47 Facts About Kenneth Grant

Kenneth Grant was an English ceremonial magician, novelist, and advocate of the Thelemic religion.

When Crowley died in 1947, Kenneth Grant was seen as his heir apparent in Great Britain, and was appointed as such by the American head of OT.

In 1949, Kenneth Grant befriended the occult artist Austin Osman Spare, and in ensuing years helped to publicise Spare's artwork through a series of publications.

On Germer's death in 1969, Kenneth Grant proclaimed himself Outer Head of OT.

Kenneth Grant's Order became known as the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis, operating from his home in Golders Green, north London.

Kenneth Grant was born on 23 May 1924 in Ilford, Essex, the son of a Welsh clergyman.

Kenneth Grant had made use of a personal magical symbol ever since being inspired to do so in a visionary dream he experienced in 1939; he spelled its name variously as A'ashik, Oshik, or Aossic.

Aged 18, in the midst of the Second World War, Kenneth Grant volunteered to join the British Army, later commenting that he hoped to be posted to British India, where he could find a spiritual guru to study under.

Kenneth Grant was never posted abroad, and was ejected from the army aged 20 due to an unspecified medical condition.

Kenneth Grant was fascinated by the work of the occultist Aleister Crowley, having read a number of his books.

Eager to meet Crowley, Kenneth Grant unsuccessfully wrote to Crowley's publishers, asking them to give him his address; however, the publisher had moved address themselves, meaning that they never received his letter.

Kenneth Grant requested that Michael Houghton, proprietor of Central London's esoteric bookstore Atlantis Bookshop, introduce him to Crowley.

Persisting, Kenneth Grant wrote letters to the new address of Crowley's publishers, asking that they pass his letters on to Crowley himself.

In March 1945, Kenneth Grant moved into a lodge cottage in the grounds of Netherwood, a Sussex boarding house where Crowley was living.

Kenneth Grant continued living there with Crowley for several months, dealing with the old man's correspondences and needs.

Kenneth Grant's family disliked that he was working for no wage, and pressured him to resign, which he did in June 1945, leaving Netherwood.

Kenneth Grant attended Crowley's funeral at a Brighton crematorium, while accompanied by his new wife, Steffi.

Steffi Kenneth Grant introduced herself to the occult artist Austin Osman Spare in 1949, having learned about him while she was modelling for Herbert Budd, a tutor at St Martin's School of Art who had studied alongside Spare.

Kenneth Grant had continued studying Crowley's work, and a year after Crowley's death was acknowledged as a Ninth Degree member of OT.

Germer however deemed it "blasphemy" that Kenneth Grant had identified a single planet with Nuit; on 20 July 1955, Germer issued a "Note of Expulsion" expelling Kenneth Grant from OT.

Kenneth Grant however ignored Germer's letter of expulsion, continuing to operate the New Isis Lodge under the claim that he had powers from the "Inner Plane".

From 1953 to 1961 Kenneth Grant immersed himself in the study of Hinduism, becoming a follower of the Hindu guru Ramana Maharshi.

Kenneth Grant was interested in the work of another Hindu teacher, Lord Kusuma Haranath, and was credited with encouraging and helping to create the three-volume Lord Haranath: A Biography by Akella Ramakrishna Sastri.

From 1959 to 1963, Kenneth Grant privately published the Carfax Monographs, a series of short articles on magic published in ten instalments, each at a limited print run of 100.

In 1969, Kenneth Grant co-edited The Confessions of Aleister Crowley for publication with Crowley's literary executor John Symonds.

That same year, Kenneth Grant published Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare, a collection of his late friend's images based on 20 years of research.

Kenneth Grant had begun work on the book many years before and had agreed for 500 copies to be published by Trigram Press Ltd in 1967, although at the last minute the project was cancelled.

Kenneth Grant had authored new introductions for re-releases of two of Spare's works, a 1973 publication of The Anathema of Zos and a 1975 release of The Book of Pleasure.

The works of Kenneth Grant are fashioned out of the stuff of dreams.

In 1989, Kenneth Grant began his relationship with Skoob Books Limited, a publisher linked to the Skoob Books bookstore in Bloomsbury, central London which had begun to develop a line of esoteric titles under the leadership of Caroline Wise and Chris Johnson.

In 1991, Skoob Books published Kenneth Grant's Remembering Aleister Crowley, a volume containing his memoirs of Crowley alongside reproductions of diary entries, photographs, and letters.

Kenneth Grant asserted that the work was "quasi-autobiographical", but never specified which parts were based on his life and which were fictional.

Kenneth Grant died on 15 January 2011 after a period of illness.

Kenneth Grant drew eclectically on a range of sources in devising his teachings.

The historian of religion Manon Hedenborg White noted that "Kenneth Grant's writings do not lend themselves easily to systematization".

Kenneth Grant added that he "deliberately employs cryptic or circuitous modes of argumentation", and lacks clear boundaries between fact and fiction.

Kenneth Grant promoted what he termed the Typhonian or Draconian tradition of magic, and wrote that Thelema was only a recent manifestation of this wider tradition.

Kenneth Grant wrote that this tradition spread throughout the world, forming the basis of the ancient Egyptian religion, as well as the Hindu and Buddhist tantra and forms of Western esotericism.

Kenneth Grant added that for millennia, the Typhonian tradition has been opposed by the "Osirians" or "Solarites", practitioners of a patriarchal and solar religions, who have portrayed the Typhonians as evil, corrupt, and debauched.

Kenneth Grant adopted a perennialist interpretation of the history of religion.

However, Kenneth Grant differed from Traditionalists like Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy in his positive assessment of Western occultism.

Kenneth Grant believed that by mastering magic, one masters this illusory universe, gaining personal liberation and recognising that only the Self really exists.

Kenneth Grant further claimed that the realm of the Self was known as "the Mauve Zone", and that it could be reached while in a state of deep sleep, where it has the symbolic appearance of a swamp.

Kenneth Grant believed that the reality of consciousness, which he deemed the only true reality, was formless and thus presented as a void, although he taught that it was symbolised by the Hindu goddess Kali and the Thelemic goddess Nuit.

Kenneth Grant thought that because women possess kalas, they have oracular and visionary powers.

Kenneth Grant published his work over a period of five decades, providing both a synthesis of Crowley and Spare's work and new, often idiosyncratic interpretations of them.

In 2003, Bogdan's first edition of a Kenneth Grant bibliography was published by Academia Esoterica Press.