The Magus of Mexico: Malcolm Lowry, Magic and Myth

  

I am very pleased to pay homage to Malcolm Lowry with a new anthology of essays from Zagava, The Magus of Mexico: Malcolm Lowry, Magic and Myth. This will appear in a highly limited collector's edition, followed in ten days by an affordable paperback. 

My copy of Under the Volcano has faded to a sort of smoky lilac, and the back of the book is striped like a deckchair in bands of the original pale blue and the faded hue. It must have lain on a table where sunlight filtered through slatted shutters. 

It was given to me by my friend P J Beveridge of Crash Smash Crack Ring zine, who had already introduced me to Michael Arlen, Denton Welch, Ronald Firbank, Llewellyn Powys and others who became favourites. Malc, as we breezily called him, was soon added to these. My friend was studying to be a designer bookbinder and had made a striking binding inspired by Lowry’s poem ‘The Lighthouse Invites the Storm’.

I began to look out for Malc’s other work, which includes a short story collection, Hear Us O Lord from Heaven they Dwelling Place (1961) and several posthumous, reconstructed novels. Lowry was a jazz enthusiast and persuaded his long-suffering stockbroker father to pay for publication of two of his songs: ‘I’ve Said Goodbye to Shanghai’ and ‘Three Little Dog-Gone Mice’. For years I have rummaged through piles of sheet music in junk and book shops on the off-chance of finding them

Malcolm Lowry’s work is infused by a persistent interest in the esoteric. For example, in the first chapter alone of his classic work Under the  Volcano (1947), there are numerous specific references to the supernatural.

The deserted hotel on the hill in the Mexican town which is the scene of the book has a casino haunted by the ghosts of gamblers. The character of M. Laruelle, the French film director, visits the ruined palace and gardens of the Emperor Maximillian and his Empress, which seem haunted by their fate. And he remembers a visit to Chartres, the vista of the cathedral’s towers and the numinous ambience of the city.

All three of these could be regarded as poetic images, or simply personal impressions, but the book does not rule out that they are also a form of reality. The same chapter includes numerous other uncanny images, and allusions to Blake, Swedenborg and the Kabbalah It is, in short, an occult novel. And indeed we are told the Consul, the main protagonist, was a Cabbalist and is writing a book on Secret Knowledge.

I thought that this aspect of Lowry’s work was worth exploring further and so I invited fellow writers and Lowry enthusiasts to contribute to an anthology on this theme. I also wanted each piece to have a personal, creative element to it, reflecting Lowry’s own practice.

In The Magus of Mexico, Helen Tookey explores Under the Volcano with the help of Tarot imagery, Mark Goodall looks at Lowry’s use of alcohol as a magical practice, James Riley considers the book in the context of shamanism, and Michael Romer studies Lowry’s links to Aleister Crowley. Adriana Diaz-Enciso explores Dark As the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid, a sort-of sequel to Volcano, and its handling of the themes of friendship and returning.

Jonathan Wood offers a ‘meditative semi-fiction’ on Lowry’s fascination with the sea, my own essay looks at Lowry’s interest in supernatural fiction in his story ‘Elephant and Coliseum’, and John Howard discusses landscape mysticism in the story ‘The Forest Path to the Spring’. Finally, John Hyatt recalls his own acts of art-magic in response to Volcano and other work.  

 I am grateful to all the contributors for their celebration of Malcolm Lowry, illuminating the esoteric secrets of his work. 

 (Mark Valentine)