Against the Light
A Nightside Narrative
by Kenneth Grant
An idle fancy sparked by curiosity opens a door on darkness . . .
On learning that an ancestor was executed for witchcraft in the sixteenth century, the narrator is prompted to explore her history. Research having failed, he resorts to magical means and exposes an array of malefic forces poised to invade the Earth.
In a deserted Welsh ruin he discovers a grimoire revealing traffic between alien entities and their terrestrial agents. Rumoured to have lain for centuries in the custody of a Scottish clan, the grimoire’s existence is known to very few. Among them are powerful occultists such as Aleister Crowley and Phineas Black, desperately tracking it down. The grimoire alone holds the keys - and the Sign of Protection. A chimera? An allegory? More aptly, a Warning. Civilisation is careering to destruction: it may find the Sign - or, the Seal of its doom . . .
This rich, scintillating novel by Kenneth Grant was described by him as a “quasi-autobiography”. The background to this Nightside Narrative, like so much of Grant's work, can be found in New Isis Lodge, a magical working group which developed from the late 1940s, was formally established in 1955, and carried on working until the mid 1960s. Some of the workings of New Isis Lodge were described by Kenneth Grant in Hecate’s Fountain. In the late 1950s, the ritualists of New Isis Lodge began to receive a series of oracles which on subsequent rearrangement formed a coherent work known as ‘The Book of the Spider’. When planning his third and final trilogy during the 1980s, Grant decided to publish ‘The Book of the Spider’ with extended commentary in the final volume, The Ninth Arch. He was aware, however, that assimilation of The Ninth Arch might be somewhat demanding, and thought that perhaps something was appropriate by way of introduction. That “something” turned out to be the novel Against the Light.
Grant started writing Against the Light in the mid 1980s, and he developed it to explore in a fictional setting some of the themes of ‘The Book of the Spider’. It was his original intention that Against the Light be published before The Ninth Arch, and this was achieved by the first publication in 1997.
Note on the Second Edition
This republication of Against the Light is freshly typeset, and incorporates corrections and additions by Kenneth Grant noted in his copy of the 1997 edition. Illustrated endpapers include diary entries by the author from 1985 when the novel was started; some early plot notes; the first draft of a cover blurb from 1995; and a gloss where Grant gives the meaning of symbols on the front of the dust-jacket. A colour frontispiece reproduces the bust of Mephistopheles, a mysterious and compelling figure which is an integral feature of this novel and which appears elsewhere in Grant’s work.
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Table of Contents
Frontispiece: Mephistopheles
Prologue
Part One The Grimoire
Part Two Mirroracle
Part Three Destiny of the Unslept
Epilogue
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Cover artwork and design by Steffi Grant.
Hardcover Edition
142 pages. Black-cloth hardcover, sewn-bound, octavo format. Printed on high-quality paper, with illustrated endpapers. Full colour dustjacket and frontispiece.
ISBN: 978-1-906073-37-4
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About the Author
The late Kenneth Grant (1924 – 2011) was an English occultist, poet, novelist, and writer. He was the head of several important Thelemic orders and the author of the influential Typhonian Trilogies series.
When Aleister Crowley died in 1947, Kenneth Grant became heir apparent of the esoteric magical order Ordo Templis Orientis (OTO). Alongside his artist wife Steffi, Grant was one of few to attend Crowley's funeral service, becoming the last living link with "the Beast", whose work he championed, nurtured and refined for over six decades. From his New Isis Lodge, established in London in 1955, through to his final organisational vehicle, the Typhonian Order, Grant's occult credentials are without parallel.
Grant’s own brand of occultism was a fusion of science, fantasy and metaphysics, through which he offered a radical decoding of Crowley, the artist Austin Osman Spare and the author H.P. Lovecraft, alongside healthy doses of astral projection. Grant's writings and teachings have proved a significant influence over other currents of occultism, including chaos magic, the Temple of Set, and the Dragon Rouge. They also attracted academic interest within the study of Western esotericism, particularly from Henrik Bogdan and Dave Evans.
