Did Aleister Crowley really contact demons from another dimension?

[AMystic3434]

Alister Crowley said that he contacted demons and other worldly being in other dimensions with his Occult practices and Rituals. I know the Illuminati are using these Occult practices to communicate with bad entities. They may even want to open a portal so the demons can come through to this world. Magic is only a hidden science.

Does anyone know what these demons said to Alister Crowley when he contacted them?

[truth4me]

You can google his name plenty of sites about him out there.....I believe he did.

[Lifebringer]

You can always find evil or demons or trouble and you don't have to look for it, as it surrounds you everyday, you just don't participate or invite them as a vampire. Crowley offered himself as a vessel of Satan and his demons for the occult. He probably did get instructions, look how the little demon students have been destroying and running amok since. Elites psychos gone wild. LOL break dancing to a lower beat of vibration. Just look at Sterling try and use every emotion in the book for what he let slip out. The girl was half black and Mexican and he goes off and destroys her heritage, just because he's jealous. Nah, he just got caught being a hurtfilled tyrant of the NBA that finally was seen for what his old decrepit maladjusted thinking and intent really is. He said back in Israel, they treat the blacks like dogs. I saw the whole video, my peeps don't take shorts. LOL

[thunder24]

has anyone met crowley? any links to video or audio of him saying these things?

[Shezbeth]

What you say Lifebringer is significantly probable re: Crowley; I don't know where/why in the world you started talking about Sterling and the NBA. That bit is so irrelevant to this thread that I want to suggest that you might be subject to mind control. With all due respect, allow me to suggest out that regardless of implants, you don't know what you are talking about. (I.e. what you just said is full of,...)

To address the question of the OP, you would have to ask Crowley (who is dead) or any of his associates. Who knows who they were, the silly gits invent a new name for themselves for every degree of achievement; foolishness IMO. IF any such records exist (like a 'minutes' or something, though I seriously doubt it) one will have a hard time finding them outside of certain circles.

Simply, the OP question is - in the least - not likely to be answered satisfactorily by anyone on Avalon; anyone who would know is likely smart enough not to out themselves, and anything else you read would likely be retrieved from a rectum or two.

[GuyFox]

There are many "dangerous" other Dimensional beings who can interfere with people in our 3D existence if they are given the chance.

One way they are "brought in" is through traumatic episodes involving extreme emotions, such as intense Fear. Such episodes are induced by Illuminati in their rituals. An entire "family" of demons maybe be brought into contact with our 3D reality through these intense rituals.

[GK76]

has anyone met crowley? any links to video or audio of him saying these things?

Heh, now there's a real question. Are the 'facts' on this thread through experience or stories filtered through ego after ego?

[spiritwind]

I stumbled across a good book called Pilgrims of the Night: Pathfinders of the Magical Way by Lars B. Lindholm. There's several chapters on different kinds of magic and a lot on the rise and fall of the Golden Dawn and about a 20 page chapter on Crowley specifically. Another good book, not about Crowley but written by Israel Regardie who became Crowley's secretary in 1928, is The Tree of Life: An Illustrated Study in Magic. Understanding something about the occult systems in use can give you a good idea of the types of magic and rituals that may have been used by Crowley. Unfortunately, with so much out there, it's hard to separate fact from fiction. Not really a guy I want to know a whole lot about anyway.

[thunder24]

maybe more importantly would b to go back and find his mentors, and then their mentors.... somewhere in there i would guess one would come across John Ruskin from oxford

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Where there is a bright fire, people draw near --
the spirits are little different.

When they sense a change, when they sense a great deal of energy, they draw toward the person who generates the energy,
just like primitive people standing around a campfire. Or a wildfire, if you will.

I think a big difference between Christ and Crowley is that Christ conserved his energy more,
and did nothing without his full awareness.

Whereas magicians and mediums, particularly those who use drugs and trances like Crowley,
depend on the surrender of the senses they hold so dearly, in order to be spiritual.

So Crowley and Christ approach the issue of spiritual mastery from two sides of the same coin,
the positive and the negative.

They both had very enormous people- and spirit-attracting "divine" energy.




I believe in a phenomenon that I call "wild cards", based on the Stephen King book Insomnia.
A Wild Card is a human being for whom Fate has not set a path in stone.
They have true free will, an unbound spirit, so to speak -- and what they choose affects the fate of the rest of us.

Christ's choices, Crowley's choices -- both changed the world a lot.
But for good or evil? People will never agree.


So I take the third option, the physicist's option, I suppose,
and merely point out what should be obvious -- the great energy coming from the man who called himself "Beast"....



food for thought!

[jake gittes]

Jack Heart discusses Crowley quite a bit in his "Behind the Bush" and "Black Sun Rising" series at http://jackheart2014.blogspot.com/. Pretty interesting stuff.

[Cardillac]

anyone can conjure up ANYTHING if they have the abilities/knowledge; it's all there but just not readily accessible by most; start with David Copperfield (and I think we can safely assume he's not the only one with these abilities but the "machine" behind him has granted him a commercial monopoly)- ever wondered why star-model Claudia Schiffer's career slowly (or not) disintegrated after her relationship with David Copperfield "busted up"?- could it be CS began to know too much (at least about DC's entity- not necessarily about a magician's abilities- no magician reveals their secrets)?- I don't think we should rule that out-

a lot of dots to connect here; my one American co-worker is a hobby magician (his shows are awesome) and he belongs to the org. "Magic Circle";

I asked him if he knew how David Copperfield does it and he answered with "yes"-

if one has read Greg Hallett's "Hitler Was a British Agent" he briefly addresses the issue of a British magician (I forget his name- my co-worker knew it- but I still forget his name- me bad) who would've been considered the 'David Copperfield' of his day and was used in the British N. Africa campaign to conjure up "visions" to scare the s**t out of German troops or to camouflage the approach of British troops; I asked my co-worker if he felt this could've been possible and he answered with an emphatic "yes"-

all of Europe used to be Druidic and the Druids used to conduct occult ceremonies using wands made of holly wood (any wonder why the name "Hollywood"?) to conjure up "things"; so if nothing whatsoever was happening in these 'occult' (our labeling) ceremonies why did they continue to hold them for hundreds if not thousands of years?- does one think these people back then were so "stoopid" they continued to attend occult ceremonies for hundreds of years or more where every wand-induced (or whatever) ceremony "fizzled"?- hardly-

my point (finally): we haven't been told even half the truth about Crowley's power (but I just don't think he was acting alone- there had to have been a machine of some sort behind him pushing him to the fore; no man is an island)-

please stay well all-

Larry

[thunder24]

Where there is a bright fire, people draw near --
the spirits are little different.......

Or a wildfire, if you will.......

I think a big difference between Christ and Crowley is that Christ conserved his energy more,
and did nothing without his full awareness.

Whereas magicians and mediums, particularly those who use drugs and trances like Crowley,
depend on the surrender of the senses they hold so dearly, in order to be spiritual.

So Crowley and Christ approach the issue of spiritual mastery from two sides of the same coin,
the positive and the negative.

They both had very enormous people- and spirit-attracting "divine" energy.




I believe in a phenomenon that I call "wild cards", based on the Stephen King book Insomnia.
A Wild Card is a human being for whom Fate has not set a path in stone.
They have true free will, an unbound spirit, so to speak -- and what they choose affects the fate of the rest of us.

Christ's choices, Crowley's choices -- both changed the world a lot.
But for good or evil? People will never agree.



the neighbor started a wildfire here a few hours ago, bout the time of your post....forestry and firefighters all over.... weird

I think you hit the nail on the head with your assessment of both.... What if Hey-Zeus came back as Crowley?! I know i know blashpemy... but just a thought....

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Where there is a bright fire, people draw near --
the spirits are little different.......

Or a wildfire, if you will.......

I think a big difference between Christ and Crowley is that Christ conserved his energy more,
and did nothing without his full awareness.

Whereas magicians and mediums, particularly those who use drugs and trances like Crowley,
depend on the surrender of the senses they hold so dearly, in order to be spiritual.

So Crowley and Christ approach the issue of spiritual mastery from two sides of the same coin,
the positive and the negative.

They both had very enormous people- and spirit-attracting "divine" energy.




I believe in a phenomenon that I call "wild cards", based on the Stephen King book Insomnia.
A Wild Card is a human being for whom Fate has not set a path in stone.
They have true free will, an unbound spirit, so to speak -- and what they choose affects the fate of the rest of us.

Christ's choices, Crowley's choices -- both changed the world a lot.
But for good or evil? People will never agree.



the neighbor started a wildfire here a few hours ago, bout the time of your post....forestry and firefighters all over.... weird

I think you hit the nail on the head with your assessment of both.... What if Hey-Zeus came back as Crowley?! I know i know blashpemy... but just a thought....

I agree that the fire coincidence is a bit strange!!

In regards to reincarnation and messiahs -- we know that energy learns, that energy is lazy, that it prefers the familiar channel over the new --
just like water -- and we know that patterns in nature persist even to the point of mockery.

Until the so-called "true messiah" comes to us, there will be so many would-be messiahs trying to step into the place he left empty.
Some of the things they say may be true, and some of their powers may be great --

-- But some people say, the ability of the servant to recognize his master is very important.

I think with Crowley what we recognize is a very amazing intelligence and as Ozzy Osbourne quipped, "Your lifestyle to me seemed so tragic. With the thrill of it all."

and also "Was it polemically sent? I want to know what you meant"... "ride my white horse" etc.

Ozzy has obviously given some thought to this issue as well, as an open minded person, he is pretty interested in the myth of the man upon whose back the scarlet woman rides...

p.s. James 3:6
And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

Acts 2:3
And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

Exodus 13:21
And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:
He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.



what those verses are saying, especially the bottom one, is that even in darkness there is hope in unlikely places. and that we underestimate the power and magic of the spoken word.

[Aurvandil]

Crowley is a very interesting man and a lot more important than imagined. He did some basic documentary work and, I believe, really tried to understand the spirit world and the esoterical and magical theories and practices through a lot of experiments. He did conjure up spirits, whether they were demons or not, and some became important to his belief of Thelema.

I am not an expert on his works but I think there is a lot to find in his books, even if they sometimes are difficult to understand.

My advice to the OP is to read Crowleys books for yourself and try to interpret his text. You can find a lot of information about him, including a great many of his books here. (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_crowley.htm)

[Frederick Jackson]

thunder24 said


maybe more importantly would b to go back and find his mentors, and then their mentors.... somewhere in there i would guess one would come across John Ruskin from oxford

Ah, John Ruskin, the culture maven, the cultural arbiter of the Victorian Age. I ran across a wonderfully ironic quote of Ruskin recently on Goodreads. Let me see if I can find it...ah here is it is (aren't search engines great):

“To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.”

― John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

Well it seems that Mr. Ruskin on his wedding night was shocked and appalled to find imperfection in his bride and it apparently "checked his exertion". My God, she had a patch! He felt utterly betrayed, for she was not at all like the bare Elgin marbles he was so fond of.

Well, there is a happy ending. The lady dumped the dolt, went to France*, and shacked up with a painter. Whether Ruskin ever dared to look at a real woman naked again I have no idea.

As ugly and grotesque as the sexual mimicry you see on TV from our pantheon of celeb entertainers, how much uglier the Victorian Age. Can you imagine living under such strictures? Like having to have floor length table cloths lest some male visitor become horny on seeing the tables legs? :embarassed::tape::flame::banplease:}

PS Any evidence to show Crowley was indeed a "33rd degree Free Mason"?

PPS I find it hard to believe that this same Ruskin could have been a forebear ... in a lineage of black magic. Spiritualism, seances, yes, I can imagine all that for this Ruskin, but nothing involving Satanic rituals. Unless the story I told is fiction.

OK, I just had to check on this story about Ruskin. It may be apocryphal. But the bride Effie Gray did say in a letter things consistent with this take on what transpired. What happened for sure though was that something did go wrong on the wedding night and it appears that the marriage was never consummated. Here is a good brief article from The Guardian about Ruskin and his life and the matter of the wedding night:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/mar/14/john-ruskin-wedding-effie-gray

A film is now being made of Ruskin's career that pivots on this moment of his life.
_________
* Ok, according to the Guardian piece she actually met the painter Millais in Scotland before going to France and marrying him. Sorry, could not resist putting it the way I put it, and actually I did not know any of the details of the real story.

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Crowley is a very interesting man and a lot more important than imagined. He did some basic documentary work and, I believe, really tried to understand the spirit world and the esoterical and magical theories and practices through a lot of experiments. He did conjure up spirits, whether they were demons or not, and some became important to his belief of Thelema.

I am not an expert on his works but I think there is a lot to find in his books, even if they sometimes are difficult to understand.

My advice to the OP is to read Crowleys books for yourself and try to interpret his text. You can find a lot of information about him, including a great many of his books here. (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_crowley.htm)



the Thoth Tarot and the Ars Goetia are both very interesting works.
Lesser Key of Solomon etc.

not saying to USE them, just saying, interesting to study.
I really enjoyed reading the Ars Goetia/demonology list on Wikipedia.

lemme see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goetia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lesser_Key_of_Solomon

I also read some of The Red Dragon/Grand Grimoire, upon which these are largely based.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Grimoire



Fairly tame stuff for "devil worship".
The contracts are horrible but not as bad as the UCMJ/military lol.

I wouldn't be too fast to make a deal with the devil.
At least for the sake of money or sex.

It's so stupid -- better to starve with hope than gorge on despair.

[AutumnW]

I think they beat him up, physically. I don't normally like demons, but in this case, they truly rocked. Wish I could have joined them and kicked 'the Beast' in the ass a few times. Alas, born too late. *sigh*

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

any of you familiar with the rumor/web tale about Crowley possibly being a stand-in for Hitler after a certain alleged WWI mustard gas injury?

of course the official story is different...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_and_occultism#Aleister_Crowley

Aleister Crowley

There are also unverifiable rumours that the occultist Aleister Crowley sought to contact Hitler during World War II. Despite several allegations and speculations to the contrary (e.g. Giorgio Galli) there is no evidence of such an encounter.[27] In 1991, John Symonds, one of Crowley's literary executors published a book: The Medusa's Head or Conversations between Aleister Crowley and Adolf Hitler, which has definitely been shown as literary fiction.[27] That the edition of this book was limited to 350 also contributed to the mystery surrounding the topic.[27] Mention of a contact between Crowley and Hitler—without any sources or evidence—is also made in a letter from René Guénon to Julius Evola dated October 29, 1949, which later reached a broader audience.[27]



Erik Jan Hanussen

When Hitler and the Occult describes how Hitler "seemed endowed with even greater authority and charisma" after he had resumed public speaking in March 1927, the documentary states that "this may have been due to the influence" of the clairvoyant performer and publicist, Erik Jan Hanussen. It is said that "Hanussen helped Hitler perfect a series of exaggerated poses," useful for speaking before a huge audience. The documentary then interviews Dusty Sklar about the contact between Hitler and Hanussen, and the narrator makes the statement about "occult techniques of mind control and crowd domination".

Whether Hitler had met Hanussen at all is not certain. That he even encountered him before March 1927 is not confirmed by other sources about Hanussen. In the late 1920s to early 1930s Hanussen made political predictions in his own newspaper, Hanussens Bunte Wochenschau, that gradually started to favour Hitler, but until late 1932 these predictions varied.[28] In 1929, Hanussen predicted, for example, that Wilhelm II would return to Germany in 1930 and that the problem of unemployment would be solved in 1931.[28]



....p.s. http://www.blackraiser.com/nredoubt/ident2.htm


the motivation: "Crowley had told Viereck in 1915 that he wanted to help Germany in order "to exploit the stupidity of the British public.""


and exploiting the stupidity includes bombing his own country.

So Crowley was kind of like George Bush w/ 911

and there are rumors that Crowley is Bush's grand-pappy.

which is why i brought up family resemblance in the reincarnation thread. :scared:

[thunder24]

When French Grand Orient Freemasonry sent a German-born Mason, Karl Marx (1818 - 1883) to England to agitate the lower classes to rebel against the British aristocracy, the British aristocracy became concerned. To counter the increasingly influential ideology of French Freemasonry, in 1870 a select group of English Masonry devised a plan which would both satisfy the proletariat and keep the Masonic oligarchy in power. The scheme was introduced at Oxford, by Freemason John Ruskin.
Ruskin's inspiration and devotion to the creation of an elite of race patriots derived directly from Plato's Republic. In the Republic, Plato called for "a ruling class with a powerful army to keep it in power and a society completely subordinate to the monolithic authority of the rulers." Ruskin sent out to recoup and extend the influence of British Masonry. He wanted to do this by education of the working man. His views on the ruling class as developed from Plato's Republic, sent shock waves through Oxford.
"[You, the undergraduates are] the possessors of a magnificent tradition of education, beauty, rule of law, freedom, decency and self-discipline but... this tradition [can] not be saved, and does not deserve to be saved, unless it can be extended to the lower classes in England itself and to the non-English masses throughout the world. If this precious tradition is not extended to these two great majorities, the minority of upper-class Englishmen will ultimately be submerged by these majorities and the tradition lost. To prevent this, the tradition must be extended to the masses and to the empire."
Ruskin's rationale for proclaiming such ideas was to plant in the fertile minds of his Oxford students the theory that if they educated the working man and elevated him to the middle class, he would labor in behalf of the aristocracy to perpetuate the tradition of the upper-class Englishmen - which tradition was to control the finances of nations through ground rent, banking and trade. Ruskin taught that it was the essential duty of the aristocracy to guarantee an education for the so that an expanded middle class would rule the country. This arrangement would be a type of legal slavery whereby both classes would benefit. Through the power of finance, the ruling class would maintain control from behind the scenes, while the working class would have opportunity to share in the common wealth made available through loans.
Ruskin successfully transmitted his vision to his students at Oxford. They in turn became the Masonic movers and shakers in the new politics and economics that today govern the seven industrial nations of the world - the United States, Canada, England, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan.
A wealthy young man, Cecil Rhodes, like John Ruskin believed that only the British elite could and should rule the world to the benefit and happiness of mankind. Shortly after arriving at Oxford, Rhodes was initiated into Freemasonry at the Apollo University lodge No. 357. On April 17, 1877, he was raised a Master Mason in the same lodge. Rhodes also joined a Scottish Rite Lodge at Oxford called Prince Rose Croix Lodge No. 30.
http://watch.pair.com/roundtable.html
man kind does not seem to b benefiting.. of course its all about perspective... from mine... we are not benefiting nor happy serving the british elite...

if he was a mason wouldn't that make him a satanist since thats equated with lucifer, and they supposedly worship the light... or is satanist really a diversion for the uninitiated into the occult mysteries.... these dang words and different peoples meanings of them cause confussion to me...


fredrick jaskson wrote

Any evidence to show Crowley was indeed a "33rd degree Free Mason"?

Has anyone met him, or have video or audio proof?

[Ray]

I'm sure they lied, whatever they said, even if he didn't.

[Aurvandil]

Haha, I never would have thought that I read a thread Aleister Crowley AND John Ruskin! :p

Ruskin is also a very interesting man, albeit very firm in his beliefs. The story about the wedding night is apparently true and it was of course a misfortune that Ruskin apparently introduced his wife to Millais, being the "godfather" of the preraphaelites whereof Millais was a member.

But Ruskin as a black sorcerer, well, I agree with you, not a likely picture. But who knows what he was up to at Brentwood, his home in Lake District, where he isolated himself, weary of the modern world, and grew a long grey beard...? Well, it seems to be some truth in this. Just found this (https://secure.gn.apc.org/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5317&s). Perhaps worth to dig in on?



thunder24 said


maybe more importantly would b to go back and find his mentors, and then their mentors.... somewhere in there i would guess one would come across John Ruskin from oxford

Ah, John Ruskin, the culture maven, the cultural arbiter of the Victorian Age. I ran across a wonderfully ironic quote of Ruskin recently on Goodreads. Let me see if I can find it...ah here is it is (aren't search engines great):

“To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.”

― John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

Well it seems that Mr. Ruskin on his wedding night was shocked and appalled to find imperfection in his bride and it apparently "checked his exertion". My God, she had a patch! He felt utterly betrayed, for she was not at all like the bare Elgin marbles he was so fond of.

Well, there is a happy ending. The lady dumped the dolt, went to France*, and shacked up with a painter. Whether Ruskin ever dared to look at a real woman naked again I have no idea.

As ugly and grotesque as the sexual mimicry you see on TV from our pantheon of celeb entertainers, how much uglier the Victorian Age. Can you imagine living under such strictures? Like having to have floor length table cloths lest some male visitor become horny on seeing the tables legs? :embarassed::tape::flame::banplease:}

PS Any evidence to show Crowley was indeed a "33rd degree Free Mason"?

PPS I find it hard to believe that this same Ruskin could have been a forebear ... in a lineage of black magic. Spiritualism, seances, yes, I can imagine all that for this Ruskin, but nothing involving Satanic rituals. Unless the story I told is fiction.

OK, I just had to check on this story about Ruskin. It may be apocryphal. But the bride Effie Gray did say in a letter things consistent with this take on what transpired. What happened for sure though was that something did go wrong on the wedding night and it appears that the marriage was never consummated. Here is a good brief article from The Guardian about Ruskin and his life and the matter of the wedding night:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/mar/14/john-ruskin-wedding-effie-gray

A film is now being made of Ruskin's career that pivots on this moment of his life.
_________
* Ok, according to the Guardian piece she actually met the painter Millais in Scotland before going to France and marrying him. Sorry, could not resist putting it the way I put it, and actually I did not know any of the details of the real story.

[thunder24]

Well, it seems to be some truth in this. Just found this (https://secure.gn.apc.org/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5317&s). Perhaps worth to dig in on?

yup i seen that info, didn't have time to go into a deep study yesterday, glad others are still searching... thanks for the link...

[dianna]

Crowley on the Bowery

http://realitysandwich.com/219219/crowley-on-the-bowery/

http://realitysandwich.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/AleisterCrowley.jpg

Gary Lachman

Gary Lachman is the author of several books on the link between consciousness, culture, and alternative thought. His books include Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius; A Secret History of Consciousness; In Search of P.D. Ouspensky; A Dark Muse; Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Thought; and The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicides: Dead Letters. As Gary Valentine he was a founding member of the rock group Blondie, played guitar with Iggy Pop, and fronted his own groups the Know and Fire Escape. New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation is an account of his years on the New York and Los Angeles underground music scenes in the 1970s and 80s, and in 2006 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is a regular contributor to Fortean Times, Independent on Sunday, Strange Attractor, What is Enlightenment and other journals in the US and UK. A frequent lecturer on the history of the counterculture, Lachman has appeared in several UK television documentaries and has broadcast for the BBC. He lives in London. His most recent book is Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (Quest, 2008).


The following is excerpted from Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World


http://cstrips.bitstrips.com/930de9fce2ea65b692126ec3debcfe3d.png


I first came across the name Aleister Crowley, the twentieth century’s most infamous magician and self-styled “Great Beast 666,” in 1975, when I was nineteen and playing in a rock and roll band in New York City. I was living in a rundown loft space on the Bowery with the guitarist and singer, not far from CBGB, the club that a year or so later became famous as the birthplace of punk rock. My band mates had a kitschy interest in the occult, which manifested in the pentagrams, voodoo trinkets, skulls, crossbones, swastikas, crucifixes, talismans, and other magical bric-a-brac that jostled for space with photographs of the Velvet Underground, posters for the Ramones, and Rolling Stone album covers on the bare brick walls. We had an eerie statue of a nun standing in front of a fireplace, which was itself covered in occult insignia. A cross was painted on the nun’s forehead and rosary beads hung from her hand. Tibetan tantric paintings, one of which depicted a monk being eaten by his fellows, hung on the walls, and an old doll that Chris, the guitarist, had found in the trash and had transformed into a voodoo ornament was perched over the drum kit. Debbie, the singer, was interested in UFOs, and after rehearsals she would often consult the I Ching about the next band move.

We shared the space with an eccentric artist, an older hipster who had a dangerous passion for the Hell’s Angels and often dressed in biker gear. Like myself, he was a fan of H. P. Lovecraft and the Weird Tales set, but he was also interested in magic, and he often painted his own version of the tarot deck, modeling his images on Crowley’s then rare Thoth Tarot. He would also give impromptu readings, and I was struck by the seriousness with which he treated the cards. I could tell that for him they were more than just an eccentric form of entertainment, that they presented something more like a philosophy of life. He related the tarot to other things like art and music, and to people I had read, such as Jung and Nietzsche. But the person he mentioned most was Crowley. He held up Crowley as a model of what a magical life should be like, and at one point he introduced me to someone who claimed to be an illegitimate son of Crowley. I can’t remember who this was, or what we talked about, and I never discovered if he really was Crowley’s son or not.

The artist read from The Diary of a Drug Fiend, Crowley’s sensational novel about heroin and cocaine addiction, which was also an advertisement for his ill- fated Abbey of Thelema in Sicily, where initiates would learn how to do their “true will.” Like practically everyone else then, I was interested in drugs, and the cover of the book, with a sheik of sorts luxuriating in an opium-induced Oriental repose, certainly caught my eye. I had seen the book in the window of the old St. Marks Bookshop on St. Marks Place, just up from the famous Gem Spa, and I wondered when I would have enough cash to buy a copy.

Chris had an apartment that he sublet to Tommy Ramone, the Ramones’ first drummer and, sadly, the only member of the original group still alive. One afternoon we headed to his place and while Chris and Tommy talked, I checked out the bookshelves. Two books I borrowed that day changed my life. One was The Occult by Colin Wilson; the other was Crowley’s other novel, Moonchild. The Occult made a powerful impression on me. Aside from a taste for 1940s horror films, I had no interest in the occult or magic, and my knowledge of mysticism was limited to what I had read in Alan Watts and Hermann Hesse. Wilson took the occult seriously, and connected it to philosophy, science, literature, and psychology. Wilson’s ideas about consciousness would have a lasting effect on me, but at the time what struck me most was his chapter on Crowley, and the sections about the poet W. B. Yeats and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. I didn’t know it then but Moonchild was a roman à clef, depicting in an often nasty way some members of the Golden Dawn. Yeats, for example, against whom Crowley held a particularly spiteful grudge, comes in for an especially vile treatment.

After that I was hooked. I picked up The Diary of a Drug Fiend and read it in a day or two. I was especially struck by the quotation from the seventeenth-century philosopher Joseph Glanvil that opens the book: “Man is not subjected to the angels, nor even unto death utterly, save through the weakness of his own feeble will.” Crowley spoke a lot about will. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” “Love is the law, love under will.” Even his well-known definition of magic as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will” spoke of it. I knew that will was an important part of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and at the time his ideas had the most influence on me. If magic had something to do with the will, I wanted to know more about it.

I spent a lot of time at Weiser’s Bookshop on Broadway near Astor Place, then the main source for occult literature in New York. I remember a stack of The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, with its black cover emblazoned with a pinkish-purple sigil of Babalon and Crowley’s magical order the A... A... (the Argentium Astrum, or Silver Star) greeting me as I walked in. Today copies go for several hundred dollars, but back then Weiser’s was selling them at $5 apiece. Weiser’s reprints of Crowley’s magical magazine The Equinox were going at a similar price. Books on the Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie’s The Tree of Life, works by Dion Fortune and Eliphas Levi, reprints of S. L. MacGregor Mathers’s translation of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, Sax Rohmer’s The Romance of Sorcery, A. E. Waite’s Book of Black Magic and Pacts, Egyptian Magic by E. A. Wallis Budge as well as his edition of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and newer works like Kenneth Grant’s The Magical Revival and Francis King’s classic Ritual Magic in England were all very affordable. For someone who had just discovered the occult, it was like walking into Ali Baba’s cave or rubbing Aladdin’s lamp.

An edition of Crowley’s magnum opus, Magick in Theory and Practice, also found its way to me. I couldn’t understand much of it and even today it is not an easy read, but certain things fascinated me. The images of the magician in his black robe and hood, making the signs of the elements and of Isis and Osiris, held a peculiar attraction. I was also intrigued by the “curriculum of the A... A...” Crowley appended to the book. The course in “General Reading” especially caught my attention. I was already familiar with some of the books that were required reading for the aspiring magician, but the idea of a reading course in magic — or magick, as Crowley spelled it — in general excited me, as did the numerous “official publications of the A... A...” Crowley had listed. These were various rituals and exercises designed to discipline the magical mind. There were accounts of previous incarnations; instructions in invocations and meditation; exercises in how to develop the will and the imagination; instructions in achieving higher consciousness, in breath control, in the tarot, and in the strange philosophical system called the Qabalah that I was just beginning to learn about. Even the spelling of this struck me as mysterious; shouldn’t there have been a u after the Q? Crowley had included some rituals in the book, and these didn’t seem like the kind of rituals I had come across in books on black magic or spells, with their candles and spooky ambience. They seemed a strange mixture of precise directions — rather as in a science experiment — and baffling opaqueness. Over the next few months my interest in magic and the occult became the real center of my life, even more so than music, and when tensions with Chris and Debbie developed, they wondered if I was casting spells. When I left the loft to live with my girlfriend, she became interested, too. We soon discovered that we were sharing dreams. It happened so often that I wrote a song about it. In 1978 “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear” became the only song about telepathy— or to have the word theosophy in its lyrics— to make the Top Ten I think. But by that time, I had left the band and had moved to California.

Gilbert’s Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard specialized in occult literature and its clientele included David Bowie, the filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and Led Zeppelin’s guitarist, Jimmy Page (who once wired his girlfriend $1,700 to purchase a rare Crowley manuscript from the shop). On a visit I saw a notice for a Crowley group pinned to the bulletin board. Not expecting much, I answered it. A few days later there was a knock at my door. I opened it and a rather unprepossessing character in his early twenties mentioned the postcard I had sent to the Crowley group and almost immediately asked if I was prepared to take the probationer’s oath of the A... A... and to be initiated into the O. T. O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) a magical society Crow- ley became involved with in 1912. To be asked to join two magical societies immediately after meeting someone was, you might expect, a bit much, as if a Jehovah’s Witness had asked me to join his flock. But after some conversation I asked myself, am I ready to commit to obtaining the “knowledge and conversation of my Holy Guardian Angel,” the aim of Crowley’s system and the essence of what he called “the Great Work”? I had been reading about magic in general and Crowley’s in particular for a good three years. Was I serious about it or it or not? I decided I was and said yes. He handed me a certificate, told me to read it, and then to sign.