A E M Baumann

The Knossian Oracles A E M Baumann

The Knossian Oracles is a journey in the traditions of myth and magic; in the erotic; in literary fantasy; and in poetic invention. Its themes rest heavily in the esoteric: from alchemy to mysticism, to traditions of witchcraft and the occult, and to myth, tapping many sources, but especially the tales of Daedalus and Pasiphäe, Theseus and Ariadne. However, while the book is woven from literary fantasy, the thread that unifies it is the characters of a contemporary man and woman. Through those characters and their many incarnations, The Knossian Oracles explores (what may be) its central theme: the hieros gamos, the union of the eternal masculine and eternal feminine. As an erotic work it takes up in words what is an important theme in the plastic arts: the female form. And it is not false to call The Knossian Oracles a meditation on beauty. Some may even say it is best described as a love poem in long form, though that may be putting to the fore what is an inevitable current within all the previous. Though, with The Knossian Oracles, how can you begin to distinguish what in the above is current and what is river?

While The Knossian Oracles is constituted of eighty-three "fragments" plus the seven part poem that brings the work to a close, it has development and progression, scenes and characters. It is not, however, a novel-in-verse: it does not have a plot as found in a novel, nor is it uniform in style. The fragments vary greatly, from the formal to the experimental, from the lyrical to the narrative, from the very brief to the somewhat long. Creating a unity of these stylistically disparate and thematically ranging parts is one of the endeavors of the work. This is not a collection of verse. It is a book. And a book like none other.