Atramentous Press recently announced a series of upcoming publications. We posted regarding the first in the series earlier this week. Here’re the publisher’s statement about the overall series:
“Being and Non-Being in Occult Experience is a projected series of four volumes. The series serves to introduce readers to a spirituality, philosophy, existential-phenomenology, and depth psychology of occult experience through the lens of the dialectical relationship (the play) between becoming, being, and non-being. The author purports an anti-foundational “language” through which occult experience can be translated, transformed, transmuted, and ultimately (ex)communicated. Here, philosophical method in and of itself becomes alchemical and tantric, taking the reader on a transubstantiative journey into the textual flesh of writers such as:
• Aleister Crowley (The Book of the Law and Thelema) in Volume I
• Austin Osman Spare (Zos Kia Cultus) in Volume II
• Kenneth Grant (Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis) in Volume III
• Andrew Chumbley (Cultus Sabbati) in Volume IV
“Each volume will demonstrate how Logos (Being) and A-Logos (Non-Being) continually affirm and negate one another as a means to create lived space for opposition; thereby forming a circularity of becoming through both presence and absence.
“In the very writing or inscribing of occult experience, the author shows how each writer ex-communicates the illusory being/non-being dichotomy so as to create a crooked path to Divinity (by way of self-overcoming via the dialectic itself). Ritual and contemplative practice, as symbolic representations, are shown to be materializations of the Being/Non-Being dialectic, which can function autonomously through experiences of possession, relationally through conversation and dialogue with one’s Holy Guardian Angel or Daemon, or intentionally through various forms of prayer, meditation, or yoga. That which is fundamental throughout is the suggestion that the speech act is the vehicle through which occult experience is both carried and transmitted, as ultimately any form of spiritual practice is conceived with an utterance, with its semantic, morphological structure serving to affirm and negate an adept’s existential reality, as that reality is lived in multiple self-referential and paradoxical worlds. Here, the author will argue that the task of the occultist is to hold the experience of paradox, opposing the inclination to create an idol out of or fetishize the Right-Hand or Left-Hand Path, White or Black Magick, Life or Death, Heaven or Hell, Nirvana or Samsara, etc., as incarnations of Being or Non-Being. By so doing, gnosis can be achieved by freeing psyche’s own polytheistic ground, transforming the aspirant into a Seer.
“Dr. Edwards attained his PhD in Clinical Psychology and holds both administrative and clinical positions at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (United States). He is also an Adjunct Professor of Psychology and Philosophy. Dr. Edwards also co-created and currently runs the Duquesne University Center for Student Wellbeing.”
https://www.atramentouspress.com/beingnonbeing
