Your opinions on Crowley?

Driley

Perhaps I misspoke

On review, I think I misspoke (er... mistyped).

When speaking of Al's positive qualities, I cited "Magic without Tears", which I again recommend to anyone who wants to see a side of the man that the rumours don't provide. Then I said I wouldn't cite any negative examples since they are so well known. I was then asked to provide a negative example of his writing since they are so well know.

Whoops. I meant, his writing is positive. The negative aspects of his personality which have been referenced here are well know. I haven't read everything Crowley wrote. But...

When I was trying to give Lady Harris some overdue credit, evidently it came across as minimizing Crowley's contribution. I just think the balance has been out of whack for a time and if it helps people access the deck to think of them as primarily Harris's work, then that should be fine. Crowley, I suspect, would be more interested in the transmission of the ideas than the credit. This, I think, is one of the problems he had with Mathers, actually.

One of the problems. The other is that you can only have one egomanical control-freak in a group and have a happy group. ;)

Anyway, don't give up on Crowley. I don't find his writing very accessible in the Thoth book... and I say that's deliberate because I find him covering similar topics in other works in a much more engaging style. I'm actually not much of a fan of the man himself. But I do think he has something to offer and as Dion Fortune pointed out, a man's personality and his body of work deserve to be judged seperately. To dismiss his work because we don't like his life story is rather shallow. Consider what a loss that would be to English poetry... Byron certainly couldn't withstand such a test.

And I suspect that Crowley would be pleased and amused by this conversation.
 

kwaw

Cerulean said:
Thanks very much for the insight! I was wondering what translations Crowley would have had available to him in regards to the I-Ching, whether he read French or English translations of Taoist texts and who were the translators.

Thanks again for the references,

Cerulean

Crowley prepared several editions of chinese classics, including his versions of "Khing Khang Khing", "Shih Yi Chien", "Liber Triggrammaton, being a Book of Trigrams of the Mutations of the Tao with Yin and Yang", and the "Tao Teh King". He often produced such under the pseudonyms Ko Yuen or Ko Hsuen. During his 'magical retirement' on Aesopus Island on the Hudson river in 1918 he claims one of his 'magical memories' was as an incarnation of Ko Yuen, disciple of Lao Tze and author of the Khing Kang King. It was during this 'retirement' he produced his version of the "Tao Teh King", of which he says at the beginning If any sinologists object to anything in the translation, let him go absorb his Yang in his own Yin, as the Americans say; and give me credit for an original masterpiece. Whatever Lao Tzu said or meant, this is what I say and mean."

There is also his essay in Knox om Pax of course, Thien Tao or the Synagogue of Satan, in which he tells the tale of the Philosopher Kwaw:)

Kwaw Li Ya was one of the psedonyms Crowley wrote under; for example he wrote under that name introducing a Haiku writing competition in Vanity Fair [New York, August, October and December 1915].

Kwaw
 

wandking

Now this next rumor I'm curious about... accusations that he spied for the Nazis. Whether he did or not; can anyone furnish documentation that the accusations actually took place? Crowley was moving around the European continent a great deal during WW II and Hitler was fascinated with the occult. I wonder if there was any contact with the dictator.

I'd also like to see that essay on Knox om Pax. Is it long or can you share parts of it online, Kwaw?
 

kwaw

wandking said:
Now this rumor I'm curious about... accusations that he spyed for the Nazis. Whether he did or not, can anyone furnish documentation that the accusations actually took place? Crowley was moving around the European continant a great deal during WW II and Hitler was fascinated with the occult. I wonder if there was any contact with the dictator.

Don't know anything about him spying for the nazi's. He did not as far as I know have any contact with Hitler. One of the German OTO members was a fanatical Hitlerite and sent him a copy of Liber AL apparently. What little circumstantial evidence there is suggests that Crowley might have served some minor capacity for British Intelligence. Captain Fullerton was head of department in the MI5. In 1914 Crowley suddenly set off on a rather strange madcap adventure to Russia with Leila Waddel and the Raggeddy Rag Time girls, their theatrical manager was a British spymaster in Russia, and while there Crowley met the Head of British Intelligence in Russia [who interestingly in his biography called him Sir Aleister Crowley, this has been edited out of recent editions though]. When back he then went of to America of course, and one of the first things he did was to claim some Irish heritage and pretend to throw his British passport into the sea in a well publisised act which he orchestrated again with Leilla Waddel [whose husband was a naval intelligence officer]. Setting himself up as an Irish sympathiser he got himself a job in a German newspaper owned and ran by German intelligence workers, the idea that he did so working for British intelligence has been poopooed by those who prefer to see him as a traitor but the fact is he returned to England in 1918 and was never prosecuted as such and such immunity despite demands for his prosecution. He spent a lot of time in Germany in the 1930's and he did receive some payments while there from the British secret services. He was also acquainted with Maxwell Knight, who he was apparently teaching astral projection as he was interested in its spying possibilities. In Maxwell's biography it relates an incident when Maxwells wife was scared out of her wits when she entered the bedroom to see Maxwell at the window when she suddenly realized he was also laying down on the bed. It was later claimed that its was Maxwells occult interests and involvement with Crowley that led to his wife leaving him. There is also some minor involvement with the Hess affair and a propaganda leaflet dropping campaign, Crowley also claimed to have developed Churchill's 'Thumbs Up' campaign. Pat McAlpine who Aleister had a son with [Aleister Ataturk] became an SOI when her husband [a friend of Crowleys who introduced the two], also an SOI died on a mission overseas.

Kwaw
 

kwaw

Babylon_Jasmine said:
On the other hand I feel addictions of any kind are a sign of a weak will and Crowley prided himself on the strength of his will.

Crowley felt the same and experimented with many drugs without becoming addicted and felt such addiction could be overcome by will-power. Heroin proved him wrong however, he became addicted to it in the early '20s and he did from his diaries feel it a failure when he finally admitted himself to a clinic to help beat it. He did finally beat it in the latter half of the 20's ['26,'27] when he was prescribed a new medication for the treatment of his asthma. However the drug was manufactured in Germany and at the outbreak of WWII supplies stopped and his doctor once again prescribed heroin for his asthma, and he remained on it then [under prescription] until his death in '47.

Kwaw
 

wandking

Thanks kwaw

In the Equinox there is an ongoing article called "Herb Dangerous" that comes across as a thinly vieled how-to manual on Pot. There's also plenty of stuff like THE POEM OF HASHISH: THE LONGING FOR INFINITY but neither represent an addictive drug.

I wasn't sure about the spying accusation rumor but what I read online did have some historic merit. The rest of that perticular "rumor" delved into the possibility of Crowley acting as a double-agent. Why was Crowley deported from France?
 

Lillie

Babylon_Jasmine said:
On the other hand I feel addictions of any kind are a sign of a weak will and Crowley prided himself on the strength of his will. QUOTE]

Well, I would say that we are all addicted to something. Coffee and smoking being 2 of mine (there are others...)
However, you seemed to be saying that one of the things that made Crowley a bad person was his use of heroin.
All the above wuote says is that he did not manage to live up to his expectations of himself. And that is not being a bad person, it is being a human. (ie. usually crap)
You, yourself once stated on this very forum that you used to take a lot of acid.
Would you wish people to assume from that some unrelated aspect of your character?
Or would you just like us to take you at your word, that you used to take a lot of acid, which does not necessarily have any bearing on anything to do with your character, and is just something you did?

It appears from my reading that Crowley struggled with his addiction (originally prescibed by a doctor) all his life.
He never conqured it, but neither did it conqure him. He did not die young in a public toilet with a needle in his arm.
And personally I hope he got good and gouched many times, and had loads of good dreams.

PS> I totally agree about the amphetamine (meth or otherwise) I hate speed, I hate what it is and I hate what it does.
However, I have known some OK people who take it.
 

wandking

Crowley never had a drug problem

Until he had a money problem, the man got all the drugs he wanted: No problem and he wanted plenty...

Most reasonable sources on Crowley contain the word "hedonism or hedonist" and he was no better or worse than a modern rock star when it came to drugs and sex. In fact, it wasn't his disposition some in the GD deplored it was his practice of sexual magic and his associations with Mathers who was losing London friends fast, while suffering a bit financially himself in Paris.
 

Lillie

wandking said:
Crowley never had a drug problem...
Until he had a money problem, the man got all the drugs he wanted: No problem and he wanted plenty...


:D:D:D What a man, what a life, the like of which us mortals can only dream...

Still, a fair amount of rock stars OD, or die young choking on their own vomit.
Or hanging from cupboard doors...
 

Driley

666

I do think Crowley didn't help his case much by identifying himself with the number 666 and The Beast.