Printed on Japanese vellum.¹

Top edges cut and gilt.  Other edges uncut and unopened.²

Bound in white vellum boards.²

Upper cover stamped in gilt within an ornamental frame ‘ΘΕ | ΛΗ | ΜΑ’.²

Spine stamped in gilt ‘II’²

5 7/16” x 3 5/8”.²

______________________________

One copy rebound in 1910 by Zaehnsdorf in full blue morocco leather and stamped with gilt.

Presented to Leah Hirsig by Norman Mudd.

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There are known sets of the Holy Books bound in black morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe.⁵

Variant bindings are found bound up in three individual volumes in vellum, white cloth and black cloth as well as bound as a single volume with similar binding materials.⁷

Five sets were printed on vellum and bound by in one volume in full black, green, yellow, blue and red morocco leather.¹ 

The volumes bound in blue, red, and green are known to survive.⁸

On 10 April 2013, the O.T.O. International Headquarters announced that it had come into possession of James Thomas Windram's personal copy, in full green leather, of this extremely rare edition of The Holy Books.³

Page(s)

[i-vi]

Blank Pages

[  1]

Title-page

[  2]

A\A\ notice

[3-4]

Prologue

[5-43]

Text

[  44]

Notice to Neophyte

[i-viii]

Blank Pages

-

Liber Liberi vel Lapidos Lazuli.  Adumbratio Kabbalae Aegyptiorum sub figura VII 

1.

Gerald Yorke, A Bibliography of the Works of Aleister Crowley (Expanded and Corrected by Clive Harper from Aleister Crowley, the Golden Dawn and Buddhism:  Reminiscences and Writings of Gerald Yorke, Keith Richmond, editor, The Teitan Press, York Beach, ME, 2011, pp. 51-52.

2.

Dianne Frances Rivers, A Bibliographic List with Special Reference To the Collection at the University of Texas,  Master of Arts Thesis, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 1967, pp. 80-81. 

3.

O.T.O. News from International Headquarters, 10 April 2013, Internet Resources, last accessed on 30 June 2016.

4.

Personal observation of the item.

5.

Timothy d’Arch Smith, Aleister Crowley’s Aceldama (1898):  The A B Copy’, Book Collector, 56, 2 (Summer 2007), p. 222.

6.

Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law:  Liber Al vel Legis, Red Wheel/Weiser, York Beach, ME, 2004, p. 152.

7.

Timothy d’Arch Smith, The Books of the Beast, Mandrake, Oxford, 1991, p. 120, note 25.

8.

J. Edward Cornelius, The Aleister Crowley Desk Reference, The Teitan Press, York Beach, Maine, 2013, pp. 319-320.