Video Nasty and Year in Review (2017)

2017 was a pretty good year for me. I got a much better job, became a dad and went back to university (again). These changes, while mostly enjoyable, meant that I didn’t get to review or read as many books as I have in the last few years. However, I feel that the quality of this year’s posts has been of a decent standard. Here’s the best of 2017.

10. Liber Falxifer
A heavy metal grimoire of dark black magic.

9. Halloween and Satanism
Anti-Semitic Christian bullshit propaganda for assholes.

tarry thou till i come croly 8. Tarry Thou Till I Come
Including it here because, as far as I know, this is the only review of this book online. The tale of the Wandering Jew.

arktos joscelyn godwin 7. Arktos
Some bullshit about Donald Trump. A very cool book.

holy-blood-holy-grail 6. Holy Blood, Holy Grail
Jesus had a kid, and Hitler was a descendant of Dracula.

crowley book 4 5. Aleister Crowey’s Law and Lies
Getting to grip’s with Aleister Crowley’s bullshit.

faust demon 14 4. The Books of Faust
This one took a lot of work.

red book of appin scarabaeus 3. The Red Books of Appin
Myth busted.

2. The Aleister Crowley Scrapbook
An interview with a Crowley expert.

robert anton wilson the sex magicians 1. The Sex Magicians
My contribution to the conspiracy theories about the conspiracy theorist.

Well, there you go: Nocturnal Revelries’ best of 2017. (Just to remind you, as with last year, the links in this post are to the best posts of the year, not the best books that I read.) This blog has been going for nearly 3 years now, and I’ve reviewed about 170 books so far. I recently added an index page to the site in case anybody is looking to see if I’ve looked at a specific book or author.

Thanks for all of the support and interest. Remember, this blog has twitter and facebook pages to help keep you up to date with my ramblings. I’ve a few posts planned for the near future, but who knows what’s going to end up featured here in 2018. I’m going home for Christmas for the first time in years too, so I doubt I’ll post again until January. As always, you can email me with recommendations, questions, comments or threats. If you currently work in retail, know that my heart bleeds for you. For everyone else, enjoy the time off work, and don’t forget to go to mass on the 25th.

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race – Thomas Ligotti

2010

I saw this book recommended on a forum a few years ago and put it on my to-read list. A while later, I saw articles online about how the writer of the first season of True Detective had ripped it off. I loved that show, particularly the parts that were supposed to have been taken from this book, so this made me want to read it even more. It only took about 4 years for me to work up the courage to pick it up. I had a pretty good idea of what it was going to contain, but it wasn’t its infamous negativity that was putting me off, it was the fact that it is a book of philosophy.

I don’t like reading philosophy anymore. I occasionally pick up some Plato just for the fun of it, and I have been known to giggle at Schopenhauer and Neitzsche’s aphorisms, but I’m not really interested in their fiddle-faddle arguments about the will and all that crap. I don’t mind a philosophical novel, but books of pure philosophy often seem to require more effort than they’re worth.

That being said, there were a few things about this book that made it seem more appealing than other works of philosophy. It was written by a writer of horror fiction, and the philosophy it propounds is one of extreme pessimism, so it’s basically doom metal in the form of a book. For some reason, probably December’s festive cheer, I decided to inflict it upon myself last week.

Alright, so the main idea here is that consciousness makes life so unpleasant that it would be better not to live. I followed the author’s arguments, but they haven’t really changed my outlook on life. Maybe it’s the fact that I knew this guy is a horror writer and all of the references to Lovecraft in the text, but I couldn’t help but feel that the reality that he was writing about was a slightly different reality to the one I live in. As interesting as his arguments are, I was able to forget about them immediately after putting the book down in much the same way that I forget about the slime creatures from Stephen King stories when I go grocery shopping. In fairness to Ligotti though, he does reference this as an inevitability of the horror of existence. If we were not able to distract ourselves and stop thinking about these issues, we’d probably all kill ourselves very quickly. Ligotti’s arguments are convincing; yes, we are fucked, but they’re not particularly effective; we’re fucked, but who cares?

The world is a generally shitty place, and human beings are making it much worse. I, for one, solemnly believe that we are living in end times. The atmosphere is heating up, the seas are turning into chemical cesspools, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re all wiped out by nuclear war, biological weapons, aggressive technology or something else that’s really unpleasant (I’m personally hoping for an Independence Day style alien invasion). Human beings are disgusting, selfish, idiotic creatures with barely any self respect or intelligence, and there’s far too many of us for things to turn out well.

Life in the near future will become insufferable, but as long as I can listen to rock’n’roll, troll the internet and drink tea, I’ll be grand. While I didn’t find the arguments hugely effective (probably because I already accepted most of them), I did actually enjoy reading this book. Unfortunately, as with the last book I reviewed, it’s the people that most need to read this that are least likely to bother with it.

Perhaps the greatest feature of this book is it’s quotability. It is absolutely filled with zingers. I’ll leave you with a few of my favourites:

“We can stomach our own kind, or just enough of them who either prove useful to us or are not handily destructible, only by the terms of the following contract: we will eat some of the other fellow’s excrement if he will eat some of ours.”

On why humans reproduce: “People get the biggest kick out of seeing the features of their faces plastered together onto one head.”

“Child-bearers, then, should not feel unfairly culled as the worst offenders in the conspiracy against the human race.”

“Let it be said—human beings are the most retarded organisms on earth.”

Thomas Ligotti – Noctuary

Carroll and Graf – 1994

I guess I can throw this in here too. I read this collection of Ligotti’s short stories a long time ago. I had an office job back then, and I would spend most of the work day reading. I’d download pdfs of books and rename them “factory standards.pdf” and upload them to google drive so that my employer wouldn’t know what I was up to if he checked my history. I also got reckless and read a few at openlibrary.org, including this one. Over the course of three days on the job, I managed to finish Noctuary, the Satanic Bible, Mount Analogue by Damaul and Look Back in Anger by John Osborn. This frenzied bout of reading was fueled by spite for my employer rather than enjoyment, and I can honestly remember more about the ensuing headaches than the texts themselves. I rated Noctuary 4 out 5 stars on goodreads though, so it must have been pretty good.

I’d imagine this won’t be the last time Ligotti’s works are featured on this blog.

Drunk With Blood

Drunk with Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible – Steve Wells
SAB Books – 2013

I read (past tense) the Bible largely out of spite. I went through the whole thing, chapter by chapter, underlining or highlighting bits that I thought were silly or violent. Needless to say, it took a lot of ink. I did a Bible post on this blog, but it was a fairly general overview of the entire text, and I didn’t get into specifics. When it comes to a text like the Bible, there’s not much a person can say that hasn’t been said before.

While I didn’t bother to get into specifics, Steve Wells has been doing so on his sites the Skeptics Annotated Bible and Dwindling in Unbelief since 1999. In this book, Drunk with Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible, he examines each murder committed by God throughout the events of Bible. It’s a bit like a true crime book about the most insane and successful serial killer of all time. Using the numbers provided in this text (which are sourced from the Bible itself), I worked out that throughout the Bible narrative, God was murdering between 500 and 7000 people a day on average.

The material in the book is well organized, and Steve Well’s comments are often very funny. It does get a bit boring at times, but that’s not really the author’s fault, and in a way, the offending sections make the book more effective. These boring passages highlight the fact that the Bible should be seen as nothing more than a collection of repetitive folktales from the iron-age.

Keeping that in mind, I sometimes felt a bit sorry for the Bible when reading Wells’ criticisms. He’s interpreting it literally, and for most texts of this era and genre, I would say that this would be a fairly silly thing to do. It would take all of the entertainment out of the old Greek or Irish myths if you were to take them at face value. Of course, very few people have taken literal interpretations of the Greek and Irish myths to enforce their perverse ideals upon others in the last thousand years, so I completely understand the author’s approach. I just want to put it out there that the Bible is actually a really interesting resource for entertaining stories and cultural insight. Just please understand that it’s a book from history, not a history book.

It has been long enough since I read the Bible for me to have forgotten big chunks of it. Reading this book reminded me of Biblical gems such as the tale of Elisha and the children (2 Kings 2:23-25). Elisha was a mate of the prophet Elijah. One day, he was out and about when a group of 42 children teased him for being bald. Luckily for Elisha, his merciful and forgiving God sent two bears in to kill the children. He didn’t give them a dose of diarrhea or a headache or have their parents talk to them about being polite. He had their little bodies torn limb from limb by a pair of nature’s fiercest animals.

Will many Christians read Drunk with Blood and change their minds? I doubt it. If they haven’t read the Bible, the book where all this horrible shit came from, why would they read a criticism of it? I’d imagine that most non-believers wouldn’t have much time for this kind of thing either; I mean who cares if the imaginary man in the sky is a murderer? I guess that leaves the annoying people who like to think that they know more about scripture than the majority of believers to enjoy this book.

It’s good. Read it.

jesus cant die While we’re on the subject of Bibles, I “found” this illustration in a hotel room Bible over the summer. Thought this would be a good opportunity to post it.

The Peculiar Legends of the Red Book of Appin

A few weeks ago, I wrote a review in which I claimed that all of the grimoires that I have thus read have been a little disappointing. The book in question, Liber Falxifer, had a good atmosphere to it, but while the ritual procedures were generally spooky enough, the end goals of the rituals themselves were just a little too similar to what I’ve seen before. In response to this complaint, V.K. Jehannum, infamous demonolater and black magician, kindly suggested that I check out a mysterious little book called The Red Book of Appin.

This “book” is, as far as I know, exclusively available in pdf form. I did a bit of research on it before reading, and the earliest mention I found of this specific text comes from 2003. However, a mysterious book titled ‘The Red Book of Appin‘ has been referenced in many works over the last 150+ years.

I decided to do a little research.

Popular Tales of the West Highlands Volume II [1860] by J. F. Campbell
The first written mention of the Red Book of Appin can be found in what is basically a footnote to a story in J.F. Campell’s collection of Scottish folktales. The stories in this book were orally collected from Scottish peasants and the likes by the author and his accomplices during the mid-nineteenth century. Part XXX, The Two Shepherds, is the story of a lad getting assaulted by a very suspicious individual when making his way home one night. It is followed by another, very similar story, and it is in this tale, as told by “an old carter named John in Ardkinglas to Hector Urquhart, a friend of Campbell’s, in 1860, that the Red Book of Appin is first mentioned. The story goes a little something like this:

A man in Appin, a village in Scotland, adopted an orphan boy, and when this kid was old enough, he became a shepherd. One day, when he was out herding sheep, a mysterious stranger approached the boy and offered him a better job. The stranger told the kid that he’d make lots of money in his service; all he had to do was sign his name in the stranger’s little red book. The kid was interested, but he said that he’d have to talk it over with his adoptive father first. The stranger didn’t like this idea and tried to convince him to agree there and then. The kid was having none of it, so they arranged to meet up the next day after he had talked things through at home.

That night, the kid tells his dad what had happened, and this dad congratulates him for acting sensibly. He tells the kid to meet up with the stranger on the following evening, and he gives him instructions on how to make a protective circle around himself with the point of a sword so the stranger can’t touch him. (Note that this guy already seems to have some knowledge of folk magic.) He instructs the kid to accept and steal the book from the stranger only when he’s safely within the circle and to avoid signing it at all costs.

The kid manages to pull it off, much to the dismay of the stranger, who, at this stage, by transforming himself into many likenesses and blowing fire and brimstone, has cast off any doubts over his true identity. The kid waits till morning when the Devil disappears and then takes the book home to his dad.

(I’m by no means an expert on Gaelic mythology, but I have encountered similar stories of Scottish and Irish folk tricking the Devil (Divil). He seems to be a bit of an idiot when he’s in those parts.)

Urquhart notes that he had heard many tales of the Book of Appin from old people but that this particular story was the best. I’m sure that he chose the word “best” to suggest that this story was the most entertaining rather than the most accurate.

Apparently, Campell provided other origin tales for the Red Book of Appin (and other red books), but I haven’t been able to find their sources online. There’s an article by Hugh Cheape that gives these different stories and other information on the book. From both the quantity of accounts and their banality, it seems quite likely that there was an actual man in Appin who had a red book. Most of the stories are about villagers asking this man for advice when their cattle were sick. The actual Red Book was almost definitely just a collection of folk medicine recipes. These stories are too boring to presume that somebody made them up.

Ok, there you have it. The actual Red Book of Appin was a book of cow medicine.

red book of appin - ethan allen hitchcock

What’s this then? It looks fancy. This, my friends, is an 1863 book called The Red book of Appin : a story of the Middle Ages, with Other Hermetic Stories and Allegorical Tales by Ethan Allen Hitchcock. It’s a book in which the author takes folk tales and completely over-analyzes them.

It gives the account from Campell’s book, word for word, and then it goes into a bizarre analysis in which the author compares elements of the story with elements of the Bible. I gave up reading it after he says that the orphan in the story represents Melchisideck. Nothing of note here other than the fact that by 1863, the legend of the Red Book of Appin was already attracting lunatics.

Ok, so we have a quaint Scottish folktale and some historical traces of a curious little book about healing cows. Didn’t I start this post off discussing ultra-violent black magic?

Enter Montague Summers.

montague summers history witchcraft.jpg

Montague Summers, a man infamous for his anachronistic fear of black magic, includes the exact same paragraph on the book of Appin in both his History of Witchcraft and Demonology, 1926 (Chapter 3, p.86) and his Popular History of Witchcraft, 1937 (Chapter 2, p.76). It reads:

Such a volume was the Red Book of Appin known to have actually been in existence a hundred years ago. Tradition said it was stolen from the Devil by a trick. It was in manuscript, and contained a large number of magic runes and incantations for the cure of cattle diseases, the increase of flocks, the fertility of fields. This document, which must be of immense importance and interest, when last heard of was (I believe) in the possession of the now-extinct Stewarts of Invernahyle. This strange volume, so the story ran, conferred dark powers on the owner, who knew what inquiry would be made ere the question was poised ; and the tome was so confected with occult arts that he who read it must wear a circlet of iron around his brow as he turned those mystic pages.

The only part of what Monty wrote that didn’t come directly from the account in Campbell’s book is the line about the iron circlet, but the chapter in Campbell’s book that mentions the Red Book does specifically discuss the notion that “supernatural beings cannot withstand the power of iron”. I think it safe to assume that Campbell was Summers’ direct source for this paragraph.

Ok, so Summer’s paragraph doesn’t really add anything to what we already knew. However, I have little doubt that it was its mention in the works of Montague Summers that brought The Red Book of Appin to the attention of modern occultists.

Somewhere along the way, around 2003 it seems, somebody decided to write (or maybe just translate) a grimoire, but they knew that nobody would pay attention to it unless it had a cool name. On reading about the long-lost, mysterious Red Book of Appin in the works of Summers (or maybe one of Summers’ fans), the author/translator realized that his work would be a whole lot more mysterious (and hence popular with occultists) if it purported to be a resurfacing of that long lost work.

red book of appin scarabaeus The Red Book of Appin – Translated by Scarabaeus
Year of composition and publication unknown

So here we go, the dodgiest book of black magic available for free download.

This grimoire supposedly contains the teachings of Vlad Tepes. That’s right; Vlad the Impaler is supposed to have dictated this malarky to a monk named Kirill. The text claims that “the devil-worshipping of the great romanian general is an unquestionable fact, which no serious black adept can deny.” This is a bit odd considering that we’re speaking of a (V)lad who once attacked the Ottoman Empire “for the preservation of Christianity and the strengthening of the Catholic faith”.

Authorship aside, what the Hell does a grimoire supposedly written by Count Dracula have to do with the Scottish Red Book of Appin that we’ve been talking about? Well, as it turns out, nothing at all; this grimoire is named after “Joseph Appin”, the English merchant who supposedly once owned the manuscript. The fact that the book was red is just another coincidence. Indeed, the only part of the pdf that’s actually red is the Times New Roman heading on the first page.

ritual red book appin scarabaeus One of the book’s high quality illustrations.

This is definitely not the actual Red Book of Appin, but I suppose it could be a translation of a genuine grimoire to which the translator attached a name for which he knew there would be a market. Indeed there are signs that this is a translation. It reads a lot like the homework of a foreign student who has used Google Translate to change their writing into English. The grammar, spelling and punctuation are all absolutely horrible. I’ll be honest here, even if this is a translation, it’s a translation of absolute garbage. I find it very fitting that translator’s pseudonym literally means dung beetle.

There’s two main sections to the text. The first is a fairly standard list of demons, the same kind of thing that you find in the Goetia and the Grand Grimoire. The next section is on different rituals. These are absurd. The most entertaining was the one in which the wizard constructs a bell with a human corpse as the dingy bit in the middle. I can’t remember what this was supposed to achieve, but it was pretty funny. Most, if not all, of these rituals involve murderous sacrifices, including the killing of babies. I know that I complained that other grimoires weren’t nasty enough, but I found this pretty tasteless. There’s no atmosphere or cleverness here; it’s the kind of thing a teenage death metal fan would write. A load of shit.

sigil red book appin Doodles from a boring math class or the demonic seals of “Superior Creatures”?

There is another book, The True Red Book of Appin, written by Tarl Warwick, but this is an admitted fiction. This lad noticed the hullaballoo that this text was causing online and decided that he could write a much better version. Fair play to him. I haven’t read his book, but I am quite sure it’s more entertaining than the heap of trash by Scarabaeus.

So there you go, the legends of the Red Book of Appin. I somehow doubt that the original text, if it were ever to be found, would be as entertaining as the tales that have told about it.

Shelley’s Zastrozzi and St Irvyne – Revenge is Sweeter than Life

Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne – Percy Bysshe Shelley
Oxford University Press – 1986

These are the only novels Percy Shelley ever wrote, and they are usually published together. They’re roughly 100 pages each.

Zastrozzi (First published 1810)
I’ll be brief with this one because it’s very short and the more I say, the more it will take from your enjoyment if you do decide to read it. This is a remarkably enjoyable Gothic romance. The title character’s horrendously callous pursuit of vengeance leads him to acts of genuinely shocking brutality. Fantastic. File this guy alongside Maldoror, Iago, and Aaron the Moor. At one point, he utters the words, “I will taste revenge; for revenge is sweeter than life: and even were I to die with him, and, as the punishment of my crime, be instantly plunged into eternal torments, I should taste superior joy in recollecting the sweet moment of his destruction. O! would that destruction could be eternal!”
Those might be my favourite sentences in the entire canon of literature.

The ending of this book was absolutely satisfying in every respect. Incredible.

I listened to a few chapters from the Librivox audiobook version, but the narrator tries so hard to sound dramatic that he makes it difficult to keep listening. I don’t like badmouthing people who put together the stuff at Librivox as I know they’re volunteering their time to make literature accessible, but Jesus Christ, this guy sounded like an arsehole.
St. Irvyne (First published 1811)
The second tale in this collection, St. Irvyne, isn’t quite as good. There’s two storylines in here, one about a pair of star-crossed lovers and one about an innocent young virgin who is led astray by a mysterious stranger. I was really enjoying it, but I started getting a bit worried when I noticed that I was only a few pages from the end and had absolutely no idea how the two plotlines related to each other. I started wondering if I had skipped a chapter by accident. Unfortunately, this confusion lasted right up until the third-last sentence in the book.

St. Irvyne, you see, was originally intended to be a much longer work, but at a certain point Shelley got sick of writing and decided to tie everything up in a 2 page conclusion. The writing is nice, but this was a bit of a disappointment.

The alternate title of the work is actually The Rosicrucian, and while one of the characters in here has clearly been dabbling in the Occult, there’s not a single mention of actual Rosicrucianism in the entire book. If you’re into that kind of thing, I’d recommend Bulwer Lytton’s Zanoni instead.
While on the subject of Shelley, I’m going reread his wife’s Frankenstein soon. I’ve previously mentioned that book’s shameful absence from this blog, and it’s about time to rectify that. Its 200th anniversary of publication is coming up in a few weeks, so I’m going to try to get it done by then.

On Reading and Collecting Occult Books

occult paperbacks This, my friends, is what it’s all about. Fuck your fancy hardback collection!

How could a person possibly enjoy Simon’s Necronomicon if they’ve never heard of Cthulu? Could they possibly feel the full impact of Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness having never before encountered the dread cry of “Tekeli-li!”? Haven’t you ever noticed the references to Pallas Athena and the Balm of Gilead in Poe‘s the Raven? They couldn’t have made much sense to you unless you were familiar with Greek mythology and Biblical lore. Speaking of mythology, isn’t the Simon Necronomicon, the text that we started off with, basically just a silly version of the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth?

Even the silliest, most entry-level texts of Occultism require an awful lot of background reading if they are to be understood and fully appreciated.

“Occult” literally means hidden, and many “Occultists” out there limit their research to the esoteric. Occultism is generally concerned with spirituality and the supernatural, and many “occultists” that I have encountered have little to no interest in the major world religions, history, philosophy or science. I personally fail to understand how they can comprehend the Hidden without first studying and attempting to understand what is in plain view.

The internet has made countless esoteric texts instantly available to the neophyte. A few clicks on wikipedia and Curious George ends up bypassing Homer and the Bible and gets straight into nutty books filled with references to these works. These n00bs can’t possibly understand the stuff they’re supposedly reading.

Maybe I’m just getting old. I have similar complaints about kids these days being able to download obscure black metal records when they’ve never listened to Megadeth or Anthrax. When I was a teenager, we had to buy albums and check the thank-you lists in the cd booklets to find the names of other cool bands. Nowadays a kid can go from being a Justin Bieber fan to a devotee of obscure Finnish death-doom in just a few clicks. Start at the start or go die in your posehole, you annoying little snots.

And music, while obviously very different to literature, can also contain references to other music. (I felt chills the first time I heard the singer from Crypt Sermon bellow out “Fool, fool!” in this track, a song that is incidentally based on a story from the Bible. If you don’t understand the “Fool, fool!” reference, please abruptly find the closest exit and leave the hall. (That’s another heavy metal reference btw.)) This being said, a person can certainly enjoy a song without having heard older songs of the same genre. References within music (and fiction) generally serve aesthetic purposes.

Occult texts are a little different though. Their writers often deliberately attempt to obfuscate their message, and esoteric references are one of the more popular methods of doing so. These references, while often having an aesthetic quality, primarily serve as what I’ll refer to as “initiation bridges”. You don’t get to cross the bridge and pass on to green fields of understanding until you’ve done your research and found out what the reference means.

mythology book collection Some of my books on Mythology

No matter how much background reading you do, you’re bound to run into these initiation bridges on your quest for secret knowledge. In my opinion, however, the occult adventurer is better off starting off on their quest with at least some of their homework done. If you want to become a psychologist, you need to study the history of psychology. Why should it be any different if you want to be a magician?

If you want to be a Satanist, please read the Bible and familiarize yourself with who Satan really is. It strikes me as bizarre that a person whose religion is named after a character from a book would not have read said book. Bizarre, but not surprising; Christians are in the same boat, with the same book. Hard copies of the Bible are widely and cheaply (if not freely) available, and it is my firm belief that every Christian, Satanist, atheist and occultist should have a copy of it on their bookshelf for reference. I have a few.

bible collection

I recently finished reading Liber Falxifer, a grimoire that I can’t imagine making much sense to anyone who isn’t familiar with Gnosticism and the book of Genesis. Indeed, it was my ruminations on that book that led to this post. Check this out:
poser occultist books I saw this posted on facebook a few weeks ago. That collection of 6 books makes up the entirety of an individual’s library. Now look, I understand that it’s not fair to judge a person based on the number of books in their collection, but I think it is fair to judge a person based on the types of books in their collection. The books in this collection are fancy-pants hardbacks that sell individually for anything between 50 and 1000 dollars. Does expensive mean better? Can you remember the tale of the Emperor and his new clothes?

I also think it’s fair, and even important, in this situation, to judge a person based on the types of books NOT in their collection. His six books doubtlessly contain references to texts not in his possession. Does he just use wikipedia to check these references? Don’t get me wrong; I use the internet to research stuff all the time. Just remember that in this case, this person has thousands of dollars to spend on books, and it very much seems that he wants people to know that he’s a book collector. It looks like he has deliberately limited his purchases to obscure, expensive books, and as you can tell, this pisses me off. Books are for reading, not for showing off.

Yeah, ok. I am obviously guilty of showing off my book collection at every given opportunity, but at least I actually read them.

You might accuse me of jealousy, and while I can freely admit that I’m jealous of anyone who clearly has fewer responsibilities than I, I would not trade my extensive collection of trashy paperback classics for a much smaller collection of far more expensive texts. For a thousand dollars, you could buy one copy of Liber Falxifer from an Ebay auction or literally hundreds of peculiar and interesting paperbacks from library book sales and second hand book stores. Which choice is going to give you more hours of entertainment? Which choice is going to give you more knowledge?

Interestingly enough, the author of Liber Falxifer seems to agree with me on the price issue. In an interview he actually encouraged people to download pdf versions of his sold-out books rather than paying anything over the original sale price for second hand copies. I have to say, I respect him for that. The original prices for his works are reasonable for nice books put out by an independent publisher.

You see, I understand that some things are worth more than others, but just as an expensive video game is useless without a console, so too is an occult book without an appropriate amount of background knowledge. I don’t think it controversial to say that Occultism is about knowledge, and spending a ridiculous amount of money on a rare occult book does not make you a knowledgeable occultist.

web of occult books.jpg I’m already seeing about 5 more connections between these texts.

I had an English teacher when I was in secondary school who used to say, “You can buy fashion, but you can’t buy style.” I’ve been struggling to make a very similar point as succinctly. To sum up this post then: Any fool can buy books, but true understanding of the Occult is available only to the dedicated student.

The practical value of studying the occult is a separate matter, one which I might address in the future. For now, it shall suffice to say that personally, I reckon most of it’s absolute rubbish.

To end on a positive note though, let us remember that while many texts require extensive background reading, these texts will likely also lead to further reading. One of my favourite things about reading is finding the name of some curious book being mentioned and then going out and tracking down a copy, only to find it filled with references to other curious tomes. You’re never going to run out of books to read, thank goodness.

occult book collection.jpg “Not for sale. Just showcasing my collection as of 2017.”

Death Worship and Current 218

Liber Falxifer: The Book of the Left Handed Reaper – N.A-A. 218
Ixaxaar – 2008
While maybe not quite as old as they claim to be, grimoires such the Grand Grimoire, The Goetia, the Book of AbraMelin and Die Faustbücher have all established their places within the canon of Western Occultism. These texts are referenced in many of the other books that I read, and I read them in turn to help me understand those other books. Liber Falxifer, however, was first printed in 2008, and it has yet to be republished as a Dover Occult paperback. With the internet, anyone can create and publish their own grimoire, so why did I choose to read this one?

The cover is really fucking cool, and the title has a nice ring to it. However, what really drew me to this book were the prices that I saw people paying for it online. You’ll be lucky if you can find a copy of this thing for less than $500. I would never spend that much on a book, but I was intrigued as to why others would. When a friend offered to lend me their copy of Liber Falxifer, I jumped at the chance to see what all the fuss was about. (I’m actually working on a separate post about collecting occult books in which I’ll further elaborate on the potentially ludicrous cost of this hobby.)
falxifer skeleton.jpg The Illustrations, sigils and front cover of this book were designed by Soror Sagax. 218.

Liber Falxifer is about the Cult of the Dead and the worship of the Left-handed Skeleton Lord of Death. The first part of the book describes the origins cult of this Señor La Muerte. I presumed this was all bullshit, but I looked it up and it’s a real thing in parts of South America; people there do actually pray to a Saint of death. The book claims that there is an esoteric side to the worship of this Saint that is not publicly discussed or recognized, and it’s this side of things that it focuses on: how to kill your neighbour, how to control people, all of that good stuff…

Links are then drawn between this Saint of Death and Qayin (Cain) of Bible fame. It gets into apocryphal interpretations of the Genesis story and ends up with a really juicy Satanic form of Gnosticism. I absolutely loved this part of the book.

The last few chapters are on the actual practice of Black Magic. These parts, though occasionally rather sinister, were not different enough to what I’ve seen before to hold my interest. I wasn’t reading this as a practicing magician, so this bit was bound to be wasted on me.

falxifer sigil Sigil from the cover of the book.

There’s a poem at the very beginning of the book that struck me as very familiar, and some of the phrases in the different summonings and the way in which they were ordered made me think of the lyrics on Dissection’s Reinkaos album. While ruminating on that record, I recalled that the first song is called Nexion 218. Was it a coincadence that the author of this book is given as N.A-A. 218? Ixaxaar.com, the publisher’s website states that this book was written by the Magister of the Temple of the Black Light, the same order that Jon Nödtveidt, singer of Dissection, belonged to. This Magister of the Temple of the Black Light (formerly the Misanthropic Luciferian Order) also went by the name of Frater Nemidial, and what do you know, Frater Nemidial gets a writing credit on Dissection’s Reinkaos album. dissection reinkaos

For those of you who don’t know, Jon Nödtveidt, the singer and guitarist in Dissection ended up shooting himself in the head during a Satanic ritual. He had previously spent 8 years in prison for murder. Reinkaos, his final album, is maligned by many fans of the band because it sounds so different from their earlier releases, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it.

Anyways, back to Liber Falxifer. It’s definitely a more enjoyable read than other grimoires I’ve slogged through. I really liked the way that it tied Gnosticism, Satanism and the cult of Death together; I love that occulty synthesis stuff. Also, this one is pretty dark. It doesn’t shy away from blood rituals and graveyard desecration. I mean, I’m not going to go out and do that stuff myself, but I like the idea that books like this exist. My interest in Satanism and Black Magic is largely fueled by my love of heavy metal, and while I was surprised that I was able to recognise the author by his turn of phrase, I was not surprised that the individual who wrote this was somehow involved in heavy metal.

skull falxifer

As mentioned before, I am not a practicing magician, so I have nothing to say on the book’s efficacy. I can really only discuss whether or not I enjoyed reading it. When I read grimoires, I like imagining that I’m a character in a tale by Clark Ashton Smith or Lovecraft who has come across some long forgotten book of heinous magic, and as far as grimoires go, this one was quite entertaining. The only way I would have enjoyed Liber Falxifer more would have been if it was more violent. I liked how it touched on blood sacrifices, but I would have enjoyed some brutal torture or some mass killings thrown into the mix. Again, I stress that I read these things as if they were fiction; I really don’t want that kind of thing to happen in the real world. I suppose there’s only so much you can get away with if you’re putting out a book that is going to be taken seriously.

So overall, this book was enjoyable enough, but it fell just short of what I want from a Satanic Grimoire. I feel a bit like Bono. Does my ideal Grimoire exist? I’ve thought of writing one myself, one that was completely over the top in terms of sinister violence and evil, but as much fun as that would be, I’d be terrified that some loon might get their hands on it and take it seriously. There’s two more books in the Falxifer series, and while I sure as Hell won’t be buying them, I’ll consider reading them if they ever come my way.

Halloween and Satanism

Halloween and Satanism – Joan Hake Robie and Phil Phillips
Starburst Publishers – 1990 (First published 1987)

It’s been a while since I reviewed any Evangelical christian bullshit. While books of this ilk are always terrible and often palpably irritating, they are a necessary evil. The frustration that they cause serves to replenish my patience for awful, left-hand-path books about Black Magic and Satanism. The ol’ devil worship seems violently appealing when compared with this kind of idiotic christian foolishness.

Holy Jesus, this one is particularly bad too. I actually ordered it online last October, but it arrived 2 days into November, so I postponed reading it for the year. It was not worth the wait. I’m going to briefly go through the chapters, just so you can get a taste of how truly moronic this pile of shitty-shitey-farty-bummy-pooey-poo this is.

Chapter 1. The argument here is that fear is not of God; therefore, anything that causes fear intentionally (horror movies, scary costumes, etc…) is not appropriate for a christian. In fact, watching horror movies or dressing up in a costume will probably lead you into practicing witchcraft. I thought that this idea of fear being completely removed from god was fairly interesting.

Say, all my Bible nerds, can you remember what Genesis 20:11, 2 Samuel 23:3, 2 Chronicles 20:29, Nehemiah 5:15, Psalms 36:1, Romans 3:18, 2 Corinthians 7:1, and Ephesians 5:21 all have in common?
Yeah, that’s right; all of these Bible verses specifically address the necessity for “fear of God”.

Christians should not entertain themselves with scary things; the more time you spend being afraid of movies, the less time you’ll spend being afraid of god. That’s how this works, right? Makes perfect sense to me.

Chapter 2 describes the origins and traditions of Halloween. This section was a bit confusing. The text is describing ancient Celtic practices, but the accompanying images are from Disney and Hammer Horror films. There’s no distinction made between historical fact and legend. I’m sure some of what’s written in here is true, but the information is so poorly presented that it would be futile to attempt to distinguish the fact from the fiction. This issue is apparent throughout the book, and it serves to clarify that the only people who could read this book and take it seriously would be individuals completely incapable of critical thought.

man myth and magic
Many of the images in this seriously shitty book were simply lifted from Richard Cavendish’s Man, Myth and Magic magazine series. I have a few copies of the magazine on my shelf, but I recently found that a nearby college library has the entire collection. I think I might have to spend a few days in there soon doing so some copying.

Chapter 3 talks about some animals and supernatural entities that have been linked with Halloween. It doesn’t really pass much judgement on them though. Again, the information here is a weird mix of general knowledge, opinion and fiction. This chapter, like many of the following, doesn’t really support the author’s idea that Halloween is Satanic at all. One of the images here is the cover page of a reprint of Varney the Vampire.

varney halloween Varney the Vampire is a serialized novel originally published from 1845-1847. It’s a fairly well known piece of literature, and will definitely have come to the attention of anyone who has done any research on vampires. The authors of Halloween and Satanism have taken the cover page of this famous work and given it the heading “Vampire Show Advertisement”. But a book is not the same thing as show, and a title page is not the same thing as an advertisement. This is not a case of me disagreeing with the authors; this is a case of the authors publishing false information. But wait… this isn’t the worst of this variety of mistake to appear in this book. This doesn’t even come close to what pops up in chapter 7…

At the end of chapter 3, the authors suggest that their readers should celebrate “Holy-ween” instead of Halloween. This would entail prayer and dressing up as one’s favourite Bible character. Whoever made this suggestion would doubtlessly go as THE VIRGIN.

Chapter 4 is comprised of descriptions of different occult phenomena, from palmistry to necromancy. The descriptions themselves are basic and generally not condemnatory, but each one is followed by the phrase;
“You can be set free from [insert occult phenomenon here]!”
(You can be set free from Good Luck Charms!, You can be set free from Edgar Cayce!, You can be set free from Tea Leaf Reading!) The effect is generally fairly humorous. I had a hard time picturing the person whose life was being ruined by their commitment to tea-leaf reading. There’s a few irritating grammar mistakes in here too. This book was printed in September, and I imagine it had been rushed to the press to get it out in time for Halloween. I doubt it was ever proofread.

Chapter 5 is just a bunch of Biblical references chosen to support the notion that witchcraft is bad.

Chapter 6 is an awful summary of the history of witchcraft. The complete disregard for separating truth from speculation and opinion renders this fairly difficult to bother analyzing. Anyone with the patience to read a serious critique of this book would never have been capable of taking this rubbish seriously. It’s genuinely appallingly written. There’s a great bit in here about witches’ familiars, the demon-animals that witches use as servants. The authors claim that witches familiars never take the form of fish because fish are linked with christ. I would have thought that this had more to do with the fact that a fish is going to be far less useful as a servant to a human due to the fact that it lives in water. There’s very little mention of Halloween in this chapter.

Chapter 7 discusses the history of black magic and the black Mass. Again, this is awful rubbish and doesn’t really add any weight to the authors’ argument that Halloween is satanic. There’s a fairly lengthy description of a witch being tortured in this chapter that doesn’t serve any function other than sensationalizing the topic. This is objectively terrible writing.

Also included in this chapter is perhaps the most offensive part of the book.

de eewige jood Evangelical christian propaganda vs Nazi propaganda.

This image of an evil looking man, titled “Satanic Symbol” is thrown in the middle of a section about the Black Mass. This “Satanic Symbol” is actually the movie poster for Der ewige Jude, a repulsively anti-Semitic 1940 film produced for Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister for Propaganda. The title is still on the poster too. How the fuck did nobody notice this? Either Joan Hake Robie and Phil Phillips didn’t give a fuck about what they put in their book, or they deliberately used an image that the Nazis used in their attempts to dehumanize Jews. Either way, this is a shameful mistake to have made. I’m not easily offended, but when you sit down and think about what’s happened here, it is actually disgusting. They have literally used one of the vilest and sadly, most effective pieces of Nazi propaganda to push their moronic agenda. What a fucking disgrace. They really should be ashamed of themselves.

At this stage, I was getting a bit fed up with this book. The next chapter discusses modern day witchcraft and magic. Nothing of note here.

Chapter 9 gives some satanic terminology and rituals. It actually contains large chunks of text from LaVey’s Satanic Rituals. I wonder if they were given by permission by the Church of Satan… Also included here is a warning to parents to look out for Motley Crue or “Ozzie” Osbourne records in their children’s rooms.

Chapter 10 is weird. It gives accounts of people who played with the occult and suffered because of it. One of them ends up getting attacked by a werewolf Jesus. Utterly stupid.

Chapter 11 is comprised of different news stories. There is mention of the cancellation of a Mercyful Fate concert in Norfolk, Virginia. That must have sucked for Norfolk. I checked it out, and that show was indeed cancelled (although King Diamond played a set in the same venue 4 years later). The rest of these news stories are about kids turning satanic after playing with Ouija boards.

The last 3 chapters wage war on Satan without being very clear on how to achieve victory. There’s some cringey sections in which the authors quote their favourite get-rich-quick, motivational speakers. Unsurprisingly. there’s no brilliant conclusion to tie up all the loose ends into a coherent argument against Halloween.

phil phillips joan hake robie This is a “picture” of the “authors”.

I think that an intelligent person could very easily write a book about why Christians should reconsider how they celebrate Halloween, but I also doubt that any intelligent person would waste their time doing so. Halloween and Satanism was clearly not written for intelligent people. This is sensational, incoherent garbage that only the most dangerously stupid idiot could take seriously. It’s misleading, it’s untrue and it’s legitimately offensive. Fuck this shitty book.

My life is extremely busy at the moment, and I actually wrote this review in September to make sure it would be ready for Halloween. In the meantime, I did a little internet sleuthing to see if I could track down either of the authors. I found Phil Phillips’ twitter account, and to my surprise, he seems to have dedicated a lot of his time to helping people, especially kids, in parts of Africa and Asia. He is a Trump supporter (no surprises there), but the guy is definitely not an out-and-out racist. I’d be willing to bet that the Nazi imagery included his book wasn’t included with the intent to sow the seeds of the fourth reich. With this in mind, I reached out to Phil and asked him for an interview.

tweets to phil phillips
These are the only messages I sent. Friendly and polite, no?

Now look, I know that I’ve written some nasty things about books and authors, but I’m not a complete piece of shit. If a person is willing to take the time to talk to me, I’ll be respectful, friendly and polite, regardless of our differences. The reason I wanted to interview Phil Phillips was the fact that I hated his book but thought I saw goodness in him. I hoped to use that goodness as a bridge between our differences so that we could better come to understand each other’s point of view. It was not to be.

blocked
I thought this was a bit of an over-reaction to be honest. I wanted to give the guy a chance to respond to my criticism of his work. As things stand, I can only presume that he’s aware of the shortcomings of his terrible book and doesn’t want to embarrass himself further by talking about it. Fair enough Phil, but you didn’t have to block me. I wasn’t remotely unpleasant to you.

Ok, all that being said, the big day is almost here. I’ve already carved my pumpkin and filled my phone with Misfits and Type O Negative albums. This is going to be my first Halloween as a dad too, and I’m going to initiate my baby girl into the cult of Satan by dressing her up as a cute little witch and taking her to the trick-or-treat party in our apartment building.

witch hat baby

I encourage you all to watch scary movies, listen to heavy metal and worship at the altar of Satan this Halloween. Keep it spooky and have a good one!
pumpkins

The Unknown Origins of the Nine Unknown Men

talbot mundy nine unknown The Nine Unknown – Talbot Mundy
1923

This is a 1923 adventure novel by Talbot Mundy. It’s a moderately entertaining read, but the writing is surprisingly heavy for a work that was originally serialized in Adventure Magazine. It has the kind of plot that makes you want to read quickly, but the writing is so dense that you can’t really skim through it. The frustratingly large cast of characters is made up of protagonists from Mundy’s other works, and as I haven’t read anything else by Mundy, I repeatedly found myself having to consult the first chapter in order to figure out who was who. By the end of the novel I had figured out that the team of good guys consists of a Sikh, a Muslim (with several interchangeable sons), a Christian priest, a strange Indian man and four white guys. The white guys are the heroes from other books by Mundy. I’m sure his fans would have loved this crossover, but I could barely tell these lads apart.

This dream team was assembled by the priest to help attain a mysterious set of books that contain some terrible knowledge. These books are kept by a very secretive and mysterious secret society known as the Nine Unknown or the Nine Unknown Men. The priest intends to burn the books as soon as he gets his hands on them in order to keep the public from ever reading their secrets. Naturally enough, the Nine Unknown don’t want to let this happen. (I found the priest’s name, Father Cyprian, quite intriguing; Saint Cyprian of Antioch was an alleged sorcerer and author of several grimoires. Can we be sure that he really wants to burn these books?).

Also thrown into the mix are a fake Nine. These impostors share the protagonists’ goal of attaining the books, but they want to do so for their own benefit. These lads are trained killers and hypnotists and cause some serious problems for the good guys (and the original Nine, who actually seem pretty chill once you get to know them). Fires, jailbreaks, trips to a brothel, talking corpses, unruly mobs and vicious battles ensue.

Ok, so an adventure novel about a secret society and a set of mysterious books that features hypnotism and chatty corpses sounds like the kind of thing that you’d expect to find reviewed on this blog. However, the really interesting thing about this novel is not the text itself but the conspiracy theory that grew out of it. You see, there are people out there who have come to believe in the literal existence of the Nine Unknown.

The internet is full of confused references to this book and the conspiracy theories it inspired. Most depict that the Nine as guardians of society, withholding dangerous information about nuclear physics to protect humanity from itself. This much is revealed or at least suggested by the end of the novel. But you’ll find many websites that claim that Mundy’s novel mentions the specific topics of the forbidden books being sought by Father Cyprian. The topics of the nine forbidden tomes are supposedly propaganda, physiology, microbiology, the transmutation of metals, communication (both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial), gravitation, cosmogony, light and sociology.
9 unknown ancient origins
(From Ancient-Origins.net)
You see, the problem here is that the topics of the books are never given in Mundy’s novel. Like many of the best conspiracy theories, this idea has its origin in Pauwels and Bergier’s Morning of the Magicians. While the two Frenchmen don’t actually claim that the list comes from Mundy’s novel, the passage in question (or at least the translation of this passage) certainly makes it seem like Mundy had given the list. The supposed topics of the Nine books are almost definitely of P+B’s invention. Also, in the passage in question, they quote Mundy, and although I am working with a translation (presumably of a translation), the quote is not to be found in The Nine Unknown. Looking up the quote online only brings up links to Pauwels and Bergier’s text. I’m not entirely convinced that Pauwels and Bergier made up the quote, but given the rest of their body of work, it really wouldn’t surprise me if they had.

Aside from Mundy, Pauwels and Bergier’s only other source on this topic is Louis Jacolliot, a man whose ideas of Agartha, a city in the centre of the world, I have previously come across in Arktos. (Arktos is a wonderful book, but it’s basically a compilation of some of the worlds craziest conspiracy theories. Unsurprisingly, it contains many references to the work of Pauwels and Bergier. It also contains several references to Om, another novel by Mundy.) P+B say of him; “Jacolliot states categorically that the society of Nine did actually exist. And, to make it all the more intriguing, he refers in this connection to certain techniques, unimaginable in 1860, such as, for example, the liberation of energy, sterilization by radiation and psychological warfare.” Note that Jacolliot died more than 30 years before the novel was written, so his knowledge of the Nine would be very interesting if it was real. However, while Pauwels and Bergier claim to have found information on the Nine Unknown in Jacolliot’s work, they fail to mention the specific text in which they found this information. I have not read anything by Jacolliot, but other people have, and as far as I know, nobody has found the section alluded to by P + B. Mundy’s novel is then, as far as any sane person has been able to tell, the earliest mention of the Nine Unknown.

A big chunk of Pauwels and Bergier’s section on the Nine Unknown has to do with the Nine’s origins. Apparently they were founded by Emperor Asoka (Ashoka). You will notice however, that all respectable sources (examples 1, 2, 3) on the Emperor completely fail to mention the Nine. Is that because the Nine have suppressed this information or because it’s a load of bollocks? I’ll let you decide.

Since Pauwels and Bergier’s book came out, the Nine Unknown have become key players in the world of occultism and conspiracy theories. They pop up everywhere. Anton LaVey thanked them in the dedication that was included in the first editions of the Satanic Bible. According to Frank Lauria’s Doctor Orient Series (expect a post on same soon), the Nine are a benevolent group of mystics including the immortal Count De Saint Germain. They even appear as rockstars in the Illuminatus! Trilogy.
nine unknown illuminatus

Mundy’s text has been widely available for almost a century, and you’d think that anybody writing about the Nine Unknown would have started with reading this book. Unfortunately, judging by the articles I’ve seen online, this has not been case. If you want to read it yourself, it’s available online. However, nearly all of the copies of the text I found online were incomplete, missing several pages at the very end of the novel. Here is a link to the complete text.

The Paddling of the Swollen Ass – Francis King’s Secret Rituals of the O.T.O.

secret rituals of the oto francis king The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. – Francis King
1973
I’m a member of a few different book related groups on Facebook. A few weeks ago, I saw a man post a link to the ebay auction for his copy of Francis King’s The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. Within moments, other users of that group had warned him to take the ebay listing down and to try to sell it privately instead. They claimed that the O.T.O. would file a copyright claim to have the ebay auction cancelled. Sure enough, the ebay listing was cancelled less than 6 hours later.

I knew the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) was originally a German secret society that Aleister Crowley had commandeered at some stage, but I had no personal interest until I saw that they didn’t want people to read a particular book. Nothing is quite as appealing as that which is forbidden, and I immediately determined to read said book.. Unfortunately, copies of this curious text sell for anything between $250 and $1300.

francis king sex satan swastica These are the only books I own by Francis King. It can’t be denied that he had a real talent for choosing appealing titles.

Luckily for me, it took about 5 seconds to find the text of Secret Rituals online. It seems rather silly that the O.T.O. would bother filling out the copyright claim against an ebay auction for a single, very expensive copy of the book that’s going to end up wrapped in plastic on some nerdy collector’s shelf when the same exact text is freely available to anyone with access to the internet. Let it go lads. The more you fuss over it, the more people are going to want to read it. I can honestly say that I would never have bothered reading this garbage if not for your hullabaloo.

And this is the thing; the content of this book is actually rather boring. There’s a small biography of the O.T.O. at the beginning, and the rest of the book is taken up with the different initiation rituals. I’m not going to discuss what they entail because I don’t want the O.T.O. to file copyright claims against me, but I will say that there’s nothing all that interesting. You know all the silly ceremonies the Mason’s go through? This is the same crap, only a bit more Templary.
secret rituals of the oto

Members of the O.T.O. have claimed that the documents herein are imperfect draft versions of their rituals. King supposedly got them off some collector and stuck them together in a book without really asking permission. Others have pointed out that these rituals don’t make any sense without another document, De Arte Magica. The best part about this omission is that De Arte Magica was later printed in full in Scott Michaelsen’s Portable Darkness with the O.T.O.’s permission. (It’s also available online.)

oto lamen.jpg All in all, the controversy surrounding this book is far more alluring than its contents. I wouldn’t recommend reading it, but can’t deny that doing so was moderately satisfying.
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crowley liber cdxv paris working Liber CDXV – Opus Lutetianum or The Paris Working – Aleister Crowley
1914

It’s no secret that the O.T.O. teaches sex magic. I was doing a bit of research on the ol’ sex magic after reading their secrets, and I came across Liber CDXV – Opus Lutetianum or The Paris Working. This is basically a magickal diary kept by Aleister Crowley during a lengthy sex magick ritual that he was practicing with his mate Victor Neuburg. This ritual is the basis for the story of Crowley told by the Canon Copley-Syle in Dennis Wheatley’s To the Devil a Daughter and again by Wheatley in his The Devil and all his Works. The story tells of Crowley going mad and his son (who never existed) dying in an attempt to evoke Pan. What actually happened was that Crowley and Neuburg took a bunch of drugs and bummed the arses off each other. Fair play.
Read the cryptic account of their drugged-out bumming frenzy here.

This has been my third post in a row relating to Aleister Crowley. Kenneth Grant led his own branch of the O.T.O., and The Magical Revival discusses sex magic at length, even briefly mentioning Crowley and Neuburg’s tango in Paris. The Aleister Crowley Scrapbook shys away from elaborating on any of the truly lurid details of Crowley’s practices, but it does suggest that his poetry might be a good place to look if one was interested in that kind of thing. My own suggestion would be to read Crowley’s poem, Leah Sublime. It’s a love poem to one of his girlfriends, and it contains the lines;

“Shit on me, slut!
Creamy the curds
That drip from your gut!
Greasy the turds!
Dribble your dung
On the tip of my tongue!”

He did actually eat her poos in real life too, and that’s not even nearly the worst of it. Leah Hirsig was the woman that had tried to have sex with a goat for one of Crowley’s rituals. When the goat wouldn’t fuck her, Crowley slit its throat and let it bleed all over her.

Hopefully it will be a while before I post about this Crowley scumbag again. I feel like it’s time to read some fiction. My life is a bit hectic at the moment too, so posts here might be a bit more sporadic for a while.