{religion} – { feuilleton }

The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult

I ought to have been writing this in the run-up to Halloween but as I’ve said before, Halloween here is a state of mind, not a mere twenty-four hours. The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult received a mention in the recent post about Charles Williams, two of whose novels were included in the collection. The paperback series was brought to mind again last week when another of the titles, The Prisoner in the Opal by AEW Mason, turned up at Standard Ebooks, the home of high-quality, public-domain texts. This in turn gave me the idea of compiling a list of links to online sources of all the other titles which are now in the public domain. As you’ll see below, that list has sprawled into a guide to the entire series. When I’ve referred to these books in the past I’ve usually pointed to one of the Wheatley fan sites which are generally informative but also lacking in detail, especially when it comes to telling you anything about the individual titles. In this post I’ve satisfied my curiosity about the more mysterious books, listed all the public domain texts and also sought out the information that the Wheatley sites neglect to offer.

The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult was launched by Sphere Books in Britain in 1974. Unlike similar series which promote their titles with a well-known name, Wheatley himself was heavily involved, writing a promotional flyer which was sent to booksellers, and helping to choose the books. The flyer’s text suggests that Wheatley was eager to capitalise on the occult revival of the 1970s, a resurgence of popular interest which had been especially prominent in Britain thanks to our pagan past and the legacy of earlier revivalists like Gerald Gardner, the Golden Dawn and others. Each of the books in the Library series contains a brief introduction by Wheatley which is signed with his facsimile signature, while the four collections of short stories and non-fiction pieces include essays or fictional extracts by Wheatley himself. The introductions for all of the books may be read here and here.

The flyer gives an idea of Wheatley’s ambitions, with a mention of 400 titles being under consideration. One of the books listed as forthcoming—Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by MR James—never appeared, possibly for copyright reasons. The list of prospective authors includes many who appeared in the series and a few more who didn’t, among them Robert Chambers (presumably the author of The King in Yellow), Carl Jung and—surprisingly—HG Wells; the list also manages to misspell Edgar Allan Poe’s middle name. The series as it was published is unusual in its mix of fiction and non-fiction, with magical guides and historical studies scattered among the weird tales; this really is a Library of the Occult, albeit a popular take on the subject, rather than another collection of horror stories. Sphere published 45 of the books in all, an impressive number that might have been greater if Wheatley hadn’t died in 1977. I bought the Library copy of Dracula in the same year, and subsequently managed to accumulate 23 of the titles during visits to secondhand shops. Many of these books were being published for the first time in paperback, and some of them remain obscure today. Even if Wheatley had lived a little longer I doubt the series would have sustained itself much further than 50 titles. The occult revival of the 1970s oscillates between poles of attraction and repulsion; an acknowledgement that this is dark and even dangerous material which is also attractive because of its previously forbidden nature. Wheatley’s fiction had been trading on the same attraction/repulsion since the 1930s, but by the end of the 1970s all the old “forbidden” grimoires were back in print and being joined on the bookshelves by invented ones like the two fake versions of the Necronomicon. The arrival of a new decade demanded a new sensibility. The darkness and witchiness didn’t vanish in the 1980s, when “occult” in its popular manifestations was diluted into “New Age”, it retreated to the shadows to fuel the Goth and metal subcultures while serious occultism began breeding something called Chaos Magic. But that’s another story…

1: Dracula by Bram Stoker

★ ★ ★ Dracula at Standard Ebooks ★ ★ ★

2: The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore

The novel follows Bertrand Caillet, the eponymous werewolf, throughout the tumultuous events of the Franco-Prussian War.

Still in copyright.

3: Moonchild by Aleister Crowley

★ ★ ★ Moonchild at the Internet Archive. ★ ★ ★

Its plot involves a magical war between a group of white magicians, led by Simon Iff, and a group of black magicians, over an unborn child.

Crowley was a better poet than a novelist but this novel has been reprinted many times, with Sphere publishing it again a few years later. Wheatley met Crowley at least once, and in his introduction to this edition describes being in attendance one evening in Paris when Crowley performed a summoning which had tragic consequences. It’s a very Wheatleyan anecdote which doesn’t seem to have ever been confirmed by either Crowley himself or any of his biographers.

4: Studies in Occultism by Helena Blavatsky

★ ★ ★ Studies in Occultism at Project Gutenberg. ★ ★ ★

…a collection of essays written in the early 20th century. This book delves into the foundational concepts and practices of occultism and theosophy, distinguishing between true spiritual knowledge and superficial magical practices.

The first non-fiction title of the series.

5: Carnacki the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson

★ ★ ★ Carnacki the Ghost-Finder at Project Gutenberg. ★ ★ ★

…a collection of short stories published between 1910 and 1913. The work features Thomas Carnacki, an occult detective who investigates unusual hauntings using scientific methods, photography, and his fictional invention, the Electric Pentacle.

Wheatley was an early champion of William Hope Hodgson’s fiction, and in his introduction to this edition announces an intention to reprint all of Hodgson’s novels plus a collection of his sea stories. In the end only The Ghost Pirates was added to the series. One thing Wheatley doesn’t mention here is his borrowing of details from the Carnacki stories for his own occult novels. He swiped a lot more from Hodgson’s Sargasso Sea tales for a non-occult novel, Uncharted Seas.

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Boris Artzybasheff’s Myths of the World

Boris Artzybasheff’s art was rediscovered in the 1980s by a new generation of American cartoonists who were delighted by his illustrations of anthropomorphic machinery and other technological artefacts. These were the illustrations which made Artzybasheff popular with advertisers and the commissioners of magazine covers in the 1940s and 50s, and their continued popularity today has tended to overshadow his earlier book illustrations, in the same way that W. Heath Robinson’s drawings of improbable inventions overshadow his own illustrated books.

Anthropomorphic machines were still in Artzybasheff’s future when he produced twenty wood engravings for Orpheus: Myths of the World in 1930, one of several books by Padraic Colum which retell mythological stories. In the introduction Colum explains why he named a book about world mythology after a Greek icon:

I have called the collection “Orpheus,” naming it after the minstrel who, according to the poet of the Argonautica, sang “how the earth, the heaven, and the sea once mingled together in one form, after deadly strife were separated each from the other; and how the stars and the moon and the paths of the sun ever keep their fixed place in the sky; and how the mountains rose, and how the resounding rivers with their nymphs came into being, and all creeping things.”

The art from Artzybasheff’s first decade of published illustration is so different to his later humourous drawings that it might be the work of another artist altogether. The Colum engravings are all very Deco-styled: bold, stylised, and generally flat, reminding me of some of the illustrations the Radio Times used to run. They’re also almost entirely serious until you spot the expression on Eve’s face when the Serpent offers her the forbidden apple. As with Heath Robinson, the humour crept in slowly until it became the dominant mode.

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Weekend links 841

Drawing Hands (1948) by MC Escher.

• New music: The World In Layers by mōshonsensu; The Rest Is My Ghost by Lawrence English; Rotostyles by Julien Ash & M.Nomized.

• At Public Domain Review: “The Persian Mâr-Nâmeh or, The Book for Taking Omens from Snakes” (1892).

• At Little White Lies: Sam Moore writes in praise of Hiroshi Teshigahara, “surveyor of the abyss”.

Paradoxically, art is useful only if it is allowed to remain entirely useless—that is, entirely free to go where it will. Wilde finds an ally here in Baudelaire, who followed his observation of the strangeness of the beautiful with a sharp rebuke to those who would subordinate artistic beauty to a utilitarian logic. Baudelaire asks:

“How could this necessary, irreducible, and infinitely varied strangeness…ever be controlled, amended, and corrected by Utopian rules conceived in some little scientific temple or other on this planet, without mortal danger to art itself?”

The privileging of utility over uselessness, of work over play, is the death of art—and the death of the given world in which our utilitarian spirit must be grounded if it is to have purpose and meaning.

JF Martel explores the ways in which art invented humanity

• Old music: Visions Of Sodal Ye by Mar-Vista.

• RIP Bill Oddie and Raoul Vaneigem.

• Martyn Ware’s favourite albums.

• The Last Museum

• Snake Rag (1923) by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band | Ananta Snake Dance (1980) by Suns Of Arqa | Snakes Crawl (1980) by Bush Tetras

Gargoyles, Chimeres, and the Grotesque in French Gothic Sculpture

Good books about gargoyles aren’t easy to find but this one, edited by Lester Burbank Bridaham, is better than many I’ve seen. Gargoyles, Chimeres, and the Grotesque in French Gothic Sculpture was published in 1930, and is mostly a collection of photographs, with the text kept to a minimum at the front of the book. The nature of the subject—eroded soot-stained sculptures seen against eroded soot-stained walls—doesn’t always help the photographer but the book makes up in quantity what it lacks in quality. There are many photographs here, often four to a page over 200 pages. Dover reprinted the book in a large-format edition in 2006.

These gargoyles and grotesques show very plainly the complete freedom under which the old craftsmen worked and the immense originality and variety that were the result. Here are hundreds of spontaneous creations, each as individual as possible, and not only this but many of them show a brilliancy of space composition and a fineness of line that would not shame a great sculptor. Craftsmen these, but also creative artists.

Ralph Adams Cram in the introduction

The authors divide their study according to subject: Last Judgments, Gargoyles of different ages, Chimeras (or hybrid creatures), and Heads. Gargoyles are often hybrid creatures, of course, but the broad difference between a gargoyle and a chimera in the architectural sense would be that gargoyles often serve a purpose as a waterspout whereas chimeras are solely decorative. Gargoyles are a good example of an architectural solution that evolved into an element of architectural style. Spouts were required to direct rainwater away from the lower areas of the building; decoration helped incorporate the spouts into the building’s structure then the decoration became a traditional part of the Gothic style. For a time, anyway. You don’t see many gargoyles among the buildings designed by the rather pious English revivalists in the 19th century, but the great French revivalist and restorer, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, enjoyed the grotesquery of the old cathedrals, and it’s he who was responsible for the famous chimeras that look down on Paris from the balconies of Notre Dame.

Continue reading “Gargoyles, Chimeres, and the Grotesque in French Gothic Sculpture”

Weekend links 830

Plakat Secesyjny (1971), a poster by Hubert Hilscher for an exhibition of Art Nouveau graphics.

• At Public Domain Review: Longitude by Way of Wounded Hounds: Kenelm Digby’s Sympathetick Powder (1669 edition). Two subjects familiar to readers of Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon.

• Miles Davis and group (Dave Liebman, Pete Cosey, Reggie Lucas, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, James Mtume) live in Stockholm in 1973. TV footage, 56 minutes.

• At the BFI: Rory Doherty selects ten great films about forgers and fakes, while Kazuo Ishiguro compiles a list of his top ten train films.

• At Colossal: “Markus Brunetti’s monumental photos venerate European ecclesiastical landmarks”.

• Font Faces: Nick Shinn answers questions about being a type designer.

• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – May 2026 at Ambientblog.

• Milky Way photographer of the year 2026.

• New music: Chambers by Ruben.

• Train To Ranchipur (1959) by The Markko Polo Adventurers | One Train Load Of Dub (1974) by Tommy McCook & The Observers | Sunstroke / Mind Train (1992) by Sun Dial