Books on Crowley

Aeon418

Ross G Caldwell said:
With the possible exception of Daniel P. Mannix "The Beast" (1959).
The Beast Demystified by Roger Hutchinson is a close third. Complete rubbish.
 

Lillie

I said it was a good read. Not that it was accurate, or on Crowleys side.

Mannix. I think I have read some stuff by him, years ago.
Roman Areana? maybe. it's an unusual name.

Anyhow. I didn't think Symmonds was particullarly hostile. At least he was'nt some namby pamby appologist who makes excuses for the person they are writing about.

I'm with Cromwell on this one. Warts and all.
 

kwaw

Lillie said:
Anyhow. I didn't think Symmonds was particullarly hostile. At least he was'nt some namby pamby appologist who makes excuses for the person they are writing about.

I would recommend Symmonds but with the provisio that that I consider he is very hostile to his subject and any reader should be aware of that.

Gerald Kelly, while hardly an unbiased reviewer, points out many of the techniques of literary denigration used by Crowley’s biographers, and takes up the defence of Crowley against some of the common allegations. Some of his reviews:-

The Beast Demystified by Hutchinson:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/7069/acdemyst.html
The Great Beast by Symonds:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/7069/symonds.html

A list of all his reviews can be found here:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/7069/reviews.html

Kwaw
 

Cerulean

I'm changing my mind about having dinner with Crowley

I think a good cup of bracing black tea--say on a cold day--and a nice afternoon stretched before us...

A rather sensible woman, Sybil Leek...who eventually became known as an astrologer...at least I thought so from reading this:

http://www.controverscial.com/Sybil Leek.htm

By the way, I looked at another opinion of her, and maybe it's not credible reading:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=49967&highlight=sybil+leek

In an inexpensive book, "My Life in Astrology" I read about a country-bred young girl surrounded by loving parents (Father was a kind of philosopher and mother a Theophist) and a quite sensible grandmother who helped run an farm that housed about 17 relatives...she said Alexander Crowley, among other people, would come to the farm...even though H.G. Wells was kinder to her, she didn't feel Crowley was a bad man at all. He might have spoken frankly to her grandmother about his beliefs, never hid his ideas around the 'child' (her), but he wasn't about being the baddest influence in a family setting.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0136085210/ref=sr_11_1/102-0619825-9170543?_encoding=UTF8

Not certain what people think of Sybil Leek, but here's a synopsis of her hardback paragraph that I've read so far:

"...certainly he respected her (grandmother), because he was mad about astrology. My father thought he was slipshod, but Grandmother thought he might make it if he practised more. She could always beat him in a quick assessment about a chart, and he took it in better humor than he did most things. He loved to be thought superior in mental activities as much as he loved to boast of his sexual conquests. No one ever hushed him or said "Not beefore the child", so my small pink ears were full of conversations with my Grandmother. Contrary to popular opinion, Crowley did not talk lasciviously about sex, at least not in front of me, but neither did he put any false values on it. It was a tool to be used in life, just as astrology was. "Old lady," he would say, although Grandmother was probably younger than he was, "you teach this child all you can. Sex is in the world and she'd better know about it; astrology is in the world, and sh'ed better know about that. And maybe you could teach some simple forms of magic."

That usually pricked my grandmother into action; she would come back at him about those "simple forms of magic" and they would verbally chase each other with formulas in a game of cat-and-mouse.

Crowley's form of astrology was too mystical for my father, who preferred an academic and purely scientific method and Grandmother resented the idea that an astrologer had to be psychic, although she would grudgingly admit tha psychic ability really mattered in most things--so why not add a dash of it to astrology? Both she and Father agreed that astrology had to be put into simple forms and intelligible language, but Crowley disagreed. He certainly evolved a strange form of astrology--valid, but practically unintelligible, even to expert astrologers. He loved tarot cards, too, and he linked them to astrology of course, which is proper, but can cause some confusion for the run-of-the-mill astrology students. To this day, I am not sure which one of the three was completely right, if any of them were right..."

Anyway, it's kind of refreshing to have a person's childhood story about Crowley and a grandmother chatting away over a cuppa tea...might help to calm people's nervous fears of too strong a tarot, when it might be slipshod editing, bad press and awful color copies putting one off to the Thoth decks...don't know if her work is credible, as I picked up the book used and thought it was fun reading. Maybe too silly, though?

Cerulean
 

Aeon418

Very interesting, Cerulean. I think Crowley was actually a very good astrologer. He certainly knew quite a bit about the subject.

The two books that saw the well known astrologer, Evangeline Adams, rise to fame in the 20's and 30's, Astrology, Your Place in the Sun and Astrology, Your Place in the Stars, were actually written by Crowley. She stole all his notes and published them under her own name, making quite a bit of money in the process. Crowley was broke at the time and couldn't do a damn thing about it.

The books have since been reprinted under joint authorship as The General Principles of Astrology.
 

Cerulean

Thank you Aeon418!

I like hearing alternative views and was curious about this opinion from Sybil Leek. The views of A. Crowley's astrology and tarot as written by him will be interesting as well to explore.

Regards,

Cerulean
 

ravenest

Biased?

Xander said:
hey dudes :p

im gonna get a book on Alexander Crowley but not sure which one? could you helps me please?

and maybe give me a little insight on what the books about ??

thanks dudes :D :x

The Book of Lies
777
The Holy Books of Thelema
Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley ~ Richard Kaczynski
Diary of a Drug Fiend

**and incase the people upstairs read this thread ;) it is tarot related because im seeking tarot knowledge about Crowley's Thoth deck because i might get it :p**

Well, ya gonna find it pretty hard to find a book unbiased on A.C.!
He put a lot of energy into extremly varied interactions with a lot of people.
Try Israel regardies "The Eye in the Triangle" If any one was every vilified, ripped of, cared for and cherished more than Isreal (by A.C.) I havnt encountered their story. yet Israel seems to give an open an honest view.
He was a pretty balanced and cool dude though.
 

Aeon418

ravenest said:
Try Israel regardies "The Eye in the Triangle" If any one was every vilified, ripped of, cared for and cherished more than Isreal (by A.C.) I havnt encountered their story. yet Israel seems to give an open an honest view.
He was a pretty balanced and cool dude though.
I read The Eye in the Triangle a few years ago. It's not bad really. One thing that annoyed me though was Regardie's habit of both praising and damning Crowley with the same breath. It's almost as if he couldn't make up his mind. Or maybe he didn't want to seem biased. If that's the case it didn't work because it makes Regardie look like he's "sitting on the fence" for the entire book.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Aeon418 said:
I read The Eye in the Triangle a few years ago. It's not bad really. One thing that annoyed me though was Regardie's habit of both praising and damning Crowley with the same breath. It's almost as if he couldn't make up his mind. Or maybe he didn't want to seem biased. If that's the case it didn't work because it makes Regardie look like he's "sitting on the fence" for the entire book.

I guess you have to be pretty balanced to sit on the fence through a whole book!

But seriously... the only way I got a real understanding of Crowley "the man" was by reading his diaries. Day to day stuff really gets you in touch with a person.

Of course, it helps to read everything else he ever wrote, over and over, and only *then* to approach the biographies. It is a costly and time-consuming route, but the only real way. That could be supplemented with trying to meet people who knew him personally, but there aren't many left.

The problem for biographers of Crowley is that they can never hope to reveal as much about him as he himself has.
 

Aeon418

Ross G Caldwell said:
I guess you have to be pretty balanced to sit on the fence through a whole book!
LOL :D

I'll put it another way. Regardie wanted to have his cake and eat it. Regardie wanted to set the record straight after John Symonds published his own negative biography full of baseless rumours, hear-say, and personal opinion. (Most of which is still going round today.) But it seems he wasn't prepared to stick his own neck out in Crowley's defence. He only seems to defend Crowley so far and then backs away when it looks like he might be tarred with the same brush.
It's still a decent bio though.
Ross G Caldwell said:
But seriously... the only way I got a real understanding of Crowley "the man" was by reading his diaries. Day to day stuff really gets you in touch with a person.
Very true. Unfortunately very little of it has been published. And what little is in print isn't exactly the cream of the crop. The 1923 diaries are still in print but they are from a very bleak time in Crowley's life. But they do show Crowley's human side. A side that doesn't come across very well in his published works.