THE CLARION

London, England

13 September 1907

(page 2)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

“The Star in the West,” By Captain Fuller [J. F. C. Fuller]. Walter Scott. 6s. net.

[We must confess that our intelligence is not equal to the task of wrestling with this book. It is quite an unusual sort of book. “At first sight,” says the author, in the first sentence of his preface, “it may appear to the casual reader of this essay, that the superscription on its cover is both forward and perverse and contrary to the sum of human experience.” Which appears to be sane and intelligible enough until you read the superinscription, which is as follows:

V. V. V. V. V.

I. N.     T. A.

666       418

The whole being surmounted by certain mysterious symbols. “Contrary to the sum of human experience” is not quite how we should express it. Most of the volume appears to be devoted to an appreciation of the poetic works of a Mr. Aleister Crowley, whom Captain Fuller describes as “No vestal. . . . No mere milk-and-bun-walk, where we may rest and take our fill; for he has unstrung the mystic lyre from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and of Evil, singing old songs and new,” etc. We are also informed that “Crowley fairly puts his characters to bed, tucks them up, and does not blow the candle out with cryptic Morse-like dot and dash, leaving the imagination to wallow in the dark, intelligible to the baby mind of sucklings, and we admire him all the more for not doing so.” Concerning which we have nothing to say, except that we wonder why authors like Captain Fuller always send their books to the Clarion?]