Occult & Esoteric Book Arts
[CROWLEY, Aleister] The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (Unique Full Leather Binding)
[CROWLEY, Aleister] The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (Unique Full Leather Binding)
Translated Into the English Tongue by a Dead Hand [S. L. MacGregor Mathers] and Adorned with Divers Other Matters Germane Delightful to the Wise
[UK]: Hell Fire Club Books. Facsimile Edition. Hardcover, issued without dust jacket. Quarto. Oddly paginated (about 90 total pages). Fantastic custom binding in full polished maroon leather with the sigil of the demon Marchosias raised in blind (with animal sinew) to upper right front. The boards along both sides of spine are also laced with animal sinew. There is a blind “666” at foot of spine. All edges stained red. Marbled endpapers with book title label on front free endpaper. This Hell Fire Club edition was limited to a total of 72 numbered copies, each designated by the name and number of one of the 72 demons of the Goetia. According to a sheet which is laid in, showing an e-mail exchange between the publisher and Clive Harper (former owner), this copy was specifically bound for Clive. This copy is for the 35th spirit: Marchosias, indicated on the verso of the title page, along with his sigil. There is a short Latin phrase and an inscription to Clive Harper, signed by the publisher on same page. 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. Clive Harper’s ex-libris ticket is tipped in at end of volume. It remains unknown if any other copies of the total edition of 72 were bound like this one in full leather with the raised demon sigil. This is the first and only copy like this I’ve seen. Note: for whatever reason, it is difficult to get a decent photo of the binding that would actually do it justice. A fine volume in a magnificent, unique , and potentially, one-of-a-kind binding.
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.