Crowley on spirit
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In response to various claims that Aleister Crowley wasn't talking about spiritual matters in his writings, I'm going to occasionally post small items as I come across them. In the poem at the start of One Star in Sight, written in the 1920s to be part of Magick in Theory & Practice, we find the following verse on the human condition. (I've given the whole poem, but put the verse I want to highlight in bold.)
*Thy feet in mire, thine head in murk,
O man, how piteous thy plight,
The doubts that daunt, the ills that irk,
Thou hast nor wit nor will to fight –
How hope in heart, or worth in work?
No star in sight!Thy Gods proved puppets of the priest.
“Truth? All’s relation!” science sighed.
In bondage with thy brother beast,
Love tortured thee, as Love’s hope died
And Love’s faith rotted. Life no least
Dim star descried.Thy cringing carrion cowered and crawled
To find itself a chance-cast clod
Whose Pain was purposeless; appalled
That aimless accident thus trod
Its agony, that void skies sprawled
On the vain sod!*All souls eternally exist,
Each individual, ultimate
Perfect – each makes itself a mist
Of mind and flesh to celebrate
With some twin mask their tender tryst
Insatiate.*Some drunkards, doting on the dream,
Despair that it should die, mistake
Themselves for their own shadow-scheme.
One star can summon them to wake
To self; star-souls serene that gleam
On life’s calm lake.That shall end never that began.
All things endure because they are.
Do what thou wilt, for every man
And every woman is a star.
Pan is not dead; he liveth, Pan!
Break down the bar!To man I come, the number of
A man my number, Lion of Light;
I am The Beast whose Law is Love.
Love under will, his royal right –
Behold within, and not above,
One star in sight!* -
In response to various claims that Aleister Crowley wasn't talking about spiritual matters in his writings, I'm going to occasionally post small items as I come across them. In the poem at the start of One Star in Sight, written in the 1920s to be part of Magick in Theory & Practice, we find the following verse on the human condition. (I've given the whole poem, but put the verse I want to highlight in bold.)
*Thy feet in mire, thine head in murk,
O man, how piteous thy plight,
The doubts that daunt, the ills that irk,
Thou hast nor wit nor will to fight –
How hope in heart, or worth in work?
No star in sight!Thy Gods proved puppets of the priest.
“Truth? All’s relation!” science sighed.
In bondage with thy brother beast,
Love tortured thee, as Love’s hope died
And Love’s faith rotted. Life no least
Dim star descried.Thy cringing carrion cowered and crawled
To find itself a chance-cast clod
Whose Pain was purposeless; appalled
That aimless accident thus trod
Its agony, that void skies sprawled
On the vain sod!*All souls eternally exist,
Each individual, ultimate
Perfect – each makes itself a mist
Of mind and flesh to celebrate
With some twin mask their tender tryst
Insatiate.*Some drunkards, doting on the dream,
Despair that it should die, mistake
Themselves for their own shadow-scheme.
One star can summon them to wake
To self; star-souls serene that gleam
On life’s calm lake.That shall end never that began.
All things endure because they are.
Do what thou wilt, for every man
And every woman is a star.
Pan is not dead; he liveth, Pan!
Break down the bar!To man I come, the number of
A man my number, Lion of Light;
I am The Beast whose Law is Love.
Love under will, his royal right –
Behold within, and not above,
One star in sight!*"The first condition of membership of the A∴A∴ is that one is sworn to identify one's own Great Work with that of raising mankind to higher levels, spiritually, and in every other way."
---Chapter 9 "Magick Without Tears."
"The answer is that it depends on the Angel—for the purposes of this letter I propose to use the word "angel" to include all sorts of disembodied beings, from demons to gods—in all cases, they are objective; a subjective "angel" is different from a dream only in non-essentials."
"I want you to understand that a goddess like Astarte, Astaroth, Cotytto, Aphrodite, Hathoor, Venus, are not merely aspects of the planet; they are separate individuals who have been identified with each other, and attributed to Venus merely because the salient feature in their character approximates to this ideal."
"for I believe that the Holy Guardian Angel is a Being of this order. He is something more than a man, possibly a being who has already passed through the stage of humanity, and his peculiarly intimate relationship with his client is that of friendship, of community, of brotherhood, or Fatherhood. He is not, let me say with emphasis, a mere abstraction from yourself; and that is why I have insisted rather heavily that the term "Higher Self" implies "a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion."
It it were not so, there would be no point in The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage."
"But do remember this, above all else; they are objective, not subjective, or I should not waste good Magick on them."
---Chapter 30, "Magick Without Tears."
"Hence: no a priori reason to deny the existence of conscious intelligences with insensible bodies. Indeed we know of other orders of mind (flies, etc., possibly vegetables) thinking by means of non-human brain-structures."
"It is obviously impossible to communicate with an independent intelligence — the one real object of astral research — if one allows one's imagination to surround one with courtiers of one's own creation."
"The Magician may therefore be confident that Spiritual Beings exist, and seek the Knowledge and conversation of His own Holy Guardian Angel with the same ardour as that of FRATER PERDURABO when He abandoned all: love, wealth, rank, fame, to seek Him. "
---Notes For an Astral Atlas.
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In response to various claims that Aleister Crowley wasn't talking about spiritual matters in his writings, I'm going to occasionally post small items as I come across them. In the poem at the start of One Star in Sight, written in the 1920s to be part of Magick in Theory & Practice, we find the following verse on the human condition. (I've given the whole poem, but put the verse I want to highlight in bold.)
*Thy feet in mire, thine head in murk,
O man, how piteous thy plight,
The doubts that daunt, the ills that irk,
Thou hast nor wit nor will to fight –
How hope in heart, or worth in work?
No star in sight!Thy Gods proved puppets of the priest.
“Truth? All’s relation!” science sighed.
In bondage with thy brother beast,
Love tortured thee, as Love’s hope died
And Love’s faith rotted. Life no least
Dim star descried.Thy cringing carrion cowered and crawled
To find itself a chance-cast clod
Whose Pain was purposeless; appalled
That aimless accident thus trod
Its agony, that void skies sprawled
On the vain sod!*All souls eternally exist,
Each individual, ultimate
Perfect – each makes itself a mist
Of mind and flesh to celebrate
With some twin mask their tender tryst
Insatiate.*Some drunkards, doting on the dream,
Despair that it should die, mistake
Themselves for their own shadow-scheme.
One star can summon them to wake
To self; star-souls serene that gleam
On life’s calm lake.That shall end never that began.
All things endure because they are.
Do what thou wilt, for every man
And every woman is a star.
Pan is not dead; he liveth, Pan!
Break down the bar!To man I come, the number of
A man my number, Lion of Light;
I am The Beast whose Law is Love.
Love under will, his royal right –
Behold within, and not above,
One star in sight!* -
In response to various claims that Aleister Crowley wasn't talking about spiritual matters in his writings, I'm going to occasionally post small items as I come across them. In the poem at the start of One Star in Sight, written in the 1920s to be part of Magick in Theory & Practice, we find the following verse on the human condition. (I've given the whole poem, but put the verse I want to highlight in bold.)
*Thy feet in mire, thine head in murk,
O man, how piteous thy plight,
The doubts that daunt, the ills that irk,
Thou hast nor wit nor will to fight –
How hope in heart, or worth in work?
No star in sight!Thy Gods proved puppets of the priest.
“Truth? All’s relation!” science sighed.
In bondage with thy brother beast,
Love tortured thee, as Love’s hope died
And Love’s faith rotted. Life no least
Dim star descried.Thy cringing carrion cowered and crawled
To find itself a chance-cast clod
Whose Pain was purposeless; appalled
That aimless accident thus trod
Its agony, that void skies sprawled
On the vain sod!*All souls eternally exist,
Each individual, ultimate
Perfect – each makes itself a mist
Of mind and flesh to celebrate
With some twin mask their tender tryst
Insatiate.*Some drunkards, doting on the dream,
Despair that it should die, mistake
Themselves for their own shadow-scheme.
One star can summon them to wake
To self; star-souls serene that gleam
On life’s calm lake.That shall end never that began.
All things endure because they are.
Do what thou wilt, for every man
And every woman is a star.
Pan is not dead; he liveth, Pan!
Break down the bar!To man I come, the number of
A man my number, Lion of Light;
I am The Beast whose Law is Love.
Love under will, his royal right –
Behold within, and not above,
One star in sight!* -
In response to various claims that Aleister Crowley wasn't talking about spiritual matters in his writings, I'm going to occasionally post small items as I come across them. In the poem at the start of One Star in Sight, written in the 1920s to be part of Magick in Theory & Practice, we find the following verse on the human condition. (I've given the whole poem, but put the verse I want to highlight in bold.)
*Thy feet in mire, thine head in murk,
O man, how piteous thy plight,
The doubts that daunt, the ills that irk,
Thou hast nor wit nor will to fight –
How hope in heart, or worth in work?
No star in sight!Thy Gods proved puppets of the priest.
“Truth? All’s relation!” science sighed.
In bondage with thy brother beast,
Love tortured thee, as Love’s hope died
And Love’s faith rotted. Life no least
Dim star descried.Thy cringing carrion cowered and crawled
To find itself a chance-cast clod
Whose Pain was purposeless; appalled
That aimless accident thus trod
Its agony, that void skies sprawled
On the vain sod!*All souls eternally exist,
Each individual, ultimate
Perfect – each makes itself a mist
Of mind and flesh to celebrate
With some twin mask their tender tryst
Insatiate.*Some drunkards, doting on the dream,
Despair that it should die, mistake
Themselves for their own shadow-scheme.
One star can summon them to wake
To self; star-souls serene that gleam
On life’s calm lake.That shall end never that began.
All things endure because they are.
Do what thou wilt, for every man
And every woman is a star.
Pan is not dead; he liveth, Pan!
Break down the bar!To man I come, the number of
A man my number, Lion of Light;
I am The Beast whose Law is Love.
Love under will, his royal right –
Behold within, and not above,
One star in sight!*"[Font:Sarcasm] Obviously this is one of those areas where Crowley got it wrong. [/font]"
Luckily this thread isn't about whether Crowley was wrong....it is about showing that it is wrong to state that Crowley was a hard faced materialist who never believed in spiritual experience. Anyone who thinks that is wrong!
MWT is my favorite book of Crowley's (non class A), I view it as a chat between two people without barriers and bullshit.
"Lol... How long you been sittin' on those quotes, Mark?"
A while, it just takes me a long time to remember where I read things!