Aleister Crowley, il cui vero nome era Edward Alexander Crowley , è stato un esoterista, artista, scrittore e alpinista britannico.
Figura assai controversa, è considerato il fondatore del moderno occultismo e fonte di ispirazione per il satanismo.
Uomo di vasta cultura, è considerato una figura chiave nella storia dei nuovi movimenti magici. A Crowley è attribuito il maggior tentativo di creare una «religione magica» per l'epoca contemporanea e la sua influenza sul coevo ambiente magico è stata fondamentale.
“Io sono sopra di te e in te. La mia estasi è nella tua. La mia gioia è veder la tua gioia.”
I: 13
I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy.
The Book of the Law
“Ogni uomo e ogni donna è una stella.”
I: 3
Every man and every woman is a star.
The Book of the Law
“L'amore è la legge, l'amore sotto il volere.”
I: 57
Love is the law, love under will.
The Book of the Law
“Questi sono idioti che gli uomini adorano; entrambi i loro dèi e i loro uomini sono idioti.”
I: 11
These are fools that men adore; both their Gods & their men are fools.
The Book of the Law
Appendix VI : A few principal rituals – Liber Reguli.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Contesto: The Magician must be wary in his use of his powers; he must make every act not only accord with his Will, but with the properties of his position at the time. It might be my Will to reach the foot of a cliff; but the easiest way — also the speediest, most direct least obstructed, the way of minimum effort — would be simply to jump. I should have destroyed my Will in the act of fulfilling it, or what I mistook for it; for the True Will has no goal; its nature being To Go.
Appendix VI : A few principal rituals – Liber Reguli.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Contesto: The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and — yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.
“The best models of English writing are Shakespeare and the Old Testament”
First and only letter to his son Aleister Ataturk (May 1947), as quoted in Do What Thou Wilt : A Life of Aleister Crowley (2000) by Lawrence Sutin, p. 416.
Contesto: The best models of English writing are Shakespeare and the Old Testament, especially the book of Job, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. … In writing English the most important quality that you can acquire is style. It makes all the difference to anyone who reads what you write, whether you use the best phrases in the best way.
“Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.”
Origine: Diary of a Drug Fiend
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
“Every man and every woman is a star.”
I:3.
Origine: The Book of the Law (1904)
Origine: Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law
“I've written this to keep from crying. But I am crying, only the tears won't come.”
Origine: Diary of a Drug Fiend
“Love is the law, love under will.”
I:57.
Variante: There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.
Origine: The Book of the Law (1904)
Origine: Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law
“Happiness lies within one's self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine.”
Origine: Diary of a Drug Fiend
“It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment.”
Origine: Moonchild
“Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life….”
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
“For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.”
Origine: The Book of the Law
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 57.
Contesto: Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales. … Knowing nothing and fearing everything, they rant and rave and riot like so many maniacs. The subject does not matter. Any idea which gives them an excuse of getting excited will serve. They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally avowable emotion. It may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman or even a doctor whose views displease the Medial Trust.
“Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations”
Origine: The Book of Lies
“Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them…”
Origine: The Scented Garden Of Abdullah The Satirist Of Shiraz
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 23.
Contesto: To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The natural laziness of the mind tempts one to eschew authors who demand a continuous effort of intelligence. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
People tell me that they must read the papers so as to know what is going on. In the first place, they could hardly find a worse guide. Most of what is printed turns out to be false, sooner or later. Even when there is no deliberate deception, the account must, from the nature of the case, be presented without adequate reflection and must seem to possess an importance which time shows to be absurdly exaggerated; or vice versa. No event can be fairly judged without background and perspective.
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 5.
Contesto: I resolved passionately to reach the spiritual causes of phenomena, and to dominate the material world which I detested by their means. I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.
“He shall fall down into a pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of reason.”
Origine: The Book of the Law
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
“I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union.”
I:29.
Origine: The Book of the Law (1904)
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
Origine: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
