ATDTDA 719..Very Misc. V-related?
Mark Kohut
markekohut at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 2 10:41:26 CST 2008
Crowley claimed to have invented the V sign, I recently learned.
Before Churchill used and claimed it.
----- Original Message ----
From: "robinlandseadel at comcast.net" <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, February 2, 2008 11:04:03 AM
Subject: RE: ATDTDA 719
I've got so much [too much] to say on the subject, so enjoy the
ride. Well, first of all, It's great to hear from Kai again. The more
I find out about Magic/Magick [nothing like working in a shop that
sells crystals for therapists that work with moving subtle energy
fields to get you into a real "AtD" kinda mood, all Belle Epoque
and smoky if you catch my drift] the more I realize how little I know.
[just got "The Encyclopedia of Crystals" by Judy Hall:
http://www.boonebridgebooks.com/book_details.php?isbn=1592332668
just about the most luscious portfolio of eye candy heretofore assembled,
and now realize yet another layer of magic in Against the Day, other uses
for all those crystal formations.]
Just to get this out of the way, Blavatsky is in Against the Day,
Arthur Edward Waite is in Against the Day and out in the open, this time
[he's in Gravity's Rainbow, but to know that you have to know him by
his works, anyway GR is clogged with kabbalistic references intelligible
in no other context, can't confuse it with no bowling alley action, if you
catch my drift:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lfjc4Q9pso ]
The Golden Dawn is name-checked in there somewhere,
that's enough right there, there's your Enochian references right there,
now take it away Mr. Firstnighter!!! And I do believe that the Grace the
Chums are flying into is Christian Grace, is Buddhist Grace, is
Goddesses Grace--- hey folks, slack is slack: All Hail Bob!!!---but yeah,
way up there beyond the limitless light.
However, given that, what goes on in the stretch between pages 219-242
reads, to me, as a an obvious, smack you in the head with a frying pan
[as directed by Bob Clampett] parody version of Aleister Crowley and the
British version of the O.T.O. Knowing Crowley's interest and engagement
in the Kaballah and Enochian Magic, I'm dead cert as regards the Nicholas
Nookshaft/Aleister Crowley mirroring. This is not a total, one-for-one
correspondence, mind you. But the parodisical elements of the total
T.W.I.T./Nookshaft enterprise serve to illuminate sources and contexts.
I'll give a few examples from the mouldering halls of the p-list archives:
http://tinyurl.com/23gpvu
http://tinyurl.com/yrt9tc
http://tinyurl.com/yrplhg
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 share 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".
http://tinyurl.com/23d4ky
If that ain't enough, well, I dunno, cause it like sounds cool to say it?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Me:
My undestanding is that the Occult and Cryptography
really got rolling with John Dee.
Kai:
I don't know, perhaps this is too ethnocentric as far as
the occult is concerned.
While you could be right, I'm thinking of the building of an empire
[think it was Dee who came up with the meme of British Empire
which you gotta admit is one hell of an act of conjuration, I mean,
you try pulling that one out of your ass, ok?] with loads of spying
and incription and having that cluster of buds blossom into the Tudor
rose of British Intelligence [Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord
Tweedsmuir, Graham Greene] which brigs us back to Crowley.
Anyway, Dee is quite up-to-date
these days, no? My daughter who will be 11 years old
next week she just read Livi Michael's "The Angel Stone"
(dtsch. "Das Flüstern der Engel") and already knew about
Dee from another novel. I gave her some further
information. Explained the sigill, told her about the
Enochian chess game. Since your magick-ear-listening
of CoL49 (its play-in-play COURIER'S TRAGEDY can
perhaps be read as being about the failing of the new
communication between Angels and humans) makes
some sense to me, it would be important to actually
find that "Enochian material in AtD" you promised us.
If one could, this would indeed be a strong indicator
that "long-practiced, all-out, contrary-to-fact, capital M
Magic" (TRP: SJ intro) is among Pynchon's primary
concerns. In all of his books.
This is pretty recent, and it's really more meditating on what sort
of impact family history would bear on Pynchon's revisionist histories.
I see a lot of the ass end of the Burning Times in this sequence. That
"zany paraclete" line, with the flaming tongue makes me think of
Giordano Bruno's awful demise.
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_kessler/giordano_bruno.html
Pynchon has a marked interest in all things heretical, I trace that back to
William Pynchon, founder of Springfield Mass. and the first guy in the
north american colonies to have his book burned, in this case due to
steaming heaps of heresies, not the least of which was the heresy of
inclusion, thus TRP's fascination with excluded middles and deviates of
all stripes.
Me:
Just the other day Thelma, my Ceremonial Magician of a
niece-by marriage, was complaining about how hard it was
to utter the Enochian names John Dee had cooked up on
account of them having been so devilishly encrypted.
Kai:
In part X of his edition of the Golden Dawn documents
Regardie gives useful hints.Take for example the first call:
OL SONUF VAORSAGI GOHO IADA BALTA. LEXARPH,
COMANAN, TABITOM, ZODAKARA
EKA ZODAKARE OD ZODAMARAN. ODO KIKLE QAA,
PIAPE PIAMOEL OD VAOAN.
Mathers & Westcott gave some advice largely orientated
at the pronunciation of the Hebrew language (which plays,
as you know, via the QBL an important role in Western
occultism). However, "there is no final version of authoritative
character", as Regardie writes, and like in other comparable
cases the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If you wanna
play around a little with the first call (on your own responsibility,
that is), I'd start like this:
O-el Zo-nuf Ve-o-ar-sa-dschi, Goho I-a-da Balta. El-ex-arpe-he.
Ko-ma-na-nu. Ta-bi-to-em. Sod-a-ka-ra e-ka sod-a-ka-re o-da
Sod-a-mer-a-nu. Oh-da ki-kle ka-a. Pi-a-pe pi-a-mo-el o-da
ve-o-a-nu.
Well, gee, thanks for the tip. Very fortunately Thelma's not shy in the
least regarding calls & such, pronunciation and nuances. In a safe
context, mind you. I mean, you don't want all hell breaking loose, do you?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"In 1932 Crowley went off to Europe to show his paintings in Berlin,
where subsequently they were destroyed by the Nazis. Anyway, he
was gone several years ..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You ever see those things? They're like, atrocities, man.
Aesthetically speaking, of course.
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