Star in the West

The Star in the West: a Critical Essay upon the Works of Aleister Crowley by Captain (as he then was) J. F. C. Fuller can now be read online at Scribd. The current copy consists of page images, scanned from the 1976 Neptune Press reprint, and includes the frontispiece plate, omitted in the existing Internet copy. A re-set may be prepared at some point.

This is a lengthy study of Crowley's early poetry and philosophy (as expressed in the writings collected in his 1905-7 Collected Works). Some might question the "critical" part; even AC was occasionally embarassed by the excesses of Fuller's praise, as witnessed by his ca. 1910 poem "The Convert (a hundred years hence)":

There met one eve in a sylan glade
A horrible Man and a beautiful maid.
"Where are you going, so meek and holy?"
"I'm going to temple to worship Crowley"
"Crowley is God, then? How did you know?"
"Why, it's Captain Fuller that told us so."
"And how do you know that Fuller was right?"
"I’m afraid you're a wicked man; Good-night."

While this sort of thing is styled success
I shall not count failure bitterness

The symbolic design on the cover, which later appeared as an example Lamen in Book 4 Part II has itself raised questions, since a similar design (lacking "666," "418," "T.A.R.O." and "V.V.V.V.V." and with a sunburst in a triangle in the centre) appears in O.T.O. literature issued by Reuss apparently prior to his association with Crowley (see for example Starr, "Aleister Crowley, Freemason" AQC 108, note 5) and also appears as one of the seals on AC's O.T.O. charter. It is possible that both are independent modifications of an earlier original; a similar design is used by a modern group claiming to derive from Mathers' Alpha et Omega (see www.golden-dawn.com).