Crowley: Junkie Mystic
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We all know about Crowley's appetites. Some of us may have even followed in his footsteps (raises hand)... I would even dare to say that one can't understand where he was coming from until one has been successfully addicted to heroin (not difficult).
All this discipline. All this practice to tame the mind and tendencies. How could he preach and do all that he did "for mankind" while riding the white pony to his death-bed? Is this just another classic case of "do what I say and not what I do" ?
"take strange drugs unto me" I'd say a lifetime of heroin addiction makes that drug very NOT strange to him. I could see the value if his experience with H was an experimental or rituallistic use, but it wasn't. He was a drop-dead junkie, hands down... not to mention the sex addiction as well..
Don't get me wrong.. I'm still a fan. His photo is still on my wall, next to the buddha.
What's my point? I guess I wonder who has followed his footsteps in this regard. Can we take what we want from the man and declare ourselves Thelemites? What Themite is willing to dive into the deep sea of addiction in order realize what it was like to be Crowley? I, for one, feel a little cheated and lied to. Personally, I believe he was lying to himself the whole time. He died an addict. How's that for discipline?
\Marz -
How about you be you. You don't need to be Crowley.
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@Marzipan93 said
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What's my point? I guess I wonder who has followed his footsteps in this regard. Can we take what we want from the man and declare ourselves Thelemites? What Themite is willing to dive into the deep sea of addiction in order realize what it was like to be Crowley? I, for one, feel a little cheated and lied to. Personally, I believe he was lying to himself the whole time. He died an addict. How's that for discipline?
\Marz"I'd be careful saying he had a "lifetime" of addiction. As I understand it, he only really got addicted during the Cefalu period and for a bit thereafter, but AFAIK he did indeed kick the habit some time in the mid 1920s and was clean through the 1930s. The addiction of his last few years was the result of a doctor prescribing morphine as prophylaxis for an ailment he was suffering, and him getting re-addicted. (Presumably by that time he was past caring.)
I tend to cut him a lot of slack because of the pressure he was under. It can't have been an easy job being Prophet of a new Aeon, and a constant propaganda victim of the tabloid press and sundry unsavoury "old Aeon" elements.
OTOH, I've never felt compelled to imitate him, and I think it would be foolish to do so. If one were to imitate his drug addiction, ought one not also imitate his mountain climbing?
Again, AFAIK, he himself referred to that sort of "imitatio Crowley" as obsession by the Demon Crowley.
You best honour Crowley by being natural, being honest and being yourself, I think.
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Crowley's heroin addiction is hard to look down upon when you look at the time he lived in. Addiction was something almost everybody was dealing with in their lives, of some sort. Then, his later life heroin use was a medical situation that got out of hand and an example of why heroin is no longer used for asthmatics. You can not judge people from other times based on modern standards, otherwise great men & women's accomplishments would become meaningless. Martin Luther, for example, was a great man, but he was also a sexist, zealot etc. but looking at what he accomplished in his era (not Dr. King) he is one of the central and most important figures of the era that brought about necessary, positive change and is a positive figure in history.
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I was addicted to opiates before I really got into Crowley and kicked before seriously devoting my life to my Thelemic practice. Funnily enough, the spiritual side of 12 step support groups really got the ball rolling for me and Thelema. I was a daily opiate user on and off for seven years with habits extending well beyond years. Several of my best friends are dead including one I thought I would marry someday. To say that quitting opiates (and maintaining abstinence) is difficult is a gross understatement but to imply kicking an addiction as a prerequisite to real mysticism is a joke.
While I would never have been able to stop using opiates without some profound spiritual realization that made me understand my existence in a different way, the idea that it is necessary is absurd. What I gained from kicking my habit was the ability to adapt to and cope with my life. Something of this nature could easily happen via the traumatic passing of a loved one or sustaining some serious injury. Life is full of ordeals and we are who we are by how we grow to conquer them. Some live to tell about it and some don't.
I would never wish anyone to have to go through the devastating effects of an addiction, likewise for their families. To focus upon Crowley's addiction is to miss the point entirely, and also to be seduced by the glamour of it (which is never the way it looks in movies or sounds in books). For some reason addiction is romanticized in Western culture and I can tell you from experience, it's a load of shit. A load of shit I bought hook, line, and sinker. If I had known then what I know now... Heroin and opiates to me have really always meant one MAJOR thing and that is A WASTE OF TIME. I'm sure any junky knows exactly what I'm talking about. Watch years of your life disappear while you do NOTHING. What a waste. Of course I learned a lot from it but life has a way of teaching you tough lessons regardless. Better keep the needle out of your arm and spare your loved ones a little grief. Read Crowley's work and practice his techniques for spiritual attainment as he was one of the most sincere seekers I have found but as the chap above said be yourself, not Crowley. I have yet to find a copy of Liber H (I am aware of Liber HHH and it has NOTHING to do with heroin).
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Oh for f***'s sake, has no-one actually read the history of this? Crowley was prescribed Diamorphine for the bronchitis he developed after the Kanchenchunga expedition of 1905, he did not use it for pleasure or magical purposes. He was deeply addicted early on, and was prescribed a new miracle cure for it, Cocaine, before doctors finally realised that was addictive too - Freud was a coke-head as well. His first recorded attempt to give up is in Liber Tzba, which I published in the early 1990's and which dates to 1918, years before Cefalu.
He remained addicted all his life, he was not clean in the 1930s.
And if anyone, ever again, says i can't understand Crowley or Thelema without becoming a junkie myself, I would point out that Diamorphine was first introduced to Crowley the year after the reception of Liber Al, and I do not need , in a day and age where heroin (the brand name by which Diamorphine was sold in the USA) is understood, to act like a twat to be a better magician.