Tag Archives: alchemical

Green Mars

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, book 2 in the Mars Trilogy.

Kim Stanley Robinson Green Mars

In my reading of Red Mars, the first of Robinson’s Mars books, I detected an esoteric infrastructure for the saga of the First Hundred, cast according to the pattern of the gods of ancient Egypt and their legendary deeds. The esotericism of this sequel is alchemical, as openly signaled in the first of its ten parts, but carried through in more subtle details as well as the overarching structure. Ann Clayborne reflects at one point on the nomenclature of areography, which is remarkably alchemical when Robinson translates it into English, not that Ann notices:

“Only on Mars did they walk about in an horrendous mishmash of the dreams of the past, causing who knew what disastrous misapprehensions of the real terrain: the Lake of the Sun, the Plain of Gold, the Red Sea, Peacock Mountain, the Lake of the Phoenix, Cimmeria, Arcadia, the Gulf of Pearls, the Gordian Knot, Styx, Hades, Utopia….” (121)

As with the first book, the novella-length components alternately follow different principal characters, most of whom are still members of the original expedition, now well into their second (terrestrial) century of life. These characters accordingly are driven to reflect on memory, both in actuality and theory. The two new focal characters are Nirgal (a native Martian of first Hundred parentage) and Art Randolph, an new immigrant sent as a liaison to the Martian underground from one of Earth’s metanational corporations.

This middle book of the trilogy is a tale of transformation that describes the accomplishment of the Martian biosphere and political independence. As with the first, it is replete with political and scientific meditations, anchored in the travails of admirable but credibly fallible central characters. The lore of Big Man and the little red people of Mars (272-274) also acknowledges the vital presence of a fantasy dimension, that is nevertheless not deeply explored. The end of the book is clearly only the beginning of a story, although it does deliver some satisfaction in its own right. [via]

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Inner Order Teachings of the Golden Dawn

Inner Order Teachings of the Golden Dawn by Pat Zalewski, with an introduction by Nick Farrell, the 2006 softcover from Thoth Publications, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

Pat Zalewski Nick Farrell Inner Order Teachings of the Golden Dawn from Thoth Publications

“Hidden Teachings revealed!

For more than 100 years, secret magical manuscripts from the Order of the Golden Dawn’s inner order of adepts (the Ordo Rosae Rubae et Aurae Crucis) have been unseen by most students of the esoteric. This includes the Golden Dawn alchemical teachings, secret teachings of the Zelator Grade and the important Caduceus paper. These have either been gathering dust on some collector’s shelves, or have been worked by those who have continued the Order’s work. So secret were these documents, Israel Regardie was unaware of them and subsequently many of the modern orders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn who were dependent on his encyclopaedic text The Golden Dawn for their teachings have left out much of this work. However, the papers contained in this book provide the much needed keys to understand the Golden Dawn system in its entirety.

Just as the Golden Dawn was not simply dependent upon intellectual information gathered under one heading but also on oral instruction to make the system come alive, so this material came with extensive traditions that make it useful to the student.

For the first time, Golden Dawn authority Pat Zalewski, who was trained by the inner order adepts of the GOlden Dawn, reveals the key to this material.”

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Liber Nigri Solis

Liber Nigri Solis edited by Victor Voronov is available for pre-order from Theion Publishing in limited standard edition, although the deluxe “Auric” edition is already sold out.

Victor Voronov's Liber Nigri Solis from Theion Publishing

“Liber Nigri Solis, edited by Victor Voronov, elaborates the occult, magical and initiatory work of two esoteric orders. Presenting the aeonic history, mythic imagery, and arcane aesthetics of the Black Sun along with its alchemical and astrological aspects and significances, this opus includes a concise though multi-faceted esoteric system in theory and practice suitable for work with the Black Sun on microcosmic, mesocosmic, and macrocosmic levels. It will enable solitary practitioners and occult colleagues alike to cultivate the Gnosis of the Sol Niger through self-initiatory workings, rites, and operations of sinister alchemy.

The reader will be provided with eighteen keys which open the nine Infernal Gates and the nine Gates of Radiant Darkness, ultimately leading to the vision of the Black Sun, which radiates twelve Crooked Paths that cross the nine Thresholds. The text also expounds significant concepts such as the Fivefold Unmanifest or the Grand Chymical Conjunction of the arcane Black Suns that unveils the fiery gates of the Inverse Opus. Beyond researches concerning the sunspot cycle and cosmological considerations pertaining to Indo-Iranian mythology, substantial theoretical and operative material concerning plague-magic and epidemics has been included.

Liber Nigri Solis is a truly controversial grimoire and whether one agrees or not with all of its antinomian gnosis and sinister strategies, the uniqueness, sophistication and otherworldly power of its system is undeniable.

Lavishly illustrated with artwork commissioned especially for this book, Liber Nigri Solis also features a fascinating, elaborate introduction by Dr. Eva Kingsepp of Stockholm University.” [via]

(An Open Entrance To The Shut Palace Of) Wrong Numbers

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews (An Open Entrance To The Shut Palace Of) Wrong Numbers by Franklin Rosemont:

Franklin Rosemont's Wrong Numbers

 

Chicago surrealist Rosemont is not particularly coy about the fact that his book Wrong Numbers is an alchemical operation. The work transpires on several planes. On the most obvious, it is an effort to transform the base matter of accidental telephony into the gold of poetry. The book also contains a level of anecdotal autobiography comparable in some respects to Br. DuQuette’s My Life with the Spirits.

Yes, the book is actually about the “wrong numbers” of telephone misdialing. In addition to accounts of his personal experiences, the author sidles up to his topic from various angles: historical, cultural, psychological, and even magical. He champions the derided experience of the Wrong Number, not to rehabilitate it as an object, but rather to assail and transform the “miserablist” perspective of its detractors.

The text is complemented by a set of splendid drawings by Portuguese artist Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas, a surrealist comrade of Rosemont’s. The drawings too demonstrate an alchemical sensibility, in which beings and substances appear transformed, sublimated, and precipitated.

The heterogeneous details of the book, which manage to include multiple references to such disparate topics as Paschal Beverly Randolph, Bugs Bunny, and the IWW, should not obscure the fact that it does indeed express a single, magically puissant will to achieve “Freedom and the Marvelous, Now and Forever!”

Insightful, sincere, funny, and artful, this book would inherently resist being called “important,” yet it addresses the most fundamental dilemmas of our society. Read and enjoy. [via]

 

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.