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Words from our Readers;
From Joe E from Urbandale: Like the E Magazine, keep up the good work
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It's nice to see the Crystal Tower in a new incarnation. Nice look to the pages.
Love,
Lettie
AN EXTRA
The Men Who Sold the World: Crowley, Hitler and the Dogs of Reason by
Jason Wynd
"The word of the Magus is always a falsehood... The task of the Magus is to
make his word, the expression of his Will, come true."
Aleister Crowley, Confessions (chap 81)
"Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed Magus of the Aeon, was destined from
his inception to be an exception. His father, a preacher, hounded him
relentlessly to "Get right with God"; his mother, equally obsessed with
biblical lore, referred to him repeatedly as a "beast," and beyond doubt all
this left its mark on young Alexander, the great beast to be. For years
later, he did indeed assume the title or station of "To Mega Therion," The
Great Beast, signing all his correspondences in later life not with a name
but a number 666, all in his continued quest for supreme significance in the
eyes of a hostile, if not plain indifferent, world. Infamy, Crowley
reasoned, was every bit as valid as fame, and that much easier to claim; in
this, as in countless other ways, he was far ahead of his time, one of
thefirst con-artists to realize that "all publicity is good publicity." Both
amount to influence, which amounts to power. "From the very first of his
reinventions (the name change) his purpose was plain: whatever games
Crowley played with the perceptions of the world, he was undoubtably a
master, though after a fashion wholly his own. Never a dabbler, he applied
himself to a number of diverse disciplines and excelled in them all: chess,
literature, languages (ancient and modern), philosophy, poetry, espionage,
mountain climbing, wild-game hunting, yoga, drug-taking, sex magick, and so
forth. His claims to fame, indeed, are as many and myriad as his
namesHitler's guru, self-made Messiah, Babe of the Abyss, and let us not
forget, Prophet of the New Age! His greatest claim of all was what he
himself termed, "crossing the abyss," being what is known nowadays
ego-death, or being "born again." It was by this accomplishment, highly
esteemed in all magikal circles, that Crowley assumed, or pretended, his
role as "Magus of the Aeon." "Crowley was notoriously perverse in both his
personal and professional life. But, though he was to all intents and
purposes a sort of inspired lunatic, he did practise all he preached, a rare
enough commodity these days to command respect. The central event in his
life was undoubtedly the writing of The Book of the Law, an event that was
to give him the most grief but also the most gratification in his long and
fruitful career. Apart from anything else, it fulfilled his fantasies, from
the most exalted to the basest and most abominable. The Book of the Law, or
Liber Al vel Legis (Liber Al for short) is a text considered by many to
contain the profoundest secrets of magick, as well as the keys to the
inauguration of the long-promised (and long-delayed) New Aeon. For what it's
worth, it is a book that claims to have been
written (passive voice), rather than one which Crowley (or anybody)
actually wrote. Nowadays, we'd call it a "channelled work," but in this case
one channelled with such a degree of precision as to entirely separate it
from the vast mass of "automatic writings" so popular today, and which
amount to little more than the wishful free-associations or mystical
ramblings of the supposed "channellers." "In distinction, Crowley claimed
that, on the 8th of April 1904 in Cairo at 12 noon exactly and for the
following two days at the exact same time he actually heard a voice in his
ear, dictating the words of the text (as if through some transmittor in his
brain), and that he transcribed them faithfully. It was not
"inspired," then, so much as received. The voice itself claimed to be that
of Aiwass, or Aiwaz, "the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat," or otherwise,
Horus, the god of force and fire, child of Isis and Osiris, and
self-appointed conquering lord of the New Aeon, officially announced through
his chosen scribe, "the prince-priest the Beast." This much of Crowley's
controversial life and claims is more or less confirmed. It is, as promised,
to be found there in the writings themselves the proof as it were is in the
pudding. Anyone who has read the work, and suffered the resulting
conflictive feelings of admiration and disgust, will not doubt that there is
something about the "little red book" that puts it in a class all its own.
It might be argued that it is simply the work of a poetic genius, were it
not for the fact that Crowley was to prove again and again in subsequent
works that, for all his magikal
prowess and philosophical brilliance, he was anything but a poetic genius.
It seems rather as though the book partakes not of the qualties of Crowley,
but that, conversely, Crowley himself grew over time to partake of the
qualities of the book. And this he did, by his own admission, with boundless
reluctance and distaste. "The work itself, not for its artistic merit so
much as its sheer intensity and relevance to our times, is perhaps the most
substantial evidence for the much-insisted upon (by Crowley) greatness of
its puppet-author. Yet Crowley also claimed to revile and disdain the work
(particularly the third chapter) for many years, above all for its barbaric
and warlike diatribes, and its ruthless rejection of all philosophies and
creeds previous to it, its utter savage as it let fly its war cry and word
of the Aeon (be it anarchy or be it harmony): Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The
Whole Of The Law! These characteristics of ruthlessness, arrogance and
blasphemy were of course, rightly or wrongly, traits for which Crowley
himself would become most commonly and widely known in the public mind,
while there is a fair case, in conventional history alone (Crowley's claims
aside), to be made for the fact that besides the "secret four-fold word, the
blasphemy against all gods and men...Do What Thou Wilt" Adolf Hitler
whole-heartedly adopted many of the central tenets of Liber Al. Whether or
not he actually embraced "the Law of Thelema," as such, there can be no
doubt at all that Hitler was aware of the Book, and probably derived a
certain demonic inspiration from it. The third part of the Book, pertaining
to Horus (sounding very much like an Old Testament god of war and
vengeance--P), begins:
"Now let it first be understood that I am a god of war and vengeance. I
shall deal hardly with them... I will give you a war-engine. With it ye
shall smite the peoples; and none shall stand before you. Lurk! Withdraw!
Upon them! this is the Law of the Battle of Conquest: thus shall my worship
be about my secret house." (I:3,7-9) [It continues:] "Mercy let be off: damn
them who pity! Kill and torture; spare not; be upon them... (18) Argue not;
convert not; talk not overmuch! Them that seek to entrap thee, to
overthrowthee, them attack without pity or quarter; and destroy them
utterly. Swift as the trodden serpent turn and strike! Be thou deadlier than
he! Drag down their souls to awful torment: laugh at their fear: spit upon
them! "Certainly such sentiments, if taking at face value, would have
appealed to the young monomaniacal Austrian bent upon leaving history in
ruins. As he had done with Nietzsche, however, Hitler was wont to twist and
distort the text to his own ends, and to pervert the whole by taking what
were perhaps (one hopes) as much metaphorical expressions as literal
commands. Nevertheless, between Nietzsche and Hitler, it seems, came
Crowley. Crowley himself made no bones about it: "Before Hitler was, I am,"
he boasted, in imitation of Christ, who said the same about Abraham. (It
might be fair to reply, however: "Before Crowley is Aiwaz!") "Crowley's
involvement in espionage on both sides of the first and second world wars
(he worked for both US and British intelligence writing deliberately
"absurd," i.e., counter productive, German propaganada during the first) is
well known and presumably well-documented. Nevertheless it is extremely
difficult to find any author anywhere who will admit to Crowley's
involvement with Hitler, despite the fact that Crowley himself confessed, or
more accurately bragged, about it to his associates. Yet, Hitler's
interest, nay obsession, with the occult is well-known and there are dozens
of books upon the subject, of varying degrees of ludicrousness and
sensationalism (it even served for the plot of the pulp action movie Raiders
of the Lost Ark). It is a well-known fact that he set out either to recruit
or to persecute all practising occultists in Germany, and Crowley eventually
found himself on the "shitlist" too, which by no means refutes the
possibility of their working together. (The apparent vilification of Crowley
might have been simple cover, or even genuine but as a result of a "falling
out" between the two men.) The fact remains that at the deepest, most occult
level, and behind the political facades and the theatre of war performed for
the public, the most powerful factions, occult and economic, of both Germany
and Britain were not enemies but allies, bound together in the one great
war for the conquest of men's souls and minds. This in itself makes it
highly probable that Hitler and Crowley would have met, and that some
relationship existed betwen the two men, of such different characters but
sharing so similar an obsession. Perhaps even it was a relationship similar
to that shared by Rasputin and the Tsar and Tsaress of Russia at roughly the
same time the one priest, the other king, and each equally benefitting from
the favors of the other? (The idea of priest-kings ruling over Mankind stems
from the most ancient of days even though they have now become separate
entities in people's minds --P.).
"We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their
misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the
wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law, and
the joy of the world. Book of the Law, II:21
"In order to qualify such off-the-wall remarks, we need to take a brief
excursion into the philosophy of war: All warfare must be understood, first
and foremost, as internal warfare hidden, domestic and "cold," of which the
external, overt and heated warfare between nations is no more than an
outburst, a brief orgasm, if you will, after years of foreplay. Wars are
never won or lost, they are merely negotiated, and World War II might best
be seen as the greatest business deal ever accomplished. As a battle between
"good and evil," or justice against crime, it was but one more in a long
series of hollow dramas, engineered expressly for the hoodwinking of the
masses. It seems likely, however, that Hitler, in his bid for
world-domination (or destruction?), lost his head and alienated the very
"powers" that put him in place to begin with: he became an unmanageable
element, if not an actual embarrassment, and so had to be removed. It's
possible even that he was as guilty of "betraying" Chamberlain and later
Churchill, as much as he was Stalin by setting his sights on the whole of
Europe, and so banishing all possibility of an unholy alliance between the
two powers. Ideologically they were perfectly compatible, however, and the
same might be said of the US, which also only entered the fray when it
became completely unavoidable. Hence, victory was denied Hitler, by his own
excess of zeal and lust for power. At the same time, however, and all
appearances aside, his "defeat" was anything but total. In truth, Nazism
was as much a global phenomenon as was Christianity 2000 years before
(though it required considerably less time and effort to take hold), and
there was little likelihood that a minor setback such as the collapse of the
Third Reich in 1945 would quench the raging ideological pseudo-religious
thirst and fervour of such a movement. The explosion of rage might be
checked and contained and so postponed but the collective psyche which had
spawned it could by no means be so easily satisfied: Because Nazism was no
aberration, but rather the NATURAL AND LOGICAL development of a global wave
of systemized, ritualized and economized warfare. It was the realization of
an age-old political dream the perfected face of tyranny. Hence, while to
all the world it appeared as if Nazism suffered a mortal defeat at the end
of the war, in reality, it merely underwent a sophisticated facelift. Behind
the wholesale destruction of Germany and Hiroshima, and the empty facade of
the Nuremberg trials, another, occult agenda was being pursued that of
establishing a secret treaty between the Nazis and the Allies specifically
the American Intelligence community through which Hitler's goals and dreams
would be subtly resumed, albeit in a mutated form, and continue to manifest
over the years in only thinly disguised ways.
Continued in Part 2
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