Allen Ginsberg commentary on William Blake’s Book of Ahania continues from here
Peter Orlovsky: Where would you look in the Kabbalistic books for (explanation)?
AG: Well I think probably Gershom Scholem‘s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism might give some of that. Bill Burroughs recommended a basic handbook of magic to me that might give the old Aleister Crowley or other, magical basic (ideas). Helen (Luster) might know – (to Helen Luster) What are the traditional, say, directions associated with North/South/East/West? Is there any particular system that you know of?
Helen Luster: You’re asking the wrong person.
AG: Yeah.
Helen Luster: I don’t even know (left from right!)
AG: Okay. She’s graduated from the Black Magic School and the White Magic School! – Does anybody know Kabbalah here? Or any other magic forms?
Student: I know Tarot
AG: Tarot. Do they have directions in space – East/West/North/ South – as part of their system?
Student (2): In the Kabbalah there’s some attribution which you could check up on … or I could check up on.
AG: Could you? Where would you look it up?
Student (2): Umm … (Scholem’s book) is really good….
AG: Yeah, I know, but do you know how to look into it and find (a) page where they’ve got the pictures?
Student (2): I’ll look at it.
AG: Okay, see if you can find some old western Gnostic system which has directions, colors, circles, squares, triangles. Maybe the Tree of Life, I guess, is just about as useful as any. The basic. That’s the Sefirot, isn’t it? Yeah. Actually, I’ve never studied that so I’m not really too smart on the subject. I would have imagined that there would have been more people here that know that – [to Student] Yeah?
Student (3): What about in Seven Arrows? That book, Seven Arrows
AG: Yeah, Amer-Indian. That’s (an) American Indian shot. [Editorial note, but riddled with inaccuracy – author Charles Storm, was the son of a German immigrant who claimed to be Cheyenne; he misappropriated and misrepresented Native American teachings and symbols from a variety of different cultures, claiming that they were Cheyenne”] – Yeah, I suppose they would…
Student (3): (Trees often feature in) Native American systems..
AG: Yeah.
Student (3): In some instances.
AG: Yeah, well, what I’m interested in (is)…
Student (3): (The color of the) tree (is) associated with…
AG: Pardon me?
Student (3) : You have a color of a tree, and then associated with it (is)…
AG: Oh, right, okay. Same. Blake has, (the) Buddhists have, so it’s basic. Blake has it because he’s drawing from traditional Hermetic Western sources, except that he’s sort of synthesizing his own system once and for all, because, as I’ve quoted before, he said, “I must make a system of my own or be enslaved by another man’s”, “make a system of my own or be enslaved by another man’s.” (“I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Mans/I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create”). An interesting idea. His fear of being enslaved by an older system.
to be continued