Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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Page 196 of 197
1929 · PDF PAGE 50

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… was the same old story. The man couldn't stand on a snow slope. I was constantly having to misuse valuable time in saving his worthless life. {102} I began to reason the whole business out from the start. Mountaineering, I saw, was primarily a scientific problem. How, then, could the superstitious and ignorant peasants of the Alps master it or even attack it? There could be only one answer; they made no attempt to do so. Their craft was traditional; one man learnt from another by rule of thumb. Confront any guide with any mountain that he did …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 558

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…mi --- her twin --- and Helen, nearly twenty years her senior. Mimi was delighted. She yearned intensely to throw in her lot with us for life and yet she was inhibited by subconscious fear. The chains from civilization clanked on her ankles and wrists. She stayed with us for a fortnight and then went back to her work with the Red Cross in the devastated districts round Soissons. But the gods had their rod in the pickle for her. I must explain that members of the abbey bore certain distinguishing marks. The official costume for those not entitle…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 115

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…all my travels I have hardly ever "seen the sights". Nothing is so disappointing. My plan is simply to live in any new city the ordinary life of the people. I wander about and presently come unexpectedly upon one of the wonders of the world. In this way one gets the thrill which those who have sold their souls to Baedeker miss. Imagine the delight of discovering the Coliseum or the Taj Mahal for oneself, at a moment, perhaps, when one's mind was preoccupied with commonplace ideas! I may have missed a few masterpieces, but not many; and people w…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 549

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…trieve our great loss dragged its anchor. The past had perished and now the future failed us. An operation was necessary to save her own life. My faculties were utterly paralysed. I stood as if petrified in the studio, while in the next room the surgeon drew forth the dead from the living. I shall never forgive myself. I can only say that my brain was benumbed. It was dead except in one part where slowly revolved a senseless wheel of pain. Thus, although I had ether in the house, and I was competent to administer it, it never came into my mind …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 103

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…s white with foam. Also that we were off a lee shore, and that shore about the middle of the precipice. We could do nothing but pull for life in the teeth of the gale, which increased in violence every moment. We were both already tired out. Despite every effort, we were forced, foot by foot, towards the rocks. By great luck, there is one gap in those infernal little cliffs. But the boat was not under control. However, we had to risk it and managed to get ashore without being smashed, to beach the boat and walk home. That was the worst of it. B…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 554

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…had then put in eleven years with the A.'. A.'., but in the absence of personal guidance his progress had been slow. He arrived weary of life, despairing of truth.

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1929 · PDF PAGE 517

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

517 {815} class I represented; to experience what the French rather neatly call le-struggle-for-lifeisme; and that with the absolute moral certainty of being completely beaten from the very nature of things. In a country where the most week and ignorant, the least intelligent and resourceful, find it easy enough on the whole to earn a fairly decent living, and where the slightest capacity of almost any sort makes it a safe bet that ten years will put its possessor in Easy Street, I was to find myself a candidate for complete destitution. For ma…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 527

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…ell itself, I doubt whether I should have been warm. Night after night I sat, all through, rigid as a corpse, and icier; the whole of my life concentrated in two spots; the small section of my brain which was occupied in the work, and my right wrist and fingers. I remember with absolute clearness that my consciousness appeared to start from a perfectly dead forearm. The book is written in prose, yet there is a formal circumscription more imminent than anything which would have been possible in poetry. I limited myself by making a point of deali…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 199

Collected Works (Vol. II)

… when Earth shall be as dead as the moon is to-day, my breathing now will have robbed some being then living of the dearest necessity of life, That the theft is minute, incalculably trifling, is no answer to the moralist, to whom degree is not known; nor to the scientist, who sees the chain of nature miss no link. If, on the other hand, the store of energy in the universe be indeed constant (whether infinite or no), if personality be indeed delusion, then theft becomes impossible, and to forbid it is absurd. We may argue that even so temporary …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 519

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…erse. However right I may be in thinking as I do, you may be equally right in thinking otherwise. You can only accomplish your object in life by complete disregard of the opinions of other people. You must not even take the outward signs of success as indications that the course of action which has produced them would serve your turn. For one thing, my coronet might not suit your complexion but give you a headache; for another, the measures which I took to obtain that coronet might not succeed in your case." My mission is, in short, to bring ev…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 43

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…o be in a rock chimney in the Dolomites. After a short time at Tonbridge my health again broke down. It was evident that boarding-school life was unsuited to me. It was arranged for me to live at Eastbourne with a tutor named Lambert, a Plymouth Brother. It is curious (by the way) to reflect that Henry Bernstein, the celebrated French dramatist, being also a "hope" of the Brethren, was one of Lambert's pupils. I saw hardly anything of him. All I remember is that one day, for no reason that I can remember, we set to in the street and

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1919 · PDF PAGE 459

The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

…inetion, and the book, from first to last, is one which lovers of poetry will appreciate.”—standard. “, + full of the throbbing fever of life which one cannot confine into measure on all_ occasions, «‘civie Triumph of Pan’ is full of sonorous lines, with wonderful word pictures and poetic imagery which has seldom been excelled. « . "American Register, _‘.. Many beautiful passages in the volume... strange allusions to unpleasant gods, and the imagery is occasionally repellent ‘ . " sche fremendous conception of that ‘world so wide’ . .. at his b…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 276

Collected Works (Vol. II)

…re at fault. They. sensibly enough reject error; but they are over-proud of their lofty attitude, and, letting slip the real problems of life, busy themselves with side-issues, or try to satisfy the spiritual part of the brain (which needs food like any other part) with the husks of hate. * Pp. 144-163 in this volume. t Pp. 164-184, 233-243, and 244~261 respectively, in this volume.

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1904 · PDF PAGE 58

The Sword of Song

… when Earth shall be as dead as the moon is to-day, my breathing now will have robbed some being then living of the dearest necessity of life. That the theft is minute, incalculably trifling, is no answer to the moralist, to w hom degree is not known; nor to the scientist, who sees the chain of nature miss no link. If, on the other hand, the store of energy in the universe be indeed constant (whether infinite or no), if personality be indeed delusion, then theft becomes impossible, and to forbid it is absurd. We may argue that even so temporary…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 349

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… liar to {564} his face in front of everybody. It then began to dawn upon him that he had no power to exclude me from Trinity, I being a life member of the college. He summoned the president, secretary and treasurer of the society, and threatened to send them down. But as it happened they none of them belonged to Trinity and he had no more power over them than he had over the Queen of Madagascar. He must have been a really exceptional fool, even for a don, not to have found out such essential facts before entering upon his campaign. He ultimate…

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1913 · PDF PAGE 600

The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

…distinction, and the book, from first to last,isone which lovers of poetry will appreciate.” —Standard, “ full of the throbbing fever of life which one cannot confine into measure on all occasions. «The Triumph of Pan’ is full of sonorous lines, with wonderful word pictures and poetic imagery which has seldom been excelled. . '—American Register. Many beautiful passages in the volume . . . strange allusions to unpleasant gods, and the imagery is occasionally repellent. “The tremendous conception of that ‘world so wide’... at his best in some of…

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1913 · PDF PAGE 600

The Equinox (Volume I, Number X)

…distinction, and the book, from first to last,isone which lovers of poetry will appreciate.” —Standard, “ full of the throbbing fever of life which one cannot confine into measure on all occasions. «The Triumph of Pan’ is full of sonorous lines, with wonderful word pictures and poetic imagery which has seldom been excelled. . '—American Register. Many beautiful passages in the volume . . . strange allusions to unpleasant gods, and the imagery is occasionally repellent. “The tremendous conception of that ‘world so wide’... at his best in some of…

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1912 · PDF PAGE 428

The Equinox (Volume I, Number VII)

…istinction, and the book, from first to last,is one which lovers of poetry will appreciate.” —Svandard, + full of the throbbing fever of life which one cannot confine into measure on all occasions. “<The Triumph of Pan’ is full of sonorous lines, with wonderful word pictures and poetic imagery which has seldom been excelled. . '— American Register. “... Many beautiful passages in the volume . . . strange allusions to unpleasant gods, and the imagery is occasionally repellent. “The tremendous conception of that ‘world so wide’... at his best in …

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1912 · PDF PAGE 428

The Equinox (Volume I, Number VIII)

…istinction, and the book, from first to last,is one which lovers of poetry will appreciate.” —Svandard, + full of the throbbing fever of life which one cannot confine into measure on all occasions. “<The Triumph of Pan’ is full of sonorous lines, with wonderful word pictures and poetic imagery which has seldom been excelled. . '— American Register. “... Many beautiful passages in the volume . . . strange allusions to unpleasant gods, and the imagery is occasionally repellent. “The tremendous conception of that ‘world so wide’... at his best in …

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1906 · PDF PAGE 200

Collected Works (Vol. II)

…recepts. ; t I do not propose to dilate on the moral truth which Ibsen has so long laboured to make clear: that no hard and fast rule of life can be universally applicable. Also, as in the famous case of the lady who saved (successively) the lives of her husband, her father, and her brother, the precepts clash. To allow to die is to kill—all this is obvious to the most ordinary thinkers. These precepts are of course ex- cellent general guides for the vulgar and ignorant, but you and I, dear reader, are wise and clever, and know better. Nichtwar…

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