From: rjb@carson.u.washington.edu (LeGrand Cinq-Mars)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Jackal at the Shaman's Gate (longish note on a book)
Date: 1 Jan 1993 08:45:40 GMT
Organization: University of Washington
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

                Jackal at the Shaman's Gate:
            a study of Anubis Lord of Ro-Setawe
          with the conjuration to chthonic deities
                   (PGM XXIII; pOxy 412)
              text, translation and commentary
               and an annotated bibliography
                  of the Anubis Archetype.

Terence Duquesne; frontispiece by Louise Tammuz; Oxfordshire
Communications in Egyptology III (Thame, Oxon:  Darengo
Publications, 1991.  ISBN 1-871266-13-0 (paperback); 1-
871266-14-9 (hardback). 135pp; illustrations.

If there ever was a saturnine book, this is surely it.  It
begins with four quotations.  The Greek (Euripides) is
translated but not transliterated; the Arabic (Rumi) is
translated and transliterated; the French (a proverb) and
German (Gottried vin Strassburg's _Tristan_) are neither.

But yet, there is something deeply antic about it.  The
annotated bibliography of the Anubis archetype occupies
pages 56 through 135.  Prefatory reflections on shamanic
motifs in Egypt (with incidental allusions to _Star Trek_,
the Holy Guardian Angel, Da'at as "the black hole of the
soul," and "being drawn gravitationally into the event
horizon" of the shaman's gate) fill pages 9 through 26.  The
nearly word-by-word commentary (which has its own brief
bibliography) on the text runs from pages 36 to 55.  A brief
introduction to the text takes up pages 27 to 29.  The
edited text ("A Greco-Egyptian Necromantic Spell,
incorporating an invocation to Anubis and other chthonic
deities") and its translation (on facing pages) are encased
in pages 30 through 35.  And the actual conjuration (lines
22 to 26 of the text) is enthroned in ample white space on
pages 32 (text) and 33 (translation).  Surely this could not
have been produced without a smile?

This is a small piece of a work in progress, "a substantial
work on the Anubis archetype and its manifestations in
diffrenet religious traditions [that] will be ready for
publication, by the grace of the gods, well within a
decade." [p 6]  That, in turn, is a mere event in the
prosecution of a larger project "about the ontological
basis, structure, and interpretation of Egyptian religion
...."

The book is a curious production in several other ways.
Despite some cautious qualifications in the introductory
passages (page 6), DuQuesne is clearly, if not a magician,
at least a believer in magic.  And not only does he describe
the customary obliquities used to conceal the import of
magical texts ("I have the impression that the Homeric
quotations and burlesques are designed chiefly, or
exclusively, to conceal the hymn which is at the heart of
our document.") -- he practices them.  A reading of the rich
and abundant bibliography provides a range of clues (Crowley
and Corbin, Lavey and Lindsay and Levi-Strauss) for
interpreting various throwaway lines in the text -- and it
is amusing as well to try to find the various ways in which
the Duquesne's own works appear (I am not sure that I found
them all).

Again, there is little in the way of sustained argument:
everything is in the commentatorial notes.  The effect is
rather like that of some sort of linear hypertext.  One
finds one's way through several times, through several
paths, and begins to acquire a sense of the author's thought
about the core text.

I can only imagine the usual publisher's reader's response
on catching this object coming in over the transom.  What
audience, after all, could he be writing for?  He piles
unexplained allusions to Crowley and syncretic cabala on top
of references to popular culture, in the midst of an
unrelenting assumption that readers need little translation
or explanation of any quotations from or allusions to modern
European texts, or for that matter Latin literature.

Yet (unless my sense of these things has been thoroughly
perverted) he writes clearly, not turgidly, and even those
of us who are not able to evaluate emendations of Greek
magical papyri in the light of various Egyptian ritual texts
(and I am one!) can still find much to mull over.

I cannot find the catalogue in which I once saw this book
listed, so I cannot be sure of its price; I do not think it
is cheap.  I wouldn't recommending running out and ordering
it, sight-unseen.  But if it should be available through
some convenient library, at least some people here might
enjoy giving it a glance or two.

And if anyone has seen it, I'd be interested to hear what
you think.



--LeGrand
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From: cal@otter.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 13:10:19 GMT
Subject: Re: My answers (was Re: ... Definitions of "evil")
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.