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Remembering Frater Aossic, the late Kenneth Grant:

When I was still only a 15 year old schoolboy, passionately imbibing everything that was weird and alternative (from H P Lovecraft to Philip K Dick, William S Burroughs and already befriending the notorious Throbbing Gristle, and as a consequence being in at the start with TOPY), I had been steeping myself in the Occult from the age of 11, already reading all the Aleister Crowley that I could lay my hands on, and became acquainted with the works of Kenneth Grant.

Left: Kenneth Grant, as he looked around the time the author corresponded with and met him; Right: Matthew Levi Stevens, about a year after he met Mr Grant, in full Temple ov Psychick Youth Tibetan mode

So I wrote to him, c/o the publisher, borrowing a trick from Rimbaud of pretending to be a coupla-three years older than I was and seeking to claim my place amongst the aspirants (ah, the arrogance of youth!). To my surprise and delight he replied, always writing very formally (Dear Mr. Stevens, and signed Sincerely, K. Grant) but still taking the trouble to answer my various queries. He was also good enough to put me on to Frank Letchford, that other great friend & champion of the one-andonly Austin Osman Spare. Eventually I met him, almost by accident by being in the right place at the right time when a book-dealer friend of mine had reason to meet

with him and although at first he seemed slightly less-than-amused by my presence, and the fact I had misrepresented my age (at 15 I was still of course a minor, and living at home with my parents neither detail totally lost on a man who had assiduously avoided controversy or personal disclosure in the public arena, whilst at the same time writing prolifically on the Black Arts and sex-magick, as Head of a secret order dedicated to the same) Still, after a little while the conversation warmed, and we discussed a number of things some of which were of genuine interest & surprise, as I will attempt to outline below. I genuinely believe his curiosity got the better of him, and the fact I was the same age at which he had experienced his own first magickal awakenings was not lost on him, either. It ended with him recommending me to my studies, both in and out of school, and that I was welcome to write back if I was still seriously interested in Crowley, magick, and the O.T.O. when I reached the age of legal adulthood at 18. Although with the passing of time I was never to take him up on this (and, indeed, have never been a member of ANY group calling itself the Ordo Templi Orientis, or other such body), I retained friendships and corresponded with a number of key British Thelemites over the years. Also, Kenneth Grants almost surprising accessibility caused me to later encourage both my ex-wife Mouse (formerly of Psychic TV) and my old friend Gavin Semple to write to Grant regarding their various researches, and he didnt disappoint either time.

Here is what I remember from Frater Aossic, Kenneth Grant: He liked Count Basie, and was convinced that his jump rhythms held sonic keys to tangential tantras on the reverse side of the Tree-of-Life. On the other hand, like so many of his generation, he was all-too dismissive in the extreme of pretty much ALL popular music recorded from the 60s onwards, which he characterized along the lines of idiot noise that interfered with the higher vibrations, etc. Despite his lifelong dedication to the life & works of Aleister Crowley, promulgation of the Law of Thelema, claiming Outer Headship of his Own True Order, etc., he confided that really his first love, spiritually speaking, was Advaita Vedanta: this lead to him writing a number of articles for Indian journals, and for a while becoming a follower of the Sage of Arunachala [all of this was later collected and commented upon in At the Feet of the Guru] He really believed that H. P. Lovecraft was onto something the Necronomicon in fact existed on the astral, as it were, and that HPL had apprehended this through his

dreams, or suchlike, but was unable to accept the truth of what he had discerned that he was in effect an unconscious magickian. At a time when AMOOKOS was all the rage, and Guru Sri Mahendranath was being talked up in all the English Occult zines, he told me that he could not find any reference to Crowley meeting with a Lawrence Miles, or advising any young seeker that the West was finished and that he should go to India to seek enlightenment, anywhere in the numerous journals, desk diaries, or appointment books that covered the time at which Dadaji was said to have visited with him. He had received his first intimations of an Occult Transmission at 15, when he had received a Transmission from the entity Slba also the same age at which he came across Crowleys Magick In Theory & Practice in a Charing Cross Road bookshop, which lead him eventually to write to AC c/o the publisher (he was hoping that AC would be able to teach him yoga!) These things go in cycles, Im sure Of profound interest was Grants assertion that Crowleys revision of the XI* O.T.O. (the sex-magickal degree relating to anal intercourse/homosexual working) was in fact IN ERROR, and that The Great Beasts reading of per vas nefandum by the unmentionable way was incorrect, and that this was in fact referring to ritual intercourse during menstruation, the unclean time when a woman was of no use (reproductively speaking). This somewhat bold and controversial insistence that The Great Beast had actually GOT IT WRONG where one of his sex-magickal innovations was concerned (probably a case of AC putting personal penchant over and above any true symbolism or tradition), and that by this means Grant opens the door to an integration of Thelema with the true Left Hand Path of Vama Marga Tantra. And lastly, on a more personal note, with regard to my age he encouraged me to make the best of my education (he seemed particularly pleased that my schooling included Latin, Religious Studies, and a generous round of the Sciences in short, a classic English grammar school education as he felt this would provide just the sort of grounding a serious student of magick needed), and when he understood that my interest in the Occult was leading to a certain amount of social ostracism, even problems with bullying at school, he recommended to me the Fourth Power of The Sphinx: that as well as To Know, Will, & Dare, one should also remember when to Keep Silent Finally, in closing, I know that a picture of Grant is often painted as autocratic, old school authoritarian, which may well have been so several people have lead me to believe that he was actually easier to get on with if you WERENT a member of his

Typhonian Order! but the thing that impressed me about him was his obvious dedication to the daemonic feminine. His championing of the work of Dion Fortune, and of Marjorie Cameron (at a time when most people, if they were aware of her AT ALL, just thought of her as Jack Parsons widow), and his active encouragement of successive generations of strong women occultists such as Margaret Ingalls (Nema), Janice Ayers & Jan Bailey, Mishlen Linden, Linda Falorio, and Mary Hedger as well as his life-long devotion to his wife, the artist Steffi Grant, attest to this. The last living link to Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardiner, Eugen Grosche, and Austin Osman Spare, his legacy is yet to be fully assessed and we shall not see his like again.

In Memoriam Kenneth Grant, 1924-2011, now gone to his Greater Feast.

Matthew Levi Stevens www.whollybooks.wordpress.com matthew-wholly-books@hotmail.co.uk

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