The Moonchild of Yesod

by Karl Stone

Genres: Magick

231 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a number of possible reactions to this book - it is nonsense for gullible people, it is a spiritual text, it is simply part of a cultural tradition with cultic aspects.

I prefer to see it as an interesting contribution to a particular type of speculative fiction, the post-modern grimoire. Once you accept this, you can relax and, if you like that sort of thing, enjoy it.

This is not to be dismissive of the role of speculative fiction in our culture. What genre fiction (speculative fiction is just an element of genre) does is provide catharsis for an emotional state.

Women are drawn to crime novels because the narrative relieves a genuine anxiety about threat in the world by acting it out in a narrative with a mise-en-scene, a puzzle and a resolution.

Erotic fiction, like 'Fifty Shades of Grey', permits the professional woman to enjoy sexual submission without actually submitting to anyone or anyone in the world.

Science fiction can be (though it is now much more than this) an analogue for male desire to master his material conditions as well as express awe while the Western and imperial adventure story died when hope died of a frontier on earth.

The modern grimoire derives from an early modern and very lower class interest in getting a short cut to wealth or power by summoning demons. It was, of course, a futile exercise but the futility was not the point, the fantasy was.

As science fiction has moved towards a synergistic relationship with science through the geeks and nerds who both read it and undertake real science so the original simplistic model of the grimoire has transformed, partly through the agency of Crowley, into something much more sophisticated.

In this particular case, the author has constructed something that has to be taken on its own terms - as an intent to command the universe of power and desire with a poetical description of reality that refuses to accept that powerlessness and unfulfilment are the natural state of man, without becoming involved in the fantasy of 'politics'.

The book is subtitled 'A grimoire of occult hyperchemistry' and the reference to hyperchemistry is a backhanded reference to alchemy and a recovery of it from scientific method.

It is persuasive once you accept that the author is not dealing with otherwise knowable things - this is science free territory because science has nothing significant to say on will, feeling and the 'somanoetic'. The grimoire fills a gap in reality.

It is actually a remarkable work, derivative of a number of sources - as eclectic as all such grimoires must be: alchemical, Typhonian, Voudon, Lovecraftian, gematriac, tantric, qabbalistic, theosophical and more. The text demands access to a certain cultural complex.

If one was so inclined, nearly every paragraph could be used to explore terms and build magical mountains of one's own but this book has a greater purpose. It is best to follow it through to its end but it is a deeply tragic work in some ways.

The language is certainly not dull. It is not badly written but the author chooses to use language with repetitions that reproduce the tone of the chant without being overly obvious about it - telesma, somatonoetic and so on. This mentalised chant is part of the process.

The grimoire slowly builds up, through much magical exposition that could be nonsense or could be a matter of psychological insight, towards its real purpose which is the fundamental reason why this sub culture has emerged.

It skirts Being as a hungry dog skirts a camp fire. But it is really about transcendental sex as the dog is about assuaging his hunger. Not simple rutting or satisfaction of an itch but sexual expression as trigger for seriously altered states of mind and meaning.

The book draws toward this only as we reach the last fifth and it ends in a sexual working, highly Crowleian in inspiration, that leaves one with two fundamental impressions - it might very well work to transform the persons engaged in it and the working of it for the vast mass of humanity is about as likely as a snowball in hell.

This is the nub of the problem with such grimoires and workings. They are both working on something truly primitive and beyond reason that speaks to any person honest enough to recognise their own origins and yet what it requires is only possible amongst humans who have moved far beyond the current state of the species.

This is the tragic and painful paradox. It all requires superhuman, almost sociopathic, commitment to the 'work' but it is working on 'prima materia' that goes back aeons in time and is fundamentally without mind and will.

We do not know what post-humans will be like but if they have lost their 'somatic aspects' (endocrine system or chakras as you will) to become silicon-based entities, none of this will amount to a hill of beans.

The body is the basis for the transcendence. Without the body there is no move forwards (certainly not on the basis of pure reason or the grace of some deity) so we may be in a race against time to become transcendent before we become virtualised or siliconated.

Perhaps people of high sensitivity, wealth and leisure might reproduce this process in order to attain transcendent internal power but I doubt whether even this is possible - the very imbalances of power involved would dictate inauthenticity, delusion, egoism and court orders three decades later by vengeful feminists.

No, what is expressed here as a dynamic possibility - transcendence through sensory overload, loss of inhibition and mutually constructive and consensual objectification - slips from reality back into the world of speculation very quickly once we remember precisely what a sad-ass mainstream culture we live in.

As speculative fiction, such a grimoire becomes analogous to its science fiction counterpart - an expression of what might be possible in inner space (as science fiction is to outer space) and an inspiration to mortal men and women to seek immortality through action in the world. But it is not a description of current or near future reality.

For all the space opera and TV dramas, humankind has still not returned to the moon in decades and its renewed space programme will get up there again only to deflect asteroids and visit nearer planets and moons. Flying between the stars is another matter altogether.

And so it is with the analogical thinking of this grimoire. To find two persons who can, as secure and stable psychological equals of different genders, undertake an operation of transcendent sexuality without neurosis or 'baggage'in order analogically to call down 'praeterhuman intelligences' for total transformation is to ask more of current humanity, as risen ape, than it can bear.

As with science fiction, such grimoires are texts of wish fulfilment and desire albeit with a motivating energy that might one day inspire humanity at its best to break through the barriers that limit it to one planet or to one rigid socially constructed identity ... one day.

That is why I like this book. It is not perfect. It requires a level of cultural knowledge that will pass most people by.

The author, however, has started to bridge the gap between the secretive, neurotic and occult world of magical thinking and mass culture by offering something that could, in its way, inspire people in general much as science fiction writers have inspired engineers.

I look around and I know the transformation will not happen in my life time. Possibly, it may take 30,000 years to change if we are not turned into or replaced by robots but it all has to start somewhere and this book is as good a place to start as anywhere else.

[Jordan Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is hands down the most comprehensive book on kabbalah that I have ever read. I don't believe it is a work of speculative fiction but, a metaphysical map of reality that the author teaches. At first it appeared to start off slow. But, by the time I made it to Chapter 3 I found myself having to put the book down several times, because there was so much information contained within that I had to pause to absorb it all. To anyone who has read Dion Fortunes Mystical Kabbalah you will see that he picks up where she left off; with the exception that he takes it much further. The author also helps elucidate a lot of the doctrines that Grant espouses in the Typhonian Trilogies which is known to have at least left a couple of us scratching our head. He teaches doctrines that are only slightly veiled (or not even discussed for that matter) in all other books that I have read on kabbalah.
This is a scholarly work that I recommend for intermediate to advanced students of kabbalah of the agnostic hermetic persuasion. If you are a Jewish Kabbalah purest, than this might not be for you. It focuses solely on the unwritten kabbalah (tree of life); and uses non-Jewish sourcing and Gematria. The only critique I have is that one might need a dictionary handy, as Mr. Stone possess a huge personal vocabulary. I don't think the author possessing a big personal vocabulary is reason to give it a bad rating or reduction in stars though as it contains a treasure trove of information. I am certain that Karl Stone will be known as one of the trailblazers of the occult avant garde of this century. I recommend that before you read this book; that you at least read the first trilogy of Kenneth Grants Typhonian series. I promise that if you purchase this book that you will not be disappointed.

[Hagen Von Tulien · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first official transmission from the Cult of the Yellow Sign.
Theorie and practice of initiation, sexual magic, qabalah and sorcery, as a preparation for contacts and communications with praeter-human intelligences.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very much in the style of Kenneth Grant but with something to say. Interesting.

[C · Rating 2 out of 5]

Trying to be Kenneth Grant. But Kenneth Grant it's not! I liked the aesthetic especially with his later books the cool covers and paperbacks but in these cases the packaging is prettier than whats inside. Now that all this stuff is quite rare I can't see any of it being worth anything what people are asking for it.

[Ryan Viami · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read and very much enjoyed this weird AF Typhonian AF book, confusing and fun.