The Great When (Book Review #105)

The Great When
Alan Moore
Bloomsbury Archer

Foreword : iteratio
Book Reviews are a part of self gnosis, just as writing in a diary, or meditating on the days events without attaching, that is ~ without creating possibilities in the mind, “I should have done this” , “I should have said that”… just review. Sometimes the context of a book, be it non-fiction or fiction seeps into our reality. We could reason its our theatre ~ emulating what we are influenced by.
“Between ‘The God of Logic and Maths’ and ‘The Goddess of Creativity and Chaos’, the manifest was plausible,” So said no-one somewhere.
I’ve included this foreword merely because I fear these reviews will be and are becoming less about the content of the books and more about its influence. But ignore this Foreword,I can’t explain things because I can’t explain it, I only have one hobby after all, and that is ‘hobbies’
Surrealism, welcome to The Great When…,

CoreWyrrd

Another review of a fiction book, because I never read fiction, so I have been.
This recommendation came as always via a string theory entangled synchronicity, which I mustn’t attach my mind to or else it distorts. If I am unaffected when I see a ghost, more often will they arise, likewise, miracles and weather pattern manifestations shouldn’t be met with wow and flutter but just drink tea and carry on.
That ‘happenings’ occur in clusters, with a determined and actual process they should be met with nothing more than silent non-emotional attachment a brief encounter of acknowledgement.
It is as the same as if we were to analyse every heartbeat lest we fear we should die if we don’t think of it. The subconscious avenue then is where the portals of synchronicity occur, arising as archetypes that we need not consider but they run parallel to our being.
So how did I arrive here, at another book of fiction. I have remarked elsewhere that fiction can provide more an inkling to our path than that of the monotony of redrawn maps from old grimoires and the incessant litany of sacred rites, rituals and endless mush of barbaric names. Just give me a story.
My life revolves around the waking world, the dream world and the in-between, that is the Lucid dream world, and lets say the Lucid dream world is what others refer to as the Astral world. ( Out of body experience being separate, my Out of body experiences occur in the here and now, nothings misplaced or strangely distorted except that I view in spirit vision, akin to Infra red photography perhaps. But its real time, real places and fixed. )
Lucid dream world of course, is malleable and fluid. Environment changes with emotion, the manifest is instant to the will of the observer.
In life, the astral influence mostly evaporates and does not affect us, it doesn’t become a part of the material world we inhabit, much as a dream itself is forgotten when the gears of the conscious mind rev into action.
Sometimes however, and certainly more often with us dreamers and wayfarers, it does seep out and reveals itself as synchronicity, archetypes, and coincidences. A tangible overlap.
In this instance, to repeat, Quietly acknowledge but do not revere, lest the activity wanes and disperses as much as a traveller seeks to stroke the curious roebuck who will have it away on its toes the moment we acknowledge it and seek to embrace it.
We walk in parallel, acknowledging humbly and let the stream flow beneath us without plunging our hands into its waters.
This Astral/ Manifest entanglement then becomes akin to an Algorithm, adapting and leading us where we need to be, but the signs are uncertain, for the most part because the future affects the past and this is how the Astral works before us, we obviously fumble to consider the signs, they are abstract, strange, quirks.

Look at the daft meme here. It popped up on my Facebook, I don’t know what it is, except clickbait to read the article filled with adverts~ each one generating 0.0001 pence for the author hoping a million will click it and receive a generous booty of those who dare open the Pandora’s little clickbait box ( thus, I haven’t included a link to it)
What is this ‘alternative’ universe, the parallel view, the echo of the manifest, or are we an echo of it, the reflection, the harmonic, the causation of a spectrum shift.
We cannot see it because of distortion just as four random numbers in Pi don’t seem to be connected to another four… but the infinite progression states they will be. That eventually a set of numbers will occur is because those set of numbers have occurred but have yet to be seen, Retrocausality theory states what is in the future is the cause of the past, and we are merely fixed between the certainties of both, unable to see that one doesn’t follow another but are all equal. In our arrow of time of course, one set of circumstance is labelled as the future.
This parallel world, this alternate.
I saw the meme, and nearly fell into the trap as it was definitely the rabbit hole that I have been on.
I then saw a comment elsewhere, doomscrolling, ‘algorithm’, for Alan Moore’s new book, a sequel apparently to The Great When, I’ve never read Mr.Moore, in fact i’d never heard of him or knew he wrote a few things that I had heard of…,
A friends son loved The Watchman graphic novel series.
“You read a lot of occult books?” he asked eyeing my shelves.
” I guess so,” I dismissed, ” and what do you read?”
” The Watchmen, ” he said, ” it … it teaches me things.”
It was a very curious conversation and I never followed it up except to try and watch the movie at one point, but I fell asleep, not because it was boring, but because when I get into a passive, do nothing, non-adhd pursuit, fall asleep seems the best option.
So for no known reason I purchase “The Great When”, because my feet are being lead upon another merry dance.
And the book begins with a conversation, unmistakably between Aleister Crowley and Dion fortune? curiouser and curiouser.~
I have prior to this just finished a book on the (Witchcraft of ) Highlands and Islands of Scotland hoping for glimpse of my ancestors- the Mckays, but they were not mentioned.
” The Great When” fullfills the algorithm of coincidence including a certain~ Prince Monolulu, real name Peter Carl Mckay.
Synchronicty?
To recap on this nature,
Apophenia: The universal human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns or connections in random information.
We see a number. Some call them angel numbers, which is daft and draw certain conclusions.
In respect of this I adopted a different approach,

I saw the number 555, and at the end of the day, as I did, write the day’s events in my diary. Then forget it. Days, weeks later the number 555 would crop up with a regularity that deserved for it to be dotted in the top right hand corner of that days page, again I dismiss my inference and wrote the diary entry as usual before sleep.
Eventually! I searched through the pages where I had written 555 in the top right hand corner of the page, reviewed each day and found a common theme. For the case of ‘555’ whenever I saw those numbers someone, that day or the next would die, or become gravely ill. I found 333 to be times when my situation would temporarily shift, a burden or dramatic change of plan that day, when things unexpected would disrupt me. I found, ahem, that 747 or 727 would mean an unexpected journey. The number 307 signifies the home indeed soon after I actually moved into an address with the number 307. And when I saw 711, the day would be always have been great, everything fell into place.
I did not, as others have assume that 555 means something a book tells me, and then adapt reasoning behind the days events to fulfill that criteria. Ambiguity be gone, shoehorning the fortune tellers interpretation into my life was avoided.
It was the logic of Jerome, to translate rather than assume.

What has that got to do with Alan Moore’s book? A book about a book that shouldn’t exist in this waking world?
I have a dozen little black books of self written poetry and obscure experiences and five large self made and self written A4 size volumes of esoteric lore, mostly gained by experience and lucid dream, and none of it has ended, indeed, as we’re on the synchronous path, I write this the day wordpress (host website) publishes its daily word challenge, what book would you change the ending to?

“The Great When” discusses ‘Jack Spot’ and ‘Billy Hill’, both of whom known to my dad in real life when he was running up and down the East End as a ‘Bookies Runner’ , whether he worked for them or not, I don’t know, he never discussed the days when he was known as “The whippet”.
We have Austin Spare whose work I have been fascinated by this last year, acquiring most of his published books, ouch says wallet, in the process.
Ada Coffin, whose mannerism are so alike a dear friend of ours my wife wondered when I read her some bits if I was parodying our beloved Anne, Ada Coffin speaks exactly like Anne, including the cough.
Anne died the same day I read this book. 555 is written on the diary when it cropped up as the time that morning seen on the car, outside and on a pharmacy digital clock in the space of the same minute, it then appeared on a receipt soon after and then again as a model no. for some broken bit of equipment at work we was trying to source. I wrote it in my journal at the top right hand corner and encircled it as being significant, by now knowing it was the portent of doom.

But , come on, all this synchronicity lark, this algorithm peep show, this coincidental weirdness, what does it mean and where more importantly is it taking these aimless footsteps ? I conclude that the purpose of life, and its meaning, is simply to eternally search. The ‘search’ is the answer, the manifest is an emanation, and that emanation is born of wonder, dream, vivarta~विवर्त.
Given that, do I need these shinning trinkets, breadcrumbs in the maze, little pockets of wonder. I don’t dismiss them, or need them, and more so afterwards do they fall before these plates of meat (Moore knows the language of rhyme).
The Great When’s master archetype criminal ~ Harry Lud. What would he do? Perhaps laugh, perhaps enjoy, perhaps dismantle and re-arrange just to change the music and predictability.
I grab hold of my 6ft -measure of myself- wand of Holly, crafted by the Alsatian witches to bring tempests and storms, I bring my mind back to my recent foray on the moray, of my ancestors up there on the Firth, and the ‘Song of the Inverness witch’ ;-
Now the Sun go out of sight
Beet the shingle snuff the light
In Glens the FAiries skip and Dance
An Witches Wallow O’er to France.

(sic) Epic Log
My wife this morning said to me, ” For your birthday in September we’re going away, to France.”
“What for?” I asked.
She replied with a squint and a sigh that I would dismiss it.
My birthday. The 30th of the old seventh month when the Good ship will sail ….to wallow in France. Home? 307. France? FFS.
I don’t know what to do anymore, I think I should root myself more firmly in fiction I reasoned, and yet, the path has a habit of steering you right back to where it wants you on its merry dance with no finale.
Alan Moore is a crafty cunning old soul. Of course it’s a good read, if I can immerse myself in these parallel worlds as easily as a potty mouth can cough then the work is done.
The book ends on page 307. 30th and 7. Of course it does. Home.
I can now read the sequel…” I hear a new world “