Recursive Occlusion by Philip Sandifer

by Elizabeth Sandifer

YOU'RE THE TIMELORD! FIND ALL THE OUTCOMES!CAN YOU ESCAPE THE TV TIME MAZE?You've just bought a book called Recursive Occlusion, spinning out from the acclaimed series TARDIS Eruditorum. It promises to provide an overview of occultism and mysticism within the television series Doctor Who. But inside you find an arcane and mindbending labyrinth of visions and prophecies to navigate in an attempt to attain spiritual ascension! If you take the onyx path, turn to page 76. If you take the burning vermillion path, turn to page 74. If you take the moonlit path, turn to page 70. But beware - the lightning path of ascension is fraught with mysteries and terrors. You might end up confronting skull-faced visionaries of abandoned futures, twisted mirrors of beloved childhood heroes, or worst of all, an explanation of what the book is about!What form will your enlightenment take? It all depends on the choices you make! How will you climb the Tree of Life? Only you can find out! And the best part is you can keep reading and rereading until you've found not one but many bewildering accounts of occultism in Doctor Who! SELECT YOUR OWN CONTINUUMRecursive Occlusion is a spin-off of the acclaimed series TARDIS Eruditorum, exploring the themes of occultism and mysticism within the classic television series Doctor Who in the form of an at times oblique and entrancing Kabbalah-inspired interactive essay that pays homage to the classic Choose Your Own Adventure series of books.

Genres: Doctor Who, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Note: This author previously published under the name Philip Sandifer.

Reviews

[Dee Eisel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I consider the author a friend, and I suppose it could be influencing my view of the book. Nevertheless, I think a good book is a good book, regardless of author, and hope any readers feel the same!

I had to create a whole new shelf for this book: Defies-Categorization. It really does, and it's a wonderful, fun read. It's also informative, meaningful, and right in the tradition of Alan Moore. (At the time of this writing, I have his Promethea on my to-read list because it's been a couple of years since I read it, and I need to read it again.) One of my rules of life is that you can learn a lot while you're having a good time, and this book is a confirmation of that rule! Also, other than by telling you what character or situation you're likely to meet in a given set of pages, it's really almost totally spoiler-proof.

It is also a bear to review. Is it humor? Parts of it are funny, but it's not humor. Is it educational? Yes, if you love pop culture and the occult, but it's not really a primer. Is it about pop culture? Not really. Eventually, you just have to take it as a pretty unique experiment and go from there.

Recursive Occlusion is formatted like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, and that's actually ideal for its goal: An exploration of the Quabalistic Tree of Life, told through the filter of Doctor Who. (That sound you hear is the heads of hundreds of occultist heads exploding.) For those who are not familiar with the Tree of Life, it can be summed up as an exploration of reality through a series of ten nexus points, called Sephiroth, and the paths between them. (And there's that boom again. Sorry, occultists, I'm trying for simple.) Recursive Occulsion uses characters and writers of Doctor Who which symbolize the Sephiroth and the pathways. Each has a message about the world and reality, as seen through this Whovian lens. As an added bonus, Sandifer includes two pathways not seen in the traditional Tree of Life as visualized, which leads to the "missing Sephiroth," Da'ath.

Those who are familiar with the Tarot and like Doctor Who, even if they haven't studied the Tree of Life, will find much to like here. I was enchanted with some of the choices for the various pages. The paths to Da'ath were wonderful and in-depth, and they are highly worthwhile reads.

I went through five reads in a short time (it's a slim volume, as I expect from CYOA books), trying out different paths. Because this is laid out like the Tree of Life, sometimes different paths will take you to the same place. That's to be expected, so don't let that throw you if you're doing multiple reads. Just take a different path out of a repeated scene, if available, and realize you're at a Sephiroth.

Those who are not as familiar with the history of Doctor Who may be confused in a few places by the names referenced, or may not know who is speaking. That's OK too, because what they have to say is a lot more important than who they are.

This is a book that will reward rereads. I look forward to getting more out of it in the future.
(Edited once to fix HTML)

[Artur Nowrot · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in awe of the concept of this book: a Choose Your Own Adventure non-linear essay that looks at Doctor Who through the lens of Western occult tradition, but the execution is no less noteworthy: almost every page brings some interesting insight into the mythos of DW or the wider cultural context in which it is embedded. Add to that the beautiful design, and you get a gorgeous gem of a book. 5/5, would recommend.

[Alex Sarll]

A Kabbalah gloss on Doctor Who, or vice versa, in the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure. Sandifer - or should I say a Red Kang - notes herein that only one TV show would ever have attempted JG Ballard as children's panto. Similarly, only one TV show could ever inspire as gloriously niche a commentary as this. A slim volume, but so much bigger on the inside.

[Katherine Sas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm glad I went through and re-read Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum essays in book form before tackling this deceptively slim-looking volume, as the density of ideas referenced would be pretty inscrutable to anyone who hasn't read that excellent series. This isn't a criticism -- an occult reading of Doctor Who should be nothing if not dense and inscrutable. Nevertheless, it enhanced my enjoyment of this book, structured as a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, to have a strong familiarity with the concepts Sandifer references, both those from Western occult traditions (such as alchemy, the tarot, the Kabbalah, etc.) and those from his own personal lexicon of symbols and critical terms (emboitment, narrative collapse, psychochronography, etc.). I wouldn't recommend anyone start here, but if you're interested in looking at Doctor Who as a "quasi-sentient metafiction" that tracks the intellectual history of post-War Britain (and really, who wouldn't?) then I'd recommend picking up the existing book versions of the TARDIS Eruditorum series (books 1-6 with more forthcoming) and then diving into this fun little thought experiment in symbolic analysis.