Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism Aleister Crowley (1875–1947). Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism z Edited and introduced by HENRIK BOGDAN AND MARTIN P. STARR Foreword by WOUTER J. HANEGRAAFF 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Th ailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism / edited and introduced by Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr; foreword by Wouter J. Hanegraaff . pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-0-19-986309-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-19-986307-5 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Crowley, Aleister, 1875–1947. 2. Occultism—History—20th century. 3. Hermetism—History—20th century. I. Bogdan, Henrik. II. Starr, Martin P., 1959– BF 1598.C7A65 2012 130.92—dc23 2011050288 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Contents Foreword: Bringing Light to the Underground v ii Wouter J. Hanegraaff Contributors xi 1. Introduction 3 Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr 2. Th e Sorcerer and His Apprentice: Aleister Crowley and the Magical Exploration of Edwardian Subjectivity 15 Alex Owen 3. Varieties of Magical Experience: Aleister Crowley’s Views on Occult Practice 53 Marco Pasi 4. Envisioning the Birth of a New Aeon: Dispensationalism and Millenarianism in the Th elemic Tradition 89 Henrik Bogdan 5. Th e Great Beast as a Tantric Hero: Th e Role of Yoga and Tantra in Aleister Crowley’s Magick 107 Gordan Djurdjevic 6. Continuing Knowledge from Generation unto Generation: Th e Social and Literary Background of Aleister Crowley’s Magick 141 Richard Kaczynski 7. Aleister Crowley and the Yezidis 181 Tobias Churton 8. Frenzies of the Beast: Th e Phaedran F urores in the Rites and Writings of Aleister Crowley 209 Matthew D. Rogers vi Contents 9. Aleister Crowley—Freemason?! 227 Martin P. Starr 10. “Th e One Th ought Th at Was Not Untrue”: Aleister Crowley and A. E. Waite 243 Robert A. Gilbert 11. Th e Beast and the Prophet: Aleister Crowley’s Fascination with Joseph Smith 255 Massimo Introvigne 12. Crowley and Wicca 285 Ronald Hutton 13. Th rough the Witch’s Looking Glass: Th e Magick of Aleister Crowley and the Witchcraft of Rosaleen Norton 307 Keith Richmond 14. Th e Occult Roots of Scientology? L. Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley, and the Origins of a Controversial New Religion 335 Hugh B. Urban 15. Satan and the Beast: Th e Infl uence of Aleister Crowley on Modern Satanism 369 Asbjørn Dyrendal Index 395 Foreword Bringing Light to the Underground Wouter J. Hanegraaff studying western esotericism is much like applying psychotherapy to the history of thought. Its fi rst requirement is not to be satisfi ed with surface appearances and not to take for granted what the offi cial narratives tell us, but to be curious about what they prefer not to talk about: the presence of subter- ranean archives, or memory vaults, where we store away everything we do not want to accept because it diff ers too much from our ideal image of ourselves and our cherished values. Th e German language has found a beautiful expres- sion for this, in speaking of the occult as the Untergrund des Abendlandes . 1 Th ese archives of suppressed memories do not exist just metaphorically but quite literally as well. Scholars of Western esotericism spend much of their time—or so one hopes!—reading and analyzing the primary sources of rejected knowledge: volumes that have been gathering dust on library shelves because nobody reads them anymore, books and manuscripts of authors who never made it into the canon of acceptable and respectable academic litera- ture, or dropped out of it at some point in time, and so on. Such research may resemble a hunt for forgotten treasure, and it is true that, buried underneath lots of stuff that has not withstood the test of time, genuine gems wait to be found; with luck, one will come across profound thinkers and texts of high quality that should never have been forgotten and deserve to be recovered for their intrinsic merits alone. Th is hope for exciting discoveries is familiar to all working historians, but in the case of Western esotericism, more is at stake. Th ere is a structural logic to the U ntergrund des Abendlandes: far from being just a random collection of things that have happened to fall by the wayside, it is a reservoir that represents the shadow side of our own offi cial identity, and we need to learn more about it if we wish to understand ourselves. Th e basic identity of modern Western culture rests upon two pillars: a religious tradition of monotheism that defi nes itself with reference to Jewish viii Foreword and Christian scripture, and a tradition of rationality and science that sees itself as hailing back to the Greeks and culminating in modern science and Enlightenment. Summarized very briefl y, the former is defi ned as standing against “paganism,” the latter as standing against unreason and superstition. But if one tries to look beyond this offi cial image, one discovers a historical reality that is much more complex and messy. Christianity did not simply triumph over paganism during the fi rst centuries of the Common Era; on the contrary, ever since Platonism was accepted into Christian theology by a range of early church fathers, theologians and philosophers had to deal with a continuous presence of paganism i nside Christianity, not as some kind of alien entity but as an integral part of its intellectual fabric. Only the more radical representatives of the Reformation were more or less successful in exorcizing pagan speculation from Christianity, but at the high price of set- ting in motion a process of rationalization that ultimately caused Enlighten- ment thinkers to throw out the Christian baby along with the pagan bathwater. Th e so-called Age of Reason was also an age of illuminism, theosophy, and other forms of esotericism, and the new scientists and rationalist philosophers were perfectly aware of the fact. Th e Enlightenment defi ned its very identity against this contemporary esoteric culture, by means of rejecting what now came to be known by generic labels such as m agic and t he occult : terms refer- ring to a wastebasket category that contained everything associated with pagan superstitions and now successfully demonized or ridiculed as “irra- tional” nonsense. In this process of identity formation by means of polemical exclusion, “pagan” traditions were tacitly divested of their traditional status as players in the fi eld of history and transformed into nonhistorical universals of human thinking and behavior: instead of discussing intellectual or religious traditions such as “Platonism” or “Hermeticism,” one could now simply speak of “irrationality,” “prejudice,” or “stupidity.” 2 As the outcome of these developments, Western esotericism still functions in the academic imagination as the structural “other” of our collective mod- ern identity, with its Christian roots and its commitment to rationality and science. It is like a dark canvas that allows us to draw the contours of our own identity in shining colors of light and truth. It is for this reason we have a vested interest in keeping it dark: if esoteric or occult currents and ideas are seen as integral parts of Christian culture, if their representatives appear to be capable of rational thinking, if they have contributed to genuine science, or their worldviews are refl ective of modern and progressive tendencies—and all these things are in fact abundantly demonstrated by modern research—then the canvas begins to brighten up and it becomes more diffi cult to decipher Foreword ix what “we” are supposed to be all about. To preserve our identity, we would prefer “the occult” to stay in its own place: dark must be dark, light must be light, and never the twain should meet. Few personalities seem to represent the dark side of the occult more ex- tremely than the English magus and enfant terrible Aleister Crowley. Th ere is no doubt that during his life, he did everything he could to set himself up as the perfect opposite of mainstream Western society and all its traditional values. Crowley was the self-proclaimed Beast from the Abyss who preached an anti-Christian religion revealed by a pagan deity or demon; he was the paragon of sexual perversion who experimented with every conceivable form of immorality; and, in an age of science and rational progress, he was the prophet of “magick” who was apparently bent on reviving all the “supersti- tions” of the past. It might seem hard to fi nd clearer evidence for the allegedly anti-Christian, antirational, and antimodern nature of the occult: if main- stream society and its representatives have a vested interest in keeping the occult as dark as possible, one might say that Crowley was more than willing to oblige. B y playing the role of the demonic “other” to perfection, then, Crowley confi rmed and strengthened the established canon and gave Christians and rationalists every argument they needed to keep seeing themselves as good and the occult as evil. Ironically, the present collection of scholarly essays might be much more profoundly subversive in its implications than Crowley’s own strategies of provocation, because it does not accept the black-and-white stereotypes at face value but brings color and depth to the dark canvas by going into intricate detail, exploring a whole range of historical contexts, and asking uncomfortable questions. In his very criticism of modernity and his deliberate return to archaic traditions, Crowley turns out to have been a mod- ernist. In his explorations of “magick” and altered states of consciousness, he turns out to have been a rationalist. And it could even be claimed— consider, for example, the profoundly biblical language of his experiential narratives in Th e Vision and the Voice —that in his very rejection of established Christianity he was a heretical Christian. In short: rather than representing their radical opposite, the Crowley phenomenon—including not only the Beast himself but also a vibrant contemporary subculture of Crowleyites, with multiple ramifi cations in literature, art, music, and fi lm—provides us with a window on the complex d ialectics of Christianity, rationalism, and modernity. As such, it is among the most extreme illustrations of a point that can be made about the domain of Western esotericism in its entirety. Th ere is a world of diff erence between how this fi eld, its representatives, and their