More Information about Aleister Crowley
a.k.a. "Frater Perdurabo" (5=6)
a.k.a. TO MEGA THERION (10 = 1)
Crowley Today
Aleister Crowley may have died in 1947, but his influence is still very much felt by the magicians of today. The CD soundtrack The Beast Speaks sold 8000 copies since its release in 1993, and the paperback edition of Crowley's Confessions was number two in Virgin Megastores top ten books. Don't be fooled into thinking that the magician of today is a slavish follower or member of some mind-bending cult. Crowley's watch word was Thelema -- which means Will. Those who choose to follow this magical path aim to de-condition themselves, to develop independence of spirit and ultimately to become their very own self. One of the many attractions of Crowley's type of Magick was this advice to follow one's own way and create your own life style. You don't need a priest or a judge to tell you how to act - work it out for yourself.
As part of the process of developing self knowledge, Crowley advocated the practice of Magick. This he defined as 'the science and art of causing change in conformity with will.' The history of magick is the history of human beings. Many of the things that are now labelled 'culture' began as experiments in ritual and magick viz. drama, music, art, dance, philosophy and poetry etc., etc. Magick has played a role in many key moments of our history; for example, during the fourteenth century, it was the philosophy of the Renaissance. In our own time, many modern art movements have been driven by magical ideas; for instance, the first abstract painting was made by the Theosophist Kandinsky. Magick is a valuable and reputable activity to undertake.
Crowley's Books
The solitary magician gathers most of his or her information from books and Crowley made a substantial contribution to the vast number of books on the subject. Most of his books are now in print, something like 100 titles. The secondary literature of commentaries and studies, as one might expect after almost 50 years, is very extensive indeed. However there is no need to read everything the master wrote. There are a handful of key texts that should give you a good grounding in the man and his magick.
Sadly, there is still no really objective biography of Crowley. The standard biography is John Symonds' The Great Beast, (lastest edition of which is entitled King of the Shadow Realm) which records all of the salient facts but is very hostile to Crowley's ideas and therefore gives a lively but unbalanced picture. Jean Overton Fuller's Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg is slightly more objective and written with much inside information. A modern attempt is Gerald Suster's Legacy of the Beast, which is too short to cover all the facts, and too sycophantic -nevertheless, it is not without value. Gerald Suster also wrote Crowley's entry in Dictionary of National Biography - Missing Persons (OUP 1993) which is also worth a read. Incidentally, 1993 was also the year in which Crowley made it to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations for the first time with his motto 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.'
The modern generation of Thelemites admires something in the spirit of Crowley rather than the word. He could be a interesting writer but as is often the case, the present day re-working of his material is often easier to follow and less peppered by some of Crowley's cultural baggage. Writers such as Jan Fries in Visual Magick and Jack Parsons in Freedom is a Two Edged Sword seem to have a better understanding of the magical philosophy for which Crowley was a conduit. However, you will undoubtedly want to make your own mind up in this, so apart from biography and if you have the stamina his massive autobiography, the following are Crowley's principle works.
1. Magick - alternatively called Magick in Theory and Practice or Book Four. This is his textbook of magick, leads the reader from basic yoga techniques through Golden Dawn type ritual to his own unique gnostic rituals, many of them with veiled sexual content. But beware, this is not a book for the beginner and you might do well to ask a more experienced magician to suggest a study plan for it beginning with Liber O, or even look at some of the secondary literature first. For example see Lon DuQuette's The Magick of Thelema or Israel Regardie's Middle Pillar, Eye in Triangle, and others.
2. The Book of Thoth, along with the tarot cards of the same name, is his brilliant study of the tarot, difficult to follow in parts if you have no familiarity with his 'Thelemic' imagery, but well worth persevering with. The tarot deck he created with English 'surrealist' Lady Frieda Harris, is fast becoming the most widely used esoteric tarot deck in the world.
3. 777 and other Qabalistic Writings. A essential summary of his symbol system, which also contains a reprint of Mathers' instructional essay on Qabalah.
4. Holy Books of Thelema - all brought together under one cover, including Liber al vel Legis - Book of the Law. The mystical poem that formed the core of Crowley's magical system. 'Delivered' to him by discarnate entity Aiwass during one of the most important mystical experiences of his life.
Crowley's People
There are a small but growing number of groups, based in this country that work with Crowley's ideas. The following list is not exhaustive, but gives some of the main contact points. It is recommended that you do not atttempt to join all of them at once.
O.T.O.: This stands for Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the Eastern Temple). A magical order, based on eastern eroto-gnostic techniques, some derived from Tantrism. Existed, long before Crowley came on the scene but soon became the principle vehicle for his magical work. Has undergone a big revival over the last ten years. Unfortunately, split into several rival tendencies following the death of Crowley's successor, Karl Germer. In England there are two main groups claiming title to Crowley's mantle: In other parts of Europe and the world, other OTOs exist and can claim priority. There are currently legal threats flying between these groups, so I hope I get it right.
i. OTO 'Caliphate' - BM Thelema, London WC1N 3XX - more 'traditional' if it can be termed so. Uses original OTO Masonic style rituals and charges annual subscriptions and initiation fees.
ii. OTO 'Typhonian' BM Starfire, London WC1N 3XX. Ruled by famous occult scholar Kenneth Grant, whose book Aleister Crowley & the Hidden God, revolutionised the understanding of Crowley magick. Ditched the old Masonic style rituals in favour of the syllabus very like the Argentinum Astrum, i.e. individual graded magical practices leading to adeptship.
Non-O.T.O. Thelemic Groups
Apart from the 'OTOs' there are a number of 'new wave' magical groups and orders that are trying to refashion the occult community more in tune with modern needs. Strict hierarchies, authoritarianism and obscurantism are definitely out. An honest attempt to build a fellowship or sodality of magicians is on the cards.
[Note that these addresses may or may not still be valid. A web search under 'Aleister Crowley' will turn up a large amount of additional information and up-to-date contact data.]
Chaos Magic and the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT)
C/O BM Sorcery
London WC1N 3XX
Another important new style of magick that has developed out of the Thelemic one. Other influences include new physics and European shamanism.
The Kaula-Nath Community (including AMOOKOS)
C/O PO Box 250, Oxford, OX1 1AP
East-West tantrik groups, founded by Dadaji, one of Crowley's disciple's in the 1930s who, on the master's advice, went to India and became a sadhu. A unique blend of western occultism with authentic magical Hinduism. Has an older equivalent of Crowley's 'Law of Thelema' - viz: svecchacara - 'the path of ones own will'.
Crowley and the Media
There has been precious little media attention to Crowley, no film or documentary of any kind has been made, despite the many interesting events of his life. There are been one or two short radio pieces and an interesting stage play by Snoo Wilson some time back. Snoo Wilson recently did a fifteen minute broadcast for UK's Channel 4 (reprinted in Thelemic Magick I from Mandrake of Oxford.) Mandrake are currently working on the publication of novel based on events at the Abbey of Thelema in Sicili, entitled I Crowley. He has also written a screenplay called The Beast, which is being considered for production as a major film.
"Crowley's Law of Thelema, as an ideal Freemasonry, saw each member of the human race as unique, sovereign, and responsible only to himself."
"Crowley devoted a whole chapter in The Confessions his so- called 'Autohagiography' to Freemasonry, especially the story of his relationship with John Yarker [who sold the 33rd degree 'patents' to men like Crowley who did not possess any of the legitimate degrees of Freemasonry. Yarker was expelled from this Order on the 30th November, 1870]...It is obvious that Crowley had in mind that he would be the best person qualified to be sort of a 'Supreme-International-Grand-Master' and since he fancied himself to be 'a god' that Masonry as well as every body else should worship him."
- Grendel Grettisson (mimir@stein.u.washington.edu)
"We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of Kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world...I am of the snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs...They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self ...Be strong oh man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture.... The kings of the earth shall be kings forever: the slaves shall serve.
"Them that seek to entrap thee, to over throw thee, them attack without pity or quarter; and destroy them utterly. I am unique and conqueror. I am not of the slaves that perish. Be they damned and dead! Amen. Pity not the fallen! I never knew them. I am not for them. I console not: I hate the consoled and the consoler!"
- Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law
"Acting on the authority of Aiwaz [his Holy Guardian Angel], Crowley was happy to supplant Mathers and his Golden Dawn by forming a new order called Astrum Argentum, or Silver Star, named after Set, or Sirius, of which he claimed our sun was but a reflection, or son. The order, which Crowley considered the truly occult representative of the Great White Brotherhood, was designed to bring out into the open the secret knowledge so painstakingly preserved by initiates."
Karl Kellner, a wealthy Austrian iron founder, high Mason, and founder of the Ordo Templi Orientis "claimed to have rediscovered the 'secret doctrine' during travels in India, where he had been initiated into Tantrism...Theodor Reuss, reputed agent of the German secret service, employed to spy on British Marxists, inherited the leadership of the OTO..."
- Peter Tompkins, The Magic of Obelisks
"In 1902 Reuss set up a German Order (Ordo Templi Orientis) which still exists and claims to continue the teachings of the Knights Templar. Aleister Crowley was initiated by Reuss and allowed to establish an English branch of the Order known as the Mysteria Mystica Maxima. The M.M.M. was later assimilated into Crowley's own Argenteum Astrum."
- David Conway, Ritual Magic
"In World War I Aleister Crowley ingratiated himself with an Hermetic sect in order to reveal to the Americans that is head was a highly dangerous German agent. In World War II it was well known in British Intelligence that many leading Nazis were interested in the occult and especially in astrology. Crowley did some work for MI5, but his project for dropping occult information by leaflet on the enemy was rejected by the authorities."
- Richard Deacon, Spyclopaedia
"In 1920 he established his famous Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily, where, as in Rabelais' fictional abbey of the same name, the motto was 'Do as thou wilt'. Stories of drug-taking, sexual orgies and even child-sacrifice soon began to circulate, until in the end Mussolini ordered Crowley's expulsion from Italy."
- David Conway, Ritual Magic
"Crowley's method of achieving and transcending religious visions was based on Hindu Bhakti yoga and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Once a manifestation of a divinity was experienced, Crowley would have the experimenter stop and start over with a different God.
"After you have run through three or four divinities in this manner... you will be increasing skeptical about everybody's reality maps, including your own."
- Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger
In traveling to Dee's worlds using his "astral body", "sexual acts, which he had indulged in 'with casual abandon' became for him a sacrament, a rite to be performed deliberately for the glory of the gods. Buggery, Crowley avowed, other than for religious purposes, was abominable..."
"To impersonate an Egyptian god-form, mental concentration on the form of the god was required throughout intercourse; one had to imagine the god to have a life of its own. At the moment of climax, a transference of consciousness to that of the image was necessary, 'blending the personality of the initiate with that of the god.'"
- Peter Tompkins, The Magic of Obelisks
"Crowley was aware of the possibility of opening the spatial gateways and of admitting an extraterrestrial Current in the human life-wave...It is an occult tradition - and Lovecraft gave it persistent utterance in his writings - that some transfinite and superhuman power is marshaling its forces with intent to invade and take possession of this planet... This is reminiscent of Charles Fort's dark hints about a secret society on earth already in contact with cosmic beings and, perhaps, preparing the way for their advent. Crowley dispels the aura of evil with which these authors (Lovecraft and Fort) invest the fact; he prefers to interpret it Thelemically, not as an attack upon human consciousness by an extra-terrestrial and alien entity but as an expansion of consciousness from within, to embrace other stars and to absorb their energies into a system that is thereby enriched and rendered truly cosmic by the process."
- Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God
"This seems to be a vividly poetic pre-statement of Leary's theory that Higher Intelligence is 'divided,' by sending out DNA seed to fertilize every womb-planet in the galaxy, 'for the chance of union', and return of these 'children' after they have evolved past the larval circuits into higher modes of consciousness."
- Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger
In the new aeon, "a race will be propagated of magically generated beings able to probe extraterrestrial dimensions. And the next stage in the advancement of evolution on the planet 'will be achieved by a willed congress with extra-terrestrial entities of which, in a sense, Aiwaz [Crowley's Guardian Angel] is the immediate messenger to humanity.'"
- Peter Tompkins, "The Magic of Obelisks"