The Occult Life of Montague Summers

Was Montague Summers a priest or a dabbler in the dark arts? With one foot in the Catholic Church and another in the world of the supernatural, he has been claimed as both.

- Brian Regal

 

A 1934 review of the book The Werewolf in the journal Man said of the author that “it is unfortunate that a writer of such erudition and of so recondite a literature should be so lacking as he is in the spirit of scientific inquiry, for he is not only uncritical but definitely obscurantist.” The reviewer was correct, but missed the point – an easy thing to do when writing about the the book’s author, Montague Summers (1880-1948). Regularly characterised as an occultist and/or priest, Summer was seen by admirers as intriguing, but also a bit dangerous. He wrote a series of books on esoteric lore and had acquaintances in the occult world, including Aleister Crowley, which led to his reputation for being involved in the dark arts.

His life had been such that author Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977; see ‘Dennis and all his Works’, FT256:38-43), who knew him personally, used Summers as the model for the character of Canon Copley-Syle in his occult themed novel To the Devil – A Daughter (1953). Even towards the end of Summers’s life, his reputation brought inquiries for occult information. He told the Cambridge University musicologist EJ Dent (1876-1957) that: “I had a letter from… the President of the Pentacle Club.”With a tired sigh he added: “What he really wanted to know… was how to celebrate a Black Mass.” By this point Summers did not have the energy to reply.