A font system for occultists and more from the author of “A Little Orphic Initiation: Three Easy Pieces for Prose, Poetry, and Piano”
Disclosure: I know the author/compiler of this text and software personally and work with them professionally. Nonetheless, I will endeavor to be as objective as possible.
“The Hierographicon” by Cory C. Childs, billed as a “Technical Toolkit for Esoteric Artist and Academic Esoteric Alike”, is actually a compilation of several texts, separated using a schema based upon the Greek Muses, an ennead of goddesses that, according to Hesiod, are the children of Zeus, king of the Olympians, and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. From this divine origin comes art in all its forms, and each muse is reflected in the present text as different aspects of the work are brought to light.
At the core of the work is the font system (for that is the only word I can use here, for this is no mere font) which is linked to at the beginning of the text and available free of charge. The installer for the font also installs a shortcut to activate the massive and complex system of shortcuts that make the font system usable.
As an offering, especially a free offering, the font system is excellent. It allows for a single Windows installation for an extensive number of languages and symbol sets useful to occultists (note that while I am sure classicists, philologists, and folklorists—among others—may benefit from this font system as well, I am primarily speaking as an occultist writing for other occultists). This font system works in any Unicode-based writing software (though, as noted in the text, it will argue with Microsoft Word’s shortcuts…solutions are offered within the text) and, for those with an urge to get under the hood, the entire Unicode specification document is included.
The use case given by our author for the font system is that of an occultist researching a particular spell in the PGM (the “Greek Magical Papyri”), which almost certainly contains several ancient languages the reader does not know. Speaking from experience, this can be a difficult task involving several reference texts in addition to the PGM itself, and part of why it is so difficult is because until now it has been nearly impossible to take accurate notes for later research and reference. This font system makes this laborious process much easier, allowing the working occultist to note down accurately exactly what the text says in a document for later work, which saves time and energy for the actual research required to make sense of the spell and make it useable.
The font system itself is articulated in to several subsystems, which are helpfully explained by the Muses in turn. In addition, several appendices are included. This is where our dear author shows their impishness as well as their literary ability. Among the appendices are works by the odd and interesting author of the 19th century, Isaac Preston Cory, with whom our author clearly feels a peculiar kinship and with which the average reader may feel varying degrees of interest, but the real gem of the work, at least from an aesthetic point of view, is our author’s brilliant and scintillating literary offering satirizing the best and worst of our little occult community.
About halfway through the book, in section Ω, right after the “Agrippa’s Pseudo-Koryphanean Alphabetic Correspondences” and right before “Orphicum Fragmenta” sits the sort of long, fantastical riff one would expect to run into into in the best of William S. Burroughs on a real good fix (think “Interzone”, “Nova Express”, or, of course, “Naked Lunch”) where the reader is led through a goth club filled with a menagerie of magickal helpers and hazards. While it is a short piece wedged in among the “real material” on offer here, I feel like this jazz solo of a short story can stand alone on its own merits.
All in all, “The Hierographicon” is an interesting, if uneven, contribution to occult literature. The font system will, I am sure, prove invaluable to many, and the various appendices are interesting enough to support their added weight. Well worth the price.
“The Hierographicon” by Cory C. Childs can be purchased on Amazon here (not an affiliate link): https://a.co/d/68rUK14