Editor's note: This
will
be a regular feature in Silver Star Journal. Any and all readers are
encouraged
to submit reviews that they feel pertain to the magickal community. We
also actively seek publications of all kinds for review in this space.
Send
submissions (or requests for a snailmail address for review books and
mags) to:aion@psychicsophia.com
Reviewed by Nema
Convolvulus
and other poems, with drawings by Austin Osman Spare, by Kenneth Grant,
Starfire Publishing Ltd., BCM Starfire, London WC1N 3XX, UK, 2005
Kenneth Grant transforms poetry, as
he transforms expositional prose and novellas, into sigils, talismans
and phoenix eggs. His poems are direct in emotional and preconscious
effects, yet subtle in imagery.
In this volume are gathered three
books: Black to Black and Other Poems from 1963, The Gull's Beak and
Other Poems from 1970, and Convolvulus: Poems of Love and the Other
Darkness, until now unpublished.
Among the poems are drawings by
Austin Osman Spare. These resemble mists that swirl and condense into
faces and figures for a few moments, then melt into other images and
caricatures endlessly roiling. The drawings and the poems
generate extra dimensions among them, although both words and images
are complete in themselves.
The poems come from various levels of
time and experience. There are songs of natural beauty in "Bright
Water" and "All Soft-Winging Things", melancholy meditation in "A Dead
Hydrangea", a hymn to Kali in "Song of Adoration", and a generous
variety of other nuanced subjects.
The format of the poems strikes me as
effective minimalism: with the exception of proper nouns, only
the initial word in a sentence is capitalized. The purposes of
punctuation, in most cases, are served by spaces. The titles are all
capitalized. I find these choices to be transparent, aiding clarity to
the reception of the words themselves.
Show is better than tell, in my
opinion, especially in poetry. This one caught my eye with its title,
which refers to a method of causing change to occur through written
symbols of desire.
SIGILS
My massive book whose leaves you turn with a single eyelash wheels round in space spirals
a velum grimoire scratched with sigils from a future aeon whispering with ageless spells unnerving even the
grey magus who waiting for the Word scans the twisted runes as hell's own hieroglyphics
A spider's web that only vampires
leave unbroken in their passage.
These images of shaped, meaningful
lines hint of a progression toward a desired disappearance. Each
image speaks to a weight and complexity that fades from one stanza to
the next while clarity emerges in the fading. My immediate response was
"Of course!"
Mr. Grant's verbal images generate
graphic images for my mind's eye, pictures moving in more ways than
one. He speaks a fluent Surrealish that changes my current way of
looking at things, whatever that way may be. For example:
" The backs of women shadowed by the trees are flowing with a pure white line on which the smooth gull glides not knowing evening ghouls will feed or lead their flight of newly dappled
brides along the deep dark ways where hunger rides a darker phase than falling night."
--from The Backs of Leaves
The transition from one scene to
another suggests the movement from day to night, from shore to ocean,
from gull to ghouls, movement that Dali would achieve through
juxtaposition of images and objects. I was struck by the amount of
changes here, transitions precisely conveyed by honed words.
Many of Mr. Grant's writings are
dark, in subject as well as in mood and color. Some poems in
Convolvulus remind me of the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe. Others seem
more attuned to the atmosphere of H.P. Lovecraft's stories. My favorite
example of the latter is a vignette of horror, a gem called
THE WEED
There is a monstrous growth in a garden close, its roots imbibe a turbid putrefaction from the quaking soil which breathes a black malignant oil of rank decay.
Sometimes a stray and staring bird is snared, its tremulous gyrations stilled:
and all is quiet and calm, fulfilled, in a garden close…
Where these two artists of horror
differ most is in their attitudes: Lovecraft seems to equate "alien"
with "monstrous" while enjoying his own terror, where Grant seems more
of a Trickster who knows what strings to pull. I found The Weed to be
slyly humorous. The first stanza seems a tribute to Lovecraft, but the
other two convey an innocence like that of a hunting cat.
The poems were written over a
long span of time, so some of them exhibit more experiential depth than
others. On the subject of death, Poe mourns his lost Lenore,
Lovecraft seems to equate death with madness, but Grant writes:
"Our span of being, being vaster than the breath, a death we cannot comprehend sails past, its pale wings trailing moths which like the summer
lightning tremble over blue waters."
--from The Silent Ones
I was struck by the serenity of this
image, its calm observation of passage, and its cool bliss. It would be
the logical conclusion to a decorous and polite review. However, I
think this final example, which celebrates a dark Babalon in the
passionate words of a dark Priest, is a better valediction.
NOCTUA
Woman of Night! your demon screech-owl shudders on its Lilith-flight across the blackened hells where hideous hissings spout from the mouths of Hecate's shells
Your leprous toads leap evilly in echoing pools where lightless moons drown their blood-drained ghostliness and noxious ghuls at cross-roads cast their runes
The smooth white alabaster of your skin is phosphorescent with a million sins that lust behind your eyes charging their limpid light with tawny lies that turn my soul to dust
Yet the fascination of your serpent mouth sucks in the semen of the sun that dies with a scarlet face
Your spider's web spans space laces that to this across the black abyss its glittering ropes binding the pylon of my erect and
sentient sentinel now mummified beneath the silky kiss of your
obscene caress
Black as ice embalmed piercing the colder dream of white
I cling to you like bat to barn-loft
beam And slake my thirst upside down At the climax of your evil rite
O Queen of Night!
Nema
MAGAZINE REVIEW By Aion 131
Silkmilk #3
From the center an image falls out And I am utterly taken by Baphomet
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erupts riding the Beast Yet she is the Beast Multi-cultural flashes of brilliance Spirals of words and gnosis Poetry, art, articles Delving into the deep and mysterious
Hidden Lore Oozing with star fires and emanations Scarlet Women and Horned Gods Rituals, transmissions, deep Lore Spells and Invocations Kali, Sekhmet, Maat, Shakti, Madonna… The Great Mother in all her glory The light is mine This Mag consumes me! On the back cover… “By the Door she waits for your
truth…”
Indeed!
666stars- top rated in all spheres En-joy the most artistically powerful
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Beast/WoMan
Lao Tzu/Tao Te Ching: A Book about
the Way and the Power of the Way, a new english version by Ursula K. Le
Guin with the collaboration of J.P. Seaton, Shambhala 1998, 125 pages.
The Tao Te Ching is in my opinion
among the greatest books on earth, and the incredible subtlety of its
infinite simplicity has not always been easy to capture in the many
translation by scholars and others. Ursula K. Le Guin, however, is a
poet who has devoted some 30 years of study and of life to this
wonderful fresh rendering, which I find clear and translucent,
beautifully expressed, profoundly wise and humorous. Her brief
commentary is illuminating, her notes on the process of the writing and
comparisons to earlier attempts very useful. She was assisted by
Professor J.P. Seaton with the technical and linguistic aspects. This
is a work of high art which has gently unfolded through decades of
penetrating insight and careful thought, and I am delighted to
recommend it to everyone. The author is one of our national literary
treasures in the fields of fantasy, science fiction, and other tales
far less susceptible to limiting classifications; many of my readers
may well be familiar with her Earthsea sextet.
The Hidden Messages In Water by Dr
Matsuro Emoto, translated by David A. Thayne, 160 pages, many
photographs, Beyond Words Publications 2004.
An unusual translation from Japanese
which has somehow become a worldwide new age sensation, and a new way
of understanding the mystical nature of water and the many ways in
which it somehow seems to receive and transmit the imprints of human
thought. The author is a naturopathic physician who developed a novel
method of performing microphotography on ice crystals and analyzing
their forms. To his surprise these often quite beautiful crystals took
very different shapes when exposed to positive (happy thoughts, chanted
mantras) or negative (death metal, angry threats) influences or when
drawn from pure or polluted streams. He provides many lovely examples
that contrast clear and colorful snowflake structures with dull and
asymmetrical defective forms, and proceeds to explore an assortment of
unusual insights drawn from both modern scientific and other sources in
a warmly human book with an important spiritual message that has very
interesting implications for mages as well as the general public. There
are currently two additional sequels.
Etheric Anatomy: The Three Selves and
Astral Travel by Victor H. Anderson with additional material by Cora
Anderson, Acorn Guild Press 2004, 97 pages.
The late seer and healer Victor
Anderson may well be termed the poet laureate of the Wiccan Revival,
and with his wife Cora he formulated the rather secretive yet highly
influential Feri Tradition, which drew upon many shamanic influences
including the northern European, Native American, Vodou and Hoodoo, and
especially Hawaiian Huna. Only a very few of their writings have
appeared, including Cora Anderson’s important work Fifty Years in the
Feri Tradition. This slender volume presents rare essays and insights
upon subtle anatomy, the nature of the soul, out-of-body travel and
astral sexuality drawn from his many years of personal experience and
work as a healer, and this experience is worthy of both attention and
respect.
Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti by
Phyllis Galembo, 113 pages oversized, illustrated, Ten Speed Press 2005.
A volume of powerful photography
documenting the temples and priesthood of Haiti’s magical folk
religion, with an excellent text covering the Spirits, Sacred Places,
Symbols & Ritual Objects, and Practitioners. There are a
number of traditional chants, powerful modern poems and quotations from
scholars and other writers. It is in the many brilliantly colorful
images that the work comes alive, however: in the household altars,
personal artworks, and devotees garbed in the costumes of their patron
loa. Vodou was the secretive practice of the colonial slave revolt, the
creative mystery that kept alive the ancestral spirits and suppressed
culture of West African tribes and continues to give hope and meaning
to some of the poorest and most politically oppressed people in the
western hemisphere today. Seeing the famous poster of Natassja Kinski
naked and wrapped in a snake on the wall of a shrine as a
representation of the serpent god Dambhalla-Wedo is but one example of
the subversive ways in which Vodou both appropriates images and
permeates the entire Haitian culture.
Borough Satyr, The Life and Art of
Austin Osman Spare, 86 pages plus a 7 page catalogue of the recent
exhibition at the Maas Gallery, Fulgur 2005.
Austin Osman Spare was a truly
amazing artist and an innovative sorcerer whose work is one of the
greatest influences on post-modern occultism, and he is often regarded
as both a proto-surrealist and the Godfather of Chaos magick. This
volume opens with an outstanding introductory essay by Robert Ansell,
which guides us through the different stages and styles of his work and
the evolution of his magical philosophy; and then collects a dozen rare
essays about Spare ranging throughout his career, dating from 1904 to
1999. Some are interviews by journalists and appreciations by critics,
others are by friends, patrons, and fellow artists, and one is a radio
script from 1956. In these intimate and contemporary portrayals the
sense of Spare as a person comes alive. Some are drawn from catalogues
of his exhibitions and others explore Spare's magick, including
insights from Ithell Colquhoun, Steffi Grant and Kenneth Grant.
However, it is always Spare’s art that dominates the page. Stunning
images of creative genius and atavistic power, many of them recently
exhibited at the Maas Gallery, are magnificently reproduced in full
color and clearly show why Spare was controversial throughout his life
and how completely he can still capture the imagination today. There
are countless portraits and also examples of his more bizarre or occult
work; many are full-page illustrations and the book is the same format
as the seminal work on his life and art, Kenneth Grant's recently
reprinted Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare. This is a beautiful
piece of publishing and a window on the life and boundless creativity
of an astoundingly prolific visionary. And as always, his remarkably
suggestive gnomic aphorisms remind me of Lao Tzu on psilocybin:
“We are millions of yesterdays, and
what appears autogenetic is the work of unknown mediators who permit,
or not, our acts by the mysterious chemistry of our believing." ~ A.O. Spare
Generation Hex, edited by Jason Louv,
Disinformation 2006, 286 pages.
One of the best and most original
works on magick I have seen in the new millennium, this is a collection
of enthusiastic writings from the current generation of mages and
shamans, including creative mutations of chaos magick, personal
records, drug workings, rave and cyber-culture, politics, DNA, the
ecology…. you know, the future. First of all, it is quite good writing,
stylish, honest, fun, direct, and born of some real experience. Second,
it shows how fast the future is happening as these unique mutations
accelerate and spread through our popular and esoteric and underground
cultures. Third, this perpetual reinvention of the occult tradition
shows the immense potential of a constantly transforming power
springing from ancient forms and creatively reborn in ways that are
novel, vital, modern and exciting. I highly recommend this book to
anyone who thinks that Thelema should ever have any kind of orthodoxy,
or that the impetus of chaos magick has stalled in recent years. Big
fun!
Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic
Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius by Gary Valentine
Lachman, Disinformation 2001, 430 pages.
An outstanding and hugely amusing
history of the 20th century occult revival as seen through the lens of
popular movements and rock & roll, ranging from magick and
mysticism to tantra and zen, from the beats to the hippies to the
punks, through literature, philosophy, music, radical politics, LSD and
drug experimentation. Odd links between Manson, The Beatles, Blavatsky,
Leary, Watts, Led Zeppelin, Krishnamurti, Castaneda, Huxley, Jung,
Hesse, Lovecraft, LaVey, Crowley, Tolkien, Grant, Ginsberg, Hubbard,
the Process… a host of imported gurus… the unusual suspects. Revealing
the dark hidden depths of the self-proclaimed intelligentsia and
glitterati, making connections between all kinds of unlikely
characters, exposing the secret history of our times and of events that
even I did not know about (and I have a lifelong unhealthy interest in
this kind of stuff). The author is an erudite cultural historian who
was also a co-founder of Blondie and a guitar player with Iggy Pop, The
Know and Fire Escape.
A Dark Muse by Gary Lachman,
Thunder’s Mouth Press 2005, 384 pages.
From the same author, the additional
history of an earlier era of the Other Side, covering periods from the
Enlightenment through the fin de siecle to the modern era, from the
rosicrucians to the illuminati, the romantics to the symbolists, from
Christ to Satan… Levi & Mesmer, Blavatsky & Baudelaire,
Strindberg & Goethe, Swedenborg & Balzac, and inevitably
Aleister Crowley. Have you ever noticed that there is always an Occult
Revival going on somewhere? That is because Magick is primordial,
eternal, and always new…. There are also over 100 pages of carefully
selected texts to illustrate the era.
Sex and Rockets: The Occult
World of Jack Parsons by John Carter, introduction by Robert Anton
Wilson, 229 pages, illustrated, Feral House 1999.
I have been meaning to review this
excellent book for some time. One of America's most active early O.T.O.
lodges was run by the pioneering Californian rocket-scientist John
Whiteside Parsons, a co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that
helped create the American space program. Parsons was strongly drawn
toward the flaming archetype of Babalon, the Scarlet Woman of
Revelations; Crowleanity has inherited a tendency toward apocalyptic
aeonics quite similar to that of the U.F.O. cults. Parsons' life was a
remarkable and ultimately rather tragic magical melodrama which
intersected unfortunately with that of sci-fi hack-writer L. Ron
Hubbard, later the founder and guru of Scientology and Dianetics, a man
who is all too seldom recognized as both an early follower and
watered-down imitator of Crowley and a casual acquaintance of H.P.
Lovecraft. Jack Parsons perished in a laboratory explosion, leaving
behind a small but very striking body of work (collected in Freedom Is
A Two-Edged Sword from New Falcon Press). A grateful NASA has
appropriately named a large crater on the dark side of the moon after
him. As a lifelong rebellious spirit he is essentially the occult James
Dean, and his demise was quite unfortunate. Intelligent, charismatic
and deeply devoted to Thelema, he might have provided much stronger
continuity to a movement that had a considerable hiatus (if not a
near-death experience) after Crowley’s passing. This is without a doubt
the best account of his life to date, detailed and well documented,
collecting rare photographs, and covering all aspects of his complex
personality.
Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board
by J. Edward Cornelius, Feral House 2005, 165 pages.
A little-known chapter in the career
of Crowley involved his experimentation with the Ouija Board, as
revealed in an essay or two and considerable correspondence with Frater
Achad. The author places this material in context with ancient oracles
and methods of divination, the Angelic or Enochian workings of Dr. John
Dee, the checkered history of spiritualism in popular culture
(including the fundamentalist hysteria sparked by the book and film The
Exorcist) and the evolution of the talking board itself. Mr. Cornelius
is a clear and intelligent writer who is also an experienced practicing
magician, and he provides a ritual framework for further
experimentation, documentation and verification, as well as
considerable advice on the nature, care and feeding of spirits that is
very useful in other contexts. He appends an extensive essay on the
Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. We might recall that the
Golden Dawn was spawned in the golden age of spiritualism as a mass
movement, and there can be no doubt that many of its adherents turned a
few tables themselves. This is an informative and very entertaining
volume. Note that the planchette is essentially the fabled Triangle of
Manifestation used in medieval and renaissance ceremonial magick.
Shaping Formless Fire: Distilling the
Quintessence of Magick by Stephen Mace, New Falcon Press 2005, 91 pages.
This slender tome collects an
excellent series of essays originally presented in a German rock zine.
Mr. Mace is one of the unsung heroes of modern magick, with many
writings privately published or appearing in Chaos International
magazine, and his Stealing the Fire from Heaven was an underground
classic, merging the Abra-Melim system with Crowley, Spare, and
Castaneda back at the dawn of what has now become Chaos Magick. These
sixteen short chapters are a basic yet very clever and comprehensive
introduction to the whole range of the magical Art as he sees it, a
practical, personal and experimental approach to insights and results.
Apparently more volumes of his writings will follow, and his exposure
to a wider audience is long overdue. Such penetrating and original
thought is as rare in sorcery as it is anywhere else, and very welcome
indeed.
The Paradigmal Pirate (Liber LLL
& Liber Ventum) by Joshua S. Wetzel aka Frater Palimpsest,
privately published limited edition 2001, 149 pages, illustrated.
Chaos Magick first found its agenda
expressed in Peter Carroll’s Liber Null, the essential volume
expounding its tentative technology and conceptual underpinnings. Since
then many other magi have explored the potential, and this is a report
from the front lines. The first half expounds and draws upon working
the outline as provided by Carroll, with advice regarding lucid
dreaming, magical tools, techniques of varied and layered gnosis and
the ‘colors of magick’ agenda as a system of personal metamorphosis.
The second explores more personal creations, rites based on children’s
games, open-handed magick, the alphabet of desire, Lovecraftian
entities and use of images for both cursing and protection. This is
hard-edged, no-bullshit sorcery designed to create solid results and
foster the useful habit of reliably expecting such results. Chaos
Magick has occasionally seemed to harden into dogma for some, as its
original formulation of a conditional system worked quite well. This
volume shows that the true success of the movement lies in continuous
creativity, mutation and evolution – and in actually doing magick
instead of just reading about it!
Space/Time Magick by Taylor Ellwood,
Immanion Press 2005, 204 pages.
I have previously reviewed this
author’s Pop Culture Magic, and I like this book even more. Time and
Space are pretty damn mysterious, and are essentially linked to the
nature of reality and the consciousness that experiences what appears
to be that reality. Modern physics, however, has come to many unnerving
conclusions regarding our many previous assumptions about what is going
on in our universe, and it seems that nothing is as simple and
straightforward as it seems. Space bends and Time curves, and the past
and future are equally insubstantial from the perspective of the
present. Mr. Ellwood explores many rather surprising implications of
science and psychology as well as philosophy and occultism, of Chaos
magick, divination, and various methods of reality-shifting and
retroactive enchantment as well as future-focused operations. He also
has high regard for the work of mages such as William G. Gray, Stephen
Mace and Robert Anton Wilson. One of the Big Secrets of magick, by the
way, is that you actually do the exercises you may well find out that
they work, and that the habit of transforming your reality does indeed
have a cumulative effect and an increasing momentum, and this book has
some excellent suggestions for doing just that. This is a wide-ranging,
thought-provoking and intelligent work with profound implications for
anyone who is actually thinking about how magick works, and what we can
become by practicing it.
Gathering The Magic: Creating 21st
Century Esoteric Groups by Nick Farrell, Immanion Press 2005, 259 pages.
Recent decades have seen an explosion
of covens, cults and magico-mystical orders of various persuasions. Few
have given serious thought as to how they should realistically be
structured. This nice man has (perhaps) given the question way too much
thought, and created a detailed guide to the ways in which such orders
can successfully function in the long term. Largely based on the
workings of British orders from the Freemasons and Mather’s Golden Dawn
to Theosophy and Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light, but progressing
to many modern manifestations and personal experience, he covers ways
in which groups can be structured and run, leader/follower and sexual
conflicts can be resolved, cliques, gossip and infighting can be
transcended, and genuine spiritual egregores formed. In my own
experience such groups can be both incestuous emotional
pressure-cookers and incredibly rewarding and productive experiences,
if things are done right. This book shows how to make the systems work.
The author has also written Making Talismans and Magical Pathworking,
both published by Llewellyn.
The House of Doctor Dee by Peter
Ackroyd, Penguin Books 1994, 277 pages.
Peter Ackroyd is one of the brighter
lights of modern times: a Times literary critic, poet, prolific author
of biographies including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Moore, Blake, Milton,
Newton, Turner, Dickens, Pound and Eliot, commentaries on the Bible,
histories of ancient civilizations and especially of London and British
culture, and some very unusual and award-winning novels. The House of
Doctor Dee may well be the best fictional depiction of John Dee &
Edward Kelley to date. Employing the time-honored device of alternating
between the present and the past, the mythic spirit of London itself
unfolds in a tale of the haunted young man who inherits the home where
Dee performed his experiments in Angelic or Enochian magick centuries
before. The story comes vividly alive in the exploration of Dee’s life
and thought, much of which employs his own words and writings and the
rich astrological and alchemical symbolism of his era, a feat that
could only be accomplished by an author so completely steeped in the
legend, prose and personalities of the times. A suspenseful and
broodingly atmospheric narrative building in tension to a climactic
catharsis that achieves the level of true poetry, a vision of multiple
revelations reaching through centuries. I will also highly recommend
Hawksmoor.
The True Face of Jack the Ripper by
Melvin Harris, 216 pages, illustrated, indexed, Brockhampton Press 1999.
Jack the Ripper was perhaps the first
notorious serial killer and tabloid sensation of modern times, and he
was never caught, which maintains his fascination to the present day.
Countless books, stories, articles, films and TV shows have exploited
his image and theorized about his identity and motives: crazed madman,
royalist freemason, demented surgeon, perverted midwife, black
magician? Aleister Crowley wrote a long-ignored essay claiming to know
the occult truth, and after some considerable and careful research this
contemporary Ripperologist has concluded that he may well have been
right. Crowley’s candidate is Roslyn D’Onston, a confidence trickster,
former war surgeon and later on a very odd christian author with links
to Theosophy through Mabel Collins, a close friend of Madame
Blavatsky. These murders may indeed have been an operation of
sacrificial satanism; stranger things have happened, and while we will
never know for sure this theory makes a better case than many other
attempts. D’Onston was clearly out there, and even wrote taunting
articles on the subject of the Ripper; his presence in Whitechapel at
the time is better documented that that of many other candidates. This
is a fascinating story, filled with bizarre personalities.
From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie
Campbell, massive graphic novel compilation, Eddie Campbell Comics 2000.
Among the other glories of esoteric
Ripperology there is Alan Moore’s brilliant graphic novel From Hell,
which sort of spawned a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp. A
multi-layered and complex exploration of the whole range of Ripper
theories, largely going with the notion of a Masonic conspiracy, this
is both a complex historical mystery and a powerful sociopolitical
critique. Among my favorite segments is a lurid esoteric tour of the
sacred sites and supernatural history of London. The art consists of
outstandingly grim, subtle and evocative black & white illustration
by Eddie Campbell, whose extensive historical research reproduced the
gritty atmosphere, casual brutality and grinding poverty of the
Victorian underworld. Alan Moore is an intricate and astounding prose
stylist, and this is also one of the very few major projects in comix
with completely revealing footnotes. A truly remarkable achievement.
Think Like An Egyptian: 100
Hieroglyphs by Barry Kemp, 256 pages, illustrated, Penguin 2005.
A very entertaining work by a
Cambridge Egyptologist, who presents one hundred hieroglyphic signs as
the starting points for a rambling tour through an ancient culture
touching upon history, religion, mythology, warfare, politics,
commerce, architecture, geography, marriage, medicine, daily life, the
arts of the scribe, and crafts including metal-work, pottery,
boat-building and magic. “Egypt was the mother of magicians,” said
Clement of Alexandria, and the language and symbolism of Egypt has
flowed like the Nile through all of human history, constantly
resurfacing and reinterpreted, and still evolving today for those
Followers of Horus who have the eyes to see.
The Hymns of Orpheus: Mutations by
R.C. Hogart, Phanes Press 1993, 184 pages.
This is one of my all-time top-ten
Holy Books. The ecstatic and esoteric Orphic sect lurked in the Mystery
cults that influenced the ancient Greek philosophers who provided the
conceptual underpinnings of what we now laughingly refer to as Western
civilization. Their surviving and often fragmentary hymns have been
collected and reinterpreted here as a luminous and oracular set of
invocations to the entire Olympian pantheon and many of the other gods
and spirits. For anyone involved in the revival of classical paganism,
the creation of archetypical rituals, or the magical power of words in
poetry, this book is a treasure-house of inspiration and is also very
useful in practice. It is an absolutely beautiful poetic universe.
Tales From Ovid by Ted Hughes, 257
pages, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999.
The Metamorphoses of the ancient
Roman author Ovid is one of our traditional Great Books, a retelling of
legendary tales linked by the theme of transformation, and an
inspiration to thousands of years of artists and writers. Twenty-four
of these tales have been uniquely re-envisioned in primal and powerful
verse by the late Poet Laureate of England, in a highly-acclaimed work.
Like the previous title, it reveals the force of magical words and the
impact of primal deities and natural imagery. Greek myth evolved from
the seething primordial depths of the human psyche into a subtle and
sophisticated exploration of human experience, and to this day is still
one of the few pagan visions taught to schoolchildren. It lurks beneath
our culture, and resurfaces in our dreams.
Labyrinths & Mazes: The
Definitive Guide to Ancient & Modern Traditions by Jeff Saward, 223
pages, profusely illustrated, indexed, Gaia Books Limited 2003.
Mazes have existed from the dawn of
humanity, and the spiraling symbol of the labyrinth has appeared in
near-identical forms in widely diverse corners of the world. In recent
years there has been a revival of interest in walking the labyrinth as
a profound meditative process, and a number of fine books have
appeared. This one may well be the definitive guide to the phenomena,
covering prehistoric and classical manifestations, Asian, Indonesian
and American forms, christian cathedrals, European gardens and
hedge-mazes, and the modern rediscovery and contemporary projects. A
wide-ranging, comprehensive text completes an encyclopedic effort by an
acknowledged expert, with charts and geographic guides and fabulous
photography.
The Archeon Tarot by Timothy Lantz,
U.S. Games, 78 cards and instruction booklet.
This is a gothic and quite
good-looking computer-generated deck, drawing from the archeology of
various world cultures, atmospheric and with an effective use of color.
I enjoy it, but I am something of a collector. The artist clearly has
talent. Where I find a problem is that, handsome though the images may
be, they seem to lack some of symbolic depth that allows the Tarot to
create moments of resonance. When I look at a Magician atu, by Gawd I
want to see a wand, cup, sword and pantacle. I have studied the system
for decades, so I have the associations to fill in the blanks. But the
Tarot is a system of visual triggers for the deep mind. Without the
more elaborate imagery of some other decks (while admittedly there is
indeed a fair amount to work with here) I sense an absence of clear or
deeper meanings that would make me hesitate to recommend this deck to
someone just beginning their studies. It is, however, quite beautiful
in its way; and honestly, most of it works just fine. It is just
sufficiently stylized to make me wish for a bit more to work with
emotionally. The author is influenced by the Symbolists, which is
always a good thing; and as customary miniscule instruction booklets
go, this one is actually quite lively and rather clever.
Liber T: Tarot Of Stars Eternal by
Roberto Negrini, art by Andrea Serio. 78 cards and instruction booklet,
distributed by Llewellyn Worldwide.
This deck is a close reworking of the
Crowley/Harris Thoth Tarot, which may strike some as verging on
blasphemy. I actually quite like it. The major arcana are a slightly
simpler rendition of Crowley’s descriptions and Harris’s imagery, but
with an effective style and sense of color all their own. The real
innovations lie in the minor arcana, which have been enriched by many
exotic figures from ‘the hermetic tradition of the Egyptian Decans’ and
‘the astrology of the Golden Dawn’, from the Arabic Picatrix and the
constellations of India. These surreal images of men, women, spirits
and beasts are bizarre, goetic, sexual, alchemical, mythical, daemonic,
sidereal, and strangely effective. Sadly, the usual miniscule
instruction booklet fails to provide many explanations or details,
leaving me hoping for much more information in the future. The original
artwork by Lady Frieda Harris still remains one of the glorious
achievements in the art of Tarot, but this intelligent tribute to the
roots of Crowley’s vision stands quite well on its own.
I AM ONE Tarot by Maya Britan, 78
cards, chart of spread and instruction booklet, distributed by U.S
Games.
Long long ago in a galaxy far far
away there was a very innovative deck called the New Tarot, drawn from
very detailed descriptions given via Ouija board in 1962-63, created by
John Cooke and Rosalind Sharpe and accompanied by their Book T, Book G
and The Word of One. It was said to be a Reverse Tarot, the turning
back of the Nile, and for me it always had a futuristic Maatian feel
for reasons made even more clear in the texts. This is clearly a more
recent reworking of that deck, with rather striking artwork, but one
which seems to be strangely unaware of the previous incarnation, making
no reference to the original creators and referring to it online as the
completion of an unfinished project. It is in its way a vivid and
enthusiastic version of the symbols, with a very colorful and more
sophisticated style that sometimes overshadows the details. I want to
like it, since in either incarnation it forms a powerful interpretation
of the Tarot. But the lack of credit or attribution sort of weirds me
out, as I remain quite fond of the now long out of print original.
