From Abracadabra to Zombies
reader comments: Aleister Crowley
07 Apr 1997
"Thelema" wasn't dictated by "a spirit called
Aiwass".
*"The book of the law"* was a book dictated by "Aiwass".
Crowley always refers to Aiwass not as a "spirit", but
as
a "praeter-human intelligence". With that he used a
true skeptical view, that is: Aiwass can be anything, even himself, a higher-self, an angel, etc.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"
wasn't his
motto for OTO. It is not a personal motto, it is used by anyone in contact with the thelemic
doucrine. And it came
from RABELAIS (you know him?) through AIWASS.
....in South Brazil, there exists a popular writer (biggest
selling
in Brazil) named PAULO COELHO, who was a follower of Aleister
Crowley. Now he is against him, but he was imprisioned and BEATEN
in
the years of dictatorship because of a "Alternative
Society",
a "Thelema Abbey".
In USA, Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson are good examples of perpetuators of Crowley ideals.
But read Nietzsche, you may find the same values Crowley
praised.
Nietzsche is another kind of Beast, a philosophical Beast.
Crowley is a religious one.
Eduardo Pinheiro crowley@vortex.ufrgs.br
reply: thanks for setting the record straight. I think Nietzsche predicted Crowley somewhere in Zarathustra. Or was it Timothy Leary?
9 Feb 1997
Just FYI since you seem to be aiming at accuracy here..
Crowley DID NOT form Ordo Templi Orientis. It had been around for a while before he got his hands on it.
Point of fact: OTO was founded by Karl Kellner in 1895, and Crowley became Outer Head of the Order in 1922 when Theodor Ruess (its second OHO) resigned.
Also, Crowley also claimed that he had no awareness of the Order's existence prior to 1912 when Ruess approached HIM with accusations of revealing the Order's "secret" in a publication.
JR Brown
reply: According to an unauthorized blurb for the inaugural edition of the Official Journal of the Ordo Templi Orientis in Australia.
Although officially founded in 1902, the Order Templi Orientis (OTO) represents the surfacing and confluence of the divergent streams of esoteric wisdom and knowledge which were originally divided and driven underground by political and religious intolerance during the dark ages. Its traditional lineage extends through the Freemasonic, Rosicrucian and Illuminist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, through the crusading Knights Templar of the middle ages and into early Christian Gnosticism and the Pagan Mystery Schools.
The efforts of Karl Kellner and Theordor Reuss resulted in their obtaining charters to operate two systems of high-grade Freemasonry. These rites, along with the Swedenborgian Rite, included a version of the craft degrees, and the Cernau Scottish Rite and the Rites of Memphis and Mizraim provided a selection of workable higher grades as nearly complete as had ever existed. Together, they provided a complete system of Masonic initiation. With the incorporation of these rites, the Order was able to operate as a completely independent Masonic system and the OTO was offically proclaimed in 1902.
The most widely known involved in the Order is, of course, Aleister Crowley. It was his discomfort with the Masonic Charter of the OTO that led to the radical changes around 1920 and to his succeeding Reuss as head of the OTO in 1922. After his death, and in accord with his wishes, he was succeeded by Karl Germer.
When Germer died without nominating a successor a degree of chaos ensued culminating in the legal battles of the eighties. It was McMurtry's efforts to ensure the legal recognition of the OTO that finally led to the current period of harmony with Hymenaeus Beta as Caliph.
Aleister Crowley
