Robert Podgurski

Having had the benefit of participating this past spring with a Virtual Presentation for the Institute of Hermetic Studies 3^rd annual conference I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with the event’s organizer, Mark Stavish. Mark and I exchanged copies of our recent books. I was moved to relay some of my reflections on Mark’s fascinating study: Egregores published by Inner Traditions, 2018. So rather than composing a formal review I have opted to reproduce my letter here in order to convey the overall kinetic and energy of my first reading of the book without subjecting it to any filters or additional polish.

Mark,

First off, I will mention that Egregores raises numerous questions for me. That’s a good thing. I judge a book first off by how much it stimulates me to generate queries on multiple levels. This is not to say that your book falls short of answering these questions but that it in essence generates them. You’ve taken on a monumental topic, one that warrants very careful thought.

The first thing that caught my attention was the collective nature of Egregores which you stress in your initial definition and by many that you site. When you mention Sadhu’s take on egregores as a collective entity such as governments, religions, etc. I had to think back on your stating that egregores are watchers that preside over earthly affairs or activities. As a result I began to wonder about if there may be a connection or fine-line division between egregores and subdivisions of the “world-will.” And I’m not just thinking along the lines of Schopenhauer on this issue but from a Neoplatonic and Hermetic view of the anima mundi as part and parcel of the world-will. Back to Sadhu where he states that egregores are like human bodies with appendages, etc.. This in turn made me think of several things such as the genius loci. For example, if certain parts of the globe are charged with a specific spirit or energy then they could possibly be said to be under the aegis of a specific aspect of the world-will. This in turn could be interpreted as a type of watcher. Dee and Kelly’s governers of the aethers are a case in point where the 91 governors are said to correspond to specific geographic locations. These topoi are then depicted as being imbued or bearing the force of a divine signature. So what I’m getting at here is that I’m wondering if it’s possible that such tellurian forces and their paired watchers may be construed as embodiments or possibly earthly centers where aspects of the localized world-will may be interpreted as under the aegis of egregores. And when I consider that I began to wonder, even if I’m totally missing the ballpark on my previous assertion, perhaps these geographic centers, because of their inherent magical tellurian power may be part of the equation in the formation of an egregore that, let’s say, oversees a particular body politic or government that is located in a specific area. You yourself stated in the section Language as a Control Mechanism about students of Tibetan Buddhism who may never read your monograph that to desire enlightenment wind up trading one egregore for another. This is a critical statement and one that sparked the previous query. “They have traded one mental organizing structure for another” is indeed what is at stake in incorporating any practice into one’s regimen. So when I read that I became wary of my own observation and then thought, rather than supplanting the concept of egregores with some concocted theory of the world-will, perhaps a fusion of the two may be more insightful. In any event, take it with a grain of sand. I’m sure not making any hard and fast assertions, just some observations.

Taking that tack I thought a little further about this quandary: here is the new boss, the same as the old boss whereupn I began to consider the Neoplatonic, specifically Proclus’s and Iamblichus’ approach to the dialectike—the internal process of diaresis and anamnesis, or analysis-division, and reunification, ie synthesis. This dialectike, and not the external mode of debate, is the one that Plato is focused on in the Republic wherein the individual represents the body politic. And each branch of the polis is within. This had me thinking of the great Vedic Asvamedha or Horse Sacrifice or where each part of the horse is emblematic of some portion of the universe. Sacrificing the horse becomes a synecdoche for identifying and sacrificing one’s bonds to the material, or rather the associations one makes with it (this is only one narrow aspect of the rite). Therefore, if a government or political party can be an egregore then one’s own method of governing one’s life may be subject to an overseeing egregore. You address this dilemma well in the book especially in the concluding chapters in re freeing one’s self from egregores and ideas and their consequences.

Dhyana, emptying the mind, as you site in one section is a most powerful means of liberating the self and or protecting consciousness from slavish adherence to an egregore. As you suggest recognizing the “mind forg’d manacles” as Blake put it is the first step toward freedom. For me, though, separating out mental constructs, pitfalls of manas, from animating and generative forces of the world-will seems to be what is at stake in this phase of the process.

However, I’ll be honest, there are a few things I could debate somewhat in the book in re your mention of qliphoth. Scholem himself in discussing the qliphoth as shadows or shells of manifestation suggested that this shadow realm may be the more bona fide aspect of the sephiroth. Jung even hints at this as much in his approach to the shadow self in the red book. By the way, have you read Peter Kingseley’s Catafalque. Interesting book if read in the right frame of perspective. He points out the fact that Jung’s primary interest was in the occult and the shadow or dark side of being. Jung essentially kept it under wraps as he literally said he was afraid of losing all the grant money and endowments if he owned up to it. Admitted to taking himself to the edge barely able to hang on at points. That and his exchanges with Corbin, that had been somewhat suppressed, is the real strength of the book.

Much more to say, but I will let it at that for now.

Very Best,
Bob

A purely linear or diachronic reading ofBP does the study and oneself a great disservice. Gavin’s work is highly discursive and winds about with subconsciously articulated convolutions in and upon itself constantly pushing the reader’s sense of contiguity to its limits. The work is purposefully suggestive and allusive. This is based on certain assumptions given the author’s own stated presuppositions in BP itself. In the first chapter he claims “The Benighted Path is not a barrier but a seam, pregnant with portents of Becoming.” (p.28) Shortly thereafter he succinctly states that “Cultivation of this seam can only occur through the engagement and arousal of the poetic faculty” which I take simply as the faculty of making. The classical Greek mindset conceived of the poet as a maker, plain and simple.

In short, Gavin’s work calls for an immersion and embodiment in the shadow realms of consciousness to one’s bearable limits and perhaps beyond. That is my sense of the project’s gnosis. It is a system and not altogether similar to typical magical methods which call for a disciplined praxis. BP calls for surrender and possession by the wyrd itself. It is a tall order and in no way a secure endeavor (but then again, any path worth embarking upon is precarious insofar as anything that threatens accepted normalcy on any level is concerned).

The Monstrous Soul is the overriding obsession of this work. In framing it as an obsession I mean this in its most utilitarian way and in its most tenuously uncontrollable aspects as promulgated by Austin Osman Spare. Because surrendering control is a key factor this approach becomes the most daunting task presumed in this tract. I’m reminded of Joel Biroco’s important manifest on Juxtapositional Magick. Biroco’s project is based on the practitioner developing an innate awareness of alignments and juxtaposed elements in their surroundings and consciousness to be harnessed for sigils, spontaneously and without direction. Biroco clearly states that it’s not something anyone can actually consciously construct, these juxtapositions, but foster a level of receptivity that permits them to register with and accentuate one’s psyche. Biroco is explicit in this regard whereas Gavin is implicit in keeping with the overall shadow perspective his work engenders. This lure surfaces in what Gavin refers to as a grammar of decay by focusing on bones, skulls, viscera, explicit momento mori of the most stark and abhorrent as emblems of the absolute shadow of death and its remains.( pp. 127-130). In fact, in a very telling moment we’re informed:

The grammar of the Benighted Path rarely takes the form of human speech (hence the relative concision of this book). Our language is the cawing of the carrion crow, the low whistle of an autumn wind, the raising of hackles, the idiolalia of dream speak. One’s grammar may be babble toall but one’s self.” (pp. 129-130).

Prior to this section the author discusses creating a reliquary of wyrd objects such as bones, etc.. He offers hints but avoids providing much detail about exact usage of these artifacts which at first I found disconcerting until I considered the overall logic. The bones and their implementation are partially concealed / revealed as is Holbein’s skull in The Ambassadors inducing a trial and error of positioning in order to facilitate a revelatory view key to opening perception.

Asserting “the relative concision of this book” surfaces as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek subterfuge but also the work’s very content emerging as an extension of its form or katabasis described therein. Had the author explicitly spelled out recipes and or protracted formulas for implementation then he would, in essence, have been operating in direct contradistinction to a shadow or dream-world mode of logic or anti-logic. Persisting in this fashion would have pulled the rug straight out from under its very foundation in attempting to lay it firmly in place. Static solid ground is pure anathema to the monstrous soul. That’s the beauty and inherent problem of the BP—it is allusive, elusive, and even illusive to a certain extent. The illusion is propagated potentially for readers seeking a definiteness which can never be, never was in the dream-time that is constantly moving ahead, in flux and creative, ie poetic.

The idiolalic, idiosyncratic glossolalia as I take it, or seemingly incoherent enunciations that are endemic to the individual, are central to the practical concerns of the BP. I have come to a similar assessment in my own work by suggesting a grammatography in chapter 4 of The Sacred Alignments and Sigils. Such a systematization, or to be more precise, syntax of graphic formal elements such as line, curve, squiggle, in relation to the aesthetics of sigil formation is only of relevance to the individual. Like components of a dream, the psycho-aesthetics of form are significant to each and everyone insofar as much as dreams hold the same intrinsic sort of worth. To seek out a universal method of decoding such elements is to miss the point altogether. Subsequently I have found myself immersed in the monstrous (w)hole. Given my own proclivities and idiolalizations I find the monstrous dilation transmitting as a whole, akin to Cusa’s concept of the absolute maximum or expansion as it converges eventually into the contracted point; and as a hole, akin to a black hole or an aperture absorbent of all light, in particular, intention’s.

Speaking of a black hole brings us to the central katabatic aspect of the benighted approach: a descent into the underworld for the sake of advancing consciousness. It is an un-harrowing as there is no expressed aim in liberating anything from the depths. Rather, through intentional descent and embodied awareness, the BP zeroes in on multi-faceted dimensions of being dispersed throughout the infinite darkness. The somatic symptoms of the katabasis, arousal and launching of the dreaming body, as an exploratory vehicle of the monstrous soul are thankfully not overlooked. Gavin affords some telling insights concerning the thanatos drive and the psycho-physiology of the dreaming body, that “Kephra’s bodily design is organically etched into our bones.”(p.128) “Along with the arousal of the Qoph, thin bands of pressure along the back of the neck…[are] common symptoms of arousal of the Monstrous Soul.”(p. 56) Bones litter this section of the book hopefully encouraging certain practitioners to adopt parallax views of ossuaries and their subliminal significance. We learn about the “Trance of the Bones” as part and parcel of BP’s “biocentric intent.” This reference to Ludwig Klage’s philosophy of biocentricity in terms of the manic / mantic drive of eros in compelling serious aspirants will no doubt be obvious to those familiar with Klages work (see: Of Cosmogonic Eros, and Chthonic Gnosis both by Theion Press). I am also reminded of William Butler Yeats most magickal play, The Dreaming of the Bones where a young man and woman engage in dialogue over the dead and their dreams, memories, essences that lie still imbued in their bones. Their exchange eventually dissolves in an a-temporal realm where their own history and existences are left wide open to conjecture and further dreaming.

The mention of Jung’s obsession with the katabasis and “granting the unconscious absolute free expression” is noteworthy (p.57). In fact, Peter Kingsley, in his recent book, Catafalque, uncovers much previously unknown information on this topic including Jung’s conversations with Henri Corbin where he revealed that magic and delving deep into the shadow realms of consciousness were his primary concerns to the end. Kingsley points out that Jung often drove himself to the edge of absolute insanity but hid it from his students and colleagues for fear of losing grant money, etc.. It is quite satisfying and encouraging to know that Carl Jung himself took extreme risks in his own benighted quest for expanded awareness. Undoubtedly, the Benighted approach itself is one of extreme risk because katabasis’s aim broaches the unknown and untrodden wastes of primal consciousness where the aspirant is clearly and absolutely on their own having forgone all better waking judgment.

There is much more to say about BP as well as less. The project initiated by this path is one often not readily discernible and chaotic given the best of circumstances wherein intuition may in fact be the only reliable guide.

As I approach my incompletion of this un-review I am inclined toward a few utterances, questions, things approaching observations and nascent formulations.

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How one random thought fades and another arises

Actions without thinking

Reflections, especially those of shadows in the water pullulate

What does your writing

Gouges in wood meaning

How does sex drive out
of sex

Imagine an object that works its way into the shadows on its own

Cats, just… cats.

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For more Information visit:

www.richardgavin.net

www.theionpublishing.com

©Robert Podgurski
5/5/2020