RViewer said:
So you are saying that in this thread, which is titled “Your opinions on Crowley”, that people offering such opinions are pointless and out of place? I fail to see your logic. I have a similar problem seeing the logic of the beast claiming to work white magic while creating a legacy of lies confusion and deceit.
It seems to me that your statement of intended ridicule is the one that is out of place here. Perhaps it is that those who follow this beast do not wish to look too closely at what side of Justice these teachings reside. Maybe they just wish to blindly follow someone who they believe has the ability to transfer power to them.
I believe Crowley would care about people's opinions for he was a person of very low self-esteem who played host to the darkest energies he could commune with. Such a person is in need of a second opinion more than they may be allowed to be aware of.
Hey gang,
I've been sitting on my thumbs for the past few pages but I'm gonna jump in here because I feel like there is a discussion that is actually germane to the topic of the thread which is trying to poke through the soil.
Edge's comment wasn't that people can't express opinions but wondering why these same impassioned detractors continue to repeat the monotonous litany of Crowley's evils without gathering substantive information beyond urban legend and bits of self-promotion by the man himself.
I take Edge's point deeply to heart: it is bewildering why folks who can't stand Crowley are endlessly fascinated with standing in the middle of the virtual Town Square and trumpeting their righteous disapproval. And I love the idea that Crowley has spearheaded some kind of sinister global cabal which is reaping souls as we speak. The fact remains, propping up straw villains to build bonfires inevitably throws more light on the voyeuristic Mob than on the roasted Devil.
Crowley was an educated individual. Finding wisdom in his work is a matter of personal taste/effort/ability. For my money, the canonic Bible is at the root of more rape, torture, murder, and war than any other text in history but that doesn't make it any less beautiful or valuable as a work of myth and mysticism. And the kneejerk revulsion I have towards Christianity as an institution only descends to direct attack when I'm at my most petty. I spent years getting a degree in religion so that when fundamentalists and literalists of any stripe come a-knocking I can speak with some measure of competence.
I will defend anyone's right to howl execration at charismatic leaders because it is the nature of charisma to corrupt and the nature of movements to devolve. The observation that public figures gain power at the expense of others is circular and specious (like saying water is wet): that's what public
means. Leaders draw followers to them and thereby become public figures. ALL public figures from Martin Luther King to Pinochet are buoyed by their constituents. That's the definition of leading, whether the power involved is characterized as religious or otherwise. And I know of very few organizations that don't have compromises and skeletons rattling around in their closets. Look at the desolation wrought by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, all of which were founded by charismatic leaders and then ossified by bureacracy and cliché.
The Yeats quote misattributed by Rviewer is from a letter to Lady Gregory expressing concern about uncertain future of the Golden Dawn. It is similar in character to criticism by any existing hierarchy when faced with the charismatic interloper: Jesus, Franco, Gandhi, Elizabeth I, and Henry Ford included. If that is proof of Evil then it is so ubiquitous that the word is meaningless and The "Good Leader" a mythical beast.
In Saint Augustine’s
Confessions, Book 12, section 24, he has this brilliant, fearless chunk about Moses and the impossibility of knowing the word of God. Augustine decides that
no one is allowed to insist on one reading of any text because of our inherent ignorance and consequently no one has the right to dictate belief… From one of the most dogmatic of church thinkers, a diatribe against dogmatism. And that's a sword that cuts all ways.
It is my own weakness that I am immediately suspicious of people who sneak into neighboring churches to cast down Idols. Another weakness I have is humor: I doubt any leader who can't laugh at themselves because laughter is the sound of Truth. Only the ridiculous would attempt to ban ridicule. But my most concrete belief is that the moment we are certain, is the moment we are
wrong. Anyone who announces their absolute certainty of anything (even uncertainty itself) has a streak of intellectual masochism too deep and vexing to bother plumbing. And they tend to wear the stink of burning books. We are the mote in the Universal eye and the seeds of Hate grow within us...
I don't believe in mindless monsters operating in a vacuum. I don't see how anyone but a child could believe that "Bad" people simply set out to do "Bad things" with no other motivation or desire... as if the world were idiot clockwork and everyone chooses a white or a black hat to dictate their responsibility-free actions. That's a practically medieval viewpoint, though no less popular or useful for being superceded by 600 years of intellectual progress.
Nietzsche says "Good is eternal and unchanging, therefore all progress depends on the Evil man." And Goethe has a certain someone say in Faust: "I am that force in the Universe forever striving towards Evil, forever accomplishing good."
Reading this entire thread is interesting: people are different; differensces are interesting. For anyone who popped over to the Thoth thread to log their disapproval of Crowley: I imagine The Beast is pretty chuffed... You couldn't have made him happier. The irony is that (in my opinion) the people defending him aren't worshipping him, but rather advocating a dialectic that presumes the ability to doubt.
Taking "untrammeled delight in every possibility of existence, potential or actual" seems like a synonym for reverent prayer. In my opinion, Crowley was an educated man trying to posit a faith that refused to provide simple answers and insisted that enlightened immortality was possible, but that each of us is responsible for rolling away our own stone.
Scion
