Feb 3, 2021

Hermetic Library Newsletter - Issue #1 (Hey, what does this button do?)

By John Bell the Librarian • Issue #1 • View online

Hey, what does this button do?

Oh no! I’ve tripped on a thing, hit my head, and started a newsletter!

Um. Now what?

Berniemit(tens) / Baphomet

Over on the blog in January:

I was never that interested in organised games or religion because someone else had already worked out what all the patterns were.—Quote
Such an education in the art of distinguishing between the proper and the improper use of symbols could be inaugurated immediately. Indeed it might have been inaugurated at any time during the last thirty or forty years. And yet children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements.—Quote
The books he read as a scholar, full of the wisdom of the ancients, must have been balanced in his mind by the questions left unanswered and the treatises never written. His own library of parchment and paper was grounded by his imaginary library of forgotten or neglected subjects of study and reflection.—Quote
It’s an old thing, made of parchment and leather. Some herbalist on my mother’s side of the family started it ages ago. The book’s composed of page after page of ink drawings of plants with descriptions of their medical uses. My father added a section on edible plants that was my guidebook to keeping us alive after his death. For a long time, I’ve wanted to record my own knowledge in it. Things I learned from experience or from Gale, and then the information I picked up when I was training for the Games.—Quote
Saint, hero, and poet are all inspired; the difference is that saint and hero work in their “… own flesh and blood and not in paper or parchment…” (PASL, 333). Their very lives are works of art, because they have permanently found the anti-self, and so, live in an inspired ecstasy. The poet lives in the tension between inspiration and the workaday world. According to this theory, the ecstatic state of mind, immersion in the anti-self, allows the daimon to inspire the artist.—Quote
Hackers, in fiction, are the trickster-gods of the realm of computing. They go where they’re not supposed to, steal anything that isn’t nailed down (or rather, written down in ink on parchment with a quill plucked from a white goose), and boast about it.—Quote
Sometimes I would read a passage at random, drinking in the impossible luxury of ink organized into meaningful patterns.—Quote
Making love to Jesse was more like drugs than sex, nothing was static or confined to one role. Under my hands he was a girl, a newborn child, a flowering plant, a sculpture that I was carving inch by inch, the perfection of all my desires. He was not conscious of himself other than as something undergoing change and seeking to minimize pain, he was open to all possibilities.—Quote
Sometimes, out of all this static and confusion, the Other assembles itself and takes form before our very eyes.—Quote
She felt it. This was not her imagination. It was all around her, but she couldn’t get a handle on it. It was as untouchable as the static between two radio channels.—Quote
Lighthouse keepers were once warned they shouldn’t listen to the sea for too long; likewise, you could hear voices in the static and lose your mind.—Quote
Exquisite Corpse—Review
Rock Jaw: Master of the Eastern Border—Review
Mefisto—Review
This Book is Full of Spiders—Review
There’s something you don’t want me to know about you. Why, there’s something you’re ashamed of. Or is it something you can’t afford for me to know?—Quote
News flash, honeys, the equipment you’re born with has nothing to do with how strong or weak you are. It hasn’t nothing to do with anything about you. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Besides, some people would kill for what you’ve got.—Quote
He looked at me. “I don’t know what she might have told you, miss, but—” “My name’s Sarah Jane,” I told him. “Sarah Jane Dillard.” He sighed. “But the first thing should have been not to share your name with any stranger you might happen to meet in the woods.” “He’s right about that,” Aunt Lillian said. “I’ve heard so much about you,” I said. “I didn’t think you were a stranger.” “No, he’s a stranger, all right,” Aunt Lillian corrected me. “That’s what you call folks you never see.”—Quote
“That’s right, just get rid of me you weirdoes, so you can talk about your stupid make believe stuff,” he replied. “Don’t be ridiculous Angus we’re only going to talk about you,” Sue laughed at him. “Well off you trot then.”—Quote
Life is not about you. It’s about what you do for others. The faster you are able to get over yourself, the more you can do for the people who matter most.—Quote
The Urth of the New Sun—Review
Only Begotten Daughter—Review
The Hippopotamus Pool—Review
Eternals—Review
Eyes Wide Shut—Review
Hermetic Library Zine January 2021—Zine
one precaution is necessary, failing which it were better to leave untrodden all steps on the path to higher knowledge. It is necessary that the student should lose none of his qualities as a good and noble man, or his receptivity for all physical reality. Indeed, throughout his training he must continually increase his moral strength, his inner purity, and his power of observation.—Quote
“The other self, the anti-self or the antithetical self, as one may choose to name it, comes but to those who are no longer deceived, whose passion is reality”—Quote
A moment later Doyle was reflecting that liquor was even more effective than pain—or, probably, throwing up—in reconciling one to reality.—Quote
“This,” I said, “is contrary to all the doctrines of our science, which teaches that we can see nothing whatever unless it has a shape of some kind.” “The eye of science sees only the outward form,” answered Adalga; “but the eye of wisdom sees the reality itself.”—Quote
Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany—Review
Thuvia, Maid of Mars and The Chessmen of Mars—Review
Four Against the Great Old Ones—Review

Hermetic Library Zine, Perihelion, January 2021, Issue #3

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By John Bell the Librarian

Archiving, Engaging and Encouraging the living Esoteric Tradition, Hermeticism & Aleister Crowley's Thelema. Open Access Occultism for over 20 years.

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