Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00184)

>I'm just starting to learn about the Kabbalah.  From what I've heard of
>Aleister Crowley, he seems like an unpleasant character.

He was in some ways. Most of these are the same ways that Blavatsky was
an unpleasant character: foul-tempered, mean-spirited, quick to judge. In
either case, you'll find that even friends of these spiritual leaders
would be the first to admit their personality failings. At the same time,
both also had their points of brilliance and charm, and certainly of
talent.

>I heard of rumors
>that he did all sorts of awful rituals, and started satanic cults.

Oooooh, "cults". That sounds really scary. Does the TS qualify?

Blavatsky would not have approved of Crowley's rituals, due to their
sexual element, but they don't seem especially shocking to people living
at the end of the twentieth century. His rituals are theurgical magick
intended to unite the magician with higher powers, and to make progress
toward mystical goals, and they are still regularly practiced today.

As for Satanism, that's another point of contact between Blavatsky and
Crowley -- not too surprising, since they both drew so heavily on Eliphas
Levi, who did so much to justify "sympathy for the devil" among the
nineteenth century occultists. Both denied the Christian Devil while
advocating a positive, enlightened reinterpretation of the character as
unfairly demonized. I'd be curious what you think of Blavatsky's
teachings on the fallen angels, Satan/Lucifer, and Ialdabaoth from "Isis
Unveiled" and "The Secret Doctrine".

>Some
>people are convinced that it is very true.  Someone told me that there is
>one in California near San Francisco, which is near where I live.

There are a few hundred O.T.O. members, and several active bodies of the
Order, in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of the international officers
lives in the North Bay, as well as one of the national. Berkeley used to
be the headquarters during the McMurtry revival in the late 1970's and
early 1980's.

>Then
>again, I heard that all those ritual rumors were just symbolic.  That he
>used symbolic replacement instead of doing the actual deeds.

Crowley definitely had sex as part of ritual work, if that's what you're
alluding to. While the roots have been traced by some commentators to
P.B. Randolph and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, I don't see a lot of
commonality between their practices and Crowley's.

>I don't know
>and I don't care.  He's dead and hopefully his cults will just stick among
>themselves.  I figure if a person is attracted to evil, he/she will find it
>anywhere.  If a person wants to be in an evil cult, that is his/her choice,
>just as long as it does not involve hurting innocent people or children.

Now we seem to have jumped abruptly from "I heard maybe he made some
Satanic cults" to "he did make evil cults but I just hope they keep to
themselves." I wonder if you could consider whether the sort of
intolerance that you seem to be practicing "hurts innocent people"?

Tim Maroney