Busy work can be fun!

[trystinn]

Finished archiving "The Ancient's Book of Magic", which is so carney, I simply must share some of it here. Some of the graphics are familiar; some from the Key of Solomon, some straight out of "Mastering Witchcraft" by Paul Huson. There are some interesting woodcuts, black & white images of fairly familiar paintings.

I'll leave it up to commentors to describe the other ones!



"Our dear guide to the Mysteries, Lewis Claremont, himself:



We know he's very stylish, most wizards of any note are:



Oddly enough, the Witch of Endor isn't into style:



An example of Glamoury:



Exorcism, that important task we all do:



Cthullu is oddly missing:



Oddly familiar:






Our dear hosts, who published the text:


"

Comments

[herbmcsidhe.livejournal.com]

Francis Barrett, The Magus, not Huson's Mastering Witchcraft.

:)

De Claremont published in the early 20th century.

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, thank you.

We've not been able to find anything on Claremont and decided he was a bit of a huckster. I'll get the Magus, Masting... out and compare to this.

[herbmcsidhe.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia has the following:
Lewis de Claremont, also spelled Louis de Clermont, was the pseudonym of an American author on occultism who flourishd during the 1930s. Books attributed to him include 7 Keys to Power, 7 Steps to Success, The Ancient's Book of Magic, The Ancient's Book of Formulas, and Legends of Incense, Herb, and Oil Magic. Although authorship of his writings was claimed by the publisher Joseph Kay (Joseph Spitalnick) for purposes of copyright renewal, this claim has been easily disproved. It is possible that this author is the same person who also used the pseudonym Henri Gamache. If so, his name may have been Mr. Young. More information can be found on the page about Henri Gamache.*

*Henri Gamache was the pseudonym of an otherwise unknown author who was active in the United States during the 1940s, and who wrote on the subject of magic. All his books were published in New York City and most of them consist of semi-scholarly popular compilations that draw from (and give credit to) previously-published works on occultism. His works are noted for their connection to the Afrocentric theories of Marcus Garvey.

Henri Gamache's most popular books are The Master Book of Candle-Burning, a classic of practical African American hoodoo folk magic, Terrors of the Evil Eye Exposed, a work dealing with worldwide belief in the evil eye, and Mystery of the Long Lost 8th, 9th, and 10th Books of Moses, which is based upon the Garveyist assertion that Moses, the leader of the Jews, was a Black African.

The identity of Henri Gamache is disputed. Some researchers take at face value the mid-1950s copyright renewal claims of a book publisher named Joseph W. Kay (a.k.a. Joseph Spitalnick), in which Kay claimed to be the actual author of all works by both Henri Gamache and a pseudonymous occult author of the 1930s, Lewis de Claremont (also spelled Louis de Clermont). The falsity of Kay's claims with regard to the works of de Claremont is demonstrable, because the de Claremont books were first published by another company and only assigned to Kay upon republication, and this obvious attempt at deception in turn casts doubt upon Kaye's claim to the Gamache authorship.

Joe Kay died in 1967, but interviews with younger members of the Kay family have brought out the fact that the elder Kay obtained copyright ownership and publication rights to the previously published writings of a Mr. Young, whose first name is lost, in exchange for a debt owed. Young is mentioned as a writer of occult books within the pages of the ghost-written autobiography of the famous African American stage magician Benjamin Rucker, better known as Black Herman.

Thus it seems that both Henri Gamache and Lewis de Claremont / Louis de Clermont were not pseudonyms for Joe Kay (Joseph Spitalnik), but for Mr. Young, the ghost-writer of the Black Herman autobiography.

Cat Yronwood has a lengthy essay on the matter at http://www.luckymojo.com/young.html

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

Very, very interesting. I'm checking the Cat article now.

Haven't read the book, but the bits and pieces I've read seem a tad overly dramatic, frankly.