Aleister Crowley

[mono]

As I mentioned in another thread, I just finished Aleister Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend, and absolutely loved it, to simply say the least. I have read only little of Crowley's other works, but the following quotes come only from Diary of a Drug Fiend, which I personally collected.
Please, feel free to post any other Crowley quotes, whether it comes from this novel or not. :)

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

"War is like a wave; some it rolls over, some it drowns, some it beats to pieces on the shingle; but some it shoots far up the shore on to glistening golden sand out of the reach of any further freaks of fortune."

"I've often thought that there isn't any 'I' at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think of ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion."

"I loathe law. It seems to me as if it were merely an elaborate series of obstacles to doing things sensibly."

"Ever man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease - that of thinking."

"Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence. It's hateful to be interrupted."

"Lofty morality is the last refuge when one feels onself to be hopelessly in the wrong."

"The most delicious sensation of all is the re-birth of healthy human love. Spring coming back to Earth!"

"Everyone interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstand you, or doesn't understand you at all."

". . . only by climbing painfully to a spot beyond human intervention, could one obtain a stable point of view from which to regard the Universe in due proportion."

"There is nothing in nature which cannot be used for our benefit, and it is up to us to use it wisely."

"People think that talking is a sign of thinking. It isn't, for the most part' on the contrary, it's a mechanical dodge of the body to relieve oneself of the strain of thinking, just as exercising the muscles helps the body to become temporarily unconscious of its weight, its pain, its weariness, and the foreknowledge of its doom."

"The universe is the looking-glass of the soul."

"Experience is the only teacher."

"As long as you have animal passions, you are an animal. How disgusting it is to think of eating and loving and all those appetites, like cattle! Breathing itself would be beastly if one knew one were doing it. How intolerable life would be to people of even mediocre refinement if they were always acutely conscious of the process of digestion."

"Our souls have invented our minds . . . with the object of registering conscious experiences, and therefore the more deeply an experience is felt the better our minds are carrying out the intention of our souls."

"The most deeply seated instinct in us is our craving for experience."

"The true test of the perversity of a pleasure is that it occupies a disproportionate amount of the attention."

"Sanity consists in the proper equilibrium of ideas in general. That is the only sense in which it is true that genius is connected with insanity."

"Man has a right to spiritual ambition. He has evolved to what he is, through making dangerous experiments."

"We learn more from our failures than from our successes."

"Love is the law, love under will."

[Basil]

"After five years of folly and weakness, miscalled politeness, tact, discretion, care for the feeling of others, I am weary of it. I say today: the hell with Christianity, Rationalism, Buddhism, all the lumber of the centuries. I bring you a positive and primaeval fact, Magick by name; and with this I will build me a new Heaven and a new Earth. I want none of your faint approval or faint dispraise; I want blasphemy, murder, rape, revolution, anything, bad or good, but strong."

letter to Gerald Kelly

[Beaumains]

Is Diary of a Drug Fiend similar to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? If so, I need to find a copy of this book; anything about drug-induced hallucinations is of great interest to me. :lol:

[mono]

Is Diary of a Drug Fiend similar to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? If so, I need to find a copy of this book; anything about drug-induced hallucinations is of great interest to me. :lol:
To tell all honesty, no, it has very little correlation with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in my opinion. I can see, perhaps, where Hunter S. Thompson gained some worthy inspiration from Aleister Crowley, but, in my opinion, the two bright authors took very different approaches to the use of drugs.
Again, this seems only according to my opinion, but Diary of a Drug Fiend reminded me so much more of Crowley's increasingly spiritual perception - in a way, gaining insight and introspection through altered states (the same way thinkers like Dr. Timothy Leary, Dr. John Lilly, Robert Anton Wilson, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg did). Thompson also wrote much in his novel regarding introspection and self-realization, but, to me, in a less spiritual more intellectual pursuit manner (not to say that spirituality does not have connection with intellect).
Others, no doubt, would disagree with me; I loved both novels, but the two authors, I think, just have different insights.

[NewWorldOrder]

"After five years of folly and weakness, miscalled politeness, tact, discretion, care for the feeling of others, I am weary of it. I say today: the hell with Christianity, Rationalism, Buddhism, all the lumber of the centuries. I bring you a positive and primaeval fact, Magick by name; and with this I will build me a new Heaven and a new Earth. I want none of your faint approval or faint dispraise; I want blasphemy, murder, rape, revolution, anything, bad or good, but strong."

letter to Gerald Kelly

This is litterature brainwashing machine for the masses : you will never be delivered from Religious Beliefs, it will be substitued a New World Religion to make you believe that you have been "Freed" from Religions but in fact people will be even more enslaved by this new one that is preparing for the NEXT GENERATION (because old generation cannot be rewired easily) by the Globalist Elites:

From
http://www.thewinds.org/library/order1.html

This is a transcript of the first two of three tapes on the "New Order of Barbarians", referred to on the tapes simply as the "new world system." Tapes one and two were recorded in 1988 and are the recollections of Dr. Lawrence Dunegan regarding a lecture he attended on March 20, 1969 at a meeting of the Pittsburgh Pediatric Society.



BLENDING ALL RELIGIONS...THE OLD RELIGIONS WILL HAVE TO GO
Another area of discussion was Religion. This is an avowed atheist speaking. And he said, "Religion is not necessarily bad. A lot of people seem to need religion, with it's mysteries and rituals - so they will have religion. But the major religions of today have to be changed because they are not compatible with the changes to come. The old religions will have to go. Especially Christianity. Once the Roman Catholic Church is brought down, the rest of Christianity will follow easily. Then a new religion can be accepted for use all over the world. It will incorporate something from all of the old ones to make it more easy for people to accept it, and feel at home in it. Most people won't be too concerned with religion. They will realize that they don't need it.

CHANGING THE BIBLE THROUGH REVISIONS OF KEY WORDS
In order to do this, the Bible will be changed. It will be rewritten to fit the new religion. Gradually, key words will be replaced with new words having various shades of meaning. Then the meaning attached to the new word can be close to the old word - and as time goes on, other shades of meaning of that word can be emphasized. and then gradually that word replaced with another word." I don't know if I'm making that clear. But the idea is that everything in Scripture need not be rewritten, just key words replaced by other words. And the variability in meaning attached to any word can be used as a tool to change the entire meaning of Scripture, and therefore make it acceptable to this new religion. Most people won't know the difference; and this was another one of the times where he said, "the few who do notice the difference won't be enough to matter."

"THE CHURCHES WILL HELP US!"
Then followed one of the most surprising statements of the whole presentation: He said, "Some of you probably think the Churches won't stand for this," and he went on to say, "the churches will help us!" There was no elaboration on this, it was unclear just what he had in mind when he said, "the churches will help us!" In retrospect I think some of us now can understand what he might have meant at that time. I recall then only of thinking, "no they won't!" and remembering our Lord's words where he said to Peter, "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church, and gates of Hell will not prevail against it." So .. yes, some people in the Churches might help. And in the subsequent 20 years we've seen how some people in Churches have helped. But we also know that our Lord's Words will stand, and the gates of Hell will not prevail.

RESTRUCTURING EDUCATION AS A TOOL OF INDOCTRINATION
Another area of discussion was Education. And one of the things; in connection with education that remember connecting with what he said about religion was in addition to changing the Bible he said that the classics in Literature would be changed. I seem to recall Mark Twain's writings was given as one example. But he said, the casual reader reading a revised version of a classic would never even suspect that there was any change. And, somebody would have to go through word by word to even recognize that any change was made in these classics, the changes would be so subtle. But the changes would be such as to promote the acceptability of the new system.

MORE TIME IN SCHOOLS, BUT THEY "WOULDN'T LEARN ANYTHING."
As regards education, he indicated that kids would spend more time in schools, but in many schools they wouldn't learn anything. They'll learn some things, but not as much as formerly. Better schools in better areas with better people - their kids will learn more. In the better schools Iearning would be accelerated. And this is another time where he said, "We think we can push evolution." By pushing kids to learn more he seemed to be suggesting that their brains would evolve, that their offspring would evolve .. sort of pushing evolution .. where kids would learn and be more intelligent at a younger age. As if this pushing would alter their physiology. Overall, schooling would be prolonged. This meant prolonged through the school year. I'm not sure what he said about a long school day, I do remember he said that school was planned to go all summer, that the summer school vacation would become a thing of the past. Not only for schools, but for other reasons. People would begin to think of vacation times year round, not just in the summer. For most people it would take longer to complete their education. To get what originally had been in a bachelor's program would now require advanced degrees and more schooling. So that a lot of school time would be just wasted time. Good schools would become more competitive. I inferred when he said that, that he was including all schools - elementary up through college - but I don't recall whether he said that. Students would have to decide at a younger age what they would want to study and get onto their track early, if they would qualify. It would be harder to change to another field of study once you get started. Studies would be concentrated in much greater depth, but narrowed. You wouldn't have access to material in other fields, outside your own area of study, without approval. This seem to be more .. where he talked about limited access to other fields .. I seem to recall that as being more at the college level. high school and college level, perhaps. People would be very specialized in their own area of expertise. But they won't be able to get a broad education and won't be able to understand what is going on overall.

[starrwriter]

Crowley gives barbarians and pagans a bad name. He was a debauched and jaded freak of nature.

[Psycheinaboat]

Crowley gives barbarians and pagans a bad name. He was a debauched and jaded freak of nature.

:) Sub pennis, penis! :)

[Jean-Baptiste]

THE POLE-STAR
from The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley

"Love is all virtue, since the pleasure of love is but
love, and the pain of love is but love.
Love taketh no heed of that which is not and of that
which is.
Absence exalteth love, and presence exalteth love.
Love moveth ever from height to height of ecstasy
and faileth never.
The wings of love droop not with time, nor slacken
for life of for death.
Love destroyeth self, uniting self with that which is
not-self, so that Love breedeth All and None in
One.
Is it not so?...No?...
Then thou art not lost in love; speak not of love.
Love Always Yieldeth: Love Always Hardeneth.
……….May be: I write it but to write Her name."


I've come to the conclusion that he was quite a freak of nature, but some of his poetry is quite descent.

[Zippy]

Some very interesting quotes here Mono, Crowley's always been very quotable.

"Our souls have invented our minds . . . with the object of registering conscious experiences, and therefore the more deeply an experience is felt the better our minds are carrying out the intention of our souls."

I have to say this quote is almost the opposite of what I believe. I believe that the mind has invented the soul. A sort of safety valve. If you believe that there is a soul, some way of outlasting death, then it gives you a get-out clause. A hope that no matter how bad life gets that someday, in the afterlife, things will be better. It's like the soul is the human body's equivalent of the black-box on an aeroplane. Even if the plane goes down in flames the back-box survives.

The quote: "Love is the law, love under will" interests me. What does he mean by "love under will"? From what little I remember of reading Crowley many years ago, I recall that the concept of "will" was pretty important to his whole outlook. It would be good to get a fuller explaination.

Diary of a Drug Fiend looks interesting. I'll have to see if I can track a copy down.

Zippy.

[mono]

The quote: "Love is the law, love under will" interests me. What does he mean by "love under will"? From what little I remember of reading Crowley many years ago, I recall that the concept of "will" was pretty important to his whole outlook. It would be good to get a fuller explaination.
Indeed, a very popular quote of his, what he called one of his quotes of Thelema (meaning 'will' in Greek). His definition of will extends much further than the common definition of acting and intentions, but also encoporates all desires, wishes, and destiny. True Will Crowley more called a built-in, intrinsic determination of one's course in life; one's actions can confirm or negate his/her True Will identified by his/her course in life.
Interesting, eh? I feel unsure whether I can agree with everything he wrote, but I surely cannot doubt Crowley's immense intelligence and wisdom.

[Jean-Baptiste]

This may not be the place to post this thought, but it half-way corresponds to the discussion. I wonder how Crowley's definition of Will would compare to that of Kierkegaard. The later had quite a few things to say on the topic, viz.: "Purity of heart is to will one thing," and all that stuff about Abraham actually taking every step up Mount Moriah and actually drawing the knife found in "Fear and Trembling." In addition, perhaps Nietzsche could be included in this; although, Crowley and Kierkegaard (surprisingly) seem to go together much better than Crowley and Nietzsche, in my mind. Perhaps I'm wrong. The first two do, however, take the idea of Will in a much more spiritual sense, rather than Nietzsche's bit for power and seeming focus on the material world.

[mono]

This may not be the place to post this thought, but it half-way corresponds to the discussion. I wonder how Crowley's definition of Will would compare to that of Kierkegaard. The later had quite a few things to say on the topic, viz.: "Purity of heart is to will one thing," and all that stuff about Abraham actually taking every step up Mount Moriah and actually drawing the knife found in "Fear and Trembling."
Unfortunately, I have read painstakingly little material by Søren Kierkegaard, despite several recommendations. From the quote itself, Jean-Baptiste, it sounds like their philosophies could have had some similarities, mainly on justly acting out according to one's will (the term 'will,' of course, having much more depth than from the typical dictionary definition). Whether Crowley sided with 'the heart or the head,' as the popular phrase goes, concerning ethics and just actions, I have no idea, yet I definitely see the similarities.
Thanks for sharing the quote, Jean-Baptiste, and do not worry about 'posting in the wrong area,' as you mentioned. I enjoy your posts, and most threads outside the 'General Chat' area seem to get less attention, regardless; I always feel up to good discussion. :)

[Jean-Baptiste]

Thanks mono! How about this for a quote--actually I can't quote at the moment, but it's from "Book Four."

--If the barking of a dog disturbs your meditation, it is best to shoot the dog and think no more about it.--

I think that's very close to the statement. It's been several years since I read it.

[subterranean]

How can you forget this one:

"I am tired, so tired, so tired! . . . "

I just think that line is interesting ;)



"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

"War is like a wave; some it rolls over, some it drowns, some it beats to pieces on the shingle; but some it shoots far up the shore on to glistening golden sand out of the reach of any further freaks of fortune."

"I've often thought that there isn't any 'I' at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think of ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion."

"I loathe law. It seems to me as if it were merely an elaborate series of obstacles to doing things sensibly."

"Ever man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease - that of thinking."

"Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence. It's hateful to be interrupted."

"Lofty morality is the last refuge when one feels onself to be hopelessly in the wrong."

"The most delicious sensation of all is the re-birth of healthy human love. Spring coming back to Earth!"

"Everyone interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstand you, or doesn't understand you at all."

". . . only by climbing painfully to a spot beyond human intervention, could one obtain a stable point of view from which to regard the Universe in due proportion."

"There is nothing in nature which cannot be used for our benefit, and it is up to us to use it wisely."

"People think that talking is a sign of thinking. It isn't, for the most part' on the contrary, it's a mechanical dodge of the body to relieve oneself of the strain of thinking, just as exercising the muscles helps the body to become temporarily unconscious of its weight, its pain, its weariness, and the foreknowledge of its doom."

"The universe is the looking-glass of the soul."

"Experience is the only teacher."

"As long as you have animal passions, you are an animal. How disgusting it is to think of eating and loving and all those appetites, like cattle! Breathing itself would be beastly if one knew one were doing it. How intolerable life would be to people of even mediocre refinement if they were always acutely conscious of the process of digestion."

"Our souls have invented our minds . . . with the object of registering conscious experiences, and therefore the more deeply an experience is felt the better our minds are carrying out the intention of our souls."

"The most deeply seated instinct in us is our craving for experience."

"The true test of the perversity of a pleasure is that it occupies a disproportionate amount of the attention."

"Sanity consists in the proper equilibrium of ideas in general. That is the only sense in which it is true that genius is connected with insanity."

"Man has a right to spiritual ambition. He has evolved to what he is, through making dangerous experiments."

"We learn more from our failures than from our successes."

"Love is the law, love under will."

[Jean-Baptiste]

Here are some of my favorite Crowley quotes:

“When NOTHING became conscious, it made a bad bargain.”

“Every man and every woman is a star.”

“Consciousness is a symptom of disease.”

“Magick is the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will.”

“Every intentional act is a Magical Act.”

“No religion has failed hitherto by not promising enough; the present breaking up of all religions is due to the fact that people have asked to see the securities.”

“In the Wind of the mind arises the turbulence called I.”

“Proof is only possible in mathematics, and mathematics is only a matter of arbitrary conventions.”

“Little children, love one another!”

“Bring us through Temptation! Deliver us from Good and Evil!”

“You will say: ... ‘What was I doing?’ ‘Where am I?’ ‘Who am I?’ … This may alarm you, and your alarm will not be lessened when you come to full consciousness, and reflect that you have actually forgotten who you are and what you are doing!”

Many of these quotes are found in “THE BOOK OF LIES, WHICH IS ALSO FALSELY CALLED BREAKS, THE WANDERINGS OR FALSIFICATION OF THE THOUGHT OF FRATER PERDURABO WHICH THOUGHT IS ITSELF UNTRUE….” Others are found in “Book Four,” “Liber Legis,” or “Magick in theory and practice.”

[Starving Buddha]

One of my greatest revelations came when I was simultaneously reading Crowley's Magick and the writtings of St. John of the Cross. I realized that all mysticism was the same, no matter what polarity. The journey of the soul to enlightement is all the same. There are paragraphs between the two that are so similar they could be switched and you would not be able to tell the difference.

[apollyon]

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I came across this post when doing research on Crowley and Virginia Woolf. Your post came up because of your quote in your signature, and while I was not a member of this forum, I decided I would join just to say that I am glad you enjoyed Diary.
I am in fact a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, OTO, ( usa-oto.org), the organization that Crowley resurrected, and reworked in the early 1900's.
I would also suggest reading his other novel, Moonchild. On the subject of Will. The Will that Crowley refers to (Will or True Will), is much more than the will of the individual. The Greek word Thelema (Will), occurs in the Holy Bible numerous times (any bible reference can help you locate actual pages), usually in reference to the Will of God. The True Will is the individual's "perfect course in nature". It is the path that is most suited to the individual. The belief being that if everyone followed their True Will, there would be harmony. This is reflected as well in the quote "Every man and woman is a star" (Liber AL Vel Legis I:3). Every individual has their own course in Nature. From page 228 of Magick Without Tears, Crowley remarks:


The ideal analogy seems to be that of a planet in its orbit. It has its "true motion"; it meets the minimum of friction from circumambient space. When it suffers the attraction of another body, it sways slightly to make the proper adjustment without effort or argument; it can, consequently, continue indefinitely in its orbit.
This is roughly the plan of the Taiost in his attitude to life. Having ascertained the Path which satisfies the equations of his Nature (as we say, "found his True Will") he continues "without lust of result", acting only when it happens to be necessary to adjust himself to any external stress that affects him, and so proceeds happily.
Love is the law, love under Will
Frater Apollyon, OTO