Grimscribed

I first encountered Thomas Ligotti through his anthology Songs of a Dead Dreamer.  I found his books compelling, or at least until he started turning out $50 CD/limited edition books at a time when I couldn’t afford such things.  Nonetheless, he’s quite popular in horror circles, and Matt Cardin has posted an interview with him on a blog that has the exact same background as this one.

I highly recommend this interview to those who like Ligotti, those who want to know whether they should like Ligotti, or those who are curious as to the appearance of concentrated apathy.

Dead Names, Dead Dog: Shooting the Messenger

In March of 1904, magician and explorer Edward Alexander (Aleister) Crowley was honeymooning in Cairo with his new bride, Rose. As he introduced her to his life and style of magic, Crowley found that his wife was giving him messages that he interpreted as being from beyond the worlds we know. Though he initially rejected the idea that his pedestrian English wife could be a medium, her speech led Crowley, on April 8-10, to dictate (or to compose) a work from a being from beyond the material world. This transmission turned into Liber Al: The Book of the Law. Heralded by some as a manifesto for a New Aeon, dismissed by others as the ravings of a charlatan, Crowley’s work has had an undeniable impact on modern occultism.

The Book of the Law, Crowley said, came to him from a being known as Aiwass or Aiwaz. Crowley interpreted Aiwass at different times as a manifestation of the god Horus, an aspect of the energy of Mars, and a reflection of his higher nature. In “Simon’s” Necronomicon, however, “Aiwass” is depicted as the equivalent of Lovecraft’s Azathoth – the blind idiot chaos that roils at the universe’s center.

We challenge “Simon” on this in The Necronomicon Files, and he responds indignantly in Dead Names:

Critics have attacked my equation of Aiwaz—the spiritual being who communicated the Book of the Law to Crowley in Cairo in 1904—to Lovecraft’s “blind idiot god of chaos.” As usual, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Had the critics looked a little deeper into the Grant and Parsons works, they would have found many references supporting just this point of view.

Kenneth Grant and Jack Parsons were two associates of Crowley who later went on to create a number of works that reinterpreted and elaborated upon his works. Their opinions should indeed bear some weight on this question. It should be noted that Crowley himself repudiated both men at different points in his career (though the finality of this with regard to Grant is open to question, and Crowley did so to practically everyone he knew).

Although these men’s opinions of Crowley’s experiences are indeed relevant, “Simon” ducks the main question – did Crowley himself believe that Aiwas was a “blind, idiot chaos”? After all, he’s the one with firsthand experience of that individual.

You’ll find out in two days.

That Other Question

FTL’s other question was whether I had seen the new book Alhazred, a sequel to the Llewellyn Necronomicon (of which I should write more later, but for now I’ll say it’s a brilliant piece of fiction) written by Donald Tyson. (No, not this Donald Tyson.)

The answer is no. I’ve ordered it from Amazon with a couple of other things, and I’ll give a report when I get around to it.

It was a fortuitous question, because while I was buzzing around Amazon, I ran across this new English translation of the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin. I knew this had been in the works for some time, as some excerpts have appeared online already, but now it’s got a release date in September.

For all you occultists who said, “Gee, I’d like to get in touch with my Holy Guardian Angel through the Abramelin ritual, but six months of seclusion is so long” – the cosmic forces have played a cruel joke on you procrastinators. This new edition requires a period of a year and a half, three times the previous Abramelin duration. You can’t initiate the operation until next Easter, so there’s no way to get out of it by starting before the book appears. You’re stuck with it, buster!

At any rate, I’ll look forward to reading it, as will many other people.

Ask the Author

FTL bravely steps up and asks:

Did you write the book first, and then look for a publisher, or did you write a treatment/plan/etc. and shop it around first?

The trouble is, the assumption behind this question is flawed. What I’m sure you really want to know, FTL, are what strategy authors in general should use. We’ll get into what I did later, as an illustration of the absolutely wrong ways to handle such things.

Two caveats here. First, if you want to publish with someone, you should send them exactly what they request in their submission guidelines or in correspondence. Second, in terms of being a career-oriented writer, writing up a treatment for publishers beforehand is your best bet.

If you’re writing in your spare time and intend to do so as a side job or a hobby, though, the right answer can vary considerably.

Let’s say you submit a treatment to a publisher. You have to have a good idea of where the book’s going beforehand, so the publisher knows whether your work is marketable. You have to be willing to send it off, sit on the idea, and not be horribly upset when (as often happens) it’s rejected. If it’s accepted, you must be willing to work under a contract that specifies the topic, the length, and the deadline. When you’re done, though, the publisher has exactly what they want, and you can tell everyone that being closeted away for all that time actually paid off.

On the other hand, what if you write the book first? There’s more freedom in this for the writer. You can follow your enthusiasm instead of worrying about a plan. You can explore interesting topics you didn’t consider initially. You can take as much time as you want to make sure it’s as correct as possible. On the other hand, you might emerge from this process to find that your idea has already been done, or that massive revisions are needed, or that your labor of love, into which you poured heart, soul, time, and effort, is simply unmarketable.

Thus, the right answer is really dependent upon your personality and the particular project. I tend toward the meandering model, which I find personally satisfying. On the other hand, I have written three near-complete books that I don’t think will ever see print for various reasons. I don’t consider them a waste of time, though others certainly might.

For our next “Ask the Author,” I’ll talk about strategies that got me published but that you should consider as virulent as typhoid.

UPDATE:  Of course, the real question for the professional author is, “What should I submit to potential agents?”  I don’t have one, I forgot that part of the equation. (And for those who are wondering, I don’t have one because I don’t want to become a constant source of frustration to anyone who doesn’t deserve it.)

Dead Names, Dead Dog: Blinded by the Dawn, Part 3, or The Title that Time Forgot

Picking up where we left off…

At the end of his chapter on the Cromlech Temple in Modern Ritual Magic, King mentions Astral Projection, Ritual Magic, and Alchemy, a book that contains many of the grade papers and instructions for that body. Therein we shall search for clues regarding the Veils of Negative Existence, the forbidden book which “Simon” hints darkly may be another version of the Necronomicon.

Here we are:

The whole teachings as originally given to Our Order are contained in a very ancient M.S.S. known among us as the Book of the Negative Existence. More than 600 years ago this Book was for very sufficient reasons withdrawn from the knowledge of the lower Grades of the Order, and is now in its entirety only to be studied by Companions who have attained to a great advance… I ShMSh have now received from the Custodian of our Ancient Wisdom certain excerpts from this book – which in its entirety I have never seen – and have been commanded to adapt these to the mode of thought and the comprehension of the modern student.

Could it be? Has the Custodian indeed brought forth the dark tome that we may be taught its secrets? Indeed! Let the Necronomicon’s words be proclaimed, so we might be illuminated by its antediluvian lore!

It is in Our Order an opinion…that Our Blessed Lady was verily and indeed born without the taint of original sin and was so also conceived in the Womb of her Mother.

Wait. That doesn’t sound right. Let me skip ahead to the bits about Sumer and the gates and Kutulu.

Hence before the Word could become flesh it was necessary that there should be a perfect manifestation or incarnation of the Negative and that this Negativity should be absolute -

Good, good…

- and hence the Immaculate Conception – the Virgin Birth of the Master. This, and the perpetual virginity of Our Blessed Lady, are not theories or myths superstitions or corruptions, but the absolutely essential concomitants of His Divinity.

And so forth from there.

You know, I’m starting to think that this might not be the Necronomicon.

This isn’t to say that we don’t have a mystical transformation outlined here. Nonetheless, it seems quite different from the confident, powerful, self-initiated “black boddhisattva” dedicated to saving the earth from outer darkness that “Simon” describes.

The sad thing is, of course, that the true nature of the Veils of Negative Existence was only a single footnote away for “Simon” for quite some time. He was never curious enough to go the extra distance, to explore the note to see what exactly was going on with the book. It’s a tragedy for his readers that his lack of curiosity will end up destroying their talking points once again.

Ask the Author

Some of you may want to ask me, “Dan, as a great and famous author, what words of wisdom do you have for us?”  Of course, all of you are far too shy to actually raise that question, but fear not!  I can tell you are burning for answers.

My first piece of writerly advice is not to buy a fan based on its resemblance to any hypothetical appliance you might find in Darth Vader’s meditation chamber.  All writers should buy fans that actually blow air and keep them cool.

The second piece is to keep several copies of whatever you write on hand for business purposes.  I used to be really bad about this – I promised just about everyone I knew a hardback copy of The Necronomicon Files, even using my royalty money to buy more.  This is has led me to such embarrassing situations as having to buy an extra copy of my own book on eBay.

Really, if any of my experiences as an author can help anyone, please feel free to ask.  As most of what little experience I have comes from being clobbered repeatedly, you’ll likely gain valuable knowledge and be amused at the same time.

Dead Names, Dead Dog: Blinded by the Dawn, Part 2

To pick up our discussion, Nate points out that the Ciceros do suggest here that the Cromlech Temple was part of the Golden Dawn. My answer to this is twofold. First, we should note that these references are brief, and each describes the Cromlech Temple as a “hybrid” organization. Elsewhere, it is described as a “side-order” of a Golden Dawn temple, suggesting that it might not have been your according-to-Hoyle Golden Dawn organization.

The Cromlech Temple and different Golden Dawn orders did share members in common, the Golden Dawn may have had a role in its foundation, and the organizations did have close relations. Nonetheless, that doesn’t make the Cromlech Temple the Golden Dawn. To do that we would need proof that the organization was chartered as such, or that its members considered it a Golden Dawn temple, or even that it shared the goals with the Golden Dawn. As “Simon’s” own source (Modern Ritual Magic) and further readings show, none of these are the case. Here are the results of my own research:

The Cromlech Temple was an esoteric order based in Christian mysticism, instead of the syncretic approach typical of the Golden Dawn. Many of its members were Anglican and Scottish Episcopalian priests seeking mysticism while remaining within religious orthodoxy. Indeed, no non-Christian could pass beyond the system’s introductory degree. The teachings of the Temple were not always the most orthodox – they included elements of Gnosticism, and reincarnation was a fundamental tenet – yet for the most part they tried to appear as much in line with the teachings of their churches as possible.

Further cementing the divide between the Cromlech Temple and the Golden Dawn was the former’s attitude toward magic.  Practicing such techniques was not considered improper, but merely outside the Temple’s scope. Those who were interested in magic were sent to the Golden Dawn orders for instruction.  I don’t know many occultists who’d accept as a “Golden Dawn” an order that outsourced all its magical training.

For those who wish to pursue this, King collected a number of the group’s rituals in his Astral Projection, Ritual Magic, and Alchemy. Those familiar with documents from both orders will find it readily apparent just how far these two orders diverged. To pre-empt “Simon,” the teachings have a couple of superficial similarities – a Temple head named Shemesh, and the use of seven colored strings called “quipu” in meditation (another non-Golden Dawn element). Of course, “Shemesh” is the Hebrew word for “sun,” and the sevenfold color scheme of the Cromlech Temple is entirely different in shades and symbolism from that in the Necronomicon. The Temple also gave respect to a wide variety of religious traditions, though it maintained that all its teachings were in accord with strict orthodoxy. Reading these references in context will quickly eliminate any supposition that the Temple was practicing Necronomicon magick. If you feel obligated to make digs at Presbyterians, you’re a long way from walking the gates of the Sumerian gods.

What about the most interesting possibility – that the Cromlech Temple did, indeed, have the Necronomicon? Next time (or probably the time after), the Veils of Negative Existence are parted!

Through a Scanner Darkly

No, no gratuitous Philip K. Dick reference here.  I did manage to hook up the new scanner in my office today and try out the OCR software for foreign languages.  So much on the grimoire tradition has been written in other languages.  As I don’t have time to learn French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or whatever other language is up this week, I have to make do with scanning in passages and running them through Babelfish.  Sure, it’s not perfect and it still takes some proofreading, dictionary work, and common sense to get through.  When you’re just trying to get a handle on the basics of a topic, it’s good enough, and it gets easier with practice.

Back to the Necronomicon tomorrow.

Dead Names, Dead Dog: Blinded by the Dawn

The introduction to the Necronomicon holds the following cryptic reference that has baffled occultists everywhere:

The Golden Dawn, a famous British and American Occult lodge of the turn of the Century, was said to have possessed a manuscript called “the Veils of Negative Existence” by another Arab.

In Dead Names, Simon expands upon this information:

We raised the possibility that Lovecraft’s information might have been related to a book on Arab mysticism in the possession of the Golden Dawn as early as 1915, an eighth century AD (or earlier) manuscript called The Veils of Negative Existence, mentioned by occult historian, Francis King.

Looking at the first quote, it’s clear that “Simon” actually didn’t “raise the possibility,” but that’s par for the course at this point.  We return to this in his critique of John:

I imagine that his considerable library does not have a copy of Francis King’s Modern Ritual Magic, where such a manuscript – the “Veils of Negative Existence”- is mentioned on page 136 of the 1989 edition and which “purports to be an English translation of an Arabic work of the sixth, seventh or eighth centuries” that was cited by Golden Dawn initiate and Mathers protégé R.W. Felkin in a lecture he gave before the occult society Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1915. (An eighth century Arab occult work is certainly suggestive, though by no means a confirmation that the Golden Dawn knew of the existence of the Necronomicon in 1915, long before Lovecraft published any stories with that name and placed in that era.)

Isn’t that odd?  Somewhere between these two quotes, we’ve gone from the Golden Dawn owning this book to the Golden Dawn knowing about it.  Could “Simon” be attempting to slip something past his readers?

Do we even have to ask at this point?

Next, I want everyone to buy, borrow, or interlibrary loan a copy of King’s Modern Ritual Magic, turn to page 136, and see what it says.  I’ll wait.

All right, so you actually didn’t do that.  That’s what “Simon” was counting on – he could toss out the reference and most people wouldn’t check him on it.

I won’t quote directly, so I can encourage you to check for yourself.  Suffice to say that the book was actually not in the possession of the Golden Dawn, that famous magical order that numbered Yeats, Crowley, Mathers, Machen, and Blackwood among its members.  It was not even in the possession of one of the offshoots that claimed the title, rightly or wrongly, down through the ages.  No, right there on page 136 is the statement that this book was actually in the possession of – the Cromlech Temple.

Who’s the Cromlech Temple?  We’ll pick that up next time.

Back Again

Tomorrow signals the end of my study leave.  I got less accomplished than I wanted, but more than I thought, so it all balances out.  Plus, I got to spend time with my family and watch Pirates of the Caribbean II, so it was a good time all around.

In other news, the murder case against Scott Dyleski in San Francisco is off to a reassuring start:

The prosecutor in the Scott Dyleski murder trial asked prospective jurors Friday whether they were familiar with or knew anyone who embraced the Goth culture or the Wicca religious movement, and whether they had read books about psychopaths, serial killers and Jack the Ripper.

That’s right.   One of the prosecutor’s criteria for jury service in this case is whether a person knows anyone who is Wiccan.

No snickering from you gamers!  It just gets worse:

When a prospective juror told Jewett that he enjoyed role-playing in the form of dressing up like people did during the Renaissance, Jewett asked whether he did that because “you’re visiting the dark side.” The man said no.

Too bad.  Maybe Prosecutor Jewett was going to ask about ruling the galaxy together.

I have no doubt that this is legal, but I have to say, I find all of this very creepy.  It’s certainly proof that neither gamers nor occultists can necessarily count on a fair shake, no matter how integrated into society they might think they are.