“Two candles held close together shine brighter than two held apart.” from THE TEARS OF THE GODS by Ron Weighell (Passport Levant 2011) – a constituent of the TARSHISHIM Box.
REAL-TIME REVIEW CONTINUED FROM HERE.
“TARSHISHIM – boxed limited edition” by Ron Weighell
On the Side of the Angels
“In fifteen sixty six, when Suleiman’s Sorceror called up demons to fight alongside the Ottoman army, an Angelic Host led by the Archangel Gabriel was summoned to oppose them.”
Felicitously, amid the book’s dutifulness towards its own Angelic thread, there is much synergy not only with my own long-term definition of ‘magic fiction’ as a real power in human affairs but also with the use made of it in warfare as described by the masterpiece ‘Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’ in the name of Susanna Clarke. Also, arguably, a textual hint here of the internet as part of these processes, which my real-time reviewing also taps into, I suggest. “I take it you are not well read in the works of the master, Edgar Allan Poe? I thought not. It was his belief that if you wish to hide something, the best place is in full view.” This book is fast becoming, in full public view, an important part of my life, retrocausally as well as linearly forward in time. Remarkably, it mentions in this section today “Marston Moor” as one of the battles where “Beings” were sent, i.e. a battle which, synchronously, only yesterday was mentioned independently to me on a semi-public internet forum (here) as being a battle that (with right or wrong on my side, angels or demons?) I am currently fighting on behalf of real books against ebooks. (31 Dec 11 – four hours later)
Control
“…and flickering firelight, full of the smells of old books…”
A scholarly meeting in tune with M.R. James but, refreshingly (with scholars worth their salt), leading not to a plot-sized populist ghost story but to implications of more ‘musical’ interactions of Fine Art (fine as well as foul?) and Philosophy within the book’s Angels & Demons thread / Rationalisation and Magic / Control and Totalitariansim – and how each of us – however firm we are in our beliefs and in our own hard-won goodness – teeters in the grey area between such pairs of ‘similar opposites’, such Ewers-Spider symbioses or host/parasite-uncertainties-of-which-is-which — {Swedenborg or Blake?} [The paragraphing and speech-marks at one point in this section made it difficult to differentiate speakers]. (31 Dec 11 – another 90 minutes later)
Satyrs Gathering
“…the magic that could be wrought by the decoration of books.”
A short telling Coda to the previous story, regarding Chaos Theory (butterfly effect between earthly things and Angels) and much else contained within its Tardis of words. Serendipitously, Blake figures here (Hitler again, too): and the cats and other creatures from the VanderMeers’ massive ‘The WEIRD’, and the London Stone ley-lines from Ackroyd — and the oxymorons within salvation… And it also reminds me that Caruso’s decorations are suffused with Blake’s, in a good original way. Another symbiosis. (31 Dec 11 – another hour later)
THIS REAL-TIME REVIEW IS NOW CONTINUED IN 2012: HERE
Synergies 