Thanks 509. I read this earlier today and somehow missed Kenneth on the list. For those interested, the Starfire Facebook page has a memorial section in the "discussions" tab that folks can contribute to. It also lists links to several online obits.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/topic.php?uid=249935899164&topic=15022

I'm pleased that an obituary for Kenneth appeared in such a well-read newspaper, but it hardly touched upon his association with Spare (despite the good points which it does raise). But Spare gets just a passing mention. I'd have found at least a decent paragraph for it.

I'd also have placed him higher on the Watkins list (as nice as the number 88 may be) - problem is, people's memories aren't long enough. Kenneth Grant played a significant role not only in the development of Thelema but also in the development of "Chaos" magick, partly through his championing of Spare, and partly through his own incredibly syncretic works. This in itself has been massively influential as a piece of magical infrastructure across every shade of the entire spectrum in the field. Never mind.

Obituaries in newspapers have limited space. This one had a page, which included a lovely photograph (not reproduced on-line) of Kenneth in his study in the mid-1970s. Given the limitation on space, I thought this obituary covered the ground rather well. There are all sorts of areas which could have been expanded upon and treated in more depth, but then it would have run to a much greater length, and that sort of space simply wasn't on offer. As it was, the support of the Grants for Spare was made clear, as was their role in the resurgence of interest in Spare's work.

I know what you mean, Noctifer. However, this obituary wasn't intended primarily as an account of Grant's relationship with Crowley, Spare, Symonds, Germer or anyone else, but an account of Grant's life and work, into which flowed influences from a variety of sources, Spare and Crowley amongst them.

Best wishes,

Michael.

Hi Michael,

Upon second reading, I confess that I am surprised that I said what I did above. The presence of Spare is, in fact, duly and appropriately acknowledged towards the end of the article. I must have got distracted and missed it before.

As Paul says, it's an extraordinarily detailed article, appropriate testimony to an extraordinarily detailed magical life!

Cheers,
N. 😀

I'd be indebted to anyone who might set aside a print copy of this for me. I'd pay you for cost, time, trouble, and shipping to NZ. Please PM me. That was a really great article.

Best
S

The problem is that daily newspapers in the UK disappear from the shops at the end of the day. You need to scour the website of the newspaper to find out how to go about ordering back issues.

Best wishes,

Michael.

Thanks Michael,

Ohh good point. I will have a look and see if I cant get a back- issue from the site.

Cheers!
S

Very sad news indeed, My deepest condolences to his family and friends. My discovery of Grant's work in the late 1990's was one of the best and most magickal periods of my life and I continue to study those works to this very day. I will always be very grateful for the enjoyment and illumination has works have brought me. A true genius.

I have yet to read anything by KG, but if this:
www.fulgur.co.uk/authors/grant/articles/beyond-our-ken/
.. is not an Indicator of Quality, I don't know what is. This review/essay is simply one of the best I have ever read. As it was quoted from in the Obituary linked to here, I went to the source. I guess that I have alot more reading to do!

I was lucky enough to get "Against the Light" before it went out of print. I know someone who is (or at least was) having difficulty finding a used one. Good luck finding one Horemakhet! I think its his best work of fiction and I'd never get rid mine!

I think its his best work of fiction and I'd never get rid mine!

Agreed, NOX-! It is essential "supplemental" material to the Trilogies and asks to be read over and again. To say it is a "trip" would be a gross understatement. ATL is a Visionary Voyage in a genre of its own. It's evocative, provocative and, although it may be classified as "fantastic fiction," contains many Keys to Initiatory Gateways. The statement regarding Thelema as the greatest blind of them all was very (third) eye opening for me. High recommendations for this one, Horemakhet!

I read in Michael's presentation from one of the book launches it is actually intended to be read between mauve Zone and Ninth Arch, is that correct?

S

Yes, I believe that is correct, Scott.

Yes, that is correct. Kenneth's original idea was that Against the Light would act as an introduction to The Book of the Spider, presenting some of its themes in fictional form.

After publication of Against the Light, Kenneth proposed publishing further novellas and thus creating a series of Nightside Narratives. These subsequent stories had been written in the days of New Isis Lodge, and were edited by him prior to submission to Starfire Publishing. One of them - The Stellar Lode, one of my personal favourites - had been part-published initially by Skoob, and then later in full, in their Skoob Esoterica magazine I believe.

Best wishes,

Michael.

You are correct, it was the Skoob Esoterica Anthology Vol I.

Does anyone happen to know the details on Mr. Grant's funeral service?

Having read this I went online and bought a copy of the Skoob Esoterica anthology, not realizing the Stellar Lode had been published in the The Other Child, which I have yet to obtain. However due to the other content of the magazine Iam glad I purchased it, they are available cheaply and readily online.

Dear Friend and Fellow Stars,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Here is the scan of Keneth Grant obituary by Zivorad Mihajlovic-Slavinski, including two previously unpublished pictures. as well as a couple of paintings by Steffi Grant. I like her paintings, is it possible that we see her monography one day?

http://depositfiles.com/files/5ra1yofv2

http://depositfiles.com/files/of29nwe88

http://depositfiles.com/files/k7hrzogx2

http://depositfiles.com/files/5z0vhzfkj

Love is the law, love under will.

B.

Which reminds me, if anyone would like a pdf copy of how the obituary appeared in the Independent, a nice lady from there emailed it to me for free, photo and all. So if you dont want to buy the whole paper just for that I can send you the pdf.
I won't say RIP Kenneth Grant because he is out exploring the Universe 🙂

I have uploaded a high resolution scan of the article to the Personalities album in the Galleries. Thanks to Peter for providing the scan.

I wonder if anybody noticed that this obituary refers to "Beyond the Mauve Zone" and "Snakewand" as works of fiction and poetry.

I noticed it. Isn't everything? 😉

Thanks for sharing but I've only been able to download the first file, I get an 'invalid params' error message when I attempt the others.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

OK, here is the pdf version:

http://depositfiles.com/files/kus1xg98s

Love is the law, love under will.

B.

Splendid! Many thanks.

A very substantial obituary in The Daily Telegraph…

Kenneth Grant

Kenneth Grant, who has died aged 86, was probably the last living link to the voluptuary, occultist and megalomaniac Aleister Crowley; after Crowley’s death Grant co-edited and published many of the self-styled mystic’s writings, but he also became involved in a protracted wrangle over his own claim to be Crowley’s heir.

6:42PM BST 04 Apr 2011

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was known by his enemies as “the wickedest man in the world” and by himself as “the Beast 666”. A bisexual, recreational drug user and self-styled prophet, he shaved his head bald, filed his incisors into points and invented a new religion, which he called Thelema, the libertinist tenets of which had been revealed to him by “preternatural intelligences” in 1904. He transcribed their message into his sacred text The Book Of The Law , and subsequently appointed himself Outer Head of the Order of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), a movement thought to have begun in Germany towards the end of the 19th century which Crowley remodelled around his new religion.

When Grant first met him, in 1944, he was a cantankerous 69, in failing health and struggling to make ends meet.

Grant had become interested in Crowley in 1939 when he chanced across his Magick in Theory and Practice in a Charing Cross Road bookshop. After being invalided out of the Army following some unspecified breakdown, in 1944 the 20-year-old Grant went to visit the occultist at his lodgings in a Buckinghamshire inn. Later he stayed with him at the Hastings guesthouse where Crowley spent his squalid final days. After his death in 1947 Grant took over as head of Crowley’s order in England.

Crowley had died without nominating an heir, but before his death he had written a letter to a friend describing Grant as “a definite gift from the Gods”. But a careful reading of Crowley’s writings suggests that he was praising Grant’s dedication as a secretary and errand boy, a view borne out in his letters to Grant, published as Remembering Aleister Crowley in 1991.
The letters (which were signed “666” or “Baphomet”) alternated occultist mumbo jumbo with requests for money and peremptory demands: “Fortnum and Mason owe me a bottle of whisky since Feb 1, please make them cough up!” Crowley instructs in one missive, followed a few weeks later by “you were close to F&M... but no word of the whisky. It’s all very unsatisfactory. You must put a sock in it if you still want to work with me for the Order.”

Crowley’s letters also show him enlisting Grant in the process of extracting his remaining possessions from the unsympathetic landlady of his old rooms in Jermyn Street, and sending him on “magical” shopping expeditions for fountain pens, brass buckles, nail files, cigarettes, a “gold zecchino [coin] issued by Pope Alexander VI”, barley sugar, hypodermic needles and drugs.

The last two items were required to treat the bouts of asthma to which Crowley was prone and which, as Grant recalled, involved injecting substances which “were not easy to persuade doctors and chemists to dispense”— including veronal, heroin, ethyl oxide and cocaine. The state of Crowley’s health, Grant noted, “necessitated such massive doses that one doctor in Hastings hinted to me in confidence that he feared that his patient was a drug addict!”

For a time Crowley “employed” the young man to transcribe his manuscripts, though it is not clear whether Grant ever received any financial reward: “I do not think he ever understood that I was an impecunious youth,” Grant recalled, “and it never occurred to me to enlighten him.”

Grant claimed to have written magical papers at Crowley’s suggestion, and in 1945 he was allowed to sit the examination for initiation into the Order. After a year’s probation he was initiated into Crowley’s magical fraternity Argentum Astrum and confirmed as an IX° in the OTO.

After Crowley’s death in December 1947, Grant was one of the few to attend his cremation service in Brighton (described by the press as a “black mass”). According to occultists, Grant then “took it upon himself to rework the sexual magic of the OTO along what he considered to be Tantric principles”, with “degrees” awarded to initiates on the basis of their sexual experiences.

In 1951 Karl Germer, who had taken over as head of the OTO, issued a charter to Grant to open an outpost in London, a document Grant interpreted as making him the head of the order in Britain.

He began the work of founding a new lodge, and in 1955 issued a manifesto announcing his discovery of an extraterrestrial “Sirius/Set current” in Crowley’s work — upon which the lodge was to be based. Germer, however, disapproved of this piece of private enterprise and issued a “Note of Expulsion” exiling Grant from OTO.

Grant carried on as if nothing had happened, and ran his new lodge on the basis of what he claimed were “inner plane” powers. When Germer died in 1969, Grant used Crowley’s Autohagiography, which he co-edited and published the same year, to declare himself Outer Head of the Order.
This later metamorphosed into the “Typhonian” Ordo Templi Orientis, but Grant’s right to the title remained disputed.

Kenneth Grant was born at Ilford, Essex, on May 23 1924, the son of a Welsh clergyman. During his teens he developed an interest in oriental mysticism, and when he volunteered for the Army during the war, it was with the expectation of being sent to India, where he hoped to find a guru. Instead, after being discharged from military duties, he had to make do with Crowley.

After Crowley’s death, Grant collaborated with John Symonds in the editing and annotating of several of Crowley works, including The Magical Record of the Beast 666 (1972), The Diary of a Drug Fiend (1972), Moonchild (1972), Magick (1973), Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on the Book of the Law (1974) and The Complete Astrological Writings (1974). He also wrote novels, poems and a series known as The Typhonian Trilogies that set out his own brand of occultism .

He spiced up his work with borrowings from Crowley, from the “weird fiction” writer HP Lovecraft, and with occult illustrations by his wife, Steffi, and Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956), an artist and “sorcerer” who specialised in fantastical and sexually graphic drawings and paintings, some produced in pitch darkness. Over the years Grant did much to introduce Spare’s works to a new generation of occultists, including publishing Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare (1975) and Zos Speaks! (1998, co-authored with Steffi Grant), a memoir and celebration of Spare’s work.
Kenneth Grant, who died on January 15, is survived by his wife , with whom he had a son.

--- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8427675/Kenneth-Grant.html

Thanks for posting this, Paul. I hadn't seen it. Good to have had two fairly substantial obituaries in national newspapers.

Best wishes,

Michael.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Very interesting text: Kenneth Grant (1924-2011) “A Memory” by Jan Fries

http://avaloniapress.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/kenneth-grant-1924-2011-a-memory-by-jan-fries/

Love is the law, love under will.

B.

Yes, a very interesting piece.

WHat exactly is the Tantric document that Grant received from Curwen? In Gran't writings it is always noted as being unpublished/ Has this document ever been published?

A lovely piece by Jan Fries - I'd love to obtain permission to reproduce it for posterity on LAShTAL.COM.

Thanks, in any case, for the link, Frater_HPK.

AEternitas,
The tantric mss has not been published as a fully seperate piece. But Grant does share parts of it throughout the Trilogies such as in BTMZ, for example.

No, it hasn't. It is a Comment on the Anandalahari which was sent to Curwen from his guru in South India, and which was a privately-circulated paper not intended for publication. Crowley was loaned a copy by Curwen, as was Yorke.

Best wishes,

Michael.

That was a lovely remembrance from Jan. Thank you for pointing our attentions to it.

Scott

This is, perhaps, the most interesting "remembrance" I've read to date. It is extraordinarily interesting to read selections from the private correspondence but also a fascinating essay in its own right. The discussion regarding the relationship between reality and illusion, with noted divergence between Grant's view and that of Fries, is particularly relevant to my own thought and very insightful. If this were a lecture, I would have stood to applaud at the end.

Thanks to HPK for calling attention to this-and to Jan for writing it!

93,

Kyle

My thoughts exactly, Kyle, which means you're brilliant. 😉

you're brilliant

That would be an Illusion. 😉

One of my favorite lines from the piece which has stuck with me through the day

"...surrealism is the inevitable outcome of magic."

lovely!

I really enjoyed it too, thanks for bringing my attention to it lashtalians.
I sadly have to agree with him in regards to the numbing and stultifying effect of too much technology in ones life. Regardless of what the electromagnetic radiation is doing, the social and psychological effects are in my mind mostly negative.
Very few people are able to sit still and enjoy their surroundings without the need for a cell phone app , talk, or a tv or internet fix. It saddens me.

Very well written by Jan though. And it makes me want to read his Kali book even more now, which the lovely postcard of the cover has been taunting me to do for a while now....

"It has got so bad that everyone I pass on the street is making nonsensical remarks into a gadget held to one ear.”

Respect.

Seconded. A typically brilliant piece by Jan (one of my favourite authors) really insightful, and particularly valuable as the views of an authoritative independant magical Adept sharing initiated insight into and comprehension of Grant's writings, and the unique achievement and Attainment which they represent. An inspirational piece of magical writing its own right.

I was delighted to discover that Grant was an avid reader of Finnegans Wake which he considered “a superb nightside text.”

And so did Joyce, as far as I know. He considered it a night-time parallel to his Ulysses. One is the record of the day-time stream of consciousness and another is the record of the dreaming mind stream of consciousness. Ever heard someone talk in their sleep? The entire FW is written in that style.

Interestingly, in Fries account after saying how Grant reads and quotes FW, it's mentioned that Grant also enjoyed Timothy Leary's autobiography, Flashbacks. Leary was also an avid James Joyce reader and once said that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake were his best preparation for entering psychedelic spaces.

Apart from drawing inspiration from Joyce, both Grant and Leary were pioneers in the exploration of alternate realities and both could make the claim of carrying on Crowley's work in their unique ways.

Crowley called Joyce a genius in a review of Ulysses. I have found much in FW that resonates with Thelema and Magick and apparently Grant did too. This makes me wonder about the unsubstantiated statement Kaczynski makes in Perdurabo that Joyce never read Crowley?

There is a study by Terrinoni, Occult Joyce: The Hidden in Ulysses: http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/Occult-Joyce--The-Hidden-in-Ulysses.htm and an essay by Tindall, James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2707648 These, together with bibliographies and further clues should point out the ares of subsequent research for those inclined to do so.

I think that it would make sense to substantiate the claim that Joyce read Crowley, which would depend on some sort of record. To substantiate that he did not do so is much more tricky, negative proofs and such. But there is always a nice coincidence, if there are coincidences, that Joyce set Ulysses in the spring of 1904.

Yes. If he could not have read AC, that would be the only acceptable proof of the negative.

There's a joke about Edison. Somebody says, "They have found a piece of old wire, thousands of years old." "And?" says Edison. "That proves that they have discovered electricity long time ago." "That's nothing," says Edison, "At this other place they also dug and found nothing." "And?" asks the other person. "Well, that proves that long time ago they also used wireless ."

By "unsubstantiated statement" I meant that Kaczynski didn't indicate what lead him to such a conclusion not that he should provide absolute proof. For instance, if someone who knew Joyce well said that he never read Crowley, etc. Joyce obviously knew of Crowley as would anyone who reads newspapers. References to him and his life do pop up in FW.

Thanks for the links!

AC and Finnegans Wake: http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-3285-highlight-finnegan.phtml

Jan's article was indeed a great read and very well written. Glad to see Mr. Grant isn't forgotten 🙂