"The Crowley 'Joke' & My Allergic Reaction to Occultism"

[Project Willow]

^
So here’s something to consider. If you’re trying to attract other survivors, but you’ve got little to offer them in terms of insight because your own case remains “nebulous”, and you’re following instinct and engaging in speculation, instead of taking an evidence based journalistic approach, it’s quite possible you’re functioning as a honey pot and unconsciously reinforcing or triggering programming. In my experience, this is the case 99% of the time. Trying to go public before full recovery is inadvisable, to say the least, and I’m saying that as someone who has done it.

[guruilla]

^
So here’s something to consider. If you’re trying to attract other survivors, but you’ve got little to offer them in terms of insight because your own case remains “nebulous”, and you’re following instinct and engaging in speculation, instead of taking an evidence based journalistic approach, it’s quite possible you’re functioning as a honey pot and unconsciously reinforcing or triggering programming. In my experience, this is the case 99% of the time. Trying to go public before full recovery is inadvisable, to say the least, and I’m saying that as someone who has done it.

I may have misspoken, I am not trying to attract survivors, only seeing that this is happening and that they are describing positive effects from what I am "doing." That's why I placed "do" in quotes. All I am engaged in is my own process of self-discovery, like any "artist." I'm not an activist. You are trying to force me into your own mold, still.

[MacCruiskeen]

I'm not qualified to comment on any substantive point raised in this thread, but maybe someone can help me in passing (this is a serious request): What is or ever has been interesting about Aleister Crowley? I mean, what did he ever do apart from posing around in ridiculous costumes, being "compelling", and treating women (and men, and maybe children) abominably? Is there a good book or article that explains why anyone should regard Crowley as anything more than a complete chancer or an actual crook?


Goth Metal singer, 58, seeks band, Leamington Spa area. All offers considered.

Did any of his "magic" ever have any detectable effect whatsoever?

[Project Willow]

I'm really not qualified to comment on any substantive point raised in this thread, but maybe someone can help me in passing (this is a serious request): What is or ever has been interesting about Aleister Crowley? I mean, what did he ever do apart from posing around in ridiculous costumes, being "compelling", and treating women (and men) abominably?

Did any of his "magic" ever have any detectable effect whatsoever?

Who knows, however, it seems to be very entertaining for some people. There are a few isolated researchers who have attempted to track the influence of Crowley on the occult belief systems of human trafficking rings, as well as high profile murderers, but I think in most cases this is a huge distraction. I really don't care what costumes rapists and torturers wear or what they chant. I don't think belief is motivating perpetration, rather belief is constructed to rationalize, contextualize, and cover perpetration, so when people get all caught up in focusing on the ritual rather than the abuse, they're headed down a dead end path. This is undoubtably the case when it comes to public disclosures.

[MacCruiskeen]

Thanks, Willow. You posted while I was amending my post. Yes, my impression has always been that he was just a chancer and a user. The bombast and the pretence and the hocus-pocus were just there to dazzle any potential victims.

I think we're property.

[slimmouse]

I assume you know he was an extremely well connected spook Mac? Saville on drugs.

Because as someone who knows that , I find Crowley quite compelling

[MacCruiskeen]

Yeah, the spookery I had heard tell of. Damn, I'm going to have to read up on the old phoney, I suppose. Any recommendations?

[slimmouse]

Hey, who ever said Crowley was a phoney?

From where Im sat Love is law is truth.

[guruilla]

I'm not qualified to comment on any substantive point raised in this thread, but maybe someone can help me in passing (this is a serious request): What is or ever has been interesting about Aleister Crowley? I mean, what did he ever do apart from posing around in ridiculous costumes, being "compelling", and treating women (and men, and maybe children) abominably? Is there a good book or article that explains why anyone should regard Crowley as anything more than a complete chancer or an actual crook?

I am very wary about sharing this here or anywhere since it is uncooked, but, since someone asked what I think is one of, if not the most relevant question here, this is from chap 10. "Why Should We Take Crowley Seriously?"

This leads to the next question that came to me, while undergoing the unpleasant task of reading through passages from these journals: why should I take Crowley seriously at all? The answer that came to me was really a variation of the same question: because so many people did take Crowley seriously, and continue to do so. As a result of this, Crowley’s influence on Western culture is incalculable, and we may as well ask why take Hitler seriously when he was so obviously “insane.” The point isn’t how sane or insane a person is by the usual psychological criteria, or how demented their beliefs might seem to us, but how much they and their beliefs have communicated, and how much they have been imitated. John Harrington wrote, “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” Insanity that’s communicated in such a way as to inspire mimesis eventually becomes something that can’t be called insanity. If not normalized, then at the very least it becomes the basis for a religious (or other) sort of social “movement.” Insanity that prospers, none dare call insanity.

Aleister Crowley is of interest—and of huge, though perhaps lamentable, social importance—because his work literally spells out some of the major lynchpins of “occultic” beliefs in the 19th, 20th, and now 21st centuries. The degree to which he merely re-introduced existing beliefs, as opposed to formulated new ones, is beyond the scope of this exploration. Suffice it to say that these beliefs have persisted throughout long periods of time (at the very least centuries), and that they continue to inspire people to act on them. As such, these beliefs have to be considered real, practical, and useful, as beliefs, though the question of useful to whom and for what is another matter, and one of the primary questions of this investigation.

[PufPuf93]

Yeah, the spookery I had heard tell of. Damn, I'm going to have to read up on the old phoney, I suppose. Any recommendations?

1. Perdurabo - The Life of Aleister Crowley; Kaczynski (2002) - Well regarded bio by most.
2. Do What Thou Wilt - A Life of Aleister Crowley; Sutin (2000) - Note Sutin is PKD's biographer, Perhaps the most even handed treatment.
3. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley; Crowley (1969) autohagiography edited from a larger unpublished transcript by Symonds and Grant
4. The Eye in the Triangle - An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley; Regardie (1970) - Regardie was at one time AC's secretary. He is best known for releasing Golden Dawn teachings to the public.
5. The Magickal Essence of Aleister Crowley, Red Flame No. 7; Cornelius (1999) - Good overview of Crowley's system of magick , also some history on Caliphate
6. Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God; Grant (1972) - Grant was a literary executor of AC and founded a Thelemic order and wrote many books. Also was literary executor and friend of Austin Osman Spare.
7. The Magical World of Aleister Crowley; King (1977) - King published another now rare and once controversial book releasing the higher order and sex magick rituals of the OTO.
8. The Star in The West: A Critical Essay Upon the Works of Aleister Crowley ; Fuller (1907) - Fuller was an early disciple that broke with AC who had more fame as a military strategist and western fascist sympathizer.
9. Aleister Crowley The Beast in Berlin; Churton (2014)
10. Secret Agent 666 - Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence, and the Occult; Spence (2008)

[Harvey]

[humour] Not knowing anything else, I'd say he looks like a fun guy from that picture. [/humour]

[guruilla]

Yeah, the spookery I had heard tell of. Damn, I'm going to have to read up on the old phoney, I suppose. Any recommendations?

1. Perdurabo - The Life of Aleister Crowley; Kaczynski (2002) - Well regarded bio by most.
2. Do What Thou Wilt - A Life of Aleister Crowley; Sutin (2000) - Note Sutin is PKD's biographer, Perhaps the most even handed treatment.
3. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley; Crowley (1969) autohagiography edited from a larger unpublished transcript by Symonds and Grant
4. The Eye in the Triangle - An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley; Regardie (1970) - Regardie was at one time AC's secretary. He is best known for releasing Golden Dawn teachings to the public.
5. The Magickal Essence of Aleister Crowley, Red Flame No. 7; Cornelius (1999) - Good overview of Crowley's system of magick , also some history on Caliphate
6. Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God; Grant (1972) - Grant was a literary executor of AC and founded a Thelemic order and wrote many books. Also was literary executor and friend of Austin Osman Spare.
7. The Magical World of Aleister Crowley; King (1977) - King published another now rare and once controversial book releasing the higher order and sex magick rituals of the OTO.
8. The Star in The West: A Critical Essay Upon the Works of Aleister Crowley ; Fuller (1907) - Fuller was an early disciple that broke with AC who had more fame as a military strategist and western fascist sympathizer.
9. Aleister Crowley The Beast in Berlin; Churton (2014)
10. Secret Agent 666 - Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence, and the Occult; Spence (2008)

Having read half of it, I would not recommend # 1, it is an obvious puff bio written by a high-ranking OTO member, so no chance of an even hand there. I have not read the Sutin one but it sounds hopeful. Most of these books are from the AC camp and IMO are primarily written to keep the cash cow of Themela fat and lactating. I heard the Martin Booth A Magickal Life is a bit more impartial. Richard T Cole's Liber Bogus is an interesting alternative take, maybe the only one out there, not counting the Christian counter-attack (William Ramsay's Prophet of Evil, which I have not read, tho Ramsay seems to have done his AC research before going off on a Christian rant).

This one also sounds promising, by Hugh Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism; I got a key quote from the chapter on AC:

“Crowley, I will argue, hoped to find in deliberate acts of transgression a radical kind of superhuman power, one that went well beyond the transgressive rites performed by Reuss and the early Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO)—indeed, a power that could explode the boundaries of Western society and open the way for a new era of history.”
—Hugh B. Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism

[PufPuf93]

Yeah, the spookery I had heard tell of. Damn, I'm going to have to read up on the old phoney, I suppose. Any recommendations?

1. Perdurabo - The Life of Aleister Crowley; Kaczynski (2002) - Well regarded bio by most.
2. Do What Thou Wilt - A Life of Aleister Crowley; Sutin (2000) - Note Sutin is PKD's biographer, Perhaps the most even handed treatment.
3. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley; Crowley (1969) autohagiography edited from a larger unpublished transcript by Symonds and Grant
4. The Eye in the Triangle - An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley; Regardie (1970) - Regardie was at one time AC's secretary. He is best known for releasing Golden Dawn teachings to the public.
5. The Magickal Essence of Aleister Crowley, Red Flame No. 7; Cornelius (1999) - Good overview of Crowley's system of magick , also some history on Caliphate
6. Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God; Grant (1972) - Grant was a literary executor of AC and founded a Thelemic order and wrote many books. Also was literary executor and friend of Austin Osman Spare.
7. The Magical World of Aleister Crowley; King (1977) - King published another now rare and once controversial book releasing the higher order and sex magick rituals of the OTO.
8. The Star in The West: A Critical Essay Upon the Works of Aleister Crowley ; Fuller (1907) - Fuller was an early disciple that broke with AC who had more fame as a military strategist and western fascist sympathizer.
9. Aleister Crowley The Beast in Berlin; Churton (2014)
10. Secret Agent 666 - Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence, and the Occult; Spence (2008)

Having read half of it, I would not recommend # 1, it is an obvious puff bio written by a high-ranking OTO member, so no chance of an even hand there. I have not read the Sutin one but it sounds hopeful. Most of these books are from the AC camp and IMO are primarily written to keep the cash cow of Themela fat and lactating. I heard the Martin Booth A Magickal Life is a bit more impartial. Richard T Cole's Liber Bogus is an interesting alternative take, maybe the only one out there, not counting the Christian counter-attack (William Ramsay's Prophet of Evil, which I have not read, tho Ramsay seems to have done his AC research before going off on a Christian rant).

This one also sounds promising, by Hugh Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism; I got a key quote from the chapter on AC:

“Crowley, I will argue, hoped to find in deliberate acts of transgression a radical kind of superhuman power, one that went well beyond the transgressive rites performed by Reuss and the early Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO)—indeed, a power that could explode the boundaries of Western society and open the way for a new era of history.”
—Hugh B. Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism

Regards Perdurabo note I said, "most".

Sutin is even handed in that he is not of the occult community and strives to be fact based.

I listed biographies in my library. Note also I no longer search out and buy occult books and have not added to my collection since 2009, the 2014 Churton book is an exception.

Read the material on the Cole book and the associated Facebook page. Cole has found nothing new but items already well known within the academic and scholarship community and put a rather shallow negative "gotya", spin.

Regards the deliberate acts of transgression in western hermicism, look to the Sabbateans for provenance. Various Sabbateans sects practiced antinomian acts in general and some specific antinomian sexual activities.

You might look to the Solar Lodge and the Burlinggames and the boy in the box for something lurid.

Also look at Koenig's The Ordo Templi Orientis Phenomenon website: http://www.parareligion.ch/
Also Hubbard was associated with Jack Parsons and Crowley material had great influence on the start of Scientology.

[tapitsbo]

I've read attempts to link the Sabbataeans directly to the OTO through one of Frank's sons and a group called the Asiatic Brethren.

The deliberately transgressive ethos is very ancient and predates all of this.

[MacCruiskeen]

PufPuf93 and guruilla, thanks very much for your responses. I appreciate the time and effort you put into them. If and when I start to read up on Crowley I now at least have some idea where to start looking.

John Lennon sticking The Beast's image on the cover of Sgt Pepper, Jimmy Page buying his house at Loch Ness... I can kind of understand the fascination, the frisson, for kids who had grown up in Forties and Fifties Britain, pre-TV and pre-Internet: the rumours, the rituals and the magic[k] and The Devil and the secret orgies and the Unspeakably Perverted S*x. I suppose Crowley has his (minor) place in cultural history. I just don't yet see why it should be any larger than the place occupied by, say, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, who was at least quite funny.