College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

I am curious, what books have been the most influential on you concerning magick?

I have a variety of books, I am always reading and learning. I have been familiar with Magick for a few years now but only a serious neophyte for about a year and i feel like i have learned quiet a bit.

my first book was

Modern Magick by Dondald Michael kraig

it was a good start as someone very unaware and new.

here are a list of some of the books that have been important to me. I would love to have open discussion on any of them.. not all of them directly concern magick, but they are related in one way or another.

-Liber Null & Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic by Peter J. Carroll
-Magick: Book 4, Liber Aba (Magick Bk. 4) (Bk.4) by Aleister Crowley
-Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
-Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult by Richard Metzger and Grant Morrison
-NLP: The New Technology of Achievement by NLP Comprehensive, Steve Andreas, and Charles Faulkner
-The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot
-cosmic Trigger I : Final Secret of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson

i just picked up these books which I am reading now

-The Magick of Thelema: A Handbook of the Rituals of Aleister Crowley by Lon Milo DuQuette
-Mystical Qabalah by Dion Fortune

i have also read other random .pdf documents and ebooks floating around out there

Overall Prometheus Rising is probably the single most important book for me on that list because it really helped to decondition myself. It was a real eye opener and catalyst for my growth, and I can always rely on "maybe logic" which this book really introduced me to.

Then again when i start thinking about Book 4... maybe that is just as important to me as Prometheus.

Thank you for your responses.

I did not think that Book 4 contained any themes of "attacking" others, or contain any negativity in regards to hurting others. This was just something that someone else was mentioning. I am a big advocate of "maybe logic" so i usually view claims like this with a skeptical eye. I just wanted to see what this forum had to say about such claims.

Since we are talking about Book 4, I have another question.

Earlier this week someone told me that Book 4 is often referred to as the "Big Blue Brick" and they also called it the "War Book" because there are some elements about the book that teach one how to attack others. I haven't quiet found it to be about that...

They also claimed that Crowley wrote Moon Child with the intent of it being one big magickal attack on his enemies.

I have not read Moon Child

I was just interested to hear the thoughts and comments of others who have more experience with Crowley's work than I do. Although I don't dismiss it entirely, from what I know so far it doesn't seem like Crowley's style

I like to be a positive person so these sort of practices aren't appealing to me.

Thank you,

This does shed light. I will have to do some more research on the lady of babalon and this chapter in general.

Hello,

This is my first post and I needed to find a place to discuss. I have been studying magick for 9 months now and although I would not consider myself a follower of Thelema, I do identify with a lot of what I have learned from it thus far. I have been reading Book four for about 7 weeks. I just went through Chapter XI and I found the chapter to be very mysterious. I didn't understand much of what was being told and I had a hard time deciding if Crowley was speaking in literal terms or symbolic/abstract terms.

Would anyone care to share with me their interpretation of this chapter or share what they have come to know from it?

Who is the lady babalon?

is this chapter referring to astral travel?

is it related to Merkahbah mysticism?

why does Crowley suggest that the majority of the topics in chapter XI are not actually revealed and are instead kept secret for his close students?

Please help an avid student