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Page 1 of 21910 · PDF PAGE 42
PREFACE. XXXVII Crowley — the Saviour of the Earth. So that the reader need only turn back to the title-page to see that the Light hath indeed arisen in the darkness. THE ENGLISH SPIRIT It was in my mind to discourse freely upon this enga- ging topic ; but to say truth I am somewhat weary, having now written for some six hours, and being well assured that if I once laid down the pen nothing would persuade me to resume the distasteful task. For there is no ecstasy in argument and exposition as there is in Poetry. That is why journalists are such…
1910 · PDF PAGE 9
IV PREFACE. railways were not mentioned in the Bible ! Of course the practice of finding a text for everything means ultimately “ I will do as I like ”, and I suspect my father’s heroics only meant that he thought a slump was coming. Their attitude to human reason, too, was simply won- derful. Some Wicked Man would point out that the Jonah story was contrary to our experience of possibility. THE P. B. — The word is not “ whale ” in the Hebrew : it probably means “ dog-shark ”. (This “ solution ” is actually printed in a book of the liar and sla…
1910 · PDF PAGE 6
PREFACE I have it on hearsay that I was born on the 12th of October in the year 1875 of Pseudo Christ. I was born dumb ; and the first incident of my career was the cutting of my fraenum linguae, that I might speak plainly. The operation, as this volume shews, was a complete success. Of my early life I remember little ; chiefly a large garden with, at the end of it, a wood which overlooked the road and afforded vantage for archers. There was war in the land ; my cousin Gregor Grant, six years older than myself, and a few other stern exiles, des…
1910 · PDF PAGE 28
PREFACE. XXIII circulated among the young. There is hope there if anywhere. Let me seduce the boys of England, and the oldsters may totter unconverted to their graves. Then these boys, becoming men, may bring about the new heaven and the new earth. You are not a Crowleian till you can say fervently “ Yes, thank God, I am an atheist.” For the ’ transvaluation of all values ’ must yet again take place, when those are all dead and damned who have forced us into the painful position we now occupy. The “ man-eating beasts because of whom we dare not…
1910 · PDF PAGE 29
XXIV PREFACE. PORNOGRAPHY Now to give battle one must find a disputed point, and struggle for its mastery. English pudibundery being the main strong hold of the Puritan, I now concentrate my guns on that position. With the exception of the Chinese classics and one or two of the Hindu and Buddhist, all authors of antiquity are wholly or partially concerned to discourse frankly, joyously, amusingly, of the sexual act. Of modern authors we observe that only the pornographic survive. Shakespeare, Sterne, Swift, Rabelais, Villon, — what names have w…
1910 · PDF PAGE 33
XXVIII PREFACE. large a number of peers there are against whom I have not a shadow of evidence or even suspicion. Luckily the jud- ges are less wary. While the bishops are such easy game as to be hardly worth powder and shot. There, I’ve done it now ! Vous avez écrit contre le bon Dieu ; c’est mauvais, mais Il le vous pardonnera. Vous avez écrit contre Jésus Christ ; c’est pire encore, mais Il le vous pardonnera. Mais vous avez écrit contre Leurs Excellences, et Elles ne le vous pardonneront jamais. But this lion can bite back ! Nor after all, …
1910 · PDF PAGE 8
PREFACE. III listic crusade at Plymouth in its early days was started in Ireland. It was an aristocratic and intellectual movement. John Nelson Darby, a learned man of good family, reasoned thus : The Bible is the Word of God. If its literal interpretation is once abandoned, the whole structure crashes to earth. This it will be seen is identically the Catholic position, save that for “ literal ” Rome reads “ Ecclesiastical.” Darby, too, found himself forced into the practical admis- sion that “ literal ” meant Darbeian ; for some of the more ob…
1910 · PDF PAGE 7
II PREFACE. bonnet, I as Greumoch Dhuibh Mc. Alpin had pierced with that same knotty lance. Nor shall I easily forget how we filled the tea-urn at the Brethrens’ tea-fight with old Mr. Sherrall’s castor-oil, to the discomfiture of the faith- ful, who were too polite to call the attention of the hostess to their interior pangs. Joyful too was the great tea at Mr. Nunnerley’s where we delayed the prayer meeting one whole hour by plying Mrs. Musty with avalanches of food after everyone else had finished. Ah joy ! as piglike she munched on ! while …
1910 · PDF PAGE 13
VIII PREFACE. had withdrawn from the Lord’s supper ! ! ! It was there fore absolutely necessary for both of them to assure them- selves that the bedridden mother was of their way of thin- king, or neither could hold the “ Morning Meeting ” ; though I suppose either could preach the Gospel — morose vulptas ! Unhappily, that excellent lady was a hard case. She was quite deaf and very nearly blind ; while mentally she had never been remarkable for anything beyond a not una- miable imbecility. However, there was but one thing to be done, to argue h…
1910 · PDF PAGE 31
XXVI PREFACE. mental and strong. The whole soul storms the height of heaven, exults, laughs, enjoys, falls exhausted. The thing is clean. It is the lady novelist that drags her snail-track across the desert of bad literature. Nothing so excites my loathing as to see these ghouls licking their chops over the adven- tures of some dirty slut of a Princess. They scent indecency in passion beyond the marriage-tie : they will not even allow a man to be in love with his own wife. Why shouldn’t he be ? He is now and then. I happen to know it. The long …
1910 · PDF PAGE 18
PREFACE. XIII 6. The “ Badgers’ Meeting ”. Every Monday night the school was ranged round the back of the big school- room, and the scourings of Barnswell (Cambridge’s slum) let in, fed, preached to, and dismissed. Result, epidemics of ring worm, measles, and mumps. Oh no ! not a result ; the Lord’s hand was heavy upon us because of some undiscovered sin. I might go on for a long while, but I will not. I hope there are some people in the world happy enough to think that I am lying, or at least exaggerating. But I pledge my word to the literal t…
1910 · PDF PAGE 19
XIV PREFACE. rable ” in front of his name, destined to be celebrated in the world of motors and balloons, walked into the room and told us rather a lively story. The Reverend something Doddridge thought of the “ honourable ” and laughed pleasantly. I remember how, boys as we were, we filed austerely from the rooms without farewell. Oh, you must know the C. I. C. C. U. ! I remember too how this Doddridge, while in charge of my morals, aided and abetted me in extinguishing street lamps ; and how when a policeman pounced upon me, he forsook me and…
1910 · PDF PAGE 25
XX PREFACE. penance of C. B. J. ; all night I wrote — and wrote. So fierce I wrote that — six months later — I have written no word since. I have poured forth all the vials, and loosed all the seals. From that supreme effort I am fallen exhausted — until, as it may chance, the Gods renew my vigour. And all my other work I count as nothing ; for I have written this in Pan, and in Pan I am content. To the boys and girls of England I give my book, the charter of their freedom. ALICE WESLEY TORR OR ALEISTER CROWLEY ? With one thing and another to w…
1910 · PDF PAGE 30
PREFACE. XXV But, then, of course, the question arises “ what is por- nography ? ” It has been justly remarked that the greatest men are those who play upon the whole scale of human emotions, from the spiritual to the obscene. The humour of Aristo- phanes, Shakespere, Sterne, and Rabelais is identical with that of the ordinary smoking-room story ; only a deal better done. Nor is there any other eternal humour ; other kinds depend on the accidents of the age. You never find a single impure line in any of these au- thors, any gloating on impurity…
1910 · PDF PAGE 41
XXXVI PREFACE. formal or informal pledged to the guardianship of mankind. With this postulate the way is clear. In the prologue we find innocence : Pagan love, Pagan music, Pagan mysticism, and we find the Sabbatarians pretty sick about it, like the fox that lost his tail. We next find Alexander, one of the guardians, anxious about humanity. He is not squeamish about a little blood, his own or another’s, and he discovers the plot. Next we find the dove achieving his foul purpose, not on a pure laughing Pagan girl, but on a furtive lecherous gir…
1910 · PDF PAGE 23
XVIII PREFACE. THE WRITING OF THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY It has been necessary to sketch this part of my life in order to exhibit the atmosphere which I am bound to connect with Christianity, or at least English Christianity. Certainly the vast majority of English people, of those who are religious at all, belong either to Evangelicalism or Dissent ; and the tyranny of these is nearly if not quite as bad as that of the Plymouth Brethren. I had, however, cut myself adrift from all these things. I had lived among the great men of the earth, and the grea…
1910 · PDF PAGE 12
PREFACE. VII it ; even Stuart was sound in this matter, and Stoney himself (though reluctantly) gave his adhesion. To hold a Meeting you must have two persons present. Let nobody try to upset this ; for once I positively insist. No less than two for a Meeting ! I will brook no oppo- sition ; I mean to have my own way in the matter ; I am not to be played with. Two or more make a Meeting. There ; my foot is down, let’s hear no more senseless cavil about it ! Well, I need hardly say that Mr. and Mrs. Cameron took opposite sides of the controversy…
1910 · PDF PAGE 10
PREFACE. V cised by scholars again and again. You accept all the criticisms up to 1611 and reject all later. Why ? THE P. B. — There is a place prepared for the devil and his angels to which you (my poor dear brother) will most surely go ! Why not simply accept Christ as your Saviour and Lord ? (Then he gets started ; and the rest must be heard to be believed). So — is it a type of all logic ? — their simple Yea and Nay became more casuistical than Dens or Escobar, and their strict adhesion to the Commands of the Bible became a mere loosening o…
1910 · PDF PAGE 34
PREFACE. XXIX It is in a way extremely trying to live in a world where connotation varies so wildly. The Sicilian peasant who can roar with laughter at some blasphemous obscenity of his village priest while pre- serving his devotion to the deities satirized, will justly be astonished and disgusted with me. He will hardly credit that anyone can take deities so seriously as to do anyone an injury on their behalf. He is at heart a Pagan ; Mary is his mistress and Jesus his « Bambino », and he loves to play with them in the woods where the sunlight…
1910 · PDF PAGE 38
PREFACE. XXXIII — what a washerwoman lost to mankind ! was the French nation’s epitaph upon her — drove the last nail into the coffin of art in England. Though ’twas needless cruelty : whom have we had of the first rank in England since Eli- zabeth but the Revolutionaries ? Blake, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Byron, Swinburne, Swift, Butler, Milton, every one exiled, starved, bullied, driven insane ; except Milton, whose supreme hypocrisy saved him, as it damned the nation for ever. Anyhow, bad as it was, Victoria made it worse, and, under a quee…