by Colin Wilson
And what precisely is this truth? It can be summarized in four propositions: (1) Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, (2) Love is the law, love under will, (3) Every man and woman is a star, and (4) Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with the Will. The first two propositions are not, in fact, to be found in The Book of the Law; they are Crowley's own formulation of its central message. The fourth proposition (from Magick in Theory and Practice) is Crowley's central definition of magic. The Book of the Law states: ‘The word of the law is thelema.’ On this, Crowley commented: ‘Compare Rabelais. Also it may be translated, “Let Will and Action be in harmony.” He then adds: ‘But thelema also means Will in the higher sense of Magical One-pointedness, and in the sense used by Schopenhauer and Fichte.’ But we can cut through all the confusions about its meaning if we simply recognize that Crowley had spent his childhood listening to statements about ‘the will of God.’ His parents were the kind of people who would preface any statement of intention with ‘God willing’ or ‘If it be the will of God.’ The state of mind induced by such a continual affirmation is that the universe is, for all practical purposes, predetermined, and that man possesses no free will.
It is interesting to note that when Crowley began to study magic and mysticism, he still found himself haunted by the Christian God; the name can be found on every page of The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary, as well as in the Book of Abra-Melin the Mage and in the rituals of the Golden Dawn. Crowley must have felt he had escaped one insidious form of Christianity only to fall victim to another. A testimony to his exasperation can be found on the title page of one of his earliest works, The High History of Good Sir Palomedes, where the date is given as ‘Anno Pseudo Christi MCMXII’. Crowley could not feel free until he had created his own religion without the Christian God or its ‘pseudo saviour.’
Once we can grasp that acceptance of human free will is the core of Crowley's religion, then it can be seen that ‘Do what thou wilt’ is more than a restatement of Rabelais's motto; it represents a major philosophical affirmation. That he thought of it in this way is clear from his mention of Schopenhauer and Fichte. In Schopenhauer, the Will is the truth behind the world of illusions and appearances. And the most important recognition of the philosopher Fichte is that as soon as man launches himself into action, he becomes conscious of his freedom—a freedom that eludes him while he contents himself with mere thinking. One of Rudolf Steiner's earliest and most important books was called The Philosophy of Freedom, and was an attack on scientific materialism and an assertion of the reality of the human will. If Crowley had started his career with a similar book, it would be a great deal easier to understand his significance as a thinker. The discovery that man possesses a ‘controlling ego’, which presides over consciousness, is the foundation stone of his magical philosophy. This is why, while agreeing that ‘love is the law’, he insists: ‘Love under will’. According to Christianity, love is the essence of the created universe; God is love, and the basic teaching of Christianity is that men should love one another. Crowley agrees, but he cannot accept that love is the be-all and end-all of the universe: so he adds the all-important postscript: ‘Love under will’. Free will is the foundation stone, not love.
When man stops thinking of himself as a mere passive ‘creature’, and grasps that he is free, he at last ceases to be a mediocrity; he grasps that he is, in fact, a ‘star’. In 1922, Crowley told Sullivan:
Every man and woman is a star. You, being a man, are therefore a star. The soul of a star is what we call genius. You are a genius. This fact is obscured either by moral complexes which enmesh it, or lack of adequate machinery to express it…
Sullivan took Crowley's words to heart, wrote his perplexities and frustrations out of his system in an excellent autobiography, then went on to become the first rate writer that Crowley knew him to be. He is a good advertisement for Crowley's conviction that every man and woman is a star.
But perhaps the most interesting of all the propositions that Crowley deduced from his recognition of free will was his belief that magic is the science and art of causing changes to occur in conformity with the will. Other modern thinkers have asserted that the essence of human existence is freedom—notably the ‘existentialists’. But most of them feel that, although man is free, he is trapped in a world of matter which always has the last word. Man is free, but his freedom is purely a mental attribute, the ‘eternal spirit of the chainless mind.’ It cannot save him from suffering and dying miserably. Crowley's deepest instincts revolted against this poor-spirited view. He was convinced that, once a man has grasped his own freedom, he ceases to be the helpless victim of circumstance; he can somehow cause changes to occur in conformity with his will. Man's mind has exactly the same power as his hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.
But if the man is free, what can he do with his freedom? How can he express it? Crowley's first solution to this problem was to travel round the world and sail up crocodile-infested rivers and climb mountains: in short, to become an adventurer. This failed because, as Chesterton rightly observes, an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered, and inconvenience is not particularly uplifting to the soul. Crowley's next venture was to award himself various honorary titles, publish books at his own expense, and try to become a celebrity. This was also a failure, largely due to lack of public interest. Finally as a last resort, Crowley returned to magic—and instantly achieved remarkable success. Crowley discovered, to his astonishment, that the Enochian ‘calls’ really worked. And when Reuss initiated him into the secrets of sexual magic, he felt he had finally solved the problem of expressing his ‘true will’. The Book of the Law says: ‘Take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.’ That is, have as much sex as you like, but dedicate each sexual act to the Holy Guardian Angel. Crowley carried out these instructions to the letter, and apparently achieved magical visions, like the one at Lake Pasquaney. Convinced that he was at last on the right track, he devoted the rest of his life to the study of magic and The Book of the Law. And disciples like Bennett, Loveday, Mudd, Regardie and Cammell became convinced that Crowley's claim to be the founder of the new religion was factually true. They grasped that the essence of this new religion was human free will, and recognized that, in this basic respect, it differed fundamentally from Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the rest.
There was, however, another basic difference between these earlier religions and the faith of thelema. They had been founded by avatars or prophets who identified themselves totally with their teachings. Crowley admitted freely that he had done his best to evade his responsibility as the custodian of The Book of the Law. Disciples like Norman Mudd and Leah Hirsig recognized this when they denounced Crowley for ceasing to be faithful to The Book of the Law, and declared themselves the new custodians. The religion of thelema claimed to be the direct word of some superhuman entity, who announced the coming of the new age, and its basic teaching was the reality of free will. Crowley regarded himself as an extremely imperfect mouthpiece of this teaching. But he also believed that any final merit he possessed was the result of having been chosen to propagate the religion of Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
The priest of Ra-Hoor-Khuit was a failure as a human being, as he himself was inclined to acknowledge in moments of honesty. But he thought that unimportant compared to the religion of thelema, the philosophy of human free will that would enable man to evolve to a higher stage. If we ignore Crowley and concentrate on the philosophy, it seems highly probable that he was right.
* * *
1. For a fuller discussion of such cases, see my Mysteries, Part 2, Chapter 7.
2. See Mysteries, pp. 486—491, and A Criminal History of Mankind, p. 28 et seq.
3. The Great Beast, footnote p. 292.
4. See my book The War Against Sleep, pp. 32 and 63.
5. See The Occult, p. 401.
6. See, for examp
le, Israel Regardie's Foundations of Practical Magic (1979) and W. E. Butler's The Magician, His Training and Work (1959.)
7. In An Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries.
Bibliography
Cammell, Charles Richard, Aleister Crowley, The Man: The Mage: The Poet (University Books, 1962).
Crowley, Aleister:
The Tale of Archais (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1898).
Ambergris: A Selection from the Poems of Aleister Crowley (Elkin Mathews, 1910).
Good Sir Palamedes (Wieland & Co., 1912).
The Stratagem (The Mandrake Press, n.d).
Moonchild—A Prologue (The Mandrake Press, 1929).
Diary of a Drug Fiend (Sphere, 1972).
Magick: In Theory and Practice (Castle Books, n.d).
The Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Journals of Aleister Crowley ed. John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (Duckworth, 1972).
The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot, The Equinox, vol. III, no. V. (Samuel Weiser, 1972).
The Qabalah of Aleister Crowley (Samuel Weiser, 1973).
The Equinox, 10 vols. (Samuel Weiser, 1973).
Magick Without Tears, ed. Israel Regardie, (Llewellyn Publications, 1973).
Gems From The Equinox, ed. Israel Regardie, (Llewellyn Publications, 1974).
Crowley On Christ, ed. Francis King, (C. W. Daniel, 1974).
The Complete Astrological Writings, ed. John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (Duckworth, 1974).
Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law, ed. John Symonds and Kenneth Grant, (93 Publishing, Canada, 1974).
The Law is for All, ed. Israel Regardie (Llewellyn Publications, 1975).
Tao Teh King, ed. Stephen Skinner (Askin Publishers, Ltd., London; Samuel Weiser, 1976).
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——, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God (Frederick Muller, 1973).
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——, The Magical World of Aleister Crowley (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977).
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Index
A. A. (Argenteun Astrum), 88, 89
Abbey of Thelema, 119-34
Abra-Melin ritual, 51, 53, 55
Abra-Melin the Mage, Book of, 165
Aceldama, 43
Agape Lodge, Pasadena, 147
Aiwas, 71, 75
Aleister Crowley, The Man, The Mage, The Poet, 10
Alice, An Adultery, 57
Amalantrah Working, The, 114
Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, 72, 117
Archer, Ethel, 96
Argonauts, The, 57
Baker, Julian L., 37, 44, 54
Baphomet, 103
Bennett, Alan, 51-3, 58-9, 80, 97
Bennett, Sir Frank, 124-6, 163
Berwick Witches, 14
Bickers, Betty, 130, 131
Blavatsky, Helena, 20-23
Boleskine House, 53, 68, 69, 75
Bond Bishop, Tom, 27-9
Book of Black Magic and Pacts, The, 40
Book of Lies, The, 102
Book of the Law, The, 10, 71-5, 164-7
Book Four, 11, 99, 170
Bou-Saada, 93
Butts, Mary, 127-8, 130-31, 145
‘Camel’, the, see Minor, Roddie, Cammell, Charles Richard, 10, 12, 19, 72
Celtic Church, 41
Chogo-Ri (K2), 59, 60
Choronzon, encounter with, 93-5
Cloud upon the Sanctuary, The, 40, 156, 165
College of Life and Occult Sciences, 65
Collins, William, 128-9
Confessions, The, (of A.C.), 10, 31, 32, 33, 37, 38, 43, 44, 51, 55, 58, 63, 67, 70, 71, 78, 81, 111, 142, 143
Conjuring up Philip, An Adventure in Psychokinesis, 52
Crowley, Aleister
acquisition of Boleskine House, 53
childhood and schooling, 26-33
death, 152
formation of AA, 88
homosexuality, 38, 42, 106
influence of Nietzsche, 87
introduction to Golden Dawn, 45
meets Leah Hirsig, 116
marriage to Maria de Miramar, 141
marriage to Rose Kelly, 68
mountaineering, 41, 59-60, 76-9
poetry, 34, 43, 50, 58, 67, 86
sets up Abbey of Thelema, 119
sets up English branch of OTO, 104
‘sex magic’, 101, 103, 116
university, 35
writes Book of the Law, 71-5
writes Confessions, 142
Crowley, Edward, 25-7
Crowley, Rose, see Kelly, Rose
Crowley's travels to
America, 107, 112
Burma, 59, 80
Cairo, 70
Ceylon, 58, 70
China, 93
Hong Kong, 58
India, 59
Mexico, 55, 57
Morocco, 93
Russia, 36, 38
Tunisia, 136
Croysdale, Vera, 66
Dee, John, 19, 92
Diary of a Drug Fiend, The, 128-30, 137, 169
Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, 22
Douglas, Archibald, 29
Dramatic Universe, The, 48
Duranty, Walter, 105-6
Earl of Tankerville, 86
Eastbourne College, 32-3
Eckenstein, Oscar, 41, 57, 59, 60, 76
Eight Lectures on Yoga, 12, 149, 159
English Alpine Club, 42
Enochian magic, 92
Equinox, The, 92, 95, 140, 169
Esoteric Buddhism, 20, 21, 156
Eye in the Triangle, The, 11
Farr, Florence, 54, 55
Fatherland, The, 110, 111
Flying Cow, The, 16, 17
Foster, Jane, 109-110
Fox sisters, 20
Freud, Sigmund, 15, 16
Fuller, Jean Overton, 84, 106
Fuller, Captain J. F. C., 63, 85, 89, 97,
Gardner, Gerald, 162
Gaunt, Sir Guy, 111
Genealogy of Morals, A, 87
Germer, Karl, 139-41, 162
Gleadow, Rupert, 151
&nbs
p; Goetia, 69
Golden Dawn, 11, 45, 47, 54
Gospel According to St Bernard Shaw, The, 13
Grant, Kenneth, 149, 162-3
Great Beast, The, 43, 79, 170
Guillarmod, Jacot, 75-7
Gurdjieff, 48, 101, 158-9
Hamnett, Nina, 144-5
Harris, Frank, 117, 137
Hayes, Joan, 107
Hirsig, Alma, 115
Hirsig, Leah, 116, 118, 120-22, 139, 158
Hodgson, Richard, 21
Home, Daniel Dunglas, 20
Horniman, Annie, 50
‘Horos’ Mr and Mrs (Frank Dutton Jackson and Editha Salomon), 63-7
Hubbard, L. Ron, 147
Isis Unveiled, 20
Jaegar, Hanni, 143-4, 149
Jephthah, 50
John Bull, 96, 133, 135
Johnston, Charles, 21
Jones, George Cecil, 44, 51, 52, 89, 97, 117
Jung, Carl Gustav, 11, 15, 16, 49, 89, 114, 160
Kabbalah, 49, 56
Kabbalah Unveiled, 44, 46
Kahunas, 17, 18, 23
Kanchenjunga, 76-9
Kelley, Edward, 92
Kellner, Karl, 103
Kelly, Gerald, 62, 63, 68
Kelly, Rose, 68-9, 80-81, 91
Koomaraswamy, Ananda, 112
K2 see Choga-Ri
Là-Bas, 40
Lamp of the Invisible Light (Order of), 56
Lévi, Eliphas (Alphonse Louis Constant), 22, 23, 24
Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, 89
Liber vel Lapidus Lazuli, 89
Long, Max Freedom, 17, 18
Looking Glass, The, 96, 97
Loveday Raoul, 131-3
Magical Revival, The, 163, 170
Magician, The, 62
Magick in Theory and Practice, 107, 141, 169
Magick of Aleister Crowley, The, 151, 170
Magick Without Tears, 150
Maitland, Cecil, 127, 128
Malvern public school, 30-31
Mandrake Press, 142
Maori fire walking, 23-4
Marston, Commander, 95
Mathers, Moina, 47, 63-4, 69
Mathers, Samuel Liddell, 22, 45-7, 49-51, 54-6, 62-3, 67, 95
Maugham, Somerset, 62
May, Betty, 131-3, 145
May, Charles, 146
Medina, Don Jesus, 56