Any Tool fans out there probably noticed that Daily Grail Publishing actually published *two* books last week. While all the attention was on Jacques Vallee’s UFO classic Messengers of Deception, we also released another, more esoteric work – Blair MacKenzie Blake’s book of occult poetry, Ijynx, which you can check out on Amazon US and Amazon UK. Blair – who is the content manager for Tool’s website – has been a good friend of TDG (and myself personally) for years now, regularly linking to us, as well as contributing his impressive knowledge of esoterica to our publications Sub Rosa and Darklore.
Here’s the blurb for Ijynx…
Incorporating a magical vocabulary and nightside symbolism, IJYNX is a unique collection of occult prose-poems
by an author who has been studying, experimenting, and writing about the western esoteric tradition for over twenty years. While some of the mystical verses attempt to convey ritually-machined hyperdimensions of consciousness (including encounters with the trans-mundane entities that inhabit these parallel continua), others contain, rather inexplicably, detailed knowledge of a higher Arcanum involving the alchemical entelechy of the dead. And still others challenge even the author’s initiated interpretation of things perceived in the ontological spectrum of a ‘Magizoth’, other than to suggest, upon a closer examination of the cryptic word play, that they are anti-apotropaic in nature, and offer, at the very least, rare fleeting glimpses of the Grand Dreaming of a Treasured Eye.
We’ve released Ijynx as a hardcover book, priced at $34.95. You can take a look at the typesetting and inside contents by clicking on the thumbnails that accompany this post.
You can also read Blair’s own write-ups over at Tool’s website. I’m really pleased to have helped Blair get his book out there in hardcover at last, as he’s done so much for this site, and has such great insights into esoterica, ufology, and so many more of the topics we discuss. Not to mention he was kind enough to steer and beer me around L.A. when I was there a few years ago – that kind of hospitality is bound to earn a seat reservation on the ferry to the ‘Island of the Blest’…
Also upcoming from Daily Grail Publishing will be Darklore #2 (and there’s some great content in there!), and also a reprint of Paul Devereux’s seminal book The Long Trip, which catalogues the prehistory of psychedelia – both probably in the next month. So much great reading for y’all, I’m sure you’ll dig them. And then…I need a break!
