The meeting at Treadwells Bookshop last night to hear Michael Staley speak on Lam was well attended, the basement room being filled to capacity with roughly 50 people attending. Michael Staley is a prominent member of the Typhonian OTO and has seen AC’s drawing of Lam, which was given to Kenneth Grant by AC in 1945. To the disappointment of many, however, he did not bring AC’s original with him. After a “break the ice” session with wine and snacks, Christina of Treadwells, our hostess for the evening, led us all downstairs, where Michael was waiting to deliver his talk. Christina introduced us to him and explained the format of the evening. Once the introductions were complete, Michael began speaking. He began hesitantly, but soon got into his stride. His talk could be divided into three sections. Firstly, he gave some background into AC’s presence in America 1914-1919, his relationship with Roddie Minor, a description of the Almanantrah Working and the way AC used Minor as his seer. Michael pulled no punches for the assembled gathering, detail of the drugs used and an outline of Minor’s visions were described. Apparently Crowley was very interested in Minor’s comments concerning an egg, which AC had previously encountered during the earlier Ab-ul-diz Working. Michael then moved on to discuss Lam and how this entity had “broken through” during the working with Roddie Minor, and pointed out that AC had described to Kenneth Grant that his picture of Lam was drawn from life. At this point, I looked around the room and noticed that many of the people attending were listening with rapt attention! Michael obviously had noticed this himself and warmed to his subject. To my surprise I also noticed that a number of people had nodded off, no doubt due to the fine wine provided earlier! Michael then discussed his own interpretation of Lam as a gateway and described some techniques (which seemed to me to be based on GD methods of visualisation) in which a passage to the other side could be achieved by meditation on the image. After a prolonged round of applause questions were invited from the floor, many of which discussed the alien/ufo connection and the similarity of Lam to classic abductee reports of “grey” aliens. One interesting speaker pointed out that similar images could be traced back through Lovecraft to HG Wells and offered to provide material to support his observation. The talk came to an end and we all went back upstairs to mingle, Christina insisting that everyone spoke to at least 3 others before leaving! Michael stayed quite a while and kindly spoke with several people. Lastly, I found the talk fascinating, but I felt that it could have been improved by expanding the description of the Amalantrah Working, for example other people were involved (Charles Stansfeld Jones, Mary Desti, Elsa Linke etc) during this lengthy Working which took place January 1918 – June 1918. However, it was a fascinating talk delivered in some style by Michael and grateful thanks are offered to Christina of Treadwells for organising it.
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