Post by N0T 2 on Sept 11, 2015 11:09:09 GMT
This is a reply to Stephen's post in his excellent "Mysteries of the Sixtystone" thread, where it was prompted by the references to Crowley's notion of "scientific illuminism", with which I take issue as seen below. I have no intention of derailing the focus of that thread any more than I already have, (sorry!), but feel that the issues raised deserve their own space, here. As Crowley was an influence on Grant, his influence (and points of similarity or contrast) may perhaps find a natural home here.
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for this. I'm sorry if I gave you that impression - nothing could be further from the truth. I don't assert such a polarity as absolute at all, but now that you mention it it can be useful to analyse the situation from this dynamic - if only in terms of press releases. Most scientists would agree with the dichotomy, as they like tidy categories, but you're right - we shouldn't let them overreach.
For a start, I don't believe Crowley's science-flavoured advertising, which seems to have been his way of trying to appear relevant to the man on the street during an age of rapidly appealing scientific discovery. Crowley's science is no more scientific than scientology, it's just a buzz-word. Nothing in Crowley's work is science. It's absurd to say that it is.
Crowley had no scientific training or practical understanding beyond an eccentric amateur's, and, as his first profession - first and last - was only ever Poetry (a luxury made possible by being an heir to a fortune, not through merit or intelligence), I hesitate to take his word on science. Taking a Poet's word on Science would be like taking a scientist's word as authoritative on poetic (dare I say spiritual) concerns: hardly a recipe for illumination, science-flavoured or otherwise. Or perhaps not - there is potential for illumination in the transcendence of conceptual opposites, if science and poetry are to be regarded as opposites, which as you say isn't necessarily so, so the intention behind his notion is not necessarily entirely as cynical as I have presented above. But it's close, the reality of his legacy is far from robust in the scientific sense.
Crowley did not pass his degree at Cambridge. He did not qualify scientifically.
He never worked on scientific projects of any kind on a professional level, nor even an academic one; he simply appropriated the jargon of scientism to make his personal publications about magic (which were entirely poetic, not scientific) more appealing for the masses who were being sucked in by the new lab-coat wearing clergy of materialism who could patch up bullet holes more reliably than herbalists and prayers. But he was only ever a poet, with a poet's mind - imaginative, allusive, optimistic.
Crowley's most flagrant narcissistic fraud, the AA, totally failed as a scientific experiment, or indeed as any kind of experiment, unless its aim is seen as indulging an irrelevant, drug-f*cked psychopath's artificial sense of self-importance backed by conceptualistic metaphysical distractions of dubious value to anyone unfortunate and desperate enough to become swept up into its glittering, science-flavoured maw.
Crowley sucked at science (but not at writing), and his magical ideas aren't even remotely scientific, they are religious, poetic, magical perhaps, mystical, but not scientific. Simply keeping a journal for future reference (which was a very old tradition in the occult arts by the time he got to it) does not make its contents science. If Crowley's ideas were scientific, they'd work more often than, say, literally every other occultist's ideas, regardless of how anyone felt about them. They don't. They certainly didn't work for him!
So you see, I don't reject Crowley's "Scientific Illuminism" because as far as I can determine, it never existed to reject. Sweet notion on poetic levels though. I am simply applying reason, or rational scepticism to the phenomenon of Aleister Crowley's legacy and weighing its results against its press releases. Critical faculties aren't everything, but neither is Crowley's advertising. And advertising is all it was.
Grant on the other hand never pretended anything of the sort in his works, he just delivered a corpus of extremely weird books that are capable of blowing your mind if you're in the zone at the time. It's hit and miss, because it's an art, it's subjective, and it depends on factors that are not replicable, measurable or controllable. Science is all about control, the one thing Crowley lacked his entire life on every level.
Your question about "to what end" are the impressions created? is perhaps best answered by Kenneth himself, but his answer "my books are not written for those who do not perceive their direction" (from one of the introductions in the trilogies, I forget which) presents a poetic Mystery where perhaps the rationally biased might hope for a simple dichotomy to clamp on to. At least he's honest! His books certainly aren't for ALL, so to speak. And he's not trying to sell them for a living, or to get back at the Golden Dawn for existing, like Crowley.
I don't recall defining Grant's work as surrealistic shamanism as you state, but that's not a bad term, so I'll go along with it as a nice way of describing magical art, occultism, magic, esoteric poetry (whether it's in prose or not) mysticism and spirituality in general - like surrealism, these things require a shift in mind-perspective to achieve, and they often produce corresponding shifts in those on the receiving end. Perhaps I would apply your phrase "surrealistic shamanism" identically to Grant as to Crowley, actually - remember, Crowley only ever professed Poetry, which tradition in its deepest sense informs all aspects of shamanism, language-making, etc., and Crowley was utterly unqualified in any scientific sense, as his lifelong failure to really achieve anything beyond self-promotion shows. So it seems clear to me that Crowley's remarks about science are a poet's hopes and dreams, but do not in themselves consist of anything scientifically valuable, or measurable in terms of human success stories. Quite the opposite.
It's hardly scientific to publish a journal about something that has not actually been tested and proven. That is called advertising, not science.
Crowley uses scientific ideas rhetorically, to prop up the narcissistic auto-hagiographical poem of his life's performance.
Your rejection of Grant's conflation of Ixaxar with the Stele of Revealing on subtle (poetic) levels didn't seem to draw on any real basis beyond distaste for the idea as being somehow inappropriate, I got the impression you feel as though he has somehow "blasphemed" against Crowley's sacred Stele by suggesting it isn't the only One True Fetish, an heretical notion for someone who prefers to keep things simple and absolute. You can prove anything at all with gematria, which means nothing can be proved with it. It's an art, not science, like poetry, and magic, and as a contemplative poetic art it operates subjectively, according to how your mind happens to be at the time - what patterns it recognises at whatever stage of the process. Lack of recognition means nothing objectively, to anyone else, just as the suggestion of recognition is only ever a possibility (not an objective reality) on conceptual levels, awaiting Realisation. It can of course influence objective experience and change the mind's patterning if engaged with, but it doesn't add up like maths or science. It does use numbers though, so it's easy to lose sight of its essentially poetic nature.
Regarding Grant's old caveat about "creative occultism" as an end in itself, I think (wrongly or not -happy to be corrected as always) that he was referring to the pursuit of odd or novel forms for their own sake rather than as guided by that subtle directive for the numinous encounter with the Other that drives the deepest of Art - a subjective business. Grant's own work can easily be held guilty of falling foul of his own directive if one is so disposed, and if the essence of it is missed, which is easy to do - I myself missed all of it for a long time, and still do miss what he's on about in a lot of his work, and I think that's partly his point! Whatever you're looking for is wrong, because the reality is forever otherwise.
For what purpose are Grant's impressions created, if his aim isn't only to impart information? I venture that it is to surprise the ego into beholding itself from the true(r) location of sentience, which is no-where that can be indicated. This is a useless answer, but perhaps the question is equally to blame!
Best regards
N0t 2
Sept 11, 2015 1:06:17 GMT 10 stephen said:
While I certainly recognise that Kenneth Grant's books on Magic have a magical purpose and that he integrates diverse elements into his text with that specific purpose in mind, it does not mean that you have to accept or go along with everything he says on either aesthetic or factual grounds. While the Typhonian Trilogies are not intended as academic works, they deal with authentic and historical traditions, real people and actual events, as well as integrating fictional and literary material, and on that basis I do not regard them as being poetry either.
My reasons for regarding the equation of the Sixtystone with the Stele of Revealing as being inappropriate are hardly based on accepted academic or rational grounds, drawing as they do on gematria and theories of magical correspondences.
Creating impressions is all well and good, but to what purpose ? I think it was in the Official Statement published in STARFIRE Volume II No.2 where Grant stated that creative occultism per se was not an end in itself, but a means to an end. It seems to me that you have rejected the scientific illuminism of Crowley and chosen what you define as the shamanic surrealism of Grant, placing them in some sort of total polarity to one another when that is not really the case.
While I certainly recognise that Kenneth Grant's books on Magic have a magical purpose and that he integrates diverse elements into his text with that specific purpose in mind, it does not mean that you have to accept or go along with everything he says on either aesthetic or factual grounds. While the Typhonian Trilogies are not intended as academic works, they deal with authentic and historical traditions, real people and actual events, as well as integrating fictional and literary material, and on that basis I do not regard them as being poetry either.
My reasons for regarding the equation of the Sixtystone with the Stele of Revealing as being inappropriate are hardly based on accepted academic or rational grounds, drawing as they do on gematria and theories of magical correspondences.
Creating impressions is all well and good, but to what purpose ? I think it was in the Official Statement published in STARFIRE Volume II No.2 where Grant stated that creative occultism per se was not an end in itself, but a means to an end. It seems to me that you have rejected the scientific illuminism of Crowley and chosen what you define as the shamanic surrealism of Grant, placing them in some sort of total polarity to one another when that is not really the case.
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for this. I'm sorry if I gave you that impression - nothing could be further from the truth. I don't assert such a polarity as absolute at all, but now that you mention it it can be useful to analyse the situation from this dynamic - if only in terms of press releases. Most scientists would agree with the dichotomy, as they like tidy categories, but you're right - we shouldn't let them overreach.
For a start, I don't believe Crowley's science-flavoured advertising, which seems to have been his way of trying to appear relevant to the man on the street during an age of rapidly appealing scientific discovery. Crowley's science is no more scientific than scientology, it's just a buzz-word. Nothing in Crowley's work is science. It's absurd to say that it is.
Crowley had no scientific training or practical understanding beyond an eccentric amateur's, and, as his first profession - first and last - was only ever Poetry (a luxury made possible by being an heir to a fortune, not through merit or intelligence), I hesitate to take his word on science. Taking a Poet's word on Science would be like taking a scientist's word as authoritative on poetic (dare I say spiritual) concerns: hardly a recipe for illumination, science-flavoured or otherwise. Or perhaps not - there is potential for illumination in the transcendence of conceptual opposites, if science and poetry are to be regarded as opposites, which as you say isn't necessarily so, so the intention behind his notion is not necessarily entirely as cynical as I have presented above. But it's close, the reality of his legacy is far from robust in the scientific sense.
Crowley did not pass his degree at Cambridge. He did not qualify scientifically.
He never worked on scientific projects of any kind on a professional level, nor even an academic one; he simply appropriated the jargon of scientism to make his personal publications about magic (which were entirely poetic, not scientific) more appealing for the masses who were being sucked in by the new lab-coat wearing clergy of materialism who could patch up bullet holes more reliably than herbalists and prayers. But he was only ever a poet, with a poet's mind - imaginative, allusive, optimistic.
Crowley's most flagrant narcissistic fraud, the AA, totally failed as a scientific experiment, or indeed as any kind of experiment, unless its aim is seen as indulging an irrelevant, drug-f*cked psychopath's artificial sense of self-importance backed by conceptualistic metaphysical distractions of dubious value to anyone unfortunate and desperate enough to become swept up into its glittering, science-flavoured maw.
Crowley sucked at science (but not at writing), and his magical ideas aren't even remotely scientific, they are religious, poetic, magical perhaps, mystical, but not scientific. Simply keeping a journal for future reference (which was a very old tradition in the occult arts by the time he got to it) does not make its contents science. If Crowley's ideas were scientific, they'd work more often than, say, literally every other occultist's ideas, regardless of how anyone felt about them. They don't. They certainly didn't work for him!
So you see, I don't reject Crowley's "Scientific Illuminism" because as far as I can determine, it never existed to reject. Sweet notion on poetic levels though. I am simply applying reason, or rational scepticism to the phenomenon of Aleister Crowley's legacy and weighing its results against its press releases. Critical faculties aren't everything, but neither is Crowley's advertising. And advertising is all it was.
Grant on the other hand never pretended anything of the sort in his works, he just delivered a corpus of extremely weird books that are capable of blowing your mind if you're in the zone at the time. It's hit and miss, because it's an art, it's subjective, and it depends on factors that are not replicable, measurable or controllable. Science is all about control, the one thing Crowley lacked his entire life on every level.
Your question about "to what end" are the impressions created? is perhaps best answered by Kenneth himself, but his answer "my books are not written for those who do not perceive their direction" (from one of the introductions in the trilogies, I forget which) presents a poetic Mystery where perhaps the rationally biased might hope for a simple dichotomy to clamp on to. At least he's honest! His books certainly aren't for ALL, so to speak. And he's not trying to sell them for a living, or to get back at the Golden Dawn for existing, like Crowley.
I don't recall defining Grant's work as surrealistic shamanism as you state, but that's not a bad term, so I'll go along with it as a nice way of describing magical art, occultism, magic, esoteric poetry (whether it's in prose or not) mysticism and spirituality in general - like surrealism, these things require a shift in mind-perspective to achieve, and they often produce corresponding shifts in those on the receiving end. Perhaps I would apply your phrase "surrealistic shamanism" identically to Grant as to Crowley, actually - remember, Crowley only ever professed Poetry, which tradition in its deepest sense informs all aspects of shamanism, language-making, etc., and Crowley was utterly unqualified in any scientific sense, as his lifelong failure to really achieve anything beyond self-promotion shows. So it seems clear to me that Crowley's remarks about science are a poet's hopes and dreams, but do not in themselves consist of anything scientifically valuable, or measurable in terms of human success stories. Quite the opposite.
It's hardly scientific to publish a journal about something that has not actually been tested and proven. That is called advertising, not science.
Crowley uses scientific ideas rhetorically, to prop up the narcissistic auto-hagiographical poem of his life's performance.
Your rejection of Grant's conflation of Ixaxar with the Stele of Revealing on subtle (poetic) levels didn't seem to draw on any real basis beyond distaste for the idea as being somehow inappropriate, I got the impression you feel as though he has somehow "blasphemed" against Crowley's sacred Stele by suggesting it isn't the only One True Fetish, an heretical notion for someone who prefers to keep things simple and absolute. You can prove anything at all with gematria, which means nothing can be proved with it. It's an art, not science, like poetry, and magic, and as a contemplative poetic art it operates subjectively, according to how your mind happens to be at the time - what patterns it recognises at whatever stage of the process. Lack of recognition means nothing objectively, to anyone else, just as the suggestion of recognition is only ever a possibility (not an objective reality) on conceptual levels, awaiting Realisation. It can of course influence objective experience and change the mind's patterning if engaged with, but it doesn't add up like maths or science. It does use numbers though, so it's easy to lose sight of its essentially poetic nature.
Regarding Grant's old caveat about "creative occultism" as an end in itself, I think (wrongly or not -happy to be corrected as always) that he was referring to the pursuit of odd or novel forms for their own sake rather than as guided by that subtle directive for the numinous encounter with the Other that drives the deepest of Art - a subjective business. Grant's own work can easily be held guilty of falling foul of his own directive if one is so disposed, and if the essence of it is missed, which is easy to do - I myself missed all of it for a long time, and still do miss what he's on about in a lot of his work, and I think that's partly his point! Whatever you're looking for is wrong, because the reality is forever otherwise.
For what purpose are Grant's impressions created, if his aim isn't only to impart information? I venture that it is to surprise the ego into beholding itself from the true(r) location of sentience, which is no-where that can be indicated. This is a useless answer, but perhaps the question is equally to blame!
Best regards
N0t 2
