Μια εισαγωγή στο περιεχόμενο του Τυφώνιου συγγραφικού έπους του Kenneth Grant. Παρμένο από το εξής site και γραμμένο από τον ίδιο τον Michael Staley των εκδόσεων Starfire, το 2002.
The Typhonian Trilogies consist of nine volumes, spread across thirty years, from the first, The Magical Revival, in 1972, to the final, The Ninth Arch, published in 2002. Although each volume is complete in itself, taken in series they represent a developing body of work.
Before considering this series in more detail, we need to know something of its origins. Grant's formative years are the years of New Isis Lodge, the magical group he founded in the early 1950s, whose main body of work ran from 1955 to 1962, and who disbanded a few years later. As a young man, Grant was passionately interested in the occult, and read widely in mythology, comparative religion, mysticism and magic. In the course of his studies he came across the work of, among others, Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, and was attracted to both. In 1944 he initiated a correspondence with Aleister Crowley, and lived with Crowley for a short time in 1945 as his chela or disciple, singing for his supper by acting as secretary. During this time Grant received oral instruction from Crowley. He also received Crowley's portrait of Lam, to which he had felt drawn on first seeing it in Crowley's portfolio, and which Crowley finally gave him in gratitude for help during a particularly bad night for his health. In 1991 Grant published a memoir of his association with Crowley, entitled Remembering Aleister Crowley. This is an affectionate memoir, but it does not shrink from depicting a relationship that was at times difficult. Crowley was old, ill, and frail, and was often cantankerous. Nevertheless, Grant learnt a lot from Crowley. There is a tradition of darshan, of receiving initiation from being in the presence of the guru; that just as a picture tells more than any amount of words, there is an understanding and an insight that is passed from adept to adept which is priceless.
A little after Crowley's death in 1947, Grant finally met Austin Osman Spare. This was a longer relationship, lasting until Spare's death in 1956. And also, to judge from the account published by Kenneth and Steffi in their Zos Speaks! in 1998, as well as the earlier Images & Oracles of Austin Osman Spare, published in 1975, it was a deeper, perhaps less formal relationship. It is my impression, as a reader of Grant's work, that Spare had the greater impact on him. Spare's work is certainly more fugitive than Crowley's, but is somehow closer to the source of consciousness in cosmic imagination. An account of the relationship between the Grants and Spare is given in Zos Speaks!. It was due in no small part to the urgings of the Grants that Spare reconstructed much of the Alphabet of Desire and other aspects of his system which he had largely forgotten over the years, and committed much else to paper.
During the early 1950s, a circle of occultists accumulated around Grant that formed the core of a working group, New Isis Lodge. Several of the members had been members of the O.T.O. under Crowley - Kenneth and Steffi themselves, of course; a furrier and alchemist, David Curwen; and a woman who Grant refers to by her magical name Clanda. Spare himself was never a member of New Isis Lodge, preferring to work alone. He did though support the Grants in their endeavours, and designed several backdrops for the Lodge. The Grants described New Isis Lodge as a dependent cell of the O.T.O., and it had a grade structure and programme of work which owed much more to Crowley's Astrum Argenteum than to the O.T.O. as it was in Crowley's day. The relationship with Curwen was also instrumental in Grant obtaining a copy of a commentary by a Kaula adept on a tantric text, the Anandalahari. This gave important insights into tantric sexual magic, approaching sex magic from a very different direction to that of Crowley. Crowley's approach to sex magick is basically solar-phallic, not to say phallo-centric. That is, there is great emphasis on the importance of the male sexual energies, but very little on the female energies. Often, the woman partner is merely a cup into which the male magician pours his starfire. The Kaula text approached the matter from a different perspective, accentuating the role of the kalas and how they vary through the menstrual cycle.
The Grants issued a Manifesto of New Isis Lodge on its launch in 1955, in which they spoke of the discovery of a planet beyond Pluto, the transplutonic Isis, and what it might mean for the evolution of consciousness on this planet. Leaving aside the matter of whether or not there is a planet in this solar system beyond Pluto, it is surely obvious that the Grants were not talking about the discovery of a physical planet. Such a discovery would have been more relevant to an astronomical journal. If we bear in mind that the first sephirah, Pluto, is attributed to Pluto, then a transplutonic planet, would the "One Beyond Ten", the Great Outside. Grant expressed it thus some years later, in Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God:
In The Book of the Law, the goddess Nuit exclaims: "My number is eleven, as all their numbers who are of us", which is a direct allusion to the A.A., or Order of the Silver Star, and its system of Grades. Nuit is the Great Outside, represented physically as "Infinite Space and the Infinite Stars thereof" - that is, I s i s. Nuit and Isis are thus identified in The Book of the Law. Isis is terrestrial space, illuminated by the stars. Nuit is outer, or infinite space, the undying darkness that is the hidden source of Light; She is also, in a mystical sense, Inner Space and the Great Within.
Throughout the years 1959 to 1963, the Grants produced a series of monographs, the Carfax Monographs, each one on a different subject. Years later, in 1989, these were published in one volume as Hidden Lore.
Grant has not published a great deal about the magical rituals of New Isis Lodge so far, but a number of anecdotes arising from the workings, what Grant calls 'magicollages', are scattered across many of the nine volumes of the Typhonian Trilogies, principally Hecate's Fountain, published ten years ago, in 1992. There are also glimpses of Lodge Workings in Grant's fiction.
Grant's subsequent work arises out of the work done in New Isis Lodge. These years were thus extremely formative ones for him. Before New Isis Lodge he had an extremely broad and deep learning, as well as his association with Crowley and Spare. However, all these influences were synthesised through the magical workings of New Isis Lodge. It is the experiences gained through these workings, the initiation, the insight, which powers Grant's subsequent work. It is the well-spring without which Grant's work would have dried up. Without it, he would have become just another imitator of the work of others - and god knows we have enough of them.
An article was published by Grant in the International Times at the end of the 1960s, about Crowley, in which he states that he has written a study of the work of Crowley and others, called Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God. Subsequently he submitted this to the London publishers Frederick Muller, who expressed their interest in it, but suggested that due to its size it should be split down into two volumes. The first volume was published in 1972 as The Magical Revival.
The Magical Revival is a study and analysis of a variety of occult traditions which have survived over many thousands of years, and which are now reviving in fresh forms and new vigours. In particular the genesis and development of the Draconian Cult throughout the Egyptian Dynasties is traced, and against this more ancient backdrop are examined the more modern manifestations such as Blavatsky, Crowley, the Golden Dawn, Dion Fortune, and Austin Osman Spare. It is demonstrated that though these are recent manifestations, they are rooted in the much older magical current which has nourished and sustained all subsequent efflorations. Included as a plate in the book is a reproduction of Crowley's drawing of Lam, the first time it had been published since its original publication in The Blue Equinox in 1919.
This was succeeded in 1973 by the second volume, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God. This is a study more specifically of Crowley's system of sex magick, amplified by a consideration of the Kaula commentary referred to above. There is also a chapter on 'Nu-Isis and the Radiance Beyond Spare', in which Grant refers to New Isis Lodge and its programme of work.
Cults of the Shadow was published in 1975, and explored obscure aspects of occultism that are frequently viewed negatively as 'black magic', the 'left hand path', etc. Of particular note is a chapter on the work of Frater Achad and the Aeon of Maat, in which Grant takes a somewhat sceptical view of Frater Achad's claims of the dawning of the Aeon of Maat. Subsequently Grant came to change his views. The book also contained a couple of chapters on the work of Michael Bertiaux.
The second Trilogy opens with Nightside of Eden, published in 1977. This is essentially an exploration of the Tunnels of Set, which lie under the paths of the Tree of Life. This work was based initially on a brief and obscure work by Crowley, Liber 231, first published in The Equinox. This book consists of sigils of the genii of the 22 scales of the Serpent, and the sigils of the 22 cells of the Qliphoth, and some obscure oracles. This work evidently fascinated Grant, and the exploration of these cells of the Qliphoth forms the backbone of the work of New Isis Lodge. Grant has been criticised in some quarters for working with what some regard as the evil and averse aspects of magic. However, the darker aspects of experience are just as necessary to understand as the lighter aspects; an understanding of both is necessary.
In 1980 Grant published Outside the Circles of Time, a work that covers an extremely wide area and exposes, to quote from the cover blurb: "a network more complex than was ever imagined: a network not unlike H.P. Lovecraft's dark vision of sinister forces lurking at the rim of the universe". The book is most famous, perhaps, for showcasing the work of Soror Andahadna, a contemporary Priestess of Maat whose work had parallels with the work of Frater Achad many decades before. Many Thelemites have problems with the Aeon of Maat. As far as they are concerned, each Aeon lasts 2,000 years; we are at the beginnings of the Aeon of Horus, so Maat is a way off yet. They will echo Crowley's famous retort to the young Grant: "Maat can wait!". However, the following passage from Outside the Circles of Time puts the matter in a much more interesting light:
Myths and legends are of the past, but Maat should not be thought of in terms of past or future aeons. Maat is present now for those who, knowing the 'sacred alignments' and the 'Gateway of Inbetweenness', experience the Word ever coming, ever emaning, from the Mouth, in the ever new and ever present forms that are continually being generated from the mystical Atu or House of Maat, the Ma-atu ...
But the book is about much more. It is a potent weaving of a host of apparently diverse strands into a single, broad and powerful current. Though Grant's books are all different from their predecessors, Outside the Circles of Time seemed to herald a jump into a different dimension.
Outside the Circles of Time was the last book published by Muller, and there was a break of 12 years until 1992, when Skoob Publishing published Hecate's Fountain. Grant had originally conceived this as an account of the rituals of New Isis Lodge. However, as is often the case, the work took on a momentum of its own and threw forth a quite different flower. The book was still woven around the work of the Lodge. However, this work is illustrated as anecdotal accounts of specific workings, illustrating in particular what Grant refers to as 'tangential tantra', whereby a magical working has curious and sometimes alarming side-effects at odds with its apparent purpose. Grant traces these anomalies to a catalytic interface which he calls 'the Mauve Zone', existing between the realms of dreaming and dreamless sleep. There are movements, whorlings and eddies in the Mauve Zone which give rise to tenuous wraiths, dreams, images which enter the awareness and are clothed in the imagination.
The third Trilogy opens with Outer Gateways, published by Skoob in 1994. This book continues and amplifies some of the themes of Hecate's Fountain. It contains a lengthy account of the apparently contradictory strands of The Book of the Law, explores Crowley's work in relation to the Sunyavada, has some remarkable things to say about creative gematria. However, the core of it is undoubtedly The Wisdom of S'lba and the several chapters of analysis which follow. S'lba is a beautiful, highly-charged and rich transmission received over many years by Kenneth Grant since the late 1930s, the bulk of it received during the years of New Isis Lodge.
There is a good deal of misunderstanding about the nature of transmissions. It is not a case of simply taking dictation from a discarnate entity. Contact with what is referred to as the inner planes is a great deal more complex and more subtle than that. Take for instance the following introductory note by Grant:
The series of verses entitled collectively the Wisdom of S'lba ... were not written down at any particular time or place, although the state of consciousness in which they were received was invariably the same. The process was initiated as early as the year 1939 when the Vision of Aossic first manifested in the manner described in Outside the Circles of Time (chapter 8). The vision unfolded sporadically throughout the time of Aossic's association with Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare. But the dynamic aspect of the Working, that is to say the integration of the Vision into a coherent whole, occurred during the period of New Isis Lodge's existence.
The next volume, Beyond the Mauve Zone, was just about to go to press when Grant's publishers, Skoob Publishing, decided that they would publish nothing further by him. No reason for this was ever given. The result was that a few more years went by until its eventual publication, by Starfire Publishing, in 1999. Beyond the Mauve Zone is, as its name suggests, a deeper consideration of that region between dreamless sleep and dreaming which fecundates imagination, and in particular a consideration of various methods of accessing the Mauve Zone. There are three chapters on the Kaula Rite of the Fire Snake, giving much more material from the initiated Kaula commentary obtained from David Curwen. There is also a protracted analysis of Liber Pennae Praenumbra received by Soror Andahadna, and an account of the work of the Serbian Zivorad Mihajlovic Slavinski.
Looking back over these first eight volumes of the Typhonian Trilogies, we can see how much Grant's work has changed, and yet has reintegrated with its source. Great and deep though the earlier volumes are, they give little hint of the glorious flowering that is the third and final Trilogy. It is the last volume, The Ninth Arch, to which our attention next turns.
[...]
The Ninth Arch is woven around a transmission received over the course of New Isis Lodge workings, 'The Book of the Spider' or 'Liber OKBISh'. This transmission first started during a magical working of the 29th Tunnel of Set, Qulielfi, around 1952. The principal medium for the transmissions was a priestess known as Soror Arim. She appears in Grant's novel Against the Light as Margaret Leesing. She was not the only medium for the transmissions, but she played the larger role and co-ordinated the work of several priestesses of the Lodge.
The Book of the Spider is essentially a collection of cryptic oracles which were received over a number of years, and were in retrospect arranged into 29 chapters, each of 29 verses. Some of the verses were not heard, or have been lost, but this is the basic pattern. A couple of years after the original transmission was received, the Current once again became active, and a second transmission was received. This was a smaller number of verses, and again was arranged retrospectively into 3 additional chapters, again of 29 verses each.
The transmissions were sometimes audible, but sometimes apprehended visually also. Thus there are sigils amongst the verses.
With all this talk of transmissions, I think that we had better stop and remind ourselves of what Grant had to say in relation to the transmission of the Wisdom of S'lba:
The series of verses entitled collectively the Wisdom of S'lba ... were not written down at any particular time or place, although the state of consciousness in which they were received was invariably the same. The process was initiated as early as the year 1939 when the Vision of Aossic first manifested in the manner described in Outside the Circles of Time (chapter 8). The vision unfolded sporadically throughout the time of Aossic's association with Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare. But the dynamic aspect of the Working, that is to say the integration of the Vision into a coherent whole, occurred during the period of New Isis Lodge's existence.
Transmissions are not a matter of establishing some sort of radio contact with a discarnate entity and transcribing what it has to say. A transmission can be via any of the senses. Often it will be intuited or subtly apprehended, with the imagination as catalyst. Imagination is not whim or fancy, though this is the baggage that the word has accumulated in modern times. Rather, imagination is the space in which things occur. It is cosmic, though there are individual areas of awareness of imagination, and it is those areas around the individual of which he or she is more immediately aware, that we regard as "our" imagination. The truth is, though, that it is not "ours", but a common or cosmic area, the local reaches of which we are more immediately aware.
Transmission takes many forms. It is an inspirational flow into the more personal areas of imagination, and will often become garbed in forms drawn from the personal subconscious. We see this in Lovecraft's work for instance, much of the inspiration occurring through dream, and expressed through imagery drawn from the extensive reading and day-dreaming of Lovecraft's childhood. This is not to be wondered at. Much as light is refracted and transformed by its passage through a prism or a piece of coloured glass, or as the setting sun through atmospheric matter produces a pageant of glorious and stirring colours, so the transmission of a Current will be coloured by the personal areas of imagination. This is absolutely inevitable. The wind, for instance, only becomes manifest in the stirring leaves of the tree through which it moves, the perfumes which it agitates, the skin against which it brushes, the shapes into which it swirls the desert sand.
At the time of the New Isis Lodge workings which attracted and then incubated this informing Current, the main Priestess, Margaret Leesing, and many of her colleagues, were extremely caught up in occult fiction, and in two books in particular - Dope by Sax Rohmer, and The Beetle by Richard Marsh. At this time, New Isis Lodge had evolved a magical ritual technique which involved the dramatization of fiction. As Kenneth Grant describes it in The Ninth Arch:
"As already mentioned in the General Introduction to this book, the ritualists of New Isis Lodge utilized certain novels and stories as other magicians might use paintings or musical compositions to affect perichoresis and astral encounters. They entered into a tale as they might enter into a given picture, a scene, a desert, a crowded drawing-room, or other venue. Applied to the novel, the process develops dramatically as a vividly kinetic experience that becomes startlingly oracular. We used, principally, Richard Marsh's novel The Beetle, and Sax Rohmer's A Tale of Chinatown or Dope, for no other reason than because the chief Skryer had recently read these writings, and because other Lodge members also were acquainted with them. Marsh's tale, in particular, was chosen because it contained the only published account known to the present author of the Children of Isis, and therefore seemed en rapport with the Wisdom of S'lba and with the oracles of OKBISh."
These are the circumstances, the prism, the coloured glass, though which the verses of the Book of the Spider is expressed. There is reference, for instance, to such characters as Shöa, the Evil Woman; to Sin Sin Wa, the Chinese villain and sage; to Tling-a-Ling, his pet raven and familiar; to Sam Tûk, his revered Ancestor; all these characters are drawn from Sax Rohmer's Dope. There are also references to other characters drawn from fiction, such as Helen Vaughan and Mrs Beaumont from Arthur Machen's story The Great God Pan. These are masks, clothing, and are not intended to point to profundities of meaning inherent in the stories in which these characters occur. There are references to scenes in novels, such as The Brood of the Witch Queen by Sax Rohmer; or characters from Lovecraft's stories, such as Joseph Curwen in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
[...]
The Ninth Arch is the diadem of the Typhonian Trilogies. I have the impression that although the work done in New Isis Lodge was Grant's formative work, the foundation of everything which he has done since, by the same token it is the work done over the years since New Isis Lodge which has enabled Grant to understand fully the work of those earlier years, and to take it to another level. Kenneth Grant's initiation continues apace.
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