Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Leigh Blackmore, 78 Rowland Ave, Ben has graciously given me the option of
Wollongong, NSW 2500. Australia. including fictional material here to save
Email: lvxnox@iinet.net.au time. I cannot, therefore, resist the
temptation to present a graphic novel
script which has never been published.
IN THIS ISSUE ‘Soul Food” was written for my colleague
“Soul Food” (script)………………….…2 Chris Sequeira’s comic Pulse of Darkness,
“The Message of Thuba-Mleen: Lord and features the occult detecting duo of
Dunsany’s Influence on Aleister Doc Marten and Sydney Deadlocke. Some
Crowley” …………………………………..3 of the other tales of this duo found their
“Clark Ashton Smith & Polyamory”…..7 way into the comic, but this one was never
Mantichorus: Mailing Comments……...9 illustrated or used. I hope you enjoy its
“Succubus” poem ...….………………..10 lightheartedness. There’s also a poem
which I stuck in as space-filler at the end
News: The time seems to fly, and since of the issue.
December last year I have been very
preoccupied in enrolling and commencing I also present this issue an article on
university studies at the University of “Aleister Crowley and Lord Dunsany”.
Wollongong. Currently I am doing a Please forgive its somewhat unfinished
Bachelor in Creative Arts (majoring in state; this article needs further research
Creative Writing) but this may become a and I am currently attempting to obtain
double degree (Creative from the library of the Texas University at
Arts/Communications) next year. My Austin an unpublished essay by Crowley
university studies have been engrossing which may throw further light on his
so far, and later this session I will be dealings with Dunsany. As I’m a Thelemic
presenting a tutorial on the work The magician, Crowley is my major influence,
Devil’s Elixir by German Romanticist ETA and I am intrigued by the possible
Hoffman; perhaps this will appear in connections (literary and biographical)
Mantichore in future. between him and the fantasist Dunsany,
slight though they may have been.
I have for many years been involved with
the magical arts as well, and this year Also here is an article on “Clark Ashton
have set up with my partners a ritual Smith and Polyamory”. Since I am myself
magical group in the Illawarra (that in a polyamorous relationship (my partners
southcoast region of NSW where are Margi and Graham) I was intrigued
Wollongong is located), called MoonSkin. when reading Smith’s “Hill of Dionysus”
MoonSkin may well evolve into a working sequence to pick up some hints that I had
coven next year. To keep fit (for I have been blind to previously – that Smith was
been getting rather overweight the last few actually involved in a three-way
years) I have been doing Raja yoga once relationship, well before his later marriage.
a week with my partner, the poet Margi By contacting Boyd Pearson of
Curtis. I published an article on Clark eldritchdark.com I got into contact with
Ashton Smith in Phillip A. Ellis’s online Smith expert Donald-Sidney-Fryer, and
Calenture. I’m also writing an essay on Fryer has confirmed this three-way
Thomas Harris for a book being edited by relationship of Smith’s to me in some
detail. At this stage I’m unsure if Fryer has Quinn: "Your reputation precedes you,
given me permission to quote his letter, so gentlemen. Before we get started, here's the
his comments aren’t included in the article monetary part of the customary fee'. (He
herewith, but I hope to expand the article hands Doc a $50 bill).
later to include Fryer’s very authoritative
assessment of the unique relationship of Doc: 'Ta'. (Aside to Deadlocke): 'Handy,
Smith, Eric Barker and Madeline Green. eh?'
Accompanying this mailing should also be Quinn: "Here we are, gentlemen. This is
copies of my booklet on Australian writer Mrs O'Connor - and her late husband".
Terry Dowling (Terry Dowling: Virtuoso of
the Fantastic) which doesn’t purport to be He has ushered the two into a large room
a critical study but was prepared as a sort with sombre furnishings and wood
of career overview for the Conflux panelling. Mrs O'Connor, the grief-stricken
convention last year. I still intend writing widow, is an old grey-haired lady. She sits
my full-length critical study of Dowling (in in a chair with her hands clasped anxiously.
collaboration with Univ of WA’s Dr Van Behind her is a bier upon which reposes the
Ikin) but this project has been on hold for a open coffin containing her husband's
while and needs to be reactivated. I hope corpse. He is also grey-haired and over
the booklet will spark some interest in seventy. On the chest of the corpse sits a
Dowling’s work for those who have not loaf of bread.
encountered it before.
Doc: (to Deadlocke in a whisper): "Wonder
what he died of? Hope it was nothing
infectious".
Panel 4:
Deadlocke: (holding aloft an issue of Casket Deadlocke: "Trust me. All we do is eat that
and Sunnyside magazine - an undertakers' bread & drink some beer. A marvellous
trade journal): 'We're responding to your ad, opportunity to participate in a centuries-old
Mr Quinn. You say you want volunteers for death ritual".
a session of 'sin-eating'. Sydney
Deadlocke...' Doc: "Beer? Why didn't ya say so?" (He
looks much happier).
Doc: 'Doc Martin. We're the blokes for the
job. Lead the way'. Panel 6:
Quinn: "First I hand you the loaf of bread. Mrs O'Connor: "Oh dear, sorry to disturb
You should make sure it's devoured you gentlemen, but my husband's corpse
completely" seems to have - well - been reanimated".
Panel 10:
"THE MESSAGE OF THUBA-MLEEN”:
Mrs O'Connor: "Oh, thank you, both of you. LORD DUNSANY’S INFLUENCE ON
You've put my mind at rest". ALEISTER CROWLEY
Although even here Smith retains his The poem concludes with classical
usual penchant for reminding us that “all references to Anteros. In Greek myth,
things must pass”, with the words “frail”, Anteros ("return- or opposite-love") is
and “pass”. sometimes the brother of Eros, the god of
love. The latter languished of loneliness
With the lines: until Aphrodite gave Anteros to him as a
playmate: love must be answered if it is to
“Now, with the earth for board, prosper. Anteros is also the god who
The bread is eaten and the wine is punishes those who scorn love or do not
poured”, return love of others. Smith says that in
this worlds “Anteros is lord” but the poem
we have a clearly sacramental symbol, an looks to a place where “magical delight
embodiment of that Dionysian spirit for and sleep unfold” beyond that world.
which Smith always stood – the sexual,
wine-imbibing attitude as opposed to the The final stanza is one of “respite and
Apollonian (intellectual) spirit. release from all that hampers us”, a plain
statement of Smith’s ease with this pagan,
The threesome theme is confirmed again Dionysian state of affairs that he is
by “While she, the twice-adored” (that is, enjoying with his friends of two genders.
adored by two men) “Between us lies on Another classical reference rounds it out:
the pale autumn grass”
“Where grape and laurel twine,
Again he emphasises the timeless nature Once more we drink the Dionysian wine,
of their love Ringed with the last horizon that is
Greece”.
“Thus has she lain before,
And thus we two have watched her Smith’s relations with women were
reverently; complex. Early in his career, he was
More beautiful, and more something of a ‘rake’, having affairs with
Mysterious for her body’s nudity.” several married women in Auburn. In
1916, when Smith was 23, he was in love
This is reinforced some lines later with a with a woman called Iris (Behrends p. 19)
reinvention of the second stanza: who suffered from consumption
(tuberculosis) and died of it before she
“These things have happened even thus was thirty. Smith’s later wife referred to
of yore, this woman as “His first, hopelessly ill
These things are part of all futurity; beloved” (CAS SL p. 12, quoting CAS to
And she and I and he, GS (26 July 1917; ms, NYPL). Smith
Returning as before, seems to have been heartbroken by her
Participate in some unfinished mystery”. death. For her (it seems certain) he wrote
the immeasurably poignant lines of the
The line with the pronouns puts them in a poem “Winter Song” (Auburn Journal Nov
different order – the first time it was “he 1923) which ends:
and I and she”. Smith seems to be playing
with the combination, in both lines the poet “here on the darkening wold,
being the central player or pivot, with the In the bleak wind blown from space,
other two either side of him; the “he” and I recall thy fugitive grace,
And sigh for thy hair’s lost gold.”
with Barker and Green, Smith expert Scott
Yet he was not in favour of marriage, at Connors has confirmed a polyamorous
least at this time – he wrote “Marriage is reading of the poem, based on information
an error I was never tempted to commit: I provided to him by Donald Sidney-Fryer.
have not been in love with an unmarried Connors states: “In a nutshell, you are
woman since I was fifteen! Anyway, I correct in your deductions that their
object to marriage on moral grounds”. (To friendship was more than platonic. Eric
George Sterling, ALS, NYPL; CAS SL p. was apparently very open-minded.” (email
59) to LDB, Jan 10, 2006)
Yet later, aged 61, on 10 Nov 1954 he Smith’s great poetry collection delivered to
married Carol Jones Dorman, a widow Arkham House in Dec 1949, was
with three children. This relationship dedicated to Eric Barker and Madelynne
seems to have been conventionally Green. (It did not see print until over
monogamous. twenty years later, in 1971)