Alex Sumner's Blog, page 54

Attention Book Bloggers! (Please share this post)

You now have the opportunity to get a free review copy of my forthcoming novel, “This Is Not A Fairy Story” in advance of its official release on August 22nd 2012.

This is a [dark] fantasy novel, featuring Guy Shepardson, the character I introduced in the story “The Demon Detective” and features astral projection, the occult, and M/F *cough* romance *cough* (M/F = male / fae, in case you were wondering).

However, I will only be letting a select number of readers get a review copy, and only then if you fulfill these critieria:

You are a book reviewer or you maintain a book review blog which I have heard of; and
You undertake to publish a review about the book on reading it.

In order to take advantage of this offer, please leave a message with details of your blog or website and how I may get in touch with you (use the Contact Alex page to message me privately).

Thanks!

Alex.

Filed under: The Demon Detective, This Is Not A Fairy Story

What The Stars Have In Store For Liam Gallagher (vlog)

In response to the news that Liam Gallagher will perform at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, I use my powers of astrology to predict what lies in store for the erstwhile Oasis front-man.

By taking Liam’s birth data (21st September 1972, at Burnage in Manchester) I was able to compare his natal chart with one drawn up for the day of the closing ceremony (12th August 2012, Stratford, east London), and analyse the transits formed thereby. Fortunately the news is good – as I explain in this vlog:

Filed under: Comment Tagged: Closing Ceremony, Liam Gallagher, Oasis, Olympics 2012, vlog, Wonderwall, Youtube

How To Use Enochian Magick To Achieve Success!

Review: “Dr Dee,” London Coliseum, Saturday 7th July 2012

“Dr Dee,” the opera by Damon Albarn and Rufus Norris.

So there I was in London’s West End, weaving my way in and out of people wearing rainbow-coloured attire, en route to the English National Opera at the London Coliseum to see the matinée performance of “Doctor Dee.” Given that John Dee was such a pivotal figure in the Western Mystery Tradition – and remains so today – I found the idea of creating an opera about him curious. The idea that somebody famous like Damon Albarn would do so,and put it on in a major West End venue was even more curious, so I thought I’d better go investigate. Here then are my impressions of the event.

The venue was sold out. I scanned the audience, but I could not see anyone who looked obviously like an Enochian Magickian, except possibly a sinister couple dressed all in black. I was wearing a PELE ring all the time but nobody clocked it! No: instead I would estimate that the vast majority of the audience were there simply because they had been fans of Blur from back in the day – some were old enough now to bring their children with them. I did detect a sizeable number of “habitual opera goers” who appeared to be neither fans of Blur nor interested in the story of John Dee, but had just turned up because it was the pretentious thing to do.

Inside the auditorium, I immediately noticed that the outline of a large Sigillum Dei Aemeth had been marked on the stage. The lights darkened and a winged messenger announced the beginning of the performance: a raven flew down from “the gods” and alighted on stage, before obediently scampering off into the wings. 

Dr Dee, by Damon Albarn

There is an inevitable urge to compare the live performance with the soundtrack album which is currently available. In my opinion the former far surpasses the latter. Live, it is as much a work of dance, mime and even son et lumiere as it is of music. There are two sets of musicians: an orchestra hidden in the pit,  whilst Damon Albarn and a group of musicians with Elizabethan instruments sit in a gantry which, during the performance, is raised above the stage. Rather than a “conventional” (read: old-fashioned) opera, it is staged in a deliberately expressionistic style in order to illustrate the story.

So for example the first appearance of Dee is as an old man on his deathbed, which is wheeled around stage by his daughter. The rest of the story is then told in flashback – although even as Dee is going about his adventures, the figure of the daughter pushing the deathbed is periodically seen in the shadows at the back of the stage, reminding us of his unfortunate destiny.

Dee’s rise as a man of learning is depicted in a dance sequence in which a dancer (disguised as the character) figuratively speed reads books which transform into endless streams of paper. Interestingly, the “endless streams of paper” later becomes the material which makes up the walls of the set in the various scenes – suggesting that Dee’s life was literally defined – or indeed limited – by his books and his obsession with learning.

The story though is a straightforward tragedy. Dee rises to prominence as a scholar and gets a rare chance to prove himself by casting an electional horoscope for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I. The coronation is a success, and the new Elizabethan age buoys Dee’s fortunes – which include meeting and marrying his beautiful wife Jane. But Dee wants more – and into his life comes Edward Kelley (sung as a castrato, which is quite ironic given the Plot-Point in Act Two). With Kelley’s skrying Dee dares to aspire to the ultimate goal – not just human knowledge, but Divine Knowledge.

However, whilst Dee becomes obsessed with stealing this fire from heaven, he is ignorant Kelley staring long and lustily at his wife. Eventually tensions come to ahead. With his reputation under attack, Dee bullies Kelley into more skrying – at which point Kelley claims that the spirits are telling Dee to share Jane with him. Dee, who by now has had his vanity well and truly inflated by the spirit communications, cannot bring himself to admit that the same spirits who flattered him with the promise of Divine Knowledge before could be lying to him now (a classic case of Cognitive Dissonance!) agrees to let Kelley have his way with her. (Interestingly although Jane Dee was wearing a shift throughout, there was the merest hint of the Cup of Babalon visible at this point!) In short order Dee sees his life fall apart – his marriage ruined, his public reputation destroyed from accusations of “conjuring,” and he dies as an old and broken man.

Hence: Albarn places the blame for Dee’s ruin only partly on Kelley, but mainly on Dee himself. Dee’s lust for power – in the form of knowledge – obsessed him so much as to give him a towering ego. Kelley, whilst a rogue, was however merely motivated by natural inclinations of lust towards Jane, and resentment towards Dee.

In assessing a work like this, the question naturally arises: how much does Damon Albarn really know about the occult? In the press he has been evasive. When asked if he really believed in magic, he replied: “Cycling round London at 4am on a sunny morning – you don’t get more magical than that.” It is however obvious that he knows more than he is letting on. On the CD of the opera there is a cheeky sample of Aleister Crowley reciting an Enochian call (the sample is missing from the live performance). Even more tellingly, on the CD the first track is entitled “The Golden Dawn.” This incidentally was not played on Saturday when I went to see it, except very softly as the audience were taking their seats at the beginning.

More obviously though, many of the graphics that make up the Son et Lumiere are adapted from Dee’s magical manuscripts, for example the Tabula Bonorum Angelorum and the seals of the 91 Governors.

So one could say that Damon Albarn has used Enochian Magick to create a successful opera! Which is probably a more impressive feat than any Enochian magician has ever managed. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the current run has sold out, as indeed did the previous run in Manchester, this is unlikely to be one of those ongoing West End productions that will keep on going. The production is too heavily reliant on a unique set of performers, of which the most obvious example is Damon Albarn himself. It is hard to see the run being ever extended by changing the cast periodically, which is how most long-running West End hits sustain themselves. “Dr Dee” of necessity will only run for as long as Albarn commits himself to it. This is also why it could only transfer to e.g. Broadway if Albarn went to live in New York for sometime, which admittedly is theoretically possible. Hence, if I were given to prognosticate, we should expect to see a DVD of the performance being released sometime in the future.

Filed under: Occult Tagged: Damon Albarn, Dr Dee, Enochian

So What Will They Do With The LHC Now?

Not only have Scientists found God, they can now have Mass as well!!! This finding of the Higgs-Boson is all very well and good, but there are two rather obvious (to my mind) questions which need answering, viz. -

How is mankind going to make use of the Higgs-Boson now it’s actually been found; and
What the hell are they going to do with the Large Hadron Collider now???

Let’s face it, there is now a large circular tunnel underneath Switzerland which overnight has been turned into a White Elephant. So what I would like for the many millions of readers of this blog to do is to post their funniest suggestion for the what to do with a Large Hadron Collider that’s going spare as a comment to this blog-post.

The best suggestion will win a free autographed copy of my newest book, This Is Not A Fairy Story – due out this August. Closing date is Friday 13th July 2012, or as soon as CERN admit they got it wrong and haven’t found the Higgs-Boson at all, whichever comes sooner.

Filed under: Publications Tagged: cern, Competition, higgs-boson, large hadron collider, lhc, This Is Not A Fairy Story

The Order of Great Osiris The Saviour

Florence Farr

So there I was in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London, checking out their extensive collection of original Golden Dawn material, when I came across something I hadn’t seen before, so I presume it had only been recently been catalogued. Namely: the rituals of “The Order of Great Osiris The Saviour.”  This apparently was a post-Golden Dawn order devised by Florence Farr.

I have no evidence that the Order ever got beyond the planning stage: however Farr did manage to write out a full set of rituals for it. In a note appended to the first ritual, she wrote that she received them from “the Akashic Records” between 1899 and 1900.

The rituals themselves consist of a series of ceremonies intended to be performed at very specific times of the year: mainly when the Sun is conjunct certain of the fixed stars (mainly the Royal stars); but also there is at least one full moon ritual as well. Each ritual centres around the adoration of one particular Egyptian God: Isis, Osiris, Horus, Thoth, Hathor etc. There is a lot of use of mantra and indeed silent contemplation throughout the rituals, so it would appear that the intention was to lead the initiate into a state of mystical consciousness as he or she participated in the ceremony.

Farr’s rituals bear little resemblance to those of the Golden Dawn. There is no “Egyptian magic as seen through a Victorian prism” of the GD, instead the symbolism is practically all ancient Egyptian (though unlike any discovered by archaeological means). Curiously though, some of the descriptions of the Royal stars bear a passing resemblance to the 7=4 ceremony of the Stella Matutina, so I wonder if this was not Florence Farr’s attempt to channel higher grade rituals herself.

Anyway: I leave you with artwork drawn by Farr herself:

Osiris and Harpocrates – drawn by Florence Farr, circa 1900

Hathor and Thoth – drawn by Florence Farr, circa 1900

Horus – illustrated by Florence Farr, circa 1900

Filed under: Occult Tagged: Florence Farr, Golden Dawn, UGLE

Shall We Kill The President? Free for Independence Day

Shall We Kill The President? © Alex Sumner 2012

People of America! To celebrate your nation’s birthday, you now have the opportunity to download my novella, Shall We Kill The President? free from Smashwords.com.

This follows the sexy adventures of Guy Shepardson, “The Demon Detective,” as he takes a trip to Washington DC and gets into a load of scrapes with Vampires, Demons, and people who want to bring down the entire fabric of American society – and who would dearly love Guy out of the way permanently.

Download “Shall We Kill The President?” from Smashwords NOW by clicking this link and entering the coupon code PC22V.

Thanks!

Filed under: Shall We Kill The President? Tagged: Dark fantasy, Free giveaway, Independence Day, July 4th

July Sale At Smashwords

You are now able to download The Magus, Opus Secunda, Licence To Depart and Shall We Kill The President for $1.49 – 25% off the usual price – from Smashwords.com. This is a special offer for July 2012 only.  At Smashwords you can whichever ebook format is most convenient for you – Kindle, Nook, Kobo, PDF, etc etc.

To take advantage of this offer, click this link now!

Filed under: Licence To Depart, Opus Secunda, Publications, Shall We Kill The President?

Hello

Welcome to all the new readers I have picked up today through Bloggers.com. Welcome also if you’re visiting this for the first time.

If you like sexy action stories packed with lots of horror, dark fantasy and the occult, be sure to check out my books on Amazon.

I love interaction with the fans so please add me on Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks for stopping by!

Filed under: Site Update Tagged: Bloggers.com

QOTD

Lou Reed

“There are problems in these times,

But – wooh! – none of them are mine!”

Lou Reed, Beginning To See The Light.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Beginning To See The Light, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground

The Brotherhood of the Essenes

Zooming down the motorway at a hundred miles per hour – swerving suddenly off and down a country lane – tyres throwing up cascades of water as we rocketed through the huge puddles caused by the near flooding conditions. A few more twists and turns in the Moon-less darkness which storm and cloud had further conspired to obscure, then coming to a SCREECHING HALT… outside Glastonbury Town Hall.

I got out and checked the time on my iPhone – 10.30pm. We had made the mad dash from London to the Vale of Avalon in three and a half hours, although negotiating the rush-hour traffic out of the centre of the capital had devoured one hour of that. Our purpose: to attend the annual solstice Convocation of “The Brotherhood of the Essenes.”

Now you may be wondering why we attempted such a precisely timed excursion across fair Albion instead of taking a more leisurely pace. Indeed, this is what a lot of our friends did and made good use of the time saved at the pub across the road from the Town Hall. No – what actually happened is that we actually had a lodge meeting earlier in the day in London which we could not easily get out of. Therefore, instead of knocking the G-Town trip on the head, yours truly had the crazy idea that if we jumped in our cars immediately the meeting in London ended, we could get to the Convocation just in time. As it happened we succeeded: we got there with half an hour to spare.

“But what,” I hallucinate that I hear you ask, “is ‘The Brotherhood of the Essenes,’ and why are they so important?”

The Essenes are an esoteric organisation that has been going since 1920 – at least in their present incarnation. They usually meet only privately except once a year – on June 21st, when they hold their annual convocation which is open to the public. For this they hire Glastonbury town hall. They have a number of strange doctrines, some of which are recognisable as coming from the Qabalah, Astrology, and Solomonic Magick, but some are downright bizarre (even for someone like me). Usually the Essenes are a secretive bunch, but we had managed to prize a lot of their secret teachings out of one of their members by the time-honoured method of taking him down the pub and getting him drunk.

When I went in the venue a decent sized crowd (at least a hundred or so) had already taken their places. Amongst the more soberly dressed attendees I saw a fair few strangely arrayed in bright colours – not members of the Essenes, you understand, but Glastonbury residents! In the main body of the hall chairs were set out as for a public meeting. On the stage, there were half a dozen chairs (for the senior officers of the Brotherhood) as well as a throne, with two pet-cushions to either side of it. Above the throne was a crucifix, whilst on either side of the crucifix were – strangely enough, was the portrait of a dog.

I later got the inside info on the dogs – apparently they belonged to Jesus! Or more accurately, they were His companions, so I suppose that in addition to the 12 human apostles, the Dogs were two Apostles to the Animal Kingdom which were not mentioned in the Bible. During the ceremony, whenever an Essene got up to speak, he would first bow to the throne + pet cushions, so I presume that the former was the place of the God-form of Jesus, whilst the cushions were those of the two canines. “Dog-forms,” if you will!

On the stroke of 11pm, a black robed gentleman struck a large gong (which I want for my wizard’s tower) to mark the beginning of the meeting. The whole company of the Brotherhood of the Essenes themselves processed in, in their impressive regalia. From what I gathered, they arranged the convocation in three parts. The first part consisted of some prayers and hymns, but mainly of a series of talks about the nature of the Order, its current work, its history, and the structure of the second part of the meeting. This turned out to be a powerful rite of Angel Magick. The third part essentially consisted of taking refreshments and winding down, although this itself had an important spiritual role, according to them.

Here then are my impressions of the first half of the ceremony.

1. The Essenes are at heart a Christian organisation. They incorporate many Christian prayers and hymns into their ceremonies, most notably the Lord’s Prayer and the “Nunc Dimittis.” They also believe that the Second Coming will take place in this the Age of Aquarius.

2. They are also a thorougly Anglo-centric organisation. They believe that Jesus Himself came to Glastonbury two thousand years ago, in addition to Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail. Hence why the current meeting was being held there.

3. Consequently they like singing William Blake’s “Jerusalem.” A LOT.

4. The Essenes seem to place a lot of importance on certain teachings which have been received clairvoyantly or mediumistically, and hence on influential teachers who have appeared within their ranks.

5. Most significantly, however, and this was the theme most especially emphasised throughout the first half of the convocation, they are into the Spirituality of the Animal Kingdom IN A BIG WAY. This obviously links in with their fascination with the Godly-Dogs.

Their attitude may be briefly summed up in this way: the idea that man is somehow superior to animals is a purely anthropocentric conceit, but it is not how God sees things. Instead, God has a Plan for the Universe: and He has ordained that Animals have a role to play in that Plan. Hence it is highly important for man to respect the spiritual nature of the animal kingdom, to teach humility if nothing else.

What this means in practice is that the Essenes are all Vegetarians, and actively support charities concerned with animal welfare, and ending animal cruelty. Moreover one of the speakers urged those present to get involved politically trying to get the ways of both the UK and countries abroad (e.g. China) changed for the better.

The second part of the ceremony started at precisely 1am British Summmer Time, or Midnight GMT. All of the attendees formed a ring around the circumference of the hall – although we were told not to actually touch one another – while the principle officers placed themselves in the centre aisle. The Supreme Magus then led an actual magical ceremony which consisted of invoking the names of a series of Angels. From memory I recognised some of these from various Solomonic grimoires. I must admit that as an observer I subjectively felt this long invocation to be very powerful. It had been previously explained to me that the object of this particular ceremony was to thank the Angels for their work for the previous year and to welcome the ones who would aid humanity in the coming one.

At the climax of the invocation, the Supreme Magus announced “Now is the time,” whereupon, in the three minutes of silence which followed, as we had been coached to do so beforehand each attendee mentally made their own petition to the Angels for what they wanted to achieve, in the following form:

Prospering power almighty,

Prosper all my ways.

Fill my life with health and peace,

Lighten all my days.

In the name of the Holy Holy Holy

TET – RA – GRAM – MA – TON

I petition and beseech that …

I ask this in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

YOD – HEH – VAV – HEH

World without end,

Amen!

This was explained to me that all those petitioning would, as a result of the Invocation, receive Angelic helpers that would attach themselves to the individuals throughout the year. As was ominously emphasised: “If you ask for iron bars, you will get iron bars.”

So in conclusion, therefore, what we have is an organisation which holds some very strange beliefs. Personally I thought them no more implausible than most of what occultists are regularly asked to believe as part of their training, although it did freak out a lot of others I was with that night who were completely unable to shift their paradigms, even for one second. On the other hand, the Essenes have been able to make a successful magical order with their unusual beliefs – one which has lasted longer than any Golden Dawn organisation, for example! Moreover, the Ceremony of the Angelic Names and its purported effects are an excellent way to test whether the Essenes are actually onto something.

Filed under: Occult Tagged: age of aquarius, Angelic Magick, Essenes, Glastonbury