{"id":1811,"date":"2013-02-21T10:04:45","date_gmt":"2013-02-21T15:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=1811"},"modified":"2013-02-20T14:04:57","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T19:04:57","slug":"an-autohagiography-of-aleister-crowley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2013\/02\/21\/an-autohagiography-of-aleister-crowley\/","title":{"rendered":"An autohagiography of Aleister Crowley"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection.<\/em><\/p>\n

The works of Aleister Crowley, the British occultist and author at turns renowned and infamous, are ably suited for inclusion in the Santo Domingo Collection: Crowley\u2019s mysticism, drug use, bisexuality, and overall libertinism, emblemized in his famous slogan \u201cdo what thou wilt\u201d, demonstrate his lifelong interest in altered states of mind. Among his most beloved subjects, of course, was himself, and nowhere is this in greater evidence than in his autobiography, The spirit of solitude: an autohagiography: subsequently re-antichristened the confessions of Aleister Crowley<\/em>, published in this edition by the Mandrake Press in 1929.<\/p>\n

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The cover (top left) is illustrated with a grotesque self-portrait. The text, divided into \u201cstanzas\u201d rather than chapters and illustrated with portraits, drawings, and facsimiles of Crowley\u2019s manuscript writings, consists of Crowley\u2019s reminiscences interspersed with social criticism and personal philosophy.<\/p>\n

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As an example of the narrative\u2019s self-aggrandizing tone, here Crowley describes changing his name from his given Edward Alexander, nicknamed \u201cAlick\u201d:<\/p>\n

I had read in some book or other that the most favourable name for becoming famous was one consisting of a dactyl followed by a spondee, as at the end of a hexameter: like \u201cJeremy Taylor\u201d. Aleister Crowley fulfilled these conditions and Aleister is the Gaelic form of Alexander. To adopt it would satisfy my romantic ideals. The atrocious spelling A-L-E-I-S-T-E-R was suggested as the correct form by Cousin Gregor, who ought to have known better. In any case,\u00a0 A-L-A-I-S-D-A-I-R makes a very bad dactyl. For these reasons I saddled myself with my present nom-de-guerre \u2013 I can\u2019t say that I feel sure that I facilitated the process of becoming famous. I should doubtless have done so, whatever name I had chosen. (v. 1, p. 187)<\/em><\/div>\n

Aleister Crowley. The spirit of solitude<\/em>.\u00a0London: Mandrake Press, 1929. EC9.C8863.929s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection. The works of Aleister Crowley, the British occultist and author at turns renowned and infamous, are ably suited for inclusion in the Santo Domingo Collection: Crowley\u2019s mysticism, drug use, bisexuality, and overall libertinism, emblemized in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-td","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1836,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions\/1836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}