Jewish magician tells (nearly) all in no-holds-barred memoir
WASSERMAN IS a rare memoirist in the sense that he doesn’t explain; he shows. His book is hard to put down as it is, essentially, one thing happening after the other, as life actually is.
By HAGAY HACOHENHEADING TO Mass at the reopening of the temple of the cult figure La Santa Muerte (The Saint of Death) near Mexico City in July. The book surveys a range of cults(photo credit: LUIS CORTES/REUTERS)
A young Jewish-American man who seeks spiritual salvation in the mid 1960s ends up as a high priest in an American magical order founded on divine revelations allegedly given to an English occultist in Cairo in the beginning of the 20th century. Having tremendous passion for books, he spends years working in Occult bookstores in NYC of the 1970s and 1980s while creating his own small publishing house focusing on mystical literature. Much of his time is spent on rebuilding, often from scratch and over troubled waters, the order that means so much to him. He is able to bring back into print a beautiful set of tarot cards and an ancient manuscript about the afterlife last used in the time of the Egyptian pyramids. He marries, divorces and remarries, develops drug and alcohol addictions and overcomes them, loses friends along the way and tells us about all of it.This, in a nutshell, is the essence of In the Center of the Fire – A Memoir of the Occult 1966-1989. But just as the nut is only the potential of the future oak, a Kabbalistic Tree of Life, or the World Tree Yggdrasill favored by the Norse, this description is but a hint of the many worlds the book branches to. Wasserman, who takes his role as a caretaker of secret traditions very seriously, met such noted people in the occult world as Harry Smith and Israel Regardie and takes the reader into magic, both dark and fair, without fearing to look foolish.The occult is usually employed to cover conspiracy theories, non-rational views and mystical cults. The term became widely used in the 19th century as the West transformed itself, and the world, into what we now call modernity. It was a powerful gut-wrenching revolution. Rational materialism dispensed with the illusion that the stars radiate an effect on our souls as they travel to this plane of existence, the stars are dead matter traveling in cold space, this view claims. It is possible to cut open a person in surgery and pump his body with fresh blood taken from another person to keep him alive, giving the impression, perhaps, a human is but a meat engine with blood serving as fuel.The occult, then, became the warehouse of all pre-modern things. From non-European medicine that described an unseen life-force, Chi; to Jewish mystical texts that spoke about HaMagid, the high being that appears to the seeker of sacred knowledge; to theories about the Secret Masters of the World who live in a remote mountain kingdom and seek disciples to transform humanity, as Helena Blavatsky argued. WASSERMAN IS a rare memoirist in the sense that he doesn’t explain; he shows. His book is hard to put down as it is, essentially, one thing happening after the other, as life actually is. We don’t learn much about his parents, or what his Jewishness meant for him growing up, but him being a Jewish person often appears on the road as a recurring sign. When exploring African religious traditions and the concept of honoring one’s ancestors, he is able to come to term with his own Jewishness. Since the 1677 publication of Kabbala Denudata (Kabbala Unveiled) by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, non-Jews have found Jewish mystical traditions to be of great interest and value.Occultist Aleister Crowley appears to Wasserman, and not as a metaphor, when Wasserman chances upon one of his books and attempts the magical instruction within. This revelation convinces Wasserman that the English magician is a true teacher and places him on the path of the Law (Thelma). Crowley was a complicated man about whom several biographies were written, but was he really “the most wicked man in the world?” Did he really speak with angels and receive an instruction to be a prophet to a new age? From our own vantage point, two generations after the sexual revolution, it seems that what passed for “most wicked” back then was, at best, multi-partnered bisexuality. Regarding his religion, the reader will have to decide. Crowley was a practicing magician. Meaning, he created rituals, magical instruments (swords, wands) and prayers. He traveled extensively in India and Egypt and was an educated man. This allowed him to not only see and experience mystical traditions in other cultures, but also incorporate them into his own system. He thought that the job of a magician was to discover one’s “true will.” What is the true will? Well, what is the true self? What was your face before you were born? When Crowley died in 1947, his O.T.O (Ordo Templi Orientis) was nearly destroyed as well. Wasserman describes at length how he became involved with the efforts to save what remains of the library of the California Agape Lodge and the legal issues to follow. While this is, no doubt, one man telling his side of things, Wasserman presents a very clear-sighted and sensible approach to matters of the spirit.“The Secret of the IXth Degree, and a token, will get you on a subway” he wrote in 1979 in an effort to modernize the order, meaning, the mystical secrets of the universe aren’t enough to get a free ride or lunch, nor should they be used for that purpose.“Don’t expect to find success stories in these human bodies,” a friend tells him. WHILE WASSERMAN doesn’t shy away from the darker sides of the 1970s and describes friends who committed suicide and his own struggles with drugs and alcohol, he is deeply committed to the O.T.O functioning as a mature lawful entity that has the legal right to explain itself to the outside world with copyrights and publications. The importance of books, magical and non-magical, is constant throughout the work. Crowley himself viewed his books as an extension of his “will” and, in that sense, was correct. It’s important to point out that the occult scene didn’t vanish. How could the unseen become more unseen? It morphed into health food and organic farming, acupuncture and attempts to discover the feminine side of the Hebrew God. Its darker side also survived, with some who believe still-to-be seen COVID-19 vaccines will have tiny tracking chips in them, inhabiting a dark worldview in which an evil being, Ahriman perhaps, attempts to enslave humanity. In a flawed world. Wasserman’s book, with its frank, direct discussions on how to use a junkie’s expression as a magical mantra and searching for one’s Higher Guardian Angel – is magically optimistic, hinting that there is a way to discover one’s true will, and live it, while being honest.The writer covers business, education and technology for The Jerusalem Post.IN THE CENTEROF THE FIREBy James WassermanIbis Press336 pages; $35
Related TagsMagician
if(catID != 151){
var cont = `Take Israel home with the new Jerusalem Post Store
