Crowleyanity, Viewed with Alarm

If you thought that everything has been said about Aleister Crowley, think again.

There is Henrik Bogdan and Martin Starr’s new edited collection, Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism, which I have to buy.

Also on my reading list is Marco Pasi’s Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics. Had the universe moved slightly differently, I would have copyedited and thus read it, but now it must be bought.

And a blogger for First Things, a journal of [Christian] religion and politics, sits and notices something:

Crowley is not dead yet. If anything, he is more alive today than he was when he claimed to have created the “V for Victory” sign as a magical talisman against the Nazi swastika.

And a Crowley tattoo at the farmers market (photo at the link)!

One thought on “Crowleyanity, Viewed with Alarm

  1. Medeina Ragana

    Read Crowley’s autobiography back in the late 60s. Was struck by his vehemence against his parents’ religious beliefs.

    The comment on the First Things blog, “Hubbard made no bones about it: “The one super-secret sentence that Scientology is built on is ‘Do as thou wilt—that is the whole of the law.” is interesting in that most people leave off the critical second part of that statement which is, “Love is the law, love under will.”

    Somewhere back in the 70s I remember reading in a book something to the effect that Crowley’s dictum of “Do as thou wilt” (and the critical second sentence) was really nothing more than a paraphrasing of St. Augustine’s “Love God and do what you want”, the idea being that if you loved God properly, you would only do what God wanted you to do.

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