Description
Aleister Crowley; William Breeze
Edda, Stockholm, 2011. Hardcover with dust-jacket. Limited Edition of 418 hand-numbered copies. 418 pages. Edited, with an introduction, by William Breeze. Four color printing. Illustrated by Fredrik Söderberg. As New/Fine.
Variations of sodomy, pederasty, bestiality, and necrophilia are interwoven with gleeful blasphemy in this seminal collection of poetry by Aleister Crowley. Inspired by Krafft-Ebing’s study of sexual perversity, Psychopathia Sexualis, it purports to be “the literary remains of George Archibald Bishop, a neuropath of the Second Empire.” Crowley’s infamous first book, White Stains was clandestinely printed in 1898 by Leonard Smithers. Of the one hundred numbered copies that were originally printed, only a handful were spared destruction by Her Majesty’s Customs; an outcome which speaks against Crowley’s decision to invoke the blessing of the Virgin Mary in his prefatory sonnet.
Crowley would go on to establish himself as a leading figure in the Western occult tradition. A drug addict, bisexual, and proponent of sex magick, Crowley’s flamboyantly impious lifestyle would lead the tabloid press to crown him “The Wickedest Man in the World.”
