SCENTED GARDEN OF ABDULAH THE SATIRIST

from the editor: This book is often referred to by its pseudonym-prone author, Aleister Crowley, under its Persian title of Bagh-i-Muattay (abbreviated for the sake of further concealment as "B-i-M"), is among the rarest of Crowley's first editions. Rarer still is the reader who sees anything but a huge obscene jest in the book, despite the fact that its author unhesitatingly asserted that "mystically it transcends the Bhagavat Gita and the Tao Teh fng," -two books he admired greatly. His esteem for Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, pioneer translator of Arabic and Hindu erotica and inventor of his own Sufi poet, "Haji Abdu El-Yezdi," unquestionably led Crowley to imitation of Burton's work, but this book is more than a recapitulation in verse of the author's philosophy. In addition to all the Eastern lore, occultism and facetiae with which the text is loaded, a close reading of The Scented Garden of Abdullah gives one access to part of the author's psyche that could only find expression under a series of veils, penetrable solely by those of empathic interests or personal acquaintance. As it is so much a hidden and a closed book, a few words are in order to introduce this first facsimile edition.

With so intimate a work, one cannot divorce the creator from his creation. Throughout his life Crowley was bisexual in thought and less so in practice. Owing to contemporary law and mores, the homosexual side of his nature could only be expressed in public demurely, and published anonymously or pseudonymously. But in his Confessions, which were written for publication, Crowley quietly divulges his first and deepest homosexual union. It began in his third year at Cambridge in early December 1897 with his meeting Jerome Pollitt, in the rooms of the President of the Cambridge Footlights Dramatic Club, in which Pollitt danced. Although Pollitt performed as a female impersonator, Crowley noted that he was in no way androgynous; he described Pollitt as looking "rather plain than otherwise. His face was made tragic by the terrible hunger of the eyes and the bitter sadness of the mouth. He possessed one physical beauty-his hair. This was very plentiful and he wore it rather long... -its colour was pale gold, like spring sunshine, and its texture of the finest gossamer. Crowley stated that his friendship with Pollitt was "the ideal intimacy which the Greeks considered the greatest glory of manhood and the most precious prize of life...

Publisher: Teitan, Hardcover