The excellent Groupname for Grapejuice blog has a new post up, "A Blooming, Buzzing Infusion," which investigates the possible occult links to June 16, the date that is the setting for James Joyce's Ulysses.
The Dublin Hermetic Society, which included W.B. Yeats, held its first meeting on June 16, 1885, blogger Znore explains.
[Joyce biographer] Ellmann does not suggest, to my knowledge, that this opening meeting of the Dublin Hermetic Society had anything to do with Joyce setting Ulysses on June 16th. It is quite a coincidance, though, that this magical order first met on the same day in Dublin that Nora first performed her own version of sex magick with Jim during a walk through the same city streets. Yeats's profound influence on Joyce is clearly evident and the question is begged: was Joyce in on the conspiracy?
Znore then demonstrates how June 16 is tied to the Zoroastrian religious calendar and provides citations to show how the Bavarian Illuminati were inspired by the Persian fire cult. His long post also discusses the neopagan calendar created by Ezra Pound and how Robert Anton Wilson was very familiar with it. If his post is correct, Illuminatus! is even more inspired by the work of James Joyce than we already thought.
I can't really do justice to Znore's post with this short blog entry. I had missed, for example, the fact that Aleister Crowley gave Ulysses a rave review, although Steve "Fly" Pratt knew.
I've belatedly added Groupname for Grapejuice to the "Sangha" blog list on the right side of the page. This was an oversight on my part and I'm pleased to finally correct it.
2 comments:
Interesting post. Pound called his calendar the Fascist Age. It begins with the publication of Ulysses in 1922, but more importantly to Pound, it begins with Mussolini's ascension to power.
I thought June 16th was chosen as the day on which Nora gave JJ an handjob on the banks of one of the two canals in Dublin, ie a discreet place, surely not on a street in Dublin!!
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