Aleister Crowley and Thelema
Dec 10, 2009 21:12:45 GMT -5
Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Dec 10, 2009 21:12:45 GMT -5
Aleister Crowley:
Aleister Crowley is perhaps the most notorious occultist of our age, his name having recognition even among the general public. He has likely been the target of many discussions, though probably somewhat fewer which seek to contextualize and demystify the man. My interest in Crowley is limited here - I am more interested in the occult revival movement known as "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn" , a movement that Crowley was tied up in as we will see; however, although his fame overtook that movement, he was not a central player by merit. In order to isolate and separate Crowley's real significance in modern occult (outside his fame), and that of Thelema (the magical philosophy which he founded), I will start with him and later move on to focus on the more important subject of the Golden Dawn.
In considering Crowley, I have been most fortunate to acquire an article "The Sorcerer and His Apprentice: Aleister Crowley and the Magical Exploration of Edwardian Subjectivity" by Alex Owen. Owen is an associate professor of history , and the article was published in the Journal of British studies 36 (Jan 1997). Owen commences with some valuable context:
Ritual Magic in the Victorian Era/
"What matters was that the magical enterprise could be shared with and verified by other magicians, and it's authenticity was judged by the success of the desired outcome. The absolute reality of the experience was accepted without question"
Owens, 1997
The author continues: "Magic, or more specifically, ritual or ceremonial magic, has a long and august history in Western Europe. Associated with the medieval and early periods, ritual magic has traditionally been associated with learned elites. Loosely understood to be the theory and practice of accessing and communicating with powerful but unseen natural or universal forces, ritual magic was invariably an occult or secret undertaking. Its procedures were confided in grimoires, textbooks of ritual magic, and these became the jealously guarded jewels of the magical tradition. This tradition, often assumed to be a archaic vestige with little purchase or relevance for the modern period, survived intact into the nineteenth century when it began to emerge as a more accessible subject of study with the publication of classical grimoires in English translation. Francis Barrett's The Magus (London, 1801) was a landmark text, and by the mid-century several formal groups had been established with the express purpose of studying the magical arts. Far from disappearing in the modern period, ritual magic became a central but hidden component of the nineteenth-century occult revival."
Ritual magic, the author says, carried with it Occultism's fundamental promise - that being the quest for the key that would unlock the secrets of creation, which also promised a revelation that would prelude spiritual growth and enlightenment. The nineteenth century saw the strengthening of the Rosicrucian movement, which was founded by breakaway free masons and employs ritual magic - Rosicrucianism had its "roots in Jewish mysticism, Hebrew-Christian sources of ancient wisdom, and the powerful "Egyptian" writings of Hermes Trismegistus." What is significant here, is that by the 1880s, an additional splinter movement occurred in the occult world and a number of Rosicrucians broke away to form the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the order's name "spoke to the realization of a Rosicrucian rebirth." The author comments on its founding: "Although it's founding documents were probably spurious, and its major rituals undoubtedly the work of Victorian scholars and magicians, its teachings were based on an imaginative reworking of Hermetic writings further informed by nineteenth-century scholarship in Egyptology and anthropology." What is important to understand about G.D. is there were a set of orders to rise through as an initiate progressed, and advancing to the next order was a privilege not a right- British occult groups such as these were concerned with standards and respectability, which would be accessed before an initiate was allowed to progress.
Aleister Crowley/
Crowley was initiated into the G.D. in 1898 as Frater Pedurabo ("I will endure"). He was Cambridge educated, highly intelligent, and capable of great powers of concentration - he rose quickly through the ranks. However, as Owen explains, when Crowley was attempting to enter the second order of the Golden Dawn, a higher initiation level, officials in the order had grown increasing alarmed at his apparent lack of scruple; they attempted to block him and were "scandalized by Crowley's wild, unpredictable behavior and questionable morals. Crowley subsequently became involved in a bitter power struggle within the Golden Dawn, abandoned it in 1900, went on to study with other teachers.."
Crowley continued to study magic intensely in the early 1900s, he traveled to asian countries learning yoga and buddhism as well tantric sex - and generally entertaining his occult interests - by 1909 considered himself a "Master" magician.
Crowley's Trip to the Desert 1909/
In 1909 Crowley undertook a trip to African Nigers on a Magical mission of sorts - he was familiar with the research of John Dee and Edward Kelley, two early occultists who combined Cabala with a system of angel magic developed by Renaissance magician Henry Cornelius Agrippa (we have considered the life of John Dee in some detail, see the thread "Simon Says..." reply #17). In fact, the Golden Dawn had begun teaching some of John Dee's ideas, including his system of Enochian magic, designed to enable communication with higher entities (i.e. angels) through a system of scrying - only where the Golden Dawn meant this as more or less an exercise to hone one's faculties, Crowley interpreted the system as something practicable. He determined to put the system to the test in the Nigerian desert.
The choice of testing ground may have had to do with his love of Arabic culture and desert culture, he spoke some Arabic, and while there he was thrilled to drink coffee with locals, smoke tobacco and "Hif" (hashish) with them. Owen believes that Crowley took much from the romanticization of the Desert and the Orient prevalent in "Arabia Deserta" - a sort of adventure literature prevalent in England at the time.
Crowley's "Annihilation of the Self in Pan"
Crowley wandered the desert seeking out "Aethyrs" - access points which he would summon and enter a certain state allowing him to communicate with celestial beings with the assistance of a magical shew stone. He had his assistant, a man by the name of Neuberg, record everything he said. This is the same sort of magical clairvoyance that Dee and Kelley practiced hundreds of years earlier, only Dee functioned as the scribe while Kelley was the seer. A little over two weeks in the desert and Crowley received a command from a being to perform a magical ceremony near the town of Bou Saada, he and his assistant erected an alter and on it, in Crowley's words "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the alter, consuming every particle of my personality." However, Owen explains "what happened in prosaic terms was that Crowley was sodomized by Neuberg in a homosexual rite offered to the god Pan." In fact, Neuberg had earlier had his head shaved excepting two small horn-like tufts, causing him to resemble a Satyr - they had been involved in a homosexual relationship, but this was perhaps the first magical homosexual act.
Owen recounts that "Crowley quickly came to believe that sex magic was an unrivaled means to great magical power and became one of its most innovative practitioners." In this rite Neuberg encompassed the raging lust of the god Pan, during which, Crowley came to feel he lost his "self" in the fierce exchange. Thus the latter term "the annihilation of the Self in Pan" ..which also became a sort of religious ideal of Crowley's. At the same time, both men were somewhat haunted by the rite, Crowley recalling: "There was an animal in the wilderness.. but it was not I." The two men continued their magical experiments in the desert for a few additionally weeks, encountering more of Dee's "Aethyrs", it was said that Crowley was 'psychologically shattered' by these "ordeals".
Victorian Escapism and Desert Climes/
The author notes that Crowley's trist in the desert underpins a
a strange convergence - it epitomizes the spirit of the work of Crowley's childhood hero, an exceptional explorer and linguistic scholar named Richard Burton. Burton's trips through Africa and the middle east and particularly his translation of Arabic literature and erotica helped introduce Victorian England to the east - coupled with Burton's notion of Arab sexuality as decidedly more open to homosexuality. Crowley wrote in his memoirs that his trip was "treading, though reverently and afar off, in the footsteps of my boyhood's hero, Richard Francis Burton." Incidentally, just before Crowley, the famous and notoriously gay Oscar Wilde has made an escape to Nigers, and, in the same year, the famed Laurence of Arabia was making his epic trip through the deserts (latter he was found to be gay.)
The Aftermath of Crowley/
While Crowley believed his experiences in the desert had taught him to distinguish his magical self from his mundane self, to sum, biographers of Crowley interpret that he in fact came closer to loosing the distinction between conscious and unconscious desires, more or less. In his own words he had "expelled" his ego - this resulted in a universal embrace of new experience without trepidation; as a result, his amoral behavior with men and women alike became legendary and he was called "the wickedest man in the world." As Owen observes, "far from establishing an all-seeing, harmonious relationship with the unconscious, working with it to achieve magical ends, the unconscious now controlled and dominated him."
Crowley spent some time in America 1914-1918, later to settle in the Italy at a residence he named "The Abbey of Thelema". He was expelled from the country by Mussolini's fascist government in 1923.
His magical philosophy known as Thelema survived his death in 1947 among a growing number of Crowley admirers.
Crowley as an occult figurehead may be seen as an initiate in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, one who at points, payed particular attention to the Angel Magic and Cabala of Renaissance magicians John Dee and Edward Kelley - he was an impressive learner of a myriad of occult and mystic traditions, however, given what is widely accepted to be his failure to truly master "self", the value of his magical philosophy Thelema may be viewed with some disdain.
