‘IO Typhon’ by Harper Feist
Review: Harper Feist, IO Typhon, Grayle Press, s.l., 2024, limited edition hardcover quarter bound in leather with custom slipcase
by Frater Acher
Before you open the pages of IO Typhon, I recommend that you (re-)read Alan Moore’s essay Fossil Angels – or for those of us who are up for even more substantial reading, perhaps Frater U∴D∴’s ICE MAGIC. These texts will give you a proper grounding in the radicalism of what is to come. They will also help to shed any genre expectations; as we shall see, a crucial prerequisite for fully opening the gates of Harper Feist’s first stand-alone book.
At initial sight, Grayle Press has delivered an impressive poetic collection of Typhonic hymns with this book, richly illustrated with black and white graphics by Rowan E. Cassidy, whom we already know as a collaborator on Jack Grayle’s important Hekataeon work.
Structurally IO Typhoon consists of eight hymns: The Hymns of Awe, and of Trepidation, an Invocation to Typhon for two devotees, the Hymns of Union, War and Volatility, as well as a Lament in Two Voices, finally, the Hymn of Ignition and a closing Author’s Note. The slender book comes in at about 150 pages.
Now, since the early 1990s, many researchers have stood at the crossroad of music and magic and presented us with their findings. The speciality topic of the magical hymn, however, has been at the forefront of the magical scene at least since the publication of the reader Hymnic Narrative and the Narratology of Greek Hymns (Brill, 2015). We are spared a complete bibliography here, but a few highlights will suffice: 2016 gave us the important study Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt by L.M. Bortolani (Cambridge University Press, 2016). In 2020, we learned from Hymns, Homilies and Hermeneutics in Byzantium by Sarah Gador-Whyte and Andrew Mellas (Brill, 2020). In 2022 we were offered Benedikt Peschl’s The First Three Hymns of the Ahunauuaitī Gāθā (Brill, 2020) as well as Sara L. Mastro’s Orphic Hymns Grimoire (Hadean Press, 2020). And last year we received Tamra Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac’s even more recent translation of the Orphic Hymns (Inner Traditions, 2023).
In view of the diversity of publications on this subject, it is obviously necessary to be sharp in distinguishing it from related subjects. Specifically, the hymn differs from the prayer in its lyrical character. A prayer is a conversation with a non-human person; a hymn is a song sung to them.
Of course, from a magical perspective, the hymn offers a variety of essential technical applications: It is suitable for sacred invocation, for erotic conjuration, for gnostic immersion into the unconditional presence of the desired non-human person. As such, the essential function of the hymn is not praise, but the affirmation of an intimate relationship. The singing of the hymn reaffirms a bond that is tied around the caller and the called, like the ribbon that was once tied around the hands of those who entered into an intimate bond. It is impossible to sing a hymn and not offer oneself up in the process. In their constitutive nature, hymns are radical, frivolous one might say, certainly kinship inducing. In the intonation of a hymn, we place our selves as the key in the lock that leads to proximity with the desired non-human person. As such, the magical hymn is the momentary, ephemeral sister of the magical pact.
This much must be said – and then, best of all, the writings mentioned at the beginning must be read – before opening IO Typhon. To open it carelessly, to read it lightly, to imitate it naively, is a danger that is expressly discouraged in this review. For IO Typhon is not really a book.
Remember your mentor’s advice not to buy magical items on eBay? To stay away from thatvoodoo totem from Ghana, from the shaman drum from Nepal, the raffia-bound monkey skull from Oceania? Fascinating as they may be, artefacts of actual magical acts carry the echoes of their creation throughout their lives. Spirit echoes travel with them, wrapped in bubble-plastic, from house to house, from country to country. Better to make your own paraphernalia from natural materials, or to buy them new and untouched, then consecrate them to your own heart, hands, and blood.
Then comes IO Typhon.
From within the paper of its pages beats the vibrant presence of the encounters from which this book was born. Regardless of the divergence in expression, this typhonic pulse is as unmistakable in Harper Feist’s book as it is in the works of Austin Osman Spare, Andrew Chumbley, Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule, or Gast Bouschet. IO Typhon is a drum your eyes beat while reading. IO Typhon is a donkey’s skull your thoughts feed with blood while reading. IO Typhon is a totem that occupies your house as soon as the postman carelessly leaves the package at your door…
See how IO Typhon is already taking possession of this review? Although I’m not completely incompetent, I'm doing a lousy job here of reviewing this book according to formal criteria – because after reading the book it has already entered into my own blood, and is now speaking through me. So, with all due caution, I will try to break free of its spell and still put some academically valuable words on this page.
IO Typhon is Harper Feist’s hymnal account of her magical encounters with none other than the primordial Greek monster Typhon. The latter is the ancient enemy of Zeus and all the Olympic Gods. Buried deep in the chthonic underworld, s/he remains animated by a power and violence that keeps even the Olympians in suspense. Pluto, for example, once descends from his galactic spheres onto Earth for fear that Typhon might shake off Trinacria (an ancient name for the island of Sicily), which had been placed over her/him as a seal, and allow the invigorating daylight to shine upon her/his serpentine body.
Etymologically, the name Typhon is associated with storms, smoke, and madness, and suggests the personification of volcanic activity.
He has gigantic proportions, often a lower part consisting of the bodies of snakes, further wings, a hundred arms, a hundred snakes’ heads […], and a human head as well. He spits fire and is called a Dragon. His terrible voice(s) and insolent behaviour are often emphasized. (Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, London: Brill, 1999, p. 879-880)
A chthonic monster that could resist even Zeus’ lightning, Typhon was destined to become the epitome of resistance and the overthrow of the existing order. Thus, Typhon is not only the enemy of the gods, but also of all kings, rulers, and human institutions. Typhon represents the revolutionary force, not beholden to any agenda, and opposed to all stability and order. In a modern reference, we can say that Typhon corresponds to the Lords of Chaos in Michael Moorcock’s eminently important works of fantasy literature. A reference that is smoothly closing the circle from the ancient Greeks to modern Chaos Magic.
IO Typhon thus traces an experienced magician’s voluntary submission to the presence of Typhon. Such tracing now is not done from the safe distance of clearly outlined ritual instructions or diary entries, but in the form of magical hymns. And here lurks the aforementioned danger: these hymns are far less a product of art than they are magical objects themselves. Imagine that this book was not to be read with your eyes, but drunk with your mouth. How recklessly would you put it to your lips, not knowing whether it contained poison or remedy? The brief outline of the nature of Typhon should have been sufficient to make clear the commitment that this reading demands.
Dear and dread master Typhon
Ophidian might of one hundred heads
Massive, scaled serpentine glory
Hail to your hybrid body
Hail to your shifting and uncertain form
You who possess the power of all beasts
The power of terrible wind and lashing rain
Sonic breaker of structures
All wonders to swallow.
Reign with plurality and shattering resonances
Taker-apart of things
Readier of the rebuilders
We hear your hundred voices dissonant
A visual wonder to hear
Behold Master of synesthesia
We humbly implore you
May we serve as your Muses (p. 7-12)
This is a book for people who have been broken, who have lost dearly and hurt deeply, and yet find themselves alive, forever changed, forever enmeshed in Otherness. IO Typhon is for all of them through whose bodies and lives Typhon has already passed once at least. As such, Harper Feist’s intimate account offers an invitation, for a brief moment or a longer period of time, not to dread, fear, or fight the presence of the chthonic dragon, but to surrender to her/him fully. To temporarily grant Typhon the title of a master and ourselves the one of a muse. Now, consider what kind of courage that requires, if it’s not spoken lightly, but sung with a full heart and open eyes as a hymn.
Handing over the helm of our ship to Typhon does not mean that we give up control over the course of our lives, but that in the next moment we may be doomed – and we have made peace with that reality. In this sense IO Typhon is at the same time highly radical and without alternatives, as it is also one-sided, unbalanced and dangerous. Everything that love for a monster must be.
Should you decide to permit this book entrance to your house, you will be holding a book in your hand that I would not call practical in the sense that it gives a road that should be followed. Yet, it is highly invocative in the sense that it shows a road that has been travelled and survived. What more can we ask for from a book, then the hymnal call of its author and genuine response of its daemon all mingled into one bright fire?
Hold this book close to your heart, fool. Then let go of it all.
Unmaker mine
Teach me to bend with your trail
To respond to uncertainty
To accept the fall
To accept impermanence:
Destruction
The ever-pregnant state of learning
And also generation
Growing, Shifting, Being, Darkly, Loving. (p. 103-106)
