Biting Through:
Trials of a 20th Century Magician
(review)
At its heart, Biting Through is an autobiographical novel which details the events that led up to a great spiritual awakening for the author, in which he comes to believe that he held "Knowledge and Conversation with his Holy Guardian Angel". Apparently, this is a desirable thing for magicians of this or any other century, and Our Hero expends unimaginable effort in pursuit of their company.
The book appears in four parts: "The Gates of Delerium", "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Wake of Vision". The first part details this person's misspent youth, misbegotten loves, mis-appropriated romantic notions, etc until we follow him through a mental crack-up (a stark refusal to deal with reality, actually) and the false hope offered by drug therapy. We see his life go from the crapper all the way up to the edge of life's toilet seat, whereupon he slips back in, accidentally flushing it in the struggle. We follow his trip into the sewers of his mind, splashing down the icky walls of this branch to that trunk-line, eventually being spewed out in a dank, Stygian river of hopelessness and madness. It is an economic study in personal entropy and the transformation from an integrated (albeit troubled) personality into a disintegrated shadow. Sounds pretty depressing, huh? Surprisingly, the story is told with a simple, Burroughs-like wit and charm, which tends to take one from the extreme of dark comedy to sappy pathos. Punctuating this, a common theme runs through it all in that he plays apprentice to a number of magickal teachers who attempt to prepare him for self-mastery, while he ignores them, favoring to collide with his fate head-on.
About the time you're wondering how it is that this fellow turns out "alright" in the end (as promised in Chapter 1), the second section begins . . . but now in the first person. We find the author climbing out of sleep in a strange place, strange vehicle, strange town and wearing an unknown face. He fights amnesia, wondering what he's doing on a vacant lot with old winos and illegal aliens who inhale spray paint through rolled-up socks stuffed into their mouths. Over time, he regains his identity about the time the real mania sets in. We shift to an intense first person document, watching this unknown and ill-remembered life unfold, first as a crazed political activist, then as a witness to what amounts to murder, and a journey of 1000 miles made with less than 15 cents. As we see his travels through his eyes, we also become aware of an odd discarnate entity who seems to be just off-stage most of the time.
The third section details the process of personal reintegration, and takes
place over the course of a winter and spring on the streets of Denver, Colorado.
He had befriended a homeless man back in section 1 who has since been driven
to schizophrenia by his poorly-planned researches into the occult. Much is made
of this friendship, as one is being driven insane while the other is just
as surely being driven sane, and each by their dealings with the magical arts. In the end, the reintegrated author, virtually
spun out of whole cloth (with the help of the increasingly-absent discarnate
entity (he calls it his "road guide") helps his friend (whose debilitation is beginning to overwhelm him) to move to the Pacific Northwest.
During this stark depiction of life on the Denver streets in mid-winter
he is often at odds with Christian "soldiers" who swarm over the
hordes of the homeless, in an attempt to save their souls, even while denying
them shelter and food on religious holidays. We see a personal relationship
with Diety being developed at this point, which makes the blind faith of the
Christians seem particularly unattractive. What might seem particularly odd
to some, is that this relationship is of such a thoroughly Pagan nature.
The end settles in quite comfortably, wrapping up most details nicely enough. The schizophrenic friend, being unable to handle the lack of anonymity of small-town life, returns to the Big City, while the author inherits a sufficient amount of money to actually make a go of it in Oregon.
The final section is an epilogue, an illuminating text of a short work called "The Wake of Vision" which encompasses a fountain of information in the form of poetry, lyric, prose peices and quotes from a variety of sources, some of it written in semi-automatic trance. The work is reffered to throughout the last few sections and comes as a delight or curiosity, rather than as a surprise. It is, in effect a diary which chronicles the personal integration of a shattered soul, putting a sharp lens upon True Alchemy.
--Spencer Kendall
