"The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without. Inevitably anyone with an independent mind must become "one who resists or opposes authority or established conventions": a rebel. If enough people come to agree with, and follow, the Rebel, we now have a Devil. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have --- Greatness."
Aleister Crowley. 1875-1947
Aleister Crowley - some views and insights
Who was he?
Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast
Crowley's Personality
Crowley and Christianity
Crowley timeline
Jeff Jacobsen - The Hubbard is Bare
Aleister Crowley as a Guru
Aleister Crowley exposed!
Was Aleister Crowley A Secret Agent?
Lists of Works by Aleister Crowley
Little Essays Towards Truth: Love
Magick (Book 4)Pt I
The Book of the Law, Ch1
An Epitaph: Of The Evil One
Further information
See also
Who was he?
Crowley was also a chess player, painter, astrologer, hedonist, bisexual, drug experimenter, and social critic. He had also claimed to be a Freemason, but the regularity of his initiations have been disputed by a member of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon.
Controversy
Author and Crowley biographer Lon Milo Duquette wrote in his 1993 work The Magick of Aleister Crowley that:
"Crowley clothed many of his teachings in the thin veil of sensational titillation. By doing so he assured himself that one, his works would only be appreciated by the few individuals capable of doing so, and two, his works would continue to generate interest and be published by and for the benefit of both his admirers and his enemies long after death. He did not - I repeat not - perform or advocate human sacrifice. He was often guilty, however, of the crime of poor judgment. Like all of us, Crowley had many flaws and shortcomings. The greatest of those, in my opinion, was his inability to understand that everyone else in the world was not as educated and clever as he.
It is clear, even in his earliest works, he often took fiendish delight in terrifying those who were either too lazy, too bigoted, or too slow-witted to understand him." DuQuette, Lon Milo. The Magick of Aleister Crowley. Weiser Books. ISBN 1-57863-299-4.
In this vein many of Crowley's more audacious and outright shocking writings were often thinly veiled attempts to communicate methods of sexual magick, often using words like "blood", "death" and "kill" to replace "semen", "ecstacy" and "ejaculation" in the yet puritanical sexual environment of late 19th/early 20th century England. It would seem that Mr.Crowley can certainly be accused of having a sick sense of humour.
Take for instance the highly repeated quote from his thickly veiled Book Four: "It would be unwise to condemn as irrational the practice of devouring the heart and liver of an adversary while yet warm. For the highest spiritual working one must choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force; a male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory." Robert Anton Wilson in The Final Secret of the Illuminati (aka Cosmic Trigger Volume One) interpreted the child as a reference to genes in sperm. Crowley added in a footnote to the text on sacrifice, "the intelligence and innocence of that male child are the perfect understanding of the Magician, his one aim, without lust of result."
In the "New Comment" to the Book of the Law, "the Beast 666 adviseth that all children shall be accustomed from infancy to witness every type of sexual act, as also the process of birth, lest falsehood fog, and mystery stupefy, their minds...Politeness has forbidden any direct reference to the subject of sex to secure no happier result than to allow Sigmund Freud and others to prove that our every thought, speech, and gesture, conscious or unconscious, is an indirect reference!" And indeed, according to Freudian Steven Marcus, men in Victorian England had a common sexual fetish for thinly veiled descriptions of men spanking boys.(In their reformatory institutions for children, men "were allowed to birch their inmates across the bare buttocks until the early 1920s, when under government pressure the cane or tawse over trousers became standard.") Many have cited one or both of these quotes from Crowley, without context, as proof of immorality and sometimes of a vast child-abusing conspiracy.
Drugs
Crowley was a habitual drug user and also maintained a meticulous record of his drug-induced experiences with laudanum, opium, cocaine, hashish, alcohol, ether, mescaline and heroin.[61] Allan Bennett, Crowley's mentor, was said to have "instructed Crowley in the magical use of drugs."[62] The Cairo revelation from Aiwass/Aiwaz specifically recommended indulgence in "strange drugs." While in Paris during the 1920s, Crowley experimented with psychedelic substances, specifically Anhalonium lewinii, an obsolete scientific name for the mescaline-bearing cactus peyote. In October of 1930, Crowley dined with Aldous Huxley in Berlin, and to this day rumours persist that he introduced Huxley to peyote on that occasion.
Crowley first developed a drug addiction after a London doctor prescribed heroin for his asthma and bronchitis. His life as an addict influenced his 1922 novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, but the fiction presented a hopeful outcome of rehabilitation and recovery by means of Magickal techniques and the exercise of True Will. At the time of his death he was addicted to heroin, his narcotic of choice.
Racism
Crowley was a product of his age in some senses more than others. Biographer Lawrence Sutin stated that "blatant bigotry is a persistent minor element in Crowley's writings."[67] The book's introduction calls Crowley "a spoiled scion of a wealthy Victorian family who embodied many of the worst John Bull racial and social prejudices of his upper-class contemporaries," Sutin also writes, "Crowley embodied the contradiction that writhed within many Western intellectuals of the time: deeply held racist viewpoints courtesy of their culture, coupled with a fascination with people of colour."
Crowley defended the use of violence against the Chinese, specifically the lower classes. He applied the term "nigger" to Italians (in Diary of a Drug Fiend Book I, Chapter 9) and Indians, and called the Indian theosophist Jiddu Krishnamurti "negroid."
Crowley, according to his biographer, Lawrence Sutin, used racial epithets to bully Victor Neuburg during a sadomasochistic magical working: "Crowley leveled numerous brutal verbal attacks on Neuburg's family and Jewish ancestry...".[72] The two became lovers by the end of that year if not before, but "[w]hether or not Crowley and Neuburg had sexual relations during this magical retirement is unclear," according to Sutin.
Crowley's published expressions of antisemitism were disturbing enough to later editors of his works that one of them, Israel Regardie, attempted to suppress them. In 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley (Samuel Weiser, 1975), Regardie, a Jew, explained his complete excision of Crowley's antisemitic commentary on the Kabbalah in the 6th unnumbered page of his editorial introduction: "I am ... omitting Crowley's Preface to the book. It is a nasty, malicious piece of writing, and does not do justice to the system with which he is dealing."
What Regardie had removed was Crowley's "Preface to Sepher Sephiroth", originally published in Equinox 1:8. Written in 1911, at the same time that Menahem Mendel Beilis was accused of ritual cannibalism in Kiev, Russia, it contained a clear statement of Crowley's belief in the blood libel against the Jews:
Human sacrifices are today still practised by the Jews of Eastern Europe, as is set forth at length by the late Sir Richard Burton in the MS. which the wealthy Jews of England have compassed heaven and earth to suppress, and evidenced by the ever-recurring Pogroms against which so senseless an outcry is made by those who live among those degenerate Jews who are at least not cannibals.
Having thus implicitly defended the recent antisemitic pogroms in Kishinev Russia and elsewhere, on the grounds that the murder of thousands of Jews was a rational response to the implied danger of Jewish ritual cannibalism, Crowley rhetorically asked how a system of value such as Qabala could come from what "the general position of the ethnologist" called "an entirely barbarous race, devoid of any spiritual pursuit," and "polytheists" to boot. As Crowley himself practiced polytheism, some read these remarks as irony.
Crowley repeated his claim that Jews in Eastern Europe practice ritual child-murder in at least one later work as well, namely the section on mysticism in Book Four or Magick. Here he uses quotation marks for "ritual murder" and for "Christian" children.
An article at The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum makes the following claim while speaking of the previously mentioned remark elsewhere in Magick:
At first glance Crowley seems to be advocating an atrocity, the sacrifice of a child, the bugaboo of witchhunters and anti-Semites everywhere. But in fact he is claiming that the historical legend of child sacrifice, used to persecute so many "witches" and Jews, veils a sexual formula of self-sacrifice. In a secret document of the IX*, the "blood libel" against the Jews -- the story that they celebrate covert rituals employing the blood of sacrificed children -- is taken as a statement that certain sects of the Hassidim possess this secret. The early Christians were accused of such practices by the Roman establishment, and the Gnostic Catholic Church considers this to be evidence of a continuity of the sexual secret from the Gnostics.
Crowley studied and promoted the mystical and magical teachings of some of the same ethnic groups he attacked, in particular Indian yoga, Jewish Kabbalah and goetia, and the Chinese I Ching. Also, in Confessions Chapter 86, as well as a private diary which Lawrence Sutin quotes in Do What Thou Wilt chapter 7, Crowley recorded a memory of a "past life" as the Chinese Taoist writer Ko Hsuan. In another remembered life, Crowley said, he took part in a "Council of Masters" that included many from Asia. He has this to say about the virtues of "Eurasians" and then Jews:
I do not believe that their universally admitted baseness is due to a mixture of blood or the presumable peculiarity of their parents; but that they are forced into vileness by the attitude of both their white and coloured neighbours. A similar case is presented by the Jew, who really does only too often possess the bad qualities for which he is disliked; but they are not proper to his race. No people can show finer specimens of humanity. The Hebrew poets and prophets are sublime. The Jewish soldier is courageous, the Jewish rich man generous. The race possesses imagination, romance, loyalty, probity and humanity in an exceptional degree.
But the Jew has been persecuted so relentlessly that his survival has depended on the development of his worst qualities; avarice, servility, falseness, cunning and the rest. Even the highest-class Eurasians such as Ananda Koomaraswamy suffer acutely from the shame of being considered outcast. The irrationality and injustice of their neighbours heightens the feeling and it breeds the very abominations which the snobbish inhumanity of their fellow-men expects of them.
All these remarks must necessarily be contrasted or reconciled with Crowley's explicit philosophical instructions in Magick Without Tears. Chapter 73, which is entitled "'Monsters', Niggers, Jews, etc," states his essentially individualistic and anti-racialist views, citing relevant verses from The Book of the Law: "Ye are against the people, o my chosen!" (Liber Al II:25), "Every man and every woman is a star" (Liber Al I:3). Here Crowley emphasizes by way of commentary upon these verses the instant debasement and un-Thelemic viewpoint which any notion of human beings as "classes" or "races" -whether belonged-to or feared- instead of as individuals, is likely to bring. The "Thelemic" philosophical position which he taught in this volume (which is a series of letters of direct personal instruction to various disciples) is clearly an anti-racialistic one. Even in private comments on Mein Kampf, Crowley said that his own preferred "master class" was above all distinctions of race.
Sexism
Biographer Lawrence Sutin stated that Crowley "largely accepted the notion, implicitly embodied in Victorian sexology, of women as secondary social beings in terms of intellect and sensibility." Occult scholar Tim Maroney compares him to other figures and movements of the time and suggests that some others might have shown more respect for women.
Crowley stated that women, except "a few rare individuals," care most about having children and will conspire against their husbands if they lack children to whom to devote themselves. In Confessions, Crowley says he learned this from his first marriage. He claimed that their intentions were to force a man to abandon his life's work for their interests. He only found women "tolerable", he wrote, when they served the role of solely helping a man in his life's work. However, he said that they were incapable of actually understanding the work. He also claimed that women did not have individuality and were solely guided by their habits or impulses.
Nevertheless, when he sought what he called the supreme magical-mystical attainment, Crowley asked Leah Hirsig to direct his ordeals, marking the first time since the schism in the Golden Dawn that another person verifiably took charge of his initiation. In the Hierophant section of the Book of Thoth, he interprets a verse from the Book of the Law that speaks of "the woman girt with a sword; she represents the Scarlet Woman in the hierarchy of the new Aeon.(...)This woman represents Venus as she now is in this new aeon; no longer the mere vehicle of her male counterpart, but armed and militant."
Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast
popsubculture.com
Aleister Crowley was born October 12th, 1875 at 36 Clarendon Square, Leamington, Warwickshire, England as Edward Alexander Crowley into a wealthy and religious family at the height of the Victorian era. Crowley despised and rebelled against his family at every turn, even renaming himself 'Aleister' to avoid sharing the same first name as his father, who passed away when Crowley was 11.
Like many naughty young boys, Aleister entertained himself through several activities, notably creating a "homemade firework" with which he nearly killed himself, as well as torturing a cat in several horrible ways to test the "nine lives" theory. He dispensed of his virginity at age 14 with the help of a maid. At 17, he contracted gonorrhea with the help of a street walker.
Crowley went on to attend Cambridge University, where he apparently studied alpine climbing, living in the manner of the privileged aristocracy and having a great deal of sex with both men and women. He also began working in the Diplomatic Service, but as Crowley himself said "the fame of an ambassador rarely outlives a century", and Crowley wished to make a greater imprint on the world.
Having had this epiphany, he began searching for more lasting pursuits and in 1898, at age 23, Crowley began his path of magical enlightenment by joining The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Led by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers other members included such notables such as William Butler Yeats, Maud Gonne, Constance Wilde, (the wife of Oscar Wilde), Arthur Machen, Moina Bergson, Arthur Edward Waite, Florence Farr, Algernon Blackwood and possibly, though records for their membership are shaky, Sax Rohmer and Bram Stoker.
The Golden Dawn's contribution to the Western Magical Tradition is definitely worth noting, because it was their synthesis of the Kabbalah, alchemy, tarot, astrology, divination, numerology, Masonic symbolism, and ritual magic into one coherent and logical system which led them to influence countless occult organizations to come. Mathers adapted the system of magic outlined by Eliphas Levi, and through Levi, the spiritual ancestry of the Golden Dawn was traced to the Rosicrucian Brotherhood and from there, through the Kabbalah to Ancient Egypt. Mathers' authority was held in part by his link to the "Secret Chiefs", the "true leaders" of the Order, with whom Mathers could communicate with only through metaphysical means.
Adopting the magical name Frater 'Perdurabo', Latin for "I Will Endure", Crowley advanced quickly through the ranks of the Golden Dawn, initially studying under Alan Bennett, who was Mathers' spiritual heir. Bennett left England in 1899 for health reasons, moving to Ceylon, what it now Sri Lanka, where he joined a buddhist monastery. Unfortunately, Crowley, left to his own devices, managed to severely fragment the order through sheer force of personality. In 1900, he completed the studies necessary in order to obtain the rank of Adeptus Minor, however the London controllers of the Order, disapproving of Crowley's homosexual dabblings, refused to advance him. Crowley travelled to Paris, where Mathers himself performed the ceremony, which only served to further outrage the London members.
The ensuing uproar caused several of the London members to resign, and Mathers was eventually expelled from the Order, specifically on the grounds that he had put its authority into jeopardy by revealing his suspicions that the founding documents linking them to an older occult order in Germany had been forged by another member (which they had been). Crowley attempted to obtain possession of the Order's property on behalf of Mathers, interrupting one of their rituals in full Highland regalia, wearing a black hood. As with any serious dispute between occultists, astral attacks ensued. Crowley reported that the rebels directed hostile magic against him as evidenced by the fact that his rubber raincoat burst spontaneously into flames and he found himself in a "furious temper" for no reason, so extreme that horses ran away in fear at the sight of him. In the end, however, it was the police who resolved the matter.
Crowley was expelled from the Golden Dawn, only 2 years after joining, chiefly through the efforts of William Butler Yeats, who reportedly did not approve of Crowley's magical methods.
Crowley, understandably tired of all the fighting, chose to travel the world, visiting Mexico, India, France, Ceylon, where he reunited with Alan Bennett and studied Yoga. He also married Rose Kelly, later revealed to be clairvoyant, travelling with her to Egypt.
In fact it was in Egypt, in March of 1904, that Crowley had the most important experience of his life. Crowley had been trying for several years to contact his Holy Guardian Angel using the methods described in The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage with no success. However it was in Cairo that Crowley finally encountered an entity known as Aiwass, whom Crowley believed was his Holy Guardian Angel.
According to Crowley's own account, while (unsuccessfully) trying to summon sylphs for his wife's amusement, she began to receive a very powerful psychic message from the Ancient Egyptian god Horus.
Skeptical of his wife's sudden clairvoyancy, Crowley demanded answers to a series of questions from her, of which she had no possible prior knowledge. Upon answering all things correctly, he took her to a museum, and after passing several images of Horus (which the still skeptical Crowley reports, he "noted with silent glee"), she pointed across the room to a stele which could not be clearly seen from where they stood. When they examined the stele (now referred to as the Stele of Revealing, it was painted with the image of Horus, and to Crowley's further conviction, it was labelled as item number 666 in the museum catalog.
Crowley had himself adopted 666 as his personal moniker in rebellion to his religious upbringing many years before. After invoking Horus, Crowley made his fateful breakthrough. For three days Crowley took dictation from the entity identifying itself as Aiwass, the resulting text, Liber AL vel Legis, became what is now known as The Book of the Law.
This book was to become the central core of Crowley's philosophy. Crowley was named the Prophet of a New Aeon which would end the Age of Osiris and usher in the Age of Horus, a signal that a new era had begun for mankind, and that the old religions were to be swept aside.
The 3 key philosophical ideas outlined in the book are:
• Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The
Whole Of The Law
• Love Is The Law, Love Under Will
• Every Man And Every Woman Is A Star
• Love Is The Law, Love Under Will
• Every Man And Every Woman Is A Star
Interpretation of what "Do What Thou Wilt..." in contemporary times seems to have deteriorated into "do whatever you want...", however it seems clear that the meaning was more along the lines of 'doing that which your higher self dictates'. The higher self, or "Will" is present in all of enlightened people. In order to follow your "Will", one must know oneself. And self knowledge is the central basis of most successful philosophies.
After the encounter with Aiwass, in typical grandiose fashion, Mathers received a letter announcing that the Equinox of the Gods had come, and that Crowley had forged a new link with the Secret Chiefs, thus making him the supreme magical authority. This naturally resulted in a magical duel, which Crowley seems to have eventually won.
According to Crowley, Mathers reportedly sent one of his followers, a vampire, to him. She appeared to him in the guise of a "young woman of bewitching beauty", but was able to defeat her, and she was "transformed into hag of sixty, bent and decrepit". Mathers then sent a "current of evil" which struck Crowley's bloodhounds dead and caused his servants to fall ill. Crowley retaliated by summoning up the forces of the demon Beelzebub and his 49 attendant fiends. Following this effort, Mathers' magical assaults on Crowley ceased. Years later, when Mathers passed away of influenza, many felt that Crowley had murdered him with magic.
It is not clear why shortly after his encounter with Aiwass and his battle with Mathers, Crowley seems to have lost interest in things magical for several years. In 1905, he was part of an ill-fated expedition to climb a Himalayan mountain peak, in which several members of the party died. He spent several years travelling through China, Canada and the United States, with and without his wife and child. It was not until his return from the United States that he found out that his daughter Lola Zaza had died from typhus in Rangoon, India.
In 1907, Crowley formed the Argenteum Astrum, the Order of the Silver Star, a magical organization centered around his re-discovered Book of the Law manuscript. In 1909 he began publishing the Equinox, a biannual publication arriving on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the official organ of the A:. A:., the majority of the writing contributed by Crowley himself.
In 1909, Crowley divorced his wife, on the grounds of her alcoholism. The divorce enabled Crowley to indulge in his passions for magick, drugs, and women unchecked by the constraints of married life.
It might be interesting to note at this point that Crowley believed himself to be the reincarnation of the occultist Eliphas Levi who died the same year that Crowley was born. He had also determined that his past lives had included Count Cagliostro, an 18th century occultist, founder of 'Egyptian Rite Masonry', Alexander VI, the notorious Borgia Pope, and Edward Kelley (who along with John Dee were the Elizabethan court magicians who invented, err, deciphered Enochian, the language of the angels.)
In 1910, Crowley was contacted by the head of a German magical order known as the Ordo Templi Orientis, often referred to as the OTO, (alternately translated as either "the Order of the Templars of the East" and "the Order of the Temple of the Orient" in a variety of sources.) The OTO accused Crowley of having published the secret of their IXth degree. Crowley was mystified until a conversation revealed that a passage he published led the OTO to assume that Crowley was involved in sex magick which they used in their rituals. He join the order shortly thereafter, and in 1912, became the head of the English speaking branch of the Order.
In 1916, while living near Bristol, New Hampshire Crowley promoted himself to the rank of Magus through a ceremony of his own devising. According to Richard Cavendish, in History of Magic and The Powers of Evil in Western Religion, Magic, and Folk Belief (both currently out of print), this involved baptizing a toad as Jesus of Nazareth, then crucifying it. I've been chided by several acquaintances who are involved with the OTO for citing this "utter fabrication".
Crowley waited out the first World War in the United States, publishing a fair amount of Anti-British propaganda. He later claimed that the writing done supporting the German side was done satirically, however this did little to improve his already festering public image.
After the war, Crowley had a daughter, Poupee, with Leah Hirsig (AKA The Scarlet Woman), and in 1920 he set up the notorious Abbey of Thelema in Sicily.
The Abbey, however, was an "unsanitary hovel". Crowley's addiction to both heroin and cocaine raged out of control. The Abbey was the setting for Diary of a Drug Fiend, Crowley's hopeful novel about a couple struggling to free themselves of their drug addiction. Sadly, the truth was much more grim. Poupee died there, while Crowley was travelling between London, Paris and the Abbey. It was when one of the Crowley's undergraduates Raoul Loveday died from drinking impure water, that the Abbey's fate was finally sealed. Loveday's wife Betty May went back to England and sold her story to the London tabloid newspaper The Sunday Express.
The papers were filled with reports of black magic rituals and other scandalous acts allegedly performed at the Abbey. These reports came during the same time as the rise of the Mussolini regime and Crowley was quickly expelled from Sicily in 1923.
In 1925 he was elected World Head of the O.T.O., and 1929 saw the publication of his seminal work Magick: In Theory and in Practice.
In 1955, Kenneth Anger shot the documentary Thelema Abbey at the Abbey, which had been exorcised after Crowley's departure, painstakingly exposing the whitewashed walls to reveal paintings and other physical evidence of Crowley's occult activities.
After his expulsion from Italy, Crowley's life took a turn for the worse. His reputation as "The Wickedest Man In The World" was now more than ever playing against him. Unable to find a reliable publisher for his writing, or for that matter, a reliable place of residence, he spent the remaining years as a wanderer, still addicted to heroin, desperately in need of both disciples and money.
Aleister Crowley died December 1st, 1947 at age 72. His last words are often reported to be "I am perplexed", though since he died alone, this is patently false.
(The man who put the 'k' in Magick
There seems to be some confusion as to Crowley's spelling of the word magic. According to Cavendish, the addition of the letter 'k' by Crowley represented the sexual aspects of his magical studies, the letter 'k' being the first letter of kteis which is the Greek word for female genitalia. However I have been told that reasons for the spelling change were purely numerological by a member of the OTO. Either reason seems likely and acceptable. What is not acceptable is the profusion of words mispelled in some sort of pseudo-appropriation of the power of the word magick. I have noticed several writers freely using the word 'magickian', which I am willing to tolerate. A reprehensible abuse of this is certainly 'astrologickal' which I believe was repeatedly used in a book published by Llewellyn.
Thelema
Thelema is Greek for "The Will". Crowley used the word Thelema to represent his most important concept, the statement "Do As Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law". Crowley's entire religion, (Crowleyanity as it sometimes referred to by some cynical authors) liberally mixes elements of Christianity, Gnosticism and the Masons into its magickal rituals. It's hard to conceive how mildly Crowley and his followers would have been received if they were judged according to our contemporary standards. Thelemites, those who follow the laws of Thelema, often greet one another with the shorthand "93", which is the numerical value of the phrase "Love Is The Law, Love Under Will", the proper response to the "Do As Thou Wilt..." phrase.
Subcultural Relevance
Aleister Crowley may seem, to the uninitiated, like an unmitigated egomaniac, a charlatan, a mad man, or worse. It can be argued, even by occultists, that this was indeed the case. However as occultist, Crowley remains unparalleled. How many contemporary practitioners can actually claim to have manifested a lasting change on the world. After all, changing the world around you is what magic is all about, and Aleister Crowley did it better than anyone. To say that Crowley was ahead of his time would be an understatement. Aside from the glamour of his "wickedness" which will always have a certain appeal, his greatest gift was perhaps his ability to reshape the theory of magic from a modern psychological standpoint, refashioning it into a tool for the New Aeon, a contribution that has yet to be matched or exceeded.)
Crowley's Personality
larabell.org
Crowley was an unusual and involved individual and his views changed over the course of the more than fifty years of his writing career. It is not unusual for him to contradict himself on the same page. The best way to get acquainted with him as a character is to read biographies of him and his own books. Unfortunately, there is more bad biography of Crowley than good. It would be difficult to deny his many character failings, but the level of vitriolic abuse leveled at him both during and after his lifetime is remarkable, and it only continues to grow as bad writers with low standards of truth and fairness find the sensationalistic aspects of his life -- both real ones and confabulated ones -- useful for the swelling of their coffers. Crowley has not been adopted by the literary mainstream, and so the reader has to rely upon biographers with a religious ax to grind, whether one is reading a sympathetic biography, a critical one, or a hatchet job.
Probably the two best sources are Crowley's own "Confessions" and Israel Regardie's "The Eye in the Triangle". Crowley's failings are disguised, but without success, in his own account of himself; both his vices and his virtues shine through clearly. Regardie gives a critical but sympathetic and engaged account of Crowley's spiritual career, not turning a blind eye to his flaws or his accomplishments.
In short, though, Crowley was talented, intelligent, capable, arrogant, judgmental, prejudiced, and not afraid to turn politeness aside if it would get in the way of a good insult. His talents extended to ritual and meditative practice, writing, mountain climbing, sexual athletics,attracting followers, and getting publicity. His vices went as far as anti-Semitic blood libel, rabid hostility to Christianity, misogyny, neglect of family, loss of friends through obnoxiousness, and megalomania. There are marked similarities between Crowley, MacGregor Mathers (his mentor in the Golden Dawn), and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (who founded the Theosophical Society). All three were charming, impressive, well-read, anger-prone, tough-talking international spiritual leaders. The current euphemism "strong ego" does not begin to describe their arrogance. Followers were drawn to them by their magnetism, energy and talent, but frequently did not know what to make of their character flaws. In each case there is cause to suspect mental disorder by the criteria of modern psychology, but now psychology is also beginning to study a possible link between creativity and mood disorder, while Szasz and Laing continue to remind us that inspired wisdom is often socially condemned as insanity. Simple pathologizing perspectives of such people are necessarily oversimplifications, but they give so much ammunition to character assassination that it is inevitable. Crowley, Mathers and Blavatsky were creators of new religious traditions when traditional belief in Christianity was on the decline because of new knowledge -- knowledge of the scientific world on one hand, and of Eastern and pre-Christian religions on the other.
Whether one could accept a flawed character such as Crowley as a spiritual leader depends on one's model of spirituality. Treating any of the three as moral exemplars would seem incompatible with their biographies. If the purpose of religion is to produce moral exemplars then these religious endeavors have failed. However, if the purpose of religion is to produce spiritual adventurers then they have succeeded. A person might have attained to real spiritual accomplishments yet retain base characteristics of their personality.
Crowley's life was an adventure. When he was not climbing mountains he was being set upon by thieves in dark alleys, getting thrown out of countries for his sexual immorality, recklessly spending away two inherited fortunes, writing fantastic tracts and books claiming to reveal the mysteries of magic, scandalizing a culture that had adapted to Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Swinburne, having torrid affairs, producing theatrical performances, getting reviewed in the popular press, forming new magical orders and taking over or helping to break up others, being reviled in headlines as "the Wickedest Man in the World", and through all this maintaining what most people would consider a rigorous course of spiritual practice, journaling, and interpretive writing. His career is reminiscent of the 19th century adventurer/writer Richard Francis Burton, a man Crowley admired.
In this main text voice I have tried to be cautious and say only those things that I was sure could be defended by the evidence. Biography is a hard subject in which to be objective because it deals with personalities, and your own relationship with Crowley the dead writer and spiritual leader will no doubt be unique. For the last time, your Unreliable Narrator will turn the subject over to the little voices inside his head.
The Literalist might say this, with the formal closing at the end: Crowley was the Prophet of the Silver Star, the chosen human agent of the Secret Chiefs. He was selected because for all his human frailties he was a man of prodigious strength, intelligence and discipline, an occultist of many incarnations who was poised to assume the highest mantle and fit himself for a place in the City of the Pyramids together with the Prophets and Bodhisattvas of other religions. The attacks on Crowley's character by yellow journalists are libelous and fabricated. To understand Crowley you must work his system, attaining through the power of your own True Will the keys to the Great Work, and only then judge Crowley from an Initiated perspective. Any other perspective is unequal to the task of interpreting an Initiate. Love is the law, love under will.
The Chaotic might say this: I'm tired of Crowley. It seems like all the people who are into him are into nothing else. I'm suspicious of his system; way too regimented, way too hierarchical. Yeah, Crowley made a contribution to magic, but other people have made better ones in the last fifty years. We've learned a lot in the 20th century about real freedom and sexual liberation, not this Victorian captain-of-your-own-soul and master-of-the-passions crap. Crowley was a hung-up jerk in a lot of ways and I'd usually rather read something that is more relevant to my life today.
The Skeptic might say this: Crowley studies have not been adopted by academics, with good reason. His work is derivative and like Blavatsky he could be traced to a handful of main sources. He does not give credit where credit is due to previous traditions and he fails to teach the reader about his sources. The intensity of Crowley's sexism and racism is beyond the standards of his day and endorsing him could be tantamount to endorsing those prejudices. Spiritual progress is feeding people, helping those who need it, participating in the social process to make it more just and humane, and Crowley has nothing to contribute to that. (Also almost all of his poetry is terrible; why would anyone want to study it?)
The Mystic might say this: The documents of A.·. A.·. in Class A are inspired writings from a praeterhuman Intelligence, a direct and flawless link to the Secret Chiefs. The transmission of these gems of True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness is all that one needs to know about the career of To Mega Therion, the Great Beast, the Magus who spoke through the physical vessel of the man named Aleister Crowley, himself merely a Student of no great importance. The course of study of A.·. A.·. is the work not of Crowley but of The Master Therion and has been issued under the direct Authority of the Third Order. Who masters it masters the universe and himself. May you achieve in this life the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, that great spiritual Being assigned as your Guide, who will teach you better than any other.
Christianity
Crowley's hostility to Christianity was vitriolic and intense. There are many Thelemites who are equally hostile and would not accept or admit that any part of Christianity, esoteric or not, is part of Thelema. This utter exclusion of Christianity does not reflect Crowley's complex views on the subject. From his texts a few starting points are clear.
Biographically, Crowley's hatred of Christianity began with his upbringing in the oppressively conservative Protestant tradition known as the Plymouth Brethren, to which his parents belonged. Moralistic and restrictive, the Plymouth Brethren were also obsessed with the Book of Revelation. His mother called the rebellious Crowley "the Beast" early in life well before the Book of the Law confirmed him in this title.
Crowley was a self-identified opponent of Christianity who also practiced Jewish and Christian occult traditions and put the works of Christian mystics on his required reading lists. The key to this contradiction lies in his æonic doctrine. He believed that somehow the Æon of Osiris went horribly wrong, but the Osiris legend remained the natural formula of the time even though its chief exemplar, mainstream Christianity, was corrupt. He is not clear on the details, but the theory appears to be that the Gnostics (a preoccupation of occultists late in the 19th century) were sex magicians who blended Paganism with Christianity and held the sexual inner keys of the formula of the Eucharist of the Catholic Mass, a symbolic form of the secret carried down by the occult underground through the centuries. Crowley's Gnostic Mass, one of his most frequently practiced rituals today, is meant to restore that secret to its proper place. Given this and Crowley's reliance on the reinterpreted Book of Revelation, it would not be far off the mark to call Thelema itself a form of esoteric Christianity.
As mentioned above with respect to the Tree of Life and tables of correspondence, taking the symbols of other religions and placing them into new systems is often considered offensive by believers. An examination of the table of correspondence associated with Christianity in Crowley's 777 reveals a wicked sense of humor at work. This together with his vitriolic hostility to Christianity suggests that he was aware that reducing others' traditions to short notes in a table would not be appreciated and that the Christian elements of his system were at least in part meant to annoy traditional believers. However, it would be a mistake to say that the Gnostic Mass and similar Christian elements in Thelema are low parodies merely meant to offend; many Christian symbols are at the very heart of Crowley's system and evidence demonstrates his sincere devotion to them. For Crowley as for other satirists there was pleasure in using Christian symbols in ways likely to offend, but that was not his primary motive in using symbols like the Rose and Cross.
The Literalist might say this: Christianity is the curse of the world. Those who cling to it in the new Æon of Horus are like those who enslave themselves to the undead and they will be banished when the Sun shall fully rise. When the Prophet wrote "the Christians to the lions!" He did not speak idly or in jest. Christians are the enemies of Freedom and they do not even understand the few fragments of the Secret Tradition that are perverted in their rites. Only when they are all gone can we truly become as "a strong Man who goeth forth to do his Will."
The Chaotic might say this: Christianity is the hand with the stick that has instilled shame and guilt as virtues so we have a whole society of mass-produced clone-farm humanoids who are too afraid to think. The way to dissolve these shackles on a mass scale is through a culture of individuality and the reality distortion effect that has become the dominant paradigm already. Christians are plodding, literal mechanoids who would probably lock up all the magicians if they could get away with it.
The Skeptic might say this: The freethinking movement has had an interface with Christianity longer than it has with occultism, which has often been rigid, dogmatic, and prone to doctrinal warfare. Christianity in both Catholic and Protestant forms has done more than its share of harm in Western culture, and committed injustices on a large scale when it has held power. These failings are well known to us because we come from the Christian culture. There are few religions that seem much better when they acquire political ascendancy, at least from a perspective of human rights, but we are less aware of the similar problems in other cultures and so we are willing to embrace spiritual traditions from cultures with histories of religious abuses such as India, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, Egypt, Persia, and so on. Of the many faiths, Christianity is among those adapting most quickly to the modern world and the idea of human rights, and now at the start of the 21st century liberal theologies are taken seriously in many mainstream denominations and in Vatican II. It is hard to find a Thelemic group as devoted to pluralism as liberal Christian groups and their close relatives (e.g., the Society of Friends, Unitarian-Universalism, Matthew Fox -- some Vatican II documents are more progressive than Thelemic consensus). Authoritarian modes were established by Crowley and persist to this day; in the unlikely event that Thelema rose to political power, its authoritarianism suggests that it would be no better than Christianity or other faiths in this regard.
The Mystic might say this: The Equinox of the Gods has come as it does every two thousand years, installing new Officers and Rites, and sweeping away the darkness of the old ways. Where once blazed the Cross of Suffering as the Sun of Beauty now there is the Crowned and Conquering Child, whose message is not of salvation from without but Grace from Within, the Kingdom of Heaven that is within you (as the phrase survives in the corrupted Gnostic Gospels that appear in the Christian Bible). Through all the Æons there is one thread of tradition and one Great White Brotherhood whose immortal spiritual Chiefs share the Wisdom of their Teaching with humanity. The Christians could not destroy the Gnosis and now the Initiates of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis have embraced the formula propounded at the new Equinox with Joy and Love in their hearts.
A CROWLEY TIMELINE
1875 Born at Leamington Spa, Warwickshire on 12 October. Parents members of The Plymouth Brethren, a fanatical Christian sect.
1887 His father, Edward Crowley, dies.
1895 Matriculation at Trinity College, Cambridge.
1896 First mystical experience on a visit to Stockholm. He writes;"I was awakened tothe knowledge that I posessed a magical means of becoming conscious of and satisfying a part of my nature which had up to that moment concealed itself from me. It was an experience of horror and pain, combined with a certain ghostly terror, yet at the same time it was the key to the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists".
1898 His first published poem, Aceldama.
Meets Gerald Kelly.
Leaves Cambridge.
Writes White Stains.
Meets George Cecil Jones and is initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
1899 Meets Allan Bennet of the mentioned Order, and becomes his chela.
Meets Mathers, the Chief of the Order.
Buys Boleskine House on the Shores of Loch Ness in Scotland.
Performs Abra-Melin Operation.
1900 Conflicts and schisms in the Order.
Mathers initiates Crowley into Adeptship in Paris.
1900 He leaves for Mexico.
1901 In Mexico, he writes Tannhauser and Alice: An Adultery, becomes a 33* Mason ,continues scrying experiments, tries Enochian magic, devises a Ritual of Self- Initiation, and claim the grade of Adeptus Major.
1902 Leaves for Ceylon and practises Yoga under Allan Bennet, who had become a Buddhist
Monk. Dhyana.
1901-2 Wanderings in India
1902 Visits Bennet in Burma.
Leaves for Paris. In Paris meets Sommerset Maugham who mocks him in the character of Oliver Haddo in one of his earliest novels, The Magician.
Collaborates with Auguste Rodin, and produces Rodin in Rime.
1903 Returns to Boleskine.
Completes Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden.
Establishes his publishing house the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth.
Marries Rose Kelly, the sister of Gerald Kelly.
1903-4 Honeymoon travels to Paris, Naples, Cairo and India; return to Cairo.
Completes The Sword of Song, The Argonauts, The Book of the Goetia of
Solomon the King.
1904 8-10 April: The Book of the Law dictated to Crowley.
1905-7 The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley published.
Completes Oracles and Orpheus.
1906 Travels through Southern China.
Completes Gargoyles.
Augoeides Invocations.
Attains Nirvikalpa Samadhi and completes Abra-Melin Operation.
Writes 777.
Acknowledged a Master by George Cecil Jones.
1907 Reception of The Holy Books commences.
Completes Konx Om Pax.
A.'.A.'. founded.
Meets and becomes friend with Captain J.F.C. Fuller
Visits Marocco.
1908 Walks across Spain and Marocco with Vicor Neuburg, the poet.
Performs 'John St. John' Operation in Paris.
1909-13 Publishes the first ten numbers of The Equinox.
1909 The A.'.A.'. opened to new members.
Divorces Rose Kelly.
The Vision and the Voice received in Sahara with Neuburg.
Crowley accepts the grade of Master of the Temple.
1910 Meets Leila Waddell
The Rites of Eleusis performed at Caxton Hall.
1911 Jones, Fuller and others break with Crowley.
Another visit to Sahara with Neuburg.
Meets Mary d'Este Sturges.
Abuldiz Working.
1912 Book Four published as result of that Working.
Theodor Reuss initiates Crowley into the Ordo Templi Orientis, and appoints him head of the British Branch, the M.M.M.
1913 Visit to Moscow with the 'Ragged Rag-Time Girls'. Writes The Gnostic Mass there.
The Book of Lies published.
1914 The Paris Working with Neuburg.
Depaurture for the United States.
1915 Work on Astrology with Evangeline Adams.
Work with Charles Stansfield Jones ,Frater Achad,in Vancouver.
Claims the Grade of Magus, Prophet of the New Aeon.
1916 Magical Retirement in New Hampshire.
1917 Becomes editor of The International.
Takes up painting.
1918 Liber Aleph completed.
Amalantrah Working with Roddie Minor.
Magical Retirement on Oesopus Island.
Publishes his version of Tao Teh King.
Meets Leah Hirsig.
1919 The Blue Equinox, III,1,published.
Return to England with Leah.
1920 Abbey of Thelema founded in Cefalu, Sicily. Visits from Jane Wolfe, Frank Bennet,
C.F. Russel, Raoul Loveday and his wife Betty May.
1921 Claims the Supreme Grade of Ipsissimus.
1922 Publication of Diary of a Drug Fiend.
New campaign of newspaper assaults on Crowley.
1923 Crowley expelled from Sicily by Mussolini.
Crowley leaves for Tunis and completes The Confessions.
1924 'The Supreme Ordeal' of the Ipsissimus Grade in Paris.
1925 Invited by Heinrich Tränker to Thuringen in Germany to become International Head of the OTO.
1926-28 Travels in France, Germany and North Africa.
1928. Israel Regardie joins Crowley and becomes his secretary.
1929 Crowley expelled from France.
Magick in Theory and Practise published.
Crowley marries Maria de Miramar in Germany.
1930 First two volumes of The Confessions published.
1930-36 Is visited and supported financially by Karl Germer who to succeed Crowley as OHO of the O.T.O.
1930-4 Wanderings in Germany and Portugal.
1932 Crowley and Regardie part company.
1934 Crowley loses libel suit against Nina Hamnett over the book
1935 Crowley made bankrupt.
1936-8 Visits to Germany. Meets Aldous Huxley.
1937 Publication of The Equinox of the Gods.
1938 Eight Lectures on Yoga.
1940-5 Is visited by Grady Louis MacMurtry on a regular basis. McMurtry is later to succeed Germer as OHO of the O.T.O.
1944 Publication of The Book of Thoth with Torot Cards designed by Lady Frieda Harris.
1945 Crowley retires to 'Netherwood', Hastings and works on Magick without Tears.
1947 Completes 'Olla', his third anthology of poetry.
Crowley dies on the 1 December.
Crowley is cremated in Brighton. Among the persons present were Gilbert Bayley, who knew Mudd and frater Achad,Sorores Tzaba and Ilyarun, Gerald Yorke, Kenneth Grant and his old friend Louis Wilkinson who read 'Hymn To Pan', the 'Collects and Anthems' from 'The Gnostic Mass' and selected passages from The Book of the Law.
The Brighton Council afterwards delivered a protest in regards to the contents of the Last Ritual:
"We shall take all necessary steps to prevent such an incident occuring again".
Jeff Jacobsen - The Hubbard is Bare
Chapter seven: Aleister Crowley
Hubbard had clear connections to the occult. Even in the first publication of dianetics in "Astounding Science Fiction", Hubbard in explaining how he did his "research" into what the mind was doing, says he used "automatic writing, speaking and clairvoyance" (1) to discover what the mind's memory banks were doing. Automatic writing is an occult method of communicating with the spirit world, although psychologists consider its products to arise from subconscious thoughts of the writer. Whichever is correct, it is hardly a method used by competent scientific researchers.
Hubbard's connection to the occultist Aleister Crowley is quite clear and noteworthy. Crowley called himself the Anti-Christ, the Beast of Revelations, and 666. Russell Miller has adequately chronicled Hubbard's connection in 1945 to John W. Parsons, who headed Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis chapter in Los Angeles. (2) Hubbard was an active member in this group for several months, and first met his second wife there. The Church of Scientology claims that Hubbard was actually infiltrating this group in order to break it up, but the following should suffice to dismiss this claim.
In the Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures taped in 1952, Hubbard discusses occult magic of the middle ages, and recommends a current book - "it's fascinating work in itself, and that's work written by Aleister Crowley, the late Aleister Crowley, my very good friend." (3) The book recommended was The Master Therion, (published in London in 1929) later re-released as Magick in Theory and Practise. L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. asserts that during the time when the Philadelphia course was given his father would read Crowley's works "in preparation for the next day's lecture..." (4)
There are interesting similarities between Crowley's writings and the teachings of Hubbard. Dianetics' Time Track, in which every incident in a person's life is chronologically recorded in full in the mind, is quite similar to Crowley's Magical Memory. The Magical Memory is developed over time until "memories of childhood reawaken" (5) which were previously forgotten, and memories of previous incarnations are recalled as well. Hubbard gives examples in the Philadelphia Doctorate Course of several people remembering lives earlier on earth, some up to a million years ago. The similarity between the Magical Memory and Time Track, then, is that they both can recall every past incident in a person's life, they both can recall incidents from past lives, and they both must be developed by certain techniques in order to make use of them.
Both Hubbard and Crowley consider it important to have the person recall his or her birth. "Having allowed the mind to return for some hundred times to the hour of birth, it should be encouraged to endeavour to penetrate beyond that period" (6) (Crowley). "After twenty runs through birth, the patient experienced a recession of all somatics and 'unconsciousness' and aberrative content." "Thus there was no inhibition about looking earlier than birth for what Dianetics had begun to call basic-basic" (7) (Hubbard).
Both Hubbard and Crowley are avowedly anti-psychiatry. "Official psychoanalysis is therefore committed to upholding a fraud... psychoanalysts have misinterpreted life, and announced the absurdity that every human being is essentially an anti-social, criminal, and insane animal" (8) (Crowley). Hubbard considered that psychiatry controlled most of society and was struggling to create their own 1984 world. (9)
Hubbard (10) and Crowley both posit the ability of the person to leave his or her body at times. Crowley states that the way to learn to leave your body is to mock up a body like your own in front of your physical body. Eventually you will learn to leave your physical body with your "astral body" and travel and view at will without physical restrictions. (11) Hubbard teaches the same, and his method of "exteriorization" is to tell the person to "have preclear mock up own body" (12), which will send the person outside his body.
Both Crowley (13) and Hubbard (14) use an equilateral triangle pointing up in a circle as one of their group's symbols. Both use Volume 0 instead of Volume 1 to begin enumerating their works. One could go on for quite some time listing the similarities between Crowley's and Hubbard's theories and writings, but for more the reader is encouraged to look for him or herself.
In Crowley's Organization are several grade levels. To reach the Grade of Adeptus Exemptus "The Adept must prepare and publish a thesis setting forth His knowledge of the Universe, and his proposals for its welfare and progress. He will thus be known as the leader of a school of thought." (15) It is apparent that Hubbard has fulfilled this requirement.
Gnosticism
First, an explanation of what gnosticism is. It is an old religious philosophy with Platonic roots. Basically, gnostics believe that we as humans are "outsiders" to this material universe. Our immortal godlike souls were trapped here in a body by evil forces, and we are reincarnated continually, while our true spiritual identities are clouded from our memory. It is our task to discover the hidden knowledge, or gnosis, that will allow us to escape this evil material world of illusion and return to our rightful place. We keep reincarnating until we learn how to escape.
The world seems to be 'the epitome of evil'. Because it is alien to their true nature, human beings must renounce it and flee from it in order to be able to return to their heavenly home. To achieve this aim they must possess Gnosis, be reborn in their true nature, and be baptized in the cup of knowledge into which the divine intellect has been poured. (16)
Salvation begins with a messenger from beyond bringing the necessary knowledge to mankind, but this knowledge is given only to those deemed worthy, and even then one must follow certain steps in order to arrive at the ultimate Truths. The individual must struggle to earn and then incorporate the secret knowledge needed to return to his rightful place.
There is a need for someone to bring this gnosis or knowledge to mankind:
It follows that this divine reality cannot be known through the ordinary faculties of the mind. Illumination, revelation, the intervention of a celestial mediator is required. He descends from above to call the Gnostic, to rouse him from earthly sleep and drunkenness, to take him back to his divine homeland. (17)
While on this earth, man is plagued by many difficulties which lessen his real abilities and being. One problem to us all is that within each of our bodies is a plethora of spirits or souls, causing us harm:
A hierarchy of demons, servile and ready, is continually at work in everyone's body, transformed into a remorseless inferno in miniature. (18)
Mankind is also cursed with forgetfulness of his true home and true composition, being blinded by this material world.
As with Christianity today, there were many sects of gnosticism. The most famous gnostics were those that took the basic ideas of Christianity and mixed them into their own otherworldly theories. One of the most dangerous enemies of the early church were the Christian gnostic movement, for it greatly distorted the essential message of Christ and his followers while using similar terminology. The early church fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, spent much of their time speaking out against gnosticism.
Scientology, however, embraces gnosticism. Its doctrines are gnostic, and it uses gnostic writings to support its own ideas. For example, "Advance!" issue 93 has an article entitled "The Surprising Christian Tradition of Reincarnation", which relies heavily on gnostic writings such as the Pistis Sophia (the best known of the surviving gnostic writings) to support its viewpoint. Scientology is clearly gnostic, by its own admission and by the similarities to its own and gnostic teachings. Once again, ideas Hubbard declares to be new and discovered by him, are shown to be derived from old and widespread teachings in existence long before he came along.
Hubbard claimed to be the sole source of the hidden knowledge needed to escape these earthly bonds. "The mystery of this universe... has been, as far as its track is concerned, completely occluded. No one has ever been able to make any breakthrough and come off with it and know what happened... I finally was able to make a breakthrough which brought people through the zone safely." (19)
When Hubbard died in 1986, it was announced that he had left this "MEST" (the acronym of Matter, Space, Time, and Energy) universe to continue his work and research. In other words, he had obtained the gnosis needed to break the bonds to this material illusory plane and travel to other worlds or dimensions at will. (20)
Hubbard was the sole source for the technology Scientologists need to break free from this MEST universe. "Nobody else - NOBODY - ever discovered it." (21) He is thus the gnostic "celestial mediator" empowered to bring mankind the knowledge needed to bring us back home.
Another obvious connection to gnosticism is in the upper level of training known as Operating Thetan III, or "The Wall of Fire." It is at this level that the Scientologist first is taught that many of his problems are caused by other souls attached to his soul. These souls are detached and sent on their way through the course training. The goal of OTIII is to rid the individual of hundreds of "Body Thetans", or other souls attached to the main dominant individual. No one is even allowed to see OTIII material until he has completed the previous courses leading up to OTIII. (21) This material is carefully guarded and treated as a great important mystery to be imparted only to those proven worthy.
These great "discoveries" of Hubbard actually were taught as far back as 300 AD:
"For many spirits dwell in it [the body] and do not permit it to be pure; each of them brings to fruition its own works, and they treat it abusively by means of unseemly desires. To me it seems that the heart suffers in much the same way as an inn: for it has holes and trenches dug in it and is often filled with filth by men who live there licentiously and have no regard for the place because it belongs to another." (22)
Although this sounds almost identical to ideas in OTIII, it is in fact a quote from Valentinus, one of the most famous early Christian gnostics, writing around 300 AD. Valentinus taught that there was more than one spirit within an individual, causing difficulties for the "host" or main soul of the individual. The gnostic Basilides also taught in a similar vein that man "preserves the appearance of a wooden horse, according to the poetic myth, embracing as he does in one body a host of such different spirits." (23)
The above is similar to the New Testament idea of demons in that demons are "outsiders" from the main inhabitant of the body and are problematic to the host. Gnostics, however, seem to feel that it is the normal human condition to have these other souls, whereas Christianity considers this a rare aberration.
Another gnostic idea, that this is a world of illusion, is in Scientology doctrine as well. Scientology teaches that this universe we live in is the MEST (matter, energy, space, time) universe that exists solely because the non-MEST beings known as thetans decided to agree to bind themselves to the rules and laws that we see operating here, such as gravity and the speed of light: "a Thetan may postulate a material or mental condition and subsequently consider that he cannot escape that condition, and succumb to the resulting illusion of entrapment within it." (24) Theta beings (Hubbard's name for the soul) lived here on earth by dwelling in a human body. Humans, that is, the living body, existed without the theta being before the thetans were trapped in this material universe. Theta beings are "trapped" into human bodies by trickery and forget their true nature:
Your preclear was basically good, happy, ethical and aesthetic before the contagion of the MEST universe got him. Then, still a thetan, he wasn't very good but he was still trusting and ethical. Finally, when he had a body - well, look around. (25)
Scientology then shares the gnostic idea that mankind is separate from the physical universe and is trapped against his will here.
As gnosticism is a secret knowledge, Scientology hides its upper level or OT level teachings under a strict veil of secrecy. When I visited the Los Angeles "Big Blue Building" of Scientology, I was invited to listen to some OT VIII's speak via satellite from the "Free Winds" ship where OT VIII is exclusively taught. An OT VII on board said that the OT VIII material is in a locked case, and the only way to open the case is to enter a certain locked room and pass the case under a laser beam there. Scientologists are taught that if they hear the teachings of OT III before they have taken the necessary previous courses, they will catch pneumonia and die.
Early gnostics also used various methods to hide their teachings. The initiations were so secret that today we can only piece parts of them together. The writings of many gnostics were purposely vague and incomprehensible, so only the initiated could understand them.
The goal of dianetics and Scientology is to return the Theta being to its inherent abilities (i.e. freeing it from the laws of this universe) and remove it from its need to have a body. The sole source for accomplishing this is the technology of L. Ron Hubbard, celestial mediator of the gnostic Church of Scientology.
Parenthetically, one can clearly see from above that these teachings clash with Christian thinking today. While Scientologists claim that "in Scientology there is no attempt to change another's beliefs or to persuade the person away from his own religious practice," (26) in reality there is an incongruity of beliefs that must fall either to the side of Scientology or Christianity. They are not compatible. Scientology is gnostic, which has been seen from almost the beginning of Christianity to be a great threat to correct Christian dogma (see the Ante-Nicene Fathers writings, for example), and it requires the belief in reincarnation, which is foreign to Christian thought. Elsewhere I write about Hubbard's connection to Aleister Crowley, "my very good friend," who called himself the anti-christ and taught accordingly. Hubbard generously borrowed ideas from and admired the writings of Crowley. Obviously, Scientology's claim that their ideas will not interfere with a person's Christian beliefs is absurd.
Notes:
L. Ron Hubbard, "Dianetics: Evolution of a Science", Astounding Science Fiction, May 1950 p. 66
Bare-faced Messiah, pp.112-130
L. Ron Hubbard, "Conditions of Space/Time/Energy" Philadelphia Doctorate Course cassette tape #18 5212C05
L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? p. 305
Aleister Crowley, Magick In Theory And Practice (NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1976) p.51 (originally published 1929, London)
Magick, p. 419.
Dianetics, p. 171 and 172.
Magick, p. xxiv
L. Ron Hubbard, "What Your Donations Buy", church pamphlet
Dianetics pp. 340f.
Magick pp. 146-7
L. Ron Hubbard, The Creation Of Human Ability, (Sussex, England: The Department of Publications Worldwide, 1954) p. 226f
Francis X. King, Mind and Magic (London: Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 1991) p.100. see photograph.
See for example the bookends of Hubbard's Research and Discovery series.
Magick p.236
Giovanni Filoramo, Gnosticism, (Cambridge, MASS: Basil Blackwell, 1990) p. 9
Gnosticism, p. 40
Gnosticism, p. 92
"Advance!" issue 93, p. 16
International Scientology News, issue 8, p. 3.
International Scientology News, issue 8, p. 7
The material has been released publicly in court cases. Scientologists refuse to read it, however, until they reach the proper level of training. They believe they will die if reading it unprepared.
Gnosticism, p.98
The Ante-Nicene Fathers (WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids MI) reprinted February 1983. Volume 2, p. 372.
L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: A World Religion Emerges in the Space Age, (Church of Scientology Information Service, Department of Archives, date and location not listed) p. 23
L. Ron Hubbard, A History Of Man (Sussex, England; Department of Publications Worldwide, 1961), p. 55
Staff of Church of Scientology, What Is Scientology? (Kingsport Press, Inc., 1978) p.199
Reprinted with permission from The Hubbard is Bare by Jeff Jacobsen. Copyright © 1992 by Jeff Jacobsen, P.O. Box 3541, Scottsdale, AZ 85271.
ALEISTER CROWLEY AS GURU
by John S Moore
Official culture does not take Aleister Crowley at all seriously these days, but the issues he arouses, and the things he writes about, are often very similar to others which are taken very seriously indeed. Take for example the writings of one of the most revered of modern philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein. In his book, 'Culture and Value', translated by Peter Winch, Wittgenstein appears as guru, with views and observations on all manner of subjects over and above the strictly philosophical ones which made his reputation. If it is acceptable to study this sort of thing, Aleister Crowley offers comparable intellectual meat to chew on, fascinating, creative and original speculations, normally censored out of the English scholarly tradition. Why pay attention to one set of ideas rather than to another? This is the question of authority. Why Wittgenstein rather than Marx, Freud, Heidegger, or even Crowley?
Crowley shared with Wittgenstein the urge to submerge others in his own will, to overcome their alienness by dominating and influencing them. Both sought and found fanatical followers among brilliant, unstable undergraduates from Oxford and Cambridge. Through these was hope of influencing the cultural mainstream. However, just as Wittgenstein rejected the idea that his influence should be restricted to academics, so Crowley repudiates any suggestion that he is speaking to some class restricted in scope. As much as to the fortunate members of society he addresses himself to paupers and to prisoners. He is concerned to influence individual minds through unofficial channels, bringing creative thinking to those normally felt to have no right to it.
He did aspire to a popular following, partly for energy, partly as the most obvious possibility of effecting change. He made use of existing occultist movements to refine them and to exercise his will to power. Though 'against the people', the individual who can lead a mass movement acquires freedom of action, and the dominant forces of the day no longer obstruct and oppose him. With the inertia of the mass behind him, he has support for whatever he wants to do. Even a rational ideal could do with a popular base, especially if it is expected to make any serious difference to society.
In 1911 he was advertising his publications Equinox and 777, textbook of the Crowleyan Kabbala, in the Occult Review. These were the waters in which he fished, as Lenin and Mao in those of revolutionary tradition, and Wittgenstein among philosophy students. Crowley showed little interest in politics. From his viewpoint political interests may be thought of as a kind of vice, constricting into immediate place and time. By contrast he invites into some very exotic traditions, exploring the wisdom and experience of civilisations very remote from his own. His literary style has an oriental, very knowing, quality. Little is argued, or attempted to be argued. He writes from a position of assumed enlightenment, though he is far from narrow or dogmatic. Also he was a master of image manipulation, a subject of ever increasing importance in the modern world. A large part of his message actually consisted in the creation of his image. For a seeker after power who was also a serious intellectual, the field of people looking for esoteric wisdom had something promising to it. The world of the philosopher and the world of images might seem to be very different, but if the philosopher desires influence he may have to take account of this other world.
Preoccupation with images may suggest corruption of feeling, or at best triviality, like an excessive concern with clothing. The world of images promises the excitement of the superficial, with immediate opportunities for emotional stimulation and satisfaction. This is the world of Hitler as fuhrer, and that of American advertising and propaganda. The subject includes the emotional power of archetypes and stereotypes, sexual adornment and attraction, kings, queens, gods, goddesses, demons, vampires, maenads, angels, nymphs.
Actors apply their skills to see other people in terms of images; studying image manipulation, they may live out their own lives in such a world. Image contrasts with reality, for example the image of a philosopher versus the reality of a philosopher. Image manipulation appears as a form of play. One takes pleasure in the promotion of a certain image or reputation, and responding to the images projected by others as the the truly real as if this is the true game of life, its real meaning. Focussing on the emotional impact of a stereotype, all the charge associated with it, the aspiring magus aims to be more than human in embodying some attractive image.
Certain writers have significantly influenced this intersection between thought and image. In the early years of the century, the influence of Dostoyevsky was strong in Germany, as well as in Russia. Dostoyevsky stimulated a will to believe in the exciting personal relationships, and daemonic influences that he described. This created a demand, which came to be met, ultimately giving rise to such charismatic beings as Rasputin and Hitler. Crowley thrived in a similarly motivated atmosphere among susceptible circles in England and elsewhere.
Where the objective is power and overcoming, it is not enough to be seen as embodying some image or other, as if life were some form of stage play or masquerade. Jacques, in 'As You Like It' says that 'All the world's a stage', but his is the viewpoint of a gloomy misanthrope. Life as masquerade is a limiting perspective. The person who desires power will only value it from the point of view of what he can get out of it. Crowley's first object was to get people to listen to what he had to say. The ideal of the masquerade depends on mutual courtesy and respect, which is to say a general propping up of illusions. A politician or philosopher who wants to exert an original influence will want to spoil other people's games.
According to the rules of ordinary life, success follows according to a given procedure. To raise the question of what rule we ought to follow introduces complication. If you seek to question the rule you will have nearly all those who have prospered by it against you.
John Symonds's book 'The Great Beast', reached a generation of readers in the post 1945 age of mass culture. It effect was to contribute to a reaction against that culture, but it was also a product of it. Crowley's influence was initially transmitted largely through that book. Reflecting on what he achieved suggests what else might be done. Thinking of modern culture and the normal ways in which it is transmitted, mass media, music industry, universities, art schools, political parties, publishing houses, Aleister Crowley is not supposed to count for very much.
There is seeming justification in the nature of his following. Despite his enormous intellectual power, his initial attraction, to any one, does not lie in the answers he gives to intellectual problems. People are attracted to Crowley for reasons other than an appreciation of the sublime poetry of the Book of the Law, the intricacies of the Crowleyan Kabbala, or the other profound and fascinating ideas to be found in his writings. Whatever it is that attracts, attracts all kinds of people. This may appear to his intellectual discredit. There is an interesting question in the relation of his guru image to the quality of his message. The same applies to Wittgenstein. The message on all levels springs from a strong, conscious drive for power, and is in no way weakened or invalidated by that.
Crowley's admirers in modern society are from many walks of life, from the insane and the incarcerated, through the respectable working and middle classes, to the aristocracy and the intelligentsia. Among his proclaimed followers are some with disagreeable forms of mental disturbance. Some like to inspire fear, if they can, the sadistic and pathologically aggressive. There are the self consciously malevolent and the criminals. They usually lack Crowley's sense of humour and his wit. His own hostility was meant as a way to repel fools. People pursue their ways of life usually unaware of the rationale that lies behind them. Hence the value of devils like Crowley to disturb.
His influence stretches among ordinary working people, as he said he wanted in Magick in Theory and Practice. His admirers have included hippies, punk rockers, readers of science fiction, football fans. A bookcase full of Crowleyana, is a sight occasionally to be seen in the most unexpected places. He is not without appeal in the suburbs, among middle class women, interested in magic and the occult, people that might normally be thought of as thoroughly bourgeois. Crowley as a hobby for the respectable may sound odd. Isn't he a revolutionary, doesn't he appeal to the discontented? But when we talk about bourgeois values we are talking about something fundamental. What could anyone put in their place? There is a poetry of the suburbs, with its cranks and cults, and housewives. Though one may feel that thelemism is really revolutionary, one cannot object to its existence on that level. After all, what use do the intellectuals make of it?
Crowley created a persona for himself of omnipotent ego, the actualisation of 'Do What Thou Wilt'. Living in a way that was outrageous to the people of his day, he crops up as one of the most striking bridges between the old culture and the new, one whose place is not fully recognised in the life of his own generation, yet whose influence is long reaching, out of the heyday of the imperial era into modern mass society, the post imperial pop age. Few bridge that gap; Dali is another who does. Dali & Crowley were two of a kind, monstrous egos, they have been called. Neither will win the complete approbation of the conventional, Crowley in particular because of his comprehensive flouting of moral taboos. There is a great discordance between his portrayal of himself as the wise and virtuous King Lamus, and his real untrustworthiness. This very untrustworthiness is part of his message to the world, and does much to prove his seriousness. To maintain a positive personal image by continuously observing some code, even if only one of honour and decency, is an easy way out for anyone. The path of dishonour is the way to search out the deeper questions of value and the worth of life, it is that of the religious reformer. The Christ chose dishonour, and was prepared to sacrifice millions of people in the name of God, which was his name for his mission. The Crowley's dishonourable acts were not meannesses, they are witnesses to his sense of destiny.
Symonds wrote:- 'The sphinx with the face of Aleister Crowley propounds this riddle. 'Why did I drive away my friends and followers? Why did I behave so vilely?. Other people have no ego and are just weak, but Crowley made a religion out of his weakness, out of being egoless'.
This alleged weakness and 'vile' behaviour, especially if we want to avoid reproaching Crowley for it, poses an interesting problem. To call someone weak rather than bad may normally be thought a charitable view. But in Crowley's case, of possible motives for his actions, even sadism seems a more creditable motive than mere weakness. On an ordinary understanding, weakness would completely undermine his guru image. It must be wrong to see it as weakness pure and simple. We might rather see him as sticking to his guns, to a principle of absolute egoism, on which it would be impossible for him to compromise. From this viewpoint what Symonds would understand as strength is a kind of inhibition. He writes that Crowley lacked integration and was in the grip of unconscious forces. What is integration? Moral unification and control?
His ruthlessness would perhaps be of the same order as Lenin's. Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of the proclamation of the law of thelema. Weakness may be included in this. One would like to do good as the expression of strength; however, one has weakness, that is to say a certain quality of self indulgence, and self denial is unrealistic. It may be 'normal' to overcome this in unthelemic ways. Some people practise self denial by putting moral restraints on themselves, for altruistic motives. Rejecting such solutions, vile behaviour may express integrity without suggesting immediate strength.
Crowley's alleged weakness included difficulty in earning a living. He survived by a series of shifts. Some things that come easily to the normal human, like steady, regular work, are just impossible for such types, putting it one way they are too weak to do it. What are regarded as elementary duties, if they clash with immediate self interest, will be experienced as impossible. They cannot do anything for the sake of duty, they cannot sacrifice themselves for anything other than perceived self interest.
Women who claimed to understand him better than he understood himself, occasionally said there was something in him which was fundamentally not likeable. Alostrael asserted that there was weakness in him, something he did not normally want to think about, and that he normally preferred to deny.
He affirmed himself in his weakness. Weakness usually suggests constraint, prison, the opposite of a holiday. Acts of weakness are acts of constraint, and are therefore not admired. What excites admiration is courage, the power to act according to an idea, the saint, the martyr, not self glorification in one's weakness. 'Admire me, follow me, but I cannot protect you. I claim to be a magus, but I do not have everything under control. I am not entirely to be trusted, not because of my perverseness, but because of my weakness (Dalinian softness)'. What is normal human strength that is respected? Dependability, loyalty etc.
Crowley is misunderstood if he is seen primarily as the teacher of a new path to liberation, his sexual yoga and the abbey as a means of imparting this, with the theory behind it boiled down to the crude schematism of paths to enlightenment. He was part of a greater, far more intelligible tradition. Thelema itself is a rationally intelligible ideal that goes back to Rabelais, via Sir Francis Dashwood. Crowley gave this distinguished western tradition a new degree of development. The doctrine serves the man, not the man the doctrine. Not every practitioner of sex magic is a true disciple of Aleister Crowley.
Crowley resembles a Sufi master in the mystery and ambiguity of his image. In one aspect, his life is a fantasy indulgence. Many of the most explicit doctrines are only to be understood in the light of the conditions to which they are a response. The entire occult tradition is something complex like this. Magick is the satisfaction of desire, that is its whole concern, and desires vary from person to person. A magus combines knowledge with personal development, specific techniques that may be taught have greater or lesser value, take them or leave them, dependant on the individual. A magus will explore and understand different systems of attainment which will be suitable to different people at different times and places. No one of these is to be seen as his central message unless he is a social, religious, or cultural reformer, which he might well be, but we trivialise Crowley if we see him primarily thus.
Social mores change, what remains constant is the will to power. Generally the thelemite rebels against the prevailing mores. In one age asceticism is appropriate, in another lechery. Crowley's sensual extravagance is admirable from his viewpoint, but to expect it to become socially acceptable is unreasonable. Prejudice against it is not irrational, it springs from honest self interest. Who can feel pride in himself if an ideal is held up for his admiration which seems to overthrow all the fixed standards by which he finds his feet, an ideal that can easily be copied by people he may not want to admire, violent criminals, effeminate homosexuals and hopeless drug addicts?
Sensual desire can overthrow the judgement. Begin believing that total sensual satisfaction is the ideal and one is as if hooked on a drug, one feels forced to respect and admire those one wants to despise. It is wisdom that is really the ideal, but it is easy to confuse wisdom with its outer husk or shell, the manifestation it takes in some particular era.
The superman in the form of Sanine*, or the Master Therion, is someone above all the normal problems of life, powerful, resourceful and superabundantly healthy. Crowley often chose to present himself thus. His life conflicts are described in a context of the noblest idealism. He has no hangups, no bitterness, envy or hatred. This is presumably why Symonds says he was surprisingly unintrospective. His nobility, his supermanhood, is preserved by the externalisation of all his problems. He presents himself as a practical and efficient man of action.
There is a paradox in the superman persona. He is the serpent in lion's clothing. The serpent was the subtlest beast of the field. The lion, as king of beasts, represents conventional moral strength. It does not admit to weakness or resentment as elements in its character. The later Goethe projected a leonine image. However the lion is too stupid to become the superman. The superman has grown outside conventional values, and this is how he has mastered them. He has grown outside them because he has rejected them, and he has done this because he has suffered from them. In the process of overcoming this oppression, he has broken the code most thoroughly and comprehensively. Nothing has stood in his way, neither justice, loyalty, nor common decency. If he now dons the mantle of superior virtue, this is because he is able to rationalise the path he has taken in terms of duty to God, or some other externalisation.
In contrast to Symonds, Susan Roberts's biography of Crowley, 'The Magician of the Golden Dawn', is a presentation of the superman persona. In a way, to take that persona at face value diminishes it, reduces to the leonine, cuts him down to size. But it does give a useful perspective. Dali's egomania took a different form. Roberts's biography paradoxically brings Crowley down to earth, it makes him seem less incommensurable with other people. Much of this apparent superiority is due to this presenting as manifestations of mere Saninian strength what was far more likely to be the manifestation of a violent reaction against weakness. The manifestation, be it strength or weakness, has itself the power and mystery of art. There is no art apart from profound discontent with conventional values. The great artist is not some kind of Olympian superadult, giving people superior toys to play with, from his position of serene mature wisdom and insight. He is one trying hard to enjoy himself. It is not that he has surpassed conventional happiness, not that he is so abundant in it that he creates more of it. His strength is not superhuman. He is driven by his discontent, his dissatisfaction with conventional values, ordinary roads to fulfilment and happiness, to remould them, to remake them so they can serve his purposes properly.
The yellow press was of great help to Crowley in promoting a superman image. The building up of a devil figure can produce an object of admiration and identification for those who despise the values of those who create it. The devil is a hate object compounded of insecurities. Symonds's expressed opposition to Crowley is apparently quite fundamental, it seems to be of someone belonging to an opposite camp, like an ideological enemy. The effect, however, is that Symonds with his moralising is like the straight man of a pair of comedians. Conventional newspaper morality sets off Crowley's eccentricity very well. Crowley makes us laugh, and this can be built on. It is a form of illumination.
The reality of people like Crowley is that they react as they do by sheer reflex action. In the process of reacting they are creative. For those who are on his side, he is a solace and an encouragement, his superhuman legend more than his reality. All his actions take on a special heroic quality, as if they are messages, as if everything he does is part of a deliberately created work of art. Usually they just spring from the necessity of his position. Moves of desperation seem like acts of great evil and perversity.
Hero worship of Crowley involves the constant assumption of his superior wisdom, as if all of his interests had some profounder significance. Always there is his assumption of esoteric, initiated knowledge, guruhood. There is special value in having instruction from a guru. In the study of secret wisdom one needs to be led through the profoundest paradox, keeping trust unswerving. A guru may be living or dead. Crowley of course is dead. Are not the works of the sages, in Chuang Tsu's phrase 'the lees and the scum of bygone men'? But books these days can preserve more than that. We can even hear his voice, see his portrait.
Rather than that Crowley was dishonest in he way he presented himself, it is more likely that he expected his intelligent readers to be able to read between the lines. The devil image is really far more attractive than the lion. The lion image is less a source of wonder because it is more transparent. As for Crowley's family life, that is hardly so bizarre as it once seemed, as many of us discover from our own experience. Much of his outrageousness is fairly ordinary if we take a broad perspective, and cease to think only of the respectable middle classes.
There are many possible attitudes towards moral rules. Where a moral code provides a standard by which the success or otherwise of a course of action is to be judged, change the standard and you read an entirely different story. The moral code, or the standard, is entirely a question of interpretation, it does not have to be consciously in the minds of any of the actors in the drama. Thus your actions may very easily have more significance than you understand at the time. At the time, for example, you may feel very insecure about your code of values. You may feel shame and guilt, which is dissipated in retrospect, as you understand that you could not have done otherwise than as you did.
The roots of the creative personality lie in the great mass of disorderly material from childhood onwards. His task is the imposition of order upon disorderly material. Much of this is to be found in the writings of Aleister Crowley. His genius lives on, resisting judgement, through the power of will. Judgement (Geburah on the Tree of Life), until you have won its favour, is a kind of death. A claim to greatness is not an appeal to judgement.
In presenting oneself as capable now, one must acknowledge that once one was incapable. That is one's true history, and resulted in a certain amount of abnormality. Only in the light of this admission can the reality become intelligible or admirable. In applying the law of Do What Thou Wilt, it must be understood what phantoms one fought and is still fighting, in what exactly one's strength should consist. In a general sense, it consists in not submitting to alien judgements and never having done so. Crowley emphasises some of the vices in his own character, to the point where they make us laugh, and seem an expression of freedom.
His alleged crimes and weaknesses include letting Mudd and Leah starve. But I am not my brother's keeper. Why should he have accepted the responsibility of supporting them as if they were his family? They were not his children. He had to consider his own survival first, and that was at times difficult. He is accused of self indulgence. He was not able to support, materially, all the various weaklings who crossed his path. Did he ever imply, misleadingly, that he could? Unlike Bhagwan, or the Scientologists, his organisation offered no security to its members. Unfortunately, the law of Do What Thou Wilt did not work well for some people. Too many came to bad ends, seeming damnation. Crowley appeared to be preaching a philosophy of dangerous bohemianism. Why did his personality appear to drive women mad? He never went to prison, though he came close to it once. He has been reproached for his behaviour on the mountain, for an incompletely cut ice step, and for not going out to search for the missing people. Was that funk? He may have been guilty of trying to justify himself after the event, of self justification in the face of crimes and weakness.
Crowley the Beast made a morality out of immorality. It is shocking that madness and suicide should so follow in his wake. It shows how far he was from being the King Lamus figure he sometimes projected. But this shockingness also seems to express some teaching, perhaps a mystical message worth meditating upon. Crowley lived out his Beast role. As to the Beast, one is not called to an Imitatio Crowleyi. Not having that historical role to play, one does not have to be utterly callous and selfish to all one's friends and lovers. One can be inspired by it, without feeling any need to imitate it.
Youthful fascination for Crowley is an essentially statistical phenomenon. A proportion of young people who read "The Great Beast" would feel a close identification with him. Because they feel as they do they also feel a sense of superiority, of being in possession of some superior insight. Not that, at their age, their insight could be any greater than the man chosen by Crowley himself to be his biographer. The Crowley discovered at age 14, can continue to have profound value and significance throughout life. His appeal is far more than something merely adolescent. Crowley was a deliverer from weltschmerz, he represented affirmation in a strong form. In the war against Ialdabaoth, as in all wars, sometimes extreme measures are necessary. Oppression by the zeitgeist continues, whether we feel it as Christianity, grundyism, capitalism, socialism, materialism, democracy, or whatever. It is all too easy to pick on one of these, identifying most strongly with its enemies, fervently denouncing it as the heart and essence of an evil that really runs much deeper.
*Sanine:- eponyomous hero of a novel by Arstibashyev, a Russian portrayal of a Nietzschean superman from a largely sexual angle.
Aleister Crowley EXPOSED!
Complied and commented by David J. Stewart
Crowley
was the Master Satanist of the 20th Century
The hierarchy of the Secret-Societies have been deeply involved in the Black-Occult since they have existed. This includes the ritual sacrifice of children and babies. This knowledge has been kept from the minds of society at large until more recently. It is now only a matter of time when the masses of the people become fully aware of the real agenda behind the secret societies and the true purpose of why they exist.
Aleister Crowley - Initiated to the highest levels of Freemasonry and high priest of the Golden Dawn, said: "A white male child of perfect innocence and intelligence makes the most suitable victim."
In the US each year 400,000 children are reported missing.
In the UK,98,000 children are reported missing.
Crowley's Large Influence Upon Rock Music (and it's fans)
Lest you think that Aleister Crowley (born Edward Alexander Crowley, 1875-1947) was just some crazy fool that no one took seriously, think again. Crowley has had a large influence upon modern rock music. Unbeknownst to most Americans, much of the Hellish music which they idolize was written and sang by devout followers of Crowley and his Satanism.
Guitarist Jimmy Page of Zeppelin is a devout follower of Satanist, Aleister Crowley, who proclaimed himself as "The Beast 666". Aleister Crowley was also a 33rd and 97th Degree Freemason and is recognized as the master Satanist of the 20th century. In 1971, guitarist Jimmy Page bought Crowley’s Boleskine House on the shore of Loch Ness where Crowley practiced his hellish, satanic sex-magick rituals, including human sacrifices. Guitarist Jimmy Page actually performed Crowley magical rituals during their concerts. Their song "Stairway to Heaven" carries the reference "May Queen," which is purportedly the name of a hideous poem written by Crowley. Page had inscribed in the vinyl of their album Led Zeppelin III, Crowley's famous "Do what thou wilt. So mete it Be.’ Page and Robert Plant claim some of Zeppelins' songs came via occultic "automatic handwriting," including their popular "Stairway to Heaven."
The cover of the Sergeant Pepper's album by the Beatles showed a background of, according to Ringo Starr, people "we like and admire" (Hit Parade, Oct. 1976, p.14). Paul McCartney said of Sgt. Pepper's cover, ". . . we were going to have photos on the wall of all our HEROES . . ." (Musician, Special Collectors Edition, - Beatles and Rolling Stones, 1988, p.12). One of the Beatle's heroes included on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's was — the infamous Satanist, Aleister Crowley! Most people, especially in 1967, did not even know who Crowley was — but the Beatles certainly did.
". . . we were going to have photos on the wall of all our HEROES . . ."
The Beatles apparently took Crowley's teaching very serious — Beatle John Lennon, in an interview, says the "whole idea of the Beatles" was — Crowley's infamous "do what thou wilt":
"The whole Beatle idea was to do what you want, right? To take your own responsibility, do what you want and try not to harm other people, right? DO WHAT THOU WILST, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody. . ." ("The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono", by David Sheff and G. Barry Golson, p. 61)
Paul McCartney and Lennon were Satanists as well
Most people recognize the Satanic hand sign which John Lennon is making at the bottom right; but, few people realize that the "ok" sign which Paul McCartney is making at the bottom left is also very Satanic. The "ok" sign is actually three 6's, each of the three vertical fingers forming an individual 6. 666!
Crowley has had a great influence on rock & roll. The International Times voted Crowley “the unsung hero of the hippies.” One man who helped popularized Crowley’s work among rockers is avant-garde film artist Kenneth Anger. He claimed that his films were inspired by Crowley’s philosophy and called them “visual incantations” and “moving spells.” Anger considered Crowley a unique genius. Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin both scored soundtracks for Anger’s films about Crowley. See “Led Zeppelin” for more about Page’s enthusiasm for Crowley.
Crowley’s photo appeared on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album cover. The Beatles testified that the characters who appeared on the album were their “heroes.” John Lennon explained to Playboy magazine that “the whole Beatle idea was to do what you want … do what thou wilst, as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody” (Lennon, cited by David Sheff, The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, p. 61). This was precisely what Crowley taught.
Ozzy Osbourne called Crowley “a phenomenon of his time” (Circus, Aug. 26, 1980, p. 26). Ozzy even had a song called “Mr. Crowley.” “You fooled all the people with magic/ You waited on Satan's call / … Mr. Crowley, won't you ride my white horse…”
On the back cover of the Doors 13 album, Jim Morrison and the other members of the Doors are shown posing with a bust of Aleister Crowley.
David Bowie referred to Crowley in his song “Quicksand” from the album The Man Who Sold the World.
Graham Bond thought he was Crowley’s illegitimate son and recorded albums of satanic rituals with his band Holy Magick.
Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson said: “… we’ve referred to things like the tarot and ideas of people like Aleister Crowley” (Circus, Aug. 31, 1984). Their song “The Number of the Beast” said, “666, the number of the beast/ 666, the one for you and me.” Crowley was called the Beast.
Daryl Hall of the rock duo Hall and Oates admits that he follows Crowley. “I became fascinated with Aleister Crowley, the nineteenth-century British magician who shared those beliefs. … I was fascinated by him because his personality was the late-nineteenth-century equivalent of mine—a person brought up in a conventionally religious family who did everything he could to outrage the people around him as well as himself” (Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews, p. 584). Hall owns a signed and numbered copy of Crowley’s The Book of Thoth (about an Egyptian god).
Sting, formerly of the Police, has spent many hours studying Crowley’s writings.
Stiv Bators, lead singer for The Dead Boys and Lords of the New Church, had a song titled “Do What Thou Wilt/ This Is the Law,” after the philosophy of Satanist Aleister Crowley. In another song Bators sang: “I heard the Devil curse/ I recognized my name.”
LSD guru Timothy Leary was a Crowley enthusiast. He said: “I’ve been an admirer of Aleister Crowley. I think that I’m carrying on much of the work that he started over a hundred years ago … He was in favor of finding yourself, and ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ under love. It was a very powerful statement. I’m sorry he isn’t around now to appreciate the glories he started” (Late Night America, Public Broadcasting Network, cited by Hells Bells, Reel to Real Ministries).
The Marilyn Manson song “Misery Machine” contains the lyrics, “We’re gonna ride to the abbey of Thelema.” The Abbey of Thelema was the temple of Satanist Aleister Crowley.
If ever there was a God-hating degenerate, it was Aleister Crowley ...
33° Mason, Aleister Crowley would definitely get some votes in the "most wicked man who ever lived contest" and is the clear cut favorite for the title of "The Father of Modern Satanism". Crowley's wicked life and his intimate association with Freemasonry are both well known.
Crowley himself was terribly decadent. A happily heroin-addicted, bisexual Satan worshiper, he asked people to call him "The Beast 666." Crowley believed that he was literally the antimessiah of the apocalypse.
During the first World War, Crowley transferred his activities to America. The press proclaimed him "the wickedest man in the world." He also spent time in Italy, but was expelled because Italian authorities accused his disciples of sacrificing human infants in occult rituals. According to one source, Crowley resided in the Abbey of Thelema near Cefalu Sicily, and revived ancient Dionysian ceremonies. During a 1921 ritual, he induced a he-goat to copulate with his mistress, then slit the animal's throat at the moment of orgasm. -SOURCE
Crowley Hated God with a Passion
The following overview of Crowley’s life is from Hungry for Heaven by Steve Turner:
“Born in 1875, Aleister Crowley had, like the Rolling Stones, rebelled against a regulated small-town background. He’d been raised in Leamington, Warwickshire, by parents who were members of the Strict Brethren, a fundamentalist Christian sect. From an early age young Aleister identified with the enemies of God in the Bible stories that were read to him. In particular he identified with the antichrist predicted in the book of Revelation. In 1898 he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical society.
“Most of Crowley’s adult life was dedicated to indulging in everything he believed God would hate: performing sex magic, taking heroin, opium, hashish, peyote and cocaine, invoking spirits, and even once offering himself to the Russian authorities to help destroy Christianity. He wrote volumes of books that he believed were dictated to him by a spirit from ancient Egypt called Aiwass. “To worship me take wine and strange drugs,” the spirit conveniently told him. “Lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture. Fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.” …
“Crowley finished his life as a sick, wasted heroin addict given to black rages and doubts about the value of his life’s work. His last words as he passed into a coma on December 1, 1947, were, “I am perplexed…” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, pp. 92,97,98).
Aleister’s father Edward was a Brethren preacher, but he had inherited a fortune from his father who Crowley Ale. Edward died when Aleister was eleven and the son inherited the fortune. From this inheritance, Aleister financed his satanic career. He began torturing and killing animals at age twelve. Crowley was a heroin addict and a sexual pervert. His Christian mother referred to him as “The Great Beast of Revelation whose number is 666,” and he was pleased with the title. He was convinced that he was the reincarnation of the magician Eliphas Levi, who died the year Crowley was born. Crowley also believed he had lived other lives, including that of Pope Alexander VI. Crowley claimed that dark powers gave him the words to his “Book of the Law.” His first wife, Rose, died in a mental asylum. His second wife also went insane. “Five mistresses committed suicide, and scores of his concubines ended in the gutter as alcoholics, drug addicts, or in mental institutions” (Hellhounds on Their Trail, p. 56).
Crowley’s philosophy was as follows (which is the exact same philosophy of all Witches and Satanists today):
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
“Lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture. Fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.”
“I do not wish to argue that the doctrines of Jesus, they and they alone, have degraded the world to its present condition. I take it that Christianity is not only the cause but the symptom of slavery” (Crowley, The World’s Tragedy, p. xxxix).
“That religion they call Christianity; the devil they honor they call God. I accept these definitions, as a poet must do, if he is to be at all intelligible to his age, and it is their God and their religion that I hate and will destroy” (Crowley, The World’s Tragedy, p. xxx).
Crowley studied Buddhism and Hindu yoga, following in the footsteps of Helena Blavatsky, and did much to popularize these in the West.
Crowley Died a Drug-addict and Sexual Degenerate
In 1922, Crowley published Diary of a Drug Fiend, which was about the use of cocaine. He described the widespread use of cocaine among Hollywood stars, which he described as “cocaine-crazed sexual lunatics.”
As noted, Crowley died a wasted heroin addict given to rages and doubts. His last words were “I am perplexed…” Crowley worshipped the demon god Pan, the god of sexuality and lust. His “Hymn to Pan” was read at his funeral: “I rave and I rape and I rip and I rend/ Everlasting world without end!”
Satanists are Still Abducting, Raping, and Killing Children
There is an enormous amount of evidence to categorically prove to the genuine seeker of truth and justice, that the Secret Societies-run Intelligence Network are sexually abusing, and murdering children all around the world.
Was Aleister Crowley A Secret Agent?
Richard Spence 17th July 2008
Occultist, poet, painter, novelist, mountaineer, chess master, prophet of the New Aeon, drug addict, alleged traitor: such is a brief CV for Aleister Crowley, who dubbed himself the Great Beast 666. However, there is another accomplishment that needs to be added to this list, a side long obscured by the powers that be and by the man himself- Aleister Crowley, spy.
In his 1929 book Confessions and elsewhere, Crowley made vague references to his intelligence work, notably his 1914-19 mission in the U.S.A. There, he claimed, his public role as anti-British propagandist masked secret service on behalf of His Majesty. Such protestations were mostly dismissed as face-saving fantasies, but they really were the bare tip of the iceberg of the secret life of the "Wickedest Man in the World".
Back in 1999, I was busy working on a book dealing with the so-called Ace-of-Spies, Sidney Reilly. Crowley and Reilly were hanging around New York at the same time, so I was curious about a connection. I discovered a small file on Crowley long-forgotten in the WWI-era files of the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence Division. What leapt out was the conclusion that Crowley "was an employee of the British Government on official business of which the British Consul, New York City, has full cognizance," and that "the British Government was fully aware of the fact that Crowley was connected with…German propaganda and had received money for writing anti-British articles." So, the Beast had been telling the truth, or a least a little of it.
This initial discovery was the basis for a subsequent article which acquired a weird life of its own as it circulated across the internet and God knows where else. This led to further information and suggestions, the main one being that I should dig deeper into Crowley's espionage career. Reluctantly at first, but with growing enthusiasm as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, I assembled the story of Crowley's connection to the intelligence world and its denizens, including the likes of Everard Feilding, Maxwell Knight and Ian Fleming. The story goes back to his Victorian dalliance with the Order of the Golden Dawn, through his twilight years during WWII, and is revealed in my recently-published book Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult.
The story remains in places teasingly hazy and speculative. At least part of the blame rests with the agencies whose files might have provided definitive answers, or at least more perspective, on nagging questions - MI5 and MI6. The latter, as usual, refused to either confirm of deny that they had any info on the Beast, though they did conjure up a list of press references that one might logically infer came from just such a dossier. MI5 at first denied knowing anything about the notorious Mr. Crowley. When confronted with the undeniable fact (discovered elsewhere) that their records had once held at least two files on Crowley, they acknowledged their error but insisted that the files had long ago been destroyed, "we think." Perhaps they had conveniently forgotten what was never supposed to be remembered.
Lists of Works by Aleister Crowley
Novels
Moonchild (1970)
Collections
Ahab: And Other poems (poems)
The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz (1910)
The Stratagem: And Other Stories (1929)
White Stains (poems) (1986)
Scrutinies of Simon Iff (1987)
Little Poems in Prose (poems) (1993)
Non fiction
Crowley on Christ
Magical and philosophical commentaries on The book of the law
The Argonauts
Banned Lecture
Oriflamme: Magick and Mysticism
The Soul of Osiris
Amrita: essays in magical rejuvenation
The commentaries of AL: being the Equinox volume v, no. 1
Jephthah
Orpheus: a lyrical legend
Carmen Saeculare (1901) (writing as St E A of M and S)
Tannheauser: A story of all time (1907)
Amphora (1908)
Rosa Decidua (1911)
Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
The confessions of Aleister Crowley: an autohagiography (1969)
Diary of a Drug Fiend (1970)
The Book of Lies, Which Is Also Falsely Called Breaks: The Wanderings of Falsifications of the One Thought of Frater Perdurabo (1970)
Clouds without water (1970)
Konx Om Pax: Essays in Light (1970)
The Book of Thoth (1971)
Eight Lectures on Yoga (1972)
Magical Record of the Beast 666 (1972)
Book of the Law (1973)
Magick: Liber Aba : Book 4 (1973)
Magick Without Tears (1973)
The Works of Aleister Crowley: With Portraits (1973)
The Law Is for All: The Authorized Popular Commentary of Liber Al Vel Legis Sub Figura Ccxx, the Book of the Law (1975)
Book Four (1980)
Liber Xxi, Khing Kang King: The Classic of Purity (1980)
Gems from the Equinox (1983)
Little Essays Toward Truth (1985)
The Worlds Tragedy (1985)
The Fun of the Fair (1987)
Goetia: First Impressions Series (1987)
Songs for Italy (1987)
The Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot (1987)
Golden Twigs (1988)
An Essay upon Number (1988)
Handbook of Geomancy (1989)
Last Ritual (1989)
777 and other Qabalistic writings of Aleister Crowley: including Gematria and Sepher sephiroth (1990)
Portable Darkness: An Aleister Crowley Reader (1990)
The Equinox (1990)
The Equinox of the Gods (1991)
Enochian World of Aleister Crowley: Enochian Sex Magick (1991)
Crowley on Drugs (1991)
Olla (1992)
Aleister Crowley's Illustrated Goetia: Sexual Evocation (1992)
Cocaine: Impressions and Opinions (1992)
Gargoyles: being strangely wrought images of life and death (1992)
The Heart of the Master and Other Papers (1992)
Songs of the spirit (1992)
Why Jesus Wept: Together With, 'the Child of Ephraim' (1993)
Aceldama,: A Place to Bury Strangers In. : A Philosophical Poem (1993)
Appeal to the American Republic (1993)
City of God: A Rhapsody (1993)
Summa Spes (1993)
Temperance: A Tract for the Times (1993)
Three Great Hoaxes of the War: Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen and Yet Have Believed (1993)
Thumbs Up: A Pentagram - A Pantacle to Win the War (1993)
Simon Iff: The Big Game (1994)
Absinthe: The Green Goddess (1994)
Satanic Extracts (1995)
Anthologies containing stories by Aleister Crowley
The Satanists (1969)
The Necromancers (1971)
The Nightmare Reader Volume 2 (1973)
The Black Magic Omnibus Volume 1 (1976)
Don't Open This Book! (1998)
Short stories
The Testament of Magdalen Blair (1912)
The Black Lodge
The Dream Circean
The Initiation
Little Essays Towards Truth
LOVE.
Now the Magus is Love, and bindeth together That and This in his Conjuration.
The Formula of Tetragrammaton is the complete mathematical expression of Love. Its essence is this: any two things unite, with a double effect; firstly, the destruction of both, accompanied by the ecstasy due to the relief of the strain of separateness; secondly, the creation of a third thing, accompanied by the ecstasy of the realisation of existence, which is Joy until with development it becomes aware of its imperfection, and loves.
This formula of Love is universal; all the laws of Nature are its servitors. Thus, gravitation, chemical affinity, electrical potential, and the rest -- and these are alike mere aspects of the general law -- are so many differently-observed statements of the unique tendency.
The Universe is conserved by the duplex action involved in the formula. The disappearance of Father and Mother is precisely compensated by the emergence of Son and Daughter. It may therefore be considered as a perpetual-motion-engine which continually develops rapture in each of its phases.
The sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis may be taken as typical of the formula: the mystical effect is the assumption of the maid to the bosom of the goddess; while, for the magical, the destruction of her earthly part, the fawn composes the rage of AEolus, and bids the Danaids set sail.
Now it cannot be too clearly understood, or too acutely realised by means of action, that the intensity of the Joy liberated varies with the original degree of opposition between the two elements of the union. Heat, light, electricity are phenomena expressive of the fullness of passion, and their value is greatest when the diversity of the Energies composing the marriage is most strenuous. One obtains more from the explosion of Hydrogen and Oxygen than from the dull combination of substances indifferent to each other. Thus, the union of Nitrogen and Chlorine is so little satisfying to either molecule, that the resulting compound disintegrates with explosive violence at the slightest shock. We might say, then, in the language of Thelema, that such an act of love is not "love under will." It is, so to speak, a black magical operation.
Let us consider, in a figure, the "feelings' of a molecule of Hydrogen in the presence of one of Oxygen or of Chlorine. It is made to suffer intensely by the realisation of the extremity of its deviation from the perfect type of monad by the contemplation of an element so supremely opposed to its own nature at every point. So far as it is egoist, its reaction must be scorn and hatred; but as it understands by the true shame that is put upon its separateness by the presence of its opposite, these feelings turn to anguished yearning. It begins to crave the electric spark which will enable it to assuage its pangs by the annihilation of all those properties which constitute its separate existence, in the rapture of union, and at the same time to fulfil its passion to create a perfect type of Peace.
We see the same psychology everywhere in the physical world. A stronger and more elaborate illustration might well have been drawn, were the purpose of this essay less catholic, from the structure of the atoms themselves, and their effort to resolve the agony of their agitation in the beatific Nirvana of the `noble' gases.
The process of Love under Will is evidently progressive. The Father who has slain himself in the womb of the Mother finds himself again, with her, and transfigured, in the Son. This Son acts as a new Father; and it is thus that the Self is constantly aggrandized, and able to counterpoise an ever greater Not-Self, until the final act of Love under Will which comprehends the Universe in Sammasamadhi.
The passion of Hatred is thus really directed against oneself; it is the expression of the pain and shame of separateness; and it only appears to be directed against the opposite by psychological transference. This thesis the School of Freud has made sufficiently clear.
There is then little indeed in common between Love and such tepid passions as regard, affection, or kindliness; it is the uninitiate, who, to his damnation in a hell of cabbage soup and soap-suds, confuses them.
Love may best be defined as the passion of Hatred inflamed to the point of madness, when it takes refuge in Self-destruction.
Love is clear-sighted with the lust of deadly rage, anatomizing its victim with keen energy, seeking where best to strike home mortally to the heart; it becomes blind only when its fury has completely overpowered it, and thrust it into the red maw of the furnace of self-immolation.
We must further distinguish in this magical sense from the sexual formula, symbol and type though that be thereof. For the pure essence of Magick is a function of ultimate atomic consciousness, and its operations must be refined from all confusion and contamination. The truly magical operations of Love are therefore the Trances, more especially those of Understanding; as will readily have been appreciated by those who have made a careful Qabalistic study of the nature of Binah. For she is omniform as Love and as Death, the Great Sea whence all Life springs, and whose black womb reabsorbs all. She thus resumes in herself the duplex process of the Formula of Love under Will; for is not Pan the All-Begetter in the heart of the Groves at high noon, and is not Her "hair the trees of Eternity" the filaments of All-Devouring Godhead "under the Night of Pan?"
Yet let it not be forgotten that though She be love, her function is but passive; she is the vehicle of the Word, of Chokmah, Wisdom, the All-Father, who is the Will of the All-One. And thus they err with grievous error and dire who prate of Love as the Formula of Magick; Love is unbalanced, void, vague, undirected, sterile, nay, more, a very Shell, the prey of abject orts demonic: Love must be "under will."
Magick (Book 4)
PART I. MEDITATION
THE WAY OF ATTAINMENT OF GENIUS OR GODHEAD CONSIDERED AS A DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN BRAIN
Issued by order ofthe GREAT WHITE BROTHERHOOD known as the A.'.A.'.
Witness our Seal,N.'.' Praemonstrator-General
Book Four
by Frater Perdurabo and Soror Virakam
PRELIMINARY REMARKS
EXISTENCE, as we know it, is full of sorrow. To mention only one minor point: every man is a condemned criminal, only he does not know the date of his execution. This is unpleasant for every man. Consequently every man does everything possible to postpone the date, and would sacrifice anything that he has if he could reverse the sentence.
Practically all religions and all philosophies have started thus crudely, by promising their adherents some such reward as immortality.
No religion has failed hitherto by not promising enough; the present breaking up of all religions is due to the fact that people have asked to see the securities. Men have even renounced the important material advantages which a well-organized religion may confer upon a State, rather than acquiesce in fraud or falsehood, or even in any system which, if not proved guilty, is at least unable to demonstrate its innocence.
Being more or less bankrupt, the best thing that we can do is to attack the problem afresh without preconceived ideas. Let us begin by doubting every statement. Let us find a way of subjecting every statement to the test of experiment. Is there any truth at all in the claims of various religions? Let us examine the question.
Our original difficulty will be due to the enormous wealth of our material. To enter into a critical examination of all systems would be an unending task; the cloud of witnesses is too great. Now each religion is equally positive; and each demands faith. This we refuse in the absence of positive proof. But we may usefully inquire whether there is not any one thing upon which all religions have agreed: for, if so, it seems possible that it may be worthy of really thorough consideration.
It is certainly not to be found in dogma. Even so simple an idea as that of a supreme and eternal being is denied by a third of the human race. Legends of miracle are perhaps universal, but these, in the absence of demonstrative proof, are repugnant to common sense.
But what of the origin of religions? How is it that unproved assertion has so frequently compelled the assent of all classes of mankind? Is not this a miracle?
There is, however, one form of miracle which certainly happens, the influence of the genius. There is no known analogy in Nature. One cannot even think of a "super-dog" transforming the world of dogs, whereas in the history of mankind this happens with regularity and frequency. Now here are three "super-men," all at loggerheads. What is there in common between Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed? Is there any one point upon which all three are in accord?
No point of doctrine, no point of ethics, no theory of a "hereafter" do they share, and yet in the history of their lives we find one identity amid many diversities.
Buddha was born a Prince, and died a beggar.
Mohammed was born a beggar, and died a Prince.
Christ remained obscure until many years after his death.
Elaborate lives of each have been written by devotees, and there is one thing common to all three -- an omission. We hear nothing of Christ between the ages of twelve and thirty. Mohammed disappeared into a cave. Buddha left his palace, and went for a long while into the desert.
Each of them, perfectly silent up to the time of the disappearance, came back and immediately began to preach a new law.
This is so curious that it leaves us to inquire whether the histories of other great teachers contradict or confirm.
Moses led a quiet life until his slaying of the Egyptian. He then flees into the land of Midian, and we hear nothing of what he did there, yet immediately on his return he turns the whole place upside down. Later on, too, he absents himself on Mount Sinai for a few days, and comes back with the Tables of the Law in his hand.
St. Paul (again), after his adventure on the road to Damascus, goes into the desert of Arabia for many years, and on his return overturns the Roman Empire. Even in the legends of savages we find the same thing universal; somebody who is nobody in particular goes away for a longer or shorter period, and comes back as the "great medicine man"; but nobody ever knows exactly what happened to him.
Making every possible deduction for fable and myth, we get this one coincidence. A nobody goes away, and comes back a somebody. This is not to be explained in any of the ordinary ways.
There is not the smallest ground for the contention that these were from the start exceptional men. Mohammed would hardly have driven a camel until he was thirty-five years old if he had possessed any talent or ambition. St. Paul had much original talent; but he is the least of the five. Nor do they seem to have possessed any of the usual materials of power, such as rank, fortune, or influence.
Moses was rather a big man in Egypt when he left; he came back as a mere stranger.
Christ had not been to China and married the Emperor's daughter.
Mohammed had not been acquiring wealth and drilling soldiers.
Buddha had not been consolidating any religious organizations.
St. Paul had not been intriguing with an ambitious general.
Each came back poor; each came back alone.
What was the nature of their power? What happened to them in their absence?
History will not help us to solve the problem, for history is silent.
We have only the accounts given by the men themselves.
It would be very remarkable should we find that these accounts agree.
Of the great teachers we have mentioned Christ is silent; the other four tell us something; some more, some less.
Buddha goes into details too elaborate to enter upon in this place; but the gist of it is that in one way or another he got hold of the secret force of the World and mastered it.
Of St. Paul's experiences, we have nothing but a casual allusion to his having been "caught up into Heaven, and seen and heard things of which it was not lawful to speak."
Mohammed speaks crudely of his having been "visited by the Angel Gabriel," who communicated things from "God."
Moses says that he "beheld God."
Diverse as these statements are at first sight, all agree in announcing an experience of the class which fifty years ago would have been called supernatural, to-day may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a proper name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred.
Theorists have not been at a loss to explain; but they differ.
The Mohammedan insists that God is, and did really send Gabriel with messages for Mohammed: but all others contradict him. And from the nature of the case proof is impossible.
The lack of proof has been so severely felt by Christianity (and in a much less degree by Islam) that fresh miracles have been manufactured almost daily to support the tottering structure. Modern thought, rejecting these miracles, has adopted theories involving epilepsy and madness. As if organization could spring from disorganization! Even if epilepsy were the cause of these great movements which have caused civilization after civilization to arise from barbarism, it would merely form an argument for cultivating epilepsy.
Of course great men will never conform with the standards of little men, and he whose mission it is to overturn the world can hardly escape the title of revolutionary. The fads of a period always furnish terms of abuse. The fad of Caiaphas was Judaism, and the Pharisees told him that Christ "blasphemed." Pilate was a loyal Roman; to him they accused Christ of "sedition." When the Pope had all power it was necessary to prove an enemy a "heretic." Advancing to-day towards a medical oligarchy, we try to prove that our opponents are "insane," and (in a Puritan country) to attack their "morals." We should then avoid all rhetoric, and try to investigate with perfect freedom from bias the phenomena which occurred to these great leaders of mankind.
There is no difficulty in our assuming that these men themselves did not understand clearly what happened to them. The only one who explains his system thoroughly is Buddha, and Buddha is the only one that is not dogmatic. We may also suppose that the others thought it inadvisable to explain too clearly to their followers; St. Paul evidently took this line.
Our best document will therefore be the system of Buddha;
footnote: We have the documents of Hinduism, and of two Chinese systems. But Hinduism has no single founder. Lao Tze is one of our best examples of a man who went away and had a mysterious experience; perhaps the best of all examples, as his system is the best of all systems. We have full details of his method of training in the Khang Kang King, and elsewhere. But it is so little known that we shall omit consideration of it in this popular account.
but it is so complex that no immediate summary will serve; and in the case of the others, if we have not the accounts of the Masters, we have those of their immediate followers.
The methods advised by all these people have a startling resemblance to one another. They recommend "virtue" (of various kinds), solitude, absence of excitement, moderation in diet, and finally a practice which some call prayer and some call meditation. (The former four may turn out on examination to be merely conditions favourable to the last.)
On investigating what is meant by these two things, we find that they are only one. For what is the state of either prayer or meditation? It is the restraining of the mind to a single act, state, or thought. If we sit down quietly and investigate the contents of our minds, we shall find that even at the best of times the principal characteristics are wandering and distraction. Any one who has had anything to do with children and untrained minds generally knows that fixity of attention is never present, even when there is a large amount of intelligence and good will.
If then we, with our well-trained minds, determine to control this wandering thought, we shall find that we are fairly well able to keep the thoughts running in a narrow channel, each thought linked to the last in a perfectly rational manner; but if we attempt to stop this current we shall find that, so far from succeeding, we shall merely bread down the banks of the channel. The mind will overflow, and instead of a chain of thought we shall have a chaos of confused images.
This mental activity is so great, and seems so natural, that it is hard to understand how any one first got the idea that it was a weakness and a nuisance. Perhaps it was because in the more natural practice of "devotion," people found that their thoughts interfered. In any case calm and self-control are to be preferred to restlessness. Darwin in his study presents a marked contrast with a monkey in a cage.
Generally speaking, the larger and stronger and more highly developed any animal is, the less does it move about, and such movements as it does make are slow and purposeful. Compare the ceaseless activity of bacteria with the reasoned steadiness of the beaver; and except in the few animal communities which are organized, such as bees, the greatest intelligence is shown by those of solitary habits. This is so true of man that psychologists have been obliged to treat of the mental state of crowds as if it were totally different in quality from any state possible to an individual.
It is by freeing the mind from external influences, whether casual or emotional, that it obtains power to see somewhat of the truth of things.
Let us, however, continue our practice. Let us determine to be masters of our minds. We shall then soon find what conditions are favourable.
There will be no need to persuade ourselves at great length that all external influences are likely to be unfavourable. New faces, new scenes will disturb us; even the new habits of life which we undertake for this very purpose of controlling the mind will at first tend to upset it. Still, we must give up our habit of eating too much, and follow the natural rule of only eating when we are hungry, listening to the interior voice which tells us that we have had enough.
The same rule applies to sleep. We have determined to control our minds, and so our time for meditation must take precedence of other hours.
We must fix times for practice, and make our feasts movable. In order to test our progress, for we shall find that (as in all physiological matters) meditation cannot be gauged by the feelings, we shall have a note-book and pencil, and we shall also have a watch. We shall then endeavour to count how often, during the first quarter of an hour, the mind breaks away from the idea upon which it is determined to concentrate. We shall practice this twice daily; and, as we go, experience will teach us which conditions are favourable and which are not. Before we have been doing this for very long we are almost certain to get impatient, and we shall find that we have to practice many other things in order to assist us in our work. New problems will constantly arise which must be faced, and solved.
For instance, we shall most assuredly find that we fidget. We shall discover that no position is comfortable, though we never noticed it before in all our lives!
This difficulty has been solved by a practice called "Asana," which will be described later on.
Memories of the events of the day will bother us; we must arrange our day so that it is absolutely uneventful. Our minds will recall to us our hopes and fears, our loves and hates, our ambitions, our envies, and many other emotions. All these must be cut off. We must have absolutely no interest in life but that of quieting our minds.
This is the object of the usual monastic vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience. If you have no property, you have no care, nothing to be anxious about; with chastity no other person to be anxious about, and to distract your attention; while if you are vowed to obedience the question of what you are to do no longer frets: you simply obey.
There are a great many other obstacles which you will discover as you go on, and it is proposed to deal with these in turn. But let us pass by for the moment to the point where you are nearing success.
In your early struggles you may have found it difficult to conquer sleep; and you may have wandered so far from the object of your meditations without noticing it, that the meditation has really been broken; but much later on, when you feel that you are "getting quite good," you will be shocked to find a complete oblivion of yourself and your surroundings. You will say: "Good heavens! I must have been to sleep!" or else "What on earth was I meditating upon?" or even "What was I doing?" "Where am I?" "Who am I?" or a mere wordless bewilderment may daze you. This may alarm you, and your alarm will not be lessened when you come to full consciousness, and reflect that you have actually forgotten who you are and what you are doing!
This is only one of many adventures that may come to you; but it is one of the most typical. By this time your hours of meditation will fill most of the day, and you will probably be constantly having presentiments that something is about to happen. You may also be terrified with the idea that your brain may be giving way; but you will have learnt the real symptoms of mental fatigue, and you will be careful to avoid them. They must be very carefully distinguished from idleness!
At certain times you will feel as if there were a contest between the will and the mind; at other times you may feel as if they were in harmony; but there is a third state, to be distinguished from the latter feeling. It is the certain sign of near success, the view-halloo. This is when the mind runs naturally towards the object chosen, not as if in obedience to the will of the owner of the mind, but as if directed by nothing at all, or by something impersonal; as if it were falling by its own weight, and not being pushed down.
Almost always, the moment that one becomes conscious of this, it stops; and the dreary old struggle between the cowboy will and the buckjumper mind begins again.
Like every other physiological process, consciousness of it implies disorder or disease.
In analysing the nature of this work of controlling the mind, the student will appreciate without trouble the fact that two things are involved -- the person seeing and the thing seen -- the person knowing and the thing known; and he will come to regard this as the necessary condition of all consciousness. We are too accustomed to assume to be facts things about which we have no real right even to guess. We assume, for example, that the unconscious is the torpid; and yet nothing is more certain than that bodily organs which are functioning well do so in silence. The best sleep is dreamless. Even in the case of games of skill our very best strokes are followed by the thought, "I don't know how I did it;" and we cannot repeat those strokes at will. The moment we begin to think consciously about a stroke we get "nervous," and are lost.
In fact, there are three main classes of stroke; the bad stroke, which we associate, and rightly, with wandering attention; the good stroke which we associate, and rightly, with fixed attention; and the perfect stroke, which we do not understand, but which is really caused by the habit of fixity of attention having become independent of the will, and thus enabled to act freely of its own accord.
This is the same phenomenon referred to above as being a good sign.
Finally something happens whose nature may form the subject of a further discussion later on. For the moment let it suffice to say that this consciousness of the Ego and the non-Ego, the seer and the thing seen, the knower and the thing known, is blotted out.
There is usually an intense light, an intense sound, and a feeling of such overwhelming bliss that the resources of language have been exhausted again and again in the attempt to describe it.
It is an absolute knock-out blow to the mind. It is so vivid and tremendous that those who experience it are in the gravest danger of losing all sense of proportion.
By its light all other events of life are as darkness. Owing to this, people have utterly failed to analyse it or to estimate it. They are accurate enough in saying that, compared with this, all human life is absolutely dross; but they go further, and go wrong. They argue that "since this is that which transcends the terrestrial, it must be celestial." One of the tendencies in their minds has been the hope of a heaven such as their parents and teachers have described, or such as they have themselves pictured; and, without the slightest grounds for saying so, they make the assumption "This is That."
In the Bhagavadgita a vision of this class is naturally attributed to the apparation of Vishnu, who was the local god of the period.
Anna Kingsford, who had dabbled in Hebrew mysticism, and was a feminist, got an almost identical vision; but called the "divine" figure which she saw alternately "Adonai" and "Maria."
Now this woman, though handicapped by a brain that was a mass of putrid pulp, and a complete lack of social status, education, and moral character, did more in the religious world than any other person had done for generations. She, and she alone, made Theosophy possible, and without Theosophy the world-wide interest in similar matters would never have been aroused. This interest is to the Law of Thelema what the preaching of John the Baptist was to Christianity.
We are now in a position to say what happened to Mohammed. Somehow or another his phenomenon happened in his mind. More ignorant than Anna Kingsford, though, fortunately, more moral, he connected it with the story of the "Annunciation," which he had undoubtedly heard in his boyhood, and said "Gabriel appeared to me." But in spite of his ignorance, his total misconception of the truth, the power of the vision was such that he was enabled to persist through the usual persecution, and founded a religion to which even to-day one man in every eight belongs.
The history of Christianity shows precisely the same remarkable fact. Jesus Christ was brought up on the fables of the "Old Testament," and so was compelled to ascribe his experiences to "Jehovah," although his gentle spirit could have had nothing in common with the monster who was always commanding the rape of virgins and the murder of little children, and whose rites were then, and still are, celebrated by human sacrifice.
footnote: The massacres of Jews in Eastern Europe which surprise the ignorant, are almost invariably excited by the disappearance of "Christian" children, stolen, as the parents suppose, for the purposes of "ritual murder." WEH footnote: This unfortunate perpetuation of the "blood-libel" myth was later recanted by Crowley. The blood-libel was visited upon early Christians by the Romans and is visited today upon Thelemites by Christian Fundamentalists.
Similarly the visions of Joan of Arc were entirely Christian; but she, like all the others we have mentioned, found somewhere the force to do great things. Of course, it may be said that there is a fallacy in the argument; it may be true that all these great people "saw God," but it does not follow that every one who "sees God" will do great things.
This is true enough. In fact, the majority of people who claim to have "seen God," and who no doubt did "see God" just as much as those whom we have quoted, did nothing else.
But perhaps their silence is not a sign of their weakness, but of their strength. Perhaps these "great" men are the failures of humanity; perhaps it would be better to say nothing; perhaps only an unbalanced mind would wish to alter anything or believe in the possibility of altering anything; but there are those who think existence even in heaven intolerable so long as there is one single being who does not share that joy. There are some who may wish to travel back from the very threshold of the bridal chamber to assist belated guests.
Such at least was the attitude which Gotama Buddha adopted. Nor shall he be alone.
Again it may be pointed out that the contemplative life is generally opposed to the active life, and it must require an extremely careful balance to prevent the one absorbing the other.
As it will be seen later, the "vision of God," or "Union with God," or "Samadhi," or whatever we may agree to call it, has many kinds and many degrees, although there is an impassable abyss between the least of them and the greatest of all the phenomena of normal consciousness. "To sum up," we assert a secret source of energy which explains the phenomenon of Genius.
footnote: We have dealt in this preliminary sketch only with examples of religious genius. Other kinds are subject to the same remarks, but the limits of our space forbid discussion of these.
We do not believe in any supernatural explanations, but insist that this source may be reached by the following out of definite rules, the degree of success depending upon the capacity of the seeker, and not upon the favour of any Divine Being. We assert that the critical phenomenon which determines success is an occurrence in the brain characterized essentially by the uniting of subject and object. We propose to discuss this phenomenon, analyse its nature, determine accurately the physical, mental and moral conditions which are favourable to it, to ascertain its cause, and thus to produce it in ourselves, so that we may adequately study its effects.
The Book of the Law
Liber AL vel Legis
sub figura CCXX
as delivered by XCIII = 418 to DCLXVI
Chapter I
1. Had! The manifestation of Nuit.
2. The unveiling of the company of heaven.
3. Every man and every woman is a star.
4. Every number is infinite; there is no difference.
5. Help me, o warrior lord of Thebes, in my unveiling before the Children of men!
6. Be thou Hadit, my secret centre, my heart & my tongue!
7. Behold! it is revealed by Aiwass the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat.
8. The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs.
9. Worship then the Khabs, and behold my light shed over you!
10. Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known.
11. These are fools that men adore; both their Gods & their men are fools.
12. Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love!
13. I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy.
14. Above, the gemmed azure is
The naked splendour of Nuit;
She bends in ecstasy to kiss
The secret ardours of Hadit.
The winged globe, the starry blue,
Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-khonsu!
15. Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men.
16. For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight.
17. But ye are not so chosen.
18. Burn upon their brows, o splendrous serpent!
19. O azure-lidded woman, bend upon them!
20. The key of the rituals is in the secret word which I have given unto him.
21. With the God & the Adorer I am nothing: they do not see me. They are as upon the earth; I am Heaven, and there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit.
22. Now, therefore, I am known to ye by my name Nuit, and to him by a secret name which I will give him when at last he knoweth me. Since I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof, do ye also thus. Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt.
23. But whoso availeth in this, let him be the chief of all!
24. I am Nuit, and my word is six and fifty.
25. Divide, add, multiply, and understand.
26. Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one: Who am I, and what shall be the sign? So she answered him, bendingdown, a lambent flame of blue, all-touching, all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers: Thou knowest! And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my body.
27. Then the priest answered & said unto the Queen of Space, kissing her lovely brows, and the dew of her light bathing his whole body in a sweet-smelling perfume of sweat: O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let it be ever thus; that men speak not of Thee as One but as None; and let them speak not of thee at all, since thou art continuous!
28. None, breathed the light, faint & faery, of the stars, and two.
29. For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union.
30. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.
31. For these fools of men and their woes care not thou at all! They feel little; what is, is balanced by weak joys; but ye are my chosen ones.
32. Obey my prophet! follow out the ordeals of my knowledge! seek me only! Then the joys of my love will redeem ye from all pain. This is so: I swear it by the vault of my body; by my sacred heart and tongue; by all I can give, by all I desire of ye all.
33. Then the priest fell into a deep trance or swoon, & said unto the Queen of Heaven; Write unto us the ordeals; write unto us the rituals; write unto us the law!
34. But she said: the ordeals I write not: the rituals shall be half known and half concealed: the Law is for all.
35. This that thou writest is the threefold book of Law.
36. My scribe Ankh-af-na-khonsu, the priest of the princes, shall not in one letter change this book; but lest there be folly, he shall comment thereupon by the wisdom of Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
37. Also the mantras and spells; the obeah and the wanga; the work of the wand and the work of the sword; these he shall learn and teach.
38. He must teach; but he may make severe the ordeals.
39. The word of the Law is THELEMA.
40. Who calls us Thelemites will do no wrong, if he look but close into the word. For there are therein Three Grades, the Hermit, and the Lover, and the man of Earth. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
41. The word of Sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife, if she will! O lover, if thou wilt, depart! There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accursed! Accursed be it to the aeons! Hell.
42. Let it be that state of manyhood bound and loathing. So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will.
43. Do that, and no other shall say nay.
44. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.
45. The Perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!
46. Nothing is a secret key of this law. Sixty-one the Jews call it; I call it eight, eighty, four hundred & eighteen.
47. But they have the half: unite by thine art so that all disappear.
48. My prophet is a fool with his one, one, one; are not they the Ox, and none by the Book?
49. Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all words and signs. Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods; and let Asar be with Isa, who also are one. But they are not of me. Let Asar be the adorant, Isa the sufferer; Hoor in his secret name and splendour is the Lord initiating.
50. There is a word to say about the Hierophantic task. Behold! there are three ordeals in one, and it may be given in three ways. The gross must pass through fire; let the fine be tried in intellect, and the lofty chosen ones in the highest. Thus ye have star & star, system & system; let not one know well the other!
51. There are four gates to one palace; the floor of that palace is of silver and gold; lapis lazuli & jasper are there; and all rare scents; jasmine & rose, and the emblems of death. Let him enter in turn or at once the four gates; let him stand on the floor of the palace. Will he not sink? Amn. Ho! warrior, if thy servant sink? But there are means and means. Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.
52. If this be not aright; if ye confound the space-marks, saying: They are one; or saying, They are many; if the ritual be not ever unto me: then expect the direful judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit!
53. This shall regenerate the world, the little world my sister, my heart & my tongue, unto whom I send this kiss. Also, o scribe and prophet, though thou be of the princes, it shall not assuage thee nor absolve thee. But ecstasy be thine and joy of earth: ever To me! To me!
54. Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold! thou, o prophet, shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein.
55. The child of thy bowels, he shall behold them.
56. Expect him not from the East, nor from the West; for from no expected house cometh that child. Aum! All words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand a little; solve the first half of the equation, leave the second unattacked. But thou hast all in the clear light, and some, though not all, in the dark.
57. Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God.
All these old letters of my Book are aright; but [Tzaddi] is not the Star. This also is secret: my prophet shall reveal it to the wise.
58. I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.
59. My incense is of resinous woods & gums; and there is no blood therein: because of my hair the trees of Eternity.
60. My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us. The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red. My colour is black to the blind, but the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also I have asecret glory for them that love me.
61. But to love me is better than all things: if under the night stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in spendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly to come before me in a single robe, and covered with a rich headdress. I love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!
62. At all my meetings with you shall the priestess say -- and her eyes shall burn with desire as she stands bare and rejoicing in my secret temple -- To me! To me! calling forth the flame of the hearts of all in her love-chant.
63. Sing the rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I love you! I love you!
64. I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.
65. To me! To me!
66. The Manifestation of Nuit is at an end.
An Epitaph
Of
The Evil One
Of Horus follows this Aeon,
And sung is the paean
To Gods forgotten this day,
Images formed in potter's clay.
Thelema is the Word of the Law,
93 the justification of it's claw,
Liber Al vel Legis, Love without Flaw,
Uttered from his Satanic maw.
Crowley, Lusting mental abberation,
Raising himself to the top elevation
Neophyte, Zelator, Philosiphus,
Adeptus, Magister Templi, Magus.
Frater Perdurabo known to some,
Intending a larger part to play.
Ordo Templis Orientis You led,
Perverse dreams within your head.
Dubbing Yourself the Great Beast,
Attending Satan's untimely feast,
Thinking Yourself the latter day Levi,
Never realising, You too must die.
Ipsissimus, Love under Will,
Living Baphomet for Your only thrill,
Sanity long driven out,
Abyssal Power? The final Doubt.
Requiring Subordinates For Your Domination,
Gullible Fools For Your Invocation,
Submissives For Your Abomination,
Mater Tenebrarum For Your Fornication.
In You their torture making,
Preceding thy Thanatos, for the taking.
Of Horus follows this Aeon,
And sung is the paean
To Gods forgotten this day,
Images formed in potter's clay.
Thelema is the Word of the Law,
93 the justification of it's claw,
Liber Al vel Legis, Love without Flaw,
Uttered from his Satanic maw.
Crowley, Lusting mental abberation,
Raising himself to the top elevation
Neophyte, Zelator, Philosiphus,
Adeptus, Magister Templi, Magus.
Frater Perdurabo known to some,
Intending a larger part to play.
Ordo Templis Orientis You led,
Perverse dreams within your head.
Dubbing Yourself the Great Beast,
Attending Satan's untimely feast,
Thinking Yourself the latter day Levi,
Never realising, You too must die.
Ipsissimus, Love under Will,
Living Baphomet for Your only thrill,
Sanity long driven out,
Abyssal Power? The final Doubt.
Requiring Subordinates For Your Domination,
Gullible Fools For Your Invocation,
Submissives For Your Abomination,
Mater Tenebrarum For Your Fornication.
In You their torture making,
Preceding thy Thanatos, for the taking.
Further information
OTO in the UK: http://www.oto-uk.org/
OTO Albion, in the UK: http://albion.oto.org.uk/
Do what thou wilt: http://www.dowhatthouwilt.com/symposium/
Golden Dawn: http://www.golden-dawn.org/
OTO in the US: http://oto-usa.org/
See also
Lafayette Ron Hubbard
Living in a mad world
Faith Christianity and religious politics
Magic Mushrooms
Interview with MAD from nwowatcher
Paganism in Scotland
Dismantling The Da Vinci Code
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