Lib197

This is a narrative poem in the medieval romance tradition by Aleister Crowley (written 1905), structured as an extended Arthurian quest narrative following Sir Palamedes, a Saracen knight, as he pursues the elusive "Questing Beast" across the entire known world — Syria, Arabia, India, the Himalayas, Japan, China, Egypt, and Europe. According to the editor's note, the poem is autobiographical allegory, with each episode encoding a stage of Crowley's own spiritual search; acts of killing by Palamedes represent renunciations of attachment rather than literal violence. The 41-canto argument traces a systematic rejection of every philosophical and religious path Palamedes encounters — rationalism, evangelicalism, mysticism, ecstasy, metaphysics, self-negation, and occult ritual all prove inadequate, their representatives slain or discredited when they fail to produce the Beast. The poem's distinctive claim is that the quest cannot be fulfilled through any positive doctrine or method: the Beast finally comes to Palamedes only when he returns to Camelot having fully accepted his failure, suggesting that the accumulation of failures is itself the spiritual path. Formally, the work blends the cadences of Victorian medievalism (echoing Tennyson's Idylls) with Thelemic occult content, making it of primary interest to readers of Crowley's mystical writings or those tracing his synthesis of Western esotericism and Eastern renunciation philosophy.

Lib197

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