Robert Anton Wilson

Sunday, 28 October 2012

Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson On The Acceleration To 2012

Dr. Demento, Robert Anton Wilson, and Walter Block: Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and Libertarianism

Robert Anton Wilson explains Quantum Physics

Robert Anton Wilson talk at Palm Springs Prophets Conference December 2000

Politically Incorrect on LSD with guest Robert Anton Wilson

The New Inquisition - Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson: The Acceleration Of Knowledge - 1/6

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The Lost Studio Session (Robert Anton Wilson) [FULL]

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published: 20 Nov 2011

Robert Anton Wilson Lecture - The HEAD Revolution

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published: 13 May 2012

Robert Anton Wilson On The Acceleration To 2012

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published: 24 Jun 2009

Robert Anton Wilson: Maybe Logic - 1/6

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published: 23 Sep 2010

Dr. Demento, Robert Anton Wilson, and Walter Block: Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and Libertarianism

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published: 05 Oct 2012

Robert Anton Wilson explains Quantum Physics

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published: 29 Dec 2007

Robert Anton Wilson talk at Palm Springs Prophets Conference December 2000

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published: 17 Jan 2012

Politically Incorrect on LSD with guest Robert Anton Wilson

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published: 23 Apr 2011

The New Inquisition - Robert Anton Wilson

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published: 28 Mar 2012

Robert Anton Wilson: The Acceleration Of Knowledge - 1/6

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published: 22 Sep 2010

Robert Anton Wilson Free your mind.

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published: 30 Jun 2008

Robert Anton Wilson: Borders (1989)

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published: 17 Mar 2012

Robert Anton Wilson: Aleister Crowley [FULL]

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published: 12 Oct 2011

Robert Anton WIlson: The I in the Triangle

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published: 24 Sep 2006

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25 Oct 2012

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27 Oct 2012

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For other people named Robert Wilson, see Robert Wilson (disambiguation).

Robert Anton Wilson
At the National Theatre, London, for the 10-hour stage version of Illuminatus! in 1977
Born	Robert Edward Wilson (1932-01-18)January 18, 1932 Brooklyn, New York
Died	January 11, 2007(2007-01-11) (aged 74) Capitola, California
Spouse(s)	Arlen Riley Wilson
Influences Aleister Crowley · Buckminster Fuller · George Gurdjieff · James Joyce · Alfred Korzybski · Friedrich Nietzsche · Ezra Pound · Wilhelm Reich · Erwin Schrödinger · Lysander Spooner · Benjamin Tucker · Ludwig Wittgenstein ·

Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson, January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007), known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian^[1] and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized as an episkopos, pope, and saint of Discordianism, Wilson helped publicize the group through his writings, interviews, and strolls.^{[clarification needed]}

Wilson described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth".^[2] His goal being "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything" (cf. solipsism, acatalepsia, Pyrrhonism).^[3]

Early life [link]

"Is", "is." "is"—the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.

— Robert Anton Wilson, The Historical Illuminatus, as spoken by Sigismundo Celine.

Wilson, born Robert Edward Wilson in Methodist Hospital, in Brooklyn, New York, spent his first years in Flatbush, and moved with his family to Gerritsen Beach around the age of 4 or 5, where they stayed until he turned 13. He suffered from polio as a child, and found generally effective treatment with the Kenny Method (created by Elizabeth Kenny) which the American Medical Association repudiated at that time. Polio's effects remained with Wilson throughout his life, usually manifesting as minor muscle spasms causing him to use a cane occasionally until 2000, when he experienced a major bout with post-polio syndrome that would continue until his death.

Wilson attended Catholic grammar school, most likely the school associated with Gerritsen Beach's Resurrection Church^{[citation needed]}. He attended Brooklyn Technical High School to remove himself from the Catholic influence. While working as an ambulance driver Wilson attended New York University, studying engineering and mathematics.

He worked as an engineering aide, a salesman, a copywriter, and as associate editor of Playboy magazine from 1965 to 1971. Wilson adopted his maternal grandfather's name, Anton, for his writings, at first telling himself that he would save the "Edward" for when he wrote the Great American Novel and later finding that "Robert Anton Wilson" had become an established identity.

In 1979 he received a Ph.D. in psychology from Paideia University in California,^[4] an unaccredited institution that has since closed.^[5]^[6] Wilson reworked his dissertation, and it found publication in 1983 as Prometheus Rising.

Wilson married freelance writer and poet Arlen Riley in 1958; they had four children. Their youngest daughter Luna—beaten to death in an apparent robbery in the store where she worked in 1976 at the age of 15—became the first person to have her brain preserved by the Bay Area Cryonics Society.^[7] Arlen Riley Wilson died in 1999 following a series of strokes.^[8]^[9]

[edit] The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Main article: The Illuminatus! Trilogy

File:Illum EitP-1975.jpeg

The Eye in the Pyramid, first volume of the first edition of Illuminatus!, 1975

Among Wilson's 35 books,^[10] and many other works, perhaps his best-known volumes remain the cult classic series^[11] The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), co-authored with Robert Shea. Advertised as "a fairy tale for paranoids," the three books--The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan, soon offered as a single volume—philosophically and humorously examined, among many other themes, occult and magical symbolism and history, the counterculture of the 1960s, secret societies, data concerning author H.P. Lovecraft and author and occultist Aleister Crowley, and American paranoia about conspiracies and conspiracy theories.

Wilson and Shea derived much of the odder material from letters sent to Playboy magazine while they worked as the editors of the Playboy Forum.^[12] The books mixed true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called "guerrilla ontology" which he apparently referred to as "Operation Mindfuck" in Illuminatus! The trilogy also outlined a set of libertarian and anarchist axioms known as Celine's Laws (named after Hagbard Celine, a character in Illuminatus!), concepts Wilson revisited several times in other writings.

Among the many subplots of Illuminatus! one addresses biological warfare and the overriding of the United States Bill of Rights, another gives a detailed account of the John F. Kennedy assassination, in which no fewer than five snipers, all working for different causes, prepared to shoot Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, and the book's climax occurs at a rock concert where the audience collectively face the danger of becoming a mass human sacrifice.

Illuminatus! popularized Discordianism and the use of the term "fnord". It incorporates experimental prose styles influenced by writers such as William S. Burroughs, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound.^[13] Although Shea and Wilson never partnered on such a scale again, Wilson continued to expand upon the themes of the Illuminatus! books throughout his writing career. Most of his later fiction contains cross-over characters from "The Sex Magicians" (Wilson's first novel, written before the release of Illuminatus!, which includes many of his same characters) and The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

Illuminatus! won the Prometheus Hall of Fame award for science fiction in 1986, has many international editions, and found adaptation for the stage when Ken Campbell produced it as a ten-hour epic drama. It also appeared as a Steve Jackson role-playing card game called Illuminati and a trading-card game called Illuminati: New World Order. Eye N Apple Productions and Rip Off Press produced a comic book version of the trilogy.

On the Illuminati [link]

Near the end of his life, Richard Metzger interviewed Robert Anton Wilson and asked him about the Illuminati. His answer was:

Richard Metzger: You have studied the Illuminati for years. Have you come to any conclusion about their aims?

Robert Anton Wilson: Usually when people ask me that question, I give them some kind of a put-on, but I can't think of a good and original put-on that I haven't done several times before. So I'll tell you the truth, for once. After investigating the Illuminati and their critics for the last 30 years, I think the Illuminati was a short lived society of free thinkers and democratic reformers that formed a secret society within Freemasonry, using Freemasonry as a cover so they could plot to overthrow all the kings in Europe and the Pope. I'm very happy that they succeeded in overthrowing all the kings, I just wish that they had completed the job and gotten rid of the Royal family in England too, but they did pretty well on the continent. I'm sorry they haven't finished off the Pope yet, either, but I think they're still working on the project and I wish them luck.

— Disinformation: the interviews. By Richard Metzger.^[14]

[edit] Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, and Masks of the Illuminati

Main articles: Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, and Masks of the Illuminati

Wilson wrote two more popular fiction series. The first, a trilogy later published as a single volume, was Schrödinger's Cat. The second, The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, appeared as three books. In-between publishing the two trilogies Wilson released a stand-alone novel, Masks of the Illuminati (1981), which fits into, due to the main character's ancestry, The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles' timeline and, while published earlier, could qualify for the fourth volume in that series.

Schrödinger's Cat consists of three volumes: The Universe Next Door, The Trick Top Hat, and The Homing Pigeons. Wilson set the three books in differing alternative universes, and most of the characters remain almost the same but may have slightly different names and different careers and background stories. The books cover the fields of quantum mechanics and the varied philosophies and explanations that exist within the science. The single volume describes itself as a magical textbook and a type of initiation, and implies that some people have gone slightly insane just by reading it. The single-volume edition omits many entire pages and has many other omissions when compared with the original separate books.

The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, composed of The Earth Will Shake (1982), The Widow's Son (1985), and Nature's God (1991), follows the timelines of several characters through different generations, time periods, and countries. The books cover, among many other topics, the history, legacy, and rituals of the Illuminati and related groups.

Masks of the Illuminati, featuring historical characters in a fictionized setting, contains a great deal of occult data. Intermixing Albert Einstein, James Joyce, Aleister Crowley, Sigmund Freud and others, the book focuses on Pan and other occult icons, ideas, and practices.

Plays and screenplays [link]

A play by Wilson, Wilhelm Reich in Hell (published as a book in 1987 and first performed at the Edmund Burke Theatre in Dublin, in San Francisco, and in Los Angeles) included many factual and fictional characters, including Marilyn Monroe, Uncle Sam, and Wilhelm Reich himself. Wilson also wrote and published as books two screenplays, not yet produced: Reality Is What You Can Get Away With: an Illustrated Screenplay (1992) and The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1997).

[edit] The Cosmic Trigger series and other books

In the nonfiction and partly autobiographical Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) and its two sequels, as well as in many other works, Wilson examined Freemasons, Discordianism, Sufism, the Illuminati, Futurology, Zen Buddhism, Dennis and Terence McKenna, Jack Parsons, the occult practices of Aleister Crowley and G.I. Gurdjieff, Yoga, and many other esoteric or counterculture philosophies, personalities, and occurrences.

File:CosmicTrigger1.jpg

Wilson advocated Timothy Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness and neurosomatic/linguistic engineering, which he wrote about in many books including Prometheus Rising (1983, revised 1997) and again in 1990 with Quantum Psychology (which contain practical techniques intended to help one break free of one's "reality tunnels"). With Leary, he helped promote the futurist ideas of space migration, intelligence increase, and life extension, which they combined to form the word symbol SMI²LE.

Wilson's 1986 book, The New Inquisition, argues that whatever reality consists of it actually would seem much weirder than we commonly imagine. It cites, among other sources, Bell's theorem and Alain Aspect's experimental proof of Bell's to suggest that mainstream science has a strong materialist bias, and that in fact modern physics may have already disproved materialist metaphysics.

Wilson also supported the work and utopian theories of Buckminster Fuller and examined the theories of Charles Fort. He and Loren Coleman became friends,^[15] as he did with media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Neuro Linguistic Programming co-founder Richard Bandler, with whom he taught workshops. He also admired James Joyce, and wrote extensive commentaries on the author and on two of Joyce's novels, Finnegans Wake and Ulysses, in his 1988 book Coincidance: A Head Test.^[16]

Although Wilson often lampooned and criticized some New Age beliefs, bookstores specializing in New Age material often sell his books. Wilson, a well-known author in occult and Neo-Pagan circles, used Aleister Crowley as a main character in his 1981 novel Masks of the Illuminati, included some elements of H. P. Lovecraft's work in his novels, and at times claimed to have perceived encounters with magical "entities" (when asked whether these entities seemed "real", he answered they seemed "real enough," although "not as real as the IRS" but "easier to get rid of", and later decided that his experiences may have emerged from "just my right brain hemisphere talking to my left").^[17] He warned against beginners using occult practice, since to rush into such practices and the resulting "energies" they unleash could lead people to "go totally nuts".^[18]

Wilson also criticized scientific types with overly rigid belief systems, equating them with religious fundamentalists in their fanaticism. In a 1988 interview, when asked about his newly-published book The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science, Wilson commented: "I coined the term irrational rationalism because those people claim to be rationalists, but they're governed by such a heavy body of taboos. They're so fearful, and so hostile, and so narrow, and frightened, and uptight and dogmatic... I wrote this book because I got tired satirizing fundamentalist Christianity... I decided to satirize fundamentalist materialism for a change, because the two are equally comical... The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they're rational! ...They're never skeptical about anything except the things they have a prejudice against. None of them ever says anything skeptical about the AMA, or about anything in establishment science or any entrenched dogma. They're only skeptical about new ideas that frighten them. They're actually dogmatically committed to what they were taught when they were in college..."^[19]

Probability reliance [link]

In a 2003 interview with High Times magazine, Wilson described himself as "model-agnostic" which he said "consists of never regarding any model or map of the universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial. Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory".^[20]

Wilson claimed in Cosmic Trigger: Volume 1 "not to believe anything", since "belief is the death of intelligence".^[21] He described this approach as "Maybe Logic."

Wilson wrote about this and other topics in articles for the cyberpunk magazine Mondo 2000.^[22]

Economic thought [link]

Robert Anton Wilson favored a form of Basic Income Guarantee; synthesizing several ideas under the acronym RICH. His ideas are set forth in the essay "The RICH Economy" found in The Illuminati Papers.^[23]

Other activities [link]

Robert Anton Wilson and his wife Arlen Riley Wilson founded the Institute for the Study of the Human Future in 1975.

From 1982 until his death, Wilson had a business relationship with the Association for Consciousness Exploration, which hosted his first on-stage dialogue with his long-time friend Timothy Leary.^[24] entitled The Inner Frontier.^[25]^[26]^[27] Wilson dedicated his book The New Inquisition to A.C.E.'s co-directors, Jeff Rosenbaum and Joseph Rothenberg.

Wilson speaking at the Phenomicon

Wilson also joined the Church of the SubGenius, who referred to him as Pope Bob.^[28] He contributed to their literature, including the book Three-Fisted Tales of "Bob", and shared a stage with their founder, Rev. Ivan Stang, on several occasions. Wilson also founded the Guns and Dope Party^[29] and its corresponding Burning Man theme camp.^{[citation needed]}

As a member of the Board of Advisors of the Fully Informed Jury Association, Wilson worked to inform the public about jury nullification, the right of jurors to nullify a law they deem unjust.^[30] He supported and wrote about E-Prime, a form of English lacking all "be" verbs (words such as "is", "are", "was", "were" etc.), and preferred the term "maybe logic".^[31]

A decades-long researcher into drugs and a strong opponent of what he called "the war on some drugs", Wilson participated as a Special Guest in the week-long 1999 Annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam,^[32] and used and often promoted the use of medical marijuana.^[33]

Wilson co-founded and became the primary instructor of the Maybe Logic Academy, named for his agnostic approach to all knowledge. Fellow instructors include Patricia Monaghan, Rev. Ivan Stang, Philip H. Farber, Antero Alli, Peter J. Carroll, Starhawk, R. U. Sirius, Douglas Rushkoff, Erik Davis, Lon Milo Duquette, and David Jay Brown.

Death [link]

On June 22, 2006, Huffington Post blogger Paul Krassner reported that Robert Anton Wilson was under hospice care at home with friends and family.^[34] On October 2, 2006 Douglas Rushkoff reported that Wilson was in severe financial trouble.^[35] Slashdot, Boing Boing, and the Church of the SubGenius also picked up on the story, linking to Rushkoff's appeal.^[36]^[37] As his webpage reported on October 10, these efforts succeeded beyond expectation and raised a sum which would have supported him for at least six months. Obviously touched by the great outpouring of support, on October 5, 2006, Wilson left the following comment on his personal website, expressing his gratitude:

Dear Friends, my God, what can I say. I am dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and totally stunned by the charity and compassion that has poured in here the last three days.
To steal from Jack Benny, "I do not deserve this, but I also have severe leg problems and I don't deserve them either."

Because he was a kind man as well as a funny one, Benny was beloved. I find it hard to believe that I am equally beloved and especially that I deserve such love.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, know that my love is with you.

You have all reminded me that despite George W. Bush and all his cohorts, there is still a lot of beautiful kindness in the world.

Blessings,
Robert Anton Wilson

—^[38]

On January 6, Wilson wrote on his blog that according to several medical authorities, he would likely only have between two days and two months left to live.^[39] He closed this message with "I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying. Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd." He died peacefully five days later, on January 11 at 4:50 a.m. Pacific time.^[40] After his cremation on January 18, and his family-held memorial service on February 18, 2007, his family scattered most of his ashes at the same spot as his wife's - off the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, California.^[41]^[42]

A tribute show to Wilson, organized by Coldcut and Mixmaster Morris and performed in London as a part of the "Ether 07 Festival" held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on March 18, 2007, also included Ken Campbell, Bill Drummond and Alan Moore.^[43]

Works [link]

Bibliography [link]

Fiction [link]

The Sex Magicians (1973)
The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975) (with Robert Shea)
- The Eye in the Pyramid
- The Golden Apple
- Leviathan
Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy (1979–1981)
- The Universe Next Door
- The Trick Top Hat
- The Homing Pigeons
Masks of the Illuminati (1981)
The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles
- The Earth Will Shake (1982)
- The Widow's Son (1985)
- Nature's God (1988)

Neuropolitique (1988) (with Timothy Leary & George Koopman) revision of Neuropolitics
Sex, Drugs and Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits (1988) revision, with new introduction, of Sex and Drugs: A Journey Beyond Limits
Ishtar Rising (1989) revision of The Book of the Breast
Quantum Psychology (1990)
Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults and Cover-ups (1998) (with Miriam Joan Hill)
TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution (2002)

Essay collections [link]

Email to the universe and other alterations of consciousness (2005) collection of essays and new material
Coincidance: A Head Test (1988) essays and new material
The Illuminati Papers (1980) collection of essays and new material
Right Where You Are Sitting Now (1983) collection of essays and new material

Editor [link]

Semiotext(e) SF (1989) (anthology, editor, with Rudy Rucker and Peter Lamborn Wilson)
Chaos and Beyond (1994) (editor and primary author)

Discography [link]

A Meeting with Robert Anton Wilson (ACE) cassette
Religion for the Hell of It (ACE) cassette
H.O.M.E.s on LaGrange (ACE) cassette
The New Inquisition (ACE) cassette
The H.E.A.D. Revolution (ACE) cassette and CD
Prometheus Rising (ACE) cassette
The Inner Frontier (with Timothy Leary) (ACE) cassette
The Magickal Movement: Present & Future (with Margot Adler, Isaac Bonewits & Selena Fox) (ACE) Panel Discussion - cassette
Magick Changing the World, the World Changing Magick (ACE) Panel Discussion - cassette
The Self in Transformation (ACE) Panel Discussion - cassette
The Once & Future Legend (with Ivan Stang, Robert Shea and others) (ACE) Panel Discussion - cassette
What IS the Conspiracy, Anyway? (ACE) Panel Discussion - cassette
The Chocolate-Biscuit Conspiracy album with The Golden Horde (1984)
Twelve Eggs in a Basket CD
Robert Anton Wilson On Finnegans Wake and Joseph Campbell (interview by Faustin Bray and Brian Wallace) (1988) 2 CD Set Sound Photosynthesis
Acceleration of Knowledge (1991) cassette
Secrets of Power comedy cassette
Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything: or Old Bob Exposes His Ignorance (July 30, 2005) Sounds True ISBN 1-59179-375-0, ISBN 978-1-59179-375-5

Filmography [link]

Actor [link]

Túneis da Realidade, Os (a.k.a. Who Is the Master Who Makes the Grass Green?) (1996) Edgar Pêra (Portugal)
Manual de Evasão (September 16, 1994) Edgar Pêra (Portugal)

Writer [link]

Wilhelm Reich in Hell (2005) (Video) Deepleaf Productions

Himself [link]

Children of the Revolution: Tune Back In (2005) Revolutionary Child Productions
The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick (2001) TKO Productions
23 (1998) (23 - Nichts ist so wie es scheint) Claussen & Wöbke Filmproduktion GmbH (Germany)
Arise! The SubGenius Video (1992) (V) (a.k.a. Arise! SubGenius Recruitment Film #16) The SubGenius Foundation (USA)
Borders (1989) Co-Directions Inc. (TV documentary)
Fear In The Night: Demons, Incest and UFOs (1993) Video - Trajectories
Twelve Eggs in a Box: Myth, Ritual and the Jury System (1994) Video - Trajectories
Everything Is Under Control: Robert Anton Wilson in Interview (1998) Video - Trajectories

Documentary [link]

Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson, a documentary featuring selections from over 25 years of Wilson footage, released on DVD in North America on May 30, 2006.^[44]

References [link]

^ [1] [2] [3]
^ Patricia Monaghan: "Robert Anton Wilson". Booklist, May 15, 1999 v95 i18 p1680
^ "Robert Anton Wilson". Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007
^ "Robert Anton Wilson." St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th ed. St. James Press, 1996. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
^ Martin van der Werf: "Lawsuit U." The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 4, 2006
^ Prometheus Rising Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising on the credibility of the previously existing Paideia University
^ Patricia Luna Wilson at cryonics.org
^ Robert Anton Wilson obituary mentioning Arlen's death
^ The Beltane Celebration
^ "The author of 35 books on subjects like extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs and what he called quantum psychology..." New York Times obituary.
^ "...an author of The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- a mind-twisting science-fiction series about a secret global society that has been a cult classic for more than 30 years..." from "Robert Anton Wilson, 74; Wrote Mind-Twisting Novels"; [Obituary (Obit)] Dennis Hevesi. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jan 13, 2007. pg. A.16
^ "The Illuminatus saga stumbles along" by Robert Anton Wilson
^ Conspiracy Digest Interviews printed in Illuminatus Papers, 1980
^ Disinformation: the interviews. By Richard Metzger. Accessed 26 July 2011.
^ 23 Skidoo Cryptomundo
^ Bray, Faustin / Wallace, Brian (interviewers)/ Wilson, Robert Anton (speaker) (1988). Robert Anton Wilson On Finnegans Wake and Joseph Campbell (Audio CD). Mill Valley: Sound Photosynthesis. ISBN 1-56964-801-8.
^ Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson
^ "Robert Anton Wilson". Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything. 2000
^ 1988 interview
^ Krassner, Paul. A Paul Krassner Interview With R. A. W - High Times, March 2003 issue.
^ Wilson, Robert Anton. Cosmic Trigger: Volume I. Tempe, Arizona. New Falcon Publications. 1977. pg ii.
^ "CybeRevolution Montage", Mondo 2000 no. 7, 1989
^ The RICH Economy by Robert Anton Wilson from The Illuminati Papers
^ Lesie, Michele (1989) "High Priest of LSD To Drop In", The Plain Dealer
^ Local Group Hosts Dr. Timothy Leary by Will Allison (The Observer Fri. Sept. 29th, 1989)
^ Two 60s Cult Heroes, on the Eve of the 80s by James Neff (Cleveland Plain Dealer October 30, 1979)
^ Timothy Leary: An LSD Cowboy Turns Cosmic Comic by Frank Kuznik (Cleveland Magazine November 1979)
^ Winterstar 2001
^ Nocenti, Annie; Baldwin, Ruth (2004). The High Times Reader. Nation Books. p. 472. ISBN 978-1-56025-624-3.
^ Interview of Robert Anton Wilson, (conducted August 1997) Paradigm Shift, Vol. 1 No. 1 (July 1998). Retrieved January 11, 2007.
^ Andrea Shapiro: "Taking the High Road". Santa Fe New Mexican, December 5, 2003
^ Paul Krassner: "The High Life", LA Weekly, December 17, 1999
^ "In Santa Cruz, an Official Handout of Medicinal Pot." Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2002.
^ Robert Anton Wilson The Huffington Post
^ Robert Anton Wilson Needs Our Help
^ Illumninatus! Author Needs Our Help Slashdot
^ Robert Anton Wilson needs our Help BoingBoing
^ Robert Anton Wilson Home Page
^ Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night
^ RAW Essence
^ RAW Data: Robert Anton Wilson Cosmic Meme-Orial
^ YouTube - Robert Anton Wilson Meme-orial Procession
^ Coldcut, Mixmaster Morris, Ken Campbell, Bill Drummond and Alan Moore (March 18, 2007). Robert Anton Wilson tribute show. Queen Elizabeth Hall, London: Mixmaster Morris. http://www.dailymotion.com/tag/illuminatus/video/x366w1_robert-anton-wilson-1-ken-campbell_fun. Retrieved August 28, 2009.
^ Maybe Logic

External links [link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Robert Anton Wilson

Official website, now maintained by his family
RAW Data 2.0, Wilson's blog, now maintained by his daughter, Christina
RAW Data, Wilson's first blog
Guns and Dope Party, Political party created by Wilson and Olga Struthio
Maybe Logic - The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson
Right Where You Are Sitting Now Podcast Extensive two-hour Robert Anton Wilson tribute podcast, featuring audio clips, and interviews with friends of Wilson.
A collection of RAW audio/video from his publisher A collection of RAW audio/video from his publisher
Robert Anton Wilson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Works by or about Robert Anton Wilson in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

v t e Discordian religion

People	Malaclypse the Younger Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst Robert Anton Wilson

Organizations and titles	Pope Episkopos

Symbols and mythological personas	Eris (aka Discordia) Aneris (aka Harmonia) Apple of Discord Sacred Chao Fnord Hand of Eris Hung Mung

Foundations	Principia Discordia Discordian works Discordian calendar Operation Mindfuck Law of Fives Original Snub Curse of Greyface Pentabarf

Events	Devival

v t e Occult topics

Definitions	Occult Esotericism Gnosticism

Lists	Magical terms and traditions Magical mottos Magical organizations Occultists Occult writers Methods of divination List of Enochian angels

Movements	Theosophy Ariosophy Enochian Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Ordo Templi Orientis Rosicrucianism Thelema Chaos magic

Topics	Nazism and occultism Lost lands Alchemy Divinatory, esoteric and occult tarot

Literature	The Occult Roots of Nazism

Recreational drug use

Major recreational drugs

MDA
MDMA (Ecstasy)

Hallucinogens

Psychedelics	Bufotenin Psychoactive toads Vilca Yopo DMT (Ayahuasca) LSA LSD-25 Mescaline Peruvian Torch Peyote San Pedro Psilocybin \ Psilocin (Psilocybin mushrooms)

Dissociatives	DXM Inhalants Nitrous oxide alkyl nitrites – poppers, such as amyl nitrite Ketamine MXE Muscimol (Amanita muscaria) PCP Salvinorin A (Salvia divinorum)

Deliriants	Atropine and Scopolamine Datura Deadly Nightshade Henbane Mandrake Dimenhydrinate Diphenhydramine

Cannabinoids	JWH-018 THC (Cannabis Hashish Hash oil)

Oneirogens	Calea zacatechichi Silene capensis

Drug culture

Cannabis	420 Cannabis cultivation Cannabis smoking Legal history of cannabis in the United States Legality of cannabis Marijuana Policy Project Medical cannabis NORML Religious and spiritual use of cannabis Stoner film

Psychedelic	Art Drug Experience Literature Music

Other	Club drug Counterculture of the 1960s Dance party Drug paraphernalia Drug tourism Entheogen Hippie Party and play Poly drug use Rave Self-medication Sex and drugs

Problems with drug use

Abuse
Dependence
Drug-related crime
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder
Illegal drug trade
Long-term effects of cannabis
Neurotoxicity
Overdose
Date-rape drug
Passive smoking (of tobacco or other substances)

Legality of drug use

International	1961 Narcotic Drugs 1971 Psychotropic Substances 1988 Drug Trafficking Cannabis reform at the international level

State level	Drug policy Decriminalization Prohibition Supply reduction Policy reform Demand reduction Drug Policy Alliance Harm reduction Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Liberalization Students for Sensible Drug Policy Transform Drug Policy Foundation

Drug policy by country	Australia Canada Germany India Netherlands Portugal Sweden Switzerland Soviet Union United States Just Say No Office of National Drug Control Policy School district drug policies California Colorado Maryland Virginia

Other	Arguments for and against drug prohibition Capital punishment for drug trafficking Designer drug Drug court Drug possession Drug test Hard and soft drugs Illegal drug trade in Colombia Mexican Drug War Narc Opium production in Afghanistan Politics of drug abuse War on Drugs Zero tolerance

Lists of countries by...

Persondata
Name	Wilson, Robert Anton
Alternative names	RAW
Short description	American writer
Date of birth	January 18, 1932
Place of birth	New York, New York
Date of death	January 11, 2007
Place of death	Santa Cruz, California

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Walter Block
Austrian School
Walter Block teaching
Born	(1941-08-21) 21 August 1941 (age 70) New York
Nationality	United States
Field	Political economy, environmental economics, transport economics, political philosophy
Influences	Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand

Walter Edward Block (born 21 August 1941) is an Austrian School of economics economist and anarcho-capitalist.^[1]

1 Personal life
2 Professional career
3 Political views
4 Books
- 4.1 As author
- 4.2 As editor
5 Articles
6 Notes
7 External links

Personal life [link]

Block was born in Brooklyn, New York to Abraham Block, a certified public accountant, and Ruth Block, a paralegal, both of whom Block has said were liberals.^[2] He earned his undergraduate degree in Philosophy summa cum laude from Brooklyn College, where he was a member of the varsity swimming team. Block earned his Ph.D. degree in economics from Columbia University and wrote his dissertation on rent control.^{[citation needed]} Block, who is of Jewish background, self-identifies as a "devout atheist".^[3]

Block's early thinking life was characterized by egalitarian thought. In an interview by the Austrian Economics Newsletter, Block stated, "In the fifties and sixties, I was just another commie living in Brooklyn."^[4] Block credits his "conversion" to Libertarianism to personal meetings with Ayn Rand while he was an undergraduate student. Alan Greenspan was in attendance at some of these meetings.^[2] As Block describes it, "In 1963, when I was a senior at Brooklyn College, Ayn Rand came there to give a lecture. I attended, along with about 3,000 of my fellow mainly leftish students, in order to boo and hiss her, since she was evil incarnate. Afterward, the president of the group that had invited her to campus announced there was to be a luncheon in her honor, and anyone was welcome to take part, whether or not they agreed with her ideas. Not having had enough booing and hissing at Ayn in her formal lecture, I decided to avail myself of this opportunity to further express my displeasure with her and her views."^[2]

Block thereafter attended a luncheon with Rand, Nathaniel Branden, and Leonard Peikoff. After Block's challenging of several luncheon attendees, Branden forged an agreement with Block: "Nathan very graciously offered to come to the other end of the table with me for this purpose, but he imposed two preconditions: first, I would be honor bound not to allow this conversation to lapse with this one meeting, but would continue with it until we had achieved a resolution: either he would convince me of the error of my ways, or I would convince him of his. Second, I would read two books he would later recommend to me (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt).^[2]

Although Block credits Ayn Rand, Branden, and other Objectivists with his initial interest in laissez faire theory in general, he says of Murray Rothbard that,

After I met Murray, it took him probably all of 15 minutes to convert me to the same anarcho-capitalist position I have held ever since.... In retrospect, before I had met Murray, I was nine tenths of the way toward embracing laissez faire capitalist anarchism; all I needed was a little push in the same direction I had already been going for some time.^[2]

Professional career [link]

Block now holds the Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola University in New Orleans. From 1979 to 1991, he was the Senior Economist with the Fraser Institute. In addition to his faculty position at Loyola, Block is also a Senior Faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics. His most famous work is Defending the Undefendable, of which John Stossel said, "Defending the Undefendable... opened my eyes to the beauties of libertarianism. It explains that so much of what is assumed to be evil--is not."^[5] Lew Rockwell of the Mises Institute said this about Walter Block's active role in modern libertarianism:

Murray Rothbard, in his life, was known as Mr. Libertarian. We can make a solid case that the title now belongs to Walter Block, a student of Rothbard's whose own vita is as thick as a big-city phonebook, and as diverse as Wikipedia. Whether he is writing on economic theory, ethics, political secession, drugs, roads, education, monetary policy, social theory, unions, political language, or anything else, his prose burns with a passion for this single idea: if human problems are to be solved, the solution is to be found by permitting greater liberty.^[6]

Political views [link]

Libertarianism
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Block, along with Robert Nozick, is one of the leading libertarian defenders of voluntary slave contracts, arguing that a slave contract is "a bona fide contract where consideration crosses hands; when it is abrogated, theft occurs". He critiques other libertarians who oppose voluntary slavery as being inconsistent with their shared principles. Block seeks to make "a tiny adjustment" which "strengthens libertarianism by making it more internally consistent." He argues that his position shows "that contract, predicated on private property [can] reach to the furthest realms of human interaction, even to voluntary slave contracts."^[7]

On February 17, 2006, Dr. Walter Block publicly expressed his support for the Free State Project (FSP). He is quoted as saying,

You people are doing the Lord's work. The FSP is one of the freshest practical ideas for promoting liberty that has come out of the libertarian movement in the past few decades. May you succeed beyond your wildest dreams, and thus demonstrate in yet another empirical way the benefits and blessings of liberty.^[8]

Books [link]

As author [link]

Defending the Undefendable (1976; translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Russian languages) ISBN 0-930073-05-3
A Response to the Framework Document for Amending the Combines Investigation Act (1982)
Focus on Economics and the Canadian Bishops (1983)
Focus on Employment Equity: A Critique of the Abella Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (with Michael A. Walker; 1985)
The U.S. Bishops and Their Critics: An Economic and Ethical Perspective (1986)
Lexicon of Economic Thought (with Michael A. Walker; 1988)
Economic Freedom of the World, 1975-1995 (with James Gwartney, Robert Lawson; 1996)
The Privatization of Roads and Highways: Human and Economic Factors (2006)
Labor Economics from a Free Market Perspective: Employing the Unemployable. (2008)
The Case for Discrimination (2010)
Ron Paul for President in 2012: Yes to Ron Paul and Liberty (2012)

As editor [link]

Zoning: Its Costs and Relevance for the 1980s (Ed.; 1980)
Rent Control: Myths & Realities (Ed. with Edgar Olsen; 1981)
Discrimination, Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity (Ed. with Michael A. Walker; 1982)
Taxation: An International Perspective (Ed. with Michael A. Walker; 1984)
Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation (Ed.; 1985; translated into Portuguese 1992) ISBN 0-88975-067-X
Morality of the Market: Religious and Economic Perspectives (Ed. with Geoffrey Brennan, Kenneth Elzinga; 1985)
Theology, Third World Development and Economic Justice (Ed. with Donald Shaw; 1985)
Reaction: The New Combines Investigation Act (Ed.; 1986)
Religion, Economics & Social Thought (Ed. with Irving Hexham; 1986)
Man, Economy and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard (Ed. with Lew Rockwell; 1988)
Breaking the Shackles; the Economics of Deregulation: A Comparison of U.S. and Canadian Experience (Ed. with George Lermer; 1991)
Economic Freedom: Toward a Theory of Measurement (Ed.; 1991)
Libertarian Autobiographies (Ed.; forthcoming)

Articles [link]

"Katrina and the Future of New Orleans" Telos 139, Summer 2007.
"Hayek's Road to Serfdom". Journal of Libertarian Studies (Center for Libertarian Studies) 12 (2): 339–365 (1996).

Notes [link]

^ "WalterBlock.com — Austrian Economist and Libertarian Theorist:". http://www.walterblock.com/. Retrieved 2012-05-31. "Walter Block, an Austrian school economist and anarcho-libertarian philosopher, is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Chair in Economics and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and Senior Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute."
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e [1] Walter Block. "On Autobiography." LewRockwell.com. 4 December 2002.
^ Block, Walter. "Open Letter to Ron Paul by Walter Block." LewRockwell.com. 28 December 2007. [2]
^ [3]"Radical Economics: An Interview with Walter Block." Austrian Economics Newsletter. Summer 1999.
^ "Personal Reason." Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. 24 June 2007
^ [4] Lew Rockwell. "Putting Opponents on the Hot Seat." LewRockwell.com. 3 May 2006.
^ "Towards a Libertarian Theory of Inalienability: A Critique of Rothbard, Barnett, Smith, Kinsella, Gordon, and Epstein." pp. 39-85, Journal of Libertarian Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 44, p. 48, p. 82 and p. 46
^ [5] Walter Block's endorsement of the Free State Project. FreeStateProject.org. 17 February 2006.

External links [link]

WalterBlock.com
Commentary by Walter Block for CNBC
Biography and Article Archive at Mises.org.
Media Archive at Mises.org.
Defending the Undefendable

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Name	Block, Walter Edward
Alternative names
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Date of birth	21 August 1941
Place of birth	Brooklyn, New York
Date of death
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Aleister Crowley
200 px Aleister Crowley in ceremonial garb.
Born	Edward Alexander Crowley (1875-10-12)12 October 1875 Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England
Died	1 December 1947(1947-12-01) (aged 72) Hastings, East Sussex, England
Occupation	Occultist, poet, novelist.
Spouse	Rose Edith Kelly
Parents	Edward Crowley, Emily Bertha Crowley (neé Bishop)

Aleister Crowley (/ˈkroʊli/ KROH-lee; 12 October 1875–1 December 1947), born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, mystic, ceremonial magician, poet and mountaineer, who was responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. In his role as the founder of the Thelemite philosophy, he came to see himself as the prophet who was entrusted with informing humanity that it was entering the new Aeon of Horus in the early 20th century.

Born into a wealthy upper class family, as a young man he became an influential member of the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn after befriending the order's leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. Subsequently believing that he was being contacted by his Holy Guardian Angel, an entity known as Aiwass, while staying in Egypt in 1904, he "received" a text known as The Book of the Law from what he believed was a divine source, and around which he would come to develop his new philosophy of Thelema. He would go on to found his own occult society, the A∴A∴ and eventually rose to become a leader of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), before founding a religious commune in Cefalù known as the Abbey of Thelema, which he led from 1920 through till 1923. After abandoning the Abbey amid widespread opposition, Crowley returned to Britain, where he continued to promote Thelema until his death.

Crowley was also pansexual, a recreational drug experimenter and a social critic. In many of these roles he "was in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time", espousing a form of libertinism based upon the rule of "Do What Thou Wilt".^[1] Because of this, he gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, and was denounced in the popular press of the day as "the wickedest man in the world ."

Crowley has remained an influential figure and is widely thought of as the most influential occultist of all time. In 2002, a BBC poll described him as being the seventy-third greatest Briton of all time.^[2] References to him can be found in the works of numerous writers, musicians and filmmakers,^[3] and he has also been cited as a key influence on many later esoteric groups and individuals, including Kenneth Grant, Kenneth Anger, Jack Parsons, Gerald Gardner, Robert Anton Wilson and, to some degree, Austin Osman Spare.^[4]

1 Early life
2 Developing Thelema
3 Later life
- 3.1 After the abbey: 1923–1947
- 3.2 Death
4 Beliefs
5 Controversy
6 Writings
7 Legacy and influence
- 7.1 Occult
- 7.2 Popular culture
8 References
- 8.1 Footnotes
- 8.2 Bibliography
9 External links

Early life [link]

Childhood: 1875–1894 [link]

Aleister was born as Edward Alexander Crowley at 30 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, between 11 pm and midnight on 12 October 1875.^[5]^[6] His father, Edward Crowley (c.1830–1887), was trained as an engineer but, according to Aleister, never worked as one, instead owning shares in a lucrative family brewing business, Crowley's Alton Ales, which allowed him to retire before Aleister was born.^[7]^[8] His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop (1848–1917), drew roots from a Devonshire-Somerset family and was despised by her son, whom she described as "the Beast", a name that he revelled in.^[9]^[10] The couple had been married at Kensington Registry Office in London during November 1874.^[11]

The Crowley family were Christian; Aleister's father had been born a Quaker, but had converted to the Exclusive Brethren, a more conservative faction of a denomination known as the Plymouth Brethren. Upon marriage, Emily had also converted to the Exclusive Brethren. Aleister's father was particularly devout, spending his time as a travelling preacher for the sect and reading a chapter from the Bible to his wife and son after breakfast every day.^[12]^[13] Aged 8, Aleister was sent to H.T. Habershon's evangelical Christian boarding school in Hastings, and then to a preparatory school in Cambridge run by the Reverend Hendry d'Arcy Champney, whom Aleister considered a sadist.^[14]

On 5 March 1887, when Crowley was 11, his father died of tongue cancer. Aleister would describe this as a turning point in his life,^[15]^[16] and he always maintained some admiration for his father, describing him as "his hero and his friend".^[17] Inheriting his father's wealth, he was subsequently sent to Ebor School in Cambridge, a private Plymouth Brethren school, but was expelled for misbehaviour.^[18] Following this he attended Malvern College and then Tonbridge School, both of which he despised and soon left after only a few terms, instead beginning studies at Eastbourne College.^[19]^[20]^[21] He became increasingly sceptical about Christianity, pointing out logical inconsistencies in the Bible to his religious teachers,^[22]^[23] and went against the Christian morality of his upbringing, for instance embracing sex both with girls whom he met and by visiting female prostitutes, including one from whom he contracted gonorrhea.^[24]^[25]

Cambridge University: 1895–1897 [link]

In 1895 Crowley, who soon adopted the new name of Aleister over his birth name of Edward, began a three year course at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was entered for the Moral Science Tripos studying philosophy, but with approval from his personal tutor he switched to English literature, which was not then a part of the curriculum offered.^[26]^[27]^[28] Crowley largely spent his time at university engaged in his pastimes, one of which was mountaineering; he went on holiday to the Alps to do so every year from 1894 to 1898, and various other mountaineers who knew him at this time recognised him as "a promising climber, although somewhat erratic".^[29] Another of his hobbies was writing poetry, which he had been doing since the age of 10, and in 1898 he privately published one hundred copies of one of his poems, Aceldama, but it was not a particular success.^[30]

"For many years I had loathed being called Alick, partly because of the unpleasant sound and sight of the word, partly because it was the name by which my mother called me. Edward did not seem to suit me and the diminutives Ted or Ned were even less appropriate. Alexander was too long and Sandy suggested tow hair and freckles. 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 and Aleister is the Gaelic form of Alexander. To adopt it would satisfy my romantic ideals."

Aleister Crowley, on his name change.^[31]

That same year he published a string of other poems, the most notable of which was White Stains, a piece of erotica that had to be printed abroad as a safety measure in case it caused trouble with the British authorities.^[32] Part of this work, according to biographer Lawrence Sutin, "deserves a place in any wide-ranging anthology of gay poetry."^[33] A third hobby of his was the game of chess, and he joined the university's chess club, where, he later stated, he beat the president in his first year and practised two hours a day towards becoming a champion, but he eventually gave this idea up.^[34]

It was while on a winter holiday in Sweden in December 1896 that he had his first significant mystical experience.^[35]^[36] Several later biographers, including Lawrence Sutin and Tobias Churton, believed that this was the result of Crowley's first homosexual experience.^[36]^[37] Following this experience, Crowley began to read up on the subject of occultism and mysticism, and by the next year he had begun reading books by alchemists and magicians.^[38]

At university, he also maintained a vigorous sex life, which was largely conducted with prostitutes and girls he picked up at local pubs and cigar shops, but eventually he took part in same-sex activities including receptive anal sex.^[39] This was despite the fact that homosexual acts were illegal and punishable with imprisonment at that time. In 1897, Crowley met a man named Herbert Charles Pollitt, the president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, and the two entered into a relationship but broke up because Pollitt did not share Crowley's increasing interest in the esoteric.^[40]^[41] Crowley himself later stated that "I told him frankly that I had given my life to religion and that he did not fit into the scheme. I see now how imbecile I was, how hideously wrong and weak it is to reject any part of one's personality."^[42] In October a brief illness triggered considerations of mortality and "the futility of all human endeavour," or at least the futility of the diplomatic career that Crowley had previously considered,^[43] and instead, he decided to devote his life to the occult. In 1897 he left Cambridge, not having taken any degree at all despite a "first class" showing in his spring 1897 exams and consistent "second class honours" results before that.^[44] That summer, he then travelled to St Petersburg in Russia; later biographers Richard Spence and Tobias Churton suggested that Crowley had done so under the employ of the British secret service, but this remains inconclusive.^[45]^[46]

The Golden Dawn: 1898–1899 [link]

In 1898, Crowley was staying in Zermatt, Switzerland, where he met the chemist Julian L. Baker, and the two began talking about their common interest in alchemy. Upon their return to England, Baker introduced Crowley to George Cecil Jones, a member of the occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which had been founded in 1888. Crowley was subsequently initiated into the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898 by the group's leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854–1918). The ceremony itself took place at Mark Masons Hall in London, where Crowley accepted his motto and magical name of "Frater Perdurabo", a Latin term meaning "I shall endure to the end."^[47]^[48]

The Rosy Cross of the Golden Dawn, the organisation that first introduced Crowley to the world of ceremonial magic.

Crowley moved from the elegant accommodation at the Hotel Cecil to his own luxury flat at 67–69 Chancery Lane. He soon invited a Golden Dawn associate, Allan Bennett (1872–1923), to live with him, and Bennett became his personal tutor, teaching him more about ceremonial magic and the ritual usage of drugs.^[49] In 1900, Bennett left London for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) to study Buddhism,^[50] while in 1899 Crowley acquired Boleskine House in Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. He subsequently developed a love of Scottish culture, describing himself as the "Laird of Boleskine" and took to wearing traditional highland dress, even during visits back to London.^[51]

However, a schism had developed in the Golden Dawn, with MacGregor Mathers, the organisation's leader, being ousted by a group of members who were unhappy with his autocratic rule. Crowley had previously approached this group of rebels, asking to be initiated into the further orders of the Golden Dawn, but they had declined him. Unfazed, he went directly to Mathers, who still held the post of chief and who agreed to initiate him into the Second Order.^[52] Now loyal to Mathers, Crowley (with the help of his then mistress and fellow initiate Elaine Simpson) attempted to help crush the rebellion and unsuccessfully tried to seize a London temple space known as the Vault of Rosenkreutz from the rebels.^[53]

Crowley had also developed personal feuds with some of the Golden Dawn's members; he disliked the poet W.B. Yeats, who had been one of the rebels, because Yeats had not been particularly favourable towards one of his own poems, Jephthat.^[54] He also disliked Arthur Edward Waite, who would rouse the anger of his fellows at the Golden Dawn with his pedantry.^[55] Crowley voiced the view that Waite was a pretentious bore through searing critiques of Waite's writings and editorials of other authors' writings. In his periodical The Equinox, Crowley titled one diatribe, "Wisdom While You Waite", and his mock-obituary on the passing of Waite bore the title "Dead Waite".^[56]

Mexico, India and Paris: 1900–1903 [link]

In 1900, Crowley travelled to Mexico via the United States on a whim, taking a local woman as his mistress, and with his good friend Oscar Eckenstein (1859–1921) proceeded to climb several mountains, including Iztaccihuatl, Popocatepetl and even Colima, the latter of which they had to abandon owing to a volcanic eruption.^[57] During this period, Eckenstein revealed mystical leanings of his own and told Crowley that he needed to improve the control of his mind, recommending the Indian practice of raja yoga in order to do so. Crowley had continued his magical experimentation on his own after leaving Mathers and the Golden Dawn, and his writings suggest that he developed the magical word Abrahadabra during this time.^[58]

Leaving Mexico, a country that he would always remain fond of, Crowley visited San Francisco, Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong and Ceylon, where he met up with Allan Bennett and devoted himself further to yoga, from which he claimed to have achieved the spiritual state of dhyana. It was during this visit that Bennett decided to become a Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, travelling to Burma, while Crowley went on to India, studying various Hindu practices.^[59] In 1902, he was joined in India by Eckenstein and several other mountaineers; Guy Knowles, H. Pfannl, V. Wesseley, and Dr Jules Jacot-Guillarmod. Together the Eckenstein-Crowley expedition attempted to climb K2. On the journey, Crowley was afflicted with influenza, malaria, and snow blindness, while other expedition members were similarly struck with illness. They reached an altitude of 20,000 feet (6,100 m) before deciding to turn back.^[60]

In 1903 Crowley wed Rose Edith Kelly, the sister of his friend, the painter Gerald Festus Kelly, in a "marriage of convenience". However, soon after their marriage, Crowley actually fell in love with her and set about to successfully prove his affections.^[61] Gerald Kelly was a good friend of W. Somerset Maugham, who after briefly meeting Crowley would later use him as a model for the protagonist of his novel The Magician, published 1908.^[62]^[63]

Developing Thelema [link]

[edit] Egypt and The Book of the Law: 1904

In 1904, Crowley and his new wife Rose travelled to Egypt using the pseudonym of Prince and Princess Chioa Khan, titles which Crowley claimed had been bestowed upon him by an eastern potentate.^[64] According to Crowley's own account, Rose, who was pregnant, began to experience visions while in the country, regularly informing him that "they are waiting for you", but not providing him with any further information as to who "they" were. It was on 18 March, after Crowley sought the aid of the Egyptian god Thoth in a magical rite, that she actually revealed who "they" were – the ancient Egyptian god Horus and his alleged messenger. She then led him to a nearby museum in Cairo where she showed him a seventh century BCE mortuary stele known as the Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu (it later came to be revered in Thelema as the "Stele of Revealing"); Crowley was astounded for the exhibit's number was 666, the number of the beast in Christian belief.^[65] Crowley took this all to be a sign from a divine entity and on 20 March began performing ritual invocations of the god Horus in his rented room. It was after this invocation that Rose, or as he now referred to her, Ouarda the Seeress, informed him that "the Equinox of the Gods had come".^[66]

"Had! The manifestation of Nuit.
The unveiling of the company of heaven.
Every man and woman is a star.
Every number is infinite; there is no difference.
Help me, o warrior lord of Thebes, in my unveiling before the Children of men!"

The opening lines of The Book of the Law.

It was on 8 April, when the couple were still staying in Cairo, that Crowley first heard a disembodied voice talking to him, claiming that it was coming from a being known as Aiwass, the true nature of whom Crowley never understood. Crowley's disciple and later secretary Israel Regardie believed that this voice came from Crowley's subconscious, but opinions among Thelemites differ widely.^[67] Aiwass claimed to be a messenger from the god Horus, who was also referred to by him as Hoor-Paar-Kraat. Crowley wrote down everything the voice told him over the course of the next three days, and subsequently titled it Liber AL vel Legis or The Book of the Law.^[68]^[69] The god's commands explained that a new Aeon for mankind had begun, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. As a supreme moral law, it declared "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law", and that people should learn to live in tune with their "True Will". Although this event would prove to be a cornerstone in Crowley's life, being the origin of the philosophy of Thelema, at the time he was unsure what to think about the whole situation. He was "dumbfounded about what to do with The Book of the Law" and eventually decided to ignore the instructions that it commanded him to perform, which included taking the Stele of Revealing from the museum, fortifying his own island and translating the Book into all the world's languages. Instead he simply sent typescripts of the work to several occultists whom he knew, and then "put aside the book with relief."^[70]

Kangchenjunga and China: 1905–1906 [link]

Returning to Boleskine, Crowley came to believe, for reasons that are documented in Crowley's diaries, that his former friend Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers had become so jealous of his progression as a ceremonial magician that he had begun using magic against him, and the relationship between the two broke down.^[71] On 28 July 1905, Rose gave birth to Crowley's first child, a daughter, whom he named Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith, although she would commonly be referred to simply by her last name.^[72] He also founded a publishing company, naming it the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth in parody of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and through this released more of his own poetry, including The Sword of Song.^[73] While his poetry often received strong reviews (either positive or negative), it never sold well, and attempting to gain more publicity, he issued a reward of £100 for whomever could write the best essay on the topic of his work. The winner of this would prove to be J.F.C. Fuller (1878–1966), a British Army officer and military historian, whose essay, The Star in the West, heralded Crowley's poetry as some of the greatest ever written.^[74]

The mountain of Kangchenjunga, as seen from Darjeeling.

Crowley decided to climb another of the world's greatest mountains, and for this chose Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, widely thought of as "the most treacherous mountain in the world" by climbers at the time. Assembling a team consisting of Dr Jacot-Guillarmod, a veteran of the K2 climb, as well as several other continental Europeans including Charles Adolphe Reymond, Alexis Pache and Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi, the group travelled to British India to undertake the task. Throughout the expedition, there was much argument between Crowley and the others who felt that he was reckless. They eventually mutinied against Crowley's control, with the other climbers heading back down the mountain as nightfall approached despite Crowley's warnings that it was too dangerous. Crowley was proved right as Pache and several porters were subsequently killed in an accident.^[75]

Returning from this expedition, he met up with Rose and Lilith in Kolkata before being forced to leave India after shooting dead a native who had tried to mug him.^[76] Travelling to China, Crowley soon fell down a forty foot cliff; finding himself unscathed, he believed that he was being protected for some prophetic purpose, and underwent a religious experience that he felt bestowed on him the rank of Exempt Adept, the highest grade of the Second Order of the Golden Dawn. Devoting himself fully to spiritual and magical work, he began studying the Goetia, and recited the grimoire's preliminary invocation daily in order to try to get in contact with his Holy Guardian Angel. The Crowleys spent the next few months travelling around China, but it was decided that in March 1906, they would return to Britain.^[77]

Rose took Lilith with her and set off for Europe via India, while Crowley himself decided to travel back via the United States, where he hoped he would be able to get support for a second expedition to Kangchenjunga. Before departing, Crowley visited his friend Elaine Simpson in Shanghai, a fellow occultist who had been his colleague in the Golden Dawn. She was fascinated by The Book of the Law and the prophetic message that it contained, something he had been ignoring, and together they performed a ritual to invoke Aiwass once more. The ritual proved successful, and Aiwass provided Crowley with the message that he should "Return to Egypt, with same surroundings. There I will give thee signs." Nonetheless, Crowley ignored the advice of Aiwass, instead heading off to America. Stopping off at the Japanese port of Kobe along the way, Crowley had a vision which he interpreted as meaning that the great spiritual beings known as the Secret Chiefs had admitted him into the Third Order of the Golden Dawn. Subsequently arriving in America, he found no support for his proposed mountaineering expedition, and so set sail to return to Britain, arriving there in June 1906.^[78]

The A∴A∴ and the Holy Books of Thelema: 1907–1909 [link]

Upon arrival at Britain, Crowley learned that his daughter Lilith had died of typhoid in Rangoon and that his wife had begun suffering from alcoholism. Heartbroken, his health began to suffer, and he underwent a series of surgical operations. He began having a short-lived sexual affair with Vera "Lola" Stepp, an actress to whom he would devote some of his poetry, while Rose gave birth to his second daughter, Lola Zaza,^[79] for whom Crowley devised a special ritual of thanksgiving.^[80]

"Into my loneliness comes --
The sound of a flute in dim groves that haunt the uttermost hills.
Even from the brave river they reach to the edge of the wilderness.
And I behold Pan."

The opening lines of of Liber VII (1907), the first of the Holy Books of Thelema to be revealed to Crowley after The Book of the Law.^[81]

Believing that he was now amongst the highest level of spiritual adepts, Crowley began to think about founding his own magical society. In this he was supported by his friend and fellow occultist George Cecil Jones. The pair began to practice rituals together at Jones' home in Coulsdon, and for the autumn equinox on 22 September 1907 developed a new ceremony based upon the Golden Dawn initiatory rite, for which Crowley composed a verse liturgy entitled "Liber 671", and later dubbed "Liber Pyramidos". The pair repeated this ritual again on 9 October, when they had made some alterations to it. In Crowley's eyes, this ritual would prove to be one of the "greatest events of his career" during which he "attained the knowledge and conversation of his holy guardian angel" and "entered the trance of samadhi, union with godhead." He therefore finally succeeded with the aim of his Abramelin operation – as set out in the grimoire known as The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage – which he had been working on for months.^[82]^[83] Because of his spiritual attainment Crowley came to believe that he could finally enter into conversation with his Holy Guardian Angel, the entity known as Aiwass, and as a result of this, on 30 October 1907 penned "Liber VII", a text that he believed to have been dictated to him by Aiwass through automatic writing. Following The Book of the Law, which had been received in 1904, "Liber VII" would prove to be the second book in a series of Holy Books of Thelema. Over the next few days, he also received a further Holy Book, "Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente".^[84]

Soon, Crowley, Jones and J.F.C. Fuller decided to found a new magical order as a successor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which would be known as the A∴A∴, the Argenteum Astrum or the Silver Star.^[85] Following the order's foundation, Crowley continued to write down more received Thelemic Holy Books during the last two months of the year, including "Liber LXVI", "Liber Arcanorum", "Liber Porta Lucis, Sub Figura X", "Liber Tau", "Liber Trigrammaton" and "Liber DCCCXIII vel Ararita".^[86] Meanwhile, effectively separated from his wife Rose by this point, Crowley entered into a romantic and sexual affair with Ada Leverson (1862–1933), an author and friend of Oscar Wilde.^[87] This affair was brief, and in February 1908, Crowley was reunited with his wife as she had overcome her alcoholism, and together the couple travelled to Eastbourne for a holiday. Rose however relapsed and Crowley, who disliked her when drunk, fled to Paris.^[88] In 1909, when doctors stated that Rose required institutionalisation for her alcoholism, Crowley finally decided that it was time to get a divorce, but because he didn't want the proceedings to reflect badly upon her, he agreed that she could divorce him for infidelity, thereby meaning that any bad appearances would instead be reflected upon him, and he remained her friend following the proceedings.^[89]

Trying to gain more members for his A∴A∴, Crowley decided to begin publishing a biannual journal, The Equinox, which was billed as "The Review of Scientific Illuminism". Starting with a first issue in 1909, The Equinox contained pieces by Crowley, Fuller and a young poet Crowley had met in 1907 named Victor Neuburg.^[90] Soon other occultists had joined the order, including solicitor Richard Noel Warren, artist Austin Osman Spare, Horace Sheridan-Bickers, author George Raffalovich, Francis Henry Everard Joseph Fielding, engineer Herbert Edward Inman, Kenneth Ward and Charles Stansfeld Jones.^[91]

Victor Neuburg and Algeria: 1910–1911 [link]

In 1907, Crowley had been introduced to a Jewish Londoner named Victor Neuburg, a poet who was interested in the esoteric.^[92]

In Paris during October 1908, he again produced Samadhi by the use of ritual and this time did so without hashish. He published an account of this success in order to show that his method worked and that one could achieve great mystical results without living as a hermit. On 30 December 1908, Aleister Crowley using the pseudonym Oliver Haddo made accusations of plagiarism against Somerset Maugham, author of the novel The Magician. Crowley's article appeared in Vanity Fair, edited then by Frank Harris who admired Crowley and who would later write the famous work My Life and Loves. Admittedly, Maugham did model the character of his magician Oliver Haddo after Crowley himself and Crowley confessed Maugham acquiesced privately on the question of plagiarism.^[93]

In 1909, Crowley and Rose divorced, largely due to her alcoholism. She was subsequently admitted to an asylum suffering from alcoholic dementia. Meanwhile, Crowley soon moved on and took a woman named Leila Waddell as his lover or "Scarlet Woman".^[94] In 1910, Crowley performed his series of dramatic rites, the Rites of Eleusis, with A∴A∴ members Leila Waddell (Laylah) and Victor Benjamin Neuburg.

Ordo Templi Orientis: 1912–1913 [link]

Main article: Ordo Templi Orientis

According to Crowley, Theodor Reuss called on him in 1912 to accuse him of publishing O.T.O. secrets, which Crowley dismissed on the grounds of having never attained the grade in which these secrets were given (IXth Degree). Reuss opened up Crowley's latest book, The Book of Lies, and showed Crowley the passage. This sparked a long conversation which led to Crowley assuming the Xth Degree of O.T.O. and becoming Grand Master of the English-speaking section of O.T.O. called Mysteria Mystica Maxima.^[95]

Crowley would eventually introduce the practice of male homosexual sex magick into O.T.O. as one of the highest degrees of the Order for he believed it to be the most powerful formula.^[96] Crowley placed the new degree above the Tenth Degree – not to be confused with any title in his own Order – and numbered it the Eleventh Degree.^[97] There was a protest from some members of O.T.O. in Germany and the rest of continental Europe that occasioned a persistent rift with Crowley.^[98]

In March 1913, producer Crowley introduced Leila Waddell in The Ragged Ragtime Girls follies review at the Old Tivoli in London where it enjoyed a brief run. In July 1913, the production enjoyed a six-week run in Moscow where Crowley met a young Hungarian girl named Anny Ringler. Crowley went on to practice sado-masochistic sex with Ringler. According to Crowley, "... She had passed beyond the region where pleasure had meaning for her. She could only feel through pain, and my own means of making her happy was to inflict physical cruelties as she directed. The kind of relation was altogether new to me; and it was because of this, intensified as it was by the environment of the self-torturing soul of Russia, that I became inspired to create by the next six weeks." While in Moscow, Crowley would see Anny for an hour and then he would write poetry. During this summer in Moscow, Crowley would write two of his most memorable works, the Hymn to Pan and the Gnostic Mass or Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae. The Hymn to Pan would be read at his funeral thirty four years later. Certain Thelemites regularly perform the Gnostic Mass to this day. It symbolises the act of sex as a magical or religious ritual.^[99]

Upon returning to London in the autumn of 1913, Crowley published the tenth and final number of volume one of The Equinox. In December 1913 in Paris, Crowley would engage Victor Benjamin Neuburg in The Paris Working. The first ritual took place on New Year's Eve 1914. In a period of seven weeks, Crowley and Neuburg performed a total of twenty four rituals which they recorded in the 'holy' or partially holy book formally entitled Opus Lutetianum.^[100] Around eight months later Neuburg had a nervous breakdown. Afterward, Crowley and Neuburg would never see each other again.^[101]

United States: 1914–1918 [link]

Aleister Crowley’s rendition of the Unicursal Hexagram.

During his time in the U.S., Crowley practised the task of a Magister Templi in the A∴A∴ as he conceived it, namely interpreting every phenomenon as a particular dealing of "God" with his soul.^[102] He began to see various women he met as officers in his ongoing initiation, associating them with priests wearing animal masks in Egyptian ritual.^[103] A meditation during his relationship with one of these women, the poet Jeanne Robert Foster, led him to claim the title of Magus, also referring to the system of the A∴A∴.

In June 1915, Crowley met Jeanne Robert Foster in the company of her friend Hellen Hollis, a journalist; Crowley would have affairs with both women. Foster was a famous New York fashion model, journalist, editor, poet and married. Crowley's plan with Foster was to produce his first son; but in spite of a series of magical operations she did not get pregnant. By the end of 1915, the affair would be over.^[104] During a trip to Vancouver in 1915, Crowley met Wilfred Smith, Frater 132 of the Vancouver Lodge of O.T.O., and in 1930 granted him permission to establish Agape Lodge in Southern California.^[105] During the same trip in 1915, Crowley stopped over at Parke Davis in Detroit for some mescaline.^[106]

In early 1916, Crowley had an illicit liaison with Alice Richardson, the wife of Ananda Coomaraswamy, one of the greatest art historians of the day. On the stage, Richardson was known as Ratan Devi, mezzo-soprano interpreter of East Indian music. Richardson became pregnant but on a voyage back to England, in mid-1916, she had a miscarriage. Just before his affair with Ratan Devi, Crowley was practising sex magick with Gerda Maria von Kothek, a German prostitute.^[107]

Two periods of magical experimentation followed. In June 1916, he began the first of these at the New Hampshire cottage of Evangeline Adams, having ghostwritten most of her two books on astrology.^[108] His diaries at first show discontent at the gap between his view of the grade of Magus and his view of himself: "It is no good making up my mind to do anything material; for I have no means. But this would vanish if I could make up my mind." Despite his objections to sacrificing a living animal, he resolved to crucify a frog as part of a rehearsal of the life of Jesus in the Gospels (afterward declaring it his willing familiar), "with the idea ... that some supreme violation of all the laws of my being would break down my Karma or dissolve the spell that seems to bind me."^[109] Slightly more than a month later, having taken ether (ethyl oxide), he had a vision of the universe from a modern scientific cosmology that he frequently referred to in later writings.^[110]

Crowley began another period of magical work on an island in the Hudson River after buying large amounts of red paint instead of food. Having painted "Do what thou wilt" on the cliffs at both sides of the island, he received gifts from curious visitors. Here at the island he had visions of seeming past lives, though he refused to endorse any theory of what they meant beyond linking them to his unconscious. Towards the end of his stay, he had a shocking experience he linked to "the Chinese wisdom" which made even Thelema appear insignificant.^[111] Nevertheless, he continued in his work. Before leaving the country he formed a sexual and magical relationship with Leah Hirsig, whom he had met earlier, and with her help began painting canvases with more creativity and passion.^[112]

Richard B. Spence writes in his 2008 book Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult that Crowley could have been a lifelong agent for British Intelligence. While this may have already been the case during his many travels to Tsarist Russia, Switzerland, Asia, Mexico and North Africa that had started in his student days, he could have been involved with this line of work during his life in America during the First World War, under a cover of being a German propaganda agent and a supporter of Irish independence. Crowley's mission might have been to gather information about the German intelligence network, the Irish independent activists and produce aberrant propaganda, aiming at compromising the German and Irish ideals. As an agent provocateur he could have played some role in provoking the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, thereby bringing the United States closer to active involvement in the war alongside the Allies.^[113] He also used German magazines The Fatherland and The International as outlets for his other writings. The question of whether Crowley was a spy has always been subject to debate, but Spence uncovered a document from the US Army's old Military Intelligence Division supporting Crowley's own claim to having been a spy:

Aleister Crowley was an employee of the British Government ... in this country on official business of which the British Consul, New York City has full cognizance.^[114]

Abbey of Thelema: 1920–1923 [link]

Abbey of Thelema

Main article: Abbey of Thelema

Soon after moving from West 9th St. in Greenwich Village, New York City, to Palermo, Sicily with their newborn daughter Anne Leah (nicknamed Poupée, born February 1920, died in a hospital in Palermo 14 October 1920), Crowley, along with Leah Hirsig, founded the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù (Palermo) on 14 April 1920, the day the lease for the villa Santa Barbara was signed by Sir Alastor de Kerval (Crowley) and Contessa Lea Harcourt (Leah Hirsig). The Crowleys arrived in Cefalu on 1 April 1920.^[115] During their stay at the abbey Hirsig was known as Soror Alostrael, Crowley's Scarlet Woman, the name Crowley used for his female sex magick practitioners in reference to the consort of the Beast of the Apocalypse whose number is 666.^[116] The name of the abbey was borrowed from Rabelais's epic Gargantua,^[117] where the "Abbey of Thélème" is described as a sort of anti-monastery where the lives of the inhabitants were "spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure."^[118] This idealistic utopia was to be the model of Crowley's commune, while also being a type of magical school, giving it the designation "Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum," The College of the Holy Spirit. The general programme was in line with the A∴A∴ course of training, and included daily adorations to the Sun, a study of Crowley's writings, regular yogic and ritual practices (which were to be recorded), as well as general domestic labour. The object, naturally, was for students to devote themselves to the Great Work of discovering and manifesting their True Wills. Two women, Hirsig and Shumway (her magical name was Sister Cypris after Aphrodite), were both carrying Crowley's seed. Hirsig had a two-year old son named Hansi and Shumway had a three-year old boy named Howard; they were not Crowley's but he nicknamed them Dionysus and Hermes respectively. After Poupée died, Hirsig had a miscarriage but Shumway gave birth to a daughter, Astarte Lulu Panthea. Hirsig suspected Shumway's Black Magic foul play and what Crowley found when reading Shumway's magical diary (everybody had to keep one while at the abbey for reasons explained in Liber E) appalled him. Shumway was banished from the abbey and the Beast lamented the death of his children. However, Shumway was soon back in the abbey again to take care of her offspring.^[119]

Mussolini's Fascist government expelled Crowley from the country at the end of April 1923.

Later life [link]

After the abbey: 1923–1947 [link]

In February 1924, Crowley visited Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. He did not meet the founder on that occasion, but called Gurdjieff a "tip-top man" in his diary.^[120] Crowley privately criticised some of the Institute's practices and teachings, but doubted that what he heard from disciple Pindar reflected the master's true position. Some claim that on a later visit he met Gurdjieff—who firmly repudiated Crowley.^[121] Biographer Sutin expresses scepticism,^[122] and Gurdjieff's student C.S. Nott tells a different version. Nott perceives Crowley as a black or at least ignorant magician and says his teacher "kept a sharp watch" on the visitor, but mentions no open confrontation.^[123]

On 16 August 1929, Crowley married Maria de Miramar, a Nicaraguan, while in Leipzig. They separated by 1930, but were never divorced.^[124] In July 1931, de Miramar was admitted to the Colney Hatch Mental Hospital in New Southgate where she remained until her death thirty years later.^[125]

In September 1930, Crowley was in Lisbon to meet the poet Fernando Pessoa, who translated his poem "Hymn To Pan" into Portuguese. With the assistance of Pessoa Crowley faked his own death at a notorious rock formation on the shore called Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). Crowley then left the country and enjoyed the newspaper reports of his death, and reappeared three weeks later at an exhibition in Berlin.^[126]

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.

—Mr. Justice Swift

Patricia "Deirdre" MacAlpine approached Crowley on the day of the verdict and offered to bear him a child, whom he named Aleister Atatürk. She sought no mystical or religious role in Crowley's life and rarely saw him after the birth, "an arrangement that suited them both."^[127]

In March 1939, Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley met publicly for the first time. Fortune had already used Crowley as a model for the black magician Hugo Astley in her 1935 novel The Winged Bull.^[128]

During the Second World War, future James Bond author Ian Fleming (then a Navy intelligence officer) along with other colleagues proposed a disinformation plot in which Crowley would have helped an MI5 agent supply Nazi official Rudolf Hess with faked horoscopes. They could then pass along false information about an alleged pro-German circle in Britain. The government abandoned this plan when Hess flew to Scotland, crashing his plane on the moors near Eaglesham, and was captured. Fleming then suggested using Crowley as an interrogator to determine the influence of astrology on other Nazi leaders, but his superiors rejected this plan. At some point, Fleming also suggested that Britain could use Enochian as a code in order to plant evidence.^[129]

On 21 March 1944, Crowley undertook what he considered his crowning achievement, the publication of The Book of Thoth, "strictly limited to 200 numbered and signed copies bound in Morocco leather and printed on pre-wartime paper". Crowley sold ₤1,500 worth of the edition in less than three months.^[130]

In April 1944, Crowley moved from 93 Jermyn St. to Bell Inn at Aston Clinton, Bucks. Daphne Harris was the landlady.^[131]

Death [link]

In January 1945, Crowley moved to Netherwood, a Hastings boarding house where in the first three months he was visited twice by Dion Fortune; she died of leukaemia in January 1946. On 14 March 1945, in a letter Fortune wrote to Crowley, she declares: "... The acknowledgement I made in the introduction of The Mystical Qabalah of my indebtness to your work, which seemed to me to be no more than common literary honesty, has been used as a rod for my back by people who look on you as Antichrist."^[132]

Crowley died at Netherwood on 1 December 1947 at the age of 72. According to one biographer the cause of death was a respiratory infection.^[133] He had become addicted to heroin after being prescribed morphine for his asthma and bronchitis many years earlier.^[134] He and his last doctor died within 24 hours of each other; newspapers would claim, in differing accounts, that Dr. Thomson had refused to continue his opiate prescription and that Crowley had put a curse on him.^[135]

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." who worked at the house, in which Crowley dies pacing in his living room.^[133] 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, who visited Crowley with their son and her three other children, 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 excerpts from Crowley's works, among them his poem Hymn to Pan, and newspapers referred to the service as a Black Mass. The Brighton council subsequently resolved to take all the necessary steps to prevent such an incident from occurring again.^[133]

Beliefs [link]

Thelema [link]

Thelema
Category:Thelema

Core topics

The Book of the Law
Aleister Crowley
True Will · 93
Magick

Mysticism

Thelemic mysticism
The Great Work
Holy Guardian Angel
The Gnostic Mass

Thelemic texts

Works of Crowley
The Holy Books
Thelemite texts

Organizations

A∴A∴ · EGC · OTO
OSOGD · TO

Deities

Nuit · Hadit · Horus
Babalon · Chaos
Baphomet · Choronzon
Ankh-f-n-khonsu
Aiwass · Ma'at

Other topics

Stele of Revealing
Abrahadabra
Unicursal Hexagram
Abramelin oil
Thoth tarot deck

Main articles: Thelema and Thelemic mysticism

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Thelema is the mystical cosmology Crowley announced in 1904 and expanded upon for the remainder of his life. The diversity of his writings illustrate his difficulty in classifying Thelema from any one vantage. It can be considered a form of magical philosophy, religious traditionalism, humanistic positivism, and/or an elitist meritocracy.

The chief precept of Thelema, derived from the works of François Rabelais, is the sovereignty of 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".

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.

Freemasonry [link]

He had also claimed to be a Freemason,^[136] but the organisations he joined are not considered regular by Masonic bodies in the Anglo-American tradition.^[137]

Crowley claimed the following Masonic degrees:

33° of the Scottish Rite in Mexico from Don Jesus Medina.

“Don Jesus Medina, a descendant of the great duke of Armada fame, and one of the highest chiefs of Scottish Rite free-masonry. My cabbalistic knowledge being already profound by current standards, he thought me worthy of the highest initiation in his power to confer; special powers were obtained in view of my limited sojourn, and I was pushed rapidly through and admitted to the thirty-third and last degree before I left the country.” The Confessions of Aleister Crowley pp. 202–203.

3° In France by the Anglo-Saxon Lodge No. 343, a Lodge chartered in 1899 by the Grande Loge de France, a body not at the time recognised by the United Grand Lodge of England, on 29 June 1904.

33° of the irregular 'Cerneau' Scottish Rite from John Yarker

90°/95° of the Rite of Memphis/Misraim from John Yarker.

The United Grand Lodge of England, whose recognition is generally considered the standard for Masonic validity, did not recognise any of the above bodies as being true Freemasonry, thus Crowley never was an “official” Freemason within the common understanding of the term.

Crowley quickly realized that the post-Yarker era meant change. He was not rebellious by reflex, at least where old British institutions were concerned. He undoubtedly believed O.T.O. had authority from Yarker to work the Ancient and Primitive Rite's equivalent to the Craft degrees in England, but once made aware of the issue of regularity when having his own French Masonic credentials declined, he was not defiant and on his own made changes to the O.T.O. to avoid conflict. He inserted notices into the last number of The Equinox to the effect that the O.T.O. did not infringe upon the just privileges of the Grand Lodge Of England

During WWI Crowley worked slightly revised English Craft rituals in America, but despite the absence of a central Grand Lodge, he met with objections from masonic authorities. He then rewrote the O.T.O. rituals for I° – III° so that they no longer resembled Craft masonry degrees in language, theme or intent.^[138]

Science and magic [link]

Crowley endeavoured to use the scientific method to study what people at the time called spiritual experiences, making "The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion" the catchphrase of his magazine The Equinox. By this he meant that religious experiences should not be taken at face value, but critiqued and experimented with in order to arrive at their underlying mystical or neurological meaning.

In this connection there was also the point that I was anxious to prove that spiritual progress did not depend on religious or moral codes, but was like any other science. Magick would yield its secrets to the infidel and the libertine, just as one does not have to be a churchwarden in order to discover a new kind of orchid. There are, of course, certain virtues necessary to the Magician; but they are of the same order as those which make a successful chemist.^[139]

He frequently expressed views about sex that were radical for his time, and published numerous poems and tracts combining religious themes with sexual imagery both heterosexual and homosexual, as well as pederastic. One of his most notorious poetry collections, titled "White Stains" (1898), was published in Amsterdam in 1898 and dealt specifically with sexually explicit subject matter. However, most of the hundred copies printed for the initial release were later seized and destroyed by British customs.^[140]

Crowley's magical and initiatory system has amongst its innermost reaches a set of teachings on sex magick. Sex magick is the use of the sex act—or the energies, passions or arousal states it evokes—as a point upon which to focus the will or magical desire for effects in the non-sexual world. In the view of Allen Greenfield,^[141] Crowley was inspired by Paschal Beverly Randolph, an American Abolitionist, Spiritualist medium, and author of the mid-19th century who wrote (in Eulis!, 1874) of using the "nuptive moment" (orgasm) as the time to make a "prayer" for events to occur.

Crowley often introduced new terminology for spiritual and magickal practices and theory. In The Book of the Law and The Vision and the Voice, the Aramaic magickal formula Abracadabra was changed to Abrahadabra, which he called the new formula of the Aeon. He also famously spelled magic in the archaic manner, as magick, to differentiate "the true science of the Magi from all its counterfeits."^[142]

He urged his students to learn to control their own mental and behavioural habits, to the point of switching political views and personalities at will. For control of speech (symbolised as the unicorn) he recommended to choose a commonly used word, letter, or pronouns and adjectives of the first person (such as the word "I"), and avoid using it for a week or more. Should they say the word he instructed them to cut themselves with a blade on each occasion to serve as warning or reminder. Later the student could move on to the "Horse" of action and the "Ox" of thought.^[143] (These symbols derive from the cabala of Crowley's book 777.) Crowley has also been labelled by some anthropologists as a practitioner of neoshamanism and revivalist of shamanistic philosophies in the early 20th century.^[144]

Controversy [link]

Crowley enjoyed being a figure of controversy and frequently deliberately provoked it among his peers and in the media. Author and Crowley expert Lon Milo Duquette wrote in his 1993 work The Magick of Aleister Crowley that:

"Crowley clothed many of his teachings in the thin veil of sensational titillation. By doing so he assured himself that one, his works would only be appreciated by the few individuals capable of doing so, and two, his works would continue to generate interest and be published by and for the benefit of both his admirers and his enemies long after death. He did not—I repeat not—perform or advocate human sacrifice. He was often guilty, however, of the crime of poor judgment. Like all of us, Crowley had many flaws and shortcomings. The greatest of those, in my opinion, was his inability to understand that everyone else in the world was not as educated and clever as he. It is clear, even in his earliest works, he often took fiendish delight in terrifying those who were either too lazy, too bigoted, or too slow-witted to understand him."^[145]

File:Leila Waddell Headshot.jpg

Leila Waddell (Laylah), Crowley's muse during the writing of The Book of Lies

In this vein many of Crowley's more audacious and outright shocking writings were often thinly veiled attempts to communicate methods of sexual magick, often using words like "blood", "death" and "kill" to replace "semen", "ecstasy" and "ejaculation" in the yet puritanical sexual environment of late 19th/early 20th century England. Take for instance the highly repeated quote from his thickly veiled Book Four: "It would be unwise to condemn as irrational the practice of devouring the heart and liver of an adversary while yet warm. For the highest spiritual working one must choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force; a male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory."^[146] Author Robert Anton Wilson, in his 1977 The Final Secret of the Illuminati (aka Cosmic Trigger Volume One), interpreted the child as a reference to genes in sperm. Crowley added in a footnote to the text on sacrifice, "the intelligence and innocence of that male child are the perfect understanding of the Magician, his one aim, without lust of result."

In the "New Comment" to The Book of the Law, "the Beast 666 adviseth that all children shall be accustomed from infancy to witness every type of sexual act, as also the process of birth, lest falsehood fog, and mystery stupefy, their minds ... Politeness has forbidden any direct reference to the subject of sex to secure no happier result than to allow Sigmund Freud and others to prove that our every thought, speech, and gesture, conscious or unconscious, is an indirect reference!"

Spiritual and recreational use of drugs [link]

Crowley was a habitual drug user and also maintained a meticulous record of his drug-induced experiences with opium, cocaine, hashish, cannabis, alcohol, ether, mescaline, morphine, and heroin.^[147] Allan Bennett, Crowley's mentor, was said to have "instructed Crowley in the magical use of drugs."^[148]

The Cairo revelation from Aiwass/Aiwaz specifically recommended indulgence in "strange drugs". While in Paris during the 1920s, Crowley experimented with psychedelic substances, specifically Anhalonium lewinii, an obsolete scientific name for the mescaline-bearing cactus peyote and initiated the writers Katherine Mansfield and Theodore Dreiser in its use.^[149] In October 1930, Crowley dined with Aldous Huxley in Berlin, and to this day rumours persist that he introduced Huxley to peyote on that occasion.^[150]

Other drug use [link]

Crowley developed a drug addiction after a London doctor prescribed heroin for his asthma and bronchitis.^[151] His life as an addict influenced his 1922 novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, but the fiction presented a hopeful outcome of rehabilitation and recovery by means of magical techniques and the exercise of True Will. He overcame his addiction to heroin during this period (chronicled in Liber XVIII – The Fountain of Hyacinth) but began taking it once more late in his life, again on doctor's prescription for his respiratory difficulties.^[152]

Racism [link]

Biographer Lawrence Sutin stated that "blatant bigotry is a persistent minor element in Crowley's writings."^[153] He also calls Crowley "a spoiled scion of a wealthy Victorian family who embodied many of the worst John Bull racial and social prejudices of his upper-class contemporaries,"^[154] noting that, "Crowley embodied the contradiction that writhed within many Western intellectuals of the time: deeply held racist viewpoints courtesy of their culture, coupled with a fascination with people of colour."^[155]

Crowley's published expressions of anti-semitism were disturbing enough to later editors of his works that one of them, Israel Regardie, who had also been a student of Crowley, attempted to suppress them. In 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley (Samuel Weiser, 1975), Regardie, who was Jewish, explained his complete removal of Crowley's anti-semitic commentary on the Kabbalah in the sixth unnumbered page of his editorial introduction: "I am ... omitting Crowley's Preface to the book. It is a nasty, malicious piece of writing, and does not do justice to the system with which he is dealing."^[156] What Regardie had removed was Crowley's "Preface to Sepher Sephiroth", originally published in Equinox 1:8. Written in 1911,^[157] which contained a statement of Crowley's belief in the blood libel against the Jews:^[158]

Human sacrifices are today still practised by the Jews of Eastern Europe, as is set forth at length by Sir Richard Burton in the MS which the wealthy Jews of England have compassed heaven and earth to suppress,^[159] and evidenced by the ever-recurring Pogroms against which so senseless an outcry is made by those who live among those degenerate Jews who are at least not cannibals.

Crowley rhetorically asked how a system of value such as Qabalah could come from what "the general position of the ethnologist" called "an entirely barbarous race, devoid of any spiritual pursuit," and "polytheists" to boot.^[158] As Crowley himself practised polytheism, some read these remarks as deliberate irony.^[160]

Crowley studied and promoted the mystical and magical teachings of some of the same ethnic groups he attacked, in particular Indian yoga, Jewish Kabbalah and goetia, and the Chinese I Ching. Also, in Confessions Chapter 86,^[161] as well as a private diary which Lawrence Sutin quotes in Do What Thou Wilt chapter 7, Crowley recorded a memory of a "past life" as the Chinese Taoist writer Ko Hsuan. In another remembered life, Crowley said, he took part in a "Council of Masters" that included many from Asia. He has this to say about the virtues of "Eurasians" and then Jews:

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.^[162]

All these remarks must necessarily be contrasted with Crowley's explicit philosophical instructions in his last book Magick Without Tears. Chapter 73, which is titled "'Monsters', Niggers, Jews, etc," and which states his essentially individualistic and anti-racialist views:

... you say, "Every man and every woman is a star." does need some attention to the definition of "man" and "woman." What is the position, you say, of "monsters"? And men of "inferior" races, like the Veddah, Hottentot and the Australian Blackfellow? There must be a line somewhere, and will I please draw it? ... Not only does it seem to me the only conceivable way of reconciling this and similar passages with "Every man and every woman is a star." to assert the sovereignty of the individual, and to deny the right-to-exist to "class-consciousness," "crowd-psychology," and so to mob-rule and Lynch-Law, but also the only practicable plan whereby we may each one of us settle down peaceably to mind his own business, to pursue his True Will, and to accomplish the Great Work.

The "Thelemic" philosophical position which he taught in this volume (which is a series of letters of direct personal instruction to a student of Magick) is clearly an anti-racist one. Even in private comments on Mein Kampf, Crowley said that his own preferred "master class" was above all distinctions of race.^[163]

Views on women [link]

Biographer Lawrence Sutin stated that Crowley "largely accepted the notion, implicitly embodied in Victorian sexology, of women as secondary social beings in terms of intellect and sensibility."^[164] Occult scholar Tim Maroney compared him to other figures and movements of the time and suggests that some others might have shown more respect for women.^[165] Another biographer, Martin Booth, while describing Crowley's misogyny, asserts that in other ways he was pro-feminist who thought women were badly served by the law. He considered abortion to be tantamount to murder and thought little of a society that condoned it, believing that women, when left to choose outside of prevailing social influences, would never want to end a pregnancy.^[166]

Crowley stated that women, except "a few rare individuals," care most about having children and will conspire against their husbands if they lack children to whom to devote themselves.^[167] In Confessions, Crowley says he learned this from his first marriage.^[168] He claimed that their intentions were to force a man to abandon his life's work for their interests. He found women "tolerable", he wrote, only when they served the sole role of helping a man in his life's work. However, he said that they were incapable of actually understanding the nature of this work itself.^[169] He also claimed that women did not have individuality and were solely guided by their habits or impulses.^[170] In this respect Crowley displayed the attitude to women conventional for a male of his time.

Nevertheless, when he sought what he called the supreme magical-mystical attainment, Crowley asked Leah Hirsig to direct his ordeals, marking the first time since the schism in the Golden Dawn that another person verifiably took charge of his initiation.^[171] In the Hierophant section of The Book of Thoth, Crowley interprets a verse from The Book of the Law that speaks of "the woman girt with a sword; she represents the Scarlet Woman in the hierarchy of the new Aeon.(...)This woman represents Venus as she now is in this new aeon; no longer the mere vehicle of her male counterpart, but armed and militant."

In his Commentaries on The Book of the Law Crowley stated what he considered to be the correct Thelemic position towards women:

We of Thelema say that "Every man and every woman is a star." We do not fool and flatter women; we do not despise and abuse them. To us, a woman is herself, absolute, original, independent, free, self-justified, exactly as a man is.^[172]

Writings [link]

Main article: Works of Aleister Crowley

Crowley wrote in a wide variety of genres: here are images from the covers of his novel Moonchild (1917) and his list of magical correspondences, 777 (1909).		Crowley wrote in a wide variety of genres: here are images from the covers of his novel Moonchild (1917) and his list of magical correspondences, 777 (1909).
Crowley wrote in a wide variety of genres: here are images from the covers of his novel Moonchild (1917) and his list of magical correspondences, 777 (1909).

Aleister Crowley was a highly prolific writer, who published works on a wide variety of topics, including his philosophy of Thelema, mysticism, ceremonial magic, as well as non-occult topics like politics, philosophy and culture. Widely seen as his most important work was The Book of the Law (1904), the central text of the philosophy of Thelema, although he claimed that he himself was not its writer, but merely its scribe for the angelic being Aiwass. This was just one of many books that he believed that he had channelled from a spiritual being, which collectively came to be termed The Holy Books of Thelema.^[173]

He also wrote books on ceremonial magick, namely Magick (Book 4) (1912), The Vision and the Voice and 777 and other Qabalistic writings, and edited a copy of the grimoire known as The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King. Another of his important works was a book on mysticism, The Book of Lies (1912), while another was a collection of different essays entitled Little Essays Toward Truth (1938). He also penned an autobiography, entitled The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929). Throughout his lifetime he wrote many letters and meticulously kept diaries, some of which were posthumously published as Magick Without Tears. During his lifetime he also edited and produced a series of publications in book form called The Equinox (subtitled "The Review of Scientific Illuminism"), which served as the voice of his magical order, the A∴A∴. Although the entire set is influential and remains one of the definitive works on occultism, some of the more notable issues are "The Blue Equinox", "The Equinox of the Gods", "Eight Lectures on Yoga", "The Book of Thoth" and "Liber Aleph".

Crowley also wrote fiction, including plays and later novels, most of which have not received significant notice outside of occult circles. His most notable fictional works include Moonchild (1917), Diary of a Drug Fiend (1922) and The Stratagem and other Stories (1929). He also self-published much of his poetry, including the erotic White Stains (1898) and Clouds without Water (1909), although perhaps his best known poem was his ode to the ancient god Pan, Hymn to Pan (1929).^[174] The influence of Crowley's poetry can be seen through the fact that three of his compositions, "The Quest",^[175] "The Neophyte",^[176] and "The Rose and the Cross",^[177] were included in the 1917 collection The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, however The Oxford Companion to English Literature entry on him describes him as a "bad but prolific poet".^[178]

Legacy and influence [link]

Crowley has remained an influential figure, both amongst occultists and in popular culture, particularly that of Britain, but also of other parts of the world.

Occult [link]

After Crowley's death, various of his colleagues and fellow Thelemites continued with his work. One of his British disciples, Kenneth Grant, subsequently founded the Typhonian O.T.O. in the 1950s. In America, his followers also continued, one of the most prominent of whom was Jack Parsons, the influential rocket scientist. Parsons performed what he described as the Babalon Working in 1946, and subsequently claimed to have been taught the fourth part of the Book of the Law. Parsons would also later work with and influence L. Ron Hubbard, the later founder of Scientology.

Crowley inspired and influenced a number of later Malvernians including Major-General John Fuller, the inventor of artificial moonlight, and Cecil Williamson, the neo-pagan witch.

One of Crowley's acquaintances in the last months of his life was Gerald Gardner, who was initiated into O.T.O. by Crowley and subsequently went on to found the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Various scholars on early Wiccan history, such as Ronald Hutton, Philip Heselton and Leo Ruickbie concur that witchcraft's early rituals, as devised by Gardner, contained much from Crowley's writings such as the Gnostic Mass. The third degree initiation ceremony in Gardnerian Wicca (including the Great Rite) is derived almost completely from the Gnostic Mass.^[179] Indeed, Gardner liked Crowley's writings because he believed that they "breathed the very spirit of paganism."^{[citation needed]}

Crowley was also an influence on both the late 1960's counterculture and the New Age movement.^{[citation needed]}

Popular culture [link]

Fictionalised accounts of Crowley or characters based upon him have been included in a number of literary works, published both during his life and after. The writer W. Somerset Maugham used him as the model for the character in his novel The Magician, published in 1908.^[62] Crowley was flattered by Maugham's fictionalised depiction of himself, stating that "he had done more than justice to the qualities of which I was proud... The Magician was, in fact, an appreciation of my genius such as I had never dreamed of inspiring."^[180] Similarly, in Dennis Wheatley's popular thriller The Devil Rides Out, the Satanic cult leader Mocata is inspired by Crowley, and in turn the deceased Satanist Adrian Marcato referred to in Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby is likewise a Crowley-like figure. Long after his death Crowley is still being used for similar purposes, appearing as a main character in Robert Anton Wilson's 1981 novel Masks of the Illuminati and Jake Arnott's 2009 novel The Devil's Paintbrush.

The association of Crowley's name with various satanic or dark individuals occurs widely in published works, especially those oriented toward a younger but technologically literate demographic target audience. In Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990), a World Fantasy Award nominated novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Crowley appears as one of the major characters - a demon who originated as the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In the cyberpunk novel Hammerjack (2005), author Marc D. Giller introduces the "Crowleys" on the second page of that sci-fi thriller, as one of the groups of "street species" inhabiting the cities. The long-running American TV series "Supernatural" also includes a major character named Crowley, who plays key roles in dealings with evil forces.

The acclaimed comic book author Alan Moore, himself a practitioner of ceremonial magic, has also included Crowley in several of his works. In Moore's From Hell, he appears in a cameo as a young boy declaring that magic is real, while in the series Promethea he appears several times existing in a realm of the imagination called the Immateria. Moore has also discussed Crowley's associations with the Highbury area of London in his recorded magical working, The Highbury Working.^[181] Other comic book writers have also made use of him, with Pat Mills and Olivier Ledroit portraying him as a reincarnated vampire in their series Requiem Chevalier Vampire. Crowley also is referenced in the Batman comic Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth where the character Amadeus Arkham meets with him, discuss the symbolism of Egyptian tarot, and they play chess. He has also appeared in Japanese media, such as D.Gray-Man and Toaru Majutsu no Index, as well as the hentai series Bible Black, where he has a fictional daughter named Jody Crowley who continues her father's search for the Scarlet Woman. He is also depicted in the Original PlayStation game Nightmare Creatures as a powerful demonic resurrection of himself.^[182] Ian Fleming used Crowley as a model for Le Chiffre, villain in the first James Bond novel Casino Royale.

Crowley has been an influence for a string of popular musicians throughout the 20th century. The hugely popular band The Beatles included him as one of the many figures on the cover sleeve of their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, where he is situated between Sri Yukteswar Giri and Mae West. A more intent interest in Crowley was held by Jimmy Page, the guitarist and co-founder of 1970s rock band Led Zeppelin. Despite not describing himself as a Thelemite or being a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Page was still fascinated by Crowley, and owned some of his clothing, manuscripts and ritual objects, and during the 1970s bought Boleskine House, which also appears in the band's movie The Song Remains the Same. On the back cover of the Doors 13 album, Jim Morrison and the other members of the Doors are shown posing with a bust of Aleister Crowley. Author Paulo Coelho introduced the writings of Aleister Crowley to Brazilian rocker Raul Seixas, who went on to write and perform songs (most notably, "Viva a Sociedade Alternativa" and "Novo Aeon") that were strongly influenced by Crowley.^[183] The later rock musician Ozzy Osbourne released a song titled "Mr. Crowley" on his solo album Blizzard of Ozz, while a comparison of Crowley and Osbourne in the context of their media portrayals can be found in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture.^[184] Crowley has also been a favourite of Swiss Avant-Garde metal band Celtic Frost. In fact, the song Os Abysmi Vel Daath from Monotheist is based partially on some of his writings. In the early 1990s, British Indie band Five Thirty carried with them on tour a front door which they alleged had belonged to Crowley. The door was placed prominently on stage during their gigs.^[185]

Crowley has also had an influence in cinema; in particular, he was a major influence and inspiration to the work on the radical avant garde underground film-maker Kenneth Anger, especially his Magick Lantern Cycle series of works. One of Anger's works is a film of Crowley's paintings,^[186] and in 2009 he gave a lecture on the subject of Crowley.^[187] Bruce Dickinson, singer with Iron Maiden, wrote the screenplay of Chemical Wedding (released in America on DVD as Crowley),^[188] which features Simon Callow as Oliver Haddo, the name taken from the Magician-villain character in the Somerset Maugham book "The Magician", who was in turn inspired by Maugham's meeting with Crowley^[189]

The Italian historian of esotericism Giordano Berti, in his book Tarocchi di Aleister Crowley (1998) quotes a number of literary works and films inspired by Crowley's life and legends. Some of the films are The Magician (1926) by Rex Ingram, based upon the eponymous book written by William Somerset Maugham (1908); Night of the Demon (1957) by Jacques Tourneur, based on the story "Casting the Runes" by M. R. James; and The Devils Rides Out (1968) by Terence Fisher, from the eponymous thriller by Dennis Wheatley. Also: "Dance To The Music of Time" by Anthony Powell, "Black Easter" by James Blish, and "The Winged Bull" by Dion Fortune.^[190]

References [link]

Footnotes [link]

^ Symonds 1997. p. vii.
^ Churton 2011. p. 3.
^ Kaczynski 2010, Acknowledgments.}}
^ Sutin 2000. p. 207.
^ Sutin 2000. p. 15.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 14.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 04–08.
^ Churton 2011. pp. 14–15.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 18–21.
^ Churton 2011. pp. 17–21.
^ Churton 2011. p. 17.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 17–23.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 11–12, 16.
^ Churton 2011. p. 24.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 19.
^ Churton 2011. pp. 24–25.
^ Sutin 2000. p. 21.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 27–32.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 32–33.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 27.
^ Churton 2011. pp. 26–27.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 25–26.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 23.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 24, 27.
^ Churton 2011. p. 27.
^ Crowley 1989. p. 108.
^ Booth 2000. p. 49.
^ Churton 2011. pp. 27–28.
^ Symonds 1997. p. 13.
^ Symonds 1997. pp. 14–15.
^ Crowley 1989. p. .
^ Symonds 1997. p. 15.
^ Sutin 2000. p. 46.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 36–37.
^ Symonds 1997. p. 14.
^ ^a ^b Churton 2011. p. 29.
^ Sutin 2000. p. 38.
^ The Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley (Tunisia 1923): Edited by Stephen Skinner; page 10.
^ Booth 2000. p. 5.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 41–47.
^ Churton 2011. pp. 33–24.
^ Sutin 2000. p. 47.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 37–39.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 35–36.
^ Spence 2006.
^ Churton 2011. pp. 30–31.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 52–55.
^ Churton 2011. p. 35.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 64–66.
^ IAO131 Thelema & Buddhism in Journal of Thelemic Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, Autumn 2007, pp. 18–32. Archived 25 October 2009.
^ Symonds 1997. p. 29.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 73–75.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 76–79.
^ Symonds 1997. p. 37.
^ Owen, Alex (2004). The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern. University of Chicago Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-226-64201-7.
^ Colquhoun, Ithell (1975). The Sword of Wisdom: MacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn. New York: G.P.Putham's Sons. pp. 231–233. ISBN 0-85435-092-6. http://www.kheper.net/topics/Hermeticism/Waite.html. Retrieved 15 November 2010.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 83–89.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 84–85.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 93–98.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 98–108.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 119–123.
^ ^a ^b Curtis, Anthony; Whitehead, John (1987). W. Somerset Maugham: the critical heritage. Routledge. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-7100-9640-1. "... in Paris in 1905... At that time he got to know Aleister Crowley,..."
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 112.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 124.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 124–126.
^ Symonds 1997. pp. 65–66
^ Wilson, R. A. with Miriam Joan Hill, Everything is Under Control: Conspiracies, cults and cover-ups, HarperPerennial 1998. ISBN 0-06-273417-2. Kenneth Grant vs Israel Regardie p. 134. Grant's alien claim "widely shared in occult circles," p. 212.
^ Crowley (2004:7–9)
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 127–129.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 129.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 130.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 132.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 131–133.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 136–137, 139, 168–169.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 138–149.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 151–152.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 153–154.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 155–156.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 159–160.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 171–173.
^ Crowley 1983. p. 32.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 157–160.
^ Sutin 2000. pp. 173–174.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 172.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 172–173.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 173–175.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 173–174.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 177.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 182–183.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 183.
^ Kaczynski 2010. pp. 185–189.
^ Kaczynski 2010. p. 165.
^ Sutin. Do what thou wilt. p. 190. ISBN 0-312-28897-2. "But Crowley could not leave The Magician unavenged"
^ Symonds 1997. pp. 132–133.
^ King, Magical World, pages 80–81
^ Newcomb, Jason (2005). Sexual Sorcery: a complete guide to Sex Magick. Weiser. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-57863-330-2. "...more powerful than heterosexual or lesbian acts"
^ Lachman, Gary. Turn off your mind: the mystic sixties and the dark side of the Age of Aquarius. The Disinformation Co.. p. 227. ISBN 978-0-9713942-3-0.
^ Sutin. Do what thou wilt. p. 228. ISBN 0-312-28897-2. "Crowley also added a new degree of his own devising – an XI° magical working utilizing anal sex which was, in practice, primarily homosexual."
^ Sutin. Do what thou wilt. pp. 232–236. ISBN 0-312-28897-2. "Once arrived in Moscow, Crowley was entranced by the beauty of the city..."
^ The material AC considered holy "is inextricably imbedded in the Class B text, often without the benefit of quotation marks." The Holy Books of Thelema intro to 1984 ed, p xxiii.
^ Sutin p. 241
^ Liber ABA Part II gives this task.
^ Sutin p 251.
^ Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt, pp. 251–254
^ Knowlton, Janice; Newton, Michael (1995). Daddy was the Black Dahlia killer. Simon & Schuster. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-671-88084-2. "... Smith got things rolling in Hollywood by luring celebrities to special invitation-only rituals at which "sex magick" was one of the major attractions."
^ Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt, pp. 252–253
^ Sutin, Lawrence (2000). Do What Thou Wilt: a life of Aleister Crowley. Macmillan. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-312-25243-4.
^ Sutin p257.
^ Sutin pp260, 261.
^ Sutin p258.
^ Sutin pp271, 272.
^ Sutin p275
^ Spence, Richard B. (2008). Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult. Port Townsend: Feral House. ISBN 978-1-932595-33-8.
^ Spence p.6, quoting US National Archives, Record Group 165, Military Intelligence Division file 10012-112, "General Summary", Intelligence Officer, West Point, New York, 23 September 1918
^ Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt, pp.279–280
^ Levenda, Peter (2002). Unholy alliance: a history of Nazi involvement with the occult. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-8264-1409-0. "Perhaps the most famous to Crowley's enthusiasts was the ghostly Leah Hirzig, the younger sister of the Swiss-German Alma Hirzig,..."
^ Nature of the Beast by Colin Wilson; page 73
^ Rabelais, F. Gargantua and Pantagruel Ch. 1.
^ Sutin, Laurence (2000). Do What Thou Wilt: a life of Aleister Crowley. Macmillan. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-312-25243-4.
^ "Heard more sense and insight than I've done in years." Quoted in Sutin, p. 317.
^ James Webb, The Harmonious Circle, p. 315. Quoted in Introduction to Gnosis #20, online version. Retrieved 20 December 2007.
^ "If this brutal banishment did occur, then it is remarkable that Crowley, who harbored animus toward so many rival teachers, never did so toward Gurdjieff." Sutin p.318.
^ Teachings of Gurdjieff: A Pupil's Journal
^ "The Encyclopedia of Thelema & Magick | Maria de Miramar". Thelemapedia. http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Maria_de_Miramar. Retrieved 8 January 2010. ^{[dead link]}
^ Sutin, Lawrence (2000). Do what thou wilt: a life of Aleister Crowley. Macmillan. p. 359. ISBN 978-0-312-25243-4.
^ "The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Fernando Pessoa's Esoteric Writings" in Gnostics 3: Ésotérisme, Gnoses & Imaginaire Symbolique (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2001) pp.693–711.
^ Sutin, pp 373–374.
^ Sutin, Do what thou wilt, p. 407
^ Sutin, pp. 388–389
^ Sutin Do what thou wilt, pp, 400–401
^ Sutin Do what thou wilt, p. 402
^ Sutin Do what thou wilt, pp. 407–408
^ ^a ^b ^c Sutin, pp. 417–419
^ Sutin pp 411, 416, initial prescription p 277.
^ "Daily Express". 4 December 1947. and "The Winnipeg Free Press". 31 May 1969. . See also Sutin p 418.
^ Sutin:Do What Thou Wilt (p. 83)
^ E.g. Starr M P 2004, "Aleister Crowley: freemason!", Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon, http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/aqc/crowley.html, BC
^ Frater Superior Hymenaeus Beta The Magical Link Vol. IX No. 1
^ Confessions Ch. 64 para. 5
^ ">> literature >> Crowley, Aleister". Glbtq.com. http://www.glbtq.com/literature/crowley_a_lit.html. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
^ The Scarlet Letter Vol V no 2, December 1998, web version. Retrieved 16 January 2008.
^ (Crowley, Magick, Book 4, p.47)
^ Liber III vel Jugorum
^ Shamans/neo-Shamans: ecstasy, alternative archaeologies, and contemporary pagans By Robert J. Wallis. Retrieved 9 September 2009.
^ DuQuette, Lon Milo (2003). The Magick of Aleister Crowley. Weiser Books. ISBN 1-57863-299-4.
^ "Of the Bloody Sacrifice and Matters Cognate." Magick Book 4 Part III, Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter 12. Samuel Weiser edition.
^ "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography" by Aleister Crowley (Arkana Publishing, 1989); "Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley" by Lawrence Sutin. (St. Martin's Press, 2000); "The Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley" edited by Stephen Skinner (Weiser, 2003)
^ Owen, Alex (14 April 2004). "Aleister Crowley in the Desert". The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Hardcover ed.). University of Chicago Press. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-226-64201-7. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html.
^ Confessions, pp. 386 and 768.
^ Cornelius, 2001.
^ "Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley" by Lawrence Sutin. (St. Martin's Press, 2000) ch. 7, p. 277
^ "Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley" by Lawrence Sutin. (St. Martin's Press, 2000) p. 416
^ Sutin 2000. p. 223-224.
^ Sutin 2000. p. 02.
^ Sutin 2000. p. 336.
^ 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley edited by Israel Regardie, (Samuel Weiser, 1975), sixth unnumbered page of the editorial introduction
^ 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley edited by Israel Regardie, (Samuel Weiser, 1975)
^ ^a ^b Equinox 1:8
^ The MS Crowley referred to in this passage was "Human Sacrifice among the Sephardine or Eastern Jews" by Sir Richard Francis Burton; it was thought so inflammatory and damaging to the author's reputation that it was never published, and in her will Burton's widow Isabel asked for it to be destroyed to protect her husband's name. References here BBC News
^ For example, by Bill Heidrick in a note on Crowley's introduction to Sepher Sephiroth, retrieved from Hermetic.com, 26 May 2011.
^ "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley". Hermetic.com. http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/confess/chapter86.html. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
^ Confessions chap. 54
^ Sutin, p. 377
^ Sutin, ch. 1, p. 28
^ Facts and Phallacies by Tim Maroney (1998) (Originally published in The Scarlet Letter, Volume V, Number 2). Retrieved from Maroney.org, 8 June 2006
^ "A Magick Life", Martin Booth, p400, Coronet, ISBN 0-340-71806-4
^ (Crowley Magick Without Tears p. 254); Aleister Crowley (1982). Magick Without Tears. Phoenix, AZ: Falcon Press. ISBN 978-0-941404-17-4.
^ (Crowley Confessions p.415); Aleister Crowley (1989). The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography. London: Arkana. ISBN 978-0-14-019189-9. Gender Bias: "There is yet a further point. My marriage taught me many lessons, and this not the least: when women are not devoted to children – a few rare individuals are capable of other interests – they take a morbid pleasure in conspiring against a husband, especially if he be a father. They take advantage of his preoccupation with his work in the world to conceive and execute every kind of criminally cunning abomination. The belief in witchcraft was not all superstition; its psychological roots were sound. Women who are thwarted in their natural instincts turn inevitably to all kinds of malignant mischief, from slander to domestic destruction." – Chapter 50
^ (Crowley Confessions pp. 95)
^ (Crowley The Confessions of Aleister Crowley pp. 96–7)
^ (Sutin Do What Thou Wilt pp. 282–290)
^ Crowley, Aleister (1996-10). Commentaries on the Holy Books and Other Papers: The Equinox v.4, No.1. Hymenaeus. Beta (ed.). Red Wheel/Weiser. ISBN 0-87728-888-7.
^ Crowley 1983.
^ "''Hymn to Pan''". Paganlibrary.com. http://www.paganlibrary.com/music_poetry/crowleys_pan_invocation.php. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
^ "The Quest". Bartleby.com. http://www.bartleby.com/236/314.html. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
^ "The Neophyte". Bartleby.com. http://www.bartleby.com/236/315.html. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
^ "The Rose and the Cross". Bartleby.com. http://www.bartleby.com/236/316.html. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
^ Drabble, Margaret. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 243.
^ [1] Ecclesia Ordinis Caelestis Templum Olympicus – Thelemic Origins of Wicca
^ Symonds 1997. p. 132.
^ Doyle-White 2009
^ Morehead, John W. (3 August 2010). "Video games: Zombies Ate My Neighbours, and Nightmare Creatures". Theofantastique: a meeting place for myth, imagination and mystery in pop culture. Wordpress. http://www.theofantastique.com/2010/08/03/video-games-zombies-at-my-neighbors-and-nightmare-creatures/. Retrieved 15 November 2010.
^ Essinger, Silvio. "A redenção do mago e ocultista Aleister Crowley". O Globo 4 January 2012. [2]
^ Christopher M. Moreman, "Devil Music and the Great Beast: Ozzy Osbourne, Aleister Crowley, and the Christian Right," Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 5 (2003), University of Saskatchewan
^ Gary Crowley (1991). "Band Explosion". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIwqNlycTfk. Retrieved 19 June 2011.
^ Pilkington, Mark (15 May 2007). "Kenneth Anger: celluloid sorcery and psychedelic Satanism". Bizarre Magazine. http://www.bizarremag.com/entertainment/movies/68/kenneth_anger.html. Retrieved 15 November 2010.
^ Anger, Kenneth. 2009. Do What Thou Wilt: Kenneth Anger and Aleister Crowley and the Occult. Youtube.com
^ Chemical Wedding at the Internet Movie Database
^ "Roadrunner Records". Roadrunner Records. http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/Blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=79442. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
^ Berti, Giordano; Negrini, Roberto; Tebani, Rodrigo (1998) (in Italian). I Tarocchi di Aleister Crowley [The Tarot of Aleister Crowley]. Torino: Lo Scarabeo.

Bibliography [link]

Booth, Martin (2000). A Magick Life: The Life of Aleister Crowley. London: Coronet Books. ISBN 978-0-340-71806-3.
Churton, Tobias (2011). Aleister Crowley: The Biography. London: Watkins Books. ISBN 978-1-78028-012-7.
Crowley, Aleister (1983). The Holy Books of Thelema. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser Inc. ISBN 978-0-87728-686-8.
Crowley, Aleister (1989). The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography. London: Arkana. ISBN 978-0-14-019189-9.
Kaczynski, Richard (2010). Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (second edition). Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books. ISBN 978-0-312-25243-4.
Sutin, Lawrence (2000). Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley. New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-25243-4.
Symonds, John (1997). The Beast 666: The Life of Aleister Crowley. London: Pindar Press. ISBN 978-1-899828-21-0.
Tully, Caroline (2010). "Walk Like an Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley's Reception of The Book of the Law". The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies (London: Equinox) 12(1).
"US Grand Lodge, OTO: Aleister Crowley". Oto-usa.org. http://oto-usa.org/crowley.html. Retrieved 8 January 2010.

External links [link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Aleister Crowley

Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
The Libri of Aleister Crowley Many of the writings of Crowley have been published for free online.
The Journal of Thelemic Studies "The first academic, non-partisan journal dedicated to Thelema, the psycho-spiritual religious tradition of Aleister Crowley"

v t e Thelema

Important elements	The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis) · Aleister Crowley · Thelemic mysticism · True Will · The Great Work · Holy Guardian Angel · Abrahadabra · Stele of Revealing · 93 · Aeon of Horus · Abyss · Magick

Thelema and religion	The Gnostic Mass · Holy Books of Thelema · Saints of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica

Godforms	Nuit · Hadit · Ra-Hoor-Khuit · Aiwass · Babalon · Baphomet · Chaos · Ma'at · Choronzon · Ankh-af-na-khonsu

Organizations	A∴A∴ · Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica · Ordo Templi Orientis · Typhonian Order · The Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn

Personalities	Kenneth Anger · Allan Bennett · Emile Brugsch · Mary Butts · Marjorie Cameron · Aleister Crowley · Lon Milo DuQuette · J.F.C. Fuller · Karl Germer · Kenneth Grant · Allen Greenfield · Lady Frieda Harris · Leah Hirsig · Christopher Hyatt · Hymenaeus Beta · Charles Stansfeld Jones · George Cecil Jones · Carl Kellner · Rose Edith Kelly · Grady McMurtry · Marcelo Ramos Motta · Victor Benjamin Neuburg · Jack Parsons · Israel Regardie · Theodor Reuss · Leila Waddell (Laylah) · James Wasserman · Jane Wolfe

Thelemite texts	Works of Aleister Crowley · Libri of Aleister Crowley · The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis) · The Equinox · Liber 777 · Magick (Book 4) · Confessions · The Book of Lies · Liber OZ (Liber 77) · The Equinox of the Gods · The Law is for All · Konx om Pax · The Book of Thoth · The Vision and the Voice · Little Essays Toward Truth · Eight Lectures on Yoga · Magick Without Tears · The Blue Equinox · Liber Aleph · Moonchild · Diary of a Drug Fiend · White Stains · Clouds without Water · Collected Works of Aleister Crowley 1905-1907 · The Stratagem and other Stories

Magick and ritual	Magick · Oil of Abramelin · Cake of Light · Bornless Ritual · Eroto-comatose lucidity · Gematria · Thoth tarot deck · Mass of the Phoenix · Hermetic Qabalah · Sex magic · Astrology · Yoga · Obeah and Wanga · Babalon Working · Ceremonial magic

Other topics	Unicursal hexagram · Body of Light · Night of Pan · City of the Pyramids · Boleskine House · Abbey of Thelema · Rites of Eleusis · Magical formula

Categories	Thelema · Thelemites · Thelemite texts

Magic and Witchcraft in Britain

Folk Magic

Variants	Anglo-Saxon magic · Cunning folk in Britain

Magicians	Dummy, the Witch of Sible Hedingham · George Pickingill

Ceremonial Magic

Organizations	Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn · Illuminates of Thanateros · Ordo Templi Orientis · Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia

Magicians	Peter J. Carroll · Andrew Chumbley · Aleister Crowley · Kenneth Grant · Dion Fortune · Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers · Alan Moore · Ray Sherwin · Arthur Edward Waite

Early Modern
Witchcraft

Trials	Witches of Warboys (1589–1593) · North Berwick witch trials (1590) · Pendle witches (1612) · Northamptonshire witch trials (1612) · Samlesbury witches (1612) · Witches of Belvoir (1619) · Bury St. Edmunds witch trials (1645, 1662, 1655 & 1694) · Bideford witch trial (1684) · Paisley witches (1696) · Islandmagee witch trial‎ (1711)

Accused Witches	Isobel Gowdie

Neopagan
Witchcraft

Variants	Wicca: Alexandrian Wicca · Gardnerian Wicca · Cochrane's Craft

Neopagan Witches	Charles Cardell · Robert Cochrane · Stewart Farrar · Janet Farrar · Gerald Gardner · Alex Sanders · Doreen Valiente · Cecil Williamson

Persondata
Name	Crowley, Aleister
Alternative names	Crowley, Edward Alexander (birth); Perdurabo (motto); Therion, Master (pen)
Short description	poet, mountaineer, occultist
Date of birth	(1875-10-12)12 October 1875
Place of birth	Clarendon Square, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England
Date of death	1 December 1947(1947-12-01)
Place of death	Netherwood, Hastings, East Sussex, England

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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

For the Canadian documentary filmmaker, see Terence McKenna (film producer).

Terence Kemp McKenna

Born	(1946-11-16)November 16, 1946 Paonia, Colorado, United States
Died	April 3, 2000(2000-04-03) (aged 53) San Rafael, California, United States
Era	20th century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Metaphysics, phenomenology
Main interests	shamanism, ethnobotany, metaphysics, psychedelic drugs, futurism, primitivism, environmentalism, consciousness, phenomenology, historical revisionism, evolution, ontology, Mind at Large, virtual reality, dominator culture, criticizing science, the Logos
Notable ideas	Novelty Theory, The "Stoned Ape" Theory of Human Evolution, Machine elves
Influenced by psychedelic drugs, Marshall McLuhan, Alfred North Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, Aldous Huxley, I Ching, William Blake, Riane Eisler, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Heraclitus
Influenced Rupert Sheldrake, Robert Anton Wilson, Ralph Abraham, RU Sirius, Cliff Pickover, Timothy Leary

Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.

1 Biography
2 Ideas
- 2.1 "Stoned Ape" theory of human evolution
- 2.2 Novelty theory
3 Bibliography
4 Spoken word
5 Discography
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links
- 8.1 Audio and video resources
- 8.2 Transcripts

Biography [link]

Early life [link]

Terence McKenna grew up in Paonia, Colorado.^[1] He was introduced to geology through his uncle and developed a hobby of solitary fossil hunting in the arroyos near his home.^[2] From this he developed a deep artistic and scientific appreciation of nature.

At age 16, McKenna moved to Los Altos, California to live with family friends for a year. He finished high school in Lancaster, CA.^[1] In 1963, McKenna was introduced to the literary world of psychedelics through The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley and certain issues of The Village Voice that talked about psychedelics.^[1]^[3]

McKenna claimed that one of his early psychedelic experiences with morning glory seeds showed him "that there was something there worth pursuing."^[1] In an audio interview Terence Mckenna claims to have started smoking cannabis regularly during the summer following his 17th birthday.

Studying and traveling [link]

In 1965, McKenna enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley^[4] to study art history.^[1] In 1967, while in college, he discovered and begun studying shamanism through the study of Tibetan folk religion.^[5] That year, which he called his "opium and kabbala phase"^[6] he also traveled to Jerusalem, where he met Kathleen Harrison, who would later become his wife.^[6]

In 1969, McKenna traveled to Nepal led by his "interest in Tibetan painting and hallucinogenic shamanism."^[6] During his time there, he studied the Tibetan language and worked as a hashish smuggler, until "one of his Bombay-to-Aspen shipments fell into the hands of U. S. Customs." He was forced to move to avoid capture by Interpol.^[6] He wandered through Southeast Asia viewing ruins, collected butterflies in Indonesia, and worked as an English teacher in Tokyo. He then went back to Berkeley to continue studying biology, which he called "his first love".^[6]

After the partial completion of his studies, and his mother's death from cancer in 1971,^[7] McKenna, his brother Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of oo-koo-hé, a plant preparation containing dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Instead of oo-koo-hé they found various forms of ayahuasca, or yagé, and gigantic Psilocybe cubensis which became the new focus of the expedition.^[6] In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, he was the subject of a psychedelic experiment which he claimed put him in contact with "Logos": an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience.^[6] The voice's reputed revelations and his brother's simultaneous peculiar experience prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the I Ching, which led to his "Novelty Theory".^[6] During their stay in the Amazon, McKenna also became romantically involved with his translator, Ev.^[6]

In 1972, McKenna returned to Berkeley to finish his studies.^[4] There he decided to switch majors to a Bachelor of Science in ecology and conservation, in a then new experimental section of the same university called the Tussman Experimental College.^[1] During his studies, he would also develop techniques for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms with Dennis.^[6]

In 1975, he parted with his girlfriend, Ev, when she left him for one of his friends from Berkeley. Their parting left him "tormented with migraines and living alone".^[6] He graduated in 1975.^[8] That same year, he began a relationship with Kathleen Harrison, whom he had met in Jerusalem.

Soon after graduating, McKenna and Dennis published a book inspired by their Amazon experiences, The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching. He also began lecturing.^[4] The brothers' experiences in the Amazon would later play a major role in McKenna's book True Hallucinations, published in 1993.^[6] In 1976, the brothers published what they had learned about the cultivation of mushrooms in a book entitled Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide under the pseudonyms "OT Oss" and "ON Oeric".^[9]

Later life [link]

In the early 1980s, McKenna began to speak publicly on the topic of psychedelic drugs, lecturing extensively and conducting weekend workshops. Though associated with the New Age and human potential movements, McKenna himself had little patience for New Age sensibilities. He repeatedly stressed the importance and primacy of felt experience, as opposed to dogma.^[10] Timothy Leary once introduced him as "one of the five or six most important people on the planet."^[11]

“	It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. These are the two things that the psychedelics attack. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it's not easy.	”
—Terence McKenna, "This World...and Its Double", ^[12]

He soon became a fixture of popular counterculture. His growing popularity culminated in the early-to-mid-1990s with the publication of several books: True Hallucinations, relating the tale of his 1971 La Chorrera experience; Food of the Gods; and The Archaic Revival. He became a popular personality in the psychedelic rave/dance scene of the early 1990s, with frequent spoken word performances at raves and contributions to psychedelic and goa trance albums by The Shamen, Spacetime Continuum, Alien Project, Capsula, Entheogenic, Zuvuya, Shpongle, and Shakti Twins. His speeches were, and are, sampled by many. In 1994 he appeared as a speaker at the Starwood Festival, documented in the book Tripping by Charles Hayes. His lectures were produced on both cassette tape and CD.^[13]

McKenna was a colleague of chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham, and biologist Rupert Sheldrake, creator of the theory of "morphogenetic fields", not to be confused with the mainstream usage of the same term. He conducted several public debates known as trialogues with them from the late 1980s until his death. Books containing transcriptions of some of these events were published. He was also a friend and associate of Ralph Metzner, Nicole Maxwell, and Riane Eisler, participating in joint workshops and symposia with them. He was a personal friend of Tom Robbins, and influenced the thought of many scientists, writers, artists, and entertainers. His influences include comedian Bill Hicks, whose routines about psychedelic drugs drew heavily from McKenna's works. He is also the inspiration for the Twin Peaks character Dr. Jacoby.^[14]

In addition to psychedelic drugs, McKenna spoke on the subjects of virtual reality, which he saw as a way to artistically communicate the experience of psychedelics; techno-paganism; artificial intelligence; evolution; extraterrestrials; and aesthetic theory, specifically about art/visual experience as information representing the significance of hallucinatory visions experienced under the influence of psychedelics.

In 1985,^[8] McKenna co-founded Botanical Dimensions with his then-wife Kathleen, a nonprofit ethnobotanical preserve in Hawaii, where he lived for many years before he died. In 1997 he and Kathleen divorced.^[15] Before moving to Hawaii permanently, McKenna split his time between Hawaii and Occidental, located in the redwood-studded hills of Sonoma County, California.

Death [link]

A longtime sufferer of migraines, in mid-1999 McKenna returned to his home on the big island of Hawaii after a long lecturing tour. He began to suffer from increasingly painful headaches. This culminated in three brain seizures in one night, which he claimed were the most powerful psychedelic experiences he had ever known. Upon his emergency trip to the hospital on Oahu, Terence was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer. For the next several months he underwent various treatments, including experimental gamma knife radiation treatment. According to Wired magazine, McKenna was worried that his tumour was caused by his 35-years of smoking cannabis; though his doctors assured him there was no causal relation.^[15]

In late 1999, Erik Davis conducted what would be the last interview of McKenna.^[16] During the interview McKenna also talked about the announcement of his death:

“

I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you'd have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it's a kind of blessing. It's certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you're going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. ... It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.^[17]

”

McKenna died on April 3, 2000, at the age of 53, with his loved ones at his bedside. He is survived by his brother Dennis, his son Finn, and his daughter Klea.

Library fire [link]

On February 7, 2007, McKenna's library of rare books and personal notes was destroyed in a fire which burned offices belonging to Big Sur's Esalen Institute which was storing the collection. An index maintained by his brother Dennis survives, though little else.^[18]

Ideas [link]

“	There are these things, which I call "self transforming machine elves," I also call them self-dribbling basketballs. They are, but they are none of these things. I mean you have to understand: these are metaphors in the truest sense, meaning that they're lies! [...] I name them 'Tykes' because tyke is a word that means to me a small child, ... and when you burst into the DMT space this is the Aeon - it's a child, and it's at play with colored balls, and I am in eternity, apparently, in the presence of this thing.	”
—Terence McKenna, "Time and Mind", ^[19]

Terence McKenna advocated the exploration of altered states of mind via the ingestion of naturally occurring psychedelic substances. For example, and in particular, as facilitated by the ingestion of high doses of psychedelic mushrooms, and DMT, which he believed was the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience. He spoke of the "jeweled, self-dribbling basketballs" or "self-transforming machine elves" that one encounters in that state.

Although he avoided giving his allegiance to any one interpretation (part of his rejection of monotheism), he was open to the idea of psychedelics as being "trans-dimensional travel"; literally, enabling an individual to encounter what could be ancestors, or spirits of earth.^[10] He remained opposed to most forms of organized religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening.

Either philosophically or religiously, he expressed admiration for Marshall McLuhan, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Gnostic Christianity, Alfred North Whitehead and Alchemy. McKenna always regarded the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as his favorite philosopher.^[11]

He also expressed admiration for the works of James Joyce (calling Finnegans Wake "the quintessential work of art, or at least work of literature of the 20th century")^[20] and Vladimir Nabokov: McKenna once said that he would have become a Nabokov lecturer if he had never encountered psychedelics.

"Stoned Ape" theory of human evolution [link]

In his book Food of the Gods,^[21] McKenna proposed that the transformation from humans' early ancestors Homo erectus to the species Homo sapiens mainly had to do with the addition of the mushroom Psilocybe cubensis in its diet - an event which according to his theory took place in about 100,000 BC (this is when he believed that the species diverged from the Homo genus). He based his theory on the main effects, or alleged effects, produced by the mushroom. One of the effects that comes about from the ingestion of low doses, which agrees with one of scientist Roland Fischer's findings from the late 1960s-early 1970s,^[22] is it significantly improves the visual acuity of humans - so theoretically, of other human-like mammals too. According to McKenna, this effect would have definitely proven to be of evolutionary advantage to humans' omnivorous hunter-gatherer ancestors that would have stumbled upon it "accidentally"; as it would make it easier for them to hunt.

In higher doses, McKenna claims, the mushroom acts as a sexual stimulator, which would make it even more beneficial evolutionarily, as it would result in more offspring. At even higher doses, the mushroom would have acted to "dissolve boundaries", which would have promoted community-bonding and group sexual activities-that would result in a mixing of genes and therefore greater genetic diversity. Generally McKenna believed that the periodic ingestion of the mushroom would have acted to dissolve the ego in humans before it ever got the chance to grow in destructive proportions. In this context, he likened the ego to a cancerous tumor that can grow uncontrollable and become destructive to its host. In his own words:

Wherever and whenever the ego function began to form, it was akin to a cancerous tumor or a blockage in the energy of the psyche. The use of psychedelic plants in a context of shamanic initiation dissolved-as it dissolves today-the knotted structure of the ego into undifferentiated feeling, what Eastern philosophy calls the Tao.

—Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods

The mushroom, according to McKenna, had also given humans their first truly religious experiences (which, as he believed, were the basis for the foundation of all subsequent religions to date). Another factor that McKenna talked about was the mushroom's potency to promote linguistic thinking. This would have promoted vocalisation, which in turn would have acted in cleansing the brain (based on a scientific theory that vibrations from speaking cause the precipitation of impurities from the brain to the cerebrospinal fluid), which would further mutate the brain. All these factors according to McKenna were the most important factors that promoted evolution towards the Homo sapiens species. After this transformation took place, the species would have begun moving out of Africa to populate the rest of the planet ^[21] Later on, this theory by McKenna was given the name "The 'Stoned Ape' Theory of Human Evolution".^[23]

Novelty theory [link]

McKenna's Timewave zero is a numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of "novelty", defined as increase over time in the universe's interconnectedness, or organized complexity. ^[24] According to McKenna, the universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time that increases interconnectedness, eventually reaching a singularity of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything imaginable will occur simultaneously. He conceived this idea over several years in the early to mid-1970s while using psilocybin and DMT.^[24]

McKenna expressed "novelty" in a computer program which purportedly produces a waveform known as "timewave zero" or the "timewave". Based on McKenna's interpretation of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, ^[15] the graph appears to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity'sbiological and sociocultural evolution. He believed that the events of any given time are recursively related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date of November 2012. When he later discovered this date's proximity to the end of the 13th b'ak'tun of the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two dates matched. ^[25]

The 1975 first edition of The Invisible Landscape refers to 2012 (but no specific day during the year) only twice. In the 1993 second edition, McKenna employed Sharer's date^{[Note d]} of 21 December 2012 throughout. ^[26]

Bibliography [link]

1975 - The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching (with Dennis McKenna) (Seabury; 1st Ed) ISBN 0-8164-9249-2.
1976 - The Invisible Landscape (with Dennis McKenna, and Quinn Taylor) (Scribner) ISBN 0-8264-0122-8
1976 - Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (with Dennis McKenna: credited under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric) (2nd edition 1986) (And/Or Press) ISBN 0-915904-13-6
1992 - Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (with Dennis McKenna: (credited under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric) (Quick American Publishing Company; Revised edition) ISBN 0-932551-06-8
1992 - The Archaic Revival (HarperSanFrancisco; 1st edition) ISBN 0-06-250613-7
1992 - Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge - A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (Bantam) ISBN 0-553-37130-4
1992 - Synesthesia (with Timothy C. Ely) (Granary Books 1st Ed) ISBN 1-887123-04-0
1992 - Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, Creativity, and the Resacralization of the World (with Ralph H. Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake and Jean Houston) (Bear & Company Publishing 1st Ed) ISBN 0-939680-97-1
1993 - True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise (HarperSanFrancisco 1st Ed) ISBN 0-06-250545-9
1994 - The Invisible Landscape (HarperSanFrancisco; Reprint edition) ISBN 0-06-250635-8
1998 - True Hallucinations & the Archaic Revival: Tales and Speculations About the Mysteries of the Psychedelic Experience (Fine Communications/MJF Books) (Hardbound) ISBN 1-56731-289-6
1998 - The Evolutionary Mind : Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable (with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph H. Abraham) (Trialogue Press; 1st Ed) ISBN 0-942344-13-8
1999 - Food of the Gods: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (Rider & Co; New edition) ISBN 0-7126-7038-6
1999 - Robert Venosa: Illuminatus (with Robert Venosa, Ernst Fuchs, H. R. Giger, and Mati Klarwein) (Craftsman House) ISBN 90-5703-272-4
2001 - Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness (with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph H. Abraham) (Park Street Press; revised ed) ISBN 0-89281-977-4 (Revised edition of Trialogues at the Edge of the West)
2005 - The Evolutionary Mind: Trialogues on Science, Spirit & Psychedelics (Monkfish Book Publishing; Revised Ed) ISBN 0-9749359-7-2

Spoken word [link]

History Ends In Green: Gaia, Psychedelics and the Archaic Revival, 6 audiocassette set, Mystic Fire audio, 1993, ISBN 1-56176-907-X (recorded at the Esalen Institute, 1989)
TechnoPagans at the End of History (transcription of rap with Mark Pesce from 1998)
Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1999) 90 minutes video
Alien Dreamtime with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent (Magic Carpet Media) (CD) video
Conversations on the Edge of Magic (1994) (CD & Cassette) ACE
Rap-Dancing Into the Third Millennium (1994) (Cassette) (Re-issued on CD as The Quintessential Hallucinogen) ACE
Packing For the Long Strange Trip (1994) (Cassette) ACE
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, broadcast on May 22, 1997, Five hour interview covering various topics
Global Perspectives and Psychedelic Poetics (1994) (Cassette) Sound Horizons Audio-Video, Inc.
The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (1992) (Cassette) Sounds True

Discography [link]

Re : Evolution with The Shamen (1992)
Terence McKenna & Zuvuya - Dream Matrix Telemetry (1993)
Alien Dreamtime with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent (Magic Carpet Media) (DVD)
2009 - Cognition Factor (2009)

Notes [link]

^d Coe's initial date was "24 December 2011." He revised it to "11 January AD 2013" in the 1980 2nd edition of his book, ^[27] not settling on 23 December 2012 until the 1984 3rd edition.^[28] The correlation of b'ak'tun 13 as 21 December 2012 first appeared in Table B.2 of Robert J. Sharer's 1983 revision of the 4th edition of Sylvanus Morley's book The Ancient Maya.^[29]

References [link]

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Terence McKenna Interview, Part 1. Tripzine.com. Accessed on June 29, 2011.
^ McKenna, Terence (Unknown (1985)). Under The Teaching Tree (Speech). Ojai Foundation, Upper Ojai, California.
^ Erowid Terence McKenna Vault: The High Times Interview. Accessed on June 29, 2011.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Terence McKenna, 53, Dies; Patron of Psychedelics". Cannabis News. 2000-04-09. http://cannabisnews.com/news/5/thread5337.shtml.
^ Erowid Terence McKenna Vault: The High Times Interview.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise. Terence McKenna, 1993.
^ http://www.disinfo.com/2010/08/machine-elves-101-or-why-terence-mckenna-matters/
^ ^a ^b https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/mckenna_terence/mckenna_terence.shtml
^ Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, OT Oss and ON Oeric, 1976.
^ ^a ^b "The Invisible Landscape (lecture)". Terence Mckenna. http://www.futurehi.net/media/McKenna_The_Invisible_Landscape_1-A.mp3.
^ ^a ^b Introduction by Timothy Leary to "Unfolding the Stone" lecture by Terence McKenna, c. 1992
^ Terence McKenna (1993-09-11). This World...and Its Double. Mill Valley, California: Sound Photosynthesis.
^ Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures by Charles Hayes. Accessed on April 26, 2007.
^ "Twin Peaks (1990) - Trivia". IMDB. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098936/trivia.
^ ^a ^b ^c http://cannabisnews.com/news/5/thread5337.shtml
^ "Wired 8.05: Terence McKenna's Last Trip". Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.05/mckenna.html.
^ Terence McKenna Vs. the Black Hole: by Erik Davis
^ http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/22/terence-mckennas-lib.html
^ McKenna, Terence (May 1990). "Time and Mind". - Partial transcription of a taped workshop held in New Mexico. The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension (deoxy.org). http://deoxy.org/timemind.htm.
^ "Surfing Finnegans Wake". Terence Mckenna. http://www.lancerules.com/terence/finneganswake.mp3.
^ ^a ^b McKenna, Terrence (1992) [1993]. Food of the Gods: the Search for the original Tree of Knowledge. Bantam. ISBN 0-553-37130-4.
^ Fischer, Roland; Hill, Richard (1970). "Psilocybin-Induced Contraction of Nearby Visual Space". Agents and Actions 1 (4): 190–197. PMID 5520365.
^ "http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/
^ ^a ^b Art Bell (22 May 1997). "Terence McKenna with Art Bell". archive.org. http://www.archive.org/details/TerenceMckennaWithArtBell. Retrieved 22 September 2009.
^ Ralph Abraham and Terence McKenna (June 1983). "Dynamics of Hyperspace". Santa Cruz, California: Ralph Abraham. http://www.ralph-abraham.org/talks/transcripts/hyperspace.html. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
^ Sacha Defesche (2007). "'The 2012 Phenomenon': A historical and typological approach to a modern apocalyptic mythology.". skepsis. http://skepsis.no/?p=599. Retrieved 29 April 2011.
^ Coe, Michael D. (1980). The Maya. Ancient peoples and places series, no. 10 (2nd ed.). London: Thames and Hudson, p. 151.
^ Coe, Michael D. (1984). The Maya. Ancient peoples and places series (3rd ed.). London: Thames and Hudson.
^ Morley, Sylvanus (1983). The Ancient Maya (4th ed.). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, p. 603, Table B2.

External links [link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna Land at Deoxy.org
Terence McKenna at Levity.com
Erowid's Terence McKenna Vault
Botanical Dimensions
Rotten.com bio
FloatingWorldWeb's McKenna Pages
Terence McKenna's Last Trip 2000 Wired Magazine article by Erik Davis
"Mind contagions" (2001) at disinfo.com
Psychedelics, Evolution & Fun 2008 essay by Patrick Lundborg
Machine Elves 101, or Why Terence McKenna Matters - Reallity Sandwish by Daniel Moler
Transcription from 1991 interview regarding cannabis

Audio and video resources [link]

Terence McKenna's interview Conducted by John Hazard in October 1998
Audio and video archive at Deoxy.org
Terence McKenna media archive at EROCx1.com
FutureHi.net MP3 Downloads - Terence McKenna, Albert Hoffman, Robert Anton Wilson, and more
McKenna at the 1999 Entheobotany Seminar - Audio Podcast
Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines - Video samples from the 1999 DVD
McKenna Video on FloatingWorldWeb - McKenna Video Portal
Over 100 podcasts of Terence McKenna talks - Audio Podcast

Transcripts [link]

MindofMcKenna - McKenna audio excerpts, transcriptions and quotes

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Rudy Rucker
Rudy Rucker, Fall 2004, photo by Georgia Rucker
Born	Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (1946-03-22) March 22, 1946 (age 66) Louisville, Kentucky
Nationality	American
Alma mater	St. Xavier High School, Swarthmore College, Rutgers University
Occupation	Author
Known for	Ware Tetralogy
Relatives	G.W.F. Hegel
Website
Rudy Rucker

Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (born March 22, 1946) is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and philosopher, and is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which (Software and Wetware) both won Philip K. Dick Awards. At present he edits the science fiction webzine Flurb.

1 Early life
2 Career
3 Testimonials
4 Works
5 References
6 External links

Early life [link]

Rucker was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the great-great-great-grandson of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel.^[1]

Rucker attended St. Xavier High School before earning a B.A. in mathematics from Swarthmore College, and a Master's and Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University.^{[citation needed]}

Career [link]

Rucker taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo from 1972–1978. Thanks to a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Rucker taught math at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg from 1978–1980. He then taught at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia from 1980–1982, before trying his hand as a full-time author for four years. Inspired by an interview with Stephen Wolfram,^[2] Rucker became a computer science professor at San José State University in 1986, from which he retired in 2004.^[3] A mathematician with philosophical interests, he has written The Fourth Dimension; Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension; and Infinity and the Mind. Princeton University Press published new editions of Infinity and the Mind in 1995 and in 2005, both with new prefaces; the first edition is cited with fair frequency in academic literature.^{[citation needed]}

As his "own alternative to cyberpunk," Rucker developed a writing style he terms Transrealism. Transrealism, as outlined in his 1983 essay "The Transrealist Manifesto," is science fiction based on the author's own life and immediate perceptions, mixed with fantastic elements that symbolize psychological change. Many of Rucker's novels and short stories apply these ideas. One example of Rucker's Transrealist works is Saucer Wisdom, a novel in which the main character is abducted by aliens. Rucker and his publisher marketed the book, tongue in cheek, as non-fiction.

His earliest Transrealist novel, White Light, was written during his time at Heidelberg. This Transrealist novel is based on his experiences at SUNY Geneseo.

Rucker often uses his novels to explore scientific or mathematical ideas; White Light examines the concept of infinity, while the Ware Tetralogy (written from 1982 through 2000) is in part an explanation of the use of natural selection to develop software (a subject also developed in his The Hacker and the Ants, written in 1994). His novels also put forward a mystical philosophy that Rucker has summarized in an essay titled, with only a bit of irony, "The Central Teachings of Mysticism" (included in Seek!, 1999).

His non-fiction book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning Of Life , and How To Be Happy summarizes the various philosophies he's believed over the years and ends with the tentative conclusion that we might profitably view the world as made of computations, with the final remark, "perhaps this universe is perfect."

The Ware Tetralogy [1]
- Software (1982)
- Wetware (1988)
- Freeware (1997)
- Realware (2000)
Transrealist novels
- White Light (1980)
- Spacetime Donuts (1981)
- The Sex Sphere (1983)
- The Secret of Life (1985)
- The Hacker and the Ants (1994) (Revised 'Version 2.0' 2003)
- Saucer Wisdom (1999) novel marketed as non-fiction
Other Novels
- Master of Space and Time (1984)
- The Hollow Earth (1990)
- Spaceland (2002)
- As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel (2002)
- Frek and the Elixir (2004)
- Mathematicians in Love (2006)
- Postsingular (Fall 2007)
- Hylozoic (sequel to Postsingular, May 2009)
Story collections
- The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka (1983)
- Transreal!, also includes some non-fiction essays (1991)
- Gnarl! (2000), complete short stories
- Mad Professor (2006)

Non-fiction [link]

Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension (1977)
(editor), Speculations on the Fourth Dimension: Selected Writings of Charles H. Hinton, Dover (1980), ISBN 0-486-23916-0
Infinity and the Mind (1982)
The Fourth Dimension (1984)
Mind Tools (1987)
All the Visions (1991), memoir
Seek! (1999), collected essays
Software Engineering and Computer Games (2002), textbook
The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul (2005)

As editor [link]

Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder, Arbor House (1987)

List on Rucker's SJSU web page. With links to each book's web page.

References [link]

^ The family tree of his mother's brother, Rudolf von Bitter.
^ "Rudy Rucker interviews Stephen Wolfram". http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-truth. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
^ Locus Online
^ DIGIMAG

External links [link]

The Rudy Rucker website

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Rucker

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Persondata
Name	Mackenna, Terence
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	November 16, 1946
Place of birth	Paonia, Colorado, United States
Date of death	April 3, 2000
Place of death	Hawaii, United States

Persondata
Name	Rucker, Rudy
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 22, 1946
Place of birth	Louisville, Kentucky
Date of death
Place of death

Branches of Mathematics

Pure mathematics

Applied mathematics

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Wilson, Robert Anton Filmography

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