Vaihinger's Influence on Grant

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

In a recent post of mine a tangential thought crossed my mind about Kenneth Grant pointing Austin Spare to Hans Vaihinger's The Philosophy of 'As If' as he recounted in Zos Speaks! (page 157):

The doctrine of 'as if', which is crucial to an understanding of Spare's later writings, derives its name from the philosophy of Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933) to whose work The Philosophy of 'As If' I directed Spare's attention in the late nineteen-forties. He realised immediately that the concept encapsulated his own major magical premise, summed up by Schiller many decades earlier: "In error only is there life, and knowledge must be death." This was acknowledged by Vaihinger to have formed the foundation of his own theory of the "useful fiction". As he stated:

"The 'As If' world... the world of the 'unreal' is just as real and important as the real or actual... indeed it is far more important for ethics and aesthetics." And - Spare would have added - "for sorcery". Vaihinger pointed out that the "specific particles of 'as if', 'as though' etc., are frequently found expressed in this manner among the mediaeval and later mystics, e.g. in St. Catherine of Genoa".

He also noticed that the 'as if' theory was the nexus between the philosophies of Kant and Nietzsche, who declared "The belief in external things is one of the necessary errors of mankind", and "our external world is a product of the fantasy." The fantasy is the 'as if'.

And so on. There's a little more but that gives you the basic idea.

I briefly scanned through the indices of all the trilogies and Images and Oracles of AOS but didn't find any other mentions of Hans Vaihinger. For some reason though I felt that Grant had talked more about Vaihinger somewhere but maybe the passage above just stuck with me over the years or maybe Vaihinger just doesn't make any appearances in the indices or bibliographies of the trilogies and Images and Oracles but is in the texts. In his introduction to The Book of Pleasure perhaps? I don't have that edition but I have read that intro. If anyone knows other mentions please point them out.

Grant only points out above how important Vaihinger was to understanding Spare's magical philosophy. What I'm interested in is how crucial is Vaihinger's philosophy of 'as if' to understanding Kenneth Grant's works? or how much of an influence was he on Grant himself? 

I think Vaihinger's The Philosophy of "As If" can be found fairly easily online these days for anyone not familiar with the work itself. I actually first of heard of Vaihinger through Grant (more than likely from the passage I quoted above) and was familiar with what Ramsey Dukes says about "acting 'as if'" in his works like S.S.O.T.B.M.E. (Dukes never actually mentions Vaihinger if I remember correctly) and somehow I knew I had to procure a copy of the actual source. Back in the late 1990's it was not easily had and when I finally acquired a copy in 2003 I paid around $280 for it (is an academic publication), give or take a few dollars and some cents. I remember it well because it was the first ridiculously expensive book I ever bought and still holds the record for highest price I've paid. At that time I thought I had something extra special. Was not quite that but it did prove to be a very good book to have on hand and has permeated my own take on magical work since. Just a few years later I noticed some new cheap editions of it as well as free pdf versions popping up.

[Gregory Peters]

Nov 27, 2013 17:49:25 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

In a recent post of mine a tangential thought crossed my mind about Kenneth Grant pointing Austin Spare to Hans Vaihinger's The Philosophy of 'As If' as he recounted in Zos Speaks! (page 157):

He also noticed that the 'as if' theory was the nexus between the philosophies of Kant and Nietzsche, who declared "The belief in external things is one of the necessary errors of mankind", and "our external world is a product of the fantasy." The fantasy is the 'as if'.

This is interesting on multiple levels, but it also reminds of an AC quote regarding what a Thelemite is that I posted in another thread:

“The main Ethics of the Book of the Law. Man is asked to act as if it were true that he is a spark of that great light of God. Those who insist on making that assumption, on basing all their lives on it, are the Thelemites.” (Churton quoting unpublished AC)

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Yeah Gregory, your quote there wasn't lost on me because you posted it the next day after I posted THIS. I thought it was funny and even considered for a moment that you might have gotten the idea from reading what I had just posted but it didn't really seem to be the case. Cool little synchronicity though.  It also shows more explicitly that the "as if" method was familiar to Crowley as well. It's indicated throughout his works of course but he doesn't quite state it as such. I think Crowley understood "the map is not the territory" quite well.

I was looking through Vaihinger's book just now and just happened upon one of the passages that Grant quotes in Zos Speaks! (that I quoted above) and noticed that in addition to how he omitted little sections of it he also misquoted what he did quote. This is the full paragraph he pulled some of that from as it appears on page xlvii (2003 Routledge reprint of the 1924 edition) in the beginning section where Vaihinger gives the historical background to the formation of his philosophy:

(11) The "As if" world, which is formed in this manner, the world of the "unreal" is just as real and important as the world of the so-called real or actual (in the ordinary sense of the word); indeed it is far more important for ethics and aesthetics. This aesthetic and ethical world of "As if", the world of the unreal, becomes finally for us a world of values which, particularly in the form of religion, must be sharply distinguished in our mind from the world of becoming.

The #11 there simply indicates that it is from a list of the various conclusions of Vaihinger's thesis that he states up front. In Grant's case it might possibly transcend coincidence that he chose to quote the 11th conclusion. The part Grant added about Saint Catherine of Genoa comes from a footnote on page 258.

[Gregory Peters]

Fascinating stuff. In a way this really nails the primary working hypothesis for all magick and ritual in its entirety. I think you are absolutely spot on in noting that Crowley integrated the "as if" method, even if not explicitly stating it. (and I do love these synchronicities popping up!)

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Crowley's Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae makes the basic theory and practice fairly explicit. Everyone here is probably more than familiar with that liber so I won't quote the relevant points.

And to bring this back around to Vaihinger's influence on Grant; take a look at the final two paragraphs of the introduction to Outside the Circles of Time. I think Grant is making it clear there that the "as if" is important to understanding his works as well. He of course spins it in a slightly deeper sense that I don't have time to analyze in the moment. I'll be back to this when I have that moment.

[Gregory Peters]

Nov 28, 2013 15:27:07 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

Crowley's Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae makes the basic theory and practice fairly explicit. Everyone here is probably more than familiar with that liber so I won't quote the relevant points.

And to bring this back around to Vaihinger's influence on Grant; take a look at the final two paragraphs of the introduction to Outside the Circles of Time. I think Grant is making it clear there that the "as if" is important to understanding his works as well. He of course spins it in a slightly deeper sense that I don't have time to analyze in the moment. I'll be back to this when I have that moment.

Agreed with everything you say here.

Those last two paragraphs of OTCOT are some of the most profound occult gnostic truth. As always, Grant had a way of taking in these ideas and teaching from other sources and enlivening them, transforming them into starry wisdom! 

[Gregory Peters]

Digging a little more into this "as-if" philosophy, I can really see how it influenced Grant in a huge way. This really is an important work, thanks for the pointer!

From the wikipedia article:

"Even the laws of logic are fictions, albeit ones that have proved their indispensable worth in experience and are thus held to be undeniably true. It is not worth asking whether religious and metaphysical doctrines are true in an objective sense, since this cannot be discovered, but it is worth asking whether it is useful to act 'as if' they were true."

[Gregory Peters]

I'm becoming mildly alarmed at just how pervasive the "as-if" philosophy is in just about everything I have ever studied, even life itself. It has been right in front of me all this time, "as-if" it were somehow engineered into the fabric of "reality." Is this not a western explanation of the dance of maya, the very fluid and energetic cosmic dance of shakti that "manifests" our every day experience?

In another synchronistic event, I am currently reading Lightquest by Andrew Collins and came across what is clearly (to me) an explicit direction to manipulate this reality in the "as-if" manner:

"Entering into the Avebury and Alton Barnes landscapes with the correct mindset could pay dividends, either through sheer belief or direct attempts at communication and interaction with the light intelligences behind these intrusions into our reality. The more you can make it happen, the more likely it becomes that you will create the correct mental environment to enable some form of directed communication to occur." (pg 182).

[Frater Shaddad]

Nov 29, 2013 21:07:47 GMT Gregory Peters said:

I'm becoming mildly alarmed at just how pervasive the "as-if" philosophy is in just about everything I have ever studied, even life itself. It has been right in front of me all this time, "as-if" it were somehow engineered into the fabric of "reality." Is this not a western explanation of the dance of maya, the very fluid and energetic cosmic dance of shakti that "manifests" our every day experience?

In another synchronistic event, I am currently reading Lightquest by Andrew Collins and came across what is clearly (to me) an explicit direction to manipulate this reality in the "as-if" manner:

"Entering into the Avebury and Alton Barnes landscapes with the correct mindset could pay dividends, either through sheer belief or direct attempts at communication and interaction with the light intelligences behind these intrusions into our reality. The more you can make it happen, the more likely it becomes that you will create the correct mental environment to enable some form of directed communication to occur." (pg 182).

I have been meaning to get into the books by Andrew Collins. Thanks for pointing out this passage, Gregory! I also want to mention that the "as if" formulae plays an important role in the works of Andrew Chumbley and Daniel Schulke through the inspirational influence of the works of Grant and Spare on Sabbatic Craft.

[Gregory Peters]

Frater Shaddad, it is all starting to come together. It is like the grand unified theory of occult sciences!

Andrew Collins book is really fascinating, I do recommend it. Also going through Peter Redgrove's The Black Goddess right now. The two books compliment one another well.

[Gregory Peters]

Isn't the celebrated Oath of the Abyss one of the most obvious examples of directly using the 'As-If' method in magick? Brilliant.
Nalyd, you have lit a fire under my rear on this one.. I am seeing it everywhere now

[ShB]

same principle but written "as though" instead of "if"

www.sacred-texts.com/eso/chaos/princhao.txt

[Vadge Moore]

Amazing. I just woke...specifically from a dream that was so vivid and realistic, it was frightening. A violent dream. But not Surreal. We all have vivid dreams but they usually contain an element of the absurd. Not this one. This had NO absurdity...no Surreal elements whatsoever. In the past when I awake from dreams this realistic, I wonder if they are a vision of a past incarnations experience...or perhaps a future incarnation. This morning was no exception.

I've been double-fisting it with Grant's books and Nietzsche's Will To Power for months now. I was just about to drop off to sleep...considering that the dream could be a foreshadowing of some incarnation...when it hit me...what has Grant been telling me for so many years...that I always understood...but, maybe didn't "see?" That just as dreams seem as realistic as waking life at times...isn't waking life just as fleeting an illusory? And, of course, anybody that has read deeply enough into Nietzsche knows that he is always questioning the reality of the appearance of being: Will To Power, passage 708; "2... perhaps the world of beings is mere appearance."

Now, don't get me wrong...I'm no idiot. I've had amazing, advanced magickal and mystical experiences my entire life. But something about this dream and it's realization hit me like a ton of bricks...and I saw. I get up, go to my desk and randomly pick up a book completely unrelated to magickal or mystical philosophy...and what do I read in the first paragraph? A quote by Vaihinger's "As If..."

This is pure Jungian synchronicity...and it tied in with everything I'd been reading in Grant's books and in Nietzsche. Never heard of Vaihinger...wasn't supremely interested when I saw this thread...but now, Nalyd, because of your post I will be picking up this book immediately. Thank you, my friend for bringing this authors work to my attention. I see how this will tie together so many threads in my philosophy...and may be the thing that allows me to finish my new book with a sense of real completeness and wholeness. Love this forum!

[Gregory Peters]

Vadge, that is an excellent example of how this web of maya plays out in our lives! I love the playfulness of that great goddess of infinite space and infinite stars!
This "as-if" connectivity is opening doors everywhere for me in seemingly random and strangely beautiful ways. More on this later.
Enjoy the ride, and thank you Nalyd for inserting this particular Key...

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Gregory and Vadge, glad you guys have gotten something useful from this. I was kind of under the impression that Vaihinger's work was fairly common knowledge amongst readers of Kenneth Grant, at least in name if nothing else. But I will say that only upon the creation of this thread and scanning through all the Typhonian trilogies did I realize that Grant doesn't talk as much about him as I was thinking. Only in Zos Speaks! and maybe in his introduction to The Book of Pleasure (not verified).

Here is another quote from page 81 of The Philosophy of "As If" that I think is relevant and may further this discussion along:

Fictio means, in the first place, an activity of fingere, that is to say, of constructing, forming, giving shape, elaborating, presenting, artistically fashioning : conceiving, thinking, imagining, assuming, planning, devising, inventing. Secondly, it refers to the product of these activities, the fictional assumption, fabrication, creation, the imagined case. Its most conspicuous character is that of unhampered and free expression.

Mythology, in so far as it may be regarded as the common mother of religion, poetry, art and science, shows us the first expression in free constructive activity of the inventive faculty, of imagination and of fantasy. It is here that we first find products of fantasy which do not correspond to reality.

Something of further interest is an article in Starfire Vol. II, No. 3 by Daniel Letts titled "The Aphotic Oracle"* where the word "fictional" is broken down into a magical formula as follows:

FICTIONAL, 186, (FICT-ION-AL), is the key to understanding much of the inner workings of the Grant books and novels; but it also has a much broader significance, for the formula is central to the creative will of initiates and non-initiates alike.

186, is, of course, 93 x 2. The 2 here represents Chokmah, 'Wisdom' or 'Light'. This 2 is also Ab, the Father: in this case, of energy and rebellion.

There is a footnote added to that which gives the rationale behind the meaning and creative gematria of FICTIONAL:

Fict is a word meaning 'an imaginative creation'. As such. it is closely related to the Hebrew IHI, 'let there be', and for the purposes of this exposition the gematrical value of 25 is substituted for FICT. The second element, ION, yields 130. The final element, AL, gives us 31. The total of these is 186.

Just felt like throwing that in the mix as well.

I have a piece of writing I've been working on off and on for some time (always expanding and revising) titled "The Sorcery of Fiction" that takes inspiration from both Vaihinger and those ideas in Letts' article quoted there and expands on my own process of using these "as if" and "fictional" metaphors magically; Magick as techne logos, the "way or skill of the word". If I ever get it in a state I feel is worth presenting I'll be sure to bring it here for inspection; maybe a different thread though.

* As a side note, I loved that article when I first read it as well as the one that directly follows it in that issue, "Nightmare Sorcery" by Richard Gavin, and was amazed that these two articles by two different individuals summed up and confirmed my own independently designed magical mode of operation at that very time in my life. The basic idea that Gavin outlines as "nightmare sorcery" is virtually identical to the methods I came to on my own and called "oneiric sorcery". Synchronistically around that same time that issue of Starfire was published, 2008, I was engaged in a series of oneiric operations that led to a series of writings that I had collectively named "Notes from the Aphotic Zone" before I ever saw Letts' article so you can probably imagine the little red flags going up when I saw that title "The Aphotic Oracle"!  Perhaps a discussion of the important role synchronicity plays in working with Typhonian currents is in order. Vadge, your own piece, "Kenneth Grant and the Merovingian Mythos" also came to my attention a few years back in a very similar synchronistic way.

[Vadge Moore]

Nalyd- I was able to read some of As If...on scribd - and especially concentrated on the last chapter on Nietzsche and if Vaihinger had access to Nietzsche's notes The Will To Power, he would have been really impressed. The book is on it's way. I've taken to sleeping on my front porch in anticipation of it's arrival...and I live in snowy Denver!

[N0T 2]

Lovecraft knew all about the philosophy of Al Azif when he was Abdul Alhazred (Al,-has-read), which was in a dream as a youngster, and over a thousand years ago here.
.
I wish more people did.

[stephen]

Wondered when someone would make the Azif connection.  The sound of nocturnal insects, apparently.

AZ-IF = Aleph, Zayin - Yod, Phay (final) = AZIPh = 818, so I would like to name (almost said christen, for some peculiar reason) this the 818 Formula.  I do like palindromic numbers.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Nov 21, 2014 15:26:35 GMT stephen said:

Wondered when someone would make the Azif connection.  The sound of nocturnal insects, apparently.

I've wondered this myself and made this connection a long time ago. I even casually pointed it out on this forum HERE almost exactly a year ago.  

EDIT: Incidentally, that post was what sparked the idea to even start this thread.

[N0T 2]

Nov 22, 2014 1:11:35 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

Nov 21, 2014 15:26:35 GMT stephen said:

Wondered when someone would make the Azif connection.  The sound of nocturnal insects, apparently.

I've wondered this myself and made this connection a long time ago. I even casually pointed it out on this forum HERE almost exactly a year ago.  

EDIT: Incidentally, that post was what sparked the idea to even start this thread.

The homophony as-if/Azif was first connected by Kenneth Grant,  and is suggested throughout Grant's explorations of these subjects in the Trilogies.

Nov 22, 2014 2:26:35 GMT 11 stephen said:
AZ-IF = Aleph, Zayin - Yod, Phay (final) = AZIPh = 818, so I would like to name (almost said christen, for some peculiar reason) this the 818 Formula. I do like palindromic numbers.

I like it, Stephen.

Also, if you take Aleph for Aayin, it's 887. Not palindromic, but worthy of our contemplation nonetheless.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Would you mind pointing to a reference to where Grant made this connection or even talks about it in the trilogies? I've never seen it. He only mentions the title Al Azif a handful of times throughout his trilogies and in none of those instances does he connect the term to "as if" that I could see. He doesn't even mention the "philosophy of 'as if'" or Hans Vaihinger even once throughout all nine books. The only mention I could find of Vaihinger in the works I have access to is in Zos Speaks! and he mentioned "as if" (without mentioning Vaihinger) in his piece on Spare in Hidden Lore. I wouldn't doubt that he made this connection but I've not seen it in anything I've read by Grant.

[N0T 2]

Nov 22, 2014 3:56:02 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

Would you mind pointing to a reference to where Grant made this connection or even talks about it in the trilogies? I've never seen it. He only mentions the title Al Azif a handful of times throughout his trilogies and in none of those instances does he connect the term to "as if" that I could see. He doesn't even mention the "philosophy of 'as if'" or Hans Vaihinger even once throughout all nine books. The only mention I could find of Vaihinger in the works I have access to is in Zos Speaks! and he mentioned "as if" (without mentioning Vaihinger) in his piece on Spare in Hidden Lore. I wouldn't doubt that he made this connection but I've not seen it in anything I've read by Grant.

One of the beauties of Kenneth's work is how he suggests connections which are left for his readers to make.

I understood Stephen's reply to my post "I was wondering when someone would make the connection" to refer to "making" the connection in the thread, on this forum, not "making" it for the first time ever (much less claiming it as one's own - which not even Kenneth, who made it for the first time ever, did overtly).  Presumably Stephen was referring to the fact that Kenneth has made the connection already in his writings, which he definitely has, suggestively, which is what I was referring to in my original post in this thread. It's not news. Or at
least, wasn't meant to be, from me.

That said, there probably is a place where he makes this resonance more obviously than in others, but I can't tell you off the top of my head where that place is. It's likely an impression, rather than a single statement, Nalyd, that makes the connection. Or perhaps a context. You know how he works - it's often not linear, it's poetic. But it's there. And I don't think he talks about Vaihinger, either.

This is why I threw it in playfully in my original post about Lovecraft above -- assuming this would be obvious to those familiar with Kenneth's writings. This is likely also presumably why Stephen independently expected someone to do so eventually, and also, presumably, why you also did so a year ago in another thread as well - a thread I had not actually read, until you posted the link to it above. Because Kenneth has put the thought in your/our head.

He also put the thought in Spare's head, introducing him to both Lovecraft's and Vaihinger's works, and it's likely the connection was in Kenneth's head already at this early stage, given his subsequent career and its focus. There's certainly somewhere (possibly in Outer Gateways?) where the two terms are in focus, but I can't tell you where. It's just there somewhere. Possibly everywhere. I don't know. Sorry.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

I suspected you'd answer in that fashion. Fair enough though. I wasn't attempting to take any credit for that 'as if'/azif connection but just pointing to the fact that I did previously mention it elsewhere. I sometimes wonder if this forum is even worth bothering with because most of us are already on the same or very similar page here. There is not much new to share with one another it seems. I say that in jest of course. 

I did come to the 'as if'/azif connection independently of Grant's writings though. My inspiration was more W. H. Müller and his book Polaria: The Gift of the White Stone. Müller relies heavily on "phonetic cabala". Curiously, in all of his alchemical exegesis of H. P. Lovecraft's mythos and how it relates to the "polar tradition" he never once mentions Al Azif that I can remember. I just applied his own methods to it myself.

[Gregory Peters]

Polaria: The Gift of the White Stone - what an interesting sounding book Nalyd! Did a quick search for it just now and see that it is a bit out of my price range currently ($700 and up for a used copy!). The idea of treating Lovecrafts writing with a sort of typhonian-alchemical lens is *very* intriguing. Is this a book that Grant referenced, or did you come across it from some other means?

At the end of the day, there are just too many damn books. Today, I had every intention of diving in to the Starfire augmented edition of the Magical Revival. I placed it on the table, with three notebooks, a pencil and a pen, to be able to catalog ideas as they came up. Simply glancing at the cover for a few minutes launched me into a reverie of thoughts and paths that I ended up spending about four hours this afternoon producing sigils and writing a ritual that works with the presence of several dakinis.. The influence of that hidden guru, LAM, radiating through the pages made me experience my own missing time.

Such is the power of the Typhonian Trilogies that the mere thought of reading them triggers creative inspiration! Looking very forward to spending the next few months deep in the midst of the new Starfire editions

[stephen]

Nov 22, 2014 1:11:35 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

Nov 21, 2014 15:26:35 GMT stephen said:

Wondered when someone would make the Azif connection.  The sound of nocturnal insects, apparently.

I've wondered this myself and made this connection a long time ago. I even casually pointed it out on this forum HERE almost exactly a year ago.  

EDIT: Incidentally, that post was what sparked the idea to even start this thread.

Have to admit that I had forgotten your observation, Nalyd.

KG does mention Al Azif throughout the Trilogies, firstly in NOE and then in OTCOT, but in none of these does he make the connection with the "as if" philosophy of Vaihinger.  The interpretation of Azif, which he does mention, is actually Lovecraft's from his "A History of the Necronomicon":

"Original title Al Azif - Azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons".

KG gives a qabbalistic interpretation of  AL AZIPh = 129 in OTCOT (p.171, Muller).  But staying with my 818, we get:

ChVThM HShTN (818), The Seal of Satan, and NVQBA DThHVMA RBA (818), Nukva di-tehoma rabba, Hole of the Great Abyss - among other correspondences.

AL AZIPh = 849 = LA-ThIRA MPChD LILH, "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night". (Psalm 91,5).

Fairly sure that I have something for 887, will check it out.  But staying with the palindromes:
AZIPh = 818 and ATzIPh = 181, 818 + 181 = 999.