The Magical Revival by Kenneth Grant

Author:Kenneth Grant [Grant, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Nonfiction, Magick Studies, History
ISBN: 9780584101751
Publisher: Muller
Published: 1972-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

[Page 114]

Steiner, to mention a few, have produced no such reliable a system. Le'vi deliberately concealed his knowledge and misled his readers by misrepresentation. Blavatsky dazzled and bewildered by the massive agglutinations of her symbolic thought, welding fact and fiction into an inextricable fabric of fantasy which makes the mind reel. Steiner and Heindel lapsed into sectarian fana ticisms caused by incomplete initiation into the Mysteries they sought to expound. But a few described clearly the essential dynamics of occultism, though they discreetly concealed the more profound aspects of initiation. Fortune, Jones, and Spare were among these. Like Crowley, Fortune scattered secrets throughout her writings; those Only who were properly prepared could recognize and use the keys she supplied. Like Blavatsky, she frequently resorted to fiction, and no doubt because of this her work has neither been properly valued nor generally appreciated, even by

Occultists.

Fiction, as a vehicle, has often been used by occultists. Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni and A Strange Story have set many a person on the ultimate Quest. Ideas not acceptable to the everyday mind, limited by prejudice and spoiled by a "breadwinning" edu cation, can be made to slip past the censor, and by means of the novel, the poem, the short story be effectually planted in soil that would otherwise reject or destroy them.

Writers such as Arthur Machen, Brodie Innes, Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft are in this category. Their novels and stories contain some remarkable affmities with those aspects of Crowley's Cult dealt with in the present chapter, i.e. themes of resurgent atavisms that lure people to destruction. Whether it be the Vision of Pan, as in the case of Machen and Dunsany, or the even more sinister traffic with denizens of forbidden dimen sions, as in the tales of Lovecraft, the reader is plunged into a world of barbarous names and incomprehensible signs. Lovecraft was unacquainted both with the name and the work of Crowley, yet some of his fantasies reflect, however, distortedly, the salient themes of Crowley's Cult. The following comparative table will show how close they are: [Page 115]

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