Brother Curwen, Brother Crowley. A Correspondence.
York Beach, Maine USA: The Teitan Press, 2010. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo (9 x 6 inches, approx 23.5 x 15.2cm), xlviii + 136pp. Heavy dark green cloth binding, with gilt titling etc to the spine. Sewn, printed on acid-free paper. Black and white frontispiece, and eight pages of black and white illustrations. Edition limited to 777 numbered copies. One of a small number of original Teitan Press "Launch copies", SIGNED by Tony Matthews and Henrik Bogdan by way of a bookplate on the front pastedown. In September 1944, a fifty-one year old Londoner named David Curwen wrote to Aleister Crowley, initiating a correspondence that would last several years. While Curwen approached Crowley with deference, the relationship that evolved between them was a complex one that defied the accepted parameters of the student-teacher nexus. For David Curwen was no newcomer to the study of the occult, and Crowley soon discovered that the flow of knowledge would not be simply one way. In particular Crowley was tantalized by the deep understanding of the principals of tantra that Curwen had acquired during the course of many years study under a mysterious guru. Curwen joined the O.T.O., but he remained skeptical of many of "the Beast's" claims, and the two ultimately parted company on strained terms. However, Curwen retained his interest in the occult, and in later life he devoted himself to the study of alchemy, publishing the results of his researches pseudonymously in the book "In Pursuit of Gold," a work that many believe to be the most significant study ever published of practical alchemy. "Brother Curwen, Brother Crowley" includes an important biographical Foreword by David Curwen's grandson, Tony Matthews. The letters themselves have been edited and annotated by the scholar of Crowley and Western esotericism, Henrik Bogdan, who has also contributed an illuminating Introduction that gives context to the relationship between Crowley and Curwen, as well as exploring the history of their interest in sexual occultism and tantra, and the influence that they had in Kenneth Grant. Illustrated dust jacket. From the collection of Clive Harper with his discreet 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. Also includes a neatly printed single page note on the work by Harper's "Fine Madness Society" in which offense is rightly taken at one of the footnotes in the volume which suggested in passing that an author's name had been misspelled in an FMS publication. Appears as new - thus about Fine in Fine mylar protected dust jacket. Item #68192
ISBN: 9780933429277
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