Your opinions on Crowley?

wandking

He certainly had a sense of style...

Check out the hat! http://www.the-equinox.org/vol1/no3/eqi03004.html

He also had a sense of humor, which reminds me to never take myself too seriously. Later in that short piece w/ a picture of him, which actually appeared in the Equinox, he begins; "A LITTLE before Dawn," (a not-so-subtle reference to the GD) and then goes on to use plenty of Golden Dawn jargon, which likely reveals secret views of the order.

Reading Waite never made me laugh. Crowley wrote quite alot about Waite, who hated people using his name like "hurry up and Waite." Crowley wrote; Wisdom While you Waite, Arthur in the Area Again and Dead Waite, a fake obituary that jibes, “Waite is gone to hell. He will soon begin to smell.”

you gotta admit it is quite a hat, a real flar for fashion, I'd say ;-)
 

kwaw

In his own words...

Driley said:
I do think Crowley didn't help his case much by identifying himself with the number 666 and The Beast.

By all sorts of monkey tricks
They make my name mean 666;
Well, I will deserve it if I can:
It is the number of a Man.

quote
In court sueing Nina Hamnet and publishers for libel:

"Are you," asked Hamnets defence attorney Hilberry , 'asking for damages because your reputation has suffered?
'Yes,' replied Crowley.
'For many years you have been publicly denounced as the worst man in the world?'
'Only by the lowest kind of newspaper.'
'Did any paper call you "the Monster of Wickedness"?'
'I can't remember.'
'Have you, from the time of your adolescence, openly defied all moral conventions?'
'No.'
'And proclaimed your contempt for all the doctrines of Christianity?
'Not all the doctrines.'
'Did you take to yourself the designation of "The Beast 666"?'
'Yes.'
'Do you call yourself "The Master Therion"?'
'Yes.'
'What does "Therion" mean?'
'"Great Wild Beast."'
'Do these titles convey a fair expression of your practice and outlook on life?'
' "The Beast 666" only means "sunlight". You can call me "Little Sunshine".'

On the second day Hilberry read out a poem from the erotic Clouds without Water and at its conclusion, asked the Beast, 'Is that not filth?'
'As you read it, it is magnificent,' replied Crowley
end quote from "The Great Beast" by John Symonds.

Kwaw
 

wandking

he did like the number six and focuses on it in some writings. Although some attribute the attention Crowley gives six to Satanic leanings, he writes this: “We behold six certain Paths; and in six days did {172} God create the Heavens and the Earth and the total numeration of its numbers is the Perfect Number, even the Decade of the Sephiroth. (1+2+3+4=10.)”
 

Driley

I'm not saying that Crowley was Satanic because he identified himself as 666 The Beast.

I'm just saying he was somewhat perverse in his sense of humour and this didn't do his reputation much good.
 

spiral

On the second day Hilberry read out a poem from the erotic Clouds without Water and at its conclusion, asked the Beast, 'Is that not filth?'
'As you read it, it is magnificent,' replied Crowley
:D Quality. The man was a legend.

I think the fact that any heroin addict lived to see his sixties is fairly remarkable. But anyway, judgement is pointless other than to satisfy the sanctimonious ego. The only question of any real worth is: are the man's excesses and apparant "moral deviations" significant to the worth of his work? The plain answer to that question is no. I find all the finger-pointing and the hysterical demonisation that goes on when discussing Crowley to be a sickening symptom of modern society - that people are so quick to divert attention away from the dark places of themselves that they will attack anything different enough to capture their attention. Even these assertions of "well I'm sure Crowley would have liked the blah blah" - it's nonsense: how can you sit in judgement on a character you haven't even met?
 

Strange2

Driley said:
In Crowley's book on the deck, the introduction implies that he frequently made her paint and then discard an image eight times or more before being satisfied. There is no evidence that this is true. The only card that she did more than once, as far as we know, is the Magus -- and we have all three versions (the alternative versions are published in at least one 80-card edition of the Thoth deck).

Here's some evidence... see the following page for alternative versions or drafts of several cards that Harris did for the Thoth deck.

http://www.caduceusbooks.com/occultartgallery/harris/harris.html
 

wandking

good bye 20th century

If we dismiss the works of EVERYONE with failings like drugs or alcoholism then we lose some very important creative work in literature, music and art. One of the losses is a personal favorite of mine who won both the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize for literature Ernest Hemingway. What a drunk! I really like the works of a desperate drug user named van Gogh as well. It's particularly fashionable in medical circles these days to write endlessly about how the effects of absinthe and other commonly abused drugs of the day might have shaped van Gogh's art, for instance by causing him to hallucinate the halos and aurorae that often surround light sources in his paintings.

The only thing that would be more ludicrous is dismissing works based on "moral deviations," which implies dismissing work based on how mainstream religion in the past or present views their findings. If we did that, we lose most of the advances in philosophy, science and math.

goodbye Darwin, goodbye Voltaire, goodbye Galileo, goodbye Copernicus and by the way goodbye Court de Gebelin, hence goodbye modern Tarot
 

prudence

~my honest opinion of this man, is that he wouldn't give a f*** what any of us thinks of him.
 

tarobones

Move On

As with All Things Tarot, if Thoth and Crowley are not your cup of tea, move on. There's plenty of other decks and traditions. Tarot Diversity is one of its great strengths. BB, Michael
 

Driley

Strange2 said:
Here's some evidence... see the following page for alternative versions or drafts of several cards that Harris did for the Thoth deck.

http://www.caduceusbooks.com/occultartgallery/harris/harris.html

Wow!

Thank you for that. There was more variation than I had thought.

Still, I think we can agree that Crowley didn't have her paint images eight or more times before finally, reluctantly accepting one as good enough. Although, evidently, there was more back-and-forth than my readings admitted.

I still interests me to note that Magus got more development, as far as we can tell, and ended up with three publishable images.

I wish some of the other images links were working... I'd love to see the rest.

Again, thanks for sharing that.