Influence of Eastern Mysticism on Grant

[Deleted]

Do we know when and why Grant first became interested, and what it was in particular? Given his obsession with Lovecraft and the Necronomicon, I find it difficult to think that he had any interest in Eastern Mysticism.

[Edward Gauntlett]

Grant's autobiographical crumbs suggest he became interested (and he says somewhere that it remained his primary interest) in his teens. I don't see this as being incompatible with a concurrent enthusiasm (which may very well be as life-long as an involvement with mysticism) in supernatural horror. A small off topic point of interest to me is whether Grant first read Lovecraft in imported copies of Weird Tales or only after the publication of Arkham House's first collection, 'The Outsider an Others', in 1939.

[Gregory Peters]

Grant's interest in eastern mysticism is one of the things that always drew me to his work and his interpretation of Thelema. I think it is largely from this influence on him that he was in fact such a creative and evolutionary force in Thelemic philosophy and magick. Once one has the ground of consciousness that is emphasized in the non-dual traditions of Advaita, Buddhism, and Hindu tantrism, the universe is seen as an endless play of Maya. Lovecraftian symbolism, and any other, easily works in such a context when you are dealing with Reality (with a capital R!).

[squareye]

What interests me in regard to Grant's use of HPL mythos and other 'weird' fiction is how he used it in ritual during the New Isis years. In my own imagination I see some fascinating group meetings in David Curwen's basement enacting psycho-dramas until they tipped over into imaginal realities. Splendid!

Both Grant and Spare used pictures also for jumping off points to make contact with deeper states and entities. The transfer of this method to the 'story' seems an evolution of method to excite imagination to the deeper levels.

[Gregory Peters]

This reminds me of Grant's Introduction to Outside the Circles of Time. Absolutely brilliant, in particular the last two paragraphs always give me chills as my consciousness leaps at the seeming gateways the words are producing. His writing is like this; it is a ritual, a dynamic living gateway.

[kylefite]

Edward, I believe the reference point you indicate is found in Grant's introduction to Remembering Aleister Crowley.

I agree that it at first seems odd that Grant would be so focused on HPL, the Necronomicon etc with his "basis" in Eastern Mysticism but it soon feels like a very natural step forward. The texts and sutras of the East are filled with images of monstrous forms, mutilations, visions of other worlds in which time and space as we know it warp and bend. We see this in everything from the Lotus Sutra to the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I tend to think of Grant's reading of Lovecraft and Co. as being his encounter with "Pulp Sutras." He was already primed to see the relevance of such "atmospheres" to his own understanding of Advaita in symbolic contexts.

What is interesting is that he also views the impress or influx informing the classic texts as a living thing which continuously seeks expression. In other words, there isn't a "closed canon." Hence, Lovecraft was as much a vehicle as Padmasambhava. Understanding what is back of all forms allowed Grant to make magical use of the modern symbols. It also allowed him to create his OWN and then pen words indicating and encouraging the continuance of the process. This is a departure point from Crowley's approach which often follows after a type of biblical religiosity.

[Aleph]

These are my thoughts exactly, Kyle. I fail to understand why so many others, it appears, neglect to see a continuity of process because of a veneer.

"This is a departure point from Crowley's approach which often follows after a type of biblical religiosity."

Crowley (and Gurdjieff, for instance) behave like characters escaped from an Arabian Nights episode, and seem to have modeled themselves on such to a degree. Both were overtly given to dressing up and parading about in those types of costume, etc. Grant kept his NIL 'dramatisations' a little more private and working-specific by comparison.

[Vadge Moore]

I like how Grant explained the Qliphoth and the Lovecraftean monsters as being the shadows of the Ain. They were "demonic" representations of non-being. If you accepted them into your consciousness, they would take you closer to the non-dual state. Granted (no pun intended)this accepting of these entities puts the practitioners ego in a state of terror...the ego becomes terrified of its own destruction. Perhaps akin to the wrathful entities of Buddhism.

[Michael Staley]

This brings to mind a passage from Outer Gateways in which Grant sets out how the deities of the Cthulhu Mythos might fulfil a specific function:

... Like other accounts of unclassifiable phases of earth’s history, the Cthulhu Cult epitomises the subconsciousness and the forces outside terrestrial awareness. It may be said in passing that true creativity can occur only when these forces are invoked to flood with their light the magical network of the mind. For purposes of explanation the mind may be envisaged as divided into three rooms, the edifice which contains them being the only real or permanent principle. These rooms are:

1) Subconsciousness, the dream state;

2) Mundane consciousness, the waking state;

3) Transcendantal consciousness, veiled in the non-initiate by the state of sleep.

The compartments are further conceived as being connected with the house that contains them, by a series of conduits or tunnels. The house represents trans-terrestrial consciousness. The invoked forces — Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, etc — are then understood, not as malignant or destructive entities but as the dynamic energies of consciousness, the functions of which are to blast away the delusion of separate existence (the rooms in our illustration).

Although the analogy hadn't occurred to me before, Vadge, in this context the Cthulhu Mythos deities are very much akin to the wrathful entities of Buddhism.

[Vadge Moore]

Yes Michael, as with Buddhism, if these entities frighten you it would be like a person placing their hand in a flame. If the pain is too great one pulls back...as an aspirant would retreat into the shell of their ego-persona. If the burning is accepted as simply another sensation, neither good or bad, or recognized as simply illusion, then there is no fear...no retreat and an opening to a greater awareness.

I love that quote from Outer Gateways. In fact, having recently completed The Ninth Arch, for the third time mind you, I have come to appreciate that final tome even more and with it the deep insights to be found in Outer Gateways.

Somewhere in Nightside of Eden Grant gives high praise to Ch'an Buddhism, and of course Tantra, as having both been  recent repositories of Typhonian Gnosis. For me particularly the praise of Ch'an, or as we know it in the West, Zen Buddhism, was striking. 

[Vadge Moore]

Gregory, I really resonate to the idea that Grants words act as a kind or doorway to these higher states. I've always felt Grant's books to be a very "dynamic, living gateway." My life was completely altered upon reading Outside the Circles of Time, way back in 1988. He also made me aware of other words that acted for me as gateways. Chthonic was just such a word...a word I first saw in one of Grant's book and then later explored more deeply through the work of Carl Jung.

I had stopped reading Grant for a few years until recently...reading Ninth Arch again, and it altered me. Wei Wu Wei, although a westerner, but obviously disposed toward the East, can have the same affect on me; but no writer has altered my psyche the way Grant has.

[squareye]

It reminds me of a quote from Joseph Campbell about the 'Angel of Death' that appears 'horrific' as it approaches but transforms to 'bliss' when it arrives.

The Wheel of Life, as found in most Buddhist Schools, is a good example of a 'consciousness-oriented' view of the world. The depiction of Yama - Lord of Death who holds the wheel is intentionally terrifying. In fact he is simply the representation of the principle of change or impermanence.  He is terrifying because he is just now taking away something to which I'm rather attached!

This way of viewing 'reality' from a 'consciousness-only' view became a school of Mahayana Buddhism called Citta-matra or 'heart - only' school. It influenced both tantric and Chan/Zen practices such as mandalas and koan work.

[Vadge Moore]

Can we say Cthulhu is akin to this Angel of Death? Or Choronzon? Probably more Choronzon since he resides at the portal of Daath...or Death, as Grant says. I can't recall if Grant equates Cthulhu with Choronzon.

[Vadge Moore]

Actually, I believe Cthulhu is akin to Hadit, since he is potential...he "lies dreaming."

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Oct 15, 2013 17:46:27 GMT Vadge Moore said:

Actually, I believe Cthulhu is akin to Hadit, since he is potential...he "lies dreaming."

It seems that Grant somehow equated Cthulhu more with the feminine Babalon and possibly Nuit and Kali in some fashion. Take a look at "the eleven powers zones" in Hecate's Fountain. He's got Cthulhu placed right there in the "outer robe of concealment" of Binah, hence the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Whereas the "inner robe of glory" of Chokmah contains the Starry Wisdom Sect and Azathoth. Personally I've always resonated with that particular Tree of Life scheme with the Necronomicon Mythos laid over it.

[Vadge Moore]

Nalyd- You are absolutely right! Thank you. There it is in Binah, which is Babalon, Saturn and , of course, Set. Grant always equates Set with Binah and Saturn...but in this graph also Daath. I think somewhere in Nightside of Eden he says that Set in Binah is reflected in Daath?...which of course leads to the back of the tree.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

No problem Vadge. You might also find the opening paragraphs of chapter 4 of Hecate's Fountain interesting in connection with what's on that tree.

[Vadge Moore]

Thanks. I'll look that up bright and early tomorrow morning...with my first cup of coffee. Nothing starts a morning better than a heapin' helping of Typhonian Gnosis.

[Marc]

I can't recall but is there an actual Tree of Life diagram in existence with the Necronomicon Mythos superimposed onto it? Has this ever been produced into an actual diagram?

[Vadge Moore]

You bet...page 124 of Hecates Fountain.

[Marc]

AHA! I haven't opened Hecate's Foutain for a while...

[Aleph]

some of Mikhail Bakhtin's writings offer insight on how, say, formerly 'real' terror gods of mythologies manifest under new forms; largely literary or dramatic, e.g. the novel, theatre or cinema - through the mind that conceives them. It is an ongoing process applying to east and west, ancient and modern, as well as the mysterious confluence underlying these temporal mindsets. Mumford in his Himalayan Dialogue compares Bakhtin's idea with one resonate of Govinda's from the Tibetan sphere:

“… [Govinda] defines Tibetan Buddhism as a technique in which images of lived experience are transmuted into new planes of mental awareness. Bakhtin finds an analogous process in the West, noting that “when nature itself ceased to be a living participant in the events of life” it became a source of “metaphors … serving to sublimate individual and private affairs.”

Bakhtin also wrote a fine study on Rabelais and many of his interpretive schemes draw from the Rabelasian model. Yes, his is an intellectual approach but it is one that I find complements the Jungian analysis. Perhaps Velikovsky too, if we believe the most devastating experiences are the ones most deeply buried, the reawakening of which (via whatever medium) is accompanied by a sensation, or memory, of terror.

[Vadge Moore]

Alastor- I've never read Mikhail Bakhtin. I'll have to obtain his book on Rabelais. Damn all of you people and your fascinating research suggestions! There are just not enough hours in the day...and I only get 5-6 hours of sleep a night!

[jcurwen]

 In Lovecrafts tales themselves such as Through the Gates of the Silver Key and Dreams in the Witch House, the mindstates described seem to have a correlation with descriptions by eastern mystics of their experiences. Certain eastern practices explore the evolution of consciousness through vast cycles of time, and the results of Kundalini awaking can apparently be horrific for the unprepared. This is the purpose of meditations on horrific entities. I like the idea of Lovecraftian entities as projections in the Tibetan sense. Ive also felt for awhile that the words themselves, Cthulhu, Azathoth, etc, are more like mantras, vibrations which invoke an experience of a certain sentient cosmic pattern or vibration, and like in the East, are personified (theriomorphically) as deities. 

I would also add that Crowley drew on eastern systems extensively, especially for physical / mental training purposes, and that Taoist / Tantric concepts underlie the Nuit / Hadit polarity. Also, even though the different eastern systems have ideas about how one should conduct oneself, they tend to not push any absolute morality of good / evil, having realized that these are not natural but conditioned human concepts and relative to situations. They are thousands of years ahead of the West on this, and the eastern versions of Typhonian practices have not been suppressed / persecuted to the extent that they have been in the West.

[Marc]

Even the basic concept of Yin/Yang flies in the face of the Judeo-Christian good vs. evil cosmic battle. It is an interaction..a dance...

I believe that in order to evolve, we must embrace both polarities of everything, then reject them both..only then will we have experienced each thing to its fullest and then we are in a position to transcend it and give birth to a "child" of those two polarities. This is exactly what Crowley explained in works like Konx Om Pax (Synagogue of Satan I believe).