The Sword of Song

“The Sword of Song is the troubadour’s voice of a young Aleister Crowley pouring ecstatically from the breast of his soul on the threshold of his great awakening. A masterpiece. A symphony. A divine nightingale’s prayer.” * Lon Milo Duquette, author of The Magick of Aleister Crowley *“‘Post annos CXX patebo.’ Perhaps now that 120 years have passed since the first revelation of Crowley’s elusive collection, The Sword of Song, it can finally open itself to open minds who, like its author, are eager to challenge and find spiritual satisfaction in challenging religious orthodoxies of all kinds. Richard Kaczynski generously provides apposite, revealing, and wholly admirable assistance to help the new reader access the remarkable genius of 666: an oasis in our current desertion of higher things.” * Tobias Churton, author of Aleister Crowley in England, Aleister Crowley in Paris, and Aleister Crowl *“Aleister Crowley’s The Sword of Song is a wild beast of a book. It includes poetry and prose touching on topics of Buddhism, Kabbalah, Tarot, cosmology, philosophy, agnosticism, magic, and more, but it is skillfully tamed by its editor, Richard Kaczynski, whose erudite introduction and notes shed light on this fascinating product of an original and extraordinary mind. Brimming with insights and ideas that explode on almost every page of the text, this sword truly sings!” * Gordan Djurdjevic, author of India and the Occult : The Influence of South Asian Spirituality on Mod *“Aleister Crowley’s The Sword of Song, as a discursive and complex conglomerate of poetry, metaphysics, philosophical criticism, and more, has long amazed and puzzled readers. At last, Richard Kaczynski’s fastidious and insightful annotations to this long-awaited volume help to reveal these branches as a unified organic field. This new edition should prove invaluable to the novice as well as the advanced scholar for exploring a new aeon of penetrating vision into magick as it unfolds in our modern era.” * Robert Podgurski, author of The Sacred Alignments and Sigils: Angelic Magick, Renaissance Thought, a *

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), English magician, poet, philosopher, and artist, is widely regarded as one of the most important occult figures of the twentieth century. His famous and oft-misunderstood maxim “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” stems from his received text The Book of the Law, which announced Thelema (Greek for “will”) as the philosophy for a new era of humankind.

Richard Kaczynski is a lifelong student, international speaker, and writer on Western esotericism and an authority on the life and works of Aleister Crowley. The author of Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley, he lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.