The Carfax Monographs [Deluxe Edition]

by Kenneth Grant, Steffi Grant (Illustrator), Robert Shehu-Ansell (Editor)

Drawn from their pioneering documentary work in the late 1940s, the original Carfax Monographs were an ambitious crossroads of art and occultism from the early magical career of Steffi and Kenneth Grant. Privately published as a series of occult essays with hand-drawn images by Steffi between 1959-1963, the original monographs were produced in very small numbers. Few survive.

The purpose of the Carfax Monographs was to reconstruct and elucidate the hidden lore of the West according to the canons preserved in various modern esoteric orders and movements. Not only were they unique in what they had to say when originally published, but a proper regard to colour, proportion, attribution and accuracy of technical detail made them a ‘veritable grimoire’ for those able to apply the formulae contained within.

This new edition draws upon unseen material from the Kenneth and Steffi Grant Archive to present this pioneering series in a fresh light. An illustrated contextual essay from Henrik Bogdan makes clear the importance of Steffi’s early role as protagonist; working as artist–researcher, author and series administrator. For this new edition we have also re-photographed Steffi’s large scale Golden Dawn sketchbooks to reproduce her key images as full-colour facsimiles. In addition, the original essays have been edited and full citations added, together with a bibliography; all cross-referenced with the Kenneth and Steffi Grant library to ensure the editions cited are those they worked from themselves.

The Carfax Monographs series may be seen as the antecedent of Kenneth Grant’s famed trilogies; this edition aims to be the most comprehensive yet.


CONTENTS

Preface – Robert Shehu-Ansell
At the Crossroads of Art and Occultism: the Carfax Monographs 1959–1963 – Henrik Bogdan

The Tree of Life – Steffi Grant
The Golden Dawn – Steffi Grant
Aleister Crowley – Steffi Grant
Austin Osman Spare – Kenneth Grant
Vinum Sabbati – Kenneth Grant
Mage and Image – Steffi Grant
Hidden Lore – Kenneth Grant
Yetzirah – Steffi Grant
Magical Creation – Kenneth Grant
Vault of the Adepts – Kenneth Grant
Further Considerations – Steffi Grant

Notes
Bibliography

120 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 2022

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Kenneth Grant was the head of several important Thelemic orders and author of the influential “Typhonian Trilogies” series (1972–2002) that includes The Magical Revival, Nightside of Eden and Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God.

In 1939, Kenneth Grant chanced upon Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice and a few years later began a correspondence with the author (see Remembering Aleister Crowley, Skoob Books, 1991) that would lead to him joining the Ordo Templi Orientis. In 1946, he was initiated into the Argentum Astrum and was confirmed as an IX° in the O.T.O.

Shortly after Crowley’s death in 1947 Grant met David Curwen. Also member of the O.T.O. Sovereign Sanctuary, a keen alchemist and a student of tantra, Curwen initiated Grant into “a highly recondite formula of the tantric vama marg.” This experience further deepened Grant’s interest in oriental mysticism and he detailed his work with the Advaita Vedanta in a number of essays for Asian journals in the early 1950s (later published as At the Feet of the Guru, Starfire, 2006).

In 1948, Kenneth Grant’s wife Steffi (they were married in 1946) wrote to Austin Osman Spare and the couple began an eight-year friendship with the artist. The bookseller Michael Houghton had already introduced Grant to Spare’s opus, The Book of Pleasure, and Spare elucidated his theories with letters and enclosures of manuscripts, with Kenneth acting as amanuensis. In 1954, Spare and Grant co-founded the Zos Kia Cultus: not a cult in the objective sense, but a designation given to the creative nexus of personal magical experience (see Zos Speaks!, Fulgur, 1999).

In the same year Grant founded the New Isis Lodge, with the intention of providing a conduit for “the influx of cosmic energy from a transplutonic power-zone known to initiates as Nu-Isis.” The group ran until 1962 and various accounts of the experiences of the group may be found throughout the “Typhonian Trilogies”.

Coetaneous with the New Isis Lodge, Kenneth and Steffi Grant began work on the Carfax Monographs. This series of ten essays was issued between 1959 and 1963 with the explicit intention to “elucidate the hidden lore of the West according to canons preserved in various esoteric orders and movements of recent times.” It was the beginning of a unique 50 year contribution to Thelemic literature and art that spans poetry, biographical works, fact and fiction.

Copyright © Robert Ansell, 2007

http://www.fulgur.co.uk/authors/grant/