Kenneth Grant First Edition Cults of Shadow
$160
Out of stock
Description
Grant, Kenneth. Cults Of The Shadow. Samuel Weiser Inc. New York. 1976.
The First American edition of Kenneth Grant’s iconic exploration of dark magic, this text includes examinations of both his mentors, Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, and Chicago’s secretive Cult of the Black Serpent led by gnostic voodoo priest Michael Bertiaux.
Relentlessly exploratory and experimental Kenneth Grant, Crowley’s personal secretary in the last years of his life and a friend and patron to Austin Osman Spare in his old age, expelled from Crowley’s para-masonic magical organization, the Ordo Templi Orientis, by its second leader Karl Germer for incorporating elements of Tantra and the work of HP Lovecraft into practices the order considers sacred.
Following Germer’s death, Grant declared himself the new head of the OTO in 1969 only to have his claims disputed and ignored by the group’s new leadership. Founding his own group, the Typhonian OTO, Grant went on to an illustrious career in occult circles, particularly noted for this two Typhonian book trilogies, of which this volume marks the end of the first. Cults of the Shadow is particularly noted for being one of the most in depth sources on the beliefs and practices of Michael Bertiaux’s Gnostic Voudon movement, which was limited to internal course material prior to the publication of the Voudon Gnostic Workbook.
Grant died in 2011, followed in 2019 by his wife and collaborator Steffi Grant, a noted artist and thinker in her own right. In addition to introducing her husband to Austin Osman Spare, Steffi Grant contributed artwork for all his books including this one’s frontispiece and dust jacket cover, “Lycanthropy”.
8vo. pp208 + glossary and index. Black cloth boards with title, publisher, author and OTO seal gilt in silver on spine. Two small scuffs to front board. Bookblock lightly spotted, endpapers and pastedowns darkened. Pages clean and legible. Very good condition. Dust jacket clean with wear to top and bottom edges. Top and bottom spine and fore corners worn, small tear along top spine near joints. Discoloration to interior. Very good condition. 22 illustrations.
