Run Viral

There will come a time in the future where the release of the Testament of Cyprian the Mage will be seen as a seminal point for western occult philosophy.  The final installment in Jake Stratton-Kent’s Encyclopedia Goetica, wherein a meaningful alternative to the masonic crosses the current rash of western occultists have crucified themselves on is revealed.  I say, ‘in the future’ because masonic initiation is as addictive as heroine and I say, ‘rash’ because it suggests a bunch of similarly aligned or focused practitioners as well as a distracting and ugly eruption upon the flesh of a thing.

With the Testament as his cypher Jake delves as far as our contemporary grasp of far history will allow, to trace the roots of the grimoire tradition, a tradition which is slowly taking a position of primacy in western occulture.  With Cyprian as his tour guide Jake visits each of the great centers of knowledge in the ancient world and like his guide discovers facets of the Arte which have been mastered there.  It is a powerful and thought-provoking journey which comes to highlight stellar lore and ancient healing paradigms as the root of what is now known as goetic magic.

It persuasively sheds the contemporary dualism's of grimoire work (good/bad, holy/evil) in favor of an ambiguous eschatology rooted in ancient correspondences between our planet and the life it sustains and the greater universe.  No small feat and one which calls into question a great deal of our current methodology and mythology regarding the daemon of the grimoires.

Though it is the conclusion of the Goetica series, it is more properly a point of departure.  It is the moment where your hand is let go.  Every historical revelation raises a myriad questions best negotiated by the individuals sympathy to the work.  I think that most veteran practitioners with a grounding in Goetia, Hellenistic Greek thought or plant-lore will have at least one ah ha moment and that those newer to the exploration have a profound leaping off point.  It will certainly have me returning to some of my earlier explorations with the daemon of the old books, in particular the old Goddess figures which didn’t fare so well in their Pauline interpretations.  So much good stuff. 

In a way that seems strangely fitting, this is my first purchase of a digital copy from the Scarlets. Though I intend to add a physical copy of the book to my collection I have been in a state of perpetual transit since last winter and it simply doesn't seem as though that is going to change in the near future.  So many strange syncronicities had arose that finally I simply broke down and got the ePub version.  Somehow even that liminal state of transit-induced limbo was fitting to the work.  It is a book whose value is found in between things, between nations, between the lines, between religious certainties, an exaltation of the liminal state.  I cannot simply consecrate it as a book in my usual manner because it is not a book in both the literal, physical sense as well as the more esoteric, it is a mythic cypher.

Fittingly, though I shall read and reread it, I shall never dirty it's pages.  Though I will carry it with me in all my travels, I shall never mar its cover.  It feels correct to me, untethered from the physical privilege of hard copy Cyprian is free to run viral through all my triumphs and evil deeds.

Spring Devils and the Giving Hands

At roughly a third of the way through the text, on a Saturday the compulsion to honor the spirits of the book overtakes me.  I use cascarilla to lay out the veve’s of Danto and Mal.  I light three tall votives and a gold pillar; fire the charcoal in the brass vessel.  I crush up the resin of Dragonsblood and scatter it over the charcoal.  I open invisible doors and pour good whiskey over the smoking resin, already the heat is there.  I take a long pull on the whiskey and spray the candles, tongue against teeth, they laugh and sputter.  I take another long pull and swallow, that heat is everywhere now radiating out and up from my belly.  I start with Cobayende, the lyrical passage from the book, then the honored dead that haunt the author’s bones.  I close the Garden of Blood and Bones by Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold, and place it on the smoking veve’s.

I crush more resin and scatter it over the coals, I take the Giving Hands that hold the solid gold seal of Baal and the polished copper of Gamori and put in my lap.  I uncork sandalwood oil and begin to mark the pages of Jake Stratton-Kent’s Rouge titles, I start with the Verum.  The book thoroughly perfumed I pass it through the incense smoke, let the heat rising out of the brass dry the oil and then place it on the veve’s.  More whiskey, this time I mist the coals and honor the Grand Duchies and Satanachia as is my custom when working with this text.  Continuing, I perfume both volumes of the Geosophia in the same manner, put them with the Verum and place the Giving Hands that cradle my devils upon them.  More whiskey, a long pull that makes me shiver, then the author’s honored dead are saluted and more whiskey poured out over the coals.  

If this seems like a lot of work to go to for a book, keep in mind that I only do this when I know that I am going to use it.  Stratton-Kent’s Verum is actually the third Verum that I have consecrated in the above fashion.  Love that book, hands down my favorite of the grimoires.  Stratton-Kent though is the man, he places his Verum firmly within the greater historical perspective of the grimoire tradition (something that few authors have attempted to do in their work on other texts of this era and tradition), and streamlines the practical ritual aspect with the organic practices developed among the Palo who have worked with this and related texts for hundreds of years including the names and ponto riscado of the corresponding Exu.  Simply spectacular. 

I don’t want to comment over much just yet on the Geosophia but the two portions I happened to turn randomly to dealt with the significance of the big dog to the infernal Hermes and Hecate (and its subsequent adoption by the karcists of the grimoire tradition) and the extreme efficacy of the Lots of Hellenistic astrology in elective sorcery and determining daemonic sympathies respectively.  So many curious synchronicities, for the last year I have used the Hellenistic Lots and their placements within the astrological decanates for just this purpose.  Austin Coppock and I nicknamed it the shadow clock, now the secret’s out of the bag.  Thanks Jake!  Needless to say, since Mr. Stratton-Kent knows the best astro-juju I have in my bag of tricks I am very much looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

At a third of the way through the Garden, with a few digressions into the Fundamento I just can’t speak highly enough of this book.  I already know what a ‘ndoki nganga’ is for instance, for those of you who have been following my recent blog round with Jack Faust.  It really isn’t the particulars though that makes me love it (though it is a veritable trove of information) but rather Frisvold’s unique ability to entrench the reader in the ambivalent worldview of the Palo, that swimming inter-mingling of the visible and the invisible, of the living and the not-living. 

Later, after I left the books smoking sweet and pungent I lay down on the couch and smoked a joint and watched Vanessa move through her yoga asanas.  A great swell of tension began in my solar plexus and continued to build into a rolling anxiety.  I laughed out loud for no reason, saluted Cobayende, put out my joint and crawled off the couch onto Vanessa and stripped her naked.  Lean death always leaves me hungry.  Needless to say, this is obviously not a book review.  I do not intend to review these books; I intend to use them, to submit to them, to learn from them. 

I apologize to the Scarlets in advance because your beautiful books will be smudged, perfumed, thumbed and anointed, they will lay upon the grass of old woods and upon the dark earth of old graveyards, I will crane red-eyed and stoned over my favorite passages marking them with sweat, the ashes of my joints and the perspiring bottles of hard liquors.  Dog-eared and sweet-smelling they will rarely find themselves in the relative safety of bookshelves and closed cupboards; one does not come to the house of the Valentines’ for relative safety.  Even now Vanessa Valentine, fresh from the shower, naked and reclining comfortably on the bed is leafing through pages of the Verum, near her feet volume two of the Geosophia is partially hidden under a pair of lacy underwear.

Everything is just as it should be.


Tweet