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.
Frater Shiva
'Inside Solar Lodge, Behind The Veil'
Desert Star Temple 2012
pp350 $32.00 (plus postage) From Weiser Books
This is a highly expanded version of Shivas' earlier 'Inside Solar Lodge, Outside The Law' (Teitan 2010) both books detailing the rise and fall of the controversial Solar Lodge magickal order of late 1960's/early 70's California.
Prior to these books virtually all that was known of the Solar Lodge was via Ed Sanders sensationalist book on the Manson murders 'Helter Skelter' in which they were portrayed variously as drug taking, orgy loving, animal sacrificing satanists; and the small matter of child abuse, the "boy in the box" case. Shiva by virtue of being Secretary General of the Lodge from 1965 (its inception) to 1972 is ideally situated to give a more accurate overview.
It a nutshell (perhaps unsurprisingly) it wasn't anything like that.
The Solar Lodge was primarily organised by Jean Brayton (1921-1984) who had been friendly with a member of a previous incarnation of the O.T.O. in the 1950s, one Ray Burlingame, and once under way quite quickly hit on a winning strategy of buying up houses to rent, the income (plus that of a Dentist member) subsidising the Lodges' work. They even ran a successful bookshop 'The Eye of Horus' and produced a number of Thelemic books. Thus the Solar Lodge must have been just about the only magickal order since the Knights Templar who ever had any money.
Explorations of consciousness via drugs were certainly a part of that work, LSD in particular, Shiva being an advocate of its use, with a fair proportion of the book being his own tales of initiation and his attempt to live a life built around the teachings of Crowley, which is no mean feat given that as the Lodge grew it started to develop the familiar trajectory of almost every occult groups.
Increasingly autocratic leadership from Brayton (a woman not to be crossed), madness (ego problems of "too much too soon") and paranoia from members probably exacerbated by drug use created cracks later widened by moments of incredible thoughtlessness and stupidity. The Lodge accumulated a number of rare Crowley editions by the simple expedient of stealing them, and Shiva relates a pathetic episode in which the Solar Lodge criminals pepper sprayed and drugged the elderly (and probably senile) widow of one such owner who in her confused state came to believe that one of her robbers was her dead husband.
Shiva (who was not party to this but as librarian knew where the books came from) is honest about the events themselves (a trait he exhibits throughout the book much to his credit) but both in his forward to this edition and within the main body of the book appears to attempt to justify such activities by either quoting e-mail from an outside party relating a conversation that the person remembered with another outside party, or by using the term 'seizing the lodge' or 'coup d'etat' - ie: if you win you're o.k., but if you don't you're in trouble. It would have served Shiva better to have related the events without further comment.
As it turned out the 'liberation' of the books to make them accessible to all, ended when almost the entire collection was incinerated in a fire at the Lodges' desert retreat. There must be an 'Liber AL' quote to cover that circumstance!
He was not present at the events which led to the 'boy in the box' and was horrified when he discovered them. In brief it consisted of an member of the Lodge - obviously out of their depth - restraining a disturbed child by chaining and locking him in a goat pen in the desert for some hours while awaiting the parents.
Shiva feels (again rightly in my opinion) that the events were blown hugely out of proportion by both the police and press (the 'few hours' became 'days', it wasn't the first time such things had happened etc...) who seemed to want to curtail the activities of the group, as they ran counter to that of the conservative status quo. The classic case of "I don't know what they are doing but its wrong and we'll get them somehow". The subsequent case was to all intents and purposes the beginning of the end of the Solar Lodge in that phase, Shiva finally leaving in 1972.
So much for the material facts. What of the spiritual? Sadly, this seems little in evidence here, and although there is much in the way of interpreting life in spiritual terms and plenty of magickal terminology no one seems to leave the process much improved. That said, there did seem to be a good sense of community within the group which over time grew quite large and Shiva especially seemed to work hard to inject spiritual values where he could, in the face of increasing opposition from Brayton with whom he clashed on several occasions. Shiva certainly seems to have interesting experiences and moments of magickal success, for example in locating a desert site for the Lodge but many of the results are more mundane - dealing with unruly occupants of the rented houses for example.
However my main 'problem' with the book is that there is, in Shivas words, 'shifting in and out of different dimensions from time to time' by which I think he means that things are not laid out in a linear way and that there will be digressions. I would put it as "things are a bit of a mess".
On the one hand, in terms of correcting the previous perceptions of the Solar Lodge he does admirably, portraying the Lodge and his role within it 'warts and all'. However, as a 'history' it is undermined by its lack of context in the world in which it found itself both materially and spiritually. We get little sense of the cultural (or counter-cultural) milieu in which they moved. For example, his account of a magickal battle with the Scientologists is a great moment in the book, but what of the other cults of the time, or indeed the general populace?
In terms of a memoir/magickal record it does a lot better, but to a casual reader the terminology is daunting and again the confused layout seems to hinder a clear understanding of what is going on which, in fairness perhaps reflects the nature of 'the path' itself.
I think stronger editing would have streamlined its narrative thrust, and it would have greatly benefited from a glossary or at least an index.
Despite all of this, I found Shiva to be an engaging writer, even more so when read in small doses. For those interested in the Lodge it will (surely) remain the definitive account, though whether it warrants book length treatment is another matter.
Weiser Books can be found here.
