CROWLEY, Aleister.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The God-Eater. Rare first edition. In Crowley's own arcane words: "The idea of this obscure and fantastic play is as follows. By a glorious act human misery is secured (history of Christianity). Hence, appreciation of the personality of Jesus is no excuse for being a Christian. Inversely, by a vile and irrational serious of acts, human happiness is secured (story of the play). Hence, attacks on the mystics of history need not cause us to condemn mysticism" (Crowley, p. 360).In his "autohagiography", published 20 years after his death, Crowley reflected on his relaxed efforts at publishing his writing in the first decade of the 1900s. "I had simply no idea of business. Besides this, I was in no need of money; my responsibility to the gods was to write as I was inspired; my responsibility to mankind was to publish what I wrote. But it ended there. As long as what I wrote was technically accessible to the public through the British Museum, and such places, my hands were clean" (Crowley, p. 406).This copy is a rare variant, noted by Yorke, with the imprint reading "Watts & Co." rather than "Chas. Watts & Co.". Auction records list only one other copy in the last 50 years.

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