DNA wrote: › ... once I'd reached "Mirroriel" I actually felt as though I were dreaming: almost as though I didn't didn't know whether I was Grant, taking part in his visions, or narrating them. It's also quite mind-boggling in that there is so much information.
It is very profound and much deeper than I'd originally anticipated- it's much more than just a novel with little bits of History and Occult lore interwoven. I don't think I've ever come upon an author who induces a feeling of traversing the Mauve Zone with a book. As I said, it really is profound. Isn't that the same with all KG books though?

Gordan wrote: › I have read recently all of Kenneth Grant's fiction available in the book format and I utterly enjoyed it. The first cut is the deepest and for that reason my favourite is "Gamaliel" but the truth is that the books are at the same time very different and very similar to each other (seems I'm reaching new levels of platitude today). Blurring of the distinction between the wake world and dream world is one of Grant's great achievements. In some weird way, I find his fiction more easy to relate to: it somehow makes more sense. All in all, Grant's writing in general seems to be governed by the logic of a dream and I agree with people who claim that to read his material is somewhat equivalent to the experience of initiation. At least, it is an entry into a very strange world.

Gordan wrote: › I appreciate your comments, Frater Ixaxaar. I am quite certain that Grant's books unfold through many layers and on may dimensions. I was, for example, totally surprised by the ending of "Gamaliel," because the story is rather dark and messy and transgressive, but it has a Buddhist finale: that all this swirl of desires is impermanent, painful and void of the self (I'm paraphrasing). The non-fiction is for me somewhat more difficult to digest, because in a sense (perhaps not very wisely) magical non-fiction calls for an implementation of its principles in one's everyday life, and I think that Grant's message is occult: hidden and dark in the literal sense, but not to be taken literally itself. Fiction allows you to voluntarily suspend your disbelief more easily. I'm turning myself in a rhetorical pretzel but all I'm trying to say is that to me Grant's writing truly is magical, although I cannot say that I always catch his meaning.

hawthornrussell wrote: › What i found really deep was that Grant's style of writing was making a point in itself in Against the Light. The writing made no distinction between the various states of being/awareness encountered by the author and Margaret Leesing when they started to scry. I think this is intentional on Grant's part, in that he is making a point that when you get to a certain point in Magick or mysticism there is no discrimination between waking conscious states and the deeper levels of being. Grant raises this in his book "At the Feet of the Guru" in the chapter The Admantine Way, where the concept of Shushupti ( dreamless sleep) is discussed. So by the time Uncle Phineas is introduced to the story his presence is just has "real" and "solid" has the protagonist and Leesing. To the casual reader this might be awkward to grasp but when you get into a deep level of awareness such has Shushupti there is no separation since there is nothing to separate in the first place.

In that sense Grants writing is more like a cipher than a piece of fiction, in showing what the protagonist has to experience just to navigate beyond waking consciousness.

magispiegel wrote: › DNA,
On a personal note I am studying, contemplating and doing much work with these 'potent termina' which Andahadna mentions in the Maat Complex. It would be interesting to read this part of the book you mention again.

magispiegel wrote: › DNA,

If it is some kind of sea monster in the narrative, then Grant is somehow arousing in his reader the ophidian symbolism/mythos, being an allegorical suggestion of the magickal radiations which seep through Daath from outside, and into this planetary round from the lens of Andromeda.

On Pg. 160, Kenneth Grant, Outside the Circles of Time (1st Edition), there is an interesting paragraph on the symbolism of the sea-monster (fish-goat), which is described as a secret formula of the Aeon of Maat. He also mentions the magickal mirror etc.

On a personal note I am studying, contemplating and doing much work with these 'potent termina' which Andahadna mentions in the Maat Complex. It would be interesting to read this part of the book you mention again.

I am just responding to your post in a reflexive fashion, as I do not have ATL to hand at the moment.

Best Wishes

Charles

DNA wrote: › I was just reading the book last night, and I was wondering, what is the creature that attacks Margaret Leesing in the cave?? Is it some form of sea monster?