Perle Besserman

Crazy Cloud is the pen name assumed by Ikkyu who was a Zen poet, calligrapher and wandering teacher. The name itself is a pun on the Japanese word denoting the Buddhist monk whose detachment from wordly life has him drifting like a cloud over water. The "Crazy Clouds" of this book are those innovative, nonconformist Zen masters, the wandering seekers and sages often disguised as beggars, nomadic preachers and "madmen", whose singular Zen way has profoundly traditional practices of meditation, daily life and spiritual, social and political attitude in Zen Buddhism. Spanning a period from 8th-century China to 20th-century America, the book portrays the lives and teachings of Zen masters like the fierce Rinzai, the easy-going layman P'ang, the renegade Ikkyu, and the lay monk Nyogen Senzaki all of whose interpretations of even the most radical forms of practice proved too enigmatic and avant garde for their contemporaries, but which remain invaluable guidelines for practitioners in today's Western Zen world of feminists, anarchists, ecologists and spiritual activists.… (altro)

Since its publication in 1969, Perle Epstein’s book-length study The Private Labyrinth of Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano and the Cabbala has served as a point of reference for scholars interested in Lowry’s cabbalistic ideas. Unfortunately, she barely touches on the works of Lowry's cabbalistic instructor Charles Stansfeld Jones, and she fails to discuss the aspects that made him distinctive as a cabbalist.

The one book by Jones that Epstein refers to by name in the body of her text is The Anatomy of the Body of God, and this book she painfully mis-characterizes as dealing “primarily with forecasting and manipulating the course of world events” (100). The only political language in Jones’ entire book is in the course of the last few pages, which include an exhortation to “those in whose charge is the Civil destiny of the Nations,” among other potential readers. There is no discussion of any sort of divination or prediction, regarding world events or otherwise. The Anatomy of the Body of God is in fact concerned primarily (and almost exclusively) with the geometric aspects of the diagram of the Tree of Life, its projection in scale and dimension, and the symbolic corollaries of Jones’ innovations in this regard, applied to alphabetic and numerical correspondences.

Epstein does devote a fair amount of attention to drawing a line between Jewish cabbalistic traditions and their Christian and hermetic derivatives, in order to point out that Jones and by extension Lowry were in the latter camp (14-44). (William H. New calls this section of Epstein’s book “factual, earnest and flat.”) But perhaps even more significant than the religious and doctrinal differences that distinguish what Epstein calls “The Two Cabbalas,” is the epistemological divide between these expressions of traditional mysticism and the modern hermetic cabbala of Jones and his instructor Aleister Crowley. For such Thelemic cabbalists, the purpose of the elaborate system of the Tree and the Paths is to afford heuristics by which any and all knowledge can be interrelated, with extrapolations to higher states of consciousness. Accordingly, it needs to be personalized with reference to individual experience in order to function.

This idea that the cabbala is a set of generic conventions to hold individualized contents accords quite well with Lowry’s description of the Consul’s ability to “dodge about in the rigging of the Cabbala like a St. Jago’s monkey.” It also accounts for the manner in which Lowry was able to seize on Jones’ cabbala as a mechanism for literary composition. It is, however, at odds with Epstein’s reading of the Volcano as employing a “Christian Cabbala” as a set of codified (if haphazardly syncretized) doctrines under symbolic coverings. To the extent that mystical doctrines are included in Lowry's Volcano, they are Thelemic ones about the Adventure of the Abyss and the Black Brothers, alien to Epstein's learning. Although she notices Lowry's attention to black and white magicians, her explanation of that distinction (8) cites no authority and provides no clarity.

(My own study of Lowry's cabbalism and his relationship to Charles Stansfeld Jones can be found under the title "Bizarre Sons" in the volume Success Is Your Proof.)… (altro)

I am not that familiar with Judaism. However, you don't have to be familiar to read this book. I like Sharon. She has a charm about her as well as a nice personality. Where Rabbi Joachim is concerned; I thought he was very dedicated to his job. You could feel how passionate he is about his role.

Yeah, I could understand Sharon's feelings towards Rabbi Joachim. There was nothing too scandalous about it featured in this book. However, it does kind of play a role in Sharon's decisions for her life.

While, I did like the characters I found myself disconnected some from the story. Religion does play a part in the overall story. This is where a bit of my disconnect came from. Because I don't really understand this type of religion. Yet, the real issue was that I was not feeling the story as too interesting. I did finish this book. This book is worth a look and cracking the pages open.… (altro)