Uncle Al and Pedophilia
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@AncientChild said
"The quote is purported to be taken from "The Magical Record of The Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley", edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant, Pg 239.
The quote: August 12th 1920"
You threw my off a bit, because the date and page number don't match. Page 239 is the end of the July 28 entry and beginning of July 29. The quoted passage does not appear on that page. The long August 12 entry (note the significant holiday) is on pp. 246-253. AC and Leah celebrated the holiday by staying in bed taking drugs and having non-stop sex all day. He's clearly intoxicated on all sorts of things (drugs, Leah, more) and he is in the middle of his "using debasement to exalt him" period.
Despite this, I don't find that particular passage here either. (I scanned quickly. I'll correct this if I find it on reading more carefully.)
Later: Ah, found it. Part of the 8:55 A.M. entry, at the bottom of p. 251. Give me a few minutes to read the surrounding text and see what I need to copy here. (It's in the midst of a multi-page ramble.)
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After many hours in bed together, at 8:40 AM Crowley wrote, "I'll rest, smoke, toy with Leah." This sets the context. But he's restless, seems (to me) agitated, has the kind of impatience in which time is distended, and finally, at 8:46, throws himself into writing with the words, "To the assault!"
He begins the very long 8:55 AM entry as follows:
@666 @ 8:55 AM said
"It is a curious feeling. Impuissance and indifference dominate me, and there is also that which wishes to 'love' the object which inspires these sentiments, for that same cause! I've turned repulsion into passion, fear into love, disgust to worship; but here beside me lies a worn-out toy [Leah]. The Opus absorbed all the forces; we are both amethystine sober, our heads well-water, clear and cool, our souls at ease. Can that perfection suffer? Can I who raped the maiden, decoyed he wife hired myself to the widow, and with wanton wild made revel, I, I, can I woo this scarecrow carrion? Can I, who writhed at stroke of the snake's fang, whose ribs cracked in her coil, can I pretend that death still lurks under the dull cast skin? I loved Her as Her slave; I lived to pander to Her lust. My neck was for Her foot; my flesh for Her tooth's need to tear, to gnaw, to pulp!"
In other words, he's been up with his love most of the night, in the manner described previously, and now, early in the morning, is reviewing the night (poetically and perhaps in the broader context of their history) and wondering, quite simply, whether there is more passion to be wrung out of the two of them before breakfast.
He then goes on. The passages are a mixture of man talking about himself and his woman, and Magus speaking archetypally of Scarlet Woman. My read of it is that Crowley, who seems to have had his poetic potency and genital potency hard-wired to each other, is pouring out the creativity that he can while trying to rouse himself to a greater, more majestic, more heavens-transcending romp - here on this 17th anniversary of the First Night of the Prophet & His Bride.
He continues writing in practically mythic terms of their sexual relationship, e.g.: "Ay! i, as the rest of me, served Her, and gloated! God that gat sons on Her, high gods, stark Truth, fine Art, fierce Music..." etc. (I just have to cut it off, there's no actual end to this stream of consciousness.)
Perhaps the entirety must be read to get the flavor... but it's orgiastic, poetic, mythic, indulgent, debasing of self and others, mad, etc. "This God did this for his Whore's pleasure. He loved to agonize as She rejoiced. Also, the filthiest worm that lurks in me, its lair most sedulous his Fear and Cunning he hath fed full upon Her flesh, bloated his lankness on Her blood."
One point to make here: Nobody had eaten Leah's flesh that morning (well, other than in the sense of that delicate language of lovers, "eat me, you fucking bastard, eat my goddamn cunt"). These remarks are poetic, occasionally archetypal, at most tangential to any physical events.
Again: "Ay! then the Worm was glutted; ay, all Her human self I took; I rotted it, I made her flesh as goat and stoat, I made her mind as an ape's mind, as a hyaena's, as a black panther's..." Etc. Nobody could reasonably conclude that this was literally done.
Here is the paragraph right before the one you asked about:
@666 further said
"Now I, the God, have choked Her god in dung and bred the Basilisk, reared the fiend, Satan-Alostrael, to burn in hell with me - to burn, to writhe, to exult, to spend, to be, to will, to go, to change, to lust, to create life, to kindle love, to unveil light, to unleash liberty, my Word and Law Thelema to proclaim, to 'stablish and to execute for ever. To build that Law into Man's Soul, as Nature builds a man from the fifth primate, is Her Satan-secret Asp-brew in Her Cup's Blood (Filth, Madness, Poison, Inchantment, Putrefaction): it aids Intoxication and its One Mystery of Mysteries, Initiation."
And then the full paragraph from which your quote was taken:
"And I the Worm have trailed my slug-slow slime across Her Breasts; so that Her mother-mood is turned and Her breasts itch with lust of Incest. She hath given Her two-year bastard boy to Her lewd lover's whim to sodomy, hath taught him speech and act, things infinitely abhorred, with Her own beastly carcass. She hath tongued Her five-month girl, and asked its father to deflower it. She hath wished Her Beast to rape Her rotten old mother - so far is woman clean of Her! Then Her blood's grown icy hard and cold with hate; and Her eyes gleam as Her ears ring with a chime of wedding bells, dirty words, or vibrate, cat-gut fashion, to the thin shrieks of a young child that Her Beast-God-Slave-Mate is torturing for Her pleasure - ay! and his own, since of Her Cup he drank, and of Her soul he breathed.
He loved it all. He rolled each drop of filth around His tongue. All this because He loved Her. He loved Her as nor God nor Man nor Beast nor Devil has loved."
And it continues for several more paragraphs. He concludes that she is of "sound Satan-stock."
He then returns to his original theme of Impuissance and indifference, his desire to get back to the night's orgy in these pre-breakfast hours: "And now - is She indifferent? If so, all's lost, and I? Most lost were I! From Magus, Word of the Aeon, I were thrust, my Wand a tinder-twig, my Word an Idiot's babble. And there she liest, the lazy lump of nastiness, no more to me than my own toenails, and to Her - I am not; she's asleep!"
So... to answer your questions... I don't think the incest remarks were any more literal than the idea that Crowley was harvesting and rotting Leah's flesh and all the rest.
But (I hear the question echo), could there maybe have been an event that actually happened that leaked out into his ramble, like a suspect not realizing he is confessing? Always possible... but the point is that there is no evidence of it. Why take a couple of sentences out of pages of Crowley's poetic, archetypal, verbal pumping up of his cock and decide that these, these alone, are literal? I see no good reason for such a conclusion.
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Wow-- quite a lot to digest there! Thanks so much for your reply and explanation. I really have to marvel at how you manage to write out these long and insightful replies so often on these forums!
I agree, it all seems to be poetic exposition. Even if it weren't, I look at it this way: Would the teachings of Buddha be any less wise if they'd come from the mouth of Hitler?
Thanks again, Jim.93s
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@AncientChild said
"I really have to marvel at how you manage to write out these long and insightful replies so often on these forums!"
It does help to have the source material and general familiarity with it
I must admit to disappointment by Jerry, on the link you gave - it was far more "run with the herd, for the worst possible outcome" than I'd ever expect from him. Oh, well, everybody has a bad day.
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I remember the subject appearing on Jerry's blog a few years back. It looked to me like Jerry just didn't have an answer and left it in "maybe - maybe not limbo". But someone did email him later on with an answer that is not so far away from Jim's.
It's the 3.33pm entry on 2nd December 2008. You have to scroll down quite a bit to find it.
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The whole topic of pedophilia is central for coming to full understanding The Aeon of the Child, and Law of Love.
Discussion is reserved for the highest ranking innermost masters of the temple.It's not about sex so much as it's about the human life cycle, family unity, and the secret magical virtues of marriage, virginity, and parenting.
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Interesting that AncientChild doesn't rant about this in the way that he did on LAShTAL.
Personally I suspect that it was drug-fuelled hyperbole, but we'll never know. Whatever, it all adds to my view that Cefalu was a time of degeneracy for Crowley, and that he lost sight of a great deal. It's my belief that the World War I years in America were his zenith, in partular the time of writing Liber Aleph and of his Magical Retirement on Aesopus Island.
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@Michael Staley said
"It's my belief that the World War I years in America were his zenith, in partular the time of writing Liber Aleph and of his Magical Retirement on Aesopus Island."
Hi Michael - I agree AC reached a peak on Esopus Island. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter and compare notes
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Liber VII
Chapter IV- O honey boy! Bring me Thy cool limbs hither! Let us sit awhile in the orchard, until the sun go down! Let us feast on the cool grass! Bring wine, ye slaves, that the cheeks of my boy may flush red.
- In the garden of immortal kisses, O thou brilliant One, shine forth! Make Thy mouth an opium-poppy, that one kiss is the key to the infinite sleep and lucid, the sleep of Shi-loh-am.
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@Priory Soul said
"Liber VII
Chapter IV- O honey boy! Bring me Thy cool limbs hither! Let us sit awhile in the orchard, until the sun go down! Let us feast on the cool grass! Bring wine, ye slaves, that the cheeks of my boy may flush red.
- In the garden of immortal kisses, O thou brilliant One, shine forth! Make Thy mouth an opium-poppy, that one kiss is the key to the infinite sleep and lucid, the sleep of Shi-loh-am."
That's Liber Lxv Ch IV vs 8-9 actually
And to be honest, I don't find that verse, or any of the others where Adonai refers to the aspirant in affectionate terms to be in the slightest bit perverted, it simply never entered my mind until now.
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I find nothing perverted about any of Aleister Crowley's writings. Even Leah Sublime is tame, compared to the typical drama found on prime time TV every night like Family Guy. By today's standards Crowley was actually a fairly wholesome person. He may have had pedophile tendencies, being attracted to teen boys or girls, but he wasn't a real full blown natural pedophile. If he were then we'd see more evidence surface in his writings.
A real true pedophile is a Lover of Youth, Philia is a word meaning Love, like friendly brotherly love, like Agape or Thelema. Lovers of youth are the protectors of childhood.
Today the word pedophile is used to describe people who rape kids and traffic internet porn. People who do such things know nothing of love or sex.
The Law of Thelema dictates, if a lover of youth finds his true will entwines him romantically with a child, and the kid loves him too, for them to deny the joy of their relationship would be a sin.
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You could argue I'm sure, that a person who finds themselves in love with a child has the right to follow up his/her urges with action, so long as the kid was also up for it.
You could also argue that by doing so he/she would be at odds with there right not to be strung up by an angry mob/the kids parents etc, and to be reviled by society as a whole, thus impeding there ability to function properly as a member of society, and thus preventing them from having any opportunity to fulfill that will, thereby stalling it at it's inception.
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I am defining Human Sexuality under application of the Law of Thelema through the Aeon of the Child.
A Thelemite, knowing the meaning of love and will, would naturally instinctively know right from wrong during any conceivable situation. That is my point, Thelema remedies all the confusion over pedophilia.At the same time Thelema creates a new blueprint of Family Unity, and puts an end to most sexual dysfunction as a whole.
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Sorry, but if you love a child, you would respect his/her innocence, give them time to grow up and find out about life for themselves, rather than pretending an age difference does not exist and engaging in a "romantic" relationship. The difference in age and life experience means there is an inherent aspect of power that comes into play. Not to mention the fact children are more trusting of adults. People who abuse this power and trust generally have very bad karma.
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@Priory Soul said
"The Law of Thelema dictates, if a lover of youth finds his true will entwines him romantically with a child, and the kid loves him too, for them to deny the joy of their relationship would be a sin."
Sure, the Word of Restriction is Sin. But the sin lies in anything that restricts our True Will. So you would have to first know what your True Will is and then, and only then, you would be in a position to know whether your actions are in conformity with it and what is right and wrong.
I say the above, having just spent two weeks with a friend of mine. She's 46, beautiful and screwed up from a history of sexual abuse from her stepfather from her early teens. She has problems with her sexuality, doesn't trust men, and feels anger toward men. But this is only the surface. The real problem lies in how he derailed her life, her sense of inner potential. Her real issue is anger toward herself, which is at the root of her lifelong depression and inability to believe in herself.