Peter Levenda - The Dark Lord: H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic

One of the least understood manifestations of Thelemic thought may be found in the works of Kenneth Grant, the British occultist and one-time intimate of Aleister Crowley, who discovered a hidden world within the primary source materials of Crowley's Aeon of Horus. Using complementary texts from such disparate authors as H. P. Lovecraft, Jack Parsons, Austin Osman Spare, and Charles Stansfeld Jones (Frater Achad), Grant formulated a system of magic that expanded upon that delineated in the rituals of the OTO: a system that included elements of Tantra, of Voudon, and in particular that of the Schlangekraft recension of the Necronomicon, all woven together in a dark tapestry of power and illumination.

Author Peter Levenda posits a mystic alliance between the thematic content of Lovecraft's fiction and the magical writings of the primary exponent of the Law of Thelema, Aleister Crowley. Levenda explores the roots of the beliefs and doctrines Crowley utilized to develop his system. And he plumbs the depths of Lovecraft's fears. The reader may expect to be introduced to Yoga and Buddhism, Gnosticism,

Published in 2013 by Ibis Press

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Copyright 2013 by Peter Levenda

Rosaleen Norton artworks copyright Walter Glover.

Cover painting reproduced by kind permission.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

JAMES WASSERMAN

17. Now shalt thou adore me who am the Eye and the Tooth, the Goat of the Spirit, the Lord of Creation. I am the Eye in the Triangle, the Silver Star that ye adore.

18. I am Baphomet, that is the Eightfold Word that shall be equilibrated with the Three.

23. I am the hideous god, and who mastereth me is uglier than I.

27. Whom I love I chastise with many rods.

Liber A'ash vel Capricorni Pneumatici

T HIS IS A WORK OF HERESY, a book meant to challenge. What else would the reader expect from that Dark Lord who inhabits the most primal and hidden depths of the unconscious? The Lord of the Shadow Realm, whose very existence has been hysterically lambasted as an evil aberration, who has been conceived as blasphemous and terrifying since people first sat around campfires near the openings to their caves, whose devotees have ever been feared and hunted. The Enemy, the Other, the Adversary, He who inhabits the undiscovered territory which must be charted and mapped by any who wish to consider themselves worthy explorers of the psyche. Lovecraft has warned us against these dark mysteries in the most dramatic terms. Crowley assumed the mask of the Beast 666 to frighten away the shy, the reticent, the cowardly. Kenneth Grant celebrated this archetype in an almost frenzied literary oeuvre that straddles the lines between scholarly discourse, imaginative fiction, and poetic invocation.

In The Dark Lord, Peter Levenda, has, once again, applied his considerable erudition and creative mind and pen to the unity of various streams of consciousness. Describing what he calls the tip of an eldritch iceberg, Levenda posits a mystic alliance between the thematic content of the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and the magical writings of Aleister Crowley, and makes a compelling case for the confluence of events that existed in real time between their efforts.

Crowley is known as the Prophet of the New Aeon, inaugurated in 1904, the founder of the magical system and religion of Thelema. His sweeping intellect and spiritual exaltation allowed him to explore and synthesize all the world's then-known sacred beliefs and practices and distill their essence into his own system of Scientific Illuminismthe Method of Science, the Aim of Religion. Scientific Illuminism has proven to be a perfect paradigm for our modern world, in which images and information travel with the speed of the electron, and the established religions have become increasingly irrelevant.

The dimensions explored by Lovecraft's fevered imagination continue to haunt and resonate in popular culture nearly a century later. Lovecraft's words and phantasms are a staple of derivative modern fiction, graphic novels, art, film, and music. The extraordinary popularity of Simon's Necronomicon (over one million copies in print since 1977!) is a case in point. The talented painter H. R. Geiger has brought Lovecraft's terrifying visions to life in his own artistic Necronomicon. The brilliant Australian artist Rosaleen Norton, whose compelling painting of the Dark Lord is featured on the jacket of this book, was another adept of the Darkly Splendid Worlds.

Kenneth Grant, the British writer and occultist, shared Levenda's fascination with both Crowley and Lovecraft. Grant is celebrated the world over for his biographies of Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Sparewho each served as teachers and guides to the young magician. Yet it is Grant's writing on the Typhonian Gnosis that captures Levenda's attention in these pages. Grant's embrace of the hidden byways of imagery and symbolism, and the obscure and antinomian practices of widely divergent peoples the world over, evoke the darker dimensions of the shadow-self of humankind.

Levenda conducts a veritable symphony with strains of religious and esoteric knowledge as he explores the roots of the beliefs and doctrines Crowley utilized to develop his system of Thelema. The reader may expect to be introduced to Yoga and Buddhism, Tantra and Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Alchemy, and Egyptology, Confucianism, Daoism, and Afro-Caribbean magic, as well as the more-familiar Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. You will walk through ancient Sumerian temples of the third millennium BCE, participate in the magical circles of the nineteenth century Golden Dawn, and witness contemporary rites of the Typhonian Order. You will learn details about the shadow side of myth that never quite made it into your copy of Larousse or Bullfinch. Nor is Levenda's discussion of Tantra what your mother understood as the ritual of the five M's.

This book will be of interest to people across a variety of disciplines. Fans of Lovecraft will find his worldview explored in ways that may shock or frighten. They will learn that Lovecraft's fearful fantasies may have a greater connection to reality than they might have hoped. Certainly, readers of Kenneth Grant will be delighted to have the mysteries of his writings made more clear by Levenda's penetrating explication and high regard for Grant. One can imagine Grant himself smiling with satisfaction in the Field of Reeds as he reviews Levenda's analysis of the complex ideas he worked so hard to communicate during his lifetime. Students of Crowley are in for a whirlwind ride of speculation, insight, historical, mythic, and spiritual associations that will enlighten and entertain, as they may also stimulate intense disagreement. (Since Levenda discusses