from Typhonian Tomes: " In this, his second book, Kenneth Grant abandons the historical approach of The Magical Revival to focus on the doctrines of the "Draconian Tradition," his term for the ancient Tantric Current embodied in the work of Aleister Crowley and Austin Spare. Now, the historical reality of this "Tradition" as a cohesive cross-cultural entity is a bit suspect, but this is nothing compared to Grant's interpretations. There are many schools of Tantra so it seems a bit unfair for Grant to say he has the One True Interpretation of Tantric doctrine (based, again, on a "Secret Comment" of unknown provenace.) What this seems to come down to is endless discussions of the Magical virtues of vaginal secretions and menstrual blood. For Grant the female is the one source of the ultimate oracle, the male serving only as a controller and stimulant, or so it seems at first. It is quite easy to miss the two passages where, out of the blue, he proclaims that, "in the current Aeon, the Aeon of Horus, the menstruum is semen." Grant barely attemps an explanation of this change, he gives no practical advice for Workings, and he certainly never explains why he devotes so much space to obsolete, or at least superceded, formulae. He does, however, promptly launch into a description of the Aeonic sequence that owes more to H.P. Blavatsky's "Root-Race" cosmology and a very garbled reading of Lovecraft than to Liber AL. Later on Grant redefines the nature of XIš Workings, saying that Crowley had it wrong and that the true Eleventh pertains to IXš during the woman's Lunar flow. Now, as I always understood that the XIš was Crowley's innovation it seems a bit presumptuous to contradict him. Beyond that is the simple fact that Grant's reasoning makes no sense: he takes words like "Qadeshim" ( a Semitic euphemism for male temple prostitutes) and "catamite" and uses them as if they refer to women. Is Grant playing Humpty-Dumpty and words mean whatever he says they do, is this one of those "deliberate mistakes" to confuse the Profane, or does he just not have a clue? I have seen some material from members of Grant's "Typhonian O.T.O." and he seems to enforce his interpretation as a sort of Official Party Line, so I think we can rule out the second possibility. Actually, it is worth mentioning here that while he claims to be the real O.H.O. Of O.T.O., many modern Thelemic scholars doubt that Grant ever made it beyond IIIš, so your guess is no worse than his and could well be better. Grant also gives a chapter on his method of "dream-control by sexual Magick." The term is something of a misnomer as it is really a method for perfoming sexual Workings with spirit partners in the dream state. This is a good example of Grant spoiling his own work with obscure presentation. On the plus side there are some chapters on Austin Spare's system, most particularly his formula of the Witches' Sabbath, as well a his method of generating Sigils. There is also an analysis of H.P. Lovecraft as a reluctant visionary of the Typhonian Current. This part would be pretty good except that Grant often misapplies Lovecraft's terminology. For example he identifies the fish-like Deep Ones with the extra-terrestrial Great Old Ones. Grant's scholarship has not improved. He still rarely gives his sources and this time does not even bother with a bibliography. The obscure jargon is well-represented, however, with such words as "adumbration," "exudations," "bodies-forth," "equinoctial colure," "teratoma," "the type of," "glyphed as," and "transdivine." he does coin one useful word though: "Aeonology." In the final analysis this book has a few good points, but overall it is not as good as The Magical Revival. It is probably just as well that it is "not designed as a manual of practical Magick.""
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ALEISTER CROWLEY AND THE HIDDEN GOD
