Sooner or later when one begins to study the deeper things of spirituality there will be a few names that pop up with regularity.
One name oft seen will be a woman by the name of “Mdm HR Blavatski” and the other a mysterious “dark magician” named “ Crowley” (some might recall the song by Black Sabbath as sung by OZZY OSBORNE which referred to this man)
We will put Blavatski aside for the time being to focus on one of the 20th centuries most influential “occultists” Crowley.
Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley (pronounced /ˈkroʊli/), (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947), was a British occultist, writer, mountaineer, poet, and yogi.[1] He was an influential member in several occult organizations, including the Golden Dawn, the A∴A∴, and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and is best known today for his occult writings, especially The Book of the Law, the central sacred text of Thelema. He gained much notoriety during his lifetime, and was dubbed "The Wickedest Man In the World."
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.
Edward Alexander Crowley was born at 36 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, between 11:00pm and midnight on October 12, 1875.
His father, Edward Crowley, was trained as an engineer but according to Aleister, never worked as one. He did, however, own shares in a lucrative family brewery business, which allowed him to retire before Aleister was born. Through his father's business he was an acquaintance of Aubrey Beardsley. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop, drew roots from a Devon and Somerset family.
Both of his parents were Exclusive Brethren, a more conservative faction of the Plymouth Brethren. which indeed makes it a tad odd that his father could be a puritan yet also depend on money from a “brewery” which manufactures alcoholic beverages (awareness of this must have had some effect on Crowley’s later viewpoints).
Crowley grew up in a staunch Brethren household and was only allowed to play with children whose families followed the same faith. His father was a fanatical preacher, traveling around Britain and producing pamphlets. Daily Bible studies and private tutoring were mainstays in "Alick's" childhood.
As many “Pastor’s Kids” do, Crowley was a bit rebellious. Having been brought up in harsh legalism and strict laws made him desire freedom from oppressive religion and he began to fashion himself as a “wizard” or “prophet” who perhaps could free himself from the chains of dogma by finding some hidden key.
Many like to pen Crowley as simply a madman or drug addict and one might say that this is only a part of who he was because he exhibited a very high level of intellect despite his obvious addictions and problems. He is actually a good example of just how tenuous is the line between genius and madness.
After the death of his father ( On March 5, 1887 ) to whom he was very close, he drifted from his religious upbringing, and his mother's efforts at keeping her son in the Christian faith only served to provoke his skepticism.
When he was a child, his constant rebellious behavior displeased his mother to such an extent that she would chastise him by calling him "The Beast" (from the Book of Revelation), an epithet that Crowley would later adopt for himself. He objected to the labeling of what he saw as life's most worthwhile and enjoyable activities as "sinful".
In 1895, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, after schooling at the public schools Malvern College and Tonbridge School, and originally had the intention of reading Moral Sciences (philosophy), but with approval from his personal tutor, he switched to English literature, which was not then a part of the curriculum offered.
His three years at Cambridge were happy ones, due in part to coming into the considerable fortune left by his father.
Here he finally broke with the Church of England, internally if not externally:
"The Church of England [...] had seemed a narrow tyranny, as detestable as that of the Plymouth Brethren; less logical and more hypocritical."
"When I discovered that chapel was compulsory I immediately struck back. The junior dean halled me for not attending chapel, which I was certainly not going to do, because it involved early rising. I excused myself on the ground that I had been brought up among the Plymouth Brethren. The dean asked me to come and see him occasionally and discuss the matter, and I had the astonishing impudence to write to him that 'The seed planted by my father, watered by my mother's tears, would prove too hardy a growth to be uprooted even by his eloquence and learning.'"
In December 1896, following an event that he describes in veiled terms, Crowley decided to pursue a path in occultism and mysticism. By the next year, he began reading books by alchemists and mystics, and books on magic.
Biographer Sutin describes the pivotal New Year's event as a homo-erotic experience (Crowley's first) that brought him what he considered "an encounter with an immanent deity.".
During the year of 1897, Aleister further came to see worldly pursuits as useless. In October a brief illness triggered considerations of mortality and "the futility of all human endeavor," or at least of the diplomatic career that Crowley had previously considered.
A year later, he published his first book of poetry (Aceldama), and left Cambridge, only to meet Julian L. Baker (Frater D. A.) who introduced him to Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Involved as a young adult in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, he first studied mysticism with and made enemies of William Butler Yeats and Arthur Edward Waite.
Like many in occult circles of the time, Crowley voiced the view that Waite was a pretentious bore through searing critiques of Waite's writings and editorials of other authors' writings. In his periodical The Equinox, Crowley titled one diatribe, "Wisdom While You Waite", and his note on the passing of Waite bore the title, "Dead Waite".
His friend and former Golden Dawn associate, Allan Bennett, introduced him to the ideas of Buddhism,[23] while Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, acting leader of the Golden Dawn organization, acted as his early mentor in western magic but would later become his enemy.
Several decades after Crowley's participation in the Golden Dawn, Mathers claimed copyright protection over a particular ritual and sued Crowley for infringement after Crowley's public display of the ritual. While the public trial continued, both Mathers and Crowley claimed to call forth armies of demons and angels to fight on behalf of their summoner. Both also developed and carried complex Seal of Solomon amulets and talismans.
In a book of fiction, entitled Moonchild, Crowley later portrayed Mathers as the primary villain, including him as a character named SRMD, using the abbreviation of Mathers' magical name. Arthur Edward Waite also appeared in Moonchild as a villain named Arthwaite, while Bennett appeared as the silent, monkish Mahathera Phang.
While he did not officially break with Mathers until 1904, Crowley lost faith in this teacher's abilities soon after the 1900 schism in the Golden Dawn (if not before). Later in the year of that schism, Crowley traveled to Mexico and continued his magical studies in isolation. Crowley's writings suggest that he discovered the word Abrahadabra during this time.
In October 1901, after practicing Raja Yoga for some time, he said he had reached a state he called dhyana—one of many states of unification in thoughts that are described in Magick (Liber ABA) (See Crowley on egolessness).
1902 saw him writing the essay Berashith (the first word of Genesis), in which he gave meditation (or restraint of the mind to a single object) as the means of attaining his goal.
The essay describes ceremonial magick as a means of training the will, and of constantly directing one's thoughts to a given object through ritual. In his 1903 essay, Science and Matter, Crowley urged an empirical approach to Buddhist teachings.
In 1903 he married Rose Edith Kelly.
Crowley said that a mystical experience in 1904, while on holiday in Cairo, Egypt, led to his founding of the religious philosophy known as Thelema. Aleister's wife Rose started to behave in an odd way, and this led Aleister to think that some entity had made contact with her. At her instructions, he performed an invocation of the Egyptian god Horus on March 20 with (he wrote) "great success." According to Crowley, the god told him that “a new magical Aeon had begun, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet“. (JoZ NOTE: in study of “secret societies” and the beliefs of the “Rose Cross” I have no doubt that Crowley indeed was a form of daemonic prophet”.)
Rose continued to give information, telling Crowley in detailed terms to await a further revelation.
On 8 April and for the following two days at exactly noon he allegedly heard a voice, dictating the words of the text, Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law, which Crowley wrote down.
The voice claimed to be that of Aiwass (or Aiwaz) "the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat", or Horus, the god of force and fire (Anybody recall the biblical verse which relates that in the End of Days that “they shall worship a god of force(s)”), child of Isis and Osiris and self-appointed conquering lord of the New Aeon, announced through his chosen scribe "the prince-priest the Beast"
The “Book of the Law” (aka: Liber AL vel Legis ) contains an actual great deal of valid information which shows the clear connection between Crowley and the Daemonic world and as all books in which Daemons are the author it can be compared to a “Sweet Chocolate Candy with just enough arsenic to slowly kill the spirit of the devotee”.
Liber AL vel Legis is the central sacred text of what is called the doctrine of “Thelema”
Liber AL vel Legis contains three chapters, each of which was written down in one hour, beginning at noon, on April 8, April 9, and April 10.
(illus: for A.A. from the Crowley Book "777")Crowley claims that the author was an entity named Aiwass, whom he later referred to as his personal Holy Guardian Angel (or "Higher Self"). Biographer Lawrence Sutin quotes private diaries that fit this story, and writes that "if ever Crowley uttered the truth of his relation to the Book," his public account accurately describes what he remembered on this point. The teachings within this small book are expressed as the Law of Thelema, usually encapsulated by these two phrases:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" (AL I:40) and
"Love is the law, love under will" (AL I:57)
The original title of the book was Liber L vel Legis. Crowley retitled it Liber AL vel Legis in 1921, when he also gave the handwritten manuscript the title Liber XXXI. The book is often referred to simply as Liber AL, Liber Legis or just AL, though technically the latter two refer only to the manuscript.
Aleister Crowley died of a respiratory infection in a Hastings boarding house on 1 December 1947 at the age of 72. He had been addicted to heroin after being prescribed morphine for his asthma and bronchitis many years earlier.
He and his last doctor died within 24 hours of each other; newspapers would claim, in differing accounts, that Dr. Thomson had refused to continue his opiate prescription and that Crowley had put a curse on him.
Crowley remained bedridden for the last few days of his life, but was in light spirits and conversational.
Readings at the cremation service in nearby Brighton included one of his own works, Hymn to Pan (see below), and newspapers referred to the service as a black mass. Brighton council subsequently resolved to take all necessary steps to prevent such an incident from occurring again.
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The “Hymn to Pan” reads thus:
Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man ! My man !
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan ! Io Pan .
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady !
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and styrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me,
Coem with Apollo in bridal dress
(Spheperdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,
In the moon, of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of the amber fount !
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantonness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain -come over the sea,
(Io Pan ! Io Pan !)
Devil or god, to me, to me,
My man ! my man !
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill !
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring !
Come with flute and come with pipe !
Am I not ripe ?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion, and sharp as an asp-
Come, O come !
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All devourer, all begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye
And the token erect of thorny thigh
And the word of madness and mystery,
O pan ! Io Pan !
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Pan Pan ! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan ! Io Pan !
Io pan ! Io Pan Pan ! I am awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The gods withdraw:
The great beasts come, Io Pan ! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn.
I am Pan ! Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan !
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold , I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end.
Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.
Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan ! Io Pan !
Aleister Crowley
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Pan (Greek Πάν, genitive Πανός) is the Greek god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music: paein means to pasture. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. He is recognized as the god of fields, groves, and wooded glens; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and season of spring.
Pan's ancient Roman equivalent was Faunus, and they were both Horned God deities. For this reason he is popular among many Neopagans and occultist groups and is sometimes related to the “Lucifer, Baal-Zebub, Moloch, The Devil or satanail (satanis/satan).
It seems odd that a man who basically taught that the only real “god” was the “self” and the only law was “Love under selfish will” would spend his life only complicating what he said was a “simple law” and talking to spirits of daemons he would seem to be claiming did not actually exist outside of the human mind.
Much like Crowley I teach that the law of YHWH is simple and does indeed have to do with “Love” and “Will” but where the “apple becomes poisoned”, so to speak, is in which “WILL” is to be heeded.
Crowley’s life seems to suggest that to heed “selfish Will” and make it a “god” is to eventually come under the lordship of the demonic world and it’s utter futility and cruelty whereas when one places their “Free Will” under the Lordship of the Creator and begins to manifest the virtues of charity and “UNSELFISH LOVE” then the true simplicity of the Spirit can manifest and instead of falling into “hedonistic depression” one can feel the true and utter “Rapture of the Spirit of Joy”.
Religion itself is not the answer.
Books of magic and occult philosophy can seem very interesting and make one ponder and no doubt much of religion has become ensnared in such things often unaware.
The answer is to find the TRUE LAW OF LOVE which is placed in the spirit of all men and which needs no magical “conjuring“, “ritual” or “religious adherence” to understand and express.. In fact the human mind is too imperfect to grasp the amazing simplicity of this true law which only varies slightly from Crowley’s manifesto.
Crowley says this law is:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" (AL I:40)
and "Love is the law, love under will" (AL I:57)
I say the TRUE LAW IS “BE LOVE & BE LOVED“ which is to say:
“You have the choice to do as you will .. Thus as long as you make “sacrificial other-centeredness” (real LOVE) the center of your “own will” you will have chosen wisely… yet such a choice is to allow the Will of God (YHWH- the God of LOVE) and His Plans to be predominate above the “will of Self” for God knows best what is best for each human since the ultimate plan is His alone”
Simply stated… “Make “God’s Will” .. “YOUR WILL”!
To become ones own “god” is a misnomer for humans because if one does not choose to subjugate themselves to the “Creator/Planner” one becomes a slave to the “daemons plans or lack thereof” inherent in “self” (which is “selfishness“.. Leading to all evils).
BE LOVE & BE LOVED!
(most of the information and history contained in this blog from “Wikipedia” confirmed also from other resources)
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