The Diary of a Drug Fiend
Crowley’s best-known novel brings the same decadent and occult interests into a single story.
Read our take
The Stratagem and Other Stories
A collection of Crowley’s sinister, decadent, occult, and darkly comic short fiction.
- 1929
About Aleister Crowley
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeCrowley’s stories move through sinister situations, black humor, occult ideas, decadence, and people entering experiences they would have been wiser to avoid.
What's inside
A varied collection of short fiction shaped by occult ideas, decadence, menace, and black comedy.
Themes and analysis
At the junction
In the title story, Bevan mistakes social position for sound judgment. His Englishness, public office and religious assumptions encourage a confidence that makes him easier to manipulate. Duguesclin repeatedly claims he already knew information Bevan has just supplied. The boast manufactures authority from the listener’s disclosures. Bevan mistakes reassurance about himself for evidence about somebody else.
The collection’s early reception registers a similar difficulty over how seriously to take this performance. The Sheffield Daily Independent welcomed the title story’s exaggerated humour; the Manchester Guardian dismissed the volume as suitable only for a student paper. That disagreement usefully preserves the risk of the comic method: a reader may enjoy the elaborate provocation or feel that the storyteller has merely wasted the attention he demanded.
Messages in their steps
The prisoners turn an imposed march into an opportunity to communicate. Ordinary steps and dragged feet become a shared language, allowing hope to travel under surveillance. But the increasingly elaborate code also makes verification harder. Duguesclin’s confidence in a plan grows with the difficulty of decoding it, not with proof that it can work. The story makes ingenuity both a possible means of freedom and a means of sustaining an illusion.
The ending refuses to explain the promised escape. Bevan receives the word stratagem instead of the stratagem itself, while his companion takes another compartment. The storyteller escapes his audience’s last question. That observable evasion gives the title a second application without resolving the adventure on which Bevan has spent his attention.
Why we recommend it
More of Crowley’s strange fiction
The collection offers occult ideas, sinister situations, decadence, and black humor in shorter doses.
Short fiction with changing threats
The separate stories allow Crowley to try different sinister situations without requiring a long narrative commitment.
Humor beside unease
Black comedy complicates the occult material, letting an episode be both disturbing and darkly amusing.
What this book explores
Timeline
1913
The Testament of Magdalen Blair appears in The Equinox before its inclusion in this collection.
1929
Mandrake Press publishes the three-story collection.
1990
Temple Press reissues The Stratagem and Other Stories.
Book editions
- Paperback
- Temple Press
- 1990
- 9781871744101
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Testament of Magdalen Blair
One of Crowley’s darkest and most concentrated fictional works.
Read our takeThe Stratagem and Other Stories: frequently asked questions
Is this a novel?
No. It is a collection of stories. The pieces should be read as separate narratives rather than chapters in one continuous plot.
What kind of stories does it contain?
The collection brings together sinister situations, black humor, occult ideas, and decadent settings. Characters often enter experiences whose dangers they fail to understand.
Is knowledge of Crowley’s occult system required?
Not to follow the stories as fiction. An interest in his ideas can add context, but suspense, cruelty, and dark comedy also work at the level of the individual tale.
Is the tone consistently solemn?
No. Black humor sits beside frightening and disturbing material. Crowley’s stories can mock their characters while exposing them to danger.
Is this a factual account of occult events?
No. It is imaginative fiction. Supernatural or occult elements are features of the stories, not verified historical claims.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Stratagem and Other Stories, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1The Stratagem and Other Stories
NovelAleister Crowley, 1929Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Aleister Crowley bibliography
Official recordOpen British National BibliographyUsed forOfficial record used to verify names, dates, institutional details, or other factual information on this page.
3Crowley, Aleister (1875–1947) — authority record
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forOfficial record used to verify names, dates, institutional details, or other factual information on this page.
4The Yorke Collection
ArchiveThe Warburg Institute, University of LondonUsed forArchival evidence used to document the historical record connected to The Stratagem and Other Stories.
5Aleister Crowley in Paris: Sex, Art, and Magick in the City of Light
BiographyTobias Churton (Inner Traditions)Used forBiographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to The Stratagem and Other Stories.
6100th Monkey Press — Stratagem bibliography
WebsiteUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the The Stratagem and Other Stories page.
7The Stratagem — The English Review, June 1914
PeriodicalThe English Review (digital text: Luminist Archives), 1914Used forPrimary text of the title story, not the other two stories in the collection.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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