Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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Page 102 of 108
1907 · PDF PAGE 227

Collected Works (Vol. III)

… and even the rationalising Mansel and Newman, if they would only concentrate upon spiritual truth, instead of insisting on the truth of things, material and therefore immaterial, which only need the touch of a scholar’s wand to crumble into the base dust from which their bloodstained towers arose. Whoso has been crucified with Christ can but laugh when it is proved that Christ was never crucified. The historian understands nothing of what we mean, either by Christ or by crucifixion, and is thus totally in- competent to criticise our position. …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 145

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…ding why; one felt the presence of forces which appal because one feels their power, recognizes their existence in oneself. They are the things one has tried to forget and persuaded oneself that they are in fact forgotten. They are the voices of ancestral appetite. It is the roar of the mob in the ears of the educated: but as for any definite religious impression, the Perahera had nothing to say. It was no more Buddhism than the carnival at Nice is Christianity. Iota Omega Pi Alpha Nu ! But the matter does not end there. Official science, which…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 100

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…fect wore off, so that he had to inject morphine. After a month of this he had to switch to cocaine, which he took till he began to "see things" and was then reduced to chloroform. I have seen him in bed for a week, only recovering consciousness sufficiently to reach for the bottle and sponge. Asthma being a sthenic disease, he was then too weak to have it any more, so he would gradually convalesce until, after a few weeks of freedom, the spasms would begin once more and he would be forced to renew the cycle of drugs1. No doubt, this constant s…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 87

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…d as anything. Eckenstein was a recognized authority on what is known as Kirkwood's schoolgirl problem, but we used to work all sorts of things, from problems connected with Mersenne's numbers and Fermat's binary theorem to the purely frivolous attempt to represent any given number by the use of the number four, four times --- neither more nor less, relating them by any of the accepted symbols of mathematical operations. Thus: 18 = 4 (4.4) + .4 38 = 14 + . + 4 106 = ł4 + 4.4 .4 128 = 44ö4-Sq.Rt.of 4 his has been done up to about 170, with the e…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 358

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… rest of the world today is Barcelona, a notorious hotbed of infidelity and freemasonry. It is to the last degree unfortunate that these things should be connected in the minds of the unthinking with anarchy and other cults implying social disorder. Lord Morley was an atheist, Huxley an agnostic, and Edward the Seventh a freemason; but it would be hard to pick three men more genuinely enlightened or more truly conservative. From Pamplona it is three days' easy walking to Logrono. We left our hotel after dinner and walked in the cool of the nigh…

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1904 · PDF PAGE 123

The Sword of Song

…ject—waking or sleeping, he remembers who he is and what his high aim in life—and this constant recollection and keeping in mind of holy things, is the Seventh Stage, Sammasati. And by the power of this transcendent faculty, rising through the Eight High Trances to the very threshold of Nirvana, he at last, in the Trance called Nirodha Samapatti, attains, even in this life, to the Deathless Shore of Nirvana, by the power of Sammasamadhi, Right Concentration. Such a one has finished the Path—he has destroyed the cause of all his chain of lives, …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 96

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

96 proper means, we can induce him to do for us those things which are consonant with his nature and powers. The whole question is, therefore, one of practice; and by this standard we find that there is no particular reason for quarrelling with the conventional nomenclature. At this time I had not worked out any such apology for the theories of transcendentalism. I took everything as it came and submitted it to the test of experience. As it happened, I had no reason at any time to doubt the reality of the magical universe. I began my practical …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 33

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…ful damned souls; of people who accepted nature as she is, accepted their own place in nature and enjoyed it, fought mean and despicable things fairly and firmly whenever they met them. It was a period of boundless happiness for me. I had always yearned for the beauty of nature; my only friends, except animals and occasional strangers, from whom I was carefully protected, had been the skies, the streams, the mountains and the seas. For the first time in my life I was brought into contact with my fellow men and women. For the first time honest f…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 59

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… in love. I always feel myself as about eighteen or twenty; I always look at the world through those eyes. It is my constant sorrow that things do not always accommodate themselves to that point of view; and it is my eternal mission to redeem the universe to that state of intoxicated innocence and spiritual sensuality. I bring ye wine from above. ...From the vats of the storied sun. For every one of ye love, ...And life for every one. The air of London is damp and depressing. It suggests the consciousness of sin. Whether one has a suite in the …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 383

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…ung Magicians forget that to dare must be backed by to will and to know, all three being ruled by to keep silence. Which last means many things, but most of all so to control oneself that every act is done noiselessly; all disturbance means clumsiness or blundering. The soldier may happen not to be hit as he carries his wounded comrade through the barrage, but there is no luck in Magick. We work in a fluid world, where every moment is compensated at once. Light, sound and electricity may be shut out, and so the effects of human thought, speech …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 367

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…ny positive point of view soever. Such a man is but one step from the threshold of Arahatship. He has only to destroy this conception of things, as is done in this four-fold formless state, to attain the trance Nerodha-Sammapatti, in which all being and form is absolutely annihilated, so much so that the trance is only distinguishable from Nibbana by the fact that one comes out of it. It was on October 2nd, 1919 that I first attained to this Pisgah-sight of the promised land, Pari- Nibbana. I was spending the night in Fleischmann's Turkish Bath…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 570

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…Whatever mischief may come of this, it is none the less my duty to save this woman's soul. I will keep my oath, come what may!" At first things went well beyond my highest hope. I showed her how to invoke the gods, and to banish evil and malignant entities that had hitherto {901} deceived her by impersonating them. The very first experiment succeeded. She brought back information of great value. Its truth and the exalted nature of the being who uttered it was guaranteed by internal evidence of the strictest accuracy. Shortly after this the sun …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 263

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…now, and they did not realize that to deviate from my instructions in any way might be disastrous. Their disobedience having resulted in things going wrong, they proceeded to blame me. Righi had refused point blank to send Nanga on my express command; he had failed to send up any supplies, so that we were absolutely out of petroleum and short of food, both for ourselves an for our men.

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1929 · PDF PAGE 140

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…ance I mean a state of consciousness definitely distinct from the normal. Its characteristic is that whereas in normal consciousness two things are always present --- the percipient and the perceived --- in Dhyana these two have become one. At first this union usually takes place with explosive violence. There are many other characteristics; in particular, time and space are abolished. This, however, occurs with almost equal completeness in certain states of normal abstract thought. {242} The attainment of this trance is likely to upset the who…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 353

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…additions or omissions. I like Maugham well enough personally, though many people resent a curious trick which he has of saying spiteful things about everybody. I always feel that he, like myself, makes such remarks without malice, for the sake of their cleverness. I was not in the least offended by the attempts of the book to represent me as, in many ways, the most atrocious scoundrel, for he had done more than justice to the qualities of which I was proud; and despite himself he had been compelled, like Balaam, to prophesy concerning me. He a…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 468

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…ast, of the men whom he had wantonly wronged wished him well. I wish him well no less today, but alas that he cannot be hurt by the hard things I happen to say. Any alteration of my pamphlet would destroy the whole spirit of the spasm, the venomous virulence of my vituperation is the essay. I showed the manuscript to poor Tommy Earp who might have been a poet if he had not been a plutocrat. He said that "The Last Straw" was the limit in its line and my judgment jumps with his. Any considered statement, any documented plea, would lack the note o…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 544

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… not understanding the Law of Thelema and hankering after exclusive possession, she fell into a frenzy of mistrust and jealousy. It made things worse that I smilingly accepted her tantrums exactly as an alienist with the outbursts of a maniac. I refused to quarrel; my kindness, tenderness, affection and nonchalance were inexpugnable. She went from bad to worse during the following months, but I maintained firm correctness and at last she gave up trying to drag me down to her ignoble ideal. In the depths of her despair there grew a glimmer. She …

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1944 · PDF PAGE 127

The Book of Thoth

… wheel, I cannot see them. But at the top seems to be the Lamb and Flag, such as one sees on some Christian medals, and one of the lower things is a wolf, and the other a raven. The Lamb and Flag sym‐ bol is much brighter than the other two. It keeps on growing brighter, until now it is brighter than the wheel itself, and occupies more space than it did. “It speaks: I am the greatest of the deceivers, for my purity and innocence shall seduce the pure and innocent, who but for me should come to the centre of the wheel. The wolf be‐ trayeth only …

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1904 · PDF PAGE 110

The Sword of Song

… to some of these antique philosophers than to the fathers of modern philosophy that suffering is the badge of all the tribe of sentient things; that it is no accidental accompaniment, but an essential constituent of the Cosm ic Process.” And in the same essay, though he is disposed to deny more than the rudiments of consciousness to the lower form s of life, he is quite clear that pain varies directly (to put it loosely) with the degree of consciousness. Cf. also “Animal Automatism,” pp. 236-237. (2) S ORROW’S CAUSE.—The caus e of sorrow is de…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 492

The Equinox (Volume I, Number III)

…r is acquainted with, The denominator chosen is necessarily a large one, as the author's object is to reconcile systems which divide all things into 3, 7, 10, 12, as the case may be. Since our expression ‘common denominator’ i used in a figurative and not in a strictly mathematical sense, the task is less complex than appears at first sight, and the 32 Paths of the Sepher Yetzirah, or Book of Formation of the Qabalah, provide a convenient scale. These 32 Paths are attributed by the Qabalists to the xo Sephiroth, ‘or Emanations of Deity, and to …

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