[Opinion] "I Come To Praise Aleister, Not Bury Him."

[Xenophon]

OK, Crowley gets little love in the forum. Still, he was---and remains--- immensely influential. So let's try saying something good about him. And no, saying "He had a wonderful head of hair in his youth" won't cut it.

ME: First, he had a pretty damned fine writing style (though organizational ability lags.) He had bigger balls than mine being the Alpine mountaineer he was. His working up the exhaustive lists of correspondences he did was quite a feat, and one useful---even though his work is not the last word here.

 

[8Lou1]

He knew how to spend someone else's money.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

He managed to paint ideas out very simply using big complex symbols. He also was very sporty with numbers and ciphers.

I'm still working through the Book of Lies on my spare time but it came out swinging. Any aspiring Babe of the Abyss ought to pick it up

 

[Xenophon]

He managed to paint ideas out very simply using big complex symbols. He also was very sporty with numbers and ciphers.

I'm still working through the Book of Lies on my spare time but it came out swinging. Any aspiring Babe of the Abyss ought to pick it up

His numerology was either profoundly insightful or highly inventive.

A babe of the Abyss should pick the Book up? Indeed. Our Aleister himself picked up many a babe.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Also, he was physically kicked out of the Golden Dawn, right? Like they physically had to kick at him with their legs until he left, I heard. That is a profoundly funny mental image to me

 

[Robert Ramsay]

His "Magick In Theory and Practice" was the first occult book I ever read, and a lot of it made a lot of sense to me. I've had to spend a lot of my time separating the art from the artist in films, books etc. so this was no different.
It was obvious from the beginning that Crowley had a pretty damn high opinion of himself, but I could see past that to what he was actually talking about. He got a lot of it wrong in specifics, but that was the limitations of the time he was living in.
His work encouraged me that I was not wasting my time.

 

[Wintruz]

I suspect that Crowley was undiagnosed autistic. In addition to that battle, his upbringing, which was repressive even by Victorian standards, would have messed anyone up. The man carried those dysfunctions with him for the rest of his life.

I am not overly concerned about any adult followers that he "abused". They had Will just as much as he did and were perfectly free to walk away, as many did. He never held anyone against their Will. In their weakness, they may have held themselves against their Will but that's on them. However, my rage with Crowley is that he did have direct experience enough to question his social programming concerning animals and he knew that religious attitudes towards sacrifice were subjective methods and that there was no inherent power in the act. Still, according to Symonds, he murdered at least one cat in horrific circumstances (probably two - he wrote in a way that belied no shame about such acts either). Animal sentience was disregarded by most at that time but he'd read Nietzsche, there were successful British campaigns at ending vivisection during Victoria's reign and personal deprogramming is a central tenet of Thelema. He had no excuse. He behaved as a squalid, drug-addled degenerate would.

As a writer, nothing could ever exceed his opinion of himself so there is no space left to praise. He was a decent writer though that wasn't unusual for someone of his education. The passage in the Confessions where he reads a mediocre poem to Yates and describes Yates as envious afterwards, is clearly delusional. His dependency on alliteration becomes rapidly annoying and, in his magical writing, his retaining the G.'.D.'. Qabala reveals a surprising reluctance to revolt.

None of this changes his world changing conclusions on magic. 666 took a jumble of medieval superstitions, opaque references in classical literature, Nietzsche, interminable Eastern ponderings, French poets, Victorian Egyptology, sifted through much of the chaff and streamlined a vision of the heroic individual in the midst of a life-affirming universe. In those fragments he saw a way to transform the individual soul into a god. It is perhaps fitting that the man who did that was, more than most, in need of the transformation of his own soul.

Degenerate? Yes. A genius? At times, also yes.

 

[Aeternus]

@Wintruz couldn't have said it better.

In many Satanic traditions and cults (mostly cults) Aleister Crowley is considered something such as a "perverted saint" in Satanism.

If Aleister would only have known what path to really choose and to not mix drugs with spiritualism, and also not kill animals, well, in my opinion, he would have been a man worth listening.

But eh... guess mad men come from where you won't expect them to come from

 

[Xenophon]

I suspect that Crowley was undiagnosed autistic. In addition to that battle, his upbringing, which was repressive even by Victorian standards, would have messed anyone up. The man carried those dysfunctions with him for the rest of his life.

I am not overly concerned about any adult followers that he "abused". They had Will just as much as he did and were perfectly free to walk away, as many did. He never held anyone against their Will. In their weakness, they may have held themselves against their Will but that's on them. However, my rage with Crowley is that he did have direct experience enough to question his social programming concerning animals and he knew that religious attitudes towards sacrifice were subjective methods and that there was no inherent power in the act. Still, according to Symonds, he murdered at least one cat in horrific circumstances (probably two - he wrote in a way that belied no shame about such acts either). Animal sentience was disregarded by most at that time but he'd read Nietzsche, there were successful British campaigns at ending vivisection during Victoria's reign and personal deprogramming is a central tenet of Thelema. He had no excuse. He behaved as a squalid, drug-addled degenerate would.

As a writer, nothing could ever exceed his opinion of himself so there is no space left to praise. He was a decent writer though that wasn't unusual for someone of his education. The passage in the Confessions where he reads a mediocre poem to Yates and describes Yates as envious afterwards, is clearly delusional. His dependency on alliteration becomes rapidly annoying and, in his magical writing, his retaining the G.'.D.'. Qabala reveals a surprising reluctance to revolt.

None of this changes his world changing conclusions on magic. 666 took a jumble of medieval superstitions, opaque references in classical literature, Nietzsche, interminable Eastern ponderings, French poets, Victorian Egyptology, sifted through much of the chaff and streamlined a vision of the heroic individual in the midst of a life-affirming universe. In those fragments he saw a way to transform the individual soul into a god. It is perhaps fitting that the man who did that was, more than most, in need of the transformation of his own soul.

Degenerate? Yes. A genius? At times, also yes.

Autistic? They have made the spectrum so broad as to mean almost nothing. One can be an a**hole without a clinical condition. I know: I am one.

The cat-killing I have always found despicable and cowardly. Some cats are better than some humans, so he should've gone the whole 9 yards or simply sheathed the knife and ceased the bad theatrics.

 

[Wintruz]

Autistic? They have made the spectrum so broad as to mean almost nothing.

True, though I'm not talking about "I identify as a neurologically divergent" as much as utter obliviousness to many of the psychological and social cues that the rest of us take for granted. A good magician masters those things, so that they can employ/discard them as serves their purposes. Crowley seemed incapable of doing that but re-told himself that his faux pas' were somehow proof that he was beyond convention. For example, a major theme when he met with his peers, rather than some doe-eyed acolyte, was that he had an utter unawareness that he might have been boring healthier people to death with interminable thoughts on non-issues.

With Crowley it also informed a kind of William McGonagall-inflected superiority, committing the cardinal sin of thinking that intellectual knowledge equaled quality of soul. To make it all worse, much of the "intellectual knowledge" he was obsessed by was of poor quality (bad translations of Hebrew, worse translations of Egyptian) but was labyrinthine and made up a part of an internally coherent system of thought. Writing everything down and categorising correspondences also obsessed him. These are all classic autism traits.

He did sustain a very serious head-injury as boy which left him out cold for days. I sometimes wonder if things got knocked around.

Approach his books, especially the Confessions, as the work of an autistic mind with an overactive libido and it reads entirely differently. Then add to that the thought that this person may have had genuine metaphysical insights and Crowley emerges as fractured mind that received an influx of preternatural intelligence.

It's also worth saying that few have benefitted more from how Americans fetishise Englishness than Aleister Crowley. All the airs and graces of his background and the sense that anyone so verbose must know what they're talking about (especially when coupled with an individualism palatable to Americans) and he's received a reception there which hasn't happened here, at least not outside a few regrettable types (I have attended O.T.O. events).

 

[Xenophon]

My M.D. sister, who has raised three functional kids as well, recently "discovered" she is high-functional autistic. By the same token, I guess, LeBron James is high-functional quadraplegic.

In the case of quite capable obnoxious people, why give them a clinical label to hide behind? Somerset-Maugham (among many others) pronounced Crowley simply loathsome. Give Al the label and it becomes a shield. Somerset-Maugham (and others) are now "bullying" a "mentally diverse" individual. I say Aspergers, ass-burgers! GTFU, Mr. Crowley.

Post automatically merged: Saturday at 3:46 AM

Looking at this thread, I see even its OP---your humble narrator, myself---has turned on the Guest of Honor and rends him like a ravening wolf. I suppose some enterprising forumite can set to work on a sure-fire bestseller: "Being Obnoxious Is My Superpower!" Subtitled, Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from The Beast."

 

[stratamaster78]

I enjoy a lot of his writings on Ceremonial Magick and specifically Magick without Tears.

I don’t really ever feel the need to bring him up good or bad though because he is divisive as a topic of conversation.

I have not really ever had a strong pull towards Thelema especially because I’ve more than had my fill of Religion in this life.

But a person can learn a lot from Crowley’s path of Attainment.

The AA and OTO both have incredibly long Reading/Study lists and if nothing else a person could be exposed to some differing philosophical views and Methods.

Post automatically merged: Saturday at 8:54 AM

Autistic? They have made the spectrum so broad as to mean almost nothing. One can be an a**hole without a clinical condition. I know: I am one.

The cat-killing I have always found despicable and cowardly. Some cats are better than some humans, so he should've gone the whole 9 yards or simply sheathed the knife and ceased the bad theatrics.

I in my ignorance was not previously aware of Crowley resorting to Animal Sacrifice.

As it relates to our discussions in the thread on that topic.

@Xenophon and @Wintruz

My apologies Gentlemen.

 

[Xenophon]

I enjoy a lot of his writings on Ceremonial Magick and specifically Magick without Tears.

I don’t really ever feel the need to bring him up good or bad though because he is divisive as a topic of conversation.

I have not really ever had a strong pull towards Thelema especially because I’ve more than had my fill of Religion in this life.

But a person can learn a lot from Crowley’s path of Attainment.

The AA and OTO both have incredibly long Reading/Study lists and if nothing else a person could be exposed to some differing philosophical views and Methods.

Post automatically merged: Saturday at 8:54 AM

I in my ignorance was not previously aware of Crowley resorting to Animal Sacrifice.

As it relates to our discussions in the thread on that topic.

@Xenophon and @Wintruz

My apologies Gentlemen.

No problem. Actually I would not have known about it either save for a few sentences related to events his Abbey of Thelema in Celafu, Italy. The tale usually told is that "Mussolini's fascists" kicked the innocent Thelemites out of their happy hideaway in the hills. Actually it was more a matter of a village policeman acting on complaints from neighbors about annoying foreigners. When one of those foreigners, Raoul Loveday, died suddenly from typhus, official patience was exhausted. (Nothing pisses off the police like more paperwork.) Murals depicting sex, drug use, and rumors of animal sacrifice---the cat, finally---did not fly well in 1920's Italy. Probably they don't fly well with most landlords in, say, 2024 Pittsburgh, Manchester, or Osaka.

Anyhow, neither Crowley or his biographers seem much inclined to dwell on the animal sacrifice stories. One can perhaps wrap his mind around sacrificing to a cat, but certainly not sacrificing one as such. (And I'm a dog person!)

 

[Wintruz]

In the case of quite capable obnoxious people, why give them a clinical label to hide behind? Somerset-Maugham (among many others) pronounced Crowley simply loathsome. Give Al the label and it becomes a shield. Somerset-Maugham (and others) are now "bullying" a "mentally diverse" individual. I say Aspergers, ass-burgers! GTFU, Mr. Crowley.

I suppose I'd give Crowley a clinical label because I'm not sure there's a non-neurological explanation for being that way. I don't think it can be just social maladjustment or an unpleasant personality; there are human nuances which he seemed incapable of getting and autism also fits his overly systematised thinking, obsessions and self-importance. The Marquis de Sade (who tutored my dentist) could be loathsome but I never get the sense that he didn't know he was violating social cues. Crowley seemed oblivious to much.

His being autistic doesn't let him off the hook with me either. Cards on the table (and I'm sure this will win me friends and influence people), I find these dispositions very difficult to deal with. I'm the man who watched Rain Man, sympathising entirely with Tom Cruise while chanting "drown the bastard!".

Looking at this thread, I see even its OP---your humble narrator, myself---has turned on the Guest of Honor and rends him like a ravening wolf. I suppose some enterprising forumite can set to work on a sure-fire bestseller: "Being Obnoxious Is My Superpower!" Subtitled, Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from The Beast."

We have dragged his lifeless corpse behind our trucks. This is without even getting into the inherent superiority of Nietzsche, Gurdjieff, Guido von List, etc.

Still, with its endless, maddening faults, Crowley did have the right kind of mind to push magic in a new, necessary direction. It took other minds to take those insights further, liberating the central principles of Thelema from bad Egyptology and Crowley's personal failings. For my money, some of the best at that have been American rather than British magicians; Robert Anton Wilson, Michael Aquino, Christopher Hyatt, Hakim Bey, even Timothy Leary, were able to translate Crowley's thoughts into something far more streamlined and workable.

In short, I'm grateful to the Beast, but I'm glad he's dead.

 

[Konsciencia]

Crowley was a motherfucking badass!!!. I had the Book of The Law. Oh yeah, classic.

 

[Romolo]

Crowley could casually write things like, “The sword destroys. The wand creates. The cup preserves. The coin ordains,” and suddenly you understand tarot better than after having read a whole book by a tarot expert.

Crowley’s writing is charged with danger, with a dark vitality, with a Nietzschean will to life. Parts of Magick in Theory and Practice feel like a nauseating overripe fruit. It sloshes like a ripe pear when shaken.

 

[Xenophon]

Crowley could casually write things like, “The sword destroys. The wand creates. The cup preserves. The coin ordains,” and suddenly you understand tarot better than after having read a whole book by a tarot expert.

Crowley’s writing is charged with danger, with a dark vitality, with a Nietzschean will to life. Parts of Magick in Theory and Practice feel like a nauseating overripe fruit. It sloshes like a ripe pear when shaken.

The main danger from overripe pears is diarrhea. But, yes. He was a fine writer most of the time. Sometimes his subject matter does not lend itself to elegant expression. Liber Lex, for instance, was not designed to be easily understood or straightforward. In its putative context, this can scarcely be called a fault. Heck, most of the rituals he penned hold a sort of dramatic interest in a way such writings rarely do.

 

[Rowena]

Personally I don't buy that Crowley was autistic - arrogant certainly, and equally certainly damaged both by fundamentalist schooling of his youth (which he later characterized as 'sadistic'), and by the childhood death of his father - both of which fed into the teenage rebellious phase where he contracted both

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(while still at school), and

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(as a university undergraduate) - neither of which had a cure until only a few years before his death.
I think it entirely more likely that the increasingly erratic & outrageous behavior of his middle-to-later years were a result of untreated tertiary syphilis coupled with Heroin addiction - both of which were the end of a slippery slope he started down when still at school.

 

[Jackson]

I suspect that Crowley was undiagnosed autistic.

Unless you are one, probably not. If anything it would be giving autism too much credit. Even given twenty years, an autistic hyperfocus by itself doesn't make a Crowley.

 

[Aeternus]

Personally I don't buy that Crowley was autistic - arrogant certainly, and equally certainly damaged both by fundamentalist schooling of his youth (which he later characterized as 'sadistic'), and by the childhood death of his father - both of which fed into the teenage rebellious phase where he contracted both

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(while still at school), and

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(as a university undergraduate) - neither of which had a cure until only a few years before his death.
I think it entirely more likely that the increasingly erratic & outrageous behavior of his middle-to-later years were a result of untreated tertiary syphilis coupled with Heroin addiction - both of which were the end of a slippery slope he started down when still at school.

Now I don't want to attack you or say that you are defending Crowley, but I just want to add this.

I had some past drama in my life as well, not Crowley style but still had some drama happening (won't get into detail about it), but I never resorted to drug us and other bad stuff like sacrificing animals