Magical Revival, Grant Starfire
When preparing The Magical Revival for republication in 2010, I wanted to use a colour photograph of the stélé. A friend of mine had been to Cairo a few years earlier and taken several photographs at the Museum. The resolution wasn't very good, and there were some problems due to reflection from the glass cabinet, but after some image correction work we had a good enough image to use.
Kenneth Grant expected that we would use the photograph of Crowley's replica stélé as published in The Equinox of the Gods in 1936. However, it was my opinion that we should use the more recent photograph, and after discussion of the colour differences between the two images, that's what we agreed. Hence the pupil in the eye.
I imagine that the plates of the stélé in Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law were reproduced from the colour plates of Crowley's replica in The Equinox of the Gods.
@ignant666 Hopefully your book arrives today. Only 5 more days before you won't need it any more...
Maybe it was introduced by an idealistical employee who wanted to make sure the copy would always be distinguishable from the original?
Exactly that.
@lashtal I forgot to ask: is this a thing among Egyptian museums when giving out copies of artefacts? You sounded very sure.
@the_real_simon_iff - Listed as "Out For Delivery" by the Post Office.
Have my rubber gloves, and fireplace tongs, ready! So excited!
Guess what the nice mail-man just brought me? About to learn all of Ol' Fakey's secrets!
@ignant666 - Best sit down, as shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent... and watch out for those... uhem... punctuation marks... 😯
punctuation marks...
Whoever thought that periods, semi-colons, and apostrophes would bring down the whole House of Cards Crowley?
Alright, i have now completed my first read-through.
Short review: Just laughably bad, much worse than my low expectations.
An "unquestionable" solution" this ain't, nor is it marked by "the most sublime simplicity", or indeed any trace of any simplicity. "Mindbogglingly convoluted mystical mathematics" is more like it (a phrase RTC uses to critique other solutions- pot/kettle?). As to "immediate conviction"- oh, please.
This book isn't going to convince anyone of anything, nor will it shake anyone's faith in Ol' Fakey one iota. His solutions to both the cipher and grid page are heavily dependent on special pleading, giant leaps of logic, and make zero sense anyway. He still has no straight answer as to the whole Aiwass' GPS issue, and can't even accurately quote the title of the wikipedia article that supplies the total of his knowledge here.
Worth buying, i suppose, for the two quotes from me (one without attribution), and the screed about me that does not mention me by name. And this won't go to the recycling bin, but will be saved as an outstanding addition to my collection of nut literature, along with Is Castration Effective?, and my Jack Chick comics, and the Dr. York material on how disco was enslaving the black man. In the interest of finding something nice to say about this book, it does have quite a nice cover, and has somewhat fewer typos that Bogus (though 4 on one page seems sloppy (p. 61, aka "Jewish Zero")).
It is very hard to imagine that @therealrtc can possibly think anyone will take this utter nonsense seriously. The only answer i can think of is: Maybe this is some sort of very elaborate prank?
Longer review to follow. Will have to wait a couple days to recover.
Thank you very much for your short review.
Will have to wait a couple days to recover.
As you know, just drink a lot of water, take as needed some vitamin C and/or B12, and of course, your libation of choice. All the best.
Longer review to follow. Will have to wait a couple days to recover.
I look forward to your longer review, as I do to Lutz's review. I'd also like to read any favourable reviews of it; there must be some people who think it has substance, judging by the interest that Cole generated on this forum earlier this year.
Short review: Just laughably bad, much worse than my low expectations.
Oh Lord, save us now and the hour of our need which is right now ...
Will have to wait a couple days to recover.
... and which may last for a few days.
(Makes sign of pentagram and departs to get hazmat suit disinfected)
The end of the world called off for a while then?
Is Castration Effective?
Well, is it? Don't leave us hanging!
I also eagerly await your review, but don't strain yourself overmuch on our part. If you think too hard over something crazy, it might start to make sense -- and then you're really in trouble.
I'd also like to read any favourable reviews of it
I think my review is “favorable” without needing to agree with or be convinced by Cole's conclusions. I enjoyed the book but this may be because I enjoy the topic itself and I feel “Race to Conquer” evokes considerations which I am interested in further exploring. As I indicated in my own mini-review (which was, admittedly, restrained as I did not wish to unveil RTC's solution ere readers such as-and especially-Ignant received their copy), I personally think the proposed word “Beglamor” is a painful pill to swallow.
The point where I become most hung up is where it appears that Crowley basically rewrote certain characters in the cipher. RTC's angle is very intriguing (i.e. that there was an intentional message encoded in there but the game changed and so AC had to rub out the evidence). I am wondering if Crowley simply attempted to obscure the cipher-or if his specific “re-letterings” were intended to create a new intentional message.
Both views reject the official Reception Story. I have to say...the textual evidence doesn't look so good for Crowley's account. He was instructed to not muck about with the text-and he then went ahead and did this repeatedly and in many ways.
We might say the “Author” knew that Aleister “The key of joy is disobedience” Crowley would tinker, tweak and trink about with things...and it would be in THOSE efforts that the Transcendental Power would manifest its message through the puppet. This, of course, smacks of Yahweh playing Pharaoh like a marionette in the book of Exodus. It is a VERY religious view of TBOTL. One might say...an Old Aeon view. Aleister tried to bend the book to his ambitious agenda...but AIWASS had OTHER plans. Even in the Prophet's perfidy, the hand of Horus was at work (and, I will add, I am not, myself, entirely opposed to this perspective, “Old Aeon” as I just remarked that such a viewpoint seems).
One thing I take from “eLGMOR” is that there was an original version of the cipher followed by a modified version. The changes made need to be considered in regard to proffered solutions. There IS a particular solution I am very interested in and I need to sort it out in this context. It is not mine (nor is it RTC's) but one which I must give credence to.
The end of the world called off for a while then?
Of course. It always is (called off). Unless it isn't. In which case you won't remember much about it.
So, i read Bogus, but can't find the pdf.
Does Bogus explain more fully the claim that AC 's original Book Of The Law plan was that he would claim that the book was received from "an Egyptian adept" that AC refers to in his diary as "Big Beast", on March 24 1906, and that this date and meeting are encrypted in the cipher? He also posits another probable meeting for March 22 1906. AC would then be not the Beast and Prophet, but "the one who comes after" and solves the cipher
I don't recall these March 1906 dates from Bogus. Are they there?
Does @therealrtc explain how AC met this "Egyptian Adept" "Big Beast" on either March 22, 1906, when he and his wife and child embarked from Hanoi bound for Hong Kong on "a dirty tramp tub", or on March 24, 1906, when said tub was "hanging about off the islands" of Vietnam? See pp. 499-500, Confessions, p. 169 Sutin.
There is one fellow passenger of note, a cowardly Christian missionary, but this person hardly seems likely to be the "Big Beast", unless the detailed description of his cowardice, and AC's disgust at it, is one of those famous "Crowley blinds".
Does RTC just have the year of the diary notes of these March meetings with "Big Beast" wrong? Which would of course utterly destroy his whole cipher solution.
Unfortunately eLGMOR does not include any footnotes or citations of any sources used, such as these diary entries, despite their being the linchpin on which his whole claim stands or falls.
Is Castration Effective?
Well, is it? Don't leave us hanging!
I have not only 2 copies of Is Castration Effective?, but also a copy of Celibacy Guaranteed by the same author (Victor T. Cheney).
It would be fair to say that Mr. Cheney was/is very pro-castration, both for sex offenders (the topic of Is Castration Effective?), and for men in general (the topic of Celibacy Guaranteed, which mentions that "there is even a 'do it yourself method'"). These pamphlets were given out by a man who would attend the American Society of Criminology annual meetings every year in the '90s, and who looked very much like what a possible self-orchiectomy practitioner might look like.
Many of his writings on castration are available through the daemon Google. This appears to be the only topic which ever caused Mr. Cheney to put pen to paper.
i read Bogus, but can't find the pdf.
The last time I looked, Bogus was available at LAShTAL for instant download.
Unfortunately eLGMOR does not include any footnotes or citations of any sources used
I tried that trick with the first submission of my PhD detestation dissertation, and my mentor basically said the same thing you just did.
This appears to be the only topic which ever caused Mr. Cheney to put pen to paper.
But does it work?
Thank you Shiva- should have thought of/remembered that!
Unfortunately eLGMOR does not include any footnotes or citations of any sources used, such as these diary entries, despite their being the linchpin on which his whole claim stands or falls.
@ignant666 There are many more reasons why the claim can't stand or limp or crouch or even hold any position, believe me....
Have now checked Bogus- it quotes the same two March diary entries, one for the 22d and one for the 24th, the latter containing a bit of Arabic that RTC translates as "Big Beast", without providing the source or rationale of this translation in ether book. Bogus does not, in the text discussion, clearly state what year this is supposed to be, nor does it give any citation/source for the diary he is quoting. In a table at the end, it is said that the encounter with "Big Beast" takes place in spring 1906.
So this means that RTC is saying that Ol' Fakey's original story was that the crucial encounter with "Big Beast"/"the Egyptian Adept" who received AL from Aiwass, and subsequently gave it to AC on March 24 1906, definitely took place on a "dirty tramp tub" off the coast of Viet Nam.
In the real world, RTC must have his year wrong, and most likely the diary entry refers to a big of rough trade with a well-endowed swarthy man on March 24 of some other year.
Can anyone familiar with Crowley diaries tell us what his source is here, and what year this actually took place?
Or, if @therealrtc is willing to provide some back-up for his claims, to supplement his normal snark, bluster and arrogance, he could of course easily supply this information, which after all is totally central to the claims of both Bogus and eLGMOR.
Ooops, the cowardly clergyman was on AC's subsequent passage from Hong Kong to Shanghai, not the tub, so he can't be the "Big Beast".
AC actually doesn't mention there being any other passengers besides his family on the cargo ship where he was on March 22 and 24 of 1906.
I can't find any indication that any AC diaries from 1906 have ever been published. The two entries, in both books, include bracketed comments from some editor/commenter- so they must be from some published source, unless the comments are Cole's own- this is not at all clear. Cole must have some source here- what is it?
I am not completely sure, but if I understood RTC right when I had the same questions about the date, his newest theory is this: AC wrote the book consciously in 1904, maybe even earlier. His plan was to be in Egypt in spring 1906 and then tell everybody that he there met a mysterious Egyptian adept named "The Beast" in contact with the Secret Chiefs who gave him the Book of the Law (a Thelemic Anna Sprengel so to say). To prove this he had the meeting's specifics incorporated in the riddle. But not only did he not happen to be in Egypt at this date, nor did he feel the necessity for a middle man anymore. It would be much better if he himself was the contact to the Secret Chiefs (allegedly to beat Jones' lust for "authority" in their new founded order). That's why he changed the riddle (because it would tell the "original" story) and came up with the Cairo story and dated it back to 1904 when he was there with Rose. So there never was a real existing Egyptian Adept named "Beast" he met in Cairo anyway, neither in his original plans nor in his adjusted new story.
At least that's how I understood it. Not that it makes very much sense. But this way RTC could use the riddle's solution as another proof for his "alternate timeline" he invented with Bogus.
Love=Law
Lutz
I can't find any indication that any AC diaries from 1906 have ever been published. Cole must have some source here- what is it?
@ignant666 The whole of the Augeoides Diaries cover 1906, that's why we can be sure where he was at the time. It covers also the incidents when he worked on the comment to L, when he discussed it with Soror Elaine, and when he invoked Aiwass. It also covers the Jones incident about "wanting authority". There's a typescript around and a handwritten version at The Harry Ransom Research Center which differs slightly from the TS. So the diary with "the Beast" which according to AC is the 1904 diary, would be a second diary of 1906.
So you are saying RTC's current story is that AC fabricated AL in 1902, or sometime in 1904 that wasn't his honeymoon in Egypt, or some other time before spring 1906, planning to pretend to receive the Ms. on March 24 1906, when he would arrange to be in Egypt to pretend to receive it, but then scrapped that plan and that's why he was on a cargo ship off the coast of Viet Nam on March 24 1906, unable to meet any person whatsoever.
This is, i suppose, possible, and has some internal logic to it. But if all that is right, how can there be these possibly be these March 22 and 24 1906 diary entries documenting the two meetings with the "Big Beast"/"Egyptian Adept"? Did he fabricate these in advance also?
So the diary with "the Beast" which according to AC is the 1904 diary, would be a second diary of 1906.
Or do these entries occur in a diary that AC says is for 1904, but RTC asserts is actually a diary for 1906, as you seem to imply here?
Very confused. RTC must be citing something here.
This is, i suppose, possible, and has some internal logic to it.
@ignant666 This is what I am saying for some time now. If you buy into the Bogus alternate timeline theory FIRST, than eLGMOR is a supplement supporting it. Even if weird it would be a way to explain certain inconsistencies. Of course it should be the other way round. One should discover certain evidence and THEN distil a certain theory if possible. But since the watermark, Rose's diaries, and now eLGMOR totally suck at being evidence for anything (or even being coherent), I can't buy into it.
Which gives not much hope for the Horus Toy...
Love=Law
Lutz
I am not completely sure, but if I understood RTC right ...
Your rendering approximates my understanding of the overall plot. I have not read the book yet, but I find no conflicting data twixt eLGMOR and your overview.
Conflicting data might be found anywhere and everywhere, with continued research, in this twisted tale of hagiography versus autohagiography, and automatic writing versus fiddling with the styles of letters.
I have now re-read the sections of eLGMOR about these diary entries, several times.
As best i can make out, RTC's claim is that AC fabricated these March 1906 diary entries, along with AL, sometime in summer 1904 at Boleskine, as part of his magickal war with Mathers, intending, two years later in March 1906, to travel to Egypt again, and pretend, on March 24 1906, to receive AL from a mysterious "Egyptian Anna Sprengel" called "Big Beast", who was the Prophet, and whose wife (rather than Crowley's) would be the "Scarlet Woman" having all those loud adulterous three-ways, and thus, two years later, topple Mathers, because he was in touch with The Prophet/Beast, and Mathers wasn't.
This seems like a ludicrous, and very slow, plan to topple Mathers. And the diary entries hardly provide support for the planned future claim, as they are totally cryptic- one would expect Ol' Fakey to do better at his faking, or at least be clearer in lying.
In any case, this initial plan was abandoned, and AC sat on AL til summer 1906, and decided to re-purpose it to give him "authority" over Jones in the nascent A.'. A.'., with himself now re-cast as the "Beast"/"Prophet" screwing the "Scarlet Woman", and he then decided to pretend the fabricated "March 1906" diaries were actually March 1904 diaries from before the fake "Reception" a few days later.
The "fabricated" "March 1906" diary entries verbatim consist of
March 22 X.P.B.
E.P.D. in 84 m.
March 24 Met [Arab script translated by RTC as "Big Beast"] again.
Such cryptic shorthand in AC's diaries generally refers to sex acts with men, doesn't it? A man having some clandestine rough trade in some Cairo men's toilet or bathhouse while on his honeymoon might very possibly be circumspect in recording these things in his diary, if these were March 1904 entries.
Can anyone tell me if these entries appear in any AC diary for for any year?
I know i promised a review, and one is coming eventually, if i can ever figure out what exactly RTC is claiming in this book.
@therealrtc has gone uncharacteristically silent (at least in this thread) since i started reading his book. Of course, he could clear up all my confusion in a couple minutes- why doesn't he?
Can anyone tell me if these entries appear in any AC diary for for any year?
@ignant666 They appear in the "Book of Results" (Yorke OS 27) that cover the time in Cairo in 1904.
Thank you!
RTC's theory makes very little sense, now that i am pretty sure i understand it.
Why, in fabricating AL during summer 1904 at Boleskine, and fabricating evidence of receiving it from a "Big Beast" in Egypt, did Ol' Fakey not simply back-date his Egyptian fake story to his very recent honeymoon in Egypt, instead of setting it up for a future return in two years?
Then he would immediately win his magick war with Mathers, which after all, according to RTC was the entire point of fabricating this book, instead of waiting two years, and having the considerable expense of returning to Egypt to "receive" it.
This revised "Ol' Fakey" timeline would still explain why there is no direct mention of the reception in his Cairo diaries, since he hadn't fabricated it yet in March. And note that RTC's "Horus Toy" claim seems to rest on the claim that something momentous happened in Cairo during his honeymoon, but that thing wasn't actually receiving The Book Of The Law.
We know RTC has a history of changing and revising his claims over time. The problem with this timeline, which is much more plausible than the Bogus/eLGMOR timeline, is that it destroys the eLGMOR cipher solution, which requires that March 24 1906 be the [pre-faked] date of the delivery of AL from the "real" (invented) Prophet to AC.
It also doesn't explain why Crowley did not want to be the Beast and Prophet himself, and have his own wife be the Scarlet Woman commanded by the gods to have lots of kinky sex, rather than be the mere "one who comes after", and who merely got to meet the glamorous sexy Beast.
It would be very easy to convince me that AC fabricated AL in the summer of 1904 out of some sex-magick experience in Cairo that spring, with the goal of toppling Mathers, and all others, by virtue of his status as Prophet of the New Aeon, and voice of the Secret Chiefs. But AC casting himself as the Errand-Boy of the Prophet, rather than as the Prophet, seems totally out of character.
ignant666: "... note that RTC's "Horus Toy" claim seems to rest on the claim that something momentous happened in Cairo during his honeymoon, but that thing wasn't actually receiving The Book Of The Law."
What was"that something momentous" that "happened in Cairo during his honeymoon", that "wasn't actually receiving The Book Of The Law."?
What was"that something momentous" that "happened in Cairo during his honeymoon", that "wasn't actually receiving The Book Of The Law."?
Good question. I will leave it to The True One Who Comes After to answer as i have no idea.
Fear not, my brethren, for the Magicole Hair is amongst you...
@wellreadwellbred - You are sooo slipping back into your old aeon ways... Tut, tut. - "RTC's "Horus Toy" claim seems to rest on the claim that something momentous happened in Cairo during his honeymoon, but that thing wasn't actually receiving The Book Of The Law." - No, no, no, no, no... No! The Horus Toy™ would function perfectly had Crowley left uni and become a plumber - In this instance, it just wouldn't be called The Horus Toy™
The spectacular 'something' which occurred at the Spring Equinox I've already outlined several times.
@ignant666 - "But AC casting himself as the Errand-Boy of the Prophet, rather than as the Prophet, seems totally out of character." - Crowley's initial plan was a variation on the Golden Dawn 'Founding Documents' story (itself a fabrication). In place of finding a skeleton ritual, leading to the German adept Mrs Spangles, Crowley's fiction involves him receiving documents from an Egyptian adept (as Crowley plainly states numerous times - See multiple instances Crowleyites prefer to look away from). To subsequently (self-)validate his claim, Crowley incorporates into the document a riddle in which is encoded (amongst other things) the location and date he (allegedly) met and received the document (i.e. Legis) from the Egyptian Adept. But HIS PLAN CHANGED. As such, he no longer needed to be in Cairo on that particular date - And wasn't.
Crowley's original scheme didn't write himself as a messenger-boy. He actually played the role of the 'one chosen' (by name, in the cipher) to roll out the red carpet for a New Equinox (only after ol' Fakey changed his plan did it become a New Aeon).
Crowley's original scheme didn't write himself as a messenger-boy. He actually played the role of the 'one chosen' (by name, in the cipher) to roll out the red carpet for a New Equinox (only after ol' Fakey changed his plan did it become a New Aeon).
Amazing that you persist with this drivel.
Crowley's original scheme didn't write himself as a messenger-boy. He actually played the role of the 'one chosen' (by name, in the cipher) to roll out the red carpet for a New Equinox (only after ol' Fakey changed his plan did it become a New Aeon).
But, of course, your eLGMOR cipher solution does not include any such thing. He is not actually mentioned by "name". but only by a number derived by incredibly baroque, in fact, "mindbogglingly convoluted mystical mathematics".
For the benefit of non-possessors of eLGMOR, RTC's solution is
418 2 418 24 03 1906
A BeGLAMOR? RSVP TO L
The letter "I" hangs out til the last minute, but then is dropped as inconvenient to reaching the desired solution. There is also an even more baroque Qabalistic "analysis" that depends on a counterclockwise reading of the cipher on a circular band. Don't ask.
And yes i know that's 32 characters (and would have been 33 if we hadn't agreed to just ignore that "I") to decipher 30 characters. I just work here.
But, more importantly, the idea that AC thought that pulling out this deciphered "proof" that he was the Holy CHOSEN Delivery-Boy of the NEW Revelation of the Great Beast And Prophet Of The New Equinox would convince anyone with an IQ higher than a house-plant to believe in his planned fraud is just ridiculous.
Why wouldn't he have faked something more intelligible/convincing as proof or as anything?
Incidentally, i haven't said anything about the Aiwass GPS/grid page section because that part is easy to understand, and way more ridiculous than the cipher part. His solution there, even if we accept the means of arriving at it, makes zero sense, and is just totally pointless.
He actually played the role of the 'one chosen' (by name, in the cipher) to roll out the red carpet for a New Equinox (only after ol' Fakey changed his plan did it become a New Aeon).
@therealrtc Do you seriously believe that your "solutions" [sic!] to the riddle and the cipher would have anyone not on drugs believe that AC was "the chosen one"? I mean like seriously? "A Beglamor? RSVP to L?" Oh, yeah, this Crowley surely is the chosen one! It says so in this mysterious document he received from Anna Sprengel II. I even deem those gematrimnastics bringing new "chosen ones" every year or so more plausible.
Edit: @ignant666 you just said it much better!
@the_real_simon_iff - Yeah, ol' Fakey went for 'an angel flapped into my honeymoon bed with a Chosen One T-shirt' because that's really convincing!
I do enjoy the manner by which you quite merrily dance all around the houses to incorporate the most improbable scenarios in defence of Crowley's fabrication.
Ultimately, and for all of your elaborate crutches, Crowley's Thelema is dysfunctional. His own blurb demands that Thelema 'cures all problems of society,' that "this revelation a million times more important than the discovery of the Wheel, or even of the Laws of Physics or Mathematics." If it worked, nobody, including myself, would give a stuff about the dodgy backstory... but it does not. Or, rather, whilst the fabrication touted by Crowley is defective, the alternate I distilled works just fine, and includes The Horus Toy™. As previously noted, try the The Horus Toy™ and you no longer require any third-party theory.
But, hey... You remain on the Flat-Crowley-ers bench with a few other fossils. The New Aeon is here, and will get you, irrespective of your disinclination to believe it's happening.
By the Hair of my Magicole I manifest the first emoticon of the New Aeon...
I do enjoy the manner by which you quite merrily dance all around the houses to incorporate the most improbable scenarios in defence of Crowley's fabrication.
@therealrtc I said it before, I do not defense anything, I am merely attacking what YOU announced as the new one big proof to sink Crowley's timeline (and ship). YOU simply have to do better and I'll promise, from April 23rd on no-one will ever think about this pathetic attempt again at least. I think it is telling that the newest proof for his faking is that the New Aeon so far hasn't worked out so well since all problems of society are not cured yet. Oooo-kay.
Anyway, after April 23rd we all forget about this crazy episode and wait for the Horus Toy. Am I right?
And please: I would really wish to take none of this personally (as brothers etc. ya know?) but putting me again in some Blindly-Following-Crowleyite corner sucks, really (I started quite some threads here about the inconsistencies in the Cairo story). It would suck if I put you into the Disappointed-Ex-OTO-P.R.Koenig corner, and look who's listening to him these days...
Righty right? So another 4 days and then on to the Horus Toy...
Love=Law
Lutz
the most improbable scenarios
Sounds familiar.
Being for the Benefit of Younger Readers:
The scriptures say:
"There is one Richard Cole, and not two. There is one Richard Cole, and not none."
Richard Cole (born 2 January 1946) is an English music manager, &c., &c, &c. Read here.
"Michael Des Barres described Cole's role in the band as being "like a Rottweiler pimp. You did not want to fuck with him. He's the gentlest, sweetest man today, but back then, he would shove a coat hanger up your ass and hang you out the window like a wet cunt. All of the Zeppelin road incidents were in essence choreographed by Ricardo [Richard Cole]." "
your old aeon ways
The term "old aeon," including "emotions," "ways," "thinking," etc, is now receiving reports of "hi usage," over and over, throughout the esoteric lingo.
The most popular term, back a few decans, was "Trog."
These all come down to shameful condescension withoverlording overtones (International Classifications [of] Disease #22023: "Macromanubrium with Scorn.")
Don't ask.
What?
Oh, sorry.
I just work here.
What benefits do you receive ... other than lack of sleep and loss of hair due to pulling?
Crowley's Thelema is dysfunctional
Well, yeah. That's because it only works above a certain level. That level is high enough that many people, who cannot climb properly, run around saying, "It is my Will to ..."
"Prematurely adopted" is a better term than "dysfunctional," which applies to authors like you and me.
Here is my somewhat more detailed review as promised. It does not attempt to deal with every bit of RTC's claims in this very silly book, and entirely ignores the whole gematria of the cipher written on a counterclockwise circular band nonsense.
Cipher Solution
- The "6" in "4638" "has been replaced with larger example of the same number" This is a bit like the claim that Shakespeare's plays were not written by him, but by another man of the same name.
- The "K" in "ABK" "almost certainly conceals" the numeral "1" or possibly the letter "I"- he eventually opts for the latter and then discards it at the last moment as inconvenient to the desired solution. Possible, certainly no reason to think this is so though.
- It is "self-evident" that the "A" in "ALGMOR" was originally a lower case "l" or possibly an "e". Not to me, and if it is so "self evident", why aren't you sure what it was originally? Ridiculous and obviously wrong.
- The "3" after "ALGMOR" "began life as a "?" Even more ridiculous, and even more obviously wrong.
- The "Y" immediately after is actually an "I" or possibly a "1". Doesn't look like it to me at all, but possible.
The simplest and most effective means of duplicating imagery is that of tracing it. Visualize a scenario in which Crowley pricks the three crucial holes into a suitably scaled map of Cairo ... He then loosely tacks this to the reverse of his 'cross and circle manuscript leaf and holds it against a strong light source (i.e. sunlight). He next traces a line and cross, with remarkable precision, directly onto the manuscript page, with no requirement of a grid or other giveaway marks. This operation inherently generates a mirror image, which, by the time Crowley realized, was too late to change.
- Why not simply trace the line onto the page, which doesn't "inherently generate a mirror image", and is faster, easier, and far more accurate?
- What "three crucial holes"? My best guess is that he means the ends of the line, and the center of cross in the circle. What is the point of doing this? How is this better than just tracing the line, and marking the point?
- How does one "loosely tack" two sheets of paper together? Why aren't there any tack-holes in the "grid page"?
- How so is it that "[t]his operation inherently generates a mirror image"? I mean, it would if you put the back of the map to the back of your ms. page, but why would anyone do that? How could anyone who had done well in math at Cambridge not realized that he was reversing the image?
- Why was it "too late" to change? Why couldn't he trace the line on the page before writing the text, and after he "realized", why didn't he just make a non-reversed version and recopy the page?
- praeterhuman creation of AL, or
- that someone has gone a little cuckoo and is probably also seeing Messages From The Space Brothers in the shapes of passing clouds.
A typo i missed, fixed:
The closest he comes to explaining what defines the 0 degree line is: "Working on this tentative hypothesis [that the 'rotation' numbers are degrees of a circle], i reasoned that if Crowley's LINE represented the vertical axis (at 0 degrees), and x marked the spot through which the line transited, what would i find at 24 degrees and 89 degrees?"
Ball in your court, @therealrtc - get struttin', and preenin' and sneerin' and refutin', as you will and are able.
Speaking of preening, i freely admit i was dead wrong in my prediction that you quote that you would not publish this book by April Fool's Day.
Also, to claim i threatened you with "the most severe legal consequences" by pointing out how copyright works with regard to posts to internet forums is rather over-heated.
Finally, why don't i get credit for the "predictably knee-jerk" quote on p. 75, saying in essence "so what?"? To which, i note, you continue to have no very good answer.
A totally worthless and nutty book, that many at lashtal will enjoy and cherish
Many thanks, ignant666, for your review. I prefer my carrots sliced, but diced can be just as good.
Looking forward to the response, and to Lutz's review in a few days' time.
I hope all this shooting-gallery massacre of RTC's theories doesn't blow away my 2012 Horus-as-teenager analysis. Hahar.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
We aim to please, Michael. Though i was more going for a purée actually.
The reason that i say that it is a book that "many at lashtal will enjoy and cherish" is that it is totally an artifact of this forum- it is equally hard to imagine that anyone who isn't a lashtal regular would even really understand this book, or why it was written. RTC is probably right that my estimate that this book might sell "literally dozens of copies" was very over-optimistic.
At a quick skim, i see posts from me, @lashtal (many), @faustian (many), @herupakraath , @wellreadwellbred , @kidneyhawk , and @the_real_simon_iff.
Paul will certainly want to read this book, to learn of RTC's paranoid fantasies concerning him, and perhaps to offer to the local authorities in seeking whatever Brits call an "order of protection" against RTC- maybe one of those "ASBOs"?
And RTC may well want to keep this book away from his psychiatrist, and from all psychiatrists, lest he end up "in four-way restraints in a padded cell in an asylum somewhere near Barking", as those nasty rumors (that i tried to squash) suggested he was during his Period Of Silence a while back.
It does have a very nice cover, reminiscent of '60s British editions of spy novels, with a nice big blow up of the "grid solution", that makes all the fudging even clearer than it is in the text of the book- and in glorious color ("colour" for you Brits).
And note that the exact center of the edge of the brown "claim check" is at exactly the point in the middle of Soccer Field #2 at the Zamalek Sporting Club where RTC says the GPS coordinates encrypt deep Thelemic numerological significance.
A favorable Review....Well here's a try!....It does not qualify as toilet paper, as it already is a dirty mess, and that is part of the entertainment, which is the only way that it should be valued, as it has that, and now as it is in review season, I shall start here...
First by all indications a book is first judged by its title, to which Cole does get on the score card, particular with the under-title of 'The Lessor Heresy' or is it 'Heirisy' which then puts the provocative title 'The Race to Conquer eLGMOR, into a context, which I think is missing a letter, for after trying to get through the swamp, it is more like eLUGMOR, for lugging more is more like the truth...and not because it is not brief...
The book starts off with a fairly nice synopsis of the swamp of threads that produced the quest, from Faustus and Lashtal to others....
Thus the book's success does merit that it came into being and was an open sourced affair which i actually came to find quite encouraging on a number of levels, including the repetitively annoying, but where indeed an interesting door has been opened, and in these threads...
Hence Coles contributions are manifold, as a bizarre and noxious portal replete with poisons of a campiness that is actually a gross distillation of the tradition which is the ill ordered houses of trickeries the cards are indeed marked.
Marked by what is a form of graffiti upon graffiti, and that is the question of what is hiding, or trying to reveal, but perhaps not by Cole's record of trash picking, but by other winks...
Winks or winces, for for fan's of Cole he does certainly deliver the madness to which demonstrates the missing link between Crowley and Mad Magazine of which Robert Anton Wilson would have a few jokes out of the travelogue and hissy fit. Yes a cut and paste wackiness endures with some rehashed figures and a few new ones, the most interesting is the calligraphy on the cover that opens us up to other mysteries...
Further merit of the book is that it has merited a review by @Ignant666 whom as legal scholar has the requisite skills honed by lysergic strolls through NYC back in the 70's to pull the blade out to hack through the brush, upon what was not a disinterested stroll along the edge of the Boulaq...yes place on the shelf next to the Chick Tracks...
i myself am interested in certain dates which might veer off the timeline...outside the circles of... Of course Mr. Grant understood the April Fool's joke of the Equinox of the Gods, and by playing off the date Cole plays off the date with his ruse or what might just be a fuse as various II 76 claims come to the fore which just makes for a bigger circus, or business convention...
A sucker is born every minute, so at least the ticket was cheap, and one can just skip around, while taking a dump...
it all ends up in the Nile
or rather the Hpi'
93
HG
@hadgigegenraum : SHARE YOUR DRUGS NOW! I am getting tired of asking. Pretty please?
{Is hadgigegenraum Tiger's unbound id, his evil twin, or just a cousin?}
[sigh]