Daughter of Sunset Updates

A new biography of Aleister Crowley by Tobias Churton is scheduled for publication in September 2011. The book supposedly includes a wealth of new material and it is significant that it is highly recommended by the Frater Superior of the O.T.O., while the Foreword is written by Christopher Macintosh, a highly respected scholar of western esotericism and the author of Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival.

Aleister Crowley: The Biography may be pre-ordered through Amazon.ca.

Brother Curwen, Brother Crowley: A Correspondence, edited & with an Introduction by Henrik Bogdan, Foreword by Tony Mathews (York Beach, ME: Teitan Press, 2010) is a fascinating book about a little known episode in the life of Crowley, involving his dealing with a person whose very existence was doubted by some people. Readers of Kenneth Grant’s voluminous opus will be familiar with the character, sometimes referred to as the Alchemist, who supposedly transmitted to him the ‘real’ tantric teachings (of the Kaula system left-hand path). The Alchemist, also known under his magical name of Anu Abthilal, was also the last person whom Crowley initiated into the IX degree of the O.T.O. In his book Remembering Aleister Crowley (London: Skoob, 1991), Grant revealed the identity of this person as David Curwen. Now at last we have a chance to find out more about him, as his correspondence with Crowley is finally published.

Judged by this correspondence, Curwen seemed to have been a hard nut. Already more than fifty years old, he exhibited a stubborn and down-to-earth mercantile mentality. His initial letters were related to the then recently published The Book of Thoth by Crowley, but soon the focus turned to the OTO and its mysteries. Curwen, constantly afraid of being made a fool of and wary of the financial involvement, insisted on definite answers and expected the ultimate secrets of the O.T.O. to be delivered on the spot as if they were a stock of fur in which he was trading. Crowley on his part kept insisting that the secrets were real but that they needed to be practiced in order to be appreciated. There was a good deal of mutual mistrust and communication breakdown between these two strange and opinionated individuals. One thing which is striking, however, is the lucidity of Crowley’s mind, who was at the time in his seventies. This fact stands in sharp contrast against the urban legend of a  broken-down Crowley in his old age.

The book is a well-produced hard-cover volume, in the already well-established tradition of excellence associated with Teitan Press. Curwen’s grandson, Tony Mathews, has supplied an interesting Forward, while Henrik Bogdan penned an excellent  Introduction and provided erudite notes to the text. (Interested readers may also wish to consult Bogdan’s well-received and highly informative Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation [SUNY Press, 2008]). This edition is limited to 777 copies so if you are interested, you should act fast and order your copy soon.

Thanks to Frater Iskandar:

There is something distinctly apocalyptic about the collection of essays published by Scarlet Imprint under the Roman numeral title of XVI, associated with the 16th card in the Tarot deck, otherwise known as “The Tower,” or “The House of God.” Sixteen authors muse on the meaning of the card, taking it as the point of departure in order to discuss the perceived collapse of our present civilization, the ecological and economic crisis, and magical ways of coping with the end of the ‘age of exuberance,’ the breakdown of authority, and the initiatic experience of the dissolution of one’s own sense of separate identity. The writers and the writing are at the cutting edge of the contemporary magical current, informed inevitably and clearly by Crowley and Thelema. The opinions are diverse and the views often verge on disturbing: there is certainly nothing in the book that would be acceptable to everyone, and that is as it should be. The overall message is however clear: it’s the end of the world as we know it, whether we like it or not. In the words of Peter Grey, one of the two principal editors of the collection, and the co-owner of the Scarlet Imprint, “If there is one piece of alchemical arithmetic you need to take away from this entire book, it is this: for every one calorie of food produced, ten calories of oil are needed to produce it” (“Seeing Through Apocalypse,” 92; emphasis in the original). You do the math.

It would be inaccurate, however, to think that this is a volume of gloom. Quite the opposite, the bulk of the essays urge towards action: magical, political, ecological, erotic, you name it. To quote Peter Grey again, “In opposition to the Tower we raise the image of the maypole. A living symbol on a human scale. An image of resistance ” (“Forwarned,” iii; you can read this text here). In a similar vein, Peter Carroll suggests the following as a vision of an alternative state of affairs: “Imagine a society where neighborhoods had their own magical temples where people could come to learn and practice meditation, visualization, trance, ritual, invocation, enchantment and divination, free from theological dogma, purely as mental techniques” (“”Eschaton,” 250).

On a more technical note, the book is a beautifully produced hard-cover volume graced by a black-and white rendition of “The Tower,” executed by Kyle Fite (whose personal gallery may be viewed on the Lashtal site, where Fite appears under the nom de plume ‘Kidneyhawk’).

Highly recommended. But be forewarned: “By the mere possession of this book, you too are implicated” (Grey, “Forewarned,” iii).

A special thanks to guest poster Fr. Iskandar for this item:

Students of things esoteric, Eastern and Western alike, will probably find these two new titles of special interest.

One is a biography by Robert Love, The Great Oom:  The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America (New York: Viking, 2010), briefly reviewed by the New Yorker. The Great Oom was a name the press gave to Dr. Pierre Bernard, the founder of the American Tantrik Order, a yoga aficionado, an adventurer, and a lady’s man, who was also recently talked about by Dr. Richard Kaczynski in his lecture on Victorian Sex Magic that he presented under the aegis of the Daughter of Sunset Oasis, here in Vancouver. To quote from the cover:

Reviving a forgotten tale of mysticism, intrigue, and the American dream, The Great Oom traces the practice of yoga from Bernard’s moonlit ‘Tantrik’ rituals in 1890s San Francisco to its arrival in New York City, where his teachings were adopted by the Wall Street barons ad Gilded Age heiresses who would bankroll his luxurious Jazz Age ashram on the Hudson River – the first in the nation. With celebrities like Leopold Stokowski hitting the mat with Vanderbilts, Goodriches, and Great War spies, Bernard’s brand of yoga (which initiates signed their names in blood to learn) was reviled as much as it was revered.

An essential and fun read on an important subject.

The other title is Aleister Crowley, The Drug and Other Stories (Wordsworth Editions, 2010), forthcoming in September this year. A collection of 49 stories by Crowley, some of them never published before, issued in a popular edition (Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural) by a respected publisher, with the foreword by David Tibet and Introduction by William Breeze, with the more than affordable price of only $4.57, this is a publication that many of us will  eagerly anticipate.