Description
Jeffrey D. Evans, Peter Levenda
Ibis Press, USA, 2021. Hardcover. 320 pages. Brand New.
Over a period of several years, the former head of Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian Order in the United States, conducted a bizarre sexual ritual with elements of Thelema, Lovecraft, and the Egyptian mummification ceremony to unlock a mathematical code buried in plain sight in Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law.
Jeffrey Evans, a follower of Aleister Crowley’s Thelema since his teenage years, had an encounter on a bridge in Washington, DC, with a being he identified as his holy guardian angel. This being—Karla—provided him with the inspiration to begin a series of rituals incorporating Egyptian and Lovecraftian elements in an effort to traverse the Tunnels of Set: pathways on the “dark side” of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. The ritual, conducted with his wife, Ruth Keenan, employed cross-dressing and bondage as well as Cthulhian imagery and chanting, and resulted in a series of revelations concerning the mathematical code hidden within the verses of Crowley’s Book of the Law: a circumstance that Crowley always suspected but was never able to prove, not even with the help of accomplished mathematicians. Evans tried in vain to demonstrate this code to other members of the Typhonian Order, to no avail, but a chance meeting online with Peter Levenda resulted in Levenda’s taking a closer look at the data and what he discovered astounded him. He agreed to help bring this discovery to the attention of the general public.
There has been very little new work published in the field of Thelema in the last 10 years or so, at least since the death of Kenneth Grant. Most publishing concerning Crowley has been biographical or reissues of Crowley’s own material. This work is a departure from all of that. It is new material, completely unexpected within the Crowley/Thelema/OTO environment, for it offers a new approach to the mathematical nature of Thelema that so far has been based on Qabalah. This work brings attention to the existence of a sacred geometry within the verses of the Book of the Law: a completely unexpected discovery but nonetheless mathematically verifiable. It bridges the gap between Thelema, Freemasonry, and Templarism, as well as Gnosticism, demonstrating a continuum of esoteric thought spanning millennia.
Jeffrey D. Evans is the former head of Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian Order in the United States. Peter Levenda is a well-known author of many published works on esoteric subjects including Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult; The Dark Lord: H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic; and The Lovecraft Code series of novels.
Peter Levenda was born in the Bronx and lived in New York, Indiana, Chicago, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island before going to Malaysia where he lived for seven years. He has an MA in Religious Studies and Asian Studies, and has worked as an IT executive in China, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Europe (he became involved in China trade in 1984). He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the T.E. Lawrence Society, and is a charter member of the Norman Mailer Society. He is also a member of AFIO (the Association of Former Intelligence Officers) and has appeared in television documentaries on Nazism and the Third Reich, most recently on Brad Meltzer’s Decoded series (“The Spear of Destiny” episode), as well as on documentaries aired on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and TNT. He has given addresses before the American-Chinese Business Women’s Association and the Florida-China Chamber of Commerce on China trade, and has lectured on the role that Operation Paperclip played in American political and military post-war history (in Amsterdam).
