Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION

Search the corpus.

Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.

2,226 matching pages

Page 77 of 112
1907 · PDF PAGE 65

Konx Om Pax

…u have genuinely conquered the Illusion of the Pairs of Opposites. Truthfulness and Lying are just as much opposites as white and black, good and evil—— Bones. I sometimes doubt if any of these are opposites at all. Next time you run up to Kether, look down the Tree and see what Truth looks like from there! Take the case of heat and cold, at one time the typical opposites. Nowadays we conceive of a hot body as one in violent internal motion, a cold body as in moderate motion. Bowley. Fast and slow. Bones. Or even (to allow the enemy every advan…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1954 · PDF PAGE 173

Magick Without Tears

…hat is not with me is against me." In all these letters you will find only two things: either I tell you what is bad for you, or what is good for you. But I am not you; I don't know every detail of your life, every trick of your thought. You must do ninety percent of the work for yourself. Whether it is love, or your daily avocation, or diet, or friends, or amusements, or anything else, you must find out what helps you to your True Will and what hinders; cherish the one and eschew the other. I want to insist most earnestly that concentration is…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1929 · PDF PAGE 474

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… everything five times over after everybody else has ceased to take the smallest interest in the question. There were lots of small fry, good for subordinate positions. But was there not someone authentically anointed for the work, someone who had made a special study for years of the psychology of Americans, who had written books about them? Was there no man of master mind, ripe experience, balanced wisdom? {749} I found such a candidate for the secret director of the German propaganda in Professor Hugo Münsterberg. As it happened, the profess…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1929 · PDF PAGE 485

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…n gurgito vasto. Nobody would look at my work, either in a periodical form or volume. I shall tell later of my grotesque failure to make good as a Master of Magick. The people I met knew nothing and thought they knew everything, and whatever scraps of information they had, they had all wrong. I took a week off in March to go to Philadelphia, where the great Billy Sunday was conducting a revival. The immense notoriety of the man, and the incompatibility of the accounts which my queries elicited, determined me, like the man in the gospel, to hear…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1929 · PDF PAGE 547

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…. Anyone who knows Italy will appreciate the magnitude of this miracle. To get the most trifling business through demands the maximum of good luck at least a month before the first move is made. Giosus took me up the hill and lo! a villa that might have been made to order. It fulfilled all my conditions; from possessing a well of delicious water to a vast studio opening northwards. The gods took no chances. They meant me to live there and guarded against any possible perversity on my part by planting two tall Persian nuts close to the house. Th…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1912 · PDF PAGE 24

The Equinox (Volume I, Number VII)

… example of J, who wanted to store up Ojas, and went off his K—nut? No, dear readers, love is not all that it’s cracked up to be. It’s a good boy to have to answer the bell, but it’s a bad packing-house when you’re the pig! Love is like champagne. You must drink it quickly; and if you keep it corked up too long, you find it has gone flat. It is a fine pick-me-up; but champagne all day is nastier than skilly. FRATER PERDURABO is a wise man. He never says “ Keep off the drink!” If you cannot drink soberly and decently you are not fit. If you can be y…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1912 · PDF PAGE 24

The Equinox (Volume I, Number VIII)

… example of J, who wanted to store up Ojas, and went off his K—nut? No, dear readers, love is not all that it’s cracked up to be. It’s a good boy to have to answer the bell, but it’s a bad packing-house when you’re the pig! Love is like champagne. You must drink it quickly; and if you keep it corked up too long, you find it has gone flat. It is a fine pick-me-up; but champagne all day is nastier than skilly. FRATER PERDURABO is a wise man. He never says “ Keep off the drink!” If you cannot drink soberly and decently you are not fit. If you can be y…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1922 · PDF PAGE 56

Diary of a Drug Fiend

…g Fiend particularly wrong with us except youth and enthusiasm, and he was very sorry that it would take three weeks to turn us off. The good old boy explained the law. “Oh, that’s easy,”” we said in a breath. ‘“ Let’s get the first train to London.” There are no incidents to record. We were both completely anzsthetised. Nothing bothered us. We didn’t mind the waiting on the platform, or the way the old train lumbered up to London. Everything was part of the plan. Everything was perfect pleasure. We were living above ourselves, living at a trem…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1922 · PDF PAGE 161

Diary of a Drug Fiend

…. It’s nature’s way. ... We picked ourselves up with five or six goes of heroin. It’s no use taking cocaine unless you're feeling pretty good already... . The supply is really awfully small. Confound this silly holiday habit. It really isn’t fair of Gretel to let us down like this. We went to the Café Wisteria. Somebody introduced us to somebody that said he could get all he wanted. But now there was a new nuisance. The police find it troublesome and dangerous to attend to the crime wave. Besides they’re too busy enforcing regulations. England’…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1929 · PDF PAGE 72

Moonchild

…ecause of your passion for Brother Cyril. And I tell you honestly that I am mortally afraid for you, because you live in extremes. It is good for a swift push to have that sudden energy of yours; but no research in science is to be taken by storm. You need infinite patience, nay, even infinite indifference to the very thing on which your heart is set: "Well, I have prated. The old man must utter his distrust of fiery youth. So we'll go on. "I'm going to talk to you about the soul again. Remember our conception of it, the idea that seemed to do …

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1947 · PDF PAGE 8

The Last Ritual

…e particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Behold ! the rituals of the old time are black. Let the evil ones be cast away ; let the good ones be purged by the prophet ! Then shall this knowledge go aright. I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star. I am Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death. I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. Remember all ye that existence is pure joy : that all the sorrows are bu…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1954 · PDF PAGE 197

Magick Without Tears

… from the nativity. It sounds incredible; but more than a score of times I have been actually able to name him! By the time you have got good at this game-and a most amusing game it is-you may call yourself a very competent astrologer . Sometimes , even now, you may assign the figure of the Archbishop of York to Jabez Balfour or Catherine de Medici; or mix up Moody and Sankey with Brown and Kennedy : don't be discouraged; perhaps there may be something to be said for you after all! I believe, as I hope, that you will be surprised at the speed w…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1954 · PDF PAGE 488

Magick Without Tears

…oportion of masters to servants . The stability of a building depends on the proportion of superstructure to foundations. The rule holds good in every department of Nature. There is an optimum for every case. If there is one barber for ten thousand men, most of them will remain unshorn; if there are five thousand barbers , most of them will be out of a job . Apply this measure to society ; there must be an optimum relation between industry and agriculture, between town and country . When the proper balance is not struck , the community must dep…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1954 · PDF PAGE 494

Magick Without Tears

…r being intelligent, or even, in a weak moment, human; and this is not the case with officials. The standard, moreover, of education and Good Manners, low as it is, is less low in Tory circles. As I think that totalitarian methods are already on the way to extinguish the last spark of manly independence-that is, in self-styled civilized countries-it seems to me that we all should regard with shrewd suspicion any plans for "perfecting" social conditions . The extreme horror is the formula of the gregarious type of insect. Inherent in the premise…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1907 · PDF PAGE 40

The Star in the West

…ey alone obeys , and that is : that all verse - rime , rhythm , and metre — to be considered as poetry , must be musical .' Without As a good example I will quote the following opening lines of a sonnet addressed to “ the Secretary of State ,” by Wilson Bonchord in Poems composed in Prison : When Crime's sad victim has been tried and brought Within the circle of the difficult sphere Which England's penal statutes appoint him here : To expiate by patient toil and thought . Neither the second nor third line scans ; nevertheless the P

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1929 · PDF PAGE 449

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…ain control of the Rite. The outrage was baroque, it being the first condition of membership that the candidate should be a freemason in good standing under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of England. However the conspirators had illegally convened a secret council at Manchester to elect a successor to Yarker. I was deputed to attend and convey the protests of the various Grand Masters on the continent. I did so. I challenged the legality of the council. I showed that Wedgwood was not a freemason at all. I exposed the whole intrigue. At the…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1929 · PDF PAGE 465

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…His irony is incomparably keen. That I should have missed the point taught me a much needed lesson. To pick up a book, persuaded that no good thing can come out of Nazareth, makes appreciation impossible. Harvey introduced me to Edwin Markham, whose The Man with the Hoe, and other poems is assuredly first-rate of its kind. His work is uneven and it would be absurd to assert that he is of outstanding excellence. He lacks the stature of the sacred legion, but at least he proved to me the existence of what I had till then doubted; a poet true to h…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1906 · PDF PAGE 125

Collected Works (Vol. II)

…e curse of Ares dog you into Hades! I have my reasons [dowdtfully), ay, my reasons ‘plain ! Going, not forced. CHORUS. Yet going—that is good | JASON, To Corinth! Bride of my own heart, Medea, Well hast thou put thy power off for the time Preferring love to pomp, and peace to revel— MEDEA. And the soft cushions of the moss-grown trees To royal pillows, and the moon’s young light To gaudy lamps of antique workmanship— JASON. And music of the birds to harps of gold Struck by unwilling fingers for gold coin. MEDEA. Come! lest the curse I call upon…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1909 · PDF PAGE 391

The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

…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 wives are of the best, and I am afraid they are like a master to me, though their authority is always tempered with sisterly manners. And what fine cooks they both are! They will help me to civilise our negroes. This task seems to me the most important. All the civi- lised world may disappear; and we must have cultured beings to put i…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1909 · PDF PAGE 391

The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

…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 wives are of the best, and I am afraid they are like a master to me, though their authority is always tempered with sisterly manners. And what fine cooks they both are! They will help me to civilise our negroes. This task seems to me the most important. All the civi- lised world may disappear; and we must have cultured beings to put i…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →