‘The Stellar Lode’ by Kenneth Grant

a review by Peter J. Smith

First published in Skoob Esoterica Anthology, 1995

Till now, English occult author Kenneth Grant has been most widely known amongst Lovecraftian circles for his convoluted exegeses of the magickal philosophies of Aleister Crowley, in such monumental works as Cults of the Shadow and Nightside of Eden. These intellectually daunting tomes also include many references to Lovecraft’s fictional deities, thus classifying them as (admittedly heterodox) additions to the ever-burgeoning canons of the Cthulhu Mythos.

With the publication of The Stellar Lode – the first widely available example of the Grant’s fictional work – we are presented with an astonishing fait accompli. Namely, that the true heir apparent to Lovecraft’s throne as the presiding Master of Weird Fiction is not in fact Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti, or Clive Barker, but must now be acknowledged as none other than the aforementioned Mr Grant himself!

His short novel, The Stellar Lode, was originally written in the mid nineteen fifties, at a time when Grant and a group of like-minded ceremonial magicians (‘the Nu-Isis Lodge’) were experimenting in actuality with ceremonies and rituals designed to evoke ‘extramundane entities’ of a truly bizarre nature, bringing them into physical manifestation (see his 1992 study, Hecate’s Fountain, for detailed descriptions of these workings and their literally incredible results!).

At first glance, Grant’s narrative stylings bear all the fruits of his longstanding fascination with Lovecraft, as ‘the reluctant prophet’ of the revenant cosmic currents of the New Aeon. However, a deeper reading soon displays the influence of a wider literary background, including the Symbolists and Decadents of the fin de siecle, and early exponents of the ‘weird’ genre including Arthur Machen, Sax Rohmer, Vincent Starrett, Robert Chambers and Oscar Wilde (I am thinking here of The Picture of Dorian Grey, in particular). Indeed, on one level, Grant’s story could be regarded as an affectionate (and accurate) reconstruction of a very particular narrative form, heavy with decorative and sonorous description, and yet at the same time curiously reserved and archetypically English – the anecdotal prose style of a reminiscent monologue, recounted within the hushed confines of a Gentleman’s Club. The tone set is at once conspiratorial and initiatory, as layer upon layer of dark mystery are peeled away from the scintillant core of the tale.

And yet, there is another dimension to Grant’s fiction, and one that sets him wholly apart from his contemporaries in the field of supernatural fiction. This is of course the input derived from his unparalleled knowledge of recondite and obscure arcana from the Mystery Cults of Ancient Egypt, Tantric India and Medieval Europe – and furthermore, from his own personal, first hand experience of the very same occult forces which Lovecraft dimly glimpsed in his dreams and waking reveries, and which underlie and underpin the external, diurnal world which we rather hopefully grace with the term, ‘reality’.

In the Forties, Kenneth Grant was the personal assistant and protégé of Crowley, during the Great Beast’s final years spent in obscurity in a guest house (‘Netherwood’) in Hastings. Now, Grant can also be seen as the inheritor of the literary mantel of that other enigmatic figure, whose shadow falls heavily across the twilight landscape of occultism: none other than the reclusive Young Man of Providence himself. And with the imminent publication of further examples of Grant’s fiction – including the novels Against the Light and Snakewand, and his collection of evocatory verse, Black to Black, Lovecraftians of all denominations are in for a veritable ‘feast of the unknown’!

Copyright © Peter J. Smith, 1997
Reproduced with kind permission

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