‘The Cult of the Black Cube’, 2nd Edition, by Arthur Moros
Review: Moros, Dr. Arthur; The Cult of the Black Cube: A Saturnian Grimoire, 2nd Edition, Munich: Theion Publishing, 2021, 192 pages, bound in deep black fine cloth, front embossing, lettering on spine, headbands, book ribbon, limited to 903 copies
To begin at the beginning of any book is a risk. Perhaps we are taught to assume otherwise, because it makes it easier to perceive things in a straight line? Beginning, middle, end. Texts sandwiched safely between two covers. In some libraries, older books were or are, chained in place. To protect them from theft, or to prevent them escaping?
The most ordinary, sensible, option would be the first. Yet, as you read this review – and doubly, perhaps triply so, if you were to read the book it discusses – this reviewer would like you to allow the possibility of the second.
Second, singular, and seconds, plural, are important when thinking about such a text as this. Not least because it is the second edition of a previously published work written by the late, pseudonymous Dr. Arthur Moros and released by German-based Theion Publishing. Also however, because it is a Saturnine text, and time, and death, restriction, maleficence, and the like fall under the planet’s and deity’s purview.
Amongst other things, it is a book of The Cult of the Black Cube. This is not to say it references a particular organisation, or an eponymous group of individuals gathered under a particular banner. Indeed, it mentions in passing various Saturnine cults, including the German Fraternitas Saturni but also the British Order of Nine Angles, the latterof which has been connected to white nationalist terrorism, and various other criminal acts in various countries. It should be noted here that Moros (or this reviewer) does not equate these various cults with each other.
He also touches on notions held by some conspiracy thinkers about a worldwide cult of Saturn which supposedly sacrifices people and manipulates society for wealth and power. While he may discuss the doctrines and beliefs of the historical Fraternitas Saturni, it is in relation to so-called Saturnian Gnosis as a whole, as much as it discusses Islamic, Greek or Indian cults. As a broad overview of similarities and differences, it suffices
Further, if it is not already clear, neither the text nor this reviewer are using cult in the popular sense of a controlling religious organisation. Rather, the reference to cult arises from cultus, which shares roots with culture, cultivation, etc. That is to say, the practices, processes, calls and responses – ritualised and otherwise – to a given encounter, situation, or engagement.
Thusly, that the book has such a title is an evocation, in a sense, of the Cult of the Black Cube as a current or flow which emerges from encounter with that which Moros refers to as the Saturnine Deity. This naming is in distinction to Saturn, Chronos-and-or-Kronos, Shani, or Zuhal; Moros holds that each of these names and cults emerges from contact with the Saturnine Deity:
Nevertheless, if one accepts for a moment that the occult addresses actual deities which themselves transcend cultural boundaries, then one must acknowledge that a culture specific approach might (or indeed, must) have limitations that are a result of a culture’s bias. (p. 43)
As we shall see, the emphasis on limitation is quite in keeping with being a text of the Saturnine Deity, which Moros (perhaps extraordinarily appropriately when compared to most modern occultism or so-called occulture) deliberately de-anthropomorphises by centering on the Black Cube. The text has no truck with saying that Shani, Zuhal, Saturn, or the Ancient Greek Deities are equivalent or are “the same”. Rather it elucidates, via similarity and kind, recurring motifs, symbols, and manifestations associated with the Saturnine Deity – which is itself most often associated with the celestial body or planet which we call Saturn. To establish and privilege any identity other than the Saturnine Deity (i.e. Saturn, Shani etc) is to both dismiss the potency of those cultural limitations, and perhaps further disrupt a genuine encounter between aspirant and deity – or so Moros seems to imply.
The strangeness (or perhaps this reviewer might be permitted to say wyrdness – with all its connotations of weaving, binding and shaping) is highlighted by Moros’s own description of a dream encounter with the Saturnine Deity.
Suffice to say we do not wish to spoil the alien inhumanity of the dream, merely that it once again challenges anthropocentrism. That this occurred after an apparently failed ritual, by human standard of success and perhaps morality, is all the more interesting to this reviewer.
For it should be said that this text, according to the author, was written at the urging of the Deity after years of quiet and personal practice. A long-term pact, originally made by an individual in the face of extreme physical distress and disablement occurs, according to the author, and this is something that this particular crippled reviewer finds deeply resonant.
Even while operating from within a pseudonym, it became obvious to this reviewer in the first, and this second edition, that this text is an honest offering from and to the inter-and-intra-relation of Deity, magician, and world. Similarly, so are the offerings from Dr. Tomas Vincente (author of The Faceless God, also published by Theion) and David Beth.
It is interesting, though perhaps not surprising, that both Doctors are writing pseudonymously. Outside of academic studies in so-called Western Esotericism (itself a relatively recent discipline) admitting to interest or practice in the occult is by no means always wise. As the text makes quite clear, nor is the Saturnine Deity stripped of its maleficence or so-called negative tendencies in such work – this is not a “friend” or a “Cuddly Saturn.” Far from it.
As Vincente makes clear in his foreword, entitled Saturn, The Black Star:
[The Saturnine Deity is] a god of chaos who eternally devours and remanifests the ordered cosmos. [...] In the controlled lawlessness of the Saturnalia, the Romans acknowledged the eternal reality of Saturn, who (like the Mesopotamian Tiamat), could only be restrained and never destroyed. (p. 7,10)
Vincente’s foreword takes us into the possibility of considering the Black Star as (at least) as potent as the Sun, making the point that alchemists sought Gold (Sun), from Lead (Saturn) Vincente points at the primordial nature of Saturn as chief embodiment of chaos-within-cosmic-order, something Moros highlights later in his discussion of scholarly material across traditions. The planet Saturn is known to be disruptive, and in many traditions can queer or negate other operations by other planets or overpower other gods at certain times.
It is worth noting that the text is excellently footnoted – even if the reader does not find the arguments presented as compelling, the footnotes and bibliography are perfectly good jumping off points for those interested in engaging with the material and its antecedents.
It is here we must return to the risk of beginning at the beginning of a book. We return now, because as someone who has read both first and second editions of this text, we do not think it can be read, simply, left to right, from beginning to end.
This not a disagreement with typesetting, or layout, nor a critique of Theion’s publishing choices. This review is being written in October, after receiving the book in late September. We admit to keeping it, waiting for it to ask to be read. After all, the main text had not changed that much, though Vincente’s foreword and Beth’s essay were new. The prospect of this review was, truth be told, a little daunting. This reviewer thought they might be in danger of rehashing, talking about old meat between slices of admittedly very fruitful and physically, aesthetically pleasing book covers.
We discuss this here, for you, the reader, because much has been written over the past twenty years or so, about talismanic books, and the pros and cons of them; issues of price-gouging, scalping, and inflation, have inveigled themselves into our corners. They were always there, of course, but it seems the 21st century made them more visible. As this is a review, rather than some kind of editorial, it seems kind to assure you that, if you have the first edition, and were enamoured of it – you will be enamoured of this one. But we would, perhaps, suggest you trouble, you disrupt, your usual reading patterns.
This is a book that benefits going-back-to. The fullness of it is not one of completion, of thinking that you are done with it once you close the pages. Soon enough, Saturnalia comes, and things go topsy turvy. Saturn always returns, inescapable and old, older even than time, in some senses.
Moros points out that our modern depictions of Saturn often show him devouring his children, tearing them apart – yet Greek and Roman myth suggests they were swallowed whole, and thus able to emerge when liberated by Zeus. They were encapsulated, bound by the Titan’s body, held until release. They were not slain.
There is a Mystery, in that, we surmise.
Further, it is often a mystery to many moderns how Saturnalia worked. How could such licence during the festival not have consequences throughout the year? We may never know, and yet Moros offers us an option; that the reason such consequences did not widely occur was because of the belief in the gods not as abstract personifications, but as genuine Powers with the capability to enact consequences. Rather like, we suppose, legality and law enforcement serve as deterrence to criminal behaviour for much, if not perhaps all, of society today.
That Zuhal was prayed to by the author of the 10th century text The Nabatean Agriculture is noted by that text’s author’s own account. Despite such things being forbidden, he recounts spells and prayers and materials used to propitiate Zuhal, both in an apotropaic sense, while also noting that some do for their own benefit. – Moros also notes:
Saturn was an aspect of Chaos and so the equality enjoyed by all [in the Golden Age] was an equality of utter subjugation. (p. 73)
That the gods warred with the Titans in myth, binding the monstrous forces of Chaos is, in a sense, an arrogant assertion of power – precisely the thing Saturn might be said to wish to prevent, for power and order give the notion of fixity; the subjugation of Chaos is not the subjugation of Order, after all.
The world-order of the gods is said to be eternal, and yet Saturn and the Titans speak of a time before Order – that is, the time before the current arrangement of things and the laws and rituals and processes which maintain it.
As all humans are mortal, and even the gods and other Powers may be thwarted, or even die, Saturn – the Saturnine Deity – speaks to that which is vulnerable, broken, crooked or dying; rejected, abjected, enslaved or criminalised within the current order. It speaks to these because, the text suggests, it may visit such things upon all beings, even gods and celestial bodies. Conversely however, it may be called to by those afflicted; by those bound, restricted, and subjugated to mitigate these circumstances.
It is not, as all three writers note within the pages of this volume, that the Saturnine Deity is anti-cosmic. It does not desire to, if we will permit the metaphor, to war against or destroy the cosmos because Chaos is self-sufficient. It needs nothing more than itself. Perhaps that is why, as Moros highlights, the Saturnian Deity is often regarded as distant, strange, alien –a distant wanderer with terrible regard. Its offerings are often forbidden, antinomian things, or things which are seen as disgusting or vile in a given culture.
This is, Moros seems to suggest, not about transgression, or being edgy and breaking cultural taboos. Rather it is precisely because of the same self-sufficiency, that same necessity and inevitability. It is this which the Saturnine Deity manifests. As an elder ancestor to gods and men it is ever-present in all actions of the younger. Indeed, the text contends that Saturn is, in a sense, an ancestral deity, much like Wodan/Woden may have been to Germanic tribes, chieftains and kings.
Again, we turn once more to the risk mentioned – the risk of beginnings.
Risk (n.) – 1660s, risque, "hazard, danger, peril, exposure to mischance or harm," from French risque (16c.), from Italian risco, riscio (modern rischio), from riscare "run into danger," a word of uncertain origin.” (Online Etymology Dictionary)
To read this way is to follow the way we have been taught: beginning, middle, end. We risk re-exposing ourselves to those patterns and processes, those logocentrisms, as David Beth might put it, which drive a wedge between Body and Soul.
His contribution, Clavis Saturni: A Kosmic Heresy, is an essay on the Kosmic Gnostic perspective on the Saturnian. Moros quotes correspondence with Beth in the main text, and contact between the two and an exchange of ideas has quite obviously occurred – as is always the case between correspondents. Yet even for those disinterested in the Kosmic Gnosis, the essay may prove illuminating in expressing a worldview which complements that of the main text in situating the Saturnine as the Stranger-Within-The-Kosmos, who while bound is nonetheless the pre-eminent fetterer and also loosener; the maleficent healer who lays low kings and raises up slaves, the ancestor of heroes who it raises high and casts low.
In this context then, we may – if we allow ourselves to dare to meet the stress of the regard of Saturnine Deity – find something more. A movement which is not conventional movement, a power which is queer and strange and is never captured or completed but cycles in a rhythmic, pulsing eternity.
This then, is where the Black Cube shines most darkly; for all that Moros presents us with scholarly analysis, and historic and new rites to encounter the Saturnine Deity in our own lives should we wish closer congress, it is his obvious intimate embrace of, and his deep suffusion in such a Saturnine Gnosis which wells up.
By perceiving this work as a linear process – perhaps rushing to the rites to “see what’s new”, skipping to the end, we risk exposing ourselves to the harm of not recognising its rhythmic nature, its orbiting distance and utter embeddedness in the earth – like a meteor that has plunged into the crust of the planet.
And yet, if we take our time, allow ourselves to risk bathing in the radiance of that Black Star in full cognisance that it will come again as it wishes, and the best we can do is treat-with-it, this book becomes a portal to that most terrible of gravities, which may nonetheless bring us great joy and ecstasy.
Is this a good book? No. Is this a bad book? No.
This is a book of Necessity. This is a book of the Saturnine Deity. It emerges from them. It is not merely about them. If this fact intrigues you, this reviewer suggests you read it according to its rhythms, and see what emerges with you.
