk and sympathetic magic jostle uncomfortably alongside the carefully considered lore of astrology and high magick". Hockley himself was a bit of a grump, criticising Barrett's "Magus" as "an unaknowledged compilation from other authors".

As usually at these times I seek out my friend, the Cunning Man Jack Daw, whose caravan is parked up on 'The London Plain' nearby.

"Ah just in time," he says, offering me some of his squirrel kabab.

"No thanks," I say, "I've eaten already, tea would be nice."

I show him Hockley's books and mention the author's strictures on Francis Barrett

"Well" he said, tapping the contents of his acorn-pipe out on the bumper of my Modeo.

"I'd say Barrett got rid of a lot of unworkable rubbish from those moldy old books and put together a sensible book of magick that actually had some chance of working".

I nodded sagely, thinking it best not to mention the editors view about "crude folk magick" and its practitioners.

The publisher's blurb says this is the first ever printing of Occult Spells, a work that until now has existed only as a manuscript in a private collection. It is part of a rich legacy of carefully written manuscripts, left to the world by the Frederick Hockley (1809-1885), an occultist and Freemason with an interest in Spiritualism who in later life was associated with the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Hockley's peers considered him to be one of the great occult scholars of his time: in fact he was held in such high regard by one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, W. Wynn Westcott, that he posthumously claimed Hockley as one of the Order's most outstanding Adepts.

Occult Spells is a sort of esoteric "commonplace book" in which Hockley recorded material on different spells, talismans, charms and such-like that he came across in rare books and manuscripts in the course of his researches. Hockley started compiling the book at about the age of twenty, and added to it throughout his life: he still had it in his possession when he died at the age of seventy-six. The sources that he used ranged from "occult classics" such as Richard Saunders' "Physiognomie, and Chiromancie, Metoposcopie" (1671), John Heydon's "Theomagia, or the Temple of Wisdome" (1663); and Henry Cornelius Agrippa's "Three Books of Occult Philosophy" (1651), to relatively obscure works like Joseph Pettigrew's "Bibliotheca Sussexiana" (1827), and notorious grimoires like the "Petit Albert". The spells and talismans vary as much as his sources: from sublime Enochian invocations, through folk magic, and on into the darker realms of necromancy. Thus it includes charms to determine "the name of the person you will marry" (useful only to virgins!), a quite poisonous-sounding "love powder," talismans for all sorts of purposes, and even a recipe for the creation of a homunculus.

The book includes an Introduction and a typeset transcription of the text of the manuscript, prepared by Silens Manus, a scholar of Hockley's works who has studied literally dozens of his manuscripts. In addition to checking and restoring illegible words or phrases from the original sources that Hockley used, Manus has also added footnotes explaining many obscure terms, plant and deity names and such-like, as well as providing translations of most of the less common non-English phrases and passages that appear in the text. Hockley had also left a number of blank spaces in the text of the manuscript in which he planned to eventually reproduce some of the tables and diagrams in the works from which he quoted. Where possible Manus has included these in the transcription.

For those who prefer to consult the manuscript exactly as Hockley wrote it, an exact photographic facsimile, on special coated paper, completes the book.

Occult Spells offers a rare insight into the occult preoccupations of this interesting figure, whose work arguably had a profound effect on the late nineteenth century 'Occult Revival'. Price at USD $60.00 plus shipping not cheap but there again with the pound rising in the exchanges, its a handsome edition to a good library.

Order direct at:

http://www.weiserantiquarian.com or email us at < books@... >

"Equinox" Festival (review)

I had a great day at this event and wished I could have stayed the whole weekend. I was lucky enough to get a concessionary ticket
for the saturday speaker session, which at £15 was a bargain. I arrived just in time to hear Robert Wallis talking about some of research on the Saxon "Nine Herb Spell" - to be published shortly in Mark Pilkington's excellent journal "Strange Attractor". What caught my attention was his connecting of Saxon Aelf-Side (Elf or Faery magick) with Nordic Seidr (Seething) - an interpretation that may annoy some of the born-again Odinists, who seems to dislike more "shamanic" interpretations, perhaps because they bring in too many "Eastern" influences.

I watched Robert's talk from the darkened and diserted gallery of Conway Hall and wondered if I had sneaked into the supposed VIP area, advertised on the website - if so - there seemed to be very few takers and in fact I was later to bump into the "only" VIP - perhaps this idea of VIP areas doesn't sit well with the British occult scene - but there again . . .

I moved downstairs for a very engaging talk by American NLP practitioner and magi, Philip Farber, chatting with him later over a coffee - actually he had a vegetable soup. He is busy on several projects including an excellent novelisation of his ideas which are a much needed continuation, perhaps upgrading, of the late Robert Anton Wilson's discordian project. For a flavour of his non fiction teaching chech out his various videos on "Youtube". Who was it who said to me - if you havent been "Youtubed" these days you're nothing - Gary Lachman maybe.

I should say that the whole day there were multiple choices between smaller workshops and films. So it was with regret that I had to skip the very personable David Beth's (whose recently published book is already out of print) presentation of Voodoo Gnosis, in favour the show's organiser Raymond Salvatore Harmon's set on the main stage. He mixed sounds and images via a gizmo projecting the very spacey result on a screen. Meantime a trumpeter improvised stuff a bit like Charles Ive's "Unanswered Question" - not quite as good - but there again what is? The images were interesting but the sound was a little too shrill for my hearing and the unpleasant reasonances drove me out although the otherwise packed audience stayed and enjoyed.

I bumped into people with happy faces coming out of David Beth's talk and heading for one of the day's many high points: Robert Answell's illustrated lecture about Austin Spare and his communion with monstrous entitites from the otherworld. Happy faces apart from one, a wellknown member of an occult fraternity who was hurumphed by yet more obscure magical orders rearing their heads - seems to be a trend, what with World of Witchcraft's ever growing ranks of hereditary, "dark" and traditional practitioners; the occult's previously unknown and unheard of magical orders. Robert's talk was quite deep, with material about epistemology and judging by the scrum at the Fulgur's bookstore for copies of Robert's new book on Austin Spare "Borough Satyr " - it certainly struck a chord with the audience.

My final session was Erik Davis, author some years back of "Techgnosis". Yet another well presented, illustrated lecture, this time of the history of the "Phantasm" - kind of cultural history stuff I suppose about the way the collective unconscious, doesn't need much prompting to manifest those monsters from the Id. Erick drew our attention to an obvious but perhaps overlooked fact that in every stage of the development of photography and the camera, the device was used to present images of the occult and paranormal. Thus early "Magick Lantern" shows was just that - images of witches, ghosts, ghouls, fairies etc - almost as there is an unconscious need for these things to be shown.

Well it was a stimulating day and I felt the need for some calming Indian vegetarian food at the Hari Krisna Restaurant, Govinda's in Soho square. It was a great event and I certainly hope the organisers made back their enormous investment of time and money. The only thing that was missing for me, was maybe more on Aleister Crowley and indeed some informed material from my beloved Egyptian magical-religion - but there again - for that you need the Thelemic Symposium in September. [Mogg]

Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
by Owen Davies
ISBN 978-0-19-920451-9
Published by Oxford University Press
366pp /£14.99/ Hardback

"The production of grimoires was an entrepreneurial enterprise that thrived wherever the influence of secular and ecclesiastical censors was restricted by geographical, educational or political factors. The opening up of America created just such an environment, and hucksters, quacks, astrologers, fortune tellers and occult practitioners of all shades thrived." p. 188

Which may indicate that the primary audience for this book might not be the "hucksters, quacks, astrologers, fortune tellers and occult practitioners" some of whom might even read this newsletter. Owen Davies has built a strong reputation for himself as author of the groundbreaking Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History re-branded with an eye to the MBS marketplace as Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History. Here again he has taken up a largely neglected topic with some verve and produced a page turning history of the grimoire.

OD's book is likely to be of special interest to those with some knowledge of the genre. Davies gives very few examples of a grimoire's actual content, so there is an assumption that the author has already read one or two. The small examples OD does give tend to underline his thesis that the grimoires are at best a debased form of ancient magick or worst cynical, gibberish. Modern magicians tend to approach the grimoire as an exercise in magical creativity but also as a possible source of Pagan wisdom and occult knowledge that has somehow survived the hands of Christian iconoclasts.

Academic authors are obviously quite keen for the practitioner community to read their work although they are less keen to read anything the practitioners write about the same subject. So you won't find much here of the contemporary magicians approach to the grimoire, apart that is from old chestnuts such as the Necronomicon and the Satanic Bible.

Even so, there is much in here of interest to the contemporary practitioner, once one gets over the slight disappointment at the absence of any mention of the "Goetia", the most popular example of the genre. There is also nothing of what surely be the most famous of all occult trials involving a grimoire, that of Gilles the Rais - Bluebeard. For those with an interest in Aleister Crowley, there is also very little in this book. Crowley of course, represents the way the practitioner community has reframed and rationalised the grimoire over the years. And Crowley penned what is considered to be the best and most cogent of all modern grimoires - Liber ABA.

However most of the book's contents were new to me - although one passage where I would take issue with the author is when he discusses the Theban Magical Library alternatively known as The Greek Magical Papyri or Greco Egyptian Magical Papyri. Davies tells us that these are somehow connected with the very first grimoires in the sequence - which would be my own intuition. But he then says that "There are distinct differences between the magic they contain and that found in the earliest magical inscriptions and papyri from the time of the pharaohs" (p 9) . I read that and thought that must be wrong and wondered where he could have found such a view amongst Egyptologists? My heart sank when I saw the reference to Geraldine Pinch's seminal work on Egyptian Magic, could she really be so out of step with all her colleagues? But there again what does Geraldine Pinch actually say (p. 160-1):

"The openly expressed malevolence of these spells seems un-Egyptian but similar desires may lie behind some of the earlier Letters to the Dead. These do no specify exactly how the akhu are to deal with the writer's enemies. . . Many spells in the Graeco-Egyptian Magical Papyri describe how to make a deity appear and answer questions. The appearance may take the form of a dream for the magician or a vision for the child assistant. These spells are the private equivalent of consulting a temple oracle, or of incubation - sleeping in the temple to receive a divine dream". (my emphasis)

In other words there is quite a lot of Ancient Egyptian religion in the PGM and I suspect the grimoires. Afterall doesn't it say in the Goetia that the spirits speak the Egyptian tongue?

These small issues of the beginning aside, Davies' study is soon on stronger ground after fifteen hundred years of development we arrive at the era of the printed book, when the grimoire really did make it big on the world stage. As the book's publicity confirms, "to understand the grimoire is to understand the spread of Christianity, the development of early science, the cultural influence of the print revolution, the growth of literacy, the impact of colonialism and the expansion of western culture across the oceans."

One tantalizing parallel between the PGM and later grimoires is the "Sixth & Seven Books of Moses" discussed in fascinating detail by OD. These books began circulating in Germany in the eighteenth century and were to become popular in USA. One could of course argue that given the well known existence of the first five, it is just human nature to want to supplement this with a sixth, seventh or even more; just as some bright spark penned a "Fourth" book of Occult Philosophy, a "Fourth" Veda or even "Fourth" chapter of Crowley's "Book of the Law". Interestingly no ancient edition survives of a "Sixth" and "Seventh" Book of Moses. The PGM jumps straight in there with "The Eighth" . There may never have been a sixth or seventh in classical Greco-Egyptian magic, none has so far been found. The explanation advanced for this hiatus is that the number "eight" has special symbolic resonance, perhaps connected with Hermes and the Company of Heaven .

OD calls these "modern" versions "pulp . . . to signify not just the quality of the paper but also the merit of the contents printed on it - worthless, pappy, throwaway literature fit only for those too intellectually limited to digest more serious fare. They were not the sort of publications that found their way into academic and public libraries. Yet their influence was such that, by the late 1930s, American educationalists were waging war on the genre." p. 233. Looking at the few examples of the contents given in OD's study, these would not be so out of place in the PGM - so I wonder where their real provenance lies?

If you want gnosticism and theurgy, one maybe needs to look elsewhere than in this study of grimoire. Owen Davies is revealing the dark underbelly of the magical tradition. I suspect he might even side with the shrinking minority of academics who still follow Frazer's division of magic and religion. Religion from this perspective, being all about social networking and rationality; magick the malign, irrational, solitary practice, bent on material gain. Drive a wedge between Egyptian religion and its magick, downplay the philosophical aspect of the grimoire and it all begins to look that way. It is in these areas that Davies book certainly has an colourful tale to tell. No surprise then that coming up to date, we venture into the explicitely fictional grimoires as instanced in H P Lovecraft's Necronomicon. The book concludes with a discussion of the huge popularity of Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible and the promise that, in case you didn't know it, the history of the grimoire is hardly likely to be over. "As we enter uncertain times . . . There is no sign of these books being closed for good. " p. 283

[Reviewed by Mogg Morgan with some assistance from David Rankine and Jack Daw]

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