The Black Art
Ahmed, Rollo. The Black Art. Arrow Books, 1966. Softbound. Intro by Dennis Wheatley. Famed as an occultist who ran in the same circles as Wheatley and Aleister Crowley (and like these two men, presumably worked for British intelligence), Ahmed amalgamated elements of Vodou and Obeah with the magical methods of the Golden Dawn, and in the 1950s dressed in a purple cowled robe and black mask to greet visitors seeking refuge from malefic spells, according to Ithell Colquhoun, in a room in his Hastings home, which 'was used as a magical temple. . . . He was of Egyptian extraction, white-haired, dark-skinned, and with a neat Van Dyke beard.' He was actually born in Guyana and documented his experiences as an outsider in England in the noteworthy 1937 semi-autobiographical novel, I Rise: The Life Story of a Negro.
