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Post by noctivagus on Sept 8, 2015 3:36:33 GMT
Hi
Reading Hecates fountain in the chapter of the dark angel Grant is
indicating that Crowley did a new version of the lesser pentagram ritual.
Is this a to be find in printing? Is there also a Typhonian version of
Liber Resh vel helios?
Regards
Joakim
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Post by Gregory Peters on Sept 8, 2015 16:40:13 GMT
Hi Reading Hecates fountain in the chapter of the dark angel Grant is indicating that Crowley did a new version of the lesser pentagram ritual. I had always thought that the "new version" of the pentagram ritual was the Star Ruby. |
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Post by triveni93 on Sept 11, 2015 10:52:46 GMT
That was my impression as well, in reading it recently (that the "new version" of the pentagram ritual was the Star Ruby).
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Post by stephen on Sept 11, 2015 15:31:23 GMT
This is completely without checking the reference, but I think it refers to a precise technique in the formulation of the pentagrams that was demonstrated by Crowley to Grant and which the Lodge followed in their rituals. I believe that I mentioned this matter in a letter to Kenneth Grant once and received some response to the effect that he didn't get my point. I'd need to check on that too.
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Post by Gregory Peters on Sept 11, 2015 21:27:59 GMT
This is completely without checking the reference, but I think it refers to a precise technique in the formulation of the pentagrams that was demonstrated by Crowley to Grant and which the Lodge followed in their rituals. I believe that I mentioned this matter in a letter to Kenneth Grant once and received some response to the effect that he didn't get my point. I'd need to check on that too. Very interesting Stephen. Should you happen to find the notes/references I would be very intrigued. |
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Post by N0T 2 on Sept 12, 2015 1:08:10 GMT
This is completely without checking the reference, but I think it refers to a precise technique in the formulation of the pentagrams that was demonstrated by Crowley to Grant and which the Lodge followed in their rituals. I believe that I mentioned this matter in a letter to Kenneth Grant once and received some response to the effect that he didn't get my point. I'd need to check on that too. I wonder whether the technique is something Crowley made up (/"discovered") or whether someone say, from the GD, taught him. |
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Post by stephen on Sept 14, 2015 13:37:46 GMT
Right folks, I looked into this over the weekend. Grant is talking about The Ritual of the Mark of the Beast - Liber V vel Reguli. This does use averse pentagrams in its performance, but he is dealing with the second part of the ritual point 20: "Let him trace the invoking Hexagram of the Beast". This is the unicursal hexagram that appears in the complex pantacle known as the Invoking Hexagram of the Beast. With me so far? Now Crowley seems to have said little about this hexagram (I here and now recall that it features in The Book of Thoth), and published little on the ritual itself, although an annotated typescript in his hand exists dating from 1928.
General practice is to trace the Hexagram from the upper point down to the right and there onwards in one continuous movement.
As for the technique which Crowley taught to Grant in 1944, we are a little bit stumped, for he says:
"It is a truly secret process for it does not depend upon merely linear exactitude; it may therefore be explained to the student only by demonstration, and even then, certain physical conditions are necessary". (HF, p.172, Skoob edn.)
I can speculate about the tracing of the hexagram being given a three-dimensional execution, but I do not understand the "certain physical conditions" proviso.
Gregory: I will check out the letter, but as I mentioned, KG didn't give any help on this particular point.
NOT 2: Who knows? but I am not aware that the GD used unicursal hexagrams which I believe was Crowley's innovation.
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Post by sandow on Sept 14, 2015 17:03:38 GMT
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Post by stephen on Sept 17, 2015 13:21:46 GMT
Thank you for that link, sandow - very interesting information, especially some of the comments. Seems that the unicursal hexagram may not only have been used by some members of the GD, but has a far more ancient pedigree.
This contrasts rather with Crowley's point of view. He does include the image of the Unicursal Hexagram in the page of diagrams in The Book of Thoth (page 11 in my 1974 Weiser paperback) with the caption: "It has always been declared impossible to draw an Unicursal Hexagram; but this has now been accomplished. The lines, however, are strictly Euclidean: they have no breadth." There is no further reference to the significance of the image in the text of the book.
In a letter to Kenneth Grant I expressed some disappointment that there were not more details on the actual ritual procedures of NIL in Hecate's Fountain, saying that when we did get to a ritual detail - the formulation of the invoking hexagram of the Beast - we were frustrated by the fact that this procedure could only be given by actual demonstration. This explains the opening of his response:
I do not quite get your point in quoting A.C's instruction to me concerning the Star tracing; he was very precise, and so were we in following the lines of our rituals. But when things went awry we did not close down the Circle, we endeavoured to adapt to the intrusive Current with spontaneous reactions that would not have occurred to any of us outside the actual situations as they developed. There has, I admit, been a little poetic licence here and there in the description of the rites, but far less than you appear to imagine. However, your critique is very perceptive and I welcome it."
Kenneth Grant, letter of '17 May 94 e.v.'
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Post by stephen on Sept 24, 2015 14:32:18 GMT
I have to say that I do not feel the most pressing incentive to add this post, considering that the most recent posting on the entire Typhonian Mysteries site is the one that I did here seven days ago. However, as I made the effort to look this out and it has considerable relevance to this topic and probably also to the thread on "Scientific Illuminism", I will go ahead and do so.
Extract from letter from Kenneth Grant, dated "New Moon, 7 Aug 94 e.v.":
Thank you for your letter of June 7th with interesting enclosures. To take your letter first; You tend to get entangled in the purely arbitrary procedures of ritual. An invocation that summons 'A' or 'B' on one occasion is, in practice, seldom effective on another. I am referring to effective and affective magick, not to the sort of 'get together' that may generate a feeling of having made contact with 'something out there' without acquiring an iota of substantial information to show for it. The thesis behind 'Hecate's F.' is that it is precisely when a tangential reflex disrupts set ritual that things begin to happen and a valid nexus is made - however fleeting. These occurrences are by their very nature surprising because unpredictable and therefore truly magical, both in their onslaught and in their manifestation. The lessons we learned in NIL disproved the usual 'scientific' guarantee that if process 'A' is set in motion result 'B' will ensue if ritual is performed to the letter".
I did not always appreciate at the time, that while I was reading Hecate's Fountain and corresponding with KG, that he was actually 70 years old and that I must have been trying his patience sometimes. This bit of magical instruction and comments in preceding and subsequent letters would be the closest I ever got to a 'Hastings Experience', but there you go.
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Post by Gregory Peters on Sept 24, 2015 18:50:37 GMT
Thanks for this, Stephen. I think its very revealing in that it seems to imply Grant is showing something that I have certainly experienced in my own work, and that goes against what many hardcore Thelemites have built into their consciousness from Book 4 and the 'thesis of magick.'There seems to be a tendency to read Crowley and assume that is the end game. What he said is the final answer, and so it follows that any magical ritual must follow Crowley's lead, even when it comes to results. Magick in my experience has turned out to be far more organic and flowing. I have often times worked at a particular sadhana for months for example, with certain "expected" results, only to end up with something incredible afterwords that is not directly related to the anticipated "goal" at all. Even reading Crowley's diaries you can see that he experienced this time and time again, although he more often than not attribute to a failure in concentration or some other ritual miss. I appreciate how Grant turns this around and makes it into something to explore, rather than pretending he already has all the answers. To me, this is truly creative occultism and the only way to really experiment and explore the Unknown.
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Post by artilect on Sept 25, 2015 3:32:43 GMT
Being drawn more to the oneiric side of things ritual work isn't presently an interest of mine, but I can certainly appreciate, as always, Grant's quality of correspondence. Seems to be a lost art nowadays despite all of our digital word working. A book of collected Kenneth Grant letters, in whatever form it shall take, needs to happen posthaste! Thanks for sharing Stephen.
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Post by noctivagus on Sept 25, 2015 5:41:36 GMT
Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and experience.
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Post by Gregory Peters on Sept 25, 2015 17:03:09 GMT
Being drawn more to the oneiric side of things ritual work isn't presently an interest of mine, but I can certainly appreciate, as always, Grant's quality of correspondence. Seems to be a lost art nowadays despite all of our digital word working. A book of collected Kenneth Grant letters, in whatever form it shall take, needs to happen posthaste! Thanks for sharing Stephen. Ah, I would love such a book. So much insight and real gnosis comes through in many of the letter excerpts I have seen. Never had the pleasure of receiving a letter from Grant, although I certainly wrote to him a lot on my own research. For various reasons I've always had a more detailed and closer correspondence with Michael Staley, who is also quite a luminary and has helped me a lot in my work. |
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Post by N0T 2 on Dec 4, 2015 22:11:06 GMT
Yes, Crowley was in the habit of claiming all sorts of things that simply aren't his at all. As well as the Golden Dawn, as far as this current goes there are unicursal hexagrams in Hockley's (and other related) manuscripts, which pre-date the Golden Dawn. I've seen unicursal hexagrams in Persian rugs, and I'm pretty sure they weren't studying Crowley. It's safe to assume -based on his record- that Crowley in claiming to have invented the unicursal hexagram is just trying to be Mr. Special yet again, please join my order so I can buy tobacco. It's not so much his ignorance as his pretensions that grate. He was a truly Grate magus, lol.
But my original question was sincere - I wonder what degree of "transmission" there was from Mathers to Crowley, in terms of 1-1 instruction, how much of this has been effectively transmitted/transmuted; and separately, how much genuine innovation (of worth) Crowley introduced into praxis. This distinction of authorship is not in any way a judgement of its value either way.
Crowley has got so much credit for Mathers' work, but he achieved little in comparison (given his means and position). Of the two, in terms of numbers and quality of disciples, Mathers is the truly great teacher, if cultural impact is to be assessed, for he taught Crowley everything (having taught Bennett too), and it was mostly his work that was openly plagiarised in Crowley's Equinox. Imagine having your entire order's material published by your student when it is almost all your personal work. Today there would be a copyright lawyer and a jail sentence, plus a hefty fine, for something like this. It's pure theft.
It's also stupid of Crowley to claim that he "destroyed the order" by publishing its rituals, whilst simultaneously publishing them in Class B instructions for his own order. And publishing the Goetia (and the rest) - did publishing these make them invalid? How could an author claim to be presenting something that is simultaneously a) of immense value and power to the reader and b) made abrogate by the act of publication? And then he claimed to change the world every time he published his own little Book of the Law. But I thought publishing stuff ruined it? Crowley was an idiot.
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Post by sandow on Dec 4, 2015 22:58:41 GMT
I found here the original GD source about the unicursal hexagram: www.angelfire.com/ab6/imuhtuk/gdmans/poligrams.htm(yes, angelfire.com isn't dead yet! A living fossil of the first Internet era) NOT2, your mention of Hockley is interesting. Hasn't Hockley been suspected (among others) of being the real author of the famous "cipher manuscripts" leading to the birth of the Golden Dawn ? |
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Post by N0T 2 on Dec 5, 2015 23:07:30 GMT
I found here the original GD source about the unicursal hexagram: www.angelfire.com/ab6/imuhtuk/gdmans/poligrams.htm(yes, angelfire.com isn't dead yet! A living fossil of the first Internet era) NOT2, your mention of Hockley is interesting. Hasn't Hockley been suspected (among others) of being the real author of the famous "cipher manuscripts" leading to the birth of the Golden Dawn ?
Good old Angelfire! The unicursal hexagram is not in Regardie's first GD books, but it is (I think) in the large red "Complete GD System" book he did for Llewellyn, which this is (I think) taken from. I have no idea why he left it out of the first edition.
I'm behind on the detail, as I haven't read any books on GD history for a very long time, and many very detailed books have since appeared, but yes, I think Hockley was floated at one stage as a possible contributor to the ms, as were the others. He was an influence in any case.
Who authored the unicursal hexagram instruction of the GD? It could have been Mathers, whom I believe wrote the rest of the polygons chapter; it could also have been a post-Mathers instruction from Regardie's line. In any case, I wonder whether Crowley's claim to have invented it is based on simple ignorance of the GD tradition of unicursal hexagram, or a deliberate lie. Perhaps he never got this instruction, perhaps it was a later development, perhaps it is an artefact of a specific splinter lineage (not Crowley's, lol!)? But it does seem like Mathers to me.
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