‘Whisperings from the Void: The Amaranthine Arcanum of Holy Image and Revealed Exegesis’ by Patrick Larabee
A Review by Shani Oates...
An exploratory and astonishingly beautiful narrative; a glorification of the Greatest Mystery – that of Illumination. Equally, the subtext remains skillfully dedicated to the varied threads and causeways of inspired and revealed gnosis, the strands and super-strands of ‘Fate.’
Richly symbolic sigils illustrate arte-fully this sacred pilgrimage through the lonely Arcanum of the ONE. Herein, the Beloved calls to Her Lover. To all those She inspires, Her Lover manifests Her Grand Design, Her divine Creativity in Word and Image via the liminality of ‘Being.’
Separated into two halves, book one accompanies the Fool into the Paradisial Sojourn; book two experiences the realised man, reveling in his own divinity. Together they herald the divine ecstasies. Enthralled and enrapt – this is the fascinating engagement of the ‘other.’
Perception and perspective become challenged, rocked, nay torn from the very apposite status quo. The reader is cunningly drawn in to view the veil, thereto find themselves victim to its ‘light’ but conversely subject to its elusive shadows. Whisperings from the Void resides as a work for all workers of the arte. From within the shadows habit, doubt and superstition all become ameliorated upon the Great Pyre of Truth!
In prose and verse, the dominion of flesh is illuminated by ‘Presence.’ This Matrix of the Collective weaves intricate threads to access the infinitesimal Wyrd, facilitating an inexplicable subtle vibrational causality. Degrees of separation exist only in our narcissistic perception.
Choosing the mentor of the ‘Hidden One’ within, Patrick Larabee provokes the inspiritus guide of the individual. The sentient, Multiplicity of Being is drawn from the Void of Being and tho’ oft imagined clearly through the great eye, its inner vista splintered as the prismatic reflection of the ‘Other.’ Death is but a transformation of consciousness; it is but a singular dream of the Singularity and one that unites dream with the dreaming, the reality of actuality. In real time, duality is transformed. Unity reigns supreme.
The world of insistent spirit exists as a vehicle for its own corporeality – it becomes an experiential journey, a foray designed to stimulate a realisation of Truth, the binder of Mind and Memory, the twin virtues of the soul’s evolutionary journey. Will, ever the arcane virtue of the formidable becomes the fop to a multi-dimensional absolute within and without the machine of the ‘self - the impedimenta of gnosis.
All is simplicity, sheer elegance of mechanism, economy of unilateral impact. Confronted by the eternal and unchanging Abyss, the quintessential mask is the panoply of illumination. Kalas sheath and bathe the body. Such intimate transmutations are generally passed through dreamscapes to materialise within the Nexus, the divine Hub.
Every human vacillates between the poles of extremism. The journey is the measure of self-awareness, sentience and self gnosis. Whim and desire are distractions, No more, no less. Likewise the Sandman and the Reaper are the regulators of the patterns we spin upon the arcane hub - the quaternary of spirit, soul, psyche and flesh!
Disciplined praxis presents unswerving examples of prose and verse to deepen the reader’s experience of these time-honoured battles. These pages are dedicated to the primal Covenant; in serving that vainglorious deed, convocations to several, specific, named sheaths of spirit, whose forms are explored in Rites inspired for and by them. These include the laying of the Compass proper; the Rising of Sensorial and Peripheral Being; Envelopment within the Primal Matriarch and the Father, Absorption through the Mother and Illumination inspired by all the virtues and spirits of Day and of Night, all in the immediacy of the eternal moment.
Strength, vitality and endurance are of the forge and furnace deep in the stygian darkness, of the Mound and Caverns of the seas and lakes. Universal symphonics enthuse a resonance of place in accord with divine will. Mother of exilic wanderers, Lilith, the bridge of chaos and storm winds of all change; She ushers the dynamic we least expect to challenge the status quo, rending outworn modalities from their inhibiting tethers. Together with Samael they nurture all kin in Holt and Hearth.
Entreaties are lauded to the Great Mistress of the Absu, Tiamat, Leviathon of old. Baphomet is called upon to assist in the attainment of the inner amoral androgynous Self in likeness of this realised Soul. Tubal Cain and Naamah, weavers and forgers of Fate are set beside Janus, guardian of all portals and guide to the wanderer traversing the labyrinthine paths. The Holy Spirit Ruha whose breath inspires all to rise to their divine potential is honoured here also.
These are but some of the Mighty Ones whose Titanic Virtue is recognised in reciprocal acknowledgement of the golden chain of being. For we are not so much the reflection of the divine as we are its tangible projection, a holy manifestation of Truth, Love and Beauty. Thus are we truly the ‘fallen’ as Spirit upon the Earth; and thus are we Spirit, elevated within the Light of the World.
