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CROWLEY, Aleister. The Book of Thoth. original m

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Original typed manuscript with extensive manuscript corrections. [N.p: 1940-1944]. 264 leaves typed on rectos only. 4to (X x XX mm). In custom cloth folding case with brown morocco lettering label. Condition: some edge-toning to a few leaves, minor short closed edge tears. Provenance: Edward Noel Fitzgerald, IX degree member of Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis, friend and follower of Crowley for over a decade. the original manuscript of crowley's book of thoth, the occultist's last great work and one of the most significant works on the tarot. Crowley worked on his 'Tarot book,' - the work that would later be published as The Book of Thoth - regularly from 1938 - 1940, dictating some portions of the text to typists, and writing the rest in holograph. In October 1940 he completed the first draft of the text and took the untyped sections to an agency to have them typed. The result was a near-complete typed manuscript of the book, which he would then revise and amend, before giving it to the printer for use in the production of proofs - thus the present manuscript. He labored intermittently at the revisions and corrections for just over three years, and a number of the holograph additions that Crowley made during this period were quite substantial, and are even mentioned in his diary. Thus on October 9, 1942, Crowley noted that he had begun 'Putting Yi [King] into Court Cards,' a process that took the best part of a week, and resulted in the insertion, onto the margins and previously-blank versos of the pages, of additional material on the Yi King attributions that is equivalent to about a dozen closely-written pages. Though less obvious than the additions, the revisions or corrections that Crowley made to the manuscript can be both telling and significant and relate to the early history of the Golden Dawn. Thus in the published (revised) version of the text, Crowley described Westcott and his friends as having 'reconstituted' the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and having been the 'promulgators,' of the famed cipher manuscript, the inference being that they were continuing a pre-existing group. However the present manuscript reveals that Crowley had originally written that Westcott had 'founded' rather than 'reconstituted', the group, and that Westcott and his associates were the 'authors' rather than just the 'promulgators,' of the cipher manuscripts - thereby revealing that he at first expressed a very different opinion on the controversy about the founding of the Order to that which appeared in the published work (manuscript p. 6, published work p. 7). Interestingly the manuscript also shows that at the time of its preparation Crowley had not finalised the renaming of the cards of the Thoth deck, and thus he has had to alter by hand the name of the cards 'Strength' (to 'Lust'), 'Justice' (to 'Adjustment'), 'Temperance' (to 'Art'), and 'Angel or Last Judgment' (to 'Aeon.') The first page of the manuscript has the title 'A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians. Part I. The Theory of the Tarot,' handwritten by Crowley at the head of the page, with an added marginal note 'Make a title page of this." It comprises 5 sections: Part I, The Theory of the Tarot (68 pages), Part II, The Atu [with appendix] (106 pages), Part III, The Court Cards (33pages), & 'Correspondences' (14 pages) [Appendix B of the published work] & - the "Bibliographical Note by Soror I.W.E." (actually by Crowley) which was added as an "afterthought" (3 page, carbon, on different paper). The 'Correspondences' section is lacking the final leaf, which would have had the explanation of "Diagram 9 - The Essential Dignities of the Planets," which appears on the bottom half of p. 277 in the published text. The manuscript does not include Part IV - The Small Cards (pp. 177 - 220 of the published work), and Appendix A (pp. 249 - 260 of the published work), which may well have been loaned to someone by Crowley after he had received them back from the printers, but not returned. The typed mansucript also does not include any of the diagrams or plates found in the published version, nor the Tables and Diagrams (pp. 278 - 287 of the published work), which like the preliminaries were probably not prepared until after the proofs were completed. Otherwise the manuscript is complete and a truly scarce survival. Typescript and manuscript material pertaining to The Book of Thoth is rare: so much so that it has been suggested that it may have been the victim of a deliberate campaign of destruction (several Crowley insiders would have had both motive and access to the material in the years following his death). Certainly there are no other significant manuscripts or typescripts of this work in any of the major public or private Crowley collections, the only other material extant are a few small typescript fragments in the Yorke Collection (University of London). Bloomsbury would like to thank Keith Richmond for his kind assistance in the cataloging of this lot.

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