An officer, strategist and political advocate
John Frederick Charles Fuller was born at Chichester in 1878, the son of a clergyman and a French mother. After schooling at Malvern and military training at Sandhurst, he was commissioned in 1898. Service in the Boer War and India preceded his wartime work with the Tank Corps. He became an influential advocate of mechanised warfare and retired from the army as a major general in 1933.
Writing and military reporting occupied much of his later career. He observed the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and the Spanish Civil War, and published widely on military history. He also advised Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Surviving 1934 reports contain recommendations about its leadership, propaganda and organisation. Fuller died in 1966, and his papers went to Rutgers University.
Crowley’s poetry as a revelation
The Star in the West appeared in 1907, when Fuller was still a captain. Its subtitle calls it a critical essay on Crowley’s works, but the preface declares an expansive admiration: Fuller presents the poems and magical writings as the disclosure of a new spiritual vision. He draws together Christian scripture, classical myth and occult symbols to explain what he believed Crowley had achieved.
The seven chapters bear titles including The Virgin, The Harlot, The Mother and The New Wine. Fuller supplies a list of Crowley’s books from which he has drawn his argument, ranging from poetry to Goetia. His own elaborate imagery often becomes part of the demonstration. Lumitheca’s copy identifies itself as a fourth edition on its preliminary leaf and retains the 1907 title date. Crowley is the subject of the study; Fuller is its author.
