I thought that I’d share this here. It’s a copy of an online thread that occurred today and someone mentioned that it contained useful information. I hope you can look past my egotistical drive to be correct and see the debate that’s going on between different groups: some groups that accept Crowley as contributor to the Occult movement and a exposed of Occult knowledge and some that despise him and feel his contribution should be deleted from history. I decided to hide people’s full names to protect their identities. Some were Thelemites, at least one was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis and at least one was an aspirant to the A.:.A.:. and some hated Crowley and anything to do with him. So there is quite a debate that goes on here. Nick Farrell runs one of the most informed Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn groups called the Magical Order of the Aurea Aurora and he contributed a lot to the conversation. He mentions one of his books so I’ve included it at the bottom.
In response to a post about Crowley going insane from drug use at the end of his life.
Me: I think I want to tackle a few myths right now about Mr. Crowley:
Crowley was not insane at the end of his life. He was writing the Book of Thoth and some of the content for Magic Without Tears before he died and it makes perfect sense as much as most books designed to elucidate the mysteries of magic. He wasn’t babbling a drooling down himself as OP with have you believe.
Crowley’s magickal practice did not make him a sexual deviant. Crowley was very interested in sex before he got involved in magic this was why his mother called him the beast 666. He was also bi-sexual and that was what got him called a sexual deviant. If you’re going to complain about his sexual deviance you’re basically just being homophobic. Why should he have conformed to the Victorian social rules concerning sex?
Yes Crowley was egotistical. But frankly so are you! So am I! So is Blanche! At least Crowley had the humility to write in articles for his students to see that he was having issues with his ego getting in the way of his magical practices.
Crowley was labelled a Satanist by the press, but the press and their readers were very Christian at the time. Go into a Christian church tell them that you’re into neopaganism, magic or New Age stuff and then ask them if they would label you a Satanist.
Crowley was a recreational drug taker. So was most of the society who could afford drugs. You bought your opium from the pharmacy at the time! Your dentist prescribed Cocaine for pain relief. I would understand us judging him for this if he lived after the war on drugs, but at the time it was a common practice and without living through it, you just don’t know people’s attitudes to drugs at the time. It wasn’t like he was shooting up in a crack den or lying in a gutter off his face on heroine. Also, if you knew that you could get pleasure from something and it was not dangerous to your wellbeing and you did it in the safety and comfort of your own home, not bothering anyone, wouldn’t it be crazier not to the thing you enjoyed that made you feel good?
And finally regarding the comment that he thought he was the devil. Crowley did NOT actually think he was the devil! He did not believe that Christianity was entirely accurate, only that it had part of the truth and not all. He did not believe in a single Devil only an inverted side to god. He believed that the Book of Revelation (in the bible) foretold of a time when Christianity would cease and recognized that “the beast” referred to in this book was part of this process of revealing the end of Christianity. He believed he was this beast, which is not the same as the devil. He felt that some of the revelations he was having showed the age of Christianity was coming to an end. Look at home much Christianity guided UK politics at the time and compare that to now. Look at how much everyone believed in self-sacrifice for the society you live in where as now we believe in people growing into their own personal truth. There’s been a MASSIVE cultural revolution in the last 100 years. Maybe there was a new message that changed the world. You make it sound like Crowley delusionally thought he was Satan himself incarnated as a man because of taking too many drugs and being insane. Anyone who takes Christian literature so literally is wholly unworthy to read it!
Krissy E: Rant over? Some of the attitudes to Crowley are misguided and really irritating, I have to agree!
Me: I just don’t like it when people say I’m not going to take Crowley seriously because he died in an insane asylum, penniless and poor. When he didn’t die in an insane asylum and wasn’t poor or penniless. He died in the comfort of a boarding house and he not only had a little bit of his own money which was unusual so soon after the second world war, but he also had some wealthy benefactors who believed in his work. If you’re going to not like Crowley and ignore everything he has to say, that’s fine do it… but don’t delude yourself that you’re doing it for any reason other than YOU DON’T LIKE HIM. All these false histories as if they justify ignorance. It’s willful ignorance and that’s fine but stop making crap up.
Me: As you heard when you were driving me to the station!
Kathy B: I tried to watch a documentary on Crowley recently, but turned it off after roughly ten minutes. I had a really hard time with the way they portrayed him. It actually made me sick to my stomach and I turned it off.
Me: I assume it was inaccurate then? I mean there’s enough bad stuff for people to say about him without making stuff up. It has become cool to go Crowley bashing! I think it stems from Wiccan groups trying to keep control of their initiates. Don’t go learning from Crowley. Look how evil he turned. Stick to learning from us so you won’t turn evil.
Krissy E: I have decided that those who demonise Crowley are simply jealous that he got to do wild ‘n’ crazy things with his life and magick, and they don’t. When have you ever heard a successful rich person, who lives the high life, complete with sex, drugs, drink and fun ever criticising Crowley? Never. It’s always those with dried out, boring existences, and often a vested interest in keeping the peasants under control. Jealousy, I tell you. Give me Crowleys rich tapestry, any day!
Cynthia C: Good to stand up for what you believe in.
Me: Understand that I have nothing against Wiccan groups where there is no hierarchical structure and everyone is allowed to study whatever the hell they want! I belong to one of those groups and it’s amazing! It’s often older witches or magicians who get nervous that their charge is going to surpass them by studying something they haven’t looked into.
Me: oh wow Krissy!
Cynthia C: I wonder if it is less about Wiccans than Golden Dawn initiates/aspirants?
Me: Very possible… Golden Dawn aspirants… don’t get me started. The truth is that Crowley was anti-Christian and they are Rosicrucian which officially is Christian. He was a criticism of them. But Crowley revealed so much about their beliefs so much information that would otherwise have been lost about the GD is around thanks to him.
But I do get these comments a lot from people that call themselves pagan, but whose practice bears a striking resemblance to a Wiccan circle. A circle with from HOGD elemental directions. One they probably got from Gardner who was an initiate of Aleister Crowley.
Nick Farrell: Yeah much of the Beast’s PR was rubbish… although some of it was his own fault… or part of his cunning plan. However, he was a racist, a misogynist and a bit of a fascist who believed that rape could be an initiation by the higher self so he was not whiter than white.
Me: Agree about the not whiter than white! Sadly, there was no concern with racism in those times, not until post Second World War. People were racist. I think he was quite openly anti-Christian, but when he was equally anti-Jew it seemed very antisemitic. (see the comments about Neuberg’s family). It wasn’t really about race for him only the morality and social control that prevented sexual liberation. There was a point where he supposedly acted as spy? And pretended to be a racist German journalist. I thought that was more to ridicule the Germans rather than reflecting his true views. On the other hand rape initiation Nick? Where are you getting this information from?
Nick Farrell: It was a quote that Scarlet dug up…. Ravoli insisted it did not exist and if it did he would pay $50 to Don Kraig… she provided the quote and he had to pay up one of the better stories that came up….
Nick Farrell: Not sure that racism in the UK was that common there was a lot of antisemitic stuff which Crowley blessed but actually, racism was not as common. The sort of thing you used to get was the Dion Fortune time of no African magic…. but at the time there were not that many living in the UK… so that particular card was focused on Jews.
Me: Where is this quote? in his commentary on the book of the law he wrote : “Such acts as rape, and the assault or seduction of infants, may therefore be justly regarded as offences against the Law of Liberty, and repressed in the interests of that Law.” Is that it? Also the UK was deeply racist during the Second World War. A number of prominent people talked about good breeding and practiced forms of eugenics, it just wasn’t state sanctioned. It is just easier for us to bring up history that criticises our enemies than ourselves.
Nick Farrell: Hang on, I will look to see if I still have it.
Nick Farrell: I can’t find it @Scarlet Magdalene can you help out?
Me: I know that he claimed that Aiwaz told him to write in the BOTL, “let all chaste women be despised”. But I believe that this was just an attempt to discourage people from programming their daughters that they must be pure so they can sell them to the highest bidder for a decent dowry.
Nick Farrell: No, this was more explicit.
Kathy B: I also belong to a group where all are encouraged to follow their own paths. We don’t criticize each others’ ways and hold regular classes so that each person can share a bit of what they do. It’s wonderful, though many aren’t as lucky to experience community in this way.
Me: sounds good. People should be able to do what they want and not justify with making up stories. I remember one part where it says that rough sex where you hold one partner down isn’t as bad as using legal or financial means to procure sexual submission something like that. I don’t remember where he wrote that.
Me: In other words getting your kink on, isn’t as bad as sexual slavery.
Claire S: I think AC had great PR for his purposes. He didn’t want people to emulate him, he wanted them to find their own way, so he created a persona that was not aspirational.
It’s about the message, not the man. The message is “do your Will”. My Will is not the same as AC’s, his work is not mine. His work has been done. So why should his lifestyle have anything to do with mine, or anyone else’s?
Me: Well said Claire.
Nick Farrell: I will see if Scarlet can dig up the quote again….
Me: Also magic is officially banned as non-canonical in the Christian church. Anyone who comes from a superstitious background who is going to constantly scare themselves shouldn’t get involved. Besides they’re always going to try to interpret their results through a heavily coloured lens. So anyone who’s going to get freaked out about something possibly demonic like “I’m the Beast 666, muahhahah” SHOULD be afraid of practising magic. They SHOULD head to the hills and shouldn’t be practising magic. It gets messy! Just look at Enochian magic and how demonic spirits revealed the wrong sigil to Dee the first time before the angels took over (or did they?). Crowley’s PR scared away people who probably shouldn’t be doing magic in the first place.
Me: Magic should only be open to those with the ability to compartmentalize and those who are not afraid of what they might be facing in the acts of magic! Crowley did good to scare off the wrong people.
Claire S: Depends on how you define magic. AFAIK most Christian churches still have exorcists.
Claire S: And mass…
Me: For me, magic is multiple things… the main thing is a science for finding out the truth. I hope that one day I will achieve communion with divine forces if I haven’t already done so and determine the truth of the BOTL for myself by reference to my own experiences of angels and gods. Same with chunks of the Bible and the Qoran. It is also a method of theurgy which according to Agrippa you can follow the process of creation backward in order to arrive at the throne of god or equivalent. But I get your point. Those people can stick to the sort of magic they might perform at church.
Me: Nick Farrell could this be your quote?
“The sexual act is a sacrament of Will. To profane it is the great offence. All true expression of it is lawful; all suppression or distortion is contrary to the Law of Liberty. To use legal or financial constraint to compel either abstention or submission, is entirely horrible, unnatural and absurd. Physical constraint, up to a certain point, is not so seriously wrong; for it has its roots in the original sex-conflict which we see in animals, and has often the effect of exciting Love in his highest and noblest shape. Some of the most passionate and permanent attachments have begun with rape. Rome was actually founded thereon.”
Nick Farrell: No it specifically gave the classic rape excuse (I didn’t know … I thought she liked it rough) and then said something about it being possible as part of an initiation.
Me: “Mutual consent to the act is the condition thereof. It must, of course, be understood that such consent is not always explicit. There are cases when seduction or rape may be emancipation or initiation to another. Such acts can only be judged by their results.”
Me: But as I was saying before magic is about truth. Truth is impossible without compartmentalizing. “consent is not always explicit” does sound very much like “Whoops, I thought she liked it rough”. But then again I don’t know if he’s talking about his own sexual actions because the rest of the text (Liber Legis Chapter 1 verse 52 comments).
Knowing what you want reality to be isn’t always what it is. What he is saying he sounds very much like Jeremy Bentham. It can only be judged by results suggests to me that sometimes the most painful process we go through can often yield a person more adept at handling life. A person liberated. But he then does fail to say it could also result in a person more traumatised and trapped which is worrying.
Pain can be enough that it pushes the individual to evolve. It probably is that higher beings, including our own higher selves, are not subject to pain, uncleanliness, etc. They might not be aware of the weight we would put on the trauma this would cause and for them it might seem okay. See Krishna’s comments in the Bhagavad Gita where from his perspective pain and pleasure are the same.
Me: to paraphrase… life sucks, but sometimes you can take the negative positively.
Me: Also as I was saying you need to be able to compartmentalize. Just because you don’t like Crowley, doesn’t mean you can’t learn from him and even if he was totally wrong about this, to throw out everything else he said as well is to chuck out the baby with the bath water.
Nick Farrell: not saying that… just saying he was not perfect…. I don’t write someone off because historically they were an idiot…. but I don’t deny they were an idiot. In the GD area, people are too quick to make gods of people and get very very cross when you point out their idol’s mortality.
Me: I admit that Crowley had flaws and I do not see him as an idol. But I abhor the attitude that many take which says that they don’t like him so they will disregard any progress he made in terms of elucidating the spiritual nature of the universe.
Imagine if I said I don’t like Hans Geiger because he helped the Nazis, so I’m going to refuse to believe that an atom is laid out with a nucleus and electrons orbiting it in shells as the Geiger Marsden experiment clearly showed and I’m not going to repeat that because that is the sort of thing a nazi sympathiser would do.
Nick Farrell: exactly my point… but if you turned Geiger into a god and said he must always be a good guy, which people do with both Crowley and Mathers then you miss the point of his life. Crowley might have wanted to be seen as a god (I doubt it) or a messiah… but his power is in him being human. If an otherwise loser, like Mathers, can do something brilliant like the GD then I can too.
Me: I don’t seek to turn him into a god, but I think accusing him of being a fascist and saying that he believes in rape as a method of initiation suggests some things about him that are not true, like maybe he intended to go around raping people.
Nick Farrell: I would have another look at the quote first…. the difficulty I have with reading Crowley is that he is not consistent and has found himself hijacked by a counter-culture, which I don’t think he would have agreed with. Understanding his humanity is one way that you actually get where he is coming from. (Rather than what you would like him to be coming from.) I hit the same stuff with Mathers and when I started looking at what he was really doing (rather than what either I or Howe thought). He became more interesting. Felkin is another one only in his case the opposite applies. History has made him into a fool when he clearly wasn’t.
Me: Yes he wasn’t consistent! But neither is a scientist with his faith. As science changes our understanding of the divine, we must change the models that we use to describe it. One might appear inconsistent, but the truth is consistent we are simply evolving the information one has.
Nick Farrell: I agree which is why Crowley does not work for fundamentalists. Unfortunately, you get a lot of those following Crowley.
Krissy E: I would like to back up Claire S’s earlier comment. I do My Will, not Crowley’s. I belong to a fraternal organization which uses Crowley’s rituals to enable all members to spiritually develop, with the aim of becoming at one with the Divine. We can approach this in our own individual ways, using whichever terms, names,archetypes we choose. I have yet to meet anyone who gives Crowley God status. As a modern woman, the only way it can work for me is to consider Crowley as a human product of his time. I have yet to meet any brethren who would say otherwise.
Claire S: Most brethren I know generally consider him to be a bit of a douche. A clever douche, who knew his magic, but no someone they’d spend personal time with.
Claire S: It should be added that most prophets were not thought of well in their time
Krissy E: I would, but only to have the chance to beat him in the debauchery stakes, lol
Claire S: I gather he would be entirely up for being beaten in the debauchery states. I was going to say “nto someone they’d invite to dinner” but I think a lot of people would like to talk shop with him, just not a lot else. From the body of work he produced I doubt he did much else.
Krissy E: oh the trials of inherited wealth and not having to work. I imagine he was a total bore, unless talking shop! Not much of a talent when it comes to debauchery, i think social skills are more useful, lol
Me: Claire you know he climbed mountains and wrote poetry (not great poetry though)
Claire S: Yes I do.
Claire S: And I have had the privilege of having to be the bloody orator for some of his poetry…
Me: me too once upon a time.
Nick Farrell: he also was not expelled from the GD for being gay… he was prevented entry into the 5=6 for being gay. He went to Paris and agreed to do whatever Mathers wanted for a 5=6 and the insanity which was the Battle of Blythe Road becan
Dáithí Ó: At the risk of getting dumped upon at our next poetry reading, Claire S…
Me: He wasn’t gay he was more bi. and to be clear are you saying you dont think gay people should not be initiated to 5=6?
Nick Farrell: at the time Yeats and co were terrified of a big bust of the gay group which Crowley was a part of…. the problem is that it was all illegal at that time… society had not defined a different between homosexuality and bi-sexuality.
Me: I didn’t know this I thought the GD just separated because of mather’s bullshit. Sending Crowley to magick duel. Apparently the whole thing ended when Yeat stopped doing magick and just kick Crowley down the stairs. I would have loved to have seen that.
Me: I knew he and Yeats didn’t get on. I imagine Yeats didn’t like his poetry about white stains in his pants.
Nick Farrell: Crowley said that… Yeats didnt even know who was
Nick Farrell: Rememeber it is really important that Crowley is not 100 per cent reliable as a source
Me: if yeats didn’t know who he was then why reject him entrance to the inner order
Nick Farrell: his exact works is “the inner order is not a reform school”
Nick Farrell: Crowley was not exactly infamous at that point in history
Me: “…reform school for wayward boys” I remember the quote but thought it had been Westcott. I’m seriously confused. Yeats did or didn’t know who he was?
Nick Farrell: When I wrote King over the Water I realised that most of the myths about Mathers and the GD came from Vivianne
Me: Crowley was a member of the Golden Dawn who Yeats did not know. But Yeats barred him for being gay not knowing who he was?
Nick Farrell: He was barred from being in the second order because he was involved in a group which was being investigated by the cops. Yeats didnt know he was a poet
Nick Farrell: He just knew he was a mate of bennets
Me: crowley just wrote that he showed him his poetry not that he was a recognised poet
Hadron Templeton: right understood what group was this?
Nick Farrell: yeah hang on
Hadron Templeton: was it the drama club?
Nick Farrell: It was in Howe, it was some London club which Crowley was involved with.
Nick Farrell: at the time it was a big scandal not sure how Crowley avoided it
Nick Farrell: now we would call it a gay bay but some important people were involved in it and it was illegal
Me: never heard of it though i know he has a boyfriend in the drama club at uni. One totally uninterested in spirituality who he pined for, for years afterwards. I think Victor Neuberg was a rebound.
Nick Farrell: no in the uK club means something different it is like a bar… for only selected people
Nick Farrell It is somewhere in Howe (I thiought i mentioned it in King but didn’t)
Having done some research it was likely the Cambridge Footlights Drama Society