Against the Light

An idle fancy sparked by curiosity opens a door on darkness ....

On learning that an ancestor was executed for witchcraft in the sixteenth century, the narrator is prompted to explore her history. Research having failed, he resorts to magical means and exposes an array of malefic forces poised to invade the Earth.

In a deserted Welsh ruin he discovers a grimoire revealing traffic between alien entities and their terrestrial agents. Rumoured to have lain for centuries in the custody of a Scottish clan, the grimoire’s existence is known to very few. Among them are powerful occultists such as Aleister Crowley and Phineas Black, desperately tracking it down. The grimoire alone holds the keys ─ and the Sign of Protection. A chimera? An allegory? More aptly, a Warning. Civilization is careering to destruction: it may find the Sign ─ or, the Seal of its doom ...

—

First published in 1997 and long out of print, this republication is freshly typeset, incorporating corrections and additions by Kenneth Grant noted in his copy of the first edition. Illustrated endpapers include diary entries by the author from 1985 when the novel was started; some early plot notes; the first draft of a cover blurb from 1995; and a chart where Grant gives the meaning of symbols on the front of the dust-jacket. A full-colour frontispiece reproduces the bust of Mephistopheles, a mysterious and compelling figure in this novel and elsewhere in Grant’s work.