[Rarebooks] FS: Aleister Crowley, 1 of 11 in Vellum

[Michael John Thompson]

Offering:

CROWLEY, Aleister. Introduction by Martin P. 
Starr. THE SCENTED GARDEN OF ABDULLAH THE 
SATIRIST OF SHIRAZ. (Bagh-i-Muattar). Deluxe 
Edition, limited to 11 copies, Bound in Full 
White Vellum with Silk Ties. Chicago, IL: The 
Teitan Press. 1991. Deluxe Vellum Edition. 
Octavo. 137pp. The Rare Deluxe issue, bound in 
full vellum with green silk ties, yapp edges, the 
spine titled in gilt, top edges gilt. This deluxe 
edition was issued in an extremely limited 
edition of 11 unnumbered copies only. A fascimile 
of the original edition of 1910, with a new 
Introduction by Crowley scholar Martin P. Starr. 
A fine copy. For bibliographical details, see 
"The Aleister Crowley Desk Reference" by J. 
Edward Cornelius (Teitan Press, 2013).


  The 1910 edition was printed in an edition of 
only 200 copies (plus 10 on vellum), but many of 
these were destroyed in a customs seizure not 
long after publication. A second customs seizure 
in 1924 depleted the number of surviving copies 
yet further, and it is consequently one of 
Crowley's rarest works. Crowley wrote in his 
CONFESSIONS: I spent most of my time writing 
ghazals, purporting to be by a certain Abdullah 
al Haji (Haji, with a soft ìhî, satirist, as 
opposed to Haji with a hard ìhî, pilgrim) of 
Shiraz. I caused him to flourish about 1600 A.D., 
but gave to the collection of his ghazals the 
title Bagh-i-Muattar (The Scented Garden), which 
implies the date 1905, the value of the Arabic 
letters of the title adding up to the equivalent 
of that year of the Hegira. I also invented an 
Anglo Indian major to find, translate and 
annotate the manuscript, an editor to complete 
the work of that gallant soldier (killed in South 
Africa) and a Christian clergyman to discuss the 
matter of the poem from the peculiar point of 
view of high Anglicanism. The ghazals themselves 
are rendered sometimes in the supposed original 
monorime, sometimes in prose, and the annotations 
contain a great deal of the more esoteric 
information about the East, which I had picked up 
from time to time. It is especially to be noted 
that, although I have packed every kind of 
magical and mystical lore into the volume, there 
is nowhere any reference to The Book of the Law. 
I was setting my whole strength against the 
Secret Chiefs. I was trying to forget the whole 
business. The book itself is a complete treatise 
on mysticism, expressed in the symbolism 
prescribed by Persian piety. It describes the 
relations of God and man, explains how the latter 
falls from his essential innocence by allowing 
himself to be deceived by the illusion of matter. 
His religion cease to be real and become formal; 
he falls into sin and suffers the penalty 
thereof. God prepares the pathway of regeneration 
and brings him through shame and sorrow to 
repentance, thus preparing the mystical union 
which restores man to his original privileges, 
free will, immortality, the preception of truth 
and so on. I put the last ounce of myself into 
this book. My previous efforts in the same 
direction would have deceived nobody, but the 
Bagh-i-Muatar, despite my inability to produce 
the Persian originalómy excuse was that it was 
rare and held the most sacred and most secret, 
but was being copied for meópersuaded even 
experienced scholars that it was genuine. It was 
issued by Probsthain & Co., by private 
subscription, in 1910. I have heard of a copy 
changing hands at fifty guineas." - The 
Confessions of Aleister Crowley. London: Jonathan 
Cape, 1969, Pages 451-452. Note: Crowley met 
Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt in October 1897 
and is said to have been involved with him in a 
homosexual relationship. Pollitt is memorialized 
by Crowley in Chapter XLI ìThe Riddleî. By taking 
the first letter of each line of the poem, the 
name ìHerbert Charles Jerome Pollittî is spelled 
out. In the next chapter, ìBagh-i-Muattarî, an 
acrostic spells out Crowleyís name in reverse.

$1,500.00 US



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