Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Secret Beach #2

Liam Warfield interviewed me for the second issue of his zine, Secret Beach.  I haven't seen it yet, and I might sound like a blathering idiot--we split a large bottle of cheap wine while talking.  He is an excellent writer, though, and I trust he shaped my verbiage into something comprehensible.  Also featured in the issue are Gay Liberation Network's Andy Thayer and the long-running, witchy no wave group, ONO.  Liam also has a blog called Secret Beach, and plays really wonderful music sometimes.  He decamped for Berlin weeks after I met him--sadly for me, no doubt quite happily for him.  I'm not sure where one can find issues of the zine other than at Quimby's in Chicago, but they are certainly floating around somewhere out in the world...

Of the Main Types of the Operations of Magick Art

From Aleister Crowley's Book Four:

The operations of Magick Art are difficult to classify, as they merge into each other, owing to the essential unity of their method and result.  We may mention:
1. Operations such as evocation, in which a live spirit is brought from dead matter.
2. Consecrations of talismans in which a live spirit is bound into "dead" matter and vivifies the same.
3. Works of divination, in which a live spirit is made to control operations of the hand or brain of the Magician.  Such works are accordingly most dangerous, to be used only be advanced Magicians, and then with great care.
4. Works of fascination, such as operations of invisibility, and transformations of the apparent form of the person or thing concerned.  This consists almost altogether in distracting the attention, or disturbing the judgment, of the person whom it is wished to deceive.  There are, however, "real" transformations of the Adept himself which are very useful.  See The Book of the Dead for methods.  The assumption of God-forms can be carried to the point of actual transformation.
5. Works of Love and Hate, which are also performed (as a rule) by a fascination.  These works are too easy, and rarely useful.  They have a nasty trick of recoiling on the Magician.
6. Works of destruction, which may be done in many different ways.  One may fascinate and bend to one's Will a person who has of his own right the power to destroy.  One may employ spirits or talismans.  The more powerful Magicians of the last few centuries have employed books. [...]
7. Works of creation and dissolution, and the higher invocations.

Galerie Dennis Cooper presents ...















Dennis Cooper featured some of my work on his blog, DC's.  I'm really excited, because I have been reading his novels since I was eighteen, and count him amongst my very favorite authors.  To see the post, go here.