Dive, run, and soar through this exhilarating special edition in the NEW YORK TIMES bestselling series, with a story by WILD BORN author, Brandon Mull. Briggan the Wolf, Uraza the Leopard, Jhi the Panda, and Essix the Falcon -- the Four Fallen. Long before they were spirit animals, they roamed the wilds as Great Beasts, the most powerful beings in Erdas. When a mad king arose, the four banded together with an army of humans and animals to defeat him. But they weren't the only Great Beasts in the war. A deadly scheme was already underway, hatched by two of their own. To save their world, the four had to give up their lives.These are the lost stories of the most selfless acts of bravery that Erdas has ever seen, and the secret betrayal that started it all. These are TALES OF THE GREAT BEASTS.

• Reveals Crowley’s sex magick relations in London and his contacts with important figures, including Dion Fortune, Gerald Gardner, Jack Parsons, Dylan Thomas, and black equality activist Nancy Cunard • Explores Crowley’s nick-of-time escape from the Nazi takeover in Germany and offers extensive confirmation of Crowley’s work for British intelligence • Examines the development of Crowley’s later publications and his articles in reaction to the Nazi Gestapo actively persecuting his followers in Germany After an extraordinary life of magical workings, occult fame, and artistic pursuits around the globe, Aleister Crowley was forced to spend the last fifteen years of his life in his native England, nearly penniless. Much less examined than his early years, this final period of the Beast’s life was just as filled with sex magick, espionage, romance, transatlantic conflict, and extreme behavior. Drawing on previously unpublished diaries and letters, Tobias Churton provides the first detailed treatment of the final years of Crowley’s life, from 1932 to 1947. He opens with Crowley’s nick-of-time escape from the Nazi takeover in Germany and his return home to England, flat broke. Churton offers extensive confirmation of Crowley’s work as a secret operative for MI5 and explores how Crowley saw World War II as the turning point for the “New Aeon.” He examines Crowley’s notorious 1934 London trial, which resulted in his bankruptcy, and shares inside stories of Crowley’s relations with Californian O.T.O. followers, including rocket-fuel specialist Jack Parsons, and his attempt to take over H. Spencer Lewis’s Rosicrucian Order. The author reveals Crowley’s sex magick relations in London and his contacts with spiritual leaders of the time, including Dion Fortune and Wicca founder Gerald Gardner. He examines Crowley’s dealings with artists such as Dylan Thomas, Alfred Hitchcock, Augustus John, Peter Warlock, and Peter Brooks and dispels the accusations that Crowley was racist, exploring his work with lifelong friend, black equality activist Nancy Cunard. Churton also examines the development of Crowley’s later publications such as Magick without Tears as well as his articles in reaction to the Nazi Gestapo who was actively persecuting his remaining followers in Germany. Presenting an intimate and compelling study of Crowley in middle and old age, Churton shows how the Beast still wields a wand-like power to delight and astonish.

A biographical history of Aleister Crowley’s activities in Berlin from 1930 to 1932 as Hitler was rising to power • Examines Crowley’s focus on his art, his work as a spy for British Intelligence, his colorful love life and sex magick exploits, and his contacts with magical orders • Explores Crowley’s relationships with Berlin’s artists, filmmakers, writers, and performers such as Christopher Isherwood, Jean Ross, and Aldous Huxley • Recounts the fates of Crowley’s friends and colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowley’s lost art exhibition Gnostic poet, painter, writer, and magician Aleister Crowley arrived in Berlin on April 18, 1930. As prophet of his syncretic religion “Thelema,” he wanted to be among the leaders of art and thought, and Berlin, the liberated future-gazing metropolis, wanted him. There he would live, until his hurried departure on June 22, 1932, as Hitler was rapidly rising to power and the black curtain of intolerance came down upon the city. Known to his friends affectionately as “The Beast,” Crowley saw the closing lights of Berlin’s artistic renaissance of the Weimar period when Berlin played host to many of the world’s most outstanding artists, writers, filmmakers, performers, composers, architects, philosophers, and scientists, including Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Ethel Mannin, Otto Dix, Aldous Huxley, Jean Ross, Christopher Isherwood, and many other luminaries of a glittering world soon to be trampled into the mud by the global bloodbath of World War II. Drawing on previously unpublished letters and diary material by Crowley, Tobias Churton examines Crowley’s years in Berlin and his intense focus on his art, his work as a spy for British Intelligence, his colorful love life and sex magick exploits, and his contacts with German Theosophy, Freemasonry, and magical orders. He recounts the fates of Crowley’s colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowley’s lost art exhibition--six crates of paintings left behind in Germany as the Gestapo was closing in. Revealing the real Crowley long hidden from the historical record, Churton presents “the Beast” anew in all his ambiguous and, for some, terrifying glory, at a blazing, seminal moment in the history of the world.

A celebration of the visual contributions of the bestiary--one of the most popular types of illuminated books during the Middle Ages--and an exploration of its lasting legacy. Brimming with lively animals both real and fantastic, the bestiary was one of the great illuminated manuscript traditions of the Middle Ages. Encompassing imaginary creatures such as the unicorn, siren, and griffin; exotic beasts including the tiger, elephant, and ape; as well as animals native to Europe like the beaver, dog, and hedgehog, the bestiary is a vibrant testimony to the medieval understanding of animals and their role in the world. So iconic were the stories and images of the bestiary that its beasts essentially escaped from the pages, appearing in a wide variety of manuscripts and other objects, including tapestries, ivories, metalwork, and sculpture. With over 270 color illustrations and contributions by twenty-five leading scholars, this gorgeous volume explores the bestiary and its widespread influence on medieval art and culture as well as on modern and contemporary artists like Pablo Picasso and Damien Hirst. Published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center May 14 to August 18, 2019.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) poet, painter, novelist, explorer, mountaineer, chess master, classical scholar and drug addict was the founder of a religion called thelema, which, he claimed, had superceded Christianity. He was totally at odds with the morality of his time, as this account of his life clearly shows; but avoided confrontation with the authorities by always managing to find sufficient followers to sustain him in his beliefs. Reviled in his lifetime, his fame following his death has risen steeply: he made the pages of the Dictionary of National Biography; and his Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, from which in 1923 he was ignominiously expelled, has been bought by the city of Cefalu as a tourist attraction. John Symonds is Crowley's literary executor, and his biography og Aleister Crowley is the fullest account of the life of this most bizarre Englishman. The present edition has been considerably revised and augmented, and will remain the standard work on Crowley.

Have you heard of the Beasts? No? Well, I'm not surprised. Not many people have. That's because the Beasts are very rare. This is the tale of one Beast, the rarest of the rare, a Beast who decides he is lonely and sets out to find the other Beasts. Will his daring and dangerous journey lead him to some friends?

Poet, Magician, Mountaineer, Polemicist and Pornographer, Aleister Crowley was the most famous, or infamous, name in twentieth century occultism. With his usual flair and style, Colin Wilson brings this complex and enigmatic figure to life and provides an engrossing portrait of the self-styled Great Beast, the man whom the contemporary press dubbed "The Wickedest Man in the World".The popular image of him as, in the words of Francis King, 'an insatiable sexual athlete, a pimp who lived on the immoral earnings of his girl-friends, and a junkie who daily took enough heroin to kill a roomful of people', has a basis in fact; but there were other, less obnoxious and despicable, aspects of this highly original character. Crowley's greatest legacy is his eclectic occult system: his Magick persists, a potent synthesis of Golden Dawn magic, oriental esoteric techniques, sexual magic, and the all-encompassing Law of Thelema with its two fundamental principles, 'Every man and woman is a star' and the notorious 'Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law'.