These are the collected Diagrammaton of the Hollow Collective, from 2000-2012. There are others, of course, and in due course, as we excavate the archives of the Hidden Library, they will be added au fur et à mesure. Venus in Furs, Mars to Measure.
DIAGRAMMATON : appeared as one of the New Ogham-Sigils to Malachas Ivernus in a Working of 6/8/2020. It is notable that this is a term beginning, unknown to Ivernus, to gain currency in online occult circles.
Notably, Reddit User CryptidPhylactery, who appears to be a rogue conspiracy theorist and self-declared “Secret Agent” and Initiate of the Temple of Set has been working in this direction. Their posts have all been removed from Reddit, but one can still find them, if one knows how to look. Of course, anyone claiming to be an Occult Secret Agent must be subjected to Occam’s Razor: either they’re delusional (least amount of assumptions, most elegant in terms of its simplicity), they’re lying/trolling (possibly even more simple and elegant, though it does appear to pose several follow-up questions: qui bono? What is the aim of this, if there is any beyond simple amusement?), or, finally, that they are telling the Truth (elegant, in that it is the most coherent, but it requires multiple preliminary assumptions about the reality status of Occult Conspiracy Statecraft, Secret History, the Temple of Set’s status as an initiatory order which has “actual” occult power … &co.).
It seems to us, here at the Hollow Collective, that this is a clear and elegant word for the graphic and spatial plotting of Tables of Correspondence, which is exactly what we propose to share here.
Much of this work was begun in the 1970s by Magister Ivernus, on his first sojourn in Paris; at the time, he was a novice Society of Jesus Catholic Priest, studying for a Doctorate in Philosophy, Philology, and Classics at the Sorbonne, and resident at the Collège des Irlandais in the Latin Quarter. At the time, of course, he was known by his Given Name, and had not yet taken the Orders of which we know him to be the recipient. His Great Work was ahead of him. However, falling into the company of Scots-Irish writer-poet Martin Caulder, polymath and littérateur Antoine Mercier, post-structuralist antinomian thinker Michel Foucault, Satanist film director Michel Lemoine, cult visionary Alejandro Jodorwosky, and others, Ivernus, as they say, vede la Luce, and saw that Terrible Light from Beyond. This inner circle held regular meetings at the Auberge Nicolas Flamel, and at the zinc café counter in the legendary Passage Jouffroy.
Without further ado then, we present to you the following πίνακες του νόμου, in the hop that they will prove useful to you in your Seeking. Lest we need to remind you, these are neither the original nor the operative versons of the Ivernus Grimoire Material; one cannot simply copy the Workings of another Magickal Operator ; one must appropriate for oneself, adapt, invent, mediate, catalyse, and re-member one’s own Grimoire Workings with reference to Hippolyte Taine’s formula : “milieu, race, moment“, where we are clear to differentiate and nuance his rather 19th century racialist notion of “race”, with the rather more appropriate concept of “group allegiances and alignments”, whether these be genetic and ethnic, cultural, societal, national, geographical and ecosystemic, or even by symbolic and soul-motivated identification and affinities, whether elective or revealed.
THESE ARE THE DIAGRAMMATA OF IVERNUS, KNOWN IN THOSE DAYS AS “SIRE MALACHAISE D’IVERNOIS” – BEGINNING IN PARIS IN 1972This version was prepared by Anton Merrill during his Mystery Play Cycle in Paris in 2000, Year of the Metal Dragon. It was based on an original that he unearthed in the clutches of a Bibliomagus who held one of the famous “Schrödinger’s Book-Stalls” among the bouquinistes on the Right Bank near the Hôtel de Ville at the time. It is thought (the original was again lost when Merrill fled the city in Autumn 2000) that it must be part of the Cartomancie Spéculative engaged in by Ivernus and Jodorowsky in 1976 in Fontainebleau, when they entered entheogenic trance states and channelled Tarot Arcana. This is a copy of the so-called God-Wheel (Mogh Roth na Diae) of Malachas Ivernus, which was, again, prepared by Anton Merrill based on his research in the archives of the Domaine de La Rigaud in Aquitaine. Ivernus is supposed to have developed much of it in discussion with Martin Caulder, whose ideas have an evident influence on the construction. However, Merrill’s version includes his own Personal Gnosis, and the fair copy that eventually was published in his opus, The Key to All Mythologies, Savage House, 2012 (now out of print) was full colour and included many elaborations and amendments to this DIAGRAMMA. Merrill himself now has no access to a print edition of the book, however, as most of them were destroyed by the Ordre des Petits Frères Lampiers de la Librairie (Ordo fraternem minorem lux ex libris) when they went on their Bibliomantic Croisade de la Rose, in 2016. The facing-page of previous DIAGRAMMA. This is the Attribution of the Items, according to Ivernus’s Grimoire from November 1978. Again, Merrill was the transcriber, and only had access to imperfect documents and notes. The whereabouts of the original Grimoire, believed to exist in no more than three hand-lettered and drawn copies, are currently unknown. Schematic rendition of the Item Attributions, by Anton Merrill, 2010. This index-card from Merrill’s notes (research visit to the Domaine de La Rigaud in November 2010) can be useful in identifying the Archtypes/Figures of the Ivernus Mythos according to what items they bear in their Right and Left Hands in the illustrations and (le cas échéant) in statuary. Note: Statuary relating to the Mythos can only be seen in the Chapel Perilous at La Rigaud, and in the Áras Líos Lír at the crest of Bolus Head, Baile an Sceilg, Iverragh Penninsula, Co. Kerry. Once more, from Merrill’s Notebooks, Vol. XVII, 2010, from the fateful research trip to La Rigaud. This was his own attempt to discover the correspondences between the Item Attributions Wheel (or Mogh Roth na Dílseachtanna) and the Zodiac, Tarot Suits, and Greek Pantheon. Note the unexpected insertion of a few Figures from the Pan-Celtic Mythos, as well as some Jungian Archetypes (with Arthurian Overtones).This appears to be a rough set of notes for Merrill’s never-published Tarot Deck, Tarot du Magicien, it is dated 2011, when we may surmise that Merrill was on the Second Mystery Play Phase. We can see the associations and attributions being worked out, and note the mixture of French, Greek, Gaelic, Norse, Welsh, and Hermetic imagery, as well as more General Legendary and Personal Gnostic symbols, including some from Shakespeare, Arthurian material, and even Dante. Note: in this deck, according to our correspondence with Merrill, all cards are in fixed positions, but some are “by Nature” inverted. Thus we have: The Dark of the Moon, the Wicked Fool, The Lost Lovers, etc. This appears to be a set of notes from about the same period (November 2011), as the Mystery Play of the Magician’s Initiation was in full flight for Merrill. We can surmise that this is an attempt at a “tarobiography” of himself by Merrill ; the first “Journey” is the Fool’s Errand, that runs through the Major Arcana of a Standard Deck (unclear whether he was using Marseille or Rider-Waite-Smith ; one would have to know the exact associations between the “personae” named and the VIII and XI cards: Strength or Justice?). As this “Journey” is supposed to have taken place from the ages of 11-21, through 22 Trumps, one might then go on to speculate that the Second Journey (Magician’s Initiation), takes place between the ages of 22 and 33 (which would make mythopoetic and occult sense). Thus, we have two Trumps for each year (Dark Half and Light Half?). This means that at the time of writing, when Merrill was 35, the Magician’s Initiation had been achieved two years earlier, in 2009. Important to note: the Trumps X and XXI, The Wheel of Fortune and The World, in the scan obtained for the present Work, are cut off in the image of the page. One can only offer arrant guesses as to their attributions. It would, however, be important to decipher them in any attempt to reconstruct Merrill’s history during that obscure period from the Trump Correspondences. What is, however, clear, is that the list on the right-hand side of the page refers to both Dreams, Written Texts, and Projected “Dream Texts” that were possibly never written down (cf. Caulder’s practice of “inventing” Forbidden Books, such as his own book of “sensual Celtic Paganism”, Earth Works, a book of poems that Mercier claims to have seen in manuscript, but of which no trace has ever been found. The present author posits that this was not, indeed, a real book, but rather an Imaginal Book of the Hidden Library to which Caulder had access, and which he used as a tool “to woo women”. Material from what appears to be the same book is incorporated in Merrill’s Book of Quests, 2012, privately printed. Copies available only in private collections, and the Áras Líos Lír Leabharlann, and the Bibliothèque Interdite du Domaine de La Rigaud.)Once more a leaf from the 2011 Working at La Rigaud by Merrill (Notebooks, Vol. XVIII). Here he appears to be applying Ivernus’s Lectio modum istum mythicum to his own life, and attempting to attribute the Court Cards of the Standard Tarot Deck to Figures in his own life at the time. Some of these have been identified, others not. There is particular controversy on the identity of the Knight of Wands, where the ink is smudged. Merrill himself has been silent on the topic. Note: each Figure/Persona is also attributed an animal or an Archetypal Figure from his own Inner Alchemy Correspondences (see Mulholland, Personal Archetypology in the Mythical Method of Malachas Ivernus, Journal of Literary Ephemera, 2015). On the Right-Hand Side, we can see an attempt by Merrill to include his own “love-life” as he calls it in the Elemental/Directional/Animal Correspondences. The women named are, for the most part, unidentified at the present writing. This is from the small Moleskine Working Notebook of Anton Merrill, possibly dated to around 2012-2013. These are simply his Tarot Correspondence Keywords for the Minor Arcana. Some of the attributions are debateable, but we shall remain silent on the matter. On the facing page, in very tiny writing, is this version of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with Merill’s mapping onto the Sephiroth and Paths his own personal gnosis regarding the placement of the “Figures”. It can be seen that there is possibly some influence from Caulder’s 1965 novella, Unreal City, (Olympia Press, 1965, Traveller’s Companion series). This book was known to have been influential on Merrill, and on Ivernus as well. The present author has prepared a (somewhat) acedemically rigorous edition of that novel, which is only now, nine years later, being brough to the public through its publication by the Hollow Press, in October 2020. Note: the attributions for the Paths are ascribed to Figures from the Attributes DIAGRAMMA. However, they are NOT assigned to Tarot Trumps: That indeed would be horrific. We are informed, however, that such a list does exist? Clearly influenced by William Gray, and that Merrill has a copy in his possssion but will not let it out of his sight.
Based on the notes and Working Books of :
Anton Merrill, Buachaill Bán, Wild Card, Kenning ont e theos,
Fire Lion-Dragon Apocapyptic Antinomian
Ecstatic Shaman Visionary
Compiled and annotated by :
Thomas Mulholland, MA, PhD
Aesthete, Semiologist, Decadent
Maître de conférences à l’Université de Paris – Nouvelle Athènes
Malachas Ivernus
Magus. Hierophant. Mystagogue. Simulacrum.
Professor Emeritus at Université de Paris-Nouvelle Athènes
