Occult & Esoterica
[CROWLEY, Aleister] The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (one of 72 copies, "for Mr. Page")
[CROWLEY, Aleister] The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (one of 72 copies, "for Mr. Page")
Translated Into the English Tongue by a Dead Hand and Adorned with Divers Other Matters Germane Delightful to the Wise
[UK]: Hell Fire Club Books. Facsimile Edition. Hardcover. Quarto. Oddly paginated (about 90 total pages). Bound in quarter maroon leather over black boards with a title sheet pasted to upper front panel. This edition is limited to 72 copies each designated by the number of one of the 72 demons of the Goetia. This copy is for the 48th spirit: Haagenti, indicated on the title page, along with his sigil. Some other copies of this edition included a small talisman on vellum which was pasted onto the limitation page. This copy has no talisman but rather has a small red sheet showing an amulet. This sheet is laid in and not pasted in. There is an interesting inscription which includes a short phrase in Latin followed by "To Mr. Page (one copy!)" and then initialed by the publisher. Now of course, many of us know of a certain Mr. Page so feel free to speculate on what this inscription may or may not mean. I can't confirm anything about it. The book is illustrated with tables of seals and sigils plus drawings of spirits, magical formulae, and marginalia, both from Crowley's and J.F.C. Fuller's personal copies. A fine copy, issued without dust jacket.
This is a facsimile of Aleister Crowleys own vellum-bound volume with annotations in his hand housed at the Warburg Institute University of London, containing copious notes, drawings of spirits and magical formulae both from Crowleys vellum copy and from a camels-hair binding copy owned by his friend and disciple J.F.C. Fuller.The volume opens with a curious self-portrait of Aleister Crowley in his magical persona of ‘Perdurabo’, evoking the great demon Paimon to visible appearance, above him is inscribed his magical motto with the grade 5’=6’ of the A.A. magical tradition, derived in part from the teaching structure of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley shows himself holding the feather of truth, and wearing the symbolic horns and side-curl. Paimon is shown here as described in the Lemegeton, astride a dromedary rearing up out of the Triangle of art. Opposite the sketch is a series of notes dated to 1903 covering letter and number symbolism, below is a paragraph of notes by the collector and Crowley disciple Gerald Yorke (from whose collection the book originally came) detailing the history of the volume. The ‘Preliminary Invocation’ of the GOETIA, used by Crowley to summon aerial spirits prior to reception of the Book of the Law, is heavily annotated both in the hand of Crowley and of J.F.C.Fuller. These annotations and ciphers reveal potent A.A. and O.T.O. magical formulae later given formal expression in Crowleys advanced magical instruction paper ‘Liber Samekh’ published in ‘Magick in Theory and Practise’ [1929], and in the ‘Liber Pyramidos’, both aimed at uniting the initiates consciousness with his Holy Guardian Angel through magical and tantric means. Much light is shed upon crowleys later teachings, a detailed study of these notes and their placement to the text shows the ideas breaking upon Crowley's mind. A great deal of similarities are revealed between these psycho-sexual prtactises of Crowley's personal formulae and the inner spiritual teachings infused into the Golden Dawn by Crowley's friend and early mentor Allen Bennett, whose early G.D. paper on the ‘Bornless One’ shows Bennett's contributions. Throughout the rest of the work Crowley's sketches of demonic entities jostle with the text, beings he saw and conversed with press against the margins of the book as against the borders of the mind. Included in the annotations is Fuller's inscribed copy of a series of demonic entities ‘…seen by W.B.Yeats wife at a Ghost-Club dinner…’ and which were later printed in Crowley's pseudepigraphic ‘Bagh-i-Muattar’, the pornographic work dubbed ‘The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz’, privately printed by Crowley in 1910 where he refers to them as the clairvoyant results of ‘…a well-known Irish lady…’ After the unique set of Enochian translations of the Goetic conjurations printed by Crowley at the rear of the volume, there are three pages of Enochian Calls in the hand of Crowley's mistress, the scarlet Woman Aloestrael, or Leah Hirsig, inserted into which is a series of seven talismans used by Crowley at his ‘Temple of L.I.L.’ in Mexico. A lovely edition of this classic work.