qabalah | Scriptus Recensera

November 16, 2024 by ScriptusScribe

Supernal Serpent: Mysteries of Leviathan in Judaism and Christianity – Andrei A. Orlov

Categories: mesopotamian, qabalah, typhonian, Tags: Oxford University Press,

In the previously-reviewed Demons of Change, Andrei A. Orlov devoted one of his chapters to the idea that the sash worn by the Hebrew High Priest symbolised Leviathan, participating in a sub-microcosmic representation of the cosmos that also mirrored the microcosmic design of the temple at Jerusalem. That relatively slight chapter touched on the cosmological and eschatological qualities of the primordial serpent, but here, in Supernal Serpent, Leviathan receives the full-length hardback treatment with an extensive study that includes both Judaism and Christianity. As is Orlov’s wont, though, the lens for this endeavour is provided by the Slavonic recension of The Apocalypse of Abraham, a pseudepigraphon, written sometime in the first or second century CE that acts as a frequent touchstone for him. It is genuinely remarkable how much material Orlov has managed to generate using The Apocalypse of Abraham as his source, with the aforementioned Demons of Change drawing strongly from it in its consideration of demonic and angel antagonism, while two earlier, but as yet unreviewed, titles, Dark Mirrors and Divine Scapegoats, both drew on the pseudepigraphon for their assessment of Satanael. This approach is particularly evident in how although the apocalypses’ references to Leviathan are so slight, something that could have been missed in passing, Orlov is able to use these cosmological gems as a gateway into far wider explorations.

Orlov divides this supernal serpent into just five parts, the first of these chapters opening with a discussion of Leviathan’s theophany, using as its thematic seed a scene in the Apocalypse of Abraham in which the patriarch experiences a cosmogonic vision. Gazing downwards, Abraham sees the earth and the underworld below him, seemingly created as a mirror of heaven, with Leviathan identified as a foundation upon which this world lies: “Leviathan and his domain, and his lair, and his dens, and the world which lies upon him, and his motions and the destruction of the world because of him.” Orlov seeks confirmation of this distinctive imagery in the biblical book of Job, addressing not, for now, the idea of Leviathan as a cosmological force but rather as a divine one, a mirror of God with whom he seems to share theophanic characteristics. In Job and in later mystical Jewish and accounts rabbinic speculation, Leviathan appears not simply as a monstrous creature but a numinous one, a being of aureate light and luminescence, breathing fire and exhaling smoke (attributes associated with gods throughout the Levant).

The cosmic centrality afforded Leviathan in the Apocalypse of Abraham provides the basis for the second chapter’s discussion on his role as the Axis Mundi. Despite the brevity of references to this function in the apocalypse, this is one of the longer chapters as Orlov is able to find similar axial concepts in a range of literatures, including direct biblical accounts, Enochic material, Islamic tradition, Rabbinic speculation, and later Jewish mysticism, including the Zohar. Some directly relate to Leviathan, whilst others reference similar antediluvian figures, such as Behemoth, the Watchers (who in the Book of the Watchers are punished by becoming pillars of cosmic stability), and Satan (who in the Slavonic apocryphal text About All Creation, is tied to a cosmological pillar made of adamantine). Orlov expands this theme into a broader consideration of Leviathan’s cosmological and topographical role, documenting the multitude of textual examples in which this is discussed, including, albeit briefly, instances in which the tellurian waterways associated with the dragon are envisioned as avenues for the transmission of energies from the Sitra Achra.

In chapter three, Orlov turns to a different section of the Apocalypse of Abraham to consider the relationship between Leviathan and Yahoel, an angelic protagonist who defines his raison d’être as being to “rule over the Leviathans, since the attack and the threat of every reptile are subjugated to me.” Before getting directly to Yahoel, Orlov uses this quote to reiterate the idea of multiple Leviathans, or instances in which Leviathan is twinned with some other creature such as Behemoth; some in contrasting gender designations as apocalyptic-incepting mates, but others not. As a theme that was touched on earlier in the general discussion of Leviathan’s theophany, this can feel, depending on degrees of severity, either slightly familiar or very repetitive, especially as many of the previous sources are requoted again in their entirety. Orlov compares Yahoel’s function in opposing Leviathan to similar antagonistic pairings in West Asian mythology (Marduk and Tiamat, Baal and Yamm), before drawing comparisons with his angelic brethren Raphael and Gabriel. The final and most complete comparison is with God himself, as Yahoel’s victorious function mirrors that found in the words of the Psalmist, where Yahweh is depicted complete in his victory over Leviathan or its analogues such as Rahab. This is made all the more striking by Yahoel appearing to effectively be a hypostasis of Yahweh, identifying themselves explicitly as “a power in the midst of the Ineffable who put together his names in me;” something which can be seen in the name’s combination of two theophoric elements, yah- and –el.

For his fourth chapter, Leviathan and the Temple, Orlov returns to the theme briefly touched upon in his book Demons of Change: the symbolism of the macrocosmic Leviathan hidden in the architecture and costumes of the microcosmic sacerdotal. As one can imagine, this consideration is pretty light on explicit corroborative examples, so instead, this chapter spends the bulk of its time returning to ideas of Leviathan’s cosmological function, as well as broader ideas of temple symbolism as emblematic of an intersection betwixt the macrocosmic and the microcosmic, such as the veil that protects the Holy of Holies, or the Foundation Stone upon which the temple was built. Leviathan plays a role here in some interpretations of the Foundation Stone, but can also be found in instances in which the primordial waters and their encompassing of the world are represented in sacramental architecture, such as the outer courtyard of the cosmological temple.

Orlov concludes with his fifth chapter, titled somewhat enigmatically, but intriguingly, Leviathan and the Mysteries of Evil, which shows how Leviathan was not simply a figure of monstrosity and antagonism but a source of knowledge. For darker-inclined occultists, this makes for interesting reading, with Orlov providing a whole raft of examples in which interactions with Leviathan are effectively attempts at acquiring knowledge from the Sitra Achra, often through an abyssal or chthonic descent. As a theophanic figure who mirrors the divine in power and incomprehensible glory, Leviathan acts as an encapsulation of numinous mysteries, be it as a eschatological sacrament (whose flesh is eaten by the righteous in the end times), or as an embodiment of the cosmos, the knowledge of which gives insight into the mysteries of creation. Events such as Jonah’s experience in the belly of the whale, the lifting up of the Nehushtan serpent of bronze by Moses in the Book of Numbers, the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan, and Abraham’s subterranean descent in his eponymous apocalypse, as well as many others, each acts as a piece of this puzzle, one which, when viewed in concert, makes for a convincing case. Most striking is the suggestion that the extensive description of Leviathan’s characteristics and dimension given in the book of Job provided an inversion of Shi’ur Qomah inspired mysticism (in which the measurement of God’s divine body act as a source of meditation), allowing one to use the great dragon in a similar fashion.

This is a book with much to recommend it, especially in its treatment of Leviathan as a source of wisdom. Orlov effortlessly navigates his source texts, always finding prior speculative or textual confirmation for each interpretation. Supernal Serpent runs to 347 pages and is hardbound with a beautiful dustjacket designed by James R. Perales that incorporates a detail of St. Michael from Jan van Eyck’s Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych. The stock is a beautiful, slightly cream and pleasant to the touch, with text effortlessly but practically formatted in comfortably leading and tracking for ease of reading.

Published by Oxford University Press

October 11, 2023 by ScriptusScribe

Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy – Marla Segol

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Categories: qabalah, Tags: Penn State University Press

With its provocative title, Kabbalah and Sex Magic makes for an intriguing entry in Penn State University Press’ Magic in History series. Marla Segol shows how the cosmology that underpins much of Kabbalah is inherently sexual and corporeal, being based on the interaction between human and divine bodies. Drawing on a diverse wealth of texts spanning the fifth to the twelfth centuries from Byzantium, Persia, Iberia, and southern France, she argues that in its fully developed medieval form, Kabbalah represented a ritualised mythos of divine creation through sexual reproduction. In Jewish mysticism, to study through reading was an intimate and embodied undertaking, with the act of seeing being perceived as a form of touching in which sexuality was the paradigmatic form of interembodiment.

Segol is the Director of Undergraduate Studies at Buffalo University and an Associate Professor in its Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, with a particular interest in sexuality and the body in Jewish mysticism and contemporary New Age religion. This is very much evident in the chapter divisions employed here, and in Segol’s other published work; as parts of this book have been previously published, most notably her 2012 Word and Image in Medieval Kabbalah: the Texts, Commentaries and Diagrams of the Sefer Yetsirah.

Despite what the title might suggest, Segol’s focus is limited to only certain areas of Kabbalah and is by no means comprehensive. Indeed, it is worth reiterating that many of the texts here can be classified as proto-Kabbalistic, predating the modern emergence of Kabbalah in the twelfth century; fulfilling the promise of the subtitle that describes this as a mythical-ritual genealogy. As a result, her discussion of Kabbalah’s foundational text, the thirteenth century Zohar, is somewhat cursory, as is any consideration of the Lurianic Kabbalah of the sixteenth century. Although both of these fare better than the Kabbalistic interpretations of the Frankist, Sabbatean and Hasidic movements, which are not mentioned at all.

In her first chapter, Segol focuses on the oldest text considered here, Shi’ur Qomah (‘The Measure of the Body’), a midrash which dates from between the fifth and seventh century CE and which combines a visionary experience with an exegesis on the Song of Songs (5:11-16). Segol describes it as “the most important Jewish esoteric text for the study of divine embodiment and thus for the study of kabbalistic sex magic today,” and indeed, much of what she considers later in this title has a grounding here. It is a remarkable work in which the angel Metatron reveals to the tanna Rabbi Ishmael a vision of the cosmic body of God, intimately naming and measuring each divine body part and describing the Hebrew letters that are inscribed on them. Segol shows how the text’s midrashic intersection with the Song of Songs highlights the fundamentally erotic nature of this visionary encounter; somewhat justifying Maimonides’ belief that it was a work so heretical that it warranted burning. Segol argues that this text and its encounter with an inscribed and bejewelled divine corporeality serves a theurgic function via the conventions of amulets and magic seals, protecting and transforming the operator, and imagining the relationship as an aestheticized and sexualized one.

Although she doesn’t give a textual analysis of the entire Shi’ur Qomah (and by the end of chapter resorts to mere summaries of some of its sections, sans any direct quotes), Segol does a thorough job showing the eroticism inherent in the text. Although, it must be said that, given the veiled, circumspect and ambiguous quality of the language used in this midrash, it can sometimes feel as if almost anything is ripe for a sexual interpretation, one quite a odds with conventional ideas about Judaism and Christianity. This use of erotic metaphor can lead to some bizarre imagery, like divine testicles filled with wax and fire.

In the following chapter, Segol builds upon the themes found within Shi’ur Qomah by considering two thematically and functionally diverse texts, both of which date from around the same period: the medical handbook Sefer Refuot and the cosmological and mathematical Sefer Yetzirah. The Sefer Refuot is once again concerned with corporeality, adopting a microcosmic model to imagine the human body as a mirror of the divine body, allowing the former to harness the power of the later in order to heal. The Sefer Yetzirah, meanwhile, gives an account of creation in which both the microcosm and the macrocosm are products of the mystic combination of 32 characters, including the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the Ten Numbers, meaning the Sefirot. The language of the Sefer Yetzirah genders and sexualizes these components, with the sefirot being gendered as either male or female, depending on the verse, and the primary Hebrew letters being celebrated as “mothers, from which all else is born.”

In her third chapter, Segol continues her focus on the concept of the microcosm and shows how it was developed in the tenth and eleventh century through three texts that adapted what had been established by scripture, Shi’ur Qomah, the Sefer Refuot and the Sefer Yetzirah. One of these works, Shabbetai Donnolo’s Sefer Hakhmoni (Book of Wisdom), comes from the tenth century, while Gabirol’s Tikun Midot HaNefesh (Improvement of the Moral Qualities) and Bahya ibn Paquda’s Torat Chovot HaLevavot (Duties of the Heart) are from the eleventh. As with some of the other previously considered texts, these works combine Judaic metaphysics with concepts from Greek myth and cosmology, providing a method for practitioners to emulate God and access divine power, thereby impacting the cosmos itself.

Segol devotes her final section of textual analysis to the Sefer HaBahir, a composite work dating variously from the tenth and twelfth centuries; although apocryphally credited to the first century rabbinic sage Nehunya ben HaKanah. The Sefer HaBahir contains several literary layers, denoting different authors and periods of composition. This is a style that is emblematic of a work that defies the kind of order that scholars inevitably seek to impose on it, often by ignoring the “instability of its imagery, nonbinary genderings” and its “good-natured confounding of cognitive categories,” as Segol wonderfully terms them.

In her concluding chapter, Segol moves through the medieval period and into the modern, comparing the precedents she has covered with what contemporary practitioners are doing. However, from the offset, this is a strained comparison, as medieval kabbalists share little with modern wellness and New Age self-help gurus who are covered here. Space is given to the so-called America’s Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, to Kelle Sparta (a “spiritual coach and transformational shaman” who calls herself The Spirit Doctor™), and to self-described “international love and intimacy expert” Robyn Vogel. Most egregious of all is the inclusion of the Kabbalah Centre and its former co-director, Yehuda Berg, who was removed from the position for sexual assault. In a quote referenced here, Berg claims to regard selfish sexuality as the original sin which caused a separation between the human and the divine, but his actions stand in stark contrast to such lofty and disingenuous White-Knighting.

Another matter of distinction between such modern practitioners and their predecessors, and one which Segol could have interrogated further, is that there is a distinct queerness in the eroticism of the source texts, one that destabilises heteronormativity and its attendant hierarchies, embracing, instead, an atmosphere of divine gender fluidity. In contrast, Berg and his modern ilk conceive of sex within a deeply conventional and frankly boring framework, one that is dull in both its heteronormativity and its adherence to the binary, and whose bland inevitable fruits can be seen harvested in the criminal charges against Berg. In a similar manner, Rabbi Boteach centres the male experience (with the female as mere sexual muse), while Vogel expresses an enervative and reactionary trad-wife gender essentialism that seems indicative of the inherently conservative spine that underlies so much of the entrepreneurial wellness movement. Rather than focus on the likes of Berg and Vogel, it would perhaps have been considerably more interesting to consider the inheritance of the Shi’ur Qomah in earlier Frankist and Sabbatean thought, given the core notion in those movements that intercourse in the human realm could stimulate intercourse in the cosmic realm. Further, the antinomian corporeality so thoroughly covered throughout this book has obvious mirrors in the Sabbatean and Frankish belief that rituals of transgressive sex, which they viewed as imitations of unrestrained relations in the divine world, could lead to cosmic redemption. Similarly, it would have been interesting to draw comparisons with Hasidism, and its idea of transforming mundane human impulses into elevated spiritual ones, such as the Ba‘al Shem Tov encouraging the use of sexual desire as an instrument to achieve a closer union with God, or the likening of swaying during prayer to the act of intercourse with the shekhinah.

Kabbalah and Sex Magic runs to 166 pages, with an additional 43 for notes, references and an index, but given its dense, textual subject matter, it does not feel short. Despite the slight sense of a misleading title, and gaps in what could have been covered, this is a valuable work that brings the eroticism inherent in the Shi’ur Qomahi and other proto-Kabbalistic texts to prominence. It is presented as a hardback with a glossy dustjacket.

Published by the Pennsylvania State University Press

July 7, 2022 by ScriptusScribe

The Canticles of Lilith – Nicholaj & Katy de Mattos Frisvold

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Categories: goddesses, mesopotamian, nightside, qabalah, Tags: Troy Books,

While the output of Troy Books often has a somewhat rustic and grounded feel in their choice of subject matter, reflecting localised folk and witchcraft traditions from different areas of the British Isles, on this, their first release for Troy Books, Nicholaj and Katy de Mattos Frisvold offers something slightly more sinisterly glamorous. As its title makes clear, the focus here is on Lilith, and in particular how she relates to witchcraft, with considerations of her manifestations astrological, Luciferian, Satanic, and erotic, as well as explorations of her multifaceted roles as a vampiric spirit, a Satanic muse, the witch-mother, a spirit of illness, the word of creation, and even the holy spirit herself.

What strikes the reader immediately is the aesthetic quality of the presentation here, with Troy Books replacing their previous, relatively smooth binding with a far more textured one, a gorgeous, thick-thread red cloth that takes the metallic foiling of the cover and spine very well. The interior is equally pleasing with black end papers, a nice weighty paper stock throughout, and formatting that, while functional, is effortlessly professional with it. It is slightly jarring then to be met with the first sentence, suggesting that perhaps the same amount of care should have gone into the editing. This one sentence runs to eight lines of swirling tense, multiple verbs, and minimal punctuation, which we will repeat here in its entirety since nothing else can quite convey all its hallucinatory and exhausting glory. Public health warning: do not attempt to read out loud without a respirator at hand. “Lilith has been tied to the idea of “witchcraft” either as Queen, demoness, vampire, or a spirit of lustful vice and all of these ideas hold a part of her mystery, but for the cunning one she represents the witch-mother herself that with the fallen host and their offspring gave to the fair-daughters of Cain and Seth this special blood that generated the different seed in the world that gave rise to the cunning ones.”

Although thing don’t always approach this befuddling level of complexity, it is indicative of the type of language and structure used throughout this book. Sentences frequently feel as if they are verging on chaos, be it through a breathless running-on, a concatenation of verbs that disorientates with a surfeit of opposing actions, or in the repetition of particular words in a single sentence when a synonym would suffice. There’s also an inconsistent approach to punctuation, where sometimes it is critically absent, while in other instances, its presence is superfluous. What makes this particularly confusing is that the style of writing, and the coherence thereof, seems to shift, possibly due to the double author credit, or due to parts having been written at different times. This is furthered by the way in which there has been no attempt to align the styles, either during the base writing, or at the editing stage. Indeed, one imagines that the degree of editing needed here would have amounted to a complete rewrite of the manuscript, almost negating any author’s credit. However, even a cursory proof-read seems to have been skipped, as things like errant or entirely missing words, not to mention a general vibe of unreadability, have been left intact.

In all, it is very distracting and it is impossible to escape, especially when some sentences have to be read several times to get the intent, or when the reader has to pause to get over unintended comedic moments engendered by the poor structure. Our favourite is the mental image of a caudal humanity when a discussion of huldre makes the statement: “These forest people were said to be creatures created before mankind with a tail.” Hang on, when was mankind created with a tail?

It really is a shame, particularly because Nicholaj and Katy de Mattos Frisvold clearly have an enthusiasm and passion for their subject, with their devotional fervour being quite palpable. There’s a feeling that this should be a poetic book, with florid turns of phrase adorning the language, like Peter Grey’s giddy Apocalyptic Witchcraft or his paean to Babalon in The Red Goddess, but yes, they’re not Grey, with none of his deft command of prose or his attention to detail when proofing and refining. Ultimately, a disservice is done to the book and to its very subject, especially since an unwillingness to write and edit in a credible manner makes one immediately mistrust the credibility of the very words themselves.

The Canticles of Lilith is divided into three parts, with the first two dealing with the theoretical and historical, and the third providing some practical elements. The first of these, The Lilithian Constellation, casts its net pretty wide, largely dealing not with Lilith herself, but with similar themes in adjacent cultures. By its very nature, in which Lilith is effectively treated as a vibe, this is a broad and uncritical survey in which anything slightly resembling Lilithian traits can be picked out, using confirmation bias to build a comprehensive, albeit circumstantial, picture of her as persistent and universal. As we are talking metaphysics here, there’s no need to track, or even claim, some historical path of thematic or cultural diffusion, but even with that allowance made, it can sometimes feel a bit tenuous. This is particularly noticeable when several pages are devoted to discussing Stregoneria with nary a mention of Lilith, save towards the end when there are attempts to fold her back into the discussion. It feels almost as if this was dropped in from somewhere else, which is exactly what happened, as this is Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold’s article Stregoneria: A Roman Furnace, which appeared in Scarlet Imprint’s 2013 anthology Serpent Songs. Amusingly, the 2013 version reads a lot better, as Scarlet Imprint’s copy editor Troy Chambers mush have done a fair bit of work on it, and as a result, that incarnation is deceptively readable; whereas the version copied into this new book is presumably closer to the unpolished original.

The book’s focus makes a welcomed shift to Lilith specifically in the second section, The Atmosphere of Lilith, though once again there is a feeling of things being all over the place, both in the general narrative and in sentence construction, with the tortuous writing and awkward phrasing making it a chore to get through. A favourite line, giving some much needed comic relief, comes early on in an attempt to paint Lilith’s grand history, using a strange and clumsy Mesozoic simile: “She rose from being a spirit fated to die, like a dinosaur – but still her legacy and prominence spread across the worlds as history advanced.”

The difficulty of following this addlepated text is aided and abetted by underused and inconsistent formatting, such as when references to sources texts blend into the body because they aren’t italicised, except when they suddenly are, with things getting to a ridiculous level in one reference to The Alphabet of Ben Sira in which only the second half of the title is in italics. Indeed, this whole section is rough, with sources texts from all over the place being introduced, often with zero context, giving the impression that they represent a cohesive body of lore, but with no regard to gulfs either cultural or temporal. There is the statement that Lilith is mentioned several times in “the Nag Hammadi or Dead Sea Scrolls” as if the two collections of texts are the same thing, but no actual examples are given. Instead, the paragraph refers, by comparison, to the strange woman ambiguously mentioned as a personification of temptation in Proverbs 2:16-19, with Friswold adding the bold claim that the biblical text describes her as having horns and wings (it doesn’t). One assumes that Friswold is referring to the Wicked Woman who appears in a short sapiential poem from the Dead Sea Scrolls, catalogued as 4Q184. She is an ambiguous figure who is frequently compared to the Strange Woman of Proverbs, but none of that is explored in any detail here, as if a secondary reference has been poorly transcribed, with no real investigation of the source texts. This also speaks to a flaw in the overall approach, in which a lack of rigour is combined with unwarranted certainty. There is much that could be made in investigating the Wicked Woman of 4Q184 as well as other unnamed scriptural figures as analogues of Lilith, getting into the weeds and assessing strengths and weaknesses to such arguments. But none of that occurs here, and the opportunity is wasted, replaced with categorical claims that these constitute specific references to Lilith, almost as if she is named as such within them.

The historically amorphous overviews of this section eventually lead to a consideration of the sephira and corresponding qlipha of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, culminating with Lilith’s association with Malkuth. This is a thorough consideration though, and not limited to just Malkuth, with on average a full page of information about each of the other sephiroth/qliphoth being given. Matters then turn back to non-Mesopotamian folklore, with more exploration of figures that can be compared to Lilith, with a particular focus on her association with disease, pulling variously from Greek mythology, Romani folklore and even Norse mythology. One of the key approaches here is to take three figures from a mythos and draw a triangle between them as if the space within connotes some great importance in embodying a ‘lilithian force.’ It’s all a bit arbitrary, putting, for example, Óðinn, Þórr and Frigga/Freyja (because, sure, why not treat them like they’re the same goddess) at each point, as well as bizarrely associating Þórr with the sun, Óðinn with the moon and Frigga/Freyja with Venus. There are also some weird little moments in this barrage of frequently context-lacking folklore, such as the head-scratching claim that in some unspecified legends, Tubal-Cain is the son of Cain and Eve. And then there’s this section’s opening sentence, stating that in his Ars Poetica, Horace “translates Lilith to Lamia,” a claim which appears to have been cut and pasted from a long-since-revised version of the Lilith page on Wikipedia. There’s no explanation as to how the Roman poet was supposedly translating Lilith to Lamia, and no context for the reference to Lamia within his guide to poetics, not even a mention of who Horace was. This abrupt statement thus comes across as something glommed but unexplored from an old Wikipedia page, employed as a pointless opening to the discussion that follows concerning Lilith’s similarities with Lamia.

The excessive excoriation that has typified this review comes from a place of disappointment rather than malice, because The Canticles of Lilith is a book that promises much and could have been so much more if attention had be paid to the quality of writing, in both a mechanical sense, and in the very presentation of the information. There is much that is included here in a raw manner, but it is treated so clumsily and awkwardly, that it is just sad. Such is the degree of disappointment that it is difficult not to list every error that irritates as one progresses through the book, so, for our sanity, we shall draw a line in the sand and move on to the final section, The Rites of Lilith’s Basilica, where things take a more practical turn. These entries are largely invocatory in nature, with a liturgy of a noticeably purple persuasion, with rituals for Hekate and Ishara thrown in too because why not? Running to 55 pages, this is a decent collection of workings, and there’s enough variety in approaches and formulae that for those inclined, there’s much here that can be put to use.

The Canticles of Lilith has been released in the traditional Troy Books range of editions: paper, standard hardback, and already sold-out special and fine editions. All have a page count of 264 on 90gsm cream paper stock, with the paper edition featuring a gloss laminate cover showcasing a painting by Katy de Mattos Frisvold. The standard hardback edition is bound in a dark red cloth with a spine title and a crest-like device on the cover blocked in silver foil, finished off with black end papers, and black head and tail bands. The 125 copy special edition replaces the cloth binding with a black faux leather, and silver foil blocking on the cover and spine, with red end papers, red head and tail bands. Finally, the fine edition was hand bound in a red leather with blocking in black foil to the spine and cover (with a different sigil design than the other editions), all housed in a fully-lined black library buckram blind embossed slip case.

Published by Troy Books

May 14, 2019 by ScriptusScribe

Nightside of the Runes: Uthark, Adulruna, and the Gothic Cabbala – Thomas Karlsson

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Categories: germanic, nightside, qabalah, runes, Tags: Inner Traditions,

Originally released by Ouroboros Produktion in 2002 as Uthark: Nightside of the Runes, this book has had its title flipped, and its page count inflated, by Inner Traditions; a publishing house that is home to a surprising amount of runic content alongside more conventional metaphysical fare. To do this, Nightside of the Runes takes the original content of Uthark, and adds a second part based around the Adulruna, and Gothic Cabbala of the subtitle. The latter is Thomas Karlsson’s Adulrunan och den Götiska Kabbalan, a work previously available only in Swedish, German and Italian. And fun fact, the cover here more resembles that of the original edition of Adulrunan och den Götiska Kabbalan than it does Uthark: Nightside of the Runes.

The concept of the Uthark has its origins in the work of Swedish poet and runologist Sigurd Agrell, who argued that the runes should be ordered, not with Fehu at the start, but at the end, thus beginning with Uruz to make an uthark not a futhark. While there are a few examples of a sequential listing of runes in which they could begin with Uruz instead of Fehu, these may simply be errors or erosion, such as, most famously, the Kylver stone from Gotland, where a vertical line before the Uruz could be the remains of Fehu. Karlsson himself doesn’t labour much for the validity of the theory, saying that irrespective of how it is held, the Uthark is a magically potent version of the rune row that corresponds well with Old Norse language and myth.

Perhaps the most interesting application for the Uthark is in how it changes things numerologically, with the value of each rune moving one along when using a letter-to-number cipher, with, for example, Hagalaz becoming a more pleasing 8 and Nauthiz a fitting 9. On the other hand, confirmation bias, pareidolia and apophenia being what they are, you could probably work out some esoteric significance betwixt a rune and a certain value no matter what number it was assigned.

Despite the title of this half of the book (and of the previous standalone edition), the Uthark doesn’t always play a huge role here, save for the occasional esoteric nugget that can be assigned to runes and the reshuffled aetts. Instead, this is a general rune magic primer, with everything you would expect in it: a section on the meaning and symbolism of each rune (and another variation of this same listing later on with meanings simplified for the purpose of divination), a brief guide to runic yoga in the style of Friedrich Marby, an exploration of the cosmology of the nine worlds, and a guide to ritual, including brief considerations of galdr and seiðr. The most notable innovation here is Karlsson’s presentation of the Uthark order of runes as a journey to Hel along the Helvegr, with each rune marking a stage on the journey, beginning with Uruz as a fitting gate to the underworld and ending with the less satisfying interpretation of Fehu as the magician in their state of completion.

The original body copy of Uthark has been edited for this release, tidying up and finessing the words here and there, but not going all out and altering Karlsson’s voice as it appears in the original, translated by Tommie Eriksson (whose name doesn’t seem to be credited in this new edition). As a result, the writing still comes across as the work of someone with English as a second language, though not horribly or unforgivably so. Phrasing can be a little awkward at times, and sentences are often short, abrupt eruptions, where another writer would have combined two or more of them together for greater flow.

Having previously read Uthark, but not Adulrunan och den Götiska Kabbalan, it is the latter that proves the most exciting part of the book to get to. Karlsson gives something of a prelude to this in the Uthark section with a brief chapter on runosophy and cabbala, which does introduce some redundancies when you get to Adulrunan proper. While the book’s first half is indebted to Sigurd Agrell, in the second half that role is performed by the Swedish antiquarian and polymath Johannes Bureus. Agrell and Bureus share certain similarities, despite the gulf of centuries, being figures possessed of a singular vision and unique interpretations of the northern mysteries. Both created innovations of the existing futharks, with Agrell’s one-place-along shuffling of the runes of the Elder Futhark having a parallel in the work of Bureus, who grouped the runes of the Younger Futhark into sets of five, and removed the inconvenient final sixteenth rune, Yr, to make a symmetrical three rows of five Adulrunes, as he called them.

Stephen Flowers provides prologues to both the Uthark and Adulrunan sections of this book, and also acts as the translator for the latter. His introduction to Adulruna is quite substantial, running to ten pages and providing what follows with a thorough context, highlighting the cultural and hermetic milieu from which Bureus, and the broader field of esoteric Gothicism (as Karlsson calls it), emerged. With Flowers providing the translation, The Adulruna and the Gothic Cabbala does feature a significant change in Karlsson’s voice from that of Uthark, lacking the staccato quality, with sentences now flowing longer and smoother.

The other noticeable difference is a considerably more academic approach, with the content here forming the basis of Karlsson’s 2010 doctoral thesis Götisk kabbala och runisk alkemi: Johannes Bureus och den götiska esoterismen. This is particularly evident in the first chapters of The Adulruna and the Gothic Cabbala which consists of an academic literature review of Bureus and Gothicism in general, and is then followed by a citing-heavy chapter defining Western Esotericism and name-checking all the usual suspects (Dame Frances Yates, Antoine Faivre, Henrik Bogdan, Wouter Hanegraaff, Mercia Eliade etc.). This makes for two very different halves of a book, with the academic grounding of the second half contrasting strongly with the practical, hands-on enthusiasm of the first.

It is the hermetic influences that played a large role in what Bureus created, with esoteric Gothicism drawing on elements of alchemy, cabbala, astrology and ceremonial magic; including clear nods to figures who loom large within this pantheon such as Paracelsus and Dr John Dee. As such, Bureus makes a fitting role model for Karlsson, whose Dragon Rouge organisation has a similar eclectic approach, employing elements of cabbala, including the nightside, and goetia, but with a strong focus on indigenous Scandinavian traditions.

Bureus’ system involves a dense, interwoven cosmology and a very specific nomenclature that is, to put it mildly, idiosyncratic; and Karlsson does an admirable job of documenting it thoroughly and as clearly as can be done with something as ornamented as it is. For example, Bureus posited a rather unique take on the Germanic pantheon in which, based on the runic formula of TOF, Thor was the preeminent god (an androgynous combination of feminine and masculine worshipped since “primeval times” as the “great invoker”), while Odin and Fröja were his children and messengers. This, as was the style of the time, then incorporated elements of mystical Christianity, with Fröja as the Holy Spirit and Odin as a version of Christ, the son of God, who descended into flesh and then returned, ascending to heaven, providing, as mediator, a process for others to follow. Bureus argued that this reflected a version of the philosophia perennis which had remained pristine in the north far longer than in the lands to the south. This incarnation was eventually corrupted when a wandering master of witchcraft and his wife assumed the names of Odin and Fröja. They received worship and turned this pure proto-Christianity into heathenry with its dreaded worship of wooden idols (and worst of all, changing the order of the formula to FTO, with Fröja now worshipped at the beginning of life, Thor during life itself, and Odin at old age and death).

Suffice to say, there’s not a lot of value to Bureus’ system if you’re purely pagan in orientation, or if you adhere to the archaeological record, with his conception of Germanic belief being, to put it diplomatically, highly speculative. But it is, if nothing else, fun. And that’s what makes Nightside of the Runes a worthy purchase, as it provides perhaps the most accessible and in depth information in English on Bureus’ convoluted cosmology and interpretation of the runes; as well, of course, as Agrell’s slightly less esoteric Uthark.

Illustrations in Nightside of the Runes consist of the original line drawings from the original edition of Uthark in the first half, and an exhaustive collection of images from Bureus’ publications in the second. These are rendered in black and white with the contrast turned well up to remove any colour or texture of the original print material, thereby giving them a consistent weathered and arcane look.

Nightside of the Runes is available in Kindle and hardback versions, with the latter wrapped in a dustjacket over its black boards and the title foiled in silver on the spine. Layout is by Inner Traditions’ Debbie Glogover with the body in a dependable Garamond, and headings in a distressed Appareo that contrasts with the san-serif Gill Sans of the subheadings. Appareo is a nice touch with its almost-slab serifs and worn edges approximating the face used on the original edition of Adulrunan, and conveying less of the runic side of this book and more of a sense of the later gothic manuscript or grimoire. Continuing this style, each chapter heading incorporates a crop of the sun image from the book’s cover (originally from the title page of Bureus’ Svenska ABC boken medh runor), sitting above the title as a pleasing archway.

Published by Inner Traditions

Review Soundtrack: Therion – Gothic Kabbalah (as with many Therion albums, Thomas Karlsson provided the lyrics to this album based on the work of Johannes Bureus)

January 9, 2019 by ScriptusScribe

The Blazing Dew of Stars – David Chaim Smith

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Categories: alchemy, art, esotericism, hermeticism, qabalah, Tags: Fulgur,

David Chaim Smith, as his bio runs, is an author and artist based on Long Island, New York. He gained a BFA in drawing from Rhode Island School of Design and graduated from Columbia University with a Masters in 1989. His principle medium is finely rendered and intensely detailed pencil, and that’s what you get here in this large-format book from Fulgur; his second with that press, following on from 2012’s The Sacrificial Universe.

The Blazing Dew of Stars presents David Chaim Smith’s take on qabalah, otherwise seen in titles such as 2015’s The Kabbalistic Mirror of Genesis and 2016’s The Awakening Ground: A Guide to Contemplative Mysticism (both from Inner Traditions). Where those books differ from The Blazing Dew of Stars is the focus on Chaim Smith’s artwork, often appearing here as full page plates, with adjunct smaller illustrations in the margins of facing pages. That doesn’t mean this book is without writing, in fact, it is quite text heavy, with Chaim Smith’s images appearing as adjuncts to his dense, periphrastic text. It’s just such text that forms the first, and image-free, chapter, Reaching Beyond God, 24 pages of circumlocutory writing with phrases like “systems that cultivate compassion mitigate the primitive reflexes of animal power that produce the psycho-emotive toxins of the human realm” or “Conceptuality can slowly learn to be able to abide within it, such that subtle abstract impressions can slowly take over, subsuming the momentum of perceptual formation into visionary registers.” As your eyes glaze over after page after page of this, you find yourself skipping forward, hoping to hit the pretty pictures sometime soon; the ligatures on the serif typeface are nice, though, if a little showy.

Chaim Smith presents what he refers to as kabbalistic contemplative alchemy, a system he calls Iy’yun; a Hebrew word, sans the glottal stop, meaning ‘contemplation.’ Iy’yun is pursued, in this case in particular, through linguistic and graphic constructions, with its inner life creating resonating layers, revealed within the illustrations here, and it is this that distils the dew of the title; a gnostic realisation which accumulates with wonder, beauty and astonishment. Or so the blurb goes. This takes the form in a manner of ways: exegetical sections, more practical exercises in which Chaim Smith’s images are a meditative focus, and other exercises in which the illustrations are but representations of the concept in hand.

The dense and theoretical first chapter opening The Blazing Dew of Stars is followed by one that reprises the title of the book as its own and is subtitled A Kavanah Meditation in Three Parts. This three part meditation is based on three chambers, each focussed on a divine name: AHYH, ALP LMD HY YVD MM, and YHVH/MTzPTz. Chaim Smith provides a thorough exegesis on the metaphysics behind the procedure, in which the dew of contemplation is brought forth, the blaze is set alight, and the practitioner becomes a primordial mirror, a “liquid display of transelemental morphosis,” no less. This is then followed by the exercise itself, in which the various letters are visualised doing their thing, and which is, in turn, depicted graphically in Chaim Smith’s accompanying pencil illustration.

The third chapter, Unfurling the Dream Fire, is the book’s largest and most visually impressive section, in which Chaim Smith conveys ideas through four different methods: two textual and two graphical. Each spread begins with a usually brief verse, set in a large italic face, and this is then expanded upon below it in the smaller text of technical notes, featuring definitions, correspondences, and numerological values. The ideas contained within the initial quote are distilled into small, relatively simple, seals that sit in the right margin of the right hand page of a spread, while the left page is taken up entirely by considerably more elaborate elucidations of the ideas as full page illustrations. The idea, says Chaim Smith, is that the contemplator is able to overlap and interpenetrate meaning using a variety of mental tools.

The full page formatting of the images in Unfurling the Dream Fire allows them to be seen in all their glory, and execution. They are densely rendered almost entirely in just pencil; something that you don’t necessarily notice until you are viewing them at this size, where the smudged layers of graphite used for shading or as background can look murky and less impressive than at first glance. With his images featuring an abundance of alembics and other glass vessels, as well as the roots, trunks and branches of mystical trees, the most obvious comparison of Chaim Smith’s work are alchemical illustrations; notably those that accompany the work of fifteenth century alchemist George Ripley, such as the scroll that bears his name. There’s a persistent sense of growth and fluidity, of amrita dripping from receptacles and homunculi growing in cucurbits. All of the elements are contained within often circular borders, as well as boundaries created by text, often repeating the lines of the initial verse, or evoking key words. The same four-fold format is also followed in a later section, The Enthroning of the Blaze.

Several other sections follow Unfurling the Dream Fire, largely text based but accompanied with the occasional full-page image, including some instances where the illustrations are inverted, giving the impression of scratchboard or chalk on a black board. One of these, Dead Dreams Awaken the Sleeping Bride, is effectively a guided visualisation, heavy on exegesis within the journey text, accompanied by a single full-page illustration. Meanwhile, The Intoxicating Nectar of Vision, a received text of ten numbered verses that runs parallel to the creation narrative of the opening of Genesis, and which, naturally, follows the style and nomenclature of the rest of The Blazing Dew of Stars. This is an argot full of words such as transcendence, perceptual matrices, resonances and magical continuums; all lexemes that in their disorientating concatenation are often teetering on the edge of a word salad abyss.

The regular edition of The Blazing Dew of Stars consists of 913 copies, measuring 27cm square with 138 pages in total, and 14 full page drawings, 29 seals and vignettes and a two-page folding plate of The Metacartograph, a large format, colour inverted illustration that acts as an “overview map of creativity in the manifestation of phenomena,” if you will. This edition is bound in black cloth, with a matte finish black dustjacket. The deluxe edition of 88 author-signed copies was bound by hand in full black morocco with special tooling in silver gilt, blind pressed and silver filled front panel embellishment. It included the dust jacket of the standard edition but was housed in a special lined slipcase of premium black cloth.

Published by Fulgur

December 10, 2018 by ScriptusScribe

Qliphoth Esoteric Publication Opus 1: The Awakening (Atavistic Path) – Edited by Edgar Kerval

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Categories: nightside, qabalah, typhonian, Tags: Aeon Sophia Press,

Released in 2012, Qliphoth Esoteric Publication Opus 1 is arguably one of the first journals in the current glut of darkly-hued occult publishing. Edited by Edgar Kerval and here published by Aeon Sophia Press, Qliphoth would have something of an itinerant life, moving betwixt publishing houses. A second volume would be released in a more conventional occult-book format by Aeon Sophia Press, before Nephilim Press took up the mantle for a time, with still later volumes being released by Kerval’s own publishing imprint.

There is a wide range of both contributors and topics in this first volume, embracing themes of the nightside, voudon, hoodoo, general sorcery and even a little bit of syncretisation of Loki with Azatoth (by which is meant HP Lovecraft’s Azathoth, not the similarly h-deficient Swedish black/death metal band from Uddevalla, or, for that matter, the death metal band from Stockholm – Satan bless you, Encyclopaedia Metallum). From the contributors, there’s a few new names as well as some familiar ones, such as Sean Woodward, Kyle Fite, Aion 131 (whose poem Tua-Set is an excerpt from his Liber Phoenix), Orryelle Defenestrate Bascule (with their nightside notes, some of which also appeared in Anathema’s Pillars journal), and Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold (in a lengthy piece on antinomian sorcery).

Amongst many of the contributions there’s a palpable sense of a giddy delight in darkness and shadow, of a youthful enthusiasm for what the authors hope is transgressive and original, but which old timers might find either sweet or irritating. This is particularly exacerbated by the perhaps unwise inclusion of author photos in some pieces. Formatted into their respective essay as if they’re an integral illustration, fingers contorted into significant gestures, their fresh faces glare out at the reader as if to say “Occultism, it’z serious bidness.” Bless.

The earnestness may account for the roughness in some of the writing, all pleonastic phrasing and reckless disregard for proofing. The consistently spellcheck-averse Daemon Barzai opens a piece on Gamaliel (presumably the qlipha and not the first century leader of the Sanhedrin, but he doesn’t say) by referring to it as the dark side of the moon and redundantly describing it as having an intimate relationship with, wait for it, “the dark side of the moon,” – that is very intimate, onanistically so. What follows are a series of guided meditations in which naked beautiful ladies are only outnumbered by the comedic triumphs of muddled and cruelly unedited English: “Opposite you appeared Lilith. Her body is naked but it is difficult to see her face. Her hairs are red as fire.” So, how many hairs? I’m thinking just two or three for pure comedy gold. “Come a dark mist and go out three black dogs that to be with a woman that wearing a black dress, she has a crown with jewels. His presence commands respect.” Yes, I imagine it does.

There’s other questionable writing, such as The Science of Magic by S. Ben Qayin, although saying that it’s written by him is a bit of stretch. Incapable of paraphrasing, he quotes extensively from a few sources, with some of the quotes running to as much as half a page. As these are not formatted any differently from the main body, the reader will assume that Qayin has written a lengthy, erudite piece, but his own writing only occurs as smatterings between these verbatim quotes, poorly tying completely unrelated themes together with logical fallacies. This approach reaches its surreally ridiculous zenith when he quotes himself in order to promote his Volubilis ex Chaosium book; one wonders how many pages of quotes that must contain.

But these failures are not necessarily the rule and there are a few diamonds amongst the rough, mainly coming from the more grizzled of the contributors. Sean Woodward uses a, one assumes, fictional narrative in a meditation on the Hoo Queen, with the narrator exploring the coastal town of Blackmouth in search of this Shadow Queen of Sirius. Though it lacks much in the way of cosmic horror (though there is a sense of the cosmos), there’s an unavoidable sense of Lovecraft here, with the lone narrator, a stranger in a strange town, visiting a place whose name alone is redolent of Lovecraft’s Innsmouth. There’s a similar focus of hoodoo from a name as familiar as that of Sean Woodward, Kyle Fite, who in the past has pursued the fictional narrative as occult lesson, but here has a more straight forward essay. Like Woodward’s contribution, Becoming Hoodoo is very much in the shadow of Michael Bertiaux, discussing the first section of The Voudon Gnostic Workbook, and its guide to becoming a hoodoo, which Fite argues is not the exemplar of low magic that it seems, but is instead a guide to a profound and deep theosis.

Given the title of the journal, the qliphoth does loom rather large throughout this first volume. In addition to Barzai’s error-ridden piece on Gamaliel and Orryelle’s nightside notes (in which they briefly detail their exploration of the tunnels of Set, accompanied by darkly-reproduced paintings of the same), there’s a working with the tunnel of Malkunofat from Andi Moon and Sarah Price.

Of personal interest to me is Ljossal Lodursson’s Loki and Azatoth – Lords of Fire and Chaos, in which he compares Loki’s disruptive, maddening and ultimately transformative quality with Lovecraft’s madness-inducing Outer God. He calls this composite figure Azaloke (presumably a play on references to Loki as Asa-Loki), and defines him in fairly anticosmic terms as an alchemical-chaotic symbiote that destroys the kingdom of all creation. The potentially alchemical etymology of Azathoth’s name, with its echoes of the universal solvent Azoth, provides Lodursson with a way of categorising Loki, via his progeny and his relationship with Gulveig, into red, black, purple and green azoths. Lodursson describes his long experiences working with Loki and presents a series of runes received from him: a bindrune called Lokekvisa, and then a set of eleven Hjärta Rúnar, divided into three aetts of creation, destruction and chaos; though those of a mathematical bent will quickly note that these aetts don’t have the traditional eight characters each, and instead group the runes into sets of five, four and three. These Hjärta Rúnar each have a name and properties assigned to them, and resemble traditional runes in some cases, but not all, so there’s a certain inconsistency to their style.

As one of the first, if not the first, publications from Aeon Sophia Press, the design and formatting of Qliphoth leaves a lot to be desired and is nowhere near the consistently high standards that the publishing house now has. The book has an oversized magazine size, which despite its light weight and soft cover makes for a cumbersome read. Text is formatted into dual columns for the most part, but in some cases, this inexplicably becomes a single, full-page column in the middle of an essay, which, given the width of the page, makes the line length intolerable for reading. In an inescapable feeling of layout-by-Microsoft-Word, the body copy is rendered in a point size too large, and the same face and size is used for captions, biographies, references and even adverts, all of which bleed into one. Distorted images abound, whether they be vertically stretched, as seems to happen more often than not with photographs, or pixelated or soft in several instances of graphic elements. This is particularly egregious when it comes to some striking images by Hagen von Tulien, where the impact of his crisp, presumably vector lines, is rendered null due to pixelated reproduction. The image quality encapsulates the problems with this first issue of Qliphoth, indicative of a lack of refinement and attention to detail that is mirrored in the minimal layout, the non-existent proofing and a certain dearth of quality control when it comes to contributors. All of which tends to overshadow the elements that are good.

As is Kerval’s style, this issue of Qliphoth was accompanied by a CD of ritual music, mainly consisting of tracks by his musical guise Emma Ya, but with also a piece from Sean Woodward as his project Gothick, and the track Orpheus’ Lament from the combined talents of Orryelle, Kestral Knox and Amordios Gobblyn-Smyth. My second-hand version of the journal didn’t include the CD, but you can imagine what it sounds like, and many of the Emme Ya tracks are available online, scattered across a variety of other releases.

Published by Aeon Sophia Press

Review Soundtrack: Emme Ya – Erotognosis (Voices From The Void)

November 28, 2018 by ScriptusScribe

The Serpent Tongue: Liber 187 – Jake Stratton-Kent

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Categories: esotericism, qabalah, Tags: Hadean Press,

As its subtitle A Workbook of English Qaballa suggests, this compact tome from Jake Stratton-Kent is a work detailing a system of English qabalah, both as a type of gematria and as a hands-on system of magic. By English Qaballa we mean a variation of conventional qabalah but one in which the English letters of the alphabet, rather than Hebrew, are assigned numeric values. Though he is enigmatically low on details, Stratton-Kent describes this system as having been discovered by a here-unnamed magical group in November 1976. The group had previously ritualised their intention to do so and details of theirs discovery were published in five issues of The New Equinox / British Journal of Magick. It provided a fulfilment to the promise made in Liber AL vel legis, verse 2:55: “Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet, thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto.”

In this English Qaballa (an idiosyncratic spelling variant chosen at the time because it was otherwise not in use), the gematria doesn’t make use of a direct monoalphabetic substitution cipher, as occurs with the Mispar Hechrachi system in Hebrew. Stratton-Kent notes that this entry-level attempt proved unsatisfactory, and it, along with other dead-ends, were ritually immolated. The successful solution instead used the number 11 as a key, counting on along the alphabet at intervals of eleven and assigning the monoalphabetic substitution to this new order of letters. Thus the value 1 was associated with the letter A, 2 with L, 3 with W and then, cycling through the alphabet again, 4 with H, and so forth until all 24 values were assigned to a unique letter.

For those familiar with Stratton-Kent’s social media presence, it may be of interest to know that he writes with the same, recognisable voice. It is a voice whose tone and manner is somewhat arch and acerbic, not suffering fools gladly, and throwing in words like ‘absurd’ multiple times to refer to opinions he does not share. Conversely, though, there is a certain informality to Stratton-Kent’s tone, a pragmatism that allows him to be upfront about the vagaries and vicissitude of qabalah in particular and occultism in general.

The air of a polemic bordering on the vituperative suffuses the first section of The Serpent Tongue, a lengthy introduction in which Stratton-Kent argues against the pre-eminence given in contemporary occultism to Hebrew, especially as it pertains to qabalah. He contends that qabalah as a system is indebted to the cosmopolitan milieu that preceded its development, in particular the strain of Jewish Gnosticism seen in Merkabah mysticism, within which Greek Neoplatonism was the wielder of the greatest influence. This invective is used to argue against the primacy given to Hebrew in the Western Tradition, and to make the case that, in the words of Umberto Eco, the idea of Hebrew as the primal language from which all others descended is a ‘crusty old myth;’ – a quote that Stratton-Kent appears so enamoured with that he repeats it later.

With the introductory case made for the validity of an English qabalah, part one follows with chapters on various qabalistic qualities of Liber AL, most notably the famous cipher found at II.76: 4 6 3 8 ABK 2 4 ALGMOR 3 Y X 24 89 RPSTOVAL. This underlines Stratton-Kent’s approach here, which is very much grounded in Thelema, with the gematria often being used to proffer evidence of the veracity of Crowley’s transmission, or to at least provide greater insight into its cosmology and symbolism. Crowley’s oeuvre returns the favour in kind, being used to add the mythos and liturgy from which the English Qaballa can draw its proofs.

Stratton-Kent provides plenty of ways to work with English Qaballa, not just for gematrial investigations of esoteric themes and motifs, but in practical ritual and sorcery. There’s a consideration of magick squares, but perhaps of the most interest are the various systems he presents for creating barbarous names, magickally encoded language devised with increasing degrees of complexity.

Qabalah and gematria often feel like coding and programming: if you don’t have a particular aptitude for it, it’s all a bit impenetrable, or at the very least intimidating. There’s nothing too byzantine here, but the various permutations of numbers and equations can make your eyes glaze over after a while. Ever the skeptic, I’m never sure what to think of gematria and there’s always that suggestion of confirmation bias. I mean, sure the value of the five vowels in English Qaballa is 73, which is the value of MANTRA, POWER, RUNES, GIANT, all great stuff to be sure, especially the rune power of giants, am I right? But, then, it’s presumably also the value of NURSE and RATMAN and a variety of other less numinous words… so all hail Nurse Ratman, lord of the vowels, I guess?

Despite its small size, and in saying that, it does run to over 200 pages, The Serpent Tongue is a dense work with a rigorous internal consistency and a lot for readers to employ in their practice. Stratton-Kent’s writing is to be commended, keeping it erudite but still frequently informal and irreverent, with occasional splash of snark.

Published by Hadean Press

Scriptus Recensera

Reviewing books magickal

Categotry Archives: qabalah

Supernal Serpent: Mysteries of Leviathan in Judaism and Christianity – Andrei A. Orlov

Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy – Marla Segol

The Canticles of Lilith – Nicholaj & Katy de Mattos Frisvold

Nightside of the Runes: Uthark, Adulruna, and the Gothic Cabbala – Thomas Karlsson

The Blazing Dew of Stars – David Chaim Smith

Qliphoth Esoteric Publication Opus 1: The Awakening (Atavistic Path) – Edited by Edgar Kerval

The Serpent Tongue: Liber 187 – Jake Stratton-Kent