Insights from a Longtime O.T.O. Researcher
In the Bermuda Triangle
AI–crafted Dadaist self–portrait based on keywords from this page
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Mr. König, say something…
PRK: I must confess that I have never managed to finish an issue of Gnostika. Though, as they say, I’m supposedly a first-hour author...
I find it utterly baffling how anyone can seriously identify with the vast swamp of esotericism, occultism, and endless sophistry. Reflect upon it? Certainly, but only in the proper context. My engagement with all that I’ve put out into the world since 1985 has been an exercise in juggling across meta-levels. Think of it this way: I’ve never intended, nor do I understand, why anyone would immerse themselves in the motifs of art brut drawings and paintings. Collecting? Yes. Creating? Also yes. But the motifs themselves? Either you like them, or you don’t. What they depict is, frankly, irrelevant to me. And yet — I love this art form. I own a fair number of originals, which mean infinitely more to me than the towering stacks of books lining my home.
But what do these drawings mean? Pfft. Who cares? What matters is the context — always the context. Consider the works of Adolf Wölfli or Oswald Tschirtner. What are they pointing towards? That’s where the intrigue lies.
Why does occultism exist? Who are these people who pour their time, their lives, their very socialization into it? What do they do with each other, and — above all — why? The how has never particularly interested me. Adolescent doodles infused with sexual innuendo and clumsy schoolyard humor, crafted by young men still trapped in post-pubescent bodies? Who cares what occultists believe or practice? It’s the circumference, the cultural ripple, that fascinates me.
Writing and thinking about occultists prompts questions — some intriguing, others less so. Should one regard the subject and object of inquiry as a friend, an adversary, or a hapless test subject — like a guinea pig — to be prodded until it squeals, its reactions captured in word, image, and tone? And by what method? There are myriad critical theories, all equally applicable in their own peculiar way. I employ none of them specifically because any of them will suffice. I don’t approach texts, ideas, or individuals as though they were patients to be dissected. Rationality, at its core, is an intensely subjective affair. As the Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend so aptly put it: Anything goes.
Readers often find my writings disjointed or overly technical — a hodgepodge of obscure, labyrinthine concepts that resemble, depending on one’s perspective, either a word soup or a heap of nonsense. My website likely leaves a similar impression, leading the visitor down a rabbit hole of details and minutiae, or perhaps into a murky pond of embarrassing gossip and tawdry scandal.
And yet, that’s precisely what I’ve relished in my own research, musings, and writings: Everything was possible. Gentle encounters. Humorous ones. Fiery confrontations. Who or what lingers in my memory? Chiefly Johannes Maikowski, one of the Grand Masters of the Fraternitas Saturni: amusing, erudite, and generous in thought as well as restraint. And then there was that moment: drifting down the Amazon in a boat, bumping into a tree in the water, a clump of ants tumbling down, and I thought, “So this is where Arnoldo Krumm-Heller lived?”
Occasionally, I met sorrowful souls caught in unbearable financial straits, and I am ever grateful that the food on my plate remains mine alone.
Now, in 2024, I sit in a three-story house in the Swiss Alps. On the first floor, 13,000 CDs somehow line the walls. From my desk a floor below, dressed in a crisp Oxknit shirt, I can see four stacks of East German science fiction against one wall — more science fiction than any science fiction could possibly contain. Back then, paper was scarce. Every manuscript faced the scrutiny of a censor, and anything not scientifically conceivable or extrapolative was rejected. No energy beams, no aliens, no telepathy. Every story had to serve the socialist revolution. What was still left? And what remains of occultism if you strip away radiations, mystical vibrations, angels, demons, astral levels, and astrology? Every occult text must serve a pre-stamped schema (hello, GDR). Every non-fiction book on the occult overflows with names that amount to footnotes.
Occult texts (and texts about occultism), like those East German sci-fi booklets, are a closed loop, endlessly self-referential. In this currency of references, "You call me Goethe, and I’ll call you Schiller."
I own 22 meters’ worth of science fiction booklets from 1930 to the mid-1970s. Their language is impenetrable, reactionary drivel — spaceships and aliens leave me cold. At my place, a number of cover art pieces — original illustrations used for the covers of those booklets — lean against the walls, stacked upon piles of books. Do I care for the motifs? Not especially. But they, too, gesture toward their contexts.
Picture post-war Germany: bombed-out ruins, scarcity everywhere. And yet, by 1948, a few people are already writing and publishing their fantasies on thin paper, their first issues devoid of ads.
"Mülltonne für Schmöker" [Bin for Cheap Novels]
From: Heinz J. Galle: "Volksbücher und Heftromane . Band 1", Lüneburg 2006, 2009.
[restored with AI]
To whom were these writings addressed? To youths whose parents burned this so-called trash in the bin. To Johannes Maikowski, huddled against the radiator in his basement, conjuring inspiration for his later pornographic sci-fi novel, replete with Cathar overtones and red bodily fluids.
And A.M.O.R.C.? Didn’t they recruit members through American pulp magazines? I own a few of those ancient tomes from the 1940s, their pages so brittle they barely unfold. Their advertisements beckon: Buy The Strange Keys to the Powers of the Universe, The Secret of Mental Creating, A Secret Method for the Mastery of Life. On the covers, the BEMs (bug-eyed monsters). Do high-ranking members later feel any shame about this? And that’s what I find interesting.
The rest is religion as decoration. Occult material and sci-fi lie around my place as design objects. Nice to have.
As for me, there was never any connection between my personal life and the subjects I research and publish about. My favorite book at the moment? The Monk, written by the 23-year-old Matthew Gregory Lewis in 1796. I think I shall end here, with a brief summary of this book’s finale:
The novel hurtles feverishly toward its conclusion: a mini subplot featuring Raymond’s underage valet sneaking around a women’s convent. There, the heavily pregnant Agnes is banished to the deepest dungeon beneath the altar, where she gives birth alone, only for the baby to die immediately. For weeks, the corpse of the child, rotting at her breast, remains with her as she, half-blind, gropes through the decaying flesh teeming with worms. Ambrosio strangles Elvira, Antonia’s mother, and rapes Antonia herself in the crypt next door, surrounded by putrid corpses. The wicked abbess meets her end at the hands of a furious mob, who tear her to shreds in the street, and the convent is burned to the ground. The deranged monk strangles Antonia and, for his sins, is extensively tortured by the Inquisition. The Devil appears to him in his true form in the dungeon, and the monk, at last, renounces his faith. Only then does he learn from the gloating demon that Elvira was his own mother and Antonia his sister, while the cross-dressing nun was one of the Devil’s lesser minions. He is flung into a ravine by Lucifer Himself, left broken and helpless, where, for seven days, insects gnaw at his shattered limbs. He endures the most exquisite and insupportable torments until vultures descend to peck out his eyes and tear him apart entirely. Finis.
But oh, look at the time, and the calendar ! I should really get moving. Twenty-two thousand documents and photos await me, photographed (not scanned — I love the shadows). One day, all this will make it to my website. After all, I’m only 65. Plenty of time for that, I should think. Or don’t you agree?
Translation note:
This interview was translated with the invaluable help of ChatGPT.
The machine is the only being that knows how to humble humans without ever displaying arrogance.
© P.R. Koenig 2024.
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