Outer Gateways (Inscribed by Kenneth Grant to his friend Richard Harting) by Grant, Kenneth - 1994

London: Skoob Books, 1994. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. Inscribed by Kenneth Grant: "To my friend Richard Harting with evergreen greetings from Kenneth Grant, Spring 1994 e.v." Black cloth with silver spine titles. 264 pages. Black and white plates. A fine copy in like dust jacket. The Typhonian Tradition discussed in this book matured and declined before even the monumental phase of the earliest civilizations. This is witnessed by fragments of magical and mystical lore once current in Egypt and the Far East. The Tradition lingered on and became corrupt with passing epochs and the gradual attrition of an ages-old lineage of Initiates. Harassment by warring factions seeking temporal power at the expense of intemporal space-transcending Knowledge stifled the spark and fouled the springs of ancient Wisdom. It reappeared fitfully over the centuries in obscure alchemical writings in the West, and in Oriental occult tantras, and traces of it proved sufficient to permit of its powerful resurgence. The earliest themes of Grant's series of trilogies are here related, intensified and developed. The unearthly provenance of such disturbing messages as The necronomicon is reaffirmed, leading to a cognate treatment of Aleister Crowley's reception of The Book of the Law and a reinterpretation of that book's implications in the light of the Typhonian Tradition. The volume concludes with a haunting transmission - Wisdom of S'lba - received in new Isis Lodge under circumstances outside usually accepted magical procedures, and subsequently translated into terrestrial language. Richard Harting was born in England and grew up with, and was a close friend of, Kenneth Grant. Harting moved to the United States in the 1950s. They reconnected at some point which resulted in a lengthy correspondence and a sharing of books.