Is the messenger part of the message?

[brendanxx]

DuQuette writes that a knowledge of the life and personality of Crowley is not necessary to acquire an ability to get the most out of the Thoth pack. At first (like DuQuette I was seripously put off by some of the things crowley wrote about, particularly the desirable sacrifice of a child, but then I was swayed by the facts that Crowley desired notoriety and often made biographical things up and also wrote for those who had knowledge and so could see through the descriptions intended to confuse or play with the dilletante. But yesterday I read Crowley's description of killing a cat - stabbing it repeatedly, then hanging it etc. and was appalled. This had a totally different feel to the passage about child sacrifice. I was reminded of Ian Brady's boyhood entombement of a cat - also an experiemnt in death. So, my questions are (1) if we see Crowley as a messenger is there something bad he could have done that would make his message unacceptable (2) was there any confidant or contemporary to whom Crowley confided that he didn't kill the cat (3) is his crration and explication of the Thoth Tarot unterly divorced from his actions or personality?

[Deian]

Dunno, but if I was alive back then and had a cat, letting it alone with him, would not have been something I would enjoy. If you follow what is attributed to him, we go far, far beyond the cat, though.

Can you use the tarot without connection to him, I don't think so. There is what in the east is called "original qi" that carry the story there, can't use it without connecting to that. Its not that pretty, though, if there wasn't this connection the cards wouldn't be that interesting, anyway.

Are we sure he had connection in making the tarot... Yea, there were letters and stuff, between him and the woman that draw it.
Are we sure he killed a cat... No idea. But if we look at the big picture, if what they thought back then about the enochian rituals were true, he was open to kill all cats and everything else. So a single cat, seems a small thing to worry about on the scale we look at here.

"(1) if we see Crowley as a messenger is there something bad he could have done that would make his message unacceptable"

I think that can be misleading.
We have to look back to the enochian material. That was channeled some time before Crowley and it was providing a very complex ritual with its own language(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian) that was suppose to do something yet people were not sure exactly what. But they did seem to think its connected to the "end of the world" as that is how it was described.

Today, if one is interested in both the old metaphysics and the new ones, its easy to see what is described there happened 30-35 years ago. And it was very important. That is how we know someone did the whole ritual as well. We also understand angels better now, people were afraid of them back then, as if we read the old books they can seem scary. We understand stuff better now, so the worries about the rituals would unlikely be there for many practitioners now, but that was not the case then.

 

And that ritual is accepted today, was channeled from angels. And that happened rarely, back then. In todays world, we can go in bookstore or the net and see thousands, maybe millions channeling angels - nothing rare there. How accurate it is is another topic, yet the process is available. Back then it wasn't. And the people that received it(Dee and Kelly) has gone through a lot of difficulties to be able to do so.

And the instructions were with the whole time carrying the idea the ritual will bring what was scattered back home, with the idea home was God/Spiritual Dimensions/Source.
That did sound like the end of the world. We go back home when all here ends. Turns out that wasn't as simple as we thought, however.

 

Then we go to Crowley and G.D.

In his dairies, apparently(I haven't read them, nor do I plan to, but I know people that like him and did, even more so before) he described he started doing it. I think it was a little more then 2 weeks ritual. And he was 3/4 on the way of it, with no information if he ever finished it.

 

Yet we know 1989-1992 what is described there fully happened, so someone, somewhere has done it.
But the key here is that needs free will. Someone has to choose to change it all here and do it with clear understanding the world, as we know it may end(and it did in many ways).

And for that he had to be someone like that. Anyone that purely cared, at least a little, would have so much doubts we would never start it, let alone finish it. So he was what was needed. But that... In my humble view, and that is just personal view here(to be fair all of this is), if we are wise we would use the opportunities that open up. If instead we try to dig into why Crowley was what he was, the answers would always be the same. He was needed like that back then. If we need that now, up to us to see how we can do it without feeling bad for god knows how many cats, people and a lot of other stuff all over...

About the Church... In my country I have been in different "sects" and "groups" all my life. Have many people I know that had their own sects made with their followers and everything. And I had the chance to observe how the official religion in my country handled that. And I think they did a decent job with it. The ones that were closed, had good reason to be closed. Many had no problems teaching at all.
So I get part of his teaching is alternative to religion in England back then, but I can't see that as needed where I am, so I don't think that will be a problem everywhere. Even more so if we check and see that more then half of humanity isn't Christian at all.

[MuninnMissinHuginn]

For me this is an interesting question - Is the messenger part of the message?

 

I know nothing about the Thoth deck and next to nothing about Crowley. So I will only put my two cents in for the title question and obliquely to question 1 in your post.

 

Crowley was a flawed person. Who is not a flawed person?  Everyone who creates decks is a flawed messenger. Sometimes we know the flaws of the creator, as we each personally define flaws, sometimes we do not. So, perhaps the question is - Can we accept the flaws of the messenger and see the beauty in the message.  I can make an example in art. Picasso, as a person ugh, but I was lucky enough to see a portrait he drew on a scrap of butcher paper what was/is indescribably lovely. (And other lovely things he made.)

 

What is the message.  I really like the Sola Bosca deck, I love the art and the strangeness of it all. But the message, the absolute grasping for power and control (in my opinion) makes the deck unreadable for me. 

 

In the end how does the balancing of the message and the flaws come out?  

[Aeon418]

I don't have a lot of time at the moment and can't respond in detail right now. But for the sake of clarity, try reading Crowley's own description of the incident - in context - in his autobiography, The Confessions, chapter 6.

 

Chapter 6 - The Confessions of Aleister Crowley - The Libri of Aleister Crowley - Hermetic Library

 

The section towards the end of the chapter beginning "There is one amazing incident; at the age of fourteen as near as I can remember" where Crowley reflects on the actions of his teenage self and what he believes influenced them. (The astute Tarot reader will spot the 9 of Swords theme in the final paragraph.)

 

While it does not excuse anything, context is important. In our so-called more "enlightened times," kids go one better than Crowley and stab each other after having their teenage brains messed with by social media. 

[Aeon418]

On 7/18/2024 at 2:22 PM, MuninnMissinHuginn said:

Crowley was a flawed person. Who is not a flawed person?  Everyone who creates decks is a flawed messenger. Sometimes we know the flaws of the creator, as we each personally define flaws, sometimes we do not.

 

In the case of Aleister Crowley we most definitely do know his character flaws because he refused to hide them. "Veil not you vices in virtuous words," was proclaimed in Crowley's Book of the Law. And he lived up to that maxim, believing that the whole person must brought to the spiritual quest, not just those aspects of self that may be thought acceptable to polite society. This selective cherry picking of only the positive and inoffensive "nice" character traits leads to internal conflict and division within the self as all those so-called darker aspects of self have to be hidden away where one else can see. The latter is the most important bit. 🙈🙉🙊

 

Israel Regardie comments of this aspect of Crowley in his interpretation of Crowley - The Eye in the Triangle. (p.434)

 

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What is enormously impressive about Aleister Crowley and his diaries is his uncompromising honesty with himself, which leads foolish biographers like Symonds altogether astray with rash assumptions. Never does Crowley make any attempt to minimize what most of us might label his worst traits in favor of the higher or more socially acceptable. It is here that is evident that magnificent difference which makes him altogether dissimilar to any other of the spiritual, metaphysical or philosophical instructors of our time. The average spiritual teacher is prone to advertise freely his possible illuminated state and the precise terms of his philosophy, yet remain wholly silent as to the contents of his private life. A dichotomy is set up. To the average disciple or student, it is as though the teacher had no private life, or if he did have one it differed in no way from his publicly discussed inner life.

 

This "uncompromising honesty" caused Crowley nothing but trouble. Trouble that continues to this day in the minds of people who simply can't accept the fact you don't need to have the absurdly one sided perfection of Jesus to talk about spirituality or to have spiritual experience. But Crowley's adoption of the imagery of the Beast 666 still has the potential to winkle out the residual Christian conditioning that many people like to believe they don't have, while simultaneously bleating on about Satanism as if Crowley were in the same league as Jim Jones or Shoko Asahara.

 

Sometimes I think Crowley's real "crime" was being partly responsible for the creation of one of the most influential Tarot decks out there. Crowley is the "fly in the ointment" that spoils the deck for the white light crowd.

 

But do Crowley's personal failings vitiate his spiritual message? I'm sure some people will say yes. But where does that leave the rest of us who fail to live up to this imaginary standard of perfection? Maybe I've read too much Crowley and read too many biographies and have become desensitised to his behaviour. But even though there are many aspects to Crowley's character that might be described as ugly or unpleasant, I've yet to find it reflected in the Thoth Tarot deck or the spiritual philosophy that underpins it.     

[Aeon418]

Yesterday I started re-reading P. T. Mistlberger's comparative study of Aleister Crowley, G. I. Gurdjieff and Osho - The Three Dangerous Magi. In his opening remarks on Crowley, Mistlberger makes some insightful observations.

 

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A certain litmus test I have long had for metaphysically inclined people is their opinion of Crowley. He’s the kind of guy who tends to frighten off anyone who still harbors significant religious conditioning or sexual inhibitions. But he also baffles the dabblers because once you actually read his writings you see his intellectual depth and breadth of learning. Crowley perhaps more than any other tends to provoke opinions from people who have not actually read even a page of his writings. It’s something I’ve noted for several decades.

 

He then goes on to say:

 

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Of the three subjects of this book, Aleister Crowley leaves both Gurdjieff and Osho far behind when it comes to the sheer number of biographies and commentaries written on his life in the latter decade of the 20th century. That is a telling feature, one that speaks to a particular quality of Crowley, that may roughly be characterized as — perversely as this may sound to some — his very humanity.

 

The last remark caught my eye. In my opinion some people object to Crowley as a spiritual figure simply because he was very human and therefore subject to human failings and frailties. The mixture of the spiritual and the flawed human really is perverse in some people's minds because it appears to deviate from the established template of a what a "spiritual person" should be. When compared to the heavily mythologized figures of Jesus or Buddha, everyone falls short and is found wanting. Nevertheless, this unobtainable spiritual ideal is firmly implanted in many people's minds, even if they are not religious. 

 

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Of the three, Crowley registers the most readily apparent human flaws and this, along with his obvious brilliance, sincerity, and accomplishments as a seeker, researcher, practitioner and writer of higher truths, makes him a compelling figure. He holds within him all human dimensions — or most, at any rate — and while Gurdjieff and Osho lived extraordinary lives and may have discoursed at length about both the multidimensional nature and limitations of the human being, it was Crowley who thoroughly lived it all, at times scaling sublime heights (literally), more often stumbling about in sheer human muck. Also, it is very clear that of the three, Crowley was by far the most isolated. Not that he did not have many people in his life — he did — but he did not garner anywhere near the support for his ideas and work that Gurdjieff, and certainly Osho, did. He had a far greater tendency to alienate people. This greater degree of isolation renders him a more tragic and human figure. Despite the outlandishness of much of his life, he is, quite simply, easier to relate to and ultimately a more accessible figure than Gurdjieff or Osho.

 

I believe most people with a modicum of self awareness and self honesty can identify with the image of reaching for the heights while simultaneously stumbling around in human muck. Aleister Crowley exemplified this. But he's not a role model to be emulated. His central teaching - Do what thou wilt - runs counter to the very notion of emulation of others. But he is source inspiration and a cautionary tale very appropriate to an age of increasingly individualized spirituality, where growing numbers of people are trying to discover the divine within themselves in the context of their very messy human lives. "Every man and every woman is a star." 

[Misterei]

On 7/17/2024 at 5:12 AM, brendanxx said:

... Crowley's description of killing a cat - stabbing it repeatedly, then hanging it etc. and was appalled. ...

As a cat lady, to me this is the worst of his crimes. Yet reading the account, he was 14 years old boy. And 14 year old boys do horrible things. At least he drugged it first so the poor cat didn't suffer.

 

We now live in a time where sadists put a cat in blender and made a video to post on the internet. In Crowley's time people threw bags of kittens in rivers to drown. During the Black Death and witchcraft persecutions, priests crucified cats. Which is ironic since Plague was carried by rats. But I digress.

On 7/18/2024 at 6:22 AM, MuninnMissinHuginn said:

...  I really like the Sola Bosca deck, I love the art and the strangeness of it all. But the message, the absolute grasping for power and control (in my opinion) makes the deck unreadable for me.

Sola Busca always creeped me out. It's a grimoire of Black Magic. To me, much darker than Thoth. But I still have a copy of SB. It's historic value is part of Tarot's history. So is Thoth.

On 7/19/2024 at 3:00 AM, Aeon418 said:

... Crowley's own description of the incident - in context - in his autobiography, The Confessions, chapter 6.

 

Chapter 6 - The Confessions of Aleister Crowley - The Libri of Aleister Crowley - Hermetic Library

 

While it does not excuse anything, context is important. In our so-called more "enlightened times," kids go one better than Crowley and stab each other after having their teenage brains messed with by social media. 

Thanks for providing the original source material.

On 7/21/2024 at 11:11 AM, Aeon418 said:

In the case of Aleister Crowley we most definitely do know his character flaws because he refused to hide them. ...

This "uncompromising honesty" caused Crowley nothing but trouble. ...

But do Crowley's personal failings vitiate his spiritual message?

Not one iota.

Not a fan of Thoth or Crowley per se, but HUGE fan of his essay on the Dangers of Myticism. I learnt this the hard way.

I will always defend Thoth [which was collaboration with Harris] whenever people blather on that we should condemn the deck b/c Crowley Was Bad. And even if you don't like Crowley's energy---Harris did amazing artwork. Beauty speaks for itself.

14 hours ago, Aeon418 said:

Yesterday I started re-reading P. T. Mistlberger's comparative study of Aleister Crowley, G. I. Gurdjieff and Osho - The Three Dangerous Magi. In his opening remarks on Crowley, Mistlberger makes some insightful observations.

Sounds like a fascinating book. I will add to my reading list. Did you read Lords of the Left Hand Path?

Edited July 23, 2024 by Misterei

[Aeon418]

12 hours ago, Misterei said:

Did you read Lords of the Left Hand Path?

 

If this is the same book written by Stephen E. Flowers, then yes. It's been sitting in my Kindle library for quite a while now. I started reading it but still haven't finished it. I hate doing that but I found the book a bit of a struggle. Although, despite Flowers comments on Crowley, I am pretty confident that he does not fit within his definition of a "Lord of the Left-Hand Path."

 

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Essentially, the left-hand path is the path of nonunion with the objective universe. It is the way of isolating consciousness within the subjective universe and, in a state of self-imposed psychic solitude, refining the soul or psyche to ever more perfect levels. The objective universe is then made to harmonize itself with the will of the individual psyche instead of the other way around. Where the right-hand path is theocentric (or certainly alleocentric: “other-centered”), the left-hand path is psychecentric, or soul/self-centered. Those within the left-hand path may argue over the nature of this self/ego/soul, but the idea that the individual is the epicenter of the path itself seems undisputed. An eternal separation of the individual intelligence from the objective universe is sought in the left-hand path. This amounts to an immortality of the independent self-consciousness moving within the objective universe and interacting with it at will. 

 

Non-union? Isolating consciousness? Eternal separation of the individual intelligence from the objective universe? Crowley would sum this up in one word. FEAR.

 

The follower of the Left-Hand Path fears to lose their individuality. But in Crowley's spiritual worldview each of is the Universe. Our sense of individuality is the last illusion that must be given up in order to realise this liberation. On Atu XI - Lust, the Beast tramples on the Thelemic Saints as if they were ripe grapes, releasing their individual lives, which is collected in the Holy Grail held aloft by the Scarlet Woman or the Universe itself under the symbolic guise of the Divine Feminine.

 

This is neatly summed up by Entelecheia is his book, Erotic Liberation (p.27-28).

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The path toward Babalon is ostensibly a path toward night, toward destruction. It is symbolised by emptying out one's blood in the Cup of Our Lady, the cup of her fornications. One relinquishes control over one's life, what one considers to be one's self, which can only be seen from the perspective of the ego as death, a casting of oneself to the four winds. This is described as becoming like a pile of dust in the City of the Pyramids. But by relinquishing this false sense of self and by surrendering to universal life, one is able to embrace true life and true joy. One achieves real unity, which is the continual, ongoing unity of unification between the self and the universe, which is experienced as joy. So what initially appeared as a path toward destruction is in reality a path toward unification, a path toward the recognition of eternity in time.

 

Unfortunately a lot of people never suspect that this sort of stuff lies at the heart of Crowley's system because they are frightened off by the personality of Aleister Crowley. But is this really unfortunate? Or is he really the ideal door keeper? 

Edited July 23, 2024 by Aeon418
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