-Caveat Lector-
T H E S O R C E R I E S O F Z O S
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[or Orgone Farming by Clever "ET" Succubae]
>From Cults of the Shadow By Kenneth Grant
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Interesting excerpts:
"It has been suggested by some authorities that the original
witches sprang from a race of Mongol origin of which the Lapps
are the sole surviving remnants. This may or may not be so, but
these 'mongols' were not human...The characteristic that
distinguished them from the others of their kind was the ability
to project consciousness into animal forms, and the power they
possessed of reifying thought-forms. The bestiaries of all the
races of the earth are littered with the results of their
sorceries.
"They were non-human entities; that is to say they pre-dated the
human lifewave on this planet, and their powers -- which would
today appear unearthly -- derived from extra-spatial dimensions.
They impregnated the aura of the earth with the magical seed
from which the human foetus was ultimately generated.
"Arthur Machen was, perhaps, near the truth of the matter when he
suggested that the fairies and little people of folklore were
decorous devices concealing processes of non-human sorcery
repellent to mankind.
"This theme is a frequent one with Machen. The hideous atavisms
described by Lovecraft in many of his tales evoke even more
potently the atmosphere of cosmic horror and 'evil' peculiar to
the influx of extra-terrestrial powers.
"Machen, Blackwood, Crowley, Lovecraft, Fortune, and others,
frequently used as a theme for their writings the influx of
extra-terrestrial powers which have been moulding the history of
our planet since time began; that is, since time began for us,
for we are only too prone to suppose that we were here first and
that we alone are here now, whereas the most ancient occult
traditions affirm that we were neither the first nor are we the
only ones to people the earth; the Great Old Ones and the Elder
Gods find echoes in the myths and legends of all peoples.
"Austin Spare claimed to have had direct experience of the
existence of extraterrestrial intelligences, and Crowley -- as
his autobiography makes abundantly clear -- devoted a lifetime
to proving that extra-terrestrial and superhuman consciousness
can and does exist independently of the human organism.
[...]
"These magicians utilized human embodiments of power (shakti)
which appeared -- usually -- in feminine form. Each book that
Crowley produced had its corresponding shakti. The Rites of
Eleusis (1910) were powered, largely, by Leila Waddell. Book
Four, Parts I & II (1913) came through Soror Virakam (Mary
d'Este). Liber Aleph -- The Book of Wisdom or Folly (1918) --
was inspired by Soror Hilarion (Jane Foster). His great work,
Magick in Theory and Practice, was written mainly in 1920 in
Cefalu, where Alostrael (Leah Hirsig) supplied the magical
impetus; and so on, up to the New Aeon interpretation of the
Tarot (The Book of Thoth), which he produced in collaboration
with Frieda Harris in 1944. Dali's shakti -- Gala -- was the
channel through which the inspiring creative current was fixed
or visualized in some of the greatest paintings the world has
seen. And in the case of Austin Osman Spare, the Fire Snake
assumed the form of Mrs. Paterson, a self-confessed witch who
embodied the sorceries of a cult so ancient that it was old in
Egypt's infancy.
[...]
"The Adepts of Ku worshipped a serpent goddess in the form of a
woman dedicated to the Cult. During an elaborate ritual she
would become possessed, with the result that she threw off, or
emanated, multiple forms of the goddess as sentient shadows
endowed with all the charms possessed by her human representative.
These shadow-women, impelled by some subtle law of attraction,
gravitated to one or other of the devotees who sat in a drowsy
condition around the entranced priestess. Sexual congress with
these shadows then occurred and it was the beginning of a sinister
form of dream-control involving journeys and encounters in
infernal regions.
"The Ku would seem to be a form of the Fire Snake exteriorized
astrally as a shadow-woman or succubus, congress with which
enabled the devotee to reify his 'inherent dream'. She was
known as the 'whore of hell' and her function was analogous to
that of the Scarlet Woman of Crowley's Cult, the Suvasini of the
Tantric Kaula Circle, and the Fiendess of the Cult of the Black
Snake. The Chinese Ku, or harlot of hell, is a shadowy embodiment
of subconscious desires concentrated in the alluringly sensuous
form of the Serpent of Shadow Goddess.
[...]
"Sleep should be preceded by some form of Karezza during which a
specially chosen sigil symbolizing the desired object is vividly
visualized. In this manner the libido is baulked of its natural
fantasies and seeks satisfaction in the dream world. When the
knack is acquired the dream will be extremely intense and domin-
ated by a succube, or shadow-woman, with whom sexual intercourse
occurs spontaneously. If the dreamer has aquired even a moderate
degree of proficiency in this technique he will be aware of the
continued presence of the sigil. This he should bind upon the
form of the succube in a place that is within range of his vision
during copulation, e.g., as a pendant suspended from her neck; as
ear-drops; or as the diadem in a circlet about her brow. Its
locus should be determined by the magician with respect to the
position he adopts during coitus. The act will then assume all
the characteristics of a Ninth Degree Working, (24) because the
presence of the Shadow-Woman will be experienced with a vivid
intensity of sensation and clarity of vision. The sigil thus
becomes sentient and in due course the object of the Working
materializes on the physical plane. This object is, of course,
determined by the desire embodied in and represented by the sigil.
[...]
"A word of explanation is, perhaps, necessary concerning the term
Karezza as used in the present context. Retention of semen is a
concept of central importance in certain Tantric practices, the
idea being that the bindu (seed) then breeds astrally, not
physically. In other words, an entity of some sort is brought
to birth at astral levels of consciousness.
[...]
"Spare's 'sentient symbols' and 'alphabet of desire', (26)
correlating as they do the marmas of the body with the specific
sex-principles, anticipated in several ways the work of Reich
who discovered -- between 1936 and 1939 -- the vehicle of psycho-
sexual energy, which he named the orgone. Reich's singular
contribution to psychology and, incidentally, to Western
occultism, lies in the fact that he successfully isolated the
libido and demonstrated its existence as a tangible, biological
energy. This energy, the actual substance of Freud's purely
hypothetical concepts -- libido and id -- was measured by Reich,
lifted out of the category of hypothesis, and reified.
[...]
"These and similar symbols originally typified the Draconian
Tradition which was degraded by the pseudo witch-cults during
centuries of Christian persecution. The Mysteries were profaned
and the sacred rites were condemned as anti-Christian. The Cult
thus became the repository of inverted and perverted religious
rites and symbols having no inner meaning; mere affirmations of
the witches' total commitment to anti-Christian doctrine whereas
-- originally -- they were living emblems, sentient symbols, of
ante-Christian faith.
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Sorcery and witchcraft are the degenerate offspring of occult
traditions coeval with those described in the second chapter.
The popular conception of witchcraft, shaped by the anti-
Christian manifestations that occurred in the Middle Ages is
so distorted and so inadequate that to try and interpret the
symbols of its mysteries, perverted and debased as they are,
without reference to the vastly ancient systems from which they
derive is like mistaking the tip of an iceberg for its total
mass.
It has been suggested by some authorities that the original
witches sprang from a race of Mongol origin of which the Lapps
are the sole surviving remnants. This may or may not be so, but
these 'mongols' were not human. They were degenerate survivals
of a pre-human phase of our planet's history generally -- though
mistakenly -- classified as Atlantean. The characteristic that
distinguished them from the others of their kind was the ability
to project consciousness into animal forms, and the power they
possessed of reifying thought-forms. The bestiaries of all the
races of the earth are littered with the results of their
sorceries.
They were non-human entities; that is to say they pre-dated the
human lifewave on this planet, and their powers -- which would
today appear unearthly -- derived from extra-spatial dimensions.
They impregnated the aura of the earth with the magical seed
from which the human foetus was ultimately generated.
Arthur Machen was, perhaps, near the truth of the matter when he
suggested that the fairies and little people of folklore were
decorous devices concealing processes of non-human sorcery
repellent to mankind. (1)
(1) See The White People, The Shining Pyramid, and other stories.
This theme is a frequent one with Machen. The hideous atavisms
described by Lovecraft in many of his tales evoke even more
potently the atmosphere of cosmic horror and 'evil' peculiar to
the influx of extra-terrestrial powers.
Machen, Blackwood, Crowley, Lovecraft, Fortune, and others,
frequently used as a theme for their writings the influx of
extra-terrestrial powers which have been moulding the history of
our planet since time began; that is, since time began for us,
for we are only too prone to suppose that we were here first and
that we alone are here now, whereas the most ancient occult
traditions affirm that we were neither the first nor are we the
only ones to people the earth; the Great Old Ones and the Elder
Gods find echoes in the myths and legends of all peoples.
Austin Spare claimed to have had direct experience of the
existence of extraterrestrial intelligences, and Crowley -- as
his autobiography makes abundantly clear -- devoted a lifetime to
proving that extra-terrestrial and superhuman consciousness can
and does exist independently of the human organism. (2)
(2) See The Confessions, Moonchild, Magick Without Tears, and
other works by Crowley.
As explained in Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare,(3)
Spare was initiated into the vital current of ancient and
creative sorcery by an aged woman named Paterson, who claimed
descent form a line of Salem witches. The formation of Spare's
Cult of the Zos and the Kia (4) owes much to his contact with
Witch Paterson who provides the model for many of his 'sabbatic'
drawings and paintings. Much of the occult lore that she
transmitted to him suffuses two of his books -- The Book of
Pleasure and the Focus of Life. (5) In the last years of his
life he embodied further esoteric researches in a grimoire (6)
which he had intended publishing as a sequel to his two other
books. Although death prevented its publication, the manuscript
survives, and the substance of the grimoire forms the basis of
this chapter.
(3) Frederick Muller, 1975.
(4) 'The body considered as a whole I call Zos' (The Book of
Pleasure, p. 45). The Kia is the 'Atmospheric I'. The 'I' and
the 'Eye', being interchangeable, the entire range of 'eye'
symbolism -- to which repeated reference has been made -- is here
applicable.
(5) First published in 1913 and 1921 respectively. There has
been a recent republication of The Book of Pleasure, with an
introduction by Kenneth Grant. (Montreal, 1975).
(6) This was to have been divided into two parts: The Book of the
Living Word of Zos and The Zoetic Grimoire of Zos; in the present
chapter it is referred to simply as the grimoire.
Spare concentrated the theme of his doctrine in the following
Affirmation Creed of Zos vel Thanatos.
"I believe in the flesh 'as now' and forever...for I am the Light,
the Truth, the Law, the Way, and none shall come unto anything
except through his flesh.
"Did I not show you the eclectic path between ecstasies; that
precarious funambulatory way...
"But you had no courage, were tired, and feared. THEN AWAKE!
De-hypnotize yourselves from the poor reality you be-live and
be-lie. For the great Noontide is here, the great bell has
struck...Let others await involuntary immolation, the forced
redemption so certain for many apostates to Life. Now, in this
day, I ask you to search your memories, for great unities are
near. The Inceptor of all memory is your Soul. Life is desire,
Death is reformation...I am the resurrection...I, who transcend
ecstasy by ecstasy, meditating Need Not Be in Self-love...
This creed, informed by the dynamism of Spare's will and his
great ability as an artist, created a Cult on the astral plane
that attracted to itself all the elements naturally orientated to
it. He referred to it as Zos Kia Cultus, and its votaries
claimed affinity on the following terms:
Our Sacred Book : The Book of Pleasure.
Our Path : The eclectic path between ecstasies; the
precarious funambulatory way.
Our Deity : The All-Prevailing Woman. ('And I strayed
with her, into the path direct'.)
Our Creed : The Living Flesh. (Zos): ('Again I say :
This is your great moment of reality -- the
living flesh').
Our Sacrament : The Sacred Inbetweenness Concepts.
Our Word : Does Not Matter-Need Not Be.
Our Eternal Abode : The mystic state of Neither-Neither. The
Atomospheric 'I'. (Kia).
Our Law : To Trespass all Laws.
The Zos and the Kia are represented by the Hand and the Eye, the
instruments of sentiency and vision. They form the foundation of
the New Sexuality, which Spare evolved by combining them to form
a magical art -- the art of visualizing sensation, of 'becoming
one with all sensation', and of transcending the dual polarities
of existence by the annihilation of separate identity through the
mechanics of the Death Posture. (7) Long ago, a Persian poet
described in a few words the object of Spare's New Sexuality.
"The kingdom of I and We forsake, and your home in annihilation
make."
(7) Vide infra.
The New Sexuality, in the sense that Spare conceived it, is the
sexuality not of positive dualities but of the Great Void, the
Negative, the Ain: The Eye of Infinite Potential. The New
Sexuality is, simply, the manifestation of nonmanifestation, or
of Universe 'B', as Bertiaux would have it, which is equivalent
to Spare's Neither-Neither concept. Universe 'B' represents the
absolute difference of that world of 'all otherness' to anything
pertaining to the known world, or Universe 'A'. Its gateway is
Daath, sentinelled by the Demon Choronzon. Spare describes this
concept as 'the gateway of all inbetweenness'. In terms of
Voodoo, this idea is implicit in the Petro rites with their
emphasis upon the spaces between the cardinal points of the
compass: the off-beat rhythms of the drums that summon the loa
from beyond the Veil and formulate the laws of their
manifestation. (8) Spare's system of sorcery, as expressed in
Zos Kia Cultus, continues in a straight line not only the Petro
tradition of Voodoo, but also the Vama Marg of Tantra, with its
eight directions of space typified by the Yantra of the Black
Goddess, Kali: the Cross of the Four Quarters plus the
inbetweenness concepts that together compose the eightfold Cross,
the eight-petalled Lotus, a synthetic symbol of the Goddess of
the Seven Stars plus her son, Set or Sirius. (9)
(8) See previous chapter.
(9) The significance of the number eight as the height, or
ultimate One, is explained in Aleister Crowley & the Hidden God.
The mechanics of the New Sexuality are based upon the dynamics of
the Death Posture, a formula evolved by Spare for the purpose of
reifying the negative potential in terms of positive power. In
ancient Egypt the mummy was the type of this formula, and the
simulation by the Adept of the state of death (10) -- in Tantric
practice -- involves also the total stilling of the psychosomatic
functions. The formula has been used by Adepts not necessarily
working with specifically tantric or magical formulae, notably by
the celebrated Advaitin Rishi, Bhagavan Shri Ramana Maharshi of
Tiruvannamalai, (11) who attained Supreme Enlightenment by
simulating the process of death; and also by the Bengal
Vaishnavite, Thakur Haranath, who was taken for dead and actually
prepard for burial after a 'death trance' which lasted several
hours and from which he emerged with a totally new consciousness
that transformed even his bodily constitution and appearance.
(12) It is possible that Shri Meher Baba, of Poona, during the
period of amnesia that afflicted him in early life, also
experienced a form of death from which he emerged with power to
enlighten others and to lead a large movement in his name.
(10) i.e. the assumption of the 'god-form' of death.
(11) See Arthur Osborne: Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self
Knowledge, London, 1954.
(12) See Shri Haranath: His Play and Precepts, Bombay, 1954.
The theory of the Death Posture, first described in The Book of
Pleasure, was developed independently of the experiences of the
above mentioned Masters about whom nothing was published in any
European language at that time. (13)
(13) i.e. 1913.
The Rosicrucian mystique of the pastos containing the corpse of
Christian Rosencreutz -- dramatized by MacGregor Mathers in the 5
degree = 6 square Ceremony of the Golden Dawn -- resumes the
mystery of this essentially Egyptian formula of the mummified
Osiris. Spare was acquainted with this version of the Mystery.
He became a member of Crowley's A.'. A.'., for a brief period, in
1910, and the Golden Dawn rituals -- published shortly after-
wards in The Equinox (14) -- may have been available to him.
(14) The 5 degree = 6 square Ritual was published in Volume I,
No. 3 in 1910.
The concepts of death and sexuality are inextricably connected.
Saturn, death, and Venus, life, are twin aspects of the Goddess.
That they are, in a mystical sense, one idea is evidenced by the
nature of the sexual act. The dynamic activity connected with
the drive to know, to penetrate, to illumine, culminates in a
stillness, a silence, a cessation of all effort which itself
dissolves in the tranquillity of total negation. The identity of
these concepts is explicit in the ancient Chinese equation 0 = 2,
where naught symbolizes the negative, unmanifest potential of
creation, and the two the two polaritites involved in its
realization. The Goddess represents the negative phase: the
atmospheric 'I' symbolized by that all-seeing Eye with all its
ayin symbolism; (15) and the twins -- Set-Horus -- represent the
phase of 2, or duality. The lightning-swift alternations of
these terminals, active-passive, are positive emanations of the
Void, i.e. the manifestation of the Unmanifest, and the Hand is
the symbol of this creative, power-manifesting duality. (16)
(15) See Chapter I.
(16) By qabalah, Hand=Yod=10; Eye=Ayin=70. The total, 80=Pe
(Mouth), the Goddess, Uterus, or Utterer of the Word.
The supreme symbol of Zos Kia Cultus therefore resumes that of
the Scarlet Woman [i.e. Babalon -d4], and is reminiscent of
Crowley's Cult of Love under Will. The Scarlet Woman embodies
the Fire Snake, control of which causes 'change to occur in
conformity with will'. (17) The energized enthusiasm of the Will
is the key to Crowley's Cult, and it is analogous to the
technique of magically induced obsession which Spare uses to
reify the 'inherent dream'. (18)
(17) Crowley's definition of magick. See Magick, p. 131.
(18) i.e. the True Will.
One of the foremost magicians of our time -- Salvador Dali --
developed a system of magical reification at about the same time
that Crowley and Spare were elaborating their doctrines. Dali's
system of 'paranoiac-critical activity' evokes echoes of
resurgent atavisms that are reflected into the concrete world of
images by a process of obsession similar to that induced by the
Death Posture.
Dali's birth in 1904 -- the year in which Crowley received The
Book of the Law -- makes him, literally, a child of the New Aeon;
one of the first! His creative genius adumbrates at every stage
of its flight the flowering of the essential germ that has made
him a living embodiment of New Aeon consciousness, and of the
'Kingly Man' described in AL.
Dali's objects are reflected in the fluid and ever-shifting
luminosity of the Astral Light. They resolve themselves and melt
continually into the 'next step', (19) the next phase of
consciousness expanding into the further image of Becoming.
(19) Crowley defined the Great Work in terms of the 'Next Step',
implying that the Great Work is not a remote and mysterious
thing, unattainable by humans, but the realization of the 'here
and now', and attention to immediate reality. Both Spare and
Crowley castigated the prevaricators who, scared of the idea of
work, look to the 'future life' and the unattainable, instead of
seizing reality and living NOW. 'O Babblers, Prattlers,
Loquacious Ones,...learn first what is work! and the Great Work
is not so far beyond' (The Book of Lies, Chapter 52).
Spare had already succeeded in isolating and concentrating desire
in a symbol which became sentient and therefore potentially
creative through the lightnings of the magnetized will. Dali, it
seems, has taken the process a step further. His formula of
'paranoiac-critical activity' is a development of the primal
(African) concept of the fetish, and it is instructive to compare
Spare's theory of 'visualized sensation' with Dali's definition
of painting as 'hand don colour photo- graphy of concrete
irrationality'. Sensation is essentially irrational, and its
delineation in graphic form ('hand done colour photography') is
identical with Spare's method of 'visualized sensation'.
These magicians utilized human embodiments of power (shakti)
which appeared -- usually -- in feminine form. Each book that
Crowley produced had its corresponding shakti. The Rites of
Eleusis (1910) were powered, largely, by Leila Waddell. Book
Four, Parts I & II (1913) came through Soror Virakam (Mary
d'Este). Liber Aleph -- The Book of Wisdom or Folly (1918) --
was inspired by Soror Hilarion (Jane Foster). His great work,
Magick in Theory and Practice, was written mainly in 1920 in
Cefalu, where Alostrael (Leah Hirsig) supplied the magical
impetus; and so on, up to the New Aeon interpretation of the
Tarot (The Book of Thoth), which he produced in collaboration
with Frieda Harris in 1944. Dali's shakti -- Gala -- was the
channel through which the inspiring creative current was fixed or
visualized in some of the greatest paintings the world has seen.
And in the case of Austin Osman Spare, the Fire Snake assumed the
form of Mrs. Paterson, a self-confessed witch who embodied the
sorceries of a cult so ancient that it was old in Egypt's
infancy.
Spare's grimoire is a concentration of the entire body of his
work. It comprises, in a sense, everthing of magical or creative
value that he ever thought or imagined. Thus, if you posses a
picture by Zos, and that picture contains some of his sigillized
spells, you possess the whole grimoire, and you stand a great
chance of being swept up and attuned to the vibrations of Zos Kia
Cultus.
A little known aspect of Spare, an aspect that links up with his
friendship with Thomas Burke, (20) reveals the fact that a
curious Chinese occult society -- known as the Cult of the Ku --
flourished in London in the nineteen-twenties. Its headquarters
may have been in Peking, Spare did not say, perhaps he did not
know; but its London offshoot was not in Limehouse as one might
have expected, but in Stockwell, not far from a studio-flat that
Spare shared with a friend. A secret session of the cult of the
Ku was witnessed by Spare, who seems to have been the only
European ever to have gained admittance. He does, in fact, seem
to have been the only European apart from Burke who had so much
as heard of the Cult. Spare's experience is of exceptional
interest by reason of its close approximation to a form of dream-
control into which he was initiated many years earlier by Witch
Paterson.
(20) 1886-1945.
The word Ku has several meanings in Chinese, but in this
particular case it denotes a peculiar form of sorcery involving
elements which Spare had already incorporated in his conception
of the New Sexuality. The Adepts of Ku worshipped a serpent
goddess in the form of a woman dedicated to the Cult. During an
elaborate ritual she would become possessed, with the result that
she threw off, or emanated, multiple forms of the goddess as
sentient shadows endowed with all the charms possessed by her
human representative. These shadow-women, impelled by some
subtle law of attraction, gravitated to one or other of the
devotees who sat in a drowsy condition around the entranced
priestess. Sexual congress with these shadows then occurred and
it was the beginning of a sinister form of dream-conrtol
involving journeys and encounters in infernal regions. [one
cannot help but note at this point the strong sexual component
coupled with "dream-state" consciousness manipulations so
intrinsic to the current "alien abduction" phenomena. -d4]
The Ku would seem to be a form of the Fire Snake exteriorized
astrally as a shadow-woman or succubus, congress with which
enabled the devotee to reify his 'inherent dream'. She was known
as the 'whore of hell' and her function was analogous to that of
the Scarlet Woman of Crowley's Cult, the Suvasini of the Tantric
Kaula Circle, and the Fiendess of the Cult of the Black Snake.
The Chinese Ku, or harlot of hell, is a shadowy embodiment of
subconscious desires (21) concentrated in the alluringly sensuous
form of the Serpent of Shadow Goddess.
(21) Hell is the type of the concealed place symbolic of the
subconsciousness; the 'infernal' region.
The mechanics of dream control are in many ways similar to those
which effect conscious astral projection. My own system of dream
control derives from two sources: the formula of Eroto- Comatose
Lucidity discovered by Ida Nellidoff and adapted by Crowley to
his sex-magical techniques, (22) and Spare's system of Sentient
Sigils explained below.
(22) See Chapter 10.
Sleep should be preceded by some form of Karezza (23) during
which a specially chosen sigil symbolizing the desired object is
vividly visualized. In this manner the libido is baulked of its
natural fantasies and seeks satisfaction in the dream world.
When the knack is acquired the dream will be extremely intense
and dominated by a succube, or shadow-woman, with whom sexual
intercourse occurs spontaneously. If the dreamer has aquired
even a moderate degree of proficiency in this technique he will
be aware of the continued presence of the sigil. This he should
bind upon the form of the succube in a place that is within range
of his vision during copulation, e.g., as a pendant suspended
from her neck; as ear-drops; or as the diadem in a circlet about
her brow. Its locus should be determined by the magician with
respect to the position he adopts during coitus. The act will
then assume all the characteristics of a Ninth Degree Working,
(24) because the presence of the Shadow-Woman will be experienced
with a vivid intensity of sensation and clarity of vision. The
sigil thus becomes sentient and in due course the object of the
Working materializes on the physical plane. This object is, of
course, determined by the desire embodied in and represented by
the sigil. [although the current crop of succubae appear to
enjoy dressing up as "space aliens," one cannot help but note the
striking similarities to ancient magickal rites and indeed,
question not only the immense secrecy behind these rituals but
also the underlying nature of organizations which hold as their
ultimate goal such "Ninth Degree [sex magick] Workings." -d4]
(23) Vide, infra, p. 204.
(24) i.e. a sex magical working with a female partner.
The important innovation in this system of dream control lies in
the transference of the Sigil from the waking to the dream state
of consciousness, and the evocation, in the latter state, of the
Shadow-woman. This process transforms an Eighth Degree Rite (25)
into the similitude of the sexual act as used in Ninth Degree
Workings.
(25) i.e. a solitary sex act.
Briefly, the formula has three stages:
1. Karezza, or unculminating sexual activity, with visualization
of the Sigil until sleep supervenes.
2. Sexual congress in the dream-state with the Shadow-woman
evoked by Stage I. The Sigil should appear automatically at
this second stage; if it does not, the practice must be repeated
at another time. If it does, then the desired result will reify
in Stage.
3. after awakening (i.e. in the mundane world of everyday
phenomena).
A word of explanation is, perhaps, necessary concerning the term
Karezza as used in the present context. Retention of semen is a
concept of central importance in certain Tantric practices, the
idea being that the bindu (seed) then breeds astrally, not
physically. In other words, an entity of some sort is brought to
birth at astral levels of consciousness. This, and analogous
techniques, have given rise to the impression -- quite erroneous
-- that celibacy is a sine qua non of magical success; but such
celibacy is of a purely local character and confined to the
physical plane, or waking state, alone. Celibacy, as commonly
understood, is therefore a meaningless parody or travesty of the
true formula. Such is the initiated rationale of Tantric
celibacy, and some such interpretation undoubtedly applies also
to other forms of religious asceticism. The 'temptations' of the
saints occurred on the astral plane precisely because the
physical channels had been deliberately blocked. The state of
drowsiness noted in the votaries of the Ku suggests that the
ensuing shadow-play was evoked after a fashion similar to that
obtained by a species of dream control.
Gerald Massey, Aleister Crowley, Austin Spare, Dion Fortune, have
-- each in their way -- demonstrated the bio-chemical basis of
the Mysteries. They achieved in the sphere of the 'occult' that
which Wilhelm Reich achieved for psychology, and established it
on a sure bio-chemical basis.
Spare's 'sentient symbols' and 'alphabet of desire', (26)
correlating as they do the marmas of the body with the specific
sex-principles, anticipated in several ways the work of Reich who
discovered -- between 1936 and 1939 -- the vehicle of psycho-
sexual energy, which he named the orgone. Reich's singular
contribution to psychology and, incidentally, to Western
occultism, lies in the fact that he successfully isolated the
libido and demonstrated its existence as a tangible, biological
energy. This energy, the actual substance of Freud's purely
hypothetical concepts -- libido and id -- was measured by Reich,
lifted out of the category of hypothesis, and reified. [Indeed,
"space aliens" allegedly capable of "interstellar travel" would
certainly have discovered petrie dishes -- thereby rendering them
capable of mass-producing as much cloned "DNA" as they please. It
has always appeared far more plausible that these clever entities
are far more interested in farming orgone, prana, tantric
energies or other intradimensional "substances" which we do not
yet know about or understand than mere biological sperm or ova.
-d4]
He was, however, wrong in supposing that the orgone was the
ultimate energy. It is one of the more important kalas but not
the Supreme Kala (Mahakala), although it may become such by
virtue of a process not unknown to Tantrics of the Varma Marg.
Until comparatively recent times it was known -- in the West --
to the Arab alchemists, and the entire body of alchemical
literature, with its tortuous terminology and hieroglyphic style,
reveals -- if it reveals anything -- a deliberate device on the
part of Initiates to veil the true process of distilling the
Mahakala.
(26) Described in The Book of Pleasure (A.O. Spare), republished
1975.
Reich's discovery is significant because he was probably the
first scientist to place psychology on a solid biological basic,
ant the first to demonstrate under laboratory conditions the
existence of a tangible magical energy at last measurable and
therefore strictly scientific. Whether this energy is termed the
astral light (Levi), the elan vital (Bergson), the Odic Force
(Reichenbach), the libido (Freud), Reich was the first -- with
the possible exception of Reichenbach (27) -- actually to isolate
it and demonstrate its properties.
(27) See Letters on Od and Magnetism; Karl von Reichenbach,
London, 1926.
Austin Spare suspected, as early as 1913, that some such energy
was the basic factor in the re-activization of primal atavisms,
and he treated it accordingly as cosmic energy (the 'Atmospheric
I') responsive to subconscious suggestion through the medium of
Sentient Symbols, and through the application of the body (Zos)
in such a way that it could reify remote atavisms and all
possible future forms.
During the time that he was preoccupied with these themes Spare
dreamed repeatedly of fantastic buildings whose alignments he
found quite impossible to note down on waking. He supposed them
to be adumbrations of a future geometry of space-time bearing no
known relation to present-day forms of architecture. Eliphaz
Levi claimed a similar power of reification for the 'Astral
Light' but he failed to show the precise manner of its
manipulation. It was to this end that Spare evolved his Alphabet
of Desire 'each letter of which relates to a sex-principle'. (28)
That is to say he noted certain correspondences between the inner
movements of the sexual impulse and the outer form of its
manifestation in symbols, sigils, or letters rendered sentient by
being charged with its energy. Dali refers to such magically
charged fetish- forms as 'accommodations of desire' (29) which
are visualized as shadowy voids, black emptinesses, each having
the shape of the ghostly object which inhabits its latency, and
which IS only by virtue of the fact that it is NOT. This
indicates that the origin of manifestation is non-manifestation,
and it is plain to intuitive apprehension that the orgone of
Reich, the Atmosheric 'I' of Austin Spare, and the Dalinian
delineations of the 'accommodations of desire' refer in each case
to an identical Energy manifesting through the mechanics of
desire. Desire, Energized Will, and Obsession, are the keys to
unlimited manifestation, for all form and all power is latent in
the Void, and its god-form is the Death Posture.
(28) The Book of Pleasure, p. 56.
(29) See The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, New York, 1942.
These theories have their roots in very ancient practices, some
of which -- in distorted form -- provided the basis of the
medieval Witch Cult, covens of which flourished in New England at
the time of the Salem Witch Trials at the end of the 17th
century. The subsequent persecutions apparently obliterated all
outer manifestations both of the genuine cult and its debased
counterfeits.
The principal symbols of the original cult have survived the
passage of aeon-long cycles of time. (30) They all suggest the
Backward Way: (31) The Sabbath sacred to Sevekh or Sebt, the
number Seven, the Moon, the Cat, Jackal, Hyaena, Pig, Black
Snake, and other animals considered unclean by later traditions;
the Widdershins and Back-to-Back dance, the Anal Kiss, the number
Thirteen, the Witch mounted on the besom handle, the Bat, and
other forms of webbed or winged nocturnal creature; the Batrachia
generally, of which the Toad, Frog, or Hekt (32) was preeminent.
These and similar symbols originally typified the Draconian
Tradition which was degraded by the pseudo witch-cults during
centuries of Christian persecution. The Mysteries were profaned
and the sacred rites were condemned as anti-Christian. The Cult
thus became the repository of inverted and perverted religious
rites and symbols having no inner meaning; mere affirmations of
the witches' total commitment to anti-Christian doctrine whereas
-- originally -- they were living emblems, sentient symbols, of
anteChristian faith.
(30) They were carried over from the Draconian or Typhonian
Traditions of predynastic Egypt. See The Magical Revival,
Chapter 3.
(31) The Way of Resurgent Atavisms.
(32) Hecate, the witch or transformer from dark to light, as the
tadpole of the waters to the frog of dry land, as the dark and
baleful moon of witchcraft to the full bright orb of magical
radiance and enchantment exemplified for Spare by 'Witch'
Paterson who changed from the hag to the virgin before his eyes.
See Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare, 1975.
When the occult significance of primal symbols is fathomed at the
Draconian level, the system of sorcery which Spare evolved
through contact with 'Witch' Paterson becomes explicable, and all
magical circles, sorceries, and cults, are seen as manifestations
of the Shadow.
[end]
=======================================
[or Orgone Farming by Clever "ET" Succubae]
>From Cults of the Shadow By Kenneth Grant
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Interesting excerpts:
"It has been suggested by some authorities that the original
witches sprang from a race of Mongol origin of which the Lapps
are the sole surviving remnants. This may or may not be so, but
these 'mongols' were not human...The characteristic that
distinguished them from the others of their kind was the ability
to project consciousness into animal forms, and the power they
possessed of reifying thought-forms. The bestiaries of all the
races of the earth are littered with the results of their
sorceries.
"They were non-human entities; that is to say they pre-dated the
human lifewave on this planet, and their powers -- which would
today appear unearthly -- derived from extra-spatial dimensions.
They impregnated the aura of the earth with the magical seed
from which the human foetus was ultimately generated.
"Arthur Machen was, perhaps, near the truth of the matter when he
suggested that the fairies and little people of folklore were
decorous devices concealing processes of non-human sorcery
repellent to mankind.
"This theme is a frequent one with Machen. The hideous atavisms
described by Lovecraft in many of his tales evoke even more
potently the atmosphere of cosmic horror and 'evil' peculiar to
the influx of extra-terrestrial powers.
"Machen, Blackwood, Crowley, Lovecraft, Fortune, and others,
frequently used as a theme for their writings the influx of
extra-terrestrial powers which have been moulding the history of
our planet since time began; that is, since time began for us,
for we are only too prone to suppose that we were here first and
that we alone are here now, whereas the most ancient occult
traditions affirm that we were neither the first nor are we the
only ones to people the earth; the Great Old Ones and the Elder
Gods find echoes in the myths and legends of all peoples.
"Austin Spare claimed to have had direct experience of the
existence of extraterrestrial intelligences, and Crowley -- as
his autobiography makes abundantly clear -- devoted a lifetime
to proving that extra-terrestrial and superhuman consciousness
can and does exist independently of the human organism.
[...]
"These magicians utilized human embodiments of power (shakti)
which appeared -- usually -- in feminine form. Each book that
Crowley produced had its corresponding shakti. The Rites of
Eleusis (1910) were powered, largely, by Leila Waddell. Book
Four, Parts I & II (1913) came through Soror Virakam (Mary
d'Este). Liber Aleph -- The Book of Wisdom or Folly (1918) --
was inspired by Soror Hilarion (Jane Foster). His great work,
Magick in Theory and Practice, was written mainly in 1920 in
Cefalu, where Alostrael (Leah Hirsig) supplied the magical
impetus; and so on, up to the New Aeon interpretation of the
Tarot (The Book of Thoth), which he produced in collaboration
with Frieda Harris in 1944. Dali's shakti -- Gala -- was the
channel through which the inspiring creative current was fixed
or visualized in some of the greatest paintings the world has
seen. And in the case of Austin Osman Spare, the Fire Snake
assumed the form of Mrs. Paterson, a self-confessed witch who
embodied the sorceries of a cult so ancient that it was old in
Egypt's infancy.
[...]
"The Adepts of Ku worshipped a serpent goddess in the form of a
woman dedicated to the Cult. During an elaborate ritual she
would become possessed, with the result that she threw off, or
emanated, multiple forms of the goddess as sentient shadows
endowed with all the charms possessed by her human representative.
These shadow-women, impelled by some subtle law of attraction,
gravitated to one or other of the devotees who sat in a drowsy
condition around the entranced priestess. Sexual congress with
these shadows then occurred and it was the beginning of a sinister
form of dream-control involving journeys and encounters in
infernal regions.
"The Ku would seem to be a form of the Fire Snake exteriorized
astrally as a shadow-woman or succubus, congress with which
enabled the devotee to reify his 'inherent dream'. She was
known as the 'whore of hell' and her function was analogous to
that of the Scarlet Woman of Crowley's Cult, the Suvasini of the
Tantric Kaula Circle, and the Fiendess of the Cult of the Black
Snake. The Chinese Ku, or harlot of hell, is a shadowy embodiment
of subconscious desires concentrated in the alluringly sensuous
form of the Serpent of Shadow Goddess.
[...]
"Sleep should be preceded by some form of Karezza during which a
specially chosen sigil symbolizing the desired object is vividly
visualized. In this manner the libido is baulked of its natural
fantasies and seeks satisfaction in the dream world. When the
knack is acquired the dream will be extremely intense and domin-
ated by a succube, or shadow-woman, with whom sexual intercourse
occurs spontaneously. If the dreamer has aquired even a moderate
degree of proficiency in this technique he will be aware of the
continued presence of the sigil. This he should bind upon the
form of the succube in a place that is within range of his vision
during copulation, e.g., as a pendant suspended from her neck; as
ear-drops; or as the diadem in a circlet about her brow. Its
locus should be determined by the magician with respect to the
position he adopts during coitus. The act will then assume all
the characteristics of a Ninth Degree Working, (24) because the
presence of the Shadow-Woman will be experienced with a vivid
intensity of sensation and clarity of vision. The sigil thus
becomes sentient and in due course the object of the Working
materializes on the physical plane. This object is, of course,
determined by the desire embodied in and represented by the sigil.
[...]
"A word of explanation is, perhaps, necessary concerning the term
Karezza as used in the present context. Retention of semen is a
concept of central importance in certain Tantric practices, the
idea being that the bindu (seed) then breeds astrally, not
physically. In other words, an entity of some sort is brought
to birth at astral levels of consciousness.
[...]
"Spare's 'sentient symbols' and 'alphabet of desire', (26)
correlating as they do the marmas of the body with the specific
sex-principles, anticipated in several ways the work of Reich
who discovered -- between 1936 and 1939 -- the vehicle of psycho-
sexual energy, which he named the orgone. Reich's singular
contribution to psychology and, incidentally, to Western
occultism, lies in the fact that he successfully isolated the
libido and demonstrated its existence as a tangible, biological
energy. This energy, the actual substance of Freud's purely
hypothetical concepts -- libido and id -- was measured by Reich,
lifted out of the category of hypothesis, and reified.
[...]
"These and similar symbols originally typified the Draconian
Tradition which was degraded by the pseudo witch-cults during
centuries of Christian persecution. The Mysteries were profaned
and the sacred rites were condemned as anti-Christian. The Cult
thus became the repository of inverted and perverted religious
rites and symbols having no inner meaning; mere affirmations of
the witches' total commitment to anti-Christian doctrine whereas
-- originally -- they were living emblems, sentient symbols, of
ante-Christian faith.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sorcery and witchcraft are the degenerate offspring of occult
traditions coeval with those described in the second chapter.
The popular conception of witchcraft, shaped by the anti-
Christian manifestations that occurred in the Middle Ages is
so distorted and so inadequate that to try and interpret the
symbols of its mysteries, perverted and debased as they are,
without reference to the vastly ancient systems from which they
derive is like mistaking the tip of an iceberg for its total
mass.
It has been suggested by some authorities that the original
witches sprang from a race of Mongol origin of which the Lapps
are the sole surviving remnants. This may or may not be so, but
these 'mongols' were not human. They were degenerate survivals
of a pre-human phase of our planet's history generally -- though
mistakenly -- classified as Atlantean. The characteristic that
distinguished them from the others of their kind was the ability
to project consciousness into animal forms, and the power they
possessed of reifying thought-forms. The bestiaries of all the
races of the earth are littered with the results of their
sorceries.
They were non-human entities; that is to say they pre-dated the
human lifewave on this planet, and their powers -- which would
today appear unearthly -- derived from extra-spatial dimensions.
They impregnated the aura of the earth with the magical seed
from which the human foetus was ultimately generated.
Arthur Machen was, perhaps, near the truth of the matter when he
suggested that the fairies and little people of folklore were
decorous devices concealing processes of non-human sorcery
repellent to mankind. (1)
(1) See The White People, The Shining Pyramid, and other stories.
This theme is a frequent one with Machen. The hideous atavisms
described by Lovecraft in many of his tales evoke even more
potently the atmosphere of cosmic horror and 'evil' peculiar to
the influx of extra-terrestrial powers.
Machen, Blackwood, Crowley, Lovecraft, Fortune, and others,
frequently used as a theme for their writings the influx of
extra-terrestrial powers which have been moulding the history of
our planet since time began; that is, since time began for us,
for we are only too prone to suppose that we were here first and
that we alone are here now, whereas the most ancient occult
traditions affirm that we were neither the first nor are we the
only ones to people the earth; the Great Old Ones and the Elder
Gods find echoes in the myths and legends of all peoples.
Austin Spare claimed to have had direct experience of the
existence of extraterrestrial intelligences, and Crowley -- as
his autobiography makes abundantly clear -- devoted a lifetime to
proving that extra-terrestrial and superhuman consciousness can
and does exist independently of the human organism. (2)
(2) See The Confessions, Moonchild, Magick Without Tears, and
other works by Crowley.
As explained in Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare,(3)
Spare was initiated into the vital current of ancient and
creative sorcery by an aged woman named Paterson, who claimed
descent form a line of Salem witches. The formation of Spare's
Cult of the Zos and the Kia (4) owes much to his contact with
Witch Paterson who provides the model for many of his 'sabbatic'
drawings and paintings. Much of the occult lore that she
transmitted to him suffuses two of his books -- The Book of
Pleasure and the Focus of Life. (5) In the last years of his
life he embodied further esoteric researches in a grimoire (6)
which he had intended publishing as a sequel to his two other
books. Although death prevented its publication, the manuscript
survives, and the substance of the grimoire forms the basis of
this chapter.
(3) Frederick Muller, 1975.
(4) 'The body considered as a whole I call Zos' (The Book of
Pleasure, p. 45). The Kia is the 'Atmospheric I'. The 'I' and
the 'Eye', being interchangeable, the entire range of 'eye'
symbolism -- to which repeated reference has been made -- is here
applicable.
(5) First published in 1913 and 1921 respectively. There has
been a recent republication of The Book of Pleasure, with an
introduction by Kenneth Grant. (Montreal, 1975).
(6) This was to have been divided into two parts: The Book of the
Living Word of Zos and The Zoetic Grimoire of Zos; in the present
chapter it is referred to simply as the grimoire.
Spare concentrated the theme of his doctrine in the following
Affirmation Creed of Zos vel Thanatos.
"I believe in the flesh 'as now' and forever...for I am the Light,
the Truth, the Law, the Way, and none shall come unto anything
except through his flesh.
"Did I not show you the eclectic path between ecstasies; that
precarious funambulatory way...
"But you had no courage, were tired, and feared. THEN AWAKE!
De-hypnotize yourselves from the poor reality you be-live and
be-lie. For the great Noontide is here, the great bell has
struck...Let others await involuntary immolation, the forced
redemption so certain for many apostates to Life. Now, in this
day, I ask you to search your memories, for great unities are
near. The Inceptor of all memory is your Soul. Life is desire,
Death is reformation...I am the resurrection...I, who transcend
ecstasy by ecstasy, meditating Need Not Be in Self-love...
This creed, informed by the dynamism of Spare's will and his
great ability as an artist, created a Cult on the astral plane
that attracted to itself all the elements naturally orientated to
it. He referred to it as Zos Kia Cultus, and its votaries
claimed affinity on the following terms:
Our Sacred Book : The Book of Pleasure.
Our Path : The eclectic path between ecstasies; the
precarious funambulatory way.
Our Deity : The All-Prevailing Woman. ('And I strayed
with her, into the path direct'.)
Our Creed : The Living Flesh. (Zos): ('Again I say :
This is your great moment of reality -- the
living flesh').
Our Sacrament : The Sacred Inbetweenness Concepts.
Our Word : Does Not Matter-Need Not Be.
Our Eternal Abode : The mystic state of Neither-Neither. The
Atomospheric 'I'. (Kia).
Our Law : To Trespass all Laws.
The Zos and the Kia are represented by the Hand and the Eye, the
instruments of sentiency and vision. They form the foundation of
the New Sexuality, which Spare evolved by combining them to form
a magical art -- the art of visualizing sensation, of 'becoming
one with all sensation', and of transcending the dual polarities
of existence by the annihilation of separate identity through the
mechanics of the Death Posture. (7) Long ago, a Persian poet
described in a few words the object of Spare's New Sexuality.
"The kingdom of I and We forsake, and your home in annihilation
make."
(7) Vide infra.
The New Sexuality, in the sense that Spare conceived it, is the
sexuality not of positive dualities but of the Great Void, the
Negative, the Ain: The Eye of Infinite Potential. The New
Sexuality is, simply, the manifestation of nonmanifestation, or
of Universe 'B', as Bertiaux would have it, which is equivalent
to Spare's Neither-Neither concept. Universe 'B' represents the
absolute difference of that world of 'all otherness' to anything
pertaining to the known world, or Universe 'A'. Its gateway is
Daath, sentinelled by the Demon Choronzon. Spare describes this
concept as 'the gateway of all inbetweenness'. In terms of
Voodoo, this idea is implicit in the Petro rites with their
emphasis upon the spaces between the cardinal points of the
compass: the off-beat rhythms of the drums that summon the loa
from beyond the Veil and formulate the laws of their
manifestation. (8) Spare's system of sorcery, as expressed in
Zos Kia Cultus, continues in a straight line not only the Petro
tradition of Voodoo, but also the Vama Marg of Tantra, with its
eight directions of space typified by the Yantra of the Black
Goddess, Kali: the Cross of the Four Quarters plus the
inbetweenness concepts that together compose the eightfold Cross,
the eight-petalled Lotus, a synthetic symbol of the Goddess of
the Seven Stars plus her son, Set or Sirius. (9)
(8) See previous chapter.
(9) The significance of the number eight as the height, or
ultimate One, is explained in Aleister Crowley & the Hidden God.
The mechanics of the New Sexuality are based upon the dynamics of
the Death Posture, a formula evolved by Spare for the purpose of
reifying the negative potential in terms of positive power. In
ancient Egypt the mummy was the type of this formula, and the
simulation by the Adept of the state of death (10) -- in Tantric
practice -- involves also the total stilling of the psychosomatic
functions. The formula has been used by Adepts not necessarily
working with specifically tantric or magical formulae, notably by
the celebrated Advaitin Rishi, Bhagavan Shri Ramana Maharshi of
Tiruvannamalai, (11) who attained Supreme Enlightenment by
simulating the process of death; and also by the Bengal
Vaishnavite, Thakur Haranath, who was taken for dead and actually
prepard for burial after a 'death trance' which lasted several
hours and from which he emerged with a totally new consciousness
that transformed even his bodily constitution and appearance.
(12) It is possible that Shri Meher Baba, of Poona, during the
period of amnesia that afflicted him in early life, also
experienced a form of death from which he emerged with power to
enlighten others and to lead a large movement in his name.
(10) i.e. the assumption of the 'god-form' of death.
(11) See Arthur Osborne: Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self
Knowledge, London, 1954.
(12) See Shri Haranath: His Play and Precepts, Bombay, 1954.
The theory of the Death Posture, first described in The Book of
Pleasure, was developed independently of the experiences of the
above mentioned Masters about whom nothing was published in any
European language at that time. (13)
(13) i.e. 1913.
The Rosicrucian mystique of the pastos containing the corpse of
Christian Rosencreutz -- dramatized by MacGregor Mathers in the 5
degree = 6 square Ceremony of the Golden Dawn -- resumes the
mystery of this essentially Egyptian formula of the mummified
Osiris. Spare was acquainted with this version of the Mystery.
He became a member of Crowley's A.'. A.'., for a brief period, in
1910, and the Golden Dawn rituals -- published shortly after-
wards in The Equinox (14) -- may have been available to him.
(14) The 5 degree = 6 square Ritual was published in Volume I,
No. 3 in 1910.
The concepts of death and sexuality are inextricably connected.
Saturn, death, and Venus, life, are twin aspects of the Goddess.
That they are, in a mystical sense, one idea is evidenced by the
nature of the sexual act. The dynamic activity connected with
the drive to know, to penetrate, to illumine, culminates in a
stillness, a silence, a cessation of all effort which itself
dissolves in the tranquillity of total negation. The identity of
these concepts is explicit in the ancient Chinese equation 0 = 2,
where naught symbolizes the negative, unmanifest potential of
creation, and the two the two polaritites involved in its
realization. The Goddess represents the negative phase: the
atmospheric 'I' symbolized by that all-seeing Eye with all its
ayin symbolism; (15) and the twins -- Set-Horus -- represent the
phase of 2, or duality. The lightning-swift alternations of
these terminals, active-passive, are positive emanations of the
Void, i.e. the manifestation of the Unmanifest, and the Hand is
the symbol of this creative, power-manifesting duality. (16)
(15) See Chapter I.
(16) By qabalah, Hand=Yod=10; Eye=Ayin=70. The total, 80=Pe
(Mouth), the Goddess, Uterus, or Utterer of the Word.
The supreme symbol of Zos Kia Cultus therefore resumes that of
the Scarlet Woman [i.e. Babalon -d4], and is reminiscent of
Crowley's Cult of Love under Will. The Scarlet Woman embodies
the Fire Snake, control of which causes 'change to occur in
conformity with will'. (17) The energized enthusiasm of the Will
is the key to Crowley's Cult, and it is analogous to the
technique of magically induced obsession which Spare uses to
reify the 'inherent dream'. (18)
(17) Crowley's definition of magick. See Magick, p. 131.
(18) i.e. the True Will.
One of the foremost magicians of our time -- Salvador Dali --
developed a system of magical reification at about the same time
that Crowley and Spare were elaborating their doctrines. Dali's
system of 'paranoiac-critical activity' evokes echoes of
resurgent atavisms that are reflected into the concrete world of
images by a process of obsession similar to that induced by the
Death Posture.
Dali's birth in 1904 -- the year in which Crowley received The
Book of the Law -- makes him, literally, a child of the New Aeon;
one of the first! His creative genius adumbrates at every stage
of its flight the flowering of the essential germ that has made
him a living embodiment of New Aeon consciousness, and of the
'Kingly Man' described in AL.
Dali's objects are reflected in the fluid and ever-shifting
luminosity of the Astral Light. They resolve themselves and melt
continually into the 'next step', (19) the next phase of
consciousness expanding into the further image of Becoming.
(19) Crowley defined the Great Work in terms of the 'Next Step',
implying that the Great Work is not a remote and mysterious
thing, unattainable by humans, but the realization of the 'here
and now', and attention to immediate reality. Both Spare and
Crowley castigated the prevaricators who, scared of the idea of
work, look to the 'future life' and the unattainable, instead of
seizing reality and living NOW. 'O Babblers, Prattlers,
Loquacious Ones,...learn first what is work! and the Great Work
is not so far beyond' (The Book of Lies, Chapter 52).
Spare had already succeeded in isolating and concentrating desire
in a symbol which became sentient and therefore potentially
creative through the lightnings of the magnetized will. Dali, it
seems, has taken the process a step further. His formula of
'paranoiac-critical activity' is a development of the primal
(African) concept of the fetish, and it is instructive to compare
Spare's theory of 'visualized sensation' with Dali's definition
of painting as 'hand don colour photo- graphy of concrete
irrationality'. Sensation is essentially irrational, and its
delineation in graphic form ('hand done colour photography') is
identical with Spare's method of 'visualized sensation'.
These magicians utilized human embodiments of power (shakti)
which appeared -- usually -- in feminine form. Each book that
Crowley produced had its corresponding shakti. The Rites of
Eleusis (1910) were powered, largely, by Leila Waddell. Book
Four, Parts I & II (1913) came through Soror Virakam (Mary
d'Este). Liber Aleph -- The Book of Wisdom or Folly (1918) --
was inspired by Soror Hilarion (Jane Foster). His great work,
Magick in Theory and Practice, was written mainly in 1920 in
Cefalu, where Alostrael (Leah Hirsig) supplied the magical
impetus; and so on, up to the New Aeon interpretation of the
Tarot (The Book of Thoth), which he produced in collaboration
with Frieda Harris in 1944. Dali's shakti -- Gala -- was the
channel through which the inspiring creative current was fixed or
visualized in some of the greatest paintings the world has seen.
And in the case of Austin Osman Spare, the Fire Snake assumed the
form of Mrs. Paterson, a self-confessed witch who embodied the
sorceries of a cult so ancient that it was old in Egypt's
infancy.
Spare's grimoire is a concentration of the entire body of his
work. It comprises, in a sense, everthing of magical or creative
value that he ever thought or imagined. Thus, if you posses a
picture by Zos, and that picture contains some of his sigillized
spells, you possess the whole grimoire, and you stand a great
chance of being swept up and attuned to the vibrations of Zos Kia
Cultus.
A little known aspect of Spare, an aspect that links up with his
friendship with Thomas Burke, (20) reveals the fact that a
curious Chinese occult society -- known as the Cult of the Ku --
flourished in London in the nineteen-twenties. Its headquarters
may have been in Peking, Spare did not say, perhaps he did not
know; but its London offshoot was not in Limehouse as one might
have expected, but in Stockwell, not far from a studio-flat that
Spare shared with a friend. A secret session of the cult of the
Ku was witnessed by Spare, who seems to have been the only
European ever to have gained admittance. He does, in fact, seem
to have been the only European apart from Burke who had so much
as heard of the Cult. Spare's experience is of exceptional
interest by reason of its close approximation to a form of dream-
control into which he was initiated many years earlier by Witch
Paterson.
(20) 1886-1945.
The word Ku has several meanings in Chinese, but in this
particular case it denotes a peculiar form of sorcery involving
elements which Spare had already incorporated in his conception
of the New Sexuality. The Adepts of Ku worshipped a serpent
goddess in the form of a woman dedicated to the Cult. During an
elaborate ritual she would become possessed, with the result that
she threw off, or emanated, multiple forms of the goddess as
sentient shadows endowed with all the charms possessed by her
human representative. These shadow-women, impelled by some
subtle law of attraction, gravitated to one or other of the
devotees who sat in a drowsy condition around the entranced
priestess. Sexual congress with these shadows then occurred and
it was the beginning of a sinister form of dream-conrtol
involving journeys and encounters in infernal regions. [one
cannot help but note at this point the strong sexual component
coupled with "dream-state" consciousness manipulations so
intrinsic to the current "alien abduction" phenomena. -d4]
The Ku would seem to be a form of the Fire Snake exteriorized
astrally as a shadow-woman or succubus, congress with which
enabled the devotee to reify his 'inherent dream'. She was known
as the 'whore of hell' and her function was analogous to that of
the Scarlet Woman of Crowley's Cult, the Suvasini of the Tantric
Kaula Circle, and the Fiendess of the Cult of the Black Snake.
The Chinese Ku, or harlot of hell, is a shadowy embodiment of
subconscious desires (21) concentrated in the alluringly sensuous
form of the Serpent of Shadow Goddess.
(21) Hell is the type of the concealed place symbolic of the
subconsciousness; the 'infernal' region.
The mechanics of dream control are in many ways similar to those
which effect conscious astral projection. My own system of dream
control derives from two sources: the formula of Eroto- Comatose
Lucidity discovered by Ida Nellidoff and adapted by Crowley to
his sex-magical techniques, (22) and Spare's system of Sentient
Sigils explained below.
(22) See Chapter 10.
Sleep should be preceded by some form of Karezza (23) during
which a specially chosen sigil symbolizing the desired object is
vividly visualized. In this manner the libido is baulked of its
natural fantasies and seeks satisfaction in the dream world.
When the knack is acquired the dream will be extremely intense
and dominated by a succube, or shadow-woman, with whom sexual
intercourse occurs spontaneously. If the dreamer has aquired
even a moderate degree of proficiency in this technique he will
be aware of the continued presence of the sigil. This he should
bind upon the form of the succube in a place that is within range
of his vision during copulation, e.g., as a pendant suspended
from her neck; as ear-drops; or as the diadem in a circlet about
her brow. Its locus should be determined by the magician with
respect to the position he adopts during coitus. The act will
then assume all the characteristics of a Ninth Degree Working,
(24) because the presence of the Shadow-Woman will be experienced
with a vivid intensity of sensation and clarity of vision. The
sigil thus becomes sentient and in due course the object of the
Working materializes on the physical plane. This object is, of
course, determined by the desire embodied in and represented by
the sigil. [although the current crop of succubae appear to
enjoy dressing up as "space aliens," one cannot help but note the
striking similarities to ancient magickal rites and indeed,
question not only the immense secrecy behind these rituals but
also the underlying nature of organizations which hold as their
ultimate goal such "Ninth Degree [sex magick] Workings." -d4]
(23) Vide, infra, p. 204.
(24) i.e. a sex magical working with a female partner.
The important innovation in this system of dream control lies in
the transference of the Sigil from the waking to the dream state
of consciousness, and the evocation, in the latter state, of the
Shadow-woman. This process transforms an Eighth Degree Rite (25)
into the similitude of the sexual act as used in Ninth Degree
Workings.
(25) i.e. a solitary sex act.
Briefly, the formula has three stages:
1. Karezza, or unculminating sexual activity, with visualization
of the Sigil until sleep supervenes.
2. Sexual congress in the dream-state with the Shadow-woman
evoked by Stage I. The Sigil should appear automatically at
this second stage; if it does not, the practice must be repeated
at another time. If it does, then the desired result will reify
in Stage.
3. after awakening (i.e. in the mundane world of everyday
phenomena).
A word of explanation is, perhaps, necessary concerning the term
Karezza as used in the present context. Retention of semen is a
concept of central importance in certain Tantric practices, the
idea being that the bindu (seed) then breeds astrally, not
physically. In other words, an entity of some sort is brought to
birth at astral levels of consciousness. This, and analogous
techniques, have given rise to the impression -- quite erroneous
-- that celibacy is a sine qua non of magical success; but such
celibacy is of a purely local character and confined to the
physical plane, or waking state, alone. Celibacy, as commonly
understood, is therefore a meaningless parody or travesty of the
true formula. Such is the initiated rationale of Tantric
celibacy, and some such interpretation undoubtedly applies also
to other forms of religious asceticism. The 'temptations' of the
saints occurred on the astral plane precisely because the
physical channels had been deliberately blocked. The state of
drowsiness noted in the votaries of the Ku suggests that the
ensuing shadow-play was evoked after a fashion similar to that
obtained by a species of dream control.
Gerald Massey, Aleister Crowley, Austin Spare, Dion Fortune, have
-- each in their way -- demonstrated the bio-chemical basis of
the Mysteries. They achieved in the sphere of the 'occult' that
which Wilhelm Reich achieved for psychology, and established it
on a sure bio-chemical basis.
Spare's 'sentient symbols' and 'alphabet of desire', (26)
correlating as they do the marmas of the body with the specific
sex-principles, anticipated in several ways the work of Reich who
discovered -- between 1936 and 1939 -- the vehicle of psycho-
sexual energy, which he named the orgone. Reich's singular
contribution to psychology and, incidentally, to Western
occultism, lies in the fact that he successfully isolated the
libido and demonstrated its existence as a tangible, biological
energy. This energy, the actual substance of Freud's purely
hypothetical concepts -- libido and id -- was measured by Reich,
lifted out of the category of hypothesis, and reified. [Indeed,
"space aliens" allegedly capable of "interstellar travel" would
certainly have discovered petrie dishes -- thereby rendering them
capable of mass-producing as much cloned "DNA" as they please. It
has always appeared far more plausible that these clever entities
are far more interested in farming orgone, prana, tantric
energies or other intradimensional "substances" which we do not
yet know about or understand than mere biological sperm or ova.
-d4]
He was, however, wrong in supposing that the orgone was the
ultimate energy. It is one of the more important kalas but not
the Supreme Kala (Mahakala), although it may become such by
virtue of a process not unknown to Tantrics of the Varma Marg.
Until comparatively recent times it was known -- in the West --
to the Arab alchemists, and the entire body of alchemical
literature, with its tortuous terminology and hieroglyphic style,
reveals -- if it reveals anything -- a deliberate device on the
part of Initiates to veil the true process of distilling the
Mahakala.
(26) Described in The Book of Pleasure (A.O. Spare), republished
1975.
Reich's discovery is significant because he was probably the
first scientist to place psychology on a solid biological basic,
ant the first to demonstrate under laboratory conditions the
existence of a tangible magical energy at last measurable and
therefore strictly scientific. Whether this energy is termed the
astral light (Levi), the elan vital (Bergson), the Odic Force
(Reichenbach), the libido (Freud), Reich was the first -- with
the possible exception of Reichenbach (27) -- actually to isolate
it and demonstrate its properties.
(27) See Letters on Od and Magnetism; Karl von Reichenbach,
London, 1926.
Austin Spare suspected, as early as 1913, that some such energy
was the basic factor in the re-activization of primal atavisms,
and he treated it accordingly as cosmic energy (the 'Atmospheric
I') responsive to subconscious suggestion through the medium of
Sentient Symbols, and through the application of the body (Zos)
in such a way that it could reify remote atavisms and all
possible future forms.
During the time that he was preoccupied with these themes Spare
dreamed repeatedly of fantastic buildings whose alignments he
found quite impossible to note down on waking. He supposed them
to be adumbrations of a future geometry of space-time bearing no
known relation to present-day forms of architecture. Eliphaz
Levi claimed a similar power of reification for the 'Astral
Light' but he failed to show the precise manner of its
manipulation. It was to this end that Spare evolved his Alphabet
of Desire 'each letter of which relates to a sex-principle'. (28)
That is to say he noted certain correspondences between the inner
movements of the sexual impulse and the outer form of its
manifestation in symbols, sigils, or letters rendered sentient by
being charged with its energy. Dali refers to such magically
charged fetish- forms as 'accommodations of desire' (29) which
are visualized as shadowy voids, black emptinesses, each having
the shape of the ghostly object which inhabits its latency, and
which IS only by virtue of the fact that it is NOT. This
indicates that the origin of manifestation is non-manifestation,
and it is plain to intuitive apprehension that the orgone of
Reich, the Atmosheric 'I' of Austin Spare, and the Dalinian
delineations of the 'accommodations of desire' refer in each case
to an identical Energy manifesting through the mechanics of
desire. Desire, Energized Will, and Obsession, are the keys to
unlimited manifestation, for all form and all power is latent in
the Void, and its god-form is the Death Posture.
(28) The Book of Pleasure, p. 56.
(29) See The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, New York, 1942.
These theories have their roots in very ancient practices, some
of which -- in distorted form -- provided the basis of the
medieval Witch Cult, covens of which flourished in New England at
the time of the Salem Witch Trials at the end of the 17th
century. The subsequent persecutions apparently obliterated all
outer manifestations both of the genuine cult and its debased
counterfeits.
The principal symbols of the original cult have survived the
passage of aeon-long cycles of time. (30) They all suggest the
Backward Way: (31) The Sabbath sacred to Sevekh or Sebt, the
number Seven, the Moon, the Cat, Jackal, Hyaena, Pig, Black
Snake, and other animals considered unclean by later traditions;
the Widdershins and Back-to-Back dance, the Anal Kiss, the number
Thirteen, the Witch mounted on the besom handle, the Bat, and
other forms of webbed or winged nocturnal creature; the Batrachia
generally, of which the Toad, Frog, or Hekt (32) was preeminent.
These and similar symbols originally typified the Draconian
Tradition which was degraded by the pseudo witch-cults during
centuries of Christian persecution. The Mysteries were profaned
and the sacred rites were condemned as anti-Christian. The Cult
thus became the repository of inverted and perverted religious
rites and symbols having no inner meaning; mere affirmations of
the witches' total commitment to anti-Christian doctrine whereas
-- originally -- they were living emblems, sentient symbols, of
anteChristian faith.
(30) They were carried over from the Draconian or Typhonian
Traditions of predynastic Egypt. See The Magical Revival,
Chapter 3.
(31) The Way of Resurgent Atavisms.
(32) Hecate, the witch or transformer from dark to light, as the
tadpole of the waters to the frog of dry land, as the dark and
baleful moon of witchcraft to the full bright orb of magical
radiance and enchantment exemplified for Spare by 'Witch'
Paterson who changed from the hag to the virgin before his eyes.
See Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare, 1975.
When the occult significance of primal symbols is fathomed at the
Draconian level, the system of sorcery which Spare evolved
through contact with 'Witch' Paterson becomes explicable, and all
magical circles, sorceries, and cults, are seen as manifestations
of the Shadow.
[end]
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