Liber Aleph The Book of Wisdom or Folly; in the Form of an Epistle of 666 The Great Wild Beast to his Son 777 being the Equinox Volume III No. vi
California: Thelema Publishing Company, 1962. First edition. Hardcover. Quarto. xii + 220pp. Original bright red textured fabricoid with gilt lettering to spine. Tipped in frontispiece portrait of Crowley, errata slip facing p. xii. The first edition of this important work, published by Karl Germer - Crowley's chief disciple and successor as head of the O.T.O. Dust jacket art by Frieda Harris, "artist executant" of Crowley's Thoth tarot deck. In his Introduction Germer declares the book to be ".. one of the masterworks of the late Aleister Crowley ... one of ... [his] greatest and deepest books, into which he put his very blood." He then quotes Crowley as writing that "'Liber Aleph, the Book of Wisdom or Folly', was intended to express the heart of my doctrine in the most deep and delicate dimensions. It is the most tense and intense book I have ever composed." From the collection of Clive Harper with his discrete book-label neatly tipped in at the rear. Harper is well- known as the bibliographer of Austin Osman Spare, for updating the Aleister Crowley bibliography in the 2011 Teitan Press collection of Gerald Yorke's writings, and as someone who has lent his expertise to numerous other publications. There were several binding variants of the book - this one, an almost fire-engine red, is notorious on account of the binding having a chemical reaction with the dust jacket which causes the two to bond together. Most examples found have the dust jacket, or more often its remains, firmly attached to it. In this case the jacket has survived relatively intact, although parts of its underside are stuck to the surface of the book. The jacket is, however, now detached, and fully encased in a removable mylar sleeve to prevent any further reaction. Thus the boards thus have an odd glossy sheen from the reaction, and are flecked with tiny pieces of paper from the surface of the reverse of the dust jacket. There is a bump at the head of the spine, and the corners are lightly bruised. The endpapers are a little darkened, and there are two small contemporary (ie 1960s) bookshop labels on the front pastedown: one of Weiser in New York and the other from The Atlantis Bookshop in London. There is a Samuel Weiser distributor's label over the publisher's imprint on the title-page. A few light signs of use, but overall internally a VG + copy. The dust jacket has a few small holes, and a number of chips and tears, but is - quite remarkably - about 97% intact. Now protected by a mylar sleeve. A presentable example of what is, for obvious reasons, a rare issue of the first edition. Item #65112
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