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TOP | OCCULTISM | MAGICMagic and Fiction
To: alt.magick.tyagi,rec.arts.horror.written,alt.magick,alt.magick.chaos
From: 7cifnon
Subject: Magic and Fiction (was Sigils, Jurgen, Spare)
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 04:31:49 GMT
glass@panix.com (Robert Scott Martin):
>Such a study of how Crowley's love of fantastic fiction infected his own
>fantastic "nonfiction" would not only give us a toehold into the analysis
>of Crowleyania as text (not religion), but help us move beyond the
>conventions of how we think about genre and the imagination.
it would also inspire a deeper look into how each affect the other.
>Where do we draw the borderland between "fantasy" and the "occult"?
>Is the distinction ontological, in the sense that "fantasy" is always
>fictitious and the "occult" makes claims to factual basis?
no really, because fantasy isn't always completely fictitious.
some of its elements are drawn directly from the real world.
>Or is the distinction more arbitrary? Where does myth fit in?
the distinction is not arbitrary, though the categories sometimes
will overlap. it can be found on a practical level, somewhat akin
to your ontological conjecture above: fantasy is primarily an
entertainment (fiction), whereas the occult is primarily active
(engineering or orientational).
>Ironically, I expect this adventure would be most beneficial to the
>occultists, who have in the past failed to understand a work like Kenneth
>Grant's "lovecraftian" myth (as well as works like Sun Ra's, Robert A.
>Wilson's, Jack Parsons's, Castaneda's and arguably those of Spare and
>Hubbard). The fantasy fans might get a bit of a thrill from pondering the
>"occult" function of The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or late Heinlein,
>but they seem pretty well fixed on that front.
this feeds also into CkaoZ Madjik tradition of experimenting with
'fictional' entities in ritual (Bugs Bunny, the Pizza God, etc.).
typically the converted separate myth from fiction while missing
the symbolism of the expression, whereas the cynics toss the whole
as worthless unless it ties into something they deem 'real'.
Dan Clore :
>>The course of
>>reading outlined in _Magick in Theory and Practice_ includes
>>a great deal of fantasy fiction, such as works by
>>Bulwer-Lytton, Lewis Carroll, Machen ("Most of these stories
>>are of great magical interest."), Meredith's _The Shaving of
>>Shagpat_, George MacDonald's _Lilith_, Huysmans, Wilhelm
>>Meinhold, etc. etc. etc.
>The funny thing is that so much of this would be considered such febrile
>trash, Crowley's generation's answer to Grant's (and your own) beloved
>pulp. It took a real hunger for the bizarre for an Edwardian to find a
>LILITH or a SHAGPAT amid the otherwise deadening but voluminous output of
>Georges Meredith and MacD (well, MacDonald did have a few other good
>"weird" tales, to be fair).
whether it is febrile should be neglected for the character of the
suggestion. today's magician should engage the masters of fiction
involving MAGIC, for example, like Hardy and LeGuin and McKillip,
while paying attention to masters of the past like "Once and Future
King", "Zanoni" and other works influential upon the masters of
one's study. how these might be integrated into one's internal
symbol-set (operational machinery of symbolism interior to one's
psyche) will vary and those accepting a dogma will suffer
according to the weaknesses of their choices.
>How hungry was our Mr Crowley? And was the same hunger for the fantastic
>at work when he acted out those fantasies in his various ritual
>environments?
presuming all of them to be fantasies (and I tend to), the joy is
in the reading of what he imagined and the style of his reflection.
the method is already outworn and his cult taken into the evil
clutches of his Malevolent Eidolon despite his lack of success.
lichtenstrep
two of my favourite posters to this newsgroup
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