﻿If you have a fascination for Thelema and contemporary occult traditions, you may
have heard of Kenneth Grant and the Typhonian Tradition, a self-initiatory magic order named
after a monstrous serpentine giant and one of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology, Typhon!
Well, buckle up because that’s what we’re going to explore in this episode!
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Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University
Lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magic, Paganism,
Shamanism, Esotericism, and all things occult.
In this episode, we are going to tackle the Typhonian tradition.
Kenneth Grant was an English ceremonial magician,
apprentice of Aleister Crowley and a close friend of Austin Osman Spare. Since the 1970s
he had published numerous exegeses of both Crowley's and Spare's thoughts. Grant's work,
as we will see, was influential upon the Thelemic tradition as well as on Chaos Magick.
Let’s start with his role in the OTO.
The Ordo Templi Orientis, sometimes also spelt as “Order of Oriental Templars”, is an Occultist
organisation and initiatic Order, founded at the beginning of the 20th century and has remained,
up to the present, a significant vehicle for the transmission of esoteric ideas and practices.
Among its major features, we find the practice of sex magick, deemed as one of its core teachings.
This aspect, along with the role accorded to Eastern doctrines, make the OTO unique compared to
several other magically-oriented, occultist societies, and especially to the only other order
holding similar impact and visibility: the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Within the OTO, Kenneth Grant’s influence is displayed as the founder
of the so-called ‘Typhonian’ OTO,
later known as Typhonian Tradition, whose first official announcement was published around 1973.
As Henrik Bogdan illustrates – During the 1950s, Karl Germer, who had taken over the Ordo Templi
Orientis after Crowley, collaborated with Gerald Yorke, a former Crowley disciple and collector
of his works, to make transcript copies of all the surviving Crowley letters, diaries,
and manuscripts. Grant took part in this project, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, by transcribing
materials for Yorke and Germer. Later, in the late 1960s, Grant also collaborated with
Crowley’s literary executor, John Symonds, for the publication of a number of Crowley's works.
Having served as Crowley’s secretary during the last years of his life,
Grant had received in the early 1950s a charter from Germer to create an OTO Lodge in England.
However, a conflict arose between Germer and Grant in 1955 as the latter rejected the legitimacy
of the Crowley-Germer succession, leading Germer to expel him from the order. Shortly
after this event, Grant claimed the position of Outer Head of the Order for himself.
As Marco Pasi explains, In the early 1970s Grant began his career as an independent
writer and published the first volumes of a series of three Typhonian Trilogies.
In these works, Grant offered an original interpretation of Crowley’s writings,
partly based upon his direct experiences in the workings of his lodge.
Grant’s work is tightly rooted in the Thelemic tradition, even though traditionalists within
the movement perceive his work as unorthodox and idiosyncratic. Grant discusses “The Book
of the Law” profusely in his works, and it is made plain that he shared several of Crowley’s beliefs,
including the upcoming transition from the Old Aeon to the New marked by violent upheaval.
Differently from the Caliphate OTO,
which represents a more “orthodox” wing in the nebula of the Crowleyan movements,
Grant has included several elements previously absent in OTO traditions.
For instance, knowledge derived from communications with “extraterrestrial
entities” - employed as a means to claim his authority - and a renewed emphasis on
Eastern doctrines, Tantrism in particular - as we explored in a dedicated episode.
Grant’s system is also characterised by a strong influence from the works of other occultists
such as Austin Osman Spare, as well as from literary themes, particularly
the Cthulhu mythology of H.P. Lovecraft. Kenneth Grant is also quite influential
in Chaos magick. A close friend of one of the theoretical founding fathers of this tradition,
Austin Osman Spare, Grant offered his own interpretation of Spare's work.
Grant maintained that Spare's main magical "formula" was that of "atavic resurgence";
namely, 'that within trance states, the magician is able to experience the undifferentiated
life-force of Kia in the atavistic, primordial levels of human consciousness.'
Consequently, Grant sees the spiritual journey as moving somewhat "downwards"
or inwards, through the Tree of Life,
instead of moving upwards as it's taught by most ceremonial traditions, including the Golden Dawn.
Spiritual and magical evolution is, in this sense,
fostered by exploration and understanding of the chthonic levels of the psyche, the underworld
of the human's mind. This is why much of his work is concerned with the "demonic" forces
inhabiting the "Tunnels of Set", which exist on the "flipside" of the Tree of Life.
As Woodman explains, Grant believed that these powerful forces
carry 'the potential to radically transform the magician's consciousness, and propel it
into a state which lies beyond both being and non-being.’
Grant sees this process as highly dangerous, even though the inhabitants of the Tunnels of
Set are not perceived as evil forces. The reason why we may perceive them
as such is that they are foreign to everyday human consciousness.
In Woodman's words, 'By embracing the demonic as an idiom of alien otherness,
the self-other divide is collapsed, the Magician is projected into the
undifferentiated continuum of cosmic consciousness and, ultimately, toward an
evolution into new, "extraterrestrial" or "extradimensional" modes of being.’
These ideas influenced widely the countercultural discourses that gave rise
and theoretical-practical inspiration to Chaos Magick.
This is it for today’s video.
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