666. Crowley is God!

Hail Crowley

Here I post my 666th post in honour of Crowley!
Hes definately very inspiring, and whenever I bring my deck out of my bag in public it sparks off wonderful conversations about him, the deck and all other related bits. Its a wonderful discussion piece.

What does 666 mean to me?! That I waffle too much on here? That I dont waffle enough? That I believed my cousin that dialling 666 on the phone would be calling the devil and being too scared to dial that third 6 lol. Saying bloody mary 13 times in the mirror.
666 to me is all the bad things that we are told we shouldnt do or mess with, yet we want to. Its human nature to venture where others tell us not to tread. Crowley started a big thing for many people to go where we want to, push those boundaries, but lets not go crazy or become drug addicts at the same time please lol. Every man and woman is a star - so lets SHINE!

Awesome thread, I want to go and do something 'bad' now to feel alive. Maybe I'll give the devil a call hehe.

Great thread lillie!
Sezo
x

InannaTarot!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!! 666th post!!!!!!!!!!! I like how you see AC and his life experiences/experiments.



PS I am shocked at how worldwide the BloodyMary urban legend is!!!!!! First time I heard of it, I was 4 yrs old, living on an Air Force Base in New Jersey.

So I'm crashing the party, but I'm fun and I brought booze...

Sorry can't wait untill my 666th post. I figured It'd be ok to join the thread on my 18th post since 6+6+6+ =18 but then I decided that as log as I already slipping down the slope, might as well jump headfirst.

So yeah, now I know who Ozzie was talking about in that song. I always just assumed it was about using drugs or one of those royals the British are always going on about.

This guy was awesome!! He was a rockstar before there was rock and roll. Always in the papers, aloof, controversial, rude, perverted, drug addicted, perfect mix antichrist and superstar. Tried so hard to offend and revolt, and was loved and and worshipped instead. Poor guy. lol

PERDURABO!

Well it's about time. I've been waiting for my 666th and it's here to mark the first snow of winter. The flakes are just now starting to fall.

I'd like to post a little something for Uncle Al, with whom I share a birthday.. and much, much more. Two thoughts that he would have understood, and that might help people understand him.

The German poet Rilke once said: "One must always go toward what is difficult. And I think that is true, I ask myself where is the next dream that I haven't tapped into yet, I feel I have so many unseen places I need to go, quickly, I've always felt that way, that there's something calling."

And Gustave Flaubert wrote in a letter to Louise Colet, one year into work on Madame Bovary, “What seems to me the highest and most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does – that is, fill us with wonderment. The most beautiful works have indeed this quality. They are serene in aspect, incomprehensible… pitiless.”

Many thanks, Mr. Crowley for being so at ease with the difficult... and at making the impossible seem merely unlikely.

You share a birthday?

You lucky dog!

Yea Scion!

I'm almost finished with Crowley's biography, "Do What Thou Wilt " by Lawrence Sutin. I've enjoyed it and believe it's a fairly sympathetic portrayal.

With regard to Crowley going where it was difficult, I can't agree. He went where it was shocking for his time but didn't do what was difficult for HIM.

- he took no responsibility for his children
- he skulked off to the USA during WW I. Now this was a BIG deal and I'm sure why Fuller broke with him personally and also persuaded his associate not to take up with Al. Give Uncle Al a white feather. Even Mathers and Moina were doing their bit in Paris, if not actively.
- the major mountaineering expedition he lead was a disaster, resulting in the death of 4 people largely due to his inability to hold together the group

Finally, as a Mage, I'm not sure Al was any good. He lost rather than made a fortune. He had a minimal number of disciples and usually quarrelled sooner or later with those he did attract. I will grant that he had a lot of personal magnatism and produced a great deck plus some interesting reading material. But most of it is, after all, "All about Al." Both Regardie and Fortune ended up shunning Al. Interestingly, there is only a very mention of Regardie in the book I'm reading even though he worked for Al for a couple of years in Paris. Regardie was probably just too good a mage for the old crock to acknowledge.

In terms of moving forward freedom of thought, IMO he is just another biblical patriarch disgused as a naughty boy. Much more significant contributions were made by Blavatsky, the GD (including offshoots such as Fortune, Regardie, Waite, etc.), Freud, Jung and the various intellectual circles in the US and Europe. In his day, Crowely's influece was marginal, at best. I think we now look back and see an influence that simply wasn't there in his own time. Other than his sexual amours, he didn't have many disciples at all, unlike say, Blavatsky who left behind a huge and internationally influential organization.

My next bio to read is a life of St. Paul. Now he worked for a real World Teacher, lol. Bet I like him better than Al, even though I'm not at all keen on patriarchs.

wizzle said:

- he skulked off to the USA during WW I. Now this was a BIG deal and I'm sure why Fuller broke with him personally and also persuaded his associate not to take up with Al. Give Uncle Al a white feather. Even Mathers and Moina were doing their bit in Paris, if not actively.

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I'm fuzzy on the details of this (it's been so long), but I think Crowley would have been too old for active duty in those days (almost 39 years old). So the charge that he skulked off - as somehow implying he shirked duty - may be off the mark. In any case, he felt the sting of such criticism, since he claimed he *was* helping his side by his over-the-top pro-German articles in the Fatherland and International. Believe it or not.

Neglecting children etc. is true. He had a philosophical justification for it, however, which most people would regard as a mere lame excuse (something like "It's nature's way. We make babies, and some men are natural fathers while others are just f*ckers who can walk away if they like. Marriage and family are merely a social construct that can disregarded by he who dares.")

(I used the asterisk to get by the censor, not because I'm prudish).

I've read nine different Crowley biographies over the years, and each one painted a picture of a different man.

wizzle said:

Both Regardie and Fortune ended up shunning Al. Interestingly, there is no mention of Regardie in the book I'm reading even though he worked for Al for a couple of years in Paris. Regardie was probably just too good a mage for the old crock to acknowledge.

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Wrong on both counts. Towards the end of her life Fortune was heavily involved with Crowley and in one letter admits that Crowley is right about the New Aeon.

The acknowledgement I made in the the introduction to The Mystical Qabalah of my indebtedness to your work, which seemed no more than common literary honesty, has been used as a rod for my back by people who look on you as Antichrist. I am prepared to dig in my toes and stand up to trouble if I have to, but I don't take on a fight if I can help it nowadays because it wastes too much time. I am fully aware that there will come a time when I shall have to come out into the open and say: this is the law of the New Aeon, but I want to pick my time for that, because I propose to be in a strong position when I do so, and if you give Mrs. Grundy advance information, I may not be properly entrenched when the inevitable blitz starts.

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Unfortunately Dion Fortune died before she anounced her new position. It's revealing that the people left in charge of her magical order burnt large parts of her private papers after her death and then proceeded to become even more Christian than they already were.

As for Israel Regardie not being mentioned in Do What Thou Wilt, check the index. Several references are listed.

Regardie and Crowley had a row and parted ways. But Regardie changed his mind in the 70's and wrote a biography called "The Eye in the Triangle" because he was sick of people bad mouthing Crowley and spreading lies. On top of that he went on to introduce many of Crowley's books when they were reprinted. He hardly does anything but praise Crowley in those introductions.

wizzle said:

My next bio to read is a life of St. Paul. Now he worked for a real World Teacher, lol. Bet I like him better than Al, even though I'm not at all keen on patriarchs.

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Ah, St. Paul the woman hating misogynist who diliberately changed the teachings of a man he had never met (and never existed) to suit his own tastes. Great stuff

Ross G Caldwell said:

I'm fuzzy on the details of this (it's been so long), but I think Crowley would have been too old for active duty in those days (almost 39 years old). So the charge that he skulked off - as somehow implying he shirked duty - may be off the mark. In any case, he felt the sting of such criticism, since he claimed he *was* helping his side by his over-the-top pro-German articles in the Fatherland and International. Believe it or not.

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Yes, Crowley was almost 40 at the time. However, practically everyone was doing something for the war effort at the time (even Mathers in Paris and he was older than Al). I noted Fuller's reactions to Crowley specifically in light of Al's attempt to pursuade that his articles in the US for a pro-German publication were part of some sort of patriotic effort on his part. Now Fuller continued with the War Office during the 1920's and refused many overtures from Crowley. This is my own theory, but I suspect he knew that Crowley lied about what he was doing in the US. That would sit VERY badly indeed with an officer and a gentleman who had served. Fuller was able to dissuade another officer who was very interested in meeting Crowley from doing so. Why? I can only again speculate that Crowley's lying about his war activities was the deciding factor. Sutin does bring out Crowley's lies and exagurations as noted by his enamouratas, who were certainly in a position to know. Consider too that WW I did far more to shift general consciousness than Crowley could ever hope to do. It was right after the war that women were given the vote in both the UK and the USA, a major deal for more than half the population. The aristocracies in Germany, Italy and Russia were a thing of the past. And the answer to a question like "what did you do in the war, daddy?" was a test of credibility.