If anyone has further questions on these topics, I may be contacted via the Fulgur and Abraxas websites.

Robert Ansell
http://www.fulgur.co.uk
http://www.abraxas-journal.com

1) What I take him to mean regarding “deep internalization” is this: as an example, to study the Kabbalah, in the manner of the Western esoteric tradition, involves studying the Tree of Life and using it as the object of meditative practice. Dion Fortune called this practice “the yoga of the west”; hence to internalize it(I assume) would mean not merely to have a glancing or theoretical knowledge of the Tree of Life, but to have used it as part of a meditative practice whereby it becomes part of one’s conscious and un- or less conscious mental framework. It’s simply the difference between having read a couple of books about yoga, or any of the Eastern mental disciplines, and having actually practiced them with some seriousness of purpose.

2) With regard to this question, I think on the one hand what he is saying is very close to simply stating that the form and content work very well together. But to approach the more occult aspect of this, I’m afraid you are definitely heading in the direction of “further meanings that are difficult to express in words or rationally explicate.” Modern occultism was closely related in many respects to surrealism, and many occultists seemed fascinated by the idea that occult books, or art, or rites of initiation, served the function of fertilizing the unconscious mind of the recipient, or opening it up to certain images, ideas, or ways of thinking, in a very indirect, unconscious fashion. Some years ago, I came across a book called Outside the Cycles of Time by Kenneth Grant. The text of the book struck me as insane, incomprehensible, and nonsensical; but the effect the book had me, including the illustrations, the language, the physical object itself, was very much the type of effect Ansell describes as “talismanic”; and interestingly, Grant implies in the introduction that the book was designed to have this very effect: “Similarly, a magician devises his ceremony in harmony with the forces he wills to invoke, so an author must pay considerable attention to the creation of an atmosphere that is suitable for his operations. Words are his magical instruments, and their vibrations must not produce a merely arbitrary noise but an elaborate symphony of tonal reverberations that trigger a series of increasingly profound echoes in the consciousness of his readers. One cannot over-estimate the importance of this subtle form of alchemy, for it is in the nuances and not necessarily in the rational meanings of the words and numbers that the magick resides.” I can only describe these types of effects in terms of, say, psychedelics: the feeling of getting something very distinct, without being able to articulate it.

All of which may sound like a crock. Anyway, those are my answers and I don’t mean to second guess or put words in Ansell’s mouth.

I just summed up Spare’s sigil magick for you in less than a paragraph. Try it, and keep trying it for several months every single time you have sex or masturbate. Most likely, weird shit will happen that you’ll have a hard time dealing with as a Westerner. I have no idea why so many Occultists are so uptight about this stuff and couldn’t agree more with your critique of their intentionally coded texts. Oh, you should probably have a banishing ritual if you’re going to try that though. Cliff notes version: pick a song that makes you feel happy and care free and sing that over and over to yourself in your head when you feel the intrusion of negative thoughts into your headspace. 

Thad

2.  In practical terms, such charging is an act of magic on the part of the practitioner, generally utilizing some actions designed to help them do so (which are arbitrary in nature).  If you aren’t a practitioner, this is rather difficult to communicate, but the core, essential part is something that can’t be seen any more than thoughts can.  This is a rather big subject and an astronomical number of pages have been writ to try to explain it.

3. As to his specific techniques I don’t know, but the basic idea is this: Take… Kipling’s Jungle Book.  A tale of nature red in tooth and claw.  Now, mass market print it with a cartoon tiger on the front and set the type in Comic Sans.  Doesn’t feel right, right?  Instead, let’s have it hand copied in blood on hide with a tiger skin cover.  THAT is bringing the two together.  A copy of the Fall of the House of Usher might do well to be slightly charred or otherwise traumatized.

Adopting the proper framework as you put it essentially means beginning to study what the people who made the art did. For example, a bit of reading on Chaos Magic will well prepare you to read Grant Morrison’s comic-book-that-is-also-a-spell The Invisibles. A study of the general ideas found in various magical systems will certainly help to understand a great deal of the art and literature produced by their adherents more deeply. Remedios Varo’s paintings, for example, make a hell of a lot more sense if you understand the principles of sympathy and the ideas of invocation and evocation.

If they don’t already go for hundreds of dollars when they’re new, just wait until their extremely limited printing sells out and they skyrocket in price on eBay or anywhere else you might be lucky to come across a copy.