Penn Museum (Phil.) hosts “Unwrapping Egyptology and the Occult: The Curious Case of Battiscombe Gunn and Aleister Crowley” 10/25
Ancient Egypt was one area in which modern scholarship and esotericism overlapped, and even converged. It is not often remembered today that in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, a number of mainstream scholars of antiquity were interested in esoteric or occult subjects. One very interesting case is that of Battiscombe Gunn (1883-1950), still remembered as one of the most insightful Egyptologists of his generation. What is less well known is that Gunn was associated, apparently in more than a casual way, with Aleister Crowley. Crowley, of course, was and remains the most notorious British occultist of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries – an individual who was known to his detractors as the “wickedest man in the world,” and who proudly proclaimed himself to be the “Beast 666.” Lecturer Steve Vinson will first lay out the evidence for the “friendship” – if that is what it was – between Gunn and Crowley. We will go on to discuss how and why Gunn, and a number of his scholarly contemporaries, were interested in the esoteric and the occult. And Vinson will discuss the reasons why esotericism and mainstream Egyptology eventually went their separate ways.
