Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Ercildoune
    Ercildoune
    Ercildoune
    Ebook115 pages2 hours

    Ercildoune

    By Aleister Crowley

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This early work by Aleister Crowley was originally published in 1912. Born in Royal Leamington Spa, England in 1875, Crowley was raised by Christian fundamentalist parents. He attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, but left before graduating. After leaving the college, he devoted his time to studying the occult, and travelled extensively throughout the world in persuit of its secret knowledge. He went on to become a prolific writer, producing essays, prose and poetry on a wide range of subjects. To this day he remains a highly influential figure, both in occult circles and popular culture. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateOct 21, 2015
    ISBN9781473370203
    Ercildoune
    Author

    Aleister Crowley

    Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English poet, painter, occultist, magician, and mountaineer. Born into wealth, he rejected his family’s Christian beliefs and developed a passion for Western esotericism. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley gained a reputation as a poet whose work appeared in such publications as The Granta and Cambridge Magazine. An avid mountaineer, he made the first unguided ascent of the Mönch in the Swiss Alps. Around this time, he first began identifying as bisexual and carried on relationships with prostitutes, which led to his contracting syphilis. In 1897, he briefly dated fellow student Herbert Charles Pollitt, whose unease with Crowley’s esotericism would lead to their breakup. The following year, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society to which many of the era’s leading artists belonged, including Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1900 and 1903, he traveled to Mexico, India, Japan, and Paris. In these formative years, Crowley studied Hinduism, wrote the poems that would form The Sword of Song (1904), attempted to climb K2, and became acquainted with such artists as Auguste Rodin and W. Somerset Maugham. A 1904 trip to Egypt inspired him to develop Thelema, a philosophical and religious group he would lead for the remainder of his life. He would claim that The Book of the Law (1909), his most important literary work and the central sacred text of Thelema, was delivered to him personally in Cairo by the entity Aiwass. During the First World War, Crowley allegedly worked as a double agent for the British intelligence services while pretending to support the pro-German movement in the United States. The last decades of his life were spent largely in exile due to persecution in the press and by the states of Britain and Italy for his bohemian lifestyle and open bisexuality.

    Read more from Aleister Crowley

    Related to Ercildoune

    Related ebooks

    Occult & Supernatural For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Looking for LAYLAH

      Feb 23, 2023

      It’s an evocative and indelible image that has been used as an illustration for sundry books on magic, esotericism and the occult: a dusky, oneiric portrait of a woman, her face bearing a wistful, somewhat inscrutable expression. Pre-Raphaelite tress

      9 min read

    • Article

      Did You Know?

      Sep 29, 2020

      There are historical references to Valac in the 17th century magical text known as The Lesser Key Of Solomon and the 16th century Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. Both books, or grimoires, feature a list of demons and how to conjure them. Summoning spirit

      1 min read

    • Article

      Spawn Of The Beast The Children Of Aleister Crowley

      Jan 5, 2022

      If people are aware of any of Aleister Crowley’s children, they’d probably be thinking of his short-lived daughter Anne “Poupée” Leah, born to Crowley’s “Scarlet Woman” Leah Hirsig in 1920, and whose death later that year is a key part of the mytholo

      11 min read

    • Article

      Crowley And Huxley: A Trip In Berlin?

      Aug 12, 2021

      In 1977 International Times published ‘Sybarite among the Shadows’, a short story I had written based on Aleister Crowley initiating Aldous Huxley into the use of mescaline in Berlin in the 1930s. 1 For good measure, I spiced things up with a referen

      6 min read

    • Article

      “By Magicians, For Magicians…”

      Jul 14, 2022

      In the 1970s when a fuse board kept blowing and all the lights went out, Amado Crowley – who dubiously said he was Aleister’s secret son (see FT414:32-37) – announced he would claim he’d done it, just as his ‘father’ had, it is said, caused the books

      6 min read

    • Article

      Voyages Of A Simple Sailor Are Over

      Feb 27, 2020

      Suddenly the sea seems a bigger place. That’s because the greatest exponent of shrink-wrapping it for the rest of us, between the covers of his books, has retired from the ocean. Well, almost. ‘I’d never say never, but firstly I feel too much of an a

      3 min read

    • Article

      Crusader Kinks

      Sep 6, 2021

      Crusader Kinks
      7 min read

    • Article

      Crusader Kinks

      Jul 22, 2021

      Crusader Kinks
      7 min read

    • Article

      Crusader Kinks

      Aug 10, 2021

      Crusader Kinks
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Hamilton Road

      Mar 2, 2022

      The Hamilton Road
      7 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 2, 2019

      Is not January the hardest month to get through? When you have weathered that, you get into the gulf-stream of winter, nearer the shores of spring. —Henry David Thoreau, Journal, February 2, 1854 [T]he pure luxury of a cloudless sky designed not to

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Massacre of Glencoe

      Jul 30, 2018

      The Massacre of Glencoe
      4 min read

    • Article

      Of Bankruptcy And Birds

      Jul 14, 2021

      T HE family motto of the Marquess of Aberdeen is fortuna sequatur, or ‘let fortune follow’. However, reading Simon Welfare’s tale of the 1st Marquess’s reversal of his heraldic exhortation, it is difficult not to believe a more appropriate motto woul

      4 min read

    • Article

      Lonesome Pine

      Oct 8, 2021

      Lonesome Pine
      5 min read

    • Article

      Top Ten Sea Books

      Jun 5, 2020

      SJ AND SMH In the October of 1991, a storm of rare wickedness hit the North Atlantic. Caught up in it was the sword-fishing boat Andrea Gail, which went down with the loss of all hands. At that time, the author was working as a tree surgeon in the bo

      7 min read

    • Article

      White Knuckles And Wide Eyes

      May 20, 2020

      White Knuckles And Wide Eyes
      4 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2022

      Nothing is as important to our ability to survive as our ability to hurt. -Haider Warraich, The Song of Our Scars, 2022 In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. -William Blake, T

      4 min read

    • Article

      Myths And Monsters

      Dec 22, 2020

      Myths And Monsters
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Ercildoune

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Ercildoune - Aleister Crowley

      Ercildoune

      A Novel

      By

      Aleister Crowley

      Copyright © 2012 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Contents

      Aleister Crowley

      Ercildoune

      CHAPTER I

      THE GLACIER CAMP

      CHAPTER II

      THE RIVER OF MUD

      CHAPTER III

      THE DOOM OF ERCILDOUNE

      CHAPTER IV

      CONTINUES THE DOOM

      CHAPTER V

      DERELICT CORRESPONDENCE

      CHAPTER VI

      FATHER AMBROSE

      CHAPTER VII

      LITERALISM IN PRACTICE

      CHAPTER VIII

      THE CHAPEL OF REVENGE

      CHAPTER IX

      MR. JUSTICE LAYCOCK

      CHAPTER X

      MADAME ZYNSCKY

      CHAPTER XI

      THE CROWN PRINCESS

      CHAPTER XII

      MISS ARUNDELL

      CHAPTER XIII

      THE ROOT OF THE MATTER

      CHAPTER XIV

      THE FLOWER OF THE MISCHIEF

      CHAPTER XV

      LOVE AMONG THE HOOLIGANS

      CHAPTER XVI

      THE MENTAL CONDITION OF MR. SEAGRAVE

      CHAPTER XVII

      THE HOLY DIRK

      CHAPTER XVIII

      THE CUP FLOWS OVER

      CHAPTER XIX

      THE TRAP CLOSES

      CHAPTER XX

      THE CURSE BREAKS

      Aleister Crowley

      Aleister Crowley was born in Royal Leamington Spa, England in 1875. Raised by Christian fundamentalist parents, he attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, but left before graduating. Upon leaving the college, he devoted his life to the occult, studying magic, qabalah, alchemy, tarot, and astrology. From 1900 onwards, Crowley travelled extensively, mainly in India and China. In 1904, while in Egypt, he produced one of his most popular works, The Book of the Law, and three years later he founded his magical order.

      Throughout the rest of his life, Crowley was a prolific writer, producing essays, prose and poetry on a wide range of subjects. In 1913, he published Magick (Book 4), a lengthy examination of his belief system which draws on a vast range of sources and is regarded by many as his magnum opus. In his later years, Crowley became addicted to heroin and struggled with bankruptcy. He died in Hastings, England, aged 72. To this day he remains a highly influential figure, both in occult circles and popular culture.

      Ercildoune

      "A Red Star and a Waning Moon

      Rede me this true rune;

      A Gray Sun and a bastard loon

      Ding doun Ercildoune."

      CHAPTER I

      THE GLACIER CAMP

      MIDNIGHT on the Chogo Lungma La. Moonlight. The steady sweep of the icy blizzards of the north cuts through canvas and eiderdown and fur. Roland Rex, peering out for a moment from his tiny tent upon the stupendous beauty of the snows, almost wonders that the stars can stand before the blast. Yet, dimly and afar, a speck of life stirs on those illimitable wastes. How minute is a man in such solitudes! Yet how much man means to man! No avalanche, not the very upheaval of the deep-rooted mountains could have held his attention so close as did that dot upon the wilderness of snow.

      So far it was, so heavy the weight of the wind, so steep and slippery the slopes, that dawn had broken ere the speck resolved itself into a man. Tall and rugged, his black hair woven into a web over his eyes to protect them from the Pain of the Snows, as the natives call the fearful fulminating snow-blindness of the giant peaks, his feet wrapped round and round with strips of leather and cloth, he approached the little camp.

      Patient and imperturbably are these men who face the majesty of the great mountains: experience has taught them that it is useless to be angry with a snowstorm. A blizzard may persist for a week; to conquer it one must be ready to persist for many weeks. So, quiet and at ease, just as if he had not made his two-and-twenty marches in six days, the messenger fumbled in his clothes and produced the mail.

      Two years and more since Roland had been lost in the waste; within a month of Skardu he had arrived, and sent forward a swift runner with a letter to the Tehsildar, the local official, and a budget for his friends at home. The wind had failed just after dawn, and the sun shone strongly on the glacier. Every particle of bedding was hung out to dry; the coolies were right merry; it would be easy to cook food to-day.

      Roland had thawed his penultimate tin of sausages, and boiled up his chocolate. Seated on one of the leather-bound baskets which contained his few effects he was now enjoying the warmth, and his pipe, and the rapture of news from home. For though he could expect no letters, the thoughtful Tehsildar had sent him up a newspaper. Mr. Justice Billington had hay-fever; Lord Wittle had obtained his decree nisi; Consols had fallen a point; Sir Julius Boot had left town for his country seat; three pigs had been killed in Staffordshire, and a land-agent in Galway; coal would probably soon be dearer; Tariff Reform meant lower income-tax and work for all; Peter Briggs, alias Peter the Pounder, had got three years; Buncombe’s Bottlettes Cured Constipation; Should Women Wear Braces? and all the weariness of the daily drivel.

      But the haunting unreality of the rubbish for a Londoner gives place to a vivid brilliance and charm for one who is far off. Clearly the stuff that dreams are made of; therefore --- strange paradox! --- convincing. Lord Wittle became for the moment as real as Mr. Pickwick. Roland Rex was happy.

      Nor was his satisfaction confined to the news of the world. After the starved brain has got every stupid phrase by heart, it turns, still eager, to the report of the Monthly Medal Competition at Little Piddlingborough, and the P. and O. sailings for next month. Even the dull personal column with its hairpin imbecilities and its bogus assignations gives a certain thrill. All is so deliciously fantastic; in the dreary maze of glaciers, in the grim silence of the rocks, in the splendour of the vast, sheathing as they did the iron of reality in the soul of the explorer, the fatuous piffle of the penny-a-liner is like a fairy story told for the first time to a child. Rather a shock to the child when it learns that its Cinderella is not true, but merely a lesson in humility and punctuality; so to the man should he find in his fairy newspaper a paragraph which directly concerns him. Roland Rex found

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1