AtD: The Serpent in the Garden of Eden was never symbolic ... (p. 223)

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 01.12.2010 17:33, Robin Landseadel wrote:
> Who's "A.C." -- a character on "The Wire"?

Nope. It's a man who loved to climb mountains, all kinds of sexual 
activity, substances, chess
a-and spying. He was a member of several occult organizations, among 
them the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). A person here 
on Pynchon-list (actually
I seem to recall that that person was you!) argued with good reasons 
that Aleister Crowley (A.C.)
gets portrayed in "Against the Day". Am talking about the Tarot master. 
Let's have a look!

"Lew was greeted by Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of the London 
chapter of the T.W.I.T., a
person in mystical robes appliquéd with astrological and alchemical 
symbols, and a bowl haircut
with short fringes. 'Neville and Nigel, allowing for some chemical 
exaggeration, tell us they saw
you emerge out of an explosion. The question that arises is, where were 
you just before.'
Lew squinted, perplexed. 'Strolling down to the creek minding my 
business. Where else?'
'Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now.'
'You seem pretty sure.'
The Cohen elaborated. 'Lateral world-sets, other parts of Creation, lie 
all around us, each with its
crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can 
be anywhere, really ... An unscheduled Explosion, introduced into the 
accustomed flow of the day, may easily open, now and then, passages to 
elsewhere ...'
'Sure, like death.'
'A possibility, but not the only one.'
'So when I went diving into that blast---'
Grand Cohen Nookshaft nodded gravely. 'You found passage between the 
Worlds. Your mysterious
assailants presented you with an unintended gift.'
'Who asked them?', Lew grumbled.
'Yet mightn't THEY, AND OTHERS LIKE THEM [emphasis added.kfl], in 
providing such passage,
be considered AGENCIES OF THE ANGELIC?' [emphasis added once more: OK, I 
admit that this
could be the nugget of "Enochian material in AtD" you were searching for 
during the group read
back when.kfl]
'All respect, sir. I think not, they're more like Anarchistic 
terrorists, for Pete's sake.'
'Tsk. They are shamans, Mr. Basnight. The closest we in our fallen state 
may ever come to the
uncivilized purity of the world as it was and shall never be again --- 
not for the likes of us.'
'Can't buy it, sorry.'
'You must,' insisted the Grand Cohen. 'If you are who we are beginning 
to believe you might be.'
Neville an Nigel, who had slipped away during this exchange, returned 
now in the company of a
striking young woman, who regarded Lew out of eyes from which a 
suggestion of the Oriental
might not have been altogether absent." (pp. 220-1)

Nicholas Nookshaft's initials N.N. do not only point to a dimension of 
anonymity (cf. Latin: Nomen
Nominandum), they also - of all the Hermetic Arts the Tarot is in the 
book's focus - hint us to Atu
XIII: "Death" (= resurrective transformation), which is in the system of 
the Golden Dawn (& others)
kabbalistically connected to the Hebrew letter 'Nun'. That Pynchon has 
this (in the orthodox Jewish sense not traditionally kabbalistic) 
connection to the Tarot on the screen, becomes obvious right
after the quoted passage, in the next sentence, where there's a 
(contextualized) mention of the
Hebrew letter "Tzaddik" (p. 221). In "The Book of Thoth", Crowley calls 
the "Death"-card the "perfection of 'Lust' (Atu XI)" and explains it to 
be the key to "universal energy in its most secret
form". Aleister Crowley was a Western adept of Red Tantra.

On the "concept of the Psychical Detective" (p. 222) do see "Psychic 
Self-Defense" [1930] by Dion
Fortune, another member of the Golden Dawn, who also had some training 
as a psychoanalyst.

Kai