Thelema

[obnoxion]

I agree but I am also unsurprised, seeing how strange some of the people themselves tended to be.

This is a very good point! And we might add that there were also students who prospered, Israel Regardia being perhaps particularily sane example.

Some things in Grants writings keeps a distance between me and him but I find his work entirely fascinating and a pleasure to read.

Same for me. Grant goes very deep, and his exegesis were for me the most convincing arguments for the Liber AL being a genuine holy book. But Grant cuts too many corners in his intepretations. He is, I think, ultimately a poet. And he seems to need a lot of licence...

I also think that his followers tend to lack the real depth of Grant's thought. Judging by his work, I actually consider David Lynch to be a most genuinely Grantian artist I know. The depth of originality needs to be abyssic.

[RPSTOVAL]

This is a very good point! And we might add that there were also students who prospered, Israel Regardia being perhaps particularily sane example.

Yep, Regardie seems to have always been a very level-headed, critical thinker (like Crowley himself, who was very skeptical about everything before he committed to things).

How I mentioned Achad (Jones) and Parsons; I think they started off on a very positive note but after a point, their egos or ulterior motives got to them. Parsons getting swept up by Hubbard's scams didn't help his situation either. I think if Parsons had met Crowley earlier, he would have produced more within the OTO. Liber 49 (Babylon) is interesting as it is, but I'm so on the fence about it.

The Babylon working, is still perhaps one of the most intriguing events in Occult history for me, in so many ways.
Sadly Parsons death also caused Cameron to loose her mind to an extent, which is sad but I also have a bit of an infatuation with her and her art too. Though she still produced great art throughout all her life

Same for me. Grant goes very deep, and his exegesis were for me the most convincing arguments for the Liber AL being a genuine holy book. But Grant cuts too many corners in his intepretations. He is, I think, ultimately a poet. And he seems to need a lot of licence...

I also think that his followers tend to lack the real depth of Grant's thought. Judging by his work, I actually consider David Lynch to be a most genuinely Grantian artist I know. The depth of originality needs to be abyssic.

Yep, I just lap up Grants comments on Liber Legis. While I don't always agree about many of his conclusions, he says things that are very much outside of my own perception of Thelema, that I can't help but enjoy it. In other words it challenges and intrigues me but also forces me to suspend my judgement because of how much it intrigues me.

I've been reading Liber Okbish a lot recently and the Mauve Zone is an important idea. Dreams, the subconscious and new images attributed to already established symbols are probably the best lenses (for me) to interpret his writings. Otherwise, his writings can come off a bit...conspiratorial or just crazy...
He definitely explored the subconscious more in-depth than Crowley ever did, maybe even Jung too?


On a related note (with Liber Okbish), the spider imagery has been turning up a lot in my dreams coincidentally recently

[obnoxion]

The last book from the Trilogies that I read was The Outer Gateways. If I remember correctly, it was here that Grant took a strong stance against rock music and using swear words... Anyway, I remember thinking how much I was surprised by the profane language used by Fred Fowler in Linda Falorio's "The Shadow Tarot", and how much of Kenneth Grant's ideas have inspired rock musicians to make more rock music. So I thought that Grant's legacy have in many cases become a peculiar variety of Gothic New Age. I mean, Grant seemed to lead a very conervative and monogamous life. He was very much unlike Crowley. And this extremely sober example is often forgot, when Grant's extravagance is stressed. And on the other hand, it is funny how Crowley is often considered the more sober example for Thelemites, when his life was anything but.

If the most prominent examples of Grant were accomplished artist like H.P. Lovecraft and A.O. Spare, I think that from such company we should search for mauve manifestations. It was exciting to see the beginning of the new Twin Peaks, which begun with a scene, which, when connected to the simultanous event of Cooper in the "Mauve Zone", is as if lifted straight out of Hekate's Fountain.

Grant had a lot of sympathy for the "heretical Thelemites".
For me, however, the most important thing was the introduction of the Left Hand Path as the practice centering around the female. This lead me to authentic Tantric teachings of the East. And after these, much of Western stuff started to feel a bit shallow and irrelevant.

[Vanadís]

It seems Twin Peaks is quite Thelemic, because I see the new season through the glasses of Jack Parsons & Hubbard's Workings in the Agape Lodge in Pasadena, what finally lead to Babalon Working, which had many results and manifestations, but one was the answer "2017 is the year one for Babalon" - the same year than TP 3rd season came out.

Ps. Check also Spiritus Mortis: The Year is One -album with song Babalon Working <3

Pps. Check also The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost for some links between ufo's, subterranean hells, Jack Parsons and Babalon. But the book contains also "false" facts because Mojave desert is close to Pasadena but hundreds of miles from Roswell etc.

[RPSTOVAL]

If the most prominent examples of Grant were accomplished artist like H.P. Lovecraft and A.O. Spare, I think that from such company we should search for mauve manifestations. It was exciting to see the beginning of the new Twin Peaks, which begun with a scene, which, when connected to the simultanous event of Cooper in the "Mauve Zone", is as if lifted straight out of Hekate's Fountain.

While I have learned to be less adverse towards Grant's use of Lovecraft in his writings, it does irk me a lot. Still, it's weirdly made me fascinated in Lovecraft a little

His stories and mythos don't attract me but the many weird coincidences Grant found in Lovecraft's stories is a wonderful piece of synchronicity!


Yeah, the Mauve Zone segment of episode 3/8 is cool (though like most occult references in Twin Peaks, it's only a passing nod rather than anything else)

[RPSTOVAL]

It seems Twin Peaks is quite Thelemic, because I see the new season through the glasses of Jack Parsons & Hubbard's Workings in the Agape Lodge in Pasadena, what finally lead to Babalon Working, which had many results and manifestations, but one was the answer "2017 is the year one for Babalon" - the same year than TP 3rd season came out.

As I've said previously, it's one of the events in occult history that really intrigues me. But it does make me curious why all of a sudden it is being included in particular media (Ridley Scott has apparently got a bio-period piece coming out soon about it to.....)

[RPSTOVAL]

Anyone read any of Nema's books?

Maybe I just have more conservative leanings when it comes to Thelema but I have a few hangups about Ma'at

And yet, from reading Kenneth Grant's writings on Ma'at (and liber pennae praenumbra namely), I am left with a bit of a imaginative lure, despite my issues with it

[obnoxion]

I've read "Maat Magick" by Nema, but that was so long ago I really don't remember that much of it, except that it was strucured around The Tree of Life and that there were some teaching about bees and the group mind. Back then I thought it was decent, but it was one of the last books on Thelema or modern Hermetic QBL I bought, so I think I was already a bit over it by then.

I've only left a couple of QBL books on my shelf. I got Dion Fortunes MQ and David Rankine's Climbing the Tree of Life, and they got me pretty much covered when it comes to Hermetic QBL. And then I got Paul Foster Case's "The True and Invisible...". That was the one that I was most impressed about. But that got me into Jewish Kabbalah, and when the secret texts of Fosters GD were published, I just wasn't impressed by them at all. Cordovero, Gigatilla and the Zohar were so much better. But I got startet with by translating and interpreting the Hebrew text of the "32 Paths of Wisdom", and it was PFC that got me heavily into Hebrew language and Jewish texts in the first place.

[RPSTOVAL]

There seems to be something shady about Nema but I'm not quite sure. In her interview with Thelema Coast To Coast, she both sounded very uncertain about what she was saying, and her description of her dictation of liber pennae praenumbra felt disingenuous.

With Kenneth Grant, I can lift my suspension of disbelief to get into the essentials but I can't/haven't developed a way of interpretation at this stage with Nema/Ma'at Magick.

Her account of the dictation seemed to be (not in verbatim); "I kind of wanted to do this with Thelema because, eh. I kinda got bored with Crowley, so I started thinking....then I got a telephone from this angel"

If I have to make a comparison with Crowley, well for at least 6 years (after his own dictation), he was very personally conflicted by Liber Legis and he rejected it at first. Still regardless of if it's of supernatural or of psychological phenomenon, it's a profound masterpiece that speaks volumes regardless. Not to get at that though...

It appears from my perspective to be an attempt for Nema to get a but of a reputation in the Thelemic off-shoots, but in contradiction, she isn't really infamous or even prolific.





Yes, the Kabbalah/Quabalah and the tree of life is a big and important system for so many of us from so many spiritual/religious and philosophical areas (whether through Judaism or Hermeticism like me etc). The Zohar (or what I've read of it) is quite an intensive study, with a lot to be gained from it. I'm not Jewish however, so my relation to it and Judaism itself is more pragmatic/comparative in nature than personal. I've still had some interesting moments with it (the Jewish Quabalah that is).

[obnoxion]

There seems to be something shady about Nema...

With Kenneth Grant, I can lift my suspension of disbelief to get into the essentials.

Shady is a word that tends to come up often when Nema is mentioned, but one tends to disregard much of it, considering how much gossip and quarrel there seems to be going around the public figures of modern occult.

Kenneth Grant's shadiness is such a sublime affair that it is easier to look past it, especially as it seems that he led a quiet life. Perhaps some of Grant's magic rubbed off on Nemas work, and made it out to be a bit bigger deal than it otherwise would have been. Grant is not unlike Lovecraft in that everyone they mention tend to be swallowed up in their mythology.