Aleister Crowley - Magick, Rock and Roll, and The Wickedest Man in the World

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

But what's puzzling you is just the nature of my game

- Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling Stones

Aleister Crowley - Magick, Rock and Roll, and The Wickedest Man in the World, by Gary Lachman is the latest bio on ole Beastie to come out.  I was going to pass on it having read every other bio on Big Al I could get my hands on, but then considered there might be a good look at Crowley's immense influence on rock and roll from a qualified source who had played in a band I liked.  The author is the bass player from Blondie.  I'm very glad I changed my mind.  I'm finding this to be the most engimatic of all the Crowley biographies apart from his own autobiography.

Superficially and ostensibly, this book aggressively brands Crowley in the persona I call " the demon Crowley" ie his popular legend of living as a drug addled black magician pursuing Satanism and Evil without regard for anyone but himself and just all around being an egotistic naughty boy.  This is the Crowley most of the public knows, if they've heard of him at all, due to John Symonds publication of The Great Beast in 1952.  Symonds was clearly biased and prejudiced against Crowley, but nonetheless this image caught on, an image that Crowley had helped foster to some extent.  In this new bio, Lachman calls Symonds' book "flawed" but still feels it's the best Crowley bio out there.  Israel Regardie called Symonds, "that most hostile biographer."

AC -MRRTWMW seems the spiritual heir of Symonds' book, but taken to the next level.  It appears by far the most negative biography about Crowley and everything he stood for.  The demon Crowley gets fully evoked in all its dark and dreary counterglory.  Through very clever selective perception, much judgement and amateur psychological evaluation this perspective paints a picture that seems far blacker than Symonds. Damning comments from his diaries seem taken out of context in this case against him.  Eyewitness accounts by anyone who ever had anything bad to say about Crowley get stacked up against him.  The writing, however, goes far beyond the citation and judgement of bad deeds.  It makes irrational associations to give a worse picture as for instance when talking about another writer who put forth that Cagliostro was a charlatan, the writing in this new bio says One of Crowleys former incarnations, Cagliostoro was considered a charlatan, by such and such.  In fact the negative reinforcement gets so strong and continuous that it seems like the pov of this book operates as a program to get the reader to permanently enter an anti-AC mindset or reality tunnel.  It seems like a form of subtle hypnosis or neuro-linguistic programming.  For example, from p. 177:

"Like Crowley, Randolph used drugs as an aid to mystical states; he has been described by the esoteric scholar Christopher Bamford as " in equal parts authentic and a fake" - again like Crowley. Randolph, an unstable character, blew his brains out in 1875 at the age of 45."

Another superstitiously extravagant claim holds that some of the mischief Crowley did with his magick back in 1909 helped to cause the disastrous circumstances at the free Rolling Stones concert held at Altamont.  Richards and Jagger studied AC with Kenneth Anger which had something to do with it the book alleges, though it's left unexplained.  Crowley and his philosophy gets compared with  Charles Manson.  He's called an admirer of Adolf Hitler.  It goes on and on never seeming to miss a moment to get a dig in at Crowley.

In fact it begins to feel slanted to the point of ridiculousness.  The bias looks extremely transparent and some of the statements appear to say much more about the author than about AC, like obvious psychological projection - mirror reflection.  It fact, it seems so obvious that I suspect it' s a dodge, a misdirection to get the reader to consider the author in a particular way.  I suspect that behind this  negative Crowley mask the author wears lies an adept communicating genuine teaching.  I suspect this book to be a trick, a teaching device applying shocks in a particular way with a lot more to it beneath the surface.  It seems like something Crowley might do or someone very advanced in his teaching techniques.  I remain open to all possibilities.
 
This bio started to look like more than it seems when I noticed the author deliberately discredit the source of one of the quotes that opens the book -  not just once, but twice.  It begins with two quotes, a rational, even one from Crowley and a hysterical one from Vittoria Cremers that reads:

"It was sex that rotted him.  It was sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, all the way with Crowley.  He was a sex maniac."

Lachman tells us later that Crowley accused Cremers of embezzlement making her prejudiced against him.  Then we are told that she held a grudge against AC.  These are the only credentials given for her to make that quote, it doesn't even mention if they were lovers.  So why use a quote with dubious truth and no authority to back it?  Well, for one thing, the two quotes by Crowley and Cremers very nicely anticipate and encapsulate the flavor of the book's subject matter - what opening quotes are intended to do - ONLY in those quotations, Crowley sounds totally rational and gives a completely sane explanation for much of the rest of the book, while the accuser here, Vittoria Cremers gets deliberately discredited by the author.  This seems completely opposite to the atttitude of the rest of the book where Crowley seems to take all the blame.  The book starts with Crowley's quote giving a reasonable defence/explanation why people see the demon Crowley.

Another possible reason for the quote - sex sells!  Every advertiser knows that.  I submit that one hidden agenda of this new biography is attract people to the current of the Great Work as Crowley presented it.  Are young people reading about Crowley for the first time going to see that quote and consider, "oh that bad man, he liked sex too much"  or " hey, sex, let's check this guy out."  A kind of bait.  The author practically tells you that in so many words when he comments favorably on the Symonds bio saying it's the best of the lot despite its flaws, then says quite rightfully that The Great Beast was responsible for keeping Crowley's name alive until it he became more widely known.  The public gets attracted to the sensationalism of the demon Crowley legend, but it also gets into the hands of many people who saw through the author's bias and searched further.  Aleister Crowley - Magick, Rock and Roll, and The Wickedest Man in the World will likely have a similar effect, maybe moreso, now that there's rock and roll to help with the marketing!

The bio started to look  like active magical ammunition, when I began experiencing mildly precognitive coincidences.  For instance, I kept  thinking of the Shakespeare line: "Methinks he doth protest too much"  from the constant put downs when to great amusement I read Lachman suggesting the same quote applies to Israel Regardie's so-called protestations of AC's innocence in The Eye in the Triangle then writing: "... and is therefore suspect; at the end of it, Regardie himself admits that it is with real relief that he can unburden himself of the task of exonerating Crowley." The Eye in the Triangle seems pretty balanced with the pros and cons of Crowley.  One wonders if Lachman anticipates real relief from the burden of implicating Crowley?  If he was referring to himself?  This bio does end graciously toward Crowley on a positive note, in my opinion.  It could get read as sarcastic, but I suspect it's genuine maybe because I also agree.  Toward the end I wondered if there would be mention of AC's second most popular saying: "Love is the law, love under will" and discovered it a few pages later with the only explanation that Crowley ended all his correspondence with it.  It gets mentioned again a few pages after that as if the author wants to be sure the reader sees it, but again with little explanation.

Next, I happened to look closely at the front cover which depicts Crowley in magical regalia making horns with his thumbs in front of his ears in the posture called Vir which represents the Hierophant.  The book's title and author's name is printed in a white band across AC's forearms.  A graphic of a dark gold sunburst resides in the center behind the "I" and "S" of Aleister and the "W" of Crowley.  The letters inside the sunburst read IS W.  W = vau = the Hierophant.  Looking at this sun placed over AC's chest made me suddenly realize for the first time that he was making himself into a rough form of the Tree of Life in this photo.  I now saw it as a powerful magical statement.  His upright forearms indicate the twin pillars of Mercy and Severity, his hands and thumbs = Chesed and Geburah, the radiant triangle on his hat = the Supernal Triad, and his eyes and forehead are positioned perfectly to suggest Daath and the Abyss.  Crowley's name in large letters expands out from the Tiphareth region, the subtitle covers Hod (Magick), Netzach ( Rock and Roll) and Yesod ( the Wickedest Man in the World, the foundation of this book).  The author's name. Gary Lachman, appears appropriately in the position of Malkuth, the material world which this book seems mostly to dwell in as you would expect.  I find it interesting that Crowley gets belittled frequently about his physical condition, and the narrative often talks about how he's battling disease or drugs when not engaging in degenerate sex or ruining people's lives yet they use one of his strongest looking photos for the front cover.  He's looking his best.

The sunburst on the cover recalls another Crowley book which has always had a radiant sun graphic on its cover, The Book of Lies.  Perhaps this bio identifies itself as another book of lies, another series of koan type puzzles with great truth underneath?

A qabalist gets trained to see multiple points of view.  Part of that training involves learning to read things backwards or in mirror image; to consider the opposite pov of any communication.  This has a basis in Taoism, a philosophy Crowley was fond of, with the notion that every thing contains the seed of its opposite.  This is shown in the well-known yin/yang symbol.  In Sympathy for the Devil, arguably The Rolling Stones most Crowleyesque song, they sing of this identity of opposites in the bridge : 

Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners Saints ...

A qabalist might apply this same logic to the title and hear it in a whole new way.

Some of the interpretations the writer draws from Crowley's work seems exactly opposite from common understanding by people who have tasted the pudding.  For instance, stating that to 'do what you want' as the highest aim of AC's magical system.  On p. 58 he writes: 

"... Crowley would espouse a philosophy expressing this antinomian rejection of opposites." 

This sentence itself seems opposite to Crowley's espousement in that he accepted opposites, or maybe we're just talking semantics, however the next sentence in the book looks very interesting.  It appears the author instantly reverses himself with the opposite attitude.
 
Almost all skepticism in this bio seems unbalanced against Crowley, and the author usually sounds very sure of himself.  He speaks as if with a voice of authority.  Yet in a paragraph on p. 341 that begins by talking about the inspiration behind The Matrix,  a movie about an illusionary, programmed surface reality, he writes:

 "Today we all live with a sense of reality not being quite what it seems.  Rightly or wrongly we have - at least in the West - grown suspicious of every authority; to borrow a phrase from the philosopher Paul Ricour, we live under the "hermeneutics of suspicion" and the once firm fitting for our beliefs is now little more than thin ice.  This sense of ontological disorientation has reached contemporary pop."

Like Timothy Leary, one of Crowley's successors, the author suggests that his own authority be questioned or at least approached with skepticism.  Again, this seems completely in accordance with Crowley's training of rigorous, but balanced skepticism.

Perhaps this bio appeared with the intention to stimulate a 'sense of ontological disorientation' amongst Crowley true believers or people who regard him as a hell of a holy guru?  Actually, that one person could be so black and horrible yet so profoundly influence a cultural movement based on peace, love and understanding seems another kind of ontological disorientation. 

AC - MRRTWMW will also serve as a filter.  People who unquestioningly believe this account will likely not pursue the subject any further.  I see it as kind of a preliminary test to see if one can get past the mask of the demon Crowley.

Teacher's of Crowley's caliber will deliberately create obstacles for their students to overcome at certain points in the training.  This biography could be serving that purpose by putting the reader in confront with the demon Crowley.  As well as functioning to keep Aleister's name, then his work in the public eye through the vehicle of John Symonds, the demon Crowley also seems the first Guardian of the Temple.  It helps to have a sense of humor.

If AC - MRRTWMW did get written by a student or graduate of Crowley's, then it seems a sheer act of courageous love to slosh through all the pain and misery of constructing the demon Crowley image, faux as it may be, for the benefit of current and future travelers.  It reminds me of an esoteric interpretation by Gurdjieff regarding Judas' betrayal of Christ.

Some more curious things in a bio that seems to have Paint It Black playing in the background for most of it:

1. We are told about Crowley's identification with Christ in his oath for the assumption of his Holy Guardian Angel, the pinnacle of his True Will.  The writer then, very disingenuosuly for a prolific writer and researcher of esoteric subjects, mistakenly confuses Christ with Christianity by way of misdirection/explanation.

2. The author has no problem passing judgement and giving strange moralistic interpretations on statements from The Book of the Law, but says on p. 118 that it requires

"...a knowledge and expertise of Kabbalah and other arcane hermeneutic disciplines most of us do not possess or have the time inclination or inclination to acquire."

Again, it seems the author shows us a rationale for rejecting other statements and conclusions made in the book.  He gives valuable direction on what's needed to fully understand Crowley and The Book of the Law, ie qabalah, while letting us infer that his arguments don't necessarily have that same background.  Yet the front cover depicts a subtle Tree of Life?

3.  This seems only pure coincidence, but some may find it curious - the phrase, " But this was the aim of his entire magical system..."  occur on p. 36.  Chapter 36 from The Book of Lies has The Star Sapphire ritual which definitely speaks to "the aim of his entire magical system."

I recommend anyone interested in Crowley to read  Aleister Crowley - Magick, Rock and Roll, and The Wickedest Man in the World while monitoring their own reactions to some of the more outrageous and salacious commentary.  At times the author shows adeptness at stepping on corns ala Gurdjieff.

Since I like rock and roll even more than Crowley  I will end with Led Zeppelin's  response and commentary, Trampled Underfoot, that I divined earlier today.  It's a longish version but it does nicely illustrate a theurgic invocation via rock and roll especially right at the end of the song.

Aleister Crowley's Sex Magick

 It's all right now, 

in fact it's a gas,

It's all right, 

Jumping Jack Flash is a gas gas gas

- Keith Richards favorite Stones song

Last summer a series of posts launched attempting to present what I know of Aleister Crowley's School in a down to earth fashion.  Now we'll look at sex magick, a subject Crowley considered of paramount importance, one found in  many of his writings.   It seems most of his rituals from about 1910  on had a sex magick component to them.  He considered it the most powerful method for practicing magick.

The story goes that Crowley became enlightened to the efficacy of sex magick when Theodore Reuss, head of the O.T.O. at the time visited Crowley around 1912 or 13 and told him that he'd exposed the Supreme Secret of the O.T.O. in the recently published Book of Lies.  Crowley supposedly said that this wasn't possible, he didn't know this Supreme Secret whereupon Reuss showed him the chapter that  revealed it.  Crowley then writes in his autohagiography, "The entire symbolism, not only of freemasonry but of many other traditions, blazed upon my spiritual vision.  I understood that I held in my hands the key to the future progress of humanity."  He doesn't say which chapter Reuss showed him.

In Cosmic Trigger, Robert Anton Wilson states that Book of Lies chapter 69, The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs! contains the O.T.O. Supreme Secret because it suggests mutual oral sex as a form of meditation.  Lon Milo Duquette nominated chapter 36 The Star Sapphire as the one with the Supreme Secret in The Magick of Aleister Crowley.  He writes, "The Star Sapphire is written as if it could be a complex act of ceremonial lovemaking."  Both chapters appear closely related.  The commentary for ch.36 says: "This chapter gives the real and perfect Ritual of the Hexagram."  Ch. 69 starts: "This is the Holy Hexagram."  Both chapter numbers have a strong relation with the number 6 which figures as they both describe the Hexagram.  36 = 6 x 6 while 69 comprises a 6 and an inverted 6.  6 indicates a solar number and also the key number for Tiphareth, the central Sephiroth on the Tree of Life.

One can infer that the OTO's Supreme Secret has something to do with sex.  I'll hazard a guess at this secret despite never having joined the OTO.  It has to do with focusing the energies raised during lovemaking and directing them, through imagination and visualization, to a specific intention particularly at the moment of release and right after.  However, this seems one of those "secrets" that can be communicated in a few minutes but take a lifetime to master.  Crowley writes in The Confessions:

" I personally believe that if this secret, which is a scientific secret, were perfectly understood, as it is not even by me after more than twelve years' constant study and experiment, there would be nothing which the human imagination can conceive that could not be realized in practice.
 ... for at present, we are compelled to admit that the superstitious reverence which has encompassed it in past ages, and the complexity of conditions which modify its use, place us in much the same position as the electricians of a generation ago in respect of their science.  We are assured of the immensity of the force at our disposal; we perceive the extent of the empire it offers us, but we do not thoroughly understand even our successes and are uncertain how to proceed in order to generate the energy most efficiently or to apply it most accurately to out purposes."

In actual fact the Book of Lies has a great deal of information on sex magick also known as sexual alchemy. Much of it appears veiled in qabala, symbolism and metaphor though it begins to get more obvious when knowing in what direction to look.  Chapter 35, Venus of Milo starts a cycle of chapters related to working with sex magick, the other chapters of the cycle are given in the commentary.

Crowley calls this a scientific secret.  That may seem an extravagant claim until we remember that one scientist, Wilhelm Reich, spent a great deal of time and experimentation investigating the uses of sexual energy which he called orgone, and which he considered a universal life force.  His beliefs about the changes orgone energy could bring about seem as expansive as Crowley's beliefs regarding the power of sex magick.  Former Crowley secretary and student Israel Regardie eventually became a Reichian therapist.  He connects Reich's ideas about orgone with Crowley's sex magick researches in The Eye in the Triangle.

Reich designed a special box to concentrate and collect this force calling it an orgone accumulator, basically a faraday cage big enough to sit in.  Faraday cages are enclosures designed to block external electromagnetic radiation.  William Burroughs consistently used and advocated orgone accumulators managing to get one built for himself nearly every time he moved.  A friend of mine told me he regularly used one but stopped.  At the time my friend was a cigarette smoker, but whenever he came out of a session in the accumulator it felt like he had never smoked before.  He enjoyed smoking, but accumulating orgone took that pleasure away.  I have not as yet had the opportunity to try one.  I have wondered what it would be like to build one around a floatation tank?

Crowley claims, a little theatrically in my opinion, to being unaware of the sexual mysticism in The Book of Lies and the importance of sexual energies in magick until Reuss pointed it out to him.  He probably didn't know what Reuss meant by the Supreme Secret of the OTO, and maybe he did have a further realization at that moment, but significant instruction on sex magick can also be found in The Book of the Law which he received in 1904.

The Book of Wisdom or Folly, Crowley's epistle to his magickal son contains much further instruction and elaborations in these matters.  A technique for focusing the energies on the intent of the operation by creating what he calls a 'Bud-Will' lives in the chapter On the Complete Formula.  He ends this short sexual ritual/meditation saying: Now then do this continuously, for by Repetition cometh forth both Strength and Skill, and the Effect is cumulative, if thou allows no Time for it to dissipate itself.  Crowley really likes using capital letters in this book!

Austin Osman Spare offers a similar, but different approach with his sigil magick and Alphabet of Desire.  Very simply, you write a sentence or phrase describing your desire.  Then take the first letter of each word and construct a sigil, an artistic collage/coherence of the letters any which way you want to put them, without repeating any letters.  You can rotate it to see in what direction looks the best, looks the most alive.  You are supposed to forget the original sentence, consciously forget the desire, and let it sink into the subconscious mind.  You then want to charge the sigil by whatever arts and skills you possess. Many people use sex magick for this purpose. The sigil creates a material focal point.

Four sex magick rituals appeared in various issues of Crowley's Equinox Volume I which Regardie collected into section V of the compendium Gems from the Equinox.  Nowhere in any of his writings is Crowley straight forward and direct with sex magick instruction.  It's all versed in complex, sometimes obscure symbolism and what one could call code.  Why, one might ask?  Medieval and renaissance alchemists had good reason to code their sex magick workings -  to avoid persecution and death from The Church.  Early Roman Catholic image makers of some ilk created a fictional boogeyman they called the Devil which appeared to personify and externalize their fear of sexuality.

Crowley may have covered his tracks because the subject and practice can get very dangerous, fraught with possible peril and pitfall, walking a razor's edge of sensitivity and balance.  In one tradition it goes by "tickling the dragon's tail."  If you tickle the dragon too much and wake him up too fast it can feel extremely uncomfortable and overwhelming.  It's also known as the awakening and rising of the kundalini.  The unpleasant  side effects of forced accelerated kundalini get recounted by Gopi Krishna in his book Kundalini, - sensations of fire, unbearable heat, bleak depression, extreme sensitivity to everything.

 Crowley apparently had direct experience with followers misunderstanding his tantric teachings particularly in reference to the Agape Lodge that operated in Los Angeles around the end of his life. As recounted in The Unknown God by Martin Starr, Crowley basically fired the head of the Lodge, Wilfred Smith.  Though I don't recall the specific reason he gave, he must have obviously thought that Smith wasn't doing a good job.  It seems the Lodge may have turned into a bit of a love cult with Smith placing emphasis more on sexual conquest and endurance than on the postbiological activities, voyages, or magick it's meant to fuel.

Further evidence for this supposition might be found in the science fiction classic, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.  Heinlein had visited the Lodge, attending at least one party there, and was friends with Jack Parsons who took over the leadership of the Agape Lodge when Smith departed.  Plausible rumor has it that Heinlein got the assignment to write a popular account of Crowley's teachings.  I call it plausible because Stranger does read as an excellent presentation of Crowley's basic gist with the added benefit of only indirectly referring to him once with the mention of The Book of the Law thus avoiding the association of these liberating ideas with his sinister reputation.  In Stranger, Heinlein seems to satirize, ridicule and skewer the whole love cult aspect of the new religion presented by the central protagonist  Valentine Michael Smith.  I suggest that this may have been a commentary on the Agape Lodge. 

Robert Anton Wilson, Crowley interpreter extraordinaire, puts a significant amount of sex magick instruction (and Crowley) in his fiction.  He appears to have given away one of the basic secrets for getting off the ground when he quotes Jesus from the gonstic Gospel of St. Thomas at the beginning of the 1988 edition of The Universe Next Door

 Not until the male become female and the female becomes male shall ye enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

This seems an allegorical not literal instruction. Contemporary psychologists tell us that every male has a feminine side and vice versa so it may be a matter of changing the balance.

 E.J. Gold shares a similar view in his book Alchemical Sex (p.35-36):

 Most human beings in the sense of those falling under the category of organic male gender together with the corresponding automatic gender identification and vanities necessary for the maintenance of their gender identification, are notably lacking a sufficient poetic sense of wonder. 

Their tribal preoccupations are primarily with hunting and killing - if not with a spear or bow and arrow or a chipped-flint knife - with a briefcase, pick and shovel, typewriter, or blunt instrument

.Only a very small, utterly unmeasurable in the statistical sense, percentage of men stay behind with the women to become a shaman, while the other men go off joyfully to pursue the hunt, or to raid a nearby village. 

To become a real shaman one must strive to understand, and even to sense, from the women's view, the process of inner evocation. 

The instruction of changing or relinquishing, even temporarily, gender identification seems symbolically all over The Book of Lies appearing immediately in chapter 1 with the formula of N.O.X. 

Very simply, these letters can mean:
N = nun = Death (tarot)
O = ayin = Devil (tarot) = male sexual energy
X = the Cross which Crowley equates with the phallus in this chapter, but it can also mean The Star.
Of course the formula always goes death/rebirth, also mentioned in this chapter.  Therein lies the magick.  Not mentioned in this chapter - the space in between death and rebirth where the actual reprogramming or magick occurs which Tibetan Buddhists call the Bardo.

I found a different formulation of the same quote from the Gospel of St. Thomas that may prove helpful:

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, then you will enter [the kingdom]

The Book of the Law has excellent general guidlines for sex magick. Among my favorites:

 II:70:   There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein!

Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot deck contains quite a bit of sexual alchemical imagery. See Lon Milo Duquette's excellent Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot for insight along those lines along with Crowley's own explanation of the tarot in his Book of Thoth. Reading those two books back to back sheds much light on the alchemical, astrological and the rest of the symbolism in the cards.

Many of the trump cards seem to describe processes as well as techniques. One card in particular, The Sun, seems almost a photographic snapshot of an energetic process. The two genderless cherubs joined as one in joyous dance and posture could easily represent what John Lilly calls the Dyadic Cyclone - a working couple in motion - in full bloom, with the rays of the sun symbolizing the energy they release. This energy appears palpable and sensible to the participants. A visual display of the line:  Every man and every woman is a star.

 An audio equivalent of this picture can be found in the album Day of Radiance produced by Brian Eno featuring Laraaji on a heavily treated and multiply overlaid hammer dulcimer. An experiment I tried in the early 80's when Walkmans first came on the scene was to walk around my hometown, Calgary, Alberta, playing Day of Radiance while sensing/feeling/visualizing this card and seeing what effect, if any, it had on other people.  It sure made me feel high.

The name Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of qabalist James Joyce's Ulysses, could indicate a literary allusion to this card, Leo being the lion and all.

Christopher Hyatt (his magickal name), another progeny of Crowley's, wrote an excellently practical, straight-forward, easy to understand introduction to sex magick called Secrets of Western Tantra that seems a safe and gentle approach to a practice that will eventually blow your mind.  Hyatt combines very simple breathing techniques with Reichian muscular relaxation techniques to prepare the bodies for the stronger and more intense energies they will experience later on.  This can be a good place to start.  Strengthening attention also seems a requirement.  The space changes will speed up as the body gets left behind requiring a greater than normal level of attention to maintain focus.

It should be said that the spiritual energy we talk about raising - the orgone, baraka, shakti, the force etc. whatever you wish to call it can get raised through many other, non-sexual methods.  Reich made a lot of experiments using orgone without sex including affecting weather patterns.  We all know that reading a good poem or listening to a special piece of music can suddenly open tracks into an expansive mood or set the soul on fire.

93_The Aleister Crowley Primer by J. Edward and Erica M Cornelius

FOR THOSE WHO ARE WILLING TO BE SHUNNED!

Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night's old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast: flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror's secret by which - though it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off - the living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations.

 - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 10

 93_The Aleister Crowley Primer  proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the tradition, known as Thelema, presented by Crowley and bequeathed to future generations is vitally ALIVE,  growing, evolving, and informing.  Death in this context means the death of Aleister Crowley's legacy by turning it into a dogmatic, sectarian orthodoxy. This Primer is the opposite of that and is critical of those who would take Crowley's legacy in that direction.  It is a scholarly book, quite clearly an authoritative work of those who practice what they preach.  The dyad Cornelius generously gives us their vision of Thelema in a way that gently challenges the willing reader to begin, continue or reinvigorate the labyrinthine journey to gnothi seauton (know thyself).  The 93 Primer gives much more than a data dump of information - though it has a wealth of that - it can also serve as a work book or lab manual.  93_ The Aleister Crowley Primer presents an encounter with a school.  In other words, it has much practical value alongside the study of Thelemic theory; a Primer in theory and practice.

The authors don't ask for the reader to agree with what they write and definitely aren't asking for anyone to believe anything.  Their intent seems a wish to guide, tease, coax and cajole readers into thinking for themselves. Much like Crowley, they implore the student not to automatically accept what they say, rather make the effort to verify everything  for yourself.

 After a brief history of Thelema including extensive biographical footnotes, The 93 Primer's format becomes an extensive series of questions and answers.  The authors say it can be read in a random order though there is some intentionality to the sequence .  This soon becomes apparent in the second question, What do the initials A.'. A.'. mean? wherein they give the two primary tasks or ordeals of this system abbreviated as The Angel and the Abyss.  Right off the top, anyone totally new to this ideology and ontology gets a clear and concise North Star to aim for.  This fact alone makes it worth the price of admission.

Arguably, the most valuable monkey wrench (to wrench the evolving spirit away from the monkey), absolutely indispensable to students new or grizzled, arrives in the very first question, What is a Bullshit Meter and do I need one?

The idea of a Bullshit Meter isn't new to popular culture nor even to the legacy of Thelema.  I'm not aware of its genesis, first heard of it in the first line of the song Garageland by The Clash, released in 1977.  To my knowledge, this concept made its Thelemic debut in the Introduction by Robert Anton Wilson  to a new edition of Israel Regardie's The Eye in the Triangle published in 1997.  Wilson mentions and advises its use right off the top without further explanation.  The 93 Primer is the first publication I am aware of to take this concept and run with it, expanding and explicating this notion into a practical working model.  However, this didn't mark the Meter's expanded debut.  One of the authors, Erica M Cornelius, recently wrote and published On Getting a Bullshit Meter or, If I Remember Lemuria, Will You Pay Me $100 a Year (2016).  I haven't had the opportunity to read it yet, it's on my list.

Writers who promote these metaphysical devices attempting to inspire independent thought in readers are known to intentionally introduce material for detection, i.e. bullshit, into their books as a test.  We see this in the title of Erica's study.  Obviously, remembering Lemuria is much more valuable than $100/year... at least twice as much I would think!  The seemingly non sequitur instances of the Bullshit Meter's recurrence in the 93 Primer suggests test material to evaluate.  For example, at the conclusion of  Who exactly is Choronozon?  out of nowhere comes the advice: "The sooner you pick up a proverbial "Bullshit Meter," the better off you'll be." (p. 156)

The Bullshit Meter has a much broader range of use than trying to determine whether the author is pulling your leg as you'll see in the Primer.  Also, check the following example from the book One Truth and One Spirit - Aleister Crowley's Spiritual Legacy by Keith Readdy. p. 255: "Cornelius' writing is best understood within the context of polemics aimed against the O.T.O."  A footnote gives the example of his 2018 publication: Memoirs of an A.'. A.'. Initiate: Being the True Story of the Struggles for Freedom in the 1990s Against the Restrictionists. 

On my personal Bullshit Meter, as shown above, that statement goes somewhere between Get A Shovel and Bullshit!!! On another Bullshit Meter the needle might point to True, particularly if the only writings by Cornelius that they've read is the book listed in the footnote.  I haven't read it, but could see it best understood as a polemic against the O.T.O. because that's pretty much stated in the title.  From reading the 93 Primer one infers that the Restrictionists = the O.T.O. and the branch of the A.'. A.'. connected to them.

The Primer does contain some criticism, not a lot, against perceived dogmatic attitudes and some restrictive policies and practices in official Thelemic orthodoxy (a paradox if ever I heard one) as promulgated by the O.T.O.  I find the Cornelius' arguments compelling in this regard and look forward to hearing from the other side which is why I picked up One Truth and One Spirit. Critical and existential examinations of how Thelema manifests in contemporary society seems one way that Crowley's legacy remains vitally alive.  I would characterize the two viewpoints as rhizome vs arborescent in the Deleuze and Guattari sense of those concepts.  To very roughly paraphrase: rhizome = it can sprout up anywhere and make connections to anything; multiple ways to manifest. Arborescent models must conform to a specific form; only one way to do it.  One can easily see this translated into a dialect of freedom vs restriction.

I find Cornelius' work best understood in the context of learning more about Thelema and how it can practically work.  Among other things, I have learned a great deal about the ON formula that Crowley placed great importance upon.  This partially explains its significance to me: O = Ayin = the path that connects Tiphareth 6 with Hod 8.  Anyone who follows this blog stream knows the importance I assign to 68.  I connect it with the discovery by Crowley in The Paris Working of the identity of Mercury and Christ, among other things.  I wrote about this in Thelema, Deleuze and 68; that post also has links to additional blogs on the subject.  As I discovered from a reference in the 93 Primer, Crowley writes of this path in The Book of Wisdom and Folly in the chapter Further on these Paths: Now the Path of Ayin is a Link between Mercury and the Sun and in the Zodiac importeth the Goat.  This Goat is called also Strength, and standeth in the Meridian at the Sunrise of Spring, and it is his nature to leap upon Mountains.  So therefore is he a Symbol of true Magick, and his name is Baphomet ... Therefore this Goat, making each leap with Fervour, yet at all Times secure in his own Element, is a true Hieroglyph of the Magician.  Mark also, this Path sheweth One continuous in his Exaltation upon a Throne, and so it is the formula of the Man, as the other was of the Woman.
I suggest that if you know what gets exalted then you have a good start toward understanding the ON formula.

The other path, the path of the Woman  = N = Nun = the path connecting Tiphareth 6 with Netzach 7 = Death in the Tarot Major Arcana.    In the chapter preceding the one just quoted, On The Keys of Death and The Devil, Arcana of the Tarot of the R.C. Brotherhood Crowley writes: "Nun joineth the Sun with Venus, and is referred to Scorpio in the Zodiac.  This Path is perilous, for it seeketh the Level, and may abase thee, except thou take Heed unto the Going.  Of its three Modes, the Scorpion destroyeth himself, as if it were a type of Animal Pleasure.  Next, the Serpent is proper to Works of Change, or Magick; yet is he poisonous also unless thou has wit to enchant him.  Lastly, the Eagle is subtlest in this Sort, so that this Path is proper to a Transcendental Labour.  Yet are all these in the Way of Death ..."
People who know me know of my strong interest in technology to handle Death in all aspects, literal and metaphorical.  I've been called obsessed with Death.  My real obsession is with Life, and the music it makes.  Death appears a gateway to a greater life.

This barely scratches the surface.  The Cornelius' dive much deeper into this formula with great clarity.

The 93 Primer has something for anyone with an interest in Thelema.  It can become an invaluable aid to those with little or no prior exposure to Thelemic philosophy.   It can do the same for anyone with experience ranging from moderate to extensive.  The potential for unlocking new keys, for pursuing new avenues of research in Thelemic study and practice seems just as unlimited and vast as unlocking new keys and gaining new insights to the human mind and nervous system.  This book rewards repeated rereading.  It's structured more like a map than a linear textbook.  You can jump in anywhere you wish to go.  Often, you'll see references and suggestions for other writings to investigate that will further elucidate a point or topic... like hypertext.  These ancillary references include the authors' previous publications, Crowley's writings (as would be expected), some of them obscure to me, along with what seems like unpublished material - excerpts from letters and diaries.  We also get suggested reading completely outside recognized Thelemic circles.  On the practical side, we see an excellent exercise for imprinting Qabalah on pages 43 - 44.  Elsewhere, the authors give their recommendation for how to get started, what practices to begin.

There is a plot element in the new season of the excellent Netflix science fiction series, The OA (Original Angel) where you have to solve a complex puzzle to unlock a corridor in an unusual house that leads to an Interdimensional Choice Point space (i.e. the bardo).  House = beth = The Magus. Crowley's magick has always appeared a complex puzzle to me and many others.  The 93 Primer goes a long way to putting those puzzle pieces into place.  Yet, this book too has a puzzle-like component to it.  To give a small example: On p. 82 they quote Crowley: "The man of earth is the adherent..."  At the conclusion of the book, immediately following a quote from Timothy Leary to "Question authority," they give the first step they teach (in large bold letters): "Learn what it means to be the AHERANT!"  At first reckoning this appears a rather substantial typo with the mispelling of adherant.  Or is it?  Qabalistic analysis of this "typo" reveals something interesting which wouldn't be expressed with the correct spelling.  Below this, in small letters we see: (all else is pendant to this).  This phrase is numerically equivalent (by the method of Notarikon - transposing and adding the initials) to a phrase that concludes What are the Fifty Gates in Qabalah? (p. 45).  This latter phrase recurs throughout the 93 Primer and represents a core concept in Thelemic theurgy.

Yes, this book is the real deal.  That doesn't necessarily mean you'll agree with everything, I don't.  In the introduction the authors state times where they don't agree with themselves.  They also reserve the right to change and revise their model with future information and gnosis.  Again, this is a living, growing, mutating tradition.  In terms of the lineage question, whether or not Grady McMurtry did the proper administrative dance to warrant the authority to establish a legitimate line of the A.'. A.'., whether all his eyes were dotted and tees crossed etc., the question itself seems counter-intuitive after reading the 93 Primer.   It documents McMurtry's intensive contact with Aleister Crowley as well as Crowley's trust in McMurtry to carry on his legacy.  It also documents the close relationship and mentoring between McMurtry and Jerry Cornelius.  Among other sources, the baraka passed from Crowley to McMurtry and then from McMurtry to Cornelius.  This baraka has been imprinted and passed through this book.  That doesn't make it infallible, if anything it makes it dangerous ... and real.  If you don't pick up on this energetic right away, keep reading and experimenting ... eventually you will.

Esotericism/ Magick/ Music

I received this question via facebook the other day:

Greetings Oz,

I know there are a plethora of books and studies to choose from but I am curious if you have any in particular that you would suggest to someone delving deeper into the realms of esotericism/magick/music.

Since school is a waste of time and money for me right now I am trying to continually formulate my own lesson plans.
Any books or directions you could point me in that have had a particularly strong influence on your understanding of music, magick and life?

Take Care,

-Dash

Dear Dash,

I commend you for making efforts to formulate your own lesson plans. In the 10th grade, I reached the conclusion that the formal education system was, for me, a waste of time. I effectively dropped out of all classes except for minimal attendance in order to maintain a presence in High School. I felt any real education, at that time, came from the cultural milieu of the friends I knew there.

In my early 20's I got turned on to a book by Robert Anton Wilson called Cosmic Trigger, The Final Secret of the Illuminati. Now it's Volume I of III, back then it was the only one out. Cosmic Trigger is one persons travelogue through the field of contemporary esotericism. It provides excellent introductions to the works of Aleister Crowley, G.I. Gurdjieff, Timothy Leary, John Lily, Buckminster Fuller, Kenneth Grant, Wilhelm Reich, and various others. It also looks at Quantum Physics from a laypersons point of view, Magick, Conspiracy Theory, Psychedelics, General Semantics, Ufology, and Synchronicities, and ties them all in with personally experienced consciousness research and exploration. The only area that now reads as quaint or dated, is the section on longevity and immortality.

Cosmic Trigger had the initial effect of making me realize just how little I knew. For the first time that I could remember, I had a real thirst for knowledge. At the time, I was doing live sound and being a roadie on the Western Canadian bar band circuit. I started checking out all kinds books from the library. The subjects included, geometry, music theory, science, nutrition, philosophy, etc. I formulated my own course curriculum and called it Space-Time University.

You mentioned magick, this seems a good place to start. First of all, magick is very applicable to the process of making music. Ritual magick has two general areas, Invocation, which means to draw down from above, and Evocation, which means to draw out from within. The parallels with music or any creative activity are apparent. But, more importantly, magick, being the esoteric system that Aleister Crowley rehabilitated, has the primary goal of discovering one's real purpose in life and then aligning to it. Crowley called this True Will.

As you say, 'there are a plethora of books and studies to choose from.' Having at least some inkling of one's True Will can help select and forge a course through the vast amount of materials available. Some questions that can help with discovering one's purpose:(1) Who am I? (2) Why am I here? ie why this incarnation on this planet at this time? (3)what interests me the most? (4) what would I do if time and money weren't an obstacle, etc. I don't know if a final answer ever gets reached regarding one's purpose in life, but tentative working answers can be found to help plot a direction.

Before suggesting any books, I'll cut to the chase, and impart some advice I first heard from the good Doctor Leary. He suggested that: If you want to learn anything, hang out with people who are much smarter than you are in your chosen field. I learned more about making music working with Bill Laswell, Tom Waits and some others, than I ever have from a book.

The first book I'd like to recommend is the one I haven't written yet. You'll have to ask me again later.

The High Velocity Sound Engineering Reading List ( which I'm just now making up) includes:
In Search of the Miraculous - P. D. Ouspensky. It has a lot of material on Gurdjieff's notion ( borrowed from Pythagoras and others) of how the harmonic structure of the octave can be applied to any creation process and also what thwarts the creative process. Introduces the idea that the brain and nervous system function, in one respect, as a mechanical but programmable machine. Much else of value.

The Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus - E. J. Gold. The human brain and nervous system of the producer(s) and engineer(s) seems the most critical piece of equipment in the recording studio, or anywhere for that matter. Developing one's presence and attention will greatly increase the likelihood of real music being created.

As far as magick goes:

Crowley's basic magick theorems are here:

http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/defs.html

Magick, Book Four, Liber ABA - Aleister Crowley's system of magic. The theorems are from the introduction to part 3, Magick in Theory and Practice.

The Magick of Aleister Crowley - Lon Milo Duquette. Very helpful for practical application.

The Book of Lies - Aleister Crowley. Multi-leveled koan-like poetry and commentary to get outside one's mind.

All of these books could be said to utilize the "method of science for the aim of religion." Or perhaps, the method of science for the aim of music.

I also recommend finding and maintaining a yoga or martial arts type of practice.

I hope this answers your question. If everything, or most everything is already familiar to you and you were looking for something further, let me know.

Philosophy and Magick: Deleuze and Crowley with Special Guest Robert Anton Wilson

Magick could be called applied philosophy.  Philosophy can provide blueprints and start the ignis for affirmative action and intentional change. The two disciplines have been entwined dating back to antiquity.  The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles introduced the division of matter into the four elements: Air, Water, Fire, Earth that continues as one fundamental principle of ritual magick to this day.  According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Empedocles: "has been regarded variously as a materialist physicist, a shamanic magician, a mystical theologian, a healer, a democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud."  Except for the democratic politician, that could pass for a description of Aleister Crowley.  The IEP goes on to say: "Empedocles did not make a clear separation between his philosophy of nature and the more mystical, theological aspects of his philosophy, and so may well have seen no great difference in kind between healing ills through empirical understanding of human physiognomy and healing by means of sacred incantations and ritual purifications."

An essential work of contemporary magical literature, The Tree of Life, A Study in Magic, by Israel Regardie, presents a clear and comprehensive overview of Golden Dawn-style magic.  The beginning of Chapter 3 starts with the section: "Necessity for philosophic training prior to undertaking practical work." Regardie makes the point quite clear:

Insisted upon by all the eminent Theurgists of past time of being of equal importance with practical work, and as a radical necessity giving precedence to that work, the august Philosophy which underlies the theory and technique of Magic is a prerequisite to any further discussion.  Indeed there can hardly be a real understanding of the rationale of Magic, and certainly no realization of the complexities taking place within and without the constitution of the Magician, if the corner stone of philosophy is not firmly laid in hir mind."

Couple of things about this quote: the subject "Theurgists" identifies the kind of Magic under discussion - magic to raise consciousness not magic to directly change something in the environment such as casting a love spell or winning the lottery.  Philosophy "as a radical necessity" squarely aligns with the approach of Gilles Deleuze - philosophy as a response to problematics.

Antecedents

Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, and Gilles Deleuze share a common philosophical lineage in Friedrich Nietzsche.  I would add G.I. Gurdjieff  and P.D. Ouspensky to that list though in Gurdjieff's case it seems less verifiable.  We find much mythology over the sources of Gurdjieff's teaching and not much documented fact, to my knowledge.  Yet blatantly Nietzschean concepts find their way into his program to become elaborated and expanded upon.  We know from Ouspensky that Nietzsche was all the philosophical rage in Russian intellectual circles in the years immediate prior to Gurdjieff emerging upon the world stage in Russia.  Aleister Crowley candidly details his philosophic explorations in Confessions and elsewhere.  Several of Nietzsche's concepts get expanded into key points in Crowley's system: the crossing of the Abyss, the creation of the Overman, the revaluation of all values, etc. Crowley recognized Frederich Nietzsche's genius by anointing him a Saint in his Gnostic Mass. Nietzsche, in turn, was influenced by Baruch Spinoza.  Deleuze calls Spinoza the Christ of philosophers, "and we (i.e. other philosophers) are his disciples." Spinoza has been referred to as the first modern pantheist.  He was called an atheist in his time for rejecting the Judeo-Christian God in favor of an impersonal God of Nature - Nature's God.  This may have inspired the title for  third volume in Robert Anton Wilson's Historical Illuminatus series, Nature's God.  Wilson quotes Spinoza in Schrodinger's Cat at the beginning of the chapter Dancing Photons: "The intellectual love of things consists in understanding their perfections."

Nietzsche may have influenced Deleuze even more than Crowley or Gurdjieff.  Deleuze began his literary oeuvre with a series of historical portraits of, at the time, outsider philosophers like Hume, Nietzsche, Spinoza and Bergson.  He became known for using the history of philosophy for his own purposes, drawing out conclusions and interpretations to present a Deleuzean vision. Deleuze's Nietzsche appears quite different in significant ways then other interpretations.  Nietzsche has an image of great thinkers shooting the arrow of their work as far as possible with that arrow to be picked up by the next philosopher where it lands and flung further; building upon the work of your predecessors.  Both Deleuze and Crowley responded quite literally to this metaphor in different, but resonant ways. Deleuze wrote a significant and unique interpretation, Nietzsche and Philosophy, that revived interest in his philosophy in France just in time for the 1960's cultural revolution.  One of the last essays of his life beautifully summarized Nietzsche's philosophy.  In it, Deleuze claims to have found at least 12 different interpretations of the famous, " God is dead" proposition in Nietzsche's literary corpus. One of Deleuze's overall projects was to complete the concept of the Eternal Return which he said Nietzsche didn't have time to fully develop.  Deleuze notably does so at the conclusion of Difference and Repetition.  His interpretation disavows the common one, that everything repeats exactly the same, instead making the theory stand on its head to affirm difference as that which repeats.  The Eternal Return = repetition AND difference.  The film Groundhog Day provides an oversimplified example: it's always the same day, but there's always something different. The Eternal Return, as it appears in Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, became an early topic of discussion in the Tales of the Tribe course that Robert Anton Wilson gave. Finnegans Wake perfectly illustrates the difference and repetition of the Eternal Return.  Various cycles repeat themselves, sometimes frequently, yet they reveal something different every time.  Deleuze, for his part, borrowed the portmanteau term "chaosmos" - chaos + cosmos - from Finnegans Wake to describe the mixture of randomity and chance (chaos) with the ancient Greek philosophers who attempted to overlay order upon the world (cosmos).

 The Will to Power and Do What Thou Wilt.

It's said of some early 20th Century philosophers that one of their projects was to provide a
metaphysics for science.  We will offer a suggestion that Gilles Deleuze  provides a metaphysics for Thelema, the name of Aleister Crowley's agnostic religion.  It seems useful to look at Deleuze's interpretation of "the will to power, " a concept Nietzsche introduced, but didn't have time to fully explicate, in light of Crowley's "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" formulation. According to Ronald Bogue in Deleuze and Guattari, Deleuze defines the will to power as:

the genealogical element of force, both differential and genetic.  The will to power is the element from which derive both the quantitative difference of related forces and the quality that devolves into each force in this relation.  The will to power here reveals its nature as the principle of the synthesis of forces. (Nietzsche & Philosophy, p. 50, 56.)

Bogue gives an interpretation of Deleuze's interpretation:

It seems that Deleuze is here positing the will to power as a kind of inner center of force, a general orientation of becoming that only manifests itself in specific forces but goes beyond individual forces to link them in a line of development.

These two quotes are just an example of how the will to power can inform an approach to do what thou wilt.  The will to power, in this context, seems never about acquiring power over others, but rather getting power over yourself.  It seems you can acquire power over yourself through constant intentional change, or in other words, magick.  Through magick, you can gain self-mastery by making the self disappear.  Magick doesn't necessarily have to be exclusively improvised or directly followed from Crowley's rituals.  "Every intentional act is a Magical Act." (Magick, p.129). In the book Dialogues with Claire Parnet, Deleuze equates the will to power with the libido: "... an unbounded, free-floating energy which Freud called libido and which Nietzsche called will to power."  Crowley understood this same connection with his Do what thou wilt formula as evidenced by the sex magick instructions given in The Book of the Law, The Book of Lies and elsewhere in his writings.

Perhaps the core gist of Crowley's theurgic magick can be seen by how he composed his letters.  His correspondence to all and sundry always began, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."  This magically consecrates the letter with the collected forces and intentionality of this writing event (the letter) according to "the law."  After the body of the letter he tell us what law when signing off with, "love is the law, love under will."  In other words, no matter what they say, all of Crowley's correspondence used this magick formula to make them an intentional act of love under will; higher emotional, mental and somatic forces collected and given a specific direction; the preferred weapon of healers everywhere. At the start of Robert Anton Wilson's Crowley's 101 online course in 2005 ( the 101st anniversary of the reception of  The Book of the Law), Wilson began and ended his posts in the same way making them all acts of love under will.  He appeared quite fastidious about that for a time.

One of the biggest misunderstandings in Crowley's work to new friends and old foes alike is misinterpreting do what thou wilt for do what you want.  This seems completely wrong by the fact that it appears to inject the personality of the ordinary self into the equation.  "Thou" and "you" can't be exchanged without changing the entire sense of the statement.  A big mystery in the formula: who or what does "thou" represent?  What is meant by "thou?" If I recall correctly, it's somewhere in Illuminatus! where Wilson suggests that thou indicates the union of the personal will with God's will. Thou gets commonly interpreted as the source of the True Will  - the will of the deep self or true self as opposed to the human animal's will.  This still renders the meaning of "thou" as something mysterious, abstract, and difficult to grasp in a concrete way.

Deleuze's philosophy demonstrates the illusory nature of the subject - any subject, the idea of the subject as a real thing, a static entity transcendent and separate from its actions.  He takes this up from Nietzsche and other philosophers who say the common view of unchanging sedentary subjects who do things or have properties appears ultimately a consensual illusion programmed into us by the subject/predicate nature of language.  Loosening and getting more flexible with the programming of self, the world and God and of the ordinary way of seeing things seems an initial step in any mystery school. On page 3 of The Logic of Sense, Deleuze uses the "contesting of Alice's personal identity" in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass stories as an example of language and identity.  Deleuze writes:

"But when substantives and adjectives begin to dissolve, when the names of pause and rest are carried away by the verbs of pure becoming and slide into the language of events, all identity disappears from the self, the world and God.'

Although it sounds like the subject due to the requirements of language, "thou" in do what thou wilt can't be a set subject because we have no set subject. (In Egyptian mythology the god Set, of course, becomes the enemy of Horus, the "crowned and conquering child" of Thelemic chaosmology). Crowley affirms this with a comment in The Book of Lies: "Man is only himself when lost to himself in the charioteering;" i.e. the subject gets lost in the process or what Deleuze calls the event.

The reason that Nietzsche and Deleuze and others don't like a static subject is because it implies something, a metaphysical critter of some sort, continuously and permanently transcendent (outside) the conditions of its existence; a ghost in the machine.  Gilles and Friedrich prefer immanence to transcendence on the grand scale.  Although I suspect he didn't pick the title, Deleuze's last slim collection of essays released posthumously was called Pure Immanence to reflect the nature of his passion.

Nietzsche vehemently opposed the Christianity of his time because it subjugated its victims to the oppressive rules of a transcendent philosophy.  It is said that God made man in his image, but it seems more likely that man ended up making God in man's image with the help of the transcendent philosophies propounded by Plato, Aristotle and their followers.  The Christian God became an abstract, anthropomorphic ideal outside and beyond human experience.  You could only get to God by transcending human life when you died, but only if you behaved in the proscribed way.  All life, to the true believers, became beholden and regulated to a set of abstract transcendental ideals.

The philosophy of immanence, on the other hand, supposes that nothing happens outside of natural life - no abstract ideals serving as models for how to live life.  With his historical profiles, Deleuze championed philosophers of Immanence, in particular Spinoza and Nietzsche and updated the concept in ways particularly productive for the theurgic practitioner.  Aleister Crowley's extravagant claim that his school can produce "Christs," (Postcards to Probationers) could only be realized if that circuit (C6 in Leary's model) has an immanent relationship to the student's process.  To have any effect at all, magick require a philosophy of Immanence.  Crowley's 12th Thereom clearly reflects the immanent nature of magick:

WoMan appears ignorant of the nature of hir own being and powers.  Even hir ideas of hir limitations appears based on experience of the past, and every step in hir progress extends hir empire. There seems therefore no reason to assign theoretical limits to what she may be, or to what she may do.

 - Magick, p. 130, (translation modified).

One of the most significant books in Aleister Crowley's secondary literature is Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.  On one level, the book presents a guide to qabala (or cabala as they quaintly spell it), the ten chapters are named after the sephiroth on the Tree of Life.  The first chapter, the first sephira is Kether which refers to God in a general way without indicating or advocating any specific theist belief system though later on it seems pantheism becomes resonant with Kether.  The first sentence in Illuminatus! reads: 

It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton. 

Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, says that the phrase originated in 1952 as a political theory in Eric Voegelin’s. The New Science of Politics.  It means: “trying to make that which belongs to the afterlife happen here and now on Earth” or “trying to create heaven here on Earth.”  Wilson and Shea immediately align themselves to a philosophy of Immanence in alignment with the Thelemic current for which they contribute an unique exegesis.  Incidentally, the first narrator in Illuminatus! sounds remarkably like Lewis Carroll’s Alice when she’s unsure about who she is.  Illuminatus! begins right off with uncertainty about personal identity while, as mentioned, Deleuze confronts this point almost immediately in The Logic of Sense.  Uncertain personal identity challenges the reality and validity of the subject getting replaced by the dynamic process, or the event.  “I seem to be a verb, “ as Buckminster Fuller used to say.

For further research: this first sentence, "It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton."  adds to 80.

Repetition and Love Under Will

In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze radically redefines the regular meaning of repetition.  He divides repetition into two kinds, bare and clothed.  A bare repetition is something that repeats in exactly the same way with no change.  A clothed repetition repeats something, but always in a different way which can include bringing in something  a little bit new, something different, or at the other end of the spectrum, a complete transformation.  Deleuze deals almost exclusively with clothed repetitions.  Whenever Deleuze uses the word repetition he means a clothed repetition unless indicated otherwise.  For him, repetition is how change occurs.  It occurs due to the difference each repetition can potentially bring.  When you add intention to the mix it becomes magick - causing change to occur under will.  You repeat the same ritual over and over and each time it's different in some way, different results, different affects and sensations.  Mix engineers naturally and instinctively know this.  Setting up an audio mix requires listening to the same piece of music repetitively for hours at a time.  Every playback has something different about it, something different gets perceived even if no changes were made to the mix. In general, over a lifetime you can listen to a song or a piece of music many, many, many times and hear it, feel it, sense it, and dance to it differently each time.  Never just repetition, always difference and repetition.

Repetition + Difference + Intention = Magick.

Difference and Repetition was Gilles Deleuze's first book devoted to his own philosophy. Up until that time, 1968, all his publications were historical sketches of other philosophers.  Difference and Repetition was his doctoral thesis.  On page 2 he writes:

The head is the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repetition.  (It is true that repetition also concerns the head, but precisely because it is its terror or paradox)."

The definition of amorous: "inclined or disposed to love, especially sexual love.  Practitioners of tantra, sex magick, and kundalini yoga maintain that sexual energy and spiritual energy refer to different uses of the same energy.  Calling the heart an amorous organ, giving it a sexual force obviously not a physical one, aligns with the efforts of the yogis to draw the kundalini energy up the spine  opening the heart chakra among all the others. The head as repetition's terror or paradox will get examined in a subsequent post that compares the use of paradox by Deleuze and Crowley.  It will be seen that creative repetition for Deleuze requires the cooperation of the head, the heart, and the somatic or sexual forces.  This appears to link repetition with difference to the will to power.  Combining repetition, as Deleuze describes it, with his interpretation of will to power seems an awful lot like love under will.

The way I see it, Deleuze beginning his doctoral thesis by identifying the heart as the organ of repetition (remember, he means clothed repetition, repetition with something different, repetition that brings change) seems cognate with Aleister Crowley insisting to students of the A.'. A.'. that all initial magical efforts should get directed to or focused upon attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.  This operation represents one of the two main tasks in Thelema and takes place in the sphere of Tiphareth, the central Sephiroth on the Tree of Life, the Sephiroth connected to the heart chakra.  Illuminatus! begins in New York's Central Park, an obvious representation for Tiphareth.  Where else could you start if you're writing a guide to qabalah as one of Crowley's brightest students?  I suspect Wilson wrote most or all of the Crowley material in Illuminatus! unless it was Shea.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Crowley/Deleuze show featuring the use of paradox.