Kenneth Grant (1924–2011) was a British occultist and a protégé of Aleister Crowley who became known for radically expanding and reinterpreting Thelema through what came to be called the Typhonian Tradition. Grant’s work, outlined in a series of books (the Typhonian Trilogies), wove together a vast syncretic tapestry of esoteric themes – from ancient Sumerian and Egyptian lore to Tantric philosophy, Lovecraftian fiction, and even UFO-like extraterrestrial influences. In the process, he deviated significantly from orthodox Thelema and established a new magico-mythic framework that has strongly impacted modern occultism. Below is a detailed analysis of Grant’s key contributions and innovations.

Thelema and Ancient Sumerian Mythology

Grant interpreted Crowley’s Thelema not as a novel 20th-century religion but as a revival of humanity’s most ancient magical traditions, particularly those of the Near East. He believed the Thelemic current (the “93 Current” of Will) was continuous with the cults of pre-Christian, pre-Islamic Mesopotamia – a time when the Great Mother Goddess and serpent deity were revered before later religions demonized them. In his writings, Grant frequently linked Thelemic figures to Sumerian or Mesopotamian mythic archetypes. For example, he identified Crowley’s “Beast” and the Thelemic devil figure Shaitan (Satan) with the Egyptian Set and with a Mesopotamian divine power worshipped by groups like the Yezidis of Iraq. According to Grant, the Yezidi’s secret cult of Shaitan was an “ancient source of the Sumerian Tradition,” preserving an old gnosis that in modern times re-emerged as Thelema. He saw the Ophidian Current (serpentine cosmic energy) – personified as the Sumerian dragon or chaos-serpent in mythology – as underlying both ancient Mesopotamian cults and Crowley’s Book of the Law. In short, Grant’s Thelema is a syncretic resurrection of primal rites: the worship of the “Primal Goddess” and her serpent that once stood at the root of human spirituality. This outlook gave Thelema a much older mythic pedigree, aligning it with Sumerian-Babylonian legends (such as the goddess Ishtar or the dragon Tiamat) and casting Crowley’s 1904 revelation as only the latest chapter in an eons-old saga.

The Central Role of Set in the Typhonian System

A centerpiece of Grant’s reformulation of Thelema is the elevation of the Egyptian god Set (or Typhon) to a position of central importance. In orthodox Thelema, the new Aeon is that of Horus (the Crowned and Conquering Child), but Grant emphasized that Horus has a shadow twin – Set – whose influence must also be accounted for. He renamed his magical order the Typhonian O.T.O. to signal this focus on Set/Typhon. Set, the ancient god of night, desert, and chaos, is portrayed by Grant not as a demonic adversary but as a cosmic initiator and the hidden power behind the Thelemic current. Grant in fact claimed to have detected an extraterrestrial “Sirius/Set current” in the 1950s, upon which he based his New Isis Lodge. This current was so named because Grant linked it to the star Sirius (the “Silver Star”) and the god Set, seeing Sirius as Set’s star and as a transmitter of occult energy. In the manifesto announcing this discovery, Grant wrote that a new energy was streaming to Earth from another planet (or star) identified with Nuit, the Thelemic sky-goddess. Crowley’s successor Karl Germer was scandalized by this, calling it “blasphemy” to pin Nuit to a single celestial body, but for Grant the message was clear: Set (as Sirius) was the cosmic source behind the Aeon of Horus.

In Grant’s theological vision, Set and Horus form a necessary polarity – two sides of one coin. He explicitly equated Hadit (the Thelemic god of the point/internal spark, who in Crowley’s doctrine speaks in the Book of the Law) with Shaitan/Set as “Lord of the Desert” and the guardian of the hidden abyss. Likewise, Grant noted that Crowley’s order Astrum Argentum (A∴A∴) literally means “Silver Star,” a reference to Sirius, and he stated that “the 93 Current emanates from … the A∴A∴, which is identical with the Star of Set, Sirius, or Sothis.” In other words, the guiding force of Thelema (93) was, in Grant’s view, fundamentally a Sirius/Set energy. He even mapped Horus and Set onto the binary star-system of Sirius: Horus corresponding to the bright visible star Sirius A, and Set to the dark companion star Sirius B. By such correspondences, Grant injected a strong Typhonian (Set-oriented) current into Thelema, balancing Crowley’s solar Horus current with a stellar, nightside current of Set. This was a dramatic reinterpretation – one that recasts Thelema as a dual current (Horus-Set) rather than solely the Horus Current of Crowley’s canon.

The Tunnels of Set and the Nightside Tree of Life

Grant’s contributions to Qabalistic mysticism are most famously laid out in Nightside of Eden (1977), where he explores the “Nightside” Tree of Life – the shadow or inverse of the classical Tree of Life in Hermetic Qabalah. In occult tradition, the sephiroth (spheres) of the Tree each have a dark, adverse aspect known as the Qliphoth (shells), sometimes called the “Tree of Death.” Crowley had hinted at this “other side” in cryptic works like Liber 231, which contains sigils of spirits corresponding to the 22 paths of the Tree, but he never published a full exposition of the Qliphothic realm. Grant took it upon himself to complete this unfinished work: he fleshed out the map of the Nightside and introduced the concept of the Tunnels of Set – the 22 hidden pathways linking the realms of the Qliphoth. These Tunnels of Set, described as a “dark web or nocturnal network” behind the familiar Tree, are the routes through which one can explore the deepest subconscious layers of the universe.

According to Grant, Daath (the “false” sephira of knowledge on the Tree, situated in the Abyss) is the gateway to the Nightside. The descent through Daath leads the adept into the Tunnels of Set at the “back of the Tree”. He calls this mysterious alternate dimension “Universe B”, as opposed to “Universe A” (the normal manifested universe of the Tree of Life). Universe B, accessed via the Tunnels, is a realm of non-linear time, dreamlike symbolism, and what Grant terms “the backside of the Tree where the light of day does not shine.” In Nightside of Eden and subsequent works, Grant catalogued the entities and visions of these tunnels, often linking them with various mythologies. Notably, he made connections between the Tunnels of Set and H.P. Lovecraft’s extramundane deities, suggesting that the monstrous gods of the Cthulhu Mythos correspond to real forces or entities one might encounter on the Nightside. For instance, Grant saw Lovecraft’s slumbering god Cthulhu and the other “Great Old Ones” as Qliphothic energies – powerful but sub-human forces residing in Universe B.

By systematizing the Nightside Tree, Grant expanded the Thelemic magical roadmap to include the shadow-areas that Crowley had only hinted at. He justified this expansion by noting that Crowley’s tradition had focused on the “day-side” (the sephiroth and positive archetypes) while leaving the “night-side” largely unexplored – a gap the Typhonian tradition would fill. This work was controversial and daring. Exploring the Tunnels of Set was considered spiritually perilous – a point Grant himself acknowledged with warnings about not getting lost in the “Desert of Set” lest one become a “Black Brother” (an adept who fails to transcend the ego). Nevertheless, Nightside of Eden became a seminal text for those occultists drawn to the Qliphothic, left-hand path side of Kabbalah. Through it, Grant introduced into Thelema a whole new map of initiatory experience – one that includes the underworld corridors of the soul, populated by surreal and often fearsome imagery, yet ripe with occult insight for those who dare the journey.

Sirius and Its Magical Significance

A hallmark of Grant’s cosmology is the star Sirius and its supposed occult influence on Earth. Grant was fascinated by Sirius (the so-called Dog Star and brightest star in the sky), viewing it as a kind of cosmic beacon for the current Aeon. In Thelemic lore, Sirius had already made an appearance – Crowley’s A∴A∴ (Argentum Astrum or “Silver Star”) is widely interpreted as a reference to Sirius, and the star was sacred in ancient Egypt as Sothis. Grant took these associations further, asserting that Sirius is literally the source of an alien or supramundane energy guiding human evolution. His 1955 New Isis Lodge manifesto declared that an extraterrestrial current from Sirius (the “Sirius/Set current”) was now influencing the planet, heralding a new stage in Thelemic magick. In Grant’s mythos, Sirius = Set = the Ontic Source of the 93 Current. He pointed out that the heliacal rising of Sirius signaled the Nile flood in Egypt – a “deluge of waters” that he symbolically linked to the influx of cosmic energy (and also to the flow of blood or life-force in his occult metaphor).

Grant often syncretized Nuit (the Star Goddess of The Book of the Law) with the idea of the Sirius star. In the New Isis Lodge manifesto, he in fact identified the “planet” sending energy as Nuit. This implies Nuit is Sirius (or resides there), a daring reinterpretation of Thelemic scripture. The practical upshot was that Grant oriented many rituals and workings of his Typhonian Order towards astral contact with Sirius. He believed that communications from higher intelligences often came from or through Sirius – an idea that resonates with certain strains of UFO lore and earlier occult speculation (e.g. the writings of Madame Blavatsky and later the Sirius Mystery theories). By framing Sirius as a magical star, Grant gave a cosmic, interstellar dimension to Thelema. The 93 Current, in his view, was not merely a terrestrial or solar force but a stellar impulse radiating from the “Sun behind the sun.” As cited earlier, Grant wrote: “The 93 Current … is identical with the Star of Set, Sirius.” This Sirius-centered doctrine set the Typhonian tradition apart, adding a strong emphasis on astromagic and “cosmic consciousness” that looks to the stars (literally) for spiritual influx. Subsequent occult writers and groups influenced by Grant – including some “Neo-Gnostic” and New Age circles – would also pay special attention to Sirius as a result of his work.

The 93 Current Reinterpreted and Expanded

In Thelemic parlance, “93” is the number of Thelema (Will) and Agapé (Love), thus representing the spiritual current Crowley ushered in with the Aeon of Horus. Kenneth Grant fully embraced the concept of the 93 Current but reinterpreted its origin and trajectory in bold ways. First, Grant emphasized the otherworldly origin of the 93 Current: he stressed that Aleister Crowley received The Book of the Law in 1904 from a praeter-human intelligence (Aiwass), and he flatly characterized this event as an “extra-terrestrial” transmission. In doing so, Grant cast Crowley’s revelation not just as an internal mystical experience but as something akin to an alien message – an idea he would elaborate on with the Sirius connection. Grant saw himself as the heir to that current, writing that as an Initiate of a new era it was his task to “develop the work of his predecessor” (Crowley) by continuing and evolving the 93 Current in light of new revelations.

Unlike some Crowley disciples who treated Thelema as a closed corpus of Liber AL and established rituals, Grant took a dynamic approach. He believed the 93 Current was alive and would continue to unfold in response to humanity’s occult exploration. In his foreword to Nightside of Eden, he stated that his work “continues to transmit the 93 Current as revived by Crowley in the twentieth century,” while also noting that as the current evolves, certain aspects of older practice might be discarded as “obsolete, impractical, or erroneous”. In line with this, Grant wasn’t afraid to modify Thelemic doctrine and methods. For example, he observed that the traditional Masonic structure of the O.T.O. (with lodge meetings, degree rituals, etc.) was a product of the Old Aeon and “no longer accords with New Aeon consciousness.” He therefore abandoned the old lodge system in his Typhonian Order in favor of astral initiations and a less formal, more exploratory magical structure. He wrote that the new O.T.O. under the 93 Current should be “founded upon the Circle, the Goddess, the Mother,” rather than on the patriarchal Masonic Square of the past. This was effectively a reorientation of Thelemic worship: Grant elevated the feminine divine (the “Cult of the Mother”) within the 93 Current, something Crowley had touched on but not emphasized to the same degree.

Grant’s expansion of the 93 Current also involved integrating new symbols and syncretic correlations – as detailed throughout this analysis (Set/Sirius, Tantric kalas, Lovecraft’s gods, etc.). While orthodox Crowleyans might regard these as extraneous, Grant argued they were natural extensions of Thelema’s universality. His efforts were acknowledged even by Crowley’s biographers: occult historian Richard Kaczynski noted that of all those who claimed Crowley’s lineage, “[Grant] made the greatest effort to expand and build upon Crowley’s work rather than confine himself to the letter of the law…. While his system differs considerably from Crowley’s, he gets high marks for originality.” In summary, Grant reinterpreted the 93 Current as a continuously flowing, ever-adapting magical stream – one that began in remotest antiquity, was jump-started anew by Crowley, and was being further extended through Grant’s own innovations. This philosophy justified his numerous departures from Crowley’s orthodox practice: he saw them not as betrayals, but as the natural evolution of Thelema’s Will in the world.

Syncretic Use of Eastern Esoteric Systems (Tantra and Vedanta)

One of the ways Grant enriched and expanded Thelema was by synthesizing it with Eastern esoteric systems, notably Hindu Tantra and Advaita Vedanta. He had a lifelong interest in Eastern religions, and during the 1950s he deeply immersed himself in Hindu philosophy, even becoming a devotee of the renowned Indian sage Ramana Maharshi. From Advaita Vedanta (the philosophy of non-duality), Grant absorbed the idea that only the Self (ātman) is ultimately real and that the phenomenal world is illusory (māyā). This outlook dovetailed with Thelema’s focus on discovering one’s True Self/True Will – Grant essentially interpreted the True Will as the will of the capital-S Self, the only reality. He wrote that by mastering magic (which for him meant mastering the mind and its projections), one can recognize the universe as an illusion and realize the Self that transcends it. In Typhonian lore, the ultimate reality – the formless Consciousness beyond the ego – was poetically termed the “Mauve Zone” or the realm of the Self, and Grant often described it using Eastern symbols such as the Hindu goddess Kali or the concept of Śiva-Śakti, alongside Thelemic symbols like Nuit. For instance, he said the only true reality was a void-consciousness that could be represented iconographically as Kali (the dark void mother) or Nuit (the starry infinite space) – showing how he blended Eastern and Thelemic iconography.

Tantra – particularly the left-hand path Tantra – was another huge influence. Grant was intrigued by how closely Crowley’s sex magick techniques resembled the Vāmamarga (left-hand Tantra) which uses sexual union and the energies of the body to reach enlightenment. He authored articles on Tantra and even helped publish writings on obscure Hindu gurus, reflecting his serious study of the subject. In his books (notably Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, 1973), Grant draws explicit parallels between Thelemic practices and Tantric yoga. For example, Crowley’s concept of the rise of the Kundalini serpent (which Crowley termed the “Fire Snake”) up the spine in sexual magick is directly taken from Tantra. Grant elaborated on this, emphasizing the activation of chakras and the Kundalini-Shakti as fundamental to occult work. He asserted that Crowley’s Nuit-Hadit polarity is analogous to the Shakti-Shiva polarity in Tantra – Nuit (the infinite space, female) corresponds to Shakti (cosmic energy) and Hadit (the point, male) corresponds to Shiva (pure consciousness).

Most controversially, Grant incorporated the Tantric notion of sexual fluids as sacred essences. Tantra often speaks of bindu (drops) or rasas associated with sexual fluids used in rituals. Grant introduced the Sanskrit term “Kalas” (literally “times” or in esoteric usage, energy-elements) to describe the psychic & magical properties of vaginal fluids. In his system, a woman’s sexual energy – her kalas released especially during menstruation – contains specific magical “flavors” or essences that can unlock hidden states of consciousness. This led him to elevate the role of the priestess in ritual: the woman isn’t just a passive altar as in some of Crowley’s rites, but is the active oracle and fountain of mystical energy. “Because women possess kalas,” Grant wrote, “they have oracular and visionary powers.” He taught that by ingesting or anointing with these kalas, or by entering a trance in conjunction with the female partner, the magician could gain prophetic insight. This is directly inspired by Tantric rites where sexual fluids (often called amarita or nectar) are ingested as sacraments.

In refashioning Thelemic sex magick along Tantric lines, Grant departed from Crowley’s approach in a striking way: Crowley had often centered the phallic or male component (e.g. sperm as the “elixir” and even anal sex as a method in the XI° O.T.O.), whereas Grant asserted that the “true secret” of sex magick lies in the feminine emissions, with menstrual blood being “the most important”. This was a clear import from Tantric and folk traditions (where menstrual blood is sometimes regarded as immensely powerful). Grant even criticized Crowley’s endorsement of male-male anal sex in high-degree O.T.O. workings, calling that “the sodomitical formula” and “a perversion of magical practice,” arguing that the yoni (vagina) and female menstrual current should instead be the focus. Such views show how thoroughly he blended Eastern Śakti-centric worship with Thelema’s framework.

In summary, Grant’s Thelema is profoundly syncretic with Eastern mysticism. He approached Eastern doctrines not as separate from Western occultism, but as parallel pathways that could merge. The result was a kind of East-West occult synthesis: Advaitin monism reinforced Thelema’s core idea of discovering the one True Self/Will; Tantric Shakti-ism amplified the role of the feminine divine and sexual alchemy in Thelema; yogic practices like mantra, chakra work, and meditation were incorporated into the toolkit of Thelemic magick. This syncretism greatly broadened Thelema’s appeal and depth, making it more “universal” in scope – a spiritual system that could credibly dialogue with Indian and Tibetan esoteric concepts (something Crowley himself had dabbled in, but Grant took much further). It also set the stage for later occultists, particularly in the Chaos Magick movement, to freely combine paradigms from around the world.

Lovecraftian and Extraterrestrial Themes in Grant’s Thelema

Perhaps the most iconoclastic aspect of Kenneth Grant’s expansion of Thelema is his integration of Lovecraftian horror mythology and extraterrestrial/UFO themes into occult practice. Grant was virtually unique among prominent occultists in the 20th century for insisting that the imaginative fiction of H.P. Lovecraft carried genuine occult significance. While Lovecraft wrote stories of cosmic monsters and forbidden grimoires as fiction, Grant believed (or at least postulated) that Lovecraft had unwittingly tuned into real “astral” entities and truths through his dreams. He famously took Lovecraft’s mythical grimoire Necronomicon and treated it with the same seriousness as an authentic ancient text, often quoting from Lovecraftian lore alongside traditional occult sources in his books. Grant’s Typhonian Tradition thus boldly asserts that the “Great Old Ones” – Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, etc. – are not merely literary inventions but are symbolic masks for transhuman forces that a magician can actually encounter on the astral or unconscious plane. “The entities of the Cthulhu Mythos,” he argued, “are manifestations of archetypal realities, possibly even actual spiritual forces or beings.” This approach was so notable that scholars of Western esotericism like Justin Woodman credit Grant as “one of the key figures” responsible for bringing Lovecraft’s mythology into modern occultism. Today, the idea of Lovecraftian magick (people attempting to work with the Necronomicon or invoke Cthulhu in rituals) can be traced largely to Grant’s influence in the 1970s.

Practically, how did Grant incorporate Lovecraft’s themes? In his books like The Magical Revival (1972) and Outside the Circles of Time (1980), he drew elaborate parallels between Lovecraft’s nightmarish cosmology and Crowley’s magical cosmology. For instance, he compared Lovecraft’s fictional “Old Ones” (ancient beings outside time) to Crowley’s “Ancient Ones” in The Book of the Law and the Qliphothic forces of the Nightside. He identified Lovecraft’s Shub-Niggurath – the Black Goat goddess of the woods – with the dark aspect of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life (i.e. Binah’s shadow or the primordial mother Chaos). He connected the idea of Azathoth, the blind idiot god at the center of the cosmos in Lovecraft’s tales, to the formless hub of the Qabalistic universe (the Ain Soph or the notion of the “black sun” at the galactic center). These are just a few examples; Grant essentially created a syncretic mythology where Crowley’s gods, Eastern gods, and Lovecraft’s entities all corresponded with each other in a grand tapestry. Rituals conducted in the New Isis Lodge (1955–62) reportedly included attempts to contact or invoke Lovecraftian entities, treating them as real presences. Grant claimed that such workings could unlock “Outer Gateways” – portals to other dimensions or subconscious zones, a concept he explored in the book Hecate’s Fountain (1992) and Outer Gateways (1994).

Coupled with Lovecraft’s fiction was Grant’s fascination with extraterrestrials and the idea of occult contact with non-human intelligences. We have already seen how Sirius played into this as an alien source. Additionally, Grant speculated on experiences of Crowley and others that might be reinterpreted as alien encounters. For example, Aleister Crowley in 1918 supposedly made astral contact with an entity named LAM – Crowley even drew a portrait of Lam, which looks startlingly like a classic “grey” alien with an enlarged head and narrow features. Grant was intrigued by this and suggested Crowley had opened a “gate” through which extraterrestrial forces (like Lam) could enter our world. Decades before the 1980s surge of UFO/New Age occultism, Grant was talking about “alien intelligences” in magical contexts. In The Magical Revival, he stated plainly: “Aleister Crowley received The Book of the Law from an extraterrestrial source”, and throughout his trilogies he muses on the idea that beings from beyond Earth (or outside our space-time continuum) are shaping occult currents. His New Isis Lodge was explicitly said to be in contact with “Extras,” and one of the Lodge’s stated aims was communication with beings from Sirius or beyond.

These ventures were extremely controversial in the 1950s and 60s when Thelemites and traditional occultists highly valued orthodoxy and lineage. Karl Germer and other Crowley loyalists saw Grant’s Lovecraftian and alien insertions as heretical. Germer’s expulsion of Grant from the O.T.O. in 1955 directly cited Grant’s “extraterrestrial (Sirius/Set) claims” as unacceptable. Many felt Grant was mixing fantasy with reality in a way that could discredit the seriousness of Thelema. Grant, however, would argue that myth and reality bleed into each other on the astral plane – what is fictional can become a form for genuine forces. In retrospect, while his ideas were far-out, they anticipated a current in contemporary occultism that is very open to pop culture and sci-fi symbolism as valid magical content (a stance later embraced by Chaos Magick). His work blurred the line between occultism and speculative fiction, enriching the symbolism available to magicians. It’s worth noting that mainstream interest in “ancient aliens” and sci-fi occult correlations (e.g., the 1970s book The Sirius Mystery by Robert K. G. Temple, or later the whole Ancient Aliens genre) developed in parallel – Grant was very much ahead of the curve in merging these ideas with a formal magical system.

In summary, Grant’s Typhonian Thelema daringly incorporates the cosmic horror of Lovecraft and the intrigue of alien contact. He invited occultists to consider that perhaps the universe is teeming not only with gods and angels, but with ancient star-beings and monstrous powers from the depths of consciousness – and that all these are reachable through the right kind of esoteric exploration. This attitude has made the Typhonian tradition a kind of bridge between traditional ritual magic and the more surreal, post-modern occult currents that followed.

Views on Sexuality, Dreamwork, and the Mauve Zone

Sexuality in Grant’s system is not just one component of magick but a central sacrament and gateway to other dimensions. Building on both Crowley’s sex magick techniques and the aforementioned Tantric ideas, Grant put forth some distinctive views on how sexual energy should be employed. A key element is his focus on sexual polarity and the role of the Priestess. In contrast to Crowley – who, despite revering the feminine divine in principle, often structured rituals around the male magician’s perspective – Grant placed the female at the heart of the most powerful workings. He taught that during the rite the Priestess should enter a state of entranced oracle, where controlled dreaming/visioning occurs. The flash of visions or messages received at the moment of climax or during sexual trance was, for Grant, the voice of deeper forces speaking through the woman. He linked this to the symbolism of the Peacock Angel (Melek Taus, revered by the Yezidis) whose eye-spotted feathers represented expanded astral vision. As Grant notes, “the multi-eyed tail [of the peacock] is symbolic of the faculty of astral vision and dream-control which is brought into play in the entranced priestess during the secret rites.” In other words, the priestess’s activated Kundalini (“fire snake”) energy opens her inner eye, allowing her to navigate dream imagery and potentially channel communications from spiritual entities. This emphasis on dream visions obtained through sexual ritual is a hallmark of Grant’s approach.

Grant’s sexual teachings also included specifics about the use of bodily fluids. As discussed, he considered a woman’s menstrual blood and other secretions to be of supreme magical value – calling them “Kalas” (energetic essences). The idea was that each kala corresponds to a phase of the moon and a particular occult property, which an adept could use for sorcery or enlightenment. For Grant, the menstruating woman was especially holy, embodying the union of life and death (creation and dissolution) and providing in her blood a kind of elixir. This stood in contrast to Crowley’s focus on semen (and to a lesser extent, mixed sexual fluids). Grant even believed that the XI° O.T.O. secret (which Crowley kept cryptic but indicated involved anal sex and male emissions) should have actually been about vaginal intercourse with a menstruant. He unabashedly critiques Crowley on this point, indicating that Crowley’s use of, say, semen or even mixing male semen with blood in certain rites was missing the mark compared to the pure menstrual emanation. Such assertions were radical and not widely accepted by others at the time – indeed they contributed to accusations that Grant was biased or even homophobic (as he dismissed homosexual formulae as “perversions”). Regardless, these views underscore how sexual gnosis in the Typhonian tradition is tilted toward a lunar, feminine framework. Grant saw heterosexual coupling (magician + priestess) as the ideal magical engine, with an emphasis on the woman’s body as an oracular vessel of the gods.

Moving from sexuality to dreamwork, Grant was a strong proponent of what we might call lucid dreaming and hypnagogic magic. He developed techniques for “dream control,” which involve setting up conditions before sleep so that the subconscious will present the magician with useful symbols and even allow conscious intervention within the dream. One method he described was akin to Austin Osman Spare’s system: the practitioner should vividly visualize desired scenarios or sigils before sleep and sublimate sexual energy (either through coitus reservatus or celibacy) so that the unfulfilled libido seeks outlet in dreams. When the dream begins, the trained magician can recognize the dream state and participate in it consciously – directing the dream, interacting with dream characters (often interpreted as astral entities or subconscious complexes), and extracting information or performing rites in the dream landscape. Grant regarded this skill as extremely important, because the dream realm is one of the main entry points to what he termed the “Mauve Zone.”

The Mauve Zone is a concept Grant introduced to describe a liminal state of consciousness beyond normal dreaming yet short of full transcendental enlightenment. He noted peculiar phenomena reported by adepts – such as astral travel anomalies, encounters with bizarre beings, and overlaps between subjective vision and objective reality – and theorized that these occur in an intermediate zone of consciousness. The Mauve Zone is said to exist “between the realms of dreaming and dreamless sleep”, i.e., at the deepest level of the subconscious mind before one hits the truly ineffable union with the Self. In deep dreamless sleep, according to Vedanta, one touches the bliss of the Self unknowingly; in ordinary dreaming, one is in personal symbolic narratives. The Mauve Zone, by Grant’s definition, is a borderland where one can experience a collective or archetypal reality consciously. He described it as having “the symbolic appearance of a swamp” when seen clairvoyantly – an image conveying its shifting, murky, and primeval nature. In that swamp-like zone, personal identity blurs; one might encounter amorphous beings, or one might interpret it as an endless purple-gray fog or marsh where realities seep in and out. Grant claimed that through intensive practices (often involving sex magic and controlled dreaming as mentioned), he penetrated into the Mauve Zone and even navigated it systematically. His eighth book, Beyond the Mauve Zone (1999), deals with the challenges and revelations of this exploration.

Within the Mauve Zone, Grant reported contact with what could be considered truly alien intelligences – not “aliens” in the sci-fi sense of physical ETs, but beings or currents of consciousness utterly unlike human thought. This concept ties back into his Lovecraftian theme: the Mauve Zone could be where the “Great Old Ones” stir, or where one might glimpse incomprehensible pre-human symbols. It also relates to Eastern mysticism: one is reminded of the Turiya state in yoga (the 4th state beyond waking, dreaming, deep sleep) – except that Grant’s Mauve Zone seems to be a sidereal and even spooky take on that idea, filled with shades of violet (hence mauve) and shadow. In practical terms, Grant encouraged his advanced students to develop trance and scrying techniques to consciously explore this zone. These included sexual exhaustion followed by meditation, intense pranayama and mantra to dissociate normal senses, and then “drifting” the consciousness at the cusp of sleep while maintaining a witnessing spark. The visions or communications thus received could then be recorded and analyzed after return to waking state. Such methods were quite unique to the Typhonian path – few other occult schools attempted to chart this kind of oneiric interzone with such seriousness.

In essence, Grant’s views on sexuality and dreamwork are about using the most primal human experiences (sex and sleep) as doorways to the infinite. He saw the moment of orgasm, the fluid of menstruation, the content of dreams, and the trance of deep sleep as all interconnected keys to unlock what lies “beyond the mauve veil.” By validating experiences like erotic visions, nocturnal emissions, and hypnagogic imagery as genuine components of magick, Grant greatly enriched the occult vocabulary of inner experience. Modern practitioners of Chaos Magick, sex magick, and transpersonal psychology who delve into lucid dreaming or use sexual trance for self-exploration owe a debt to the trails blazed in Grant’s work here.

The Typhonian Tradition vs. Orthodox Thelema

Grant’s bold innovations inevitably led to schism with what we might call “orthodox Thelema” – the line of Thelemic practice upheld by Crowley’s direct successors in the main O.T.O. and A∴A∴ lineages. The differences were both doctrinal and organizational. On a doctrinal level, as we have seen, Grant introduced foreign elements (Set, Sumeria, Tantra, Cthulhu, etc.) that purist Thelemites felt were not supported by the received texts (like Liber AL or Crowley’s official writings). Where Crowley had kept Thelema’s pantheon largely Egyptian and Theosophical in flavor, Grant brought in a menagerie of other gods and ideas. For example, Crowley identified himself with the Beast 666 (sometimes linked to Therion or Hadit in Liber AL), but he did not claim Thelema was a revival of Sumerian Shaitan worship – that jump was Grant’s, and many Thelemites didn’t buy it. Likewise, Crowley’s system emphasizes Horus as the Lord of the Aeon, whereas Grant gave equal if not greater weight to Set/Typhon, a move traditionalists viewed as a misunderstanding (or even inversion) of Crowley’s message. In Crowley’s cosmology, Set or Satan can be seen as a necessary adversary (or a symbol of freedom in some commentaries), but he’s not the proclaimed leader of the Aeon – Horus is. Grant’s Typhonian heresy was essentially to say, “We are in the twin Aeon of Horus and Set,” which orthodox Thelemites saw as confusing the issue. They quipped that Grant had turned to the “Dark Side” (pun intended) by obsessing over the nightside/Set aspect instead of the solar ascent that Crowley championed.

On organizational matters, Grant’s divergence was stark. After Crowley died, Karl Germer as head of O.T.O. tried to keep the order orthodox and quiet. Grant, however, began performing novel workings in his New Isis Lodge and issuing manifestos that did not have Germer’s approval. The breaking point was Grant’s 1955 manifesto about the Sirius/Set current, which Germer explicitly condemned. “On 20 July 1955, Germer issued a ‘Note of Expulsion’ expelling Grant from O.T.O.” for promulgating what Germer considered nonsense and blasphemy. From that point on, Grant was operating completely independently of the main O.T.O. He later named his organization the Typhonian O.T.O. (and eventually just Typhonian Order) to differentiate it from the Caliphate O.T.O. under Grady McMurtry (which emerged in the U.S. in the 1970s as the “official” O.T.O.). The two organizations had very different characters: the Caliphate O.T.O. focused on implementing Crowley’s system as written (emphasizing the Gnostic Mass, the original degree initiations, etc.), whereas Grant’s Typhonian O.T.O. was more free-form, encouraging personal experiments, visions, and correspondences that went far beyond Crowley.

One clear example of this divergence is the approach to ritual structure and authority. Crowley left behind scripts for initiations (largely based on Masonic lines) and expected O.T.O. members to go through these degrees physically with officers, temples, etc. Grant found this model increasingly outdated – he remarked that requiring members to gather at one place and time for rituals was “unwieldy” and not in tune with the new era. He therefore dispensed with formal lodge meetings after the 1960s. Instead, the Typhonian Order often worked via correspondences and irregular small group meetings; many initiations were said to be done astrally. Grant claimed he had authority from inner-plane Masters to do this. To orthodox occultists, this was dubious – it lacked the checks-and-balances of physical lodge work and could easily lead to self-delusion. Additionally, Grant’s willingness to publish almost all his secret material in his books (albeit often in oblique, coded form) was contrary to Crowley’s secretive approach to higher-degree teachings. Essentially, Grant opened the doors and let the sunlight (or moonlight) in, while orthodox O.T.O. maintained more closed initiatory doors.

Because of these factors, many Crowley traditionalists were harshly critical of Grant. Some went so far as to call him a “Black Brother”, implying that, symbolically, he had failed to cross the Abyss properly and had fallen prey to the demon Choronzon (who in Thelema personifies ego-disintegration and illusion in the Abyss). This accusation arises from Grant’s avowed exploration of Daath and the Tunnels of Set; to conservative Thelemites, intentionally plunging into the Qliphoth could be seen as choosing the quicksand of the abyss rather than the proper path of divine union. Grant of course would argue otherwise – that one must explore the shadows to truly integrate the self – but the criticism stuck in some circles. It didn’t help that Grant’s later writings become increasingly baroque and hard to decipher, which even some admirers admit. Detractors like Francis King or Martin Starr accused Grant of “confusing his own imagination with objective occult truth” and leading students astray with chimerical links (like connecting Crowley’s system to random mythologies without solid rationale). Grant responded in part by emphasizing personal verification – he often challenges readers to actually perform the rituals or visualizations and see if the results confirm his connections.

In terms of Typhonian vs. orthodox practice, we can summarize: The orthodox Thelemite might recite Liber Resh (solar adorations), celebrate the Gnostic Mass, and seek the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel as Crowley taught, sticking to Egyptian pantheon names and Thelemic holy books. A Typhonian practitioner, inspired by Grant, might instead (or additionally) conduct a ritual to contact Cthulhu or the “Ma’at current,” use a mantra to invoke Shiva-Shakti in tantric union, attempt skrying the Tunnel of Set corresponding to a Tarot path, or experiment with Spare’s sigils to reach a trance of contact with extraterrestrial “Lam” entities. Both would call themselves Thelemites doing the True Will, but their activities would look very different. This divergence grew over time – by the 1990s, the Typhonian Order was so distinct that it formally broke any remaining ties with O.T.O. and became its own Typhonian Order under Grant and then Michael Staley.

Despite the criticism and schism, it’s important to note Grant never renounced Thelema itself – he always upheld Liber AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law) as a genuine revelation and encouraged practice of Crowley’s fundamental tenets (the pursuit of True Will, acceptance of the Law of Thelema, etc.). He saw himself as clarifying and expanding Thelema, not opposing it. As he put it, the Typhonian current “involves the worship of the Primal Goddess” which looks like a revival of something ancient, but is in fact the spiral rebirth of the same Current that Crowley sparked, adjusted for a new stage of evolution. Thus, from Grant’s perspective the orthodox Thelemites were simply too narrow in their view, potentially missing the forest (the big magical picture) for the trees (literal adherence to Crowley’s work). Meanwhile, the orthodox camp largely viewed Typhonian Thelema as off on a tangent at best, or a corrupting influence at worst. Over the decades, however, Grant’s ideas have permeated occult culture to the point that many of his once-“heretical” notions (like Qliphoth exploration, or Lovecraftian magic) are now almost mainstream in the esoteric community.

Impact on Modern Occultism

Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian tradition, once fringe, has proven to be immensely influential on contemporary occultism. His legacy can be seen across several esoteric movements and magical practices that flourished after the 1970s. Here are some key areas of impact:

• Chaos Magic: The Chaos Magic current that emerged in the late 1970s in England was notably influenced by Grant’s work. Chaos magicians like Peter J. Carroll and Phil Hine advocate a creative, paradigm-shifting approach to magic that resonates with Grant’s syncretism. Grant’s frequent citing and promotion of Austin Osman Spare (an artist-mage whose ideas on sigils and the subconscious greatly shaped Chaos Magic) helped spark renewed interest in Spare’s work. In fact, Grant was among the first to publish Spare’s art and writings in the 1960s. Chaos Magic’s willingness to employ fictional or pop-cultural archetypes (e.g. using Lovecraft’s gods in rituals tongue-in-cheek or otherwise) is a direct inheritance from Grant’s pioneering melding of fiction with occult reality. Grant showed that one could derive effective occult symbolism from modern myth – a core idea in Chaos Magic.
• Temple of Set: Michael Aquino’s Temple of Set (founded 1975 after splitting from the Church of Satan) shares a clear ideological overlap with the Typhonian outlook. The Temple of Set, as the name implies, venerates Set as a principle of isolate intelligence and self-deification. While Aquino’s approach was independent, he did acknowledge Crowley and Grant’s work; indeed, Grant’s writings on Set and the “Sirius/Set current” provided an occult context for elevating Set as a positive figure. Both the Typhonian tradition and the Temple of Set explore the Left-Hand Path idea of the practitioner forging a unique godlike identity (what Aquino calls Xeper, coming into being). The fact that Setian groups became a major part of the late 20th-century occult scene can be partially attributed to Grant making Set respectable again as an occult icon (beyond just the Satanic or villainous gloss). It’s noted that Grant’s work was read in Temple of Set circles, and one of Grant’s prominent devotees, Stephen Flowers (also known as Edred Thorsson), had associations with the Temple of Set’s inner order. In short, Grant helped rehabilitate Set in occultism, an influence reflected in the very existence and naming of the Temple of Set.
• Dragon Rouge and Left-Hand Path orders: Dragon Rouge, a Left-Hand Path occult order founded in Sweden in 1989, openly cites inspiration from Grant’s Qliphothic and nightside explorations. Dragon Rouge’s curriculum involves Qliphothic Qabalah, Lovecraftian gnosis, and dark goddess Lilith worship, all themes that appear in Grant’s books. The founder of Dragon Rouge, Thomas Karlsson, has mentioned Grant’s influence in his writings. More broadly, the 1980s-90s saw a blossoming of “Draconian” or “Typhonian” themed groups – small occult orders focusing on the Lilith/Typhon/Set and Qliphoth. Grant’s term “Draconian Current” (related to the kundalini serpent and the beast of Apep) became a buzzword in these circles. Organizations like the Order of Leviathan or individuals like Thomas Vaughn (who wrote Qabalah of the Qliphoth) were clearly following in Grant’s footsteps. Grant’s work provided both a map and a validation for those pursuing Left-Hand Path techniques (e.g. sex magic, nocturnal astral travel) within a Thelemic or Qabalistic framework.
• Maat Magick and Nu-Isis: Within Thelemic derivatives, Grant also had an influence. In the late 1970s, an American magician named Nema (Andahadna) developed what she called Maat Magick, positing that the next Aeon (after Horus) would be the Aeon of Maat, a goddess of truth and balance. Nema was aware of Grant’s work (she corresponded with him) and the Nu Isis Lodge journals. Grant had written of a future Aeon of Maat in some cryptic passages, and Nema’s own system can be seen as parallel or complementary to Grant’s Typhonian Thelema. In fact, the Maat movement and Grant’s Typhonian Order collaborated on at least one working, the Maat-Typhon Working in the late 1970s. Nema’s group (the Horus-Maat Lodge) and Grant’s shared members and ideas occasionally, both focusing on goddess energy and the notion of going beyond Crowley’s Horus framework. The Typhonian Order was thus “instrumental in the creation of Nema Andahadna’s Maat Magick movement.” Even outside that, Grant’s championing of the Divine Feminine in Thelema (through the Cult of the Mother, calls for a revival of “Crowley’s Whore of Babalon” as a positive force, etc.) helped pave the way for more female-centric or gender-balanced offshoots of Thelema.
• Academic and cultural impact: While not “pop culture famous,” Grant’s work drew the attention of serious scholars of esotericism. Henrik Bogdan, a historian of Western esotericism, wrote a doctoral thesis and later a book on Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian magic, highlighting it as a prime example of “post-modern occult genre.” In 2003 Bogdan called Grant “perhaps the most original and prolific English author of the post-modern occultist genre.” This is high praise, noting that Grant’s imaginative scope and integration of diverse strands was unparalleled. Another scholar, Dave Evans, included Grant prominently in his research on the history of modern occultism, and Justin Woodman (mentioned earlier) analyzed Grant’s use of Lovecraft from an anthropological perspective. Culturally, Alan Moore – famed graphic novelist and magician – has been vocal about Grant’s influence, saying it’s “hard to name any other living individual who has done more to shape contemporary western thinking with regard to Magic” than Kenneth Grant. Moore himself incorporated Lovecraftian and occult themes in works like Promethea and Neonomicon, arguably a testament to Grant’s trailblazing. The current popularity of terms like “Chaos Magick,” “Qliphoth,” “Lovecraftian occultism,” etc., in occult and even popular circles (e.g., Lovecraft-themed tarot decks, or music bands referencing Cthulhu in magical contexts) can be traced back to the seed ideas that Grant either planted or significantly watered in the mid-20th century.

In sum, Kenneth Grant’s expansion of Thelema through the Typhonian tradition has had a lasting and wide-ranging impact. What was once seen as wild eccentricity – mixing fiction with ritual, talking about aliens in magic, focusing on the feminine and the shadow – has, over the decades, entered the mainstream of the occult world. Many modern practitioners who might not even have read Grant directly are nonetheless operating in a landscape that Grant helped shape. The 93 Current, as Grant envisioned it, has indeed morphed and branched into new forms. His legacy lives on in the openness with which occultists now approach mythology and unconscious material: a willingness to draw from Sumerian to Sirius, from Tantra to Tarot, from science fiction to Sabbatic witchcraft, all in service of gnosis. The Typhonian tradition’s divergence from strict Crowleyan Thelema thus became, in retrospect, not a side road to oblivion but a fertile delta branching out and enriching the modern magical tradition as a whole.

Sources:

• Grant, Kenneth. The Magical Revival (1972); Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God (1973); Cults of the Shadow (1975); Nightside of Eden (1977); Outside the Circles of Time (1980); Hecate’s Fountain (1992); Beyond the Mauve Zone (1999); The Ninth Arch (2002). (Primary works where Grant lays out the ideas discussed.)
• Evans, Dave. The History of British Magick After Crowley (2007). (Includes discussion of Grant’s influence.)
• Bogdan, Henrik. Kenneth Grant: Myth and Magic in the Typhonian Tradition (forthcoming academic work, building on Bogdan’s 2003 thesis).
• Wikipedia – Kenneth Grant (occultist) (Referenced passages provide supporting details and direct quotes as cited above.)