27 October 2023
There is an awful lot of mythology adhering to American Christian religion.
On the one hand, there are plenty of things we should not sample. It is not necessary to fool around with drugs to know how they can destroy you. It's not necessary to fool around on your spouse to know that adultery will ruin your marriage. It's not necessary to play around with pagan idolatry to know it will open the door to Hell.
On the other hand, you'd be surprised by how many simple books and ideas are condemned without so much as reading a single word of the material. Doing just a little honest fact-checking can identify a vast load of manure that needs to be shoveled out. In yesterday's post I mentioned a book widely condemned only because people apparently didn't actually read it. They simply assumed they knew what it was about. There are other examples.
I've heard church leaders condemn Aleister Crowley and his teaching, yet they really knew nothing about it. All they had was rumor and legend. Crowley was evil, but he was even more stupid than evil. Then again, it's not all his fault. He got off on a false path because of a very bad experience with church. As I recall, his sole experience before going off the deep end was the Plymouth Brethren church. It was elitist, with a truculent literal reading of the Bible. That left the door open for too many abuses, and made genuine faith actually rather difficult in some ways. Keep in mind this was Darby's church, home of his wild Dispensationalist teachings. Near as I can tell, not once did Crowley encountered someone with genuine faith.
So, he went in search of something else to believe in, and ended up with a very strong pagan faith. He did not worship the Devil; he worshiped a lot of false gods from pagan history. It was actually self-worship. He indulged human lusts as a means of trying to find moral boundaries. He was a self-indulgent fool and those who actually study his writings will tell you that. What they really defend is the open-ended search, and also learning from his mistakes.
The core of his teaching is exactly what you might expect if you really understand the path of searching your heart for convictions, because that's what he did. The problem is that he did this under the guidance of Jehovah's elohim opposition. He was trying to recover the secrets the elohim had taught humans leading up to the birth of the Nephilim. While Crowley did rediscover a very limited amount of magical powers, he did not obtain what he sought. That's because such power is currently unavailable. He didn't understand that part, but it's obvious to us. It won't be available again until shortly before Christ returns.
The path of conviction without Christ results in the pagan dark arts Moses faced in Pharaoh's court. Crowley very specifically researched Egyptian religious archives. To this day, his disciples use a lot of Egyptian religious terminology, along with the recovered ritual stuff. But most of them are eclectic, wide open to Kabbalism, Eastern and Mesopotamian religions, and have a particular fondness for Celtic paganism.
Most of the powers those traditions claim to exercise are overstated, to say the least. Serious students of Crowley know this, and will admit that the most important thing is seeking your own convictions. But they don't call it that; they refer to "your true will", which is what Crowley meant when he said, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". It doesn't mean "anything goes"; it means you must discover your true character and what drives you to keep on living.
We can recognize that there's an awful lot of wannabees claiming to follow Crowley. They are silly people trying hard to find significance in being just a little different from everyone else, or simply trying to find a religious cover for self-indulgence. They don't really know what he taught, though they can quote a lot of his stuff.
Let me warn you: The folks who actually know what Crowley taught and consider themselves disciples of Thelema (Greek for "will"), their term for his teaching as a whole, are generally more intelligent than average. They also tend to have a very strong moral awareness, though the structure will be different than ours. Still, they can see right through a phony, and can shred most professing Christians in a debate.
Crowley was an awful man, but his writings are not going to open your soul to demon possession. His books are steeped in ritual language, and that makes them a little hard to read. It is supposed to be scary to people who are shallow. Isn't it funny how that sets off church folks who have no idea what he taught? There are a significant number of people out there who are unconventional by nature, and don't follow the herd. They tend to be really bright. If Christian faith has nothing to offer them other than a harsh warning to conform, then we should not be surprised that we have lost them to the likes of Crowley.
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