Path: Supernews70!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: nagasiva@yronwode.com (nagasiva) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.occult,alt.pagan.magick,alt.magick.order Subject: TMaroney: Blavatsky and Occult Historical REFs Date: 12 Jan 1998 22:28:29 -0800 Organization: Access Internet Communications, Inc. Lines: 35 Message-ID: <69f1id$qgt$1@shell.accesscom.com> Reply-To: maroney@apple.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 9946@205.226.156.10 X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 (NOV) Xref: Supernews70 alt.magick.tyagi:14698 alt.magick:122594 alt.pagan.magick:7418 alt.magick.order:1032 [from thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org: Tim Maroney ] >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 -- (emailed replies may be posted); http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi; 408/2-666-SLUG join the esoteric syncretism in alt.magick.tyagi; http://www.abyss.com/tokus