From thelema93-l-owner@hollyfeld.org Thu Oct 16 11:07:22 1997 Received: from veracruz-gw.customer.itw.net (veracruz-gw.customer.ITW.NET [208.211.5.42]) by bay2.bjt.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA21947 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 11:07:21 -0700 Received: from www.hollyfeld.org ([204.130.199.143]) by veracruz-gw.customer.itw.net (Netscape Mail Server v2.02) with ESMTP id AAA68 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 14:13:49 -0400 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by www.hollyfeld.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id NAA14631 for thelema93-l-outgoing; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 13:28:54 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: www.hollyfeld.org: majordom set sender to owner-thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org using -f Received: from mail-out1.apple.com (A17-254-0-52.apple.com [17.254.0.52]) by www.hollyfeld.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id NAA14628 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 13:28:50 -0400 Received: from scv2.apple.com (A17-128-100-140.apple.com [17.128.100.140]) by mail-out1.apple.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA10168 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 10:00:54 -0700 Received: from [17.128.200.148] (macip148.apple.com [17.128.200.148]) by scv2.apple.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA17752 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 10:00:45 -0700 Message-Id: <199710161700.KAA17752@scv2.apple.com> Subject: Re: Thelema is satanic? Date: Thu, 16 Oct 97 10:01:57 -0700 x-sender: maroney@mail.apple.com x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0, March 15, 1997 From: Tim Maroney To: "Thelema" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: owner-thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org Precedence: bulk Reply-To: thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org Status: RO >As far as I know HPL's main source for occult history was >Lewis Spence's Encyclopedia of Occultism. He knew very little of Dee's >actual work, otherwise he would have realised that a devout Anglican >like Dee would never have had anything to do with something so horrid as >the Necronomicon is supposed to be. Recall that he quit his Enochian >workings when the Angels started to contradict Christian dogma. I'm afraid this is a mistaken account of HPL's occult studies, which are documented clearly both in the five-volume Selected Letters and in his critical essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," which Dover re-issued. The Letters are best approached with Joshi's Index, which is available from Necronomicon Press. Lovecraft was widely read in both traditional and modern occultism and comments eruditely on many well-known mangicians, including a passing and somewhat dismissive reference to Crowley. I don't know what his degree of knowledge of Dee in particular was. The sources are recondite and they were then nowhere near as accessible as they are today. I would suspect he had not read Causabon, for instance. However, I do not understand the critical theory of horror that is implicit in your view of how an informed fiction writer would use a historical character. -- Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org http://www.maroney.org ____________...oooOOO---thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org---OOOooo..._____________ To subscribe send: 'subscribe thelema93-l' to majordomo@hollyfeld.org To unsubscribe send: 'unsubscribe thelema93-l' to majordomo@hollyfeld.org http://www.hollyfeld.org/heaven