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CROWLEY
“You that are me, beyond all I am,
You without nature and name,
You that are, when everything except you
will be gone,
You center and secret of the Sun, you arcane
source
of all the known and unknown things, you
only one and highest, real fire inside the cane,
you meditating and generating, source and
seed of love, freedom and light,
you unspeakable and invisible one, I invoke
you while your dim fire just burning,
revives as my thoughts.
I evoke you, eternal you, center and secret
of the Sun
And that holiest mystery of which I am
the means.”
(Note: these verses by Aleister Crowley have been re-translated from Italian, because we do not have the original version. We would be grateful to anyone who sends it to us).
According to Aleister Crowley’s teaching,
magick and transmutation are the same. Universe is a gigantic human organism
and man is just a tiny image, a miniature replica of God. Through the process
of transmutation, man can expand his being till covering the whole creation,
subjecting it to his will.
Crowley was born in Lermington (Warmickshire) on October 12th 1875, to a wealthy family of beer manufacturers. Since childhood, his uncontrollable physical exuberance and fertile imagination put him in contrast with the rigid religious faith of his family. This fact contributed to his violent aversion for any kind of sexual repression (and especially for Christianity) and represents the most modern feature of his teaching.
He studied in Cambridge, showing qualities of a poet and cultivating his passion for the mountains.
A very talented climber, he was one of the first to reach the “great eight thousands,” and his unlucky attempts on and Kanchenjunga are remembered today as the most memorable ventures in the history of early mountain climbing.
In 1898 young Crowley entered one of the most famous Hermetic schools in England, the Golden Dawn. The school claims at least two connections with the Neapolitan school: the first through the Rosy Cross Societas in Anglia and the second through the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.
Among the affiliates of the Golden Dawn Crowley met another eccentric young man, Alan Bennett. Already one of the most famous westerner yoga teachers at that time, Alan Bennett (Bhikku Ananda Metteya) died as a Buddhist at Lamma Sayadaw Kyoung monastery in Akyab, Sri-Lanka. Young Crowley moved to Bennett's flat and learned from him all his yoga secrets and unfortunately even a heroine addiction that followed him until he died.
He left Bennett’s house two years later and moved to Boleskine Manor in Scotland (today the property of the ex Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page, a fervent Crowley fan) where he started the Abramelin Project, the most powerful form of self-magick initiation.
The combination of all of these different forms of learning generates the miracle of Aleister Crowley‘s inner transmutation. It was certainly made easier due to his natural talent for controlling dreams, giving him the chance to move from one level of reality to another, with incredible ease.
In 1904, Crowley and his first wife Rose Kelly went to Cairo, with the purpose of creating a mental contact with the primreview sources of Hermetism.
After renting a flat, they engaged in a cycle of magick operations with the purpose of evoking Thoth, the Egyptian god corresponding to Mercury (Hermes).
Through Rose, a skilled seer, an entity called Aiwass started communicating at different times and it dictated Crowley the “Liber Legis”: enigmatic text announcing the advent of a new humanity governed by the laws of love and magick.
Crowley then started experiencing a period of uncertainty. At that time he wanted to elaborate his own system of transmutation having Liber Legis as a foundation, but he perceived some other elements were missing.
The definitive enlightening inspiration came from a meeting with Theodore Reuss, master of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO): a German transmutatory school emphasizing a sexual tantric technique, the so called “vamacharis”.
Crowley’s idea was to adapt a symbolic context, inspired by Gnosticism, to the vamacharis. From then on he gave his magick partners (female) the title of “Scarlet Woman”, while the male character (Crowley himself) was the “Big Beast”(from Apocalypse, 17).
By introducing sexual magick, Crowley’s system was ready to take off. From 1913 to 1919 he lived in the United States, and through couple rituals, with numerous Scarlet Women, he added further improvements.
On his way back to Europe his “Thelemit religion” was ready and Liber Legis was the sacred book for his disciples.
It was an outrageous and eccentric faith, in which liberty dogmas (DO WHATEVER YOU WANT IT WILL BE THE LAW) were mixed with suggestions rather difficult to follow without having traced its occult hermetic meaning (MAN,YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE!).
He followed Aiwass’ suggestion and rented a huge villa surrounded by olive trees, on a hill, half a mile away from the little town of Cefalu’ in Sicily. He settled there with his Scarlet Woman of the moment (the American Leah Hirzig) and a small court of disciples and supporters.
Thelema’s Abbey was one floor, whitewashed stone construction, with a red tiled roof and very thick walls. Five rooms opened onto a central hall, the Sancta Sanctorum or Temple of Thelemit Mysteries. On the red brick floor a magic circle was painted with a pentagram placed upon it, its five points touching the circumference.
In the center of the circle there was an hexagonal altar, containing a copy of the hermetic Stele of Ankh-f-n-Khonsu (copied by Crowley at Cairo’s Museum) with four candles at each side, a copy of Liber Legis with six candles at each side and several magick tools.
On the eastern side of the circle, in front of the altar, was the Throne of the Beast, and between the throne and the altar, a burning brazier, with hanging daggers used for animal sacrifices during the invocations. The Scarlet woman’s throne was situated on the west side and the Hebrew names of God were written all along the inner circumference of the circle.
Early morning, the Virgin Guardian of the Abbey would hit the gong and proclaim the law: ”DO WHATEVER YOU WANT; IT WILL BE THE LAW” and people would answer ”LOVE IS LAW; LOVE UNDER THE POWER OF WILL”.
During the day, a ritual work was happening: the Thelemites would perform magick ceremonies, evoking devils, announcing them, having conversation with Guardian Angels, evoking Gods.
All these operations have a transmutory function, according to Crowley. In fact each magick ritual is focused on creating through the performer, a mental image of the result one wants to achieve. All the ceremonial part, which is variable, is used to give further strength to this image and to better “projecting“ it. The higher the degree of realism obtained in the image, the more meaningful the ritual will be.
The result is that the best images are those created in the astral, especially through clear dreams. In other words, in order for magick to work, the sorcerer has to learn how to control the moving of the “joining point”.
“Each man is more or less aware that his individuality includes several orders of existence“ Crowley wrote in those years, “even when he affirms that his more subtle principles are only symptomatic of the changes happening in his gross vehicle (in the physical body). Develop the Body of Light until it becomes as real as your other body, teach it to travel towards each desired symbol, give it the possibility to perform all the rituals and necessary invocations.”
It was not a new idea, something similar has always been practiced at Hermetic schools, but surely Crowley was the first one to place imagination control as the focusing point of his teaching.
He was aware that by doing so, he would have revolutionized traditional Hermetism, by lowering the importance of several aspects of his doctrines that were previously considered essential.
He was advocating (with good reason) that, unlike the Egyptian time, twentieth century humanity could enjoy a far more energetically richer and imaginative life and that it could be the right time for the modern man to channel this possibility, having transmutation as his final goal.
He was facing the same problem as Gudjieff: the over abundance of the “mechanic” mental activity, joy and pain of the western civilization, as the primary source of our astonishing technologic progress and in the meantime the reason for each modern man to have lost his awareness. But the approach was very different, Gurdjieff, as a strict transmutant of Sufi school, could not conceive of any kind of opposition against the mechanic thought without cutting it at the very roots. According to a perfect statement used by von Sebottendorff,” he was cutting the head off to these wild beasts”. Crowley instead, as transmutant of Hermetic school, seems not as pitiless; his system restrains human imagination instead of killing it and leads it to enjoyable targets for achieving luxurious, dazzling, multicolored landscapes. Getting his strength little by little until the moment, when magically, man doesn’t see himself as an element in the landscape he has imagined.
But the work was not that easy, the discipline he imposed at Thelema Abbey was exhausting and health-wise very dangerous. A sinister destiny connects the experience of Thelema to the one of Prieure’, which Gurdjieff was leading during the same time.
Katherine Mansfield died at Prieure, and Crowley’s “magick son”, the American Raoul Loveday at Thelema.
The English press accused him of being the reason for this death and the Italian Government expelled Crowley in 1923. Thelema Abbey went on without him for another year, then due to economic problems it was finally closed.
After his expulsion from Italy, Aleister Crowley’s life started going downhill. He kept wandering around the world, performing everywhere, rituals with different Scarlet Women, trying to get rid of his heroine addiction which was having a devastating effect on his life energy. Journalists were hunting him with the most infamous accusations, presenting him even as a cannibal, but none of these slanders against him have ever been proven. He lived the last part of his life in London, keeping correspondence with the many OTO affiliations developing in each corner of the world due to his genius.
“He used to wander around Chelsea and Piccadilly” narrates John Symonds, his best biographer” raising his hat upon seeing a couple hugging and he lifted his hand in disregard whenever he met a religious man. He used to say “apo`pantos kakodaimonos”(and free us from all the evil demons), a sentence from Orthodox Church liturgy.”
He used to write magick texts and poetry and he made his living out of sharing the crumbles of his magick. He was selling longevity pills, training for physical and sexual rejuvenation called Amrita, giving yoga and chess lessons and he was using drugs.
He died in Hastings, on December 1st 1947, and his last scandal was his funeral, celebrated according to Thelemic ritual, by a small group of his followers.
His myth was bound to have a rebirth in the seventies, given his travels around Asia, the blond fluent hair of his youth, his passion for drugs and his anarchist spirit, typical of his existence, made him “the hippie’s unknown prophet”.