‘Goêtic Atavisms’ by Frater Acher and Craig ‘VI’ Slee
Review: Frater Acher, Craig ‘VI’ Slee, Goêtic Atavisms, Exeter: Hadean Press, 2023, paperback edition, ISBN 978-1-915933-19-5
by Sriram TR
ENDLESS BEGINNING
Goêtic Atavisms - A reading experience by Sriram T R
I think of this story often. A king, back from a hunt in deep forests, comes to rest in an ironsmith’s house. There, he sees a sword hanging on the wall. He notices that the ironsmith prays to this sword before he begins his work. The curious king questions him about it. The ironsmith says that it is a custom in the family to pray to the sword before and after every work and that it has been in his family for generations, from the time of his great-grandfathers. “No way,” exclaimed the king, for the sword looked practically new, “look at the blade, it gleams, this is certainly a new sword,” says he. The ironsmith replies, “Yes, we changed the blade. A few years back, we had to change the handle, too, but it's the same Sword my great grandfather prayed to.” We all change, and change is inevitable. But the atavisms linger on.
Goêtic Atavisms is a radical book, in its form, and in its content. How often do you see a book where the typeface tells a message - the bolding and italics? Like the good ol’ cassettes, this book has two sides: Craig VI Slee’s (say, Section A), Frater Acher’s (say, Section B), with Frater U∴D∴’s overture bridging both sides, and illustrations throughout by José Gabriel Alegria Sabogal. You may read this book in many different ways.
Read Section A or B first, the other next, and Frater U∴D∴’s overture at last.
Read Section A or B, then Frater U∴D∴’s overture, and move on to the second section.
Read a chapter each of Section A and Section B, alternatively.
Read Frater U∴D∴’s overture first, then move on to the two sections.
The best way: stray around to find your own way. Thus, the title of this piece: Endless Beginning, you may begin wherever you choose to.
Either way, this book requires multiple readings to understand how deftly the various sections gel together, despite their differences, or because of them. It is only rarely that we derive enjoyment from things in adulthood in the same way as we did in childhood. “What you did as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Therein lies the key to your earthly pursuits” (C.G. Jung). This is one such puzzle of a book with which you could have hours of pleasure.
Slee’s section of the book reads like a fever dream. He himself calls it a “demonstration of attention-seizure” (p.88). His section is divided into five essays, each building up on the other. Frater Acher’s section is also divided into five parts – the sixth part Goêtic Bodies is essentially an afterword, something radically different from the previous parts, nevertheless connected in the same vein by a black needle (pun intended). Acher’s writing reads like a continuation of his previous works and gives a lead to his forthcoming book, on the Olympic Spirits. Acher’s been exploring the concept of ancestry for some time now – read the breathtaking Epilogue in Holy Daimon (Scarlet Imprint, 2023).
The styles of the two sections can be compared like this:
José Gabriel Alegria Sabogal’s illustrations are arresting and inspired, as usual. But the way the illustrations are chosen to be presented at least in the paperback version is a bit underwhelming. In many places, the illustrations are blown up in size, reducing the quality of the images, and making them blurry at places. The crispness, the steadiness of the line that one associates with Sabogal’s work cannot be found here, through no fault of his.
Early in his section of the book, Frater Acher draws an interesting parallel between pornography and Western Ritual Magic. The setup, costumes, and staged performances have made it akin to theatre, mere show, a reflection of what could be. If you think about it, just like in porn, where the roles and the action are fixed, we play fixed roles in our lives, too. Family role, social role, work role – every man has his exit and entrance, and his roles being seve(ral)n parts. Acher argues that what happens in such staged performances is just enactment and no genuine spirit communion occurs there. It is not to say that players aren’t moved during their performance. They, too, get teary-eyed and broken-voiced, though Hecuba be nothing to them, and they to Hecuba. Is contemplation enough? Theoria and praxis are no different? Active imagination is the same as ritual? Craig Slee says: all contemplations have presence and influence; but he is not okaying armchair intellectualism. He says we should live like a corpse. How is that done, now?
“[Austin Osman Spare] speaks of a magic that is better acted in one’s third-best trousers than in quasi-Rosicrucian raiment, sorceries more readily accomplished at a kitchen table amidst the enduring odour of fried bacon than at decorated altars wreathed in frankincense or jasmine.” (Alan Moore, quoted in Goêtic Atavisms, p. 29)
Water flows, fire rises, the earth stands, and the wind blows. Heart beats, blood rushes, neurons fire, you move even as you read this sentence. Can you not move, not even the slightest movement, just for the tiniest second? Do you still live then? Do you live only then? Craig Slee implores us to be glacial, “(get your hands) extremely dirty. Cover yourself in earth, enter the grave-mound. Give up moving like a human. Lie, and live, like a corpse.” (p. 62). In the death posture, life awakens. Living like a corpse is not mere idleness. Action in inaction is the key. Opening ourselves up, pore breathing. “Can you taste the riders on the storm?” (p. 81).
“To open the gate of atavism – to travel freely in the vast realm of life, beyond the apparent limits of our individualistic mind.” (p. 23)
This book urges us to learn – not from a book (I see the Western Magical Tradition to be heavily dependent on the grimoire), not from a teacher (the Eastern Tradition on the other hand, makes a guru necessary to walk the path of knowledge), but from the land itself, the spirits that live around us. To be a solo practitioner, standing atop the mountain, crawling through the caves, being a goês. We have to walk the narrow path, not a straight path always, a circular one almost always, we have to crossover the bridge to be the Overman. “The longest way round is the shortest way home” (James Joyce). Austin Osman Spare, AOS, traveled all the way from A to Z, AOS to ZOS. “It was the straying that found the path direct” (AOS).
Among others the best experience in the book for me was gaining an animistic reading of Austin Osman Spare. If the writing of Spare was of a depth you couldn’t cut through (like me), this book offers you an option to wrap yourself around it, flesh to flesh, and imbibe his message, pore to pore.
“However great your reach, whatever you touch, shall touch flesh.” (p. 42)
The Upanishads called it “neti, neti” (not this, not that), Spare called it “neither, neither.” Radical Otherness cannot be described, it has to be felt, you have to open yourself up for the touch of the dragon. Your body and mind did not survive evolution and are in the present state just because you are enough. You contain multitudes. Solitude in Multitude. Open yourself up, let the Radical Otherness flow through you, fill the living space around you, within and without, ma/icrocosm. Perfection is persistent perfecting, till the serpent bites its tail. Goêtic Atavisms will help you in doing that.
As Frater Acher likes to say, may the serpent bite its tail.
Illustration by Sriram T R