Customer Reviews

Cults of the Shadow (Skoob Esoterica)

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This a great introduction to cults around the world who practice the Magick of the Left Hand Path. It shows that such practices spring up spontaneously, and therefore are somehow deeply imbedded in our consciousness, destined to spring up from time-to-time and place-to-place.

These Skoob books are great reprints of Kenneth Grant's earlier works. This one is originally printed in 1975. There are 9 books in the trilogies. Grant has been around for a while and already had a strong background in tantric and buddhist knowledge when he became Crowley's secretary.
He is believed to have been granted the OHO (10th and highest degree) in the O.'.T.'.O.'. and in that capacity founded an operative lodge called Nu Isis which explored and laid a foundation for many of his further works.
In regards to this particular book Grant takes an eclectic approach which attempts to find in gematria values hidden links which lie between the ancient rites of Egypt, Crowley's A.'.A.'., Theosophy, Vedic/Tantric, ancient African cults and voudon Gnosis. His chapter on Michael Bertiaux's Voudon Gnostic teachings is a good introduction to a great modern gnostic thinker/teacher.
Additionally the inclusion of several pages of illustrations by Austin Osman Spare, Steffi Grant(his wife)and others makes these books a worthwhile inclusion in a library.

Most criticism of Grant's work comes from the ranks of the Caliphate OTO who resent his strayings from 'orthodox' Crowley-worship. It is not my intention to uphold the rather overrated and unscholarly works of E.A. Crowley so my comments are somewhat independant. Grant's work is a peculiar mixture of occasional interesting insights mingled with various fragments of arcane lore, GD Magic, tantric flotsam, Lovecraftian bits and bobs stirred into a sometimes suggestive but ultimately indigestible soup. As regards Western Esotericism he depends upon the GD and Crowley which are verbose Edwardian pastiches of Hermeticism rather than the authetic current - so he lacks the depth of detailed knowledge as regards occidental traditions that are required of the true Magus. On oriental mysticism he is a bit more informed mainly by dint of reading Sir John Woodroffe's works on Tantra. The whole is cast in a macabre Addams Family aesthetic of a supposed 'Typhonian Tradition' that unfortunately seems to be just another modernist-romantic effusion of Grant's wayward fancy. Hardly the creative works of 'genius' his followers claim them to be these great tottering heaps of uncritical bric-a-brac, like the products of a 'goth' Blavatsky, are at best an occult curiosity for people stuck in the murk of a perpetual magical-spiritual adolescence, people who want to shock their parents etc etc. The overrall impression is one that comes across as slightly immature and decidedly unreliable. Best read for entertainment value only.I outgrew them around the age of 18...