Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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Page 176 of 225
1909 · PDF PAGE 391

The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE MAN-COVER little error they treat me gently and worship me so much that they seem very much concerned every time I venture myself out of their sight. The sailor, my lieutenant, calls them “Nurse,” but then he is such a simple fellow! Remembering the Laws of Manu, and how it is there said that there are seven kinds of wife, z.e., a wife like a thief, like an enemy, like a master, like a friend, like a sister, like a mother, like a slave, and that the last four are good and the last of all the best, I cannot quite agree with the ancient. My w…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 17

The Scented Garden

…s now, and I have yet to meet anyone who really knows how to extract the gold. Certainly no unworthy person. All arcana are indicible. A man whose formula is n may un- derstand (n + 1), but not (n + 101). So that my Persian MS. is doubly safe from the profaning touch of the British Public. Even the Persians themselves hold that there are Guardians who know how to guard : without pandering to any such superstitious beliefs, I may say that as far as results go, I believe them to be right. I should observe that the translation itself, as well as m…

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1919 · PDF PAGE 122

The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

…ecause all these enjoyments are dependent upon dual- ity, so that their true name is Sorrow of Illusion, like that of the normal life of man, which you have set out to transcend. Be it according to your Will, but learn this, that (as it is written) they only are happy who have desired the unattain- able. It is then best, ultimately, if it be your Will to find alway your chiefest pleasure in Love, that is, in Conquest, and in Death, that is, in Surrender, as I have written to you already. Thus then you shall delight in these delights afore- said…

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1954 · PDF PAGE 82

Magick Without Tears

…arvellous beauty and symmetry of the Qabalistic system. And then-what a weapon you will have forged! What power to analyze, to order, to manipulate your thinking! The Book of the Law itself insists upon the fact that it contains a Qabalah which was beyond me at the time of its dictation , is beyond me now, and always will be beyond me in this incarnation . Let me direct your spiritual attention at AL, I: 54; I: 56; II: 54-55; II: 76; III: 47. Now there was enough comprehensible at the time to assure me that the Author of the Book knew at least …

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1954 · PDF PAGE 169

Magick Without Tears

…es. Genius is there, or is not there; nor wit nor work avail if it be absent. Yet one may maintain that it is always there, since "Every man and every woman is a star." In any case only technique responds to study and exercise; it has been written that it "demands as much study as theology, and as much practice as billiards." All one can do is (a) to unleash, (b) to direct, the latent genius. In countries hostile to civilization (horribilesque ultimosque Brittanos) and their colonies, past and present, the technique is almost non-existent; indi…

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1954 · PDF PAGE 432

Magick Without Tears

…and inspires the questions by means of which he seeks to confirm or to discredit it? Just this, no more: here is the head and torso of a man fitted to the shoulders of a horse; how are the mechanical adjustments effected? In the same strain, he pointed out that for an angel to have practicable wings as in Mediaeval pictures, the breast-bone would have to stand out some five feet in front of the body! (The poor fellow, of course, was densely ignorant of the mechanics of the Astral Plane. I am, for once, "on the side of the angels. ")1 Am I digre…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 224

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…hletic at once. There is also the point that I make a profession of virtue when reminded of certain dates, just as a totally irreligious man might go to church at Christmas. The subsequent entries give no hint that my mind was really turning to its ancient masters. The sole entries concern sport and camp life; and they are very meagre. I have never been able to enjoy reading chronicles of slaughter, and I do not propose to inflict any such on the world. They are as monotonous and conventional as those of mountaineering. Sportsmen and climbers f…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 307

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… worn-out melancholy Scot, was as puzzled as I. He said his engines were "as rotten as the captain's guts". They moved like a one-legged man with St. Vitus' Dance and they sounded like tea trays being beaten, chains being rattled and fire irons being thrown about, all at once. We could not even get clear of our moorings without tearing away the port companion. Twenty-four hours later we stopped. The captain freely admitted that he had lost his reckoning, didn't know where he was, didn't know how to find out and didn't see why he should worry ab…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 429

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

429 {681} phenomena which impressed me in the least as being caused by occult forces. (It is to be remembered that I have seen so many phenomena of absolutely indubitable authenticity in the course of my magical work that I am predisposed to expect such things to happen.) In sitting with Eusapia, my main objects were first to get an idea of the atmosphere, so as to visualize more clearly the events recorded in the famous report, and second to criticize my own evidence. The question had suggested itself: "Feilding and the rest are clever, wary, …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 514

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…d that after all the bag was in one sense a part of myself. The two ideas came together with a snap, and I understood the machinery of a man's delusion that he is a teapot. From this I came to another discovery: I perceived why platitudes were stupid. The reason was that they represented the summing up of trains of thought, each of which was superb in every detail at one time. A platitude was like a wife after a few years; she has lost none of her charms, and yet one prefers some perfectly worthless woman. It would be quite impracticable to go …

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1904 · PDF PAGE 16

Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden

…n her love. The final “ coup ” was as I have described ; he had foreseen all, provided for all. Such incidents are characteristic of the man ; he had not (I firmly believe) even the excuse of love for her. As I have observed, the “ Nameless Novel ” was written during his wife’s convalescence. The verses which composed the “ Bromo Book ” are due to many occasions. Some are mere exercises in me- tre. If he heard a new form of rhyme, as in the “ Sailor ashore,” he would compose in it, and, lest [12]

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1907 · PDF PAGE 111

Konx Om Pax

…th the lava’s deadly dew. All the kisses of the satyr, all the punishments of Pan, All Eros hath given of arrows to the eyes of maid and man, At their lips and lives I sufl'ered—I have home me as a queen: Hear the roar of after aeons that acclaim me Messalinel Woe is me! the waves of ages—icier, icier as they roll— May not cover up my stature, may not quench this devil-soul. Here’s the palace. I must enter sly and secret as a thief. I would rather blazon, blazon, this my night beyond belief. I, a worn Suburrian Venus reeking with a fouler foam, …

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1919 · PDF PAGE 117

The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

…ame, as a song, and the whole Soul shall wing a fiery path of music unto the Ultimate Heaven of Possession. Now in this method there are many roads and ways, some simple and direct, some hidden and mysterious, even as it is with human love whereof no man hath made so much as the first sketches for a Map: for Love is infinite in diversity even as are the Stars. For this cause do I leave Love himself master in the heart of every one of you: for he shall teach you rightly if you but serve him with diligence and devotion even to abandonment. Nor sh…

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1922 · PDF PAGE 287

Diary of a Drug Fiend

…e to sing. Luckily there was a baby grand in the room. He sat down and began to accompany her. I found myself enthralled by watching the man’s mind work. It taught me something con- stantly. This last act, for example. We couldn’t go out as we were, and the singing would be an alternative distraction. At the same time, he wanted Maisie’s back turned so that we could take our heroin. We wanted it very badly indeed; and yet—so strange is nature |—we were just as ashamed to take it secretly as a moment before we had been to take it openly. The tho…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 19

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…him with the original remark: “To the pure all things are pure.” It was knowing when to be bold that had made Theodore the fine business man he was. And very bold it was, for conscience makes cowards of us all. The secret shame of his orgies! Every week- night—once even on a Sunday!—after everyone had gone to bed, he opened the little safe in the wall at the head of his bed, and drew forth the obscene picture from its envelope marked “In case of my death or dis- ability THIS PACKET is to be DESTROYED UNOPENED. T. Bugg.” Then he would sit, and h…

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1954 · PDF PAGE 538

Magick Without Tears

…is still immune to all criticism and at every period of its construction has been perfectly sympathetic with the normal consciousness of man. On this view indeed, one might laughingly remark that Yoga at its best is a smoke-screen thrown out by a battleship in self-protection. It may seem to you strange as you read this letter to have watched how the pendulum has swung always a little more

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1929 · PDF PAGE 173

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…absolute justification of the Path of the Wise as indicated by the adepts, whether of the magical or mystical schools. For Yoga offers humanity an organ of intelligence superior to intellect, yet co-ordinate with it, and Magick serves to arose spiritual energies which while confirming those of the mind, bring them to their culmination. One afternoon was made notable by a storm of wind. Fine sand was blown up from the bed of the Indus to a height of over three thousand feet, completely obscuring the mountains. (I have seen something similar in C…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 122

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

122 Our difficulties were in some ways severe. The canned food procurable in Mexico City was of inferior quality and many years old at that. Eckenstein {214} 1. WEH Note: AL I,44 was constantly ill with diarrhea and I was not much better. Finally food gave out altogether and our last three days we had literally nothing but champagne and Danish butter. We didn't care much; we had done what we had set out to do. Besides, I had learnt a great deal about camp life, the fine points of glissading, and the use of Steigeisen. In 1899, at the Montanvers…

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1922 · PDF PAGE 100

Diary of a Drug Fiend

…ainst people, but as a matter of fact, it is a bit on the thick side. You seem to know all about it, so there’s no harm in my saying the man’s an un- speakable scoundrel.” All my hatred and jealousy surged up from the subconscious. I felt that if Lamus had been there I would have shot him like a dog on sight. My old school-fellow skated away from the obnoxious topic. “You didn’t let me finish,” he complained. “I was going to say I have no particular talent for finance and that sort of thing in the ordinary way, but I have an intuition that neve…

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1922 · PDF PAGE 291

Diary of a Drug Fiend

…nting and fishing—all sorts of things which we in England take quite simply, in consequence of which they give no trouble. “ But where a man has to think of a thousand things before he has his dinner: what he eats, and how it was killed, and who cooked it, and so on for ever and ever, he gets no chance to develop his mind in more important ways. Taboo is responsible for the low mental and moral development of the peoples whom it afflicts, more than anything else. An appetite should be satisfied in the simplest and easiest way. Once you begin to…

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