Yeah, fair point. Though I myself am only talking from my personal experience, as....well the only person I've really heard much from about Nema outside of reading her works myself, is Grant (wow, that goes full-circleobnoxion wrote: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.
)obnoxion wrote: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..............Grant is not unlike Lovecraft in that everyone they mention tend to be swallowed up in their mythology.
Yep, there is a sublimity to the way Grant's style works.
Like in Grant's own "dictated" text Liber Okbish (there is S'lba too though), at first it seems that mentions of Cthulhu, The Book Of The Law (with various quotes included too!), Ma'at, S'lba (again) and so on, all seem shoehorned in....but then when you spend more time with the larger work it's contained in (The Ninth Arch), you kind of realize that it is more allegorical and representative of certain ideas then to be taken as literal/mystical (like Liber Legis for example).
A broader context with Kenneth Grant helps, as I have learned. The Mauve Zone itself is a key I think, as much is his work manifests in the idea of dreams (where your Lynch comparison feels apt).
Even though that he can seem like a raving lunatic with his inclusion of Lovecraft (initially from the weird coincidences/synchronicity, like Tutulu
), it kind of fits Grants own narrative message very well. It relates back to Austin Spares own message about how "art is one of the most powerful forms of magick" aka, literature too connects with that part of the subconscious. In some senses it could seem like Grant saw some connections and decided to run with it (and maybe that's what he did?) but reading his books tends to be an overwhelming and mind-blowing experience, regardless of how little it really actually factors into my own believes and practices as a Thelemite (and agnostic skeptic mystic
)