Oracles: The Biography of an Art

Unpublished Fragments of the Work

of Aleister Crowley with Explanatory

Notes by R. P. Lester and the Author

 

Apparently Crowley had planned to publish a special limited edition of Oracles as indicated in an S.P.R.T. catalog: ‘Oracles: the Biography of an Art. Special limited edition of one hundred copies only, containing important additional matter, privately printed on hand-made paper. Two Guineas net. Write for our special prospectus.’ Unfortunately, this publication never materialized.

 

Published Date:

1905.

Publisher:

Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth (S.P.R.T.).

Printer:

Unknown. 

Published At:

Boleskine, Foyers, Inverness.

Pages:

viii + 176 + 14 pages advertisements (S.P.R.T. catalog) + ii detachable order form.

Price:

Priced at 5 shillings.

State (a):

One copy printed on vellum and bound in paneled red morocco leather.

State (b):

500 copies printed on machine-made paper and bound in green camel's hair wrappers.

 

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Contents

 

- The Death of a Drunkard

- The Balloon

- Spolia Opima*

- Lines on Being Invited to Meet the Premier in Wales, September 92

- A Peep Behind the Scenes

- To Mrs. O——N C——T

- Elvina

- A Welcome to Jabez

- The Little Half-Sovereign

- Adaptation of “Onward Christian Soldiers” to the Needs of Brethren

- Ode to Sappho*

- In a Lesbian Meadow*

- ’Tis Pity*

- My Wife Dies*

- The Nativity*

- All Night*

- Ode to Venus Callipyge*

- The Blood-Lotus*

- Translations from Baudelaire*

- Epilogue to “Green Alps”*

- Invocation

- A Litany

- Call of the Slyphs

- Chaldean Fools

- Hermit’s Hymn to Solitude

- The Storm

- Hymn to Apollo

- Venus

- Assumpta Canidia

- Night in the Valley

- March in the Tropics

- Metempsychosis

- Advice of a Letter

- On Waikiki Beach

- The Dance of Shiva

- Sonnet for a Picture

- The House

- Anima Lunae

- The Triads of Despair

- Sabbe Pi Dukkan

- Dhammapada

- St. Patrick’s Day 1902

- The Earl’s Quest

- Eve

- The Sibyl

- La Coureuse

- To Elizabeth

- Sonnets for a Picture

- Rondels at Monte Carlo

- In the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh

- The Hills

 

* These poems were originally meant to appear in Crowley's collection of poems, Green Alps, which was never published having been destroyed by fire at the printer’s.

 

 

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