{"id":5257,"date":"2014-11-11T11:11:29","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T16:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=5257"},"modified":"2014-11-10T11:43:17","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T16:43:17","slug":"crowley-and-the-beast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2014\/11\/11\/crowley-and-the-beast\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowley and the Beast"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the\u00a0Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Santo Domingo Collection continues to bolster Harvard\u2019s library of works by author and occult leader Aleister Crowley. These range from substantive books on magic to pamphlets containing individual poems (one of these, titled \u201cTyrol\u201d, is a condemnation of Mussolini for his 1929 prohibition of that name as part of his Italianization of the region). Crowley\u2019s grandiose, egotistical mode is in evidence throughout, but so is his sardonic sense of humor. That humor is emblemized in his dedications, forewords, and other front matter, at turns combative, boastful, and wryly self-effacing. Two examples appear in this post. The first appears in The sword of song, called by Christians the book of the Beast<\/em>. This was Crowley\u2019s first publication in which he referred to himself as \u201cthe Beast\u201d, in defiance of his critics, and according to Crowley, was impeded by boycotts from British publishers. (The publisher on the imprint is the Society for Religious Truth, Benares, although subsequent Society publications would give Inverness as their location.) The dedication roundly dismisses these opponents of Crowley\u2019s poetic vision.<\/p>\n

\"Crowley<\/a><\/p>\n

The second example is Ambergris<\/em>, a selection of poetry. In its preface, Crowley outlines the selection process in a passage both self-deprecating and resentful, making reference to the public\u2019s underappreciation of his work.<\/p>\n

\"Crowley<\/a><\/p>\n

The sword of song<\/em>: EC9.C8863.904s, HOLLIS number 14166213<\/p>\n

Ambergris<\/em>: EC9.C8863.910a, HOLLIS number 2915207<\/p>\n

Thanks to rare book ca<\/em>taloger 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\u00a0Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.\u00a0 The Santo Domingo Collection continues to bolster Harvard\u2019s library of works by author and occult leader Aleister Crowley. These range from substantive books on magic to pamphlets containing individual poems (one of these, titled \u201cTyrol\u201d, is a condemnation of […]<\/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":[64929],"tags":[113736,72720,873,72621,72627],"class_list":["post-5257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-houghton-library","tag-julio-mario-santo-domingo","tag-julio-mario-santo-domingo-collection","tag-poetry","tag-santo-domingo","tag-santo-domingo-collection"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-1mN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5257","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=5257"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5263,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5257\/revisions\/5263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}