BOOK REVIEWS
I have dispensed with my 'Books of the Year' postings which covered the years 2009 and 2010, and now attempt to review a selection of books that I have read both good and bad, in editions old and new. Much of what I buy is often based on suggestions by others, or some train of thought that makes me think "maybe I should try..." so they are not necessarily all strange/supernatural fiction.
With many small press books costing around £35-£40 each, and some seemingly worthy tomes changing hands on the second hand market for many times that, these reviews may also give the potential purchaser some indication of what they might receive for their money. Needless to say, my opinions should not be given any great value as I bring my own foibles to every review and these may change at any time.
Roberto Migliussi
'Dead-ends and Breakthroughs'
Labirintostellare 2012
pp36 Euro 8,00 (plus postage)
The occultist Kenneth Grant (1924 -2011) has had a huge influence over the esoteric mindscape of the last forty years. A (controversial) follower of Aleister Crowley, his books have both inspired and infuriated- probably in equal measure.
What is beyond doubt is that he promoted various practitioners of various magickal paths, in particular the artist/occultist Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956), the voodoo practitioner Michael Bertiaux and Maggie Ingalls (Nema) among many others. The path is a broad path to be sure...
In this short (English language) booklet Migluissi acknowledges his personal debt to his friend, Grant (the 'Appreciation' of the title) and then goes on to elucidate the practise's of Spare and esoterricist Zivorad Mihajlovic Slavinski indicating how they inform his own practise.
He cites Spares sketchbook 'The Book of Ugly Ecstacy' (Fulgur 2006) as a pictorial grimoire of the highest quality and creative inspiration for much of his own image work. Spare trod (and promoted) the solitary path "to plunge deeply into his own inwardness" and in that respect Migluissi draws interesting parallels with the works of William Burroughs and especially Brion Gysin. He also attempts, and it is brave man who does so, to explain Spares concept of the 'neither-neither' the idea of attempting to create neutral space or 'inbetweeness' to achieve access to the un-manifest potential which Spare calls KIA.
This is done particularly well, and is a very good starting place for understanding Spares theories which, and I write this as a great admirer of Spare, his own books present somewhat tortuously in places.
The section devoted to Slavinski is particularly interesting as it relates Migliussi's own experience at a Slavinski group workshop and, once again, clearly explains the Gnostic Intensive workings carried out in these sessions which are often based around either questions such as "what is God?", "what is Truth" or meditations on certain words such as 'Azum', words which like Enochian or any magickal incantation have resonances on planes other than the mundane.
These are in turn related back to the concepts expounded and developed Grant especially in the latter Trilogies. The path is abroad path but has edges...
Migliussi's has done very well to summarise the concepts within this production but it is the personal aspects that really hold this together and makes it work lifting it from what could have a dry and academic text into something living, and evolving.
A very interesting and useful item
A5 size, 36 pages, 200 copies hand-numbered.
Price: Euro 8,00
Postage and Packaging:
Italy: Euro 2,00
Europe: Euro 4,00
USA: Euro 5,00
Payment via paypal to roberto@labirintostellare.org
Labirintostellare can be found here.
