Mandrake

The Apophenion (Review)

2009-02-21T09:52:00.002-08:00

- A Chaos Magic Paradigm
by Peter J Carroll
isbn 978-1869928-650 / £10.99 / $22

Reviewed by Julian Vayne

Framed as the outpouring of insight generated by the novel Goddess 'Apophenia', Pete Carroll's new work is a real gem. Coming from a science background, this is his attempt to create a falisfiable model of why the universe looks the way it does, and just why magick can operate successfully.

In the inimitable Carrollian style we have come to know and love, our author sets out to demolish the edifices of being, consciousness, causality, the big-bang and more. In toppling these ontological Titans Pete discovers a universe of panpsychism and intense meaning. If nothing else this agrees with my own views and is therefore a Good Thing. Pursuing this process through the scientific style of exploration means that quantum physics, special relativity et al show up pretty frequently in the text. If you buy this book expecting lists of planetary correspondence and ritual-by-numbers instructions you're going to be disappointed. However this doesn't mean that this is all physics and no esoterica. Rather the point is that the reading of the universe that the author presents is suffused with magick. (Nevertheless there are some reassuring illustrations of occult entities and one explicit ritual – a rather lovely evocation of the Goddess Apophenia herself).

My reaction in reading this book was one of excitement. The suggestions that Pete advances tickle the mind delightfully. Certainly this isn't Liber Null. It's not a manual of techniques but instead concentrates on theory, yet that doesn't make for a dull read. The theorisation presented here can light the touch paper of a hundred disciplines: cosmology and magick for sure but also Fortean studies, ethnography and especially neuro-biology.

Algebra explodes across the appendices of the book scattering the non-mathematicians towards the Epilogue where things are nicely rounded off in laypersons terms. The truth may well be that we live in vorticitating hypersphere with three dimensional time that, as the author beautifully asserts, "...invites us to become apprentice gods." The very fact that I can now say 'vorticitating hypersphere' and know what that means is a testament to the authors explicatory powers.

The final and perhaps most wonderful thing about The Apophenian is how it demonstrates the development and maturation of Pete Carroll's earlier writing. If nothing else this stands as a testament to the work of an individual (or perhaps conspiracy of selves!) who's magick really does seem to work.

Eight chaospheres out of a possible eight!

Bright From The Well – Northern Tales in the Modern World by Dave Lee

2009-02-21T09:52:00.001-08:00

Review by Akashanath

A common difficulty for magicians moving from one tradition to another is reductio ad nauseum. With little effort, it is easy to nail the symbolism of one's latest trip onto the pre-existing crucifix of one's earlier experiences, eventually reducing every opportunity for novelty to a stale repeat of one's preconceptions. Chaos Magick has often fallen into this trap, its dogma of 'non-dogmatism' leading adherents to strip belief-systems to their 'essentials', sometimes to the point where they lose much of their beauty and function. At the opposite extreme one can simply be overwhelmed by the strangeness and unfamiliarity of a new world-view, and fail to find a point from which to begin one's assimilation.

The Norse and Saxon myths, with their fragmented, archaic language and almost prehistoric themes, can often evoke this type of response. In his newest book, Dave Lee lithely navigates the pass between these twin peaks, taking time to pause and explore the dilemmas, or muse on them in the form of short fables. People expecting a book about the runes will not be disappointed. Those hoping for further expositions on the subject(s) of Chaos Magick will find plenty of interest. But for me where Bright From The Well comes into its own is as a series of reflections on dilemmas that will be familiar to many 21st century occultists.

For example, Chapter 5 is entitled “The Magician In and Against The World.” It's essentially an analysis of the twin functions of the magician as anarchist, challenging the false autocracy of consensus reality, and the magician as priest, strengthening social traditions by helping the laity to connect them to their spiritual and cosmic sources. Within his complex analysis, Dave grapples with magicians' tendencies towards transcendence on the one hand and immanence on the other. This rang loud bells for me; in my magickal quest I have often lurched from mind-bending hedonism to ruthless ascetic austerity and back again, struggling to marry my hungers and drives with some arbitrary construct of ultimate purpose. Dave also concludes that some sort of unification is necessary, describing this in terms of the intermarriage of the Vanir and the Aesir, the two Northern pantheons who exchange hostages somewhere near the beginning of time. Dave's exegesis interprets the former as gods of immanence and the latter as deities of transcendence and consciousness (though not exclusively so). In a story from Snorri's Prose Edda, Dave tells us how the Aesir (in the form of Odin) and the Vanir (in the form of Tyr) trick the Fenriswoolf (primal chaos) into allowing itself to be bound, creating the ordered universe that is a necessary precondition for human society and hence both esoteric and exoteric religious practice.

Students of Tantrika may find parallels here, and indeed Dave makes passing reference to the left and right hand paths. In many contemporary Hindu icons the transcendent Shiva is depicted sitting on his mountain, meditating and smoking Ganja, largely disinterested in the world. One myth tells us how the goddess Kali once went on a killing spree. Initially invoked by men seeking support in their war with the demons, Kali has lost sight of her original intention in an orgy of destruction. With all the demons slain, she turns her unstoppable fury on her former allies, slaughtering them with her many arms. Summoned from his mountain, Shiva is intrigued. Lying in front of her with his cock erect, he looks up, turned on by her warped face and blood-stained body. Gradually her lust for killing turns into a different kind of lust, and the two deities begin to f**k. Separate from one another, they are aimless, functionless. In unity, Shiva (transcendence) gains the capacity to manifest in the physical world, while Kali (immanence) transmutes her destructive power to generative.

Some of the other sections completely obviate the need for parallels by speaking directly to the magician's experience. In Chapter 7, the author recounts a fascinating and credible list of magickal anecdotes spanning over 20 (and perhaps closer to 30?) years of workings, grouped into a rough typology of function. Several chapters take the form of stories, some obviously derived from Nordic originals, others less so. The style is engaging and entertaining, not laboriously educational or annoyingly whimsical, and each is short enough to be knocked off quickly (or omitted altogether) should it not be to the reader's taste.

As well as re-telling stories from the northern traditions and presenting a novel method of working with the entities described as dwarves, the book contains a complete rune poem in English. Although it probably wouldn't stand alone as a manual of rune magick, anyone genuinely interested in the subject could probably learn something new. The main strength, for those interested in Nordic traditions, will probably be for those looking for another perspective from which to triangulate dry, historical academic texts on the one hand and the often pedantic dogmatism of modern Odinists on the other. Overall, as the title implies, the collection is refreshing and inspired. Well worth a read!

-------------------------------------------

Bright from the Well
Northern Tales in the Modern World

By Dave Lee

978-1869928-84-1
£10.99, 166pp

We change and develop ‘the past’ with narrative, and we create ‘the future’
by re-mixing the stored elements in order to continue it onwards.

All the verbal tenses cluster around the same mighty place, the same source of narrative and mythic significance.
The people had a name for this place: the Well of Urdhr, Anglo-Saxon wyrd, one of three Norns of fate,
Urdhr, Verdhandi and Skuld, who cluster around the Well. These Norns are mighty beings,
beyond and above the gods, in the sense that they are eternal and know the fates,
the rise and fall of the gods themselves. They are watchers of the Well and helpers to the Tree.
The Tree, which contains all the worlds in present time, all the branches of the Now, is nourished at its roots by the Well’s waters.

'Bright From the Well' consists of five stories plus five essays and a rune-poem.
The stories revolve around themes from Norse myth - the marriage of Frey and Gerd, the story of
how Gullveig-Heidh reveals her powers to the gods, a modern take on the social-origins myth Rig's Tale,
Loki attending a pagan pub moot and the Ragnarok seen through the eyes of an ancient shaman.
The essays include examination of the Norse creation or origins story, of the
magician in or against the world and a chaoist's magical experiences looked at from the standpoint of Northern magic.'

Dave Lee coaches breathwork, writes fiction and non-fiction, blends incenses and oils, creates music and collage.

His previous books include "Chaotopia!"

http://www.mandrake.uk.net/9781869928841.jpg

-----------------------------------------------------------

~ EGRE~GORE ~

2009-02-21T09:46:00.000-08:00

* Morgen of Lyonesse to the Sunset Bound. *

~ Ariel ~

Tendrils of Magick seep from the Internet
Twenty-four-seven, night and day.
Tantalising ectoplasmic tentacles
Like phosphorescent fern tree fingers
Unfurl languorously, penetrate my slumber;
Log-on, and I, the little cyber Match-Girl,
With precious few matches left,
Like Rapaccini’s daughter under her Datura,
Inhaling their otherworldly scent,
Hooked by indefinable longings
For unnameable things, become restless
As alien amorphous etheric Shades
Poke my dreams, probe my flesh,
Crafted by Will of disembodied strangers:
My faceless hierophantic Brothers,
With Pantagruelian appetite
Exuberantly roam in Cyberspace,
Where the Laws of Gravity don’t apply?

In the dull confinements of a prosaic existence,
A gem-like kaleidoscope of astral corollas,
Pervasive phantasmagorical Emanations
Seductively stretch, entwine, caress,
Tantalise and uproot. And I,
Thoroughly modern Moonchild,
Mesmerised, entranced by their convolutions,
Forgetting for a time both Nature and Nurture,
Melt, merge, dissolve,
Swept by this Great Tide

Psychic waves, tangible as the scent
Of blood and roses,
The acrid smell of burned wicks,
The spice of leather upon flesh,
A heady Open Source Psychotropic Draught
Bleeds from the Internet.
Ectoplasmic gales blow by numbers,
Relentlessly rocking my boat.
No matter how tight I will have myself
Tied in solitary confinement
To the rickety mast of my banal shipwreck,
They prevail: for the whole is greater
Than the sum of its part.

Their pervading vapours penetrate the stranglehold,
Rousing herds of long- repressed, shackled heraldic beasts,
Sleuth of primeval impulses,
Shoals of feral, unspeakable instincts.
In the disquieting twilight of a Dawn
That never quite breaks into day,
I beg the Shongmaw mend my broken heart;
But he doesn’t come. Instead,
Bilge water oozes, bitter as my tears,
Droves of addictive yearnings, like Golems, unleashed,
Hack at my safety net, the wilderness of brambles
Where I slept, murky chalice of Air, Water, Earth:
A Swamp awaiting the kiss of Fire.

My hand, languid, rests upon cool metal of laptop,
Carmine peonies in a broken blue vase slowly die,
Yesterday: engorged, tight and tumescent,
Shedding a lush carpet upon the dusty floor,
Their slow fall, like a clock, at first disquieted
The precarious comfort of my little Abyss.
Now, greedily, I bury my face
In their faintly scented petals,
Hungry for their soft, moist, cool pink caress
As the Occult Cyber peep-show twirls,
Night and day: Novelty-shop memetic Arcanas
Spell swirling neoteric Mayas over Gaia:
Death-Posture! Nimble reptilian fingers
Breathe life into a writhing theatre of Mandrake Servitors,
Conjure a Typhonian Pick-and-Mix
Of sharp sygilised Urban Myths;
Exalted, they arise like Baron Samedi
From the fertile graveyards of Pop Counter-Culture.

A kaleidoscope of foxy Masks, cloaked
In voluptuous shreds of bewildering Paradigms,
Dance in the Shadow of the Tree:
Papa Legba waltzes with Eris,
Cthulhu tangos with Madonna,
O! Ancient Mother - Tara: Mercy!
The Universe: a swirling Street Carnival;
Utterance of forbidden names in raucous fractals
Rips shrouds of diaphanous feathers, revealing
Glimpses of cryptic Temenos.
Polyamorous hermaphroditic Heroes
With heterochromic irises seek
The Chemycal Wedding at the Torture Garden,
Prometheus! Rise: I wanna live forever,
You know Al-ad-Insane was a junkie,
Ohm Namah Shivaya: Dionysus is on DMT,
And all the Spheres blur, veils upon veils,
Ouranian thunderbolts tear down
The controlled equilibrium of my precarious Tower:
My ancient Lions flee!
How I long for the Red Chamber,
The birch, the Cup and the Liknon!
I hide my lantern under a bushel:
I will run away with the Old Gods
Upon the wing of an Owl.
Do not unplug your computer -
It will turn off automatically.

© ~ARIEL ~ Kernow ~ June 2008 ~

Semmens, Jason. The Witch of the West or the Strange and Wonderful History of Thomasine Blight. Plymouth, 2004, £3.99. (review)

2009-02-01T06:36:00.000-08:00

Semmens, Jason. The Witch of the West or the Strange and Wonderful History of Thomasine Blight. Plymouth, 2004, £3.99. (review)

Cornwall certainly holds an important place in Britain's esoteric history and culture, and in terms of witchcraft, Cornwall has a particularly 'witchy' reputation. Local legends of standing stones and other landscape features suggest a history of witches' night meetings, Cornwall is the home of the Museum of Witchcraft, and today the territory hosts a vibrant Pagan community and receives Pagan spiritual tourism from around the globe. There are witches, pellars and cunning folk who were captured in legend by Cornish folklorists such as Robert Hunt and William Bottrell, but what of the stories behind the legends? It is doubtful that Cornwall was historically any more witchy than other place in Britain, but the idea that Cornwall is perhaps a more suitable conduit for supernatural activity has certainly helped to establish quite a reputation for this western peninsula. There have been quite a few small books addressing witchcraft in Cornwall but the majority has been written ! to suit a popular or tourist interest in the topic. Despite the incredible interest in witchcraft in Cornwall, there have been very few rigorous and unbiased studies of actual historical Cornish witchcraft traditions.

Finally, some of the history surrounding legendary Cornish witches and witchcraft practices is starting to emerge. Jason Semmens' valuable contribution The Witch of the West: or the Strange and Wonderful History of Thomasine Blight is a microhistory and biography of the Cornish Cunning Woman more popularly known as Tammy Blee. This book is truly a step forward in research about Cornish witchcraft traditions. Semmens, who hails from the Camborne area of Cornwall, is certainly no stranger to the material. Currently a documentation officer for a museum in South Wales, Semmens holds an MA in Witchcraft and Literature from the University of Exeter, and was previously a curator for the vast witchcraft related holdings in the private library of the late Robert Lenciewicz. In The Witch of the West, Semmens provides a detailed account of Blight's life and work in Cornwall in the mid nineteenth century, drawing upon archival material, newspaper accounts and early folklore research! .

We learn that Blight was born Thomasine Williams in Gwennap, a mining town near Redruth in 1793, and had two marriages. It's likely that she practiced her trade in conjuring in Redruth market at first, and then later took private clients in her home after her reputation had been established. Her trade consisted of finding lost objects, taking spells off of ill wished livestock, keeping people from being bewitched, and telling fortunes. Blight was a keen strategist, moving to Helston after her first husband's death, to expand her trade and opportunities, and was often able to manipulate local gossip and personality conflicts to her advantage. Semmens portrays Blight as a resourceful and independent woman who was cunning in many senses of the word, defying the common stereotype of such people as being simple and superstitious. Blight was certainly a dynamic personality, and well known as a local character which ensured that a number of her escapades and encounters were chro! nicled by well known Cornish folklore collectors of the nineteenth century, William Bottrell and Robert Hunt. Yet despite her contribution to our understanding of popular beliefs of the past, we must remember that Blight was a shrewd, individualist business woman who was thriving off of her wits in an often harsh economic and social climate.

Perhaps the most important contribution of this volume, however, is that it places Cornish witchcraft and Cornish conjurors in a historical context. Cornish witchcraft is moving out of legend and speculation into the realm of history and ethnography. These were real people, who had motivations and good reasons for taking up this trade. Almost more importantly, we learn about the people who became her clients and what they believed. The stories, especially those of ill wishing, healing sick animals and securing a good harvest, are similar to stories of witchcraft worldwide and we find almost identical practices in Ireland and Africa.

This microhistory and biography is an excellent contribution and a great companion piece to wider studies of witchcraft and folk belief such as Owen Davies' book Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History. Of course it has special relevance for anyone specifically interested in Cornish folklore or the supernatural in Cornwall, which is generally a pretty hot topic.

Amy Hale

War, Medicine & Austin Spare

2008-12-31T03:48:00.001-08:00

War & Medicine - Wellcome Trust, Euston Road, London until 15th February - Admission Free

"As humankind has developed increasingly sophisticated weaponry with which to harm its enemies, medicine has had to adapt to cope with the volume and the changing nature of resulting casualties. Concentrating on the modern era, 'War and Medicine' will consider the constantly evolving relationship between warfare and medicine, beginning with the disasters of the Crimean War and continuing through to today's conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The exhibition highlights the personal experiences of surgeons, soldiers, civilians, nurses, writers and artists and will look at the impact of war on the ‘home front’ as well as on front-line medicine, considering the long-term implications for society of the traumas suffered and the lessons learned."

The wonderful hidden gem that is the Wellcome Trust collection in Central London has another of its winter exhibitions, this time focussing on the theme of War & Medicine. For those who are unfamiliar, I can say that the Wellcome is one of the world's greatest collections of information and artefacts connected with medicine's long and fascinating history. Henry Wellcome was a great Victorian collector who specified that a fixed percentage of profits from his pharmaceutical company be devoted to historical research. Hence the collection is very well endowed with artistic and magical masterpieces, all available to the general public free of charge. Wellcome special exhibits almost always have as large an artistic input as scientific. This includes participation by living artists often commissioned to produce work on the theme of that particular show. It's a strong subject and has some images not for the fainthearted - including Tonks rather amazing paintings of plastic surgery techniques, inspired by material from ancient Ayurvedic medicine and put to good use to reconstruct casualties from WWI. Also on display is an example of Austin Spare's work as WWI Artist, where he documented the innovative dressing stations that became part of the industrial / medical response to industrial warfare - one of the exhibits themes. Austin Spare is of course well know to occultists as a magical artist, but here you see him in an earlier incarnation. - unmissable [Mogg]

Arianrhod A Journey to Spiral Castle (review)

2008-10-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

Arianrhod A Journey to Spiral Castle
By Levannah Morgan (review)

obtainable from Levannah Morgan (Arianrhod), PO Box 314, Exeter EX4 6YR. It costs £3.95, including UK postage; cheques should be made payable to "J. Higginbottom".

This booklet explores the complex evolution of the Welsh goddess Arianrhod, from the earliest references to her in Welsh literature through to modern visions of her as a powerful stellar goddess of inspiration and magick. It traces the author's own experiential journey as a priestess of Arianrhod and suggests some ways of working with this goddess."

I’ve heard Levannah Morgan speak on a number of occasions, and I’ve always enjoyed what she had to say, how she said it and by and large have come away enriched by the experience.

She has also, in my eyes been one of the few woman whom I have heard talk of the Goddess forms in experiential, no holds barred, and dare I say I ‘real’ terms, and I’ve a lot of respect for what she has to say.

Thus I was more than willing to read and review this booklet, at that point sight unseen and subject relatively unknown.

A section of one of my bookcase holds some of my most valued magical literature. Not a hard cover amongst them, they are all magazines or all self-published booklets, oft printed in small numbers but containing more information that many of my glossy and expensive tomes do.

Bearing the above in mind it is really no surprise I find it as easy to write a review for ‘Arianrhod- A Journey to Spiral Castle’ as I would for a more traditionally formatted book.

‘Arianrhod’ is a great booklet; it is nicely written and in a relatively few pages (which includes a bibliography and all online sources used) she explores the roots of the Welsh Goddess Arianrhod in historical terms, as well as looking at the process in which Robert Graves fleshed out a very rudimentary amount of information to animate the Arianrhod who became so well known amongst the contemporary Pagan community.

Then Levannah goes back to source, so to speak, and presents her own research, and historical and experientially realised interpretations and perceptions of Arianrhod.

This results in an easy to read balance of the proverbial art and science that could be seen as being the backbone of true magic.

I think this booklet will be enjoyed and appreciated by practitioners of many diverse paths as well as being appreciated in general by those of both an academic and a creative bent.

‘Arianrhod- The Spiral Castle’ is of interest not just for the process, both academic and creative, of giving life, substance and character to a god/dess form but also for Levannah’s relating of more personal aspects of her journey, which creates an accessibility that endears the reader further.

Her suggested practical work is well done too; written in intensely ocular and evocative language, the visualisation is near automatic as one reads the text.

Call me a shallow, but aesthetics are of great importance to me, and the pleasing presentation only adds to something that at three pounds is more than a bargain.

Julian Vayne (author of Now That's What I Call Chaos Magick) writes:
So we all know Arianrhod right? Goddess of the Silver Wheel and Spiral Castle. Sister (or reflection) of Ariadne, the spider queen; haughty lady of the strange legend of Llew Llaw Gyffes and Blodeuwedd. Well yes and no. These things are part of the story but the tale of Arianrhod is much subtler as Levannah Morgan shows. This slim, well-produced volume traces the evolution (or creation) of this goddess from the earliest Welsh legends into contemporary paganism and directly into Levannah’s own story. As a Welsh speaker Levannah is able to shed light on the first traces of the goddess in both text and the Welsh landscape. She shows how the modern perception of her myth was woven according to the ‘poetic truth’ of Robert Graves and later stitched into the fabric of twentieth century Wicca. But this book is far from a hatchet job on an esteemed member of the modern pagan pantheon. Instead Levannah demonstrates how the goddess herself has been woven, and celebrates the creativity of this process. Levannah provides some evocative glimpses into how she has contributed to this divine fabric herself through her work in 1970s goddess feminism, witchcraft and the Fellowship of Isis. An excellent marriage of well researched cold hard facts and poetic, inspired magick, this book is a essential reading for anyone who wishes to walk the spiral road to the castle of the Otherworld. Highly Recommended.

Oxford Golden Dawn Thelemic Symposium 2008 (Review)

2008-10-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

draft (has a few typos)

Conversation overheard in bar . . . "I haven't had a good sh*g for ages . . . maybe I'll go to the orgy . .. " Not that there was an orgy - not in the common understanding of the word at least - but you know how folk are. Later during the Gnostic Mass there was a forced entry via the security door - luckily not too disruptive but I suppose in such a packed day the sort of thing you might expect. The culprit, later expelled returned in the early hours to burgle the place and is currently, so they say, awaiting her majesty's pleasure. It was the only cloud on an otherwise great day.

There was much harrumphing about the change of venue from the grand but tiny Oxford Town Hall, where if I remember rightly, the porters at the last event bumbled into the late Andrew Chumbley's workshop and told everyone to wind it up. Well it was the fourth hour and they'd only just cast the circle - again all hearsay. So a new slightly larger venue was in order, with en suite bar, car park and indeed nature just a step away.

Peter Grey, took the stage together with his partner and delivered a paean to the goddess Babalon as reviewed elsewhere in this august newsletter and that really got us going. A good start, followed by Mike Magee of AMOOKOS, or perhaps formerly, as he filled us in on how he was expelled from the order his help found. Coincidently, the last time Mike spoke in Oxford was at the first Symposium back in 1986? The topic of his talk was "Factions, Fictions and Functions" which was all about the negative side of magical orders. (There's more background to this in my own "Tantra Sadhana" a chapter called "When your guru goes gaga") . This time he gave a short but informative discussion of the main elements of the Kaula magick so beloved in AMOOKOS. In the flood of correspondence I've had since the effect - not sure why me - I was just making the tea afterall - someone remarked how happy they were to see Mike again, being as what he is so charismatic.

By this time, Melissa Harrington's transport has screeched into the grassy carpark and after a suitable interval, reinforced with tea and one of Kym's inch thick sandwiches - she took the stage to reprise a talk of ten years ago on Thelema and the feminine. It was a masterly performance. The intervening years have seen many changes, marriage and parenthood - estrangement from the Caliphate OTO (bit of a pattern) and a serious reframing of her attitude to Thelema, Babalon and what to her eyes now is its first, totally flawed prophet. Her talk was a counterpoint to Peter Grey, whose book she both roundly praised but also cast at least one jaundiced eye - wondering whether the image of a whore was every really anything more than a male sexual fantasy. She highlighted the huge caesura between Crowley's devotion to his goddess and the complete contempt his held for her earthly incarnations. It's difficult to imagine Crowley cutting the toenails of the mother of his children - when she was too pregnant to do it for herself.

Another break, more tea and food, more buzz and camaraderie. Now Charlotte from Bath Omphalos, accompanied by a film show from defibulator images, spoke of here own work with dangerous, blood thirsty spirits. Which all prompted a rather interesting discussion on the theme of self harm and the strange dialectic in which it stands with some extreme forms of magical consciousness. Her spooky slide film show was full of images from oxford Pitt river Museum, which is soon to close for a twelve month refit along with the stupendous Ashmolean Museum - so get your fix now.

Next up was Jake Stratton Kent who regaled us with an investigation into the Grimoire Verum and other necrotic texts that have come down to us in our long and noble history. His emphasis was on matters practical - and he fielded many interesting questions from the floor such as "is it dangerous"; "do you deal with the boss" etc. (As in all walks of life, one tends to have more dealings with the foot soldiers than the managing director.

Finally, we came to David Beth on the topic of Voodoo Gnosis, the syncretized synthesis of voodoo put together by Michael Bertieux and the Couloir Noir and published in various editions of The Voodoo Gnostic Workbook.. He spoke well but it was complex stuff and in the end it did rather boil down to whether one either understood or related to the ideas of Michael Bertieux, which many their obviously did. My ears pricked up at the mention of occult technology, I'd heard of those wyrd machines made from twisted wire and cardboard tubes with which these practitioners commune with denizens of others dimensions. So more of a post modern view of Voodoo than strictly revivalist.

So on the whole a good day - several times I wondered at the failure to mention the elephant in the room, which for me is the authentic voice of the ancient Egyptians who sometimes seems as silenced in modern occult discourse now as it was at the at the beginning of the Christian ice age. But our day was not yet done - still to come was a Gnostic Mass. I finally found out what the strange man with swivelling eyes and Sherlock Holmes costume was up to. Actually I missed the mass, but someone who was there said it was "both the most ridiculous and coolest thing he had ever seen". There was much knob twiddling after the mass and many people left before the social really got into its swing - which was a shame as it was good fun. My correspondent says: "thank you for facilitating my public dancing debut at the Canal Club. Was it the congenial atmosphere engendered by an alliance of like-minded people? Perhaps the sun in Libra, moon in Sagittarius configuration astrologically? Maybe the unknown ingredients of the EGA Eucharist - extolling the raised glass, the presence of a naked lady or just that the world was ready for such a spectacle "...
Roll on next year - [Mogg]

OTO Matters

2008-08-25T01:35:00.001-07:00

OTO Matters

For those of you who missed it then you may be interested to know that the various incarnations of the O[rdo] T[empli] O[rientis] have been again skirmishing in the UK courts, one (the Caliphate) having just succeeded in establishing a OTO religious symbol (The Rose Cross Lamen) as a UK trademark; as well as the initials OTO. The other, (the Typhonian) had un-successfully opposed this. I've not seen the actual court ruling, just various press releases, which naturally enough tend to spin in favour of this or that organisation. For the record, let me say, that IMO, there are indeed several OTO organisations and neither of them is spurious, although some, such as the Caliphate, seem to be newer, more brash players on the scene. Aleister Crowley died in 1947 leaving his particular dispensation to Karl Germer, who on his death bed and knowing all of the candidates - plumped for Marcello Motta's (Societas) OTO. Again naturally enough - this is disputed by some - who point out that the only witness to Germer's last will and testament, was his wife, and she was after all "just a woman and not even a member".

I should say that I was a sometime member of Kenneth Grant's OTO, and was expelled for reasons not too relevant here, although I still regard myself as a Typhonian. So I have some sympathy for their refusal to lay down and die. I suspect that justice is never blind, but takes into account the relative size of competing organisations and that as the Caliphate was the bigger, richer organisation, it might have had more clout with the legal officers. But there again, when has the law ever been the friend of secret societies? Caliphate types are already swaggering that they are now the only one, but few reasonable people will agree. I read their press release on what appears to be a Caliphate friendly site, and a comment appended by a "Rodney", reveals part of their motivation is to "lessen the confusion many new people feel when they enter the world of Thelema…" Which I interpret as meaning that the world needs just one view of Thelema. As a pagan, I'm very nervous of attempts to block and negate other approaches to magick and enlightenment. So "Rodney" (whoever he might be) now thinks its safe to "assume . . . that there will only be one Order calling itself O.T.O. in future." Well that would truly be a shame but there again, I really doubt it somehow.

The Caliphate press release ends with the very encouraging remarks that they will "continue — now with fewer distractions — [their] publications program." Which includes the completely restored “Confessions” . Which is to say - the Caliphate is currently engaged in a programme of re-editing various Crowley works and at the same time suppressing what it sees as aberrant approaches to the "master". Bit of a shame I think. For me, Symonds and Grant's edition of "Liber ABA" is a handy little volume and the Caliphate's new "unabridged" version, the so-called "blue brick", is no great improvement. But there again, I'd say there is room for both. But in the interests of "avoiding confusion" - that cannot be allowed. After all, one person's "diversity " is another's “confusion". Adding deleted scenes, and "footnote fodder" has it place, but is it really that important? Roll on the expiration of the Crowley copyright - just a few more years "my people". [Mogg]

Postscript:

In an elist discussion of the above events I asked the question as to whether there was any mechanism by which the Caliphate's own membership might bring its leadership to account, should they find themsevles not totally in agreement with their Order's approach to other Thelemic groups. I received the following interesting reply:

"Although I've heard OTO members put out different interpretations, I myself believe, and have had members of US Grand Lodge confirm, that the only "secrets" within OTO are those directly related to initiations. So, I consider myself free to talk about anything but the specific contents of initiations, and perhaps specific confidential bits of information I may be privy to that would be a violation of another persons privacy--but the latter is just basic ethics.

There really is no direct mechanism within OTO for the general membership to hold the leadership accountable. Ostensibly, they could rally others within the higher grades to take up their cause, but that's pretty much it. Lacking that, the only recourse a member unhappy with actions not directly related to them has one course--leaving. In this way, OTO is truly hierarchical, and I wouldn't want to suggest otherwise. When I made my point earlier I only trying to suggest that it is not monolithic (just as the Catholic church is not really monolithic despite its centralization around the Vatican). My own observation has been that members within the lower grades who have issues with the leadership's actions usually are able to gain a voice in policy, if at all, through informal channels, as there is no formal channel for doing so.

Now, if a member feels that they have a grievance that relates directly to them, there are formal channels for addressing that through an Ombudsman's office, at least within US Grand Lodge. So, if you feel directly harmed, you can seek to bring the leadership to account for that through specific formal channels. But if you simply disagree with the direction, all you can really do is make your disagreement known.

One potential exception, of course, is the office of the revolutionary, whose job it is to depose the current sovereign within a grand lodge. So, if one is in strong disagreement, one could potentially secretly join the cause of the revolutionary. There are supposed to be two revolutionaries within any grand lodge. I think US Grand Lodge is the only lodge that currently has an appointed revolutionary (there is only one, and it is a recent appointment), and the identity of that revolutionary is secret. Based on my conversations and interviews, I'd say that some members do seem to hold the belief that if they are in strong disagreement with the present leadership, it is not merely their right, but their duty, to try to topple that leadership--either from without or within. I'd have to go back into my notes and transcripts to really get specifics on this--I don't have time for that kind of detailed work, but this is one of the questions I do hope to address in formal writing in the future.

Let me add, though, that my own knowledge is primarily based on local body participation and observation of actions on the grand lodge level in the United States. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the specific workings of the International Leadership or about other grand lodges. When I set out my project as a researcher, I constrained myself to the specifics of looking at the order on a local body level, and really only concerned myself with even grand lodge issues as they affected the local body. Of course, I have my own knowledge of those workings because I've been a member for quite some time and because I work as editor of Agape, the US Grand Lodge newsletter.

I hope that helps address your questions. The institutional mode of management is definitely one of my areas of interest, and I hope to specifically address in my future writing some of how members understand the hierarchical structure of the order to integrate with the seemingly individualist ethos of Thelema. Again, though, a responsible account of that requires a kind of detailed work I won't be able to do for some months.

Regards, Grant Potts (gpotts@ccat.sas.upenn.edu)

PS: the Caliphate "Press Release", with its not so thinly veiled warning, is posted on http://abrahadabra.net/2008/06/19/oto-wins-trademark-case/

PPS: Caliphate annual report: http://oto-usa.org/usgl_annual_report_IVxv.pdf for the USA lodge, the largest with a membership of approx 1500, a growth of 40% since its founding in 1996. So a relative small organisation compared with other neopagan groups and its membership seems according to its report to be fairly static.

Turning in his grave?

Frater Hymenaeus Alpha 777 aka Grady Louis McMurtry who shed his earthly vehicle and died twenty-three years ago in California on July 12, 1985. He was lying in his hospital bed at Brookside Hospital in San Pablo, discussing forms of meditation with a friend when he softly said, “I think my path is more the Sufi Path.” When questioned what he meant, he simply looked up and said, “I don’t know.” He then closed his eyes and quietly passed away. Grady once wrote that; “The moment of ultimate self-embarrassment is when you die. That is when you wake up.” In other words, you get to review your whole incarnation for all its good and bad, shake your head and then prepare for the next. On July 15th, his body was prepared at the Apollo Crematory in Emeryville, California. He was dressed as Saladin, in a turban with his favorite red robe. A bouquet of roses was placed in his arms shortly before he was cremated. Grady’s ashes remained in the possession of the O.T.O. for almost a year. Then, on July 12th 1986, a large group of individuals boarded a boat rented at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. About three miles past the Golden Gate Bridge, with help of the Neptune Society, his ashes were spread out across the Pacific Ocean. It was written, “From the fire of cremation to the waters of the great sea, by formula and verse did we rejoice him on his way.” A single rose was then tossed into the water, cut from the same bush as the bouquet that had been placed in his hands when he was cremated. As his ashes slowly vanished beneath the waters, one of Grady’s poem was read to send him off on his last voyage -The Redeemer That is in the Waters.

THE REDEEMER
THAT IS IN THE WATERS

O who will go with the mermen bold
With the mermen, wild and free
O who will rule from the castle old
In the Chasm of the sea
And who will brave the abyssal cold
For all eternity?

O I will go with the mermen bold
With the mermen, wild and free
And I will rule from the castle old
In the Chasm of the sea
And I will brave the abyssal cold
For one eternity!

NIGEL BRYANT versus Dan BROWN: "The Origin of the Grail"

2008-07-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

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.

Preface: Origins of the Grail legend?
No-one will ever know for certain, but a personal view which may well be wrong is this: I think it most probable that the story of the Grail which developed in the Middle Ages was (a) first and foremost, to all intents and purposes, an entirely original creation by Chretien de Troyes, the astonishingly brilliant French poet who, were he not stigmatised in most modern eyes by being medieval, would be regarded as one of the all-time greats; but (b) he had in the back of his mind the potent motif of a magic feeding vessel / cauldron of regeneration from Celtic oral tradition - Bretons were prominent professional story-tellers in medieval France.

It's crucial to understand that in Chretien's magnificent, inspirational poem the grail is NOT explicitly Christian - it is NOT "the Holy Grail" - but it does arrive on the scene with another object - a bleeding lance - which has been interpreted by some as a phallic male symbol accompanying the female grail, but which Chretien's audience would INSTANTLY and UNDOUBTEDLY have connected not with a phallus but with the Lance of Longinus (the lance with which Christ was stabbed on the Cross). This is overwhelmingly probable because holy relics - not least that particular holy relic the Holy Lance, which a man named Peter Bartholomew claimed to have found during the First Crusade - were a hot topic at the time, since holy relics and holy places were being lost to the forces of Christendom in no uncertain manner (in 1187 the True Cross itself was lost to Saladin at the catastrophic - if you're a Crusader - battle of Hattin). It is possible, and very interesting, to think that Chretien might have been inspired to the idea of the bleeding lance by a pagan ritual object, but in a way it's irrelevant, because whether he was or not, his audience would simply not have made that connection - or if they had, it would have been intriguingly interconnected in their minds with Peter Bartholomew's Christian "Holy Lance". But that's symbols for you. And the presence in Chretien's poem of an object so suggestive of that sacred Christian relic alongside the by-no-means-obviously-Christian grail prompted another poet, Robert de Boron, to claim the vessel unequivocally for orthodox Christianity by writing a "prequel" in which he identified the grail as the vessel used by Christ at the Last Supper and by Joseph of Arimathea at the Crucifixion.

But isn't it interesting that in other developments of Chretien's unfinished Grail story, the vessel has the power to heal, and also to feed endlessly... Then again, an orthodox Christian might say that a plate of communion wafers is a magic feeding vessel, and has the power to heal... Then again, a pagan might point out that the mother of all magic feeding vessels is the earth... And then there's the matter of the womb...

And Dan Brown . . .
"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 Mound

The Chemical Wedding (Film Review) Julian Doyle & Bruce Dickinson

2008-05-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

Mandrake Speaks 213
reviewed by Ivor Davies

Fun trailer, but bereft of the usual hype associated with the launch
of a movie, I arrived at the Apollo West End to see the Chemical
Wedding with mainly my own great expectations.

Stormtroopers from Star Wars greeted moviegoers at the doors as it
was the final night of a Sci-Fi festival and after a few beers at the
bar we all sat in the theatre and waited. Two simultaneous screenings
in adjacent theatres in the same cinema – cast and crew in Screen 4,
us common people in the one next door in Screen 5. After a personal
introduction by Bruce Dickinson (screenwriter), Julian Doyle
(director) and Simon Callow (lead actor) we all looked forward to the
film.

The story begins with the arrival of American scientist Mathers from
Cal Tech to supervise the installation of a virtual reality simulator
suit at Cambridge University. For the very first time this state-of-
the-art piece of equipment is being hooked up to a revolutionary new
British supercomputer, the Z93, which unbeknown to anyone, has been
programmed with a virus by lab assistant Victor who has reduced the
rituals of Aleister Crowley into binary code and infected it with
them.

The film time shifts back to when mild mannered university lecturer
Professor Haddo (Simon Callow) is willingly persuaded into the suit
by Victor for its first trial run. Haddo goes missing immediately
after his experience in the suit and turns up the following day at a
lecture theatre to give a talk on Shakespeare's "Hamlet" – except
that clearly he is no longer the man he used to be, no longer the
meek stammering lecturer he was before his VR suit experience but now
an outrageous sexually explicit speaker who urinates on his audience.
The film goes on to imply that the Z93 supercomputer virus composed
by Victor has actually caused Haddo to become the reincarnation of
Aleister Crowley and so begins a tale of the apparent depths of
depravity that a person possessed by the soul of Aleister Crowley
would sink to.

This is the crux of the problem that this film has – just what would
someone possessed by the late Aleister Crowley do all day long? "Sex
and murder" unfortunately is this film's disturbing answer and then
just how outrageous can this character become? The implication in the
trailer was that this portrayal of Crowley might be tongue-in-cheek
or humorous, but the result is far more worrying than that.

Numerous examples of exactly "just how evil could a person possessed
by Aleister Crowley be" continue in a procession of visual and
conceptual shocks ranging from relatively innocuous excrement
deposited on an office desk to the crucifixion of a prostitute. Now,
controversial a character as Crowley was, I really must ask what
Bruce Dickinson is up to here. I listened to Callow emphasise that
his portrayal of Haddo was "Playing the part of someone possessed by
Crowley… and not actually Crowley Himself" but I see this as a pre-
emptive excuse on his part for what we saw on screen and some of the
issues that we might have with it.

As for the characters: shallow, meaningless and undefined. Haddo
comes over as nothing and we don't care that he's been possessed by
Aleister Crowley (n.b. Simon Callow's performance is a delight – I
just wish the script had been up to it.), Lia the journalist is our
damsel in distress and you don't care if she's rescued or not,
Aleister Crowley is just pure evil and doesn't deserve to be
reincarnated, Victor is just a virus writing geek and got what he
deserved.

Deeply offensive, blatantly sensationalist, Bruce Dickinson's script
leaves me with questions about the target audience of this film –
fans of Simon Callow (?), fans of Bruce Dickinson (heavy metal fans
who will be disappointed by the soundtrack), fans of Aleister Crowley
(please note, only those who specifically want to be thought of as
evil and twisted) or practicing occultists (who will be annoyed by
this film's cold and completely non-spiritual content).

Three words describe this film: "Straight", "To", "DVD".

The Chemical Wedding - Official Trailer (Crowley Film):

Honouring ancient pagans and paganism

2008-04-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

[Paganism] is "just a collection of ethnic polytheism whatever was not Judaism or Christianity, but given a name by the lazy cunning of Christian apologists, who could then use their most salacious material to discredit all their opponents at one go." Fowden, review of Lane Fox 1986, JRS 78 (1988) : 176 quoted in Frankfurter : 75

“Pagan” and “Paganism” was early Christian slang, meaning “civilian” and not as some say, pejorative terms for “rustic” or “provincial”. Some of the most high profile “pagans” attacked by Christians in antiquity dwelt in sophisticated cities. For example the pagan martyr Hypatia, was from Alexandria, a city notorious to Christians, for its intellectual pagans.

Robin Lane Fox /Pagans & Christians/. Penguin 1986:

“In antiquity, pagans already owed a debt to Christians. Christians first gave them their name, /pagani/. The word first appears in Christian inscriptions of the early fourth century and remained colloquial, never entering the Latin translation of the Bible. In everyday use, it meant either civilian or a rustic. Since the sixteenth century, the origin of the early Christian’s usage has been disputed, but of the two meanings, the former is the likelier. /Pagani/ were civilians who had not enlisted through baptism as soldiers of Christ against the powers of Satan. By its word for non-believer, Christian slang bore witness to the heavenly battle which coloured Christian’s view of life.

“Paganism” too, is a Christian coinage, a word like “Judaism”, which suggests a system of doctrine and orthodoxy, as Christian religion knows one. By modern historians pagan religion has been defined as essentially a matter of cult acts . . . pagans performed rites but professed no creed or doctrine. They did pay detailed acts of cult, especially by offering animal victims to their gods; but they were not committed to revealed beliefs in the strong Christian sense of the term. They were not exhorted to faith: “to anyone brought up on classical Greek philosophy, faith was the lowest form of cognition . . . the state of mind of the uneducated.” Although followers of Plato’s philosophy began to give the term more value in the later third century ad, no group of pagans ever called themselves “the faithful”; the term remains one of the few ways of distinguishing Jewish and Christian Epitaphs from those which are Pagan.”

Robin Lane Fox is always interesting, although he does share the tendency of many historians of his generation, who tend to view things either through the distorting filter of Greek philosophy/theology or from a Christian terminus. But we might ask, was everything in the ancient world just preparation for the coming of Christianity - or can it be examined as a set of ideas in its own right? We might therefore question some of his comments about "pagan" religion being all about "cult acts" and void of any notion of inner piety. As always this tends to avoid the "elephant in the room". Ancient Egypt is now widely acknowledged as being a special case. The ancient Egyptians were renowned for their piety. But why do modern scholars never see things from their point of view when writing about "pagan" religion?

"Pagan" and "Paganism" may be loaded terms but they are not pejorative. What is little known, and little studied, is the organised "pagan" resistance to Christianity, which was recognised at the time as a dangerous, anti-intellectual movement, akin to the "taliban" of modern times.

"Paganism" came into being principally in the writings of Iamblicus, who created an eucumenical tradition based on the Chaldean oracles, that valued all major theologies, especially Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek. These pagan "clans" called themselves - "Neo-platonists", "Hellenes", "Chaldeans" or "Hermeticists" - and they were persecuted by state and the mob for several centuries. When the Athenian academy was forcibly closed, they took refuge in Alexandria, Aphroditopolis and finally the open city of Haran in Persia. Here these ideas eventually flowed into the heterodox traditions of early Islam. When the fanatical christian emperor Justinian began to really turn the screws, he was stopped in his tracks by the Treaty of Haran, which stipulated that the local philosophical pagans (Chaldeans) be allowed to continue their studies. In fury Justinian lashed out at the sanctuary of Isis at Philai, in Upper Egypt. (see Polymnia Athanassiadi "Persecution and Response in Late Paganism - the evidence of Damascius", Journal of Hellenic Studies 113 1-29)

I feel a personal desire to remember the struggles,sacrifices and often martyrdom of those "intellectual pagans" of the late classical world. They, like the modern pagans, were euchemical and eclectic, hence we should be proud to number ourselves amongst their number.

Mogg Morgan

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Black Widow Live

2008-03-03T09:49:00.001-08:00

Available from Mystic Records
www.mysticrecords.co.uk (cat number 82356644792)

Here is the show that caused so much controversy in the 1960s press and with audiences, got this cult group banned by the BBC and from touring in the USA.

For many years now, the Album Sacrifice and especially the single 'Come to the Sabbath' has been the unofficial anthem of the pagan movement.

Almost forty years ago, I remember buying my first ever album (Black Sabbath/Paranoid) then being told by friends that what I really wanted to hear was Black Widow - far more edgy. Trouble was no one could get a copy, and everyone confused them with Black Sabbath - the rest is history for what is called the most unfortunate of bands.

The release of their well crafted album, whose underlying concept and accompanying stageshow benefited from the input of the infamous Maxine and Alex Sanders (the whole story is told in Maxine's new autobiography Fire Child - see above) . Trouble was it also coincided with the Sharon Tate/La Bianca murders. So all in all the album sunk without a trace and Black Widow eventually split.

But steadily over the years, their albums, especially Sacrifice, continued a twilight existence. But no one really knew what they were like live and what was that infamous stage show?

Clive Jones, the talented saxophonist and flutist remembered that one of their singles was filmed for the German equivalent of Top of the Pops. For many years he worked to track down the original producer, and was eventually promised a remastered copy of the film. When it eventually arrived, he was stunned to discover that the DVD included the entire stage show, which had been done as a warm up in the afternoon before the broadcast. Clive has no memory of all this, perhaps it's another example of the old saying "if you can remember the 1960s, you weren't there".

This DVD and accompanying CD is a fine piece of Rock and indeed occult history. And what a wonderful undiscovered classic is on offer here. Filmed in black and white you get the full ritual opening, then the invocation of the Ashtoreth, whose look is clearly modelled on the original concept created by Maxine Sanders as documented in her autobiography. The story moves to the 'demoness' as she attempts to seduce and possess the magician, then the battle and final 'licence to depart'.

The Black Widow vocalist, musicians and dancer all look great. The whole performance is very dramatic, real and physical with the incense burning and the building of power tangible. Furthermore, it is a very aesthetically pleasing stage show.

It's a really great Rock film, it's a really great Pagan film, with the added bonus of live versions of all the tracks, all of which are longer and musically richer than the studio album.

Black Widow Live Stage Show DVD plus live bonus CD - circa 15.99 UK Pounds (12.99 if you order before end of January) - got to do it really. [Mogg]

PS: Very well worth checking out is the Black Widow official website www.blackwidow.org.uk also the Mystic Records UK website www.mysticrecords.co.uk and 'Pasi' and 'Black Widow' pages on myspace.

Torey Hayden "Ghost Girl" ( a pagan response)

2008-01-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

Torey Hayden, Ghost Girl - True crime. I'm half way through and alarm bells are beginning to ring and I wonder if it's one of those 'satanic' scare books of the 1990s - which is scarey if true as there are forty-one copies still in Oxford libraries alone. I'm nearly finished and guess it's one of the post scare books, i.e. slightly more subtle but still full of the same unsourced and vague accusations aimed, indirectly, at the pagan movement. So it acknowledges that there never has been any proof of the more lurid accusations but leads the readers to suspect that it did actually happen. So the poison is still there which is a shame as Torey Hayden is obviously an enlightened being in many other ways.

At the core of the book is the suggestion that the eight year old protagonist (Jadie) has been abused by a murderous, 'satanic' coven masquerading as characters from Dallas. The main proof is the presence of a 'well known' 'satanic' symbol, the equal armed cross within a circle. The manager of a local new age bookshop, a self styled 'white witch' confirms all this, but fails to observe that it is more widely known as a fairly innocent symbol of the elements within Wicca. Incidentally I have so far failed to find any incidence of this symbol within avowedly satanic organisations such as the Church of Satan - but maybe I missed it??

Our white witch then discusses the 'black' arts and the use of Voodoo dolls. You wonder if she ever read any of the books on her shelves - if so she might have learnt that the use of dolls within Voodoo is a myth, whereas they are fairly ubiquitous within wicca and 'white' witchcraft! Perhaps this is the reasons that we are never given any citations for any of the sources used in this author's 'research'. So given the poor quality of Torey Hayden's research - it's difficult to trust the other material in this book.

The Book of Mephisto & The Necronomicon Gnosis

2008-01-12T09:17:00.000-08:00

The Book of Mephisto- A Left Hand Path Grimoire of the Faustian Tradition,
Asenath Mason, Edition Roter Drache, 2006. 76 pages.
ISBN 3-939459-00-3

The Necronomicon Gnosis- A Practical Introduction,
Asenath Mason, Edition Roter Drache 2007. 184 pages.
ISBN 978-939456-05-7

Experienced occult practitioners understand that the Mysteries may be invoked under many identities, shifting forms and names from circumstance to circumstance. Thus it is that amongst the oldest traditions we often find elements of what might otherwise be called ‘post modern’ sorcery. For example, I remember during an adventure into the dark underbelly of London coming across a Voudon altar which had been erected to the Baron of the Cemetery - a genuine lwa of that tradition- represented by the image of Darth Vader (or perhaps that should be Daa’th Vader?). Much to the bafflement of the uninitiated, many of those practicing ‘traditional’ witchcraft often display a similar attitude towards the Mysteries of our own culture. We know that underneath all archetypes, be they from the pagan myth cycles or modern popular iconography, there lies the power of the ultimately unknowable, unnameable Mysteries of which even our traditional pantheons are ultimately the merest shadows.

Just as the Voudon cultists have identified their own lwa or ‘laws’ at different times with the saints of Catholicism, or the new myth cycles of popular culture such as the Star Wars films, so have we as witches in England. Hence it is also that the pagan gods found themselves re-identified as demonic forces in the various grimoires of cunning tradition. We know that neither interpretation of these Mysteries are strictly speaking the ‘ultimate truth’. We know also that the form beneath which the Mysteries are called may even be completely fictional, and like the rest of Western Magic in the modern day have even succumbed on occasions to applying the mythos of H. P. Lovecraft in our rites. Similarly, post-modern Chaos magicians have found that it has proved possible to work effective sorcery by invoking gods that did not exist five minutes ago, or even invoking characters from ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (although why you would want to do that is anybody’s guess). It is an attitude that is shared also by Asenath Mason, founder of Lodge Magan – Polish lodge of the Order Dragon Rouge, in the two books I have recently received from her.

In the ‘Book of Mephisto’, Asenath explores the goetic tradition through an exploration of the Faustus myth, specifically his making of a Pact with Mephistopheles, whom she identifies at various times with Ahriman, Samael, the Initiator, the Opposer, and the Jungian ‘Shadow’. She sees the Faustian Pact to be ultimately a misunderstood manifestation of the Great Work of the Left Hand Path, pointing out early on that in Marlowe’s play he does not evoke demons to satisfy petty desires, as many of the later editions of The Lesser Key promise to fulfil. He does not seek material benefit, or to have control over other humans. Rather, he sells his soul in exchange for knowledge, and for exploration of the outer and inner cosmos. In this sense he seeks illumination with the ultimate aim to become himself ‘as a god’, which as Mason points out is the definitive quest of the Left Hand Path magician. From this perspective she goes on to explore the tradition of the magical pact in sinister witchcraft, identifying Mephistopheles also as a face of the Black Man of the Sabbat. The work includes a number of ritual formulae that combine traditional and modern elements that might be employed by any aspiring magician or witch to commune and invoke this Mystery, whether in the guise of Mephistopheles or any of its other names.

In ‘Necronomicon Gnosis’ Asenath explores the employment of the Cthulhu mythos in practical modern Left Hand Path sorcery; not entirely unknown also amongst witches (being not too far a stretch of the imagination, since we commonly refer to the Mysteries as The Old Ones even when we are not being post-modern about it all), Chaos magicians, the Typhonian O.T.O., and not forgetting of course the Voudon traditions as they are transmitted through Michael Bertiaux’s O.T.O.A., nearly all of whom receive at least a passing mention. Although described as an introductory level work, there is also much here that may be of inspiration to the more experienced practitioner. Indeed, Asenath generally assumes an advanced knowledge in her readers, hoping perhaps as much to reach out to those who might be her equals (distressingly few I would imagine) as to inspire those whose journeys are only just beginning. Again, she employs this modern pantheon to explore mysteries that are in fact so ancient as to be ultimately unnameable. Along the way she offers us her always profound and occasionally alarming insights into such traditional magical practices as astral travel, the Sabbat, dream incubation, shape-shifting, necromancy, sexual communion, invocation, evocation, the creation of though-forms, and other elements that fit well into the Cthulhoid mould of working. That the pantheon is fictitious means very little, since it resonates with the deeper mind that knows no bounds to ‘truth’ or ‘fantasy’; the dreaming mind of the sorcerer.

Logic might tell us that offering sacrifices and pacts to gods that do not actually exist will bring no fruit, yet experience tells us otherwise. Similarly, just because a subjective magical belief yields objective results, this does not necessitate the objectivity of that belief. This, besides the human mind’s incapability of seeing the whole ‘truth’ at any one time, is something that we can be very thankful for. Again there are enough inspiring rituals to keep any cultist happy. These are much more your ecstatic rituals of sex and blood than the usual dry old recycled ceremonial material one has got so used to reading but never getting around to doing these days. You cannot go wrong with the odd frenzied rite here and there..

I am reminded also of a telling of a Buckinghamshire coven that, wrapped up in the usual inter-coven magical warfare over the five mile ruling or some such nonsense, attempted to evoke the Lovecraftian entity known as Azazoth, the ‘Blind Idiot God’, to direct its destructive capabilities towards their perceived ‘enemies’. As if such a being is likely to concern itself with petty squabbles about poaching each other’s coven members… As Asenath points out in the ‘Necronomicon Gnosis’, summoning entities like this to manifestation is never wise move under any circumstances. True to form, this coven failed entirely to direct the chaotic forces of Azazoth in the directions they intended, and within six months all those involved in the ritual were either in an asylum, dead after a freak accident, or had committed suicide. Which, personally, is the kind of magical f**k up we could all learn from observing. Thank the Old Ones that other people are out there to make mistakes like that for us, so that we do not have to.

Both works display profound insight into the Mysteries, as does her breathtaking ‘fantasy’ artwork which adorns their pages. I am always suspicious of so called Left Hand Path magicians that display no particular talent, such as the ability to paint inspiring images to write evocative prose (this is supposed to be the Dark Art after all) and it is obvious that Asenath Mason must surely be an accomplished sorceress to produce the quality of work that she does. I expect that her lodge will prosper and grow through her inspiration and guidance. It should matter little if your own approach is purely ‘Traditional’, or whether you are open to employing elements from fantasy as new ‘masques’ for the ancient Mysteries, there will most likely be much to inspire you within these pages. Highly recommended indeed.
So mote it be,
Nathaniel J. Harris
(Skratte)

For further details of these and other books published by Edition Roter Drache visit their web page at http://roterdrache.org
For information on the Order Dragon Rouge, visit http://www.dragonrouge.net

To see Asenath Mason’s accomplished dark fantasy artwork, and to find links to various esoteric articles by her, visit http://www.asaenath.deviantart.com

The Goetia of Dr Rudd by Stephen Skinner David Rankine

2007-12-28T06:45:00.000-08:00

isbn 978-0-9547639-2-3, £40 Golden Hoard
448pp, hardback includes full text of Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon (Liber Malorum Spiritum seu Goetia, Theurgia Goetia, Ars Paulina (1&2) Ars Almadel)

Is there such a thing as a definitive edition of a grimoire? The authors of this spanking new edition certainly think so. The Goetia or Lemegeton to give it its full title, is a well known sorcerous book still widely available through Aleister Crowley's 1903 edition, which like several other of the master's works was re-badged from the manuscript provided by Samuel Liddel MacGregor Mathers of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Skinner Rankine's justification for reprinting this new edition lies in the fact that the Crowley/Mathers edition is incomplete, contains editorial errors and is peppered with 'extraneous' material including some of Crowley's trade mark jokes. Crowley also added some additional ritual material such as the powerful Egyptian 'Headless Ritual' which is seen as anachronistic by some or a touch of magical genius; by others.

In their Goetia, Skinner & Rankine discuss the recent scholarly edition of The Lesser Key of Solomon edited by Joseph Peterson. They advance many coherent reasons as to why a further edition is useful. Controversially their edition is based on a manuscript actually rejected as defective by Peterson yet, so they argue, it possesses an internal coherence that has perhaps been overlooked. Viz: Dr Rudd's edition, warts and all, shows a system of magic as actually practiced by a working magician of the seventheenth century. In this respect, the edition of Dr Rudd has a lot in common with that of Crowley/Mathers. Dr Rudd also made his own additions to the text, additions that Stephen Skinner David Rankine this time welcome because they make the system more rational and to their minds safer. Rudd's brilliant addition was to add corresponding angelic seals for each of the demonic names, thus provided a technique by which one (the angels) could control the other (the demons).

Skiinner and Rankine's rather excellent introduction now addresses the putative history of the Grimoire, a topic which is in many ways more interesting than the grimoire itself (you might guess I'm not a grimoire man myself - one has to specialise afterall. Although I do have my own theories about the Goetia, but that can wait for another day.) As one might expect, details of the history of the Lemegeton gets murkier, the further back one looks. Ultimately, one is in the territory of myth and selective memory. I wonder if the editors had seen Lon Duquette's lively little book The Key to Solomon's Key (reviewed in MS) in which he addresses the historicity of King Solomon 'the Magician'. In 586bce the Hebrew elite of Jersualem were taken into captivity by the Babylonians and the 'Solomonic' temple destroyed. When this captivity ended the captives returned with a new name and some would say a new history and religion. Which means that all those post captivity stories of King Solomon cannot be taken at face value. King Solomon is a figure of myth who has so far remained invisible in the archaeological and historical record. So is the King Solomon who inspired the Lemegeton really a Hebrew mage or could he derive from Arabic or even Egyptian tradition? Afterall the Goetia itself says that the demons speak the Egyptian tongue?

Which brings me back to my opening question. I've yet to be convinced that the grimoires really deal with a world of facts; they seem to be much more connected to an imaginal world of magick. For all those magicians wanting to address this and other issues for themselves - you probably couldn't ask for a clearer and more complete guide than Stephen Skinner & David Rankine's excelllent new edition. [Mogg Morgan]

Sybarite among the Shadows (The Story)

2007-10-20T03:37:00.000-07:00

by Richard McNeff

“He bridges the gap between Oscar Wilde and Hitler…”
Cyril Connoly

BERLIN. The yellow stars daubed on shop windows in the Jewish Quarter, overshadowed by the monstrous towers the Nazis called architecture – totems of the thousand-year Reich. Such a millenarian atmosphere suited Crowley, fresh, if that is the word, from a reinvigorating interlude of sex magic with a woman half his age in Lisbon. Like a gratified parent, he still doted on the “German Crusade”, as he called it. In turn, the authorities tolerated his existence. Names he had been invoking for years were on the lips of high-ranking SS officers: Ahriman, Horus, and Moloch – many deities were abroad that year. Besides, his relationship with the Nazis stretched back to the early days of the Party’s formation. Yet they did not like the relationship to be too defined. Already theirs was a hidden doctrine, a sect of intrigue and the esoteric, of ritual and symbol, posing as the modern. A few years later, his eyes opened, the OTO suppressed in Germany, Crowley would describe them with contempt as the Black Brothers. Indeed, they were worshippers of the left hand, the perverted spirit – but in secret only. To the ostensible world, they presented themselves as the final cultists of the empirical. Crowley to them was something of a buffoon: an actor in a shadow play of rich widows and cocaine who shared their interests but not their intent. The Wanderer of the Waste was comfortable with this arrangement. He loved outrage and extravagance; while for them, purpose was enough.

Aleister Crowley

Crowley had first met Aldous Huxley in this same Berlin at the start of the decade and had painted his portrait in the belief that he was rich. This time Huxley was in the city as an observer of the strange monster Germany was becoming. Like many witnesses, he was both repulsed and fascinated by the dark rhythym that beat in the pulse of that nation. To describe their relationship as friendship would be to miss the point. Crowley was doubtless fascinating – notorious as the Great Beast in his own country and much of Europe, a brilliant conversationalist and something of an enigma, whereas Huxley was a myopic intellectual. Yet Crowley attracted him, just as thirty years before he had intrigued the dry and peevish Somerset Maugham in Paris. He almost existed for the straying eye of the novelist who hunted those chapters of exhibition life did not afford. Yet now Crowley fades, his rotundity, absurd and menacing, is blurred – a glaring headline of Edwardian sin.

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,
Love is the Law, Love under Will.”

So I utter his Law in my own defence, that simplification filched from Rabelais, supposedly dictated in the mirage of a Cairo night by his guardian angel Aiwass. I think of him shortly after the war shambling through that seedy Hastings boarding house sated with the Law: a figure of pathos in his threadbare dressing gown nursing his habits and remorse, an aged minotaur, sybarite among the shadows, in the fading of his Aeon, more Fool than Prospero.

Already in the Thirties psychotropic agents fascinated Huxley. Albert Hoffman, synthesizer of LSD, had yet to sway on his bicycle after the mysterious chemical seeped through his pores, yet there existed an abundance of literature concerning its predecessors: Havelock Ellis’s experiments with mescaline or those of William James with psylocibin. Moreover, Berlin, at that time, still nursing is Weimar hangover, was the epicentre of drugs in Europe. Both Hitler and Goering used amphetamine and cocaine, and the SS administered many narcotics in their initiation ceremony, the Ritual of the Stifling Air, which closely resembled the Black Mass. Indeed, one of the biggest contributors to the formation of the Nazi Party, and so the Second World War, may have been the diet of methedrine, a super strength amphetamine, and Nietzsche fed to German soldiers in the trenches - both pills of the former and copies of Also Sprach Zarathrustra were standard army issue. An oversimplification, perhaps, yet the first chemical history of our epoch remains to be written.
Thus it was that Huxley came to Crowley for his first taste of mescaline. The latter took the drug irregularly, without pretensions, purely as an exercise in that hedonistic spirituality he practised. Huxley, on the other hand, nursed a genuine mystical longing that had surprisingly blossomed in a soul as rooted in reason as his own. There was a confusion of aims, a perennial ambiguity about their enterprise. I, Victor B. Neuburg, poet and sodomite, sorcerer’s apprentice, veteran of Bou Saada and the Paris Workings, was the arbiter.

They had spent the afternoon in our less than opulent rented quarters discussing Karma. Crowley was talking:

‘To me it exists solely as a paradox. It is true I have seen retribution visit others on many occasions, especially those foolish enough to cross me as they have learnt to their cost. There does seem to be a sense of balance in the machinery. Nevertheless, this process is unending. It acts in everything and so to allow it an iota of acknowledgement is absurd.’

‘We reap what we sow, Aleister,’ Huxley countered, ‘not in a moral sense, at least only haphazardly moral. Nemesis is something like gravitation, inevitable yet indifferent. If, for example, you sow self-stultification by an excessive interest in money, you will engineer a grotesque humiliation.’

‘In what sense? How can you possibly accuse the rich of humiliation? Surely they’re the last people to fall victim to that particular failing.’

‘I was coming to that. By self-stultification I don’t just mean money. I mean anything that clouds the spirit. Over-indulgence in alcohol, food or sex are more examples of things that wreck our purpose. However, because these things reduce you to a sub-human condition, you will not be aware the humiliation is humiliation, so to speak. There is your explanation of why Nemesis sometimes seems to reward. What she brings is humiliation only in the absolute sense, for the ideal and complete human being, or at any rate, for the nearly complete. For the sub-human it may seem a triumph, a consummation, a fulfilment of the heart’s desire.’

‘Moral,’ concluded Crowley,’ live sub-humanely and Nemesis may bring you happiness. Well, if you will excuse me, my dear Aldous, I will proceed to self-stultify. Victor, if you don’t mind: Pandora’s box!’

I rose and went to the cabinet and took out his medicine. Four phials lay in the ivory box. I selected the one containing Burmese heroin and another crammed with Bolivian cocaine. Carefully I mixed the powders on a silver tray, crushing the dirty khaki coloured heroin and adding about five times as much cocaine. I passed Crowley a silver spoon that, with surprising dexterity, he used to scoop up some of the powder, which he then deftly inhaled, first through the right and then the left nostril.

‘Won’t you join us for cocktails?’ Crowley invited. ‘This combination certainly beats Pimm’s.”

Disapproval etched itself into the lines on Huxley’s drawn austere face.
Observing this, Crowley commented: ‘I’m afraid if you keep the devil’s company then you must see his works. Imagine you’re with Falstaff, you know, “gentlemen of the shade, minions of the Moon”.’

‘But this is such waste,’ declared Huxley, ‘the ultimate form of self-stultification. What’s more I’m sure it’s a conscious assault on the soul, an immense dereliction.’
‘It depends,’ Crowley replied. ‘Drugs are magick and have always been used as such. The soma of the Vedas, the nepenthe of Homer, the henbane and belladonna of the witches all point to the fact. I am sure for the nomal man, whom I happily call the sub-human, they are invariably detrimental. However, in no way do I consider myself ordinary. To me drugs are the litmus test of capacity. I know the wraith-like effects of cocaine, that long corridor of shadow where the soul is wasted and profaned. And heroin! The cushioned daze of the opiated night. But it is because I have supped large on both such joys and sorrows that I consider myself more than human.’
‘Have you not read Baudelaire’s intimate journals? Isherwood, who is staying near here, has just translated them. I’ve never come across such desperation, such remorse for a lifetime given over to false ideals – hashish and all the other indulgences that besotted the Decadents.’

‘But that is it exactly!’ Crowley, excited by the drugs, sputtered. ‘Baudelaire gloried in his fall, his self-imposed damnation. Besides, he did write some damn fine stuff, and wasn’t that born precisely out of those feelings of failure and hysteria he cultivated with his drug taking, his black bitch, his guilt? You see, Aldous, as long as we are active we are saved. All energy is eternal delight provided we use it. To take a drug is to permit a daemon to enter the sanctum of thought and action. If we give voice to this captured spirit then we enforce, rather than profane, and so exorcise the very spirit that possesses us.’

Aldous Huxley
He got up and went over to the sideboard. It was growing dark outside and his obesity threw a giant shadow across the wall. I suppose, in tribute to the spirit of the times, I should comment on the stamp of stormtroopers’ boots from the street below. But in truth I only heard the low growl of traffic and the occasional voice. Crowley came back and gave Huxley a piece of paper. ‘Read!’ he simply said.

I have that paper before me now. In the last decade, it has become yellowed and brittle round the edges. It is one of many of his papers that I still keep: bills, incantations, the occasional doodle or letter. Like me they survive in obscurity, unknown to both his followers and biographers. I shall transcribe it here.

“From the tower enchantment and the sweet hypnosis of lost time, my dreamseed spill their valediction across known worlds. I tell the cartographers, who call my map invisible, that space is frozen in the habit of their fictions. Their cities are my seed, their houses, wives and toil are fantastic shadows of solidity. I see only waves, brilliant, aural cartoons containing one centimetre of gross matter. Let the radiant language now spill forth. I sing the chisel and the blade, the hammer and the scales, and all melodies of craft. The Work ferments inside my battery of cells. My voltage is a million watts.

“Alchemy is patient. It sits in stillness. Like Tao it recognises the divinity of hazard, the vigour of the useless – accident is merely the collision of two meanings. So in me the dross solidifies. I have stopped asking if I have a story as there are no stories now, only decipherable collisions. In me, the opaque furniture of the random is condensed and drained into rich ore. My veins are heavy with dark coal nurturing diamonds. I am the redking, the bronzed phoenix upon the wheel of flame. I have traversed the river of ordeal and was crowned by elementals. Now shall the paradox of prisms blaze onto papyrus my heart’s bold voice.

“Airborne visions tingle. Coming from rich flight, the dreamer’s wingspan – almost prosaic this whirlwind. Lost continents, contours, cartographers, and me, my maiden voyage is crystal and a glass. Truly it is the scheming polarity of vision this placing on a glass, a pane that mirrors to the heart’s dereliction, the soul’s migration. I sweep the city. This is the holy liquid of metropolis, fashioned in the image of its metal bowels. This is the Fall of Ushers, the corruption of sense. Tell me the sex of electricity, of coils, sockets, plugs. Once the planet gave the deity of gender to the thunder in the hills. Only man creates the sexless. My mind is snow vapour; airwaves flow freely like the magic carpet on Sinbad’s voyage. I am standing in Mexico. I have the stature of the ancients, the children of Lilith, twenty-three feet tall. I strut the sunflower Van Gogh sand, eaten by cacti, while the arcane sun explodes above. I eat the sun. I am the debris of the stars. Solar storms flare from my pores and launch a billion sun borne seeds, the first shudder running through me forever. In the fever of mirage, in hallucination, I seek to touch the brimming fare of yellow; peyote, datura, mescaline. Behind needles sharpened by white light, fantastic buds map shades of an oasis.”

Huxley read the piece carefully but seemed unimpressed.. His exact words I cannot recall, only that they were polite and vague. Myself, I am fond of the passage and as I am fond of all visionary otherworldly things. Doubtless, to Huxley the words were another demonstration of the Beast’s eccentricity, like the whole pantheon of dark, forgotten gods that sprang so glibly to his lips.

‘When the wind of the wings of madness comes,’ Huxley said, ‘I hope you will be spared!’

His purpose in coming that evening was to take mescaline. They had discussed the subject at length – Huxley referring to Havelock Ellis, Crowley to the Vedas. ‘Come then,’ said the Beast as dusk fell. First, we smoked hashish from the hookah, its effect lightening the atmosphere considerably. Huxley lost most of the caustic self-possession that clung to him like a limpet to a rock. He was almost merry. Crowley’s mind still maintained the intense superficial clarity that cocaine induces, and heroin and hashish only partially placate. He teased our guest as if he were a mischievous child. Huxley’s intellect was running wild. He talked scathingly of England and the English, expressing opinions that delighted Crowley. They discussed Gurdjieff then Yeats and his Vision, and this time it was Crowley’s turn to be scathing. Huxley even launched into a lecture on Tao exercises, which Crowley brought to an abrupt halt by asking if one-hand clap was not a form of masturbationary syphilis. We all laughed uproariously, like schoolboys over a dirty joke. Meanwhile, I had administered the mescaline.

‘You know Hitler has taken this stuff,’ Crowley observed. ‘I heard it from a reliable friend in the OTO.’

‘OTO?’ Huxley was perplexed.

‘Ordo Templi Orientis. My local branch, you might say. Their connections with the Nazis are nobody’s business. They almost founded the Party, or at least subverted it. Do you know that two of their top men personally trained Hitler? Before he was a stuttering Austrian oaf, a shoddy bohemian with dirty nails, and a pervert to boot. They coached him in oratory and rhetoric, and under the influence of the drug that will shortly, my dear Aldous, set your eyes on fire, gave him his daemon.’

Crowley’s tone contained a certain malice – a hint to our absolute realist of the irrational and dark forces he might encounter.

‘Then,’ declared Huxley, ‘all the dispersed romanticism that in its waning found expression in the esoteric, in secret cults, has made its kingdom here; fascism is, after all, the triumph of decadence, the final madness of bohemia.’

‘So that Bartzabel may have his Day, precisely,’ Crowley replied.

Later a vast smile spread across Huxley’s formerly dry features, now radiant, illuminated, his eyes indeed tinged with fire. In what region of enchantment he walked, I do not know. Whether beneath the icy domes of Kubla Khan or in some long vanished field of his childhood, fragrant with wood smoke, he did not say. And what music flowed inside him, whether the Abyssinian maid soothed him with her dulcimer or the highest octaves of the stars astonished his ears, was also secret. Whatever is discovered at such moments belongs inviolably to the inner life of the traveller. Even if he should wish to convey it, he would probably find the few words that pertain to this province of experience unforthcoming. We have no maps for the mescal voyage of the psyche.

For me, it was a night of colours – yellow phantoms emanating from the street lamps below; silver flashes of rain tangoing on the windowsill; deep cobalt of the sky - an airless backdrop to the unflinching stars; a violet gauze of cloud over the white moon, and all the world’s allure gathered in a rainbow.

At one point Crowley produced some Tarot cards, prototypes of the pack of Thoth that Lady Frieda Harris had just embarked on in Marylebone. The figures seemed to move - the Lovers entwining themselves on the matrix, the Empress breaking into her impenetrable smile, the Prince of Wands tightening the reigns of the chimera he rode. All these vital creatures, through our intent, in the steely point of time called Berlin, living out the correspondence of their ageless dance. Like a pharaoh long ago, we parted the curtain and glimpsed the peerless geometry of the stars.
At another point Crowley quoted from the Book of the Law.

“I am the snake that giveth knowledge and delight and bright glory and stir the hearts of men with drunkeness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs, whereof I will tell my prophet and be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all.”

‘A trifle perilous, don’t you think?’ Huxley murmured.

‘Of course,’ Crowley agreed, always lucid at such moments, 'if you read it carelessly and acted on it rashly it might well lead to trouble. But the words “to worship me” are all important. They mean that things like cocaine, mescaline and alcohol may be and should be used for the purpose of worshipping, that is, entering into communion with the Snake, which is the genius that lies at the core of every star. For every man and woman is a star. The taking of a drug should be a carefully thought out and religious act. Experience alone can teach you the right conditions in which the act is legitimate; in other words, when it can assist you to do your will.’

Huxley left shortly afterwards. He walked through a Berlin he had never seen before, where cylinders of fire in the cold dawn air dazzled his senses, and the splashing rain became cartwheels of light spinning across the pavement. He had entered a hitherto unknown continent and now, like an illuminated Columbus, was intent on discovery. I remained with the good Master Therion, his bulk shifting in reverie on the Turkish couch.

Many years stretch between then and now. Long ago my two protagonists were dust, fallen to the bottom of the hourglass. Huxley on his deathbed: two hundred micrograms of LSD-25; the luminous smile of his chemical exit. Crowley in that rambling Hastings boarding house: a vast spider with a heroin itch, regurgitating the entrapments of the past. Many years: a war; the accelerated madness of an epoch; the dawning of the age of Thelema. To me long slow years of remorse, when I turned from the gender he had so skilfully taught me and from the vision that witnessed me abandoned in the desert: the pallid brow, stiff horns, the foul rapture that attends that angel to we in league with him through time and eternity.
His sub-contractors.

Victor Neuburg
Author’s Note: The above story, which appears in a slightly re-edited form, was originally published in International Times in 1977 and subsequently featured in the first Rapid Eye compendium in the Eighties. The inspiration for the story was a passage in Francis King’s Ritual Magic in England referring to how Crowley introduced Huxley to mescaline in pre-war Berlin. I was intrigued by two such incongruous types sharing so singular an experience. In turn, and inadvertently, the story inspired conspiracy theorists surfacing, for example, in Micheal Howard’s The Occult Conspiracy. Anyone interested in the bizarre consequences of its appearance in Russia in 1997 should see the account given in “Thelema in Russia” on Pan’s Asylum Camp, the website of the Russian OTO – www.oto.ru/cgi/texteng.pl/article/texts . Marking the outset of my interest in the relationship between Crowley and Neuburg, the story is the kernel of the book of the same title, which appeared in 2004: Sybarite among the Shadows (Mandrake of Oxford ISBN-1869928-822)

Ned Sherrin Dies

2007-10-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

Many moons ago my now ex-partner worked for a very large dictionary publisher and was just three days away from a big press launch at Claridges Hotel London. The guest speaker was Anthony Burgess, the novelist and expert on the English language - an excellent after dinner speaker. She rings me in the middle of the night in hysterics - Anthony Burgess has just died "what am I going to doooo!"
"Well," I says, rather sleepily, "Get someone else - it will probably work out OK."
And indeed at very short notice Ned Sherrin stepped in and like an old trouper did a fine job. As is often the way, people seem even more keen to come to an event when they realised the main man had died. It became an impromptu memorial - so good luck Ned Sherrin - where ever you are.

St Nectan's Glen (for sale?)

2007-09-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

Rumour has it that St Nectan's Glen is up for sale. I say rumour because of all the posts I've seen so far no one has yet circulated the actually buyer's prospectus for the sale. Even so it is said that the strongest offers so far are from a proposed theme park and even a religious group that plans to return the site to exclusively christian use. Now these might be mere scare stories designed to hurry others with a lot of spare cash to make a bid and save the Glen for future generations - pagans included. For those who don't know it the Glen is a much loved north cornwall beauty spot. It is also a site often visited by pagans and the location for many a heathen rite and handfasting.

The asking price is likely to be high - some say as much as 1.5 million pounds which would probably put it beyond the resources of most pagan organisations. But perhaps there is an institutional buyer, the local council or the national trust who might be lobbeyed to step in and save the place for the public. Although I don't come from Cornwall I'm sure I am amongst many who would really be sorry if the present arrangements came to an end.

mogg morgan
comments welcome

There's now a yahoo group for discussion and info about that - send email to
St_Nectans_Glen-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

St_Nectans_glen

Tourist Site in North Cornwall For Sale

Cornwall, United Kingdom

Advert ref: 1051DM

FINANCIAL DETAILS

Asking price: £1,250,000

Sales revenue: Undisclosed

Net profit: Undisclosed

Fixtures value: Undisclosed

Stock value: Undisclosed

BUSINESS DESCRIPTION

A unique tourist attraction with 2 Bed House/Tea Garden dating from 6th Century and 15 acres of grounds with valley/stream and 60' Waterfall,
Listed site and one of the most sacred sties in Cornwall with interest and appeal to all.
Near very famous resort and the North Cornish Coast, this site can either be continued or developed and lends itself to become a holiday destination in its own right with perhaps development of the ample land available all with stunning views and surrounding wildlife.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Years established: 25 years under current owner
Employees: Husband and Wife owners only
Trading hours: 10.30am to 6pm
Property: Freehold

Living accomodation
2 Bedroom House, the cellar of which dates from the 6th century and is a Shrine to a Saint who worshipped there.

Location
Set in an idyllic valley with path though woods alongside stream leading to House/Tea Garden and Waterfall.

Expansion potential
Development of lodges/houses overlooking woods/stream. There is a seperate 3 acre and 1.5 acre meadows which can also be utilised.

Competition / Market
Nearby major Cornish resort attracts visitors from all over the world and this attraction is without doubt a worthy addition and part of the charm of this ancient area.

Support & training
A complete handover will be given and all assistance to the purchaser.

Reasons for selling
Retirement of owners

Financing available
We are able to offer advice to business purchasers and have excellent contacts for business fianance

Songs of Witchcraft & Magic

2007-09-11T03:46:00.000-07:00

Price: £14.00 (£13.00 plus £1.00 p&p)/Cheques made payable to 'The Museum of Witchcraft'
The Museum of Witchcraft
The Harbour
Boscastle
Cornwall
PL35 0HD
Or purchase online from: www.theoccultartcompany.co.uk

Unlike the previous excellent CD emanating from Boscastle's amazing museum, this one is not locally produced but is in fact a compilation of many wonderful tracks from previously issued albums and artists. For example the ever famous Thomas the Rhymer is here included in the version of Both Shine As One by Ron Taylor & Jeff Gillett. Or the Song Alison Gross, made famous for me at least by 1970s folk rockers Steeleye Span is here included in the very fine version of Last Leaves by Malinky Greentrax. So this is a great compilation and you're gonna kick yourself if you don't buy it. Includes a lovely CD cover, lyrics and photographs from the museum whose work all profits will help support. [Mogg Morgan]

Bath Omphalos Magical Fair (cancelled)

2007-07-01T02:33:00.000-07:00

Bath Omphalos at the Chapel

Saturday Evening: Roberto workshop (Zivorod ).

Sunday Afternoon: 'Blood Lust and the Evil Dead' - extended workshop on supernatural assault. Workshop and performance of the Zar exorcism dance; audio/visual installation based around Mark Mirabello's Cannibal Within. Special altar and apotropiac rites. Illustrated lecture by Mogg Morgan based on his forthcoming book: Supernatural Assault in Ancient Egypt (Seth & Egyptian Magick volume III). More to be announced. A gathering of the clan rather than a commercial event so tickets £2-3 pounds.

Space in the chapel is limited so it would be handy to let the organisers know if you are coming. Bring food.

Website: http://www.omphalos.org.uk/

Yahoo elist: omphalosmagickalfair/
Sunday Afternoon: 'Blood Lust and the Evil Dead' - extended workshop on supernatural assault. Workshop and performance of the Zar exorcism dance; audio/visual installation based around Mark Mirabello's Cannibal Within. Special altar and apotropiac rites. Illustrated lecture by Mogg Morgan based on his forthcoming book: Supernatural Assault in Ancient Egypt (Seth & Egyptian Magick volume III). More to be announced. A gathering of the clan rather than a commercial event so tickets £2-3 pounds.

Space in the chapel is limited so it would be handy to let the organisers know if you are coming. Bring food.

Website: http://www.omphalos.org.uk/

Yahoo elist: omphalosmagickalfair/

Ludlow Esoteric and Bookfayre 2007

2007-06-11T01:42:00.001-07:00

Here are Charlotte's photos of the Boneroom and Mandrake stall
- review to follow shortly:

Mandrake book site

2007-06-06T13:20:00.000-07:00

Direct sales and information on our range of Leftfield titles - all aspects of magick & witchcraft plus crime, poetry, fiction and more.

Elizabeth St George (1937 - 2007)

2007-06-03T12:13:00.000-07:00

The witch Elizabeth St George died on the full moon 1st June 2007.
She was the author in 1972 of The Devil's Prayerbook,
recented reissued by Ignotus Press as Rites of Shadow.
Please do leave a comment and recollection, so i can update this page with more information about her life than is currently available online.

A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF

E.A. St. George

Held at Mortlake Crematorium 12th June 2007

8 November 1937 – 1 June 2007

Adept, Wife and Mother

Produced and published by:

Spook Enterprises, 38 Woodfield Avenue, London W5 1PA

© A.M.D. and P.A. West 2007

WELCOME

Friends and colleagues, I would like to start by saying a heartfelt thank you for coming here today. I know that some of you have come a long way - and it means a lot to us.

Sadly, it is my duty to notify you formally that my Mother passed away on the first day of summer, June 1st. 2007.

Let us remember, that we come here not just to mourn the passing of my Mother, but also to celebrate and give thanks for her life…. It is in the very nature of dualism that where there is darkness – there is also a light.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT MY MOTHER…

I think my mother was a wonderful person, and we will miss her very much. She was kind, generous (both in her support of charities and with her time), and (generally) patient.

I am proud to have been her son….

Mother was born in London, spent the early part of her life in the Bahamas and then moved back to England, to attend Roedean School for girls in Brighton. Leaving school, she worked at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington and then spent a year in the WRAF. From there she went on to work for the well-known esoteric bookshop, Atlantis Books in London WC1 – where she started to write for publication and became known as Elizabeth St George. She studied with the late WG Grey (amongst others), and cultivated a life-long interest in other religions and philosophies. Professionally, she then went on to work in politics at a national level.

So much could (and perhaps should), be remembered about my mother. It really is impossible to do her justice in the time that we have available this afternoon. Changing the tone a little to reflect the person of those times, she read (and wrote) Science Fiction long before it became mass market reading material, becoming a member of a relatively select club in the 1950s. People are now rediscovering the existence of this club, researching and recording details for historical purposes. Members included several great authors of that time, (some of whom are still active, making valid contributions to the field today). Her vision was a long and broad one - and an active interest in Astronomy, Astrology and other arts naturally enough continued to develop.

She met my father, Peter, in 1958 at a science fiction convention and married him in 1964, blossoming into the wonderful person we came to know and love. She really will be very sadly missed. My mother was one of those people that could ‘light up the room’ by her presence in it. I like to think that her spirit is not so far away now as perhaps some might think.

During the 70s, she ran a series of companies designed to enable her to achieve her self-imposed objectives - though that was still unusual for the time – and she continued with her own research, occasionally being consulted and asked for her comment or opinion.

As the millennium approached, requests for advice and help multiplied. What used to be known as ‘unorthodox’ became – if not the norm – certainly more widely tolerated, and thus accorded long overdue respect. Once again she had been there at the right time and had applied herself to making the best use of it.

Unfortunately - several years back, she slipped while coming down the stairs at home, broke a leg in the process, and became incapacitated for some length of time. This led to problems with her getting around. Although she still undertook public speaking engagements and other work, long spells on her feet slowly began to tire her. It was around this time that symptoms of Type 2 diabetes began to manifest themselves.

While there are those that would consider aspects of my Mother’s beliefs unusual, I feel that far fewer would describe her as not devout or question her level of faith. It is in this way that we both reconcile and recognise what my mother meant to the people gathered here today. I would like to say a few words from a reading. Its provenance is unknown but it is entitled and accredited as simply – ‘A Reading

A Reading

Let us be contented with what has happened to us and thankful for all we have been spared. Let us accept the natural order in which we move. Let us reconcile ourselves to the mysterious rhythm of our destinies, such as they must be in the world of space and time. Let us treasure our joys but not bewail our sorrows.

Life as a whole, and good and ill must be accepted together. The journey has been an enjoyable one - and well worth making.

I’d like to pass you over now to my father, Peter. Afterwards there will be a short prayer that we would request you to recite with us, and another will perhaps try to describe, and give credit to, the great lady whom it was my pleasure to call my Mother, Sandra West and Elizabeth St. George.

Blessed Be.

A LOVING HUSBAND’S TRIBUTE

I have loved Sandra for 45 years and was married to her for forty-two and a half. They were the happiest days of my life. It’s really hard to sum up the sharing of the best part of a lifetime. All who knew her realized that Sandra/Elizabeth was an exceptional person in so many ways. As her godson said to me: “She must be one of a few people who held a pilot’s but not a driver’s licence!”

She was not only a prolific author of monographs and books on esoteric subjects, but also a respected teacher, specialising in Qabalah, ancient Egypt, A.D.I.C. and other related disciplines.

She always resented that she was prevented from attending a university. So late in life, she undertook a course of opera studies at Rose Bruford College and successfully graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was very proud of that!

Her love of animals, especially cats – big and small – was legendary. Nor was she averse to reptiles – at one time she kept a monitor lizard in her back room. When “Lisystrata” grew to 6 feet long, she was re-homed at London Zoo.

She supported dozens of charities regularly. Those wishing to make a contribution to her memory may like to make a donation to one or more of the charities listed at the back of this booklet.

Many years ago she developed an esoteric belief system called A.D.I.C. which is briefly described on the next page. It is fitting that we finish off this celebration of her life with extracts from The Book of A.D.I.C. and The A.D.I.C. Prayer Book.

PREFACE TO THE BOOK OF A.D.I.C

The Book of A.D.I.C. presents an ethical teaching valid for today and tomorrow, applicable to other races and other planets beside our own.

The teachings are true today and will be true tomorrow when we are no longer confined to this solar system.

While truly non-sectarian, the book shares universal truths with major schools of worship and study, both orthodox and occult.

A.D.I.C. is an abbreviation of

Absolute Deity in Infinite Continuums

and its basic philosophy can be summarised as the evolution of all entities in the universe towards Godhead.

EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK OF A.D.I.C.

Time is a varying force, moving and changing and carrying all things within its waves. Little can I leave to you, O Companion. Few indeed are the gifts that will help to guide you upon the starry path.

My Book of Visions will be of little aid and it may be that your poetry is better than that which I have wrought. But the A.D.I.C. teachings are for you and for all other beings.

To she who is Guardian have I left my sword which is called "Moonfire" - the sword which is made only for my hand. I have dishonoured it in no way, yet I have built into that sword the dreams that are longer than iron and brighter than steel.

Unto the Guardian have I left my spear which was forged to point my Will unto the future, and which became a burning spear of light where none had gone before.

Unto the Guardian do I leave the chalice with which I have wrought the Cosmic Mass.

Unto the Guardian do I leave my ring which I have worn since the day I took my vows upon the world that bore me. And she will also guard my new ring whose stone I have brought from the altars of Heaven. These last shall be kept for my use for surely I shall return to reclaim them from the void of time.

Unto the Guardian have I left my banner of A.D.I.C. beneath which I have acted, for whatever the immediate results within my own life, one day the A.D.I.C. sign shall be the banner of the dawn.

Unto the Guardian do I leave the Tariel, knowing that none shall make its equal. In this day both its makers will have passed and one will not walk this earth again, for my colleague is gone forever and never will return through all eternity, though I will return.

Yet not to the Guardian, O Companion, but to you will I leave this book comprising such wisdom as I have gained. Nor is this book the end of wisdom, for it is bounded by my own time and vision.

This book alone, O Companion, shall be my gift unto you. Nor shall you allow my thoughts to limit your boundless future.

Only one thing will I promise - that I shall return, though many years go past from this, the time of my death.

Unto that time let blessing be, the blessing of Absolute Deity in Infinite Continuums.

THE FAREWELL SERVICE

(We would like to invite the congregation to recite with us the lines printed in italics.)

Companions, we have come together at this time of sorrow. It is the custom of our people to mourn for the dead and to ask Deity to bless the departed one. In this time of grief, we turn our thoughts to the A.D.I.C. teaching. We know that sorrow is a part of life, but let us learn the lessons of our grief.

We know that those who are taken from us are those that we shall meet again in the future.

We remember that time will bring fulfilment and banish the fear of death.

We remember that time will bring new hope and not the crushing sorrow of today.

We remember that death will bring us to new life until we are one within A.D.I.C.

Absolute Deity of the Infinite Continuums, grant blessing to the newly dead. Take our friend. Give to her blessing and in time to come, let her be reunited with us.

All: That we who are lonely now shall be lonely no longer.

It is written that the soul voyages from savagery to the stars. Slowly it evolves, life after life in its quest for learning and evolution. It is written that the soul progresses through many lives to come in the end to Absolute Deity.

All: We are taught that love and friendship endure past the time of death and that the companions of one life are reunited in their lives to come.

We are taught that hatred and love are binding forces and that the dear ones of one life shall be with us in other times. It is written that the soul is immortal, ever evolving into Light.

All: It is written that darkness is less than a shadow before Deity.

We will remember that the secret of Death is also the secret of Life, for each is a part of the other. All men fear death and the way of its coming, though they know that this is but one stage within their journey through evolution. We remember that death is the speed of the wind and the brightness of fire, the depth of the water and the ash of the earth. We ask that matter shall be richer for the passing of life. We ask that the spirit shall be wiser at its going. We ask Deity to bless the continuing freedom to evolve into Godhead that all is one within A.D.I.C.

Let blessing be.

All: We remember our companion. We remember her name. We remember the joys and the sorrows that we shared. We remember her voice and her laughter. We remember her touch and her friendship.

We remember our companion. As we consign her body to destruction, we remember that we shall meet again.

All: Let the blessing be spoken.

The blessing is given within the sign of Absolute Deity.

Let blessing be extended from the Northern throne of heaven.

Let blessing be granted from the Southern throne of heaven.

Let blessing be given from the Eastern throne of heaven.

Let blessing be answered from the Western throne of heaven.

Let blessing be evolved through all the heights of the heavens to meet at one point.

Before A.D.I.C. let blessing be.

FAVOURITE CHARITIES

If you’d like to make a contribution in her memory, we suggest one of the following would be most suitable:

The People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES)

15 Cloister’s House

8 Battersea Park Road

London SW8 4YY

Sumatran Tigers Trust

c/o South Lake Wild Animal Park

Broughton Road

Dalton in Furness

Cumbria

LA15 8JR

East Anglian Folk Magic and Witchcraft by Michael Clarke

2007-05-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

from the late from the 18th, to the early 20th century
The folk magic and witchcraft that I am about to describe may surprise some people. In East Anglia today as elsewhere there are to be found groups of Modern witches, some of whom call themselves Wiccans and some Traditional Witches They practise different forms of Pagan Witchcraft. Many practice it communally in a Coven or Order. Their principal objective of these covens apart from companionship is spiritual, intellectual or social development. Most people probably assume that most the witchcraft of the past in East Anglia was similarly Pagan and collective and developmental in character. However this is not the case.

Not long ago, within living memory, a different type of witchcraft was being practised in East Anglia. It was a folk or popular witchcraft. The Witch would initiate herself or himself and would tend to work alone. The magic was operative by nature. Its principal objective was attaining power over other humans particularly those of the opposite sex as well as domestic and wild animals.

The evidence for this folk witchcraft is scattered around in many written and spoken sources. These include general county and regional books and magazines, county folklore collections, folklore publications and oral history tapes, to name a few. Although this is evidence is fragmentary and difficult to find, taken collectively it speaks of goals and methods of achievement markedly different to the witchcraft of today. It is from a collection of such material made by me over several years that the substance of this talk is composed.

I have excluded from consideration, material prior to 1734. This was the year when capital execution for witchcraft ceased to be possible in England, although witchcraft remained a felony. The methods employed in extracting confessions from witches of earlier times were on the whole barbaric and would not be admissible as evidence in a court of law today. Nonetheless the resemblance of later material to that emanating from the era of the Witch Trials is striking. I leave readers to draw their own conclusions. I have also omitted material after 1950 and the beginning of the modern witchcraft revival.

How did East Anglian Folk Witches practice their craft? What follows is a brief description culled from my research notes.

The Power of a witch was gained by making a pact with an entity, which is given various names, some clearly euphemistic. He (for it seems mostly to be a he) was called Old Harry (West Norfolk), Old Scrat, Old Ragusan or Old Horny. He was rarely called the Devil. “Speak of the Devil and he will appear” went the old saying and caution was exercised in even mentioning the name.

The pact was made by a number of methods. It might be written down, but in this semi-literate society other non-verbal methods seem to have been preferred. Principal amongst these was the Toad Ritual. (See Appendix 1.)

It is worth emphasising that the entity honoured was not by and large the tempter of Judeo- Christian Tradition but rather he was the Folkloric Devil of popular belief, a being characterised by his lust for pleasure and the good things of life, his cunning in execution and his ruthlessness in achieving his ends.

In popular legend a number of signifiers would indicate that a pact had been made. They included mounting a black horse, entering a black coach or accepting an animal familiar. However in practice the most important and common signifier was preparing, accepting and using the Toad Bone. Use of the bone conferred “power over fellow creatures” human and animal. It was employed in a variety of ways. Powdered it was be mixed with oil and drugs to make a jading oil. It was held or worn about the person where its invisible influence could make that person “powerful” or it was nailed to a person’s door to show that they had been “overlooked” by a witch.

A witch called the Devil by making a circle on the ground and by saying some words or power. Saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards was one such verbalisation. Others were words of power such as “Calabar” or “Abracadabra” to name but two.

The circle tended to be a real physical circle made of powdered chalk or soot. In at least one case in the 1960’s at Castle Acre in Norfolk a soot circle was photographed before destruction. It was small, seemingly barely three feet in diameter, and was plainly made for a single individual.

If the witch stepped from the circle, the Old One was supposed to have the power to carry her away. Making a circle was used to cast maleficia. Thus the appearance of a circle outside a house could indicate that it has been bewitched. Catherine Parsons writing about the Witches of Horseheath in Cambridgeshire stresses that the appearance of a witches’ circle outside a house was both an indication that maleficia had been committed against its occupier and a consequent cause for alarm.

The witches were not always solitary. They met together from time to time to dance under the command of a Master Witch or Witch Master. At dawn on returning home they and their mounts might be dirty and sweaty, “hag ridden” in other words. The meetings seem to have been predominantly social in character, with an emphasis on companionship, dancing and drinking rather than religion or operative magic. The name applied to such meetings seems to have been convention, conventicle or convent.
.
At Horseheath in Cambridgeshire for instance the witches met danced the hornpipe. The chief witch was renowned for her dancing ability and men would come from miles around to dance with her. It is said that she could dance better than any woman in the neighbourhood could.

Witches were reputed to be able to cause illness, make persons lousy and cause them to have fits. They could also project their ill will on to animals. Nothing unusual here these are the power of the witch throughout the world in traditional societies.

Spellcraft was governed largely by the principles of sympathetic magic. To make her spell the witch needed something of yours preferably from your body. Some broken crockery or a sprig from your hedge was good. Any body part for instance hair or nail clippings was very good. Clippings from male and female pudenda were especially prized. The bones of the dead had a special virtue and were used by the all-male Ancient Order of Bonesmen for rituals of a chthonic type.

If a witch had these things you were in her power and were subject to her commands. If you were a more powerful witch than she was, then the tables could be turned and the power that you employed could be turned against you.

One way you could avert the maleficia of a witch was to make her a present. If she accepted your present not only did it make it less likely that she would attack you with magic but it was also considered to help avert bad luck generally. This belief proved a good source of income for poor or indigent witches. If however a witch gave you a present you needed to take care, for the present however well intentioned might be bewitched

Various things could serve to prevent the ingress of witches into you house. You could keep a witch out by spreading salt around the house or by putting a knife under the doorstep. The belief that witches cannot abide to step over steel was found throughout East Anglia. Witches were also repelled by witch bottles, old shoes, or old items of clothing. Such items are found even now when old houses are being demolished or altered. Marks on house beams or walls could repel witches. Plants could be employed for the same purpose. A hazel or rowan bush outside the door could act as a preventative.

A witch might be drawn by the method of preparing a witch bottle. In recent years considerable ingenuity has been employed in analysing the contents of old witch bottles Although the contents tended to vary, East Anglian Witch Bottles tended to be filled with a mixture of urine old pins and body hair. Other Regional variations such as bottles filled solely with hair or wool have been noted. The witch bottle would be placed on a fire until it exploded or vigorously shaken. In either case the witch was supposed to be subject to severe discomfort. This discomfort was supposed to be a mark of her guilt.

Simpler methods of protection from witchcraft include burning some of the thatch from a witch’s house, spitting in the direction of her house or drawing some of her blood by pricking or scratching her. There are a number cases in the nineteenth century throughout Britain of this objectionable practice and I am glad to report that magistrates usually cracked down hard on its perpetrators. Just as objectionable was the practice of setting fire to a witch’s familiar in order to injure her.

Cunning or Wise Men and Women were the professionals in the fight against witchcraft. It was they who might be asked for a fee to prepare witch bottles or other apotropaic devices. In East Anglia particular care needs to be taken not to confuse the two roles of witch and cunning person within the magical culture. The role of the Cunning Folk was preventative and healing. They were able to perform simple gynaecology and obstetrics. Cunning Murrell of Hadleigh possessed a number of books about these subjects at his death. They tended to be employed by the Christian Parish and were beholden to the guardians of the poor and the church vestry. They were used to assist in childbirth and in the laying-out or corpses and as well as their apotropaic functions they constituted the lowest level of the then very rudimentary social and medical services.

Naturally Cunning folk tended to place themselves firmly in the Christian culture of the time. They had every incentive to do so. For instance, on his deathbed Cunning Murrell the great cunning man of Hadleigh in Essex proclaimed “ I am the Devil’s Master” and declared himself to be a true Christian. And I for one do not doubt that he was.

One belief that recurs in stories about witches is the belief that if something bewitched is destroyed then the person who bewitched it may also be destroyed. So a cow, horse or pig ailing under a witch’s curse might be put down in order to harm the witch who bewitched it.

But beware injuring a witch. For if you did so the means by which you injured her may be the means of your own destruction- If you struck a witch with a fist it was likely that you too would meet your end by a blow from a fist.

Witches in East Anglia tended were held to make use of familiars, called Imps. Familiars could be passed on by another witch or given to the witch by Old Harry himself. Imps were small and often looked like mice or moles. The names of man of these imps survive for instance, Bonnie, Blue Cap, Red Cap, Jupiter and Venus. Imps were kept hidden in the bosom or under an armpit. They used to stalk their victim waiting for an opportunity to do him harm. If chased they always outran a pursuer. They would also perform domestic tasks like cleaning and washing. In one case they are recorded as cutting a field of corn for a male witch or warlock. Larger familiars like cats could be used as a method of transportation. Witches were also supposed to be able to transform other human beings into horses and to use them as transport. A Human too could be “hag ridden.”

Imps could be fed on communion bread. Some subsisted solely on this blasphemous but nutritious fare. For drink imps were suckled on a witch mark. This was often a wart, mole, pimple or supplementary nipple, all of which occur naturally as bodily blemishes. In practice the familiar could be fed on the witch’s own blood, milk or other bodily secretions

The imps of a witch had to be given away before her death or she could not die. Indeed a dying witch might often resort to subterfuge in order to pass over her imps, giving them away as pets or domestic animals. If they were unclaimed, imps would go away and try to find a new owner. The first place they visited was the house of the next blood kin of a witch and so on through the rest of the blood family. If unclaimed the imps would nest in a hedgerow where they would wait to attract the attention of a passing witch.

Witchcraft was only one aspect of an extensive folk magical culture. Traditional witches often had access to almanacs. Much of what they did had reference to the planetary hours and the phase of the moon details of which were shown in traditional almanacs. Those who worked with the moon were said to be “Followers of the moon”. There is a whole as yet imperfectly explored nineteenth century subculture of divination. Mr Rix of Shipdham in Norfolk was a well-known planet reader; in other words what we would call an astrologer. Some of this folk astrology was quite advanced, based upon calculation of astrological charts in proper classical fashion, some consisted of little more than randomly selected phrases culled from imperfectly understood manuals such as those of Raphael, Ebenezer Sibley and Sephariel.

This brings me neatly to the question of whether any of this activity was recognisably Pagan. We have seen that collective meetings seem to have been rare. Do we see covens of Skyclad witches dancing up the sun on May mornings chanting hymns to Aradia and Cernunnos? Is there any evidence for the Great Goddess whether she is called Diana or Hekate? Alas the answer to these questions seems to be “No”. Old Horny? Yes but an Old Horny firmly linked to ideas of mayhem, civil disobedience lack of good citizenship and devil may care.

However all is not quite lost for Paganism in these times. There was the astrological tradition mentioned above. The names of the planets were as they always have been classical and pagan.

There was also a tradition of working with spirit entities who were borderline Pagan. There was throughout East Anglia, a traditional belief in fairy folk. The most common names given to them were “Ferishers” or “Pharisees”. Contact with fairies seems to have been individual and personally initiated. Fairies seem to have been no friends of Witches. I have not been able to find any example of co-operation between East Anglian Witches and fairies, although other magical practitioners used them.

Fairies were, contrary to some reports, well known in the folk culture in the nineteenth century. The town of Stowmarket was particularly well known for them. There is also some good evidence from Essex and North Norfolk. There was also a thriving popular national interest in fairies with book, paintings, etchings, statuettes etc. being produced to cater for a considerable public demand. But even sticking to the local evidence it is evident that fairies played a thriving part in local mental culture.

Fairies can be small and large. They tend to wear green clothes. They love to dance in the fields at twilight. where their glistening forms may be seen faraway in the gloaming. Give them gift say a saucer of milk and they will reward you in return with wealth and good fortune. Keep your house clean and they will reward you for that. But they do not like to be spied upon. A midwife who had gone to fairyland to deliver one of their babies was given second sight and could see fairies as she went about her business. However she met one of them at the market and upon attempting to speak to him was struck blind in the eye that could see the fairies, never recovering the use of it again.

The Spirits of the dead were evoked by the construction of images made of a mixture of wax and corpse dust. These witches “poppets” were pricked to cause another hurt A swallow’s heart and liver could be attached to the poppet with pins to charge it. A heart pierced with thorns was used as late as the nineteen sixties for unknown reasons at several locations in the Kings Lynn Area.

Modern pagan witchcraft has very little to do with ghost lore. However ghost were a very important element in the mindscape of traditional society .In older accounts especially those from the eighteenth century, observations on ghosts will appear side by side with observations on witchcraft. The lore of ghosts is very extensive and can form an article in itself. However to complete the picture I have been sketching I will say a little about ghosts in the East Anglian Tradition.

Ghosts did not appear so to speak at random. In general a ghost would walk and appear in spirit on earth if something, which they sought and desired, was denied to them in death. So they might appear in the case of a will which had not been executed fairly, when the surviving partner of a marriage remarried in excessive haste. They would appear if death had been violent as in the several ghost that return after their judicial execution. They would appear if the deceased had been rumoured to practice the Black Arts as in the case of the wicked lord of Waxham and Worstead Sir Barnabas Brograve, who even today is rumoured to haunt the remote marshes around Horsey Mere.

Sometimes ghosts appeared in the semblance of their form on earth and were mistaken for real people by those not in the know. At other times they would appear as if fresh from the grave covered in grave dirt, or in the form of a skeleton, or headless or without arms or legs. Sometimes they would arrive transported in a black carriage, or on a black horse breathing fire. Some are even associated with modern means of transport, such as those miasmic forms that appear on the Great Yarmouth to Norwich railway line as it crosses the marshes at the site of the terrible Trowse Train accident of 1874. Ghost returns might be spasmodic and occasional or they might like the ghost of Anne Boleyn reappear each New Years Eve.

Ghosts were well incorporated into the magical culture. Those with the power of second sight, those born at midnight or the seventh son of a seventh son could see ghosts and might be employed to conjure them up. Such conjured ghosts could be interrogated to ask them what was troubling them. The answers they gave could be used to take remedial action in the present. Moreover even when spirits themselves were not required to manifest divination might be made with reflections in a pail of water or a flickering flame. When spiritualism arrived in Norfolk, and spread rapidly its popularity might well be put down to a pre existing culture of spirit manifestation.

There are in the East Anglian tradition a number of spectral animals. The most prominent of these is Black Shuck the demon dog of East Anglia. Old Shuck plainly has diabolical antecedence. The name Shuck may well be descended from the Old English Scucca or demon. The idea of black shuck may well go even further back and reflect the wolves of Odin or some other dim memory of the distant pagan past. It was an East Anglian tradition that dogs were more acutely aware of the presence of death than humans. The howling of a dog was traditionally ominous of a forthcoming death. Whilst evidence of ritual use of these canines is lacking smaller animals like rats, mice and cats were regularly used as familiars.

One should not forget the great variety of spectral and numinous places in the East Anglian landscape. A number of holy wells were and are used for acts of low level magic as were and are rivers. East Anglia has few high places apart from the artificial ones created by church towers. Nor is it suited to the formation of caves. Nor does it have the more obvious evidence of the prehistoric past embodied in stone circles and houses. But it does have many miles of lonely and deserted beaches and coastal heaths as well as a large area of swamp in the Broads. Both the Broads and the seashore have legendary associations with witchcraft and magic especially in the area around Horsey Mere. To judge from their use in present day Paganism one would have thought that these places might have been extensively in the past.

However the prime locus of power in the old magic is the ruined church, the graveyard attached to, and the road to it. East Anglia has many ruined churches. Strange goings on in the graveyard at midnight are symptomatic both of East Anglian magic and of the folk magical systems of America, the Appalachians and the Ozark Plateau in particular. I shall not pursue that avenue at present except to say that settlers from East Anglia allows may have given these areas aspects of the East Anglian System which may have been preserved in aspic in America whilst being forgotten in East Anglian itself. Historical opinion says that many churches are placed on the sites of pagan shrines. However I differ from those who say that this is the reason operative magic was performed in graveyards. I think that it was the particular numen or spiritual of the power of death that attracted witches to graveyards as it does the world over.

I am aware that I have said little in this talk about areas, which straddle the border between magical craft, and craft pure and simple, what might be called Everyday Magic. Maybe that is what you came to hear about. If so my apologies. However I would have the following observation to make. This very low level magic, the magic or cures for minor ailments, of herbalism, of the embodiment of folk belief in craft products of needlework and so on does tend to far better known and hence more national in scope than other practices. Because it was thought by all to be “mere superstition” there was much publishing at all times of details of low-level folk magical practices.

Folklore itself came into being as a science and a suitable pastime for young and old precisely because these practices could be verified and checked from many variant examples. Because it could easily be classified as old fashioned, innocuous and charming folklore gained a popularity and prestige amongst middle England that it could not otherwise have gained. This is not to imply that there is no value in studying such low level magic but it does mean to say that it is difficult to speak about such phenomena as purely local purely East Anglian, because in most cases it is not.

Is low-level operative magic all that there was of magic in East Anglia? The answer is probably not. However High Magic is even more difficult to trace at this period than its Low cousin is. In conditions of discretion and secrecy even quite elaborate movements can flourish and die without record.

There is good evidence that near London in particular a tradition of near High Magic was prevalent particularly amongst Cunning Men and Women. The papers of Cunning Murrell of Hadleigh examined by Arthur Morrison indicate that he was using materials from a Solomonic Grimoire in pursuit of his cunning craft. But Murrell who appears to have been a highly educated autodidact may have been exceptional. None of the other Cunning Folk of East Anglia are as well documented and he may have been an exception rather than the rule.

Another cunning man who has drawn a good deal of interest Old Pickingill of Canewdon appears to have been merely a crafty and malicious agricultural labourer. The case of Pickingill still excites controversy. His supporters claim that he founded a “Pickingill Craft” which was in communication with the High magicians of the Capital. Moreover he was credited with leading a group of covens scattered around southern England. My own view is that his magic was local and operative, being designed for the most part to extract money from credulous local farmers and others willing to come under his influence.

There was in the Nineteenth Century a coven, if it can be so called, who practised witchcraft at Cambridge University: the so-called “Cambridge Coven.” This organisation supposedly initiated Aleister Crowley when he was a student there. It is claimed that this organisation still exists in a group known to me still operative and active in East Anglia.

Whatever was going on at a popular level, the elite continued to be as they had been from the time of the Renaissance Classically minded, classically inspired and in conditions of utmost discretion not above practising some high magic. For this they took their inspiration from one of the many Grimoires or some classically inspired revelry of the Hell Fire Club type. Later more open organisations like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Theosophy, Co-masonry, Rosicrucianism and others came into existence.

The High form of magic that was centred on London is really outside the subject of this discussion. It relied on London book dealers, freemasonry, fringe masonry and the lines of communication that only a great Metropolis could then supply. It was cosmopolitan in emphasis and internationalist in spirit. It relied heavily on the ability to learn foreign languages and on having the spare time to memorise elaborate and heavily verbal rituals. Its proper place was in the middle class and aristocratic drawing room. Although there is no hard and fast line between it and folk magic it is probably true to say that high magic permeated down and that little or no low magic permeated up, except perhaps amongst the servants.

The folk witchcraft and magic of East Anglia arose from an intellectual climate of limited horizons and widely believed superstitions. Although the folk culture from which it arose has now almost gone, it continues to attract interest amongst those seeking an alternative to the public-spirited nature religion that is Modern Paganism. Different teachers and scholars have begun to reconstruct often from very different bases this strange and different form of the craft. A few are listed below.

Further reading:

Enid Porter: The Folklore of East Anglia
Enid Porter: The Folklore of Cambridgeshire
Nigel Pennick: Secrets of East Anglian Magic
Andrew Chumbley: The Azoetia
One: The Grimoire of the Golden Toad

Note: I am grateful to Ruth Kenyon for providing me with a video copy of “Moonstallion” to enable me to view and comment on it.

Appendix 1: The Toad Bone Ritual in Rural East Anglia

In Nineteenth Century East Anglia a magical ritual was carried out which has subsequently become a thing of almost obsessive interest amongst modern occultists and witches. In its origins it was a ritual by which rural agricultural workers empowered themselves by means of a diabolic pact. The pact, which was usually carried out between a solitary individual and a spirit, usually euphemistically described, which was in fact the Devil.

The ritual was felt to give its adherents a singular power, that of mastery over their fellow creatures, man and animal. In this regard, performance of the ritual was a functional direct affair. The ritual can usefully be called the “Toad Bone Ritual,” as such I will refer to it here. In its original milieu, like so much rural magic, it was referred to by means of euphemism. One of them was “Going to the River”, so closely was its practice aligned to the key event of its performance: a floating of prepared de-fleshed toad bones on the surface of a river at midnight.

The following is a presentation and discussion of key features of the ritual. I have resisted the temptation to trace the antecedents of the ritual and its many cognates in the magical praxis of Europe and the Americas. That lies beyond the scope of this brief article and has in any case been better done elsewhere. Suffice it to say that whether or not it was performed in a collective context elsewhere as in the rites of the Horseman’s Word, in East Anglia the emphasis is in individual not collective performance.

Capturing the toad:

There are in the available literature several examples of the use of a frog instead of a toad. The reasons for this are complex. They lie both in the past of the ritual in antiquity and in the practical problem of obtaining toads of the correct type in certain areas. Suffice it to say that a toad was generally preferred and used in three-quarters of the examples.

If toads were used the preferred species was a Natterjack Toad known locally as the Walking Toad. This toad which is now very rare and highly protected requires a very special environment in which to thrive. They need sandy heaths in which to capture their prey, grubs insects and some of the smaller amphibia. In order to breed shallow pools of the correct pH level need to be available within about a mile of the toads’ feeding grounds.

There were a number of preferred places for capture of the toad. In Norfolk Fritton Common is mentioned in one account as being suitable. Natterjack toads could also be found in coastal dunes and marram grass plains such as those at Winterton Ness.

Two factors have contrived to severely reduce the number of suitable habitats in recent years. The first is the growth of mass tourism. This has contrived to make places like Winterton, formerly remote and unvisited, an ideal place for such activites as dog exercising, sun bathing and recreational walking, all of which combined have severely impacted on the solitary and reclusive toad.

The second and greater threat has been posed by another seemingly equally benign activity, the plantation of former coastal heaths with Scots and other pines. In its classic habitat Fritton Common the Natterjack toad was completely eliminated and became extinct because of the plantation of the heath for forestry.

Preparation of the bones

The Toad ritual was never a thing of good taste and propriety. It was an act demonstrative of rebellion and dissent. Hence some of the methods of preparing the toad and its bones for the ritual can now seem cruel and distasteful.

In some cases the toad was placed in a box pierced with holes. The toad when dead was eaten by the ants and its de-fleshed bones were then used for the ritual itself. In other cases, the toad was sadistically killed, by being put in a box pierced with pins. In other cases a toad was placed directly in the ant heap. In some accounts the toad was crucified upon a thorn bush.

In two examples from oral history testimony I have found instances where dead toads have been used. So it is not as is sometimes said necessary for the toads to be alive and killed. The toad ritual is not a form of sacrifice.

Having said that, it is as well to remind us that the toadman (or toad woman) saw himself as being a singular person as a result of performing the toad ritual. He was a man set apart not only by being willing to make a pack with the Devil but also by his tolerance of any means at his disposal to effect his ends. The killing of the toad and the often cruel means of doing so were in a way exemplary of his ruthlessness and separation from the ethics of kindness and responsibility.

Going to the river

All of those who speak about the toad ritual agree that the all-important event without which one could not become a toadman is the ritual flotation of the bones on the river at night. Without this ritual the bones were mere bones without virtue. Without the ritual the toadman was a mere mortal subject to the vagaries of life and eventual divine judgement.

The toad ritual is the pact making of a semi illiterate class, the rural agricultural worker. Here there are no long and elaborate written pacts specifying in detail the terms by which for a certain measured period of years the pact maker might serve His Satanic Majesty. Rather what is made is a pact implicit in certain ritual actions recognised throughout the culture, “the going to the river” of popular parlance. If a man won a ploughing match by drawing plough lines of almost preternatural straightness his companions and fellow competitors might josh him that he had “gone to the river.” If strangers came to such a match, typically migrant Scots, then they to might have their skills ascribed to “going to the river.”

Certain nights of the year were preferred. Saint John’s Night typically. On those nights the aspirant Toadsman would take up his bones in a wrap of cloth and go out to the river at midnight. He would place the bones into a river or stream. Typically the watercourses of East Anglia are slow flowing and meandering. At times of low flow the surface hardly seems to move.

Then in certain accounts the bones will scream. Nature itself seems to protest against the monstrous act about to be perpetrated. The screaming bones should be ignored or the whole ceremony is made null and void. Other noises like the rattling of chains may be heard.

Now comes the most crucial part of the ritual. Here correct performance is essential. The slightest mistake or loss of concentration will not only mar the ritual but it will invalidate the performance as a whole. The floating bones must be looked at for as long as the ritual takes. No interruption can be tolerated. The sounds of the night must be ignored.

Eventually one bone will separate itself from the rest and will float back up the stream. It is this bone in which the magical virtue resides. The bone must be taken from the water and dried henceforth it will be the Toadman’s bone his amulet. In some stronger versions of the mythos the devil himself will appear and demand a pact of a traditional kind but more often than not pact making is reserved for a further rite as described below.

Sometimes the bone is the hook bone in the toad’s pelvis. The bones may now be powdered and mixed with oil to form jading oil by which to calm horses and other animals.

Further rituals

The toadman may believe a further step to be necessary in order to complete the pact making. If this is so the toadman will sleep in the barn with the bones. On the fifth night the Devil will come and demand a pact. If a pact is refused he will ask to feed on blood. This may safely be given in return for services rendered. At all times during this process the aspirant toadman must remain in command: the Devil’s master. If the Devil fails to obey the toadman may strike out at him or his sign with the Horseman’s gad (a whip). This whip is in effect a kind of wand. Made from wood about which honeysuckle or other creeper had wound itself the gad is the visible mark of attainment for a rural magician

The secret formula of the Horseman’s Word is “(Both) as one.” The horse and the horseman become one. Man and beast become something psychically conjoined, a thing with infinite intelligence and infinite power, a beast-man or a man-beast.

Another mystery is that of “drawing” and “jading”. In order to increase the efficacy of the bone it may be treated with oil using a special mixture of the horseman’s own formulation. Various recipes are extant fort this oil. It is said that many horses had their own private formulae. As well as a whole host of herbal and chemical preparations the best operative ingredient was thought to be the horseman’s own sweat. The Toadman carried the bone with him as an amulet. The bone should never be shown to another human for it will loose its power. The bone may be touched against a horse to cause it to move or stand still.

The Powers conferred and the price exacted

There is what we now call a “downside” to the mystery of the toad ritual. The Toadman may expect to experience various infirmities of a mental kind. These include hallucinations and delusions (a horse in his bed, a horse climbing the stairs), paranoia, delusions of being followed and so on. The bone was rumoured to lose power as it aged and in certain cases it was necessary to prepare a new bone and discard the old.

Nigel Pennick whose book on East Anglian Magic has made many aware of the Toad Ritual writes that the profession of Toadsman is an extremely dangerous one,“ for many in the past have been driven to insanity by exercise of these powers.” But the temptation of the reward available to the profession of Toadsman has seduced many by its promise of absolute worldly control.

To see in the dark; to be without fear at any place or any time; to have control of not only animals but human beings as well, few are those with the mental stamina to take the toad bone and use it wisely. The belief in its virtue would seem to encourage the opening of mental chasms and the ingress of chaos beyond the ability of the folk magician to control.

Few who write on the ritual can refrain from warning of its potentially baleful consequences. “A violent death” writes Nigel Pennick “is to be expected”. When asked what needed to be done to attain his powers, an old toadman answered “ Don’t, for if you do you will never rest ”. These should be sobering thoughts for any aspirant toadman or toadwoman.

Discussion

The toad ritual, however lurid its performance, needs to be seen as a part of the East Anglian folk magical culture. It arises from that culture and where it occurs is sustained by that culture. As a kind of “Nec plus ultra” of that culture it is a means by which the really determined folk magician can separate him or herself from those who have heard of the ritual but have not performed it.

Strangely the shock element in the ritual whilst remaining has itself changed. In its original context the shock of the ritual arose from its implicit blasphemy. It was by implication a method of pact making with the powers of darkness (which is bad enough in itself). However its elements also echoed in a blasphemous way the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Christ, the sacrificial basis on which the whole Christian religion is founded. In a society which was on the whole still Christian this was a direct assault on the whole founding ethos of that society.

Christ who is himself is divine sacrifices himself on the cross to redeem fallen humanity. The toadman sacrifices what is to him the most loathsome of creatures for his own sole benefit. Christ is reverently entombed prior to his resurrection and conquest of death. The dead and putrefying toad is eaten by ants. Christ arises from the dead, is transfigured and is raised to heaven by angels. The remains of the toad apart from a single bone are carried away by the stream to oblivion. The bone remains, a token of dark power counterbalancing the light power of communion bread and wine.

Examining the ritual today we think first of issues of animal cruelty and human predation on a threatened species. We are appalled by the thought that our rational secular society should still contain such superstitious and unwholesome practices. Yet it is a fact that the toad ritual remains not only in its place of origin but also in the wider world.

Afterlife

The toad ritual lives on in a world context. The English Traditional Witch and Magus Andrew Chumbley gave new life to his own recension of the Toad Ritual in his book “One: The Grimoire of the Golden Toad”. Chumbley himself performed the ritual, and in personal communication with the author acknowledged that he was troubled by the book, the ritual and consequences that followed on from its performance. He died not long afterwards from an acute and unexpected asthmatic attack

The OTO a worldwide occult organisation are rumoured to use the toad ritual in their praxis. Their former chief Aleister Crowley himself achieved elevation to the rank of Magus through a version of the Toad Ritual. The American Order of Phosphorus also promotes a version of the Ritual with a diabolic colouring.

In East Anglia, the role of the Horseman’s Word in the ritual economy of the region has been subsumed by a ritual order, composed of blacksmiths, farriers and agricultural operatives who themselves continue to use toad bones in their rituals, (or so the author was led to understand by a visitor to one of his talks.)

However, by an ironical twist of fate, in the popular mind the toad ritual lives on, promoted by the very medium where one would least expect to find it, children’s television.

In the Nineteen Seventies a British children’s' television serial, “Moonstallion” included a rapid though accurate depiction of the Toad Ritual as part of its complex plot. This depiction was highly influential and well remembered by those of that generation who saw it, as I have often found when speaking about East Anglian Magic. In this strange but apt way a whole generation of eager watching children were exposed to an authentic folk magic ritual of a singularly malefic kind. The principal initiatory method of East Anglian Magic was passed on to unfamiliar but receptive ears and eyes.

© Michael Clarke
March 2007

The Camden Town Murder - John Barber vs Patricia Cornwell

2007-02-26T10:28:00.000-08:00

The Camden Town Murder - HERTFORD author v Patricia Cornwell
Body: Author usurps crime queen's Ripper theory

A HERTFORD author has slammed crime writer Patricia Cornwell's theories on Jack the Ripper in his latest book.

John Barber, who is also the town centre manager, has penned The Camden Town Murder and is due to take part in a BBC documentary about the killer.

In his book he pours cold water on the American crime queen's speculation that a girl from Standon was the last victim of the Victorian serial killer.

Ms Cornwell spent a fortune trying to prove that prostitute Emily Dimmock was killed by artist William Sickert, whom she believes was the Ripper.

But John, 59, who has been researching the circumstances around Emily's tragic death, claims Ms Cornwell has wasted her time and money.

In the chapter entitled 'Was Emily Dimmock a Ripper Victim?' he writes: "In attempting to answer this question, one problem springs to mind. Why was there a gap of 19 years between the murder of Mary Kelly [a Ripper victim] and Emily Dimmock?

"Surely a serial killer kills and then kills again until he is caught or
dies. Rarely do they wait 19 years to strike. Yet this is what Patricia Cornwell would have us believe."

John, who lives on Folly Island, told the Mercury: "Ms Cornwell has got it wrong. It's highly improbable that Emily was the Ripper's victim.

"Her throat was cut but the Ripper's trademark was tearing open vital organs and sometimes taking body parts.

"Sickert might have been the Ripper but he didn't kill Emily - you'll have to read the book to find out who did."

John, who has admitted that his fascination with the Ripper and Emily's murder became an "obsession", has been asked to take part in a BBC documentary on Sickert.

He will take a film crew around north London and Whitechapel, in the East End, to the key sites of the Ripper attacks and the Camden Town murder.

TV prankster Jeremy Beadle has already snapped up a signed copy of the The Camden Town Murder, which is available in Waterstones, Foyles, W H Smith,
Barnes & Noble, Tesco and through Amazon.

It is published by Mandrake and costs £19.99 or £13.99 online.

All original material on this page unless specified by another URL is the property of Herts and Essex Newspapers Ltd ©2005

Shaping Formless Fire : Distilling the Quintessence of Magick

2007-02-21T10:45:00.000-08:00

By Stephen Mace
Published by New Falcon Publications

Review by Akashanath 8/1/06 e.v.

Based on a series of articles originally written for German Magazine Zillo, Shaping Formless Fire is a comprehensive introduction to the author's unique magick system. This is not to say that the sixteen short essays will be of no use to people working in other paradigms. Nor should the experienced occultist be put off by the fact that this book is aimed at 'beginners'. The fermentation of Mace's thirty plus years of practical experience, sharp analytical mind and lucid writing style has produced a rich and deeply textured brew that will appeal to a wide range of palates.

For those who are not familiar with the work of Stephen Mace, it may be useful to rewind twenty years, to the point where he stepped out of the shadows. After a decade of sterility amongst English-speaking occultists, a new magickal underground had started to gather momentum. Bored with the elitism and exclusivity of Golden Dawn style hierarchical Orders and unimpressed with the repetitive formalism of rituals based on combinations of freemasonry and the qabalah, this new breed looked to individualists like Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare for their inspiration. The new credo eventually coalesced around the twin pillars of non-dogmatism and mastery of technique, subsequently acquiring the glamour of 'Chaos Magick'. Publications such as Peter Carrol's Psychonaut and Liber Null made the ideas accessible to a wider audience. This stimulated enough interest to generate several working groups and a few periodicals, notably Chaos International. These in turn gave a public platform to a surprising number of like-minded occultists who, it turned out, had been beavering away in the wilderness all along. It is to this group that Stephen Mace belongs.

Though Mace's ideas definitely captured the Zeitgeist of the mid eighties, they have scarcely become less relevant over the intervening period. While many of his contemporaries departed from the early egalitarianism of the Chaos scene by attempting to build personality cults or by reinventing the Occult Order, Mace remained humble and unincorporated, with his nose firmly to the grindstone. I mention this because it bears closely on the work in question. The book is not interesting because it is written by 'The Great Stephen Mace', it is not interesting because the author is 'an XIo Adept in the Crowley Copyright Club'. It is interesting (and convincing) because Steve Mace has done exactly what he says he's done, usually repeatedly until he's understood it completely and assimilated any lessons to be learned.

The whole book exemplifies this, but to illustrate the point I'll use Chapter III (Astral Projection). It may help the reader to know that Mace's original Manum Opus (yes, they are plural) synthesised Sparian sigilisation with the Thelemic Liber Samekh (known to the old school as the Abramelin Operation). As many readers will know, those who claim to have achieved 'the knowledge and conversation' of their Holy Guardian Angels can often sound a little pompous. This contrasts sharply with Mace's matter-of-fact reportage. 'Of course, all this [astral magick] would be easier if you had an assistant on the [astral] planes to help you manage all the spirits you meet there' he mentions almost in passing. In case you were interested, he continues 'Traditionally the way to become acquainted with your Angel is through months of progressively greater austerities. An alternate method is to design an alphabetic sigil from letters of a sentence requesting knowledge of it. Then after about 6 weeks of putting energy into it you should be able to use it to meet your Angel on the Astral.' The only possible objection to this is that it sounds a little simplistic. As if he's read your mind, the author immediately meets you with the rejoinder 'I have told you a great deal about astral projection, but I haven't given you the explicit instruction you need to do it. This is because its proper practice is just too complex to fit into the space I have here …" This could equally apply to the book as a whole. It's full of fascinating detail about the author's down-to-earth approach to the whole gamut of magickal experience, from divination, through initiation, sacred spaces, and sex magick to magickal combat and black magick. But it's not a manual.

So, what are the highlights, apart from the aforementioned? The occasional personal anecdotes the author throws in to illustrate various themes are usually pretty entertaining. Take, for example, the story of his arrest and subsequent imprisonment in the 1970s, used to illustrate the process of initiation Chapter X. He also drops the occasional pearl about the modern world, such as the reference to '…the vast insurance pool that underlies modern society' . And Chapters XI and XII, which deal with black magick and magickal combat, should be compulsory reading for every hormone-high teenager who's just scared himself shitless by discovering that magick actually works. And the low points? Very few. Perhaps the book could've benefited by omitting the dark prognostications for the collapse of the Pax Amricana in the opening paragraphs, although it could equally be true that some readers will find inspiration here, as the author obviously intends. Some people might also take issue with the more idiosyncratic features of the author's approach, such as the location of the Guardian Angel at the centre of virtually every process, or his insistence on the necessity of 'magickal cleansing'. From my perspective, however, this one of the book's great strengths. The world is not short of occult writers who can read and digest books on magick, regurgitating in general terms any plausible sounding relationships and parallels, but rejecting anything that looks out of place. What we are desperately short of, on the other hand, is experienced magicians prepared to tell it how it is, and Shaping Formless Fire has this in spades.

To summarise, then, it's a modern classic by one of the less visible founders of Chaos Magick. Essential for anyone thinking about practicing Macian Sorcery, useful for the general beginner, and a good read for the experienced occultist.

www.spiritual-freedom.org

Subscribe to Mandrake Speaks

2007-02-04T02:28:00.000-08:00

MandrakeSpeaks : For friends of new edge publisher Mandrake of Oxford, includes information about new titles and forthcoming events

Robert Anton Wilson (obituary)

2007-01-13T05:52:00.000-08:00

From Mandrake Speaks (mandrake-subscribe@yahoogroups.com)

Robert Anton Wilson was the secret agent of synchronicity.

It was his works I discovered when I began receiving weird vibes about Sirius, and his books I was guided towards soon after executing a gung-ho magickal operation to receive illumination about Truth. Uncle Bob blew my mind with a fierce wind of cross-cultural meta-narratives about mysticism and occultism. He made the broad connections between maps and phenomena which most brains only garner the vaguest hint towards, let alone full synthesis and processing into erudite, witty, funny and perpetually enlightening prose. I haven't met one person who wasn't changed in some way by reading Robert Anton Wilson's work – which could be a testament to a sheltered life, or a bona-fide indicator of just how important this man was: in bridging the gap between the 1960s counter-culture and the future of occultism; in filtering out the dogma and the bullshit that occultism often carried along with it, breaking down a wall that precipitated a flood of fresh occult thought that wasn't weighed down by the pseudo-religious and sometimes impenetrable jargon that hung over mid-20th century occultism from the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

That he'd fallen ill late last year initiated a wave of concern all over the planet. He was pronounced dead 4:50am yesterday morning. He wrote about his experience of polio as a child, and his consistent sufferance of post-polio syndrome, with his trademark mixture of comic tragedy. That it should claim his life, despite his heroic advocacy of life-extension and virtual immortality, is a kick in the face to all optimism everywhere. But the anecdotal evidence that he maintained his humour throughout his final days on this earth, is further testament to just how switched on he was.

From his very early writings about drugs (republished as Sex, Drugs and Magick (New Falcon Press, in its sixth printing in 2000) Uncle Bob was an iconoclast. Picking away at the faults of the state and its systems and always championing the overlooked virtues of common sense. But it was the Illuminatus Trilogy, written with Robert Shea in 1975, that cemented him as a voice and mind to be taken seriously (or not, depending on your side of the fence), and his subsequent chronicles of the synchronicites and madness that led him to write that book, Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati, that secured his position as man deep in touch with his own genius.
In this book, Uncle Bob defied magickal convention by dropping LSD and listening to a tape-recording of The Bornless Ritual, thereby achieving Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. He blew the lid (for this reader at least) on the connections with extra-terrestrial intelligences and magick, and wrote with reference to the eight-circuit model of consciousness with more clarity and better explanation than its creator, Timothy Leary, ever did in his lifetime. Any self-proclaimed magician who actually practiced magick, would have recognised the initiatory journey Uncle Bob was chronicling in that book. And sympathised, perhaps even found a voice of reason where there was only a burgeoning concern of affliction with schizophrenia: I'm sure I couldn't have been the only person to read Cosmic Trigger and say “You too? Thank fuck. I thought I was going nuts...”

With Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology, arguably along with Cosmic Trigger his best and most rewarding books, he delved deeper into the exploration of human consciousness, and de-mystified mysticism into a post-modern practice of socio-cultural and neurological transcendence. Something that previously hadn't been done with such empathy, and an insight into just how stupid and prone to over-complication a human mind can be.

As I write this at 2230 I'm also reminded of Uncle Bob's fearless introduction of the 23 meme into popular consciousness. While the 23 Current has taken on a life all of its own, Bob's Most Marvelous Magi Trick may have been to let that one loose to plague a thousand minds, probably more. He almost single-handedly popularised Discordianism and edged it into the important magickal movement it is today. Without Uncle Bob, would there be Chaos Magick, or a wave of modern shaman's delivering human consciousness back from the brink of a potential over-scienced and under-psy-enced dark age?

At 2300 hours I'm reminded that while it's impossible to say too much about how great the man will be missed, it's easy to overstate it when a simple “Good Bye Uncle, Bob, we'll miss you!” would probably do.

As much as you'd probably hate to come back as anything, it would be a good idea. There's no business like show-business, and you've showed us so much. But a little more never hurt.

RIP Robert Anton Wilson 1932-2007

Tristram Burden

John Symonds (1914-2006) Obituaries

2007-01-06T03:41:00.000-08:00

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 notorious 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. [Mogg]

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 HawtreeWednesday November 22, 2006The 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?"

Galdrbok (Review)

2007-01-04T02:33:00.000-08:00

Nathan J. Johnson & Robert J. Wallis: Galdrbok. Practical Heathen Runecraft, Shamanism and Magic. 398 pages, Wykeham Press of London and Winchester, revised edition of a privately circulated work, 2005.

It's been a long time since anything new appeared regarding Nordic magick. I had almost assumed that Germanic paganism got stuck in the usual merry-go-round of group politics and hierarchy games. Then, out of the blue, appears a magnificent book on practical rune magick. The Galdrbok is a work of art. It blends high-quality scholarly research with the pragmatic approach required to make things work. Out of the union emerges something new. It could be you.

The Galdrbok is concerned with experience. It teaches rune lore, song, chanting, vision, journeys and several approaches to trance technique loosely symbolised by the Aesir, Vanir and Disir. The nine worlds model is explored in detail. Cosmogony is introduced as a ritual event and makes the myths manifest in experience. Your experience.

All of this is very much alive. It offers a pagan shamanism that can be explored by doing and enjoying it. For the authors, much takes the shape of inspired syncretism. Germanic magic, as you know, is far from complete. Its history is unknown, its lore fragmentary and regarding the training of its professionals, next to nothing has survived. What remains, in the Eddas, the writings of Roman literati, the handful of medieval spells and the odd bit of ancient folklore is not enough to reconstruct the fullness of what may have been, but it is sufficient to provide a foundation for something new and valuable. This step involves the introduction of new elements. Johnson and Wallis, both of them experienced mind-explorers, have dared to take this step and have combined rune sorcery with foreign elements, such as scrying in a crystal ball or the chanting of Tantric seed-mantras. Such methods may raise the scorn of a would-be traditionalists. Would-be, as it is pretty difficult to be a traditional purist when most of your tradition has long been lost or destroyed courtesy of the Christian church. When we wish to imbue a fragmentary tradition with new life we have to fill in the gaps to make it work. Johnson and Wallis have done so, and unlike many other writers, they give their sources and state in plain words when they add something. What emerges is a very thorough introduction to practical rune magic and Germanic paganism. The work is free of nationalism, sloppy research and the nutty lore of Guido List. It describes techniques you can use to find your own way to the runes. The format is highly practical, and the emphasis is on things you can do. Where theory is involved, it is of an excellent scholarly quality (meaning: you can read it) and presented in a relaxed, undogmatic way. There is an invaluable bibliography for those who intend to research further. The only point I am missing is a good index. I wish there were more books on pagan religion like this. - Jan Fries

Interview: Nathaniel Harris

2007-01-01T02:23:00.000-08:00

Mandrake: Nathaniel, can you begin by telling us a little about your book, and why you wrote it?

Nathaniel: Witcha, A Book of Cunning was actually several years in its making. Primarily it was written as a 'thank you' to my family for introducing me to the path of witchcraft and magick. Hence the front cover painting of Green Jack, which is the work of my mother, the Lady of the House of the Old Ways. The photographs are by my stepfather, the Magister or Devil of the same coven. The original edition was hand bound in red and black leather according to medieval style, with reference to the binding of the Key of Solomon currently in the library of Cambridge University.

I only expected to sell a very few copies, primarily to friends of the family and those who turn up for the 'Annual Witchcraft Seminars'. Since I was going to all this effort, I decided to post an advert or two on the internet to see if anyone else wanted one. Much to my surprise the book proved to be a lot more popular than I expected, selling 100 copies in no time at all. I could and would have sold more, but the amount of money and time it took to create each copy meant that I was not only running at a near loss much of the time, but I was also working very hard just to keep up with the orders. Thankfully, you people came along and made the current edition available to a wider market.

Mandrake: Can you tell us a little more concerning 'The House of the Old Ways'?

Nathaniel: The House of the Old Ways is my 'parent coven', quite literally and not at all metaphorically! It was formed by my mother and stepfather, and if it needs justification to its lineage, I guess this comes through the hereditary witchcraft on her side of the family. Although both are also initiates of other streams of witchcraft, the House of the Old ways exists independently of any other organisation or lineage.
Judging from what I see written, and the claims I have heard people make, we are a lot more humble than many other covens or groups out there these days. We meet to support each other in our rituals, which are both spiritual/meditational, and results orientated. Most of us are very quiet individuals with no desires for fame, power, or any of that nonsense. We do not claim to be the guardians of any great and lost Mysteries, although we do have direct contact with spiritual entities and occasionally it must be said that some of them do make such claims! Most psychics have met entities like that. Personally, we listen them out, and banish them is they start talking rubbish. Nor does the House of the Old Ways make any of those silly claims about being 'guardians of the Land' or of sacred sites.
I know others have made claims to hereditary lineage, and used it to con there way into positions of supposed power, or spokespersons for Traditional Witchcraft, and so on. We make no such claims, nor do we recognise any such claims made by others as valid. Witches are strong minded individualists, it is one of the things that makes us what we are. We do not need 'leaders', or followers for that matter. If we wanted them, we would have them. If one wishes to become as a thousand, one merely has to attract a whole load of zeros.
Mandrake: You said that Witchcraft does not have leaders. But there are leaders and elders in the Craft. Among them those who have published very influential works, as well as raising the profile of the Craft to a wider public. Also, covens tend to have hierarchies led by High Priestesses and High Priests. So please, could you clarify your point?
Nathaniel: In one of Terry Pratchet's very funny 'Discworld' novels, he says that "Witches do not have leaders, and Granny Weatherwax is one of the best leaders that they do not have." No-one can deny that there are influential people in the Craft who could be said to lead by example. Yet any good Magister or Priestess will tell you that they are not really a leader in the sense that a church or a government has leaders. This is why we meet in circles, after all, as a sign that we are all equal, or are supposed to be.
Mandrake: In your book it says that you are the 'Fool' or 'Dubh Sidh' of the House of the Old Ways. Can you tell us a little more about what this means?
Nathaniel: In the House of the Old Ways, the position of 'Fool' is one of sanctioned rebellion. My job is to make sure nobody takes themselves too seriously, or disappears up their own backside. In a sense this position may be likened to the role of the Lord of Misrule, called also in European tradition as the Anti-Pope, the embodiment of the formulae of inversion as seen in the traditional 'Invisible Days', the Black Mass, or even in the reversal of the runic alphabet. Hence, too, the office is associated with the forces of darkness. Dubh Sidh is Gaelic, meaning 'Dark Phaerie'. So, whilst my position may involve poking fun here and there, it is in another sense a serious responsibility.
Mandrake: You call your work Witcha, A Book of Cunning. The meaning of this is explained in the introduction. Could you please say a little more?
Nathaniel: Witcha is an Old English word, properly spelt as wicca, which has been misappropriated and commonly mispronounced in the modern day. It means the use of witchcraft, implying specifically a male practitioner. The female equivalent is wicche.
The word 'cunning' has its roots in the runic tradition. Indeed a rune of our own Old English Alphabet bares the name 'cunning'. It implies the knowledge of sorcery, also mastery of language, poetry, and generally being clever. The term was later employed in relation to cunning folk, who were what in East Anglia later became called 'white witches', being those witches who were useful to their community. Modern academic texts, such as the excellent and highly recommended works of Professor Owen Davies, tend to over emphasise the idea that there was one path called the 'cunning', and another called the 'witch', and that these two were in conflict. Often, however, there was very little between the two. For example, Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft (1584) makes various references to the 'cunning witch'.
<Mandrake: In Witcha, you state that your craft has come to your primarily through the hereditary stream of your family, and has its roots in East Anglia. Is there anything you would like to add to what you have already told us?
Nathaniel: There is not a lot to tell, really, compared to the outlandish mystical claims made by many others asserting hereditary lineages. The witchcraft in my family stretches back several generations. My mother, and my grandmother, both display unusual psychic talent and have run 'circles' of one kind or another during their lifetime. My Great Aunt, being my grandmother's sister, was the one who first informed my mother that she is of the witches, and taught her the first spells she employed. These were of the usual binding of poppets, and so on, formulae that one commonly associates with witchcraft and are well known today. The most influential member of our family, as far as witchcraft is concerned, is probably my Great Great Aunt Daisy Chapman, who was a witch and midwife operating in the Suffolk area. Unfortunately I never had the pleasure of meeting her in the flesh. She was the one who used to quietly encourage my mother by sending her letters and little packages with interesting things in. She, as well as other family members who have returned from whence they came, is honoured by name in our ancestral observances.
It must also be said, however, that ours is not a static and unchanging tradition with sacred rites passed through our lineage being unchanged for generations. Rather, we are each of us unique individuals. We do not always agree about everything, and this includes witchcraft!
Mandrake: In Witcha, you speak about the belief in fairies, or 'phaeries' as you give it, being a part of your tradition. What's all that about?
Nathaniel: To say that we believe in phaeries or 'pharisee' might be a little misleading, as most people think of this as a twee tradition kept amongst ignorant peasants. Yet it is the knowledge of these sometimes very frightening forces that might be considered the absolute crux of our witchcraft. Yet, too, it should be said that we are not really Pagans, as the word is commonly used today.
Mandrake: Here your viewpoint seems to differ greatly from others involved in the 'witchcraft revival'. You say you are not Pagan, yet believe in the Old Ones. Some might find this more than a little confusing. In Witcha, you describe yourself as Catholic. Can you explain this, please?
Nathaniel: That comment is only half a joke. I have never been baptised, nor do my family attend regular church services or support any organised religion. However, it may be more correct to call us 'nominally Catholic' rather than Pagan, as many of our formulae draw upon the powers written of in the classical 'goetic' grimoires of our tradition, and similar. Yet I think what must be stressed is that witchcraft itself is not a religion. We do not gather to 'worship' anything or anyone, even though we have regular first hand experience of the spiritual dimensions.
Mandrake:But you said that Witchcraft is not a religion?
Nathaniel: This is a difficult one as I most certainly do not wish to invalidate those out there who do practice their witchcraft as a part of a religion. Yet at the same time I think it is necessary to point out that world-wide, and even in the various approaches I encountered growing up amongst the witchcraft of East Anglia, there is no universal faith that unites us as witches. What we have in common is rather better described in my view as an arcarnum of practices and esoteric 'truths' that may only ever be realised on an individual level. For example a voodoo witch in New Orleans, a Malaysian witch of the mountains, a medieval cunning witch of East Anglia, a modern Pagan witch of England, a Taoist witch, a pre-Christian witch of Persia, or a sworn-in of the House of the Old Ways, all work according to essentially very different faiths. Yet at the same time we all work our witchcraft according to quintessentially similar formulae.
Historically witches have often been of a subversive and anarchic spirituality. Many would say that witchcraft is in fact the very antithesis not just of organised religion, but of fixed belief of any kind. Austin Osman Spare is probably the best known exponent of this approach to witchcraft in the modern day. Others of recent history, less known but probably no less responsible regarding shaping the current as it comes to us, have included the likes of Major General C. Fuller of the Golden Dawn, upon whose work Crowley based his Enochian translation of the Goetia. I think the Setanic witch priest Charles Pace was another, and his friend Cecil Williams who originally founded the Museum of Witchcraft. Hence the purpose of the 'sinister' rites of the Black Sabbat, which were quite akin to what more modern cultists might call deconditioning.
Mandrake: So do you believe in Gods, God, or Goddesses?
Nathaniel: I can only answer this personally, rather than speak for my family or 'tradition'. Previous generations of witches in my family were actually Christian. As I said, witchcraft is not a religion. They would have been Christian even if their craft had been something else entirely, such as tailors or carpenters. My mother and stepfather were drawn towards Pagan Witchcraft of one kind or another through their careers, but even they consider this approach to be a lot more modern than it pretends. Any tradition that has genuinely survived through the medieval period would have had to change and adapt with the times in order to survive. Thus, on the whole, many genuine old witchcraft traditions embraced what might be called 'nominally Catholic' formulae, which some might identify as older pagan traditions which have taken on new masques. Most modern covens, since they are also involved with the Pagan revival, have adopted Pagan formulae. We, however, are not reconstructionists. Rather, we are taking an ever evolving tradition into the modern, largely post-Christian, day.
As far as the existence or non-existence of gods is concerned, my opinion is that it is impossible to discuss such things in reasonable or logical terms. Perhaps they are a little like the 'non-existent' numbers that are used to solve certain otherwise impossible equations.
Mandrake: Some people may find your claims to hereditary lineage frustrating. After all, you cannot train to become hereditary, either you are or you are not. The only way to become such is to be either born into a witchcraft family, or marry into one. What point, then, is there in openly admitting your hereditary lineage?
Nathaniel: Firstly, to state my background is not a claim to personal power or knowledge. Rather, it explains my motivation for involving myself in witchcraft and magick in the first place. I did not begin my studies in order to become something that I was not already. I am a witch by birth, with natural talent, which has been nurtured over the years with training and study. This has included my becoming involved, in my youth, with other magical organisations. It is well known that I am a past Magister Templi of the Illuminates of Thanateros, and became involved in Chaos magic, for example. In the end, however, I outgrew these groups and 'returned to the fold', so to speak.
I appreciate that some may find my hereditary status frustrating. I have been accused of being elitist in the past. However, nobody is claiming that our way is better, purer, or in any other way more traditional or important than anybody else's witchcraft. To state that I am hereditary is simply fact, and is not said for any other reason.
I think the confusion here is caused because over the years many have raised their heads and claimed to be hereditary purely in order to claim some kind of power over other people. Usually these claims prove to be false over the years, or at least are never proven to be true.
Also, there are those who mistake my claim as saying that you absolutely have to be born a witch to be 'real'. I have never said this, nor would I. You do not have to be born into a witch family in order to be a witch, any more than being born into a family of accountants automatically makes you an accountant. However, if you are born into a family of accountants, and do want to be an accountant yourself, you are in for a head start. Yet you will still have to train and study just as hard as anybody else if you are going to be any good. In this case you might have someone who will show you the books, or grimoires in the case of witchcraft, and let you in to one or two secrets of the trade.
Finally, as I have said, most people will assume you are lying if you tell them you are a hereditary witch, anyway, and usually not without good reason.
Mandrake: Well, we've met your family, so we know you are not lying! Which perhaps brings us to your appearance on the National Geographic's documentary on witchcraft for the 'Taboo' series, which was made just as the first edition of Witcha came out. How was it that this programme came to be made?
Nathaniel: The researchers for the National Geographic contacted Graham of the Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle, to make contact with genuine witches willing to be on international television. As you can imagine there were plenty who stepped forward but who could not stand up to the intense scrutiny these researchers needed to put any claims made through. No doubt there were other genuine witches who just did not need the grief of being scrutinised. In the end, they chose me, and also featured a family coven meeting held on the Eve of May. The programme, 'Taboo: Witchcraft' still repeats on the National Geographic channel once in a while. I received a letter from one of the researchers to say it was one of their highest rating documentaries. Nobody got an EMI for it, though. Perhaps they should have done!
Mandrake: Both on this documentary, and in Witcha, you speak of the Bible as a grimoire of witchcraft. No doubt this is something many people will have difficulty with, both amongst witches and Christians alike!
Nathaniel: Well, you know me, I never like to make things easy for people by telling them what they would rather hear. The Bible has a long tradition of employment within the witchcraft and cunning of Britain, and was often referred to in much the same way as it is in contemporary magical 'Christianity', such as the path of Santeria which actually bares many striking resemblances to our own traditions. Such comparisons were made in the documentary you mention.
Mandrake: Our books have often generated controversy and we couldn't help but notice that Witcha was attracting some very positive as well as very negative vibes - how do you feel about that?
Nathaniel: Well yes, as you know - whenever you put your head above the parapet there's always someone who wants to shoot you down. Goes with the territory I guess. Not sure why that is - human nature maybe. Like Gore Vidal said, 'Nothing is more pleasing than to see your friend's latest book on the remainder pile' - wicked thoughts. Maybe you know you've arrived when this happens. I'd expected some criticism of the book but not all this ad hominem stuff and attempts at character assassination, even attacks on my close family. These have included some 'old crafters' who seem to think I was treading on their toes, and one or two that have been a bit cross at my speaking so frankly about certain more sinister aspects. On the whole, though, much of this polava has come from those who hope to raise their own profile by attacking mine and the family's. At first I was a bit stung by it all but as the sales of the book rise and the positive comments more than outweigh the odd nutcase, I'm learning to let it wash over me. Anyway, how can anything be considered bad publicity if you've already openly admitted to practices of Black Witchcraft anyway? I'm not really as evil as some people would have it, yet at the same time it is often fun to play up to the 'Bad Boy of Witchcraft' image.
Mandrake: Didn't you appear on the 'Kilroy' show about 'Witchcraft Friend or Foe?' openly admitting to having cursed people in your previous career?
Nathaniel: Hell yes. They had heard of me because of the N.G. documentary and begged me to be on that show. I must say that when I got there I did feel like I had been particularly singled out for some bad press. Despite my protests that it had been a long time since I had been particularly keen to curse anyone, but that yes I did think it was sometimes justifiable, he insisted on calling me a Black Witch and I did not really complain about that. On the one hand he was saying that he did not believe in all this Mumbo Jumbo, and on the other he was saying that I should be arrested for my magical actions. The studio was like a lion's den, with me and a few other witches of other paths already keen to dissociate themselves from me due to whatever had been said previously, and some quite rabid Christians and 'sceptics' all around us. Incidentally, it was the last episode of his series recorded, and I was the last person on the show to receive his well rehearsed wannabe politician's handshake. After that his T.V. career ended and he became an object of public ridicule. Make of that what you will.
Mandrake: You are also a tattoo artist, and have done some fine work on Jasmine Deville. Could you tell us what attracted you to this art form?
Nathaniel: There is something very primordial and magical about tattooing. There are many people one meets who have had glyphs and signs tattooed upon them as a part of some magical act or self transformation. Although the tattooist themselves might not be a practitioner of witchcraft or magic, the very act of having these things prominently emblazoned in one's flesh seems to successfully connect us somehow to the powers behind the signs. Thus, I suppose, many so called primitive initiatory cults involve the marking of the flesh during the candidate's progression. The word 'tattoo' is actually Polynesian, and only added to our English vocabulary fairly recently. Our own word before then was 'stigma', and in the witchcraft cults this tattoo has been known as the 'Stigma Diaboli' or Mark of the Devil. These may have been hidden on the body, and may have been what the witchfinders were actually supposed to hav! e been looking for. Persecution records make record of marks made by the 'Devil' of the cult pricking the finger of the new initiate to make a permanent mark, as with two Northampton witches condemned in 1705, and the Scottish witches also. Robert Graves makes mention of this somewhere in the White Goddess. Also, the signs may identify us to one another, as with the Maori tribal markings that show your gods, family status, and history. With what has been called the 'Modern Primitive' movement within body art, we can see that many of our own culture have been actively seeking to regain some sense of the sacred or magical tattoo for ourselves. It thus only made sense that I should employ my artistic skills in this world, and the majority of my customers are those who are consciously connecting tattooing to their magical practices. I am largely self taught, as the methods I employ are manual rather than using the conventional tattoo gun. Nevertheless, I have a! lways hung around tattooists of one kind or another since about six years old. When I started tattooing, about ten years ago, I was fortunate in that I lived in London and knew many successful tattoo artists. I also had two rare chance meetings with tattoo artists whom I would personally describe as magicians of one kind or another- one who tattooed traditionally for the Yakuzza in Japan, and another who was a genuine Maori tattooist and who allowed me to sit in on a session with a customer. These events proved to me that I was on the right path.
Mandrake: well that's more than enough - thanks for being so frank - if folk want more there's the current book and another coming soon - watch this space.
But if you like interviews there's one with Mandrake's Mogg Morgan on the Avalonia website (http://www.avalonia.co.uk/)

The Key to Solomon's Key

2006-12-03T04:18:00.000-08:00

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

Poetry Publishing

2006-11-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

My correspondent asked how do I progress from publishing individual poems in magazine and journals to that magical first slim volume?

Umm good question - synchronicity there in that just after I got your email - a slightly nutty person who'd phoned me a while back - decided to have another go - it's the peril of being in Writers and Artist Yearbook - i told her she couldn't get to first base unless she was on the internet these days - preferably with a blog - she's doing that in between bouts of medication ; )
anyways this time she wanted to read me something she'd just written on emerging from her druggy haze - wasn't bad either - told her it was blend of John Cooper Clark and Pam Ayres - which sent her off feeling positive.

Whats needed is a spell to make pagans a bit less philistine - very hard work getting them to _buy_ collections although they seem to appreciate poems in magazines - everyone seems to enjoy them. In the current very harse conditions for poetry publication you have to have an angle (and an angel). You're doing the right thing in sending out lots of poems to publications - they could maybe be collected together with the longer piece you wrote - but you also need a leaflet about yourself - and this is to be distributed to other poets at poetry slams, impromptu pub readings etc - this is so they know of you and can get in touch if they are looking for support at an event. Realistically you might have to pay for publication of your first collection just so you have something to sell after the readings. Why not see if you can put together a syndicate of the unpublished - each chips in 100 pounds and gets say ten copies of the resulting book which they then give to friends - send to reviewers etc etc - with adverts could be a neat calling card. If you want more that's possible but you have to buy them at cost - but its also there for the odd direct mail sale which can happen. My experience with david parry (caliban) has been ok - had some nice reviews - he is a teacher and thus hasn't done as much grifting as he promised - but its starting to get around - he's starting on a related novel which we put in Mandrake Speaks - see current issue for a nice poem by Bridgit Ariel - it all helps build a bit of a buzz - thats my ten penneth worth -

Suggested Reading: James Fenton, Master Class in English Poetry

A curse on Hastings?

2006-11-06T12:32:00.000-08:00

“O Margaret, Margaret! Now thy heavy curse /
Is lighted on poor Hastings’ wretched head,”

Richard III (Act III.iv.92–93)

Rough Diamonds Vol I (Review - updated)

2006-11-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

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

1. Rituals
2. 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:
'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).'

Murder & Mayhem Bookshop - Hay-On-Wye

2006-09-02T03:13:00.000-07:00

Kym and I travelled to Hay-On-Wye to accompany Robin Odell (author of Exhumation of a Murder: the Life and Trial of Major Armstrong) for a book signing at the atmospheric Murder & Mayhem Bookshop, where there is an excellent selection of titles by masters such as Dennis Wheatley, Sax Rohmer, Bram Stoker, and Robin Odell. Robin was fresh from his lecture to the History of Medicine Society of Wales. Due to a booking mishap, it was relocated from Hay to Builth Wells! Even so there was a steady stream of interested customers and connoisseurs of the genre - some of whom, are shown in the photo: From left to right, Robin Odell, Anne & (sitting) Derek Addyman, owners of Murder & Mayhem Bookshop, plus Addyman Books across the street, and the Addyman Annexe in Castle Street, which has a small esoterica section, Robin Odell's partner 'Non', and holding glasses of wine are two lovely ladies, Joan & Friend. Thank you ; )

More photos:

If you are interested in books then Hay-On-Wye is a cool place with a buzz to visit. A stop at the Murder and Mayhem Bookshop is a must for fans of murder and mystery books. You might have to dig around a bit to find the esoterica - but that's the fun. Do check out The Addyman Annexe for that. We stayed up the road in Hereford and were directed to the Rose Garden pub just north of the Roman road in Munstone. The beer was excellent - Flowers IPA and the home made food really was just that. The atmosphere definitely improved when they turned off the canned music. In Hay we had another lovely pint, Old Black Lion Ale at the Black Lion in Lion Street - Major Armstrong's 'local' so they say - although not too local as his wife didn't like him drinking! The food there was also really good. The cafe opposite the clock tower is very user friendly - newspapers, real coffee and wall to wall cyclists. Without being too personal - many looked to be very fit pensioners - which is obviously a trend - so next time you are mowed down on the pavement - you'll know who to blame ; )

OLD EGYPT AND THE NEW AGE by David Conway

2006-08-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

moved to David Conway's blog

A Short History of Myth (reviewed by Tom Bland)

2006-06-01T01:10:00.000-07:00

Karen Armstrong Canongate Books, 2005

Myth is one of the most important subjects for those of us who are interested in spirituality, as myth is a way of describing spirit. For me, there is no difference between spirit and vision, for to encounter spirit, is to encounter a vision of the spirit. Myth is a way of describing the vision, of bringing it into the world, so it can be seen through the world.

An example of this can be seen in the writings of St. Paul, who encountered the spirit of Christ in a vision on the road to Damascus. The vision is always paradoxical as it embraces the tangible and the intangible. On the one hand, it is a vision that is so present, it appears as a tangible presence, but on the other hand, it is intangible, composed of light. Light is a perfect metaphor for visionary experience, for it has substance and transparency to it.

One of the writers Karen Armstrong often refers to in her work is the scholar of esotericism, Henry Corbin, who writes on gnosis in Islam. He writes:

We are dealing with visions, theophanic visions. There is an actual perception of an object, of a concrete person: the figure and the features are sharply defined; this person presents all the ‘appearances’ of a sensuous object, and yet it is not given to the perception of the sense organs. This perception is essentially an event of the soul, taking place in the soul and for the soul. As such its reality is essentially individuated for and with each person; what the soul really sees, it is in case alone in seeing.(1)
Those of us who have had visionary experiences will find our own experiences reflected in Corbin’s words. He describes something quite special in his writings on gnosis. Paul’s vision would certainly be theophanic in essence, although his vision, recited in churches, is only one exoteric expression of such an experience. In his quote, Corbin is referring to the visionary experiences of a group of women, described in the apocryphal Christian text, Acts of Peter, where each of them sees a different Christ, but their visions are united in a common luminosity.

Armstrong is a very readable writer with a vivid and compelling style. Her sources for her books are truly wide ranging from the exoteric to the esoteric, which can sometimes occur in a single paragraph. Although her work is not gnostic, she refers extensively to gnostic currents in the Abrahamic faiths, revealing their mythic and visionary dimensions. In A Short History of Myth, she refers to the kabbalists’ visions of the sefirot as representing an ‘unfolding revelation’ of the divine names of God. (See p. 110) The wonderful phrase, unfolding revelation, is an apt definition of gnosis.(2)

She reveals that myth is still very much present within commonly held faiths, and shows that the polytheistic roots of these traditions, have not been lost, but simply forgotten. She is asking us to remember where our traditions come from, to see into the histories of our beliefs, ideas, thoughts and feelings. It is about understanding the myths of God and the Gods. Her book is about the myths that we live with. It is particularly about those that deepen our presence in the world. She writes:

A myth, therefore, is true because it is effective, not because it gives us factual information. If, however, it does not give us new insight into the deeper meaning of life, it has failed. If it works, that is, if it forces us to change our minds and hearts, gives us new hope, and compels us to live more fully, it is a valid myth. Mythology will only transform us if we follow its directives. A myth is essentially a guide; it tells us what we must do in order to live more richly. If we do not apply it to our own situation and make the myth a reality in our own lives, it will remain as incomprehensible and remote as the rules of a board game, which often seem confusing and boring until we start to play. (p. 10)
I imagine most people with a sense of the spiritual will be able to resonate with her words. I find in it a series of questions concerning myths I live with, in particular do they enrich me and allow me to grow and become? Are they still valid and do they still resonate with me? I won’t bore the reader with my responses to them, but I say this, to show that Armstrong is concerned with myths in an experiential sense, which is, she says, one of the best ways to understand myths.

I find one of the most fascinating aspects of her work, and one that I think is of the utmost importance to us in the present age, is that myths are not fixed in time, but change through history. Although certain archetypal themes can be said to be transhistorical, like a notion of oneness, myths that reveal such richly rewarding themes, manifest in different ways in congruence to the changing nature of history. She writes:

There is never a single, orthodox version of a myth. As our circumstances change, we need to tell stories differently in order to bring out their timeless truth. In this short history of mythology, we shall see that every time men and women took a major step forward, they reviewed their mythology and made it speak to the new conditions. But we shall also see that nature does not change much, and that many of these myths, devised in societies that could not be more different from our own, still address our most essential fears and desires. (p. 11)
And now, I want once again to turn to the vision of Paul. But before I do I first want to quote a contemporary storyteller, who said to me, ‘Stories are about making connections.’ In this regard, he seems perfectly in congruence with Armstrong. In the language of storytelling, she is asking us to address an important and valid question, ‘Do the myths we live with, connect with us?’

I think the question is not so much about believing, or even an accepting a myth, but instead being inspired by a myth. It is about being inspired to tell a myth, not only to myself, but to others who I connect with. One of the myths that intrigue and fascinate me is the myth of Jesus and the resurrection. I see it as being a myth about the nature of the divine living and dying as we live and die. It is a myth that I had a dream about, read through gospels (including the gnostic ones), and discovered a myth I resonate with, even though I am not a Christian.

For me, Paul reveals something of this way of interpreting the myth of Christ. He considers Christ a visionary experience. Armstrong writes:

St Paul did the same with Jesus. He was not so much interested in Jesus’ sayings, which he rarely quotes, or even in the events of his earthly life. ‘Even if we did once know Christ in the flesh,’ he wrote to his Corinthians converts, ‘that is not how we know him now.’ What was important was the ‘mystery’ (a word which has the etymological root as the Greek mythos) of his death and resurrection. Paul had transformed Jesus into a timeless, mythic hero who dies and is raised to new life. After his crucifixion, Jesus had been exalted by God to a uniquely high status, had achieved ‘ascent’ to a higher mode of being. But everybody who went through the initiation of baptism (the traditional transformation by immersion) entered into Jesus’ death and would share his new life. Jesus was no longer a spiritual figure but a spiritual reality in the lives of Christians by means of ritual and the ethical disciplines of living the same selfless life as Jesus himself. Christians no longer knew him ‘in the flesh’ but they would encounter him in other human beings, in the study of scripture, and in the Eucharist. They knew that this myth was true, not because of historical evidence, but because they had experienced transformation. Thus the death and the ‘raising up’ of Jesus was a myth; it had happened once to Jesus and was now happening all of the time. (pp. 107-8)
So, we can see that myth is not about believing it, but living it, and being transformed by it. My dream of the resurrection led me to an insight, that the divine reality lives and dies, for it is a mirror of the world. It exists throughout the world, and experiences itself through the world. I am able to tell this myth, for I have, in some small sense, lived through it, through the dream I experienced.(3)

I think in some respects this is what Armstrong is advocating in her books, for in them, she retells the myths, revealing their importance for our postmodern times, making a case that we have not left myth behind, but simply that we have forgotten its presence, through overt rationalism and an abandonment of the senses. I cannot agree more with this, and I’m sure anyone who picks up A Short History of Myth, will find a rewarding work that speaks to them.

Notes:

1) Henry Corbin, ‘Divine Epiphany and Spiritual Rebirth in Ismailian Gnosis,’ Papers from the Eranus Yearbook, Volume 5, Bollingen, 1964, p. 70.

2) Gnosis is a Greek word that translates literally as ‘knowledge,’ but figuratively means something more akin to ‘insight.’ It is essentially an unveiling of the divine, which lead to insights concerning the origins of the spirit. See Elaine Pagel, The Gnostic Gospels, Penguin, 1990.

3) Such dreams are common to many people undergoing life changes. Petruska Clarkson writes on this in her essay, ‘Metanoia: A Process of Transformation,’ in her book, On Psychotherapy, Whurr, 1993, pp. 67-9.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
An Afternoon Workshop

‘There is a light within a person of light
and it shines on the whole world.
If it does not shine it is dark.’
The Gospel of Thomas
An afternoon workshop for anyone who wishes to have a deeper sense of spirit within his or her life. We will be opening a space wherein we can bring spirit into being as a shared experience. We shall do this through specific exercises, such as reading from the heart, storytelling, dialogue and meditation. In this way, we hope to cultivate qualities associated with spirit, like intuition, inspiration and insight.

Facilitator: Tom Bland is a writer, storyteller and group leader. He has a passion for wisdom stories and sayings. He is deeply influenced by the writings of Carl Jung.

Date: 2-6 pm, Saturday 3rd July Cost: £20
Venue: Jung Club Library, 1 More’s Garden, 90 Cheyne Walk, London. The nearest tube is Sloane Square.
To book a place, please contact Tom at inward@email.com or 020 8686 4373.

Top

‘THE POISON MAKER’ by John Symonds

2006-03-11T02:08:00.000-08:00

John Symonds, who is ninety one, claims the play is based on a true story. He was the editor of the literary magazine Lilliput, knew George Orwell and was the lover of Peggy Ramsey, Joe Orton's literary agent. He has written over forty volumes of plays, essays and children's books and is best known for being Aleister Crowley's literary executor and author of the Great Beast. The biography was the first to draw attention to Crowley and has caused much controversy ever since. Those looking for occult subtexts in the play will not be entirely disappointed. Florence, for one, dreams of snakes, curtsies to the pear tree in the garden and frequently employs the tarot (the pack of Thoth, as it happens, though perhaps not too much should be read into this). Though antiquated in style, The Poison-Maker is highly unusual. Anyone wanting a glimpse of the eccentric upper-class milieu that both Crowley and Symonds moved in should check it out.

Generation Hex

2006-03-11T02:07:00.000-08:00

Generation Hex (review)
Jason Louv (Editor) £9.99 Disinformation Company 2005

Generation Hex comes on strong. Like the hissing intensity of a DMT hit it reaches out and grabs you. Hang on to your crown chakras kids, it’s going to be one hell of a ride!

Though brash in it’s post post-modern reality hacking style Generation Hex is far from being all façade and no content (although the design quality of the volume, as we have come to expect from the Disinformation crew, is indeed excellent). This is a wonderful selection of essays by young magicians, mostly from the USA that I found a real inspiration to read.

The collection ranges across samples of diary extracts, detailed explorations of how magick might be understood through pure maths and physics, through to work on psychogeographical drifting and esoteric parables. The styles differ as well, from the post-Gibson swaggering psybermagickical, through cut-up discordianism and into more classic modern journalese. But uniting each essay are a number of common features. The first is that without exception each essay is wonderfully written. The second is that each essay gives the sense that it is a window into real experimental magick and that the authors are primarily practitioners first and writers second. The third is that in their different ways each essay is seeking to broaden the perception of what magic is.

I was particularly taken by the honest and direct position that drugs take within the magickal work of many of the essayists. I was inspired that such intelligent, honest and human magick is being produced by younger adepts. Though you’ll find techniques in this volume it’s so much more than a crummy how-to manual. Perhaps for me (aged about 10 years older than most of the guys and gals writing in this collection) one of the great insights was how the availability of esoteric technique and technology (especially via the internet) means that today’s new generation of occultists can spend their time experimenting and doing, and not waste so much energy in trying to obtain paraphernalia, find rare out of print books and hang-around at lame New Age festivals looking for real magicians (like I had to! Honestly these kids don’t know they’re born!).

This is a must read for anyone interested in the sociology of magick let alone those people who are themselves occultists. I have a feeling that the Generation Hexers are really going to be helping to set the new agenda for magick in the 21st century and if this book represents the way we’re headed then we can expect great things indeed.

If you’ve been wondering what was going to come after chaos magick then the approaches explored in this book may well be the answer. Buy it now.

Julian Vayne
Co-author with Greg Humphries of Now That's What I call Chaos Magick, published by Mandrake. For details of this and his forthcoming Pharmakon, do an author search on the Mandrake portal.

The Genesis Meditations (review)

2005-11-08T10:36:00.000-08:00

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@email.com.

AL - 100th Anniversary _ is 2 CD boxed set

2005-09-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

AL - 100th Anniversary _ is 2 CD boxed set, compilation of Occultural and Ambient musick inspired, I would say, by Coil, Industrial, Thelema, Sisters of Mercy, et al. Limited edition _ only 418 hand-numbered copies are being published _ A3 poster, 8-page booklet and a short introduction by Carl Abrahamsson. So its got to be worth 29 EUR excl. shipping.

Horus website

I've played my copy several times now - which believe me, is a big recommendation. Naturally, I have my favourites, like the first track of the second, more Ambient CD. _ Secret Name _ by Silence & Strength, recorded in Israel, is especially interesting, with its inclusion of passages from The Book Of Lies and Liber AL.. But I'd say there are is nothing unlistenable or unenjoyable on the CD, which is something you couldn't say about a band like Coil, who can be a bit uncompromising sometimes. I remember chilling out nicely to Moon's Milk, only to be jangled out of my wits by the last track ; ) _ AL - 100th Anniversary _ passes the 'I wouldn't rush out and buy it' test. The only thing I wonder is how long magical musicians will be able to quarry the admitedly rich seams of imagery in Crowley's corpse? Isn't it time to write about some more contemporary magical themes - if you're stuck - maybe I could help you out? Even so, there is hardly anyone's record collection that doesn't need stuff like this - if you buy your musick on amazon or at HMV, then you're really do need it - trust me ; ) Do magicos give each other presents - well yes - then next time you're looking for one, think about sourcing it from a more left-field producer - I'm sure people can buy their own scented candles or Harry Potter books ; ) [Mogg]

The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism (review)

2005-09-11T06:34:00.000-07:00

Daniel C. Matt, Castle Books, 1997

Reviewed by Tom Bland
(who is facilitating a reading group in London based around this title - see end of review for details)

Daniel C. Matt, in his book The Essential Kabbalah, provides us with a perfect introduction to the central teachings of the Kabbalah. His book is a series of passages translated from the primary source material of the Kabbalah, organised and arranged by theme. He also provides a short and precise introduction that outlines a basic history of the tradition.

In his introduction, Matt touches upon the famed Lurianic Kabbalah, and provides an answer to why Rabbi Luria wrote down so little of his teachings.(1) Matt answers this through a reply Luria gave to a student who asked him why he had not written a book. Luria replied:

It is impossible, because all things are interrelated. I can hardly open my mouth to speak without feeling as though the sea burst its dams and overflowed. How then shall I express what my soul has received? How can I set it down in a book? (p14)
The question that Luria asks in the passage above is one I am sure Matt asked himself in composing this volume of extracts. Matt has chosen a poetic and graceful approach to the material. There is a simplicity to his translations that are both profound and yet subtle in style. It is this style which makes the renditions gentle in their nature. They have a contemplative quality that allows for the text to be meditated upon in a quiet space.

Matt’s translations are interpretative in nature. It is a hermeneutics that is grounded in good scholarly research on the passages. He provide notes on the passages at the end of the book, detailing the meaning of the more abstruse Hebrew and Aramaic terms, comparing the quotes to passages in other books of the Judaic canon, and finding connections with other mystical traditions in a way that is both relevant and meaningful.

This book is quite simply a good introduction to the esoteric teachings of the Kabbalah.(2) Matt writes with an eloquence that is able to speak to the soul as it comes from the soul. This mystical element is integral to the work, which is perfectly balanced with providing good and sound scholarship. This is what makes it remarkable is that Matt joins these two elements in a coherent whole, without privileging one over the other. It is truly what Henry Corbin calls a ‘dualitude,’ which means ‘two inseparable and two independent parts of a whole.’(3)

This is what makes Matt’s book essential reading for those involved either in Middle Eastern mysticism or in the Western esoteric tradition. It is important from an occidental perspective, because of the modern interest in Kabbalah, as expressed in A. E. Waite’s The Holy Kabbalah, Israel Regardie’s The Garden of Pomegranates, and Charles Ponce’s Kabbalah.(4) It offers a means of re-assessing these works in light of the original source material of the Kabbalistic tradition. It provides a way of deconstructing and reconstructing, deepening and elevating our knowledge of the Kabbalah.

To end this review, I quote a passage from Matt’s work that reveals the experience of wholeness, which is at the heart of the Kabbalah(5):

When you contemplate the Creator, realize that his encampment extends beyond, infinitely beyond, and so, too, in front of you and behind you, east and west, north and south, above and below, infinitely everywhere. Be aware that God fashioned everything and is within everything. There is nothing else. (p25)
Notes:

1) For more information on the Lurianic Kabbalah, see Sanford Drob’s website, which can be found at www.newkabbalah.com.

2) Matt’s synchronic introduction to the Kabbalah is perfectly complimented by J. H. Laenen’s historical approach to the subject in his Jewish Mysticism: An Introduction (Westminster John Knox, 2001).

3) The quote comes from Henry Corbin’s paper, The Dramatic Element Common to the Gnostic Cosmogonies of the Religions of the Book, published in the journal, Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 14: 3 4, Summer-Autumn, 1980, p. 220, n. 18.

4) Although occidental thinkers have known about Kabbalah since the Renaissance, it is only in the past hundred years that it has taken upon such a central role in the Western esoteric tradition, which is partially due to these texts.

5) See Chapter 4 of Moshe Idel’s Kabbalah: New Perspectives (Yale, 1988) for a discourse on the role of union and unity in the mysticism of the Kabbalah.

ALEPH
THE KABBALAH READING GROUP

‘Just as your hand, held before the eye, can hide the tallest mountain, so this small earthly life keeps us from seeing the vast radiance that fills the core of the universe.’
Nahman of Bratslav
This reading group is an introduction to the mysteries of the Kabbalah. It seeks to provide an overview of the essential concepts of the tradition. It will do this through the reading of the primary source material as translated in Daniel C. Matt’s book, The Essential Kabbalah, Castle Books, 1997. The book is a collection of passages from the whole range of Kabbalistic literature arranged by theme. The meetings will follow the general arrangement of the book.

Each meeting will consist of a basic fourfold structure. Firstly it will begin with a presentation on a particular theme, secondly by exploring the passages Matt provides on the concept, thirdly by comparing and contrasting these quotes, and finally by providing space for discussion and consideration. The topics will include the tree of life, God, creation and meditation. There will also be some presentations on topics not covered in Matt’s book, such as magic, angels and messianism.

The group is open to all. It attempts to integrate many different perspectives into a coherent whole. It embraces the scholarly, esoteric and mystical study of the Kabbalah.

The group will be held at the C. G. Jung Club Library in Chelsea, London. It will meet fortnightly on a Sunday from 4 to 6 pm. The dates for the group are:

September 11th and 25th
October 9th and 23rd
November 13th and 27th

The cost for attending each meeting will be £10.00.

The reading group will be led by Tom Bland.

Tom Bland is an independent researcher specialising in the study of the Kabbalah. He is also studying the writings of Carl Jung through Andrew Burniston’s study group. He is a member of the C. G. Jung Analytical Psychology Club.

To join the reading group please contact Tom on 020 8686 4373, or email him at inward@email.com

Jean Overton Fuller's The Magical Dilemma Of Victor Neuburg

2005-09-11T06:32:00.000-07:00

(reviewed by Charlotte)
During a small occult Fair at the beginning of 2005 I discovered that Marc Aitkin, who was organising sound and lighting for the event, had also made a short film around a 'what if' future of Victor Neuburg. Victor Neuburg being best known as Aleister Crowley's disciple and lover but he was also a poet, editor and the man who 'discovered' Dylan Thomas. The film was screened at the fair, but the impromptu showing didn't do 'Do Angels Ever Cut Themselves Shaving' justice; so we decided to give the film another, more focused viewing.

During preliminary arranging of this screening I discovered Richard McNeffs novel, 'Sybarite among the Shadows'; a strangely similar 'what if' also centred on Victor Neuburg, (similar in intuitive direction that is rather than in execution and result) complete with wartime settings and dedications to Mercury and Thoth respectively. Both of these creative works were initially inspired by a book by Jean Overton Fuller, 'The Magickal Dilemma of Victor Neuburg' Needless to say after encountering the works of the two above artists I very quickly purchased and read Jean Overton Fullers book, to check out the source of such abundant inspiration.

The first part of 'The Magical Dilemma' is centred on Jean in 1935 when she was in her early twenties and she first became part of a circle of poets, which included Dylan Thomas and Pamela Hansford Johnson, and which was formed by Victor Neuburg when he was Poetry Editor of The Sunday Referee.

This part of the book was a joy to read, as it fleshed out many of the names that I have encountered in various books and references over the years; creating a reality from history so to speak. In this first section of 'The Magical Dilemma', we see Victor Neuburg through the eyes of the younger Jean Overton Fuller and gradually realise the impression this gentle soul made upon her. Not simply a strong enough impression to last over the years to the time when she finally wrote this biography, but also powerful enough for her to overcome her personal beliefs and morality in the face of the said sexual and magical behaviour of Neuburg.

Truth to tell, in many ways I would say that Fuller adored Neuburg. That she thought him a good, gentle and talented man is beyond doubt but in many ways a sort of love and idealisation of him on her part comes across in the book that must have made some of the research into Newburg's past difficult for her.
'for me he lit a flame that can never be put out'…

I was intrigued as to the belief system of Fuller, which in some way seems contradictory. On one hand she has a working knowledge of palmistry/astrology and more academic branches of esoteric lore but on the other seemed to have what could be seen as a type of near Christian morality; more than one could explain as being a purely generational thing. Discovering Jean Overton Fuller's Theosophist affiliations clarified this, though the inclusion of Pamela Hansford Jones verbatim views of that period also helped me realise more about the standard morality of that time for women; even women of the more 'bohemian' set of that time. In later parts of the book, Fuller goes more into the life of Neuburg, and particularly his relationship, both sexual and magical, with Crowley.

The conflict of her obvious fondness for Neuburg, with detailing his relationship with someone like A.C whom she saw as an 'inflated pseudo messiah' and as 'exceedingly coarse' with near no redeeming features becomes obvious at points, though she generally retains the degree of professionalism necessary to rise above this, introducing statements from those she respects such as Gerald Yorke who retained a high opinion of A.C.

Whilst 'The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg' book did not take me to the same places of imaginative and creative exploration as it did Marc Aitkin and Richard NcNeff, I still found it to be an interesting and stimulating book. I wont deny that some of the opinions and perspectives of Jean Fuller differ from my own, however this didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book as anything that triggers a process of thought and evaluation can only be a good thing!

Reading 'The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg' caused me to re examine dynamics of creative magical relationships in general, as well as mulling over some fundamental aspects of the contemporary magical community that are well worth looking at. It also painted a very loving and more complete image of Victor Neuburg who for many years has existed only as a vague shadowy outline along with others of Aleister Crowley's associates and lovers in my minds eye, and this is a great thing as even in death AC has been allowed to reduce those who helped create the magick of that time, and this is something that has long needed rectifying.

One of the most poignant parts of the book was a quote given by Preston; 'Victor…was a dead man; he gave up magic and spent the whole of his life feeling he was not doing what he was meant to be doing' Jean Overton Fullers book shows that Victor Neuburg never gave up magic…just changed the way in which he performed it and without Crowley remained a creative, wondrous and spiritual man in his own right.

I think the best close for this review is a verse from 'The Epilogue' in Victor Neuburg's collection of poetry,'Triumph' of Pan, dedicated to A.C.

Because the fulfilment of dreams is itself but a dream,
There is no end save the song, and song is the end;
And here with a sheet of songs bareheaded I stand,
And the light is fled from mine eyes, and the sword
from my hand
Is fallen; the years have left me a fool, and the gleam
Is vanished from life, and the swift years sear me
And rend.

Crowley, The Masons and The Mafia

2005-08-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

By Akashanath, July 2005 e.v.

Introduction
Like many occultists, I avoid mentioning my practices to my secular friends wherever possible. One reason is the association most people seem to have between ritual magick and human sacrifice. My denials are often met with suspicion and disbelief. Today most serious occultists, whilst acknowledging that ritual slaughter played its part in the distant past, will scoff at the idea that it could have more than a symbolic role in modern magick.

An example of the gap between reality and popular perception can be found in the myth of Aleister Crowley, initiate of the Golden Dawn and founder of Thelema. Whilst it has now become relatively commonplace to hear him described as a child murderer, Crowley was actually never accused of this during his lifetime. He was, however, widely and publicly blamed for the death of his pupil Raoul Loveday. According to the Crowley Biography The Great Beast(1) , Loveday visited Crowley at his Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù in the summer of 1922. In April 1923, he died of dysentery. The London Press, although not levelling any direct accusation, called for an immediate investigation. While the reports seemed mainly to be an excuse to reprint salacious details of life in the Abbey, they nevertheless had some impact on the newly installed Italian fascist government. On April 23rd, if The Great Beast is to be believed, Crowley was summoned to the Police Station and shown an expulsion order. He left a week later.

Whilst Crowley’s murderous activities may have been largely imaginary, Mussolini may have had his reasons for being suspicious. Like most small Sicilian towns in the orbit of Palermo, Cefalù was run by Mafiosi. A new book by John Dickie titled Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia(2) , cites new evidence from research carried out after the Italian Mafia trials of the early 1990s. This material, much of it published in English for the first time, confirms long-standing rumours about links between the Mafia and other secret societies. It can now be verified that, like members of many magickal groups including the Golden Dawn and Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), members of the Mafia underwent initiation rituals, swore binding oaths of loyalty, and were organised into units based on geographical boundaries. Unlike their occult contemporaries, Mafiosi were then obliged to carry out tactical murders on the say so of their superiors, murders which often carried a gruesome symbolism.

The Origins of The Mafia
Before the Mafia trials of the 1990s, many myths surrounding the secretive criminal fraternity were deliberately allowed to survive, and in some cases were actively fostered by Mafiosi themselves. One such notion was that the organisation stretched back to feudal times, representing a kind of underground aristocracy during successive foreign occupations. In his book Dickie argues convincingly that the Mafia in fact grew up during the Bourbon dynasty that ruled Sicily from Naples during the early nineteenth century. The Neapolitans brought with them Freemasonry, which grew in popularity from the 1820s. With its secret meetings and signs of recognition, masonry provided the perfect cover for revolutionaries and others not content with the Bourbon regime. As early as the 1830s nationalistic Sicilian lodges known as ‘carbonari’ (charcoal burners) were reported as cornering the market for certain types of government contract. Following Garibaldi’s successful uprising in 1860s, Sicily was incorporated into the new Italian state. Being ruled from Rome rather than Naples brought little advantage to the impoverished Sicilians, however. The secret societies did not disband, but refocussed their activities on extortion. Soon they had establised a stranglehold on the island’s valuable citrus trade. It was through this that connections were first made with American ports, connections which would multiply in value enromously when the export of lemons and limes was supplemented by a much more lucrative commerce - in opiates.

The Mafia Initiation
The Mafia initiation ceremony is cited a few times in the book, based on ‘primary sources’ such as accounts from Mafia defectors. Details vary, but the basic pattern follows that laid out on page 160.

only six months earlier Verro [the initiate, a local trade unionist] had been woken at dawn by a handful of gravel thrown at the window of his house in via San Nicolò. As agreed, he dressed quickly. Once outside, he was led a short distance to the the house of a man he knew, a gabelloto [farm foreman] on one of the estates that surrounded the town. There he was shown into a room where he found a group of men around a table. At the centre were three rifles and a piece of paper with a skull drawn on it.

The presiding boss began by explaining the purpose of the meeting was to admit Verro to the secret association - the members called themselves Fratuzzi (‘the brothers’). When prompted the initiate Verro explained how the social movement he had founded in Corleone aimed to champion the interests of the oppressed proletarian masses. Satisfied with this account, the boss warned of the dangers that faced any man who did not keep the society secret.

Verro was asked to repeat the Fratuzzi oath of loyalty before holding out his right hand thumb to be pricked with a pin. The blood was smeared on the image of the skull, which was then burned. In the light of the flames, Verro exchanged a fraternal kiss with each of The Mafia initiation ceremony is cited a few times in the book, based on ‘primary sources’ such as accounts from Mafia defectors. Details vary, but the basic pattern follows that laid out on page 160.

“… only six months earlier Verro [the initiate, a local trade unionist] had been woken at dawn by a handful of gravel thrown at the window of his house in via San Nicolò. As agreed, he dressed quickly. Once outside, he was led a short distance to the the house of a man he knew, a gabelloto [farm foreman] on one of the estates that surrounded the town. There he was shown into a room where he found a group of men around a table. At the centre were three rifles and a piece of paper with a skull drawn on it.

The presiding boss began by explaining the purpose of the meeting was to admit Verro to the secret association - the members called themselves Fratuzzi (‘the brothers’). When prompted the initiate Verro explained how the social movement he had founded in Corleone aimed to champion the interests of the oppressed proletarian masses. Satisfied with this account, the boss warned of the dangers that faced any man who did not keep the society secret.

Verro was asked to repeat the Fratuzzi oath of loyalty before holding out his right hand thumb to be pricked with a pin. The blood was smeared on the image of the skull, which was then burned. In the light of the flames, Verro exchanged a fraternal kiss with each of the mafiosi in turn. He was told that, to introduce himself to any member of the Fratuzzi, he was to touch his incisors and complain of a toothache. He was now a member of the Corleone cosca of the mafia.”

In some versions, the image of the skull is replaced with the image of a saint, and the rifles with knives or daggers. The author of Cosa Nostra suggests parallels with masonic initiations, without going into details, and indeed there are some. In particular, there are marked similarities between the above and the so-called ‘Vengeance Grades’. Although unfashionable nowadays, these enjoyed a wide popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries. The basic motif, as always, revolved around the murder of the Master Builder of the Temple of Jerusalem, Hiram Abif. In this version of the myth, the initiate discovers one of the assassins and plunges a knife into his breast. The Vengeance Grades have a particular resonance within Red Lodge masonry because of it’s Templar grades, and the oath of vengeance allegedly sworn by the Templars’ 23rd Grand Master, Jacques de Molay.

According to occult legend the Order goes ‘underground’ after being betrayed by the Church and French King. Whilst burning at the stake, de Molay cries out to God for vengeance - a prayer that is answered by the death of both Pope and King within the year. The coming decades also see the end of the French Capetian dynasty, with many of the remaining monarchs meeting unpleasant ends. This led them to become known as the Rois Maudits, or cursed line. Interestingly, the Vengeance Grades have often been cited by the Catholic Church as evidence of the murderous and un-Christian nature of masonry. As Cosa Nostra now reveals, though, the Mafia had at least as much overlap in membership with the Priesthood as with the Masons.

Crowley, of course, would have known a great deal about the Vengeance Grades: as ‘Outer Head’ of the Ordo Templi Orientis (or Order of the Eastern Temple), he would have had a special interest in the Templar grades of English masonry, and may well have used his Italian travels as an opportunity to familiarise himself with the variants practised abroad. Sicily was itself an important Crusader stronghold, part of a chain of island fortresses that brought supplies to, and treasure from, the Holy Land. Also the skull was an important Templar symbol (often but not always combined with the two crossed thigh bones now usually thought of in connection with pirates).

Of course, the skull also has a much more obvious secular meaning, which bears directly on the work of the Cosa Nostra. According to Dickie, murder was absolutely at the core of Mafia operations. In 19th and early 20th century Sicily, poverty was nearly universal and life was cheap. Dickie’s book documents numerous killings over incidents such as vandalised bushes or slight discourtesies, which could be interpreted as deliberate insults and therefore threats to the authority of Mafia bosses. One police informant is strangled (symbolising silence) after first having had his arm cut off (symbolising the futility of opposing the Mafia). Another boy is held hostage until his 14th birthday, and then strangled (murder of children was forbidden).

For me, the Mafia (as well as the Masons) exemplify the folly of taking oaths of loyalty and secrecy more seriously that one’s oaths to the gods or the higher self. Obedience and secrecy in secret societies may once have been necessitated by persecution, but nowadays is hard to justify. Personally, I like the injunction in Lokanath’s translation of the Ganesha Upanishad: “This Arthava Shira [Magickal Text] should not be given to those not pupils.” The requirement for secrecy is qualified: it’s OK to share with genuine students, but not to boast or try to impress those who have no real interest. All of which brings me full circle, to why I don’t talk about magick to my secular friends. All things being considered, there are usually plenty of other areas of mutual interest, often topics where I have more to learn and my friends have more to say. My magickal intent remains focussed, and my friends don’t start looking at me nervously and wondering if the rumours are true ...

References

1 Symonds, John (1951) The Great Beast: The Life of Aleister Crowley, Rider, London. Chapter XXI ‘The Gods Claim A Victim’, pp.197 -215
2 Dickie, John (2004) Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia, Coronet, London

Conroy Maddox, the last British surrealist

2005-06-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

Conroy Maddox, the last-surviving British surrealist painter from the original pre-war movement, died on January 14th 2005. He had just turned 92 years old. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on Friday 21st and George Melly, a long-time friend, delivered the eulogy.

From about 1995, he had paid regular visits to the Talking Stick (later Secret Chiefs) talks forum in London, always accompanied by his improbably young companion of 25 years, Des Mogg. In the early days, Des was doing a PhD in Roman Mosaics and it was her interest in mythology and the Roman Gods which first brought Conroy onto the London pagan scene. In the last years of both their lives, Conroy and the late Gerald Suster were to become especially good friends. Over the succeeding years, Des gave one Talking Stick talk and Conroy gave two but it is from the yearly Saturnalias that Conroy is most remembered because it was said (vile calumny!) that Conroy told the same two jokes each time. In fact, he told many jokes but it amused people to pretend to remember only the 'flea' joke and the 'onion' joke...

Conroy's passion for Surrealism had begun in 1935. Silvano Levy, in 'Surreal Enigmas' (essays and writings about and by Conroy) tells how, after the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, the young 24 year old untrained Birmingham painter headed to France:

"In the hot summer of 1937 he gathered sufficient money (the return fare was then £2 10s) and set off for Paris to meet the French Surrealists. On the day he had planned to meet Georges Hugnet, the owner of his hotel advised his client that rain was likely and that he should take an umbrella. As he reached the Rue de Seine, where Hugnet lived, Maddox saw a man coming towards him, wearing a toga and carrying an umbrella. As the two met, they immediately started fencing. After a little party in the street, the stranger introduced himself as Raymond Duncan, the brother of Isadora Duncan...."

Because of techniques like automatism and interest in dreams, surrealists and occultists usually found much common ground and, in France, there had been close contact between the painters and the French hermeticists and alchemists. But, even though Conroy's works included pieces called 'Hermetic Symbols' (1942) and 'The Alchemist' (1988), he could never bring himself to love the more formalised versions of the esoteric arts:

"The seed of religion has never failed to produce its own varieties of rotting fruit: the mystic symbols 3, 5 and 7 of Rosicrucian philosophy, the cheesecloth apparitions of Spiritualism and more recently the Mandalas made by the admiring old ladies of the priest-doctor Jung."

Conroy was deeply anti-militaristic and hated organized religion, both traits having been inherited from his father who had been wounded in the First World War. His anti-religious attitude (and his delightful cheekiness) might be seen in his continual mocking use of the image of nuns. There is a series of photographs, taken in 1946, called 'Entertaining A Nun', which include the scenes 'Conroy Maddox strangling a nun' and 'Conroy Maddox stabbing a nun' and 'Conroy Maddox about to strike a supine nun'. In one of his writings, he says: "The history of Christianity is the history of a creeping sickness: for submission and obedience before the fear imagery of priestcraft, humanity is offered the dubious honour of being clasped to its filthy bosom." And then the nuns again... "I am waiting outside a restaurant in Greek Street. Two Sisters of Mercy pass quarrelling. I watch them to the end of the street and saw one of them push the other into the gutter."

But, while religion could only ever be a source of vitriol or mockery from him, magic had its allure, especially his later years, and showed itself in works called 'The Necromancer' (1961), 'The Sorceress' (1991) and 'The Black Arts' (1993).

The last time I saw Conroy was on 24th June last year in a nursing home in Belsize Park. That day, he was deep in Alzheimer abstraction and the man I talked to for 40 minutes was just the shell of the beautiful, twinkling person I had known. During the whole monologue, the only flicker of interest was when I told him of the thousands of pagans who had gathered at Stonehenge a few days earlier for the Solstice. Des told me that he had many lucid days after that, after he moved to the Royal Free Hospital. She visited him almost every day and it is fitting that Conroy's last words were for her. He said to her: "Come back. Wait for you". He died soon after.

And the final words are, again, George Melly's: "It is easy to visualize him, Harpo Marx-like, in pursuit of a nun, through the leafy streets of Belsize Village, and he in turn pursued by Ms Mogg, his androgynous companion, the 'cabin-boy' of Lambolle Road, whose treasures are horror videos and whose parents are half Conroy's age." Caroline

Note: Des will be organizing a celebration of Conroy's life at Secret Chiefs, sometime in the late Spring

'Caliban's Redemption' David Parry (review)

2005-06-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

Reviewed by Charlotte
The prospect of writing a review…of a book of poetry…I must admit threw me into a state that was uncomfortably reminiscent of school assignments and essays and said assignments subsequent desecration of beauty in the name of literary analysis.

So I'm going to bypass that conditioning of old, and write this my way: warts, stilted grammar, sloppy syntax and all.

I was given 'Caliban's Redemption' some time ago, despite my interest in poetry having diminished over the years in favour of non-fiction with the occasional embellishment of literary fluff. Thus it wasn't until last week that I started, finally, reading 'Caliban's Redemption' and discovered a truly wonderful and fascinating book.

The contents are poetry mixed with what I consider to be a poetic prose which form a series of themes that can be flow read over to simply appreciate the beauty of the words, structure and emotional effect; or read more deeply to enjoy the excitement of insights around perspectives of beauty and grotesquery; sexuality and magick and concepts of non indulgent, angry, vital and transformative alienation.

The book alludes to the work of Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Crowley, as well as to Greek and Egyptian Mythos, and concepts of initiation.

This is never done in a trite and clichéd manner though, and always touched with a depth and perspective that opened up new directions of thought and emotion for me. Despite the more cerebral references and explorations, this is also a very physical and earthy book.

It is about power and strength and the joy that can be found in spinning conditioned values of right and wrong, good and evil, beauty and ugliness on its head.

It is a descent into an underworld and a return as a sweat and semen stained, dirty, ugly, angry and very empowered God.

The cover is great; an image of a befurred, bellied beast of a man, face obscured in foliage; apt imagery considering the contents and a powerful call for me to return to my old love and enjoyment of poetry.

Ars Necrotica

2005-06-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

This article exists as an addendum to Chapter 19, WITCHA, Mandrake of Oxford, where we have introduced the subject of Necromancy; Necros Mantia, being the summoning by goety of the shades of the departed. Such may be for the purposes of interviewing the shade, perhaps to discover some secret kept by them in life, or to employ that greater wisdom that comes with the passing into death. The shade might also be bound unto the service of the witch, and made to obey their command. It is that art forbidden by Mosaic Law, Levit.XIX:31; XX:6, which is abhorred by the Lord, Deut.XVIII:11, 12, and punishable by death, Levit.XX:27; cf. I Kings.XXVIII:9. Necromancy is found in every nation of antiquity, and is a practice common to paganism at all times and in all countries. It was known amongst the sorcerers of Persia, Etruria, Chaldea and Babylon. Isaias XIX:3 refers to its practice in Egypt, and in Deut.XVIII:9-12 Moses warns the Israelites against imitating the Chanaanite abominations, among which is mentioned seeking the truth from the dead. In Deut.XVIII:11, Isa.XIX:3, Vulgate, we find mention of 'pythons', which in the Hebrew are called as 'ôbôth denoting the spirits of the dead, who were consulted to learn of the future (Deut.XVIII:10-11, I KingsXXVIII:8), giving their answers through the possession of mediums (Levit.XX:27, I Kings.XXVIII:7), Isaias.VIII:19 states that necromancers 'mutter' and makes the following prediction concerning Jerusalem: "Thou shalt speak out of the earth, and thy speech shall be heard out of the ground, and thy voice shall be from the earth like that of the python and out of the ground th! y speech shall mutter" (XXIX:4). We find it practised in the time of Saul (I Kings.XXVIII:7-9), in the age of Isaias, who reproaches the Hebrews on this ground (VIII:19, XIX:3, XXIX:4, etc.), and of Manasses (IV Kings.XXI:6, II Par.XXXIII:6). It is to that art employed by the anonymous witch of Endor, whom Saul commands to summon the soul of Samuel (I Kings.XXVIII). In ancient Greece and Rome the rites of nekromanteia, psychomanteia, or psychopompeia were performed in dark caverns, in volcanic regions, or near rivers and lakes, such as that celebrated oracle in Laconia, in a large and deep cavern from which black and stinkings vapour issued, and which was considered as one of the entrances to the cthonian realms. So too were they performed in Thesprotia, besides the river Acheron, which was supposed to be one of the rivers leading into the underworld, and at Aornos in Epirus and Heraclea on the Propontis, and in Italy was the oracle of Cumæ summoned in a cavern near Lake Avernus in Campania. It is spoken of in the narrative of Ulysses' voyage to Hades (Odyssey, XI), which tells of his evocation of souls by means of the various rites as taught by Circe.

Thus we may see that Necromancy is amongst our most ancient of traditions, for indeed it has been known amongst men since the first aeon. It is spoken of at length in many of the classical grimoire of the craft. As divinities frequently were but human heroes raised to the rank of gods, necromancy, mythology, and demonology are in close relation, and the oracles of the deceased are not always easily distinguished from those of other spirits. Those rites as are employed in the evocation of shades are in all ways similar to those of other forms of goety, whether summoning daemons, phaeries, or familiars.

You may know that such shades still love their relinquished bodies after death, and are allured to their proximity as young lovers are one to the other. This is especially so with the shades of criminal men, who have died under unfulfilled oaths, or harbouring guilt for things they did not take chance to put right. Also, with those who have died suddenly, by violence and surprise, and the shades of those awaiting burial. From hence it is, that the shades of the dead are summoned by the application of some part of their relict body, and by the sacrificing of fresh blood. Other offerings are of bones, flesh, eggs, milk, oils, honey, as with the traditional Soul Cakes, by the preparation of food such as is known as the Dumb Supper, and such things as do remind the shade of its manifestation in physical form.

The circumstances and conditions of the Necromantic Art, such as the time, place, and rites to be followed, depend upon various conceptions entertained concerning the nature of the departed spirit; its abode, its relations with the earth and with the body in which it previously resided. Conjurations as these are most effectively performed in those places that the shades of the dead are known to most frequent. Such might be some place of importance to the shade when in life, of which they felt affection, and which might allure them. If the death was violent or sudden, the shade may often be called from proximity to such a place as their shade was separated from its body. Alternatively, they might be drawn to some place where a spirit trap has been lain, that they may be punished and enslaved by the sorcerer. Those places also suitable are those that are revealed in dream, vision, or are known for apparitions, or upon whose soil much blood has spilt. To such a place ! are the bones, flesh, sacrifices, perfumes, and tools of evocation taken.

The lore of the graveyard, and of death, is an uncomfortable subjects to consider. It inspires an irrational superstitious fear, as any midnight graveyard will, despite being hallowed ground and thus theoretically 'safe'. Even the most modern mind can become unsettled by places. Even in our apparently enlightened age, we are still surrounded by taboos concerning all things deathly and funereal, as anyone who has ever found employ in 'death-care' will contest.

Nevertheless, the use of human remains was common in our old spell-craft. Human bones, usually powdered, were employed in many of those remedies sold by medieval apothecaries. Mixing such with red wine was believed to provide relief from dysentery. Another cure, this time for gout, included mucilage scraped from shin bones 'found' in a graveyard. A tricksterish spell recorded in the nineteenth century was to mix the burnt remains of a corpse with ale, so as to vastly improve its potency. Medieval sorcerers were keen to acquire them for their workings, with the theft of human remains from graveyards and tumuli being frequent. Similarly, such unwholesome ingredients provide a regular part of much surviving folk magic, both in England as elsewhere. Modern practitioners, being more likely to acquire their ingredients from a reliable supplier than go grave robbing, have largely substituted the hoodoo powder called 'graveyard dust' for spells whose earlier forms would r! equire necrotic substances.

The most famous example of necrotic witchcraft is probably the 'hand of glory'. Many other spells employed the left hand of a corpse, which may be used for both benign and malign ends. Such beliefs, although held more rarely today, are still alive amongst certain witches in East Anglia. When I returned to live in Norwich, Norfolk, and reforged contact with certain hereditary streams existent here, I met a young witch who confessed to owning such a gruesome item which she used in her spellcasting, now mummified and over a hundred years old. The essence of the belief seems to be that a certain portion of a person's 'spiritual power' may reside in its corpse after death, so that an item becomes powerful because it is essentially haunted. As is known amongst ghost hunters, those who have lead traumatic lives are more likely to leave some kind of 'aetheric recording', and this is in keeping with the idea that the body parts used in spells are often those taken from cri! minals, or those that have died a sudden or traumatic death.

That part of our skeletal structure believed most likely to maintain some semblance of the spirit is undoubtedly the skull. It was once believed to be the essential vehicle and centre of the soul, and of all psychic awareness. Thus the warriors of ancient times took great pleasure in collecting heads, just as in modern times we believe the seat of consciousness to be the brain, and thus still essentially 'within the head'. In the rites of witchcraft, the skull may be seen not merely as the 'container' of an individual spirit, but as a point of contact between those who serve in the circle and the ancestors.

Let it be understood that such things as oils and human remains are not sufficient in themselves for the raising of shades. It is of greatest importance that the summoner has prepared their own mind with meditations and rites of quiescent gnosis, the ultimate expression of which is that which has been called the Death Posture. Such periods of self preparation and purification are instructed within all the grimoires of antiquity, although couched in the language and beliefs of their time. There may also be employed certain unguents and potions known to the witches, whose effect is to transport the soul of the witch to a place 'between the worlds', and which may serve to heighten astral perceptions. It is through the trance of the witch that the spirits shall manifest, and any disturbance shall jeopardise the operation in its entirety. Moreover, there are things which may aid or hinder the operation of which I may not speak, since they are known only to the dead the! mselves. Such shades are allured by those things that do move the spirit, be they of rationality and intellect, or imaginative and intuition. Such may include the use of poetry, song, sound, enchantments; such as are provided in the classical grimoire, and are known to the witches of the sinister craft.

Nathaniel J. Harris is the author of 'Witcha- A Book of Cunning', published by Mandrake of Oxford. A Yahoo group discussing those disciplines outlined in his work may be found at- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/witcha/

The Art of Ryszard Gancarz

2005-06-12T04:07:00.000-07:00

By David William Parry
Semantically, the words fate and destiny are not seen as synonyms. Most people choose to lead quite ordinary lives and in that sense accept their fate. They could be compared to sleep-walkers who stumble through life, never realising the astonishing fact that miraculous powers surround them. Only on the rarest of occasions do they stir from their dissatisfying slumbers, irritated by the unsettling thought that there must be more to existence than the pedestrian pleasures of mundane experience. Yet this very irritation has caused some people to awaken into a new life of freedom and creativity. The prickling of their dissatisfaction has acted like a grain of aspirational sand in an oyster shell and produced one of the blackest pearls. This is the power of modern art at its best and is potently manifest in the works of the relatively unknown Polish painter Ryszard Gancarz.

When encountering his work for the first time many observers are almost forced to leave the twenty-four hour nightmare of self imposed limitation behind them. They are reborn into the realities of a higher knowledge: a type of learning which completely transforms a person and takes them beyond the sphere of the simply human into the world of contemporary imagism. There are others of course, and the names of the men and women who have recently taken this irrecoverable step are known to both the history of art and literary legend. Having said that, in ages past, imagist experiments sometimes caught critical attention for the wrong reasons. In Edwardian England for example, the notorious Aleister Crowley seems to have set the precedent by leading a life devoted to sexuality and symbol, thereby focusing the hypocritical sensibilities of his peers on scandal rather than artistic endeavour.

At times, Crowley even seems to have forgotten that the impact of visual languages derived ! from an image seek to evoke the atmosphere or mood surrounding material things, whereas symbols dialogue with the numinous itself and require a theological methodology. Moreover, the transitory and often lurid visions of certain other confused imagists defended by some of the better known Parisian Salons during the late 1800s occasionally reached an abstract (albeit largely misinterpreted) moral level. In order to achieve this bewildering status, critics claimed that the armour of artistic integrity had to be laid aside and the dubious protection assured by the gift of discernment openly spurned. These comments caused an open hostility to arise between the already contentious factions struggling at the fringes of this embryonic movement and allowed the ascent of a number of weird and wonderful people into the public world of so-called symbolist "decadence". Perhaps this is typified in the character of the Sar Peladan and his fanatical followers. To be sure Peladan, for all ! of his energetic enthusiasm, never really seems to have been regarded as a first rate figure in his own day either as an occult novelist or as an aesthetician. Unsurprisingly, pundits were quick to point out that his best known work "Le Vice Supreme" (published in 1884), received strangely pedantic reviews. Nevertheless, he has remained a rather picturesque individual whose own personal participation in "forbidden" pursuits appear to be somewhat negligible.

From the beginning of his rather chequered career Peladan attracted a retinue of reprobates and villains. One of these was the befudelled esoteric thinker Stanislas De Guaita who didn't seem to grasp the subtle and yet profound differences between the occult and the iconic arts. When they first met they fanned each other's egos into a frenzy of pseudo-Rosicrucian ideas with the intention of stimulating the paintings and sculptures of their clique. It should be remembered that Christian Rosenkreutz was a legendary fifteenth century seer of doubtful historicity whose supposed doctrines were in succeeding centuries heavily embellished by exotic ideas and extravagant hallmarks drawn from a wide range of German and Jewish folktales. However, undeterred by a factual analysis of these events Peladan decided to become a prominent figure in the liminal world of French Rosicrucianiam.

This attitude reveals an age-old distinction between those who pursue imagism as a means to an end and true imagists who recognise that they are actually explorers in the realm of imagination. Gancarz without the slightest doubt belongs to the latter school. This is why I should warn the reader from the outset, that his art is dangerous and must be approached with great caution. For Gancarz, imagination should not be confused with fantasy, which seems to be only a collection of random erotic associations and distorted sensory information. On the contrary, imagination is an empathic faculty of the psyche, which may be developed into an organ of subjective perception through which valuable altered states of awareness can be grasped. In a sense, imagism could be called the science of the imagination and stands along with logic as one of the greatest achievements of the human spirit. With this in mind it may be helpful to examine the techniques Gancarz employs to strengthen the ! third eye of his imaginative cognition.

His art seems to argue that everything in this world is relatively true and that the power of image is the binding agent, which secures each creative success or traps the otherwise evolving soul. Only the free flow of form, emancipated from false notions of intellectual quality can release the instincts of the heart. Indeed, his thesis explores contradiction along with restricted comprehension as the principle modalities conditioning our encounter with art. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Gancarz allows classic images to surface from the blurred ephemeral boundaries of post-modernity. Through the active chaos created by his clever use of colour-metaphor, we may observe anonymous human heads, buildings, highly sexualised female torsos, scribbled text in both English and Polish, a bleak and colourless church, ironically repetitious scenarios vaguely reminiscent of Andy Warhol at his best, and even the occasional phallus. Nevertheless, the sign or mark of his personal a! rtistry may be read throughout every composition. Moreover, Gancarz has gone further than other contemporary imagists due to the indirect suggestion that a visual doctrine of correspondences underlies his work. This idea is vital to the practise of his art because Gancarz is contending that all material things have a natural as well as an aesthetic meaning. He is attempting to guide his admirers through a sentient hieroglyphic labyrinth, inscribed with depictions of deeper realities. What is more, Gancarz claims that once read and decoded into manageable portraits these living images can be finally grasped. Fascinatingly, he then alludes to the possibility that they may be re-built in the sensuous mind transforming both body and essence. His art therefore, is a disturbing journey into alchemical cartographies.

There is a long creative history behind pictures of this kind and Gancarz has made a significant as well as provocatively innovative contribution to the imagist movement. It may be that for Gancarz, the primary error of received imagism was to put "expertise" on a pedestal and then defend its fallible pronouncements as though they were insights into a fixed aesthetic order. For him, this overly theoretical scheme of interpretation is vacuous. On the other hand, he is fully aware that discovering art may be a labour of love, but it is also a victim of human lethargy. For Gancarz, these are the twin Herculean pillars upholding the prominent imagist notion that art demands personal sacrifice. It can only be lamented then, that so few artists in their beleaguered attempts to define the parameters of painting have proved capable of rising to the challenge posed by his work. Instead, his colleagues have tended to compound the problem by embracing a naïve multi-cultural overview, ! which increasingly obscures artistic clarity. If present day imagists, bereft of any intellectually shared visual language, endlessly extend their yogic contortions to include allegedly analogous shapes (themselves divorced from any meaningful context), then the notion of creative coherence has finally been abandoned. Certainly, western hubris usually accompanies these broad brush-strokes of misinterpretation, often allied to the unfortunate fact that these superfluous depictions prove, on closer inspection, to need additional development themselves. Yet, this is the moment of triumph, not defeat. Gancarz has announced that uncharted imagist expeditions have ended and a new age of imaginative integrity has begun.

David Parry's poetry collection 'Caliban's Redemption' is published by Mandrake and features a cover illustration by Gancarz