Teem member Richard Gavin has a new book coming out this summer from Theion Publishing — and it’s nonfiction. Richard, as you know, has built a major reputation in recent years as a writer of exquisite weird fiction in a darkly esoteric and philosophical vein, and this book promises to be a kind of nonfiction distillation and amplification of the concepts and viewpoints that animate his stories. Here’s the scoop from the publisher:
Twisting beyond the placid boundaries of civilization is an ancient path. Its stalkers do not march the linear road of human progress but instead orient their souls to the luminous, haunted darkness of the Night Primeval. Many have glimpsed this realm, when sleep has delivered them onto the back of the charging Night-Mare, and recollections of these brief visitations survive in countless tales of terror and in the folklore of locales rumoured to be fey or cursed. Rare, however, is the individual who willingly pays the tariff and passes irretrievably through that twilight of existence in order to become Benighted.
Drawing upon the shadow aspects of a variety of traditions, including the khabit of Ancient Egypt, the Biocentrism of Ludwig Klages, Aghora, the Gothic, and David Beth’s pan-daemonic Kosmic Gnosis, all distilled through the author’s praxis, The Benighted Path explores the breach through which the egoic self is slain in order to unleash the aspirant’s true Monstrous Soul. Only then may the Benighted offer their adoration to the Gorgon and partake of the Sidereal Feast.
More: “The Benighted Path: Primeval Gnosis and the Monstrous Soul“
While waiting for the book’s release, you could do worse than to read the entries in Richard’s column “Echoes from Hades” here at The Teeming Brain:
- “Deep Shadows and Numinous Horror“
- “To Suffer This World or Illuminate Another? On the Meanings and Uses of Horror“
- “In Praise of Horror that Horrifies” (the most popular and widely linked of these essays)
- “Art, Mystery, and Magic: A Fireside Chat with Don Webb“
- “Coins for the Ferryman: Horror as the Key to Our Dark Inner Depths“
- “Womb of the Black Goddess: Horror as Dark Transcendence“
Thanks I’m excited for this.
Thank you all for making me notice things like this, I recently went to a Bible study and said John 2 had to do with ego death but had missed the earlier portion , I’ve never actually gone to a Bible study before and would continue going somewhere else at least something to do to help me study literature and knowing the Bible is good. anyway, Christ speaks about destroying and raising up the temple, and when he says this he says he speaking of the temple of his body. But he also says this, and wish I had pointed this out and angered people more . Everyone gets pissed off whenever I say anything apparently,
7 Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.
8 And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it.
This is Maussian reciprocity, to a ‘T’, as Jesus went into the jaws of death and gets remade, so too he tells his followers directly to do the same. Fill first. Receive later.
I find it immensely irritating that nobody instructs Christianity in the way I just said . I’ve always had the impression that Christianity is about getting something for nothing. Like Christmas or the laying on of hands, or waking up in the morning to a bunch of Easter eggs , but isn’t it striking that among the miracles of Christianity, turning water into wine no less.. it doesn’t just happen out of nowhere? This idea of “he turned water into wine!” and making things appear out of nowhere was devastating to my understanding of spirituality growing up. There is a ‘secret’ meaning to the texts obviously predominantly lost on people today.