Aleister Crowley's Thoth - should i or shouldn't i ? Any advice would be welcome!

Lillie [No way do I know everything about Mr C! There are people here who know a lot more. said:

I didn't mean to imply anything or impune anyone else - i just like your take on things, its interesting to hear your opinions, and everybody elses also. Thanks for the long post, i enjoyed it very much!! xxMags.

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Le Fanu said:

He is just one of many great artists & thinkers who were not angels. I have never seen people wondering whether or not they should look at Caravaggio paintings or see Christopher Marlowe plays or listen to that 16th Century composer Carlos Gesualdo who murdered his wife but wrote beautiful madrigals. There's a whole line of people who may have been criminals but who left great legacies...

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ravenest said:

If you think you are THAT easily influenced I wouldnt reccomend a Thoth deck at this stage ... you could get caught in a 'mirror maze' and confront your own projected fears looking back at you... I mean for example, how do you feel about the RW Devil card? Just visually say ... Now, How do you feel about the Thoth Devil card? I mean , IMO the RW Devil SUCKS big time ... but I aint worried that Pan is gonna turn into a fat old Christian devil and my natural desires are going to chain me to a rock ... I'm sorry if I have read you wrong here .... I'll accept a caning if so (but not a chaining )

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MagsStardustBlack said:

Lillie [No way do I know everything about Mr C! There are people here who know a lot more. said:

I didn't mean to imply anything or impune anyone else - i just like your take on things, its interesting to hear your opinions, and everybody elses also. Thanks for the long post, i enjoyed it very much!! xxMags.

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No worries.

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Lillie said:

Hi.

Great house story!!!
I too have heard about the church, but have no idea whether it is true or not!
Just one of them regularly repeated things.
Perhaps an old map would show it.
(will have to have a look about!)

No way do I know everything about Mr C!
There are people here who know a lot more.

I just have a very particular opinion of him because i think he was very funny.

So, this is what I think, and other people will not necessarily agree with me.

When Crowley was but a little itty bitty baby boy his mom and dad (but particularly his mom) were very religious and very strict. They brought their son up on a diet of god and repression and naturally, being a fairly intelligent young lad, he rebelled against this.
As his parents were Plymouth Brethren (apocalyptic fundamentalist christians) he found he could get a good rise out of his mother by telling her that he was the beast 666 and doing his best to act like it.
He never really got over this, this desire to shock his mother, and it has always seemed to me that years later, long after she was dead, he was still trying to be very, very shocking. Which really wasn't too difficult to do back in those times.

If he was around now he would have to do a whole lot more to get the same publicity he did then (and remember, to someone like his all publicity was good publicity)

The other unfortunate thing his parents did to him was to give him a lot of money. When he was young he was rich and he never learned to manage his money even when he had none left. This therefore necessitated him sponging off anyone he could to live the life he thought he was entitled too.
He would promise you the secrets of the universe, so long as you could buy him brandy, heroin and finance the publication of his latest book...

So everything he said, everything he did has to be looked at as thought it may be a lie, or an exaggeration, of done/said for effect or for money, or made up by his detractors.
Anything to fund his habit, or feed his ego.
At this distance it is now almost impossible to separate the truth from the fiction, if it ever was.

But there is another side to this bloke, this drug taking, mountain climbing egotistical sex maniac. However he got into it, however much it started off as a rebellion against the religion of his parents, he got into the 'occult' and stuck with it. He was very serious about it. He read it, he wrote it, he lived it.
He conjured spirits and demons, he meditated and chanted, he became the greatest magician of his age, through sheer force of will, through determination to believe the myth he made for himself.
And I admire that.
I really do.

But still, he makes me laugh!
What a character!
What a madman!
The would would be a poorer place without people like him.

There is something he wrote in the Book of Thoth, the book he wrote to go with the deck, it's about the Moon card.

'This is the threshold of life; this is the threshold of death. All is doubtful, all is mysterious, all is intoxicating. Not the benign solar intoxication of Dionysus, but the dreadful madness of pernicious drugs; this is a drunkenness of sense, after the mind has been abolished by the venom of this Moon... But the best men, the true men, do not conside the matter in such terms at all. Whatever horrors may afflict the soul, whatever abominations may excire the loathing of the heart, whatever terrors may assail the mind, the answer is the same at every stage: "How splendid the adventure!"'

And yes, his adventure was splendid. I wouldn't have wanted a daughter of mine to marry him, but still, the world would be a poorer place with out people like this.

And the deck he made with Frieda Harris, there at the end of his life while the bombs rained down on them during the war. It's like he distilled everything he had ever learned, all his magical knowledge and put it in there as images.
And it is a wonderful thing.
It's not for everyone, but still, it is a wonderful thing.

And everyone who thinks of this deck has to deal with their reaction to Crowley. Some just ignore him, like the deck was born from the void without any human assistance, some are put off the deck by the reputation of the man, some are attracted to the deck because of his reputation.
And many other reactions.

It's not for me to say whether or not you should get this deck, nor is it for me to tell you how you should or shouldn't approach Crowley and his reputation, that's up to you.

I'll say this though, you won't know how you react to the deck till you hold it in your hands, and I suppose, if you don't like it you could sell it on.

I promise you this, it will not, cannot, corrupt, possess or otherwise damage you just from owning it, just from looking at it.
It's just cardboard and ink, and Mr C is long dead and buried.
So don't worry about that.

Really it's up to you what you want to do, no one can decide for you, but whenever I hear about Crowley, whatever I hear about him, I laugh and I think 'How splendid the adventure!'

Sorry.
Long post...

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