what is the Mauve Zone?

[parzival81]

My background is almost entirely Crowley. The only relevant or interesting book I've read on Crowley was skimming through Grants two first books in PDF. The books seem to be actually outrageously expensive.

Also Grant, like Crowley, was a prolific and systemic writer, which means to me that one has to read more than one of his books, because there is a lot that is self referential. And then there are the blinds and the qabalistic references and gematria to deal with.

One concept that entices me and that I'd just like to read a thread on is the the "Mauve Zone". What is it. How does it relate to Thelema and Crowley's Corpus. Its such a seductive phrase that doesn't seem to come in till later.

[ShB]

the simplest explanation
the region BETWEEN
Dreaming and dreamless-Sleep

[Michael Staley]

Jun 2, 2014 20:01:18 GMT parzival81 said:

My background is almost entirely Crowley. The only relevant or interesting book I've read on Crowley was skimming through Grants two first books in PDF. The books seem to be actually outrageously expensive.

Before moving on to consider the term 'the Mauve Zone', I'd like to comment on your remarks here. The first two books are priced at £30 each. Why do you consider that price "outrageously expensive"?

Jun 2, 2014 20:01:18 GMT parzival81 said:

One concept that entices me and that I'd just like to read a thread on is the the "Mauve Zone". What is it. How does it relate to Thelema and Crowley's Corpus. Its such a seductive phrase that doesn't seem to come in till later.

The earliest use of the term I'm aware of occurs in Hecate's Fountain, and as ShB says above, the term designates the state between waking and dreaming. To quote from the Introduction to Hecate's Fountain:

Above and beyond this, the book endeavours to follow the workings of these phenomena in dimensions that scientists are only just beginning to explore. These dimensions, which may be considered as existing outside or between the two states of dreaming and waking, I have called the Mauve Zone. It includes and excludes both states simultaneously.

As examples of this, it is clear from the anecdotes of Lodge working throughout Hecate's Fountain that a technique used was inducing group dream states.

Although the term occurs, as you say, relatively late in the Typhonian Trilogies, the concept appears much earlier, for instance in the Dream Control techniques set out in Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God and Cults of the Shadow. In a wider context, techniques such as Dion Fortune's "dreaming true" are akin, as is lucid dreaming, the dream yoga techniques of Tibetan Buddhism, etc.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

There is a seeming inconsistency in what Grant states about the Mauve Zone. He does mention at various times what ShB and Mick have pointed out above; the state between dreaming and waking (which seems to imply the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states) and the state between dreaming and dreamless sleep. Both of these areas are actually quite different but both share the state of inbetweenness.

In the glossary entries for "Mauve Zone" in the last four volumes of the trilogies Grant gives four slightly different definitions but all share the same basic theme, two of which mention the state between dreaming and dreamless sleep (or deep sleep states). He says it's a synonym of various other metaphorical terms. In one instance he even says it's a "loaded term". In Hecate's Fountain he states: "Its locus on the Tree of Life is at Daath, the Place of the Crossing typified by the explosive Herschel whose astroglyph resembles the Sign of the Drukpas." The most revealing and useful statement, at least for me, was a line included in the definition in Beyond the Mauve Zone: "It is the state which dawns beyond the abyss which separates phenomenal existence from noumenal Being." You will have to get all of the books at their outrageous prices if you want it all spelled out in more detail.

I personally would even more simply, or broadly, define the Mauve Zone as any inbetweenness state of consciousness. I will share with you a couple of excerpts of what I once said about this subject a few years ago to a different crowd:

In Oneiric terms the Mauve Zone is the twilight region that exists between mundane dreaming (swapna) and dreamless sleep (sushupti), hence it's designation as "the place of the crossing". The Mauve Zone is what I sometimes refer to as the Oneiric Interface or even the Necronomicon (akashic record/grimoire). It is the realm where dreaming/imagination becomes true; the crossroads or meeting place where genuine communication with archetypes/daimons occurs. You could even describe it as sort of an asteroid belt of shells (qliphoth) that "outside intelligences" inhabit and animate in order to interface and communicate with us. These are just metaphors of course.

In waking terms the Mauve Zone is the Gate of Gnosis.

...the Mauve Zone/Da'ath is also represented by the planet Uranus. The nature of this planet holds a key to understanding the function of the Mauve Zone in Magick. Uranus represents the intuitive flash of Gnosis as well as being the disrupter of logic and reason (our maps). From below the abyss our apprehension of it's logic is that of dream and/or nightmare. Uranus shatters all the illusory forms we hold sacred to clean a slate for a new, more wholistic and universal perspective that exists above at the Supernal Triad.

EDIT: To point you in a direction that may provide an answer to your question about how this subject relates to Thelema and Crowley's corpus, see the various chapters on dreams in Liber Aleph as well as his The Heart of the Master.

[Deleted]

Grant's Mauve Zone seems to correspond to what I call the Domain of Imaginal Worlds (DIW).  From my point of ingress, I start to cross the World Lines of other entities almost immediately, just as creatures know very well when they cross each others' tracks in the cloud forest. Engagements occur in dimensionless space. I experience this space as limitless translucent green, but it could certainly appear with different colours to Observers Elsewhere. Colours have no absolute value in dimensionless space. There are no signposts, and entities successfully engaged are often, but not always, as uninformative as they are frightening.

Communicating the experience of sorcery in plain written language is always problematic, but you will know when you are in the DIW because of the presence of entities, sometimes just one, or two, or three, and sometimes too many to count. You might be the centre of attention, you might be ignored, you might take a dart or two on a bad day. Sometimes you'll be thrown out almost at once by a wave of fright too terrible to withstand, and once in a while great joy will find you among friends.

The DIW may or may not be the Mauve Zone of KG. I have no way of telling. I haven't seen him there.

Is there a Beyond DIW as there is a Beyond the Mauve Zone? I can't say there isn't, but am limited by my inability to imagine dimensionless space having anything beyond it, but...  a cave can open up in a stone, so I'm always willing to be surprised.

  

[N0T 2]

Jun 5, 2014 10:18:27 GMT Michael Staley said:

The earliest use of the term I'm aware of occurs in Hecate's Fountain, and as ShB says above, the term designates the state between waking and dreaming. To quote from the Introduction to Hecate's Fountain:

Above and beyond this, the book endeavours to follow the workings of these phenomena in dimensions that scientists are only just beginning to explore. These dimensions, which may be considered as existing outside or between the two states of dreaming and waking, I have called the Mauve Zone. It includes and excludes both states simultaneously.

Note the deliberate ambiguity of Kenneth's choice of description of Mauve Zone as "outside or between" both states.  The positional and hyperspatial paradox is itself indicative of the perspective, the reality he is trying to convey.

I had an important and unexpected mystical experience ten years ago, connected with my study of Grant, which flipped me into involuntarily and by default experiencing the "waking" world (physical universe) as merely a type of persistent dream state, which it remains for me to this day, come what may. I certainly didn't expect this from a book (Outer Gateways)! It took some adjustment I have to say over some time, but I am glad for it.

I understand his term "Mauve Zone" as referring to a perspective of sentience outside of this waking/persistent dream state, and also outside the realms of dream, - a position which oddly left in my mind a distinct notion of being in several places in the phenomenal (this waking dream) universe simultaneously, as different phases of the same person. Without any previous intention (or clue) of such a corny and ridiculous idea, by default, I was presented with the case of "myself" as an avatar, from the perspective of the "someone" whose avatar "I" was, their location being altogether elsewhere, so that the only perception forthcoming of this entity who projected "me" as an avatar consisted merely of the fact of our link and nothing more beyond the sense "my" actual position in a definite physical location in a remote galaxy, projecting this entity to Earth. A tunnel of awareness was established connecting my presence to this perspective, whose source was outside, and elsewhere; this in turn revealed this world as a dream experienced by that entity. Although taking a rest from intentional occult work, I was still casually maintaining a loose Liber Nu/Liber Had practise at odd times, as a basic feature of life, so maybe this had something to do with it.

Later, quite a bit later, i.e. recently-ish, I was able to relate and understand my experience in the light of Grant's expressions in The Wisdom of S'lba, but I had no rapport with the transmission beforehand, despite my study of the book containing it (the other portion of the book containing it was what I was studying, not the Wisdom itself), as I'd had my head in Crowley for too long up to then, and was listening wrongly.

So to me,  it seems easier to call it an outer perspective, from where the so-called Mauve Zone perspective arises (although, curiously, yes - also in a sense including both and therefore in between the more usual sleep-dream state and this ongoing dream we call the waking state, as being outside both, it contains them both - as it simultaneously touches upon their natures, and yet is distinct from them).

The above experience was akin to waking in a lucid dream, but vastly different from importing a dream into this world. I have had experiences where I have "woken" from a dream with the dream still occurring to me and visibly projected upon the "waking" world, eyes wide open (content was negligible, but the incongruity of the two states produced absolute terror and panic); I have had many lucid (consciously controlled) dreams of bliss;   I have witnessed consciously and minutely, in a continuum experienced in helpless, death-like terror, the return to the reality of "wakefulness" from the equally-real reality of the dreams of sleep (ambivalent to both, the conscious transition is what terrifies - observing the universe around you really dissolve is terrifying). None of these experiences resonate for me with Grant's ideas about The Mauve Zone. All these states, if they had any relation to the other one mentioned above, were completely different to the first one described above. So when I read Grant's ideas on what he calls The Mauve Zone, it seems to resonate more for me with the concept of being "outside" than with being "in between" the states he mentions, having been in between all of them at some time or other, although I can see why he'd not limit it to this notion alone.

Perhaps one can think of The Mauve Zone as having a relation to the entire continuum of consciousness, the appearance of Self, and dimensionality itself as our concept of space does to the objects of the physical universe (i.e. the substance of waking dream) -- perhaps one could extend Grant's remarks, that like space, the Mauve Zone might be said to be simultaneously in between the smallest or subtlest things (or phases of consciousness or dimensionality of whatever kind), and outside or beyond the largest and grossest, thus in a sense both permeating and containing them all.

[Deleted]

Jun 6, 2014 4:09:32 GMT N0T 2 said:

Jun 5, 2014 10:18:27 GMT Michael Staley said:

I understand his term "Mauve Zone" as referring to a perspective of sentience outside of this waking/persistent dream state, and also outside the realms of dream, - a position which oddly left in my mind a distinct notion of being in several places in the phenomenal (this waking dream) universe simultaneously, as different phases of the same person.

I have known multiple instances of discrete but seemingly simultaneous and non-simultaneous images of Self on a number of occasions, experiences which were vivid and interesting and memorable and emotionally neutral, but from which I draw no firm conclusions. I haven't found attempts to shoehorn my experiences into  Crowleyean experiential models much help over the years. In fact, I don't think of him that often.

Many years ago, I had one very severe malfunction along these lines. Two instances of Self (witnessed by the Observer, a third) attacked each other with enormous violence and determination, while a stream of malignant entities like metallic crabs appeared and began harassing both combatants with their pincers, inflicting terrible wounds. This is the single, most horrific, experience I've had to deal with in forty years. Of course, it's possible to put a psychoanalytic interpretation on this kind of thing - dissociation, ego fragmentation, and so on - but I don't usually find it helpful to bring in outsiders' theories of mind, explanations devised for other purposes.

I still find the diminishing, dissolution, and flowing away, of Self severely frightening and stressful, and am not sure it is something I will ever - can ever - get used to.  I greet the Smoking Mirror with dread, and sometimes think I'm not really up to this line of work. But doubts are two a penny, so after a day or two I carry on. Nobody said it would be easy. 

PS: I thought I'd find more flags flying when I moved into this Typhonian outpost. Apart from Michael's flapping around the Lightning Conductor when the wind changes,  and my own tacked together from oddments of rag I've found in the attic and pinned to the eves, I've seen a few glimpses of yours enough to know you are here, and for the rest nothing at all as yet.

[stephen]

The 'Mauve Zone' is, and is both not; any particular experience of the 'waking dream' is a pale , but pertinent experience of it. Grant's Typhonian volumes, are as ever, a progression of changing perceptions, and subtle redefinitions of magical experience. So much, in case, with the nebulous notations of the 'Mauve Zone'.

Exchanged an interesting letter with KG in the 1990s, with reference to Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone"; he stated that he had never even heard of it; and I have no cause to doubt his veracity.

[parzival81]

Thank you Michael. I'm sorry for not being specific on Amazon. Thank you for this. I wish there was more secondary but see that it place is taken out by epistles and articles in the journals. I just realized to pays that you check out the publishers website. I see that the grant texts is only about 30-40 pounds. On amazon they sell the older publications for a lot more. I don't think you com up for them. I don't know the coversion rate. But it seems f

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[parzival81]

Thank you all for your helpful responses. They are going to give me a lot to look at as relates to my primary practice, at the moment is my 11* Working from Ma'at Magick. I'm on the Throne of Daat
This information will help to dine the contours of my experience Daat. Though, I'm not ever quite sure where the power for the Working from.

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[N0T 2]

An unlikely corroboration, admittedly debatable, is Peter Carroll's "octarine" (the kala of the quintessence itself, or magic), in turn based on Terry Pratchett's (fiction parody, ostensibly) "colour of magic". Carroll's description as an "electric pinkish-purple" is a good way to not say "mauve", and whilst the reference is thin on articulation, it's a nod in the same direction, perhaps.

[sandow]

Probably both Carroll and Grant were influenced by the Golden Dawn system attributing "Lavender Blue" (i.e: mauve !) to Daath in King's scale of colour. Most of the time, King's scale wasn't used for sephiroth, the Queen scale was used instead; excepted for Daath, described in King's scale by Israel Regardie in the middle pillar ritual, probably to show the "artificial"nature of Daath, partaking more of the nature of a "path" than of a "real" sephirah...

[stephen]

The concept of the Mauve Zone had its 'birth' in the Wisdom of S'lba, Chapter II.18:

"From the destruction of mind that gives birth to Chaos a zone of mauve is created, a desert of sand above the Tunnels of Set.  The winds hurry through them, a sinister piping bearing the beetle on its wings".

Some of this transmission was received earlier, but most of it was received and consolidated during the operation of New Isis Lodge, between 1955-1962.  Therefore, now familiar terms such as 'Tunnels of Set' and 'Mauve Zone' which made their first public appearance in print during the 1970s and 1990s respectively, had their origins much earlier.

The Golden Dawn/777 colour attributions of Daath clearly made their contribution, but see Kenneth Grant's commentary on this verse in Outer Gateways.  The mauve zone was first experienced as a result of tangential tantra during Lodge workings.

[howl]

I've been having these sort of hypnagogic experiences for the last 10 years or so, quite seldom though, but the frequency seems to be slowly increasing. These usually occur when I'm really tired and exhausted, and one way to achieve this state is to drink lots of alcohol the night before and sleep just a little. Maybe alcohol alters the brain chemistry in a way that mere sleep deprivation does not do?
However the last time happened without any drinking which was really, really positive, haha.

I'm trying to fall asleep and suddenly I realize I'm still awake, yet some kind of dream begins. The images I see are quite clear and graphic, for some reason almost every time in black and white. And the atmosphere of these is every time very ominous and frightening, yet I'm not afraid, maybe because I try to focus myself so hard to see it all and gather the possible information. I simply have no time to be afraid. There's no sounds of any kind, only total silence. The last time some words appeared in the lower part of my field of vision, but I couldn't read them because that part was also very dim.

I find these occurrences highly interesting and believe they could be very useful once one is skillful enough to keep it going. At the moment I have to focus very much yet try to stay in a relaxed state lest the vision would shatter and end. The longest one I've managed to have has been approximately several minutes, although sense of time is completely gone and I've not tried to measure them in any way.

I've had e.g. lucid dreams since childhood and I guess I'm a little gifted in visualizing. But when this "state" happened for the first time, it was completely new and inspiring an experience.

Has anyone else had experiences like these? And if yes, what do you think of their relation to Mauve Zone?

EDIT: Now that I re-read this thread once again I can see that at least Simplicissimus' experiences seem to have similarities. Can't tell how I managed to skip those.

[Frater Shaddad]

Jun 20, 2014 13:44:55 GMT stephen said:

The concept of the Mauve Zone had its 'birth' in the Wisdom of S'lba, Chapter II.18:

"From the destruction of mind that gives birth to Chaos a zone of mauve is created, a desert of sand above the Tunnels of Set.  The winds hurry through them, a sinister piping bearing the beetle on its wings".

I see some strong parallels between this description of the Mauve Zone and Azathoth, a deity that I have been Working with for some time and continue to do so.  I have developed a special affinity with The Lord of All Things through my Workings undertaken in the Esoteric Order of Dagon and the Typhonian Order.  The obvious parallels of "the destruction of mind that gives birth to Chaos" and the Center of Ultimate Chaos in which Azathoth sits upon His Throne.  As well as the "sinister piping bearing the beetle on its wings" corresponding to "the thin monotonous piping of a demonic flute held in nameless paws.". 

Upon my Throne in the City of Irem,
Shaddad

[Gregory Peters]

Aug 1, 2014 2:28:21 GMT Frater Shaddad said:

Jun 20, 2014 13:44:55 GMT stephen said:

The concept of the Mauve Zone had its 'birth' in the Wisdom of S'lba, Chapter II.18:

"From the destruction of mind that gives birth to Chaos a zone of mauve is created, a desert of sand above the Tunnels of Set.  The winds hurry through them, a sinister piping bearing the beetle on its wings".

I see some strong parallels between this description of the Mauve Zone and Azathoth, a deity that I have been Working with for some time and continue to do so.  I have developed a special affinity with The Lord of All Things through my Workings undertaken in the Esoteric Order of Dagon and the Typhonian Order.  The obvious parallels of "the destruction of mind that gives birth to Chaos" and the Center of Ultimate Chaos in which Azathoth sits upon His Throne.  As well as the "sinister piping bearing the beetle on its wings" corresponding to "the thin monotonous piping of a demonic flute held in nameless paws.". 

Upon my Throne in the City of Irem,
Shaddad

I think that is very true, Shaddad. Even moreso, the entire Lovecraftian/Necronomicon gnosis seems to reflect these ideas that are expressed in nature as those strangely liminal phenomena that confuse and confound the rational mind - "black holes and warped space time" -- regions of space and consciousness that are neither here nor there fully, but stride outside and between the known and unknown.

The universe seems to follow certain rules up to a point, but then the game changes significantly. The mauve zone is that region outside the dayside universe, the reality of the truth of Self that blows away all mental conceptions of ego. This is a threat to the dayside mind.

Lovecraft wrote of this in the opening passage of the The Call of Cthulu:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

[triveni93]

I'm very new to Typhonian work but I can't help but think of Surrealism when I read these posts about the Mauve Zone. As I'm sure many of you are aware, the Surrealist Manifestos discuss a "surreality" - a reality that can be accessed when the dream and wake states are experienced simultaneously. They used a number of techniques to access this "surreality" when producing their paintings and writings, which is one reason why much of their work has a dream-like quality to it. Is it possible that this "surreality" is another way of talking about the Mauve Zone (and that the techniques of Surrealism are perhaps yet more ways to access it)?

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Charlotte, you are spot-on with your observation. I don't know how much of Grant's work you've read but he gives numerous nods to the methods of the Surrealists throughout his trilogies. The Surrealist movement is very much a part of the Typhonian Tradition and their methods of accessing that "surreality" and that state of altered consciousness itself are identical to what we are talking about here.

However one goes about it, the underlying occult influence on the Surrealist movement cannot be denied. One of them, Kurt Seligmann, made the influence explicit by writing a pretty good history of the occult titled The Mirror of Magic: A History of Magic in the Western World.

[squareye]

Duty bound to mention Ithell Colquhoun, surrealist, occultist and member of Nu-Isis Lodge plus many other orders including Fellowship of Isis.

Richard Shillitoe's biography (and website), is well worth a look. Shame that the Tate Britain does not exhibit her art despite the fact that it is in their archive...

[triveni93]

Thank you for the response, NKB! I suspected as much. I am very new to the Typhonian Tradition as I said, and have been reading through the Starfire editions of the trilogies as they are released (and as I am able). I am much more familiar with Surrealism at this point! I have one of Seligman's books (not near that book shelf at the moment), and read that it was a source of inspiration for Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, two of my favorite artists associated with the Surrealist movement. Are you familiar with their work? It's quite magical. I don't want to stray too far from the topic of the thread, though... let's just say that I appreciate the clarification with respect to the Mauve Zone, and that feel excited to hear that Kenneth Grant acknowledged these (Surrealist) techniques as a means to induce these liminal states of consciousness.

[ShB]

the simplest explanation of
The MaUVe Zone

the region BETWEEN
Dreaming and dreamless-Sleep

could better be described as
the co-mingling of
DREAMING & Dreamless-SLEEP
flowing through the WAKING state

[umbralthorn]

Something I've been struggling with...

And if this doesn't go here, please forgive me.

I have moments at night where I feel like I'm speaking to something, but I'm not fully awake, nor am I asleep.

Yet I can never remember these things, or what was said (sort of like my dreams now).

Would this be an accurate description of the "Mauve Zone" where communication with intelligences outside of oneself is possible in an "in-between" state?

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Apr 5, 2015 0:49:26 GMT umbralthorn said:

Something I've been struggling with...

And if this doesn't go here, please forgive me.

I have moments at night where I feel like I'm speaking to something, but I'm not fully awake, nor am I asleep.

Yet I can never remember these things, or what was said (sort of like my dreams now).

Would this be an accurate description of the "Mauve Zone" where communication with intelligences outside of oneself is possible in an "in-between" state?

That could be one way of looking at it. Maybe not an accurate description of the Mauve Zone but more an aspect of approaching it. Since you mentioned that you can never remember what has taken place I suggest trying to cultivate a more active awareness when you find yourself in those hypnagogic/hypnopompic states. These particular states are related to the experiences commonly referred to as "sleep paralysis" and when these states are harnessed they can act as powerful conduits to a variety of magical experiences. If you're interested in getting a handle on such experiences to try and put them to use a couple of quality books on the subject of "sleep paralysis" and its implications are David J. Hufford's classic The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions and Louis Proud's Dark Intrusions: An Investigation into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis. And don't let that term "sleep paralysis" throw you off. The experiences talked about in those books encompass a much broader spectrum. "Sleep paralysis" just gets the most attention because it scares the hell out of a lot of people who experience it.