The Magical Battle of Britain
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Ah, interesting. Came to think of it now, they mensioned in a documentary about Crowley that he supposedly magically helped the Germans as a revenge for having his offer to work as a spy for the Americans (or maybe it was the Brits) dismissed. It has been mensioned before on this forum but that documentary (The Wickedest Man in the World) seems to be mostly misinformed and shows Crowley in a negative light.
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The V symbol was used by Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister during WWII. It stood for victory. I've never heard any occult reference to the use of this symbol during WWII.
Nick
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Supposedly, so the story goes, Crowley suggested that Churchill should use the V sign of Apophis and Typhon because it is the magical counter to the Swastika.
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@Malaclypse said
"Ah, interesting. Came to think of it now, they mensioned in a documentary about Crowley that he supposedly magically helped the Germans as a revenge for having his offer to work as a spy for the Americans (or maybe it was the Brits) dismissed. It has been mensioned before on this forum but that documentary (The Wickedest Man in the World) seems to be mostly misinformed and shows Crowley in a negative light."
Crowley says he was giving pro-Nazi propaganda so ridiculous as to hinder the Nazis. It's really tough to figure the man out. He used something like 150 pseudonyms to get ideas across. So, basically, he was constantly lying and playing roles to suit his purposes. This makes it kind of hard to understand where he was really coming from, but I think if you look at the overall scope of his work, he was trying to free people.
The Nazis didn't have the same goal, did they? Of course, Britain and America built their empires on the blood of others, so that makes the whole thing more ambiguous, I guess. And Hitler supposedly was influenced by the racial ideas in Mme. Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine" and Blavatsky's ideas were close enough to Crowley's that he made use of her writings and I think considered her a member of the A.'.A.'. But, the thing about all this is Hitler seems to have gotten Blavatsky's ideas horribly wrong! Anyone can warp someone else's words. L. Ron Hubbard started out with some great ideas which he stole from Crowley, but ended up I think far removed from what Crowley was trying to accomplish. I suppose I could be wrong, but I don't think Crowley's whole point was to manipulate people to your advantage.
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@Redd Fezz said
"Crowley says he was giving pro-Nazi propaganda so ridiculous as to hinder the Nazis. It's really tough to figure the man out. He used something like 150 pseudonyms to get ideas across."
When it comes to Crowley's OTT German propaganda I think it's worth bearing in mind just how incredibly close the USA came to joining the war on Germany's side.
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Just one point. Crowley never made Pro-Nazi propaganda. Pro-German yes. World War 1 and Crowley's OTT propaganda had nothing to do with Nazi's.
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@Her said
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@Redd Fezz said
"Crowley says he was giving pro-Nazi propaganda so ridiculous as to hinder the Nazis. It's really tough to figure the man out. He used something like 150 pseudonyms to get ideas across."When it comes to Crowley's OTT German propaganda I think it's worth bearing in mind just how incredibly close the USA came to joining the war on Germany's side.
"I do not know what that means, unless you are trying to say that Crowley was trying to STOP the USA from siding with the Germans. I'm not totally familiar with his propaganda, but I think this is accurate: he wrote from an office in NYC and what he wrote really pissed people off. Therefore, he may have been pivotal in stopping the USA from siding with Germany?!?!?
If so, man that guy was awesome! I need to get a proper biography of the man. I was reading "Diary of A Drug Fiend" the other day in the store and was taken aback by what a sweet, tender man he seemed to be. I probably ruined it for myself, because I skipped right to the end and read about how they found their true will, etc.
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@Her said
"Just one point. Crowley never made Pro-Nazi propaganda. Pro-German yes. World War 1 had nothing to do with Nazi's or Crowley's OTT propaganda."
Big flub on my part!!! I definitely did read something trying to link AC with the Nazis, but it was probably anti-Occult crapola. I really need to get a proper biography, like I said. I have too many contradictory ideas floating around.
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@Redd Fezz said
"I do not know what that means, unless you are trying to say that Crowley was trying to STOP the USA from siding with the Germans. I'm not totally familiar with his propaganda, but I think this is accurate: he wrote from an office in NYC and what he wrote really pissed people off. Therefore, he may have been pivotal in stopping the USA from siding with Germany?!?!?"
Possibly.
A good example is Crowley's, "The New Parzival: A Study of Wilhelm II. The title alone is enough to tell you that it was written with tongue planted firmly in cheek.
Or how about Crowley's "Open letter to Count Zeppelin", where he complained that they had failed to bomb his aunts house in Croyden, so he printed the exact address to help them next time. If that's not OTT humour I don't know what is. No one could have taken it seriously. -
Maybe the Nazi connection to Crowley is connected to all the stuff about Martha Kuntzel and her claim that she tried to get Hitler to accept the Book of the Law.
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@Her said
"Maybe the Nazi connection to Crowley is connected to all the stuff about Martha Kuntzel and her claim that she tried to get Hitler to accept the Book of the Law."
That's it! Only, I think I remembered it (probably wrongly) that Hitler found inspiration/evidence for his ideas in Liber AL. Which is not all that surprising or unbelievable to me since many different types of people with clashing outlooks on life identify with that book. I wonder if they're opinion of the book changes as they grow and change. I know this is true for me.
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Redd Fezz: The supposedly best biography of Crowley is Perdurabo by Richard Kaczynski. I've got about 100 pp left in it and I think it's awesomely well informed. According to an unconfirmed source Kaczynski also practises magick so there's no meaningless scepticism in it. It's in any case an entertaining story and Crowley was a genuine genius imo. To accomplish so much! To be The Best mountain climber, The Best chess player and The Magician überlord AND poet and writer... man... Well, he wasn't the world champion in chess, but that was probably only because he didn't want to when he saw what goofy people outdid that category.
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"*Martha Kuntzel had been overjoyed when Adolph Hitler became Fuhrer on August 19, 1933. She had considered Hitler her Magical Son, and intended to convert him to Thelema because The Book of the Law claimed that the first nation to accept it would rule the world. Although she attempted to get a copy of The Book of the Law to Hitler in the 1920s - and Crowley heavily annotated a copy of Hitler Speaks(1939), claiming references to Thelema were interspersed throughout its pages - this was certainly not the case. Hitler's ideology was formed long before Kuntzel entered the picture. The Nazis began gunning for magicians in 1933, first banning fortune-telling, next confiscating occult books and outlawing secret societies, and finally high-ranking occultists from Freemasonry to the Fraternitas Saturni. Eventually, Kuntzel's own papers - including the stock of Crowley paintings stored with her after the Berlin exhibit - were seized and destroyed. Although A.C. initially supported the idea of converting a political leader to Thelema, his support of Hitler quickly dissipated when the Chancellor showed his true colors. *
PERDURABO ~ Richard Kaczynski Ph.D"
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@Her said
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"Although she attempted to get a copy of The Book of the Law to Hitler in the 1920s - and Crowley heavily annotated a copy of Hitler Speaks(1939), claiming references to Thelema were interspersed throughout its pages - this was certainly not the case.PERDURABO ~ Richard Kaczynski Ph.D"
"Wow, so Crowley himself wrote notes to one of Hitler's writings ("Hitler Speaks"), claiming references to Thelema? He was connected with everything, wasn't he? Jeezola. I guess he was probably just trying to play to Hitler's ego and get him to accept Thelema. I guess he also didn't know what a creep he was trying to convert.
"Perdurabo" was the one I was leaning toward, so I guess that's the one I'll get.
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Crowley's connection with the Third Reich is very slight. The same can't be said for other people that Crowley knew.
Major General J.F.C. Fuller a one time close friend of Crowley's and editor of The Equinox, until the time of the Jones versus the Looking Glass trial, was the only Englishman to be invited to Hitler's 50th birthday party and he was one of the key men behind the development of the stratergy called "Blitzkrieg".
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"Malaclypse wrote:
According to an unconfirmed source Kaczynski also practises magick so there's no meaningless scepticism in it."Dr. Kaczynski is a Thelemite. If you are interested in hearing some interviews of Dr. Kaczynski checkout -
Thelema Coast to Coast #03: May 7, 2005,
Thelema Coast to Coast #19, January 22, 2006, and
Thelema Coast to Coast #23: April 5, 2006 -
@Malaclypse said
"I just stumbled upon the book on the web but couldn't find anything extensive about it. Does anyone here know what effects it had on the war?"
Yes, if you judge success based on a desired result coinciding with a magical act intending it, then the work was one of the most successful magical workings on record.
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@Redd Fezz said
"Who had the V? The Americans or the Germans?"
The British. Crowley was conscripted to provide them with a magical symbol.
He related it to Victory, but he privately wrote that it was meant to establish the name V.V.V.V.V and the horns of The Beast as the magical power protecting and otherwise aiding Britain.
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@Redd Fezz said
"Only, I think I remembered it (probably wrongly) that Hitler found inspiration/evidence for his ideas in Liber AL."
Probably not wrongly. Crowley clearly believed Hitler was building the Third Reich using Liber Legis as his reference book. It had been placed in his hands by Martha Kuntzel, 8=3 A.'.A.'. and Hitler's magical mentor at one point, based on her belief that the nation which first adopted Liber L. as the foundation of its government and society would rule the world.
However, his understanding of it broke down in some crucial points - and, at about the same time, his empire started showing its flaws and weaknesses more openly.
In Crowley's personal copy of Hitler Speaks - a book written by one of Hitler's inner circle members, recording his actual conversations (in contrast to his public persona), Crowley wrote voluminous marginalia. Much of it was line-for-line tracking of Hitler's soliloquies against Crowley's writings (same ideas in the same sequence, sometimes nearly verbatim even after dual translating). Eventually he tracked the Liber L. references, found a direct reference to a woman in Hitler's inner circle that he believed he recognized as Kuntzel, and sited points where Hitler's understanding of Thelema faltered and he started going down the wrong track.
It's also in these marginalia that he describes his role in establishing some of the primary magical symbols of the war. For example, Ludendorf came to him a few years after WW I and said they were working with a promising young politician who was looking for a magical symbol of great power that had Norse mythological associations. Crowley suggested he use an Aryan (i.e., northern India) symbol called the Svastika which was sometimes called "the hammer of Thor" - something generally not known outside of the Golden Dawn. The rest was - literally - history!
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@Redd Fezz said
"Wow, so Crowley himself wrote notes to one of Hitler's writings ("Hitler Speaks")"
Ah, hadn't seen this when I wrote my last answer. (In fact, I didn't think anyone else knew about it!)
BTW, having read Crowley's original copy front-to-back a couple of times, I disagree with the biographer's assessment.