Item #45068 The Natural Genesis ( Volume I ONLY ) Or Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings .... [ with the bookplate, ownership inscription, notes and annotations of former Aleister Crowley associate and head of the Typhonian Order Kenneth Grant ]. Kenneth: association copy GRANT, Gerald Massey.
The Natural Genesis ( Volume I ONLY ) Or Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings .... [ with the bookplate, ownership inscription, notes and annotations of former Aleister Crowley associate and head of the Typhonian Order Kenneth Grant ].
The Natural Genesis ( Volume I ONLY ) Or Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings .... [ with the bookplate, ownership inscription, notes and annotations of former Aleister Crowley associate and head of the Typhonian Order Kenneth Grant ].
The Natural Genesis ( Volume I ONLY ) Or Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings .... [ with the bookplate, ownership inscription, notes and annotations of former Aleister Crowley associate and head of the Typhonian Order Kenneth Grant ].
The Natural Genesis ( Volume I ONLY ) Or Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings .... [ with the bookplate, ownership inscription, notes and annotations of former Aleister Crowley associate and head of the Typhonian Order Kenneth Grant ].
The Natural Genesis ( Volume I ONLY ) Or Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings .... [ with the bookplate, ownership inscription, notes and annotations of former Aleister Crowley associate and head of the Typhonian Order Kenneth Grant ].

The Natural Genesis ( Volume I ONLY ) Or Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings .... [ with the bookplate, ownership inscription, notes and annotations of former Aleister Crowley associate and head of the Typhonian Order Kenneth Grant ].

London: Williams and Norgate, 1883. First Edition. Hardcover. Vol . One ONLY (of Two) Quarto. xvi + 552 pp. Original rust-colored cloth with black decorations to boards, gilt titling to spine. This copy from the library of Kenneth Grant, with his bookplate, elaborate ownership inscription, and marginalia throughout. The bookplate, on the front pastedown, has a black and white design of the goddess Nuit arched over a stylised version of Grant's "AOSSIC" sigil against a starry background and is almost certainly printed from a design by Steffi Grant. The name printed across the bottom of the bookplate has been roughly erased, but it is still possible to determine that it was "Kenneth Grant" (all in caps). The ownership inscription, on the verso of the front free endpaper, has a large Templar (eleven-fold) cross, and "Baphomet [clearly written in imitation of Crowley's handwriting] / Xo 33o 90o 97o / acquired 25 May '48 e.v. / Sub [hexagram] Figura XX. Die [Mars symbol] [moon symbol] in [capricorn symbol] / from Domina Pythonis." The writing is definitely Grant's, although the "Baphomet" is in the style of Crowley's handwriting [Grant, considering himself at the time to be Crowley's successor, sometimes inscribed the books he acquired during the immediate postwar period thus]. "Domina Pythonis" translates as "Mistress of the Python" traditionally a reference to the Biblical "Witch of Endor" although to whom Grant was referring to with that is not known to the cataloguer. There is almost a full page of notes in Grant's handwriting on the blank facing the title-page, and there are occasional marginal comments in has hand, and lines etc. next to the text throughout. At some time the book passed from Grant's possession, and into that of "Dionysus XI° OTO" whose stylized ownership inscription (with the "D" of "Dionysus" drawn as a phallus and testicles) appears on the half-title page. Frater Dionysus ("Pasq Wilson," 1960 - 2008?) was the friend and for a time magical partner of Patrick J. King, Frater Meithras XI° (d. 1997). In 1977, Patrick King joined the 'Caliphate' and was immediately made the Official Representative in the City of San Francisco and personal 'Herald of the Caliph in the Outer'. He was an associate Hymenaeus Alpha who apparently recognised his work with homosexual energies of sexual magick by granting him a charter for the XI° (at the time this was acknowledged as relating to homosexual workings, although this seems to have now changed). King played an important - and controversial role in the O.T.O. - having claimed the XI° and leaving a set of unpublished related rituals, which circulate privately He died in unfortunate circumstances in Prague in 1997, with Wilson still named in his passport as next of kin. King and Wilson led bohemian lives, and this volume of "The Natural Genesis" was apparently part of a superb collection of books that King sold to a San Francisco bookseller in the 1980s during a period of poverty. From there it somehow made its way to the stock of a Michigan bookseller, who sold it to a private collector in 1995, who in turn offered it for sale at auction in 2006. By then the book was mis-identified as having belonged to Aleister Crowley, on account of the "Baphomet" inscription and the similarity between Grant's and Crowley's handwriting. In fact the text of Grant's inscription suggests that it is extremely unlikely that the book had belonged to Crowley. Along with "A Book of the Beginnings" (1882) and "Ancient Egypt: The Light of the Ancient World" (1907), "The Natural Genesis" (1883) is one of the major works of self-taught Egyptologist, prolific poet, antiquarian and mythographer Gerald Massey (1828 - 1907). Massey was particularly focussed on the symbolism and myth of ancient Egypt and later civilizations. An evolutionist, who believed that human beings had evolved from apes in Africa, before spreading to Egypt, where true civilization developed, he described his works "A Book of the Beginnings" and "The Natural Genesis" as " ...an attempt to recover and reconstitute the lost origins of the myths and mysteries, types and symbols, religion and language, with Egypt for the mouthpiece and Africa as the birthplace." In "The Natural Genesis" he went on expand the ideas that he had already presented in "A Book of the Beginnings" and sought to establish a typology of world cultures, and to discover and explore the links between myths, religion, symbolism, customs, etc. of other cultures, and those of ancient Egypt, which he deemed to be their source. Massey's ideas, were largely rejected by the scientific community, but embraced by many occultists and Masons, including Albert Churchward, with whom Massey collaborated, and Mme. Blavatsky, who cited Massey on numerous occasions in "The Secret Doctrine." Kenneth Grant also draws heavily on Massey, and cites him frequently in the first series of the Typhonian trilogies, noting specifically in "Nightside of Eden," " ... Yet, despite the limitation imposed upon Massey in respect of the lack of initiated texts available in his time, his work remains of the utmost value in that it traces more accurately than does that of any other writer, before or since, the line of emergence, the evolution and history of the symbolic vehicles of the Typhonian Current which the present writer has sought to explain in all his works. With the exception of Sir John Woodroffe and Aleister Crowley, no western writer, other than Massey, has touched upon the vital content of the genuine gnosis, the true magical tradition" (Grant: "Nightside of Eden," p. 110). Cloth shows overall modest wear, heavier at corners which are bruised and rubbed through. Inside hinges have been professionally repaired, edges darkened, copy obviously well read, but still tight and near VG. Item #45068

Sold