Aleister Crowley—The “Greatest” Magician of the 20th Century?
The “Greatest” Magician of the 20th Century?
— by Wes Penre, Dec 29, 1998Aleister Crowley is probably the Black Magician who is the most popular foreground figure in Hollywood and the Music Industry today. He is considered being the one who “invented” backward messages on music recordings (used by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones to name a few). A great percentage of the rock/rap/hip hop musicians of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s are highly influenced by this occult, black magician.
And sadly enough, it is often not even by their own choice – the satanic influence is something that is programmed into the artist’s mind by the “Illuminati” to serve a specific goal. You will learn more about this as go along. Now, let me introduce the most popular black magician (together with L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology) of today. Crowley has had a significant influence on the young people’s minds from the 50’s up to this date. ...
SOURCE: Wes Penre, 1998
A PRESENTATION
Aleister Crowley is the occultist and Satanist that is perhaps the most well known. His works “The Book of the Law”, “Magick in Theory and Practice” and “The Book of Thoth” are broadly used in occult circuits. Crowley himself didn’t take much credit for having written them, as he stated they were written by automatic handwriting, being channeled from a higher being called Aiwaz (or Aiwass). This being said he had lived in Caldea during the reign of Hammurabis (around 1750 BC), but later, in his book “Magick in Theory and Practice”, Crowley identified Aiwaz as his own genius. He was actually very proud of this book, which he used as a Bible for his own religion – Thelema. Crowley looked at man as a sleeping god who gradually started to understand what powers he possesses. He also taught that Satan was identical with the Sumerian devil/god Shaitan, who he stated had been worshiped in the Egyptian deserts long before the ages of the Pharaohs.
He was also a drug- and sex addict and was addicted both to opium, hashish, cocaine, mescaline, amphetamines and heroin, in order to perceive higher states of beingness (drug abuse is very common to occultists in general). When he discovered mescaline, he developed seven rituals, Rites of Eleusis, and rented Caxton Hall to demonstrate them. Later, he opened up a Temple of Satan in London, where many high society ladies became his pupils. By that time Crowley had shaved his head and filed his canine teeth so sharp that he could initiate every new woman with a “kiss of the snake”, as he gave them a bite either on the wrist or in the throat.
“Do what thou will shall be the whole of the Law” [The work of the OTO ... is geared towards the achievement of a world-spanning empire ... The Law “Do what thou wilt” is the law of this new state – a One World Government] was his motto for the OTO, which was the secret order he himself was the Grandmaster of. He rejected traditional morality in favor of the life of a drug addict and brutal womanizer (“I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend” is a line from one of his poems). He even enjoyed being called the “wickedest man in the world”. He was married twice, and both his wives went insane. Five of his mistresses committed suicide.Although the above is true, Crowley found great amusement in trying to shock his environment, the sleeping population, and when the newspapers named him “The Wickedest Man in the World”, he was very pleased. Due to his nature of wanting to shock people, he also sometimes exaggerated to create an effect.
People who met Crowley verified that he had occult powers, and as an example William Seabrook tells the following story: Seabrook wanted a demonstration of Crowley’s powers, so the latter chose a man by random out on the street and followed him, imitating his walk. Suddenly Crowley fell, but was rapidly on his feet again. At the same time the other man fell on the sidewalk. Crowley and his companion helped the man up, and he looked confused, trying to find the banana peel.
Crowley was also the man who came up with putting backwards messages into musical recordings. Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin used this on some of their albums. Jimmy Page put a backward satanic message on the mega hit “Stairway to Heaven” (“Here’s to my sweet Satan”). Page also bought Crowley’s mansion in Scotland and was/is a true follower of his teaching, as was the late drummer John Bonham from the same group. Beatles also used backwards messages like “Paul is dead” on their albums and Crowley’s head is present on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.
Aleister Crowley was born in Warwickshire where he revolted against a strict religious childhood. He left his studies and became initiated into the secret order of the Golden Dawn in 1898. After some time he came into conflict with its leaders and went to Mexico. From there he traveled a lot, to India and Ceylon, where he studied yoga and Buddhism. Buddhism replaced his occult interests for a while, until he got a strange experience in Cairo, Egypt in 1904. By curiosity his wife Rose asked him to do an occult ritual. She then went into a state of trance and brought down a message from some strange being. “He’s waiting for you”, she told Crowley. “Him”, she said, was Horus, the God of wars and the son of Osiris in the old Egyptian mythology.
At first, Crowley didn’t believe her, so he started asking her a few questions to reveal her as a fraud. But Rose, who didn’t know very much about the occult, gave the correct answers.
The message that was sent to Crowley, told him to sit down by his desk a certain time three days in a row. He obeyed and in these three days he wrote “The Book of Law” with automatic writing. This means his hand was moving by another force than his own.
Crowley’s messenger taught that the old Age of Osiris soon would follow by the new Age of Horus. But first Earth must bathe in blood. There should be a World War. The Book of Law told about a race of Superhuman and condemned the old religions, the pacifism, democracy, compassion and humanity. “Let my servants be few and secret, they shall reign over the many and the known”, the Superhuman continued. The rest of the message goes in the same spirit.
The lower races should be humiliated and condemned and even killed. It taught “no mercy”. [Long before the Roswell incident, where a flying saucer crashed in the desert and dead aliens were found, Crowley made a drawing of one of his “messengers” called Lam – the drawing is almost identical with the Grey Aliens, who nowadays are so broadly mentioned and used in movies and among abducted].
The messenger also declared that Crowley was the Beast 666 from the “Book of Revelations” (13:18), who had come to destroy Christianity. He tried to forget the whole thing, but from 1909 and forwards, he started taking the messages seriously.
Crowley then left his former occult teacher MacGregor Mathers, who by that time was a broken man. Mathers started a psychic war against Crowley. They called up demons with whom they attacked each other, and Mathers lost. Such demonic warfare is very common today among the Brotherhood.
Long after his death, Crowley became a hero for many young people within the flower-power movement. The irony in all this is that these young people cried for peace and love. Crowley in his turn welcomed the First World War, as necessary to sweep away the old age and start the new one. Since he revealed his revelations, he became the head of the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis) in Germany, which gave him a great influence over similar people in Germany. It’s also well known that Hitler was influenced by him and that Crowley himself tried to contact Hitler during the 2nd World War.
CROWLEY AND FREEMASONRY
In his book “Confessions ...”, Crowley claimed that he had been initiated as a 33rd Degree Mason in the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Masonry (A&AR). He probably did this in Mexico, where he went after breaking up with the Golden Dawn. At this time (around 1900) there was a lot of Masonic activity in South America. However, there is some confusion regarding this, as you have to be a Master Mason to be initiated on the Higher Grades, and by this time Crowley hadn’t gone through the grades required, so either he made it up or was granted the 33 degree without prerequisites necessary. In his own words he received the initiation after he had helped an individual with another mystical order called LIL. No one knows for sure what the real truth is.
It looks though, as if he at one point or another was initiated, as a copy of his recognition still exists. This is a reproduction:
T. T. G. O. T. S. A. O. T. U.
DEUS MEUMQUE JUS SPES MEA IN DEO EST
( Great Seal )
SUPREME GRAND COUNCIL
OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET
POST PUISSANT SOVEREIGN GRAND INSPECTORS
GENERAL
of the
33rd AND LAST DEGREE ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED RITE OF
MASONRY
H.R.D.M. R.M.S.H.
SITTING IN THE VALLEY OF MANCHESTERFrom the East of the SUPREME GRAND COUNCIL of the
SOVEREIGN GRAND INSPECTORS GENERAL of the 33rd and
last degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry in and for
Great Britain and Ireland under G.L. near the D.B. corresponding to 53’,
25” N. Latitude 2’, 3” West Meridian of Greenwich.
To all Illustrious, Ineffable and Sublime Freemasons of every degree
Around and [unclear] over the surface of the Globe, Greetings:
KNOW YE – That the undersigned Sovereign Grand Inspectors General
do hereby certify and proclaim, our Illustrious Brother ALEISTER
CROWLEY of *London*, to be an Excellent Master Mason, Secret
Master, Royal Master, intimate Secretary, Provost and Judge, Intendant
of the Building, Elect of Nine, Elect of Fifteen, Sublime Knight Elected,
Grand Master Architect, Ancient Master of the Royal Arch, Grand Elect
Perfect and Sublime Mason, Knight of the Temple, Prince of Jerusalem,
Knight of the East and West, Knight Rose Croix of Heredom, Grand
Pontiff, Master ad Vitam, Patriarch Noachite, Prince of Libanus, Chief
of the Tabernacle, Prince of the Tabernacle, Knight of the Brazen
Serpent, Prince of Mercy, Commander of the Temple, Knight of the
Sun, Knight of Saint Andrew, Grand Elect Knight Kadosh, Grand
Inspector Inquisitor Commander, Prince of the Royal Secret, Most
Puissant Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the 33rd and Last Degree.
WE ALSO COMMAND: All the Knights, Princes and Sublime Masons
under our Jurisdiction and we pray all other MASONS over the Surface
Of The Globe, to Welcome and Honor Him as a SOVEREIGN
GRAND INSPECTOR GENERAL, and to give credit to these
LETTERS PATENT, we have caused to be signed in the margin by our
said Illustrious Bro. ALEISTER CROWLEY, that they admit no other
than himself.
Signed and Delivered by us SOVEREIGN GRAND INSPECTORS
GENERAL of The 33rd and Last Degree with the Seal of our said
SUPREME COUNCIL affixed in the Valley of Manchester this 29th
day of the 11th month A.M. 5071 corresponding to the 29th November,
A.D. 1910.RATIFIED AND CONFIRMED
{*} John Yarker 33~
M.^.P.^.S.^.Gr.^.of Gt. Britain & IrelandThough it is beyond doubt that Crowley had connections with Freemasonry, he didn’t seem to have a high opinion of their teachings. He used some of their techniques in his own OTO later, but most of his own grades in that order was and is quite different from Freemasonry.
The following is taken from his book Confessions, page 700 et seq. regarding his motives of using Freemasonic knowledge within his own order:
“What is Freemasonry? I collated the rituals and their secrets, much as I had done the religions of the world, with their magical and mystical bases. As in that case, I decided to neglect what it too often actually was. ...I proposed to define freemasonry as a system of communicating truth – religious, philosophical, magical and mystical; and indicating the proper means of developing human faculty by means of a peculiar language whose alphabet is the symbolism of ritual. Universal brotherhood and the great moral principles, independent of personal, racial, climatic and other prejudices, naturally formed a background which would assure individual security and social stability for each and all.
”The question then arose, ‘What truths should be communicated and by what means promulgated?’ My first object was to eliminate from the hundreds of rituals at my disposal all exoteric elements. Many degrees contain statements (usually inaccurate) of matters well known to modern schoolboys, through they may have been important when the rituals were written. ... I saw no point in overloading the system with superfluous information.
”Another essential point was to reduce the unwieldy mass of material to a compact and coherent system. I thought that everything worth preserving could and should be presented in not more than a dozen ceremonies, and that it should be brought well within the capacity of any officer to learn by heart his part during the leisure time at his disposal, in a month at most.”Crowley, who had the idea that he stood above everybody else on this planet, chose other ways to accomplish his magical goals. So he took over another secret society, the OTO, and changed its rituals dramatically.
OTO symbol:
Represents the vagina.
The Pyramid with the Eye is the male (phallos), the dove is the semen, and the Grail is the female.
THE OTO
In the beginning of the 20th century, a manufacturer from Vienna, Dr. Karl Kellner, and a German theosophist, Dr. Franz Hertmann, founded a secret occult lodge which they named “Ordo Templi Orientis” (O.T.O.). Soon after, Theodore Reuss (1855-1923) who had connections with many lodges joined the Order. It was he who led Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, into such a group.
Reuss, whose lodge-name was “Brother Merlin”, contacted Aleister Crowley in 1912 and he became a member of this additional lodge receiving the name “Brother Baphomet”. Baphomet, the symbol of the satanic goat, usually portrayed as a half-human, half-goat figure, with a goat’s head. It is often misinterpreted as a symbol of witchcraft in general.
The origin of the name Baphomet is unclear. It may be a corruption of Mahomet (Mohammed). The English witchcraft historian Montague Summers suggested it was a combination of two Greek words, baphe and metis, meaning “absorption of knowledge.” Baphomet has also been called the Goat of Mendes, the Black Goat and the Judas Goat.)
The O.T.O. developed its sexual rites quickly under Reuss and later broadened them under Crowley. Not long after, Crowley took over the leadership of the lodge. Like other secret lodges, members may not disclose their knowledge.
(Baphomet)
CROWLEY, HITLER AND WORLD WAR II
Aleister (Alexander was his birth name) Crowley, the self-proclaimed Magus of the Aeon, was destined from his inception to be an exception. His father, a preacher, hounded him relentlessly to “Get right with God”; his mother, equally obsessed with biblical lore, referred to him repeatedly as a “beast,” and beyond doubt all this left its mark on young Alexander, the great beast to be. For years later, he did indeed assume the title—or station—of “To Mega Therion,” The Great Beast, signing all his correspondences in later life not with a name but a number—666, all in his continued quest for supreme significance in the eyes of a hostile, if not plain indifferent, world. Infamy, Crowley reasoned, was every bit as valid as fame, and that much easier to claim; in this, as in countless other ways, he was far ahead of his time, one of the first con-artists to realize that “all publicity is good publicity.” Both amount to influence, which amounts to power.
From the very first of his reinventions (the name change) his purpose was plain: whatever games Crowley played with the perceptions of the world, he was undoubtedly a master, though after a fashion wholly his own. Never a dabbler, he applied himself to a number of diverse disciplines and excelled in them all: chess, literature, languages (ancient and modern), philosophy, poetry, espionage, mountain climbing, wild-game hunting, yoga, drug-taking, sex magick, and so forth. His claims to fame, indeed, are as many and myriad as his names—Hitler’s guru, self-made Messiah, Babe of the Abyss, and let us not forget, Prophet of the New Age! His greatest claim of all was what he himself termed, “crossing the abyss,” being what is known nowadays ego-death, or being “born again.” It was by this accomplishment, highly esteemed in all magickal circles, that Crowley assumed, or pretended, his role as “Magus of the Aeon.”
Crowley was notoriously perverse in both his personal and professional life. But, though he was to all intents and purposes a sort of inspired lunatic, he did practice all he preached, a rare enough commodity these days to command respect. The central event in his life was undoubtedly the writing of “The Book of the Law”, an event that was to give him the most grief but also the most gratification in his long and fruitful career. Apart from anything else, it fulfilled his fantasies, from the most exalted to the basest and most abominable.
The Book of the Law, or Liber Al vel Legis (Liber Al for short) is a text considered by many to contain the profoundest secrets of magick, as well as the keys to the inauguration of the long-promised (and long-delayed) New Aeon. For what it’s worth, it is a book that claims to have been written (passive voice), rather than one which Crowley (or anybody) actually wrote. Nowadays, we’d call it a “channeled work,” but in this case one channeled with such a degree of precision as to entirely separate it from the vast mass of “automatic writings” so popular today, and which amount to little more than the wishful free-associations or mystical ramblings of the supposed “channelers.”
In distinction, Crowley claimed that, on the 8th of April 1904—in Cairo at 12 noon exactly and for the following two days at the exact same time—he actually heard a voice in his ear, dictating the words of the text (as if through some transmitter in his brain), and that he transcribed them faithfully. It was not “inspired,” then, so much as received. The voice itself claimed to be that of Aiwass, or Aiwaz, “the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat,” or otherwise, Horus—the god of force and fire, child of Isis and Osiris, and self-appointed conquering lord of the New Aeon, officially announced through his chosen scribe, “the prince-priest the Beast.” This much of Crowley’s controversial life and claims is more or less confirmed. It is, as promised, to be found there in the writings themselves.
Anyone who has read the work, and suffered the resulting conflictive feelings of admiration and disgust, will not doubt that there is something about the “little red book” that puts it in a class on its own. It might be argued that it is simply the work of a poetic genius, were it not for the fact that Crowley was to prove again and again in subsequent works that, for all his magickal prowess and philosophical brilliance, he was anything but a poetic genius. It seems rather as though the book partakes not of the qualities of Crowley, but that, conversely, Crowley himself grew over time to partake of the qualities of the book. And this he did, by his own admission, with boundless reluctance and distaste.
The work itself, not for its artistic merit so much as its sheer intensity and relevance to our times, is perhaps the most substantial evidence for the much-insisted upon (by Crowley) greatness of its puppet-author. Yet Crowley also claimed to revile and disdain the work (particularly the third chapter) for many years, above all for its barbaric and warlike diatribes, and its ruthless rejection of all philosophies and creeds previous to it, its utter savage as it let fly its war cry and word of the Aeon (be it anarchy or be it harmony): Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law!
These characteristics of ruthlessness, arrogance and blasphemy were of course, rightly or wrongly, traits for which Crowley himself would become most commonly and widely known in the public mind, while there is a fair case, in conventional history alone (Crowley’s claims aside), to be made for the fact that—besides the “secret four-fold word, the blasphemy against all gods and men...Do What Thou Wilt”—Adolf Hitler whole-heartedly adopted many of the central tenets of Liber Al. Whether or not he actually embraced “the Law of Thelema,” as such, there can be no doubt at all that Hitler was aware of the Book, and probably derived a certain demonic inspiration from it. The third part of the Book, pertaining to Horus, begins:
Now let it first be understood that I am a god of war and vengeance. I shall deal hardly with them... I will give you a war-engine. With it ye shall smite the peoples; and none shall stand before you. Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them! This is the Law of the Battle of Conquest: thus shall my worship be about my secret house.” (I:3,7-9) [It continues:] “Mercy let be off: damn them who pity! Kill and torture; spare not; be upon them... (18) Argue not; convert not; talk not overmuch! Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter; and destroy them utterly. Swift as the trodden serpent turn and strike! Be thou deadlier than he! Drag down their souls to awful torment: laugh at their fear: spit upon them!
Certainly such sentiments, if taking at face value, would have appealed to the young monomaniacal Austrian bent upon leaving history in ruins. As he had done with Nietzsche, however, Hitler was wont to twist and distort the text to his own ends, and to pervert the whole by taking what were perhaps (one hopes) as much metaphorical expressions as literal commands. Nevertheless, between Nietzsche and Hitler, it seems, came Crowley. Crowley himself made no bones about it: “Before Hitler was, I am,” he boasted, in imitation of Christ, who said the same about Abraham. (It might be fair to reply, however: “Before Crowley is—Aiwaz!”)Crowley’s involvement in espionage on both sides of the first and second world wars (he worked for both US and British intelligence writing deliberately “absurd,” i.e., counter-productive, German propaganda during the first) is well known and presumably well-documented. Nevertheless it is extremely difficult to find any author anywhere who will admit to Crowley’s involvement with Hitler, despite the fact that Crowley himself confessed, or more accurately bragged, about it to his associates.
Yet, Hitler’s interest, nay obsession, with the occult is well-known and there are dozens of books upon the subject, of varying degrees of ludicrousness and sensationalism (it even served for the plot of the pulp action movie Raiders of the Lost Ark). It is a well-known fact that he set out either to recruit or to persecute all practicing occultists in Germany, and Crowley eventually found himself on the “shitlist” too, which by no means refutes the possibility of their working together. (The apparent vilification of Crowley might have been simple cover, or even genuine but as a result of a “falling out” between the two men.) The fact remains that at the deepest, most occult level, and behind the political facades and the theatre of war performed for the public, the most powerful factions—occult and economic—of both Germany and Britain were not enemies but allies, bound together in the one great war for the conquest of men’s souls and minds.
This in itself makes it highly probable that Hitler and Crowley would have met, and that some relationship existed between the two men of such different characters, but sharing so similar an obsession. Perhaps even it was a relationship similar to that shared by Rasputin and the Tsar and Tsaress of Russia at roughly the same time—the one priest, the other king, and each equally benefiting from the favors of the other?
We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law, and the joy of the world.
SOURCE: Aleister Crowley, Book of the Law, II:21
In order to qualify such off-the-wall remarks, we need to take a brief excursion into the philosophy of war: All warfare must be understood, first and foremost, as internal warfare—hidden, domestic and “cold,” of which the external, overt and heated warfare between nations is no more than an outburst, a brief orgasm, if you will, after years of foreplay. Wars are never won or lost, they are merely negotiated, and World War II might best be seen as the greatest business deal ever accomplished. As a battle between “good and evil,” or justice against crime, it was but one more in a long series of hollow dramas, engineered expressly for the hoodwinking of the masses. It seems likely, however, that Hitler, in his bid for world-domination (or destruction?), lost his head and alienated the very “powers” that put him in place to begin with: he became an unmanageable element, if not an actual embarrassment, and so had to be removed. It’s possible even that he was as guilty of “betraying” Chamberlain and later Churchill, as much as he was Stalin—by setting his sights on the whole of Europe, and so banishing all possibility of an unholy alliance between the two powers. Ideologically they were perfectly compatible, however, and the same might be said of the US, which also only entered the fray when it became completely unavoidable. Hence, victory was denied Hitler, by his own excess of zeal and lust for power. At the same time, however, and all appearances aside, his “defeat” was anything but total.
In truth, Nazism was as much a global phenomenon as was Christianity 2000 years before (though it required considerably less time and effort to take hold), and there was little likelihood that a minor setback such as the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 would quench the raging ideological pseudo-religious thirst and fervour of such a movement. The explosion of rage might be checked and contained—and so postponed—but the collective psyche which had spawned it could by no means be so easily satisfied: Because Nazism was no aberration, but rather the NATURAL AND LOGICAL development of a global wave of systemized, ritualized and economized warfare.
It was the realization of an age-old political dream—the perfected face of tyranny. Hence, while to all the world it appeared as if Nazism suffered a mortal defeat at the end of the war, in reality, it merely underwent a sophisticated facelift. Behind the wholesale destruction of Germany and Hiroshima, and the empty facade of the Nuremberg trials, another, occult agenda was being pursued—that of establishing a secret treaty between the Nazis and the Allies—specifically the American Intelligence community—through which Hitler’s goals and dreams would be subtly resumed, albeit in a mutated form, and continue to manifest over the years in only thinly disguised ways.
Jim Keith writes extensively on the subject in Casebook on Alternative 3:
As can be seen by the activities of US and British business, statecraft, occult groups, and “aristocracy,’ the Nazis were no isolated phenomenon, only one expression of a multi-faceted and murderous world wide game... Shortly after the collapse of the Third Reich... General Reinhard Gehlen, Nazi spymaster and Knight of Malta-to-be, began negotiations with Allan Dulles and the American O.S.S. Using Nazi intelligence networks as a hole card to provide for his own survival and the survival of his huge spy network, Gehlen made a separate peace with Dulles, resulting in the clean grafting of Nazi spy apparatus to the American clandestine services. This was the birth of the C.I.A, and part of a nexus of betrayal that continues to this day.
Regardless of whether one bothers to research all this however (and there is an ever-growing amount of literature on the subject), the evidence seems to speak for itself. The CIA alone (one of the smaller of countless similar US intelligence organizations), which built itself around a nexus of ex-Nazis, has been responsible for as much havoc and wholesale slaughter in Central and South America as the Nazis ever accomplished during their brief “reign of terror” in Europe.
The Art of War then, like that of business, has been to make itself as smooth and as efficient as possible, as silent, secret and sustained an affair as the explosive, unpredictable nature of the work itself will allow. The ultimate war-machine, mili-medical-industrial complex (established in ’47 and consolidated in ’63), is designed to “serve” man in just precisely the manner which McDonalds has been “serving” cows for the last few decades. All the unpleasantness is under the counter. War itself—as a commodity—must be rendered as appealing as any other “product,” not only to be propagated and disseminated to the populace, but to be advertised and glorified, until it is coveted and consumed willingly, hungrily, as if it were manna from heaven itself, and not poisoned rain from polluted sky. Above all, it must be made to seem an intrinsic—however undesirable and inexplicable—feature of existence: an indispensable element of human nature. Thus war becomes not a single condition but the primary nature of life, and of mankind, be it ever a state of fear and loathing, empty of growth but full of decay, all of savagery and none of noblesse."For he who is ignorant until the end is a creature of oblivion, and he will vanish along with it."
—The Gospel of Truth, Nag Hamadi LibraryThe war-like nature of many of the passages in Liber Al would seem to be a direct response to this. It seems to treat of this condition as a disease that must be purged, like a boil brought to a head, in order that it might be squeezed finally out of existence. To read many of his other writings, however, leaves one in little doubt that Crowley, like Nietzsche before him, was a kind of proto-Nazi (though he abhorred all forms of fascism, just as Nietzsche despised anti-Semitism).
On the other hand, Hitler himself doubtless aspired to both immortality as a world-avatar and invulnerability as the chosen “Savage Emperor” of the New Aeon: his Fourth Reich/Millenium of peace, prosperity and perfection is illustrative of this insane mix of the best intentions with the very worst of methods. There seems little doubt that, for his part, Hitler believed that worldwide destruction was a necessary process, by which to pave the way for a new evolutionary step for mankind.
He did not acknowledge any god or saviour, as such, but was firmly persuaded of the existence of “the superman”: “The new man is living amongst us now. He is here! I have seen the new man. He is intrepid and cruel. I was afraid of him.” Whether or not Hitler was referring to Crowley here—it seems doubtful—or, as seems more likely, to some incorporeal force or preterhuman entity, conjured by his own demented will, it is impossible to say, nor does it much matter. Hitler’s preoccupation with the Superman seems to be parallel to Crowley’s own claims of affiliation (through Aiwaz) with the “Secret Chiefs”—namely, the preterhuman intelligences previously mentioned which “rule occultly over the destiny of mankind.”
Crowley himself also considered contact with these beings the next, inevitable, evolutionary step for mankind as a whole, and it is an indisputable fact that the SS—and Nazism as a whole—was established upon an occult basis, and that its inner structures and purposes were not merely political, but also magickal.
The whole apparatus of ceremonial magick (as conceived and adapted by the Golden Dawn and its offshoots, many of which were directly influenced by Crowley) that formed the true inner protocol of Nazism (originally spawned by the Thule Society) is dedicated—in theory—to the one single end and purpose of: contact with preterhuman or extraterrestrial forces. To achieve this end, the aspirant must prepare himself vigorously, mind, body and soul, for the contact, lest he be driven mad (like Hitler?), diseased, or even destroyed, by the catastrophic nature of the encounter. And yet Hitler was—to look at least, and all his considerable accomplishments aside—an ordinary, even mediocre person. It seems as though he knew little or nothing of the forces which possessed him, and was at most a low-grade medium with a deranged sense of self-importance. If so, then he was perfectly chosen to embody and so fulfill the demonic will of the mass, which he himself so despised.
John Symmonds has Crowley remarking:
I never met... someone as demonic as Herr Hitler. Why do you think I spend so much time with him? And come when he bids me? I tell you only the universe can prevail against Hitler. But the universe for the present doesn’t seem to be interested; though Hitler is the enemy of the universe, that is to say of God; for the universe is only God’s instrument. It is as if God said, “Let mankind learn a lesson; they need to open their eyes a little wider. Hitler will do that for them. Just wait. They will see things that men have never seen or heard before—such horrors that there will be no word in the German or any other language to describe them.’ That is what the demonic is when it appears in a very ordinary person, a man of the people, someone the intellectuals are contemptuous of but not the masses. With an uncanny instinct, they know who he is.”
Crowley was one of the most terrible and formidable shit-stirrers in recent history: he wrote for example about the traditional “black magickal” practice of child or animal sacrifice (also referred to in AL), and almost certainly performed it occasionally himself, even if only in a symbolic fashion (shedding of one’s own blood or the spilling of semen, for example). He enjoyed the thought of his words being misconstrued by the unwitting masses, and of all the mischief and grief that it would cause them. Hitler, on the other hand—in many ways a common Thug with an incredibly high intelligence but extremely low imagination—took the whole thing to its literal, appalling extreme, and set about to construct actual factories, complete with cages and showers and ovens and gas chambers, all with this single purpose in mind—of feeding—and thereby appeasing—the powers that would otherwise devour him. This is nothing new, of course: the Mayans and Aztecs performed similar rites of mass sacrifice (holocaust), and Jehovah of the Old Testament apparently has Moses perform the same basic “rites” by sending him and his men into city after city to butcher the populations therein and burn the bodies. Hitler was simply upholding an ancient tradition, and taking it to new extremes of post-Industrial, technological efficiency.
There seems no reason to doubt that, directly or indirectly, Crowley was responsible—at least partially— for feeding Hitler’s dark fantasies and lustful ambitions as a “black messiah” and “scion of darkness.” Crowley, a true Magician and Trickster, would have taken no sides in any battle, but deliberately and consciously played both sides against one another, in good Machiavellian fashion. His goals, however (even when evil), would have always been spiritual, never temporal. In Symmonds’s work, we have the following exchange:
Hitler: “And are you an angel of darkness?” Crowley: “You’ll find out in good time all about me. For the present, I’ll say this: if I were an angel of light, you wouldn’t want to know me.”
This has been a fable from the age of paradoxes—a fairy tale about a “good war” that never was, that still rages and has yet to be fully understood—or divulged—by history. Myth logically speaking, it doesn’t seem an excessively arbitrary or irresponsible leap of the imagination then to propose the following: that if Adolf Hitler was—archetypal if not in actual “fact”—this century’s “Antichrist” (and few would dare deny it), then Aleister Crowley—the man in the shadows—qualifies (even as he so carefully fashioned himself to) as its corresponding “Beast.” For when men assume the temerity and audacity to play the roles of the gods, the mischief they make can indeed shake the foundations of the Earth; we are still shackled to the power of myth, even if we now prefer to call it history, and still caught under the spell of magick, even if we choose to call it politics. One shudders, then—or perhaps marvels—to think that this myth-story has yet to be completed; and that the prophecy, as yet, remains unfulfilled.
(from “The Medusa’s Head” by John Symmonds)
HYMN TO LUCIFER
Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
by Aleister Crowley
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? An impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
To glut brute appetites, his sole content
How tedious were he fit to comprehend
Himself! More, this our noble element
Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned
Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.His body a blood-ruby radiant
With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer
Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant
On Eden’s imbecile perimeter.
He blessed nonentity with every curse
And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,
Breath life into the sterile universe,
With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence
The Key of Joy is disobedience.
THE REAL “ROCKET MAN” IS LOST IN THE SHADOWS OF HISTORY
Written by: Mr. SmithWhat is the connection between UFOs, the Roswell Incident, Grey aliens, Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, Ozzy Osbourne, Jimmy Page, The Beatles, backward messages hidden in music, solid rocket fuel, and a fatal explosion?
The common thread, you are wondering? It might take a bit of a stretch, but here it is, in no particular order.
The Beatles’ epic
”Sergeant Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band”The Beatles, Ozzy Osbourne, and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page are all in the music biz. The backward message issue comes in to play here as well. Musicians (those Satan worshipping loonies) have used hidden messages to coerce young people to kill their parents, bite heads off of animals, and otherwise justify insane acts of violence. Just kidding. But the accusations fly, and have for a long time. Ozzy Osbourne (the Black Sabbath frontman who went solo, then rejoined Black Sabbath after sobering up) has a song called “Mr. Crowley,” which refers to none other than Aleister Crowley.
Jimmy Page owns Crowley’s old mansion, as well as a grandiose collection of all things Crowley. It seems Jimmy has a bit of an Aleister fetish. The Beatles have the backward tunes and a picture of Crowley on the cover of one of their albums. No big deal, you say. Lots of musicians, especially the hard rockers and metalheads, try to work some of Crowley into their works and images, if for no other reason than to associate their images with an icon of “evil.”
True enough. But that’s entertainment.
Another connection to Aleister Crowley is one of his disciples – a self-taught chemist named John Whiteside Parsons (a.k.a. “Jack”). Werner von Braun called Jack Parsons the “true” father of American rocketry. Parsons was one of the original scientists involved in early rocket technology, specifically the chemical formulations for solid rocket fuel. He also did a great deal of work with jet assisted takeoffs, thereby allowing aircraft to take off from shorter runways. The group he worked with at the California Institute of Technology eventually morphed into the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It is curious, then, why Parsons’ story is so foggy, to say the least.
It is widely known that Parsons was a follower of Aleister Crowley. Crowley was an English poet, magician, Satan follower, and a member (later the leader) of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), or “Order of the Eastern Temple,” which was originally a cult of high ranking Freemasons. Crowley wrote several books that influenced many later cults and rock bands, and claimed himself as the “wickedest man in the world.” Crowley’s involvement with O.T.O. functioned as his means of disseminating his beliefs and practices, as well as his books. His work to promote the spiritual philosophy, “Thelema,” (a Greek word meaning “will” or “intention”) was done largely via the O.T.O. A great deal of complexity surrounds the ideas and beliefs of Thelema, as well as Crowley’s life, but his influence remains significant, and was especially for Parsons. Crowley died in 1947.
Robert Heinlein’s
Stranger in a
Strange LandAlthough he wasn’t a musician and probably didn’t play his music backwards, Parsons was involved with two rather famous writers – L. Ron Hubbard (Dianetics, Scientology, Battlefield Earth) and Robert Heinlein. Hubbard and Heinlein were both friends of Parsons and they shared his occult interests in magic, as well as inspirations from Crowley and “Thelema.” Parsons and his group attempted to create an incarnation of the goddess Babalon. The purpose of the Babalon Working, according to Parsons, was to create this entity, thus ushering in the Aeon of Horus. Some argue that this being manifested in the form of an Grey alien being, possibly in Roswell, New Mexico. Heinlein’s involvement is further supported through Stranger in a Strange Land, where the concept of Thelema is illustrated, but cleverly coded in the text.
Evidence from the Church of Scientology suggests that Hubbard was sent in by the government to dismantle the group of “black magicians,” including Parsons. Another Church of Scientology statement claims that Hubbard actually broke up the group, as though he completely opposed Parsons and never participated in what happened. It seems the church tried to clear Hubbard of any involvement with Parsons, his entourage, or any of the “black magic” going on in that group.
Jack Parsons
In 1950, the FBI investigated Parsons for having classified documents from his work with the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena (GALCIT). This explains why but a trace of information available from “official” sources, like the Web sites of NASA and the JPL, regarding the contributions of Parsons. For a man who was considered so significant in rocketry (and thus, to the space program and national defense), who has a statue at JPL, and a crater on the dark side of the moon in his name, it seems odd that Parsons is “lost” in history. His interest and activity in the O.T.O. is what keeps his spirit alive today, but the double-edged sword is that is also got him “accidentally” dead. (Parsons died in an “accidental” explosion while moving volatile chemicals from his home laboratory in 1952).
This also leads to the UFO connection. Some UFO researchers believe that the first flying saucer and Grey alien incidents, particularly Roswell, stemmed from the creation of the entity envisioned by Crowley and later, by Parsons. A sketch of an Enochian entity (from Crowley) looks strikingly similar to the quintessential Greys – the iconic extraterrestrial beings. Parsons had some kind of contact in a New Mexico desert, too, at this time, with a being from Venus. The timing of this also lends to the mystery because it all happened in 1946, just prior to the Roswell incident of 1947.
There are a number of other interesting connections with this group and the things that went on in Jack Parsons’s life and how they relate to the events of that time. Jack Parsons put the “JP” in JPL with his contributions to the science of solid rocket fuels and jet assisted take-off, but his other life pursuits effectively shadowed those contributions in a haze of mystery. His death, accident or not, automatically raises the skeptic’s eyebrow simply because his associations with certain people at that time, coupled with his knowledge of a sensitive subject, made him a target. Parsons’s story is a conspiracy theorist’s “land of opportunity” with all the coincidences involved and all the connections to prominent people at such a significant time.
The further this gets explored, the more questions arise. What did Parsons really know about UFOs and Ets if anything, and was his death the possible result of him knowing too much? Intentional or not, the story of Jack Parsons creeps into too many areas not to NOT be considered significant.