A fascinating item has just been sold at auction on eBay: Aleister Crowley’s Pirate Bridge… I didn’t want to mention the auction while it was ongoing, as I didn’t want to inflate the price, given that two Thelemite bibliophiles I respect enormously were bidding…
Click here for full details of the auction, now closed.
Here’s a photograph of the item:
I’ve certainly never seen this offered before – a remarkable item. Congratulations to the seller and buyer!
“(…)During my retirement by Lake Pasquaney I had, according to my custom when in solitude and in need of relaxation, passed the time by dealing myself hands in such games as skat, piquet and bridge. I was led to invent a new game, a variation of auction bridge, which we subsequently called “pirate bridge”. This appeared to me such an improvement on the ordinary game that I throught I would introduce it to the public. I convinced the editor of Vanity Fair of its merits and suggested that R. F. Foster should be called in to put the rules into definite shape. It gave me a very curious feeling, by the way, to be in such relations with a man who, twenty years before, had been the inaccessible godhead of the universe of card games to my undergraduate enthusiasm! As a matter of fact, he misunderstood one of my rules; and I think the game was spoilt in consequence. However, even as it was, Vanity Fair was devoting a long article every month to the subject, and I had only to wander into the appropriate circles to make myself the darling of the community. (…)” [“The Confessions of Aleister Crowley” page 824]