Ha ha, third reply in a row. Well, Seth, if you're too busy to read the pdf in its entirety, here's a few of my favorite bits (sorry, I missed your post until I was clued in on it by someone else). Having not seen the PDF you have I don't know if the page layout is the same as the book itself, but here goes.
Part 1: Voudoo Energies
Pages 31-34: "Lesson Nine: How the Hoodoo Man Keeps His Nature High". The chapter dealing with the "magickal cream", which appears to be semen. Bertiaux celebrates the act of men having sex with other men in "secret" places in a lesson that would make Sotos proud (Bertiaux also traces this type of sexual activity to Atlantean times, but over the course of the VGW he traces almost everything that interests him back to Atlantis, so this is no surprise).
Pages 38-42: Bertiaux discusses the "Points-Chauds" and time travel via the astral spiderweb in a lesson that obviously inspired the time travel stuff in "The Invisibles". Very fascinating reading.
Pages 43-46: stuff on Baron Zaraguin and the brotherhood of the were-tarantula sorcerors, plus a questionaire with such priceless questions as "Is this call to become a were-tarantula unmistakable?"
Pages 54-58: Information on various loa families, including the insect loa (of interest to Morrison fans).
Pages 75-81: Lots of trippy attributions, plus a brief segment on the Good UFO/Bad UFO experience, which will be of interest again to fans of "The Invisibles".
Pages 82-85: Fascinating paper dealing with "Angelic Gematria" and the "Simplified Enochian Computer".
Pages 188-191: "Vudu-Research Readings: The Metaphysics of Meat". This lesson appeared in Stephen Sennitt's "Infernal Texts: Nox and Liber Koth", in the "Nameless Sodality" segment. I have no idea what Bertiaux is going on about here but it's still pretty cool.
Part 2: Gnostic Energies
Pages 227-230: Bertiaux's thoughts on lattices, Crowley, plus excerpts from "The Book of the Meon" (mentioned in Kenneth Grant's "Hecate's Fountain").
Pages 231-232: Bertiaux's Word-Association Test (uses terms from the Cthulhu Mythos and Thelema primarily... see link at end of this post for more info).
Pages 233-235: more "Book of the Meon" stuff, plus an exercise involving writing one's own personal bible/holy books.
Pages 255-256: a small essay on the topic of Choronzon.
Pages 257-259: Perhaps one of my favorite papers in the VGW. "The Magickal Techniques of Computer Programming". For more info, see my link below.
Pages 265-268: Bertiaux instructs the reader on how to create a Gnostic Universe. Followed by a paper on Gnostic Day-Dreaming that I found very useful, back in the day.
Pages 283-285: Essay on the Zothyrian Empire and "Cybernetic Hinduism" (Cybernetic is one of Bertiaux's favorite word, along with anything ending in "ology" or "tronics").
Pages 285-286: Essay on "Esoteric Electrical Engineering" (EEE), dealing with how Bertiaux connects his students via conducters to the "Cosmic Computer" via the "Aditi-entry circuit" or some such esoterica.
Pages 300-307: Essays dealing with Yuggoth and teh Yuggoth Ray.
Pages 346-351: two interesting papers with evocative titles: "The Null Spaces of To-Gai Initiation Physics" followed by "The Application of Yuggothian Matrices to the To-Gai Null Spaces".
Pages 352-357: Bertiaux relates the Stanzas of Dzyan to the Necronomicon. Or something like that.
Pages 358-360: Essay called "Synchronistic Robotics: Design of the Theory". Mentioned by Bertiaux as being perhaps one of the most difficult papers (and he ain't joking).
Pages 364-367: A "Deep Ones" working.
Part Three: Elemental Sorcery
Pages 375-380: More info on The Zothyrians/Z-Empire.
Pages 394-396: Bertiaux's comments on energy alphas and his thoughts on building a new race.
Pages 397-408: The Oerg-8 papers. ALL RIGHT! I fucking love the Oerg-8 papers. Have to be read to be believed. At this point the VGW goes straight into science-fiction territory as Bertiaux juxtaposes his lessons with some "prose" dealing with a citizen of the future named Oerg-8, where we see that computers and servo-mechanisms now control society by perverted Reichian techniques and that humans are used primarily to produce orgone energy to power these machines. Includes the classic scene where Oerg-8 is jerked off by a mechanical hand. It's hard for me to describe these papers as they have to be read to be believed, but this was where I got my money's worth.
Pages 448-450: Essay on "Plutonian Contact Work". I write more about this in the link below.
Pages 464-472: Essays on the art of Hiroyuki Fukuda, a Japanese artist that Bertiaux seems to really enjoy. I can't find any information on this Fukuda anywhere, though two of his paintings are pictured in Kenneth Grant's book "The Ninth Arch". This is the paper where Bertiaux mentions the "void of the Manichean Baudelaire". I love that phrase.
Pages 492-504: Papers dealing with very dark magical powers. A very creepy segment in which at one point Bertiaux tells the reader about how he wishes to destroy "you", followed by a short story in which "you" meet him at a bar and he takes "you" to his apartment, where the two of you shower and he then strangles you while summoning werewolf powers.
Part 4: Elemental Theogony
Pages 511-516: Bertiaux's thoughts on the Gnostic mythology, Ialdabaoth, archons, and so forth. Bertiaux links the Book of Revelations as symbolic of his own battle against the forces of evil as his alter-ego, Michael Aquarius. I guess he's trying to say that he's Jesus Christ.
Pages 608-613: Concluding papers which gives one much to think about, especially the paper "Chorozon Club Course of Magickal Instruction Lesson 1". These papers are followed by a truly bizarre glossary.
Well, those are just some of the VGW's highlights, off the top of my head. Of course, there's bound to be a lot of other stuff that might interest others, especially if you're into stuff like ojas, kalas, tattwas, IFA, Shinto, philosophy, and so on. My interest in the occult is mainly the Lovecraftian/Kenneth Grant axis, along with the qabalah, so the portions of the VGW that dealt with that material I found most interesting of all. But it really does have something for everyone, hell, there are even portions dealing with Christianity for those of the religious bent.
Here's a link to a paper I did awhile back at the NTS (Necronomicon Transhumanism Society) website, a summary and introduction to the reader of Lovecraftian/Necronomicon influences in the work of Bertiaux, chiefly dealing with the VGW (I hadn't read any of his course papers at the time of this article so I'll probably need to update it one day). I go into more detail concerning some of the above lessons in the paper:
Michael Bertiaux |
