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THE OCCULT OBSERVER VOL. I, No. 2 London, England Summer 1949
ALEISTER CROWLEY
A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
By
Aleister Crowley was born of Plymouth Brethren stock and brought up strictly in their beliefs. While still a boy he revolted and identified himself with that Beast in Revelations whose "number is six hundred three-score and six, for it is the number of a man." This apocalyptic thread ran through his life, so that he signed his letters "The Beast 666," and even designed the mark that was to be branded on the right hands and foreheads of his followers. With the same love of theatrical display he masqueraded at different times as Count Vladimir Svareff, Lord Boleskine, the Abbot of DamCar and Sir Alastor de Kerval. Life was never dull where Crowley was.
On coming down from Cambridge he became a Neophyte in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, taking as his motto Perdurabo—"I will endure to the end," which he did. Under the tuition of Allan Bennett and Macgregor Mathers he learned the theory and practice of astrology, divination, skrying, the ritual magic of the Grimoires, the numerical Qabalah and the correspondences of the Tree of Life. Above all, he sought first the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel as taught by Abramelin the Mage, then direct contact with the Secret Chiefs of the Order, in whose existence he believed. Being of too positive a nature to see easily himself, he generally used women to skry for him, checking their results by the Qabalah. When, however, he set out to prove the Enochian system of the Elizabethan Doctor Dee, he looked right through into his own shewstone of star sapphire and travelled right through the Thirty Æthyrs from TEX to LIL.
Crowley tired of the laboured techniques of ritual magic, though he enjoyed vibrating heir barbarous words of evocation. He carried in his pocket-book the Abramelin talisman known as SEGELAH for "finding a great treasure," but never tried to acquire a familiar, and he only once succeeded in evoking a demon—Buer—to partial appearance. In a long life he only sacrificed a few sparrows, two pigeons, a cat, a goat and a toad, and of these the cat and goat were killed at ceremonies extemporized by request. Most of his operations were restricted to invocations, of which those of Jupiter in The Paris Working were the most successful. He never attempted the transmutation of metals by alchemical formulae nor to create an homunculus, and he never celebrated or was present as a Black Mass.
Not content with Western occultism, Crowley studied an Arabic system under a sheikh in Cairo and Shivite yoga together with Hinayana Buddhism with Bhikkhu Ananda Metteya (Allan Bennett) in Ceylon. He mastered virasana, a mild form of pranayama and the basic technique of Samadhi, but this cathartic side of Oriental mysticism did not appeal to him. His knowledge of Arabic was limited, of Sanskrit and Chinese nil. He never entered Tibet, nor did he meet any of the famous Indian gurus of his day. The Bagh-i-Muattar and his pseudonym Mahatma Guru Sri Paramahansa Shivaji were typical leg-pulls, while his translations of the Yi King, Tao Teh King and Khing Kang King are paraphrases.
Climber, Painter, Lover
An astrologer and teller of fortunes, though seldom for money; a teacher of magic and yoga who had done what he taught; the editor of and almost sole contributor to The Equinox and The International; a poet of considerable output though not the greatest English poet of all time as he often asserted; the author of two mediocre novels, several plays and that little masterpiece of pornography Snowdrops in a Curate's Garden; a rock climber with several records and two Himalayan expeditions to his credit; a near-master at chess; an accomplished Qabalist; a painter of so qliphotic a tendency as to shock Berlin at his exhibition at the Porza Gallery in 1931; an inspired chef; the inventor of those memorable Eagletails (cocktails) Abu ben Adhem and Kubla Khan Number One; the confidant of children; an exotic lover; a scribbler of vitriolic postcards and unintelligible telegrams; a personality so vital and explosive that the legends about him are legion—Aleister Crowley was the most colourful man of his day.
In Cairo in 1904 he was playing half-heartedly with magic and whole-heartedly with his first wife Rose, whom he called Ouarda the Seer, though she knew nothing of magic and cared less. One evening he tried out her vision and she passed back to him instructions from a spirit called Aiwass to sit at his desk from noon till one for the next three days in order to take down a message from the "Secret Chiefs." Doubting, he did so, and to his astonishment received for the first and last time in his life a direct voice communication which is now known as Liber AL vel Legis, The Book of the Law. It is a crazy prose poem in three short chapters containing a few prophecies, one at least of which has been fulfilled. Parts are unintelligible; parts only make sense when interpreted by Greek and Hebrew Qabalah, the number thirty-one being one of the keys and ninety-three the link between the two systems. Egyptian god names abound, while Christianity is blasphemed in no uncertain language. The use of wine drugs and sex are ordered in the worship of Nuit. Rabelais and Medmenham Abbey are echoed in the slogan: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"; but the corollary, "Love is the law, love under will" is original in this context. It is a powerful message for the "few and secret" who are to rule "the many and the known." It has already sent one Professor of Mathematics [Norman Mudd] off his head. At first Crowley dismissed it as crazy, and to his dying day he never brought himself to "Sacrifice cattle, little and big: after a child." Soon after writing the manuscript, he mislaid it, and only found it accidentally some years later when looking for a tennis racquet in the lumber room at Boleskine; but by 1912 it had mastered him. He devoted the rest of his life first to understanding, then, as the Logos of the Aeon and Priest of the Princes, to spreading the Law of Thelema. In this latter task he failed.
Whatever Crowley was, he was not a charlatan. He believed, he worked, he suffered, he had power. He failed to put over the religion of Thelema in his lifetime, which, considering its nature, is not surprising. The Christian world regards him as one of the Devil's Contemplatives. His few friends will not see his like again; but still fewer disciples mourn the passing of a Magus. |