Ecclesia Review Final PDF

ECCLESIA MYSTERIA – A REVIEW
July 1, 2015
DEAR MARTINET PRESS,
Thanks for forwarding the review copy of ECCLESIA MYSTERIA. A very interesting
book, though I was confused to get the text, as I don’t normally do reviews. When
you see Martinet Press publishing a book, you expect to see implicit themes that
are fairly dark. This particular book doesn’t seem dark on the first reading. So I
read it again, and again once more. Well, you have been clever. So voila: here’s
your review.
First, a correction to myself: “Tau Constantine” has been clever. On the first read
(and initially I was skimming) it seemed like an actual Gnostic movement. The
vocabulary seems typically Gnostic, there’s the expected Hellenistic terminology
like Barbello, Christos, Abraxas, the Demiurge and the archons.
Now one almost expects in modern Gnostic books to see the “anticosmic” current
which has become oddly popular in the so-called Satanic crowd, but admittedly
that wouldn’t have seemed to be the angle your press is taking. And Ecclesia
Mysteria is not anticosmic at all, which was a relief. Of course, it is dualistic,
which any gnostic book has to be. Usually the original gnostic tradition vilified
this world while promoting the spirit realms or aeons, but Ecclesia doesn’t do
that, it simply presents the two worlds as valid emanations of reality. In fact, to
be specific, it seemed fairly much along the lines of “causal” and “acausal” realms
of existence. Hmmm.
The book insists that any genuine spiritual current is “self-initiating”. Not many
schools or orders have that belief, do they? I’ll give you credit, Ecclesia argues
very convincingly that real gnosis only comes from interacting with the higher
spiritual powers. But the original Gnostic current was heavily into initiation rites
performed by the clerical ranks, and you’ve entirely dispensed with any pretense
of apostolic succession. Hmmm, again.
The occult system is decent – you’ve presented a pantheon of [dark] alien gods
that dwell in the [acausal] spiritual dimension, and they have some interests in
entering or intruding into earth. The rites and practices were genuinely hermetic
in the classical tradition. I like the use of the Typhonian litanies in the Eucharistic
ceremony, that’s nicely incorporated. You have a series of planetary rituals
(Assumptions), following the seven spheres. If I understand what you’re
describing a kind of septenary system, though that term is not used. The ultimate
rite – the crossing of the abyss – is present, though you call it “The Rite of
ECCLESIA MYSTERIA – A REVIEW
Descent”. Here’s a quote from that rite: “For this reason, rather than ascending
upwards or outwards, the Gnostic descends inwards, discovering the truth of the
abhorrent countenance in the deepest parts of the pneumatic self.” Pardon me?
The abhorrent countenance? That’s not even ONA language, that’s something
we’d see in Tempel ov Blood’s Liber 333. You have another edgy passage in the
Gnostic Mass, let me quote it for you:
You carry off every living thing without growing weary of torturing
it, rather having with pleasure delighted in pain from the time when
the world came into being. You also come and bring pain, who are
sometimes reasonable, sometimes irrational, because of whom men
dare beyond what is fitting and take refuge in your light which is
darkness.
The old saying goes: “when an author means something, he’ll say it again.” Well,
we see the themes of “pain” and “torture” repeated there, which seems
suspiciously Noctulian. Then you included “austerities” like extreme fasting and
ritual self-mortification. I enjoyed seeing blood rites dressed up as “Oblation”
and self-flagellation tricked out as “Rectification”. That felt very Catholic, in a
perverse sense, and calls to mind your current releases like Gulag.
The lectionary at the end is a nice touch. A decent edition of the Greek and
Coptic texts, nicely adapted.
An obligatory warning: Hire an actual artist. The planetary sigils make sense, but
they’re a little too crude. But then, some would say the same of Naos, so maybe
there’s a method to your madness.
All in all, it’s a nice initiative. Good to see the Sinister Tradition expanding into
new and diverse forms, even if those forms are obfuscated behind new language.
I wish Martinet Press best of success in the coming months. Looking forward to
seeing more work from your particular clandestine press.
Sincerely,
Chrétien Sauvage

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ECCLESIA MYSTERIA – A REVIEW

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