I'm entering a new phase of my Work, these days, and I'm pretty excited about it. I want to pursue some things Sef and Chris Bradford and a few other Gents had discussed back in the day under a whole new skin.
When I started "Head for the Red," it was entirely about my pursuit of the accomplishment of the Great Work. I researched the practices of magicians throughout the aeons, found a really convenient way to contact the spirits, conjured them, and performed the Work. I "created the philosophers stone" about three years ago, and have been working on figuring out the best ways to grind it and project it into the world as the universal panacea.
In addition, as many of you know, I joined the A∴A∴ and the OTO a couple of years ago, and it's shifted the focus of a lot of my Work. I'm still
conjuring from the grimoires regularly, and maintaining my relationships with the spirits, but I've also found a framework for the things revealed to me in the 8th Sphere.
I realized a lot of things when I hit the 8th, and I want to pursue those things more hard core in my public life than I have been here lately. There's an aspect of the Work that applies to every man, woman, and child upon the face of the Earth that doesn't have any press right now, and it needs it. Badly.
The Seven Spheres are just the beginning. There's more, baby, so much more.
And the A∴A∴ and OTO stuff is also pretty cool, but I haven't felt nearly as comfortable about posting my experiences in the Thelemic systems here because so many of my readers are not in that particular current, and I don't want to come off like I'm proselytizing Thelema or anything. We got together over a lot of bitterness based on my experiences with the Golden Dawn, and I respect that a sizable base of my readers aren't interested in lodgy-type things.
So going forward, I'm going to be splitting my interests between this and a couple other blogs. Over time, I'll see where I end up, but right now I'm going to keep maintaining this site, posting about awesome magical things in the traditional Hermetic current, and things of that nature.
I'm also going to be taking my 8th Sphere revelations to the Work of Kings blog. That's where I'll be getting into the Applied Hermetics stuff we had talked about years ago. It's about fucking time.
Aaaaaand, I've got a lot of stuff to talk about that is primarily of interest to folks in the OTO and the A∴A∴, which will take place on my Horns of Cerastes blog. I'll ventilize, I'll advertise, I'll theorize, and I'll proselytize.
Oh yea, I'm also getting a new web site. Because it's just that time again.
Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a wild ride.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Thursday, July 02, 2015
On the Relative Importance of Aleister Crowley
Every once in a while, it becomes super popular in various groups of occultists to argue about Aleister Crowley. In the OTO and A.'.A.'. groups I interact with, the debates usually boil down to ways people make it ok to be a Thelemite even though he was a bastard who got some things terribly wrong overall.
Outside his cultus, people argue about how important he is to modern occultism. Jake Stratton-Kent and I were talking about it the other day on FaceBook. He doesn't think Crowley was the greatest magician ever, and I agree. Not the greatest ever, but certainly the most influential of the last 1500-2000 years, within the modern western mystery tradition.
I personally believe that less than 1% of English-speaking modern occultists are untouched by Crowley. Every system of magic in the English-speaking West finds its way back to To Mega Therion at some point. Even systems that think Crowley is shit still go to pains to differentiate themselves, and thereby define themselves using Crowley's teachings and methodologies. So even when people hate Crowley, he's still influencing their practice and their minds.
But that said...
Who gives a fuck? There's nothing Crowley wrote or taught or learned or changed or presented that is necessary to accomplish "the Great Work." People did it for years before he came along, and people will keep doing it long after he's gone the way of Buddha, Moses, Christ, and Mohammad.
In the mean time, if you read his stuff and it resonates with you, enjoy it. If it doesn't, do something else. There's nothing any Order he created, changed, influenced or destroyed on the planet that has anything in its teachings that you must receive from that group to accomplish the Great Work. The Golden Dawn, OTO, and A.'.A.'. are not the only way to the Philosopher's Stone, and for a lot of people, they will hinder your progress more than help.
So many times when I see people bashing Crowley, it's to make themselves look smarter or more important in comparison. I can count on one hand the number of magicians I've met who criticize Crowley who have actually read his works and understood the intent of his practices. Jake Stratton-Kent and Jason Miller pop immediately to mind. Most other critics make their statements based on ignorance, lack of comprehension, and lack of study.
Actually, I'm being super generous. Most people talking smack about Crowley base their opinions on what they heard about him rather than what they know about his life, times, and work. Because they're lazy and would rather feel good about themselves for thinking poorly of an icon of magick than actually do anything necessary to begin to become one themselves.
Folks, the Great Work is not a competition. You are not a better magician because you can point out what other magicians have done wrong. You are a good magician when you accomplish the Great Work, whatever that means to you.
Crowley can be useful in that pursuit for some people some of the time in accomplishing some things. There can be value in understanding what Crowley got wrong, but if that's all you see when you look at his Work, you're missing out on everything he got right...
And I'd suggest your time would be better spent pursuing something else.
Outside his cultus, people argue about how important he is to modern occultism. Jake Stratton-Kent and I were talking about it the other day on FaceBook. He doesn't think Crowley was the greatest magician ever, and I agree. Not the greatest ever, but certainly the most influential of the last 1500-2000 years, within the modern western mystery tradition.
I personally believe that less than 1% of English-speaking modern occultists are untouched by Crowley. Every system of magic in the English-speaking West finds its way back to To Mega Therion at some point. Even systems that think Crowley is shit still go to pains to differentiate themselves, and thereby define themselves using Crowley's teachings and methodologies. So even when people hate Crowley, he's still influencing their practice and their minds.
But that said...
Who gives a fuck? There's nothing Crowley wrote or taught or learned or changed or presented that is necessary to accomplish "the Great Work." People did it for years before he came along, and people will keep doing it long after he's gone the way of Buddha, Moses, Christ, and Mohammad.
In the mean time, if you read his stuff and it resonates with you, enjoy it. If it doesn't, do something else. There's nothing any Order he created, changed, influenced or destroyed on the planet that has anything in its teachings that you must receive from that group to accomplish the Great Work. The Golden Dawn, OTO, and A.'.A.'. are not the only way to the Philosopher's Stone, and for a lot of people, they will hinder your progress more than help.
So many times when I see people bashing Crowley, it's to make themselves look smarter or more important in comparison. I can count on one hand the number of magicians I've met who criticize Crowley who have actually read his works and understood the intent of his practices. Jake Stratton-Kent and Jason Miller pop immediately to mind. Most other critics make their statements based on ignorance, lack of comprehension, and lack of study.
Actually, I'm being super generous. Most people talking smack about Crowley base their opinions on what they heard about him rather than what they know about his life, times, and work. Because they're lazy and would rather feel good about themselves for thinking poorly of an icon of magick than actually do anything necessary to begin to become one themselves.
Folks, the Great Work is not a competition. You are not a better magician because you can point out what other magicians have done wrong. You are a good magician when you accomplish the Great Work, whatever that means to you.
Crowley can be useful in that pursuit for some people some of the time in accomplishing some things. There can be value in understanding what Crowley got wrong, but if that's all you see when you look at his Work, you're missing out on everything he got right...
And I'd suggest your time would be better spent pursuing something else.
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