Kenneth Grant

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OUTSIDE THE CIRCLES OF TIME

Rev. ed. 2008 332pp Starfire hardback in dustwrapper. Illus

Outside the Circles of Time was first published in 1980. This edition has been newly typeset, with some of the original illustrations now in colour, and augmented with previously unpublished artwork by Steffi Grant. Long out of print, this is the fifth volume in the series of Grant’s Typhonian Trilogies. Limited to 1500 copies. Outside the Circles of Time covers “a network more complex than was ever imagined: a network not unlike H.P. Lovecraft’s dark vision of sinister forces lurking at the rim of the universe”. The book explores a complex of such ideas, from Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, Crowley’s Book of the Law, Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, and Frater Achad’s researches, alongside the work of Soror Andahadna (a.k.a. Nema). £30.00

CONVOLVULUS AND OTHER POEMS

2005 hardback, 188 pages, colour dustjacket designed by Steffi Grant.

This is the long-awaited collection of poems by Kenneth Grant. Included here are two collections previously published - Black to Black and other poems (1963) and The Gull's Beak and other poems (1970). Also included is a third, previously unpublished collection, Convolvulus: Poems of Love and the Other Darkness. Together, these poems span the years from the nineteen-forties to the present day. Integrated with the poems are twenty-one sketches by Austin Osman Spare.

Printed on high-quality uncoated paper in black and green throughout, Convolvulus is a book of delicate beauty, where the drawings by Spare complement these haunting poems by Kenneth Grant. Published in a limited edition of 750 copies. £25.00

AT THE FEET OF THE GURU

2006 hardback, 134 pages, colour dustjacket designed by Steffi Grant.

Collected for the first time as one volume are these penetrating essays on Eastern Mysticism which Kenneth Grant wrote from the early 1950s onwards. Published originally in various Asian journals as well as the 1970s encyclopaedia series Man, Myth & Magic, they concern Sages such as Ramana Maharshi, Pagal Haranath, Ramakrishna, Anandamayi Ma, Sivananda, and others.

At the core of these essays is the crucial insight of Advaita - a Sanskrit word meaning ‘not divided', and associated with the Indian school of Advaita Vedanta and the work of perhaps its most famous exponent, the Sage Sri Shankacharya. It is an insight which has been expounded most succinctly in modern times in the works of Sri Ramana Maharshi, of Tiruvannamalai, who is the subject of several of the essays in the present volume. Central to these particular essays is his technique of Atma Vichara, or enquiry into the Self, a practice leading to the dissolution of the veils of illusion which obscure the singularity and universality of Awareness, often epitomised as Cosmic Consciousness.

Generally regarded as uniquely Eastern, Advaita is on the contrary a fundamental insight that is at the core of most if not all schools of mysticism and spiritual progress which seek to penetrate to a reality beyond the glamour of appearances. It is implicit in the Western magical tradition, magic being specifically the manipulation of glamours. Much of Crowley 's work, for instance, is saturated with this insight. It is also this same fundamental understanding of Advaita which underpins Kenneth Grant's Typhonian Trilogies, and which is in the present volume consolidated and deepened over the course of these essays.

Printed on high-quality paper, 132 pages long, with a section of fourteen black-and-white plates, the book is sewn hard-bound, with an attractive full-colour dust-jacket designed by Steffi Grant.

£25.00

SNAKEWAND / A DARKER STRAIN

2000 Hardback, 168 pages, colour dustjacket by Steffi Grant. Frontispiece reproduces 'Hybrid', a 1929 drawing by Austin Osman Spare of a hyanae.

This is the second volume in the series of novellas by Kenneth Grant. This volume consists of two stories, both of them concerning the voodoo Bultu, or Cult of the Spectral Hyanae.In the first story, 'Snakewand', a set of voodoo drums exercise an insidious, hypnotic rhythm which brings about possession in those who fall under its sway, sweeping an entire town to destruction. In the second, 'The Darker Strain', something malefic is transmitted at a seance, again bringing about possession and transformation into a hyanae.

These stories, and other tales in this series, were written in the wake of rituals performed over a period of seven years in New Isis Lodge. Many were the magicians and mediums who passed through the Lodge, and some of them feature in the series of novellas. Their mundane personalities may not have appeared unusual to casual observation, but when elongated and siderealised by the unique perspectives which their magical roles created for them, they achieved an apotheosis, an epiphany. This extraordinary phenomenon demonstrated the heights and the depths which human nature is capable of scaling and of fathoming, in the delirious frenzy inspired by their art. These tales are likewise orientated to the other side of a reality rarely glimpsed outside a magically charged Circle. £25.00

GAMALIEL / DANCE DOLL DANCE

2003 hardback, 158 pages, colour dustjacket by Steffi Grant. Colour frontispiece 'Altar of Lam' by Steffi Grant.

This is the third volume in the novella series by Kenneth Grant, and consists of two stories. The first, 'Gamaliel: The Diary of a Vampire', presents the history of a woman, Vilma, who attempts to invoke unseen Intelligences but takes a wrong turn. She loses her way in the Gamaliel, the Qliphoth of Yesod, and eventually succombs to vampiric possession. The story unfolds as extracts from her Magical Diary, the editor of which makes a horrifying discovery as the Diary closes.

The second, 'Dance Doll Dance', is an account of Tantric Sorcery. It centres upon the fatal emanations of an idol, bequeathed to the narrator of the story. It becomes clear from a sinister pattern of events that the idol thrives on blood and sexual rites. The narrator is enmeshed in a nefarious web of intrigue and allure, and his energies are vampirised, culminating in a cataclysmic rite based on the Dakshina Kalika Yantra.

Like other stories in this series, they were written in the period when New Isis Lodge was in operation, in the 1950s and early 1960s. £25.00

THE OTHER CHILD AND OTHER TALES

2003 hardback, 216 pages. Colour dustjacket by Steffi Grant. Colour frontispiece 'The Stellar Lode' by Steffi Grant.

The final volume to date in Kenneth Grant's novella series, it consists of two novellas with a common theme of Ancient Egyptian sorcery, and four short stories.

The first novella, 'The Other Child', is a tale of two brothers, one a Child of Light, the other of Darkness, and the struggle for a cataclysmic magical power which they each partially glyph. A scholar of Ancient Egyptian studes is unwittingly drawn into the struggle, eventually assuming a priestly destiny as events unfold.

The second novella is 'The Stellar Lode', previously published many years ago but here re-edited and published within the novellas series. We learn of a small glass sphere into which, ages ago, was sealed by means of sorcery the soul of a powerful Egyptian Queen. The sphere exerts a powerful talismanic effect on those into whose hands it passes, each possessor playing an unwitting part in an urgent cosmic drama, echoing roles which they had played ages past, in the original drama which gave birth to the sphere.

Also included in this story are four powerful short stories having in common a state of perichoresis, or interpenetration of dimensions, across time and space. Whether caught in the events of ages past, or passing through a sequence of related dreams, we traverse a web of inter-relationships, parts of a great and unfolding cosmic drama in which our roles are myriad. £25.00