Is There A Way Out? Part Two

In the "Is There A Way Out" series I had wanted to talk a bit about transcendental psychological experiences. I would still like to look at some of these-well actually tto kind of keep various aspects of Gnostic thought/philosophy-in view during the whole series-to look at the question "Is there a way out?" in the light of this world/reality being a "Demiurgic" or fallen world of matter. Perhaps I am chasing down a wrong path? To many people, there really might not be a darn thing wrong with the world we "have." I think the description of the whys and hows if you will of how our world came to be in Gnostic thought are what fascinate me the most. A comment by the very intelligent and thoughtful Justin Russell under part one of this series reminded me not only of this aspect of my fascination -but also that perhaps NO philosophy, science or religion will ever even come close to describing all of reality. I think Kurt Godel "proved" something along these lines mathematically or using "logic" but I looked at the proof ages ago and didn't understand a bit of it (which is not surprising! although I did understand Cantor and transfinite numbers:-) I am using many sources and hope I don't get off-track or hard to understand.

The reason I would like to talk about Stanislav Grof's work in transcendental psychotherapy might not be obvious at first. I wanted to look at his work, not only because of the fascinating revelations and discoveries he had while working with people from all walks of life-but also to see if any discoveries he made give us any clues of why there is so much evil in the world-why our world is "fallen" and disjointed. This isn't, of course, to say that there isn't any good in the world-there is-and there is good, truth and beauty in enormous amounts on our little planet. It is just that with me -not only looking over all of history- but the amount of blood spilled in the century we got "done" with a little over ten years ago -the "Century of the Sun" so to speak -that there MUST be something that explains those extra touches of evil embodied in the horrors that befell hundreds of millions of people during that time ( I sure hope this century is different!).

From pages 30-32, Stanislav Grof explains some "essentials" about his work in his Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death And Transcendence In Psychotherapy, published in 1985: "The most important and obvious reason for limiting this discussion to the field of psychedelic research is my long-term scientific interest in the subject. Having conducted several thousand sessions with LSD and other mind-altering substances, and having myself experienced many psychedelic states, I have a degree of expertise concerning drug-induced phenomena that I lack in regard to other types of related experiences (note again that Grof is probably writing this in 1984 and has accumulated much more knowledge in other areas since then) Since 1954, when I first became interested in and familiar with psychedelic drugs, I have personally guided more than 3,000 sessions with LSD and have access to more than 2,000 records of sessions conducted by my colleagues, in Czechoslovakia and the United States. The subjects in these experiments where "normal" volunteers, various groups of psychiatric patients, and individuals dying of cancer. The nonpatient population consisted of psychiatrists and psychologists, scientists from various other disciplines, artists, philosophers and theologians, students, and psychiatric nurses. The patients with emotional disorders belonged to a variety of diagnostic categories, among them individuals with various forms of depression, psychoneurotics, alcoholics, narcotic drug addicts, sexual deviants, persons with psychiatric disorders, borderline psychotics, and schizophrenics.

...During the years of my clinical work with psychedelics, it has become increasingly obvious that neither the nature of the LSD experience nor the numerous observations made in the course of psycedelic therapy can be adequately explained in terms of the Newtonian-Cartesian, mechanistic approach to the universe and, more specifically, in terms of existing neurophysiological models of the brain. After years of conceptual struggle with confusion, I have concluded that the data from LSD research indicate an urgent need for a drastic revision of the existing paradigms for psychology, psychiatry, medicine, and possibly science in general. There is at present little doubt in my mind that our current understanding of the universe, of the nature of reality, and particularly of human beings, is superficial, incorrect and incomplete.

In what follows, I will briefly describe the most important observations from LSD psychotherapy that I consider to be serious challenges to contemporary psychiatric theory, to present medical beliefs, and go to the mechanistic model of the universe based on the views of Isaac Newton and Rene Descartes. Some of these observations are related to certain formal charactertistics of the psychedelic states, others to their content, and yet others to some extraordinary connections that seem to exist between them and the fabric of external reality.

(emphasis mine)

I emphasize again at this point that the following discussion applies not only to psychedelic states, but also to a variety of nonordinary states of consciousness, that occur spontaneously or are introduced by nondrug means. Thus, all the issues in question have general validity for the understanding of the human mind and disease.

Let me begin with a brief description of the formal characteristics of nonordinary states of consciousness. In psychedelic sessions and other types of unusual experiences, dramatic sequences of various kinds can be experienced with a sensory vividness, reality, and intensity that match or surpass the ordinary perception of the material world. Although the optical aspects of these sequences tend to be prominent for most people, quite realistic experiences can occur in all the other sensory areas. On occasion, powerful isolated sounds, human and animal voices, entire musical sequences, intense physical pain and other somatic sensations, as well as distinct tastes and smells can dominate the experience or play an important part in it.

Ideation can be influenced in the most profound way, and the intellect can create interpretations of reality quite different from the one that is characteristic of the individual in his or her ordinary state of consciousness. The description of the essential experiential elements of unusual states of consciousness would not be complete without mentioning an entire range of powerful emotions that are their standard components.

Many psychedelic experiences appear to have a general quality similar to those in everyday life, with the sequences occurring in three-dimensional space and unfolding along a linear time continuum. However, quite typically, additional dimensions and experiential alternatives are readily available. The psychedelic state has a multilevel and multidimensional quality, and the Newtonian-Cartesian sequences, if they occur, appear to be arbitarily teased out of a complex continuum of infinite possibilities.

(emphasis mine)

At the same time, they have all the characteristics that we associate with the perception of the material world of "objective reality."

There is more after this in the same section of Stan Grof's book that I want to put here next. I hope anyone stopping by will enjoy reading this, and once again appreciate the thoughtful and intelligent comments. All the best to anyone stopping by!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof

http://www.stanislavgrof.com/

Is There A Way Out? Part One

Although certain topics I would like to put before you might not seem to directly involve Gnostic belief structures, I would like to see if people who read this blog agree that I am still essentially talking about the basic Gnostic philosophy or not. It seems to me that a great deal of Gnostic thought and discussion centers around the belief that this world we inhabit is a "false" world created by a "false" god. There may be some disagreement as to the degree of falseness of both the material world and the "god" who created it. There is definitely a huge degree of debate about the nature of the Demiurge or "false" god. To some, this being is essentially good but misguided. To others, the Demiurge is an utter imbecile or fool. And to many the Demiurge is the very embodiment of evil.

Perhaps an example of the degree of how fake our own three-dimensional world is would be the theory that we don't even inhabit a material world at all. This is what has come to be loosely known as the "Matrix" or "Simulation Argument." In this theory, which I have discussed before here in some of the "nature of reality" posts-all you see around you-and you yourself are an illusion created by a vast supercomputer -or something very much like one. Many people might be tempted to laugh at the "Matrix" theory or "Simulation Argument"--and I don't like the idea myself-but the idea that our world is projected by a hugely powerful computer (again computer might be too weak of an analogy-but the idea it evokes is appropriate) solves an uncomfortably large number of problems in modern physics. The "Bottom Layer" site on my blog under the "great links" section goes into this in great detail and will guide anyone interested through the intricacies of the theory much better than I can.

Whatever the true nature of our world is, there are many reasons Gnosticism intrigues me. There are two major reasons that come to me immediately all the time. Remember the three types of human personalities discussed in a prior post? The pneumatikoi or "spirituals"-people who have awakened to their real divine nature through gnosis. The psychikoi or psychics, whose soul-nature may be guided by faith, but who will still need exceptional effort to gain enlightenment. Lastly, there are the hylikoi or hylics ("materials")-these people are only aware of matter, material things. They only belong to matter and because of this they don't have any chance of enlightenment. From the spiritual point of view they are already dead. I find this categorization very interesting, for what it says to me is that there are varying degrees a person is "stuck" in matter-the gross, physical material world.

I am not saying that this way of classifying people is one-hundred percent correct by any means, but aspects of the three states remind me of myself and other people. I do feel that there is some aspect of my being that is not attached to this world- a little spark here and there-a little light that is both divine and "me" at the same time. I really do feel that I "have" a body and don't feel as if I am "only" a body. There are even times that I have dreams where I feel I am really somewhere else and not just a sleeping body whose matter based brain's neurons are discharging and creating an inside movie.

The problem is that these insights and intuitions seem to occupy about one to two percent of my reality and the other 98 to 99 percent is concerned with surviving- mentally, physically and psychically in this world. There is also another face to the "surviving" aspect. At first this opposite aspect of surviving-to do more than survive-to enjoy various pleasures seems good or even great but many times I wonder if the pleasure principle, the things that give us joy in the world-of course pain is pleasure to some but lets not go there:-) chains us to the gross material world much more effectively than the painful and unpleasant aspects of life.

On the surface this might seem a stupid way to put it, as no one generally likes pain. But think how often in your daily routine you become obsessed-many times-first and foremost with money. Will I have enough money to pay my bills? Will I be "downsized" or let go from work? And to many these days-even in the so-called "modern" or "progressive" nations of the world- Will I be homeless soon? or "What bridge am I going to sleep under tonight? What I am basically trying to say is that for a species which supposedly craves pleasure and despises fear and pain, many people seem to live in a constant state of fear or free-floating anxiety (even when there is no need) -this will also be a very important idea in future posts here in relation to the archons or "rulers"- many Gnostics believes the archons or rulers of our material realm "feed" of psychic energy. A junkie putting a needle into his or her arm and getting the huge (and false -and sometimes fatal) initial rush of pleasure might be the equivalent of Steak Diane with a baked potato and a Caesar salad to an archon. The millions of lives ended or ruined by Hitler and Stalin (not to mention many others) might be like a bacchanalian Roman orgy-and a seven course meal. And perhaps a person having their first smoke of the day is just a Philly Cheesesteak or cheeseburger to them. In other words the archons- the rulers of this world-who serve at the pleasure of the Demiurge -feed off any type of human emotions-but in some Gnostic thought -agony -which there is so much of in this world-is the most exquisite for them.

Tobias Churton in Gnostic Philosophy talks about the history of some of these ideas on pages 23 to 24: We now come to a key Gnostic conception, one that caused consternation to the enemies of Christian gnosis in the second century A.D. Insofar as the Demiurge claimed to be the highest God, then the Demiurge, the awful creator of the material universe, was, for the Gnostics a false god. The Gnostic had seen through his deceptive handiwork, and, free of it by virtue of knowledge, could "look down" on it. Enemies of the Gnostics regarded this posture as one of insufferable arrogance. The radical Gnostic could reply that such a position was as nothing compared to the supreme destructiveness and arrogating offense of the Demiurge-himself the blind god who knows no higher than himself.

In their Secret Book (Apocryphon) of John, written sometime in the second century A.D., we hear of how the Demiurge, here called Ialdaboth, took counsel with the archons and created seven planets-hence the false god's claim to "have none before him." (The zodiac provided the image for the grim fetter that held humans in ignorance, or agnosis: that is, "without gnosis").

I would also like to go to pages 40 and 41 from the same book to give some information about the "Unknown God And The Demiurge: The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus wrote polemics against those who taught of two gods; at the same time, Philo himself called the Logos (the divine instrument of creation) "a second god," "archangel," "Lord," and "Name."

"After Philo's time, Jewish rabbis complained of heretics (minim) who believed that God had a representative who bore his name, Jao (an abbreviation of YHWH, the proper name of God) or Jaoel. These Jewish heretics said that this figure sat on a throne next to God's and was called Metatron. Metatron became a significant figure in what Gershom Scholem called "Jewish Gnosticism," which contains much of what is now generally referred to as the Kabbalah."

"Some dissident Jews, called Magharians, said that all anthropomorphic names in the Hebrew Bible referred not to God, but to the angel Metatron, who created the world. In the Gnostic Apocryphon of John, which is dated before A.D. 185, something like this angel appears as the Demiurge, or "the archon who is weak," with three names: Ialdaboth, Saklas, and Samael... "

"Come," says Ialdaboth in a terrifying parody of the Genesis account of the creation of Adam, "let us create a man according to the image of God and according to our likeness, that his image may become a light for us." Having made a "luminous" man, the archons recoil in jealousy, for their combined efforts have made a being greater than themselves individually: "And when they recognized that he was luminous, and that he could think better than they, and that he was free from wickedness, they took him and threw him into the lowest region of all matter".

"This is hard-core Gnosticism, where the false god has become a perfectly sinister deity. The philosopher Hans Jonas, for one, has doubted it could possibly be the work of Jews-especially since its knowledge of Hebrew scripture seems limited to the Book of Genesis, which certainly did fascinate Gentile readers. In a short and typically clear paper of gnosis, Professor Quispel observes, "Only people who had been brought up to believe every word of the Bible, and to cling to the faith that God is one, and yet found reason to rebel against Law and Order may have been inclined toward the Gnostic solution: God is one and the Bible is right, but Anthropomorphisms like the handicraft of a creative workman and personal lawgiving are to be attributed to a subordinate angel".

"Perhaps Quispel is right, but there is all the difference in the world between a subordinate angel and the vicious, scheming, sinister bunch of archons who make Man on to kick him into the dark dungeon of matter, there to all but tread the life out of him. This was the disturbing revelation of the cosmoclastic Gnostic texts such as the Apocryphon of John."

I hope to have the next article here as soon as possible. This series might be somewhat more difficult to do because I would like to use many different sources for it. I wish I had known I would stay on this subject for so long because I would have done it very differently. If anyone is confused about anything please let me know in comments or emails. My basic questions when I think of Gnosticism are: Is this world of matter we are in inherently evil? Is there any good in it at all? Or is the gross, material world indeed more like a prison than anything else? And why-if the material world is absolutely no good-why and how did we come to descend into it? And-what is the best way to regain our "real" spiritual nature-or to "break out of prison"? Thanks again for all of your wonderful comments! The next time I am online I am going to try to get caught up with everyone's work on their blogs and other things. This should be fairly easy to do because I don't think this series can be rushed in any way from here on out-especially as I want to use seven different books and other sources for it, and don't want to confuse anyone by needlessly rushing it-and if I already have please let me know. All the best to anyone stopping by!

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 13

Now I would like to turn to Gnostic Philosophy yet again to talk about Crowley's supposed Satanism from page 356: "...Crowley regarded Christianity as hostile to sex, associating it with sin, the work of the devil, immorality, and so forth. His experience of Kundalini convinced him that sex was a manifestation of the archetypal creative power of God. It is such a simple idea that it beggars belief how sex could ever have been seen as wrong.

Nevertheless, Crowley was intrigued by the association of Satan with sexual energy, and with darkness. He came to the conclusion that Satan or Shaitan, the Hebrew being derived from the Egyptian god Set-the sun in the south that blackens everything (and becomes to the physical eye invisible or occult)-had acquired his evil overtone from a war between rival solar priests in Egypt. Osirian priests, taking the myth of the murder of their god by his brother somewhat literally, eventually triumphed, and Set's followers went underground.

Crowley sometimes identified Shaitan with Aiwass, his unconscious self-or the self of which he was largely unconscious. The Hebrews had simply taken over from the Egyptians this idea of Satan, the Adversary (as he appears as God's servant, the one that tempts, in the biblical Book of Job). In time he became the actual and cosmic adversary in their more Osirian (or in Greek mythology Apollonian) god, with the resultthat Set/Shaitan became ever more the receptacle for ideas of evil, anti-God or antihuman, and so on.

Now from page 357 of Gnostic Philosophy: A similar range of ideas can be seen in Nietzche's Birth of Tragedy, in which the German philosopher pits the Apollonian (sun god) virtues and classical Greek theater against the earlier demonic and instinctive, cthonic and unconscious life, symbolized as Dionysus. Dionysus is the energy of the Bacchic revel that tears the ego to pieces (as the body of Osiris was found in pieces and reconstituted by Isis, the Earth Mother). We are accustomed to thinking of the artist (magician) as being driven by his demon, careless of the values of the world. All this explains why dominant Western culture has had such a problem with the bohemian (Bohemia had been the home of Hermetic alchemy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries). The artist, the reveler, the Falstaffian figure, the rock-and-roller-all have been treated with contempt until contained and the joy or ecstasy controlled. Materialist culture is fearful of what Crowley was and stood for. It is the urge for order over what is perceived to be chaos-and repression by almost any means is the tool.

Apollo is inevitably a materialist in this context, clinging to the hope of the solid, the visible, the stable, while the whole universe (ignoring Newton and praising Bohr) is crying out that things just ain't that way! This is what Blake means when he sees the sun no as "a golden guinea" but as a host of angels crying out "Holy! Holy! Holy!" Apollo here corresponds to the Gnostics' Demiurge or Blake's Old Nobodaddy, the archrationalist, the divider, the cosmic accountant-likewise the disrespect of Gnostics fo the God of the Law. But it happened, according to Crowley's way of thinking,that the Osirian and Jehovistic wing got hold of the Christian Church, linking it up to the legality and force of the Roman Empire.

One thing that has always fascinated me is if Crowley really thought he himself was the man who was the harbinger of the New Age. It would definitely appear that he thought that the ancient conflict between Osiris (or in Greek mythology Apollo-the rational, clockwork, "materialist" god-Blake's Old Nobodaddy) and Set (or Satan. Shaitan of the Hebrews, who over the centuries became identified with all that was evil-Crowley, of course, sometimes identified Shaitan with Aiwass) intensified in April 1904 when Horus-the Crowned and Conquering Child, came to rule over the future of humanity. His involvement with the Invocation of Horus during this time and his basic anti-Christian viewpoints may indeed have led him to believe he was the Beast (the solar man, 666) of the Apocalypse.

However, depending on the light one is viewing Aleister Crowley in-this may have actually been a "good" and necessary event. Obviously if one is a fundamentalist Christian, the prism you would view anyone proclaiming themselves to be the Beast of the Apocalypse would be very different! Overall-as a human being-it is very hard to see where Crowley was any more or any less evil that the great mass of humanity. In Gnostic Philosophy on page 358: But has it not occurred to his detractors that the Satan of their personal mythology would find it more appropriate to infiltrate quietly, subtly, stealthily, under guise of being something else? In the Hermetic scheme of things, the real darkness comes from repressed energies, mangled, regrouping, and then overwhelming the psyche. It is the unrestrained Apollonian total-control, total-order, total-law states that have generated the greatest evil. The worst murderers have been found to be cool, orderly, calm, often distinguished by the ice of intellect that has frozen out the Love under Will that is, according to Aleister Crowley, the agent of the world's salvation.

Here is part of a letter that Crowley wrote to his son taken from the "Notes" section of Gnostic Philosophy. Written in the last year of his life this letter certainly doesn't evoke any "Satanic" images in me!: My dear Son, This is the first letter that your father has ever written to you, so, you can imagine that it will be very important, and you should keep it and lay it to your heart [...] I want you to learn to behave as a Duke would behave. You must be high-minded, generous, noble, and above all, without fear. For that last reason you must never tell a lie; for to do so shows that you are afraid of the person to whom you tell it, and I want you to be afraid of nobody. [...] There is one more point that I want to impress upon you! The best models of English writing are Shakespeare and the Old Testament, especially the Book of Job, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. It will be a very good thing for you to commit as much as you can, both of these books and of the best plays of Shakespeare to memory, so that they form the foundation of your style: and in writing English, the most important quality you can acquire is style. [...] Your affectionate father, Aleister

That brings to an end the Aleister Crowley part of this series. I very much appreciate the wonderful, kind and intelligent comments from everyone who has enjoyed this series-the links too Anadae! I have ordered Gnostic Philosophy by Tobias Churton-I enjoyed this part so much and the many other aspects of Gnosticism he talks about and enjoy his style of writing enormously-the book is over 400 pages long and has very detailed (and lengthy) Notes, Bibliography and Index sections. I would like to return to the subject of Gnosticism fairly soon-after taking a break to work on some other things-both for this blog-and other stuff. All the best to anyone stopping by!

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 12

The mystery of sex and the power and understanding derived from the practice of sexual magick is very important to any understanding of Aleister Crowley. In Gnostic Philosophy on page 343 we have some important information: "On June 28, 1930, Crowley reflected in his diary, "Spiritual attainments are incompatible with bourgeois morality." The morality Crowley is referring to is based on the restriction of natural impulse; a cocantenation of fear of disease, fear of self, fear of poverty, fear of truth, and ultimately fear of life itself."

Churton also has a wonderful letter that Crowley wrote in 1913 to a Dr. Graham of Cambridge on page 343 to 344: I should have supposed that any mind could see that the finest possible thing is the indissoluble union of the whole of two personalities. Such union would be Samhadi [union with Brahman] and in accordance with the One Great Law through whose operation we get back to God.

I should also have thought even the conventional mind could see that this union was not secured by marriage, and owing to this failure, marriage has today become certainly to the young a symbol for the association of all that is vile and degrading with all that should be most pure...It has consequently already been replaced by hazardous unions between economically independent people. That such unions are not open and respectable prevents them from developing into unions which would be marriage in all but name. Respectability, as always, defeats itself.

How I love that last sentence! Also on page 344 of Gnostic Philosophy: "Crowley regarded the sexual life of his time as a mass of hypocrisy that stirred up something akin to an international neurosis that could find satisfaction only in conflict of the destructive kind. On the outside, a crisp sugary coating of sentiment, lush, romantic and dreamy; on the inside, a craven desire for satisfaction of a blind urge with the reward of a relief redolent of defecation."

I think Churton is "spot on"-especially with this last sentence. How many times have you heard- "I need to get laid" and other "romantic" :-) phrases like that to describe something that should be beautiful and also something that links one soul to another? Continuing on page 344: "Crowley cut through the whole morbid morass with a sharpened scalpel in an attempt to clean out society. His efforts, as we might expect, earned him the kind of innuendo, police harrassment, tabloid character assassination, and widespread denunciation that would later be meted out to another sexual pioneer, Wilhelm Reich. It was not society but Aleister Crowley who was King of Depravity, living on immoral earnings, debauched, diseased, and demonic."

As Churton points out-not only did Crowley want to make sex holy and ineffable again-but he wanted people to take notice -to see what William Blake meant when he said, "The Lust of the Goat is the Bounty of God" and "Everything that lives is Holy."

According to Crowley: The close connection of sexual energy with the higher nervous centres makes the sexual act definitely magical. It is therefore a sacrament which can and should be used in the Great Work. The act being creative, ecstatic and active, its vice consists of treating it as sentimental, emotional and passive. Then going back to Tobias Churton on page 345: Crowley's theory of sex departs from the conception that ecstasy is a mystical state and that orgasm represents not only the condition whose sublimation is laughter but also, more important, the temporary annihilation of the ego-bound consciousness, thereby permitting in principle the unveiling of the unconsciousness..."

Also on page 345 to 346 of Gnostic Philosophy is a fragment of Hermes Trismegistus' dialogue with Asclepius which was found in a Coptic version of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945: And if you wish to see the reality of this mystery, then you should see the wonderful representation of the intercourse that takes place between the male and female. For when the semen reaches the climax, it leaps forth. In that moment the female receives the strength of the male; the male for his part receives the strength of the female, while the semen does this.

Therefore the mystery of intercourse is performed in secret, in order that the two sexes might not disgrace themselves in front of many who do not experience that reality, [it is] laughable and unbelievable. And, moreover, they are holy mysteries, of both words and deed, because not only are they not heard, but also they are not seen.

Therefore such people [the unbelievers] are the blasphemers. They are atheistic and impious. But the others are not many; rather, the pious who we counted are few. Therefore wickedness remains among the many, since learning concerning things which are ordained does not exist among them. For the gnosis of the things which are ordained is truly the healing of the passions of matter. Therefore learning is something derived from gnosis.

It would seem that Aleister Crowley realized that sexual magick was a virtually constant thread that was hidden in the symbolism of all of the world's esoteric teachings. Going way back to Hermes thinking on the subject "God eternally generates the cosmos, and that cosmos possesses generative power, and thereby maintains all races that have come into being." Another way of looking at this thinking is that a higher-more ineffable kind of "sex" is not only how God generates All but is also how he "looks" through the "eyes" (or any other sense organs) of the beings and things he has created.

Crowley did have a new take on the classical ascetic and Gnostic concepts of divine sexual union. His notions of purity and virginity were set against the framework of Einsteinian relativism. This should come as no surprise as Crowley was a contemporary of Einstein and many other great physicists of the day who realized the deeper implications of the theories (special and general relativity and quantum mechanics). The concept of relativism was spreading out into the liberal arts, and other areas too. One could make an argument that on the "bad" side of this revolutionary way of thinking about man and his place in the universe that relativism in the political world really got a much unwanted (I would think so anyway!) boost after these discoveries were made exemplified to the greatest degree by two real "Beasts"- Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin-who seemed to embody the "relativity" of morals when the ends justify the means.

True Will was what guided the adept in his or her experiential untion with God. On page 347 of Gnostic Philosophy, Churton lets us know the true meaning of some of Crowley's symbolism: Due to the repressive laws governing sexual material-as well as many other things-in Crowley's lifetime, in addition to the (necessarily) initiatic character of Crowley's teaching, much of his writing on the subject is expressed in symbol, metaphor, euphemism, and humorous plays on words in the old occult tradition. "Bloody sacrifice," for example, does not denote something out of a horror novel but refers to the expenditure of semen (=life="blood") for magical purposes other than reproduction of the species, and "child sacrifice" meant, cheekily, masturbation or contraception.

I am almost done with the "Crowley" part of the Gnosticism series. I really appreciate all of your thoughtful and open-minded comments about this part in particular. I didn't know what to expect when I started this -because of course-all I had ever heard of for the most part was how "evil" Aleister Crowley was. It has been fascinating for me to see this vastly different viewpoint from Tobias Churton! All the best to anyone stopping by!

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 11

The Book of the Law not only was important in "predicting" -in a fashion-the importance of the youth movemnent-it also predicts the victory of the rebellion of Woman. Aiwass believed that Woman-whose body is the door to the manifest (material) world and that is should never be closed: "Let Mary inviolate be torn upon wheels for her sake
let all chaste women be utterly despised among you!"

"We do not foul and flatter women; we do not despise and abuse them. To us a woman is Herself, as absolute, original, independent, free, self-justified, exactly as a man is...We do not want Her as a slave; we want Her free and royal, whether her love fight death in our arms by night...or Her loyalty ride beside us in the Charge of the Battle of Life..."

From Gnostic Philosophy on page 353: "Crowley was prepared to go to virtually any lengths to unite esoteric bodies behind this system, whether it was recommending that Krishnamurti be brought into the OTO (Rudolf Steiner had been a member) or, as in the following letter to the German OTO G.M. Herr Hopfe, urging contact with Adolf Hitler, written on January 20, 1936:

"Under the present circumstances, if I understand them aright, the only means of propaganda is to address the leader himself [Hitler] and show him that the acceptance of these philosophical principles is the only means of demonstrating to reason instead of merely enthusiasm the propriety of the measures he is taking for the rebuilding of the Reich. Unless he does this, the Churches will ultimately strangle him; they have an almost infinite capacity for resistance and endurance for this very reason tha their systems are based on a fundamental theory which enabled them to survive attacks and restraints. They bow as much as they are compelled to bow by force and they subsequently excuse their yielding on the grounds of expediency. If the Fuehrer wishes to establish his principle permanently he must uproot them entirely and this can only be done by superseding their deepest conceptions.

Enthusiasm for a man or an outward system dies with the man or with the circumstances which have brought the system into being. The Law of Thelema being infinitely rigid and infinitely elastic is an enduring basis. Love is the Law, Love under ?Will."

Tobias Churton in Gnostic Philosophy on page 354 goes on to talk about Hitler's will and the balance of forces: "Hitler's will was already irredeemably perverted, and its duration was consequently short, overpowered as he was by unconscious forces that he was utterly unable to balance under the point of crisis. His ego simply grew and then cracked under the strain of those reactionary forces he had himself evoked and that manifested themselves all over the planet. In magick as in nature, equilibrium is all. Should a country ever lose grip of the Golden Mean, we shall know what to expect."

"The key to equilibrium may lie in a consideration of sexual magick: balanced forces of male and female, right and left, Jachin and Boaz, sun and moon, positive and negative, the duality whose apex is the unknowable One, projected in creation. Crowley denied the ascetic, encratite, and Buddhistic view that duality must mean evil. According to Crowley, "Love is the uniting of opposites" In a letter of May 27, 1913, to George Macnie Cowie, Crowley wrote: "I have just got back and have read Transcendental Universe. It is rather interesting but I think of no great value. This alleged contest between intellect and spirit makes me tired. It shows a totally wrong conception of the nature of the cosmos. It is just as bad as the alleged antagonism between mind and body."

There is a universal archetypal recognition that the sun-the Solar Principle-symbolizes the creative, conscious, generative and male aspect of God. The moon represents the Feminine Principle and sybolizes the receptive, unconscious, female aspect of God. It can't be stated to strongly that this view of the Feminine Principle is no insult-no "women are less than men" type thinking. I am about to say something that reminds me of the great religious and philosophical scholar-Huston Smith-said about the same subject/experiences with consciousness altering hallucinogenic drugs-with the same preamble he used (in his book The Perrenial Philosophy if I remember correctly)-"The Chinese have a saying: "Know ten things, tell nine." You will see why I think.

In the vast literature that has accumulated over the years about people's experiences wiht these consciousness altering drugs-both synthetic and natural (I also prefer "Brain filter" shutter downers" when I think of these substances as I truly believe they open vistas to the infinite reality that lies just beyond human perception, because the brain "filters" out 99 percent or more of a reality that we are immersed in -yet lies just beyond most people's perception most of the time-especially during "normal" waking consciousness.

When men and women both, report back on what they experienced when they "returned to earth" so to speak-many report that their consciousness was subsumed into -or at least witnessed a "formless void" that seems to be "pregnant with all possibility." This "void" that appears to contain all things in their as yet unrealized potential of course sounds extremely important- and maybe even "before-prior-or containing" all things. So this "feminine" void that is "pregnant" with all possibilities is at as important as the male "active" principle if not more so in some ways.

Going back to Churton's Gnostic Philosophy on pages 354-355: "As the Christian declares that "the sun and moon bow down before Him," the Hindu holds to the view that the God of which the cosmos is an expression (Brahman) has no attributes and can be considered to be absolute zero (the philosophical Nothing). While some of the early Gnostics postulated theories as to how 0 came to generate 2, the Hindu is satisfied that such things are beyond thought; from Brahman came an egg that divided into two, male and female, and their uniting created the universe in which we move. The Vedantic Vnishnava and Shivite sects worship the male principle; the Shakti sects worship the female principle. Some scholars assert the necessity of remarrying the opposites and merging into the resultant union (samadhi, and the meaning of Crowley's "stars separated for the sake of union").

Thanks everyone for your continued interest in this series and fantastic comments and links! I am sorry it is going somewhat slow-the information posted today has been ready to go since the 27th of December. I am hoping this exhausted feeling will go away soon and I will have more energy. I do think we are getting close to the end of the "Crowley" information of the series. I am indebted to the information in Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy for this series. I have his book as a library book now and can't wait to order it and have a copy for myself to have around all the time-and would suggest to anyone who has any interest in Gnosticism-and the history of it -personalities and different philosphical and religious views of it to order the book! When the "Crowley" series is finished and I have done just a bit more at my other blog, I will be taking a 3 week break from blogging to work on my writing or attempts at perhaps I should say. I will try to keep up with friends and their blogs during this timeframe. All the best to anyone stopping by!

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 10

To finish with the quote from Aleister Crowley from part 9: "...The only Word which can unite Mankind is "Do what thou wilt" for this asks no man to distort his personality to serve a fixed idea of conduct. At the same time, the injunction is most austere; for it permits no man to go beyond the aim appointed by his nature. The real opposition to the Law of Thelema lies just here. The base understand by instinct that this Law must destroy the whole machinery of the civilization which assumes that the greatest good of man is the possession of material means of enjoyment."

Going from Crowley to Tobias Churton in Gnostic Philosophy on page 339: "The Cephaloedium Working (Cefalu, Sicily, 1920-21) produced a "comentary on the Book of the Law" that represented much of his mature consideration of its import--although, in a sense, his entire life subsequent to April 1904 was a living commentary on the book and its perils."

" The Cefalu "Commentary" contains enlightenment, rhetoric, and disciplined synthesis. We learn, for example, that the Greek kabbalistic numbers of Agape (Love) and Thelema (Will) are both 93, as in Aiwass, spelled Aiwaz, the name of the god of the Yezdis: "Our work is therefore historically authentic, the rediscovery of the Sumerian Tradition...(the earliest home of our race.)"

Going forward in Gnostic Philosophy on the same page: "It also suggested that the principal deities of the Book of the Law, Nuit and Hadit, correspond to Anu and Adad, the supreme Father and Mother deities of the Sumerians."

"It may also be added that Nuit corresponds not only to the Gnostic Sophia (Wisdom), the Lady of the Stars, bu also to Sabbaoth, the starry sky goddess of the Sabians. In late antiquity, and even after the Islamic Hejirah, the Sabians took the Hermetica as their scripture in the city of Harran."

"The Book of the Law is divided into three chapters, being the repective expressions of three cosmic concepts personified in the form of three Egyptian deities: Hadit (motion), Nuit (infinite space), and Ra Hoor Khuit (the martial aspect of Horus and archon for the Aeon)."

"Space is motion-concealed, and by motion, space is made manifest, at the center of every atom in the cosmos. These dynamics also correspond to the Shiva and the Shakti of the Hindu pantheon and the Tao and Teh of Chinese philosophy. The conception is profound and has many intriguing correspondences. Crowley wrote: "It is cosmographically, the conception of the two Ultimate Ideas, Space, and that which occupies Space...These two ideas may be resolved into one, that of Matter: with Space its 'Condition' or 'form' included therein. This leaves the idea of 'Motion' for Hadit, whose interplay with Nuit makes the Universe. Time should be considered as a particular kind of dimension of Space." In chapter one of the Book of the Law is the enchanting thought that: "Every man and every woman is a star"; "each human being is an Element of the Cosmos, self-determined and Supreme, co-equal with all other Gods. From this Law 'Do what thou wilt' follows logically." Now of course, one can only imagine what the various major religions of the world would make of this. Every man and woman a star? Do what thou wilt? I can just imagine the paroxysms of hatred and fury these thoughts would send a fundamentalist preacher (any religion) into!

Crowley's commentary on Hoor-paar-Kraat, for whom Aiwass is a minister is informative and exquisite: Hoor-paar-Kraat or Harpocrates, the Babe in the Egg of Blue, is not merely the God of Silence in a conventional sense. He represents the Higher Self, the Holy Guardian Angel...He is the first letter of the Alphabet, Aleph [Hebrew], whose number is One and his card in the Tarot is the Fool numbered Zero...In his absolute innocence and ignorance he is "The Fool"; he is "The Saviour," being the Sun who shall trample on the crocodiles and tigers and avenge is father Osiris.

Thus we see him as the "Great Fool" of Celtic legend, the "Pure Fool" of Act 1 of Parsifal, and generally speaking, the insane person whose words have always been taken for oracles. But to be "Saviour" he must be born and grow to manhood; thus Parsifal acquires the Sacred Lance, emblem of virility. He usually wears the "Coat of many colours" like Joseph the "dreamer"; so he is also now Green Man of spring festivals. But his "folly" is now not innocence but inspiration of wine, he drinks from the Graal...Almost identical symbols are those the bisexual Baphomet, and of Zeus Arrhenothelus, equally bisexual, the Father-Mother of All in One Person. (...Tarot Trump XV, "The Devil.") Now Zeus being Lord of Air we are reminded that Aleph is the letter of Air. As Air we find the "Wandering Fool" [the Troubadour] pure wanton Breath, yet creative...He is the Wandering Knight or Prince of Fairy Tales who marries the King's Daughter.

...Thus once Europa, Semele and others claimed the Zeus-Air had enjoyed them in the form of a beast, bird or what-not; while later Mary attributed her condition to the agency of a Spirit, Spiritus, breath of air,-in the shape of a dove.

But the "Small Person" of Hindu mysticism, the dwarf insane yet crafty of many legends in many lands, is also the same "Holy Ghost," or Silent Self of a man, or his Holy Guardian Angel. He is almost the "unconscious" of Freud, unknown, unaccountable. "Blowing whither it listeth, but thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." It commands with absolute authority when it appears at all, despite reason and judgement.

Aiwass is there...the "minister" of this Hoor-paar-Kraat, that is of the Saviour of the world in the larger sense, and of mine own "Silent Self" in the lesser." In Gnostic Philosophy, Tobias Churton talks about the "Child" being a very important archetype in our age: "A key aspect of Horus is that of the "Crowned and Conquering Child." In the Yorke Collection, Caephalodium Working (1920-21), folder k.1., Crowley had this to say: "The Concealed Child becomes the Conquering Child: the armed Horus avenging his father, Osiris. So also our own Silent Self, helpless and witless, hidden within us, will spring forth, if we have craft to loose him to the Light, spring lustily forward with his Cry of Battle, the Word of our True Wills."

The image is a collection of the Gnostic deity "Abraxas" images. Thanks again everyone for your thoughtful and intelligent comments! I hope to post again here soon-until then all the best to anyone stopping by!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraxas

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 9

The Book of the Law is an incredibly unique work that essentially promotes the idea of spiritual revolution at the very heart of human existence. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" is the radical spiritual idea that pervades the three chapters of the book. Aleister Crowley's Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwass, the Minister of Hoor Paar Kraat (Harpocrates, a fusion of spiritual powers within the god Horus), speaks throughout the work.

In his "Commentary on the Book of the Law," written in September 1923, Crowley states: "The Secret was this: the breaking down of my fake Will by these dread words of mine angel freed my True Self from all its bonds, so that I could enjoy at once the rapture of knowing myself to be who I am."

From Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy: "The mystical death of the ego and resurrection of the hidden God would also be charactertistic of the birth of Crowley's New Aeon. So Crowley believed that his problems were also the problems of the culture in which he was suffering. If he overcame them, it follows that he and anyone else who had attained this would be empowered to be an authentic mouthpiece for a new culture. Aiwass-Crowley, the hidden and formerly repressed god of the West, thereby became the Logos (Word) of the Aeon-and the Word was thelema-will."

Crowley always denied sincerely, that the last position his conscious self would ever want was the responsibility of leadership of a New Aeon-and hid from this every time the subject came up. Thus the Book of the Law was put into a packing case and almost completely ignored until a lucky rediscovery in the attic at Boleskin in 1909. However, the spiritual and mental preparation for the rediscovery of the manuscript appears to have occurred in March 1906, two years after Crowley wrote it. Crowley had been in southern China with his wife and baby daughter, and a series of powerful internal invocations had left him feeling very uneasy.

Again from Gnostic Philosophy on page 335: "Crowley's Buddhism had already been severely undermined by the message of Aiwass that existence was "pure joy" and that sorrows pass.

"Now it was time for his intellect to undergo a severe attack. As Blake had realized that reason is only one faculty of mind and should never be permitted to unbalance the harmonious mens and rule the roost alone, now the essence of that conclusion smashed into Aleister Crowley's mind with sudden violence...Seventeen years later, his thoughts on the limitations of reason had coalesced into a firm grasp of the problem. This from a commentary written at the Hotel in Djerid in Tunisia on Aiwass's declaration that "Reason is a lie": "When Reason usurps the higher functions of the mind, when it presumes to dictate to the Will what it desires to be, it wrecks the entire structure of the star...The Will should not be conscious at all. Once it becomes conscious, it becomes able to doubt; and having no means of getting rid of this by appeal to the Self, it seeks a reason for its action.

The reason, knowing nothing of the matter, promptly replies, basing its judgement not on the needs of the self, but on facts outside and alien to the star. The will having stopped in doubt goes on again in error. The will must never ask why. It ought to be as sure of itself as the Law of Gravity. Aiwass now leaps to the supreme stroke-Reason itself is a lie...It can never be sure of being right unless its knowledge is complete, which of course can never happen. There is always a factor infinite and unknown."

Aleister Crowley not only thought that the Book of the Law was transmitted to him by a higher intelligence but that the book's rediscovery in 1909, due to a series of synchronicities, was also engineered in advance by the same preternatural intelligence. However much Crowley was surrounded by these strange (supernatural?) events he never lost touch with his rational intellect. Crowley had a great thought that was a kind of answer to the high priests of rationalism who truly thought humanity and its scientists had almost discovered ever law of nature and would soon be able to explain the whole of existence-as if nature-the universe-were a watch, that upon opening up, one could explain everything by the movements of its cogs and gears: "There is a factor infinite and unknown." As Tobias Churton points out: "Niels Bohr would have agreed with him."

Bohr was one of the physicists of Crowley's era that truly understood how odd and counter-intutitive the discoveries of quantum mechanics really were.

I would like to go back to Gnostic Philosophy on page 337: The laws of the unconscious are not the laws of the conscious. Awareness of this made it easier for Crowley to embrace the Book of the Law. From 1909 onward, the "Cairo Revelation" would come to be both the yardstick of his entire teaching and the arbiter of psychological, spiritual and philosophical conflict. It should also be absolutely clear why Crowley declared himself to be the sole and final judge of its contents. Not only did he not want to be the center of theological conflict and disputed readings-as the Bible had become-but it was, in the profoundest possible sense, his work."

As Churton also points out: "Very few people want to listen to their "true will": the will of the god in the human being, of whom the personality is an expression...Aleister Crowley rebelled against his Angel almost as much as against his parents and his culture. It would take fifteen hard years before he became permanently identified with Aiwass, his own very Self: a Secret Chief, an Ipissimus-the highest grade of the Golden Dawn system."

In a 1925 letter to the head of the German Ordo Templi Orientis, Heinrich Tranker, Crowley explains his belief in the necessity of the Law of Thelema: "Those who came to me in 1904 E.V. [vulgar or Christian era] told me that they chose me for the Work in question on account not of my spiritual or magical attainments (which were and are small indeed) but for (a) my loyalty and steadiness. (b) my knowledge of compartive occultism, especially in my comprehension of the essential unity underlying sectarian differences. (c) my perception of the Great Work was as strictly scientific as Chemistry. (d) my command of language.

The urgency, they told me, was this. There was to be a general destruction of Civilization...We are on the threshold of the New Aeon. The death of the formula of Osiris is marked understandably to any student of the affairs of the planet, with the complete breaking-up not only of all the religions but of all the moral sanities. The result is constantly increasing anarchy feebly stemmed here and there by reactionary movements which are merely brutal, containing no firm elements because of the lack of any principle to which reasonable men can appeal."

This will probably be the last article here for 2009. I hope to be back with more next year! Once again I thank all of you for your wonderful, intelligent comments and I hope you all have a beautiful new year!

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 8

Once again going to Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times pages 331-332: "After a fruitless divination on March 23, he made the following notes in his "Book of Results": "There is one object to complete the secret of wisdom-or it is in the hieroglyphs [of the stele]. (perhaps or Thoth) GD [Golden Dawn] to be destroyed ie: publish its history & its papers. Nothing needs buying. I made it an absolute condition that I should obtain samhadhi, in the Gods' own interest. My rituals work out well, but I need the transliteration [of the stele]."

"Crowley had the assistant curator of the museum (M. Brugsch Bey) make a transliteration of the stele's inscription into French, which he then transposed into verse. According to Crowley's Confessions, Rose then told her husband to enter the room where the transliteration had been made every day at noon on April 8, 9, and 10 for one hour."

"It is interesting to note at this point that the "Book of Results" and the notebook containing the "Invocation of Hoor" contain notes revealing that a fortnight before Crowley entered the room, he was already thinking about turning the image of the stele into a ritual. He was also making inquiries about the nature and origin of the stele."

"In the Tarot divination of March 23, we find the words and symbols: Mars in Libra=the ritual is of sex; Mars in the house of Venus exciting the jealousy of Saturn or Vulcan. Crowley had been thinking deeply already about how to turn the Horus invocation and its message into a working magical system. He could not fail to see the image of Nuit bending over Hadit, witnessed by Horus, as a sexual image of magical potency. This is especially surprising, for it is usually held that Crowley took no serious interest in sexual magic until after 1913."

"The Invocation of Horus was the key event, proving for Crowley that he had come to the explicit attention of the Secret Chiefs and was thus empowered to create his own magical order."

"The next stage of what came to be called the "Cairo Working" introduced Crowley to someone he had been wanting to meet for some considerable time. Crowley entered the room at noon, as instructed, on the appointed days "to write down what I heard," for an hour each time."

"In these three hours were written the three chapters of the Book of the Law." "The interpretation of the Book of the Law taxed Crowley's mind for the rest of his life, and since he was its authoritative interpreter, it is presumptious for this author to attempt to do any more than examine what Crowley himself believed to be its meaning and import, and to attempt to clarify some of its contents for the interested reader, with due reference to Crowley's work on the subject."

I hope anyone stopping by has a beautiful Christmas and a wonderful and joyous 2010! Thanks again for the great comments!

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 7

Here I would like to once again quote from Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy on page 325: "...Crowley headed for Sri Lanka in the hope of annihilating the universe that was his troubled mind. From Colombo, he wrote to Kelly: "I have chucked all nonsense, except a faint lingering illusion that anything exists. This (with my breathing practice [pranayama] should go soon." Crowley, for a season, became something that perhaps had never been seen before: a combination of neo-Egyptian novice-hierophant and a Buddhist. The Buddhist asserted the illusion of the very world the Egyptians deified."

It seems that by the end of 1901 Crowley realized two very important things even if his realizations were in the embryonic form at that time. 1.) He would have some part to play on the stage of this new century. 2.) Crowley-like other interesting and learned people born during the decade before and including his own (1870s) also seemed aware that Western civilization was about to undergo what would be the first of several convulsions.

Here I would like to go to Gnostic Philosophy on pages 328-329 again-speaking of Crowley's letters to Gerald Kelly: "They also give a picture of a strange outsider hanging on to reality, with all the bravado in the world, by the skin of his teeth. Six months later, he wrote to Kelly a letter full of suppressed guilt feelings, unsure of himself, frustrated. He had just met Kelly's very beautiful, but, by the standards of the time, wayward sister, Rose-a woman whom he would marry (to her family's initial dissatisfaction) within the month, in a fit of youthful impetuosity-in order, he thought, to get her out of an unwanted liason: "I have been trying since I joined G.D. (Golden Dawn) in '98 steadily and well to repress my nature in all ways. I have suffered much, but I have won, and you know it...Did your sister want to hear the true history of my past life, she should have it in detail; not from prejudiced persons, but the cold drear stuff of lawyers. And English does not always fail me. If your worst wish came true, and we never met again, my remembrances of you, with or without beard would, as you say, be good enough to go on. But I am ambitious. I hope one day to convince you that I am not only a clever (the 4tos have "mentally deformed") man but a decent and good one. Why must 9/10ths of my life: the march to Buddhism, go for nothing; the atrophied 1/1,000,000 always spring up and choke me, and that in the house of my friends?...All luck, and the greatest place in the new generation of artists be yours. So say Aleister Crowley, always your friend whatever you may do or say. Vale! till your Ave!"

----Strange Angels----

All of the suppressed or repressed material in Crowley's psyche would burst forth in a supernova of a psychic experience during his honeymoon in Cairo with Rose in March to April of 1904. This amazing episode in the life of Aleister Crowley began when his pregnant wife told him "they" were waiting for him. In some of his later writings, Crowley treated this odd statement as if he didn't know what Rose was talking about. However, many people think he knew exactly who Rose was referring to when she said "they." Crowley had been trying to make contact with his Holy Guardian Angel, his Genius or Augoides since 1899 at the very least-perhaps earlier. He had felt it was imperative to achieve contact with this being or these beings or entities if they did indeed exist.

Rose had some more news for Crowley the day after the "they" are waiting announcement. She added that this meeting was "all Osiris" and "all about the child." Crowley then performed a ritual-an "invoking" to seek the powers of Thoth (Hermes)-the Egyptian god of magic, writing, science and the judgment of the dead. By performing this ritual, Crowley hoped to receive the wisdom, insight and understanding of Thoth. Rose-who was experiencing clairaudience the next day, revealed that a particular power was trying to communicate to her husband-that it represented "Horus, whom thou offended and ought to invoke."

In Gnostic Philosophy on page 330: "Crowley later thought that the power of "Horus the avenger" with his character of "Force & Fire" (very much like Blake's Orc, child of freedom and rebellion) was precisely what he had been trying to avoid or suppress. He associated it with the martian tendencies of Mathers, whom he had been obeying in an almost masochistic fashion-and this obeisance went against his true nature that years of Plymouth Brethren conditioning made him repress. Horus, of course, is the avenger of his father's murderer; Set the sun in the south: symbolically speaking, the dark and hidden aspect of the unconcious...That Saturday's (19 March 1904) invocation achieved, Crowley wrote "little success." But Sunday's invocation was a real mind-blower. It was revealed that the Equinox of the Gods had come, "Horus taking the throne of the East and all rituals being abrogated...I am to formulate a new link of an order with the solar force."

Aleister Crowley was determined not to be hoodwinked in any way and thought of some tests for Rose, that were to make absolutely certain that it was indeed the god Horus whom she was "speaking for." One of the trials that Crowley devised for Rose was ingenious for its simplicity. They would go to the nearby Boulak Museum and walk by the various inscriptions that depicted the god in his many aspects. He was wondering if this was another false path as Rose passed by one after another without comment. Then-out of the blue-Rose pointed down a corridor to a stele (she could not see the image depicted on it), and said, "There he is!"

Crowley was very interested and when he got to the stele he saw the funerary inscription of the priest Ankh-f-n-Khonsu. On the priest's left, enthroned, was Horus in his form called Ra Hoor Khuit-the solar aspect of Horus. The goddess Nuit (the Egyptian sky goddess) was arched over the scene, and below her the winged globe of the god Hadit. The catalogue number of the stele-666-astonished Crowley. This was a number for the sun and a number that held special importance for him as it also represented his opposition to the Christian era.

Once again, I am indebted to Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times-pages 325 to 331 for this information for this article. Thanks again for all of your thoughtful and intelligent comments! Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 6

Allan Bennett, who had given up on Western magic, and was about to begin a life as a Buddhist bhikku (novice monk), suggested that Crowley was too interested in evoking demons. This point of view from a good friend appeared to have started a questioning process in Crowley's mind and he went to Mexico with his friend and fellow mountaineer Oscar Eckenstein to look over his priorities and sort his thoughts out about where he was heading in his career.

A red notebook contains information about Crowley's activities in Mexico from January to April 1901, aside from climbing mountains of that country in double-quick time. On the cover of the notebook, next to a sketch of the Monas Hieroglyphica of John Dee, are the words: "Feb 2. My 2 and 1/2 years work crowned with success. We will probably never know exactly what happened but it was most probably some sort of spiritual attainment.

Crowley left Mexico for San Francisco and from there he sailed to Japan stopping for Hawaii. There is a diary entry of his for 18 June 1901, that reveals a yearning for the simple (but also very demanding spiritually) life of a Buddhist monk. He seems to be wanting to withdraw from the greed, stupidity, absurdity and illusion of the world: "Shall I go to Kamakura and live a hermit's life in the Temple? A tarot reading advised against this -and also offered a bit of advice to which the meaning soon became obvious: "Be wise in avoiding quarrel if Alice be obsessed."

From Yokohama Crowley wrote to his friend, Gerald Kelly who was an aspiring painter: "You are a good boy and I am a good boy and I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct...Japan is a fraud of the basest sort...To change the key. This is the strictest of all confidence. I have had the greatest love-affair of my long and arduous career (arduous is good). Her name was Mary Beaton. Think of it! Absolutely the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, of the imperial type, yet as sweet and womanly as I ever knew. Moreover, a lady to her fingertips. I call her Alice in the poems you will read about her, as she preferred that name. She was travelling for her health in Hawaii where we met. We loved and loved chastely (She has a hub & kids-one boy with her) I made her come with me. On the boat we fell to fucking, of course, but-here's the miracle! we won through and fought our way back to chastity & far deeper truer love. Now she's gone & forgetten but her sweet and pure influence has saved my soul. (Heb: Nephesch). I lust no more-What never? Well- hardly ever!

"...I wish you'd buck up with occultism so that I didn't have to talk with all this damned reticence. I have done none myself lately-there's been love and poetry going on. Also my ideas are changing and fermenting. You will not recognise my mind when I get back."

In the years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one gets the feeling that Aleister Crowley was in the grip of some deep unresolved conflicts in his unconscious mind-these "issues" were struggling to make themselves known. The way this affected his actions in this timeframe is fascinating to look at. He had the soul of a lover, but seemed incapable of making a longstanding commitment. He was a poet-tried and true-his poetry received good reviews in the prewar press, but poetry was not where his destiny was either. He was the "98 pound-weakling" who turned his physical body into one that allowed him to become an accomplished mountaineer. In 1901, Crowley left for Sri Lanka.

Thanks to one and all of you for your beautiful thoughts and comments about the last few days-or about the posts on my blogs. I promise this bit with Aleister Crowley is going somewhere-sorry it is so slow-my back is hurting too much to not take a rather long break-or maybe even try to get back to this tomorrow. I would also like to do a post at my "history" blog today that just needs a bit of work in drafts to post.

Again I cannot tell you all what your friendship and support mean to me-and I will try to get to some friends who have updated today. I was so intrigued with this bit from Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times because it seems like the only "fair" treatment of Aleister Crowley I have ever seen written. Today's information in this post comes from pages 322 to 325 of that book. All the best!

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 5

In 1896 Crowley returned from St. Petersburg and experienced his first mystical awakening. While in Stockholm, Crowley received an "intimation" of the magical control of phenomena and began to study the great (and not so great) works in the field of occultism with even more verve than before. There was a book by Karl von Eckarthausen called The Cloud upon the Sanctuary that particularly fascinated Crowley. In this book, the author wrote of an invisible ecclesia of gnostic initiates whose task was to guide humanity throught its development toward the fulfillment of the Hermetic Great Work.

The Hermetic Great Work can be summed up as the liberation of the spiritual from the material. Crowley was introduced to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn by a man named George Cecil Jones after a casual conversation on the subject of alchemy in a Zermatt, Switzerland hotel in 1898. Jones recommended Crowley to this very influential British Masonic offshoot. Crowley was a bit disappointed at first with the Golden Dawn. The order didn't seem to reveal either the saints of Eckarthausen's sublime Sanctuary or the breadth and vision of Rabelais's Abbey of Thelema (see note at end of paragraph). Still Crowley began his magical training with his characteristic discipline, powerful concentration and thouroughness.

Note from pages 440-441 in Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy: 12.) The first part of Crowley's famous watchword-"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"-comes from the rule of the Abbey of Thelema (Greek for "will") in Francois Rabelais's Heroic Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel (c.1532). Rabelais was included as a saint of the Gnostic Church in Crowley's Gnostic Mass. Taking the following extract into account it is not difficult to see why: All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good: they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all of their rule, and strictest tie to their order, there was but one clause to be observed, DO WHAT THOU WILT. Because men that are free, well-born, and bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them into virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour..."

In 1899, Crowley met Allan Bennett, a fellow brother in the order, and together they began to work on a more intense magical program. Crowley turned his flat in Chancery Lane, where he lived as Count Zvareff into a magical temple. He also met Samuel Liddell "MacGregor" Mathers, who was the chief of the Golden Dawn. Mathers had also translated The Key of Solomon the King and The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, and was a Celtic enthusiast and admirer of the French Occult Revival.

Crowley believed that Mathers had "that habit of authority which never questions itself and so inspires respect." In 1899 Crowley also bought a country residence befitting his own fading Celtic revivalist enthusiasms: Boleskin House, Foyers, near Inverness. From Boleskin House that year, Crowley wrote a letter to a brother in the order. Even though he was still very young (24) one can already surmise his inclination towards the role of a teacher on the road to becoming a master: Care Frater,

"Agrippa [Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettersheim, author of Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 1651] is very useful. It is practically the source of Barrett [Francis Barrett, author of The Magus, 1801] and is much fuller in the same style...

You can only curse a spirit because you have conjured him by the Great Names of God the Vast One, and he obeyeth Them not. You cannot use these Names unless you are yourself in accordance with His Will...

My First Magical Operation was devoted to the Invocation of That One whom Abramelin calls Guardian Angel. As also it is written: So help me the Lord of the Universe and My own Higher Soul! And without the Aspiration to, and in a little measure, the grasp of this: no White Magic is possible. "In myself I am nothing: in Thee I am All-Self." Therefore you are not of a position to act as Master: for you are not yet Master of yourself, not even in communication consciously with That One who hath made you His Habitation.

Therefore, it is necessary First to reach unto your own Kether [Crown; the higher mind of the Kabbalist]: that the influence of the Most Holy Ancient One descend upon you: and then: "all things will appear easy to you."

...As to Abramelin, he is a quite different bird. You devote six moons to the purification of your sphere or "aura." Then you can invoke the Angel with complete success. Then you can compel the Forces of the World-the "visible Image of the Soul of Nature" to your service. This Operation is so Awful that I cannot find any words to tell you about it. I may now say that I have devoted my life since our fortnight at Folkestone to the Beginning of it. And the oppositions on every plane have been tremendous. Even now, the copying of the symbol is so terrible a task that I can barely finish a dozen daily. After that my brain seems to reel, the characters dance around me, and it is useless to proceed. And this while putting any magical force into them in the making. If you wish to try Abramelin, God forbid I should hinder you. But I warn you that for all its apparent simplicity and ease, it will be a bigger job than anything you have ever tackled in your life.

...The part about the Angel and my intention of doing Abramelin is very secret-not from obligation standpoint, but from its extreme sacred character. To no other person inside or outside the Order, would I have spoken thus plainly. But as I said above, what will not paternal affection do?

Yours fraternally,

Perdurabo [Crowley's magical motto, "I will endure"]

I hope to post again fairly soon-by the weekend maybe? All of the information in the last two articles comes from Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times. There is much more in the chapter on Crowley in his book, and this is what I would like to continue with when I come back and also keep going with the "mythical creatures" series. Thanks again for all of your fantastic and thoughtful comments!

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 4

The following information comes from Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times published by InnerTraditions in 2005 on pages 315 to 321. Aleister Crowley-the "King of Depravity," the "Human Beast," "the wickedest man in the world" -or so said to be by the yellow press at the time, met Nancy Cunard: poet, publisher, 1920s avant-garde star, determined campaigner for racial, social and sexual equality-and discoverer of Samuel Beckett in the late 1920s.

She had written to Crowley asking him for astrological advice involving her financial relations with her mother, Lady Emerald Cunard. Nancy was afraid that her mother was about to cut her allowance off because she was living with the black American jazz pianist Henry Crowder. The two met again in 1933. Nancy was organizing interracial dances in Notting Hill and the East End of London. She was also working on a major public appeal for the Scottsboro Boys. On 25 March 1931, nine black youths aged thirteen to twenty were found guilty in Alabama of raping two white prostitutes. Eight of them were sentenced to to die in the electric chair. Crowley signed Nancy's appeal like this: "This case is typical of the hysterical sadism of the American people-the result of Puritanism and the climate-Aleister Crowley, Scientific Essayist."

On 10 March 1933 Crowley noted in his diary: "Great public meeting to protest against Scottsborough Outrage turned to African Rally 8 PM. It would have been a perfect party if the lads had brought their razors! I danced with many whores-all colours." Nancy Cunard even visited Aleister Crowley in England in the summer of 1944 during wartime conditions-hardly the best time to travel-but shows she had a great deal of courage. And Crowley wrote to her thanking her hugely for her visit: "My own adorable Nancy, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. How too angelic a visit. But let it not be so 'far between' the next time! I cannot remember so few hours packed with so much rapture."

On 24 October 1954, Nancy Cunard sent these letters to Gerald Yorke, Crowley's old friend and preserver of his manuscripts, with an accompanying letter: "What a galaxy of people he did offer himself to! This particular point seems practically the pivot of the man-man or magus-does it not? I should have hated all the 'hoolie-goolie' stuff, but that seems to have been long before. I can well imagine him absolutely terrifying many people-serpent's kiss and all. ( I have had the honour; no trouble whatever, it lasted about 10 days, very pretty on my right wrist.)...La! What a picture it evokes, even this short sequence: there he was, in an excellent inn, see how well fed, with plenty of coupons &c...It has been a pleasure to copy them for you, but alas that none of us will see him again." Note: Regarding the "Serpent's Kiss" mentioned in the letter. In the 1920s in the south of France, Crowley enjoyed the joke of asking women if they wanted the "serpent's kiss." Those who agreed offered their hand and received a bite-an anarchic frisson from a bygone age.

Edward Alexander Crowley had been born into a family of well-off Christian fundamentalists in 1875. His family were members of the Exclusive or "Plymouth" Brethren in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. He received his education from a group of strangely sadistic Brethren, whose efforts at indoctrination intensified after Edward's beloved father's death in 1887.

Crowley referred to his education by his mother's family as "A Boyhood in Hell." The many privations he suffered led to the collapse of his health. He began to despise (in the form of a viperous wit) what he knew as Christianity, sympathizing with "the enemies of Heaven." He questioned the moral absolutes of Christianity-good and evil-holy and unholy etcetera. Back in the days of the late 19th century, questioning the foundations of one's culture wasn't near as common as it is now. Crowley felt an acute loneliness and deep isolation, and began to seek a solution to the problem that might go beyond not only these apparent opposites but also the sufferings and miseries of life itself.

His youthful rebellion against the established relgion of the West is expressed bluntly in some passages of his Confessions, of which the following is the most succinct: "I was trying to take the view that the Christianity of hypocrisy and cruelty was not true Christianity. I did not hate God or Christ, but merely the God and Christ of the people whom I hated. It was only when the development of my logical faculties supplied the demonstration that the Scriptures support the theology and practices of professing Christians that I was compelled to set myself in opposition to the Bible itself. It does not matter that the literature is sometimes magnificent and that in isolated passages the philosophy and ethics are admirable. The sum of the matter is that Judaism is a savage, and Christianity a fiendish superstition."

It would seem that Crowley was among many other things a very spiritual person. He wasn't religious in the ordinary sense of the word-but he had an intense drive to know-to have the experience of gnosis-the highest possible level of spiritual illumination. In 1913 Crowley described himself as a Holy Illuminated Man of God or "HIMOG"-and took this appellation very seriously.

At the same time, Crowley decided to improve his health, physical weakness, and prevail against the taunts of his peers by developing amazing skill in the discipline of mountaineering, a sanctuary for many solitary young people and an area in which Crowley did extremely well.

In 1895 Crowly matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a very adept scholar at this point and preferred his own voluminous reading to that prescribed by his tutors. The Crowley family wealth (somewhat ironically in the brewing trade for a family of fundamentalist Christians-although even Jesus Christ said "eat, drink and be merry" -or was that someone else? :-) ensured that money wouldn't be a concern for him at this stage in his life.

There is still more to post for this article-I wanted to take a break and look something up-I should still have it here in a bit. Thanks again for all of your fantastic comments and all the best to anyone stopping by! The second image is of a young Aleister Crowley.

Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 3

The Gnostic worldview has the Demiurge in opposition to the Anthropos, the primal human, who had appeared before the archons to their jealousy and amazement. (cf. the manifestation of the "Son of man" in Ezekiel 1: 26). As the exile from the Pleroma deepened, sparks of pneuma (spirit) were trapped in the cosmos by the envious archons and sadly got trapped with some human beings, whom then had to face the horrific fact of seeing the light (spiritually) while being cruelly exiled from it by the seemingly eternal prison bars of matter.

Again quoting from Tobias Churton's Gnostic Philosophy on page 93: "This situation typifies for the Gnostic the distress of the spiritual human's predicament: spirit trapped in matter. That is to say, humans are not simply born into the world; they are brutally "thrown" into the prison of the soul."

To Irenaeus, the Gnostic belief that humans were superior to their creator was both crazy and blasphemous. It is exactly here that we can decipher how the bishop of Lyons would differentiate between false and true gnosis. Irenaeus believed that the Johannine tradition as demonstrated by the Gospel of John, revealed to Irenaeus that eternal life consisted in knowledge of "the only true God": "This is eternal life, that they know [the Greek verb is gignokosin] thee the only true God, and he whom, thou hast sent Jesus Christ." (John 17:3).

"The only true God" for Irenaeus was the God revealed by Jesus Christ. The one and only God who had created heaven and earth and all things within them. This God was superior to all things in existence-the Alpha and the Omega. Now, of course, some Gnostics would interpret the passage above as referring to the absolute Father beyond all creation.

Continuing on with the list of Irenaeus, and quoting from pages 94-96 of Gnostic Philosophy: 4.) The great secret of radical Gnostics consists in knowing and understanding the precosmic Fall myth (in one of many variant forms) and in being given the keys to liberate the exiled pneuma from the grip of the archons. (The characteristic chord of gnosis is the yearning for the absolute in pain, the major seventh of the entire philosophy and the psychological basis of its attractiveness.)"

5.) Not infrequently, these groups refer to the holder of the keys to liberation as Jesus: an emanated energy of the Father, sent out of the Father's love to benighted earth in order to awaken the dormant Gnostics to their true identity. Jesus is thus the Gnostic par excellence; he is not a man in the ordinary sense of the word.

The crucifixion itself is a fraud, a trick effected to outwit death from the body (its essential nature)-but the spiritual being could not be destroyed. Rather, as the unknown author of the Gnostic gospel of Philip put it: He "came crucifying the world." Some Gnostics denied Jesus' participation in the crucifixion altogether, claiming that another (sometmies Simon of Cyrena) was crucified in his place..."

6.) The Gnostic groups believed the emanatory powers (aeons) of the Father were projected within the Pleroma in co-dependent pains (male and female natures), with names such as Mind and Truth and Logos and Life. Consistent with this was that one valid way for the spirituality to express the gnosis-or to return to the One-was through a pneumatic sex sacrament. This "divine union" was available only to the pneumatics-for sexual gnosis had nothing to do either with material procreation or with animal lust..."

7.) The Gnostics, who claimed to owe their being to a higher power, felt free to disregard the Ten Commandments and to live by their own light because the Demiurge was responsible for there negatively expressed injunctions. Essentially free of any external authority whatsoever, the Gnostics could "walk tall" in the world-and, should we share the Gnostics' symbol of water as denoting matter, the Gnostic could "walk on water" as well.

8.) Irenaeus found objectionable the Gnostic notion that humankind's essential predicament is the product not of sin, but of unconciousness. When humans become conscious, when they experience gnosis, they are free to disentangle themselves from (nature's grip on the spirit, working through the soul). This could be achieved either by asceticism or by becoming indifferent to the passions, permitting their manifestations with detached indifference on the principle that what the body does or does not is either irrelevant or a necessary education on the path to pure spirituality. (This was particularly the case among the followers of the proto-communist Gnostic teacher Capocrates, an intellectual anarchist who coined the dictum "Property is theft.")

9.) Gnostics gave women an equal spiritual role in their services. By emphasizing the androgynous character of the spiritual, Gnostics enabled particular devotion to either the male or the female aspect of divine emanations. Thus Sophia, for example, conceived of as feminine, could effectively be adored as a kind of goddess within, and as a road to, God.

10.) Some Gnostics used demonic magic as a means of ascending through the archontic spheres to obtain assistance from celestial and supercelestial beings. Indeed the cosmogony of the Gnostics is in all essentials a magical one, populated by beings who could be influenced by the right magical codes, symbols, and passwords."

I hope to have the next installment of something here shortly. Maybe one of the dragon "tales" would be good. I would definitely like to get more out of Tobias Churton's book before I have to take it back because it has some very unique viewpoints in it that I haven't run across before. The image is called a "Sophia" (Wisdom) Tree. Thanks again for all of your fantastic comments! All the best to anyone stopping by!