Aleister Crowley and the Cult of Pan

Few more nightmarish figures stalk English literature than Aleister Crowley (1875-1947 ), poet, magician, mountaineer and agent provocateur. In this groundbreaking study, Paul Newman dives into the occult mire of Crowley's works and fishes out gems and grotesqueries that are by turns ethereal, sublime, pornographic and horrifying.

Like Oscar Wilde before him, Crowley stood in "symbolic relationship to his age" and to contempories like Rupert Brooke, G.K. Chesterton and the Portugese modernist Fernando Pessoa. An influential exponent of the cult of the great god Pan, his essentially 'pagan' outlook was shared by major European writers as well as English novelists like E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence and Arthur Machen.

Paul Newman lives in Cornwall. Editor of the literary magazine 'abraxas', he has written over ten books including 'Lost Gods of Albion' and 'A History of Terror:Fear and Dread Down the Ages'. He was among the international scholars asked to contribute to 'Scribner's Dictionary of Ideas' and recently his Arthurian novel 'Galahad' was awarded the Peninsula Prize.

ISBN 1-871551-66-8