TESTAMENT #1 - The Story of Abraham of Ur

 

LINK TO FREE WEB COMIC VERSION OF TESTAMENT #1 (NSFW)

Quick reminder that TESTAMENT can get pretty explicit!

Original solicitation copy for TESTAMENT #1:

“From the imagination of best-selling author Douglas Rushkoff (Coercion, Club Zero-G),one of the most iconoclastic and acclaimed minds of our era, comes a series that exposes the "real" Bible as it was actually written, and reveals how its mythic tales are repeated today. Grad student Jake Stern leads an underground band of renegades who use any means necessary to combat the frightening threats to freedom that permeate the world of TESTAMENT— a world very much like our own. They employ technology, alchemy, media hacking andm mysticism, discovering a modern threat that has its roots in ancient stories destined to recur in the modern age. With intricate, darkly detailed art by Liam Sharp (THE POSSESSED),TESTAMENT takes place in an unapologetically uncensored Biblical universe, chronicling the grim confrontations between humans and their angry gods. Those horrifying encounters, full of murder, magic, monsters, sex and sacrifice, echo the forces at work beneath the surface of today's high-tech and highly ideological conflicts. In a story as thrilling as it is sure to be controversial, Jake must overcome romantic, psychic, supernatural and epic obstacles on his way to uncovering the reality behind an eternal story in which he, and all of us, are trapped.”

Right off the bat TESTAMENT announces its intentions to play with the formal structure of the comic page.

In comics we have the panels, the boxes that contain the individual moments of the story, and then there’s the gutter, the spaces in between the panels, which is secretly where the magic happens, as explained by Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics.




Rushkoff & Sharp have created a structure where they have two stories running within the panels,
(one set in biblical times and another in a near-future dystopia) and then another higher reality narrative running explicitly in the gutters, a pantheon of gods populating the spaces in between.

Our current cast of Gods occupying the gutter and bleed space of the comic pages are:

1. Moloch 
2. Melchizedek
3. Astarte

TESTAMENT offers up a significant Biblical retcon right off the bat:

Here’s Rushkoff to explain:

“Right in the first issue, I suggest that it's the Canaanite god Moloch (and not Hashem or the main Bible god) who instructs Abraham to kill Isaac. Now the actual Torah doesn't quite say this, but if I say so myself, it's a fascinating possibility. Even conservative scholars would agree that what makes Abraham unique is that, unlike the others around him, he decides not to sacrifice his son. (It's what people did to appease the gods, after all.) This was the beginning of Judaism: a new religion, dedicated to a new, kinder god who did not require child sacrifice.

So why not have the command to Abraham to kill his son come from one god, and then the countermand come from a different god? It makes the shift from one set of gods to another much more explicit.”

From a Reality Sandwich interview with Rushkoff: Testament A Comic Book for the Ages

I’m intrigued that James Joyce and Finnegans Wake both come up as influences on TESTAMENT in that interview…

We actually have pretty in-depth annotations to the series straight from Rushkoff, so some of the job of explication is already done: https://testament-reading-group.neocities.org/TESTAMENT_NOTES_1

Of course it’s one thing to imagine a world like this, and quite another to successfully build it like Liam Sharp has done!

Sharp’s style has this wonderful timeless quality that makes it perfect for this story. He’s just as adept at far flung sci-fi gadgets, aliens, and experimental layouts, as he is with sword and sorcery landscapes, ancient monsters, and grounded storytelling.

Many artists, myself included, have styles that are very timebound, very representative of the era they inhabit. For example: If a future art historian looked at Michael Avon Oeming’s fantastic art from his and Rushkoff’s Aleister & Adolph graphic novel, I suspect they could very easily tell you the era in which it was drawn:

Liam’s art, on the other hand, blends together many styles from many eras, along with his own unique voice, and in the same piece you might see something that simultaneously reminds you of Barry Windsor Smith, Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo, and nothing at all! An image that could just as easily be a 15th century woodcut as a 21st century digital illustration.

Jamie Grant must be mentioned as well! I’m not always the biggest fan of modern comic book coloring, but Jamie Grant is a very specific exception! I know him primarily from his work on Morrison & Quitely’s All Star Superman, where his gorgeous colors, under Quitely’s delicate perfect lines, helps fully realize some of the best sequential art I’ve ever seen.

My problem with most modern coloring is that it attempts to re-render what the artist already drew, with diminishing returns. What Jamie Grant does is accentuate the line art, bringing it to life, without overpowering the illustration.

Best example I can point to is the panel where Jake and Dinah are sitting beside the water tank. The texture on the tile, the subtle blue glow coming off the water, the refracted water surface details. So great!



This panel stands out to me as well because of the phrase “resonant field.”

This quote from Douglas Rushkoff’s novel Ecstasy Club has stuck with me for over a decade:

“We need to create one resonant field–an ongoing pagan mass–always initiated from the same location, at regular intervals. We keep hitting it, again and again. Each party is a beat of the drum.”

As Rushkoff mentions in his notes, the tank allows our modern characters fleeting access to the gutter/bleed space of the gods, escape from the panels of the comic!

- Bobby Campbell, author of RAW ART, Tales of Illuminatus and illustrator Extraordinaire

Faster Than You Could Say: The Sex Magicians Chapter Fourteen

Abrahadabra: Day Three

"I am Providence" by Virgil Finlay (Imagine if this guy was the one writing The Sex Magicians, it'd be crazy how much more uncomfortable that would be.)

The Sex Magicians Chapter Thirteen: "What is outside the universe?" (pg. 98-104)

Whatever is out there, you have to admit that it's quite a pick-up strategy; telling some ridiculous vignette based around an apocalyptic sex ritual and then telling the girl she was the priestess and you were the priest. Mum-Mum, indeed. I'd prefer Mum-Mom stretching her legs than Azathoth. 

A couple posts ago or so, I used a cover from Alan Moore's Providence, depicting Abdul Alhazrad's evisceration, as the illustration for that chapter's write up. I had forgot about Wilson's silly/kinda-dumb "Lhuv-Kerapht" addition to Lovecraft's silly/kinda-dumb Mythos joke "Klarkash-Ton." Klarkash-Ton is first mentioned in my personal favorite of Lovecraft's stories, "The Whisperer in Darkness," as an Atlantean High Priest as a not-so-sly reference to Lovecraft's pen-pal Clark Ashton Smith. As far as I can recall, Wilson's Lhuv-Kerapht is his own invention. Played at the level of the master, at least. 

Wilson also gives us the very silly ap-opoko-gol, named after his preferred strain of marijuana, Acapulco Gold. I never been able to find it. The only "old school" sativas I've been able to sample are offshoots of Maui-Wowie and Thai. Or at least that's what the labels said. I believe the dominant strain in "Alamut Black," along with the cornucopia of harder drugs in the mix, was Acapulco Gold. 

Anyways, lots of Lovecraft here. Going back to Providence, which is the third in a sequence of Alan Moore's comic-based expansion of Lovecraftian fiction, it is the sequel to Neonomicon. Neonomicon was a four-issue series involving an investigation of occult murder that leads to incredible degradation. It is a brutal piece of work, Moore's Lord Horror. Moore himself has said it was written in a dark mindset and reflected his disgust with parts of the world. (Holistically, Neonomicon ties in perfectly with the earlier "The Courtyard," which was actually a short story adapted into a comic, and its sweeping sequel, Providence.) While graphic, I wouldn't consider Neonomicon pornographic because there is a distinct lack of pleasure throughout. 

This is all beating around the bush that Neonomicon does have a scene that perfectly illustrates this Crowleyean-Lovecraftian blend of sex magic and eldritch rite. The cultists raise the orgone energy until what they've summoned comes forth. It is Mum-Mum, but things don't end that well for the party in The Sex Magicians pre-history either, nich whar? 

Reading about Lovecraftian/Weird Tales pre-history, especially Atlantis, brought me back to a time when I had a wicked cold. I had, probably in direct opposition for getting better, sequestered myself in a dark bathroom, only lit with candles and given the meager comfort of a judiciously toked pipe, and had found myself transported to Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique. Zothique was Smith's name for Atlantis and the name of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy compilation, with perfectly lurid cover art by George Barr, that I had brought with me to my darkling, stuffy, repose. That was a book of magic. 

If we dig a little deeper/laterally, we may recall that it has always been the contention of both authors that Robert Shea was mostly responsible for the "Atlantean" sections of The Illuminatus! Chronicles. Did Wilson actually invent Lhuv-Kerapht or was the section excised from the virginal Illuminatus! manuscript and simply sexed up by Wilson? 

My working title for the essay that serves as the afterword for the Hilaritas Press edition of The Sex Magicians was "Divine Secrets of the T'angpoon Brotherhood." I accidentally included it in the first manuscript I sent to Rasa, he was duly confused. I think that the term "t'angpoon" must have been one of Wilson's cruder, funnier jokes he makes in this book. I haven't found the term anywhere else, save for Erik Davis' High Weirdness, where it is quoted in a passage from The Sex Magicians. Thank god for childish jokes. Ewige Schlangenkraft. 

Finally, I was reminded at the beginning of the chapter of how impressed I was when, as a middle schooler, I read Douglas Adams' dismissive description of Earth as "a backwater planet in the unfashionable spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy." (Or something along those lines.) Wilson beat Adams' much more famous triangulation by a handful of years. I'm pretty sure science fiction in general had developed that type of self-defacing cosmic locational identification anyways. Goes back to Lovecraft and cosmicism. Thou art small. Same message as Behemoth and Leviathan in Job. 

As a post-script thought, I do have to question how much of scene was taken from Shea's contribution and how much was added by Wilson and was subsequently tempered back into the eventual published form of Illuminatus!. As far as I know, Shea never read up on then-modern occultists such as Crowley or Kenneth Grant. A lot of the Atlantean nonsense and its connection with the Church of Scientific Illuminism is derived from Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, which I believe Wilson would have had access to at the time of the writing of The Sex Magicians. We are all of us gutter-minded, 

I could weep: The Sex Magicians Chapter Thirteen

hope in other spells: Day Two

"Leda and the Swan" by Nikolay Kalmakoff (via Coulthart)

The Sex Magicians Chapter Thirteen: "Who knows what Evil lurks in the hearts of men?" (pg. 84-97)

Well, this is quite a chapter. Aside from the regular goetia of anxieties I have buzzing around, I think I've dithered on this post because I'm not sure that writing is not the best medium for the consideration of a chapter that is smutty, profound, flippant, obscene and iconoclastic. I would much prefer to have a conversation about this, without the permanance of type and the ability to change my mind between statements and then claim I always meant what I was thinking at that moment. 

Alas, like Mary Kelly's respectability, that eventuality is forfeit. 

The chapter begins with the famous tagline of The Shadow pulp stories and radio adaptations. Arlen Riley was famously a writer for The Shadow during the Fifties, right before the time Wilson was welcomed gently-but-somewhat-brusqley into her apartment. The Shadow knows if Arlen Riley scripted those specific shows (Alan Moore) The most beautiful woman in the universe...he would have been working with Her, still experimenting with and without LSD and almost certainly still with ritual, when he was writing this chapbook. Inspiration lies here within this fecund, seeded vulgarity. Josh Dill, who is much closer to the later iterations of Simon Moon than Simeon Moon, heralds the profundity that occurs partway through this chapter with lips spread with vaginal fluids and whipped cream. Suddenly, the Sex Magicians, or at least one of them, has arrived at the party. 

A couple of instances of language that would absolutely not be acceptable in today's world, although there was a heavy, modernish dose of irony in their usage, made me want to jump to Wilson's defense. Another time, a distant age, and all that shit. I'm being dismissive, but I'm still going with that. I believe Wilson's HGA or heart was in the right place. 

Take, for instance, the increasingly turgid turmoil of the seduction of Mary Kelly with Stan the Hand(s); is this a chronicle of disturbing coercion or a lascivious tale of liberation from middle-class, Protestant mores? Wilson gets into heavy erotic detail, making sure to fold in his satirical, Dickian advertisements while Stan prevails against Mary's qualms. Reading the text, it is obvious that Mary wants the sexual encounter, and what Wilson was depicting was a weakening of unexamined limits. The word of sin is restriction and all that. 

I'm glad we have advanced so much in so little time, even if it isn't enough, that today this scene can make a reader uncomfortable. Furthermore, I'm glad that reading porn leads to greater introspection than other avenues of consumption. Sex shouldn't be repressed or guilt ridden, but it certainly shouldn't be thoughtless or compulsive.

-times change -

Because of my proclivities, I was absolutely comparing the moment to Sput's speech that wove into the fumbling first night, the examination room and the orgiastic interjections to the current moment. What do we do with such a spout of contradictory nonsense? Does anyone agree on what the Constitution says anymore? Are political, satirical and some most-likely-sincere political musings from half a century ago relevant in any meaningful way? Who knows? But Sput is a great character and Wilson does add enough intellectual stimulation between the titillation to make this something that could plausibly have appeared in a more self-aware, daring and self-effacing version of Playboy. 

The vignette with Marvin Gardens is simplistic, crude and reductive. But goddamnit, it does always make me laugh. Especially the imagery of the apple as a symbol of disinterest/restraint. I'll go ahead and point out here that while King Kong has a five foot phallus in Josie's fantasy, Wilson notes that based on the dimensions of actual gorillas, Kong's dong would be disappointingly not-long. 

What Rough Beast

Foaming Wines: Day One 

Today is the First Feast of the Writing of the Book of the Law. A blessed day. I finished rereading Ubik, today- I've been reading a lot of PKD lately, as it seems he ended up being one of the most accurate prophets. I do wish their were fuckable robots though- and it strikes me as appropriate to come face to face with the Sophia in that way, in this age. Finishing a book about a maybe-false-God in a tenuous world while I'm in a tenuous world where a maybe-false-God sounds pretty good right now celebrating an ephemeral-God which probably doesn't exist outside the imagination and all that shit...

I've got to do something to honor these days and since I have left my fields fallow, I shall seed them. Tonight, I'll give you "Ethics for Aliens," an exercise in autobiographical excess. Mike was absolutely correct- there was no way this could have been published. I'm honestly interested in its reception now- after I've tried to tailor the way I communicate in the years intervening. This is a bizarre piece written from the Id/heart. All unto thee, Nuit. 

"Satan's Treasures" Jean Delville (via Coulthart)

Now that a month has passed...

 

I will be back soon. It's a good thing that Wilson's first novel doesn't contain too many twists and turns. It'll be easy to jump back into. As weak as this sounds, it has been hard to focus with what is going on in my country. 

Is God?: The Sex Magicians Chapter Twelve

In Throbbing Color

The Sex Magicians Chapter Twelve: "Is God male? female? or neuter?" (pg. 81-83)

God makes its only appearance in one of the chapter titles and it echoes Wilson's first published piece in Krassner's The Realist. There Wilson asked the audience to consider the size of God's dick ("willy") if we are to imagine God as a male. Here, he asks us to consider God as not only male, but female or "neuter," a term which, even in today's widening world of gender identity, has failed to have caught on. The exercise seems to be of some obvious utility while pondering the possible spiritual depths of the chapbook at hand. As a note, while I deliberately avoided telling my daughter what to believe in regards to the Gods, I did have some stipulations while she was growing up. One of the most important stipulations was that we never referred to a possible "over"God as "he" or "she" but always as "it." My reasoning was that it is of no utility to conceptualize a human-like God in the first place, considering that this posited being would have also designed cholera, tsunamis, tapeworms, extinctions and botflys. (One reason I think so many "religious" people are unable to interact with reality in a meaningful way is the sheer impossibility of the mental task of reconciling an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent deity and the harsh facts of life.) 

Back at Sput's pad things are getting spooky for Dr. Prong. Prong who is obviously stoned out of his gourd and unprepared for such an eventuality, is sinking in a sea of flesh. Here he has been arguably transported into a deeper interface with Malkuth as the world of sensation by his ingestion of Turkish tobacco. Wilson notes that while there is no such thing as a true aphrodisiac in Sex, Drugs & Magick, he also doesn't undersell the possibilities of combing marijuana and sex. As one of marijuana's most common effects is heightened sensory awareness, sex can become something that seems to last much longer where seemingly every bit of physical contact is noted and what would be a small adjustment to a sober mind becomes the rocking of ships of flesh on starlit spans of sheets. 

Dr. Prong, like many straights, vastly underestimates what it is possible to think about and do under the effects of cannabis. While I'm no good at mathematics to begin with, I'm sure those who have more experience in the subject are able to ponder on some of the more extraordinary conclusions that come down from the realm of pure numbers while under the influence. Despite his concerns about decorum, Dr. Prong is easily coerced into joining in the unfolding orgy. He becomes a piston in a daisy chain and also a self-contained philosopher as his training tries to kick in, despite his lack of objectivity. 

Thus is Dr. Prong able to escape his cycle of anxiety over the mysterious Ezra Pound and the fate of Fernando Poo. 

(The next chapter is a doozy and I'm still on the mend, so we'll be back later this week with more of The Sex Magicians. - A.C.)

A sauce of catsup, horse radish and peyote shreddings: The Sex Magicians Chapters Ten and Eleven

 

Alternate cover to Alan Moore's Providence #11: Abdul Alhazred vs. the Mama Vibe

Let's see if this one gets put behind a disclaimer: 

The Sex Magicians Chapter Ten: "Who is the Master who makes the grass green? (p. 72-75) 

Well, with one of Wilson's fondest chestnuts as the chapter title, we should be able to know that something is going to happen. And it does: herein we are introduced to the titular sex magicians, the Church of Scientific Illuminism, or, the Illuminati. (It could be argued that all of the various protagonists are sex magicians with varying degrees of awareness, but at some point we need  to abandon Kether and make distinctions.) Scientific Illuminism was one of Crowley's earliest names for his philosophy and appropriately the chapter begins with the church members saying Will before their meal. Will is a short acknowledgement for Thelemites to say before meals- in our house we only say it before more formal dinners- but I'll have to admit our menus are not as fun. Saying Will also appears in Crowley's fiction, notably in Diary of a Drug Fiend. 

Keeping with Hadit's commandment in Liber AL, "To worship me take wine and strange drugs," the food is laced with a variety of substances. In keeping with Wilson's contemporary perceptions, the Thelemites eat food that are almost comically rich- nothing but the best for our small cell of occultists. (Also keeping with Wilson's attitude at the time, which he would actually repudiate later, one of the members casually uses cocaine during the dinner. Maybe take a lesson from Crowley's biography and avoid white powdery substances.)

Since the Church is also called "the Illuminati," we should probably take a moment to consider any parellels with Wilson's (and Shea's) much more famous depictions of that illustrious organization. Here, the Illuminati engage in behavior that might appear outre to some readers but is entirely benign. In Illuminatus! the organization is certainly outre, but malicious. It is the influence of the Discordians and Hagbard Celine's orchestrations that render the Illuminati into something benevolent. Two of the members of the Church of Scientific Illuminism have names taken from real Discordians: "Mordecai," of course, is a shortened version of Wilson's own Discordian title "Mordecai the Foul." The other Discordian nom de guerre is that of "Fang the Unwashed." Fang denotes Roger Lovin, a New Orleans based Discordian initiated into the Society by Thornley. This is how Thornley described Lovin: "...a dashing, talented and handsome con artist who was too shallow to settle into one thing...for years and years he read the Principia, under his Discordian name of Fang the Unwashed, he consistently and with unswerving devotion to the task excommunicated every new person any of the rest of us initiated into the Discordian Society." A writer whose book of motorcycling is still a classic, an underground publisher and art gallery proprietor, Lovin does seem like an interesting character. (The Thornley quote and other information was all pulled from Adam Gorightly.) That seems to me to be the most crossover in this chapter between the two depictions, but I'm curious if other readers can find something that I've missed. 

While Brother Simeon and "Little" Sister Teresa are engaged in one of the more fun iterations of meditation Wilson states that "together they were in Kether, the topmost reach of the Astral World...[l]ooking down at Malkuth (our material world) from Kether...Simeon began to find the Mama Vibe." Alan and Steve Moore have some fascinating insights about the nature of Kether and Malkuth in The Bumper Book of Magic that is worth considering. (Strikingly, that interacting with Malkuth requires more than existence in the material world and that the experience of Kether might not have that much utility while one is physically extant.) While it doesn't involve chanting IAO, I'd say that a lot of inspiration for the rite comes from Crowley's "The Star Sapphire," an improved version of the Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram. While the Star Sapphire is a very effective solo ritual (my personal favorite that always makes me feel more whole) it is also serves as an instruction for magical oral sex. (I should note that the Star Sapphire is often interpretated a meditative ritual to carry out during mutual oral sex. For more information please refer to Chapter 69 of Crowley's The Book of Lies.) Another effective sex magical ritual involves cycling one's energies, going from the personal Malkuth to Kether and back again, is found in Francis King's Tantra: The Way of Action. This ritual is an adaptation of the Stella Matutina's Middle Pillar exercise made famous by Israel Regardie. Finally, Will Parfitt gives instructions for a simplified but still effective sex magic ritual in The Living Qabalah that includes provisions for oral intercourse. I don't see where the inclusion of IAO could hurt these rituals. I truly wish that Uncle Al's Liber IAO wasn't missing (or archived) as it promised to be a magical-sexual counterpart to the advanced meditative techniques given in Liber HHH; it has been a personal side quest for me for about a decade to find out more about this book. Aside from hints that it does exist in some capacity, I've always come up short. 

Roger Lovin, author portrait for The Complete Motorcycle Nomad

The Sex Magicians Chapter Eleven: Where do these questions come from? (p. 76-80)

This chapter's title consists of three "historical" vignettes that show a progression of illumination. The chapter's title is easy enough to locate as the "punch line" of the first snapshot. The conversation with one of Wilson's constant background characters, Ped Xing, follows a model of pseudo-Buddhist parables that Wilson was fond of including in his work. I'm unsure of why Wilson dubs Ch'an Buddhism as the most radical sect of Buddhism. Ch'an Buddhism seems like a pretty standard version of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, although it is generally considered to be the progenitor of Japan's Zen Buddhism, which Wilson was fond of, like many thinkers of his day and age. In other places, Wilson refers to Shin Buddhism, which he calls Shinran Buddhism, as his favorite version of Buddhism for its radical compassion. (Wilson and Arlen Riley were married in a Shin Buddhist temple.) 

The second snapshot shows Wilson's fanciful condensation of the legend of Hasan i Sabbah. I've discussed the dubious nature of the tales that surround the Old Man of the Mountain extensively in a previous post (which also includes Chapter 69 of The Book of Lies). You can find that here. The only note that I'll add here is that it is completely and totally nonsensical that Sayyiduna would have had access to cocaine in 12th Century Arabia as it is famously a product of the New World. 

The final scene, consisting of Adam Weishaupt acting sinister and arch in his rooms, is extremely similar to another scene in Illuminatus!- this leads me to believe that the trilogy was truly more or less complete by this time that Wilson poached this scene. Perhaps out of dismay that the longer work would never be published or for another reason, but the similarities are remarkable. I am unable to translate the first part of the book title that Weishaupt is working on, but I believe it comes out something like this: About Strip-Snip-Snap: World Games and The Science of Fives. If someone actually knows German, I'd love your opinion about how it should be rendered into English. And one more "historical" nitpick for Mr. Wilson: Abdul Alhazred, author of Al Azif, is said in The History of the of the Necronomicon to have died, pulled into the air and shredded by invisible claws, in the 8th Century and there is no way he could have written about Hasan i Sabbah. (Well, then again, the Mad Arab could have possibly forseen Sabbah.) 

It's good to be back, everyone. I apologize for my tendency to wander away from the blog. I hope everyone is weathering the first days of 2025 with spirit and subtlety, when necessary. See you next week. 

- A.C.