Tag Archives: necronomicon

Epoch

Epoch. The Esotericon & Portals of Chaos by Peter J Carroll and Matt Kaybryn, a new hardcover book and 55-card deck, published by Arcanorium College for Spring Equinox 2014, is available now, signed by author and illustrator, from Weiser Antiquarian.

Peter J Carroll Matt Kaybryn Epoch book from Arcanorium College

Peter J Carroll Matt Kaybryn Epoch deck from Arcanorium College

This illustrated and “illuminated” hardback opens with a detailed historical resume of magical and esoteric thought before presenting the reader with three complete grimoires. From the publisher: “this superbly produced book contains extensive text by Peter J Carroll and over 50 large full colour illustrations from Matt Kaybryn, which are represented in the accompanying deck. Carroll’s text begins with a historical resumé of magical and esoteric thought before moving on to present the reader with three complete grimoires. The first grimoire of Elemental magic deals with modern practical magical techniques and the classical and modern interpretations of the traditional elemental symbolism. The second grimoire of Planetary magic deals with the Pagan and Neo-Pagan-magical archetypes or ‘god-forms’, their contemporary roles in the human condition, and how the magician can access them for their inspiration and to borrow their abilities. The third grimoire of Stellar magic deals with the ‘Elder Gods’, those foci of awesome and dangerous extraterrestrial knowledge and power that await us in the vast deep reaches of the cosmos. This grimoire constitutes the latest upgrade to the ever evolving Necronomicon. Complementing and supporting the grimoires, further chapters deal with the history of symbolism, the creation and/ or the evolution of gods and goddesses, and the physics of parapsychology and extraterrestrial communication. All in all this book contains enough to keep any wizard, magician, esotericist or natural philosopher entranced and busy for quite quite some time to come.” Accompanied by oversized deck of 55 cards, called a “Cartomagical tool for the 21st century, the Deck presents 54 Altar Icons spanning the three Spheres of Elements, Bi-Planets and Stellar god-forms.” [via]

Verve post about Simon’s Necronomicon mentions Aleister Crowley and more

Recent The Verge post by Joseph L Flatley about Simon’s The Necronomicon (which I tend to call The Simonomicon) at The cult of Cthulhu: real prayer for a fake tentacle mentions Aleister Crowley. There’s also mentions of The Magickal Childe bookshop, Kenneth Grant, Austin Osman Spare and more.

“In 1945, a 20 year old Kenneth Grant spent several months working as the secretary for Aleister Crowley, a ceremonial magician, author, mountain climber, and possibly even spy for British intelligence during World War I. Crowley’s books are key texts of modern occultism, and his reputation as “The Wickedest Man In The World” or simply ‘The Beast’ has given him pride of place in any number of heavy metal songs — not to mention a choice spot on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album (the top left, chilling with Mae West and Lenny Bruce). At the end of his life, Crowley was unable to afford a secretary, so he let Grant fill that role in exchange for magical instruction. For a short while at least, Grant was The Intern of The Beast. By the time he passed away in 2011 at the age of 86, Grant had produced nine volumes that constitute what he called ‘The Typhonian Trilogies,’ which explored the connections between all manner of occult systems — incorporating voodoo and tantra and elements from the work of 20th century magician and the artist Austin Osman Spare.”

The Dark Lord

The Dark Lord: H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic by Peter Levenda, from Ibis Press, may be of interest.

Peter Levenda The Dark Lord from Ibis Press

“One of the most famous — yet least understood — manifestations of Thelemic thought has been the works of Kenneth Grant, the British occultist and one-time intimate of Aleister Crowley, who discovered a hidden world within the primary source materials of Crowley’s Aeon of Horus. Using complementary texts from such disparate authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Jack Parsons, Austin Osman Spare, and Charles Stansfeld Jones (‘Frater Achad’), Grant formulated a system of magic that expanded upon that delineated in the rituals of the OTO: a system that included elements of Tantra, of Voudon, and in particular that of the Schlangekraft recension of the Necronomicon, all woven together in a dark tapestry of power and illumination.

The Dark Lord follows the themes in the writings of Kenneth Grant, H.P. Lovecraft, and the Necronomicon, uncovering further meanings of the concepts of the famous writers of the Left Hand Path. It is for Thelemites, as well as lovers of the Lovecraft Mythos in all its forms, and for those who find the rituals of classical ceremonial magic inadequate for the New Aeon.

Traveling through the worlds of religion, literature, and the occult, Peter Levenda takes his readers on a deeply fascinating exploration on magic, evil, and The Dark Lord as he investigates of one of the most neglected theses in the history of modern occultism: the nature of the Typhonian Current and its relationship to Aleister Crowley’s Thelema and H.P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon.” [via]

 

The King in Yellow

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews The King in Yellow by Thom Ryng:

Thom Ryng's The King in Yellow

This stage play text was written to fulfill a literary hoax, one that in fact helped to inspire the notorious Necronomicon of Lovecraft. In the weird fiction of Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow was a play with a degenerative effect on the morals and sanity of its readers. Thom Ryng is not the first to flesh out the text of the play; in his introduction he suggests that he is perhaps the eighth, and he refers specifically to two earlier attempts: one by Lin Carter and one by James Blish. (I’ve read both.) In the first edition of the Ryng text, the conceit was that the text had been recovered from a 19th-century French edition. In this softbound reprint, editorial and authorial matter confesses its actual late-20th-century composition in the distant wake of Chambers’ fiction. It has been produced on stage at least once, if we are to believe the current edition.

Materially, the book is a sturdy softcover volume with a generous font size. I was a little disappointed that the cover had the false Yellow Sign originally designed by artist Kevin Ross and corrupted in the editorial process for the Chaosium role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. (Chambers’ original Yellow Sign was probably the “inverted torch” insignia that appeared on the binding of early editions of Chambers’ story collection The King in Yellow.)

There is a vein of socio-political commentary that is disturbingly prescient (the author implies that it could have been causative), considering that the book was written in the 1990s. Readers are also furnished with a Hasturian incantation to achieve magical invisibility.

When I read this book, the experience was attended with appropriate inter-textual synchronicities. The Oedipus eyes of Thales echoed my recent philosophical reading in Nietzsche criticism (to wit, The Shortest Shadow and Foucault’s Lectures on the Will to Know). Also relating to that reading, but opening onto a perpetual return to a secret place, is the play’s portrayal of Truth as a phantom who is martyred.

Overall, I was suitably impressed, instructed, and infected by Ryng’s deposition from the ether of this dread volume. [via]

 

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