Of Names and Identity

A theme which runs through numerous lines of fiction, folklore and magical tradition is the power of names. Consider the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, running perhaps in parallel to any number of grimoires that would instruct would-be sorcerers to seek out the true names of any demon that they would bargain with; consider the importance in Judaism and Islam (both exoteric and esoteric) of the names of God; and consider, perhaps, the "legalese sorcery" of the Legal Name Fraud movement. Names have power; names define, and thus shape reality.

To quote an excellent article by Sjaak van der Geest;

Without names there is nothing. If the mountain has no name, I did not climb it. I have not seen the painting without a name, not read the book without a title. Only the gymnastic skills with a name can be performed: cartwheel, straddle jump, cross split, Suzuki.

All names applied to humans (and, arguably, all names whatsoever) are in a sense adjectival. Many are literally so in an etymological sense - Adam (by one reading, "red") and Eve ("living"), for example. Others may not necessarily be derived from adjectives, but are nonetheless descriptive - consider Douglas ("dark water"), Theodore ("Gift of God"), or Johannes ("YHVH has been gracious").

To name a being is therefore to assign certain attributes to it; one might consider this an inherently magickal act, imparting a layer of meaning upon a subtle, linguistic plane. It is worth noting that to name a thing is a speech act - that is to say, that by saying "I declare my name to be...", the action is performed. The linguistic action, in other words, redefines reality.

To take on a new name is thus also an act of magick. In European societies this tend to be associated with the adoption of a certain social role or position that has certain obligations that come with it - a monarch takes a new name along with the oaths of accession; a member of a religious community may take a new name to symbolise their passage into a new form of spiritual life; a writer may adopt a pen name that reflects the nature of their work, and so on.

Consider also the traditionally expected role and vows of a wife, symbolised by the taking of her husband's name, whilst traditionally he changes not his name, for traditional matrimony does not require any change to his essential nature. As a counterpoint, note the symbolism inherent in more modern and egalitarian practices of both parties retaining their family names, and thus declaring their essential natures unaltered, versus choosing to amalgamate names or create a new family name from whole cloth, the inference being that the partnership alchemically alters both parties toward a certain result.

Likewise, the adoption of a new name during gender transition can be seen as a magickal act, avowing the reality of the change. By this logic, one might consider "dead naming" to be an act of spiritual aggression - an attempt on a linguistic level to override the will of the one who would redefine themselves.

One might consider names as masks for the ego, personas that we put on and take off in certain situations - consider how a Dr. John Smith might be Dr. Smith to his patients, John to his coworkers, Jack to his friends, and Johnny to his mother, each differing name reflecting a differing set of relational parameters and putting a specific part of his psyche to the forefront. A similar example of this effect could be found in the selection and use of pseudonyms on the internet; blogging under the name of "antichthonian" could serve me two purposes - as a mask it both places a discretionary wall between different parts of my identity, and serves to highlight the general nature of that which I am writing. Exactly what I am trying to portray with this username is left as an exercise for the reader.

To state the esoteric point here more explicitly - adopting a name is a form of invocation.

And, as a final thought, consider this: it is no small matter that, in the A.'.A.'. system of mysticism, the proper name of the Master of the Temple who has crossed the Abyss and cast off all but the truest sparks of their existence, is Nemo. No-One.

Overly Honest Book Reviews: Sepher Sathanas

O:.:H:.:O:.: Reviews
"Sepher Sathanas"
by the Voltigeurs of the Other Side

Deathwave Nexion, 2017

A guest post by Fr. Antoninus Minor

There seems to be an unwritten law that texts by self-described Left Hand Path occultists, at least those in the West, must at some point descend into the literary Abyss of incomprehensibility, all full of transmundanities and suprasubjectivities, and other such painful portmanteaus and nonsensical neologisms. In this regard, Sepher Sathanas escapes relatively unscathed, for all its talk of "preëval entities of formless non-being", being in the most part a reasonably accessible - by the standards of the genre - text on Traditional Satanism.

Presented as the praxis of the Temple of Night, the book mixes some rather lurid fiction and poetry with essays on Qlippothic magick that owe a lot to the Order of Nine Angles. As with the O9A, figuring out which parts are blinds to weed out the uninitiated, and which parts are genuine insights into the deeper esotericism of the LHP is not a simple task - though at least we are saved Myatt's interminable rantings about the Judaeo-Christian "corruption" of Aryan paganism. Which is not to say that the dubious racial overtones are absent, more that they take a back seat to other concerns (threats to murder those who accuse them of being Neo-Nazis notwithstanding).

Ah, and there it is, the explicit mention of human sacrifice and magickal assassination as a vital part of the sinister working that makes the O9A such an target for the aspiring occult polemicist and/or writer of Lovecraftian fiction. Say what you will about their practices, they do at least commit to the Aesthetic of Eeeevil more than your typical "Softcore Satanists".

The book opens with two pieces of short fiction, "Upon the Eve and Hour of the Plutonian King", and "Hermethterith: A River of Blood". The first depicts the magickal assassination of a "mundane" politician through the power of the Dark Gods, and is the usual blood-and-ichor-splattered horrorshow that wouldn't seem out of place in a DVD bargain bin. The second is by far more interesting, describing an initiatory ordeal of the Temple of Night.

This section gives an interesting insight into the praxis of the Temple of Night which immediately distinguishes them from orthodox O9A, as the magick is explicitly qlippothic, and hence anti-qabalistic, whereas the O9A tend towards expunging all Abrahamic content from their practices. Indeed, the direct quotation from Crowley's Vision and the Voice (specifically around the 10th Aethyr and Choronzon) shows a fairly clear split here - whilst the ethos of the work described within is quite radically different to that of Thelema, it's somewhat refreshing to see an author showing their working, rather than regurgitating half-baked Typhonianism with the serial numbers filed off, and claiming it as their own.

Next comes another piece of fiction, presented mostly as a dialogue between an aspirant and an initiate, in which the basis of the book's philosophy is outlined, along with the internal magickal goal of transcending mundane causality, entering a state of formless subjective potential, the chaotic Void. The external goal is here also stated - "disruptions, chaos, and the bedlam that precedes the manner in which change can occur" - which is admitted to be "corrosive to most individuals", who will see it as "horrific, terrible, oppressive, and perhaps altogether evil". This is then followed by the "Codex Nigrum", eleven poetic elaborations of the qlippoth, which go some way to making the matter a little clearer; and a further essay on self which states the nature of the work about as plainly as it can be: "evolution can only exist in states of duality".

Following this explication of the philosophy of the Temple, and interspersed with a brief polemic against V.K. Jehannum (which, one assumes, has somehow become a contractual obligation of sorts among certain LHP publishers), come several rather more technical chapters. The first outlines a thesis on the Phoenician origin of the Qabalah; then comes a section on the methods of entering a "state of absolute concentration on the Abyss", roughly comparable to ideas of inhibitory gnosis, which will be familiar to anyone with a reasonable understanding of meditative techniques. So far, nothing to write home about.

But then comes a rather fascinating observation, emerging from a slightly puzzling reference to Stalin and Marxist dialectical materialism:

"Individual operations are absolutely erroneous, for if you think you are 'commanding' something, you are wrong. We are all working towards and [sic] natural and necessary evolution: ourselves and the dark forces, who through meditation are revealed as having the very same source: the Noumenon."

One might easily consider this assertion to be a "dark mirror" to various right-hand-path themes of working in concert with God, the Holy Guardian Angel, or Reality in general. By this system, it is less that one is doing one's own Will, but the Anti-Will of Unreality.

A few more general methodological tips are given, with the usual expectation of basing one's practices on one's own experience rather than dogmatically sticking to some codified set of rituals. The chaote practice of "paradigm piracy" crops up, with the authors acknowledging and recommending the adoption of certain elements of other systems for temporary use on a pragmatic basis.

More meaty stuff is served up in the next chapter, which deals with the eleven-stage system of initiatory levels. As with many similar LHP groups, one begins at Nehemoth, the qlippoth corresponding to Malkuth, and moves along the lightning-flash pathway to Thaumiel, before finally jumping into the abyssal void. Various required workings are given for the individual grades, following the usual schema of "variations on a theme of pathworking", "occult pyramid schemes", "writing that shit down" and "uncomfortable ordeals". The (5)=[6] equivalent refer explicitly to the O9A concept of the Stargame, the only occult board game more inexplicable than Enochian Chess; other concepts are generally in keeping with anti-qabalistic themes.

And, of course, it wouldn't be an O9A-inspired system without a spot of magickal assassination. Six, to be precise, plus those accrued by one's own initiates. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that for a person to reach (7)=[4] requires at least fifteen murders; one wonders how one is supposed to have time for anything else, or how much the Temple must spend on lawyers. It is probably for the best that most prosecutors would struggle to proceed on a charge of "murder via acausal demonic entity", but I digress.

The most interesting concepts from this chapter are those of "insight roles", which are again adapted from the O9A, but deserve some exploration. These are split into "alchemical" and "aeonic" insight roles, and in general involve a subsuming of one's self into some social role or subculture for a period of time. The preliminary, alchemical insight role, involves an immersive involution of one's normal means of approaching the world, a concept that has cropped up in numerous occult traditions since at least Crowley (implicitly in Liber Jugorum, and rather more explicitly in Thien Tao). An example given, which is also rather typical of the satanic-revolutionary positioning of the Temple as a whole, is of a conservative person joining a socialist or communist group for a period of time.

The second, Aeonic insight roles, are a longer-term venture which cover the majority of the aspirant's future workings. Again, this is pure O9A in conception, though thankfully with somewhat less of the swivel-eyed antisemitism.

After some more Legends-of-the-Overfiend-esque magickal murderfic, most notable for the wonderful phrase "the Martian valor flowed through her Fleshgate", and a spot of rather turgid science fiction, comes a brief description of "Traditional Satanism", seemingly aimed at anyone who hasn't been paying attention and thinks that this has anything to do with Anton LaVey.  Thereafter follows another piece of short fiction on psychic vampirism, which one might as well subtitle "I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going". The book then closes with some elementary instructions in using planetary hours, some slightly difficult-to-read tables of correspondence clearly printed from Excel screenshots, and two extremely blurry diagrams of the Tree of Daath that made me briefly worry that my mother was right about the OTO making you go blind.

In summary, (6)=[4]/(10)=[1]. Hardly groundbreaking, but certainly more lucid than Kenneth Grant's Mauve Period. As with all such texts, it should probably come with a "Danger: Memetic Hazard!" sticker, or at least a disclaimer that all acts of magick displayed within are performed by trained professionals on a closed reality-tunnel, and that one should probably not try this at home.

The book can be found for purchase on Amazon here.

[Editor's note - Fr. AM has not been assassinated by the O9A at the time of publishing, likely due to his decision to declare himself magickally and legally dead for tax purposes]