The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley

Grade:	A (Excellent)
Status:	Sold
Sentimental Value: Selling Price:	$333.93  $39.98

The Book of Lies: Which Is Also Falsely Called Breaks: The Wanderings of Falsifications of the One Thought of Frater Perdurabo (Aleister Crowley) Itself Untrue


I picked this up, along with a pair of Corcoran boots, in Greenwich Village on my first trip to NYC. I immediately removed the dust jacket, as it didn't do anything for the aesthetics of the volume. 


This is a very strange book, full of obscure Qabalistic riddles and inside jokes, and purportedly contains the key to the 9th degree of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Crowley alleged that Theodore Reuss immediately inducted him to that degree after reading ch. 69: "The Way to Succeed; and the Way to Suck Eggs."


The initial page gives the complete, ridiculously long title of the book in all its glory:

The publication data on the next page goes on to tell us "There is no joke or subtle meaning in the publisher's imprint." I can't recall whether I ever found it, but I believe it may refer specifically to the first edition of the title. 

Finally, to give you an idea of how crazy these little poems are, here are the first and second pages proper. Elsewhere referred to as "The Soldier and the Hunchback":

It's not so much a book that you read from cover to cover, but very useful, for example, for bibliomancy. Or you could immerse yourself in qabalistic knowledge for a decade or so, in order to understand (most) of the jokes contained therein.