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

[Robin Landseadel]

Well, as H.S. would say - - Doh!
On Dec 3, 2010, at 7:15 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

>
> 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
>
>