Cults of the Shadow

[movebywillalone]

Hi Im currently reading the new publication of this book and Grant mentions a new revised LBRP that is more adapted the the new aeon? He referenced Magick pg. 406 but I have a newer edition than the one hes referencing. Is this the Star Ruby? Also his chapters The Cult of the Beast 1 and 2 are an amazing explanation of thelema I have no idea how people could ever doubt Grant as an initiate and thelemite! Obviously alot of his critics have not thoroughly read his work.

[Marc]

The edition of Magick referred to is the edition edited by Kenneth Grant. It is the Star Ruby ritual that is being referenced here.

[movebywillalone]

Thanks Marc

[N0T 2]

My deluxe of The Cults of the Shadow arrived recently, an exquisitely designed and realised object which it will be a joy to read and to savour over the coming years. Beautiful, gold-stamped black quarter leather cover in shadowy marbled boards that do not reflect much light and are soft to the touch, and whose sublime and masterful hand-marbled design seems to have movement and depth (in a kind of warped, perichoretic kind of way) and dust jacket, in a lovely violet slipcase. A livid celebration of the Shadow and a fitting shrine for the spirit of Typhon.

There is something extremely wonderful about owning an entire set of First Trilogy deluxes. Sorry to rub it in, but, well, there is. It must be a lot more satisfying having made them. What an extraordinary endeavour to have embarked upon. Congratulations to all concerned, you all deserve a drink, and thank you. There's simply not enough of this sort of thing.

N0T 2

[Michael Staley]

Many thanks, NOT 2, for your highly-appreciative remarks. I was very pleased with how the deluxes worked out. It's one thing to choose the various components, visualising how they might work together; quite another to see the finished book. I'm lucky enough to work with an excellent typesetter, great printers, and high-quality specialist bookbinders.

[N0T 2]

Feb 21, 2014 19:52:12 GMT Michael Staley said:

Many thanks, NOT 2, for your highly-appreciative remarks. I was very pleased with how the deluxes worked out. It's one thing to choose the various components, visualising how they might work together; quite another to see the finished book. I'm lucky enough to work with an excellent typesetter, great printers, and high-quality specialist bookbinders.

A great thing too.

Spoiler warning.

Kenneth's Prefatory Note (facsimile of handwritten note from notebook reproduced inside front cover, presumably from the period when he was composing it) was never included in any previous edition of this book.

It states :

Prefatory Note: (or for inclusion in "Intro." Cults).

My aim is not so much to impart information as to create in the reader a receptivity to influences that cannot be verbally explained.

In other words, the great unwashed have been effectively trolled from day one.

Well played, Aossic, well played.

[Ad Finem]

In my view this note of KG's is very revealing as I think it is a key to much of his work. When one reads KG there is an intense feeling that underneath all his writings there is a deep gnosis which he NEVER openly reveals but with which he seems sometimes to toy with, and comes very close to revealing. For me there is one particular work more than any other in which this is exampled. Yet, in all his writings there is an underlining web of knowledge which can only really be accessed by what I would call "instinctive understanding", in other words, you already have the keys, you just need to dig them out from your own magical universe and what KG does in his work is guide us in this journey under the paths, so for me this prefatory note has a profound meaning.

V V

[Michael Staley]

Yes, much of the material in the endpapers are taken from a notebook which Kenneth kept as he was developing Cults of the Shadow. The passage which NOT 2 highlighted is particularly germane to Grant's work, and chimes with remarks he made elsewhere - see, for instaance, the last two paragraphs of the Introduction to Outside the Circles of Time, which I'll paste in here since we do not always follow-up references:

========================

"One final point is here relevant, and I state it without apology. It is not my purpose to try to prove anything; my aim is to construct a magical mirror capable of expressing some of the less elusive images seen as shadows of a future aeon. This I do by means of suggestion, evocation, and by those oblique and ‘inbetweenness concepts’ that Austin Spare defined as ‘Neither-Neither’. When this is understood, the reader’s mind becomes receptive to the influx of certain concepts that can, if received undistortedly, fertilize the unknown dimensions of his consciousness. In order to achieve this aim a new manner of communication has to be evolved; language itself has to be reborn, revivified, and given a new direction and a new momentum. The truly creative image is born of creative imagining, and this is — ultimately — an irrational process that transcends the grasp of human logic.

"It is well known that scientists and mathematicians have evolved a cryptic language, a language so elusive, so fugitive, and yet so essentially cosmic that it forms an almost qabalistic mode of communication, often misinterpreted by its own initiates! Our position is not quite as desperate, for we are dealing primarily with the body-mind complex in its relation to the universe, and the body-aspect is deeply rooted in the soil of sentiency. Our minds may not understand, but in the deeper layers of subconsciousness where humanity shares a common bed, there is instant recognition. Similarly, a magician devises his ceremony in harmony with the forces he wills to invoke, so an author must pay considerable attention to the creation of an atmosphere that is suitable for his operations. Words are his magical instruments, and their vibrations must not produce a merely arbitrary noise, but an elaborate symphony of tonal reverberations that trigger a series of increasingly profound echoes in the consciousness of his readers. One cannot over-emphasize or over-estimate the importance of this subtle form of alchemy, for it is in the nuances, and not necessarily in the rational meanings of the words and numbers employed, that the magick resides. Furthermore, it is very often in the suggestion of certain words not used, yet indicated or employed by other words having no direct relation to them, that produce the most precise definitions. The edifice of a reality-construct may sometimes be reared only by an architecture of absence, whereby the real building is at one and the same time revealed and concealed by an alien structure haunted by probabilities. These are legion, and it is the creative faculty of the reader — awake and active — that can people the house with souls. So then, this book may mean many things to many readers, and different things to all; but to none can it mean nothing at all, for the house is constructed in such a manner that no echo can be lost."

==========================

Yes, in my opinion it is, as suggested by alchemi, a key to much of his work. There is an underlying gnosis which is glimpsed in flashes. In his Introduction to the 1975 republication of Spare's The Book of Pleasure, Grant said that Spare exalted the Imagination above all other faculties. The same is true of Grant, and the aim of hos work is to fire the Imagination of his readers, so that might engage directly with reality.

In this connection, I'll paste in one last quote. It's not by Grant, but by J. F. C. Fuller from his book Atlantis: America and the Future. It's one of several quotes which intriduced different parts of Zos Speaks!:

============================

“The gods are not persons to be seen or spoken to, their utterances are delivered in oracles and these are normally cryptic and difficult to understand. There is a Pythoness in every one of us, and a Delphic cavern, namely our imagination, into which we must retire if we are to accomplish anything of worth.”

============================

[N0T 2]

Beats the "shopping list" style any time. Rather than instructing your inner ape to do things, Kenneth cuts out the middle man and does them TO you.

Beautiful quotes Michael - interesting KG's reference to the language of mathematics, the modern form of which really began with Newton, the single most thoroughly-documented alchemist in history, with a roomful of hundreds of his alchemical notebooks still extant, to the embarrassment of certain types of rationalist for whom he is some kind of secular atheist saint, when he's actually a Natural Philosopher, i.e., magician.

[PW PV 113]

Indeed, this is a fascinating book. The work of such visionaries is to open evolutionary pathways to the future. Of course these cannot be literally described - the form for their understanding has to be brought into being first. New methods of communication are high on the list of essentials ! Non-dual, direct perception; understanding by vibration; the gist of it's holistic. Sam Beckett was another Master.

[Gregory Peters]

Michael that quote is the key to Grant's entire work I think. Really inspiring beyond.. well.. words!