The
Beast as Literary Gent
Few more nightmarish figures stalk through the pages of English literature than Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947). Born at Leamington Spa, son of strict Plymouth Brethren, he attended Cambridge University where he acquired a reputation as a poet and dabbler in the occult. Leaving university, he joined the Order of the Golden Dawn, explored China and India, organised mountaineering expeditions, wove spells and scandals. An outre figure in Edwardian London, he was acquainted with W.B. Yeats – thought his work ‘lacked virility’ – Arnold Bennet and Somerset Maugham; the latter made him the centrepiece of his sensational bestseller The Magician.
A man of strong appetites, Crowley smoked hashish, sniffed cocaine and indulged in every variety of sexual rite. As England’s leading ‘magician’, he worshipped at strange shrines. As a climber he scaled the high peaks of the world. As traveller and scholar, he scowered remote corners of the globe, absorbing exotic foods and religious practices. Having frittered away a fortune, in old age he designed a special tarot pack and was cremated at Brighton in 1947. His greatest achievement - in his own view and those of his scattered folowers - was founding a new solar-phallic religion based upon self-determination or ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ and ‘Every Man and Every Woman is a Star’, the first invoking destiny and purpose, the second emphasising the unique, separate status of each living soul.
When he died,
Crowley left behind mass of poems, essays, lyrics, meditations and
narratives that few scholars have ever bothered to sift through. In this
latest study, Paul Newman dives into the occult mire and fishes out gems
and grotesqueries that are by turns ethereal, sublime, pornographic and
horrifying in their bitterness and revulsion. But not only does this book
assess the poetry and prose, it relates Crowley to contemporaries like
Rupert Brooke and G.K. Chesterton and establishes an even broader context,
by surveying the cult of the Great God Pan, affecting both major European
writers and English novelists like E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence and Arthur
Machen.
- A
bold, startling critical examination of the poems, plays, essays and
travel writings of Aleister Crowley. This study beats a pathway
through regions never travelled before. Everything may be found here,
lyrical raptures, meditations on cocaine, the glories of Moscow and
the madness of Pan.
- For further information Email Lord Crashingbore
Order direct at: Online Catalogue