17 April 2002...June 2002
(24 pgs)
TITLE:
The title refers to a poem by Aleister Crowley entitled Dust
Devils which can be found here
SYNOPSIS
Barbara and Sophie arrive at Daath where they are right
off the map finding The Beggar and the Fountain. They encounter Crowley twice
once in female form riding a camel ("When I'm like this you can call me Alice")
and then performing the Chornozon working with
Victor Neuberg. They also find another version of Austin Osman Spare but he does
not remember their last encounter. They disintegrate and wind up at Binah.
QUOTES:
"God help me, I wish I was dead." - Sophie
"I'm already
dead. I just wish I'd never been born." -Promethea(5), pg 4
"We're right off
the map here." - Sophie, pg 5
"I think that says "Daath" over the arch." -
Sophie
""Daath?" What, like Daath Vader? - Promethea(5), pg 6
"When I'm
like this, you can call me Alice." - Aleister Crowley, pg 8
"Here, Magicians
become magic itself. The Penetrator becomes the Penetrated. Male becomes
female." - Aleister Crowley, pg 9
"It was like something H.P. Lovecraft
pulled out of his nose." - Promethea(5), pg 11
"…if you knocked the top
crossbar off the Pi symbol, it's that "eleven" we saw. And because calculating
Pi goes on forever, I guess that like the abyss, it's sort of bottomless…" -
Sophie, pg 11
"A black tower. Y'know, for sayin' there's supposed to be
nothin' here, this place is pretty scenic." - Promethea(5), pg 15
"Of this I
know nothing. Of this, nothing may be said." - Austin Osman Spare, pg
16
"This is the Tower of the Adepts, the Black Brothers, and it is at Daath.
No light is here emitted." - Austin Osman Spare, pg. 16
"The three heads of
God were sundered from existence. Who shall say that this was accident? And
likewise, who shall say that accidents be not but arabesques within some wider
figure? Of this nothing is known." - Austin Osman Spare, pg 17
"Like its
shattered plant or its unseen color, Daath is that knowledge, knowable only by
its absence. It is the neither-neither. It is that knowledge here pursued by the
black brother in the Tower of the Adepts. No light is here emitted. Fare you
well sisters." - Austin Osman Spare, pg 17
"Well, if he was embarraseed about
running into an old one-night stand, he only had to say." - Promethea(5), pg.
17
"Waters breaking. Waters breaking in the womb. Water of the great sea,
breaking on the shores of Binah our Black Mother…" - Promethea(5), pg. 18
"It
was like I wasn't there, like I was just a speaking tube for something……a hollow
reed." - Promethea(5), pg 19
"Maybe he thought being torn to pieces was
necessary." - Sophie, pg. 21
NOTES & ANNOTATIONS
First here is some discussion about this
issue at Barbelith
Underground
Anonymous who has access to Alan Moore himself told me that the Beggar and
the Fountain were just made up by Alan Moore.
Here is the full version of how
he found out in his own words
I once had someone who is annotating Alan
Moore's comic Promethea writing to me on an almost daily basis asking me
questions about the various occult minutiae of Promethea. In the end I told him
I'd ask Alan. So I asked Alan, 'What did you mean when you wrote about this
qabalistic pathway called "The Fountain", there isn't a qabalistic fountain
path, this guy who's annotating Promethea keeps emailing me asking me questions
about it.' Alan looks at me: 'I made that shit up Joel…' Now you know the inner
workings of creative talent, the deep significance embedded in each creative
choice that some worker ant will later write a commentary on, annotating every
detail with voluminous notes. I smiled: 'Now I understand why you aren't on
email.'
Joel Biroco's
website
Page 1: Note that Panels 4-5 are copied almost exactly as Page 24,
panels 1-2.
Note that unlike on the front cover where the caduceus points
upwards here it is pointing downward on the equivalnet image in Panel 3.
Pages 2-3 Nice creepy spiral effects in the sky.
Pages 4-5
middle panel Spiral effects more focused in the sky.
Page 5 panels
3-5: Nice disorientating effect of turning our viewpoint upside down. I
remember a similar effect being done in the movie Papillon.
Pages 5-6 top
panel: Here are some links to interesting information about Daath:
Page 14 panel 4: Note the Crowley like bald head partly visible on one
of the stone slabs. Nice distortion effect on the Black Tower.
The tower
itself reminds me some of the building seen in From Hell Chapter IV.
Page
15 Panel 4: Even though this is a different version of Austin Osman Spare he
still has those weird brightly colored figures floating around him.
Page
16, Panel 2: "…the Black Brothers"
TL advises me that:
The
"black brothers" are the black magicians who do not succed in crossing the
abyss. Crowley talks about them in "Magick in theory and practice".
Before
crossing the abyss, you attain the grade of adeptus exemptus. This is an
elevated state with mastery over time and space.
If you go lost in the
Abyss, you will isolate yourself from the universe and become a vampyre, a
hungry ghost who feeds on the energy of others.
In the contrary, if you give
up your ego and "give your blood to the chalice of Babalon", you will cross the
Abyss and become magister templi (master of the temple).
Here is the first
account of the Black Brothers of the Left Hand Path. Each Exempt Adept must
choose between the Crossing of the Abyss to become a Master of the Temple, and
the building of a false tower of egoism therein.
(Crowley's own annotation to
the 12th aethyr and the "dark brothers")
The "dark brothers" are mentionned
in "The vision and the voice", 12th aethyr (this
passage is also quoted in "The book of Thoth", chapter "lust"):
And this is
the meaning of the Supper of the Passover, the spilling of the blood of the Lamb
being a ritual of the Dark Brothers, for they have sealed up the Pylon with
blood, lest the Angel of Death should enter therein. Thus do they shut
themselves off from the company of the saints. Thus do they keep themselves from
compassion and from understanding. Accursed are they, for they shut up their
blood in their heart.
They keep themselves from the kisses of my Mother
Babylon, and in their lonely fortresses they pray to the false moon. And they
bind themselves together with an oath, and with a great curse. And of their
malice they conspire together, and they have power, and mastery, and in their
cauldrons do they brew the harsh wine of delusion, mingled with the poison of
their selfishness.
Thus they make war upon the Holy One, sending forth their
delusion upon men, and upon everything that liveth. So that their false
compassion is called compassion, and their false understanding is called
understanding, for this is their most potent spell. Yet of their own poison do
they perish, and in their lonely fortresses shall they be eaten up by Time that
hath cheated them to serve him, and by the mighty devil Choronzon, their master,
whose name is the Second Death, for the blood that they have sprinkled on their
Pylon, that is a bar against the Angel Death, is the key by which he entereth
in
Some extra information sent in by TL:
Crowley talks about the
Abyssus in Liber OS Abysmi vel Daath (Liber CDLXXIV = 474) and in Liber
Taw-Yod-Shin-Aleph-Resh-Bet (ThIShARB) VIAE MEMORIAE sub figura CMXIII (Liber
913). In Liber OS, he describes how the study of dialectics (Kant, Hume, Hegel,
Huxley, Berkeley, Buddhism) shatters the ordinary Ego and how the adepts finds
again the holy guardian angel - similarly, Promethea is separated from Sophie in
issue # 19, and reunited with her in issue # 21.
From Liber OS Liber
OS:
10. Now let him consider special problems, such as the Origin of the
World, the Origin of Evil, Infinity, the Absolute, the Ego and the non-Ego,
Freewill and Destiny, and such others as may attract him.
11. Let him subtly
and exactly demonstrate the fallacies of every known solution, and let him seek
a true solution by his right Ingenium.
12. In all this let him be guided only
by clear reason, and let him forcibly suppress all other qualities such as
Intuition, Aspiration, Emotion, and the like.
13. During these practices all
forms of Magick Art and Meditation are forbidden to him. It is forbidden to him
to seek any refuge from his intellect.
14. Let then his reason hurl itself
again and again against the blank wall of mystery which will confront
him.
15. Thus also following is it said, and we deny it not. At last
automatically his reason will take up the practice, sua sponte, and he shall
have no rest therefrom.
16. Then will all phenomena which present themselves
to him appear meaningless and disconnected, and his own Ego will break up into a
series of impressions having no relation one with the other, or with any other
thing.
17. Let this state then become so acute that it is in truth Insanity,
and let this continue until exhaustion.
18. According to a certain deeper
tendency of the individual will be the duration of this state.
19. It may end
in real insanity, which concludes the activities of the Adept during this
present life, or by his rebirth into his own body and mind with the simplicity
of a little child.
20. And then shall he find all his faculties unimpaired,
yet cleansed in a manner ineffable.
21. And he shall recall the simplicity of
the Task of the Adeptus Minor, and apply himself thereto with fresh energy in a
more direct manner.
22. And in his great weakness it may be that for awhile
the new Will and Aspiration are not puissant, yet being undisturbed by those
dead weeds of doubt and reason which he hath uprooted, they grow imperceptibly
and easily like a flower.
23. And with the reappearance of the Holy Guardian
Angel he may be granted the highest attainments, and be truly fitted for the
full experience of the destruction of the Universe. And by the Universe We mean
not that petty Universe which the mind of man can conceive, but that which is
revealed to his soul in the Samadhi of Atmadarshana.
24. Thence may he enter
into a real communion with those that are beyond, and he shall be competent to
receive communication and instruction from Ourselves directly.
25. Thus shall
We prepare him for the confrontation of Choronzon and the Ordeal of the Abyss,
when we have received him into the City of the Pyramids.
Liber ThIShARB describes a method to go back in time and remember past
lives.
From Liber
913
1. It is of such importance to the Exempt Adept that We cannot
overrate it. Let him in no wise adventure the plunge into the Abyss until he
have accomplished this to his most perfectest satisfaction.
2. For in the
Abyss no effort is anywise possible. The Abyss is passed by virtue of the mass
of the Adept and his Karma. Two forces impel him:
(1) the attraction of
Binah,
(2) the impulse of his Karma; and the ease and even the safety of his
passage depend on the strength and direction of the latter.
3. Should one
rashly dare the passage, and take the irrevocable Oath of the Abyss, he might be
lost therein through Aeons of incalculable agony; he might even be thrown back
upon Chesed, with the terrible Karma of failure added to his original
imperfection.
4. It is even said that in certain circumstances it is possible
to fall altogether from the Tree of Life, and to attain the Towers of the Black
Brothers. But We hold that this is not possible for any adept who has truly
attained his grade, or even for any man who has really sought to help humanity
even for a single second, Those in possession of Liber CLXXXV. will note that in
every grade but one the aspirant is pledged to serve his inferiors in the Order.
and that although his aspiration have been impure through vanity or any similar
imperfection.
5. Let then the Adept who finds the result of these meditations
unsatisfactory refuse the Oath of the Abyss, and live so that his Karma gains
strength and direction suitable to the task at some future period.
Another quote about the Black Brothers
In Magick Without Tears, the Beast
666 tells us (by way of a letter to an often confused sister of the Order) that
the ultimate secret of the Ordo Templi Orientis could be used by the Black
Brothers but that they would only succeed in destroying themselves with it.
According to Grant, Crowley had regretted that Austin Osman Spare had become a
Black Brother by
"'shutting himself up in a tower and immersing himself
in the Pool of Narcissus', by which Crowley meant that Spare had resorted almost
exclusively to the use of the magical formula known in the O.T.O. as the VIII°."
That is to say, somewhat crudely, magical masturbation .
It should
also be noted, and I refer the reader to pages 109 through 117 of Magick Without
Tears (Llewellyn Publications, 1973 E.V., Letter No. 12), that a Black Magician
and a Black Brother are not the same thing and should not be confused. Crowley
compares them to the sneak thief and a Hitler, respectively. He tells us that
one who is about to become a Black Brother constantly restricts himself,
satisfied with very limited ideas and is afraid of losing his precious
individuality. He goes on to say that the Black Brother probably deserts his
Angel when he realizes just what must be done, i.e. the destruction of the ego
and all that pertains to it, and that, perhaps, from the very beginning, it is
actually his Evil Genius which he has evoked. When this is done the man breaks
off all relations with the Supernal Triad and attempts to replace it by
inventing a False Crown of Daäth, as it is called in Qabalistic literature. To
such men as these, that is, Black Brothers, Knowledge is everything and A.C.
reminds us that this Knowledge is nothing but the very soul of Illusion. These
adepts-gone-wrong, as it were, abstaining from the true nourishment of the
Supernal Triad, lose their structual unity and must then be fed by continual
doses of dope in miserable self-preservation. They declare Choronzon to be the
child of Understanding and Wisdom, when in fact "he" is the shell or excrement
of the Supernal Triad, and the bastard of the Svastika. What A.C. then tells us
is most important for he says that Daäth and Choronzon are the Whirlpool and the
Leviathan which is written of in the Holy Qabalah.
Quoted from this Source
Pages
16-17 middle panel: nice creepy effect of a black brother in one window
pane. Not sure what the yellow triangle, etc. in the other window is
though.
Page 16 panel 4 & Page 17 panels 1 and 3: Good distortion
effects on the images here.
Page 17 Panel
2:arabesques:
French, from Italian arabesco Arabian in fashion,
from arabo Arabian, from Latin Arabus
Date: circa 1656
: of, relating to,
or being in the style of arabesque or an arabesque
an elaborate or intricate
pattern
definition from your
Dictionary.com
pages 20-21 top panel: Note the 3 dead birds at
the points of the triangle.
Page 20 Top Panel:
According to
Crowley's The Vision and
the Voice The
Cry of the 10th Aeyr the events depicted here occured:
on Dec. 6,
1909, between 2 and 4:15 p.m., in a lonely valley of fine sand, in the desert
near Bou-Sada
Note that Crowley and Neuberg's head are starting to
dissolve slightly like Sophie's shoes on page 12.
Here are some questions and
answers about the positions of Crowley and Neuberg from the Wildstorm Promethea
Message Boards:
Okay, obscure Promethea question. I’ve been working on
annotations for Promethea, and in my research I’ve been reading biographies of
Aleister Crowley. The biographies agree that he was a “bottom”, preferring the
passive, receptive role in homosexual lovemaking.
Your rendition of the
encounter between him and the poet Neuberg (damn, forgot how to spell his name)
shows him taking the active, penetrative role. Was that your artistic decision,
or was it specified in Moore’s script? Did you have a source describing Crowley
deviating from his usual practices for this working, or did you choose this
position to depict Crowley as the dominant personality in the relationship? I’m
not criticizing, just puzzling over the meanings.
Question from Weeping
Gorilla
JHW3’s reply;
that particular scene you are mentioning
was specified by Alan for Crowley to be the "top". Even though its been
documented for Crowley to be on the bottom he always had a pervasive personality
and could be quite dominant. To be honest I'm not sure if Alan has an actual
document describing the accurate details of their pairing during the ritual. But
from what I can gather Alan was making a statement on Crowley's dominance in
that situation. I will see if I can find out if there are any hard facts about
this or not.
Further comment on this issue from Perigill
Just to add a
word about the Choronzon summoning... Crowley (the fictional one) did imply that
they both had to "expend their wills." Maybe a ritual that powerful required
both magicians to be penetrated in order to "become the magic."
I doubt
dominance had anything to do with it. As both heteros and gay folks should know,
the partner on the bottom can be quite dominant.
And Weeping Gorilla’s
thoughts on this
Maybe “expending the will” in Crowley’s system required a
penile rather than a prostate orgasm.
On the other hand, given that Crowley’s
plan seems to have been to summon Choronzon into himself rather than into
Neuberg, I would have thought he would be the one requiring penetration.
The
person in the top position seems dominant during sex. (As an aside, there’s a
midrash that suggests that Adam’s first wife Lilith was cast aside because she
climbed on top.) I could understand a writer or artist choosing that image to
suggest the roles of each man in the relationship.
Page 20 Panel 2:
For fuller details see Do What Thou Wilt, pgs 202-204.
Also Crowley’s The
Vision and the Voice and Confessions
Pages 22-23: 3 great skull like
faces being stretched in agony in the background
Page 24: As mentioned
earlier panels 1 and 2 on this page are almost exact duplicated of panels 4 and
5 on Page 1
Transcript to be fixed up later Issue 20 Crowley
No other
side
Endless falling waiting for impact that will never come
3 hours
blackout
awakening fallind dream reality flourescent desert barren eeriness
fantasy plummeting horror weeping into the slipstream
Note that Page 1,
Panels 4-5 are copied almost exactly as Page 24, Panels 1-2 except that there is
no lightning in sky in the 2nd panel at the end
No point lost
I wish I was
dead.
I’m already dead. I just wish I’d never been born
Place horrible
radioactive weeds busted up paving slabs
The Beggar right off the map
here
Abyss gap old stories kings disguise themselves as beggars
False
invisible sephiroth
DAATH
Collapsed Daath Vader nice Star Wars
joke
Hebrew word knowledge
Dayglo centipede colored like black
light
Invisible sephiroth ultra violet
Camel path ruins
Aleister
Crowley
When I’m like this you can call me Alice
(NOTE: "Crowley's
personal homosexual pseudonym, Alys Cusack" - Lawrence Sutin Do What Thou Wilt
pg. 289)
Riding route 13 gimmel high priestess up to the crown
Magicians
become magic itself
Penetrator becomes the penetrated male become
female
Gimel to tiphereth to Kether
Camel in Hebrew
Pretty little V
with a cleft
Men awful vulgar creatures the camel’s hoof
I’ve an
appointment with the crown of creation.
Five footprints of the camel
VVVVV
Toodle pit dearies
Planets extra one betewen Mars and Jupited now
the asteroid belt
Planet once represented this sphere
But got
destroyed
Jellyfish
Animals things that symbolize this place don’t really
exist anymore
Number 11
False sephiroth
Daath 11th
sephiroth
bottomless
sword jellyfish snake beetle fish
black hole
mauve
Hole right through the entire tree
Hole through existence
Lump in
throat
Black tower
Nothing here pretty scenic
Austin Spare
Younger
beautiful
Pilgrims
Not in nonexistence god not god tower of the adepts
black brothers daath no light is here emitted
Knowledge that’s beyond sense
in great beginning sephiroth as true as any Beggar Fountain tress was of a whole
God was not separated from God’s universe Fall cataclysm
Lightning energie of
god descending overwhelming the structure of existence lower spheres broken from
3 divine supernals
Daath dreadful absence
Marvellous crack in
everything
Whole universe all of existence broke in half. Living in a borken
cosmos because of this fall disastrous accident
3 heads of god sundered from
existence
arabesques within some wider figure
of this nothing is
known
shattered planet unseen color
knowledge knowable only by its’
absence
intellectually, emotionally, spiritually lost ruined
pathway
unreadable highway marker
chesed the beggar to daath to fountain
to binah
waters breaking in the wombs great sea breaking on the shores of
binah black mother
wasn’t there speaking tube hollow reed throat
chakrah
Crowley freak Victor Neuberg Choronzon working
Desert demon
dispersal chaos constantly tearing universe into pieces
Circle,
triangle
Called demon into himself horrible transofrmations & possessions
destroyed their relationship & nearly destroyed Neuberg
Maybe he thought
being torn to pieces was necessary
Reduced to nothing
Wind I’m still alive
& falling none of the rest was true fall swim nightmare desert Binah