Late-modern revisions
Kenneth Grant
Thelemic writer who fused Crowley, Spare, Tantra, Surrealism and weird fiction into the deliberately unstable Typhonian current.
- Dates
- 23 May 1924 – 15 January 2011
- Dating
- documented dates
- Born
- Ilford, Essex
The life
Grant briefly served as Crowley's secretary near the end of Crowley's life and later became a friend and advocate of Austin Osman Spare. With Steffi Grant he organised the New Isis Lodge and developed the body later known as the Typhonian Order.
Place in the tradition
His books made marginal, dreamlike and fictional material productive inside ceremonial magic and influenced both later Thelema and chaos magic.
a note on the record
History and later legend
Grant's historical assertions, gematria and claims of occult succession are frequently contested, including within the organisations whose names he used. His books work more securely as creative esoteric constructions than as documentary history.
the written record
Principal works
-
1972
The Magical Revival
The first of the Typhonian Trilogies, rereading Crowley and modern occultism through Tantra, dream and hidden correspondences.
-
1977
Nightside of Eden
Develops a shadow-side reading of the Qabalistic Tree and the tunnels associated with it.
-
1994
Outer Gateways
A late synthesis of Typhonian magic, dream, fiction and extra-human intelligence.