Tag Archives: biography

Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography

Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography by Ilse Ollendorff Reich, introduction by Paul Goodman, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

Ilse Ollendorff Reich Wilhelm Reich A Personal Biography

“His books and papers were being burned by order of a United States court. he was in a federal penitentiary, in disgrace, his sanity questioned. Seminal works such as Character Analysis, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, The Murder of Christ, were being obliterated by the government of the United States. Yet it was Wilhelm Reich’s faith that history would justify him, that his cause would prevail.

Now Reich’s central ideas: the need of individual freedom and autonomy and the the elimination of psychic ‘armor’—cramped, self-limiting defences against human contact—and the identification of social and political forces as either life-serving or destructive of life, are being discovered by a generation which questions the conventional wisdom it has been handed. Wilhelm Reich has become an important source of ideas for young radicals and his books have been re-issued and are widely read. Ilse Ollendorff Reich has now set down the moving story of her late husband’s life and work, his torments and his triumphs, his theories and the controversies that surrounded them. Her book will inspire and enlighten a world that is only now discovering its indebtedness to Reich.” — back cover

The Magic of Aleister Crowley

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Magic of Aleister Crowley by John Symonds.

John Symonds The Magic of Aleister Crowley

This book was issued after the first edition of Symonds’ original Crowley bio The Great Beast, and the later revised edition of The Great Beast claimed to include the contents of The Magic of AC. But that was only partially true. About 60% of The Magic consists of biographical material that Symonds had not included in The Great Beast, particularly drawn from Crowley’s records of his major magical operations, such as “The Ab-ul-Diz Working” and “The Paris Working.” These passages were later integrated with the main biography, as advertised. But this material is more reliably approached through the primary documents in The Equinox IV (2) (The Vision & the Voice, with Commentary and Other Papers), of course.

What serious students will find most interesting is the other 40% of Symonds’ The Magic of AC, in which he describes the manner in which he ingratiated himself to the elderly Prophet of the Aeon. There is a curious repeated pattern, in which Crowley invites Symonds out to Netherwood, and Symonds brings along an uninvited guest as a companion. Symonds writes that “Crowley was someone to see and to talk about afterwards,” as if the old magician were a stage play for his amusement. Despite his protestations that he found Crowley entertaining in a sort of pathetic way, it looks like Symonds was genuinely afraid of him. His poor wife Margaret certainly was, and the account of Symonds arm-twisting her into a visit makes for gruesome reading. After several visits with Crowley, having read The Book of the Law and The Equinox of the Gods which Crowley gave him as gifts, Symonds still doesn’t seem to know the word Thelema, instead going on contemptuously about “Crowleyism” and “Crowleyanity.” Symonds patently deceives Crowley into thinking that he is willing to help on such projects as a new Thelemic commune (“The Green Lion”), playing him along, rather than being honest with him. He whines about getting involved in the publication of Olla, when he volunteered to help. And then he treats his assignment as literary executor as a surprising stroke of luck, when his intention to write a saleable biography of Crowley had been declared to the reader (but not to Crowley) from the outset.

Symonds once accused Crowley of being a man with no superego or conscience of any kind. He often remarked how Crowley seemed utterly mystified by why other people should consider him evil. I rather think, after reading The Magic of Aleister Crowley, that the description better fits Symonds himself. He seems to have thought that readers would consider him fully justified in lying to an eccentric old man whom he intended to use as literary fodder. So today Symonds is an elderly author living in England. If only two wrongs could make a right… [via]


Eminent Victorian Chess Players

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews Eminent Victorian Chess Players: Ten Biographies by Tim Harding.

Tim Harding Eminent Victorian Chess Players

This book took me approximately forever to read. The prose style is clear and accessible; there’s just so very much information, and I was trying to appreciate it all at one go, interminably extended, as it turned out. Even so, I have not yet not much explored the appendices (of which the most entertaining promises to be Appendix VI on “The Career of Mephisto,” a chess pseudo-automaton sometimes operated by the player Isidor Gunsberg). Each biography contains an assortment of chess games actually played by the player under study, usually with annotations. I am a mediocre player myself, though I enjoy the game, and working through even a quarter to a third of these, as I think I did, hugely added to the time that I spent with this book. Beyond the diagrams for games, the book is extensively illustrated in black and white with photo and sketch portraits, and reproductions of primary documents.

Eminent Victorian Chess Players embraces a wealth of detail. The editorial apparatus is bracingly thorough, including multiple indices. The included games are all indexed by opening! The ten players treated are Evans, Staunton, Loewenthal, Bird, Skipworth, Steinitz, Blackburne, Zuckertort, Burn, and Gunsberg. Each of the biographies is a considerable work, reflecting extensive research. Although providing ample biographical context in each case, these are accounts of the men as players, teachers, and organizers of chess, with details on their other employment and their family lives all as a background to their chess accomplishments. Author Harding presumes the reader’s knowledge and appreciation of the 20th-century game, and in the course of these biographies he provides many perspectives on the 19th-century chess milieu, with some intimations of how it differed from what came later. In particular, he traces the development of a British chess culture over the period studied.

The volume is a significant work of chess history, exhibiting at every turn the fruits of original research. I would recommend it without reservation to those with an interest in this particular field. [via]

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Magic Words

Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore by Lance Parkin, due on December 1, 2013 from Aurum Press, is part of the collection at the Reading Room courtesy of the publisher.

Lance Parkin Magic Words from Aurum Press

“For over three decades comics fans and creators have regarded Alan Moore as a titan of the form. With works such as V for Vendetta, Watchmen and From Hell, he has repeatedly staked out new territory, attracting literary plaudits and a mainstream audience far removed from his underground origins. His place in popular culture is now such that major Hollywood players vie to adapt his books for cinema.

Yet Moore’s journey from the hippie Arts Labs of the 1970s to the bestseller lists was far from preordained. A principled eccentric, who has lived his whole life in one English town, he has been embroiled in fierce feuds with some of the entertainment industry’s biggest corporations. And just when he could have made millions ploughing a golden rut he turned instead to performance art, writing erotica, and the occult.

Now, as Alan Moore hits sixty, it’s time to go in search of this extraordinary gentleman, and follow the peculiar path taken by a writer quite unlike any other.” — back cover

 

“Portrayed in the media as a recluse and an eccentric, the creator of such influential works as V for Vendetta, Watchmen and From Hell is a character easily as complicated as his creations. Despite international success, Alan Moore has lived his entire life in the same Midlands town where he was born. Although he began work in the comics underground where his edgy and highly personal style found an equally edgy following, his most famous work was done for major U.S. publishers and adapted for big-budget Hollywood films. And just when he could have made millions in the mainstream he turned his back on the entertainment industry and focused his attentions on performance art, writing erotica, and the occult.

On the eve of Moore’s 60th birthday, author Lance Parkin has written the definitive biography of this ‘extraordinary gentleman’. Based on life-long studies of Moore’s work and an exceptional series of personal interviews, Magic Words reveals the man behind the myth and mischief — and bears the rare distinction of an endorsement by Moore himself!” — release copy

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Magic Words

Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore by Lance Parkin is due on December 1, 2013 from Aurum Press.

Lance Parkin Alan Moore Magic Words

“For over three decades comics fans and creators have regarded Alan Moore as a titan of the form. With works such as V for Vendetta, Watchmen and From Hell, he has repeatedly staked out new territory, attracting literary plaudits and a mainstream audience far removed from his underground origins. His place in popular culture is now such that major Hollywood players vie to adapt his books for cinema.

Yet Moore’s journey from the hippie Arts Labs of the 1970s to the bestseller lists was far from preordained. A principled eccentric, who has lived his whole life in one English town, he has been embroiled in fierce feuds with some of the entertainment industry’s biggest corporations. And just when he could have made millions ploughing a golden rut he turned instead to performance art, writing erotica, and the occult.

Now, as Alan Moore hits sixty, it’s time to go in search of this extraordinary gentleman, and follow the peculiar path taken by a writer quite unlike any other.”

“In Magic Words Lance Parkin has crafted a biography that is insightful, scrupulously fair-minded and often very funny, a considerable achievement given its unrelentingly grim, unreasonable and annoying subject. Belongs on the bookshelf of any halfway decent criminal profiler.” — Alan Moore

The Confessions of Aleister Crowley

The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography, edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant, the 1971 paperback from Bantam Books, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

John Symonds Kenneth Grant Aleister The Confessions of Aleister Crowley from Bantam Books

This is the first paperback edition of the single volume redaction of the multivolume The Spirit of Solitude, “re-Antichristianed” The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, which still has not been published beyond the first two volumes, and, in spite of the ad copy, this is, indeed, still an abridgement of the sourcework. Publication of the complete Confessions might, maybe, finally begin with volume 1 available sometime in 2013.

“Complete and Unabridged—The Profane and Uninhibited Memoirs of the Most Notorious Magician, Satanist and Drug Cultist of the 20th Century.”

“Aleister Crowley called himself ‘Beast 666’ and was a self-proclaimed saint of the Gnostic Church. He became a ‘god’ in his own temple at the age of forty-five. By that time, he was infamous in several countries as a writer, poet, painter, chess expert, master magician, mountaineer, drug addict and satyr.

Born in England in 1875, the sone of a wealthy brewer, Crowley totally rejected the Victorian hypocrisy of his day and dedicated himself to a life of debauchery, evil, Satanic spells and writing, especially on such topics as sex, magic and occultism.

A notorious pleasure-seeker, Crowley truly was the hippie of his age, ‘doing his thing.’ He was banned from Italy and was forced to leave other countries, always under mysterious circumstances. Crowley was a constant user of heroin, cocaine, opium, hashish and peyote, and early in his life earned a reputation for indulging in wild sex and drug orgies which he combined with his so-called religious rites.

his reputation followed him everywhere as he traveled from country to country, practicing witchcraft and black magic with his strange group of mistresses and eccentrics.

Colourful, feared, despised and admired, Crowley brought excitement and evil with him wherever he went. He was the author of several books, treatises and poems, many of which are widely read and appreciated today.”

“Aleister Crowley was poet, painter, writer, master chess player, lecher, drug addict and magician. his contemporary press called him ‘the wickedest man in the world.’ The most bizarre and notorious figure of his age, Crowley’s own story is now available in paperback from the first time.

But The Confessions of Aleister Crowley is more than just the autobiography of a man. It is also the portrait of an age. Everything is set down just as Crowley experienced it.

In addition to being a famed magician, Crowley also had a well-deserved reputation as a writer. his flair for literature and his gusto for life elevate this books several levels above the ordinary ‘confession’ type of literature prevalent in his day.

His writing is crisp, witty and amusing and always fascinating. Crowley believed that he could do anything he set his mind to. And he’ll make a believer out of you.”

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Do What Thou Wilt

Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley by Lawrence Sutin, the 7th printing of the 2002 paperback from St Martin’s Griffin, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

Lawrence Sutin's Do What Thou Wilt biography of Aleister Crowley

“Born 1875m Aleister Crowley reached maturity in the boarding schools and brothels of Victorian England. The aspiring poet and pampered wastrel quickly gravitated toward the occult. Obsessed with reconciling his quest for spiritual perfection with his secular hedonism—Crowley developed his own school of mysticism. Devotees of Magick, as Crowley called it, embraced the imagination and glorified the will. In practice, Crowley explored his spiritual yearnings through drug-saturated vision quests and rampant sexual adventurism, but at other times he embraced Eastern philosophies and sought enlightenment on ascetic sojourns into the wilderness.

This controversial individual has inspired passioate—and seldom fair—assessments from historians. Sutin’s excellent biography treats Crowley as a cultural phenomenon, and not simply as a sorcerer or charlatan. Do What Thou Wilt is a fascinating, eve-handed study of how one man devoted his life to the subversion of the dominant moral and religious values of his time.”

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

The Legend of Aleister Crowley

The Legend of Aleister Crowley by P R Stephensen and Israel Regardie, the 1970 paperback edition from Llewellyn Publications, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

P R Stephensen and Israel Regardie's The Legend of Aleister Crowley from Llewellyn Publications

“PROPHET OF A NEW AEON vilified as THE MOST EVIL MAN IN THE WORLD

Who and what is Aleister Crowley that he should be the original of a legend of infamy without parallel in the modern world?

Here is the evidence of a campaign of personal vilification unparalleled in literary history.

Here, too, is Crowley himself — through his own words, his books, his life.”

“Aleister Crowley was an outrageously libelled and slandered man in his time. He was variously called ‘monster’, ‘degenerate’, ‘traitor’, ‘evil’, ‘criminal’, ‘pornographer’, ‘devil worshipper’, and on without end.

but he has also been called, by people who knew him and by those who have studied his works, ‘genius’, ‘prophet of a New Aeon’, ‘the greatest occult scholar of this century’, ‘one of the finest poets of the 20th century’, etc.

Crowley was a mystic, a magickian, a scholar, a poet, a climber of mountains, and probably a true prophet. He certainly became a ‘legend in his own time’ and will probably attain real recognition for his many talents only after we of lesser minds have had time to digest what he taught and the world has had a chance to catch up with the vision he had.

This book, and “The Eye in the Triangle’, will probably long remain the most valuable and honest appraisals of the real Aleister Crowley, and can be read as factual rebuttals of the popular slander of the several biographies written by non-occultists. Without a knowledge of Magick, no one can appreciate or understand Crowley. Without ‘The Eye in the Triangle’ (published by Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, 1970), it is difficult to understand modern occultism.”

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

A Magick Life

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews Magick Life: A Biography of Aleister Crowley by Martin Booth:

Martin Booth's A Magick Life from Coronet

 

Of the nearly innummerable Crowley bios I have read, this one may be the best for the curious layperson. Its facts are pretty solid throughout; and it is highly readable and well organized. The author confesses that he doesn’t know much about magick, and while that lack does show occasionally, his caution in that department rescues him from technical howlers that plague even such sage treatments as Kaczysnki’s Perdurabo. The tone of this book manages to stay in the wide middle ground between the derision of Symonds’ Great Beast (a.k.a. King of the Shadow Realm) and the adulation of Suster’s Legacy of the Beast. Unfortunately, it looks like its timing sucked: arriving just before Sutin’s Do What Thou Wilt, it was mostly washed under by the tide of Crowley bios. [via]

 

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner

You may be interested in Witchfather: Into the Witch Cult Volume 1 and Witchfather: From Witch Cult to Wicca Volume 2, two volumes of Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner, a biography of Gerald Brosseau Gardner. Currently available in ebook format, but the physical book appears to be unavailable right now [see, also].

“From the author of the highly acclaimed ‘Wiccan Roots’, this is the first full-length biography of Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884-1964) — a very personal tale of the man who single-handedly brought about the revival of witchcraft in England in the mid 20th Century.

From his birth into an old family of wealthy Liverpool merchants, through an unconventional upbringing by his flamboyant governess in the resorts of the Mediterranean and Madeira, it tells how, having taught himself to read, his life was changed by finding a book on spiritualism.

During a working life as a tea and rubber planter in Ceylon, Borneo and Malaya, he came to know the native people and was invited to their secret rituals.

But it was only on his retirement to England, settling on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire, that destiny took him firmly by the hand. Through various twists and turns involving naturist clubs and a strange esoteric theatre, he became friends with a group of people who eventually revealed their true identity — they were members of a surviving witch coven.

One evening in 1939, as the hounds of war were being unleashed, he was initiated into the ‘witch cult’ by these people, who called themselves ‘the Wica’. Gardner was overwhelmed by the experience and was determined that the ‘witch cult’ should survive.

This book chronicles his efforts over the remaining quarter century of his life to ensure not only that it survived but that it would become the significant player on the world religious stage that it now is — ‘the only religion that England has ever given the world’, in the words of Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at the University of Bristol, who calls it ‘… a very fine book: humane, intelligent, compassionate, shrewd, and based upon a colossal amount of primary research’.

Born in 1946, Philip Heselton is a geographer and retired local government officer who has written extensively on Earth Mysteries and our spiritual relationship with the landscape. He has also carried out extensive research into the story of the modern witchcraft revival, chronicled in his books, ‘Wiccan Roots’ and ‘Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration’.

Hutton has described him as being ‘… the most interesting, valuable and enjoyable author who has yet written on what is becoming one of the greatest riddles in the history of modern religion: the origins of pagan witchcraft. … Nobody has ever done more than Philip Heselton to reveal the world of magic, paganism, naturism and faerie that lay behind the garden gates of inter-war English suburban villas; and perhaps only he could have done it at all.'”