On August 10, 1948, Montague Summers, an acquaintance of Aleister Crowley, celebrated his Greater Feast. Montague was a pioneer in producing and publishing literary works insisting on the reality of supernatural phenomena and beings.
According to Wikipdia:
“Augustus Montague Summers was an English author and clergyman. He is known primarily for his scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for his idiosyncratic studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe. He was responsible for the first English translation, published in 1928, of the notorious 15th-century witch hunter‘s manual, the Malleus Maleficarum. [ergo a major influence on the naming and lyrics of countless bad metal bands]…
“Summers was ordained as deacon in 1908 and worked as a curate in Bath and Bitton, in Greater Bristol. He never proceeded to higher orders, however, probably because of rumours of his interest in Satanism and accusations of sexual impropriety with young boys, for which he was tried and acquitted. Summers’ first book, Antinous and Other Poems, published in 1907, was dedicated to the subject of pederasty.
“Summers also joined the growing ranks of English men of letters interested in medievalism, Catholicism, and the occult. In 1909 he converted to Catholicism and shortly thereafter he began passing himself off as a Catholic priest and styling himself the “Reverend Alphonsus Joseph-Mary Augustus Montague Summers”, even though he was never a member of any Catholic order or diocese…
“his primary religious interest was in the subject of the occult. While Aleister Crowley, with whom he was acquainted, adopted the persona of a modern-day witch, Summers played the part of the learned Catholic witch-hunter…”
Concerning the publication of the Malleus, it’s noted: “Summers insists that the reality of witchcraft is an essential part of Catholic doctrine, and declares the Malleus to be an admirable and correct account of witchcraft and of the methods necessary to combat it. This should be contrasted with the vastly more sceptical and critical attitude of mainstream Catholic scholars…”
Read the entire piece here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montague_Summers
