Zanoni Book One: The Musician: The Magical Antiquarian Curiosity Shoppe, A Weiser Books Collection

By Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Lon Milo DuQuette

Master of modern occultism, Lon Milo DuQuette, (author of Enochian Vision Magick and The Magick of Aleister Crowley) introduces the newest Weiser Books Collection—The Magical Antiquarian Curiosity Shoppe. Culled from material long unavailable to the general public, DuQuette curates this essential new digital library with the eye of a scholar and the insight of an initiate.

An ancient manuscript and hidden occult powers all tangled into a love story, Zanoni is one of the most unsung novels of its time. Written in 1842 by Sir Edward BulwerLytton, most known for the classic introductory line: "It was a dark and stormy night."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781619400887

Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was an English author of poetry, plays, and novels. He served under Queen Victoria as Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1858-1859. He is famous for having written the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night" as well as "The pen is mightier than the sword" and "pursuit of the almighty dollar." Among his many works of fiction, he wrote The Coming Race which drew heavily on his interest in the Occult, contributing to the birth of the Science Fiction genre. His story The Haunters and the Haunted, or, The House and the Brain, was immensely popular in 1859, but was largely forgotten until the 1920's when H.P. Lovecraft made mention of it.

Book preview

Zanoni Book One:

The Musician

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Lon Milo DuQuette

Magical Antiquarian Curiosity Shoppe

A Weiser Books Collection

This ebook edition first published in 2012 by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.

With offices at:

665 Third Street, Suite 400

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright © 2012 by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. All rights reserved.

Originally published as Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, Zanoni, Saunders, Otley, Conduit Street, 1842.

eISBN: 978-1-61940-088-7

Cover design by Jim Warner

Contents

Introduction by Lon Milo DuQuette

BOOK I. — THE MUSICIAN.

Introduction

In the early 1970s, I joined my brother Marc and became an initiate member of the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC.¹ We were both active in a local lodge in Long Beach—I eventually would serve as Inner Guardian, Chanter, and Chaplain of the lodge. I found the experience rewarding and an excellent introduction to the basic format of the Western Initiatory traditions.

Our lodge had a small, but remarkably well-stocked library of mystical books, some of them rather old and rare. One of my volunteer duties was to serve on a rotating schedule as lodge librarian. You might say it was my first experience as curator of a Magical Antiquarian Curiosity Shoppe.

The first week I sat behind the library desk prior to convocation I took the opportunity to quiz my Rosicrucian elders as to the best books I could be reading as young adept-to-be. I purposefully singled out Greta, a frail oma in her mid-eighties. With her stooped posture and thick German accent, she struck me as the wisest and most mystical of all the blue-haired mind-readers. Smiling inscrutably, she didn't recommend a book. Instead she slyly suggested that I ask my master within during the silent meditation period during convocation.

Her answer was mystical enough, I must say, but I was actually looking for some real advice from her. I pretended to be pleased with her answer and told her I would do that. About a half hour later as I sat quietly in the darkened lodge room, breathing the wonderful rose incense and feeling like a very cool mystic, I sent out the silent question to my master within (whoever that was).

No master within answered, at least not in a way that I recognized as such. In fact, I was so distracted by the horrendous snoring issuing from the gaping mouth of an elderly Pass Master sitting opposite me in temple that not even Sibelius's sublime and beautiful The Swan of Tuonela meditation music could lift me above the maddening roar issuing that old Rosicrucian lion. My mind wandered to the old cartoons where snoring is indicated by a string of zzzzzzzzzzzz's coming out of the sleeping character's mouth. Not a very mystical answer to my prayer to the master within, I thought.

After convocation Greta came to my table and asked if I had received my answer. I didn't have the heart to tell her that all I could think about was how the old guy was ruining my meditation with his snoring. I quickly searched my brain for something truthful to tell her. The first thing that jumped into my mind was the cartoon z's, so I told her, "All I got the image of the letter Z."

"Zaaaa-noe-neeeeeeeee!" she dramatically hissed through her dentures (in the most beautiful accent). She pushed me aside, walked straight to the glass doors of the book cabinet, and almost without looking plucked a very old book off the shelf. It was an 1881 Zanoni, Complete in One Volume, by Lord Lytton. Even though it had first been published in 1842 in three volumes, the one old Greta handed me appeared to be a first edition of the work in a single volume. It was a very rare and relatively valuable book, and now I was stuck with the task of reading it whether I wanted to or not—and then reporting back to Greta.

I started reading it the moment I returned home from lodge. I was very impressed with the story. In fact, after only a few pages in I was giving full credit to my master within for so ingeniously tricking me into selecting it (a Rosicrucian miracle).

At first, I thought the love story angle was pretty corny. But I really adored the magic and the alchemy and the thought of people living for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. It was just the kind of story an adolescent mystic eats up—terrible spirits, guardians of the thresholds, wise masters, and disobedient students. Zanoni had everything. After a while I even fell for the beautiful girl myself.

I would soon leave the Rosicrucian Order AMORC for the stronger mystical meat of the Golden Dawn studies and the Magick of Aleister Crowley's O.T.O. and A∴A∴, but my appreciation for Zanoni and its remarkable author would only grow as the years passed. Lytton, who is perhaps best known as the author of The Last Days of Pompeii, penned Zanoni in 1842, a full generation before the founding of Blavatsky's Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He was friends with Alphonse Louis Constant (Eliphas Levi), and it appears from references he makes in Zanoni that it was likely he was familiar with the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage—again, a full generation before it saw an English translation. He didn't get this stuff from the nineteenth-century Rosicrucians—they got it from him!

For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, there are true magick and true magical secrets in Zanoni, so much magick that when Aleister Crowley in the Appendix to his classic text, Magick in Theory and Practice,² itemized some thirty-nine books, …principally fiction, of a generally suggestive and helpful kind, the book he chose to head the list was, "Zanoni, by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. Valuable for its facts and