The Sorcerer and His Apprentice: Aleister Crowley and the Magical Exploration of Edwardian Subjectivity

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Owen

In late 1909, two Englishmen, scions of the comfortable middle classes, undertook a journey to Algiers. Aleister Crowley, later to be dubbed “the wickedest man in the world,” was in his early thirties; his companion, Victor Neuburg, had only recently graduated from Cambridge. The stated purpose of the trip was pleasure. Crowley, widely traveled and an experienced mountaineer and big-game hunter, loved North Africa and had personal reasons for wanting to be out of England. Neuburg probably had little say in the matter. Junior in years, dreamy and mystical by nature, and in awe of a man whom he both loved and admired, Neuburg was inclined to acquiesce without demur in Crowley's various projects. There was, however, another highly significant factor in Neuburg's quiescence. He was Crowley's chela, a novice initiate of the magical Order of the Silver Star which Crowley had founded two years earlier. As such, Neuburg had taken a vow of obedience to Crowley as his Master and affectionately dubbed “holy guru” and had already learned that in much that related to his life Crowley's word was now law. It was at Crowley's instigation that the two men began to make their way, first by tram and then by foot, into the North African desert to the southwest of Algiers; and it was Crowley's decision to perform there a series of magical ceremonies which prefigured his elaboration of the techniques of sex magic. In this case, the ceremonies combined the performance of advanced ritual magic with homosexual acts.

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-187
Author(s):  
Arif Sultan

Within a short span of time a number of economic blocs have emergedon the world horizon. In this race, all countriedeveloped, developingand underdeveloped-are included. Members of the North America FreeTrade Agreement (NAITA) and the European Economic Community(EEC) are primarily of the developed countries, while the EconomicCooperation Organization (ECO) and the Association of South EastAsian Nations (ASEAN) are of the developing and underdevelopedAsian countries.The developed countries are scrambling to create hegemonies throughthe General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT). In these circumstances,economic cooperation among Muslim countries should be onthe top of their agenda.Muslim countries today constitute about one-third of the membershipof the United Nations. There are around 56 independentMuslim states with a population of around 800 million coveringabout 20 percent of the land area of the world. Stretchingbetween Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, the Muslim Worldstraddles from North Africa to Indonesia, in two major Islamicblocs, they are concentrated in the heart of Africa to Indonesia,in two major blocs, they are concentrated in the heart of Africaand Asia and a smaller group in South and Southeast Asia.'GATT is a multilateral agreement on tariffs and trade establishing thecode of rules, regulations, and modalities regulating and operating internationaltrade. It also serves as a forum for discussions and negotiations ...


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 2187
Author(s):  
Caroline Cazin ◽  
Yasmine Boumerdassi ◽  
Guillaume Martinez ◽  
Selima Fourati Ben Mustapha ◽  
Marjorie Whitfield ◽  
...  

Acephalic spermatozoa syndrome (ASS) is a rare but extremely severe type of teratozoospermia, defined by the presence of a majority of headless flagella and a minority of tail-less sperm heads in the ejaculate. Like the other severe monomorphic teratozoospermias, ASS has a strong genetic basis and is most often caused by bi-allelic variants in SUN5 (Sad1 and UNC84 domain-containing 5). Using whole exome sequencing (WES), we investigated a cohort of nine infertile subjects displaying ASS. These subjects were recruited in three centers located in France and Tunisia, but all originated from North Africa. Sperm from subjects carrying candidate genetic variants were subjected to immunofluorescence analysis and transmission electron microscopy. Moreover, fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) was performed on sperm nuclei to assess their chromosomal content. Variant filtering permitted us to identify the same SUN5 homozygous frameshift variant (c.211+1_211+2dup) in 7/9 individuals (78%). SUN5 encodes a protein localized on the posterior part of the nuclear envelope that is necessary for the attachment of the tail to the sperm head. Immunofluorescence assays performed on sperm cells from three mutated subjects revealed a total absence of SUN5, thus demonstrating the deleterious impact of the identified variant on protein expression. Transmission electron microscopy showed a conserved flagellar structure and a slightly decondensed chromatin. FISH did not highlight a higher rate of chromosome aneuploidy in spermatozoa from SUN5 patients compared to controls, indicating that intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) can be proposed for patients carrying the c.211+1_211+2dup variant. These results suggest that the identified SUN5 variant is the main cause of ASS in the North African population. Consequently, a simple and inexpensive genotyping of the 211+1_211+2dup variant could be beneficial for affected men of North African origin before resorting to more exhaustive genetic analyses.


2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Fennell

High rates of desertion and surrender during the battles in North Africa in the summer of 1942 were a major factor in Eighth Army’s poor combat performance. At the time, some suggested that these problems were symptomatic of a lack of courage or even of cowardice. There are two broad strands to the conceptualization of courage and cowardice. One focuses on the willingness of the person to fight; the other puts emphasis on how actions express an individual’s ability to cope with fear. Whichever conceptualization is used, high morale motivates the soldier to fight and shields the ordinary recruit from his fear, preventing it from overcoming him in battle. Where morale fails, the soldier is left demotivated and burdened with his terror and, therefore, and is therefore prone to desertion or surrender. Because it is extremely difficult to maintain morale at a continuously high level in an environment governed by chance and managed by humans, all soldiers can find themselves in situations where their actions may be judged as cowardly. Alternatively, if they are properly motivated to fight and prepared by the state and military to deal with the unavoidable fear of combat, all soldiers can be labelled courageous. Accordingly, emotive terms should be avoided when attempting to describe rationally explainable outcomes. The undoubtedly negative connotations attached to cowardice in battle and the positive ones attached to courage are, therefore, arguably unhelpful in understanding Eighth Army’s performance in the summer of 1942 and the human dimension in warfare more generally.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-13
Author(s):  
Adrian Cosmin Basarabă ◽  
Maria-Mihaela Nistor

Abstract This article aims at presenting ISIS expansion in North Africa in the first quarter of 2016, with its subsequent implication in the wider framework of Jihadist proliferation worldwide. It can be argued that, while losing real estate in the Middle East, ISIS has started a permanent search for extra-cellular matrices or an ongoing process of de- and reterritorialization. The allegiance and support pledged by other African-based terrorist groups or organizations such as Boko Haram, al-I’tisam of the Koran and Sunnah in Sudan, al-Huda Battalion in Maghreb of Islam, The Soldiers of the Caliphate, al-Ghurabaa, Djamaat Houmat ad-Da’wa as-Salafiya and al-Ansar Battalion in Algeria, Islamic Youth Shura Council, Islamic State Libya (Darnah), in Libya, Jamaat Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, Jund al-Khilafah and Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem in Egypt, Okba Ibn Nafaa Battalion, Mujahideen of Tunisia of Kairouan and Jund al-Khilafah in Tunisia and al-Shabaab Jubba Region Cell Bashir Abu Numan in Somalia is an alarming hypothesis of Jihadism reaching “the threshold of inevitability”- syntagm existent in the network theories of David Singh Grewal- turning a whole region, continent of even world into what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would call Extremistan.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 295-341
Author(s):  
Deniz Beyazit

Abstract This article discusses The Met’s unpublished Dalāʾil al-khayrāt—2017.301—(MS New York, TMMA 2017.301), together with a group of comparable manuscripts. The earliest known dated manuscript within the corpus, it introduces several iconographic elements that are new to the Dalāʾil, and which compare with the traditions developing in the Mashriq and the Ottoman world in particular. The article discusses Dalāʾil production in seventeenth-century North Africa and its development in the Ottoman provinces, Tunisia, and/or Algeria. The manuscripts illustrate how an Ottoman visual apparatus—among which the theme of the holy sanctuaries at Mecca and Medina, appearing for the first time in MS New York, TMMA 2017.301—is established for Muhammadan devotion in Maghribī Dalāʾils. The manuscripts belong to the broader historic, social, and artistic contexts of Ottoman North Africa. Our analysis captures the complex dynamics of Ottomanization of the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, remaining strongly rooted in their local traditions, while engaging with Ottoman visual idioms.


Author(s):  
Maud S. Mandel

This chapter builds on the link between French colonial policies and Muslim–Jewish relations in the metropole by tracing how decolonization throughout North Africa changed the way a diverse set of social actors, including French colonial administrators, international Jewish spokesmen, and a wide range of indigenous nationalist groups conceptualized Jewish belonging throughout the region. It argues that the process led to the emergence of the “North African Jew,” a category to which no individual ascribed but that worked rhetorically to unite the diverse Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian Jewish populations into a collective often understood to be in conflict with “North Africans,” “Muslims,” or “Arabs.”


2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-86
Author(s):  
Vlastimil Vrtal

A group of six specimens of Late Roman pottery from the region of North Africa forms part of collections of the Náprstek Museum. The group comprises of vessels from several different functional types, forming a representative sample of the pottery production of the region. The paper discusses the setting of the individual vessels in the North African ceramic production, their dating, and provenance.


1958 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 30-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Goodchild ◽  
J. M. Reynolds ◽  
C. J. Herington

Cyrene's largest religious building, the great Temple of Zeus on the north-eastern hill of the city, has been the subject of several explorations. Its cella was partially dug out by Smith and Porcher in 1861, and was completely cleared of soil by the late Giacomo Guidi in 1926, in the excavation which brought to light the famous head of Zeus, pieced together from over a hundred fragments. Then, in the years 1939–1942, fuller work was carried out by Dr. Gennaro Pesce, who published a detailed report with admirable promptness. Despite the interruptions caused by the North African campaigns of the World War, Pesce was able to clear the greater part of the Temple and its fallen peristasis. At the conclusion of his work only the opisthodomos remained unexcavated, although much fallen stone still encumbered the pronaos and the eastern portico.


Phytotaxa ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 282 (2) ◽  
pp. 119
Author(s):  
MOUNIA BENAZZA-BOUREGBA ◽  
JEAN-MICHEL SAVOIE ◽  
ZOHRA FORTAS ◽  
CHRISTOPHE BILLETTE

Among the Basidiomycota, matsutake are the most appreciated mushrooms in Japan. Some Tricholoma species belonging to matsutake group are exported from North Africa to Japan. Until the beginning of the 21st century, the North African ‘matsutake’ was identified as T. caligatum, which is a circum-Mediterranean species described in 1834. However, recent molecular analyses uncover some North African isolates as T. anatolicum, which is a species described from Turkey in 2003. As a result, the presence of T. caligatum in North Africa remained to be confirmed. We analyzed a recent specimen collected in Algeria from mixed forest and based on molecular and morphological data, we found that it belongs to T. caligatum, indicating the existence of two species in North Africa. Morphological traits and molecular markers are proposed here to easily distinguish these two species from each other. The concept of both the species and their respective geographic distributions are discussed.


1968 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wansbrough

Since independence the countries of North Africa have been occupied almost exclusively with the establishment of a new society. An important part of this activity has been directed towards a solution to the problem of symbols and values: the construction of an image of themselves for their own contemplation and for export to the world outside. One aspect of this general problem of acculturation is concerned with interpretations of history and the evaluation of one's own place in historical evolution. Starting from the premiss that North African history has largely been a monopoly of French scholarship since 1830, contemporary historical writers in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco have found it essential, before entering upon problems of historical interpretation, to rewrite their own history. Discovery of this first requisite has generated a spirit shared by all those writers preoccupied with this problem, however much they might disagree on solutions to it, which is best expressed by the phrase ‘décoloniser l'histoire’. The subject is vast, and I should like here only to indicate several of the problems, with their proposed solutions, so far treated by writers dealing with the history of Algeria.


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