Talk:Aleister Crowley/Archive 4

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Page Locked

I've removed all the 'fact' tags and locked the page. Please work out your disagreements here. Tom Harrison ^Talk 13:43, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Once I figure out how to do it, I'm reporting Catherine on a number of things. Shes basically attacking me, cursing at me, and I see you've moved it. I've tried to be polite and discuss this, but seeing has she would like to just argue instead, I cannot help her. Zos 17:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I think now would be a good time to archive all of this. Its rather large and Catherine has stated on her user page that she is leaving. So now I'm all for discussing changes in detail if need be, as I have previously said. Zos 18:55, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Now we can get back to working on the article. Zos 19:01, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Catherine also deleted my reference to AC's remembered past life as Ko Hsuan, which seems eminently relevant to the question of his racial views about the Chinese. I also wanted to add more about his views on India. The article says he thought Britain conquered them by "moral superiority", which seems frankly dishonest considering what he wrote before that (still in Confessions Ch 34):

England is losing India by consenting to admit the existence of the conquered races; by consenting to argue; by trying to find a value for incommensurables. Indian civilization is far superior to our own and to enter into open competition is to invoke defeat. We won India by matching our irrational, bigoted, brutal manhood against their etiolated culture.

and

India can be governed, as history proves, by any alien autocracy with sufficient moral courage to dismiss Hindu subtlety as barbaric and go its own way regardless of reason. But India has always conquered its invaders by initiating them. No sooner does the sahib suspect that he is not Almighty God than the attributes of Jehovah cease to arm him with unreasonable omnipotence. Our rule in India has perished because we have allowed ourselves to consider the question of divine right. The proverb says that the gods themselves cannot contend with stupidity, and the stupidity of the sahib in the days of Nicholson reduced India to impotence.

Dan 22:58, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah hopfully we'll get this page unlocked soon, and we can fix that right up. Also I'd like to apologize if I accidentally removed it too! I had been trying to fix as many things as possible, that she did. Zos 04:30, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I made a mistake. She didn't delete the passage, she moved it away from the paragraph that it responded to. But I want to change that paragraph, unless someone makes arguments to the contrary. Let's have a new talk section:

Useful Note For ALL

Amazon.com now has a "search in book" option for almost all of their books - notably including most of those by and about Crowley. I wouldn't recommend using these online versions as cites, but this feature gives you the ability to do virtually unlimited text searches in these book - which you can then use to find relevant passages in your hardcopies. It's like the ultimate index.Psuliin 06:59, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

racism vs bigotry

I don't know if AC actually did publish "vicious denouncements of the people whose cultures had produced" the teachings he stole, at least not in any way that would contradict his respect for foreign teachings and teachers. Allow me to explain. First, he does not call Indians "inferior animals" as the paragraph suggests. He puts that phrase in the mouth of others and suggests that he considers it dishonest or foolish: To begin with, they cannot stand the climate, which compels them to live lives whose inevitable tendency is to relax the moral fibre. Thus even highclass memsahibs sometimes have themselves bathed by their beras. The excuse is that any sexual irregularity with such inferior animals is unthinkable. [1] I've already reproduced the context for this passage and the article's misleading isolated quote about "moral superiority". We don't know if he meant what he said, or offered some or all of it as a Modest Proposal to people who wanted to keep ruling India, but we do know he explicitly rejected the 'white man's burden' garbage about bringing our superior culture to that subcontinent. Second, the following quotes on the subject of Jews and Chinese (from the pages that the article cites as evidence of "racist statements") do not seem racist in the original sense of calling one race inherently or uniformly better than another. Not one of them blames the alleged negative traits on genetics. Instead they mention cultural factors, specifically the effects of suffering and oppression:

They (the "lower class" Chinese) respect any man who acts as their own mandarins act; with absolute lack of sympathy, justice or any other human feelings. They treat the traveler well in proportion as he is overbearing, haughty and avaricious. [2]

and

I do not believe that their universally admitted baseness is due to a mixture of blood or the presumable peculiarity of their parents; but that they are forced into vileness by the attitude of both their white and coloured neighbours. A similar case is presented by the Jew, who really does only too often possess the bad qualities for which he is disliked; but they are not proper to his race. No people can show finer specimens of humanity. The Hebrew poets and prophets are sublime. The Jewish soldier is courageous, the Jewish rich man generous. The race possesses imagination, romance, loyalty, probity and humanity in an exceptional degree.

But the Jew has been persecuted so relentlessly that his survival has depended on the development of his worst qualities; avarice, servility, falseness, cunning and the rest. Even the highest-class Eurasians such as Ananda Koomaraswamy suffer acutely from the shame of being considered outcast. The irrationality and injustice of their neighbours heightens the feeling and it breeds the very abominations which the snobbish inhumanity of their fellow-men expects of them. [3]

All of that belongs in the article. (On the other hand, we don't need Sutin to tell us that AC slanderously accused Jews of child-murder in Book Four. That work appears online, bigotry and all.) Meanwhile, I could make a case that AC held racist beliefs about blacks. But I don't think the words "Black School" or "Black masters" belong in the article unless we explain what he could have meant (see here and here), which would take rather a lot of space. Dan 21:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you about references to "Black Schools," the "Black Brothers," etc. That had nothing to do with race, but might be a little too complicated for this article. I don't quite agree with you (or with Sutin) about Crowley's "anti-semitic" remarks in Liber ABA. If you read the hardcopy version you see that Crowley added a footnote to that comment in which he suggested that allegations of the blood libel were mistaken. As the editor points out, Crowley's meaning in that passage is likely more complex than it looks on the surface.Psuliin 06:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Accordingly, I've moved the following italicised paragraph from the article and tried to rephrase some other parts in objectively verifiable terms. The first sentence of that section still needs work; I'll see if I can find Sutin actually using the word "racist". We probably want to mention his arguments about India, but I don't have time to put it together now (see previous talk section). Dan 06:07, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

His expressions of chauvinistic nationalism included the belief that the British military conquest of India had been won not by superior technology, but "by sheer moral superiority" His ideas concerning white supremacism and racial purity were such that he declared that male Indian students should not be allowed into Britain because they might have sex with British women . He likewise felt it was a mistake to allow British "white women" to live in India, where they might intermarry with Indians,.

Anti-Semitism

While I think it important to discuss the apparent examples of Anti-Semitism and Racism in Crowleys work, and indeed it is wrong (in my opinion) to defend such attitudes, we must be careful to frame these sort of remarks with context. Were these an attitude of the times in mainstream British society? Afterall, The poetry of T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound, two of the Twentieth Century's most celebrated poets features examples of apparent Anti-Semitism which would today seem shocking to many people, as they can seem very aggressive attacks. T.S. Eliot however seemed to be oblivious to this and indeed had Jewish friends despite this aspect of his work and and Ezra Pound was famously involved with the British facists. Pound later apologised. Anyway, returning to my point, is it not feasible that people seize on Crowley's racist views simply because he is Aleister Crowley, whereas we are more than happy to forgive T.S Eliot? I'm concerned that these aspects have been raised with the intention of defemating his character. We must try, I think, to put them into a wider context without apologising for them. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.39.155.142 (talk • contribs).

We shouldn't be framing the discussion at all. All content and discussion of the matter should be taken from biographies. That is Wikipedia policy. I think it safe to say that none of the editors of this article have the necessary depth in both understanding of Crowley and understanding of the period and typical attitude of his contempories to contexualize these issues properly. That is why WP has the no original research policy. I will continue to object to any presentation of this material unless it is coming from a reputable biographer, who can be expected to have done the necessary research to put it all in context, including having had access to Crowley's unpublished writings and diaries and education in the typical standards and attitudes of the times in which he lived . -999 13:18, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Wait. The editors don't have the necessary understanding of Crowley? or the contributors? Zos 16:51, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Please read all my words :-) The editors of this article do not have the necessary understanding of both Crowley and his times (together) to do original research into his alleged racism and/or anti-Semitism in the context of his times. Thus, any critique of his racism or anti-Semitism should come from existing biographies. This is WP policy in any case. One can not just criticize the subject: one must report not only the criticism, but also identify the critic. -999 17:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Alas. And editor can remove as well. Which is what I've been limited to (I've made attempts at adding info, which was removed!)doing. Thus marking a distinction. Some people just edit the article. But I actually refer to a nice quote I found on a wiki policy/guideline page: "The burden of proof lies with the contributor, not the editor." Zos 17:56, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

That's an odd phrasing. I think it means contributor=the WP editor adding the fact vs editor=the WP editor removing the fact. Yes, an uncited fact may technically be removed by any editor. But a lot of WP articles would be stubs again if this was applied regularly. :-) -999 22:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, which bring us back to this page...I've already noted a number of issues that need to be worked on, and no one has commented in length. Simular to me taking the racism section down. I dispute, no one answers. I remove, some one goes mad. Zos 22:38, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's frequently the way of things on WP. :-( -999 22:40, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and I'm at a loss to understand what the bit about Victor Neuberg proves. Crowley was a bottom; he may have just been trying to provoke Neuberg to ride him move violently. -999 22:42, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

If you're refering to what I wrote, its just to add more info in the way of his sexual preferences. I see an area devoted to women (Catherines doing, and again, no citations), but nothing in the way of men. I'm hoping other editors see this and have a nard copy that I don't own, for citations.

Oh and off topic, check out the Talk:Golden_Dawn_tradition page! Zos 23:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Please see section on WP history pages. (Does this fit your commenting norms?) Dan 00:07, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Here's another quote that people might want to consider in discussing Crowley's "anti-semitism." It's cited by Kaczynski (Perdurabo, page 415), from a letter that Crowley wrote to a member of the OTO in Germany. He wrote:

As for the ravings about the Jews, they are simply unintelligible. Almost the whole of life in Germany above brutality, stupidity and cruelty, servility, and bloodthirst was Jewish. Germans are far below Jews, generally speaking, as monkeys below men, but I have always been fond of monkeys and don't want to offend them by comparing any German to one.

This should be added to other quotes that I see already cited here in balancing the view Cat wishes to present of Crowley as a rabid racist and anti-semite. The truth, based on Crowley's writings (and the fact that his secretary and student, Regardie, was Jewish), is clearly more complex than that. I've been pushing for recognition of that complexity ever since Cat started her campaign, and it seems that we now have the materials needed to make the case. Here's what I would suggest:

First, put Crowley's racial attitudes in their cultural and historical context. Racism, as a concept, was barely coming into vogue during Crowley's lifetime, and racial attitudes that would offend modern sensibilities were literally unremarkable among upper-class Edwardians. I'll find a source to cite on this.

Second, note the way that Crowley's attitudes vary in his writings - and particularly how they change over the years. Cat has provided more than adequate sourcing for one aspect, and we now have others. I think the best way to present this information is chronologically, to show the development in Crowley's views.

Third, let's try to come up with some reason why the reader should care about all of this. The fact that Crowley evinced attitudes consistent with his time and place is no more remarkable than the fact that Tacitus writes disparagingly about Christians. However there are critics who use Crowley's personal beliefs as ad hominen arguments about his work and legacy - as though they had some sort of relevance to the validity of Thelema. I think we can say something in the article along these lines: "Crowley's racial attitudes are controversial to modern readers, and have excited much comment among his critics. Those attitudes are complex, and changed over time." Then list 3-4 representative quotes from those we've collected, to show that development, and put it to bed.

What do you all think?Psuliin 06:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, mostly. I agree that there is complexity in his remarks, and can be taken as racist. But I havent really seen any REALLY racist remarks. Just mild racism, that can be taken any way you like. A history should of course be done, but I'm not sure the sentence you suggest would work, unless someone is saying that specifically. Maybe if we toss every remark hes made, in the most popular biographies, onto the talk page, and see how he's using these terms. Then make the best NPOV sentences we can, using the biographies. This would end all debate I think.

I've seen Crowley use old slang, and other words that were not racist in his time. I've also seen where he has disagreed with racism, alot. So...I think we'd need someone making a note of that complexity, that would greatly help. Zos 06:44, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

In light of that, a quote I stumbled across today, refering to his views circa 1902 (a period before Liber AL, when he was engaged in no practice and had adopted a materialist viewpoint): "He [Fra. Perdurabo] analyzed God, saw that every man had made God in his own image, saw the savage and cannibal Jews devoted to a savage and cannibal God, who commanded the rape of virgins and the murder of little children." (emphasis added) Crowley, Aleister (1998) [1912]. "The Temple of Solomon the King, 'The Priest.'". In Mary d'Esti Sturges [Mary Desti], ed. (ed.). The Equinox I(7). in collab. with J. F. C. Fuller. London: Weiser. p. 368. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); |editor= has generic name (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |origmonth= ignored (help) rpt. in Crowley (2004) [1994]. "Part IV: Genesis Libri AL, Chapter VI: 'The Great Revelation'". In Hymenaeus Beta, ed. (ed.). Magick: Liber ABA, Book 4 (2nd. rev. ed. ed.). Boston: Red Wheel/Weiser. p. 406. ISBN 0877289190. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); |editor= has generic name (help); |format= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) --Geoff Capp 05:09, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Issues

Here are a few things that need to be done on the article, as far as I can see.

• The bio has not one citation, and is pretty long for no citations.

• The same for the Thelema and Mountaineering sections.

• The Science, magick, and sexuality section has only one citation.

• I'm still looking for a page number for the citation for this statement "Crowley was a habitual drug user and also maintained a meticulous record of his drug-induced experiences with laudanum, opium, cocaine, hashish, alcohol, ether, and heroin. " in the Drugs section. Also the citation needs to be fixed there, its double cited but is only using one footnote.

• The Susan Strong section is a mess, and has no citations.

• And I'm wondering why there is even a Misc. secton (Miscellany) on this page. Can't we move this to other areas or section of the article?

• The Controversy: racism, anti-Semitism, gender-bias section needs to be rewritten, again. I previously fact checked the section, and I'd like someone with the hard copy to validate that these are not conflicting with the online version (as was suggested before, and also by others).

• And last, there is an issue of footnotes. Maybe the references retittled to Sources, the footnotes can be called Notes, and the references can be used for the citations. The current section is riddled with notes, on top of the cited sources.

I'm more than willing to discuss all of this, so we can get the page unlocked and fixed. Zos 19:38, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Strike that, citation (or note) number 8 has THREE sources. Its triple cited and has no page numbers for fact checking. Zos 19:40, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, note 3 would be better (as in, more complete, thus more checkable) as:

 {{cite news 
 |first = Horatio]
 |last = [Bottomley
 |url = http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/module-subjects-viewpage-pageid-18.phtml
 |title = The Wickedest Man In The World
 |work = John Bull
 |date = [[1923-03-24]]
 |accessdate = 2006-05-28
 }}

This would show: [Bottomley, Horatio] (1923-03-24). "The Wickedest Man In The World". John Bull. Retrieved 2006-05-28. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Also, for note 9, which is presently a bare reference:

 {{cite book
 | last = Owen
 | first = Alex
 | authorlink = Alex Owen
 | title = The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern
 | accessdate = 2006-05-28
 | edition = Hardcover
 | date = 2004-04-14
 | publisher = U. Chicago Press
 | language = English
 | ISBN = 0226642011
 | pages = 192
 | chapter = Aleister Crowley in the Desert
 | chapterurl = http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html
 }} 

Produces: Owen, Alex (2004-04-14). "Aleister Crowley in the Desert". The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Hardcover ed.). U. Chicago Press. p. 192. ISBN 0226642011. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

I can, of course, make these changes myself once the article is unlocked, if there are no strenuous objections. Or, someone else can do it - I am not an edit counter. --Geoff Capp 01:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

• Shouldn't "Abrahadabra", which currently links to Abracadabra, instead link either directly to Abracadabra#Thelema or else the main Abrahadabra page itself? --Geoff Capp 02:05, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no objections myself, but cannot speak for the other. I'd raher sources be cited as best as possible to allow readers the ability to properly fact check and is better all around for verifing. And yes the link to Abrahadabra needs to be changed as well. Not quite sure who did that. Zos 03:46, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

One assumes it dates to a time before the Abrahadabra article existed. I probably made the link and forgot it until I checked back here to find a war in progress. So yeah, go ahead and fix it. I'll try to help add some citations. The misc. section doesn't seem unreasonable in theory, but at least one point deserves a longer treatment and context. Dan 03:57, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Recent disputations

First off, shoud the RFC section have been archived? Perhaps it should be copied to this active talk page. The RfC was very recently filed at WP:RFC/POLICIES by Bearcat (talk · contribs):

Talk:Aleister Crowley and Talk:Aleister Crowley (biography) - Is it ever acceptable on Wikipedia to fork a person's biographical details off as a separate article from the primary one? 01:36, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Secondly, I have found some independent, non-fiction sourcing for some of Crowley's disputed views. The following quotes are taken from:

Booth, Martin (2001) [2000]. A Magick Life: A Biography of Aleister Crowley (Coronet ed.). London: Hodder and Stoughton. p. 507. ISBN 0340718064. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help)

All {braced} insertions are mine; [brackets] are in the original as such.

attitude toward women

"His attitude toward the women with whom he fornicated was, however, one of low regard. As they were for the most part uncultured, uneducated young women, he found them morally and mentally contemptible.

"'They had [he stated] no true moral ideals. They were bound up with their necessary preoccupation, with the function of reproduction. Their apparent aspirations were camouflage. Intellectually, of course, they did not exist. Even the few whose minds were not completely blank had them furnished with Wardour Street Chippendale. Their attainments were those of the ape and the parrot. These facts did not deter me. On the contrary, it was highly convenient that one's sexual relations should be with an animal with no consciousness beyond sex.'

"This low opinion of women was coloured by Crowley's animosity for his mother, and his general misogyny arose out of his relationship with her. Women were oppressors to be vengefully oppresed, a commodity, Crowley surmised in his autobiography, which should daily be delivered to the back door, with the bottles of milk. They were there to be used: and yet, at other times, he would declare that he was unselfish towards women, liked their company and saw it as his function to pleasure them sexually. In his verse, he either idolized women or portrayed them as sexually rapacious demons." (60-61)

"In his diary for September 1916 he noted, 'It is impossible to make a tragedy of a man leaving his wife; because women don't count. They only exist insofar as they seduce or otherwise destroy men. A deserted woman may be comic or pathetic; never tragic.' Several months later, he added, 'Note that we naturally an inevitably divide women into chaste and unchaste; thereby subconsciously affirming that Cunt is the only important thing about them.'" (342)

bisexuality

"Despite his precocious heterosexual activity, Crowley was essentially bisexual with a predilection for aggression and sadomasochism, the reasons for which have been variously attributed to his repressed upbringing, his loss of a father figure during his formative years, his exposure to sodomy at Malvern College, the cruelty of Champney's academy, his attempted seduction by a tutor, and a variety of other esoteric psychological causes." (62)

homosexuality

"In homosexual dalliances, Crowley was usually the sodomized, taking the passive role, with no emotional participation. He preferred to be buggered for it apealed to his masochistic side. Later in life, Crowley defended homosexuality: in The World's Tragedy, he wrote, 'lest "broad-minded" prigs come to smash me by their aid, I shall fight openly for that which no living Englishman dare defend, even in secret — sodomy! At school I was taught to admire Plato and Aristotle, who recommend sodomy to youths. I am not so rebellious as to oppose their dictum; and in truth there seems no better way to avoid the contamination of woman and the morose pleasures of solitary vice.'" (63-64)

sadism

"An entry in {Victor} Neuberg's magical diary indicates the form of some of the instruction: 'He [Crowley] is apparently a homosexual sadist for, in giving me thirty-two strokes with a gorse-switch which drew blood, he showed great unction. He performed the ceremony with obvious satisfaction. The ceremony was quite painful, though it aroused no emotion in me save that of laughter.'" (268)

beastiality

"One of the rituals Crowley devised included a naked Leah {Hirsig} being mounted by a billy-goat. The idea was that Leah went down on all fours so that the goat could copulate with her. At the moment of its orgasm, Crowley would slit its throat. All went well until the goat steadfastly refused to play its sexual part." (376)

anti-Semitic views

"'My Guru rude; his personalities are becoming monstrous. They are grossly offensive ... If I am again insulted I shall depart immediately,' Neuberg wrote. He could have packed his bag at any time, walked the mile to Foyers and caught the ferry to Inverness. Yet he stayed. The romantic, sadomasochistic bond between them was simply too strong.

"It was not unusual for Crowley to express anti-Semitic sentiments. He believed that Jews frequently earned their reputation although, he allowed, the 'Hebrew poets and prophets are sublime. The Jewish {note: not Israeli} soldier is courageous, the Jewish rich man generous. The race {sic} possesses imagination, romance, loyalty, probity and humanity in an exceptional degree. But the Jew has been persecuted so relentlessly that his survival has depended on the development of his worst qualities; avarice, servility, falseness, cunning and the rest.' Crowley's attitudes may today be condemned, but they were widely shared in contemporary Britain." (268-69)

Nazi influence

"{Karl} Germer may have been regarded as an enemy of the Nazi state but the same could not be said of Martha Küntzel. She considered Crowley the mystical world leader and Hitler the temporal one. She sent Hitler an annotated German edition of The Book of the Law, knowing of his deep interest in the occult. Both Crowley and Germer came for a while to be convinced that Hitler was her magical son, his Nazi philosophy containing many elements of the Law of Thelema. Certainly, there are obvious similarities between Crowley's writings and Hitler's conversations, as printed in Rauschning's Hitler Speaks. These do not prove, as Crowley's detractors would have it, that he influenced Hitler. It was more a case of Hitler's own philosophy being based upon the same occult principles as those of Crowley. {...} As for Crowley's opinion of Hitler, he was under no illusions. He had visited the Third Reich on a number of occasions and considered the Führer to be a magician who misinterpreted the occult and, therefore, brought about his own destruction." (468-69)

nothing appears in the sections on his travels I have had the chance to read, nor are there any index entires for "racism" or anything similar, aside from the entry for "anti-Semitic views" cited above. If I do find anything, I'll add it here.

Regarding the RfC proper, I support the view that general biographical material should appear in the main article for any given person, including Crowley, and that if the article becomes overlong, it is other sections that should be forked and summarized, as is currently the case with Thelema and Aleister Crowley in popular culture. --Geoff Capp 00:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as how the bio was moved back and remains, and no one has put up a fight to move the content to another page, I archived it. I was the one who moved the bio section to a main page, and I agree now that it should be the whole article, and not a seperate section as it was before.

Wonderful. I see you have more sources. Once we get the page unlocked, it can be added of course, seeing as how I'm not against the idea of adding the subject to the page (previously mentioned). Zos 01:05, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

from above: "I have, unfortunately, been unable to find anything yet either supporting or refuting the allegations of racism in this source;" -- Try "Do What Thou Wilt...." by Sutin. look in the index, under 'Crowley' and within that biographical section for 'racial views of'. from there you should also be able to find your way back to Confessions, Magick Without Tears, and 777. btw, we already had numerous direct quotes from Crowley on many of these topics; why you would now wish to shift to AMBIGUOUS SECONDARY SOURCES after Crowley's own expressions and Sutin's clear and referenced text pointing to Crowley has been placed before us is *highly* suspicious, possibly obscurant -- this is the manner by which objectionable material is removed from the bios of mystic masters. E6 64.142.90.35 02:35, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Because original research and the opinions of Wikipedia editors are not suitable material for Wikipedia per WP:NOR. There must be an citable person or source for the opinions. As racism is a subjective, rather than objective, subject matter, a citable source is required per Wikipedia policy. This is, by the way, true of all encyclopedias - they summarize the research of others, they do not create new material. -999 02:42, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I notice Booth does not mention the fact that Crowley physically removed the section on sodomy from all copies of The World's Tragedy except those he gave to close friends (Sutin, ch.10). And while Crowley did claim that Kuntzel succeeded in giving Hitler a copy of the Book of the Law, Sutin gives strong reasons to think otherwise. (Also, I have yet to see any proof that Hitler saw his own views as "occult" in any way, much less that he shared "the same occult principles as those of Crowley.") I hope that if we use any claim from this author without confirmation from other sources, we describe it as a claim by Martin Booth. (Sutin appears to confirm the goat story with a citation from AC's diary, OTO archives.) Dan 05:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I just moved this ( ^ )content down here. Dan, please dont insert comments inbetween comments. This is why they are time stamped. It makes it more confusing :) Zos 05:52, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Dan (talk • contribs) writes: I hope that if we use any claim from this author without confirmation from other sources, we describe it as a claim by Martin Booth. I believe the whole point to WP:CITE to is to show the source of information, bor both to adhere to WP:V, and to allow the reader to evaluate for themselves how much trust to place in any given piece of information. I would also certainly hope that any use of Booth's information (or Sutin's, or Crowley's) is properly cited, and that any controversial claim is backed up with citations from multiple sources where possible. One of the nice things about collaborative work such as this is that no one editor needs to own the entire canon on the subject, and we can all fact-check each other. --Geoff Capp 06:12, 29 May 2006 (UTC) edited 07:20, May 29, 2006 (UTC).

Quite so. But I see an important difference between a statement of the form, 'Crowley did such and such (citation from Booth)', and a statement like, 'Booth claims such and such (citation).' I don't mind if we include claims that we can't find in other works provided we use the second phrasing. Dan 22:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

64.142.90.35 (talk • contribs) writes: why you would now wish to shift to AMBIGUOUS SECONDARY SOURCES after Crowley's own expressions and Sutin's clear and referenced text pointing to Crowley has been placed before us is *highly* suspicious.... A) Sutin is a secondary source. B) Booth quotes at length from primary sources (see above, quotes from Neuberg's record, Crowley's diaries, &c). C) Where multiple sources agree, confirmation of facts exists; where they differ, evidence of controversy exists - both seem notable. D) Note where you quoted me: in this source, which implies "in Booth." If I had a copy of Sutin, I'd certainly look there as well. E) To date, no one but me has cited any biography apart from Sutin, which certainly seems one-sided. --Geoff Capp 06:08, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, you mean the practice seems one-sided. At first I thought you meant Sutin's work. I keep citing him because he includes material that 'both sides' (pro- and anti-Crowley) would prefer to ignore, and in general seems an order of magnitute more objective than any other biographer whose work I've seen. Zos, will you actually see this response here in its chronological place, separated from the comment it responds to? Dan 21:25, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Dan, yup. Anyone reading this can, if they're willing to read the whole page. Zos 17:06, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Request for unprotection

I've requested that this article be unprotected Here, seeing as how I was the one who supposedly caused it to be protected. Zos 03:56, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Please learn to read WP history pages

I shall not be contributing to this page or to WP again, but i do note that again some ill-informed pseudo-editor has attributed to me something i did not write, this time the section on "woman" (now "Susan Strong"). I did not write it. I simply got sufficiently annoyed with its totally off-topic title that i titled it properly. It is about a woman named "Susan Strong." It is not about women (plural). Frankly, a person who does not have the simple competence to read a page's HISTORY record correctly (or at all) should not be editing WP. But, of course, WP lets anyone edit, even those who could not be bothered to look up something as simple as who wrote what. Meanwhile, in another forum, a propsective editor of this page claimed that because my husband and i use the same broadband account (well, duh, we live on the same 2 1/2 acre property, although we have 7 different networked computers in a total of 5 different offices in 2 different buildings -- and we never work at each others' computers at all), that somehow i was responsible for his writing, and implied in more than one forum that we were sockpuppeting. This is equally daft, as anyone would know, who was a writer married to another writer, which the editors here evidently are not. But, of course, when speaking of editors here, we are speaking of folks so deft with prose that one of them wrote, and the other edited, a page claiming that Chinese Taoism might have been created by a trio of anonymous mystical writers of the Edwardian era. The mind boggles. Catherineyronwode 05:33, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Stop saying you didn't write stuff. If it's under your account then we say you wrote it. The History pages show you adding the material, [4], [5], [6], and [7]. We also have [8] to show that Boboroshi only made one non-minor edit on the page. That is why I don't care if you did add this section or not, because you falsely denied the last one. Stop insulting everyone and leave if you're going to leave.

KV 16:15, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

She meant the section formerly called Women, now Susan Strong. Hence her use of the name "Susan Strong". I don't know why SS still has her own section, by the way. Seems like it would have made more sense to expand the Women section with the new material on AC and women. Dan 00:21, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

catherine, that comment appears to mean the material on women within the Racism, etc section. And I want it to stay in the article; I thought it did have citations, and I could find cites when I have time (not now). Also, the current article retains my response to that paragraph without the context. (Correction after re-reading that bit: I want to keep the quotes in the article. I don't know about the rest of the deleted material.) Dan 00:11, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

catherine yronwode's original research

Dan,

Please read WP:V, WP:RS and WP:NOR. catherine's web page is unpublished original research and cannot be used. I have no objection to expansion on the topic itself, but the citation will have to be to a published book, not a web source. Also, please note that per WP:WEASEL, phrases like "some people have said" are not permitted. To introduce the material about Crowley's alleged gender-bias, you will need to find a reliable book reference to back it up and mention the author's name and what s/he said about the topic.

-999 13:07, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I gave two published references for the more general charge of sexism. The website just gives slightly more specific examples. And of course, we have citations for the AC quotes themselves. The link to catherine just serves as a citation for the sentence fragment introducing those quotes (in addition to the Sutin&Maroney cites). But if you insist, I could try to find a different introductory sentence fragment that refers to Sutin. Dan 15:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the A.C. quotes is that you are projecting an interpretation onto them. Another solution would be to start a quotes section, with a section on quotes about women, and let the quotes stand on their own w/o attempting to tell the reader what you (or some other unpublished person) think they mean. WP doesn't allow us to interpret the data, but only to cite the published interpretations of others. -999 15:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

You are most certainly allowed to interpret data, if it is not complex. That is what a primary source is called. In this case, it is not "what did Crowley mean by his riddle in the Book of the Law?" but basic comprehension. There are statements for him going both for and against racism, and you can say that he made these racist statements and he made these anti-racist statements...... and then since there is ambiguity, and it would require complex reasoning, you get your secondary source. But if there is one side to an issue, like I believe there was with sexism, you can state that he was sexist, because that is basic comprehension. If someone says "women are inferior to men" to be overly simplified, if you cannot see that they are a sexist, then you cannot comprehend what they said and need some english classes. In fact, you cannot write a single line in Wikipedia unless you cannot interpret sources, because if you write it at all different than the exact wording given, you are interpretting it, understanding what it is saying and pulling forth that understanding of the material. That you are interpretting what Adam Smith is saying on p. 452 to mean that he believes X. If you don't do that, you are using the same wording, and you are plagiarizing, and if it was a work in 1982 instead of 1776, you are also violating copyrights.

KV(Talk) 16:04, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm refering to such interpretation as the influence of his failed marriage and other projections of the editor. That is speculation about the reasons and influences that account for his statements and is original research. Similarly, putting the statements under the heading "gender-bias" without a third-party source that uses the term is interpretation. The same material under the heading "Crowley's attitude towards women" might be considered much more acceptible; it does not lead the reader toward conclusions of the editor not otherwise documented in a third-party source. I'd recommend splitting the the section into two parts, one on racism and anti-Semitism, which is adequately documented, and another on his attitudes toward woman, documented in his own words without leading the reader or imposing an interpretation not found in any citable third-party source. -999 16:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I indented for you, but the use of the term is not out of the question at all, though I wonder why "gender bias" and not "sexism" which is much more well known of a term and shorter... I also don't understand why anti-semitism needs to be mentioned apart from racism, as it is a type of racism. Is it more or less wrong to be racist against semitic peoples like the Hebrew people, the Babylonians, the Palestinians, etc than to be racist against africans, indians, asians, latinos or white people?

KV(Talk) 16:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

On indentation, please see WP:TALK: rather than walking across the page, it is recommended that each incoming voice take the next indentation level, then maintain it. I've put my indentation back and corrected yours.

I have reinserted most of the sexism material back into the article. I think I agree with you on the headings: a simple Drugs, Racism and Sexism in that order would be preferable to my last edit. Agree? -999 16:29, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I have had many discussions with administrators, moderators, etc, etc on highly controversial pages. WP:TALK, I checked over and said nothing like you said, and rather it works in their example WP:TALK#Formatting as it is used all over, if you're replying to the post above you you indent once more, if you're replying on a new tangent, you start over, and if you indent too far you go back.

But I am glad to hear that the simple titles have your personal consensus.

KV(Talk) 16:37, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Come on, even you must be able to see how unwieldy walking across the page gets. The reference I meant to cite is Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Layout. That's one problem on WP, you get used to something being somewhere, then it gets moved :-( -999 16:45, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

To quote:

The first contributor is all the way to the left, the next person starts with one colon (:), the next person starts with two colons. Then, when the first contributor responds, they start at the left margin again, and the second and third persons continue to mark themselves with one and two colons respectively. In that way, who is saying what is clear. Other indentation systems are equally acceptable and widely used (such as a threaded tree format, like that often seen in email clients).

I have never seen anyone follow such a guideline.

KV(Talk) 16:50, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Susan Strong

I don't know what the point of the section with this title is. Shouldn't it be integrated into his biography or something? Text preserved below....

During March 1899 Crowley met, at one of the semi-public performances of MacGregor Mathers' Rites of Isis, an American soprano by the name of Susan Strong (3 August, 1870 - 11 March, 1946). Susan was the daughter of Dennis Strong, an American Congressman and mayor of Brooklyn. She had gone to the UK at the age of 21 and had enrolled in the Royal College of Music, London under the tutelage of the famous Hungarian musician Francis Korbay. Crowley met up with her again in London when she sang the part of Venus in Tannhäuser on 22 June 1899. A torrid romance followed during which Susan swore to divorce her American husband and devote herself to Crowley. However on her return to the US, around October 1899, she apparently cooled in ardour. Crowley followed her to New York City in June of the following year, but by then she was already on her way back to the UK to appear in performances of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. During 1900, while in Mexico City, Crowley experienced an epiphany, during which he transcribed his play, titled Tannhäuser. He attributed the inspiration of this play to his romance with Susan Strong.

Well, possibly someone intended to use the play as an example of Crowley's relationship with women. (Someone certainly entitled that section "Women".) If so, we could move the gender-bias controversy bit to that section. But if nobody can find an NPOV way to do this, I don't know if the Susan Strong material even belongs in the article. Dan 16:02, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Fiction Citation

Citation number 10, is a quote from Robert Anton Wilsons fiction book Cosmic Trigger:The Final Secret of the Illuminati, p. 62 . Now, as far as I knew, fiction books are not to be used, so why is it being used. Anyone? Zos 17:47, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think Cosmic Trigger is fiction. Speculation and conspiracy theory, yes, but it is not part of the fictional Illuminatus trilogy. -999 (Talk) 17:50, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I must be getting it confused with the other book I've read. Huh. Zos 17:59, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. As I recall, the three Cosmic Trigger books chiefly contain essays and anecdotes, with some fictional vignettes. --FOo 04:35, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I was mistaking them for another series of books I've read (and no its not the Illuminatus! Trilogy :p ). Zos 12:52, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Bio Section yet again

After adding the only citation in this section, I began thinking...AC's bio is in no way chronological. I think it needs a complete re-write. Here are a few examples:

• The sub-header mystical beginings contains information which could be placed in early years (first paragraph). And the second paragraph is a mess. Its basically saying he coined magick before he even entered the Golden Dawn (it should be noted when he used it first, and why). Plus, I have sources to say how he actually got started in mysticism/occultism and I'm waiting to help re-write. Also, the second paragraph seems to be saying that "in response" (to the first paragraph) he "created his own philosophical system". Er, this would be Thelema...right? I'd say move this kind of statement to the Thelema section. Then the next two sentences after the second paragraph seem like pov statements, none of which is cited.

• The sub-header golden dawn begins by asserting he had already been in the order, and nothing is said to specify how he joined and why. Plus, the golden dawn section goes into thelema as well. It should stop just short of what he did next. And I'm sure he did something inbetween the Golden Dawn and Thelema which could be added. This section should stop short of going into thelema.

These are just a few things I'm noticing. I'm about to suggest that this bio be removed to the talk page until we get citations. I mean, how long have we been waiting for them? How long will we? I'm willing to add citations, but to do this there has to be some reconstruction of this in repsect to chronological order. Any thoughts? Zos 14:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Plus, I've also been made aware on this talk page (archived by now) that this article is the bio of Crowley, so we really don't need to have a header called Bio. This lead to confusion when I was still a new editor, and I moved the material to an article called Aleister Crowley (Biography) Zos 14:24, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Re:...occultist, Freemason, prolific writer, mystic, hedonist, and sexual revolutionary

I feel I ought to dispute the claim that he was a Freemason. He was Initiated by the generally discredited John Yarker, and his conferred Degrees included the Antient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraim, which puts Crowley outside the Amity of Regular Freemasonry.

Nuttyskin 06:23, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Nuttyskin. You state for him to write the source stating that he wasn't a mason. Why don't you state the source that states he is a mason. If you can't, then I would advise you take the reference to Freemasonry out. JValenc1 07:48, 1 August 2006 UTC

Please see the last section on this talk page. There is a citation for that sentence if you did not already notice. SynergeticMaggot 14:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is a citation, however, although he practiced a bastardized form of Freemasonry, he wasn't actually a Traditional Freemason. He was duped into believing he was a Freemason. The lodge he was supposedly initiated in was not accepted by the Grand Lodge at the time. Once I find that reference, I will let you know. Until then, expect a long wait (this isn't the first thing on my "To Do" list.) JValenc1 08:40, 2 August 2006 UTC

Not a problem. Just make sure its a reliable source :) SynergeticMaggot 17:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Crowley also asserted that someone he met in Mexico (who he called Don Jesus Medina) granted him accelerated Masonic initiation into the 33rd degree of Scottish rite free-masonry at the start of the 20th century. Sutin passes on this claim. We don't know if it happened or not. (We do know, however, that Mathers granted him accelarated initiation into the Golden Dawn Second Order, and that people often had strong good or bad reactions to Crowley.) I doubt anyone "duped" him into anything here. He thought he knew a better form of Freemasonry than many who used the term, having rediscovered an important secret. See the story of Reuss, The Book of Lies and the O.T.O. In other words, he may disagree with your view of what Masonry means. I agree that the article should at least describe the controversy. As for the introduction, I don't know what definition of "Freemason" we want to use or, for that matter, what you mean by calling a person "discredited". Dan 21:15, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Discredited, in a Masonic sense, means there is no confidence in him, because he has, for example, sold Masonic secrets without authority, or conferred bogus and unrecognised Degrees upon the ignorant and gullible. The whole point in Freemasonry is to encourage fraternal relations between members; if no-one recognises the Degrees you have, or considers them improperly conferred, the Masonic purpose is not served and the one who pretended to confer them is discredited as a Conferring Master.

Furthermore, that he submitted to accelerated Masonic initiation into the 33rd degree of Scottish rite free-masonry displays Crowley's own ignorance in this matter, as the Scottish Rite is an entirely American system with no Jurisdiction in Britain. While both American and British (UGLE, GLoS and GLoI) Masonry recognise a 33rd Degree, in the UK this is always an honorific conferred upon very few, such as Grand Masters, who in the English Constitution are almost exclusively titled aristocrats.

Nuttyskin 11:06, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Crowley Occupations All Not Researched?

Besides income from his known occupations..., are there any more evidences of him having any other livelyhoods? I remember he might have called himself the "Fishmonger", did he do work at the markets, In some my fancies I've had, that he could have worked say at a "Expresso Island/Newstand" or maybe at a habidashery or book shop during slow or tough periods in his youth or later in his career. Maybe as an Agent? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.244.43.77 (talk) 05:47, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Frater5

You could have at least moved my cited statement to another location in the article. Seeing as how the bio section is small and not very chronological, and there is no misc. section anymore...where am I supposed to put it? If this is the case, then the wickedest man in the world statement needs to be moved as well (it came later in life). Zos 17:41, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

My apologies. Hoever, in my opinion, it really didn't fit in the intro. What the article really needs is a whole section on his Abbey days, which your sentence would complete perfectly. Perhaps I could start the section, if you'd be willing to lend a hand... –Frater5 (talk/con) 16:40, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I will add to the section once I get time. And thanks. Zos 19:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Thelema section

Shouldnt the Thelema section in this article focus more on the Abbey of Thelema? There is already a main page for Thelema's philosophy. How is this contributing to his bio? I've mentioned before that this section might need to be moved to its main page, for space issues, yet now, since this is Crowleys "life" or biography, it seems like the thelema section isnt supporting any of it. Zos 17:47, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Awaiting Sources

An Anon user put alot of info on the article, in the wrong place, and didnt cite it. I've removed it here until sources are found, and can be integrated into the article.

==Full Biography==

Beastly child

Baptised Edward Alexander but known as Aleister, the young Crowley was born into a family of staunch Plymouth Brethren, a puritanical Christian sect. He was taught that God was all powerful and that the sins of the flesh would be punished in the fires of hell. For the young Crowley, free will was not an option.

When Aleister was 11, his father died and the boy's feelings towards the church, and his family, turned to hate. He labelled the Plymouth Brethren a 'detestable crew', and it became clear that Crowley was not growing up to be the son his mother had dreamt of when he was caught torturing a cat to test if it had nine lives.

In his early teens, Crowley's mother caught him masturbating and in disgust called him 'the beast'. Far from being ashamed, however, Crowley adopted the name. At 14, as a way of punishing her, he had sex with a maid on her bed. This marked the beginning of Crowley's sexual life and he was forced to leave many schools, on one occasion because he had caught gonorrhoea from a prostitute.

Occult practices

In 1895, Crowley attended Cambridge University and began to publish sexually explicit poetry. A year later, however, a trust fund which had been set up after the death of his father matured, and, freed from dependence on his family, Crowley left university. Three years later, Crowley was initiated into a society called the Golden Dawn, which taught magic, alchemy and tarot. Taking the name Frater Perdurabo (Latin for 'I will endure'), he rose quickly through their ranks.

Over the next few years he travelled extensively and immersed himself in the occult, eventually growing irritated with the members of the Golden Dawn because he felt they were not taking magic seriously enough. Desperate to perform an extreme ritual, Crowley bought a house, Boleskine, in Loch Ness.

Once there, he set about performing the Abra-Melin, a high-magic ritual dating from the 14th century. The purpose of this ritual was to have a conversation with the 'higher self', or Holy Guardian Angel. It took six months, and such was its power that nobody had attempted it for centuries. Halfway through this dangerous ritual, however, Crowley met a young society lady named Rose Kelly – and a day later they were married. The Abra-Melin was forgotten and the newlyweds went on their honeymoon to Egypt.

Triumph of the will

In Egypt, between intense sex sessions with Rose, Crowley practised more black-magic rituals to impress her. Deep within the king's chamber in the Great Pyramid he recited the preliminary invocation of the occult ritual called Goetia. It had unexpected consequences.

Rose, who had previously known nothing of the occult, began to chant. In a trance, she repeated 'They are waiting for you' over and over. Crowley was irritated and sceptical of his new wife and her previously hidden clairvoyant skills but she went on to tell him that he had offended the Egyptian god Horus by not finishing the Abra-Melin. Crowley quickly set about an invocation, and a strange voice identifying itself as Aiwass began to speak in their hotel room.

For three days, between the hour of midday and 1pm, Aiwass spoke and Crowley wrote. The result was The Book of Laws. Believing himself to be the messiah of a new epoch, Crowley swore that he would perform depraved acts and learn to love them. Christianity was dead, he declared. His new religion had one all-powerful doctrine: 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.' Free will, denied to Crowley as a child, had now become all powerful.

Magick and sex

While in Egypt, Rose found out that she was pregnant and later gave birth to a daughter, Lola Zaza. Later, on a trek in Vietnam, Crowley abandoned them both, however, and his daughter died of typhoid – a tragedy that Crowley blamed on Rose and her increasing alcoholism. Left alone in grief, she descended into madness. She would not be the last lover of his to do so, nor was Lola Zaza the only child of his to die.

Crowley penetrated deeper into the world of the occult, taking another lover, this time the male writer Victor Neuberg. Together they travelled to Algeria and the Sahara to perform an Enochian ritual to summon up Chorizon, the demon of the abyss. This rite is said to open the gates of hell.

Eventually, like Rose before him, Neuberg was left psychologically ruined. For Crowley their time together was more productive, however. His intense sex sessions with Neuberg had convinced him of the power of sex magick. From then, his two obsessions were married: sex and the occult.

Treason and depravity

Crowley went on to become the world head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, or Order of the Eastern Temple, and he further defined his own religion, Thelema.

After the outbreak of the First World War, Crowley was rejected by the British intelligence service and – in a huff – turned to the Germans, supporting them by writing anti-British propaganda. This made him an outcast in Britain and in 1920, two years after the war ended, he went to Cefalu in northern Sicily and created a temple in an old farmhouse with his new mistress Leah Hirsig. They had a child together, and under the influence of opium and cocaine they founded a new religious cult.

Stories of depraved sexual acts at the abbey quickly began to circulate, one of the most notorious involving Leah. A goat was sacrificed while penetrating her. She, and many others, were becoming severely unbalanced and addicted to drugs, and Crowley himself was increasingly dependent on heroin and cocaine. In this environment, Crowley and Hirsig's child died. She had a nervous breakdown.

Decay and disillusion

The end of the Abbey came when Raoul Loveday, one of Crowley's disciples, died after drinking the blood of a cat. Mortified, his wife Betty May fled back to England and sold her story to the press. The British media immediately dubbed Crowley 'the wickedest man in the world'. The temple was disbanded and many of Crowley's former disciples went mad or committed suicide. Leah Hirsig turned to prostitution. Finally, in 1923, a year after Crowley published his Diary of a Drug Fiend, Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, had him deported.

Crowley went on to publish more books – such as Magick: In theory and practice and his Confessions – but his reputation had been damaged. As the years passed he began losing touch with reality. He spent his final years penniless, a sad figure living on the favours of friends. A chronic heroin addict, he died in Hastings in 1947, disillusioned and questioning the philosophies he built to escape his repressed Christian upbringing.

In his own words

'I have successfully eliminated the danger of obsession by sexual ideas in this way: I refuse to admit that it is the fundamental truth. Science in failing to follow me so far has destroyed the idea of religion and the claim of mankind to be essentially different from other mammalia. The demonstration of anthropologists that all religious rites are celebrations of the reproductive energy of nature is irrefutable; but I, accepting this, can still maintain that these rites are wholly spiritual. Their form is only sexual because the phenomena of reproduction are the most universally understood and pungently appreciated of all. I believe that when this position is generally accepted, mankind will be able to go back with a good conscience to ceremonial worship. I have myself constructed numerous ceremonies where it is frankly admitted that religious enthusiasm is primarily sexual in character.

I have merely refused to stop there. I have insisted that sexual excitement is merely a degraded form of divine ecstasy. I have thus harnessed the wild horses of human passion to the chariot of the Spiritual Sun. I have given these horses wings that mankind may no longer travel painfully upon the earth, shaken by every irregularity of the surface, but course at large through the boundless ether. This is not merely a matter of actual ceremonies; I insist that in private life men should not admit their passions to be an end, indulging them and so degrading themselves to the level of the other animals, or suppressing them and creating neuroses. I insist that every thought, word and deed should be consciously devoted to the service of the Great Work. "Whatsoever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God."'

• I hope we can work to fit this is. Zos 02:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I see a number of demonstrably false statements as well as biased wording. Possibly someone could summarize the long quote. Dan 01:21, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, as I said, this was done by an anon user, and it was added in the wrong area at that. Its too long to quote as well and I'm waiting to see if the anon is going to come back and comment. Zos 01:54, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Awaiting more sources

Aside from the anon user's additions, and getting back to the original bio section, I'd like to request some citations. I wont remove the content from the article just yet, but will address them here first. If no citations are given within a reasonable amount of time (a few days or so), I'll remove it. I'm also awaiting a few bio-books on Crowley to come via mail, so this is in an iterest of good faith here, as I have already removed uncited material and replaced it with citations in the early years and mystical begginings section.

(early years section)

• His father, Edward Crowley, once maintained a lucrative family brewery business and was retired when Aleister Crowley was born. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop, drew roots from a Devon and Somerset family[citation needed].

• He grew up in a staunch Plymouth Brethren household. His father, after retiring from his daily duties as a brewer, took up the practice of preaching at a fanatical pace. Daily Bible studies and private tutoring were mainstays in young Aleister's childhood; however, after his father's death, his mother's efforts at indoctrinating her son in the Christian faith only served to provoke Aleister's skepticism. As a child, young Aleister's constant rebellious behaviour displeased his devout mother to such an extent she would chastise him by calling him "The Beast" (from the Book of Revelation), an epithet that Crowley would later happily adopt for himself. He objected to the labelling of what he saw as life's most worthwhile and enjoyable activities as "sinful"[citation needed].

(golden dawn section)

• Involved as a young adult in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, he first studied mysticism with and made enemies of William Butler Yeats and Arthur Edward Waite. Like many in occult circles of the time, Crowley voiced the view that Waite was a pretentious bore through searing critiques of Waite's writings and editorials of other authors' writings.

• His friend and former Golden Dawn associate Allan Bennett introduced him to the ideas of Buddhism, while Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, acting leader of the Golden Dawn organization, acted as his early mentor in western magick but would later become his enemy. Several decades after Crowley's participation in the Golden Dawn, Mathers claimed copyright protection over a particular ritual and sued Crowley for infringement after Crowley's public display of the ritual. While the public trial continued, both Mathers and Crowley claimed to call forth armies of demons and angels to fight on behalf of their summoner. Both also developed and carried complex Seal of Solomon amulets and talismans.

• In a book of fiction entitled Moonchild, Crowley later portrayed Mathers as the primary villain, including him as a character named SRMD, using the abbreviation of Mathers' magical name. Arthur Edward Waite also appeared in Moonchild as a villain named Arthwaite, while Bennett appeared in Moonchild as the main character's wise mentor, Simon Iff.

• Crowley, in magical garb, displaying the "horns of Pan"While he did not officially break with Mathers until 1904, Crowley lost faith in this teacher's abilities soon after the 1900 schism in the Golden Dawn (if not before). Later that year, Crowley travelled to Mexico and continued his magical studies in isolation. AC's writings suggest that he discovered the word Abrahadabra during this time.

• In October of 1901, after practising Raja Yoga for some time, he said he had reached a state he called dhyana — one of many states of unification in thoughts that are described in Magick (Liber ABA) (See Crowley on egolessness). 1902 saw him writing the essay Berashith (the first word of Genesis), in which he gave meditation (or restraint of the mind to a single object) as the means of attaining his goal. The essay describes ceremonial magick as a means of training the will, and of constantly directing ones thoughts to a given object through ritual. In his 1903 essay, Science and Buddhism, Crowley urged an empirical approach to Buddhist teachings.

• He said that a mystical experience in 1904 while on vacation in Cairo, Egypt, led to his founding of the religious philosophy known as Thelema. Aleister's wife Rose started to behave in an odd way, and this led him to think that some entity had made contact with her. At her instructions, he performed an invocation of the Egyptian god Horus on March 20 with (he wrote) "great success". According to Crowley, the god told him that a new magical Aeon had begun, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. Rose continued to give information, telling Crowley in detailed terms to await a further revelation. On April 8 and for the following two days at exactly noon he heard a voice, dictating the words of the text, Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law, which Crowley wrote down. The voice claimed to be that of Aiwass (or Aiwaz "the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat," or Horus, the god of force and fire, child of Isis and Osiris) and self-appointed conquering lord of the New Aeon, announced through his chosen scribe "the prince-priest the Beast."

• Portions of the book are in numerical cipher, which Crowley claimed the inability to decode (Setian Michael Aquino later claimed to be able to decode them). Thelemic dogma (to the extent that Thelema has dogma) explains this by pointing to a warning within the Book of the Law — the speaker supposedly warned that the scribe, Ankh-af-na-khonsu (Aleister Crowley), was never to attempt to decode the ciphers, for to do so would end only in folly. The later-written The Law is For All sees Crowley warning everyone not to discuss the writing amongst fellow critics, for fear that a dogmatic position would arise. While he declared a "new Equinox of the Gods" in early 1904, supposedly passing on the revelation of March 20 to the occult community, it took years for Crowley to fully accept the writing of the Book of the Law and follow its doctrine. Only after countless attempts to test its writings did he come to embrace them as the official doctrine of the New Aeon of Horus. The remainder of his professional and personal careers were spent expanding the new frontiers of scientific illuminism.

• Crowley posing as the Bodhisvattva HoteiRose and Aleister had a daughter, whom Crowley named Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley, in July of 1904. This child died in 1906, during the two and a half months when Crowley had left her with Rose (after a family trip through China) and returned home by a different path. They had another daughter, Lola Zaza, in the summer of that year, and Crowley devised a special ritual of thanksgiving for her birth.

• He performed a thanksgiving ritual before his first claimed success in what he called the "Abramelin operation," on October 9, 1906. This was his implementation of a magical work described in The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The events of that year gave the Abramelin book a central role in Crowley's system. He described the primary goal of the "Great Work" using a term from this book: "the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel." An essay in the first number of The Equinox gives several reasons for this choice of names:

• Because Abramelin's system is so simple and effective.
• Because since all theories of the universe are absurd it is better to talk in the language of one which is patently absurd, so as to mortify the metaphysical man.
• Because a child can understand it. Crowley was notorious in his lifetime — a frequent target of attacks in the tabloid press, which labelled him "The Wickedest Man in the World" to his evident amusement. At one point, he was expelled from Italy after having established a sort of commune, the organization of which was based on his personal philosophies, the Abbey of Thelema, at Cefalu, Sicily.

• In 1934 Crowley was declared bankrupt after losing a court case in which he sued the artist Nina Hamnett for calling him a black magician in her 1932 book, Laughing Torso. In addressing the jury, Mr Justice Swift said:

• "I have been over forty years engaged in the administration of the law in one capacity or another. I thought that I knew of every conceivable form of wickedness. I thought that everything which was vicious and bad had been produced at one time or another before me. I have learnt in this case that we can always learn something more if we live long enough. I have never heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous and abominable stuff as that which has been produced by the man (Crowley) who describes himself to you as the greatest living poet."
• Aleister Crowley died of a respiratory infection in a Hastings boarding house on December 1, 1947, at the age of 72. According to some accounts he died on December 5, 1947. He was penniless and addicted to opium, which had been prescribed for his asthma and bronchitis, at the time.

• Biographer Lawrence Sutin passes on various stories about Crowley's death and last words. Frieda Harris supposedly reported him saying, "I am perplexed," though she did not see him at the very end. According to John Symonds, a Mr Rowe witnessed Crowley's death along with a nurse, and reported his last words as, "Sometimes I hate myself." Biographer Gerald Suster accepted the version of events he received from a "Mr W.H." in which Crowley dies pacing in his living-room. Supposedly Mr W.H. heard a crash while polishing furniture on the floor below, and entered Crowley's rooms to find him dead on the floor. Patricia "Deirdre" MacAlpine, the mother of his son, denied all this and reports a sudden gust of wind and peal of thunder at the (otherwise quiet) moment of his death. According to MacAlpine, Crowley remained bedridden for the last few days of his life, but was in light spirits and conversational. Readings at the cremation service in nearby Brighton included one of his own works, Hymn to Pan, and newspapers referred to the service as a black mass. Brighton council subsequently resolved to take all necessary steps to prevent such an incident occurring again.

(thelema section)

• The religious or mystical system which Crowley founded, into which most of his writings fall, he named Thelema. Thelema combines a radical form of philosophical libertarianism, akin in some ways to Nietzsche, with a mystical initiatory system derived in part from the Golden Dawn.

• Chief among the precepts of Thelema is the sovereignty of the individual will: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Crowley's idea of will, however, is not simply the individual's desires or wishes, but also incorporates a sense of the person's destiny or greater purpose: what he termed "True Will." Much of the initiatory system of Thelema is focused on discovering and manifesting one's Will, culminating in what he termed Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel (See: Thelemic mysticism). Much else is devoted to an Eastern-inspired dissolution of the individual ego, as a means to that end (see Choronzon).

• The second precept of Thelema is "Love is the law, love under will" — and Crowley's meaning of "Love" is as complex as that of "Will". It is frequently sexual: Crowley's system, like elements of the Golden Dawn before him, sees the dichotomy and tension between the male and female as fundamental to existence, and sexual "magick" and metaphor form a significant part of Thelemic ritual. However, Love is also discussed as the Union of Opposites, which Crowley thought was the key to enlightenment.

• Thelema draws on numerous older sources and, like many other new religious movements of its time, combines "Western" and "Eastern" traditions. Its chief Western influences include the Golden Dawn and elements of Freemasonry; Eastern influences include aspects of yoga, Taoism, Kabbalah and Tantra.

As you can see, there is alot of info that is not cited, and should have been upon adding this info. I've been informed that this article is his bio, and as it looks, its not so good. These sections should shade into one another with respect to previous sections. For some reason, thelema is brought up all over the place, he was known for alot more. I hope by the end of this we can get a better bio article in place. Zos 13:55, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Citations, yes. But how can we give an honest account of anything he did after 1904 without mentioning the system to which he dedicated most of his life? And for the love of Eris, what other verifiable facts that do not appear in the article made him famous? I hope you just said this because of the flow problems in the old "biography" section. Wiki guidelines as I understand them do not identify the article with the biography, they just say to focus on the bio if space requires it. While I feel for our friends on dial-up, I see no need to remove the "Thelema" section entirely. Dan 01:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, simply put, 1904 is when it was dictated, its not when Thelema began. I'm just saying as it was when I posted this, its not at all chronological. And yes its flow problems. I'm not saying remove the thelema section, but its got its own article already, and needs a smaller summary for space issues (since alot more info is going to

be put onto this article soon). Zos 19:21, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Controversy section

This may be minor points to some but just wanted to throw them out there. First, since Crowley was in many ways a pretty dedicated Drug addict one could point out that he supported the view that drugs were a useful technique towards religious experience. As such placing the section on his Drug use in the controversy section right above the sections on Sexism and Racism seems to simplify his drug and condemn it as being ultimately "wrong." Second, the section on sexism is comprised entirely of quotes from Sutin's book and what both the section & book don't clearly point out, is that regardless of Crowley's personal hangups, his legacy (i.e. Thelema) is quite egalitarian. Worlock93

Forgive me, but who are you responding to? Zos 17:02, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Wasn't actually responding to anyone, (hence new heading, maybe I should have put it at the top?) I just wanted to see if anyone could see what I was trying to say. Since this article has changed quite a bit over the last year (and gotten rather good actually) I didn't want to step on the toes of anyone who may be a rather dedicated editor of this article. ;) Worlock93 03:05, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and do whatever I suppose, if someone doesnt like it, they should bring it to the talk page. I believe I have some things I could cite for his drug use in a bio I just got yesterday, and more on the way on monday. Zos 03:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

You know what. I failed to read what you were saying. I think the reason its in the controversy section is that not many magicians/magickians (whatever) use drugs to achieve the states of consciousness Crowley did. Most feel its cheating. But I do get your point. If you have citations to say that he used drugs for technique then it should be put on the article. But only if it pertains to his life. Otherwise i'd suggest adding it to the Magick article, as its more on topic there. But if you do in fact add to this article, I'd suggest renaming the drugs section in controvery to "Addictions" or something of the simular wording. Who knows what the future holds for this article anymore :) Zos 04:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Early years vs. Mystical Beginnings

Just a thought, but does anyone but me feel we can leave out the header "Mystical Beginnings" and just move that content to "Early years"? It seems a bit off, seeing as how his true mystical beginnings were from the Golden Dawn on. For as 2-3 sources are already saying to me, that he didnt know much of anything until he met Julian Baker and was prompted to join him in meeting wither G. Cecil Jone or Mathers. I'm not sure if reading a few books and proposing that you are an expert in alchemy constitutes as mystical beginnings. Zos 16:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

This strikes me as a strange definition of knowledge. His mystical beginnings don't start with books, but with unlooked-for experience that led him to start investigating books. This continued with revelations that led him to focus on the mystical path for the rest of his life. Dan 20:15, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I removed the "Mystical Beginnings" header. They will do just fine together I think. ---J.S (t|c) 20:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Regarding this (partial)quote from the entry: "I had read in some book or other that the most favourable name for becoming famous was one consisting of a dactyl followed by a spondee, as at the end of a hexameter: like 'Jeremy Taylor.' Aleister Crowley fulfilled these conditions ...."[25] "Crowley" would appear to me to be a trochee, not a spondee, as would "Taylor." I'm not sure how this (or if this) should be addressed in the article.Llysse (talk) 21:33, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Featured Article

I'm having a discussion over at the Wikipedia:Featured articles talk page. Once we get this page looking good, I'm gonna nominate it for a featured article (this one, the Golden Dawn, and more than likely, the Ordo Templi Orientis article), so we can get a category there. This will open it up so we can nominate more article realting to Magick and the Occult. Anyone can help by reviewing the Wikipedia:The perfect article page and following it. Zos 18:34, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Here's a checklist for "A perfect Wikipedia article"...

• starts with a clear description of the subject

Check. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• is understandable,

Check. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• is nearly self-contained;

not sure entirely sure. ---J.S (t|

this means that if the article combusts, it stays on this page :p Zos 21:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Errr.... ok? I'm not sure what you mean. ---J.S (t|

Oh that was just a joke :p I have no idea what self contained means in this context Zos 17:24, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

c) 15:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC) c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• branches out;

Check. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• acknowledges and explores all aspects of the subject;

Perhapse. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• is completely neutral and unbiased;

As close as this kind of subject is likely to get imo. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• is of an appropriate length;

Maybe... tad long actualy. Not sure what we can do about it however. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Remove things to sub-section, only leaving 2-3 paragraphs. Zos 21:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

That's what I was kinda thinking, but I'll wait until we reach consensus. ---J.S (t|c) 15:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I was under the impression that no one was disputing it. Zos 17:24, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

• reflects expert knowledge;

Check. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• is precise and explicit;

Check. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• is well-documented;

Check. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• is very clear;

Check. - Clear enough for me... ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• uses clearly-worded sentences,

Check. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• includes informative, relevant images, each with an explanatory caption.

Check. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think it needs 2 or 3 more images. Just not sure if that many exist. ---J.S (t|c) 20:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Of Aleister Crowley? You must be joking. Dan 02:46, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I was actually referring to photos in the public domain. Most of the photos of Crowley are after modern copyright-laws were introduced... ---J.S (t|c) 15:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

• is engaging;

Not sure how to judge this one. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• uses proper grammar, spelling, and writing conventions;

As far as I can tell, but I'm not an expert. ---J.S (t|c) 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Writings & Thelema sections

Would anyone mind if I merged everything but the first two paragraphs into the Works of Aleister Crowley article? I'm trying to think of a few ways to shorten the article a bit and removing redundant info is always the easiest. ---J.S (t|c) 20:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• Add Thelema to this as well. I really think only one (two at most) paragraph(s) should follow a "main article". ---J.S (t|c) 20:03, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind at all. I originally made this request during the old edit wars (archived somewhere). This will give us more space for his life/bio. According to the writing a perfect article, only a brief description is needed, and only enough so where you dont have to go to that article to find out about it. This might be difficult for the Thelema section, but we should be able to keep it at 3 paragraphs at least. Zos 21:51, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, things have calmed down in the past month or so, so perhaps it's a better time for makeing changes like this. :) I was thinking on the themlma section we could even just crop it down to the first paragraph. Explaining what thelema is extra info, and it's all there in the thelema article should someone wish to go explore further. I'll work on it tonight when I have more time. ---J.S (t|c) 22:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Aside from the fact that not all of the Thelema section appears at Thelema, it seems important to give a fair summary of such a complex topic if we want to give a comprehensible picture of the man's life. (See my previous comment on the subject.) And the current section doesn't seem that long to me. I don't know about the Writings section. Dan 02:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah but this is Crowleys main page. And Thelema statements need to adress how it effects his life. This can be done with just the Abbey of Thelema section. So, in other words, the Thelema section should be taken out altogether in my opinion. A simple sentence saying he founded it should be sufficiant. But for pertaining to his life, the Abbey is good enough, and if any other comments need to be made, they can be made in other sections to improve the flow of the bio.

For instance. Such comments could be made in new headers, like "Life in the A:.A:.", and "Towards the OTO". I'm actually surprised we havent gotten to that. He founded A:.A:. and restructured OTO! I think I'll take a break from working on his bio to add the A:.A:. and OTO. Zos 03:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I gather from the second part of this that you actually know better, and didn't actually mean to identify Thelema's influence on his life with the Abbey of Thelema. Dan 03:27, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I just mean that those kind of life changing statements probably happened while in the A:.A:. or O.T.O. , and can be placed there, or where ever they happened. Zos 04:38, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

A:.A:. and OTO

Oh god. I just realized I cant find when Crowley actually joined OTO, just when he became head of the British section. Anyone have any sources for Crowley and the OTO? I guess I'll just start on A:.A:. for now. Zos 03:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Heh, well, about that. Dan 03:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok well, I squeezed the header in going by dates. And the Book of Lie only covers so much, it can help, but I'm looking for someone with a bio that I dont have. Zos 03:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I meant to point out that nobody actually knows when he joined the OTO. But I'll add the standard date with explanation. Dan 04:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

He joined in 1910, but I cant use the source I have because its not usable here. Its a main web site, and its not aloud. Its here. Zos 04:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Booth, Martin (2001) [2000]. "13: Enter Mary, Exit Victor and the Paris Working". A Magick Life: A Biography of Aleister Crowley (Coronet ed.). London: Hodder and Stoughton. p. 305. ISBN 0340718064. In 1910, while visiting Britain, Reuss had admitted Crowley into the OTO, although Crowley appears to have has little to do with it until probably 1913, when Reuss paid him a visit in London and, producing a copy of The Book of Lies, accused him of revealing in its pages the secrets of the OTO 9th Grade, which concerned sexual magic. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help) (Edit this section to copy the proper template code for the full cite.) --Geoff Capp 11:51, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

That'll worrk. Plus it doesnt comflict with my sources. Zos 14:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting is that their is no metioning of his political influence As the teachers of A. Hitler where close pupiles of his teaching, and if one reads the ideas of Hiler the connection becomes quite clear. Not metioned is too that he influenced too the foundation of the Scientology sect The connection is easaly made if you check the religiouse believe of scientology and the believe of the group around Hitler.The Thule group and its sucsessor the inner SS, It's basicly the same. Johann just as comment

The article does not include your claim about Hitler because the evidence says nothing remotely like that happened. See Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt chapter 10, p 375-380. The L. Ron Hubbard article does mention Hubbard's connection with Crowley, and I suggest you read it closely. Dan 18:33, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Preparing to add citations

Hey, you all. I'm going to take a shot at adding some citations here. Unless someone stops me. -Zeno Izen 01:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

... mind you, it won't be immediately. Want to put together something useful before I add it. -Zeno Izen 02:00, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

No ones gonna stop you so long as it merits inclusion :)

What did you have in mind? SynergeticMaggot 02:40, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

What I had in mind was whatever I could find that would be useful. That turned out to be more complicated a job than I was in the mood for, or had time for. I shouldn't have said anything in the first place. I went off half-cocked at trying not to be half-cocked. Heh. -Zeno Izen 22:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Freemason or not...

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JValenc1"

Currently there is a source that claims he was a mason. If you have a source that said he isn't' a mason (and no, absence of his name on the list is not directly a denial of his membership) then feel free to present it. If there is a controversy over his membership/lack of membership a paragraph in the main body would be reasonable... however, I don't see any kind of notable controversy. -----J.S (t|c) 20:05, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Figured I'd bring the conversation here... ---J.S (t|c) 20:08, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Right o. I feel the same way. We need a cited source here. A biographer of Crowley. Not anons trying to add this is with no conversation. I've had to revert a few times I think because of this edit. SynergeticMaggot 20:13, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

---

"Being a Freemason"

I'm of a mind to simply erase the entire thing. It's all talking about the OTO and freemasons... nothing quoted suggests there is any kind of debate about AC's membership in the masons. (Just because OTO isn't a part of the masons doesn't mean AC wasn't a member himself.) Synergy, you've gotta help me here... does that biography say, implicitly, that AC is a mason? ---J.S (t|c) 04:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, then erase that he was a Freemason until you find evidence which states he was indeed a Freemason. You can't just go claiming he was a Freemason when you have no evidence just like how I can't say he isn't a freemason without more reliable sources. --JValenc1 07:48, 1 August 2006 UTC

Awaiting Better Sources

Aleister Crowley being an actual Freemason is up for debate. It has been said that he is a Freemason, however [Freemasonry] is an entire organization in itself. Aleister Crowley is known to have been in the Golden Knights and O.T.O.

“Through his mountaineering contacts, Crowley made contact with members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult secret society. The Golden Dawn was an offshoot of the Freemasons, borrowing liberally from that order's initiation practices and layering on a hodge-podge of mysticism and ritual magic borrowed from a wide variety of influences.” Source: http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/aleister-crowley/

“O.T.O. is an offshoot of Freemasonry. The Ordo Templi Orientis (the Oriental Order of the Templars). Unlike the Masons, the OTO would allow women as members. Otherwise, at this stage, the organization was fairly similar to the Masons, and the inner circle of OTO leadership had advanced Masonic degrees as a job requirement.” Source: http://www.rotten.com/library/conspiracy/oto/

“Fringe Masonry existed. By examining it in a rational manner and in the context of its time we can defuse it and render it worthless as a weapon of attack on mainstream Freemasonry.”

John Hamill. Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge. Vol. 109. p. 214.

“Fringe Masonry encompasses those regular freemasons whose interest in mysticism and the occult led them to such organizations as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (HOGD) and the Ordo Templi Orientis. Neither of these organizations was ever recognized by any regular masonic body. The Golden Dawn had no masonic pretensions but the fact that the founders of the OTO made such claims opened it to accusations of being clandestine or irregular Freemasonry. Since 1919 (Equinox Vol. III, No. 1) they ceased to claim being or having any authority regarding Freemasonry. Currently most masonic Grand Lodge jurisdictions are unaware of, or indifferent to, the existence or history of the OTO.

It must be stressed that although Freemasonry recognizes many of these men as freemasons, no recognized masonic body, and few freemasons, endorse their opinions and conclusions as an accepted extension or interpretation of the teachings of Freemasonry. Their published works have had no positive or lasting impact on Freemasonry. In fact their writings are more often quoted, out of context, by anti-masons attempting to link masonic teachings with these individuals' opinions.

These authors do not, in any fashion, represent the teachings or beliefs of recognized Freemasonry.”

Source: http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/esoterica/index.html

Sorry. Web sites will simply not do for biographical content. Especially rotten.com, and a freemasonry website. SynergeticMaggot 04:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Also note that the only book reference does not mention Crowley. SynergeticMaggot 04:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd also have to say. The majority of this is original research. I have 4-5 book sources to say that most of that was added is complete nonsense. Especially pertaining to the Golden Dawn information. SynergeticMaggot 05:04, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

If you can't find the source that states he wasn't a Freemason, then Find the source that states he WAS indeed a freemason. You can't just simply state he is a freemason and have no proof that he was a freemason. That is what I don't understand about you editors. At least take the reference to him being a freemason out. --JValenc1 07:48, 1 August 2006 UTC

No, your right... the burden of inclusion lies right on the shoulders of the people/person who wants to include something. If I'm not mistaken the citation however supports the Freemason claim. (the book called "Do What Thou Wilt" is one of the most accepted Crowley biographies). I'm not 100% sure what the book sais since I don't have it, but it shoudln't be hard to lookup. ---J.S (t|c) 21:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, as I said (perhaps unclearly), Crowley claimed to have received Masonic initiation in the Scottish Rite before his meetings with Yarker and Reuss (or at least the ones I know about). Sutin repeats this story in "Do What Thou Wilt" (p. 83) without taking a position on its truth. Dan 02:24, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Writings

Writings section is a bit of a problem atm. It has a "main article" link and then it proceeds to a whole page of text on the subject. The stuff in this article is well done, but most of it needs to be merged over-to the other article in my estimation. Anyone up to the task? ---J.S (t|c) 05:14, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to see his writings in a chronological and dated format.

I Second that. Fuzzypeg☻ 23:47, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Himalayas

I remember hearing at one point (I thought it was in one of his own works) that Corwley had crossed the Himalayas twice, the first time eating his entire crew... is this rumor or at least somewhat factual? Thanks —Memotype::T 13:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

AC did not eat people while in the Himalaya. PyrE 06:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

West Coast Visits

Lots of Authors/Poets active in Northern California - Bohemian Club - Did he visit? Lodge Visits in CA and BC - any paths to retrace? How many visits? Wrote poem "Big Trees" about the Redwoods. Was this After Hawaii? or Later? And something about an Coastal Island here? and LAM? and Pasadena visits? with Hubbard Parsons —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.126.136.233 (talk) 09:18, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Chess master?

In the intro, the article calls crowley a chess master, but in the chess section, it never says conclusively that he actually attained master level. In fact, it implies that he gave it up just before reaching it... how about some clarification? —Memotype::T 13:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

In order to determine this, we'd need to know:

• What was meant by "master" in chess during Crowley's life, or specifically at any time that he claimed such a title?
• Did he, in fact, attain such a level?

I don't know enough about the history of chess rankings to say so. --FOo

He claims to have won two matches concurrently while blindfolded in bio —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.126.136.233 (talk) 06:36, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Chess master...

To the best of my knowledge a chess master is merely a term for someone who is a very skilled player, and doesn't imply any sort of official qualification or specific standard.

Actually it does, master implies a record of winning a certain percentage of games against opponents of has pretty strong criteria. Master is a national title (international master or grand master are international titles). If this helps, the British chess federation was established 1904 and would have had criteria, they are essentially contiguous with the modern FIDE. The modern criteria (modulo minor changes) date to the early 1950s Kenneth Harkness. jbolden1517^Talk 15:10, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

See Grandmaster (chess) and International master. Bubba73 (talk), 15:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

On the other hand, these titles were not formalized until 1950. They were used informally before that. Bubba73 (talk), 01:04, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Link to Paederastic Poetry

[Crowley]published numerous poems and tracts combining pagan religious themes with sexual imagery both heterosexual and homosexual, as well as pederastic

That is a fabrication. Though paederastic poetry was common and indeed occasionally ubiquitous in England in the period from the later Nineteenth to the middle Twentieth Centuries, Crowley himself never created any work, to my knowledge, which could be construed as paederastic. Homosexual, yes - or, more correctly, bisexual - and though some there are who strive to conflate the homosexuality with paederasty, the latter does not feature in Crowley's opus. Nuttyskin 22:37, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe the reference is to the little-known The Scented Garden, or Bhag-i-Muattar, a collection of verse, written by Crowley and published pseudonomously, on mystical themes using a pederastic sexual relationship between the supposed author and his boy lover as a metaphor for the intercourse (in the larger sense) of Deity with the soul. The facsimile edition I own was edited by Martin P. Starr, and published by Teitan Press, Chicago, in 1991. The original edition was largely suppressed by British Customs, but I believe a copy of this edition is in the collection of the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin. Fra. O.M.M. (talk) 07:38, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Sandman

alister crowly was a mason a evil man [Neil Gaiman] references him directly in the very first issue of Sandman, where he imprisons the titular hero through "black magick".

Rubbish. In issue one of Sandman, he is imprisoned by a fictional character named Roderick Burgess. On page four, Burgess says "After tonight I'd like to see Aleister and his friends try to make fun of me!" So not only is he not Crowley, he is not meant to represent him as Crowley clearly exists in the universe portrayed in the comic book.

Accordingly, I have removed the line. Pearce.duncan 03:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Burgess is evidently based loosely on Crowley, although equally obviously not the same person. There is a direct reference in "Sandman Midnight Theatre" in which the doormen to Burgess's party greet Wesley Dodds with "Do what thou wilt." Nonetheless, it is not a particularly important reference. --FOo 06:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

popular culture section

Maybe it's just me, but the few paragraphs in the popular culture section beg to be put in list form. The reason I say this is because it will jump from reference to reference without trying to group them together in some fashion. It makes the whole section seem discombobulated.

And since there is a very detailed related page that does group the instances together, why not just leave the link to the sub-section and shorten the article length? --Mr Vain 14:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Since no one has objected I'm going to go ahead and shave off that section and leave the link. If someone disagrees, then simply revert it. I'm not here for an edit war. It just looks so disjointed I think it would suit the article better if just the link were there. --Mr Vain 00:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

There -should- be a small paragraph there to summarize the "main" article. ---J.S (t|c) 01:43, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The article that I removed tried to summarize it and ending up being scattered in it's attempt. I suppose one could write something vague and get the message across. How about this: "Aleister Crowley has been mentioned in various movies, comics, books, TV Shows and in a variety of places on the net." To me that wouldn't be up to par with the rest of the article and is somewhat undeserving of being put in the article at all. Unless it is done well, then the article summarizing the appearances in popular culture will just seem like the original, that being really discombobulated without any cohesiveness that a paragraph would need. Thoughts? --Mr Vain 04:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I've added a brief summary that should suffice as a placeholder until someone can come up with something better. Justin Eiler 20:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a bundle. --Mr Vain 00:21, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Death and burial

OK, what happened when he died? Was he buried or cremated. Cremated where? Buried where? Where were the ashes taken? Where are they now? This sort of thing needs to be in this article, can anyone help expand the section on his death? I ask because I also found this: his ashes were either buried under a tree or scattered among trees on a friend's estate in Hampton, New Jersey, depending on whom one believes. [9] FK0071a 15:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Wives, Scarlet Women, and Mistresses - female aquaintences section

Rose Kelly

Mary d'Este Sturges Mary Desti Mary Estelle Dempsey, Mother of Preston Sturges

Jeanne Robert Foster

Roddie Minor

Marie Rohling

Bertha Almira Prykryl

Leilah Waddell

Leah Hirsig

Jane Wolfe

Ninette Shumway

Mary Butts

Dorothy Olsen

Maria de Miramar

Patricia "Deirdre" MacAlpine

Frieda Harris

Isadora Duncan

Marchesa Luisa Casati

Helen Blavatsky

Dion Fortune

Evangeline Adams

Sybil Leek

Mary Cunard —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.244.43.91 (talk) 21:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Sonia Greene

others ...

Ian Flemming and Hess

When Rudolf Hess was captured in Scotland, Navel Intelligence officer and author of James Bond, Ian Flemming, suggests that Crowley interrogate Hess because Hess was an occultist and supporter of Astrology (this is widely known) but Churchill rejected the suggestion. Please someone who can write better than me please add this into the article on Aleister Crowley. FK0071a 15:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Was it Hess who Crowley met with in Egypt, or List? In news articles H.Rider-Haggard or Bulwer-Lytton was there in Eygypt at same time - among others? Caliph Vizier Crowley? Eqyptian Newspaper Roses' Lime Water

And please confine trash like this to the talk pages, not to the article: If Crowley died alone in his room then there is no way to know the last thing he said. And he was not penniless as you may think but not as wealthy as in his youth. Crowley had kicked the habit of heroin but in his last years he was forced to take it because of the deterioration of his asthma. Carsonc 01:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

FK0071a, could you please give a citation for Ian Fleming's accusation. --Harpakhrad11 19:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Gates and Crowley

Independent researchers recently confirmed persistent rumors that Bill Gates is a devote Crowley's disciple. They found an alarming resemblance of Microsoft Office Mac OS icons and Hebrew glyphs Microsoft Office#Illuminati. This correspondence proves that Mr. Gates takes part in coding and programming of consensus reality. And this project is, uncharacteristically enough, is an open source one – as any member of occult community could participate in the project, using such classical sources as 777 and other Qabalistic writings of Aleister Crowley.

— Aleister Crowley, Taken from article.

I'd pay a nickle to see a source for that. :) ---J.S (t|c) 17:42, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Photograph - Infamous?

Hi:

Why is the photograph called infamous? What is the controversy surrounding it?

Zoso

Zoso redirects to Zeppelin 4, which says it traces back to Crowley? How? Mathiastck 06:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Z0.-f-.0 has been said to be an alchemical sign for Amber or electrum of some form - no refs

That looks like original research to me. Unless someone can cite a source which said that, it should be removed. Frater Xyzzy 19:01, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Crowley and Meditation

Hi Everyone :) I have been a long-time student of Crowley's work and I love everything that is being done with his page. I wonder though, why I see no mention of meditation? The first part of Book 4 is soley focused on meditation. Many of the Libers and exercises from the equinox are likewise. He wrote "8 lectures on Yoga" as some of his later work. It seems unbalanced to have so much talk of magic and so little talk of meditation. Didn't he write about how magick and meditation are inseperable, that it is always preferable to do both? Anyways, thanks again for the awesome work.<3 (+my2cents)Captain Barrett 04:40, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

This does seem like a problem. The length of the article has pushed out much material. You might expect to find it in Thelema or Thelemic mysticism, but these entries suffer from similar problems. The following text, though, seems confusing or outright false: Although highly under-publicized, Crowley eventually took to practicing only Yoga, giving up all formal ritual magick completely. During this period he wrote "Eight Lectures on Yoga" and spent time in India. Part of his stated motivation for the transition from magick to yoga is illustrated by the progression of the Argenteum Astrum degrees. According to his system, magick is only necessary for the lower degrees. Please give a source and explain what that last sentence means. (The second-to-last degree in the system goes by the name of "Magus".) I think at best the removed text blurs the distinction between one "ceremonial" type of magick and Crowley's broader definition. Dan 05:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Links

Hi all. I run a website devoted to the legacy of Aleister Crowley and which has for twelve years been home to The Aleister Crowley Society. I noted that the Links on this article were generally poor: ill-researched and partisan sites. I therefore posted a link to the non-commercial site I own (LAShTAL.COM), which is considered non-partisan and definitive. The response within hours was an anonymous edit:

07:08, 12 February 2007 217.10.142.170 (Talk) (→External links - remove link added by site owner in violation of spamming policy)

I have no desire to turn this into a squabble, but would appreciate some guidance. Can this really be considered "spamming"? Lashtal.com 00:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Uh, yes, I think I saw that in the policies somewhere. If you own/run the site, you are not supposed to add the link yourself. Does the site sell anything, take donations, etc? Khabs 05:50, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Related article nominated for deletion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aleister Crowley in popular culture. As that debate may have an impact on this article (particularly when people propose merging), I thought it would be only fair that the editors of this page be made aware of the debate. Mangojuice^talk 14:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Leaving dangerous traps in his books

I remember reading somewhere that he wrote some books detailing how to do all sorts of magical things, except some of the recipes instead of having the required effect, would explode or do something just as dangerous. According to the story a man tried to make a homunculus by Crowley's recipe, only succeeding in killing himself in the resulting explosion, long after Crowley's own death. Anyone heard of this as well? Tainted Deity 15:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Sounds like a peculiar spin on the story of Jack Parsons. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 16:31, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like an urban legend.

It's certainly true though that Crowley put things in his books that were intended to be misunderstood by those who didn't know what he was talking about. The usual example is the one where he talks about masturbation as "sacrificing a child". --FOo 18:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

That Jack Parsons fellow seems to fit in nicely with what I have heard. I guess it is an unconfirmable rumour. Tainted Deity 15:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Ouija

Does anyone else think we can find a better place for the section on Ouija boards? Judging by the article itself, they don't seem all that important to Crowley's work. The Ouija article has significantly less text than this one, which may leave out more important matters about yoga (see previous discussion). Maybe we should move the whole section there. Suggestions? Threats? Dan 00:03, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Secret Agent 666

As I have indicated in the main article, Crowley was an agent of the British intelligence all along his involvement with the Irish nationalist cause and with the cause of German propaganda. The source which claims this is Richard B. Spence, "Secret Agent 666. Aleister Crowley and British Intelligence in America, 1914-1918", International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 13:359-371, 2000, Taylor and Francis. Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I will give some brief quotations, as requested inside the main article. I hope they fall under the fair use doctrine. Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"His writing for The Fatherland, he [Crowley] argued, was <<So blatantly extravagant only a German would have believed it.>>" (ibidem:360) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"But newly available evidence from the archives of the United States Army's Millitary Intelligence Division (MID) confirms official British knowledge and acceptance of his actions, and specifically identifies him as an employee of His Majesty's Government." (ibidem:361) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"Crowley's job may have been more than a mere faux-propagandist." (loc. cit.) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"Finally, the Great Beast's role can be compared to two <<international spies>> active in much the same quarters in wartime New York: Sidney Reilly and Ignace Timothy Trebitsch-Lincoln." (loc. cit.) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"... he [Crowley] and nine companions cruised across New York Harbor in a small launch flying an Irish flag and dropped anchor off the Statue of Liberty. Calling themselves the <<Secret Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic>>, the group proclaimed the independence of Ireland and declared war on England." (ibidem:362) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"Whether these antics delighted Viereck is uncertain, but if they were not also intended to lampoon and discredit Irish separatism, they certainly should have been. As such, they suited British interests very well." (ibidem:363) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"[...] the <<Crowley file>> [...] Most disturbing to the authors of these reports was the rumor that Plummer and Crowley were able to communicate with Steiner via telepathy." (loc.cit.) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"[...] the Beast had already been subjected to an inquiry by the Justice Department because of his work for Viereck. [...] <<It was determined that Aleister Crowley was a employee of the British Government ...>> [...] The message seemed quite clear: Crowley was <<OK>> and the Americans should leave him be." (ibidem:364) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"[...] the British consul [Charles Clive Bayley] [...] vouched for him [Crowley] [...]" (loc. cit.) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"Crowley was a man with unique qualities and sources of information in corners where other agents could not or would not thread. He clearly demonstrated his ability to gain the confidence of an important German propagandist [Viereck] and to influence his product. He could also monitor enemy currents in the occult underworld." (ibidem:367) Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I hope that the above quotes show that Crowley was no traitor, but Secret Agent 666, just as James Bond is Secret Agent 007. Tgeorgescu 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree with that. However, unless the book specifically justfies any racist remarks, what you've added is original research and doesn't belong in the racism section. IPSOS (talk) 12:37, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

You may be right. I thought that his monstrous racist utterances could be attributed to faux-propaganda, i.e. make such text sound so ridiculous that every man/woman of common sense would consider it unfair and inappropriate. Tgeorgescu 20:06, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Right, seems logical. But you have to find someone else who has said so. Interpolation from sources is original research which isn't allowed in most encyclopedias, which are supposed to summarize existing verifiable knowledge. IPSOS (talk) 20:19, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. Tgeorgescu 20:24, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Crowley

"...the first syllable sounding like "crow" in English..." is is surprising to me. I have never heard anyone pronounce his name like this. Also, I know people with an identical surname and they do not pronounce the first syllable like the English word 'crow'. I thought the 'o' in Crowley is more like the English word 'our'? Without, prehaps the accent some people give to the 'r' (I could not think of a better example off the top of my head). PyrE 11:30, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

• I don't have the exact quote handy, but Crowley himself said something to the effect of "Some call me Crou-ly/To treat me foully/My friends call me Crow-ley/to show that I'm holy." --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 15:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

You may be right. Although, this may be AC and his usual attempt at wit. As a name itself how is it meant to be pronounced? Maybe in the above quote AC is trying to associate himself with holiness through word play, although he may not be giving the proper pronunciation of his surname. PyrE 14:58, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

It's well known that he pronounced it "Crow Lee". Therefore that's the "correct" pronunciation. There's no "meant" when it comes to names. Different families have different accents and traditions. IPSOS (talk) 15:02, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I am glad to get that "cleared up". Thank you for your "help". I guess the "correct" pronunciation is "meant" to be CROW-ley. lmfao. PyrE 01:05, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

There are a couple of quips attributed to Beastly Old Uncle Aleister on the subject of the pronunciation of his name that I have never been able to verify. One has him responding huffily to a misspoken introduction, "Not Crowley as in foully, but Crow ly as in holy." The other is a limerick -

"My name is Aleister Crowley,

I'm a master of magick unholy,

Wand, sword and pentacle,

Coven, conventicle,

Nightshade and mandrake and moly!"

Fra. O.M.M. (talk) 07:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Who's smart idea was This?

Ok, sorry to be blunt but, who the world thought they were benefiting wikipedia by removing the 2 pictures of Crowley as an old man? It seems this was a wanton act with no reason behind whatsoever. I'm going to asume that it was VANDALISM and not the work of a overzealouse mod. Now can someone find the old pictures and out them back? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.250.130.215 (talk) 01:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It was done by User:OrphanBot, so I'd say it's doubtful it was vandalism--at worst improper actions on a bot's part. According to them, it was removed since it had no source information. If you do talk to them, I'd advise taking a more civil tone. --notJackhorkheimer ^{(talk / contribs)} 19:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

So, you suggest that I speak to a bot? Yeah, that'll work. If you thought my tone was uncivil here, you should have seen what I was going to post... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.250.130.215 (talk) 21:04, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Citation needed?

While reading the article on Aleister Crowley I came across the following sentence, followed by a "citation needed" sign, exactly as shown below:

He objected to the labelling of what he saw as life's most worthwhile and enjoyable activities as "sinful".[citation needed]

I don't know if I have misunderstood the reason for including the "citation needed" note? However, I would have thought that Crowley's objection to 'labelling of what he saw as life's most worthwhile and enjoyable activities as "sinful"' was so well known as to need no citation whatsoever. Having read even a fraction of his "Confessions" I would say that his objection to 'the labelling of what he saw as life's most worthwhile and enjoyable activities as "sinful"' was very nearly the most obvious thing about him. This is the man who, when informed of the death of Queen Victoria, joined with his companion of the moment, in throwing his hat in the air and performing a war dance. He saw Queen Victoria as a symbol of repression and he saw her death as cause for celebration. This is the man who gave the world that well known saying: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"! Can Crowley's objection to 'labelling of what he saw as life's most worthwhile and enjoyable activities as "sinful"' seriously be in need of a citation? If it can, then please may I be permitted to cite: Every single thing he has ever written?

Richard Gillard 23:22, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's an even better suggestion! Cite "Flaky ramblings of a half-literate troglodyte on the talk page for this article."!

The grandfather of George W. Bush?

On the radio talk show A View From Space, November 11, 2007, Toronto talk show host "Spaceman" Gary Bell relays about the mother of the former first lady, Pauline, that nine months prior to the birth of her third child she was in France:

Pauline (Pierce) had two young children aged three and four when she decided to have some fun. She left her children and her husband and the States and headed off to France. When she got there, she spent time with her friend Nelly O'Hara and Frank Harris. Frank Harris also had a friend who was none other than Aleister Crowley, the head at the time of the Satanic organization known as the O.T.O. [...] This trip to France took place in 1924, the very same year that Aleister Crowley claims to have first experienced his E.C.L. or "eroto-comatose lucidity" [...] As I said, this all happened in 1924, in early October of 1924 Pauline Pierce after this meeting and staying with Aleister Crowley and her friend returned to the Unites States, and her children, and her husband Marvin. Exactly nine months later she gave birth to a daughter whom they called Barbara Pierce.

__meco 18:14, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I read the story also. Is it a true story, or a gossip simply. Nmate (talk • contribs) —Preceding comment was added at 09:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

speculate - but I think the story came out on an April 1st —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.126.136.233 (talk) 08:34, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

"Mr.Crowley"

i think that it should be put on that the ozzy osbourne song mr.crowley is based on aleister crowley. he wrote the song when he found a deck of tarot cards designed by crowley in the studio. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.179.34.159 (talk) 04:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

that is an absurd suggestion —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.127.174.141 (talk) 20:17, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There should at least be a section on 'Crowley in Popular culture' - e.g. the cover of 'Sergeant Pepper', the character of Mocata in Dennis Wheatley's 'The Devil Rides Out', Ozzy Osbourne's 'Mister Crowley', David Bowie's 'Quicksand'. 90.193.44.230 (talk) 09:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

There should definitely be a link back to Mr. Crowley from this article. It's the only way a lot of people have heard of him. A pop culture section seems appropriate to me. -- Bilbo1507 (talk) 20:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)