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This was excellent. A well written history of Magick and it's adherents, less credulous than Montague Summers, and a lot more accessible, but no less informed. Familiar names from history, people I know of well enough to know, Yeats, Crowley, Bulwer-Lytton (think: "A Dark and Stormy Night..." by Snoopy, or the contest by the same name), the formulas - in general and by example in specific, the importance of tradition, the strengthening and prevailing of will, the Magick, often, little more than an avowal of commitment.
There are anecdotes - some quite humorous, for example St. Germain: "There is a pleasant story of him describing a dear friend of long ago, Richard the Lionheart, and turning to his manservant for confirmation. "You forget, sir,' the valet said solemnly, 'I have only been five hundred years in your service.'" and Arthur Machen - "The Astronomer Royal of Scotland, and an elderly clergyman who had succeeded in making the elixir of life thirty years before, but had always been too frightened to drink it. Now that he really needed it, it had evaporated."
And then there is the damning crossover of Magick and the Church, however bad the Satanists were, the Church always managed to outdo them - and very often with their own priests and in their own halls.
It is - as the author asserts - more about poetry and metaphor, the forever evolving and changing currents of thought of which our current "age of reason" - if you would call it that, is just another. There is much to ruminate on here, the author, well reasoned, agnostic, and there are dozens of ideas, scraps, things to be gleaned and winnowed, an excellent history or guidebook if you're inclined to dig deeper...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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I thought I'd read it, picked it up for the daughter. But I dipped in, to refresh my memory, and discovered I hadn't.
It was good, great, not at all politically correct, but therein lies the joy. I enjoyed it, appreciated it, but I've been a couple of years on the road myself and needed a break, this wasn't it.
Nonetheless it's a great book.
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Painting, and it helps to clear the mental noise to have some background, usually "In Our Time" by Melvn Bragg, buy I've exhausted my first picks and sometimes need a break.
So I try listening to David Foster Wallace - readings from Consider the Lobster.
Which is good, but I have to leave off the painting, his narratives are a little too in depth, too engrossing to listen to as background, you need to actively listen. Which is a good thing. There are no great revelations, only his rather grim view of the unquestioned social hypocrisies we all adhere to - I'm probably not his ideal audience, I've considered everything that he discusses, but he goes a little - a lot more in depth than many of his listeners or readers would be comfortable with. Nothing new, nothing you couldn't have figured out yourself if you'd only ask the questions, take the time, but good nonetheless, and his "take" on things is always that of a sane person in an obviously insane world.
Listening to him, it's no surprise that he killed himself, rather more a surprise that he lasted as long as he did. And you can't help but wonder what he would have thought of the ever increasing insanity of world politics at this moment....He got out at the right time.
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He doesn't need my recommendation, of course, and for me to recommend or critique him in any way would be - well, preposterous.
I found a book of his collected verse - I've not been enjoying my current read very much (more on that if and when ever I finish) - but this I thought I'd share. I don't like anthologies - generally, but this gets me back into the poetry habit. Probably you know it already, I thought you would, still it brings back memories...
The Hollow Men
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
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I found a couple of his in the thrift shop - "The Illustrated Man" and "The October Country", and as I hadn't read him since I was about 13 years old I picked them up and tried him again.
As a kid I loved him. And as an adult? I remembered the ends of the stories as I read them. The stories - the endings, especially, formulaic, occasionally predictable, twist endings, ironic, surprising (not often) - the plotting, the themes, that's not the main thing with him. 13 was the right age to fall under his spell for sure. But what's impressive is his use of adjectives, his evocations of mood, his descriptions, his intonation of charms, whispered, spoken, sung, the rhythm of his words, poetry almost, yet managing no meaning above the fantasies, images and moods he creates...
Surprisingly well written kids books I'd say, filled with imagination. But for adults, well...tastes change.