Over a truly prolific 30-year career, pioneering music maker, political provocateur, and avant-garde filmmaker Frank Zappa flouted convention and fused genres to create some of the most innovative work of his era. The self-taught performer was a polymath who embraced a disparate range of influences, from doo-wop music to Aleister Crowley rarities and the edgy comedy stylings of Lenny Bruce.

Back in 2016, Zappa’s collection of Crowleyana and other occult books was put up for auction as part of a larger estate sale by Julien’s Live. The lot description read:

“A collection of esoteric philosophy books previously owned by Frank and Gail Zappa, including Znuz is Znees: Memoirs of a Magician by C.F. Russell (self published, 1970); The Book of Wisdom or Folly, in the Form of an Epistle of 666 the Great and Wild Beast to His Son 777… by Aleister Crowley (West Point, CA: Thelema Publishing, 1962) with an inscription in blue ink to the prelim ‘To Frank, I would be a slave to the slave, of your genius, neither tempting, nor restricting. You are, by far, the brightest star. No shadows shall remain’; Satanism in America by Shawn Carlson and Gerald Larue (El Cerrito, CA: Gaia Press, 1989) with a typed letter to Frank Zappa on Satanism in America letterhead, suggesting the book may be of use in Zappa’s fight against music censorship, signed by the author; and Laments of Mulciber the Isagoge by Benjamin A. Franklin (Detroit: Society of the Isagoge, 1973) inscribed in black ink to the front endpaper ‘To Frank, from Andrew Flame …the Lucifer.'”

Mostly comprised of work from the ’60s and ’70s, find a list of the titles pictured in the auction photo below. Complement with the reading lists of Zappa’s iconoclast contemporaries Brian Eno, David Bowie, David Byrne, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Patti Smith.

frank zappa book collection


Be Here Now by Ram Dass (also rec’d by Steve Jobs)

777 by Aleister Crowley

Aha by Aleister Crowley

Book 4 by Aleister Crowley

The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley

The Holy Books by Aleister Crowley

Khing Kang King by Aleister Crowley

Liber Aleph Vel Cxi: The Book of Wisdom or Folly by Aleister Crowley

Znuz is Znees: Memoirs of a Magician by C.F. Russell

Satanism in America by Shawn Carlson and Gerald Larue

Laments of Mulciber the Isagoge by Benjamin A. Franklin

The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts by A. E. Waite

The Lancashire Witches by William Harrison Ainsworth

(via Julien’s Auctions)