The Drug and Other Stories: Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural

This revised and expanded second edition brings together the uncollected short fiction of the poet, writer and religious philosopher Aleister Crowley. Of the fifty-four stories in the present volume, only thirty-five were published in his lifetime. Most of the rest appear in this collection for the first time. Like their author, his stories are fun, smart, witty, thought-provoking and sometimes unsettling. They are set in places in which he had lived, and knew well: Belle Epoque Paris, Edwardian London, pre-revolutionary Russia and America during the First World War. The title story The Drug stands as one of the first accounts -- if not the first -- of a psychedelic experience. His Black and Silver is a knowing early noir discovery that anticipates an entire genre. Atlantis is a masterpiece of occult fantasy that can stand with Samuel Butler's Erewhon. Frank Harris considered The Testament of Magdalen Blair the most terrifying tale ever written.  Extensive editorial end-notes give ful