Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Temple >

Crowley - Overrated?

14:12 / 09.04.04

Let us put a bit of urine in the Kool-Aid, shall we? Old uncle Al seems even today to still be very influential in occult circles. Now then, there are about as many viewpoints and opinions on Crowley as there are pubes in a 70's porno, for example: there are some that seem to cum in their pants over Crowley (OTO, Thelematics, etc.), and there are some who say they aren't really into Crowley, but give the almost commonplace "though I really respect his work(s)." Of course, there are no doubt those who think Crowley was nothing more than a dumpy little man who found an elaborate way to appear cool and get laid, the master bullshit artist.

Now, there is no doubt of Al's influence in modern occultism, but why is that so? Was he that great of a magician? Was his greatest working actually making himself appear to be a great magus? Is it that he was a good magician who simply got more press than anyone else? What are everyone's thoughts on this? Why do you think Crowley is so great? Why do you think Crowley isn't great at all? Is this just iconoclastic garbage? Is this the true basis of modern magick? Does it have to be?

gotham island fae

14:40 / 09.04.04

We Are ALL Starz.

I think that Crowley was as human as the next magickian. I know that he influenced much of modern magick and pagan spirituality from Gardner's Wicca (debatable by others, but I'm accepting his influence here) to Chaos Magick itself.

I believe that blind devotion to Crowley's writings is as inane and destructive as fundamental Xristianity can be. That's what the Conflagration I'm doing tonight is all about, the release from dogmatic creeds of any form.

Just like most every other mystical resource I've plundered in my paradigmal piracy, I pick and choose with Crowley, allowing my True Will (a term I cannot and will not define to everyone's satisfaction) to determine the relevancy and veracity of each piece.

DWTW is LUV

THELEMA::AGAPE

14:50 / 09.04.04

Even a cursory dip into Crowley's work (which is what his reputation should be judged on, rather than his PR image and the industry that's sprung up around him after his death) makes it pretty fucking clear that he was not into this shit to make himself appear cool. There are far easier and more efficient methods of appearing to be cool than sitting down and writing something like 'Magick' or 'The Book of Thoth', y'know. Have you read much by the guy? What are your thoughts on his work and ideas, as opposed to his image and reputation?

I personally think that Crowley was an important figure in western magic because he was instrumental in introducing a number of very interesting concepts, ideas and ways looking at things that have since proliferated widely through our culture. His life's work has very clearly shaped and informed the work and development of those who have come after him, and I'm not just talking about Thelemites and Doley Crowley's. On the strength of his work and its impact he deserves respect and his place in the 'Rocksteady Hall of Fame'. But essentially, he was just a guy doing his magic, much like many people posting on this list. Kill Nostalgia.

18:56 / 09.04.04

I should probably clarify my position on things here. I have been influenced by the works of Spare, Grant, Parsons (to name a few) all of whom were influenced (some more than others) by Crowley. I respect Crowley, but that doesn't mean I must like or revere him. I agree that he was just a man who was also a good mage. I personally find his methods to be a bit ostentatious, but to each his own. I have dipped into his writings (Book of the Law, Book of Lies, Magick In Theory and Practice) and, just as a side note, try taking one of his workings and "reversing" it, speak the words backwards, if it says point to the East, point to the West, do the opposite. Makse for an interesting evening.

I digress. My main objective in the post was to deconstruct his influence. The statements on his image were actually critiques I have come across concerning old Al. I do believe his work was more important than his image, but I also believe "image" was dearly important to Crowley himself. I want to know how others feel about Crowley, and why they feel he is (was) important. Simply stating that he was influential means dick, HOW was he influential in your opinions. WHY was he influential in your opinions. Or, why shouldn't he be considered influential, anything.

19:46 / 09.04.04

double edged sword (in my very very limited opinion)

Crowley for me was the antithesis of 'Chaos'

I am not stupid, nor am I blessed with great intelligence but for me Crowley's writing is tough as hell

I really struggle but whether I am guilty of being blinded by science or just too stupid to understand, he strikes me as a real intellectual. He obviously devoted a great deal of time and effort in his research.....this might have been the result of a reasonably wealthy upbringing or just as an avoidance of work. I STRONGLY suspect the former. His standing in the magick fraternity , I believe is 70 percent because of his intellect and 30% because most of us are too lazy or busy to try to refute his claims.

No old Al was a character and in a world so full of mediocrity, he made an impression. Spare was probably a better 'Magician' whatever that title means .......but AC was a better writer and intellectual. Imagine having the opportunity to speak to the man for an hour, I would sacrifice a couple of teeth to have such an opportunity

23:45 / 09.04.04

I haven't really read very much of Crowley, and I've never read an entire book of his, only bits and pieces. So, the only real opinion on Crowley I have formed is that I like his sense of humour; dry and ironic. That's at least my impression.

02:08 / 10.04.04

Brilliant theorist. Stunning ability to synthesize elements of the Eastern and Western esoteric traditions. Lucid explanations of raja yoga. Interesting perspectives on sex magic. An excellent prose writer.

An egotist. Selfish. A shameless self-promoter. Florid poetry. A seriously messed-up personal life. Never got over his fundamentalist upbringing. And the whole Book of the Law/Great Beast/Whore of Babylon/Scarlet Woman thing really is a bit tedious for non-Thelemites.

Many of his works assume that the reader has a working knowledge of cabala, Golden Dawn ritual, alchemy, the rest of the Hermetic tradition, yoga, and metaphors for sex magic. That can be problematic. But he was probably the most important Western occult writer and theorist of the 20th Century.

04:20 / 10.04.04

I am a Thelemist and I can honestly say that I think his works were ground breaking genius for its time, but since then magick in theory and practice has moved on. I still find the book of the law to be relevant, but that wasn't written by him. As a person I can say that my only problem with him would have been his random acts of cruelty, his snobishness, and I can't say that I approve of his opinions on women either. But it would have been excellante' to climb with him, which if I had to spend any amount of time with the dirty old man, would have been my preferance. I wouldn't give any teeth for it though, unless they didn't have to be mine.

06:44 / 10.04.04

I imagined joetheneophyte trying to talk to Crowley in a room with his mouth all swollen up after having the teeth pulled out.

07:21 / 10.04.04

My opinion? Crowley had an ego as big as a damn house, but he was brilliant. I supect that he had a lot of fun thumbing his nose at the conventions of the times, it was well known that he would play on the presses opinions of him. All you have to do,however, is look at his writings to see that he was dedicated to magick. He did the work. Did he posess a Great Truth? Nah. Not anymore than anyone else. He did, IMO, develop a high level of skill. In terms of his finding a way to be cool, not in the sense that is alluded to. Did he relish "coolness"? While he may not have called it that, I'm sure he did. He loved to freak out the press, and he enjoyed playing on his image. I'm willing to bet that he got quite a kick out of all the fuss.

13:45 / 11.04.04

he's a dusty old ancestor at this point,but if it weren't for the early ones,if it weren't for the messed up,wounded,manic adventurers of old,we'd generally have a less interesting time of it.he was a mutation,and the early ones always pay dearly.what kind of throwbacks will we all look like to the eternally transforming fluid glowing universal babies of the future?we'll look like needlessly eccentric,poisonous little cavemen.even if at present we're some of mankind's top creatives,healers,etc..i see no giants,it's 'on the shoulders of trolls'which makes us more lovable in my eyes.

--

17:37 / 11.04.04

Although I've read much about Crowley, the only books of his I've read are "Book of the Law", "Book of Lies", "Moonchild", "magick Without Tears", and a few others... Still have to read "Magick". I should say here that I'm one of those people who read Crowley but have never actually tried out anything he writes about, mostly due to laziness or indifference. I don't believe everything he says, as I've recently realized that taking stuff you read in occult books too literally can have disasterous results on one's psyche.

Having said that I find Crowley's personality more interesting then his magic techniques (as interesting as those in themselves are), as he had a great, sarcastic sense of humor that was way ahead of it's time. I liked how he experimented with homosexual sex magick too, something that people like regardie and grant usually try to ignore... He was open-minded enough to experiment, I think. Plus he had alot of great sound bites, and, I dunno, like that spoken word stuff of his. Great stuff. Maxim Blender had a small blurb on him recently, saying he lived the rock star lifestyle decades before it had even been invented: Declaring himself a god, doing drugs, crucifying toads and fucking trees. To me Crowley is a very likeable fellow, and in some ways I feel similiar to him... ex-religious, sickly, prone to bouts of insanity, bisexual, etc. Yeah, Crowley rocks. I don't have an orgasm over him though.

12:28 / 04.03.05

Every pioneers work decays and distorts with time passing.

Putting the corruptions he is accussed of aside, my view is that Crowleys contribution is valuable because;

he wandered into some very rare mind spaces beyond the Abyss into DAATH, and returned to talk about it which very few can do,

also revealing corresponding illumination cross referencing and verifying the rare existing information on the the nature we all share the "emptiness of the Void" in DAATH!.

It happens to be the creative seat of the Goddess, whose energy is rising now and tipping normal realities aside, and our male centric perspective needs all the help it can get to come to terms with this chalenge including Crowley.

rising and revolving

13:42 / 04.03.05

He gets an awful lot of credit for stuff he just pinched from the Golden Dawn - but that aside, his most valuable contribution (via "New Aeonics") was to show how a system (GD) could be personalised (Thelema) - thus taking away the dogma and revealing the essentially intimate nature of magic.

Customising traditional magic into a personal synthesis is what the founders of the GD did (to SRIA and Levi/Agrippa/Egyptomania mostly) and then Crowley did it to them, publically.

14:51 / 04.03.05

The weird thing is that Crowley never seemed to acknowledge or understand that in creating Thelema he was customizing the Golden Dawn system (and all of his other influences) to fit his own personal mythology, tastes and fetishes. He genuinely seemed to think that he had brought down the new word of the Aeon for everyone.

After all of his warnings to others, he was blinded by his own dogma.

16:54 / 04.03.05

I wouldn't say blinded, probably just tired of trying to prove himself wrong, it happens when you get old.

18:09 / 04.03.05

I too, love Crowley's sense of humor. As for his ego problems, after reading his two most recent biographies it seems that if he judged other harshly, he judged himself harshest of all. Although I suppose that doesn't really come across in his writings. 777 is my favorite of Crowley's books, probably because it's so useful. And let's not forget the Thoth tarot that he and Lady Frieda Harris created, and his short, 400-page treatise on it.

(I would also sacrifice a couple of Joe's teeth to spend an hour talking with him.)

rising and revolving

19:19 / 04.03.05

I think it's a pretty classic occupational hazard with Magecraft, the interpretation of personal revelation to "This is a message for all humanity!"

Of course, maybe it was. But seems to me that apocalyptic visions far more often indicate a personal apocalypse, rather than a global one. That said, I don't think any mage ought live their life differently either way - you do what you do, and Crowley definately did that.

And while I could condemn those who slavishly follow his theories as missing the point, I don't think that's fair or reasonable. He does seem to have left a set of instructions that, if followed, lead to personal revelation. At which point, if you desire, you can remould everything you've learned into a personal system - but there's nothing wrong with following the steps he took to get there, as they seem to work.

If that makes sense.

02:03 / 05.03.05

The problem is that the practical instructions he left often are smothered in a heap of Thelemic cant and dogma. And that's a shame, because it makes Crowley's work that much less accessible and attractive to the interested reader.

The Book of the Law? BABALON? Face towards Crowley's vacation home while doing a variation on the LBRP? I don't think so.

18:43 / 05.03.05

Yeah, I don't face Bolskine, I think that was his sense of humor talking, cause it's certainly funny as hell to me.

rising and revolving

16:10 / 06.03.05

Again, I don't think the point was ever to actually face Boleskine. Although I'm sure Crowley did, when he felt like it. And I'm sure many thelemites do today.

I think the point was "symbolic east is where you want it" - and at the time, that was a radical statement.

18:47 / 06.03.05

wasnt his insistence on his own prophethood one of the most important parts of his life work? if he had accepted the mages usual role as a quiet outsider, even we scholars probably wouldnt have heard of him. to me, his contribution was in the relationship of magic to the historical record (in a postmodern sense of 'historical', in that we are swimming in it). through his awareness of his own historical influence--as a mage and as a public figure, and the nonboundary between those two roles--he opened up a new archetype for we who were born after him. (of course, he also played a large role in the consolidation of magical history up the 19th century, which was another part of his life work.)

apart from the 'cunning man' type, mages were previously expected to sit in a tower in the mountains and dabble in wot man was not meant to know (and doesnt really care about, mores the pity). now it seems perfectly acceptable for a mage to write a bestselling novel and wear sunglasses in the champagne room. crowley showed how all artists are magicians, and because of him artist-magicians are our closest equivalents of priests. if that doesnt make crowley a prophet of a new age, i dont know what would.

all that said, he seems to have been cruel to his friends and lovers, and much of his magical structures suffer from his obsessive egoist quest for power. im pretty sure he failed at what was most important to him.

02:31 / 07.03.05

I'd like to think Crowley meant that "symbolic East is where you want it." But in Magick Without Tears (for example) he gives his correspondent detailed directions for how to face Boleskine from her house.

Crowley certainly was a great one for jettisoning magical dogma, but it seems to me that he really did take his own prophethood -- and the Book of the Law -- seriously. And I find it immensely frustrating to have to dig his (extremely valuable) practical instructions out of the chaff of an ideosyncratic personal religion that doesn't interest me in the least.

10:51 / 25.12.05

heres a brief encounter i had with him one day when he was bugging me (just found the transcript while sorting old notes). he only gave me one shitty (rhetorical) answer, but its all obvious stuff. my questions are as revealing as his answers, of course:

crowley what do you want?
i want you to follow me.
where are you going?
does it matter?
then why follow you instead of someone else?
beacuse i am the prophet. thats my function.
how do i know youre the prophet i should follow?
im not going to tell you what to do.
is everyone else following you too?
only if you make them.
am i supposed to climb mountains too?
only if you want to get to the top.

05:31 / 27.12.05

probably the most important and still eternally misunderstood figure of the last two centuries.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:59 / 28.12.05

More important than Napoleon? Marx? Marie Curie? Alexander Fleming? Peter Purves? Show your working, Anth.

17:46 / 02.01.06

I came to Crowley by way of Alan Moore, someone whose aesthetic and intellict I am continually impressed by. The grain (or perhaps block) of salt Moore takes Crowley with allows me to read him as a resource, not a rulebook. Magick Without Tears, 777, and The Book of Thoth, particularly, and with Book 4 (The Big Blue Brick) as an ancillary.

In MWT, he instructs you to build your own Qabalah, and develop the ability to reference it constantly. Now, that seems like a damn good way to start living a more magical life, and 777 becomes extremely helpful, (along with Dion Fortune's book on the Qabalah) at building your own tree.

That said, there's an Equinox essay he wrote regarding magical exercises of behaviour, in which he suggests cutting your arm with a razor every time you break the rules. Not so much into that, myself. Again, it's not entirely clear if he's serious about that himself, or suggesting a metaphorical, though still emotionally cutting, punishment. Or just trying to freak people out.

In Crowley's own worldview, perhaps he was the herald of new Aeon. Or he was just trying to sell a lot of books. Either way, he's left an enormous amount of material as a resource for others. That's how I take him.

06:35 / 04.01.06

importance is a relative thing. i could easily have lived without Marx. So could Russia have, probably.

Crowley was a pioneer, giving us new models to understand what i suppose can more and more safely be called the contemporary psyche in the stages of evolution in which we find ourselves, loosening the restrictions of our conditioning. we as a race need new ways of perceiving ourselves, others, and the world in order to free ourselves, heal ourselves & find meaning & Thelema applied still represents a total revolution in consciousness. The various other branches of Thelemic Magick which have spawned after Crowley are equally fertile routes for exploration.

AC was a guy who.. came across as a tit quite often, but shouldn't be lambasted on that score. the proof is in the intelligent application of his ideas and not to be found in either the worship or criticism of his personality. it also won't be found by any who simply do the reading but do not live the path.

11:57 / 04.01.06

I would say: probably the most important and still eternally misunderstood figure in magic and occultism of the last two centuries. After Peter Purves and Eddie Guerero, naturally.