The Swarming Possibilities (Some Occult, Unused) in American Life A Catalog of Books From the Collection of Gerrit Lansing Division Leap and Grey Matter Books Covers The Swarming Possibilities (Some Occult, Unused) in American Life Front / inside back: 1. A Catalog of Books From the Collection of Gerrit Lansing De occulta philosophia libri tres. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa [1486-1535]. Inside front / back: 68. Causal Mythology. Charles Olson. 72. Projective Verse. Charles Olson. Division Leap and Grey Matter Books Foreword Adam Davis The Immanent Library Catalog Part I The Occult Part II Teddy Roosevelt Rides the Range Reciting Swinburne Part III Charles Olson and His Circle Part IV Poetry and Literature Bibliography Afterword Sam Burton Thanks Forward. The Immanent Library surprise then that a remarkable poet in the first paragraph - works number of poets on this list were on bibliomancy, stichomancy, gay or queer and began from rhapsodomancy, sortes, and many “All the power of magic is founded upon Eros. forbidden ground. A remarkable other subjects. Reading through The work of Magic works is to bring things number of them were connected Gerrit’s library could make one an together through their inherent similarity.” to the city of Boston, and an even exceedingly well-informed heretic, wider number had a relationship yet the power of it was something – Marsilio Ficino, De Amore. to Lansing and his library. greater. Libraries can have their own genius loci, as powerful a “Nunquam sine phantasmate intelligit anima.” Some of this influence is direct sense of place as New York or and visible. Charles Olson’s influ- Alexandria. This is especially true – Aristotle, trans. William of Moerbecke. ential reading-list poem Bridge- with a the library of a reader or work thanks Lansing [Item no. 71 practitioner, and the signs of wear “the world of the law is the dedication copy of the first in such a library, each annota- is liberty, a book: appearance of the work]. As David tion, each cocked spine and the Rich points out in the afterward lean of each board, each stain or liber - - - legis. to Arcana, Stephen Jonas’ tarot mark becomes the impression of poems were likely informed by a subtle geometry of the library’s a writ is a route.” Lansing’s library. The associa- place in the world. Gerrit’s library tion copies in Lansing’s library seethes with life. It opens routes. – Gerrit Lansing, The Soluble Forest. are a beautiful testament to his influence. There is a more gen- I chose a life in bookselling be- A poet recently confided in me presences in the American land- eral sense, harder to define, that cause of the freedom it offered. that, after taking home a book scape, Set, along with Measure Lansing’s work and library haunt I was an apostate from a certain from the library of Gerrit Lansing, and Aion, were unlike any other so much of the best poetry of the sect of ecstatic Christianity, and he had laid it open on a table magazines before or since. past few decades. also academia. When I left the and let the pages fall open where first, and abandoned glossolalia, they would to conjure the weight Lansing belongs to a group of I’ll never forget the first time I saw I felt as if I had lost my language. of Gerrit’s hand and divine which postwar American poets that the library. I’d arrived at the house When I left academia I feared I pages he had spent the most time explored occult influence in their on a grey winter’s day to meet had lost a community of the book. reading. This catalog lacks the work. The influence of the occult my old friend David Abel, at work Bookselling seemed to offer an beautiful simplicity of that ges- on poetry is not new, but this in the archive. As David led me intellectual freedom that was ture, but is likewise an attempt group of poets were involved in a through the book-lined rooms, I eclectic, sensual, and offered the to describe in some small way project much different than their felt a sadness that I hadn’t met prospect of serendipity in a world the mind and hand behind the modernist predecessors. For Gerrit, followed by a strange sense that each day becomes further library, and the influence that both Lansing, Jack Spicer, John of movement in the stillness of narrowed by algorithms. Gerrit’s the library and the writer had on Wieners, Steve Jonas, Edward the library. It felt like that indefinite library was the furthermost exam- a certain tendency in American Marshall, Diane di Prima, David space that begins after recogniz- ple of this freedom that I’ve yet poetry. Rattray, Robert Duncan, Audre ing a passage of music, but before encountered, and cataloguing it Lorde, Kenneth Irby, Charles being able to name it. Perhaps it has been one of my greatest joys I never met Gerrit in person, but Olson and others, the occult pro- is a brute intuition of the sheer as a bookseller. If this catalog can was an enthusiastic reader of his vided an influence that opened a array of correspondences that the convey even only a small sugges- poetry and his little magazine Set, field in an America increasingly library holds, vast distances tion of its power, than I offer it in which launched an ongoing fas- dictated by the power of capital- made local. tribute to Gerrit. Thank you. cination with little magazines as ism and a politicized embodiment a site of collaborative presence. of transcendence that viewed The scope and variety of Gerrit’s – Adam Davis With its mixing of vernaculars and the human body as suspect, in library was vast, and it did contain exploration of occult and hidden need of control. Perhaps it is no works that might have helped the Part I. The Occult Bound in early pigskin, with the English translation by Frances others, systemized under extensive decorative blind- Barrett in the second book of the influence of Kabbalah and 1. stamping, raised in four bands at The Magus. Neo-Platonism. De occulta philosophia libri tres. the spine, with remnants of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa a broken metal clasp to the fore [1486-1535]. edge of both boards. Rear board This copy once belonged to detached, but present. Boards Count Walewski, who became heavily darkened, worn, and a teacher to Gerrit Lansing and stained, with the upper 2” of the Harry Smith shortly after the two leather at head of spine missing, met in the early 1950’s. Walewski and with tidemarking, chipping, was one of the more mysteri- and staining within, including ous figures in the mid-twentieth several faint burn marks. century esoteric underground, best known in his lifetime as the Extensively annotated through- proprietor of the antiquities shop out, in English, Latin, and one Esoterica. He belonged to a prom- language we’ve been unable to inent European family, the Colon- identify. With numerous pasted na-Walewski’s, descended from in additions, both in manuscript Napoleon through an illegitimate and with pages taken from other, child. According to a 1947 news later publications, including a article, Walewski had the largest number of holograph passages library relating to demonology in and symbols on sheets of paper America, though we’ve not been that have been pasted into blank able to determine the current portions of pages, including a whereabouts of his library. gracefully drawn lamen of the Archangel Michael on a circular The only book that Walewski sheet of paper which has been published under his own name pasted onto the last page was A System of Caucasian Yoga, beneath the conclusion of the Provenance: armorial stamp of published by Charles Muses text. On the detached rear board, Comte Colonna Walewski to title under his New Falcon imprint [Cologne]: [Johannes Solter], facing the lamen, there is a hand- page, bearing the family motto in the year of Walewski’s death. 1533. First combined edition. 4to, written table of the names of “Usque ad Fines,” and two older, The work is a facsimile of an [xii], cclxi pp. [numerous errors spirits and planets governing indecipherable latin phrases. illustrated manuscript made by in pagination, including p. 4 here the hours of the day and night. The first combined edition of Walewski, translated by him into misnumbered as III, indicating Given that the handwritten text this foundational work of The English from the Russian and that this perhaps is an earlier extends to the very edge of the Renaissance, originally written Persian dictation, which the editor state than the Jung copy, which left margin, these annotations from 1509-1510 while Agrippa claims was dictated to him in the incorporates the correction - were likely made after the board studied with Trithemius of Caucasian Mountains before the also p. xxii misnumbered as xxiiii, was detached, or the board Sponheim. Portions of the work 1920’s by two initiates “of a rarely cclxiv misnumbered as cclxii, was detached for that purpose. circulated in manuscript un- encountered secret society, which clxi misnumbered as clx, clxxvii Though not here attributed, til this combined publication, combined indigenous doctrines misnumbered as clxxvi, ccx-ccxi both the hand drawn lamen and which quickly found disfavor by and those of yoga with teachings misnumbered as ccviii-ccix and the angel chart appear to be the forces of the Inquisition. The stemming from a mystical tradi- carried foreward, p. cclxi mis- based upon the instructions of books are a remarkable and clear tion of ancient Zoroastrianism.” numbered as cclxiii, and cclxiv Agrippa’s teacher Trithemius of synthesis of magical thought in- The work has been translated into misnumbered as cclxii, but Sponheim for drawing spirits formed by the prior work of several languages, and remains complete and consecutive.