THE CAPITAL TIMES

Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

3 May 1962

(page 7)

Books of the Times.

By August Derleth.

Magic and Wizardry.

Aleister Crowley, by Charles Cammell, University Books. $5.00.

Two of the most interesting literary figures in Twentieth Century England were the Rev. Montague Summers, student of Black Magic, Vampirism, Gothic lore and bibliography, the supernatural, and Aleister Crowley, esoteric poet, aesthete, decadent and practitioner of Black Magic. . . .

[ . . . ]

The biography of Crowley, elsewhere biographed under the title of THE GREAT BEAST, is a friendly one. Mr. Cammell bends over backward to make Aleister Crowley sympathetic; unless the reader has no prejudice against debauchery, Cammell’s success is questionable. But Crowley was certainly an interesting poet, minor insofar as literature is concerned, for all his writings—and he was prolific; Mr. Cammell’s is one literary man’s assessment of another, with all else about Crowley in secondary place. What Mr. Cammell does make clear, however, is that Crowley was not nearly so bad as he was painted; he was bad enough, and that, of course, makes him all the more interesting.