Your opinions on Crowley?

[kwaw]

Originally Posted by 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].

The articles are reprinted in the Thelema Lodge Newsletter, together with a photo of Crowley as 'Kwaw Li Ya', and are online here:

http://www.billheidrick.com/tlc1998/tlc0198.htm#cc

Kwaw

[Babylon_Jasmine]

Originally Posted by 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?

The books i have read said that crowley attempted to offer Thelema as a philosophical justification for the nazi government but that they rebuked him. he was also fairly patriotic about england and i think it is unlikely that he would have spied for germany against them after having been rebuked by Hitler when he offered him his master work.

[Babylon_Jasmine]

[QUOTE=Lillie]

Originally Posted by Babylon_Jasmine

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]


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.

I think that the fact that I used Acid says a fair amount about my character. a certain type of person is prone to the use of psychedelics and they also affect ones mind in ways that stay with you. i do realize that asthma palyed a major part in crowley's becoming addicted to Heroin but i also think that a predeliction to narcotics, which anesthetize and distance one from life does say something about the nature of one's character.

[Babylon_Jasmine]

Originally Posted by Driley

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

I think that was more for his own benefit than anyone elses. I have noticed that many former Christians have to work pretty hard to keep the Christian guilt complex from swallowing them up and many do so by taking an actively hostile stance toward Christianity.

[Babylon_Jasmine]

Originally Posted by wandking

If we dismiss the works of EVERYONE with failings like drugs or alcoholism then we lose some very important creative work in literature, music and art. One of the losses is a personal favorite of mine who won both the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize for literature Ernest Hemingway. What a drunk! I really like the works of a desperate drug user named van Gogh as well. It's particularly fashionable in medical circles these days to write endlessly about how the effects of absinthe and other commonly abused drugs of the day might have shaped van Gogh's art, for instance by causing him to hallucinate the halos and aurorae that often surround light sources in his paintings.

The only thing that would be more ludicrous is dismissing works based on "moral deviations," which implies dismissing work based on how mainstream religion in the past or present views their findings. If we did that, we lose most of the advances in philosophy, science and math.

goodbye Darwin, goodbye Voltaire, goodbye Galileo, goodbye Copernicus and by the way goodbye Court de Gebelin, hence goodbye modern Tarot

And don't forget another great Junkie writer, William Burroughs.

[Babylon_Jasmine]

Originally Posted by Astrid O

~my honest opinion of this man, is that he wouldn't give a f*** what any of us thinks of him.

I have to disagree with that. he might claim not to care, but Crowley spent a great deal of time and energy in attracting attention and dealing with public opinion. He seemed to me to be someone who cared a great deal what others thought of him.

[Aeon418]

Originally Posted by Babylon_Jasmine

The books i have read said that crowley attempted to offer Thelema as a philosophical justification for the nazi government but that they rebuked him. he was also fairly patriotic about england and i think it is unlikely that he would have spied for germany against them after having been rebuked by Hitler when he offered him his master work.

Which book was that in ?

Crowley had no direct contact with the Nazi Third Reich as far as I am aware. But he did have a female German follower, Martha Kuntzel, who claims she tried to get Hitler to accept the Book of the Law in the 1920's. Of course she failed. It's worth pointing out that the Nazi's banned the OTO in Germany and put it's German head, Karl Germer, in prison because of his association with Crowley the OTO and Thelema.

In a letter written to Martha Kuntzel during the war years Crowley told her that "Britain would knock Hitler for six".

[Babylon_Jasmine]

Originally Posted by Aeon418

Which book was that in ?

Crowley had no direct contact with the Nazi Third Reich as far as I am aware. But he did have a female German follower, Martha Kuntzel, who claims she tried to get Hitler to accept the Book of the Law in the 1920's. Of course she failed. It's worth pointing out that the Nazi's banned the OTO in Germany and put it's German head, Karl Germer, in prison because of his association with Crowley the OTO and Thelema.

In a letter written to Martha Kuntzel during the war years Crowley told her that "Britain would knock Hitler for six".

I believe that was in "Do as thou Wilt" which is a biography written quite a while after his death. I may be mistaken, but seeing how the Germans treated the OTo it still seems unlikely Crowley would have spied for them.

[Lillie]

Originally Posted by Babylon_Jasmine

I think that the fact that I used Acid says a fair amount about my character. a certain type of person is prone to the use of psychedelics and they also affect ones mind in ways that stay with you. i do realize that asthma palyed a major part in crowley's becoming addicted to Heroin but i also think that a predeliction to narcotics, which anesthetize and distance one from life does say something about the nature of one's character.

Well then, I'm damned for sure, and most of everyone else.

[Ross G Caldwell]

Originally Posted by Aeon418

Which book was that in ?

Crowley had no direct contact with the Nazi Third Reich as far as I am aware. But he did have a female German follower, Martha Kuntzel, who claims she tried to get Hitler to accept the Book of the Law in the 1920's. Of course she failed. It's worth pointing out that the Nazi's banned the OTO in Germany and put it's German head, Karl Germer, in prison because of his association with Crowley the OTO and Thelema.

In a letter written to Martha Kuntzel during the war years Crowley told her that "Britain would knock Hitler for six".

As far as I know, Crowley was never employed by a Nazi or anybody with Nazi affiliations. Symonds recounts a story of him being beaten up by "brownshirts" in 1934 somewhere in Germany (Berlin?) - that must have hurt, him being in his late 50s by that point. Nazism surely repulsed him - the Nietzschean will-to-power and Wagnerian romance/neo-paganism might have intrigued him, but the moral puritanism and intellectual obscurantism would definitely have overridden any fascination.

He never met Hitler, at least according to any source - himself or others - that I have read. Kuntzel was his closest contact - he might have harboured a belief that exposure to Thelema might have improved Hitler's character.

There is a story that Crowley suggested the "V for Victory" sign to Churchill, to counteract the magical effects of the Swastika. I can't remember if it was Crowley himself who originated this story.

As for the spying story, this might be a confusion of WWII with Crowley's activities in the USA during WWI. He wrote "propaganda" for a pro-German magazine "The Fatherland" (later amalgamated with "The International") while he was in New York city, 1914-1918. The British press, led by John Bull, considered this work to be treason, and wrote articles about Crowley with headlines like "A Man We'd Like To Hang". When he got back to England in 1919, he had to face the serious possibility of being formally charged with treason - I believe this was one of the reasons he sought out a change of location, finally settling in Cefalu, Sicily.

Crowley himself always claimed that the "propaganda" for the Fatherland and International was "reverse propaganda" or something like that - so over-the-top that the German case would be shown absurd. I personally think Crowley was just having a good time, and was making a little money in the process. It was also another venue for his magical writings, which besides his editorials became the bulk of the magazine in short order.