Kenneth Grant died on 15th January 2011. I first read Grant's Outside The Circles Of Time when I was at school. It contains a wonderful occult mind bomb that on reading genuinely sent me into the 'neither-neither' state. A free copy of my "Tales Of The New Isis Lodge" CD, to anyone who finds this particular example of initiating the creative vertigo. His books are full of this kind of weird humour. Cults Of The Shadow is dedicated to B.L - presumably Bela Lugosi.
I feel Grant was genuinely tapping into the astral of the 20th Century, not inhabited by a platitudinous carnival of the traditional arcana, but something considerably more squamous - spewed from the seas off Nagasaki. William Burroughs said the entrance to a subway is an entrance to Hell. I would also add that they serve as entrances to the Tunnels of Set, beloved by Grant. Ballard, in his introduction to Zodiac 2000 complains that the unconscious is no longer ruled by the animals of Chaldea. Grant's books read from the same disturbing Tarot deck. The criticisms against Grant's interest in the qliphoth are criticisms against the Universe - a vain attempt to delude ourselves that we are not embroiled in some delicious nightmare. At least Grant et al., are honest enough to dive in and swim the teratogenic oceans of the occult. Not only honest, but wearing the magickal blocking factor of black humour as protection against the fallacy of the Sun.
The threads of influence and intriguing characters and concepts that I have gleaned from Grant is the perfect epitaph for post-mortem studies.
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