Subject: (urth) (whorl): Azoth misc

From: jingram <jingram at usc.edu>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 09:32:36 +0000

Rostrum's recent post reminded me of another tidbit, which I hope
isn't too redundant with long-ago posts . . .

Sepia

[taken from http://azothgallery.com/azoth_defined.html]

AZOTH. In 16 th century portraits painted of Paracelsus, the pommel of his
sword, upon which rests his hand, bears the inscription "Azoth." From the
poem set beneath a contemporary newspaper "broadside" published of
Paracelsus, we may gather that Azoth was the name of a secret medicine, an
elixir vitae, i.e. infallible remedy or alexipharmakon (~ counter poison),
he kept hidden within his swords pommel. Azoth is also the secret name of
Mercurius, extracted from cinnabar, the universal quicksilver medicine
which comprised the virtues of all other medicines. Hence, it is also the
name for the "philosophers stone." It is spiritus animatus, the animated
spirit.

[. . . ]

"Concerning the nature of Azoth there is much controversy. Some view it as
the invisible, eternal fire; others as electricity; still others as
magnetism. Transcendalists refer to it as the astral light."

Isaac Myer, in a discussion of Ain Soph and Space, says: "The Ain Soph at
first was filling All and then made an absolute concentration into Itself
which produced the Abyss, Deep, or Space, the Aveer Qadmon or Primitive
Air, the Azoth; but this is not considered in the Qabbalah as a perfect
void or vacuum, a perfectly empty Space, but is thought as the Waters or
Crystalline Chaotic Sea, in which was a certain degree of Light inferior
to that by which all the created (worlds and hierarchies) were made." --
Secret Teachings of the Ages, Page Number: CXVII

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner3 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 16:30:47 +0000

>From Sepia:

> Secret Teachings of the Ages, Page Number: CXVII

Thank you for this--it is particularly interesting to me as I have just
finished reading THE ABYSS, by Margaret Yourcenar, an account of a fictional
16th c. intellectual/astrologer/philosopher named Zeno, who is clearly based
on Paracelsus. I had mildly wondered why the book had that title--it might
have been explained somewhere but if so it went right by me. I have also
recently read THE CHYMICAL WEDDING, by Lindsay Clarke. which is very much up
the same path (though a contemporary novel). so a post like this is a real
pleasure.

-alga

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From: Jason Ingram <j_ingram at mac.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 09:28:26 +0000

Alga,

Those titles sound interesting.  I've been researching related topics 
(which are more pertinent to John Crowley, but still relevant to  
Wolfe), and fictional accounts should help to sustain interest.

One more tangent:

The Abyss also can refer to a barrier between lower and higher Sefiroth, 
around a 'secret sefira' called Daleth.  Serious Kabbalist scholars such 
as Gershom Scholem tend to denigrate the vision of the Kabbalah 
developed within Western magical traditions, the source of that use of 
"the abyss."  However, it might relate to Yourcenar's approach.

Sepia

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner3 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 03:16:59 +0000

>From Jason Ingram:

You're right on the money. I borrowed these books from the library (together
with Frances Yates's -Theater of the World-) because of the year of
researching Crowley I have done with Michael (mantis). But I had read "in"
(as Pierce would say) Gershom Scholem's -The Kabbalah-; it is a favorite of
Harold Bloom, who is to a degree my guru. Our anthology of essays on Crowley
(not just by us but by many others--Bloom introduces it) will come out in
April, and had we known you were a devote, we might have pressed you into
service to write something. I was turned onto them by a very interesting
Crowley essay (which is in our book) by James Hynes, which you can read at
http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR25.6/hynes.html.

-alga

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 09:04:30 +0000

I am not much up on Kabbalistic themes, but listmembers might find some
amusement in my attempts to fuse them with Lovecraft and Elementary Particle
Physics, at "Domain Science letters"

http://home.clara.net/andywrobertson/dslindex.html

Was Crowley's first novel, "The Deep" a Kabbalistic reference?

    hartshorn

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alice K. Turner" <aturner3 at nyc.rr.com>

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner3 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 05:09:08 +0000

From: "Andy Robertson" <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
> Was Crowley's first novel, "The Deep" a Kabbalistic reference?

I don't think so. I don't think he'd gotten interested at that early
point--it was long before he knew Bloom. I actually asked him about that
title but he was evasive--said something like "That was always the title for
me," which threw me off, since I found the title puzzling.

-alga

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