The 30 Trials of Ix and the Angels
By Mark Durant
It is apparent from the very beginning of this semi-fictional account of the scrying of the 30 Enochian Aethyrs that the author has a painfully self-conscious and unrefined prose style, with a tendency toward pomposity. In the Introduction, whilst attempting to convey an atmosphere of romance and mystery, he can do nothing more than give a parody of the opening of Zanoni; and what is clearly meant to read as literary restraint is merely the best that this unpracticed hand can muster to its command.
Each sentence is a short attack, lacking in rhythm, music or ingenuity; and those faults which might have been passed over with scarce a mention in the first novel of a budding writer, in this case simply invite contempt for the vanity of the author whose “tale no less profound than those of the greatest spiritual traditions” is nothing more than a grandiose pretence.
Immediately, though, the song of the spirit wafts in the breeze! Yes, it begins: the agon. From the first chapter, it is clear that the account of the scrying-sessions which comprises this book has been heavily glossed; but that can in no way veil what is merely an extended sexual fantasy, with the guardian angel acting as a kind of pimp:
The angel stood guard outside of the castle ruins as Ix and the maiden made love.
Ix became lost in a dirty daydream, the perverted old god and his pyramid losing its hold on his attention and giving way to a sexual frolic.
The angel’s song shifted into what Ix was best able to describe as another spectrum, for as he looked out through the eye of the tree he saw two highschool-aged teens, very fat, a boy and girl, and they were having sex to the side of a public school building.
In the first chapter, the protagonist “Ix” manages to deflower the Virgin Princess, Heh of Tetragrammaton. Such an auspicious start can hardly be marred by the fact that a liaison with the “ultimate undefiled” implies in itself a duality which nullifies the very point he is trying to make; and so the story of “barrier-breaking” becomes one tedious barrage, reminiscent of a particularly naïve LSD experience. The muddling of symbolism, the constant banal “realisations” and the interminable references to the ego make this perhaps one of the worst examples of fake mysticism that has ever been self-published. The constant thread is Ix’s inability to recognise the ego as merely a false perception, resulting in his attempts to wed the ego to the universe.
It is quite clear by this point that the author had not troubled himself with even the most minor of mystic trances (Dhyâna) before he undertook this operation, and not the faintest glimmer of the radiance with which the breaking of the Samâdhi of the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel would have endowed him is even slightly evident. To put it another way, the work of scrying the 30 Aethyrs requires first that the four watchtowers be fully opened. The early identification of Ix with the Buddha in his record of the 30th Aethyr suggests that these are shallow waters indeed.
The vision immediately following begins again with an immediate confusion (and not unification) of symbolism: this time the corpse is alive as Ix, but is the dust of the Master of the Temple; but is again the Goat of the Spirit… and in all these experiences, it is not the universe speaking to Ix as an initiate, but the ego Ix experiencing for the first time the variegated possibilities of life, taking form as an eagle or as any of the various items of imagery that are wheeled on and off stage: the unresolved wish-phantasms of a mystic dilettante. Again and again, Ix is simply taking a ride through the multicoloured show, a mere spiritual sybarite of an impotent dream:
It seemed as though the whole of the cosmos was one great, musical instrument, and the angel, in a final farewell, played it for him.
In The Vision and the Voice, the use of the “perpendicular pronoun” is restricted more or less to Crowley’s attempts to explain what happened to the scryer; whereas here it is used exclusively by Ix to explain his “I” to the entities he encounters. That is the crux of the matter. In all of Ix’s visions there is an underlying plaintiveness, an emasculate petulance, that would be more pitiful if it weren’t so painful to read.
In essence, what is being described in this book is a series of laminate visions: a “mystic” veneer placed upon the world. Symbols there are a-plenty, but it is a slide-show of poor Qabalah, a dreadful montage reminiscent of the romantic film genre, and entirely derivative. It could have been better scripted if it were shamelessly contrived from scratch, and there might have been a good deal less confusion and redundancy.
Amongst the more obscene literary conceits that sour the work are some “unseen quantum waves”, the “binary, on/off cycle of the sun”, a smattering of “fourth-dimensional notes that were vegetable growth in the third-dimensional world” and the usual “hyperspatial oceans”, “actual metaphysical space” and the like.
Of course, as in every vision, there is a reflection of truth. However, what semblance of meaning there is in this book is evidently the very gloss that nullifies its value as a magickal record; but I will not stoop to the lowest level of literary criticism and question the author’s sincerity. There is no need: it is itself the most dire drivel. Awkward phrases such as “he recalled having been told something that pertained to the coming angel by a great master of the occult he’d trafficked with ages ago”, if they do not revolt the poetic spirit, at least render any criticism largely fatuous.
The following vision (28th Aethyr) concerns a giant spider-scorpion, where “Alone in the web now, Ix struggled against it only to find himself trapped.” And so his descent into horror and madness gathers momentum. It is a vision, noted and implied several times in the text, of childhood guilt. At this stage it is palpably evident that the further 57½ chapters will be a rehearsal of nothing more than immature angst of the most tedious kind; and the spider, symbol of Tiphareth with its eight legs, is not overcome by Ix (though there is a bloody good fight):
Ix realized that his total consciousness…was insectile.
Now we’re really getting somewhere! The angel helps Ix along with a really generous dollop of flattery: “Your preparations have indeed made you worthy.” Meanwhile “[Ix] studied himself, but could find no sign of his sex…and Ix rejoiced.” Then the spider has a little dance.
(From a later section:) As though through the eyes of some hyperspatial insect, he saw himself and the angel engaged in every conceivable act of physical congress at the same time.
I had steeled myself for the remaining 57 chapters, but with the beginning of the 27th Aethyr,
First came a sound, and then Woody Woodpecker appeared and ran off to the right, laughing out his signature “ha ha ha HAha, ha ha ha HAha, hahahahahahahaha…” as he fled.
I admit my patience ran out. Having noticed some discussion of Jennifer Aniston and Gary Coleman (considered as a dichotomy) later on in the visions, and noting several other references of that general nature, I was left to conclude that Ix’s “spiritual knowledge”, which is “in some respects, encyclopedic”, relies heavily on daytime television. I had no hope of any improvement, and, quite frankly, whomever believes their life so worthless as to think it would be enlivened by a reading of the remaining 213 pages of this tripe is welcome to indulge.
A few quotes drawn more or less at random from the text:
And as that Will was revealed, he saw clearly a thousand and one devils in a sphere around him, sending in the words and chatter that bound him to his ego and that held his Consciousness apart from and outside of him. He was a knot in hyperspace, and their words were what tied it. And those devils were people: Those manifestations of Consciousness that had captured his YHWH-point of balance and focus in a womb and chattered him into existence. He was like “God” wrapped tight in the net of six billion black sorcerers who bound his energy into what he was supposed to believe that it was: His ego rather than his Self. (An example of “projection”?)
“I have been split into five parts by the night sky,” he thought. “I have come to inhabit myself! And this is breakthrough! This is cosmic influx!! The egg has cracked open! The child comes!!!” (Not on the carpet, I hope!)
Ix realized that he had stopped time, and that he had called down the demon by drawing himself to this still point. There was no past and there was no future: There was only the demonic angel there, just outside of Ix’s circle, terrifying in its enormity and power. For the most part, though, it was seemingly unconcerned by Ix’s presence. (Well, that’s alright then.)
“So many mysteries unveiled!” Ix thought, and a new idea came upon him: That having sex with a member of the opposite sex was, in essence, masturbation, for one was reaching inward in the act of trying to grasp one’s true self. He laughed out loud at the thought. (Yes, it’s all a load of wank.)
– Avalon Guest.