Starr, Martin P.:
The Unknown God: W(ilfred) T(albot) Smith and the Thelemites. The Teitan Press, Bolingbrook, Illinois 2003. Gr.-8°. With 35 b/w photographs. xii, 416 S., 2 (w) Blue cloth binding with gilt spine, gilt lamen on cover and original dust jacket.
Starr, Martin P.: The Unknown God: W(ilfred) T(albot) Smith and the Thelemites. The Teitan Press, Bolingbrook, Illinois 2003. Gr.-8°. With 35 b/w photographs. xii, 416 S., 2 (w) Blue cloth binding with gilt spine, gilt lamen on cover and original dust jacket.
First Edition. – “The first documentary study of Aleister Crowley’s contemporary followers in North America, told through the life of their de facto leader, Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885-1957). Smith, the unacknowledged offspring of a prominent English family, emigrated to Canada where he encountered Charles Stansfeld Jones, and through him, the works of Aleister Crowley. Although Crowley and Smith met only once, their twenty year correspondence proved to be a major link to the few and the faithful attracted to Crowley’s work in the United States and Canada. Smith’s spiritual life centered first on the initiatic structure of the Order of the A.·.A.·., soon complemented by the emerging fraternal and social schemes of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). Smith followed Jones into a few long-forgotten movements like the Universal Brotherhood and the Psychomagian Society, but he declined membership in C.F. Russell’s Choronzon Club. To promulgate the Crowleyan teachings, in 1934 Smith incorporated his own “Church of Thelema” – known to Los Angeles newspaper readers as the “Purple Cult”. The following year he initiated OTO activity in Los Angeles which attracted its own cast of occult characters. Smith’s life reached a strange conclusion when Crowley, taking a page from Louis Bromfield’s novel “The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg” and combining it with a reading of Smith’s natal chart, sent him off on a retreat to determine which God he was incarnating. It was a journey from which Frater 132 never returned… (Klappentext). – Contents: Prologue. The Skeleton in the Cupboard. First Steps. British Columbia Lodge No. 1. Isis Therion and Hilarion. A Master of the Temple. In the Red Room of Rose Croix. Nemo abest. The Detroit Working. Viator in Regnis Arboris. New Orders for the Ages. Psychomagia. The end of the beginning. Jane Kath and Leota. Salve Regina. Rosicrucian Amity. Chants before Battle. Ten-O-Three. Apotheosis. Hoc Id Est. Epilogue. With Appendixes and Index. – Copy in near mint condition.
- Catalog: Aleister Crowley & Golden Dawn
- Language: English (en)
- Order Number: 014163
Price: 580,00 €