Irwin weaves a terrific tale of the "Summer of Love Under Will": a hippy college student in London gets into more occultism than he bargains for. The story is enchanting, revolting, hilarious, nostalgic, riveting, and pathetic by turns, and the magick, the drugs and the weird sex are all pretty credible--even as outre as they become.

The entire book is written as a diary, initially undertaken as a magical record in obedience to the "Black Book Lodge," a persistent old schism (of Irwin's invention) from Crowley's A.'.A.'. The journal format is not merely an homage to or evocation of classic horror fiction like Stoker's Dracula, it is a faithful representation of the sort of document that modern magical practice actually generates. It repeatedly inspired me with envy; would that my own diary were as witty and perceptive as that of Irwin's protagonist! In that sense, it can serve as a goad for working occultists today.

The author's 1967 photo portrait on the back inside jacket (also in the background of the paperback cover) provides further evidence for the idea--which must occur to any informed reader--that he drew significantly on personal experience in constructing this delectable yarn.

Persian language

...has no grammatical gender, not even "natural" gender,

...comprehends Farsi (Iran), Tajiki (Tajikistan), and Dari (Afghanistan) among its principal dialects,

...is an Indo-European language most often written in Arabic characters (with four bonus letters not found in Arabic),

...is written in a modified Cyrillic alphabet in Tajikistan, and

...is called Fingilish or Penglish when written in Latin characters.

The 1001 Nights was based on a prior collection in Persian, and only became "Arabian" in the 9th century e.v. (The Scheherezade frame-narrative seems to date from the 14th century.)

When medieval Persia fell under the rule of the Ummayad and Abbasid caliphates, Persian was banned in favor of Arabic, but Islam remained an elite religion of the rulers. Only after the revival of Persian language and literature in the 9th and 10th centuries e.v. ("Persianization") did Islam become a popular religion throughout the region.

Use of the unique Persian alphabet, or Old Persian cuneiform, did not survive Islamicization. Old Persian was a much more inflected language, with extensive grammatical gender and eight different cases.

Iranaeus describes Gnostic biblical interpretation as "dismembering the body of truth," implying that Scripture is like a "body" encompassing the totality of truth (soma tes aletheias). By their heretical, perverse mode of reading, the Gnostics "dismember," as it were, truth.

--Guy G. Strousma (2005),
Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and
the Roots of Christian Mysticism, p. 115

Casanova's exploits as a Freemason, faux(?)-Rosicrucian, alchemist and magical confidence-man all rest within a larger context, where the freethinker and libertine seems to have enjoyed a genuine conviction of the reality of his personal daimonic genius. Writing of his first hardships as a prisoner, Casanova reflects, "My Genius diverted himself in this fashion in order to give me the pleasure of making comparisons." The name of this Guardian Angel was
P A R A L I S.

Casanova reflects on the Mysteries.

(promoted from a comment made in another journal)

Once in a while, I note that some people think our ceremony of confirmation in the Gnostic Catholic Church is superfluous or oxymoronic. As best as I understand it, the argument goes that since we don't inflict involuntary infant baptism on our members, they don't need to be "confirmed." I disagree with this critique, and not only (or even mostly) because of the tradition of confirmation as a cardinal sacrament of both apostolic Christian and Neognostic churches.

In primitive Christianity, adult converts went through a ceremony that included an initial exposure to the creed (and in which they also typically received bread and salt sacramentally), to inaugurate a catechumenal period in which they would prepare for full membership through baptism.

In EGC, our "baptism" takes the place of such a catechumenal ceremony, while our "confirmation" serves the role of the antique baptism, at least with respect to communal ties and individual status. It makes sense that we who are directed to "worship...with fire and blood" should have a solar and martial confirmation ceremony as the real admission to lay membership, while the watery and lunar baptism is a preliminary. (Of course, the old Piscean agenda would place the emphasis on water.)

sphinxie and I are flogging the Law and our Order on the front page of Reality Sandwich.

GLORIA PATRI RA
The lord and giver of life
Beams forth the world's nourishment
Ever-present, ever-radiant;
It is we who travel through Amenti
At nine hundred miles per hour.

GLORIA FILIO HOOR
With blood-stained spear and brilliant crown
The Child issues the decree:
Do What Thou Wilt!
The Law of the Battle of Conquest
Is a curse to be desired.

GLORIA SPIRITUI SANCTO KHUIT
The cooing of the dove
Opens the gates of Hell:
From deep within sounds the serpent's hiss,
Summoning us to joyful worship.
Our orison: HRILIU!

AUM HA

Unto him may there be granted the accomplishment of his will!

The Greeks, and all the Celtic nations, accordingly, burned the bodies of the dead, as the Gentoos do at this day; while the Egyptians, among whom fuel was extremely scarce, placed them in pyramidal monuments, which were the symbols of fire; hence come those prodigious structures which still adorn that country. The soul which was to be emancipated was the divine emanation, the vital spark of heavenly flame, the principle of reason and perception, which was personified into the familiar daemon, or genius, supposed to have the direction of each individual, and to dispose him to good or evil, wisdom or folly, and all their consequences of prosperity and adversity.

(Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, ch. XI, pp. 191-2)

Wow!
Wow?
Wow.

Swinburne died ninety years ago today, at the age of 72. He had nigh slain himself in the fervor of his devotion to Our Lady during his early forties, but lingered respectably upon Mispec Moor long enough to be still living when bits of Atalanta in Calydon were hijacked for the Caxton Hall Rites of Eleusis, and when 666 sainted him in the writing and earliest publication of the Gnostic Mass.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

(ll. 89-96)

I have a nice, large (2" or so) rose-cross pin that I wear on the lapel of my overcoat these days. For some reason, this insignia prompts strangers to blithely interrogate me about my religious status--usually while I'm preoccupied with, say, grocery shopping. Such conversations have become gradually more blunt as the exercise has been repeated, reaching a point of near-perfection on the train this afternoon.

Q. (out of the blue, without the merest hello) Are you a chaplain?

A. (flatly) No, I'm a bishop.

Q. A Lutheran bishop?

A. (with careful diction) No, a bishop of the Gnostic Catholic Church.

Q. Agnostic Catholic? That sounds like an oxymoron to me.

A. No, not Agnostic, Gnostic.

Q. Never heard of it. What's the difference?

A. (gravely) Historians typically consider Gnosticism to be the oldest and most terrible of Christian heresies.

Q. Um.

A. Good-bye! (The train has reached my stop.)

O sad Fraternity, do I unfold
Your dolorous mysteries shrouded from of yore?
Nay, be assured; no secret can be told
To any who divined it not before:
None uninitiate by many a presage
Will comprehend the language of the message,
Although proclaimed aloud of evermore.

Today is the Feast of Giordano Bruno the Nolan, who proclaimed himself d'ogni legge nimico e d'ongi fede ["enemy to every law and every faith"]. Excommunicated by Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans, he was finally burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition. Bruno was an original and profound theorist of the magical link and a surpassing mnemotechnician, who aspired to revive the solar worship of the ancients. Unto him may there be granted the accomplishment of his will, yea the accomplishment of his will.

To finally complete this survey of the basic disciplines of Islam as reflected in Thelemic practice requires an examination of the hajj: the pilgrimage to Mecca, performed with the customary rites at the designated season. Muhammad is reported to have said, “Except for paradise, there is no more pleasing reward than the pilgrimage!” The word hajj is usually supposed to be derived from an Arabic term meaning “to make a circle,” and the sevenfold circumambulation (tawaf) of the cubic building of the Kaaba in the hajj ceremonies persists from an age before Islam.

( Read more... )

In its spatial focus on Mecca, the hajj bears a relationship to the daily salat. But it is also viewed as related—by change of temporal scale—to the annual sawm for Ramadan. Salat punctuates the day with dedication to God, sawm punctuates the year, and the hajj punctuates an entire lifetime. Although some may repeat the pilgrimage, the obligation applies only once, and the unfree and insane are exempt. Undergoing the hajj is understood to confer spiritual maturity, and while it is seldom described as such, it constitutes the most significant initiatory experience offered by Islam as a whole.

In the system of attainment that Crowley outlined for Thelemites, he pointed to one particular experience as the essential spiritual maturation. “The Holy Guardian Angel is the Unconscious Creature Self--the Spiritual Phallus. His knowledge and conversation contributes occult puberty.” (Liber Samekh II.A.5) “It should never be forgotten for a moment that the central and essential work of the Magicians is the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.” (Magick Without Tears, p. 502) “The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.” As the cornerstone of his system, Crowley indicated this attainment as “The Next Step, the thing which was immediately above” mankind. (Magick in Theory & Practice, pp. 11 & 20)

This is the essential work of every man; none other ranks with it either for personal progress or for power to help one's fellows. This unachieved, man is no more than the unhappiest and blindest of animals. He is conscious of his own incomprehensible calamity, and clumsily incapable of repairing it. Achieved, he is no less than the co-heir of gods, a Lord of Light. (One Star in Sight, pt. 10)

When you seek God, seek Him in your heart
He is not in Jerusalem, nor in Mecca nor in the hajj.

For his Angel is an intelligible image of his own true Will, to do which is the whole of the law of his Being.
(“Liber Samekh,” pt. III)

It is the obliquity of the Earth's axis.

There is an update at Vigorous Food & Divine Madness, including two new rituals:

• Installation of a Domestic Relic
• Formula for Renouncing Slave Religion

A couple of OTO bodies are currently issuing the new numbers of their journals. I'm happy to say that OTO periodicals have come a long way since I joined in the early 90's, in terms of both form and content.

The Doomsayer's Digest

The Coph-Nia Wand

I was disappointed to find out during the last year that our Grand Lodge no longer requires lodges to publish, because I think that publishing serves several important functions that the Order must meet to be fully operational at the local level. Still, here we see admirable publication work being done by a camp and an oasis--provisional bodies that do not even have lodge status.

Unto her may there be granted the accomplishment of her will.

Blessing & worship to the prophet of the lovely Star!

Many are aware (or should be) that the motto or mantonym Perdurabo alludes to the gospel injunction found in Matthew 24:13. Certainly Crowely, who was allowed no reading matter other than the Bible in his early years of literacy, could not be ignorant of the reference. But was it his chief motivation in choosing the name?

Crowley had doubtless read Rabelais in college, if not earlier. In his 1926 (or earlier) essay on "The Antecedents of Thelema," he remarked that "the last line of [Rabelais'] oracle" (i.e. the prophecy at the end of Gargantua) contained anticipatory praise for him "who shall have persevered unto the end." (Cil qui pourra en fin perseverer.) Crowley was not so unclever as to be incapable of deliberately fulfilling such a longstanding call.

Furthermore, while Anna Kingsford died very shortly before the founding of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, her writings were pretty much ubiquitous among its students and aspirants. In her inspired "Hymn to Hephaistos" she wrote:

By fire is the initiate baptized, by fire the oblation is salted; and the flame shall devour the dross of the crucible. That which endureth unto the end, the same shall be saved. (vv. 19-20)