They Sold Their Soul To Rock And Roll: Aleister Crowley (Page 2 of 8)

TP- I try and have some patience precisely because AC had the habit of "shocking and aweing" which he must have found amusing, and may indeed have served to perpetuate his writings, but this image-hawking has also certainly acted to preclude serious consideration of those same writings. as Antaeus rightly observes AC did engage in "religion-bashing", often tounge in cheek, often outright aristocratic garbage... sometimes the logogram of the Man Crowley was in control of the pen, and it could be an ornery MoFo.

Antaeus- he swept it under the rug with one hand, elevated it with another.. and he did this constantly with lots of stuff. it is impossible to formulate a balanced picture of Crowley without going through a considerable volume of his work; and I think the crafty bastard did it that way on purpose ;-)

as for licentious or immoral, or 'revolting details of sex'; i'll make those distinctions on a case by case basis and on my own authority, thanks... i'm quite sure there are many cases, as you say. i'm not looking for a cult, i re-invent my own daily; and study all i come across to make it more interesting. so there.

sukaido: it's not "privileged" material, and that's the point! AC open sourced the Golden Dawn with the publication of the Equinox, and that is fully available for free online. as is TONS of stuff directly relevant to "occultism" (not been occult at all for over 100 years).

that's why i get irritated at judgemental phrases based on urban legend images being brandished about when it's a hop skip and a jump to actually having something to say.

"Garbage cans"... what part of AC's corpus of writings is that adressed to? The academic texts, the "Holy Books", his poetry, what? It's all available for free, no need even to call the evil Amazon into play. what's the rubbish bin comment coming from?

it ain't telling people "you need to be an occult scholar", it's "stop shooting off bullshit at random" nothing more.

i have a TV;  if i want random BS i'll turn it on.

if it still works.

93/93

ZT--I appreciate your moderate attitude.  And your scholarship is impressive.
But after reading Crowley and especially War in Heaven, I cannot stomach
religious fundamentalists of ANY stripe.  True, my attitude may put off some
religious types from investigating AC or other non-theocratic systems of
thought, but I maintain that if the person doesn't have a questioning mind
and is merely a spoon fed believer, that person will never see the Darkness
at the end of the religion funnel.  (The "funnel" was the name of the
anteroom leading to the gas chamber at Auschwitz.)

I don't hold Crowley as an example of how a person should behave, but
I do appreciate his ability to separate the wheat from the chaff of so much
of the disinformation which keeps us chasing our tails like the Ourobouros,
and trapped on the wheel of karma.

Ignorance Endangers
Knowledge Protects

TP

From Crowley's The Vision and the Voice:
"The supreme Rite would be to bring about a climax in the death of the victim.  By this Rite one would attain the summit  of Magical Art.  Even better would be to slay a girl, preferably a willing victim.  After violating her, she should be cut into nine pieces.  These should not be eaten, but divided as follows:-head, arms, legs, and quadrisected trunk.  The names of the gods appropriate are to be written on the skin, the arms are then to be flayed, and burnt...This Rite should not be employed on ordinary occasions, but rarely, and then for great purposes; it should not be disclosed to any man."

Personally, I don't need to waste my time studying thousands of pages of pretentious ramblings to realize that this kind of thing is not for me.  Not to mention the evidence that supports Crowley's involvement with M16 as well as masonic organizations that most likely participated in the kind of rituals described above.  But to each his own I guess.

Antaeus--thank you for correcting my sentence structure.  I got ahead of myself trying
to say too many things at once.

As to which country to live in--apparently the only place better would be someplace off
this 3D earth.  Mankind seems to be hopelessly trapped in the dog-eat-dog STS
survival of the baddest and to hell with the rest endless loop.

Our relative comfort in the US has been bought by raping and pillaging resources
and people from everywhere and it has almost succeeded in ruining the planet.

More on this later, I just got off a twelve hour graveyard shift and I must sleep.

TP

It doesn't matter to me which book the above quote is from, or how Crowley's disciples tried to whitewash its meaning, but thanks for the correction.  Regardless, I believe that the information speaks for itself.  Zejith, I have resisted making a judgement call about you or anyone else who has contributed to this thread.  Why can't you extend me the same simple courtesy?  Because when it comes right down to it, this is a message board.  You really don't know enough about me to judge whether or not I am superficial.

It was not my intention to invoke those who are pro and con forces pertaining to Aleister Crowley.  It does remind me of a lesson that has been brought to mind more than once.  How I might devote emotional energy to an ideal or belief, and when I come across some bit of information that damages the foundation on which those ideal's or belief's are resting, it can cause a volatile reaction.  Whatever I devote emotional energy to, become very important.

I have come to the conclusion that my faith should be based on confidence and trust, and that it is always evolving, or growing, and both of those terms have the verb, change, intrinsic to them. 

I am also becoming very reticent or at least, more discerning toward what I direct emotions to.  Bucking bronco's are fun to ride for only so long, then one just wants to ride the gentle horse.

And, to address those lamenting the emotional tides of controversy and devotion to beliefs:

I'm not flogging belief here in any fashion, however when outright falsity is presented and I know it to be false, I'm going to point it out.

Don't direct anything at Crowley, good or bad energy. 'E don't need it, 'e's dead.  Spouting falsities for the emotional response they elicit, either by being believed or being called out is directing emotional energy, and tapping that of others to boot.

I'm not talking about anyone personally that I didn't know, where indeed did that come from, lyra?  I'm dismantling some constructed disinfo that's fallen in my lap, nothing more.

This is the gist: if you can't be bothered to get a working model of what kind of proceedings and language these folks were using, then avoid speculation on juicy tidbits "about them" thrown at you from any angle, because you're quite simply a rube waiting to be taken.* There's a big energy funnel right there.

"doesn't matter where it's from"..."speaks for itself".. yet you never found out where it was from to actually let it speak for itself, you're a true believer in wherever you got the spin from.

i suppose it doesn't matter if there were WMD either, of little importance who paid for 9/11... the truth doesn't matter, you have a juicy quote and a gnarly horror scenario in your mind and prefer that.

i can't believe i'm hearing fact-checking deprecated here.

[*i.e. Knowledge Protects, Ignorance Endangers]