Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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Page 104 of 107
1929 · PDF PAGE 485

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…literary career, I was no snowflake in hell. Nobody knew my name, bar the educated rari nantes in gurgito vasto. Nobody would look at my work, either in a periodical form or volume. I shall tell later of my grotesque failure to make good as a Master of Magick. The people I met knew nothing and thought they knew everything, and whatever scraps of information they had, they had all wrong. I took a week off in March to go to Philadelphia, where the great Billy Sunday was conducting a revival. The immense notoriety of the man, and the incompatibili…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 278

Collected Works (Vol. II)

…er might perhaps justly compute the time during which his eye was actually at the telescope by the motion of the planets, or by the clockwork of his re- flector, but that you should do so is absurd. Scept. Yet all men do so and have ever done so. see him writhing in eternal torture — that physiological impossibility—for his word ‘‘a casual carpenter,” albeit he wrote it in rever- ence. That is the kind of Christian 1 would hang. The Christian who can write as Our Champion of Christendom does about his faith is innocuous and pleasant, though in …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 556

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…s playing at Magick. Idle and mentally muddled, they were attracted by all subjects which seemed to require no orderly thought or steady work. Nothing is easier than to pick up a few awe-inspiring terms and stir them into soup. It is the only way to impress those even more ignorant. They therefore came to me. With my invariable optimism, I picked out all the promising points and overlooked the faults, I promised myself that I could easily correct them. Their wretchedness kindled my pity and I invited them to spend their summer in the abbey at C…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 392

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… removed and he was more or less cut off from the past. One thing seemed as good as another. He acted irresponsibly. He went on with his work more by force of habit than anything else, and the events of his life were, so to say, more chemical reactions between his character and his circumstances. In the spring, a few days before the publication of number three of The Equinox, which contained the Ritual of the 5° = 6ř degree of the old Order, Mathers served him with an injunction restraining publication. It did not interest him particularly. He …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 224

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

224 Jan. 1st. Began badly: missed dear and hare. So annoyed. Yet the omen is that the year is well for works of love & union; ill for those of hate. Be mine of love! This entry does not sound as if I were still wholly lunatic in the rays of the honeymoon. The explanation is that the mere fact of getting back to camp life reawakened in me the old ambitions and interests. It may be part of my feeling for ritual that to put on certain types of clothes is to transform my state of mind. However lazy I may be, I have merely to change trousers for kni…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 429

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…lt forces. (It is to be remembered that I have seen so many phenomena of absolutely indubitable authenticity in the course of my magical work that I am predisposed to expect such things to happen.) In sitting with Eusapia, my main objects were first to get an idea of the atmosphere, so as to visualize more clearly the events recorded in the famous report, and second to criticize my own evidence. The question had suggested itself: "Feilding and the rest are clever, wary, experienced and critical, but even so, can I be sure that when they describ…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 514

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…le to go fully into the subject of this vision of the Star-Sponge. It must suffice to reiterate that it has been the basis of most of my work for the last five years, and to remind the reader that the essential form of it is "Nothingness with twinkles". {811} 83 It is a remarkable fact that physical phenomena of an appropriate character frequently accompany a spiritual event. I fail to see any special significance, from a magical point of view, in the experience now to be related; but it is highly interesting in itself, and there is unquestiona…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 563

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…d numbers, especially the Secret Key of The Book of the Law --- 31!" {889} Fagged as I was, I obeyed. The first number connected with my work was this very "31" and in the window was a card "Apartments to Let". A van stood at the door, which was open. I went in. The landlady showed me a large front room on the first floor, with French windows opening upon a balcony which overlooked the spirit-soothing oasis of the square; the small green oblong with its ancient trees. It was clean and comfortable, the rent reasonable, and the people of the hous…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 207

Collected Works (Vol. II)

…e philosophical essays on the splendour of Eastern thought.” If he confines his strictures to the translators of that well-known Eastern work the ‘ Old Testament” I am with him; any modern Biblical critic will tell him what I mean. It took a long time, too, for the missionaries (and Tommy Atkins) to discover that ‘‘ Budd” was not a ‘‘ great Gawd."" But then they did not want to, and in any case sympathy and in- telligence are not precisely the most salient qualities in either soldiers or missionaries. But nothing is more absurd than to compare …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 430

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…sonally believe that he changes his methods as much as he can. It seems perfectly obvious in any case that a trick of some sort is being worked. The real point of interest is that Hereward Carrington, who boasts that he has explained every single "sealed letter reading" that has come under his {683} notice, admits failure to explain this case, and he has assured me personally that he is completely baffled and inclined to believe that some occult power is at work. Bert Reece is an Americanized German or Polish Jew from Posen. He was, I suppose, …

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1911 · PDF PAGE 305

The Equinox (Volume I, Number V)

…th the cor n that the subject has been dealt with by two well-equipped, careful investigators." —7. Bs Weekly. “A really useful piece of work."—7.P.S. Book Notes. London WILLIAM RIDER & SON, Ltd., 164 Aldersgate Street, E.C.

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1911 · PDF PAGE 305

The Equinox (Volume I, Number VI)

…th the cor n that the subject has been dealt with by two well-equipped, careful investigators." —7. Bs Weekly. “A really useful piece of work."—7.P.S. Book Notes. London WILLIAM RIDER & SON, Ltd., 164 Aldersgate Street, E.C.

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1929 · PDF PAGE 306

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…old, lack of food and general discomfort; she never gave in, she never complained, she never failed to do more than her her share of the work and she never made a mistake. She was in a class by herself as a comrade. Even Eckenstein was not so competent all round or so uniformly exultant. We had been over four months away from civilization; and she had not only stood it but flourished exceedingly. When we started, she had been rather empty-headed and frivolous; while physically, though healthy, she could not be called an athlete. At the end she …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 274

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… hat year of the Hegira. I also invented an Anglo Indian major to find, translate and annotate the manuscript, an editor to complete the work of that gallant soldier (killed in South Africa) and a Christian clergyman to discuss the matter of the poem from the peculiar point of view of high Anglicanism. The ghazals themselves are rendered sometimes in the supposed original monorime, sometimes in prose, and the annotations contain a great deal of the more esoteric information about the East, which I had picked up from time to time. It is especial…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 450

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…before consciously attained and revealed to me secrets deeper than I ever deemed. I wrote things that I knew not and made no mistake. My work was infinitely varied, yet uniformly distinguished. I expressed the soul of Moscow in a poem "The City of God", published some months afterwards in the English Review. It is a "hashish dream come true". Every object of sense, from the desolation of the steppes and the sheer architecture of the city, to the art, attitude and amusements of the people, stings one to the soul, each an essential element of a s…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 579

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

… circumstances for the simple reason that I cannot waste my time on anything of the kind. I must maintain my concentration upon creative work. There is a further objection, mixing oneself up with people of alien mentalities. The only misfortune in the matter was that my publishers reflected that doing as they did a large business in bibles and similar pious publications they could not profit by the publicity as their clear duty was to do. They professed all sympathy with my position, but insisted on some sort of vindication before proceeding to…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 116

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…ards will touch a dead Mexican. His flesh has been too thoroughly impregnated with chillies and other pungent condiments. The make short work of any other meat. I {206}

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1929 · PDF PAGE 29

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…had one delightful summer at St. {70} Andrews where Andrew Kirkaldy taught me to play golf. My health rapidly improved. I was allowed to work a very limited number of hours, but I progressed rapidly, having the undivided attention of my tutors. These persons, however, were not too satisfactory; they were all my Uncle Tom's nominees; that is, they were of the sawny, anaemic, priggish type, who at the best could boast of minor Cambridge1 colleges. Of course, I considered it my duty to outwit them in every possible way and hunt up some kind of sin…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 352

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…and refuse to return until guarantees were given that she had stopped drinking. There did really seem some hope; the power of love might work the miracle, and certainly my love for Rose was stronger than ever, although cut away completely from its physical support. I have always been peculiarly sensitive about trifles in my rapports with women; the most trivial thing can put me off completely. (Alexander Harvey has a superb story, "The Mustache", in which this psychology is admirably set forth.) I could have borne her death more philosophically…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 104

Confessions of Aleister Crowley

…tled down in a slowly widening spiral. Obviously, these researches bore on the problem of flying. Eckenstein and I, in fact, proposed to work at it. The idea was that we should cut an alley through the woods on that part of my property which bordered Loch Ness. We were to construct a chute and start down in on a bicycle fitted with movable wings. There was to be a steam launch on the loch to pick up us at the end of the flight. We were, in fact, proposing to do what has now, in 1922, proved so successful. But the scheme never went further than …

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