Aleister Crowley (1875—1947) created a spiritual or religious system known as Thelema, which revolves around ideas of freedom and personal growth. Unlike traditional religious systems that expect their adherents to echo their teachings, Thelema recognizes the validity and holiness of many different voices. This introduction presents six different voices, myself, or the Unreliable Narrator, together with Crowley's own voice, and four fictional voices, the True Believer, the Chaotic, the Skeptic and the Mystic, composites drawn from the occult community. I do not always agree with them, and they do not always agree with each other.
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” or the Law of Thelema is a moral utterance found in the Thelemic foundation scripture, the Book of the Law. It is derived from the rule of the fictional Abbey of Thélème in the classic satire Gargantua by the French priest and occult student François Rabelais (1483—1553), named by Crowley as a Gnostic Saint, along with Nietzsche, Payne Knight, Swinburne, and Papus. In Rabelais this rule was “fay çe que vouldras,” French for “do what you will.” The maxim became a part of Western literary life, and was adopted by the English gentleman's society called the Hell-Fire Club.
In Crowley's writing, the Law of Thelema is explained in terms of True Will, the ultimate spiritual core or quintessence of each person, which has a divinely self-ordained path through the world of experience. “Do what thou wilt” refers not to the outer emotional and intellectual self but to this sacred inner core of personal divinity. Often will is contrasted with whim, and the knowing and doing of the True Will is painted not in terms of license but of responsibility.
The Great Beast
Since this new law replaces outdated moral codes based around sins and forbidden acts, a person knowing and doing the will might appear to be sinful from a traditional viewpoints. In Crowley's view the Thelemite is following a demanding code requiring personal integrity even while, for instance, making love in ways that would be illegal in oppressive societies. This inversion of traditional mores is easily expressed in ironic or satirical form.
Crowley also held that “do what thou wilt” was an ethical code bearing on how one should deal with others. One must respect not only one's own will but the wills of others. All the wills are magically arranged so that there is no conflict between them, just as (so it was believed in Crowley's day) the stars are arranged so that they never collide. The personal will and the will of all are mystically joined in a unified whole that is paradoxically also the basis of individuality. Collision between wills indicates that one or the other person was not doing their True Will.
At other times Crowley said that the only error was to believe that others existed at all and that they had wills that could be violated. This solipsism was inspired by his sympathy for the philosopher Berkeley but he placed God within rather than without.
At yet other times Crowley said that there was no possibility of error and that all beings live according to the will-paths predestined by themselves before their births, from which any deviation would be impossible. In this view the appearance of deviation from the will is akin to the Buddhist doctrine that all beings are enlightened already, and the appearance of non-enlightenment is illusion. Crowley added that incarnation is voluntarily chosen as a play of shadow and light, in contrast with traditional Hindu ideas of the curse of rebirth. The idea that sorrow is illusory in a reincarnatory world was popular in Spiritualist circles during Crowley's formative period.
“Do what thou wilt” refers not to the outer emotional and intellectual self but to this sacred inner core of personal divinity.
These apparent contradictions may have been reconciled for Crowley by the idea of levels of truth. Pure selfhood is paradoxically selfless. The realization of one's true nature comes at the same time that one realizes one's unity with all beings. So for the ordinary person, “do what thou wilt” is a useful rule of thumb for interacting with others. At a higher level one realizes that there are no others, or that the distinction between self and non-self is an illusion, and so the Law of Thelema takes on a non-dual meaning.
The Law of Rabelais' Abbey has widespread influence by itself. For instance, in 1929 Aldous Huxley published a book of his essays entitled Do What You Will. His source was not Crowley, but William Blake (1757—1827), who wrote in his Gnomic Verses, xxiii, “Do what you will this life's a fiction, And is made up of contradiction.” Similarly, the Wiccan Rede of Gerald Gardner came from Rabelais through the erotic novelist Pierre Louys and his Adventures of King Pausole (1900). Crowley did not invent the phrase, and his views are not the last word upon it.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: “Thelema means Will. The Key to this Message is this word—Will. The first obvious meaning of this Law is confirmed by antithesis; ‘The word of Sin is Restriction.’
“Again: ‘Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that and no other shall say nay. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.’
“Take this carefully; it seems to imply a theory that if every man and every woman did his and her will—the true will—there would be no clashing. ‘Every man and every woman is a star,’ and each star moves in an appointed path without interference. There is plenty of room for all; it is only disorder that creates confusion.
“From these considerations it should be clear that ‘Do what thou wilt’ does not mean ‘Do what you like.’ It is the apotheosis of Freedom; but it is also the strictest possible bond.
“Take this carefully; it seems to imply a theory that if every man and every woman did his and her will—the true will—there would be no clashing. ‘Every man and every woman is a star,’ and each star moves in an appointed path without interference.”
“From these considerations it should be clear that ‘Do what thou wilt’ does not mean ‘Do what you like.’ It is the apotheosis of Freedom; but it is also the strictest possible bond.”
“Do what thou wilt—then do nothing else.”—“The Message of the Master Therion,” The International, January 1918.
THE TRUE BELIEVER: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. As revealed in the Book of the Law, human history is divided into Æons which correspond to the precession of the Astrological Signs of the Zodiac. The new Æon of Horus, which began in 1904, brings with it a rotation in the roster of deities governing the planet as well as a revolution in moral codes. Gone are the old codes based on sin, sacrifice and other veils of shame and sorrow. The Law of Thelema is the code of absolute Freedom and absolute Responsibility, and the most perfect moral Law ever formulated. It will last for two thousand years until the rise of the next Æon. Love is the law, love under will.
THE CHAOTIC: True magical power resides in the unconscious mind, which is aware of many things beyond the scope of the ordinary consciousness. Descend far enough into the alien geometries of the unconscious and you might find out who and what you really are. This will free you from shame and guilt and other limitations that society has imposed on you. You can use magic to go inside, or music, or entheogens, or other techniques.
THE SKEPTIC: There is a long history of respect for the individual in Western culture, starting with ancient Greek philosophy, waning under Christianity, and returning in the 17th century with the rise of social philosophers and democratic political institutions. Existentialist philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries developed a new set of ideas about the individual. Crowley's work is part of this stream of thought, but his contributions are not major compared to those of thinkers such as Nietzsche on one hand and John Stuart Mill on the other.
THE MYSTIC: The True Will, the innermost spark of divine flame known in the Qabala as Yechidah, is unapproachable except by undertaking the work of the Path. By stilling the noise of the lower mind and focusing on the archetypal symbols hidden behind the veil of the universe, and persisting through the great spiritual ordeals that turn away the dilettante and the coward, one may ultimately arrive at that eternal Self and place it into its rightful relation with the rest of the personality, setting intellect and emotion in their proper places as Will's servants rather than its oppressors.
Central to Crowley's system is a curious and enigmatic book known as The Book of the Law, also called Liber AL, Liber Legis, Liber L, or CCXX (220). It is fairly short and has often been issued in pamphlet form. Crowley said it was revealed to him during his 1904 vacation with his wife Rose in Cairo by the dictation of Aiwass, who was both Crowley's own Holy Guardian Angel and the messenger of the new deities set over this Æon (eon) or age of history. In a series of trance visions, Rose indicated a number of symbols related to the Egyptian god Horus, according to the correspondences Crowley had gotten from the Golden Dawn. She pointed out Stélé 666 in the Boulak Museum, an image of an ancient priest, with the title or name Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, before the god Horus. This stélé has become a Thelemic icon. Following Rose's instructions, Crowley went to their rented rooms at an arranged time for three days and took dictation from an unseen voice.
The phrase “Book of the Law” comes from Freemasonry, as a synonym for “Volume of the Sacred Law” (VSL). In a Christian Freemasonic Lodge this VSL would be the Bible on the altar; in a Jewish Lodge it would be the Torah, which means the scroll of the Law; and in a religiously mixed Lodge there might be more than one sacred book on the altar. In Thelemic ritual, Crowley's Book of the Law is used for swearing initiatory oaths, like the VSL in Freemasonry. The Book of the Law is the central scripture of Thelema, its Bible so to speak. Crowley's work and his curriculum can only be understood with respect to his dynamic relationship with Liber AL.
The book has three chapters, one for each deity of its divine trinity. Its phrasing is often ambiguous and it employs an unearthly prose-poetic style that some find beautiful. Crowley wrote several commentaries during his life, some of them interpreting its verses in very different ways from his other commentaries or in ways at odds with the surface meaning of the verses.
The most curious page of all from The Book of the Law: “This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all. Then this line drawn is a key: then this circle squared in its failure is a key also. And Abrahadabra. It shall be his child & that strangely. Let him not seek after this; for thereby alone can he fall from it.” (AL III:47)
The trinity of The Book of the Law or Liber AL is composed of three reinterpreted Egyptian deities. First is Nuit (Nut), the goddess of the night sky, closely linked in Egyptian religion with Hathor, also known as the Egyptian Venus. Her message is of freedom, love and the mystical bliss of union, as expressed in the curious equation 0=2. Nuit reveals the Law of Thelema and declares that the Æons have turned in the Equinox of the Gods. She is represented by space and the stars of space. Nuit indicates the spacetime continuum, or infinite potential.
Second is Hadit (Heru-Bedheti or Horus of Edfu), the winged solar globe, symbol of divine authority. This form of the Egyptian god Horus, originally local to Bedheti, had influence throughout ancient Egypt. Hadit symbolizes the secret individuality within each of us, the star that each person is, the invisible, ineffable and unmanifest divine spark which moves each of us on our self-appointed path of will. As such Hadit also represents the underworld, the infinitely small point, the capacity for knowledge, the complement of Nuit, and the fiery nature of underworld deities such as Blake's Los and the Christian Lucifer. Themes of kingship are central to the message of Hadit.
Crowley said that the Apocalypse was an authentic prophecy but that it had been distorted by the point of view of the previous Æon, so that John had misrepresented the Great Beast and Scarlet Woman, who are avatars of solar power and sexual force.
Third in the trinity is the child produced by the union of Nuit and Hadit, the lord of the new Æon, alternately expressed by two different forms of Horus. One form is Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Re-Horakhty), a military aspect of Horus as conqueror and warrior. Ra-Hoor-Khuit extends the inwardly-turned energy of Hadit outwards into the world. Some Thelemites feel that the advocacy of war and violence in the second and third chapters of The Book of the Law is meant as a metaphorical magical formula, while others think of them as exhortations to conquer on the plane of political and temporal power.
The other form of Horus in the third chapter is Hoor-Paar-Kraat (Harpocrates), Horus the child, traditionally the child of Isis and Osiris. The English magical group known as the Golden Dawn, to which Crowley belonged, attached to Harpocrates an attribute he probably did not possess in ancient Egyptian religion—his finger pressed to his lips seemed to be a hushing gesture, making him the god of silence. The finger at the lips is now thought by scholars to have been a thumb-sucking gesture of childishness rather than one of silence. When Crowley revised the Tarot Trump Judgment in the last few years of his life he reflected this change, giving Harpocrates a gesture of childlike wonder.
Throughout the book two other mythic figures stand out, the Great Beast and the Scarlet Woman named Babalon. These characters are familiar in Western culture from the Biblical Apocalypse of John, where they appear as evil spirits in animal and human form whose coming marks the end times. Crowley said that the Apocalypse was an authentic prophecy but that it had been distorted by the point of view of the previous Æon, so that John had misrepresented the Great Beast and Scarlet Woman, who are avatars of solar power and sexual force. Crowley held the Beast office and Rose was his original Scarlet Woman.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: “I am certain, I the Beast, whose number is Six Hundred and Sixty Six, that this Third Chapter of The Book of the Law is nothing less than the authentic Word, the Word of the Æon, the Truth about Nature at this time and on this planet. I wrote it, hating it and sneering at it, secretly glad that I could use it to revolt against this Task most terrible that the Gods have thrust remorselessly upon my shoulders, their Cross of burning steel that I must carry even to my Calvary, the place of a skull, there to be eased of its weight only that I be crucified thereon. But, being lifted up, I will draw the whole world unto me; and men shall worship me the Beast, Six Hundred and Three-score and Six, celebrating to Me their Midnight Mass every time soever when they do that they will, and on Mine altar slaying to Me that victim I most relish, their Selves; when Love designs and Will executes the Rite whereby (an they know it or not) their God in man is offered to me The Beast, their God, the Rite whose virtue, making their God of their throned Beast, leaves nothing, howso bestial, undivine...
“‘Who wrote these words?’ Of course I wrote them, ink on paper, in the material sense; but they are not My words, unless Aiwaz be taken to be no more than my subconscious self, or some part of it: in that case, my conscious self being ignorant of the Truth in the Book and hostile to most of the ethics and philosophy of the Book, Aiwaz is a severely suppressed part of me. Such a theory would further imply that I am, unknown to myself, possessed of all sorts of praeternatural knowledge and power.... In any case, whatever ‘Aiwaz’ is, ‘Aiwaz’ is an Intelligence possessed of power and knowledge absolutely beyond human experience; and therefore Aiwaz is a Being worthy, as the current use of the word allows, of the title of a God, yea verily and amen, of a God.”—The Equinox of the Gods (1936), chapter VII.
THE TRUE BELIEVER. Liber AL vel Legis numbered CCXX is a transmission from the gods appointed over the current Æon. The Æon of Osiris was cursed by the failings and horrors of Christianity, a religion that perverted the formula of the Dying and Reborn God first prophesied by the ruling Egyptian God Osiris. In 1904 the two-thousand-year cycle ended with the new Prophecy. Now Christianity and other remnants of Osiris have only the existence of the undead, and like zombies they are crumbling away. Soon they will be gone and the true era of Freedom will reach fruition.
THE CHAOTIC: The Book of the Law is a powerful spellbook and meditation focus. It engages many deep parts of the unconscious mind. So do A. 0. Spare's works and other systems for other people—there is a lot more to occultism than Crowley. Alternative historical models may be better than Crowley's Æons, like the Chaos Magic psychohistorical model, the Typhonian/Achadian Æon of Ma'at, or the personal Word of each Magus in the Temple of Set. Crowley's Æons were valid for him and for his personal mythology but there are a lot of different stories you could tell about history. They are all myths. It would be a mistake to take any myth literally.
THE SKEPTIC: One can take an approach to Thelemic myth like that of liberal Christianity toward Genesis, using it as poetic or speculative material for ritual and worship. The Æonic model is a mistake if examined as history, but so are most cosmological myths. Cultural prejudices in the Christian West created a mistaken idea that the Christ myth had been prefigured in paganism as the Dying and Reborn God. Osiris and Christ are not similar, and they are not similar to other gods who were forced into the Christian mold, such as Dionysus, Orpheus, Attis and Tammuz.
THE MYSTIC: The Æons bring with them characteristic Formulae of Initiation. In the Æon of Osiris the Formula was Crucifixion and Self-Sacrifice. This had an esoteric meaning related to but different from mundane Christianity. The meaning was preserved through the ancient Mysteries and the Secret Tradition of Occultism. In the Æon of Horus, Sacrifice is replaced by the natural and progressive Growth of the Child. The Attainment of mature powers and Solar glory assume the place previously held by a death-and-rebirth Ordeal.
Crowley frequently makes reference to a diagram which purports to represent the spiritual universe. The Tree of Life has many forms in Qabala. This tradition of Jewish mysticism was adopted centuries ago by Christian mystics and magicians. The Tree Crowley used was that of the Golden Dawn. It is composed of ten spheres (sephiroth) and of 22 paths connecting the spheres, as well as the three veils above Kether, the veil of Paroketh (the Portal, below the central sphere of Beauty), the veil of Da'ath (the Abyss of Knowledge, below the three supernal spheres), and the corrupt and twisted Shells or Qliphoth echoing the Tree in a perverted and demonic form below Malkuth. Kether is reflected into four worlds from the closest to God down to the physical.
The Tree of Life is reminiscent of Platonic idealism, in which the world of sensory phenomena is held to be a secondary or degenerate form of a spiritual reality made up of pure ideas existing behind the appearance of the material world. The ideals are like lights and the events perceptible to the senses are only the shadows they cast.
Emanationist cosmological models similar to the Tree of Life were central in an ancient form of magic known as Neo-Platonic theurgy, an ancestor of modern occultism, and a Græco-Roman cousin of Gnosticism. Centuries after the fall of Rome, first Jewish Qabala and then Christian Qabala and Renaissance magic revived the Neo-Platonic cosmological and magical tradition. It had survived for a millennium in classical works, and in the Islamic preservation of Hellenism. The magical revival developed many different symbolic representations of the idealistic universe, including the Tree of Life, the Tarot, other philosophical card decks, and alchemical and zodiacal diagrams.
Philosophy often deals with two opposing perspectives, the nominalist and the idealist. Loosely speaking, nominalists focus on the names of things and their outward appearances as the currency of human knowledge, while idealism considers things in the world of senses to be only pale reflections of their ideal forms, or essences. For instance, there are plenty of physical chairs, but only one “chairness,” which exists on a plane separate from the physical world.
Aleister Crowley painting circa 1918. From the collection of Richard Metzger
This plane of ideal forms, derided by nominalists, was the basis of Renaissance philosophy and the Tree of Life. Nominalism has been crucial to existentialism, phenomenology, and 20th century philosophy in general. Idealism is no longer widely considered a viable philosophy.
Crowley insisted that he was not an idealist but a nominalist, while also insisting that the Tree of Life truly represented the esoteric structure of reality and that its correspondences could only be harmed by any change. Was this an inspired paradox or a careless contradiction?
Crowley also acknowledged the Enochian æthyrs, the Chinese Yi Jing, and Buddhist psychology as peers of the Tree of Life. He did not make as extensive use of these systems, feeling them to be inconvenient compared to the Tree, but they all played significant roles along his spiritual path.
In the Golden Dawn as well as Thelema, the Tree has two major roles. First, it is a map of spiritual progress. Starting at the lowest and most worldly sphere of the Tree of Life, known as Malkuth or Kingdom and representing the physical world, the spiritual adventurer ascends through the spheres by the paths, taking a new spiritual grade at each sphere, until finally a hardy few reach the ultimate sphere, Kether or Crown, the unseen unity of ultimate deity and the true Self, known in mysticism as Union with God.
Second, the Tree of Life is used as a classification system. It is held that all the symbols of world religion and occultism find a proper place somewhere on this Tree, and perhaps all symbols and ideas whatsoever. Tables set out many of these correspondences from world religion and traditional magical teaching. Familiarity with this symbolic tapestry is a prerequisite to spiritual practices in Crowley's system as well as the Golden Dawn. Much of the system is to be committed to memory so that it is readily available in ritual and meditation.
Crowley wrestled until his death with the Jewish origins of Qabala, which conflicted with his anti-Semitism. His statements resembling blood libel—the accusation that Jewish rites are celebrated using sacrificed children—should be weighed against his esoteric interpretations of the symbol of sacrifice, and his claims about the Egyptian origins of the Qabala should be taken with a sand dune's worth of salt.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: “We can refer everything in the Universe to the system of pure number whose symbols will be intelligible to all rational minds in an identical sense. And the relations between these symbols are fixed by nature. There is no particular point—for most ordinary purposes—in discussing whether 49 is or is not the square of 7.
“Such was the nature of the considerations that led me to adopt the Tree of Life as the basis of the magical alphabet. The 10 numbers and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, with their traditional and rational correspondences (taking into consideration their numerical and geometric interrelations), afford us a coherent systematic groundwork sufficiently rigid for our foundation and sufficiently elastic for our superstructure.
“But we must not suppose that we know anything of the Tree a priori. We must not work towards any other type of central Truth than the nature of these symbols in themselves. The object of our work must be, in fact, to discover the nature and powers of each symbol. We must clothe the mathematical nakedness of each prime idea in a many-coloured garment of correspondences with every department of thought.”-777 Revised, “A Brief Essay Upon The Nature And Significance Of The Magical Alphabet.”
THE TRUE BELIEVER: All the religions of the world are but Veils for the One Secret Tradition known to Initiates throughout the ages. The Prophet has left us with the Key in the form of Liber 777, the great Table of Correspondences. By meditating on and invoking the energies of the Paths and Spheres all magical power and mystical insight may be attained. Unto those who have scaled the heights of the Tree and become Adepts (or even higher Initiates) is reserved True Understanding; from these lofty heights are made possible Perspectives that utterly transcend and negate the views of persons ensnared in the illusions of the lower Spheres.
The practices of Crowley's system are arranged in an initiatic progression that is called the A∴ A∴ system. The glyphs after the letter A are triangles made up of three dots, a Freemasonic usage indicating a claim to possess the legendary Lost Word.
THE CHAOTIC: Symbols are the keys to magic, but models are only models and many different models are valid. The Tree of Life is one excellent model but to get locked into believing that it is The One True Way would be to impose harmful limitations on your own mind. The power that comes from these systems comes from the charge the symbols acquire in your unconscious mind and not from their “truth.” There are other useful models like the eight colors of magic, the Enochian æthyrs, the Leary eight-brain model, and so on. Magicians should come up with their own system rather than be trapped by others.
THE SKEPTIC: There are shared themes and formulae in world religion but we now understand that there is much more diversity than was admitted by older scholarship. In the 19th century it was common to think that all religions are only reflections of one underlying tradition. Scholars tried to unify disparate traditions and myths but they imposed preconceptions and waved away differences. Tables of correspondence reduce complex and diverse symbols to single points of debatable contact, and so they conflate the dissimilar. This may be offensive to the cultures whose complex traditions are reduced. Tables of this kind may be useful as generators for ritual and meditation practices but as an apparatus of comparative interpretation they are useless today.
THE MYSTIC: There is only one Path, the Path to Oneself. Along the way one encounters the same Truths clothed in a variety of forms and symbols. To synthesize and reduce this appearance of Many to the One is the Great Work of Alchemy. Mystics of the ages have always recognized this Unity in each other; religious differences have been caused by political usurpers who perverted the pure Teachings. Once integrated into the self by practice, the symbols become repositories for Energies. At the end of the Path the Diagram will become One with the Self and the World in a Mystic Marriage, and reveal concealed Glories undreamed of by the profane.
Many occultists endlessly spin out cosmologies and other symbolic arrangements having little relationship to any apparent pragmatic issue. Crowley speculated quite a lot, but coming from the Golden Dawn, and exposure to Buddhist monasticism, and Hindu yoga, he was more concerned with setting up a program of spiritual exercises.
In Thelema the goal of the path is to be the most oneself that one can be, to know who you really are and to let that eternal self or True Will be the guiding force in life. To do this it is recommended that one practice ritual and meditative disciplines that quiet and focus the mind, travel astrally to various locations in the spiritual world inside or outside oneself, invoke deities and evoke lesser spirits, attain to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel at the central sphere of the Tree of Life (Tiphareth, or Beauty), and for the very few, to give up all one's conceptions about the self in favor of the radical perspective of the eternal Self.
Initiation is a major theme in Crowley's system of Thelema, as in the Golden Dawn and Theosophy. Initiation is a complex subject and has been the subject of extensive study by anthropologists. Freemasonry gave rise to the Golden Dawn, and both fit the van Gennep model of initiation accepted by anthropologists. Initiations mark stages in personal transformation.
The practices of Crowley's system are arranged in an initiatic progression that is called the A∴ A∴ system. The glyphs after the letter A are triangles made up of three dots, a Freemasonic usage indicating a claim to possess the legendary Lost Word. This curriculum is a combination of Golden Dawn magic, Yogic and Buddhist meditation practices, and original practices developed by Crowley. The work to achieve even the middle ranges of the system is arduous. Few people have accomplished it. Many have claimed personal attainment of A∴ A∴ grades without conquering the basic material. The next time you meet a Master of the Temple, you might ask to test them on Asana and Pranayama as per Liber E.
The motto of Crowley's literary and magical journal, the Equinox, was “The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion”
The motto of Crowley's literary and magical journal, the Equinox, was “The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion.” While his methods fall short of a truly scientific standard, his system shares with anthropology the requirement for a phenomenological record of ritual experience, a tool of ethnographic field observation.
The A∴ A∴ system of initiations follows the spheres of the Tree of Life, as did the Golden Dawn. In addition to a variety of fringe Masonic degrees, Crowley gave the A∴ A∴ grades, the Ordo Templi Orientis degrees, and the ordinations and bishoprics of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica or Gnostic Catholic Church. These are all different systems but there is some overlap in themes and practices. The O.T.O. rituals are derived from Freemasonry as filtered through Crowley's occult theories, although like all Crowley's groups it admits both women and men. The E.G.C. is closely related to the O.T.O. but revolves around the Gnostic Mass, conferring offices such as Priestess, Priest, Deacon and Bishop. New Thelemic groups with their own initiations and courses of study have sprung up since Crowley's death in 1947. Several are currently in operation, including the Ordo Templi Astarte, Temple of Thelema, and Thelemic Golden Dawn.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: “The experimenter is encouraged to use his own intelligence, and not to rely upon any other person or persons, however distinguished, even among ourselves.
“The written record should be intelligibly prepared so that others may benefit from its study...
“The more scientific the record is, the better. Yet the emotions should be noted, as being some of the conditions.”
-Liber E vel Exercitiorum, I:5-9.
“This book is very easy to misunderstand; readers are asked to use the most minute critical care in the study of it, even as we have done in its preparation.
“In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist.
“It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.
“The advantages to be gained from them are chiefly these:
“a. A widening of the horizon of the mind.
“b. An improvement of the control of the mind.”
-Liber 0 vel Manus et Sagittae, I:2-3.
THE TRUE BELIEVER: The A∴ A∴ is the Great White Brotherhood, that hidden order of Initiates that has existed in Service throughout the ages and has emerged behind such masks as the Rosicrucians and the Zoroastrian Magi. The Third Order of A∴ A∴* is in service to the deities and sages of the Occult Government of this Solar System. The Book of the Law was sent to humanity by the A∴ A∴ on the revolution in Æons declared by the Secret Chiefs. Crowley held the grade of Magus in the A∴ A∴ and as such uttered the Word of the Æon, ABRAHADABRA, which all members accept as Natural Law.
THE CHAOTIC: The A∴ A∴ is an abstraction which includes all authentic magical paths. There are groups that call themselves the A∴ A∴ but its real nature is in the continuity of spiritual traditions everywhere. Different groups are best for different people. Treating one group as the One True Path and obsessing about lineage wars are remnants of the Æon of Osiris. Today there are spiritual methods that improve on Crowley's curriculum, like isolation tanks, sigils, entheogens, and mind machines. The Protestant work ethic is a Victorian relic. Progress is possible through play as much as perseverance and perspiration.
“It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.
THE SKEPTIC: Religious systems present themselves as revolving around doctrine, practice, and morality but they can often be best understood by the methods of political science, group psychology, sociology and anthropology. The homogenizing and leveling effects of social bonding are always in tension with the freedom of the individual. Thelemic groups have a dogmatic tendency that is in conflict with their commitment to freedom. The power dynamics in initiatory hierarchy encourage people to seek degrees for reasons of status.
THE MYSTIC: The ordinary mind is a roaring babble that drowns out the voices of the Holy Guardian Angel. Establishing Silence through Yogic concentration, then calling upon the Forces behind the sensible world, one may climb the Ladder of Lights and obtain Enlightenment. Most people require instruction by groups to learn the required practices. All such Fraternities derive their authority from A∴ A∴, which has existed since the first humans were born. A great Spiritual Hierarchy beckons downwards to us from Kether, as our Aspiration lifts us Upward through the Emanations of the one invisible God within ourselves.
Crowley's doctrine of truth and falsehood is the central theme of his book of Qabalistic poetry, The Book of Lies. Contradiction for him was not a problem but a sign of a higher mystical synthesis transcending the rational. Ordinary understanding is held to be inadequate to engage Truth; in fact it is in the way. One preparation for the Ordeal of the Abyss is to constantly multiply contradictions in one's mind, each thought contradicting the previous, until the trance known in yoga as samadhi is attained. Every fixed idea is shown to be partial and false, including ideas about the self, until finally the usurper Reason is dethroned and the True Will takes its place.
While all mundane truth is false in a sense, still there is the level of ordinary human reality with its mundane truths, “the old school tie,” whether a shop is open or closed. Deconstructing truth need not lead to the paralysis that Hume attributes to the Pyrrhonist.
The Truth of a higher initiate is incomprehensible to one of lower degree, while the “truth” of lower degrees is seen as false by the higher. Along these lines, Crowley observes that monotheism is only true after the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
Crowley claimed to be a skeptic but he was also full of passionate conviction. He demanded allegiance to certain ideas but also insisted that every idea must be doubted. Was Crowley an authority or a trickster? He has left us with no clear answer.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: “The Abyss of Hallucinations has Law and Reason; but in Truth there is no bond between the Toys of the Gods.
“The Abyss of Hallucinations has Law and Reason; but in Truth there is no bond between the Toys of the Gods.”
“This Reason and Law is the Bond of the Great Lie.
“Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations.
“There is no Silence in that Abyss: for all that men call Silence is Its Speech.
“This Abyss is also called ‘Hell’, and ‘The Many.’ Its name is ‘Consciousness,’ and ‘The Universe,’ among men.
“But THAT which neither is silent, nor speaks, rejoices therein...
“Identity is perfect; therefore the Law of Identity is but a lie. For there is no subject, and there is no predicate; nor is there the contradictory of either of these things.
“Holy, Holy, Holy are these Truths that I utter, knowing them to be but falsehoods, broken mirrors, troubled waters; hide me. O our Lady, in Thy Womb! for I may not endure the rapture.”
-The Book of Lies, “Windlestraws” and “The Glow-Worm.”
THE TRUE BELIEVER: The Law of Liberty is the Charter of Universal Freedom and the sole rule and guide of life in this Æon. It is Truth on every level. The Law of Thelema is an inspired mystical Truth emanating from the Third Order of A∴ A∴ but it is also natural Law and a pragmatic human fact. There is a definite Current of Energy flowing from the Third Order against which it would be foolish and self-defeating to struggle. It is the Will of All to align with this Current.
THE CHAOTIC: Crowley was an early shock trooper in the ontological guerrilla warfare waged by people like Brion Gysin, A. O. Spare, William Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Peter Carroll, and Robert Anton Wilson. He wasn't afraid to directly assault traditional value systems; he demonstrated the limits of logic; he explored the distant cognitive frontier; and he insisted on individual thought instead of dogma. He could sometimes forget his own principles but that's part of the process too. At least he kept his sense of humor!
THE SKEPTIC: Crowley's negative view of intellect is comparable with Blake's view of Newton and Urizen. As Crowley was a freethinker one might think of him as one of the highly differentiated points on the existentialist spectrum, a kind of occult Kierkegaard. Other existentialists also dedicated much of their work to the reclamation and validation of denied or underworld feelings. Crowley may deserve study as a literary contributor but not as a philosophical contributor—he was a sloppy thinker, and his doctrine of contradictions degenerates into an excuse for contradictions.
Crowley was an early shock trooper in the ontological guerrilla warfare waged by people like Brion Gysin, A. O. Spare, William Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Peter Carroll, and Robert Anton Wilson.
THE MYSTIC: Truth and falsehood as applied by the intellect are false. Truth is only known to the Master of the Temple, the silent Self first assumed by the Babe of the Abyss who is born after the fall of Reason. Truth can only be spoken by the Magus, but He is Cursed to have His Word be heard as falsehood. This Truth is beyond any possible description in words but could be indicated as the Understanding of the unity of the psyche and the world that it creates.
The Free Love movement and the embrace of Pagan values by Neo-Classical Romanticism in the 19th and early 20th centuries validated sexual inquiries in literature, the arts, popular morals, and Spiritualism. Sexual revolution brought in advocates such as Victoria Woodhull, H. G. Wells, and of course Aleister Crowley.
In world religion, writers such as Richard Payne Knight collected sexual odds and ends from archaeology and mythology and argued for the universal phallic basis of religion.
Rumors spread of the hidden sexual wisdom of the East as reflected in certain Yogic works, the Kama Sutra, and in Tantra, as well as in Islamic texts such as The Scented Garden. These volumes, discreetly translated by adventurers such as Gnostic Saint Richard Francis Burton and circulated by private subscription through gentlemen's clubs, helped inspire a Rabelaisian revival, including Pierre Louys and the decadents.
In the occult world, African-American mage Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875) created a system of sexual magic that influenced writers such as H. P Blavatsky and Crowley and became the foundation of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, an influential but ill-starred occult group contemporary with the Golden Dawn and Theosophy. The Cromlech Temple preached an erotic interpretation of Christian symbolism (their papers were collected by Francis King in Astral Projection, Ritual Magic, and Alchemy, London 1971), while in France saucy Gnosticism and atheism-friendly Freemasonry developed their own sexual interpretations, such as Ragon's idea of the Rose and Cross as representing the organs of generation, and Eliphas Levi's identification of Lucifer, Pan and Baphomet as sexual forces. Theodor Reuss, an associate of Richard Wagner, collected his own ideas of sexual mysticism and those he attributed to Karl Kellner into a new type of esoteric Freemasonry called the Ordo Templi Orientis or O.T.O., which claimed to hold the keys to sex magic. Other forms of esoteric Freemasonry embraced a sexual doctrine under a variety of veils, and the French mystic Papus co-developed with the O.T.O. and H.B.L. sexual interpretations of occult formulae such as the Tetragrammaton. Papus' reading of YHVH in The Tarot of the Bohemians is remarkably similar to Crowley's in Magick.
Crowley, born in 1875, was brought up in the thick of this pro-sexual current in Western society and in occultism. Since Rabelais Thélème has been associated with libertinism and Crowley's Thelema is no exception. Crowley was a libidinous individual and he delighted in flouting Christian sexual taboos. He was a bisexual ritualist and sexual adventurer.
Like many occultists and some scholars, Crowley believed that a unified religious and phallic tradition lay behind all the variations in world religion. He described his system as “solar-phallic” after Jung, and while the particular sexual formulae he employed are secret, it is no secret that the inner formulæ of the A∴ A∴, O.T.O. and E.G.C. are charged with sexual significance.
Crowley's interpretations of sexual symbolism change over the course of his life. In addition, his systematizing tendency—his desire to present a simple key or formula as initiated meaning—was at war with his freewheeling, variegated, and playfully perverse tastes.
The sexual instinct is sacred and expresses a transgenerational undying intelligence through the mechanisms of evolution and reproduction. Christianity does us harm by denying the sacredness of the sexual instinct and its variations. Sexual experimentation and sex outside marriage are praiseworthy. Christianity's sacrament of the Eucharist perverts an older pagan ceremonialism in which the Eucharist involved sexual fluids. The Phallus is the true God, while the female deity is either derogated as a temporary refuge (the womb) or exalted as the bearer of the Mundane Egg of the Orphics. The female part in sex magick, which he derogated early in life, assumes greater significance and respect in late works such as The Book of Thoth.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: “I have insisted that sexual excitement is merely a degraded form of divine ecstasy. I have thus harnessed the wild horses of human passion to the chariot of the Spiritual Sun. I have given these horses wings that mankind may no longer travel painfully upon the earth, shaken by every irregularity of the surface, but course at large through the boundless ether. This is not merely a matter of actual ceremonies; I insist that in private life men should not admit their passions to be an end, indulging them and so degrading themselves to the level of the other animals, or suppressing them and creating neuroses. I insist that every thought, word and deed should be consciously devoted to the service of the Great Work. ‘Whatsoever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.’”
—The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, chapter 61.
“Now the Semen is God (the going-one, as shown by the Ankh or Sandal-strap, which He carries) because he goes in at the Door, stays there for a specified period, and comes out again, having flowered, and still bearing in him that Seed of Going. (The birth of a girl is a misfortune everywhere, because the true Going-Principle is the Lion-Serpent, or Dragon; the Egg is only the Cavern where he takes refuge on occasion.)...
The female part in sex magick, which he derogated early in life, assumes greater significance and respect in late works such as The Book of Thoth.
“Why do men insist on ‘innocence’ in women? ... To cover their secret shame in the matter of sex. Hence the pretence that a woman is ‘pure,’ modest, delicate, aesthetically beautiful and morally exalted, ethereal and unfleshly, though in fact they know her to be lascivious, shameless, coarse, ill-shapen, unscrupulous, nauseatingly bestial both physically and mentally. The advertisements of ‘dress shields,’ perfumes, cosmetics, anti-sweat preparations, and ‘Beauty Treatments’ reveal woman's nature as seen by the clear eyes of those who would lose money if they misjudged her; and they are loathsomely revolting to read. Her mental and moral characteristics are those of the parrot and the monkey. Her physiology and pathology are hideously disgusting, a sickening slime of uncleanliness. Her virgin life is a sick ape's, her sexual life a drunken sow's, her mother life all bulging filmy eyes and sagging udders.
“These are the facts about ‘innocence’; to this has man's Christian Endeavour dragged her when he should rather have made her his comrade, frank, trusty, and gay, the tenderer self of himself, his consubstantial complement even as Earth is to the Sun.
“We of Thelema say that ‘Every man and every woman is a star.’ We do not fool and flatter women; we do not despise and abuse them. To us a woman is Herself, absolute, original, independent, free, self-justified, exactly as a man is.”—The Law is for All, III:55.
THE TRUE BELIEVER: The male is the lively, enlightening, creative, jovial force of the Pillar of Mercy, while the female is the brooding, dark, harsh, silent, but nourishing matrix of the Pillar of Severity in which the divine Seed takes shape. Creation is a higher function than destruction and Light is a higher power than darkness and so ours is a Solar-Phallic Religion. The true God is the Quintessence, the Holy Spirit, the Creative Will as expressed by the Representative of the Sun on Earth, the Phallus.
“We of Thelema say that ‘Every man and every woman is a star.’ We do not fool and flatter women; we do not despise and abuse them. To us a woman is Herself, absolute, original, independent, free, self-justified, exactly as a man is.”
THE CHAOTIC: Sex is a road to magical power and a gateway to the unconscious mind. Crowley deserves credit for his contributions, but sex has moved on from the 19th century and taking Crowley's views seriously today would be like reading old marriage manuals to understand teenage pop stars. Sex is too wild to be tied down to one formula. There are an infinite number of sexual forms and Crowley's don't seem as special or unique today as they did a hundred years ago.
The Stélé of Revealing, ancient Egyptian artifact dear to Thelemites
Sex is a road to magical power and a gateway to the unconscious mind. Crowley deserves credit for his contributions, but sex has moved on from the 19th century and taking Crowley's views seriously today would be like reading old marriage manuals to understand teenage pop stars.
THE SKEPTIC: The theory of the universal phallic religion flourished as a reaction against sexnegativity when it was hard to talk rationally about sex in Western culture. The theory has not held up now that barriers to sexual discussion have been lowered. Some of the phallicists' discussion of truly phallic deities like Priapus and Shiva remains worthwhile, but their universalism does not. Crowley embraced a radical and idiosyncratic exegesis based on tenuous speculative links.
THE MYSTIC: Every person is both man and woman, and every man and every woman is a star. The mystical formula of Union of Opposites or Thelemic Love, related to the Hegelian dialectical formula, can be enacted with thoughts or with bodies and is constantly enacting itself in the world around us. It is the Key to the Stone of the Philosophers and to the Universal Medicine. To downplay or disparage the male-female polarity would be to cripple the magic—it is their very difference from each other that makes their Union powerful. In a ritual involving sex the generative organs of the partners are consecrated ritual tools which must be used according to their natural formula like any other tool of High Magick.
The 19th century brought the West not only sexual revolution but a drug problem. Morphine was invented early in the century; it and other opiates such as laudanum, a popular opiated liqueur, were readily available and widely used in Europe and the United States. Napoleon's troops brought back marijuana and hashish along with the Egyptian revival, P B. Randolph sold hashish by mail order for spiritual purposes, and Blavatsky was said by a close acquaintance to have used hashish to boost her visionary powers; she for her part made clear enough references to psychoactive plants and Randolph's drug-induced “Sleep of Siloam.” Crowley was born into an atmosphere that was charged with drugs and mysticism as well as sex.
Crowley experimented with drugs with his teacher Allan Bennett early in life, but he says they were of no use at the time—“Like Huckleberry Finn's prayer, nuffin' come of it”—until he had practiced Yoga. Given the powers of mind resulting from meditation, he felt that psychoactive substances could be useful for breaking through dry spells, provided one had the strength to thwart an uncontrolled flow of delusional visions and the tendency to fall asleep.
Crowley also thought that drugs could wake up ordinary people to the prospects of mysticism by inducing altered states of consciousness without arduous disciplines. Israel Regardie in Roll Away the Stone attributes this idea to William James' famous statement that “our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness, as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”
A drug-positive approach is evident in The Book of the Law, when it echoes the phrase “lightening [or loosening] the girders of the soul” from the Chaldean Oracles. Crowley interprets this as a hashish reference in his “Psychology of Hashish.” Hadit instructs the reader “To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof!” Crowley took drugs such as cocaine, heroin and hashish throughout his career, all the while claiming to be above addiction. This conclusion is not shared by all of his biographers.
For all the undeniable significance of drug mysticism to Crowley and Thelema, entheogen practices never assumed the importance that sexual ones did in his system. His view of humanity was not physical but metaphysical. He believed in the ability of intelligence to take non-physical forms, so he was unlikely to adopt a concept like the psychedelic idea of consciousness as chemistry. While both the A∴ A∴ and O.T.O. lead to inner sexual instructions, neither reveals a drug practice per se in its foundations. To Crowley drugs were a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. Regardie notes this difference between Crowley's attitudes and the psychedelic idea of drugs such as LSD as inherently illuminating.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: “I could persuade other people that mysticism was not all folly without insisting on their devoting a lifetime to studying under me; and if only I could convince a few competent observers—in such a matter I distrust even myself—Science would be bound to follow and to investigate, clear up the matter once for all, and, as I believed, and believe, arm itself with a new weapon ten thousand times more potent than the balance and the microscope...
“Hashish at least gives proof of a new order of consciousness, and (it seems to me) it is this primâ facie case that mystics have always needed to make out, and never have made out.
“But today I claim the hashish-phenomena as mental phenomena of the first importance; and I demand investigation.
“I assert—more or less ex cathedrâ—that meditation will revolutionise our conception of the universe, just as the microscope has done.”—“The Psychology of Hashish,” Equinox 1:2.
THE TRUE BELIEVER: Drugs seduce the weak, but so let it be: as it is written: “stamp down the wretched & the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world.” Let all the world take these drugs so that millions may awaken to Our Law, and fear not that some must suffer early rebirth, a small penalty for a glimpse of the Dawn upon the East. Yet let the aspirant beware of addiction, obsession, and sleepiness, lest he be like my great rival, who I will not deign to mention here except by reference to the well-known failings of his mother and his charter. True, I had eaten bad mushrooms when I became a Master of the Temple, but I swore the Oath, and that's what matters.
“Hashish at least gives proof of a new order of consciousness, and (it seems to me) it is this primâ facie case that mystics have always needed to make out, and never have made out.”
THE CHAOTIC: Crowley was a drug revolutionary for his time, and researchers like Timothy Leary, Stanislav Grof, and Terence McKenna are indebted to him. That said, I'm supposed to limit my use of psychedelics until I can do what? I'd never have tripped if I thought I needed to climb to Nepal and study at someone's feet first. LSD and MDMA didn't even exist in Crowley's time and they've changed the old rules.
THE SKEPTIC: Psychedelic drugs were once erroneously known as psychotomimetic drugs, that is, drugs that induced psychotic symptoms. While this turned out to be more false than true, the use of psychotropic drugs in visionary experience inevitably raises the questions of delusion and disorder. Again, though, we must beware of reductionism. Changes induced by such means as drugs, psychosis or harsh spiritual practices such as fasting or flagellation may be pathological in one sense, but they induce states of consciousness which deserve study if only because they are hard to explain. These states might shed light on the study of consciousness as well as the treatment of mental illness.
Given this and Crowley's reliance on the reinterpreted Book of Revelation, it would not be far off the mark to call Thelema itself a form of esoteric Christianity.
THE MYSTIC: The experiences induced by drugs are lesser mysteries, tools useful only to the very beginner who needs to break the grip of ordinary consciousness, and to the experienced mage who possesses the strength of mind to resist the blandishments of drugs. Drugs do not represent a shortcut; nothing can substitute for one's own spiritual work, and only in rare circumstances can they be combined. As for the slanders raised against my mother, I only note my pity at the depths to which the Qliphoth can ensnare the unwary or inept drug experimenter. I would wish him well in the next life if he were not on the road to utter destruction, and I have given his address to the police.
Crowley's hostility to Christianity was vitriolic and intense. There are many Thelemites who are equally hostile and would not accept or admit that any part of Christianity, esoteric or not, is part of Thelema. The exclusion of Christian symbolism does not reflect Crowley's usage. Biographically, Crowley's hatred of Christianity began with his upbringing in the Protestant tradition known as the Plymouth Brethren, to which his parents belonged. Moralistic and restrictive, the Plymouth Brethren were also obsessed with the Book of Revelation. His mother called the rebellious Crowley “the Beast” early in life well before The Book of the Law confirmed him in this title.
Lawrence Sutin credibly suggests in his biography Do What Thou Wilt that one thing Crowley despised about the Plymouth Brethren was its Quaker-like egalitarianism. This might explain the rigid hierarchies of Crowley's groups and his support for the Golden Dawn's heavy-handed leader MacGregor Mathers.
The Christian elements of his system were in part meant to annoy Christians.
Crowley's theory of ancient sex magick revolves around the Gnostics, a group of ancient Christian-Jewish-Pagan fusion sects who preoccupied 19th century occultists. The 20th century discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library made Crowley's ideas of Gnosticism obsolete, but he believed the Gnostics had been sex magicians who held the sexual inner keys of the formula of the Eucharist of the Catholic Mass, a symbolic form of a central sexual secret carried down by the occult underground through the centuries. Crowley's Gnostic Mass, one of his most frequently practiced rituals today, is meant to restore his idea of the pre-Christian secret to its proper place of reverence. Given this and Crowley's reliance on the reinterpreted Book of Revelation, it would not be far off the mark to call Thelema itself a form of esoteric Christianity. [Emphasis added, Metzger]
Placing the symbols of others' religions into one's own syncretistic system is often considered offensive. An examination of the column for Christianity in Crowley's 777 reveals a wicked sense of humor at work. “God the Holy Ghost (as Incubus)” in the place of Yesod, for instance, smacks of gleeful wickedness. Similar forms of protest are evident in the Gnostic Mass and the O.T.O.'s Trinitarian central secret. The Christian elements of his system were in part meant to annoy Christians.
However, it would be a mistake to treat the Gnostic Mass and similar Christian elements in Thelema as low parodies merely meant to offend. Christian symbols appear at the very heart of Crowley's system and his sincere devotion to them is apparent. For Crowley there was pleasure in using Christian symbols in transgressive ways, but that was not his primary motive in using symbols like the Rose and Cross, or the Great Beast and Scarlet Woman. These symbols had personal significance and his interpretations were sincere despite their elements of protest.
As an opponent of Christianity, Crowley was drawn by the examples of the literary “Satanic school” and the seminal French magician Eliphas Levi to reinterpret the Devil in positive terms. The “Satanic school,” like Gnosticism, is a post facto interpretive category and not an organization or an historical meeting. It includes poets and playwrights such as Byron, Shelley, Blake, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Shaw. In occultism, Blavatsky had expressed her sympathy for the fall of the angels as the source of Liberty in her history of the solar system, as reflected in the name of her periodical Lucifer, not to be confused with the Free Love magazine of the same name. With the shaking of sexual taboos came the suspicion that perhaps Satan was not such a bad fellow after all.
Belief in the witch or black magician exists in all cultures. These reputed malefactors delight in wreaking havoc and raining ill fortune on the community. Although there are curses in magical practice, nothing real corresponds with the ancient horror that anthropologists call witchcraft.
With the shaking of sexual taboos came the suspicion that perhaps Satan was not such a bad fellow after all.
Literary Satanism was nothing like the popular idea of “Satanism.” Thus one must be hesitant to call Crowley, or anyone, a Satanist, because that would invoke legend rather than reality. In this sense there is no such thing as a Satanist. In a broader sense, though, there is a kind of Satanism in Prometheus Unbound and The Devil's Disciple, in Beyond Good and Evil, in Rabelais, Louys and Blake, and in Levi, Blavatsky, and Crowley.
It would hardly be credible to deny that Crowley was part of the Satanic school in this broader sense, since Thelema contains elements traditionally associated with Satan, and the name Satan itself is used with respect in rituals, poems and essays. The Great Beast and the Scarlet Woman are associated with “the dragon, Satan” in the Bible's book of Revelation. Crowley makes many statements which interpret Satan in a positive light throughout his career, from his dedication to an early poem (“Why Jesus Wept,” 1905) which says “I, at once a higher mystic and a colder skeptic, found my Messiah in Charles Watts, and the Devil and all his angels” to a late essay on the Tarot trump The Devil (The Book of Thoth, 1944) that “the card represents creative energy in its most material form; in the Zodiac, Capricorn occupies the Zenith. It is the most exalted of the signs; it is the goat leaping with lust upon the summits of earth... the formula of this card is then the complete appreciation of all existing things. He rejoices in the rugged and the barren no less than in the smooth and the fertile. All things equally exalt him. He represents the finding of ecstasy in every phenomenon, however naturally repugnant; he transcends all limitations; he is Pan; he is All.”
Crowley's “Satanism,” if it can be called that, is not very oppositional in itself, though it partakes of rebellion. Satan to Crowley is a misunderstood symbol for the sacred energies of sex. He writes about these positive sexual qualities much more than he dwells on Satan as the opposition to God. Their opposition is a Christian concept that he rejects. There is an irony and a playfulness in his use of Satan, but Crowley's Satan is a surprisingly sunny figure, just as Crowley explained the meaning of his adopted number, 666, as “little sunshine.” As Blake could embrace both Los and Christ, Crowley was a curiously Christian Satanist.
ALEISTER CROWLEY. “The Devil does not exist. It is a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions. A devil who had unity would be a God.
‘The Devil’ is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes. This has led to so much confusion of thought that THE BEAST 666 has preferred to let names stand as they are, and to proclaim simply that AIWAZ—the solar-phallic-hermetic ‘Lucifer’—is His own Holy Guardian Angel, and ‘The Devil’ SATAN or HADIT of our particular unit of the Starry Universe. This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade ‘Know Thyself!’ and taught Initiation. He is ‘the Devil’ of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection. The number of His Atu is XV, which is yod he, the Monogram of the Eternal, the Father one with the Mother, the Virgin Seed one with all-containing Space. He is therefore Life, and Love.“—Magick in Theory and Practice, XXI:II.
Belief in the witch or black magician exists in all cultures. These reputed malefactors delight in wreaking havoc and raining ill fortune on the community. Although there are curses in magical practice, nothing real corresponds with the ancient horror that anthropologists call witchcraft.
“It seems as if I possessed a theology of my own which was, to all intents and purposes, Christianity. My satanism did not interfere with it at all; I was trying to take the view that the Christianity of hypocrisy and cruelty was not true Christianity. I did not hate God or Christ, but merely the God and Christ of the people whom I hated. It was only when the development of my logical faculties supplied the demonstration that I was compelled to set myself in opposition to the Bible itself. It does not matter that the literature is sometimes magnificent and that in isolated passages the philosophy and ethics are admirable. The sum of the matter is that Judaism is a savage, and Christianity a fiendish, superstition.“—The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, chapter 6.
“It seems as if I possessed a theology of my own which was, to all intents and purposes, Christianity. My satanism did not interfere with it at all; I was trying to take the view that the Christianity of hypocrisy and cruelty was not true Christianity. I did not hate God or Christ, but merely the God and Christ of the people whom I hated.”
THE TRUE BELIEVER: Christianity is the curse of the world. Those who cling to it in the new Æon of Horus will be banished when the Sun shall fully rise. When the Prophet wrote “the Christians to the lions!” He did not speak idly or in jest. Christians are the enemies of Freedom and they do not even understand the few fragments of the Secret Tradition that are perverted in their rites. Only when they are all dead and gone can we truly become as “a strong Man who goeth forth to do his Will.”
THE CHAOTIC: Christianity is the hand with the stick that has instilled shame and guilt as virtues so we have a whole society of mass-produced clone-farm humanoids who are afraid to think. The way to dissolve these shackles on a mass scale is through a culture of individuality and the reality distortion effect that has become the dominant paradigm. Christians are plodding, literal robots who would probably lock up all the magicians if they could get away with it.
THE SKEPTIC: Christianity's failings are well known to those of us who come from Christian cultures. We are less aware of similar problems in other cultures and religions. Of the many faiths, Christianity is among those adapting most quickly to the modern world and the idea of human rights, and now at the start of the 21st century liberal theologies are taken seriously in many mainstream denominations. It is hard to find a Thelemic group as devoted to pluralism as liberal Christian groups and Unitarian-Universalism.
THE MYSTIC: The Equinox of the Gods has come as it does every two thousand years, installing new Officers and Rites, and sweeping away the darkness of the old ways. Where once blazed the Cross of Suffering as the Sun of Beauty now there is the Crowned and Conquering Child, whose message is not of salvation from without but Grace from Within, the Kingdom of Heaven that is within you. Through all the Æons there is one thread of tradition and one Great White Brotherhood whose immortal spiritual Chiefs share the Wisdom of their Teaching with humanity. The Christians could not destroy the Gnosis and now the Initiates of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis have embraced the formula propounded at the new Equinox with Joy and Love in their hearts.
Aleister Crowley was talented, intelligent, capable, arrogant, judgmental, prejudiced, and not afraid to turn polite-ness aside if it would get in the way of a good insult. His talents extended to ritual and meditative practice, writing, mountain climbing, sexual athletics, attracting followers, and achieving publicity. His vices went as far as anti-Semitic blood libel, rabid hostility to Christianity, misogyny, child neglect, loss of friends, obnoxiousness, and megalomania.
There are marked similarities between Crowley, MacGregor Mathers, his mentor in the Golden Dawn, and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical Society. All three were charming, impressive, well-read, anger-prone, tough-talking international spiritual leaders. They were creators of new religious traditions when traditional belief in Christianity was on the decline due to science and knowledge of Eastern and pre-Christian religions. Followers were drawn to them by their magnetism, energy and talent, but frequently did not know what to make of their character flaws. In each case there is cause to suspect mental disorder by the criteria of modern psychology, but Szasz and Laing remind us that inspired wisdom is often socially condemned as insanity. Moralistic, pathologizing or reductionist accounts of “insane” people are necessarily oversimplifications. In some cases, such as Crowley's, the “insane” person provides so much ammunition that character assassination becomes inevitable.
Whether one could accept a flawed character such as Crowley as a spiritual leader depends on one's model of spirituality. Treating any of the three as moral exemplars would seem incompatible with their biographies. If the purpose of religion is to produce such exemplars then their religious endeavors—Theosophy, the Golden Dawn, and Thelema—have failed. However, if the purpose of religion is to produce spiritual adventurers then they have succeeded.
Crowley's life was an adventure. He was set upon by thieves in dark alleys, and expelled from countries for immorality. He climbed mountains, scandalized a culture that had adapted to Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Swinburne, juggled love affairs, formed new magical orders and broke up others, and made headlines as “the Wickedest Man in the World.” Through all he maintained a rigorous course of spiritual practice, exercise, journaling, and writing. Saint Burton might have been proud.
Judgment of personality is necessarily subjective. The best way to get acquainted with Crowley is to read his own works and the better biographies. Unfortunately, there is more bad biography of Crowley than good. It would be difficult to deny his many character failings, but the level of vitriol leveled at him both during and after his lifetime is amazing. Much of this yellow journalism is libelous or fabricated.
Both Crowley's vices and his virtues shine through clearly in his Confessions. Israel Regardie's The Eye in the Triangle gives a critical but sympathetic and engaged account of Crowley's spiritual career, not turning a blind eye to his flaws or his accomplishments. Other biographies are available, and good biographies continue to appear.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: “I will not acquiesce in anything but the very best of its kind. I don't in the least mind going without a thing altogether, but if I have it at all it has got to be A1. England is a very bad place for me. I cannot endure people who are either superior or inferior to others, but only those who, whatever their station in life, are consciously unique and supreme....
“I feel so profoundly the urgency of doing my will that it is practically impossible for me to write on Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses without introducing the spiritual and moral principles which are the only things in myself that I can identify with myself.
“This characteristic is evidently inherited from my father. His integrity was absolute. He lived entirely by his theological convictions. Christ might return at any moment. ‘Even as the lightning lighteneth out of the East and lighteneth even unto the West, so is the coming of the Son of Man.’ He would have to give an account of ‘every idle word.’ It was a horrifying thought to him that he might be caught by the Second Advent at a moment when he was not actively and intensely engaged on the work which God had sent him into the world to do. This sense of the importance of the lightest act, of the value of every moment, has been a tragically intense factor in my life. I have always grudged the time necessary for eating, sleeping and dressing. I have invented costumes with the sole object of minimizing the waste of time and the distraction of attention involved. I never wear underclothing....
“I soon discovered that to distinguish myself in school was in the nature of a conjurer's trick. It is hard to analyze my method or to be sure of the analysis; but I think the essence of the plan was to make certain of the minimum required and to add a superstructure of one or two abstruse points which I would manage to bring to the notice of the master or the examiner so as to give him the idea that I had prepared myself with unusual thoroughness.” —The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, chapter 4.
THE TRUE BELIEVER: Crowley was the Prophet of the Silver Star, the chosen human agent of the Secret Chiefs. He was selected because for all his human frailties he was a man of prodigious strength, intelligence and discipline, an occultist of many incarnations who was poised to assume the highest mantle and fit himself for a place in the City of the Pyramids with the Prophets and Bodhisattvas. To understand Crowley you must work his system, attaining through the power of your own True Will the keys to the Great Work, and only then judge Crowley from an Initiated perspective.
THE CHAOTIC: I'm tired of Crowley. It seems like all the people who are into him are into nothing else. I'm suspicious of his system; way too regimented, way too hierarchical. Crowley contributed to magic, but so have other people. We've learned a lot in the last century about real freedom and sexual liberation, and a Victorian master-of-the-passions approach would be a step backward. Crowley had a lot of hang-ups; I'd rather work a system more relevant to my life.
THE SKEPTIC: Crowley studies have been little adopted by academics, with good reason. His work is derivative and like Blavatsky he can be traced to a handful of main sources. Spiritual progress is feeding people, helping those who need it, participating in society to make it more just and humane, and Crowley has little to contribute to that. For Crowley to be interesting, he does not have to be taken as a spiritual authority. A person might have spiritual accomplishments yet retain base elements of their personality. People outside the normal spectrum might carry back useful viewpoints to the world of the sane.
THE MYSTIC: The documents of A∴ A∴ in Class A are inspired writings from a praeterhuman Intelligence, a direct and flawless link to the Secret Chiefs. The transmission of these gems is all that one needs to know about the career of To Mega Therion, the Great Beast, the Magus who spoke through the physical vessel of the man named Aleister Crowley, himself merely a Student of no great importance. The course of study of A∴ A∴ is the work not of Crowley but of The Master Therion and has been issued under the Authority of the Third Order.
This introduction deals with some of Crowley's major themes in summary form. Understanding of Crowley's intricate and contradictory writing requires your own reading. The fragments given here only convey a few of the flavors of his work.
Reading Crowley can be difficult. Crowley was unusual and involved, and his views changed over the six decades of his writing career. He frequently contradicts himself and makes obscure allusions. At other times he is præternaturally lucid. He can seem almost prescient, or be starkly clear and direct when expressing his most outrageous and unbelievable views, such as those on the sexual technology of Atlantis and the turn of ancient Æons.
As this voice ends, I would like to note that your voice is your own. Your own relationship with Crowley will no doubt be unique. Your views may or may not resemble any of the views presented here. Even if some thought you hold seems almost identical with one of these ideas—or utterly incompatible with all of them!—it will still be uniquely yours, embedded firmly in your own personal matrix of thought and life in an irreplaceable and sacred way.
ALEISTER CROWLEY: “Yet to all it shall seem beautiful. Its enemies who say not so, are mere liars.”—The Book of the Law, 111:68.
THE TRUE BELIEVER: My collection contains many rare works. You do not have them, since the Gods reserve them for those of higher degree. Unto such as yourself I solemnly recommend the memorization of The Book of the Law, the Charter of Universal Freedom. The Equinox of the Gods, which is part of the book Magick, explains the revelation of the Book. It should convince even the meanest skeptic, and woe to those who reject the Prophet! In The Law is For All, he interprets the Æon of the Crowned and Conquering Child with profound wisdom. Liber Aleph, The Words Tragedy, The Star in the West and many other works are required for the serious aspirant, as is membership in my group, the one duly chartered source of Initiation in this Æon. Aum. Ha.
THE CHAOTIC: I like Crowley's later books, like The Book of Thoth, including Lady Frieda Harris' beautiful Tarot deck, and Magick Without Tears, a funny and relaxed collection of letters which was originally called Aleister Explains Everything. On the serious side The Vision and the Voice records the scrying of the Enochian æthyrs in an intense succession of visionary images worthy of Blake. Studying just Crowley would be a really bad idea, though. He's kind of outdated. Be sure to sample Austin Osman Spare, the Discordians, Peter Carroll, Nema, the Sub-Genius movement, and Alan Moore's Promethea, and don't forget to familiarize yourself with psychedelics research and transpersonal psychology in your copious free time. Make your own Æon—don't settle for Crowley's!
THE SKEPTIC: Crowley was an allusory writer and to understand him it's necessary to understand the sources of his allusions as well as the cultural and subcultural currents that influenced him. In the literary world one should be familiar with Suvinburne, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Blake, Rabelais, and Græco-Roman classics, and one will need an acquaintance with English and French art and literature in general. Geoffrey Ashe's Do What You Will: A History of Anti-Morality traces the ironic current in religion and morality, as expressed through Rabelais, the Hell-Fire Club, de Sade, Crowley, and others.
THE CHAOTIC: I'm tired of Crowley. It seems like all the people who are into him are into nothing else.
THE MYSTIC: Study and meditate upon The Holy Books, which emanate directly from the higher intelligence of the Secret Chiefs. Magick or Liber ABA is an invaluable textbook of spiritual practice and symbolism, as are Eight Lectures on Yoga, The Goetia, and every volume of The Equinox, the Encyclopedia of Initiation. The Book of Lies and The Heart of the Master elucidate mysteries through lyric philosophy. The Secret Chiefs who sent Aiwass to Crowley were the same who set in motion the Golden Dawn and Theosophy, and those two parents of Thelema must be studied. Vivekananda helped inspire the Prophet's work on Yoga, earning His recommendation. Remember that books are not the work. One must practice Yoga and Magick, as described in the instructions of the holy order A.. A.. May you achieve the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and even further Wonders; yea, even further Wonders. 
The works of Aleister Crowley are @ Aleister Crowley and Ordo Templi Orientis, and are used by permission.