Basil Crouch – The Making of a God and other Works of Black Art

Basil Crouch – The Making of a God and Other works of Black Art
Finbarr – 2010

It’s been a while since I read a grimoire. Here’s some rubbish.

This is little different from the other Basil Crouch books I’ve read. It’s written from the perspective of the publisher rather than Crouch himself, and although it is never explicitly stated, the narration makes it seem like Mr. Crouch was dead at the time of its publication in 2010. I have it on good authority that ol’ Basil died in 2020, so it’s very likely that this was actually written by him. The ridiculous amount of praise for Crouch in the text seems to confirm this suspicion.

Basil Crouch gave his publisher a book he deliberately made up, but the magic therein worked. The narrator, presumably still the publisher, claims that he prints so many books guaranteeing success and happiness not because they don’t work but because the success they provide is addictive.

Shoon is a magical land in Africa like Shambala, but aliens landed there 10,000 years ago. The Chinese had proof of this, but they hid it. Crouch gives some examples of the magic of Shoon being used to improve the lives of others. I haven’t read Crouch for years, but one of these testimonies, a story about a girl getting hurt at a fair and then being miraculously healed sounded familiar. There was another one in which a thalidomide man used Shoon magic to make his arms grow to normal size.

Make a paper-mache doll and fill it with pieces of junk and build it an altar. Name it after an African deity.

Breath in the doll’s mouth, and it will turn into a god. Talk to it, and give it offerings every day. The next portion of book describes appropriate offerings and prayers for each day.

To enslave another person, buy a doll, draw some shitty symbols on it, and pretend it’s the person you want to bum. Then give it to the fetish you have created. It might talk to you in response.

You can also use the doll you made to invoke demons. The idea here is remarkably unclear. I think the demons are supposed to possess it.

Now some instructions on how to get a barren woman pregnant. Crouch knows it works because he knew a 12 year old boy and a 9 year old girl who got pregnant this way. Also, a barren woman who was raped by the leader of an African tribe got pregnant this way. To do it, you draw a circle on the ground, bring your partner into it, strip off and then smoke a cigarette. Blow the cigarette smoke on each other, have a ride, and then go out and buy some maternity clothes.

Next up, a weird story about a man who can make himself invisible by moving his hands a certain way. This is followed with unrelated instructions on how to summon the invisibility demon. It’s genuinely hard to imagine anyone taking this seriously.

The book ends with a report about a monkey grave being found in Rwanda that Crouch read in a tabloid. It has nothing to do with anything.

Honestly, this text was so incoherent that it’s difficult to analyze. It starts off with a discussion about Shoon, the secret African city, and then goes on to tell how to make a doll that will solve all your problems. I guess the doll is a Shoonish thing, but I’m not sure this is ever explicitly stated.

Pure shit.