Post by Michael Staley on Feb 2, 2024 18:05:35 GMT
Many years ago now, at Steffi Grant's request, I catalogued Kenneth Grant's correspondence files. Recently, whilst looking for something specific, I came across this passage which I had noted. It was from a letter dated 22nd August 1985 to an American correspondent, concerning Hecate's Fountain, the Trilogies, and Tantra:
"I had to make a decision between spending the years remaining to me organising what I knew or creating something new, and I plumped for the latter course. I have begun writing the first vol. of my final Typhonian trilogy. When the work is completed I shall have laid out, to the best of my ability, the entire ground plan of the Ophidian Gnosis. There is still no news of HF, but I have no doubt that publication will be achieved when there is sufficient momentum behind it to make its appearance a magical necessity. I always work that way, and never push, knowing it is useless and sometimes a positive hindrance to the Work."
For many years now I have regarded the final trilogy as the high-point of the Typhonian Trilogies, and thus find the above quote by Kenneth Grant particularly interesting. What interests me the most in that final Trilogy is the Mauve Zone. There is an interesting passage in the 'General Introduction' to The Ninth Arch:
“The reader is invited to assemble the equations relating to the verses of Book 29 and to interpret them in the light of his or her own magical universe. The correspondences reveal the essentially Typhonian complexion of the oracles. The linkages will disclose by their interrelation an entirely new perspective on the synchronicities, the tangential fusion of ‘impossibles’, and the prophetic value of techniques somewhat akin to the Dalinian formula known as the ‘paranoiac-critical method’, herein applied qalalistically. The entire process may be described as a systematization of delusions, hallucinating holistic realities that are perpetually fulfilling themselves in the Mauve Zone on the way to achieve carnal manifestation at the will of the magician. The magician in fact becomes the Mauve Zone, the ground on which all aeons enact simultaneously their apotheosis outside the circles of time.”
It was the phrase "The Magician in fact becomes the Mauve Zone . . ." which took my breath away when I finally noticed it seemingly for the first time. I say "seemingly" because I had prepared the first and second editions of The Ninth Arch (2002 and 2016) and thus must have read this passage dozens of times without its implications sinking in. And yet, when they did, it was like reading something for the first time.
I'd be interested to hear what others make of this final trilogy, and to discuss any of the many points raised.
"I had to make a decision between spending the years remaining to me organising what I knew or creating something new, and I plumped for the latter course. I have begun writing the first vol. of my final Typhonian trilogy. When the work is completed I shall have laid out, to the best of my ability, the entire ground plan of the Ophidian Gnosis. There is still no news of HF, but I have no doubt that publication will be achieved when there is sufficient momentum behind it to make its appearance a magical necessity. I always work that way, and never push, knowing it is useless and sometimes a positive hindrance to the Work."
For many years now I have regarded the final trilogy as the high-point of the Typhonian Trilogies, and thus find the above quote by Kenneth Grant particularly interesting. What interests me the most in that final Trilogy is the Mauve Zone. There is an interesting passage in the 'General Introduction' to The Ninth Arch:
“The reader is invited to assemble the equations relating to the verses of Book 29 and to interpret them in the light of his or her own magical universe. The correspondences reveal the essentially Typhonian complexion of the oracles. The linkages will disclose by their interrelation an entirely new perspective on the synchronicities, the tangential fusion of ‘impossibles’, and the prophetic value of techniques somewhat akin to the Dalinian formula known as the ‘paranoiac-critical method’, herein applied qalalistically. The entire process may be described as a systematization of delusions, hallucinating holistic realities that are perpetually fulfilling themselves in the Mauve Zone on the way to achieve carnal manifestation at the will of the magician. The magician in fact becomes the Mauve Zone, the ground on which all aeons enact simultaneously their apotheosis outside the circles of time.”
It was the phrase "The Magician in fact becomes the Mauve Zone . . ." which took my breath away when I finally noticed it seemingly for the first time. I say "seemingly" because I had prepared the first and second editions of The Ninth Arch (2002 and 2016) and thus must have read this passage dozens of times without its implications sinking in. And yet, when they did, it was like reading something for the first time.
I'd be interested to hear what others make of this final trilogy, and to discuss any of the many points raised.
