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Victor Neuberg's & Crowley's initiations

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Initiation
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  • R redd fezz
    Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

    What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

    www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

    According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

    As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

    My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

    Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

    It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

    Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

    We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

    I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

    But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

    R Offline
    R Offline
    redd fezz
    wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 7:36 AM last edited by
    #25

    @Jim Eshelman said

    "
    I relaly don't have time to reread this thread. I'm stealing brief moments here and there to give you answers you are requesting.

    So, I repeat: What factor (daggerish or otherwise) that I've said isn't documented in what's given right here in this thread?"

    I'm confused because, if you've already typed it, why wouldn't it be documented right here in this thread? That's not the issue I was raising. The issue I was raising was whether or not what you typed was YOUR impression/opinion or straight from Victor's diary. Based on the structure of your previous posts, it was YOUR impression/opinion... unless you were quoting someone ELSE who was NOT Victor. Which was it?

    @Jim Eshelman said

    "PS - By virtue of the search function, I see I've said exactly two things about a dagger in this thread.

    The first is simply to quote his oath: "I promise to threaten with the Dagger and command back into the triangle the spirit incontinent, if he should strive to escape from it; and to strike with a Dagger at anything that may seek to enter this Circle, were it in appearance the body of the Seer himself."

    My other statement was: "Not only was Neuburg’s magick circle charged with Air names, but he was armed not only with the quill of the scribe, but with the magick dagger, the chief Air implement. Observe, also the terms of his oath: He is to employ the power of the dagger – the power of intellect – fortified by wariness and cunning. In other words – and adding this to his primary duty of transcribing each thing he heard – his mind is being kept terribly busy while all of this is going on!""

    Right. That last statement was what I was referring to as a "for instance" regarding your commentary on the ritual in general. Who knows what he was doing? You've elaborated here on the dagger, meanwhile, he might just have been standing there like a retard for all you know, mesmerized, scared, crapping his pants, etc.

    1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • R redd fezz
      Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

      What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

      www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

      According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

      As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

      My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

      Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

      It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

      Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

      We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

      I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

      But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

      J Offline
      J Offline
      Jim Eshelman
      wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 7:39 AM last edited by
      #26

      @Redd Fezz said

      "I'm confused because, if you've already typed it, why wouldn't it be documented right here in this thread? That's not the issue I was raising. The issue I was raising was whether or not what you typed was YOUR impression/opinion or straight from Victor's diary. Based on the structure of your previous posts, it was YOUR impression/opinion... unless you were quoting someone ELSE who was NOT Victor. Which was it?"

      Again:

      Which **specific passages **are you talking about?

      1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • R redd fezz
        Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

        What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

        www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

        According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

        As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

        My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

        Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

        It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

        Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

        We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

        I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

        But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

        R Offline
        R Offline
        redd fezz
        wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 7:41 AM last edited by
        #27

        Hm... See the last page, the last post.

        1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • R redd fezz
          Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

          What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

          www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

          According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

          As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

          My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

          Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

          It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

          Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

          We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

          I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

          But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

          J Offline
          J Offline
          Jim Eshelman
          wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 7:44 AM last edited by
          #28

          @Redd Fezz said

          "
          @Jim Eshelman said
          "My other statement was: "Not only was Neuburg’s magick circle charged with Air names, but he was armed not only with the quill of the scribe, but with the magick dagger, the chief Air implement. Observe, also the terms of his oath: He is to employ the power of the dagger – the power of intellect – fortified by wariness and cunning. In other words – and adding this to his primary duty of transcribing each thing he heard – his mind is being kept terribly busy while all of this is going on!""

          Right. That last statement was what I was referring to as a "for instance" regarding your commentary on the ritual in general. Who knows what he was doing? You've elaborated here on the dagger, meanwhile, he might just have been standing there like a retard for all you know, mesmerized, scared, crapping his pants, etc."

          I haven't elaborated a thing. It's all right there in the record.

          Until you specify the exact information that you believe I forged, I'm done here.

          Are you questioning my statement that his mind was kept terribly busy? I suppose that's an extrapolation, based on the fact that he was recording every word, wielding a dagger, charged with monitoring everything going on, etc. etc. But all of those component parts are in the record.

          1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • R redd fezz
            Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

            What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

            www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

            According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

            As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

            My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

            Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

            It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

            Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

            We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

            I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

            But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

            R Offline
            R Offline
            redd fezz
            wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 7:46 AM last edited by
            #29

            Maybe the problem is that I'm confused on what "the record" is.

            Who wrote all the stuff you posted on page one which described every bit of the ritual and quoted Victor? Who wrote it? Who made that "record?" I am talking about the post that begins: "Excerpts from my commentary on "The Cry of the 10th Aethyr" - the events of that day. (For the record, Copyright College of Thelema, All Rights Reserved.) "

            1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • R redd fezz
              Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

              What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

              www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

              According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

              As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

              My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

              Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

              It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

              Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

              We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

              I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

              But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

              J Offline
              J Offline
              Jim Eshelman
              wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 7:49 AM last edited by
              #30

              @Redd Fezz said

              "Maybe the problem is that I'm confused on what "the record" is.

              Who wrote all the stuff you posted on page one which described every bit of the ritual and quoted Victor? Who wrote it? Who made that "record?""

              Ah, so you don't know how The Vision & the Voice was produced, is that it? Sorry, I thought you'd been reading about it.

              While Crowley was on each vision, Victor was taking down a verbatim transcript of everything he said and of whatever happened. Victor and AC then, soon after each vision, reviewed this and Crowley wrote a copy off of Victor's notes. With minor editing, Crowley's copy became The Vision & the Voice. (During the 10th Aethyr - which is the one we're discussing here - there was a lot more physical stuff happening, so more was required than simply taking dictation!)

              In the post you cite, the blue text is straight from the published version of the record.

              1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • R redd fezz
                Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                R Offline
                R Offline
                redd fezz
                wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 7:50 AM last edited by
                #31

                @Jim Eshelman said

                "
                @Redd Fezz said
                "Maybe the problem is that I'm confused on what "the record" is.

                Who wrote all the stuff you posted on page one which described every bit of the ritual and quoted Victor? Who wrote it? Who made that "record?""

                Ah, so you don't know how The Vision & the Voice was produced, is that it? Sorry, I thought you'd been reading about it.

                While Crowley was on each vision, Victor was taking down a verbatim transcript of everything he said and of whatever happened. Victor and AC then, soon after each vision, reviewed this and Crowley wrote a copy off of Victor's notes. With minor editing, Crowley's copy became The Vision & the Voice. (DCuring the 10th Aethyr - which is the one we're discussing here - there was a lot more physical stuff happening, so more was required than simply taking dictation!)"

                Oh please! Like I have anything memorized. 😀

                Here are some of the highlights (quotes) of your previous posts:

                • For the most part, we do not have a record of Aleister Crowley’s encounter with Choronzon

                • But there is one detail the text does not give – which, in fact, Crowley went out of his way to obscure. It is virtually certain that Crowley placed himself in the triangle to serve as the living basis for the manifestation of Choronzon. That is, he invoked Choronzon into himself.

                • What is truly extraordinary, though, is that Neuburg, even late in life, insisted to his intimates that this is not what happened – that he literally fought a demon in the desert that day.

                Who is writing all this? And who cares what this person thinks? Not me! He was not there! Unless.. this is all the writing of Victor? If so, he needs to get one sense of authorship.

                1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • R redd fezz
                  Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                  What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                  www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                  According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                  As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                  My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                  Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                  It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                  Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                  We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                  I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                  But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                  J Offline
                  J Offline
                  Jim Eshelman
                  wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 7:57 AM last edited by
                  #32

                  Thank you. Now I have something to answer.

                  "Here are some of the highlights (quotes) of your previous posts:

                  • For the most part, we do not have a record of Aleister Crowley’s encounter with Choronzon"

                  Correct. Crowley wasn't saying anything. Read the Cry of the 10th Aethyr in The Vision & the Voice - unlike all 29 other chapters, this is not Crowley reciting the events that were occurring. He's deep in meditation, oblivious to everything going on. Victor is just continuing to take down what happened (which includes words coming out of Crowley's mouth as the voice of Choronzon). Read the actual record! It's one of the most widely available occult works ever.

                  "• But there is one detail the text does not give – which, in fact, Crowley went out of his way to obscure. It is virtually certain that Crowley placed himself in the triangle to serve as the living basis for the manifestation of Choronzon. That is, he invoked Choronzon into himself."

                  Technically a conclusion - although FWIW one that you started with also. The evidence is in the record, between the lines.

                  "• What is truly extraordinary, though, is that Neuburg, even late in life, insisted to his intimates that this is not what happened – that he literally fought a demon in the desert that day. "

                  From interviews with him by Jean Overton FUller in her seminal biography of Victor.

                  "Who is writing all this? And who cares what this person thinks? Not me! He was not there!"

                  OK. If you don't care what I think, I'll stop answering your questions. In fact, I'll take a few minutes and go back and delete other answers I've given you, which obviously are just a waste of space to you here.

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • R redd fezz
                    Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                    What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                    www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                    According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                    As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                    My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                    Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                    It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                    Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                    We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                    I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                    But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                    R Offline
                    R Offline
                    redd fezz
                    wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 8:00 AM last edited by
                    #33

                    Oh, sorry Jim. I thought you were quoting something else. But, it is at least nice to know that this was your writing, which I initially understood to be the case, anyway. I don't mean to imply that your impressions are worthless, just that-- well, like I said-- you weren't there. Can't you see that? I'm sure all your ideas are very poignant and meaninful, with Qabalistic merit and everything, but you can't know what the hell was going on there in Victor's head or how "well" he did, can you?

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • R redd fezz
                      Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                      What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                      www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                      According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                      As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                      My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                      Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                      It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                      Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                      We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                      I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                      But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                      J Offline
                      J Offline
                      Jim Eshelman
                      wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 8:08 AM last edited by
                      #34

                      @Redd Fezz said

                      "Oh, sorry Jim. I thought you were quoting something else. But, it is at least nice to know that this was your writing, which I initially understood to be the case, anyway."

                      That probably would explain why I began the post saying, "Excerpts from my commentary on The Cry of the 10th Aethyr," right? 🙄

                      "I don't mean to imply that your impressions are worthless,"

                      You didn't imply that at all. Instead, you explicitly stated that you do not care what I think.

                      "just that-- well, like I said-- you weren't there. Can't you see that?"

                      Neither were you. Neither was the person you originally quoted. There were only two people there. My remarks are based entirely on the written record that they prepared together and an interview that one of them gave to his primary biographer.

                      Nonetheless, I'll now get out of your way and go back to deleting answers I've given you in other threads. (I got about a dozen of them deleted before you posted the above.)

                      "but you can't know what the hell was going on there in Victor's head or how "well" he did, can you?"

                      Of course I can tell how well he did! We have a record! We know, minute by minute, what he did. We...

                      ...Erp. Excuse me. I slipped and started answering you again. Sorry. Won't happen again.

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • R redd fezz
                        Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                        What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                        www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                        According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                        As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                        My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                        Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                        It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                        Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                        We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                        I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                        But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                        R Offline
                        R Offline
                        redd fezz
                        wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 8:12 AM last edited by
                        #35

                        @Jim Eshelman said

                        "
                        @Redd Fezz said
                        "Oh, sorry Jim. I thought you were quoting something else. But, it is at least nice to know that this was your writing, which I initially understood to be the case, anyway."

                        That probably would explain why I began the post saying, "Excerpts from my commentary on The Cry of the 10th Aethyr," right? 🙄 "

                        Hey, so sue me for not noticing the word "my".

                        @Jim Eshelman said

                        "
                        "I don't mean to imply that your impressions are worthless,"

                        You didn't imply that at all. Instead, you explicitly stated that you do not care what I think. "

                        Yes, but that's different from implying your impressions are worthless, for I was making a specific comment relative to a specific experience.

                        @Jim Eshelman said

                        "
                        "just that-- well, like I said-- you weren't there. Can't you see that?"

                        Neither were you. Neither was the person you originally quoted. There were only two people there. My remarks are based entirely on the written record that they prepared together and an interview that one of them gave to his primary biographer."

                        Right. My remarks were based entirely on the record and my own imagination, too.

                        @Jim Eshelman said

                        "Nonetheless, I'll now get out of your way and go back to deleting answers I've given you in other threads. (I got about a dozen of them deleted before you posted the above.)"

                        Whatever you feel is the right thing to do.

                        @Jim Eshelman said

                        "
                        "but you can't know what the hell was going on there in Victor's head or how "well" he did, can you?"

                        Of course I can tell how well he did! We have a record! We know, minute by minute, what he did. We...

                        ...Erp. Excuse me. I slipped and started answering you again. Sorry. Won't happen again."

                        No problem.

                        1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • R redd fezz
                          Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                          What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                          www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                          According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                          As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                          My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                          Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                          It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                          Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                          We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                          I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                          But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                          H Offline
                          H Offline
                          Heru
                          wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 8:47 AM last edited by
                          #36

                          Great thread guys. Very interesting.
                          But is it just me or is it getting a little hot in here? 😉

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • R redd fezz
                            Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                            What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                            www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                            According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                            As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                            My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                            Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                            It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                            Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                            We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                            I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                            But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                            R Offline
                            R Offline
                            redd fezz
                            wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 2:48 PM last edited by
                            #37

                            Re-reading this whole mess in the light of day, I still don't see what the big deal was. I feel bad that I apparently seem to have hurt the feelings of a guy who's gone out of his way to help me and everyone understand Thelema. And since it's his forums, I guess I'll just be kind of backing off now. I"m not sure Crowley is a good fit for me, afterall, anyway.

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • R redd fezz
                              Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                              What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                              www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                              According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                              As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                              My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                              Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                              It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                              Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                              We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                              I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                              But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                              E Offline
                              E Offline
                              Edward Mason
                              wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 3:21 PM last edited by
                              #38

                              RF, 93,

                              How about just looking at all of this, and then quietly meditating on what the big deal was? Because obviously, it <b>was</b> a big deal, and therefore there's very valuable information in here for you - and about you. Don't post to the forum about it, or try to get conscious control over the data. Just let it stew just at the back of your consciousness for a few days.

                              One thing I do note is your reference to all the uncontrolled manifestations you mentioned in your J's Witnesses phase and in your occult work. That seems, to my eye, to relate somehow to your concern over such things happening in the Tunisian desert a century ago. I don't want to feed my own ideas in here, so I won't, other than saying I bet there's something of value to reflect on there.

                              93 93/93,

                              Edward

                              1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • R redd fezz
                                Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                                What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                                www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                                According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                                As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                                My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                                Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                                It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                                Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                                We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                                I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                                But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                                R Offline
                                R Offline
                                redd fezz
                                wrote on Jul 29, 2006, 4:14 PM last edited by
                                #39

                                @Edward Mason said

                                "RF, 93,

                                How about just looking at all of this, and then quietly meditating on what the big deal was? Because obviously, it <b>was</b> a big deal, and therefore there's very valuable information in here for you - and about you. Don't post to the forum about it, or try to get conscious control over the data. Just let it stew just at the back of your consciousness for a few days.

                                One thing I do note is your reference to all the uncontrolled manifestations you mentioned in your J's Witnesses phase and in your occult work. That seems, to my eye, to relate somehow to your concern over such things happening in the Tunisian desert a century ago. I don't want to feed my own ideas in here, so I won't, other than saying I bet there's something of value to reflect on there.

                                93 93/93,

                                Edward"

                                I really don't think it was a big deal. That was my whole point in trying to get down to the nitty gritty of this whole situation. It sounds like Crowley tried to take the "quick and dirty" road to enlightenment and came back with ideas nobody had ever heard of before.

                                How it ties in with my JW history is really simple: if something goes flying across the room, I wouldn't expect whatever threw it to enlighten me. Same thing with the "demons in my head" remark (I was referring to magical operations combined with different psychedelics at different times); after enduring hours of fear and insanity, including all sorts of visions (and I really thought my life and mind were over), in the end I got through it. It certainly doesn't mean I knew what I was doing.

                                In fact, to give you an idea how MUCH I didn't know what I was doing, one semi-recent pathworking of Yesod (no psychedelics, I don't do them anymore) ended with alligators leaping out of the water, much to my surprise, slipping under my feet and running me into the sunrise like a pair of water skiis, but I had no clue Horus had any relation to Diana or Yesod or that he was ever pictured standing on the back of crocodiles! I only discovered that after some Googling trying to figure out wtf happened. Once I realized a definite experience was there, I actually <i>did</i> do a psychedelic ritual for the first time in YEARS on April Fool's day of this year using baby hawaiian rosewood seeds. I certainly felt like I went to the Abyss and back! It was horrific, but by the end I felt "reborn." It was very hard to put into words-- so I stopped trying! I've basically forgotten about it at this point. I have a theory that anything you forget isn't worth remembering. The idea that someone lived through a frightening demonic experience does not mean much to me, in general! Except, maybe, that they played with the bull and got the horns. Maybe play with something more friendly next time. Certainly, I wouldn't trust anything that resulted from the experience.

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • R redd fezz
                                  Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                                  What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                                  www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                                  According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                                  As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                                  My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                                  Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                                  It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                                  Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                                  We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                                  I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                                  But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                                  R Offline
                                  R Offline
                                  redd fezz
                                  wrote on Jul 30, 2006, 4:29 AM last edited by
                                  #40

                                  It's funny to me that this thread at one time made mention of Jean Fuller's high opinion of Crowley and Victor Neuburg's long and successful career which led to his discovery of Dylan Thomas. Funny because if I didn't look her up, I wouldn't have known she apparently authored a book, which I've just ordered, called "The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg," which explains the sordid details of their relationship based on the unpublished magical records of both Neuburg and Crowley... and that Neuburg left the A.'.A.'. when he concluded Crowley was insane.

                                  P.S. #333 makes a good number for my final post on heruraha... sorry if I offended anyone and thanks to all who helped me to understand more and realize this is not the path for me. Finally!

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • R redd fezz
                                    Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                                    What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                                    www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                                    According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                                    As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                                    My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                                    Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                                    It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                                    Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                                    We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                                    I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                                    But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                                    J Offline
                                    J Offline
                                    Jim Eshelman
                                    wrote on Aug 2, 2006, 2:38 PM last edited by
                                    #41

                                    BABALON

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • R redd fezz
                                      Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                                      What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                                      www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                                      According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                                      As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                                      My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                                      Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                                      It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                                      Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                                      We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                                      I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                                      But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                                      J Offline
                                      J Offline
                                      Jonathan
                                      wrote on Jan 10, 2008, 11:02 PM last edited by
                                      #42

                                      @Jim Eshelman said

                                      "BABALON"

                                      LOL in light of this whole thread, thats classic.. haha

                                      i actually enjoyed the information jim provided in relationship to the working in this post

                                      1 Reply Last reply
                                      0
                                      • R redd fezz
                                        Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                                        What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                                        www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                                        According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                                        As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                                        My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                                        Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                                        It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                                        Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                                        We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                                        I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                                        But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                                        G Offline
                                        G Offline
                                        gerry456
                                        wrote on Jan 10, 2008, 11:42 PM last edited by
                                        #43

                                        @Redd Fezz said

                                        "What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                                        www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                                        According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                                        ?"

                                        was it Colin Wilson who said that Neuberg was the only person Crowley genuinely loved?

                                        1 Reply Last reply
                                        0
                                        • R redd fezz
                                          Jul 28, 2006, 3:20 PM

                                          What do you make of this guy's experiences with Crowley? Sounds like he was really put through the ringer!

                                          www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html

                                          According to this link, Crowley verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused him. Neuberg wrote in his magical diary, that Crowley "is apparently a homo-sexual [sic] sadist.…He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction."

                                          As for the rest of the linked article, in general, it just sounds like a completely careless crash course in magick, which put both Crowley and Neuberg in harm's way. I understand that Crowley was feeling out new territory, so I'm not disregarding or putting down his fearless pioneering.

                                          My impressions of this will probably not be popular, but I have to be honest for the sake of perhaps getting some other opinions or a broader take on it...

                                          Are these experiences anything like the finalized, um, course work for the A.'.A.'.?

                                          It sounds, to me, literally, insane. Since he'd been schooled in the use of drugs by Bennett prior to his full-throttle magickal madness, I suspect it was pretty insane. In my past, I enjoyed/endured an extended period of intense psychedelic drug use. Nothing can warp your mind like psychedelics. As I read this, all I could think of were two hallucinating loonies reminiscent of the a Manson Family situation or the CIA's MK-ULTRA program; one loony, Victor Neuberg, being the victim of Crowley's megalomaniac mind-control experiments (for example, Crowley insisting he shave his hair into 2 horns as Crowley's trained, submissive "familiar spirit") and the other a power-tripping loony (Crowley). As Timothy Leary pointed out, it's all about Set and Setting. Poor Victor Neuberg! I've witnessed this sort of relationship in the lives of some of my broken, acid-casualty friends. More than a few turned into mind-gaming, twisted assholes on LSD, but one fellow in particular, Martin, was an absolute sadist and could convince you to do anything harmful to yourself for his own amusement, on a total power-trip. And he was more and more convinced of his superiority. This is a well-known aspect of psychedelics called "delusions of grandeur". But, Martin was also a textbook definition of a sociopath. The victims of this sort of abuse end up like my friends who endured Martin's torment: broken, nervous wrecks, committed and/or medicated. Kind of like what happened to Syd Barret after his "friends" locked him in a cupboard for a few days on acid.

                                          Over and over, Crowley does not seem to have acted in line with his words. He has written at some length about that bad old Ego that must be destroyed and the utter ignorance of anyone who would be so foolish as to practice black magick... Meanwhile, he never stopped being a raging ego, did he? He claimed to have performed black magick (magickal attacks) and the methods here described with Neuberg could certainly raise an eyebrow or two. Anyways, if every act is a magickal act, wouldn't domineering behavior be considered black magick? I think so.

                                          We know Crowley thought the flowery language of term "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" was ridiculous enough to indicate something else to the intelligent student, but what of Crowley's other purple prose, such that one must "sacrfice every last drop into the Graal" lest he become a Black Brother? Is he really just talking about being sodomized in the desert by his slave-student with his hair shaved to resemble "horns"? Because Crowley described this experience thusly: "I sacrificed myself. The fire of the all-seeing sun smote down upon the altar, consuming every particle of my personality." Some might call that an idealized interpretation, to say the least. Like me, for instance. I don't care if your slave-student was possessed by Pan (and I'm not saying he was, either)-- taking it up the backend is hardly a grand sacrifice. Especially if you go right back to being a prick afterwards. What has really changed? The goal is change, isn't it? Tempering those 7 metals? Internal alchemy and whatnot?

                                          I've gone through periods like this before where I'll read something distasteful Crowley has written or done and then I take into account the times he lived in and all that and I'll read one of his more inspiring passages and chalk the whole thing up to his just being human. But, having recently read the thread comparing Buddhas and Ipsissimuses (Ipsissimi?), I take notice of the fact that the much older ideas of Buddhas didn't include bigotry or egotism. They were all about humility and compassion, which are two things Crowley seemed to have disregarded at will or forgot about occasionally.

                                          But back to the main quesiton: Is this the kind of stuff that goes on today in Crowley/Thelema-based orders?

                                          J Offline
                                          J Offline
                                          Jim Eshelman
                                          wrote on Mar 6, 2009, 5:49 AM last edited by
                                          #44

                                          @RifRaf said

                                          "I was wondering how you (Jim) came to the conclusion that the name ZAX = Leo, Taurus, Earth? Z = Leo, A = Taurus, and X = Earth? Assuming this is how you would put this together, how does the lettering match with the Zodiac/Elemental correspondences?"

                                          This has been gone over in a couple of places, including a table I put in No. 1 of Black Pearl. 16 of the Enochian letters are traditionally related to the 16 geomantic figures, which in turn have astrological correspondences. Crowley attributed the elements to the remaining letters. These became the template of his visions: He would formulate his "contact image" or "seed image" for the visions from the sequence or composite of these three ideas.

                                          "Or is there an Enochian Correspondence chart or something I haven't seen yet?"

                                          Apparently you haven't 😀

                                          "Basically I am just wondering how you came to that conclusion because it would be nice to construct the same for all Aethyrs, that is, sets of Trumps to meditate upon to get the "feeling" of an Aethyr."

                                          Here's the table. (Note that Crowley did a few of the visions without his references with him, and he made a couple of accidental letter swaps.)

                                          A Taurus
                                          B Aries
                                          C/K Fire
                                          D Spirit
                                          E Virgo
                                          F Cauda Draconis
                                          G Leo (Sun in N. Declination)
                                          H Air
                                          I/Y Sagittarius
                                          L Cancer (Moon Waning)
                                          M Aquarius
                                          N Scorpio
                                          O Libra
                                          P Cancer (Moon Waxing)
                                          Q Water
                                          R Pisces
                                          S Gemini
                                          T Caput Draconis
                                          U/V Capricorn
                                          X Earth
                                          Z Leo (Sun in S. Declination)

                                          1 Reply Last reply
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