ALISTAIR COOMBS

Kenneth Grant’s Borderland of Mystic Horror

Alistair studied religion and archaeology of the Silk Road at the School of Oriental and African Studies and is currently writing a PhD at the University of Kent.

Grant’s symbolic and perplexing universe is deeply embroidered with fictions selectively sourced from the genre of supernatural horror. His alternative vision, or one might say, siderealisation of Thelema, therefore follows a highly visual narrative that unites eastern mysticism with images of the literary nightmarish, and more besides. The strange and super-exotic figures of his iconography inhabit a hidden borderland or netherworld between wakefulness and sleep, between inner consciousness and outer space. The nodules between wakefulness and sleep are emphasized as portals accessing such realms wrought from surrealistic design and a host of unearthly, hypnagogic encounter. Located beyond rigid objective categories and limited perception, this world is a playhouse of imaginative transformation that has coloured and informed the western esoteric tradition.