Driley
Perhaps I misspoke
On review, I think I misspoke (er... mistyped).
When speaking of Al's positive qualities, I cited "Magic without Tears", which I again recommend to anyone who wants to see a side of the man that the rumours don't provide. Then I said I wouldn't cite any negative examples since they are so well known. I was then asked to provide a negative example of his writing since they are so well know.
Whoops. I meant, his writing is positive. The negative aspects of his personality which have been referenced here are well know. I haven't read everything Crowley wrote. But...
When I was trying to give Lady Harris some overdue credit, evidently it came across as minimizing Crowley's contribution. I just think the balance has been out of whack for a time and if it helps people access the deck to think of them as primarily Harris's work, then that should be fine. Crowley, I suspect, would be more interested in the transmission of the ideas than the credit. This, I think, is one of the problems he had with Mathers, actually.
One of the problems. The other is that you can only have one egomanical control-freak in a group and have a happy group.
Anyway, don't give up on Crowley. I don't find his writing very accessible in the Thoth book... and I say that's deliberate because I find him covering similar topics in other works in a much more engaging style. I'm actually not much of a fan of the man himself. But I do think he has something to offer and as Dion Fortune pointed out, a man's personality and his body of work deserve to be judged seperately. To dismiss his work because we don't like his life story is rather shallow. Consider what a loss that would be to English poetry... Byron certainly couldn't withstand such a test.
And I suspect that Crowley would be pleased and amused by this conversation.
On review, I think I misspoke (er... mistyped).
When speaking of Al's positive qualities, I cited "Magic without Tears", which I again recommend to anyone who wants to see a side of the man that the rumours don't provide. Then I said I wouldn't cite any negative examples since they are so well known. I was then asked to provide a negative example of his writing since they are so well know.
Whoops. I meant, his writing is positive. The negative aspects of his personality which have been referenced here are well know. I haven't read everything Crowley wrote. But...
When I was trying to give Lady Harris some overdue credit, evidently it came across as minimizing Crowley's contribution. I just think the balance has been out of whack for a time and if it helps people access the deck to think of them as primarily Harris's work, then that should be fine. Crowley, I suspect, would be more interested in the transmission of the ideas than the credit. This, I think, is one of the problems he had with Mathers, actually.
One of the problems. The other is that you can only have one egomanical control-freak in a group and have a happy group.
Anyway, don't give up on Crowley. I don't find his writing very accessible in the Thoth book... and I say that's deliberate because I find him covering similar topics in other works in a much more engaging style. I'm actually not much of a fan of the man himself. But I do think he has something to offer and as Dion Fortune pointed out, a man's personality and his body of work deserve to be judged seperately. To dismiss his work because we don't like his life story is rather shallow. Consider what a loss that would be to English poetry... Byron certainly couldn't withstand such a test.
And I suspect that Crowley would be pleased and amused by this conversation.