Symonds says in another edition that at the time this sort of things couldn’t be too obviously cited on the cover and that in later works he was able to add more of the sexual magick stuff. Did the 1951 act have any effect on the publication of this book? Yes I think it did, notice that there is no mention of magick on the cover of the first edition. It's interesting that the book has gone through many incarnations and rewrites and is in the words of Colin Wilson ‘a kind of appalling classic’ (on the back cover of 1989 reprint as ‘The King of the Shadow Realm: Aleister Crowley: his life and magic’). Symonds is certainly right that it did no such thing, the very opposite in truth. There is no doubt that the widespread interest today (1973) in Aleister Crowley stems from ‘The Great Beast.’ (Preface to 1979 edition of The Great Beast)’ Germer said that the book would set the Order back a thousand years. The Order of Oriental Templars (or Order of the Templars of the East) is a small international body of adepts who practice sexual magic. ‘The head of the OTO at the time, Karl Germer was shocked when he read ‘The Great Beast’.
It was a time bomb that finally blew in the sixties. This was probably the most radical book of the times. 'The Great Beast: the life of Aleister Crowley’ (also published by Rider) first appeared on 20 November 1951 just a few months after the repeal of the UK's notorious Witchcraft Act. John Symonds lived a very long life despite authoring a controversial biography of Aleister Crowley that made him the target of hatemail.
0 kommentar(er)
