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"The Stratagem and other Stories" was a small book of short stories written by Aleister Crowley ...

"The Stratagem and other Stories" was a small book of short stories written by Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), occult magician, poet and self-proclaimed prophet of a new Æon going under the name of The Beast 666. The book was originally published in 1929 and one of a series of Crowley's works to be published on the new Mandrake Press label after a difficult period in which Crowley found it difficult to publish due both to financing and notoriety. The works published by Mandrake Press in 1929 were The Confessions of Aleister Crowley volumes I and II, and Moonchild. Crowley hardly ever published collections of short stories, only the title story received such a good review from British novelist Joseph Conrad when he published it in the English Review that he thought it a possible calling to conventional fame. "The Testament to Magdalen Blair" is the longer of the three and was originally published in "The Equinonx" volume I, no.9 in 1913. It tells the haunting story of a psychic woman who delves into the dying, subconscious psyche of her husband and bares resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe's "Mesmeric Revelation" and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar". The third short story "His Secret