Crowley in popular culture

Back in the 80's there were some bands that were pretty heavily into the magickal side of it all, rather than just the 'cool' name dropping thing that the heavy metal bands do.

Current 93, bands like that.
yeah, they knew what they were talking about.

POP Culture 69/70...

Aubrey Beardsley and Aleister Crowley used to get all mixed up
in my adolescent mind, the same as Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

I had lots more fun things to do...but Beardsley, I remembered.

*

It was kind of the same with Aleister Crowley and Alistair Cooke.
But more confusing because now, which one was the dead guy?

I figured out easy enough, not how to spell their names though.

I love Beardsley.

For us here on this forum- we know many of the myths and facts about Crowley and in some cases can put these things aside. I guess after thinking about this for 48 hours, I have crystalised what it is that I think. Crowley with his reputation has done more harm than good to Tarot in my mind. If you ask someone who is rabidly anti-Tarot why they are so, they will inevitably bring up the black magic aspect. The dark side of this wonderful tool. Apart from the Christian aspect of non-divining what are people's objections to it? There is this remembering of creepy things and a hundred years is not enough time for that black magic aspect to have gone away. I realised this when I read Cosmostaroist's reply in another thread where a Poster for a film used the Thoth Tarot as a backdrop. The film did not use the Thoth in the script- but they used it in the Publicity. The film's theme is about a killer who uses Tarot. We all know Tarot is about images. So I reiterate what I said in the beginning of this thread- it does not matter what Crowley's message was- his actions gave the reputation and that is how he is perceived in popular culture- dark!
I would appreciate if I did not have to get out my Arnica cream for further bruises and cuts, by posting to this thread. I am not commenting upon Crowley's message itself, but the effect he has had in popular culture. ~Rosanne

He's not the Messiah! He's a VERY Naughty Boy!

Hey Rosanne,
Thanks for articulating my feelings about Crowley. I've had a Thoth deck and the Book of Thoth for a couple years. I still don't get it.

I spend time with my decks, read the books, try to tune in to them. I have the Barbara Walker deck as well, which is a Crowley type deck. But the sense of pessimism and negativity just doesn't work for me.

Darkness is ok with me. But maybe its my religious world-view that the Tarot is about the middle way between extremes. The Buddha said that our world has enough suffering to make us want to escape. And the Devil (Mara) rules this world.

So why wallow in it? Crowley in contemporary society would just be like one more mediocre death-metal wannabee shouting "Look at me! I'm the Beast! I'm the Messiah!"

Sigh.

I've been fighting the impulse to post, and I just succumbed...

The Buddha observed that Life is suffering and that suffering is caused by desire and the way to escape the wheel and thence suffering was to relinquish desire... even the desire to not desire. None of the 4 Noble Truths are particularly cheerful. In the middle path, I think one must even be moderate with moderation. Still, I suppose every Buddhism is individual.

Fairywren, I take your point about Darkness, but I'm not sure I follow. Many people reject Buddhism with exactly this argument. Saying that life is suffering and that Maya (and Mara) rule the world can also be construed as relentlessly negative, as is an ultimate goal of dissolution of an imaginary self. Siddhartha is enlightened by three terrible observations that gave rise to a an insight and way of life which could equally be construed as "wallowing" in it. I always get edgy and irritable when people tell me that "dwelling" on something is unhealthy or that certain subjects should be left unexamined. Still, opinions are subjective and usually meaningless in discussions. Nuff said on that.

Rosanne, no need for arnica on my account. I take your point about the impact of Crowley on popular consciousness of the Occult. The same argument can be made about pedophilic abuse in the Catholic Church and corruption in Governments: scary individuals can tar an entire enterprise. Crowley is a convenient esoteric bugbear because he was SO good at getting himself in the paper. I agree that he is a problematic posterchild and that some of his ick factor still keeps people at bay. Nevertheless, it draws some others to Tarot. He's a sword that cuts both ways. For me, anyone who thinks he was working "black magic" (a whole other topic too boring to go into again) is uninformed, and therefore not worth involving in a conversation. And I'd argue that anyone that is scared off by bad PR from the mid-20th century is better off with beige slipcovers and trimmed lawns reading the Left Behind series. Self selection is a wonderful thing.

The tricky thing is that Crowley is responsible for much of what we consider the modern occult movement and the "New Age," including helping to found Wicca (and consequently neopaganism and modern goddess worship), NLP and psychological theurgy, the popularization of astrology and occult Qabalah, emphasizing tantra and yoga in esoteric use, and almost all modern traditions of ceremonial magic (including chaos and enochian). That's not even touching on his impact on the occult Tarot. He is literally a cornerstone of the occult 20th century, like it or not. Remove even a few of his contributions and you could make a good case that without his spooky, memorable, transgressive persona looming in the popular consciousness that there might have been no Occult revival of the 60s. With that in mind, the popular explosion of interest in esoteric subjects (including Tarot) in the past 30 years would not have occurred and none of us would be having this conversation.

Let's give credit where credit is due. Feel free to ignore his charisma, his personal achievements, his scholarship, his creative output, his philosophical writing, and his role in several shifts in the zeitgeist. But to characterize Crowley as "one more mediocre death-metal wannabee" is to ignore the tremendous impact he has on esoterica of the 20th century and the vast scholarship and chutzpah with which he launched the traditions of the 19th century secret societies onto an unimaginative public. In fact, he spent his entire enormous fortune making sure that the Golden Dawn tradition, Enochiana, the Solomonic Keys, and the Abramelin texts (etc. etc.) were translated and discussed and published and made available to the masses. Not exactly some kid in a basement with eyeliner and an electric guitar. Many of the texts that form the basis of the modern Tarot would simply have been lost were it not for his iconoclastic desire to enrage his enemies by making secret info available to everyone. If you can name another person in the past 100 years who spent millions of pounds and ruined a respected title acquiring that level of esoteric education and promoting the Occult in the popular consciousness I'd love to learn about them.

I have no interest in playing the "defend Crowley" game. I take him with many grains of salt. He is a creature of the century before last. He was constantly urging people to refute him and disprove his assertions by improving upon them. Like most charismatic leaders in history, he was often a shameless jerk and spent his declining years battling critics and cadging support off of anyone who would stand still. He's sort of the bloated, lecherous, smelly uncle at every Occult family reunion: love him or hate him, he's still at the table and he was no fool. Last time I checked, no one has to use his deck or read his books. I understand fully why folks don't like him and I know that he still upsets people because he spent his whole life making sure he would and that is an essential component of his legacy. He wasn't a saint by most definitions, but he was important.

Scion

Thanks for for your post Scion- I actually happen to agree with everything you have said (especially the bit about the church in fact)- I have never ever said or thought that Crowley was not an important occultist or that he did not have a message worthy of consideration. I agree that his work has bought people to Tarot. I think him as a untrustworthy- but he was aware of this (not of me in particular ) but I disagree with how his popular image can help with Tarot; it puts more barriers up than it removes. I am tired of the uninformed view that Tarot is spooky and black and is seen as dark. I do not agree that he was the reason that there was an esoteric boom after him- I think that is too simplistic and Tarot has had its boom and bust times throughout its history. I don't want the 'beige' masses to ignore Tarot, because they are misinformed and a lot of popular culture views on him are. But be that as it may popular culture views him as spooky/dark and therefore to a great degree Tarot- I find that sad.~Rosanne

"One of the main reasons I felt the necessity of this deck was Aleister Crowley's impact on society that we have already felt. His presence has already altered the course of history in ways we can not yet fully comprehend. I need not go on about his infinite ties to the music industry and to the 60's counterculture movements, but only to point out his presence on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's." Jeremy Lampkin

Click to expand...

Based on the above quotation, and in regard
to the topic of this thread, may I present...

http://www.bifrosttarot.com/
The Bifrost Tarot

Well, this has been a most engaging thread!

Scion's post raises the interesting question of "what if"--what if Crowley hadn't been so prolific and persistent and well-known in his unorthodox interests--would I still be staring at the cards and trying to get into full lotus?

Crowley had an impact, no question, but I think that the "new age" movement and all it carried with it--tarot, alternative spiritualities, drugs & sex & rock&roll, the hell with your mum and dad and let's do as we will, etc.--was "overdetermined." In other words, there were lots of threads drawing westerners in Europe and the US away from the Beige and toward other colors, and LOTS of colors, not just black.

Frankly, the "counterculture" attachment to tarot and etc. may have been shallower, perhaps, for its ahistoricity--but it was essentially an ahistorical moment. We have so much tarot today BECAUSE it's not a secret art "owned" by secret societies. In the 1960's, which I remember (gak ahem), all sorts of "old stuff" like tarot and I Ching were grabbed and put to use without much concern for their origins and all the historical bric-a-brac that went with them. (We see similar processes of cultural diffusion at work now. When I went for my yoga teacher certification, many in my class--people who were very talented, had been practicing for years, had many different teachers--knew nothing about the origins and history of yoga. Yet...they are yogis.)

Because of cultural diffusion from the occult secret societies to the world of everyone, and from the east (in reality, and in myth) to the west, I can look askance at people who insist that my attachment to Tarot reveals an allegiance to the Dark Arts (or whatever the heck everyone wants to call it all). For some on this forum, perhaps that's how they got into tarot, but I have never pursued traditional magic with or without the "K" and yet received a deck as a gift, read various books on how to use it, dabbled here and there with stuff that didn't REQUIRE dusting off all the bric-a-brac of history to use it meaningfully. And... I can read the cards without thinking or even knowing anything about "Uncle Fester" Crowley and with confidence that doing so is not...demonic, in whatever sense one wishes to use the word.

Cheers and best wishes to all who have contributed here ... hot, cool, whatever, it's an interesting discussion and I'm learning a lot!

Scion said:

He's a sword that cuts both ways. For me, anyone who thinks he was working "black magic" (a whole other topic too boring to go into again) is uninformed, and therefore not worth involving in a conversation. And I'd argue that anyone that is scared off by bad PR from the mid-20th century is better off with beige slipcovers and trimmed lawns reading the Left Behind series. Self selection is a wonderful thing.

Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more, Scion.

This is something that applies equally to both Crowley and Tarot. The "popular" and uninformed image of both subjects is that there is something evil and dark about them. I think nearly everyone on this forum would agree that the popular image of Tarot is complete B.S. It only takes a little discrimination and an enquiring mind to scratch the veneer hard enough to reveal a whole new world. The same applies to Crowley, although the veneer is probably a little thicker.

People who can't see beyond his colourful reputation, the dark rumours, and the outright lies are probably better off looking elsewhere. Reading Crowley requires a enquiring mind capable of looking beyond the surface meaning. Rosanne says that Crowley is not to be trusted, and in a certain sense I agree with her. Crowley fits the character of "Trickster Sage" to a tee. His works are mined with literary blinds and shocking jokes that are designed to root out the superstitious and lazy student who is incapable of more then knee jerk reaction.

For this reason alone I doubt that Crowley will ever become mainstream. The only thing that he will be recognised for by popular culture is as an icon of rebellion and as a supposed Master of Darkness. In one sense I think that's a good thing. It also applies to the Tarot and the "popular" image of it as dark and possibly evil.

What happens to anything that goes mainstream? It dies. Over night it turns into nothing more than "product" designed to grease the wheels of commerce. To make it a financial success you have to aim it at as large a market as possible. 9 times out of 10 this means you have to "dumb down". The average moron won't buy something that makes him/her feel inferior or stupid. The net result of this is that the real enthusiasts who are passionate about Tarot will withdraw and maybe even go away and do something else. This pattern has been seen time and time again when anything goes mainstream.

Maybe some people will see nothing more than elitism in my remarks. But there is a stark choice. You can have real Tarot for people who are actually prepared to look behind the curtain of ignorance and the dark mystique that sometimes surrounds it. Or you can have mass produced and artificial McTarot marketed to accommodate the lowest common denominator. The same applies to Aleister Crowley.