The Truth About Mister Aleister Crowley (... or thereabouts)
There are so many rumors about this guy; he is literally the personification of the word infamous. He cultivated it himself though, building reputation and inscrutability because he understood the power of image.
You think Crowley, one of the first things that enters most minds is something in the realm of devil worship. The thing is, he wasn't a Satanist and never once worshiped The Devil. He did attempt to invoke Baphomet at one point but that seemed to be as some kind of scientific experiment of his. This is the guy who was the youngest member of The Order of the Golden Dawn to scale their ranks, right up to Adeptus Major (m*therf*cker magician), and he did so in the shortest time. And once he was there, right up at the tippy-top of their echelon, they revealed all of their deepest occult secrets to him and once he had those secrets at his fingertips, what he did was, he published them all. Every last one.
What a coup.
His thinking was that the whole elitist thing those occultists were practicing was leading to a bunch of pretentious inbreds holding the reins of the inner worlds. Crowley was of the mind that there is a more natural, deeper hierarchy at work in our world and that imbeciles would not be able to understand or assimilate the information held in those teachings anyway. And those that could, he deemed worthy.
That was one side of him.
The other side of him... like I said, he understood the power of image, so he garnished his own image to look sinister. By proclaiming himself as The Beast or saying his number was 666, he created his very own snarling guardians at the gate. Those brave enough to walk past had access to his amazing mind.
And of this, I have no doubts. As much of a wanker as he was on some levels, Crowley was a genius.
Another misperception that has surrounded him is that of his most famous catch-phrase: Do what though wilt shall be the whole of the law.
This has been taken to mean – you can do whatever you want. But half of the quote is missing.
The whole maxim is:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under Will."
Crowley takes great pains throughout his gargantuan works to expound on the vast difference between man's will and True Will. Any time he uses will with a small w he is talking about our own, weak-assed, delusional, fear-based, desire-driven will. He uses Will with a capital W, he's talking about the Will that moves everything along on it's way. He believed we would connect with that larger Will by reducing our own idea of self down to nothing.
He tells us:
“The tendencies of mind lie deeper than any thought, for they are the conditions and laws of thought and it is these you must bring to zero. Die daily.”
He says:
“Pure Will unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result is in every way perfect. Effort is no more. There is no you upon this path; you have become the Way.”
In his work Liber Aleph, which is one of my personal favorites, he indicates very clearly that we should not follow in his actions but only follow in his words and intent. He explains that he had lost himself on the path under the influence of opiates and what he terms The Scarlet Woman.
There are several rumors regarding Crowley's influence over the head's of state in both The States and in Germany during the Second World War. Nothing has ever been proven but it would not have been beyond his capabilities nor his mischievous nature to try manipulating events, possibly even just to see if he could. The other side of that rumor mill is that a certain famous English Naval Intelligence agent knew Crowley personally and hatched several schemes to use Crowley to feed misinformation to the Nazis through a man named Rudolph Hess. Some even say that the eventual capture of Hess was thanks to Crowley’s web-weaving.
He had no grand designs or agendas in this world. He certainly wasn't trying to pave the way for The Devil to rule. He was a scientist at heart; an experimenter in the field of human consciousness and it's connection to our manifest world. And he was playful.
He is seldom recognized as one of the first people to bring Yoga over to The West. There are photos of him pre-dating the turn of the last century in all kinds of asanas. He was also one of the first Westerners to climb the K2 mountain. I don't believe he managed to reach the top but he held the record for some time.
Also, at a time when it was illegal to be homosexual in England, Crowley was publishing poetry that could have landed him in prison. A whole bunch of his books were banned and burned because of the nature of the sexuality evident in them. Crowley was bisexual but fearlessly wrote poetry regarding the whole spectrum of taboo.
He would have been pleased, I think, at the distance in time his reputation has traveled and deeply satisfied at how much influence he's had on our counter-cultures in drugs and music, art and philosophy.
His message to the youth was:
“Break down the fortress of thine own individual Self that the truth may spring free from the ruins.”
You might want to deride all of this and hold onto your notions that he was simply a bad, bad man. But his intelligence and knowledge just gave him a perspective out of the box that most exist within. You hear the numbers 666 and for obvious reasons you associate it with The Devil or Satan or whatever. But Crowley was an adept on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and on that tree the trinity of 6 regards to the unfolding Self. Jokingly he said it could be translated to: “Me, me , me.” But it is evident in most of his writings that this guy new the difference between selfish and Self-centered. So when he boldly proclaimed that his number was 6 and 6 and 6 – he meant it was your number too. And when everyone rose up in arms at his quote thinking he was proclaiming himself the manifestation of Satan, he thought it was funny and helped that little mass-delusion along.
I kind of like that about him.
I'll leave you with this thought of his:
“Whatever horrors may afflict the soul, whatever abominations may excite the loathing of the heart, whatever terrors may assail the mind… the answer is the same at every stage: How splendid is the adventure!!!”
