Who Was Aiwaz? The Strange Story of Samuel Jacobs and Aleister Crowley
Cairo 1904, the Writing of the Book of the Law (© Mitchellnoite)
The first time that the name of Aiwaz (or Aiwass, as Crowley spelled it) was heard by Aleister Crowley was in March 1904, when his wife, Rose Edith Crowley née Kelly, spontaneously entered a state of trance. It is often forgotten that it was not Aleister Crowley who sought out the Cairo Working. It was an unknown intelligence communicating itself through the spontaneous mediumship of Rose that called Crowley to fulfil the role of the Beast 666, with which he had identified himself both in his childhood imaginings and in his poetry. It was Rose who told Crowley that the source of the cryptic messages concerning the Child, Osiris, Horus, the Equinox of the Gods, Christian Rosy [sic] Cross, and the Solar Force was one Aiwaz. Years later, Crowley would state that he had never heard this name before. This is probably true. Aiwaz (Aiwass is a significant misspelling) is very rare. One search showed that only 140 individuals have this surname, mostly in Pakistan. There are also numerous variations (e.g., Aaiwaz, Aiwayz, Iwaz, etc.). It is the 1,487,714th most popular surname in the world, though today, with the advent of social media, it is easier to find a few Aiwazs on Facebook!
Aleister Crowley: The Father of the Occult (Occult History Explained)
Rose instructed Crowley to sit at his writing desk at 12 noon on Friday, April 8, 1904[1] and the next two days and to write down what he heard. He obeyed, armed with paper and fountain pen (it was a Swan quill dip pen), and at 12 noon precisely he heard a voice and had a vivid impression of a ghost-like figure behind his left shoulder. Crowley described the voice as passionate, deep, musical, expressive, tenor or baritone. Crowley found the voice “startling and uncanny” because it was completely devoid of any accent, and therefore inhuman sounding. Crowley also felt the voice as an odd vibration in his heart.
The ghost-like figure was tall, dark, a little older than Crowley himself (Crowley was all of 28), personable, athletic, aristocratic, and Persian-Assyrian in appearance, “with a face like a savage king” (this was a psychic impression; at no time did Crowley turn and look at the figure). In Crowley’s vision the figure wore a veil or mask across his eyes.
© DeviantArt
Aiwaz is identified as the speaker in the seventh verse of the first chapter of the Book of the Law, as the subsequent dictation came to be called: “Behold! it is revealed by Aiwass the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat.” Aiwaz refers to himself in the third person. Whereas the physical voice of the Book of the Law is that of Aiwaz, he himself is the medium of the three ultimate cosmic beings: Nuit, the Egyptian goddess of the sky; Hadit, the winged solar disk; and Horus, the avenging son of Isis and Osiris. Aiwaz says only that he is the “minister.” A minister is both a minor priest (or a priest’s servant) and a high officer of the Crown (or the state). Originally, “to minister” is to serve food or drink. Aiwaz’ superior is Hoor-paar-kraat (Eg. Har-pa-khered, Heru-pa-khered; Gk. Harpokrates, lit. “Horus the Child”). Harpokrates, the god of silence, is represented as a small boy with his finger pressed to his lips. In fact, the voice of Aiwaz himself is never heard in the Book of the Law. He is perfectly inscrutable. He channels the divine, but in himself he is perfectly silent.
At first Crowley interpreted the Cairo Working, as he called it, as an astral vision and the Book of the Law an automatic writing. Crowley, who intensely disliked spiritualism, was embarrassed by the Book of the Law and distanced himself from it, but, clearly, it also fascinated him. He doodled on the cover page of the Book. There is a large stain on the first page of the third chapter. He took the Cairo Working seriously enough, however, to inform S.L. Mathers, the Chief of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, that a New Æon had been proclaimed with Crowley to supplant Mathers as the Head of the Order. Mathers’s reply, if he wrote one, is not preserved as far as I know. After some preliminary cabalistic analyses, Crowley ruminated whether to include the Book in his collected works, then promptly lost the manuscript.
Crowley carried on with his spiritual work without any further reference to the Book of the Law. By this time he was no longer merely a magician, he was a mystic, seeking personal communion with his own Godhood. He invoked his Holy Guardian Angel. He crossed the “Abyss” and attained the grade of Magister Templi (Master of the Temple) of the A∴A∴ or Silver Star. He founded the Order of the A∴A∴ without reference to the Cairo Working or the Book of the Law, based rather on his experiences in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Yoga, Buddhism, and metaphysical philosophy that he synthesized in his philosophy of “Crowleyanity” and Scientific Illuminism, in 1908–09.[2] On this system, Crowley superimposed the memorization of the Holy Books (the Book of the Law itself was memorized in part in the grade of Zelator). The only specifically “thelemic” task of the Great White Brotherhood is Liber V, the Ritual of the Mark of the Beast, in the grade of Philosophus. “Sex magick” is also Thelemic, of course, though not exclusively so. One finds it in the Kalachakra and in many other places as well. This was later grafted onto the original system in Magick in Theory and Practice, especially the grades of Zelator, Philosophus, and Adeptus Within in connection with the formula of the Rosy Cross in the College of the Holy Ghost and Devotion to the Order. Thus, the final system of the A∴A∴ includes both the Law of Thelema and the Supreme Secret of the O.T.O., without being subordinate to either. The central tasks of the Great White Brotherhood are simply the underlying universals of the Great Work attributed to the Cabalistic Tree of Life (Etz Chayim).
The story of Crowley’s conversion to his own religion of Thelema – or, rather, the religion that had been revealed to him as the apotheosis of his own work – would take us too far afield to repeat here. Suffice to say that Crowley came to realize the significance of the Cairo Working only after he crossed the Abyss, and rededicated his life to the promulgation of the Law of Thelema in June 1909, more than five years after the original event.
In the course of his subsequent career Crowley explained the identity of Aiwaz in different ways, not necessarily mutually exclusive. Crowley identified Hoor-paar-kraat, the silent child-god of the sun, with the True Self, which would make Aiwaz the “minor” of the True Self, the Holy Guardian Angel, interior Genius, or “daemon.”[3] Whereas the True Self is the being of the self and therefore utterly unknowable, the Genius is the True Will, ultimately one with the True Self, the dynamic/kinetic “going” in its ultimate and most essential aspect, the realization of which confers the essential empowerment of the grade of Major Adept of the Inner College of the Great White Brotherhood. In the biographical note to The Book of Thoth Crowley states that he attained this grade in April 1904. More generally, Crowley identified Aiwaz with the libido, more in the Jungian sense of “psychic energy” than in the Freudian, strictly sexual sense. Although Crowley certainly regarded Aiwaz as both a magical formula and an individual, at no time did Crowley consider that Aiwaz might be the proper name of a man. Crowley thought the word was an artificial cabalistic construction like ABRAHADABRA or BABALON.
2
In 1918, Crowley was working in New York City as the editor of a popular magazine, The International, owned by German businessman George Sylvester Viereck. At the same time, he was performing a series of magical rites with his “scarlet woman,” Roddie Minor. These operations consisted of interviews with a preterhuman intelligence that called itself Amalantrah,[4] through the mediumship of Roddie. These deeply obscure interviews seemed to continue themes and symbols that had at first appeared during a previous series of operations, conducted eight years before, with a different woman, Mary d’Este Sturges, the secretary of noted dancer Isadora Duncan, in a rented villa in Italy. These efforts to contact preterhuman intelligences were doubtless influenced by the Cairo Working. The working with Mary with an entity that called itself Ab-ul-Diz resulted in the writing of Book Four, Crowley’s celebrated classic in four parts on Meditation (Yoga), Magic, and the Cairo Working. Book Four, Part III – Magick in Theory and Practice – is widely regarded as Crowley’s magnum opus, and has been described as a postmodernist classic.
During the evening of Sunday, February 24 at 9:30 p.m.[5] Crowley was trying to get the Hebrew spelling of the Greek ΘΗΡΙΟΝ. Crowley wanted a phonetic equivalent transliteration that added up to 666. The answer that Amanlantrah gave was wrong, but seemed to imply or allude to a simpler answer that eluded Crowley. Crowley claims that he could not find a suitable transliteration, even though the solution is only two steps removed from a direct literal rendering of the Greek letters. What is even more surprising is that on the following Tuesday Crowley found a letter at his office from a reader of The International. The letter was not addressed to Crowley himself, but to Viereck, the owner of The International, who had put the letter, received on Monday, on Crowley’s desk for reply. The letter, which survives in the Warburg collection in London, was essentially a fan letter and the writer a fan of the magazine and a reader of Crowley’s. He had read Crowley’s article in which he had stated that the Hebrew spelling of ΘΗΡΙΟΝ was unknown. The writer had tried his hand at the puzzle and, not surprisingly, had found the solution in the letters ריונ. Crowley was already intrigued when he read the Americanized signature of the writer: Samuel Aiwaz Jacobs (Shmuel [Samuel] bar Aiwaz [“son of Aiwaz”] bie Yackou de Sherabad). Then he noticed the date of the letter. It was February 24, 1918, the exact date of the interview with Amalantrah in which he had tried to obtain the Hebrew spelling.
Crowley wrote to Mr. Jacobs and asked him for the Hebrew spelling of Aiwaz. Jacob’s reply, עיוז, struck him to the core. The letters added up to 93, the number of Thelema, the key number of the Book of the Law!
The exact extent of Crowley’s subsequent communication with Samuel Aiwaz Jacobs is unclear. Jacobs, an expert in metaphysical verse, had clearly read Crowley with deep attention. In 1918 America, it was surely unusual in the extreme, if not unknown, for anyone to write positively about the Antichrist! In fact, after Crowley left New York City his book, The Blue Equinox, created a scandal in which Crowley’s publisher was accused of being a satanist. Jacobs subsequently corresponded with Charles Stansfeld Jones, Crowley’s American representative, in August 1918, but there is no evidence he joined either the O.T.O. or the A∴A∴. At some point Jacobs shared with Crowley Jacobs’s theory that Aiwaz was the proper name of the god of the Yezidis (in a 1929 interview Jacobs himself identified the name “Aiwaz” with Satan). Based on the scholarship of the time, it was believed that the Yezidis, a Kurdish people located in northern Iraq, worshipped a primitive form of Satan. This became the basis of Crowley’s subsequent identification of Aiwaz with Satan in Magick in Theory and Practice, especially in “Liber Samekh” in the Appendix, which in turn he identified with the Egyptian god Set, the enemy of Horus (the conflict between Horus and Set is, mystically interpreted, two sides of the same coin). Jacobs and Crowley believed that Yezidism, as the religion of the Yezidis is called, combines traditional Sumerian beliefs with Islamic Sufi heresies (an unpopular theory today). According to Yezidi belief, Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel, is the chief of seven Angels that are set over the world by God. His other name is Shaitan or Shaytan. The Yezidi belief system is reminiscent of the Gnostic Nag Hammadi scriptures. Like the Gnostic Sethians, the Yezidis identify the disobedience of Satan as an enlightened act. The Yezidis follow the Koran, which states that Satan was cast down by God for refusing to submit to man. Like some Sufis, the Yezidis believe that God’s command was a test, and only Iblis understood this. In fact, God was testing the angel’s love of him. Like the adherents of the Romanian Iron Guard, Iblis was willing to disobey God and endure hell itself rather than give up his love of God and submission to the Highest. Thus, Iblis is the true Muslim.
For his part, Crowley referred to Jacobs as a “Brother.” This has been taken to mean that Crowley recognized Jacobs as a Brother of the Great White Brotherhood, i.e., a Secret Chief, in which case Crowley’s statement in The Equinox of the Gods that he has seen Aiwaz and other Secret Chiefs in person may refer to Jacobs, although there is no evidence that the two ever actually met. Jacobs may also have been a fellow Freemason. Crowley came to identify Aiwaz as an Ipsissimus of the Great White Brotherhood, and the Secret Chief that is responsible for the initiation of the Earth during the current cycle of the New Æon.
3
Samuel Aiwaz Jacobs (1890/91–1971), Persian-Assyrian by birth, was an American printer, typographer, compiler, and poet who founded the Golden Eagle Press in the 1920s in Mount Vernon, New York. Jacobs became the typesetter and press agent of e e cummings (it was Jacobs who introduced the lower-case display of cummings’s name), and also designed books for Covici Friede, New Directions, Oxford University Press, and Dutton. He also designed two original Syriac typefaces and was an authority on metaphysical verse. He produced many books for his own and other presses, including a fine edition of Chaucer. Jacobs was clearly influenced by libertarian notions similar to those of Aleister Crowley, as shown in the following quotation:
To those of you who will begin, as I did, at an early age to be interested in creative effort, I have a word or two to say: Follow no one. Only you can lead yourself. Be open-minded and ready to reject every extraneous influence. Use your own. Talk is cheap; let others talk. Pay no attention to them or to me. Shun them and me with your self-discipline. Value your freedom from the shackles of the strait jacket. A rose is a rose regardless of its position on the bush. Approach your line of activity as an individual. Be independent. There is but one law to obey, the law of freedom: and obedience to that law is liberty.
Although Jacobs (1890/91-1971) outlived Crowley by 24 years, it is not known if anyone ever asked him about Aleister Crowley. In 1904, he was about 14 years old.[6]
Jacobs is remembered today as an early pioneer of the research into a universal script. Jacobs’s fascination with alphabets eerily echoes Aiwaz’ references to the mysteries of the letters and the words in the Book of the Law. According to Eden Naby, “Jacobs, living absorbed in letters from his youth…, may have had a strong interest in ‘elm al-ḥoruf, that is, the science of interpreting letters and their numerical values, whether or not he also studied the practice, derived from it, of magic ‘based on the occult properties of the letters of the alphabet and of the divine and angelic names which they form.’”[7] His papers are catalogued in the Philip Kaplan Collection of S.A. Jacobs (1950–1958) at the Southern Illinois University Special Collections Research Centre. His papers also reveal an interest in acoustics and in Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, so perhaps he was not as savage as the Book of the Law seems to imply.
Notes
[1] Interestingly, April 8 is the birthday of the Buddha according to the Japanese tradition and is probably closer to his actual birthday than the tradition that he was born in mid-May. 1904 is the year in which the British invaded Tibet, the home of Vajrayana Buddhism. The British assaulted Red Idol Gorge on April 9, 1904, on the original second feast day of AL, en route to Gyantse, which they reached on April 11. Days of wrath indeed!
[2] Tobias Churton, Aleister Crowley: The Biography, p. 140.
[3] In the Ab-ul-Diz Working Crowley was informed that he was the “demon” of the æon, and his age the number of Chaos (1400). More, properly, את is a contracted form of אות, “sign,” indicative of the accusative tense. Crowley also glosses this word as “the” or “Essence” (401), “the sum and essence of all, conceived as One.” See Sepher Sephiroth, Liber LVIII, and John Symonds, The Great Beast, pp. 157, 171. Contrary to Symonds’s rather negative interpretation, the connotation of the word “demon” (daemon or daimon) is not necessarily pejorative. Ab-ul-Diz also identifies Perdurabo with the number 65, Adonai or the “Holy Guardian Angel,” “the most spiritual form of force.”
[4] The nature of this being is curious. In her first vision, Roddie describes a candlestick that breaks off at the stem, becoming a crown: “The crown floated in the air, tilted at a slight angle; and a circle, which was a halo, came down from heaven and dropped into the crown. In the center a wand came, and then it all hovered above the candlestick with a veil round it. The veil in some ways appeared as rays of light” (italics added). Many years later noted astronomer, computer scientist, and UFOlogist Jacques Vallée theorized that descriptions like this constitute the historical basis of the UFO phenomenon in his book, Passport to Magonia (cf. C.G. Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies). Roddie’s vision was obtained with the assistance of opium. UFO experiences are also reported by people who take ayahuasca and other psychedelics. Vallée does not, however, believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial. Another interesting comparison with UFOs, also noted by Vallée, is that Amalantrah/UFOs often communicate using symbolic allusions, often obscure and complex, rather than “words,” such as one might expect from an “alien” or “præterhuman” intelligence that does not necessarily communicate in English or even in language as we understand it. The symbolic level of consciousness or sentience is prelinquistic; perhaps it is ontologically primordial (see Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 2 vols.).
[5] In his Confessions Crowley says that this was a Saturday. Elsewhere he says that this incident occurred in January. However, the correct date and time are given in Magick in Theory and Practice, p. 258.
[6] Symonds unaccountably ignores the entire Jacobs episode in his biography of Crowley. Since Jacobs was still alive when The Great Beast was first published in 1952, Symonds missed an exceptional opportunity to interview Jacobs on his relations with Crowley, additional details of which we will probably never know.
[7] Jacobs, Samuel Aiwaz.
NOTE ON THE NAME “AIVAZ” (EIr)
The Turkish word that is written in the Latin alphabet of modern Turkish as ayvaz occurs widely as a given name, a surname (or a component of one), and a component of place names. Most of the variant forms are (or were formerly) written with the Arabic letter ḍād; and Turkish dictionaries derive the word from one and the same Arabic common noun. Exceptions, including a form in Arabic script that agrees with S. A. Jacobs’ Neo-Aramaic spelling in using letter zāy, are noted below (in [3]). The three Turkish forms whose spellings incorporate ʿ – w – ḍ of the Arabic root are as follows.
(1) Turkish /ivaz/. The Ottoman words written ʿivaż and plural aʿvāż (Redhouse, p. 1328) exactly reproduce the spellings and meaning of Arabic ʿiwaḍ (عوض), pl. aʿwāḍ (اعواض), basically “substitute” (Lane, p. 2197) and extending to “something in exchange or as compensation” (Barthélemy, II, p. 562; Kieffer and Bianchi, II, p. 296; for its use as a technical term in Islamic law, see Linant de Bellefonds). The corresponding name is attested historically—e.g., the soldier Hacı İvaz Paşa (حاجی عوض پاشا, d. 1429; Özcan); a 17th-century Safavid governor, ʿIvaz Beg (Matthee, p. 61); and a Turkmen Ivaz Beg, father of the khan of Khiva, İltüzer (r. 1804-06; Saray). The name is also familiar in Turkish literature. Hacı İvaz (= Hacivat; perhaps inspired by the historical Hacı İvaz) is a protagonist, with Karagöz, in the Turkish shadow puppet plays (see, e.g., Arvas). Not surprisingly, Ivaz also occurs in place of Ayvaz (see [2], below) in the Köroǧlu epic, which is found across the entire range of Turkish dialects: P. Naili (p. 40) distinguished three main lines of the literary tradition: Anatolian, Azeri (in Azerbaijan), and Turkmen (in Khorasan).
(2) Turkish /ayvaz/. The Ottoman Turkish term ayvaz (عیوض) was a title applied to non-Muslim (also to Kurdish) household servants and functionaries (Lewis, based on Siyavuşgil). Š. Aksoy (p. 60) found a dialect version of the term noted in (1), above, as /ayvaz/ in southern Turkey bordering Syria. As a name, the word also is seen latinized as Eyvaz, Eywaz, Eyvez. A well-known example in Turkish literature is the handsome youth Ayvaz, companion of the bandit poet Köroğlu (see, e.g., Sand, tr., p. 9 and ff.). “One of the most common motifs of the Köroğlu epic is the story of Ayvaz (Ivaz Han, Ivaz)” (Naili, p. 44). In other occurrences, a Persian family name ʿEyvaż-zāda (عیوض زاده) is commonly anglicized as Eyvazzadeh; the Armenian family name is Aivazian (see, e.g., in the Ottoman period, Wharton, p. 91). Kurdish Eyvaz in Cyrillic is: Эйваз. Place names include present-day Ayvazlar in northwest Turkey and ʿEyvażlu (عیوضلو), north of Ardabil, in Iran.
(3) Turkish /ayvāz/. A dictionary form of the noun marks initial a- explicitly, with the diacritic fatḥa (عیواض; Sāmi, p. 958). In Arabic script, the Azeri name ʿEyvāż (e.g., the contemporary Republic of Azerbaijan poet, Yetim Eyvaz) likewise is written in literary form as عیواض, as well as in phonemic form, ʾywʾz (ایواز, for which see also the Köroǧlu character in Alizade, ed., pp. 41 ff.). A. Barthelemy (p. 562) cites an Arabic version of the abovementioned literary character Hacı İvaz in a dialect form /ēwāz/, here spelled with letter zā (ʿywẓ, عیواظ). For the lengthening of –a- in the name, EIr suggests possible analogical influence of names such as (in Turkish) ʿİyāż and İyās.
(from Naby, Eden. See References, below.)
Bibliography
“Bardar.” The Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925. Greenwich Village Bookshop. http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/bookshopdoor/signature.cfm?item=104#1.
Brower, Steven. “Discovering E.E. Cummings’ ‘Personal Persian typesetter’ in the AIGA Design Archives.” March 31, 2016. Design History 101. https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/discovering-e-e-cummings-personal-persian-typesetter-in-the-aiga-design-archives.
Churton, Tobias. Aleister Crowley: The Biography – Spiritual Revolutionary, Romantic Explorer, Occult Master and Spy. London: Watkins Publishing, 2011.
———-. Aleister Crowley in America: Art, Espionage and Sex Magick in the New World. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2017.
Crowley, Aleister. “The Amalantrah Working (Liber XCVII).” http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/lam_and_aleister_crowley.pdf.
———. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography. Ed. John Symonds and Kenneth Grant. 1969; rpt. London: Arkana-Penguin, 1979.
———. Magick in Theory and Practice. 1929; [rpt. c. 1961?]: New York: Castle Books.
———. The Revival of Magick and Other Essays. Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Publications, 1998.
Forebears. http://forebears.io.
Kaczynski, Richard. Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley. Rev. ed. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2010.
Naby, Eden. “JACOBS, SAMUEL AIWAZ.” Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2016. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jacobs-samuel.
Rumble, Walker. “The Persian Typesetter: S.A. Jacobs, E.E. Cummings, and the Golden Eagle Press.” Journal of the E.E. Cummings Society. Fall 2013. http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/Rumble20.pdf.
———. “Reclaiming S.A. Jacobs: Polytype, Golden Eagle, and Typographic Modernism.” March 20, 2014. American Printing History Association. https://printinghistory.org/jacobs.
Symonds, John. The Great Beast: The Life and Magick of Aleister Crowley. Rev. ed. Frogmore, UK: Mayflower, 1973.
Who Was Aleister Crowley: A Non-diabolical Perspective on the Beast
Seten Tomh
For Dr. Francis Israel Regardie (1907-1985)
Edward Alexander Crowley (1875-1947), who used the pen name of Aleister Crowley, was recently voted the 73rd greatest Briton.[1] He beat out Robert the Bruce, king of the Scots; the Unknown Warrior; Edward Jenner, inventor of the Smallpox vaccine; Charles Babbage, inventor of the first computer; Chaucer; and J.R.R. Tolkien, amongst others. A painting of Crowley in his spiritual persona of “the Master Therion” is even hanging in the National Portrait Gallery of historically important and famous British people. Pretty good for a man reviled by the British tabloid press as “a man we’d like to hang” and “the wickedest man in the world”!
Such is the reputation of Aleister Crowley, whose own mother, Emily Bertha Crowley (1848-1917) declared him (whether seriously or in a fit of pique is not known) to be the Beast 666, the Antichrist himself. As far as I know, the only human being ever to identify themselves as the Beast of Revelation is Aleister Crowley, otherwise apparently based on Nero (37-68), the fifth Roman emperor, whose reign is associated with tyranny, extravagance, and debauchery – an historically unique claim as far as I know.
The Crowleys were upper middle-class Victorian English rural semi-gentry, heirs to a significant fortune associated with Crowley Alton Ales, and fanatical fundamentalist evangelical Christians. Trained as an engineer, and a former Quaker, the senior Edward Crowley (1829-1887) used the leisure that his family fortune allowed him to travel as an itinerant preacher, preaching the gospel to strangers and keeping in touch with them for years afterwards. After the death of his father, ironically of tongue cancer, when Alex was 11, Alex turned against his strict Christian upbringing as a Plymouth Brother and began to seek out a more muscular spiritual life. Looking for available models of rebellion, his attention turned to the “Satanic” poets, Byron, Shelley, and, preeminently, Swinburne and Baudelaire; conservative social philosophers like Herbert Spencer, Thomas Carlyle, and Nietzsche; and the French Decadent movement, amongst other influences too numerous to name.
Aleister Crowley
The novelist W. Somerset Maugham said of Crowley that “he was grossly, but not unintelligently, imitative.” Maugham underestimates Crowley’s intelligence here, who considered pursuing the career of a professional chess master or a diplomat; he was exceptionally well read with a phenomenal memory, even at the end of his rather exhausting life. Maugham and Crowley intensely disliked each other. Maugham wrote an entire novel, entitled The Magician (1908), parodying Crowley as a “black magician” named Oliver Haddo (Crowley, in return, accused Maugham of plagiarism, which is the pot calling the kettle black in Crowley’s case), but in this talk I come not to disparage Aleister Crowley, or to praise him.
We all know Crowley’s reputation, and many of us also know that it was warranted in many ways. Less well known are his admirers, which included men like the sculptor Rodin, artist Augustus John, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, military historian and strategist J.F.C. Fuller, and others, even up to the present day, such as esoteric scholar Tobias Churton, whose biography of Crowley is four volumes long. Crowley mentions in his Magick Without Tears that he had known personally over eighty of the world’s greatest geniuses. The question is “why?” Who was Aleister Crowley? His bad traits are well known, but what attracted even the best people to him and makes him an object of remembrance and even admiration today?
As a youth, Crowley attended a succession of private Christian boarding schools, where he was subjected to intense bullying and abuse, especially after his father’s death. This lamentable treatment further turned him against the religion of his parents, culminating in his first attempt at autobiography entitled “A Boyhood in Hell.” Interestingly, in a classic psychoanalytic reversal, the bullied in childhood became a bully in adulthood, lashing out at women, animals, perceived inferiors, even his own body, coupled with feelings of self-grandiosity – the so-called sado-masochistic tendency that one sees in Crowley’s psychology, and that is so evident in his “excreta,” as Crowley liked to refer to his numerous and frequently eccentric writings. Nevertheless, many of Crowley’s writings are profoundly interesting, despite a large quantity of ephemera. However, no one less than Nietzsche said that an artist must be judged by his greatest, not by his least, works. Who are we to dispute with Friedrich Nietzsche?
Crowley was admitted to Cambridge University in 1895, after studying chemistry at King’s College, London. He initially enrolled to study modern philosophy, but changed his concentration to English literature. He also played chess for two hours every day, and even considered becoming a professional chess player. Living lavishly, surrounded by fine furnishings and rare first editions of his favourite authors, Crowley also poured himself into his studies, studying late into the night. His method of study was quite interesting. He made it his rule to read in any book he read seriously every reference in that book to any other book, thus building up a vast library of mental associations that is clearly displayed in all of his writings. Crowley left the university with first class honours, but without taking a degree, in 1898, at the age of 22.
Crowley also developed a passion for mountaineering; in 1894, he climbed Beachy Head before visiting the Alps and joining the Scottish Mountaineering Club. He also climbed in the Bernese Alps, holidaying in the Alps every year from 1894 to 1898. He made the first ascent of the Mönch without a guide in 1897. He also climbed with his friend and fellow mountaineer, Oscar Eckenstein, in Mexico in 1900. Together they attempted K2 in India in 1902. Crowley also led the ill-fated Kanchenjunga expedition in 1905, which resulted in the death of several people. Over the course of his career, Crowley acquired a reputation as a brilliant, if somewhat reckless, climber, and set a number of world’s records.
Crowley’s first spiritual experience occurred in the context of a homosexual experience that he had in Stockholm on New Year’s Eve, 1896.[2] Crowley was also sexually active with women, mostly prostitutes, throughout his Cambridge years. In October 1897, he met Herbert Charles Pollitt, president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, with whom he engaged in a sexual relationship, despite its illegality at the time. This association of sexual and spiritual exaltation is a familiar experience to many homosexuals when they “come out.” However, he and Pollitt had a falling out due to Crowley’s increasing interest in spirituality, something that Crowley regretted till the end of his life.
In October 1897, a brief illness precipitated a spiritual crisis in which Crowley realized the futility of all human effort, the so-called Trance of Sorrow, and resolved to dedicate his life to the pursuit of spiritual knowledge or gnosis. In March 1898, he read A.E. Waite’s Book of Black Magic and of Pacts and wrote to the author concerning a reference he made to the “Great White Brotherhood.” Waite referred him to Karl von Eckartshausen’s (1752-1803) Cloud Upon the Sanctuary. Eckartshausen was a German Catholic mystic, author, and philosopher. Interestingly, Eckartshausen was an early member of Adam Weishaupt’s (1748-1830) much mythologized Illuminati (founded May 1, 1776).
It was from Eckartshausen that Crowley learned of the Great White Brotherhood, run by a group of discarnate “Secret Chiefs,” also referred to as the “Most Serene Superiors” in the Illuminati. Different traditions use different language but the idea is the same. In the Buddhist Kalachakra the Great White Brotherhood is called “Shambhala.” In 1898, Crowley published a limited edition of his first book of poetry, Aceldama: A Place to Bury Strangers In, which began with the following fascinating preface:
It was a windy night, that memorable seventh night of December, when this philosophy was born in me. How the grave old Professor wondered at my ravings! I had called at his house, for he was a valued friend of mine, and I felt strange thoughts and emotions shake within me. Ah! how I raved! I called to him to trample me, he would not. We passed together into the stormy night. I was on horseback, how I galloped round him in my phrenzy, till he became the prey of a real physical fear! How I shrieked out I know not what strange words! And the poor good old man tried all he could to calm me; he thought I was mad! The fool! I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered—now I have only one doubt left—which of the twain was God? Howbeit, I aspire!
Once Crowley read von Eckartshausen, he seriously aspired to communicate with the Secret Chiefs of the Great White Brotherhood, and sent out a mental appeal for their attention. Crowley had formulated a positive spiritual intention beyond merely rejecting the religion of his parents. He took his first step on the spiritual path, in what he would refer to as his “great work.” Crowley might also refer to this as the “magical will.” A Buddhist might use the term bodhicitta. A Hindu might refer to the Power of Truth. Diction differs, but the perennial philosophy is universal.
Almost immediately after his appeal to the Secret Chiefs, Crowley met a chemist named Julian L. Baker in Zermatt, Switzerland in August 1898, who introduced him in London to his brother in law, George Cecil Jones. Both men were members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Aurora Aurea, an occult order, based in London, which had been founded in 1888 by three Freemasons, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell Mathers, but it was Mathers who was the real genius of the order and its guiding star. Mathers had translated two books, The Kabbalah Denudata (1684) by Knorr von Rosenroth and The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage (1725). The first work on Qabalah constituted the theoretical basis of the Golden Dawn, and Abramelin its major method. Crowley was duly initiated in the first grade of Neophyte on November 18, 1898, taking the motto “Frater Perdurabo” (Brother ‘I will endure’), referring to Matthew 24:13, “he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (KJV).
The Golden Dawn spawned three lodges in England, one in Scotland, and one in France, and was very successful. In 1896 or 1897, Westcott resigned from the order, leaving Mathers in control, Woodman having died in 1891. However, Mathers’s autocratic personality alienated many members of the inner order, especially after he initiated Aleister Crowley in Paris into the grade of Minor Adept on January 16, 1900. After being rejected by the London members, the membership revolted and removed Mathers as chief of the order at a general meeting held on March 29.
The central practice of the grade of Minor Adept is the Knowledge and Conversation of the “Holy Guardian Angel,” based on The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. This book tells the story of an Egyptian desert hermit named Abraham or Abramelin, who taught a system of magic to Abraham of Worms (c 1362-c 1458). Mathers’s translation is based on a defective copy of the book, which has been retranslated by Georg Dehn and Steven Guth in 2006 (revised 2015). In the book, which purports to be written in 1458, Abraham imparts the Qabalistic and magical secrets of Abramelin to his son, Lamech. Crowley intended to perform the Abramelin operation even before he was initiated into the grade of Minor Adept[3] and purchased a house and 34 acres overlooking Loch Ness, called Boleskine, in November 1899, to perform this operation, which requires the aspirant to isolate himself for six months; construct an elaborate temple including a sand-covered terrace, lamp, wand, incense, robes, a square or silver side plate of silver or bee’s wax; observe chastity and sobriety; and pray earnestly twice daily, at sunrise and sunset.
At the culmination of the ritual, the aspirant evokes various demons and binds them to himself as familiar spirits. This enables him to use a variety of magical squares or talismans for various purposes. It took Crowley eighteen months to prepare for the Abramelin Operation, which has to begin at Easter (April 15, 1900), but Crowley broke it off in March to defend Mathers in the context of the rebellion against his authority. He would not complete the operation till October 1906.
Mathers’s reaction shook the order to its core. Mathers declared that the founding documents of the order were forged, and that he and he alone had formulated a magical link with the Secret Chiefs, and that he was therefore their sole and exclusive representative. As a result, the order splintered into several competing factions, including one led by Yeats. Several temples remained loyal to Mathers and he was even able to expand into the United States. The last temple of the Golden Dawn, the Smaragdum Thallasses Temple (commonly referred to as Whare Ra), in New Zealand, closed its doors in 1978.
In the wake of Mathers‘s revelations there were efforts to establish a new magical link with the Secret Chiefs. Dion Fortune believed she succeeded in 1922, and received a text that was published posthumously as The Cosmic Doctrine (1949), dictated to her and one Charles Loveday between 1923 and 1925. W.B. Yeats also produced a similar volume, entitled A Vision (1925), based on his wife’s automatic writing (and later, automatic speaking while asleep) between 1917 and 1920.[4]
Soon after being initiated into the Golden Dawn, Crowley struck up a friendship with Allan Bennett (1872-1923), a truly remarkable man with a reputation as a powerful practical magician. Crowley claimed that Bennett was a master of the so-called “blasting rod,” could repel leeches using breath control (pranayama), and was even able to levitate! This is alluded to in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2014). Bennett also practised Shiva yoga. Later he would convert to Buddhism, become a thera in a Burmese Buddhist monastery, and then lead the first Buddhist mission to the West in 1908. He was able to read the early Buddhist scriptures in the original Pali, wrote two books, The Religion of Burma (1911) and The Wisdom of the Aryas (1923) and was an associate of the Rhys-Davids’s, contributing to the Buddhist Review.
Bennett coined the term “Theravada,” which was adopted by the World Fellowship of Buddhists in Sri Lanka in the 1950s to designate the non-Mahayana Buddhist tradition. This may surprise some people, since Theravada generally represents itself as the original Buddhist school, but as the Princeton Encyclopedia of Buddhism points out, this is historically inaccurate. Bennett suffered from severe chronic asthma and lived in poverty. Crowley invited him to share his luxurious flat at 67-69 Chancery Lane, where Bennett shared his considerable knowledge of Qabalah, magic, and Buddhism with Crowley, training him in the elements of the Great Work. Bennett was also a trained analytical chemist, and very familiar with the use of drugs to treat his asthma. Bennett initiated Crowley into the use of drugs to produce altered states of consciousness, which Crowley continued to experiment with and use for the rest of his life as an adjunct to his spiritual practices, with mixed results.
Crowley experimented with ceremonial magic, especially the Enochian calls of Dee and Kelley, in Mexico in 1900, where he also received the highest, 33rd degree in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite of Freemasonry from one Don Jesús de Medina-Sidonia, a dissident Freemason and journalist.[5] This honourary degree is only awarded based on merit. He then travelled to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he studied raja yoga with Allan Bennett, achieving the yogic trance state of dhyana. After Allan left for Burma (now Myanmar), Crowley travelled through India, practising yoga and spending much of his time studying at the Meenakshi Temple in Madura, where he was allowed to sacrifice a goat to Bhavani, a form of Parvati, the Shakti or consort of Shiva, in a “secret shrine,” and working on his poetic defence of Buddhism, The Sword of Song, subtitled “the Book of the Beast” (1904). Although this is certainly not the first time that Crowley identifies himself as “the Beast” in his writings, this is his first explicit identification of a book and its philosophy as an expression of his anti-Christian gospel, presaging things to come. Interestingly, the philosophy of “the Beast” in The Sword of Song is not Thelema, but Buddhism! This book attracted the attention of no less a figure than G.K. Chesterton, who reviewed it, referring to Crowley as “a good poet.”
Despite all of these varied attainments, by the beginning of 1904 he was weary of magic, which he declared “led nowhere,” and had adopted the attitude of a Buddhist rationalist skeptic. He had also married Rose Edith Kelly (1874-1932), the sister of his friend, the painter Gerald Kelly, on August 12, 1903, on a whim, and was living the life of a wealthy Scottish “laird.” Crowley and Rose embarked on a world tour as a honeymoon, passing through Cairo twice. On the outbound trip he and Rose spent the night in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Cheops in November 1903, where Crowley invoked the Astral Light using the Preliminary Invocation of the Goetia (his favourite invocation). As a result, the King’s chamber was filled with luminosity bright enough that Crowley was able to read the text of the ritual without a candle.
Crowley and Rose returned to Cairo in February 1904, where they appeared in the streets of Cairo in a carriage, with two gorgeous runners to clear the way, calling themselves Prince and Princess Chioa (pronounced ‘hawa’) Khan and representing themselves as Persian aristocrats. Crowley notes that he wore a turban with a diamond aigrette, a robe of silk, and coat of cloth of gold (he doesn’t mention what Rose wore). Chioa is the Hebrew for “beast.” Crowley didn’t know it yet, but the karma that he had built up over the previous seventeen years was about to explode!
On March 16, 1904, Crowley recited the Preliminary Invocation of the Goetia, which he had previously recited in the Great Pyramid, in an attempt to show Rose the sylphs, the elemental creatures of the air, originally identified by Paracelus in the 16th century.[6] However, instead of seeing the sylphs, Rose spontaneously entered a state of trance,[7] despite having no background in mediumship or clairvoyance, and kept muttering in a dreamy state, “They’re waiting for you.” These were the opening words of an event, which Crowley called the Cairo Working, which he finally deemed to be the supreme spiritual experience of his life. On the 17th, Crowley writes in his diary that they invoked Thoth, the Egyptian god of Wisdom, with great success, and that “Thoth indwells us,” adding that “It’s all about the child. All Osiris.” On the 18th, he added that the “waiter” is Horus, whom Crowley had offended and ought to invoke.
Rose revealed the skeleton of a ritual, which Crowley subsequently wrote up in his own style. Success was promised for the following Saturday or Sunday, with the promise that he would attain Samadhi, the supreme yogic ecstasy.[8] The ritual offended Crowley’s sense of magical propriety, because it did not include the usual procedures of the Golden Dawn, such as incense, consecration of the magical weapons, preliminary banishing rituals of the pentagram and hexagram, etc.[9] Crowley notes that the ritual seemed to have been written rapidly in an intense or ecstatic state.
Crowley proceeded to test Rose’s clairvoyance, if that was what it was, by asking her a series of questions about Horus, which she answered accurately, including two telepathic tests, which she also answered correctly. This implies that Rose, or her informant, could read Crowley’s mind! Crowley then took Rose to the Egyptian Museum, and asked her to show him Horus. After leading Crowley past several images of the god, she took him directly to the section of the museum that housed an older collection of Egyptian antiquities that had been housed in the Boulaq Museum until it was flooded in 1891, when the collection was moved temporarily to a former royal place, and then finally to the Egyptian Museum in 1902. In his account of these events, written decades years later, Crowley confused the Boulaq collection at the Egyptian Museum with the original Boulaq Museum, and refers, incorrectly, to visiting the latter, which no longer existed in 1904.
Rose took Crowley directly to an 8th century BCE Egyptian stele of Ankh-ef-en-khonsu, a Theban priest of the god Mentu. Mentu is linked with Horus, and the stele also shows two images of Horus, one as a “Winged Sun,” called Behedite, which represents Horus of Edfu, later identified with Ra-Herachte or Ra-Harakhty, “Horus of the Two Horizons,” also represented on the stele as a falcon-headed god seated on a throne. Crowley was struck by the coincidence, but when he saw the original catalogue number of the stele, he was amazed. It was 666, the number of the Beast, his own number![10]
Crowley invoked Horus using the ritual based on the skeleton that Rose had revealed on the Vernal Equinox. In his diary for March 20, he wrote: “Revealed that the Equinox of the Gods is come. Horus taking the throne of the East and all rituals, etc. being abrogated. I am to formulate a new link of an Order with the Solar Force.” In a footnote, Crowley says that he thinks that this information came from Rose herself. Crowley also had the inscriptions on the stele translated, and Rose told him that the name of her informant was one Aiwass, which meant nothing to Crowley at the time.
On April 1 – April Fool’s Day, interestingly[11] – Rose instructed Crowley to set up the living room of their flat in Cairo as a temple, and to enter the room at precisely 12 noon on April 8, 9, and 10, and write down what he heard. This he did with some deference, with Quarto typing paper and Swan fountain pen in hand, and from exactly 12 noon to 1 o’clock Crowley heard a voice emanating from over his left shoulder, from the furthest corner of the room. Crowley says that the voice
seemed to echo itself in my physical heart in a very strange manner, hard to describe,” “passionately poured,” and “of deep timbre, musical and expressive, its tones solemn, voluptuous, tender, fierce or aught else as suited the moods of the message. Not bass – perhaps a rich tenor or baritone. The English was free of either native or foreign accent, perfectly pure of local or caste mannerisms, thus startling and even uncanny at first hearing. [The effect was thus as if the language were English-in-itself, without any background, such as exists when one hears any one human speak it, and enables one to assign all sorts of attributes to the speaker.]
Crowley also said that he heard his own thoughts as the voice of Aiwass at several points in the dictation, which he also obediently recorded. At one point, he tried to stop writing and was unable to do so. At another point, he briefly lost consciousness.
At the end of the three days, a 65-page manuscript, approximately 5,727 words in length, lay before Crowley. Remember that Crowley says that “The voice was passionately poured, as if Aiwass were alert about the time-limit. … I was pushed hard to keep the pace.” This is pretty clear, yet I appear to be the first, and so far the only, one, as far as I know, to make the obvious calculation that the rate of Aiwass’ dictation works out to only 32 w.p.m., which I discuss in my book, The Secret Wisdom of 666. It only takes a quick Google search to discover that normal English speaking speed is 150 to 160 w.p.m.
The conclusion is that Aiwass spoke at a FIFTH of normal speaking speed. If this is the case, how did Crowley hear Aiwass’ speech as fast when in fact it was very, very slow? Clearly Crowley’s perception of time was distorted, a telltale sign of an altered state of consciousness. This is confirmed by the aforementioned fact that Crowley heard his own thoughts as the voice of Aiwass. Moreover, despite his claim to hear Aiwass as a voice external to himself, Crowley also says that he initially regarded the entire experience as an astral vision, such as he had experienced many times before. Could Crowley not tell the difference between an astral vision and a physical experience? Another relevant consideration is the similarity of the text of the Book of the Law to Crowley’s own writings, including specific references to Crowley’s own insights prior to the dictation of the Book of the Law.
Many years later, in November 1925, in Tunis, Crowley wrote The Comment, in fulfillment of I, 36, “lest there be folly, he shall comment thereupon by the wisdom of Ra-Hoor-Khu-it,”[12] which was subsequently appended to the Book of the Law. Paraphrasing, the Comment tells the reader that that it is their True Will to read the Book of the Law once only, then destroy it rather than study it, declaring that not to do is dangerous. Those who discuss the contents of the Book of the Law are to be avoided (similarly, the discussion of religion is forbidden in Freemasonry). All theological questions are to be decided by reference to the writings of Ankh-ef-en-khonsu, referring presumably to Crowley himself, “each for himself,” echoing the last words of the Buddha in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, where he says that all questions of dharma are to be resolved by each individual for himself: “He possesses unwavering faith in the Dhamma thus: ‘Well propounded by the Blessed One is the Dhamma, evident, timeless, inviting investigation, leading to emancipation, to be comprehended by the wise, each for himself.‘” (DN 16, 9; italics added)
However, when one refers to the writings of Aleister Crowley, it is clear from several sources, including at the very end of his life, that Crowley enjoined both the study and discussion of the Book of the Law, most clearly and succinctly in the following:
Also one V.V.V.V.V. arose, an exalted adept of the rank of Master of the Temple (or this much He disclosed to the exempt Adepts) and His utterance is enshrined in the Sacred Writings. Such are Liber Legis, Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, Liber Liberi vel Lapids Lazuli and such others whose existence may one day be divulged unto you. Beware lest you interpret them either in the Light or in the darkness, for only in L.V.X. may they be understood” (Liber LXI vel Causae, 39f.).
Liber Causae is Crowley’s original introduction to the Holy Books of Thelema. It is noteworthy that all of the Holy Books, including the Book of the Law, are grouped together and assigned to the authorship of V.V.V.V.V.,[13] Crowley’s own motto as a Master of the Temple. L.V.X. refers to the Latin word for “light” or “illumination,” and the number 65 signifies Adonay, “my Lord,” referring especially to the Holy Guardian Angel. The L.V.X. signs also refer to the mystery of life, death, and resurrection, i.e., of the Body of Light, and is part of the mysteries of the grade of Minor Adept as well as Dzogchen Buddhism.
It is clear from the foregoing, and many other things I could quote, and do in The Secret Wisdom of 666, that the true exegesis of the Book of the Law is intuitive, symbolic, and esoteric, and that Crowley did not undertake this work, at least not in a comprehensively thorough way, but anticipated “a genius to arise who will accomplish all this work for us.”[14] Crowley wrote this long after his ostensible successor, Charles Stansfeld Jones, had blown up, so it is clear that Crowley was not referring to Jones.
We are only beginning to understand the Book of the Law. Aiwass Himself – whoever He was – declares that Crowley himself, who tended to interpret the Book of the Law literally and politically, would not understand it: “Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold! thou, o prophet, shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein.” (I, 54); “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” (III, 47).[15] Aiwass warns Crowley not to “seek after this; for thereby alone can he fall from it.” In fact, Crowley did seek after it, by performing a magical operation to beget a “magical child.” Thus, Crowley also failed in securing an heir, which (he said) was the most important task laid upon him by the Secret Chiefs. This failure weighed heavily upon him for the rest of his life, after Jones’s abortive birth as a Master of the Temple in 1916.
Nevertheless, the Book of the Law is a powerful and profound meditation on the fundamental premise of Buddhism: the First Noble Truth that all is suffering, very suggestive of Tantra. In addition, the Book of the Law predicts the imminent advent of world war and the collapse of civilization as we transition to a new Age of Man,[16] popularly referred to as the Age of Aquarius, ruled by the Black Sun,[17] to succeed the old age of Christianity, corresponding to the Age of Pisces, an age of debilitation ruled by Jupiter and Mercury.[18] There was a general expectation of the advent of a new age around the turn of the century, about two thousand years after Christianity and five thousand years after the advent of the Kali Yuga (1899 CE). H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, had predicted the imminent appearance of a new Messiah. Blavatsky had declared that the Age of Pisces began in 255 BCE. with an interval of 2,155 years.[19] This would put the advent of the Age of Aquarius in about 1900. This seems like a blind, however, for the true occult cycle is 30 × 72 = 2,160 years, which indicates the year 1906 – the year, interestingly, in which Crowley attained Samadhi and thus became the Prophet of the New Age of Horus, according to his own assertion!
Aiwass specifically identifies the 1940s as a decade of warfare, and the appearance of an awesome weapon of mass destruction (the first atomic bomb was exploded in 1945), and the 1980s as a decade of debacle. The ‘80s was of course the last decade when climate change could actually have been averted, as people are finally beginning to realize, although rednecks may prefer to associate this decade with the collapse of communism. The Egyptian god Set, the god of desert heat and storms, will dominate this period. This period will usher in a new dark age, called the Day of Wrath,[20] which will take several centuries to resolve. In Buddhism this is called the “sword interval” (satthan-tarakappa) or, according to another translation, the “age of science,” when most people will destroy themselves because of their evil karma. We are now living through this age.
Human beings will be so deeply altered that a new species of man will emerge, a vision shared by W.B. Yeats,[21] interestingly. Crowley refers to the “kingly men” of the New Age, but although it is easy to construe (or misconstrue) the language of the Book of the Law as social Darwinism, Crowley’s self-description of his social philosophy as “aristocratic communism”[22] might give us pause. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother denominated the new men as “supermen,” not necessarily in the Nietzschean sense but in a spiritual sense of a physically and psychologically transformed and regenerated humanity. Interestingly, the Mother, consort of Sri Aurobindo, who also had a background in Western esotericism, believed she completed this process, begun by Sri Aurobindo, on February 29, 1956, called the “supermental manifestation.” I don’t know if Crowley knew of Aurobindo, I suspect he didn’t, he doesn’t mention him as far as I know, but we can also see others similarly, including Blavatsky, Jung, Rudolf Steiner, Gurdjieff, and Krishnamurti, who surprisingly, given Crowley’s criticism of Krishnamurti, Crowley declared to be teaching the Law of Thelema! Thus, Aleister Crowley was not a false messiah, as Gerald Yorke claimed (and not a term that Crowley used to refer to himself as far as I know), but an authentic prophet in his own right, of a growing movement that continues today in many manifestations, which he called the New Age of Horus. We must not allow Crowley’s sometimes-archaic diction or troublesome personality and lifestyle to blind us to the recognition of his universality; whatever his defects might have been, he was an authentic perennial philosopher with a powerful and profound vision in which there is much value, provided we heed The Comment and Liber Causae and apply the Key.
It is widely believed that human beings are facing the greatest crisis in their history as a species. The Age of Set will be apocalyptic, characterized by extreme violence and immorality.[23] Humanity’s collective karmic books are about to be balanced. Over the next several hundred years, a new, post-modern, post-industrial civilization will gradually emerge, characterized by refinement, aspiration, regeneration, nobility, cosmic consciousness, Tantric pride, human potential, and individuation. Similarly, the Kalachakra prophesies the manifestation of the “pure land” of Shambhala in the year 2424, resulting in a global, golden age of spiritual and scientific enlightenment. Thelema looks even further forward, to the advent of the Next Age of Maat, when humanity will achieve complete self-perfection.[24]
Appendix
The Golden Dawn was based on some enciphered documents that purportedly had belonged to Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie, a Masonic scholar. These are supposed to have been passed onto Westcott from A.F.A. Woodford, in February 1886. The cipher documents were written in the Trithemius cipher, based on the Polygraphia (1518), the first published work on crytography, and contained the skeleton of an initiatory system, and the name and address of one Anna Sprengel, a German Rosicrucian, who claimed to be in touch with the Secret Chiefs. Westcott said he wrote to Sprengel and obtained permission to establish a lodge in England. On this basis, Westcott and the others founded the Golden Dawn.
S.L. Mathers wrote up the initiatory rituals. The structure of the Golden Dawn was based on the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, a Rosicrucian esoteric Christian order formed by Robert Wentworth Little in 1865, which was in turn based on the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross, a German Rosicrucian organization founded in the 1750s by Hermann Fichtuld, a Freemason and alchemist. The order was very successful with over a hundred members and attracted such luminaries as Allan Bennett, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dion Fortune, Maud Gonne, Evelyn Underhill, A.E. Waite, and W.B. Yeats (1865-1939). Yeats declared that without the influence of the Golden Dawn he could not have written his best poetry.
Sprengel was then supposed to have died in 1890 and her disapproving colleagues refused to provide any more help. In 1892 Mathers claimed to have established a magical link with the Secret Chiefs of the Order, on the basis of which he added an inner, Rosicrucian order to the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn called the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis, with three new grades of adeptship, together with a collection of new instructions obtained by Mathers’s wife, Moina, sister of Henri Bergson, the vitalist philosopher, interestingly based on a process not unlike the Ouija board. Mathers pointed to this influx of knowledge as proof of his authority. The instructions have since been published by Israel Regardie, and include over a thousand pages of material, including the magical alphabet, divination, spiritual development, ritual, magic, Tarot, and the Enochian system of John Dee and Edward Kelley. In short, the Golden Dawn system is a synthesis of the entire Western esoteric tradition with a strong emphasis on theurgy.
[1] BBC, The Top 100 Great Britons (2002).
[2] Crowley referred to this euphemistically as entering the Military Order of the Templars, which makes it sound like a Freemasonic initiation, but most biographers agree that the date is suspect and based on other references of Crowley‘s, it seems almost certain that this refers to Crowley’s first homosexual experience. The Templars were of course accused of practising homosexuality by the Roman Church.
[3] Nevertheless, Crowley refers to himself an Adept Major at the time of the Cairo Working in The Equinox of the Gods.
[4] Other “channeled” works of the period include the Book of Dzyan and The Voice of the Silence of H.P. Blavatsky and, possibly, The Mahatma Letters, although the authorship of the latter is disputed; The Cosmic Tradition, by Alma and Max Theon; Seven Sermons to the Dead, by C.G. Jung; the writings of Helena Roerich, wife of the painter Nicholas Roerich; the Vaimanika Shastra; etc. I would however remind the reader of Crowley’s prim warning in Liber Causae, 7: “the genuineness of the claim matters no whit, such literature being judged by itself, not by its reputed sources.” This applies equally to the Book of the Law and the Holy Books of Thelema, of course.
[5] De Medina-Sidonia established his own Rito Mexicano Reformado in 1890, and was the editor of El Boazeo, a Masonic magazine, directed by his brother, Jose M. Medina. Apparently, Medina was quite old in 1900, which may explain why Crowley lost touch with him. Medina’s liberal Christian order was progressive, anti-Catholic, and even admitted women!
[6] Apparently, Crowley had a facility for evoking elementals. At the German 1925 Weida Conference of Grand Masters during which he was elected O.H.O. of the O.T.O., Crowley was observed by one of the delegates, Eugen Grosche, apparently smiling and nodding to invisible beings in the forest which, it was explained to him, were dwarfs, gnomes, and tree spirits who had come to pay their respects to the master. The following year, Crowley’s secretary, Norman Mudd, sent Grosche, at Crowley’s direction, the magical instructions for the invocation of elemental beings. According to a written statement by Grosche himself, he performed the experiment in 1928 on the island of Ruegen and two gnomes appeared! Unfortunately, I am not aware that this instruction has survived. If so, would be very interesting indeed. See Tobias Churton, The Beast in Berlin (2014), pp. 71f.
[7] Crowley unkindly suggested that she was dazed, stupid, drunk, or hysterical from pregnancy.
[8] Equivalent to the grade of Master of the Temple in Crowley’s system.
[9] From a G.D. perspective, this lack of precautions therefore did not exclude negative or distracting influences, including demonic influences, which might have entered the temple and corrupted the result.
[10] Crowley was enormously impressed by coincidences like this, believing that they showed evidence of the objective influence of the Secret Chiefs, who (Crowley thought) must have arranged these coincidences for his benefit. It must be remembered that Crowley, as a late 19th century scientific rationalist, thought entirely in terms of bourgeois psychology and was really quite conventional (for the time) in many of his opinions. His notion of the unconscious didn’t go beyond Freud’s notion of a psychological swamp of repressed appetites and impulses (see The Equinox of the Gods (1936), p. 97), despite his spiritual experiences. C.G. Jung had not yet published his essay on synchronicity, “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” (1952). Computer scientist and UFO researcher, Dr. Jacques Vallée, has also proposed that the universe is structured “associatively,” like a computer hard drive, rather than “sequentially,” as a way of explaining the phenomenon that Jung denominated “synchronicity” (see J. Vallee, Messengers of Deception (1979), pp. 237-45). Interestingly, in terms of Crowley’s fascination with Qabalah, Jung and his followers share the belief that numbers are archetypes of order and major factors in creating synchronicities.
[11] April Fool’s Day has been anciently observed in Great Britain as a general festival in connection with the Vernal Equinox and appears to be related to Loki, the Norse trickster god of change. Loki was also a shapeshifter. April 1 is also associated with the ‘gowk,’ or cuckoo, harbinger of spring, regarded as the king of birds with shamanic powers and a teacher of dharma in Tibetan tradition. In the root Dzogchen text, the Cuckoo’s Song of Total Presence, the cuckoo is a symbol of the total presence of the nature of mind.
[12] The unusual hyphenation suggests an identification of the Solar Falcon with the Egyptian khu, the discarnate soul or spirit, i.e., Horus = the True Will. Cf. op. cit., III, 1, where the defective spelling suggests the false self or ego, the inherent division of which is resolved in self-realization.
[13] Vi Veri Universus Vivus Vici, “While living, I have conquered the universe by the power of truth,” referring to the pan-Indian/Buddhist doctrine of the Power of Truth.
[14] Magick Without Tears (1973), p. 307.
[15] Cf. op. cit., I, 56: “All words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand a little; solve the first half of the equation, leave the second unattacked. But thou hast all in the clear light, and some, though not all, in the dark.” The implication seems to be that prophets are limited in their understanding, including Crowley, who has nevertheless attained the Clear Light or Luminous Mind (prabhāsvara-citta or ābhāsvara-citta) of Buddha nature, an important concept in Dzogchen, but is limited in his understanding. The implication seems to be that the universal, being Infinite (Nuit), is beyond reason. Cf. also ibid, II, 27-34, 76; III, 20, 63, 75.
[16] The Anthropocene geological epoch has been proposed to begin in 1945, the year in which the first atomic bomb was exploded.
[17] Sol, ruler of Leo, and Saturn, ruler of Aquarius. The imminent Age of Saturn is unique in that it rules two signs, Aquarius and Capricorn, the zenith of the zodiac. Capricorn also represents Set, who is both antithetical to and one with Horus.
[18] Virgo, ruled by Mercury, and Pisces, ruled by Jupiter, correspond to the sixth and twelfth houses of the horoscope, corresponding to chastity and self-sacrifice respectively. These houses represent the combination of mutability and somaticism (water/earth), and are therefore weak.
[19] Blavatsky’s statement appears to be based on Egyptologist Gerald Massey’s (1828-1907) claim that the Age of Pisces began in 255 BCE, at which time (he said) the Winter Solstice passed out of Capricorn into Sagittarius. Thus, the Vernal Equinox left Aries, the Sign of the Ram, and entered Pisces, the Sign of the Fishes. He states that “This date of 255 B.C. was the true day of birth, or rather of re-birth for the celestial Christ, and there was no valid reason for changing the time of the world,” which “is the proper date for the commencement of Christianity or equinoctial Christianity.” The interval of 2,155 years is also based on Massey. Apparently, these dates are based on the astronomer Cassini (1625-1712). Blavatsky’s estimate of precession works out to 1.39 degrees per century. This is close to the actual value for antiquity of 1.38 degrees. Blavatsky’s estimate appears to be based on Simon Newcomb’s late 19th century estimate of 1.39601 degrees per century, which works out to 1894. However, the modern calculation, adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 2000, is 1.396887832 degrees per century, which works out to 1893. However, Massey does say that the Age of Pisces began in “about” 255 BCE, allowing for some wriggle room, especially since the rate of precession is not a constant, but slowly increasing over time. Following Blavatsky’s lead, a more accurate method might be to base the calculation on the ayanamsa, or difference between the tropical and sidereal zodiacs, except that here again, there is no consensus, estimated ayanamsas varying significantly with no agreement on which one is correct. The most widely accepted ayanamsa is the Lahiri ayanamsa, which is also the official ayanamsa of the government of India for calendrical calculations, although this too has been criticized. The Lahiri (Chitra Paksaha) ayanamsa for January 1, 1900 was 7.53951 degrees. Based on the current IAU value of 1.396887832 degrees per century, the new year of the Age of Aquarius works out to about 2440. Is there anything happening in the 25th century that we should know about? In fact, there is! According to Dr. Alex Berzin, the Tibetan Buddhist Kalachakra prophesies the globalization of dharma and a consequent age of peace, beginning about the year 2424 (some say 2425), just fifteen or sixteen years before the advent of the Age of Aquarius, following a long period of barbarism and a “war to end all wars.” This is very much along the lines of the Book of the Law. This would put the Age of Pisces in the late third century CE, during the Crisis of the Third Century, when Christianity began to overtake the Roman Empire. The Age of Aries would have begun about 1872 BCE, corresponding to the fall of the last Sumerian dynasty. Sumer, which originated about 4500 BCE, was a typical bull-worshipping civilization of the Age of Taurus (c 4020 BCE). Moreover, the interval from 1904 to 2424 is close to five hundred years, which corresponds to the Neptune-Pluto cycle of civilizations, the last occurrence of which was 1891-92, very close to Blavatsky’s original prediction of the Age of Aquarius. One Neptune-Pluto cycle after that is 2385, just 39 years before the manifestation of Shambhala in 2424 and 58 years into the reign of Rudra Chakrin, the last Kalki king. This conjunction of our solar system’s two outermost planets presages a fundamental civilizational change, especially a cataclysmic upheaval leading to a time of transition and uncertainty followed by a great renascence and a new age.
[20] AL, II, 24. Cf. “the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” (Rev. 6:17, KJV). “Day of wrath,” lit. “the burning turning” (Skt. dah vartate).
[21] See Gale Schricker, A New Species of Man: The Poetic Persona of W.B. Yeats (1982).
[22] See Marco Pasi, Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Poliitcs (2014), p. 50. Crowley’s philosophy has also been described as “sexual communism.”
[23] The Book of the Law predicts division, total war, the discovery of a weapon of mass destruction, cannibalism, torture, irrationality, human sacrifice, autocracy, oppression, militarism, and even slavery. Like it or not, all of this has been seen in the 20th and 21st centuries. Hinduism and Buddhism have similar prophecies.
[24] If we follow the zodiacal attributions, Maat, as Libra, is the corollary of the beginning of the current precessional cycle that began with 0 Aries about the beginning of the Common Era. If we take 1904 as the advent of the Age of Aquarius, then the Age of Capricorn/Set will follow about 4064 CE and the Age of Libra/Maat about 10,544 CE. I feel that there is a larger chronology here that is only being partially revealed through Crowley. Comparable chronologies are also presented in Yeats’s A Vision and H.P. Blavatsky’s Theosophy.
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Darkbird18 (Charles Wharry),
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