AtDTDA: (8) 221 Agencies of the Angelic 1.

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

           Ya Sam:
           Robin, the fact that there is Crowley inside 
           Nookshaft  is very persuasive. However, I 
           have some doubts that Nookshaft is, let's 
           say an 'unadulterated' parody of Crowley. 
           Can he be a composite image of various 
           mystical characters about whom, judging 
           by the way you handle this section, you 
           obviously would know more than many 
           of us? The same would go with TWIT, 
           are they a sligh reference only to OTO or 
           rather to a number of suchlike organisations?

Excellent question. No caricature of Pynchon's---or anyone else's---is 
unadulterated. However there is one single chareteristic that makes 
Crowley the linchpin I've posited: Crowley's (and the O.T.O.'s) 
involvement in espionage:

           A PRO-GERMAN. 

           The outbreak of war put an end to Crowley’s activities 
           in England. In November 1914 Crowley went to the 
           United States, where he entered into close relations 
           with the pro-German propagandists. He edited the 
           New York "International", a German propagandist 
           paper run by the notorious George Silvester Viereck, 
           and published, among other things, an obscene attack 
           on the King and a glorification of the Kaiser. 

           Crowley ran occultism as a side line, and seems to 
           have been known as the "Purple Priest." Later on he 
           publicly destroyed his British passport before the 
           Statue of Liberty, declared in favour of the Irish 
           Republican cause, and made a theatrical declaration 
           of "war" on England. According to another version of 
           this story he proclaimed himself at the same time 
           "King of Ireland."

           . . . AND REVOLUTIONARY. 

           During his stay in America Crowley was associated 
           with a body known as the "Secret Revolutionary 
           Committee," which was working for the establishment 
           of an Irish Republic. He is known also as the writer 
           of a defeatist manifesto circulated in France in 1915. 
           Crowley arrived in France at the beginning of 1920, 
           and subsequently went to Cefalu, Sicily. Here he 
           was head of a community of kindred spirits 
           established at the Villa Santa Barbara, renamed 
           by them "Ad Spiritum Sanctum." Free sexual 
           intercourse seems to have been one of their tenets.

http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/module-subjects-viewpage-pageid-13.phtml

Aleister Nookshaft was notorious for his involvement in espionage with the 
Germans in World War I. There is much more to be found, and as I discover
and recover more useful data I'll sharet it. But make no mistake, no one else 
at the time had the combination of specifics as Weird Uncle Al.

I find it very interesting that so many readers of Pynchon were seeking 
Einstein in AtD. He's there, infusing the book with light nearly everywhere. 
But I've always been aware that Pynchon's knowledge of the Occult was 
probably greater than his knowledge of Physics, and was aware of a 
singular figure from the era who was mixed in the background of 
Pynchon's other (in particular COL49 and GR) books, playing a 
major part, but not spoken due to a "ritual reluctance" akin to 
Harry Potter's "He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken". In fact, 
his name hasn't been mentioned once, has it? But the exactitude 
of the characterization of "The Great Beast" is as precise as that 
of ther Governor of Jeshimon, the specific "vectors" of Nicholas 
Crowley's enterprises are not of all those other theosophists and 
occultists---Blavatsky, A.E. Waite, the Golden Dawn, others--- that, 
in fact, are mentioned in AtD. I've had some sense of Crowley's
prescence for quite some time:


           Well, here's my weird theory. In "Goldbug Variations", 
           Richard Powers manages to include Glenn Gould as 
           part of the story without even mentioning his name. 
           The prescence/abscence of Alstaire Crowley in 
           "Gravity's Rainbow" may be more chimerical than 
           Gould's in "Goldbug Variations, but so many of the 
           specifics in the "White Visitation" point in that 
           direction, that you have to factor in one of the 
           biggest occult prescences active during WWII, 
           making the failure to mention him in "GR" somewhat 
           sinister. Somehow (thanks in large part to the 
           "Courier's Tragedy") John Dee occcupies a similar 
           abscence in "The Crying of Lot 49". At least in my mind. 

http://tinyurl.com/ytwbh2

Let me note, that Dee's "Enochian Magic" was central to Crowley's concept  of
"Magick". 

http://tinyurl.com/yw22z5

This little phrase here---"Agencies of the Angelic"---is yet another pointer 
to the beast. I see a clear link between the British tabloid portrait of 
Crowley and "The White Vistation".