all text copyright Paul Cecil 1994
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The end of one story is the beginning of another. All things return to their root, and to begin we will visit the secret chamber of Hassan i Sabbah, Old Man of the Mountain and founder of the Ismaeli sect known throughout history as `The Assassins'. The date is May 23rd. The year, 1124. The place, Alamut, the Eagle's Nest set high in the mountains, just south of the Caspian Sea. We are safe here. Safe from the orthodoxies to the West, and from the Mongul hordes to the East. This is a city of refuge, and a base for transmitting. It is reputed to contain the greatest library in all Islam, a haven for the `word' in all its forms. Here one can find ancient manuscripts from all the world's traditions. And it is here that we find Hassan i Sabbah, the hero of our tale.
He is waiting for us in the same chamber he has occupied for 33 years since founding his mountain kingdom. 33 years, the time endured in this world by an earlier heretic some thousand odd years before. Another law breaker whose word struck fear into those who opposed.
Hassan i Sabbah is dying, but still he waits. Waiting for the moment to strike. And while he waits he dreams of the grand stratagem by which he secured this impenetrable retreat. How he bargained it for the skin of an ox, sliced so thin that its length could encompass the mountain. All the land contained in the skin was his. But he is dying and his life-blood will soon depart. He must speak with Kiya.
Reaching out from his bed, he beckons Kiya-Buzurg-Umid, his Grand Vizier, friend and chosen successor.
`Kiya, come close,' he whispers. `It is time to convey the secret.'
The Grand Vizier leans closer. The Old Man, his Master, has promised him this. Kiya draws up his robe to form a protective screen from prying eyes and inquisitive ears. These last words are for him alone.
Later they were to be recorded in Cities of the Red Night from which I now quote:
`It is said that an initiate who wishes to know the answer to any question need only repeat these words as he falls asleep and the answer will come in a dream....'
Rumour has it that `these words' were:
`Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted.'
Cut to 1958. Paris. Brion Gysin is casting a spell. Some 834 years have passed since Hassan's dying breaths. Hearing his story from Brion, William Burroughs adopts the Old Man's maxim as his own. Is he aware that the numerical value of `Alamut' according to mystical traditions is 483? Does he see the permutations begin to unwind?
Two years have passed and Brion is recording his permuted poetry for the BBC, famously achieving the second lowest audience on record. We pause to wonder who achieved less. Now that would be interesting.
Some years later Brion was to relate to Terry Wilson:
`The permutations discovered me – because permutations of course have been around for a long time; in the whole magic world permutations are part of the Cabalistic secret.'
`The Way Out is to permutate... Rub Out the Word' -
from The Process.
Retreat back 1000 years. A manuscript begins to circulate in esoteric circles. It is drawn from an ancient tradition and records the secret instructions of Creation. Scan text. Lock on to 2:3. Display:
`Twenty-two foundation letters: Engrave them, carve them, weigh them, and transpose them, Alef with them all. Permute them and with them form the soul of all that ever was formed, and the soul of all that ever will be formed.'
(Sefer Yetzirah - Chapter 2 verse 3)
We know that by 900 this text was circulating in Arabic. Hassan i Sabbah, educated with the highest of his day and versed in mysticism and magic, calls upon his scribes to prepare a copy for his library. He notes that central to this esoteric Book of Creation is the concept of `No-Thing', the root of all existence.
Permutate `Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted.' Full circle. 360 distinct phrases emerge.
Brion: `The Divine tautology came up at me off a page one day: I AM THAT I AM, and I saw that it was lopsided. I switched the last two words to get better architectural balance around the big THAT. There was a little click as I read from right to left and then permutated the other end. AM I THAT AM I? “It” asked a question. My ear ran away down the first one hundred and twenty simple permutations and I heard, I think, what Newton said he heard: a sort of wild pealing inside my head, like an ether experience, and I fell down.'
(from The Third Mind)
I AM THAT I AM, the ancient formula for the ineffable God, indefinable, the `No-Thing' of the ancients manifested, the root of all Creation. `It is said... that the answer will come in a dream.'
Hassan i Sabbah reaches out across the wastes of time and space from his eagle's retreat. The dry cackle of laughter emerges sometime in the 20th century. `For Burroughs, Brion was the only man he had ever respected, a regal impeccable presence without a trace of pretension, the only authentic heir to Hassan i Sabbah.' (Ted Morgan in Literary Outlaw)
Someone at last understands. The last words of Hassan i Sabbah:
‘No-thing is True. Everything is Permuted'
This has been the way of the oppressed throughout time. Utilise words, disguise, encode, indicate with hints: an oral tradition to be decoded through action. Action speaks louder. As William Burroughs has said, words restrict. They limit and distort consciousness at the moment of conception.
Nothing is True - Everything is Permitted. Phonically, the adjustment is almost nothing at all. Split the word.
Nothing = No-Thing.
Permitted = Permuted
In the semitic languages of the mystics there are no vowels. Meaning depends on HOW you say the word, not how it is written. This is the root of the division of occult and mystical schools. Truth resolved on the sound of the word. Hassan i Sabbah knew this.
Brion Gysin, at the close of The Process, recalls the words (written) of Kashf Ul-Haqa'iq from the 13th century:
Of one hundred thousand men there may be one who knows and, of a hundred thousand things he knows, there may be one he should utter. Of the one hundred thousand things he utters there may be one he should write. If my own opinion had been set down in this book, both friend and foe might learn of it...
`In other days, the initiate confided their secrets only to those they considered competent, swearing them to the secret... The initiate ... have obtained their knowledge... through personal association with those who knew. Therefore, he who seeks the mysteries and the realities, must seek out someone who knows for, from the book alone, nothing emerges.'
`Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted' -
the last words of Hassan i Sabbah.
I have suggested that in his actions Brion Gysin revealed the secrets of Hassan i Sabbah's last words. Similarly, that William Burroughs has indicated their value as a direct link to answers through dream. My experience is that he is correct. During the preparation of the following texts I experimented with the decoded variant `No-Thing is True. Everything is Permuted'. My dream that night took me a city of refuge, a place of dead roads where dreams meet with reality and an Old Man presides. He showed me the history of his exile drawn upon a frieze in his citadel. He showed the figure of Tamerlaine whose name I mistook for that of a Christian Saint but who on examination turned out to be a descendent of the Mongul Warrior Genghis Khan, and as feared and ruthless as his forebear.
If I read the story correctly, he was telling of the tragedy of barbarism his Assassins fought to stem, of the need to believe in the transmission of a survival plan, the need to be silent in the night and invisible in the day. To exist unknown to those who would thwart his way, his progress through and beyond the constraints of Time.
The word writes and re-writes itself. It is no coincidence that the means of magic is the `spell' and that it is found in the words we use.
`And God said “Let there be Light”. And there was Light.'
Creation as an act of speech.
Abracadabra: translated literally this means `I will create as I speak'.
On letters and words the Sefer Yetzirah instructs us to `permute'.
Brion Gysin proclaimed `Rub Out the Word' ; and permuted.
`Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted' produces 360 distinct formulations, completing each degree of the circle. The beginning is in the end, and the end is in the beginning.
The word as virus.
So he says as he dies, `Nothing is True,' and in so saying directs us to look beyond the outer form of the words. He begins by telling us that what he is saying is NOT what he means, because if nothing is true, then neither is this final message. Perhaps the confusion between `permitted' and `permuted' is the result of mistranslation or transcription, but perhaps not. We will never know, for the archives of Alamut were destroyed and no accurate record survives. But I choose to believe that it matters not whether it was a deliberate obfuscation or merely erroneous. Those who know will know. And those who don't will not.
But re-formulating the phrase gets us out of the mire of nihilism, and by design or by chance, the virus set loose on May 23 1124 re-emerged through the words and actions of Brion Gysin and William Burroughs.
In their collaborative book, The Third Mind, it is written:
Permutations for 5 things, any 5, from... “I am that I am” to 5 pistol shots at a distance of 1 meter, 2 meters, 3 meters, 4 meters, 5 meters. Permutate them, and you have my “Pistol Poem”, the most percussive of our time.
The permutational poems in the later pages of this book represent my own formulation of the 5-fold Pistol Poem, structurally produced according to the scheme of the 12th century qabalists and based on the ancient Book of Creation. Some are re-produced from the words of Brion Gysin and William Burroughs, some are not. The longer permutation of `Nothing is True Everything is Permitted' is tentatively titled `The Sawn-off Shotgun Poem' indicating a truncated 6-fold permutation and its violent origins. The repeated forms produced by the repetition of the `is' were deleted for reasons of space.
The grids for all these permutations were generated manually. Observe the pattern of the last 3 words in any sequence. The basic scheme is:
1234 1243 1342 1324 1423 1432
The next line begins: 2341, and so forth. Everything acts as its own mirror. We are turning circles in Time. Type in a grid on any WP and use the search and replace keys to generate new formulations at will.
A 5-fold permutation produces 120 variant forms, 6-fold gives 720, and 7-fold 5040 distinct units.
Reading the variations out loud, like a rap, discloses their inherent rhythmic forms and meanings.
No-Thing is True. Everything is Permuted.
Last Words of Hassan i Sabbah.
Paul Cecil
Brighton 23.01.94
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all text copyright Paul Cecil 1994