Aleister Crowley: The Beast In Berlin.
Rochester VA: Inner Traditions, 2014. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. 386pp. Brown boards, with gilt lettering to spine, 16 page colour photo insert. A study of the heady times that Crowley spent in inter-war Germany. This copy from the library of British artist, writer and musician (founder of the music group Current 93) DAVID TIBET, and with his OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE on the verso of the first blank. A paragraph by David Tibet in praise of the book is included in a blurb at the front, and he is also named in the Acknowledgments. From the publisher: "Known to his friends affectionately as “The Beast,” Crowley saw the closing lights of Berlin’s artistic renaissance of the Weimar period when Berlin played host to many of the world’s most outstanding artists, writers, filmmakers, performers, composers, architects, philosophers, and scientists, including Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Ethel Mannin, Otto Dix, Aldous Huxley, Jean Ross, Christopher Isherwood, and many other luminaries of a glittering world soon to be trampled into the mud by the global bloodbath of World War II. Drawing on previously unpublished letters and diary material by Crowley, Tobias Churton examines Crowley’s years in Berlin and his intense focus on his art, his work as a spy for British Intelligence, his colorful love life and sex magick exploits, and his contacts with German Theosophy, Freemasonry, and magical orders. He recounts the fates of Crowley’s colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowley’s lost art exhibition--six crates of paintings left behind in Germany as the Gestapo was closing in. Revealing the real Crowley long hidden from the historical record, Churton presents “the Beast” anew in all his ambiguous and, for some, terrifying glory, at a blazing, seminal moment in the history of the world." An Inner Traditions printed prospectus for the book loosely inserted. A mere hint of shelfwear else a near Fine copy in mylar protected near Fine dust jacket. Item #68371
ISBN: 9781620552568
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