Pages 213-247 of the Dell Edition; Pocket Books pages 173-203; about 70 percent of an ebook
Page 216, "The victims of the worst tragedies...." I thought of Luna Wilson when I read this.
Page 232, The King in Yellow, Robert Chambers, available here.
Page 237, "perfectly trustworthy and rather formidable." A name check for the Ken Campbell who mounted the theater production of Illuminatus?
Page 242, "Great-grandfather was a bit odd," the John Babcock of the Historical Illuminatus chronicles?
UPDATE II: Blogger has been fixed, and links are now up again for the Masks Discussion.
7 comments:
Probably the odd Great-grandfather developed into John Babcock in RAWs later works.
I'm a little behind - the rights of Man starting at the bottom of p.211 actually got written by Crowley in 1941. According to Kaczynski in "Perdurabo" AC wrote it as a magickal counterpoint to the fascism sweeping and threatening to overwhelm the world at that time. He printed it on postcards and sent them to all the prominent people he had adresses for. Seven days after it got sent, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor which brought the US into it.
The passage toward the bottom of p.215 starting with "Aye" Verey cried. "Annie, my wife" going to the bottom of the page gives much info in ordinary words when viewed as occult puns. Look up 43 in the list of primes in 777 (never been able to find that online) to reveal a prominent theme here related to The Great God Pan & AC's lovely chess game. "Coffee, sir = another 68 then mentions food arriving; recalls for me RAWs admonition to keep the lasgna flying. I wrote a blog post about that.
For anyone who is curious, I believe this is the blog post:
http://oz-mix.blogspot.com/2011/08/keep-lasagna-flying.html#comment-form
That's the one, thanks Tom! Been too busy to look up my own posts but will have something more to say about Masks later today.
p.226 “ The more you hit a tar baby the more you are stuck to it” - a statement of truth in many ways but at the moment it reminds me of US foreign policy ie the war on drugs, the war on terror, the Iraq war etc.
“Action and reaction,” Einstein whispered, talking mostly to himself. “Good old Newton still has wisdom for us after three centuries…..” It seems one agenda of Masks introduces the readers to relativity in various ways. RAW has said elsewhere that Einstein introduced relativity in science, Joyce in literature while Crowley introduced relativity in mysticism. All three characters live in this book. Background research on the interview with Hitler’s childhood friend quotes him as saying that he’ll always remember Hitler fondly despite what he did. So even the extreme example of this evil Dictator has a relative nature ie the view of Hitler depends on how you relate to him. To his friend, he doesn’t appear an evil Dictator.
Einstein’s quote implies that new models don’t make all older models obsolete. Newtonian physics still has much to say about the laws of nature.
p. 227 “Listening to Babcock’s tale, on the other hand, almost puts me back into the real rancid terrors of my adolescence.”
“Of course,” Einstein said, ruddy-faced in the dying sunlight. “That is the whole point.”
This suggests to me that Einstein might consider that Babcock’s ordeal comes as the result of intentional manipulation in order to reimprint him with a different reality tunnel. “Of course” just looks like the common expression, a throwaway line, or it could suggest that Babcock traverses a particular course for his education.
The Mysteria Mystica Maxima, or MMM, was the name Crowley gave to the British chapter of the German (Jermyn) OTO after he received a charter from Theodor Reuss.
93 Jermyn St. - 93 is a significant number in Crowley's system, being the number of Thelema (Will) and Agape (Love) in Greek gematria. Thelemites often abbreviate the phrase "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" to just the number 93, used as a greeting or salute.
The Rights of Man were published by Crowley as Liber OZ (any relation?), or Liber 77. It was Crowley's intention to summarize Thelema in terms that any person on the street could understand, so he composed it in monosyllables. According to Sabazius of the OTO, it was based upon a degree lecture given by Crowley around 1916, so may have existed in a similar form at the time of this story.
p.220 Verey calling Inverness-418. 418 is another significant number in Thelema, equalling both Abrahadabra (the word of the New Aeon) and Boleskine.
p.239 Family servants Wildeblood or Dorn, forebears of Epicene Wildeblood and George Dorn.
p.242 Order of the Garter. Seems like you would have to be pretty intimate with the monarch for the king to give you a woman's undergarment!
I would love to know the Thelemic significance of OZ, never seen an explanation. It's also part of the Greek title of ch.77 Book of Lies. RAW uses it twice in his great word of power toward the end of Schrodinger's Cat.
In a response to someone in RAW's online Crowley class in 2005 I quoted/paraphrased: "There is no god but WoMan." RAW responded pointing out it was from Liber OZ then said his wife Arlen had rewritten the whole text using WoMan instead of Man and had it published in Green Egg or something like that.
RAW seems to play around alluding to 'love is the law on p.229 in the paragraph that starts:
"The stochastic is not random."
An example of old models getting erroneously thrown out seems to occur to sombunall Thelemites with the complete rejection of the Bible. AC despised organized religion but quotes several times from the Bible in Magick (Book 4) to support his points. Also, Lon Milo Duquette points out in his book Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot that AC's motto Perdurabo - I will endure unto end alludes to Matthew 10:22 "And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved."
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