Your opinions on Crowley?

[ravenest]

Good for you Indigo Rose! I respect your opinion and are not trying to change it. I can imagine the poem you read, some of them are 'nasty' so maybe I'll post a nice one of his here though for you to see the other side as he could be a very accomplished poet.

[Indigo Rose]

Originally Posted by ravenest

Good for you Indigo Rose! I respect your opinion and are not trying to change it. I can imagine the poem you read, some of them are 'nasty' so maybe I'll post a nice one of his here though for you to see the other side as he could be a very accomplished poet.

Thanks ravenest! Mutual respect here for you. I'm sure the man himself was brilliant and gifted; and perhaps this is where the admiration comes from his fan base. Again, it is just his very dark words that sank deep into my heart....it makes me not trust him, because it felt like he had given over to darkness...instead of promoting light and love.

Peace

[Aeon418]

Originally Posted by Indigo Rose

Again, it is just his very dark words that sank deep into my heart....it makes me not trust him, because it felt like he had given over to darkness...instead of promoting light and love.

Promoting a New Age style love and light philosophy is very well and good, but when it is done at the expense of other parts of your true nature it can be damaging and become a constant source of internal conflict. Human beings are not all love and light. Everyone of us has a darker, more negative side. We can either try to bring this dark aspect out into the open and explore it, in Crowley's case this was sometimes through his poetry, and attempt to integrate this aspect of ourselves into the greater whole. Or we can deny that it exists and try to bury it beneath a thin coating of love and light. The trouble is, it's still there under the surface.

This is where Crowley is different to many modern day New Agers. He never hid his darker side. He exposed it, expressed it, and explored it along with his more positive side, through his art and poetry.
His philosophy recognises that we are all gods. But also that we are all animals as well. Both aspects need to brought together in balance to make a combined whole.

The Tarot, as a map of the self, points directly to this fact. There are some good cards and there are some not so good cards. But they are all essential to the combined whole that constitutes the Tarot. How sad and incomplete would Tarot be without such cards as the Devil and the Tower.

As for Crowley's poetry, well some of it is good, some of it is bad. His themes range from the purely spirtual and exalted to the pornographic and everything in between. But to pick out one poem from the massive amount that Crowley wrote and declare it as evidence of his evil is a little narrow in my opinion.

Here's one of his poems that I like. It's certainly far from his best work but it was written in Crowley's last year of life when he must have know that his own death was near at hand.

LOGOS

Out of the night forth flamed a star - mine own!
Now seventy light-years nearer as I urge
Constant mine heart through the abyss unknown,
Its glory my sole guide while spaces surge
About me. Seventy light-years! As I near
That gate of light that men call death, its cold
Pale gleam begins to pulse, a throbbing sphere,
Systole and diastole of eager gold,
New life immortal, warmth of passion bleed
Till night's black velvet burn to crimson. Hark!
It is Thy voice, Thy word, the secret seed
Of rapture that admonishes the dark.
Swift! By necessity most righteous drawn,
Hemes, authentic augur of the dawn!

[kwaw]

Originally Posted by Indigo Rose

No Crowley for me, thank you. I had the misfortune of reading one of his poems.

What was Crowley response to the barrister who after reading one of his pornagraphic poems and asking 'is that not filth?'

Something like, 'the way you read it, it is magnificent', or something like that.

Think he wrote some pretty good poetry meself.

Kwaw

[Indigo Rose]

Originally Posted by Aeon418

...Human beings are not all love and light. Everyone of us has a darker, more negative side. We can either try to bring this dark aspect out into the open and explore it, in Crowley's case this was sometimes through his poetry, and attempt to integrate this aspect of ourselves into the greater whole. Or we can deny that it exists and try to bury it beneath a thin coating of love and light. The trouble is, it's still there under the surface.

Yes, we all have positive and negative sides. I don't have to dwell upon mine to be a whole person. Yes, I must recognize it and deal properly with it....like the Strength card....the task is Self mastery over it. As for the thin coating of love and light....when LOVE becomes your focus it becomes your core, rather than a facade to hide the darkness within.

[Baroli]

I don't think much of him in that I don't really know that much. I know he was highly controversial and had, for the most part in the Victorian Age a huge sex drive.

I don't like Thoth, don't like to read with it. I gave my deck away to someone who can use it better than I.

Baroli

[Edge]

Originally Posted by Baroli52

I don't think much of him in that I don't really know that much.

Most do not, many are swayed into a negative opinion rather easily. The popular opinion on the man has been framed by tabloids and sensationalism in the media. The famous line of John Bull come to mind. This is really no different in today's society..

[ravenest]

It might help to remember that the 4 keywords with which AC re-constituted the OTO are Light, Life, Love, and Liberty.

Here is a poem I promised by the old Beast. (from Rite of Jupiter)

Sweet, sweet are May and June, dear,
The loves of lambent spring,
Our lamp the drooping moon, dear,
Our roof, the stars that sing;

The bed, of moss and roses;
The night, as long as death!
Still, breath!
Life wakens and reposes,
Love ever quickeneth!

Sweet, sweet, when Lion and Maiden,
The motley months of gold,
Swoop down with sunlight laden,
And eyes are bright and bold.

Life-swelling breasts uncover
Their warm involving deep-

Love, sleep!

And lover lies with lover
On air's substantial steep.

Ah! sweeter was Sepember-
The amber rain of leaves,
The harvest to remember,
The load of sunny sheaves.

In gardens deeply scented,
In orchards heavily hung,
Love flung
Away the days demented

With lips that curled and clung.

Ah! sweeter still October,
When russet leaves go grey,
And sombre lovers and sober Make twilight of the day.
Dark dreams and shadows tenser

Throb through the vital scroll,
Man's soul.
Lift, shake the subtle censer
That hides the cruel coal!

Still sweeter when the Bowman
His silky shaft of frost
Lets loose on earth, that no man
May linger nor be lost.

The barren woods, deserted.
Lose echo of our sighs-
Love-dies?-
Love lives-in granite skirted,

And under oaken skies.

But best is grim December,
The Goatish God his power;
The Satyr blows the ember,
And pain is passion's flower;

When blood drips over kisses,
And madness sobs through wine:-
Ah, mine!-
The snake starts up and hisses
And strikes and-I am thine!

[kwaw]

Originally Posted by Indigo Rose

As for the thin coating of love and light....when LOVE becomes your focus it becomes your core, rather than a facade to hide the darkness within.

"Meaning arises not from some central core of identity but rather at a margin of difference. Self-definition comes from the not-self, from the alien other' {Forms of Nationhood by Richard Helgerson}.

In as much as Crowley defined himself not in opposition to the other, but his identification with it, then maybe there is an exponent of love as ultimate communion and oneness. Also in many respects Crowley it could be argued was focussed not so much upon the 'core' of identity, but its 'margins' or 'masks'. Which are apart of identity as much as the core. An onion is an onion as much for its layers as its core {and it is cutting into the core, so I've heard, that brings tears to the eyes. Under sweet sentiment, comes the sting}.

During the reign of Queen Mary many protestants exiled themselves from England refusing to drink from the 'cup of Babylon'. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth many catholics went into exile refusing to drink from 'the cup of Babylon'. That Crowley chose to relish the last drop was perhaps to divorce true virtue from concepts of partisan morality.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god. According to the protestants the latin words of the Catholic church were mere 'bibble babble' [from bible babel], to the Catholics the vernacular of the protestants was 'bibble babble'. To an antinomian on the margins it was all bibble babble, as equally defined in the roar of a beast, or better still, in silence.


Kwaw

[Sophie]

Originally Posted by Indigo Rose

when LOVE becomes your focus it becomes your core, rather than a facade to hide the darkness within.

I think Crowley would have agreed with you there - he was the one, after all, who would repeat that Love is the Law...

He believed the whole world is moved by love, and things go wrong when our relationship with love is skewered - or when there is not enough of it.