The Jewish Problem Re-Stated by a Gentile [Aleister Crowley]

Ed. This essay emerged from a time of chronic Anti-Semitic feeling in the West. Crowley saw in this pervasive oppression an affinity with the troubles to be visited upon Thelemites. He speculated about a union between Thelema and Judaism, as at other times he thought to unite Buddhism, Islam and some forms of Christianity with Thelema. Written long before the horrors of the Holocaust and the subsequent restoration of the State of Israel, this essay may tread too closely on the abyss of pain for modern readers. There is more than one kind of diaspora, as more than one kind of captivity.

First publication: The English Review 35 (London: July 1922), 28-37. Although this is the text as originally published, Crowley's typescript is substantially longer and contains more extensive Thelemic discussion.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

A distinguished article entitled "The Cry of the Modern Pharisee," by the Rev. Joel Blau, of Temple Peni-El, New York City, which recently appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, posed the Jewish problem in new dimensions. In America, where this problem is growing acute, wide interest was aroused. I quote a few passages which are characteristic.

"It is depressing to see the Jewish problem discussed, even by Jews, from without and not from within, as if its inner aspect did not matter; at all events, as if this were something in which the world at large need take no interest, it being the concern of a few Jewish zealots only. Over against this mistaken position these very Jewish zealots, who are far from obsolete, claim that the only way to solve the Jewish problem is from within. Find the right solution for the internal problem of the Jew, and the external problem, created by the persistence of anti-Semitism, will solve itself."

". . . he [the Pharisee] would rather lose the whole world than lose aught of the riches of his soul.

". . . As for pride, he admits it, yet holds himself guiltless. For pride is no sin, except when one will not live up to it.

"It [pride] is compounded of a clear knowledge of one's place, a consciousness of both powers and limitations, and a desire to participate wholeheartedly in the passionate business of living. This pride is the child of reverence, the last summing-up of the sanctities of Individuality.

"Its presence is the distinguishing sign of divinely stubborn men, 'terribly meek,' who inherit the earth--and heaven, too.

"Of peoples too, even as of persons, the same holds true; modesty is a sin in any people. The chief duty that a people owes both itself and the world is reverence for its own soul, the mystic centre of its being. . . .

"Personality spells the mystery of mysteries--the last word of life for which all the worlds and all the ages are in ceaseless travail."

"The Jew must be led back to the Discovery of the Jewish Soul."

Despite these utterances, we find elsewhere in the essay that the only practical solution in view is repatriation. A physical Zion is contemplated, and this proposal implies the very materialism which the learned Rabbi deplores as the mark of the modern Sadducee. Now the division between Jew and Gentile dates only from Abraham. The children of uncircumcision no less than those of the Covenant are of the seed of Adam, of mankind. It was by means of the secret tradition of the Hebrews that the leader of the hosts of the new Law obtained "the knowledge and conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel," whose words constitute the whole Law. This Law is the master-key to the Future of Mankind, and the learned Rabbi, being a master in Israel, is able to interpret the Zeitgeist intuitively. Accordingly, he exhibits a profound comprehension of this Law; indeed, he actually expresses some of its corollaries in various phrases. What then is the one weakness of his admirable essay? What is it that compels him to a sceptical conclusion, despite the sublimity of courage, pride, and sadness which informs his thought, and the magistral grasp of the situation? These qualities demand consummate respect; and yet their owner hesitates to articulate an "Everlasting Yea." The difficulty arises from the interference of the learned Rabbi's intellectual perception of the conditions of his environment with the truth of his soul. He must hold fast to this truth if it is to make him free. The Relative must not be applied as a measure of the Absolute, of which it is but one of the infinitely numerous symbolic representations. It is, then, here that the Rev. Joel Blau is tempted to lose touch with the essential truth. He has still to pass through the ordeal of being attacked by phenomena which threaten or allure, seeking to turn him from his spiritual integrity. It is the task of the initiate to learn to ignore these seeming facts, to recognise that these are vapours of the void. Let me say at once that the Jewish spirit cannot be destroyed any more than a grain of sand or an ohm of electrical resistance. The problem is perennial. If every Jew were instantaneously abolished, the Jewish problem¹ would remain unaltered.

The Rev. Joel Blau had himself demonstrated, with admirable clearness, that the "extraversion" of modern Sadducees has merely defiled their honour, and that reliance upon outworn formalism has failed to protect the integrity of the Pharisees.

When Moses gave His new Law, His was the Word which expressed the spiritual truth fit for that age and that folk. Other Masters have appeared from time to time with other words. Thus the Buddha, proclaiming the absence of Atman, emancipated the East from its time-rotted conditions. Mohammed, with His Word Allah, proclaimed a new aeon in which the diversity of phenomena should be referred to a single ultimate source.

The solution of the Jewish Question has baffled society completely since the earliest records. It is quite evident that before the Exodus Pharaoh was confronted by precisely the same dilemma as the Tsar of yesterday in Russia and the President of today in America. It is the problem of an endothermic chemical compound. The instability of chloride of nitrogen does not lead us to "blame" either the nitrogen or the chlorine; the elements tend to fly apart with destructive violence because neither of them is satisfying its own true nature to the full. Each has joined the other without enthusiasm because it could find no more suitable element union with which would fulfil to the uttermost its need of a complement. Nitrogen chloride is not formed if the chlorine passes over moist sodium before reaching the ammonia, or if that ammonia has been mixed with nitric acid.

Jew and Gentile have been forced into contact under innumerable varieties of social condition. Friction has been at a minimum when the Jew has been in contact either with Arabic civilisation or English jurisprudence. These two environments have a common factor: non-interference. English indifference and Moslem self-respect are agreed on the ethical principle: "Mind your own business." This is one of the moral postulates of true Law.

The incompatibility between Jew and Gentile has been based, superficially indeed, upon prejudice, ignorance, and instinctive antipathy; but this seems hardly more than a disguise for the real motive, which may more probably be the fear of alien aggression. The Jews are charged with many crimes, from ritual murder and usury to lack of patriotism. But all these charges are merely diverse expressions of the feeling that there is an irreconcilable antagonism between two spirits whose juxtaposition is an offence to nature.

Is it presumptuous to feel sure that so far one may count upon the assent of the learned Rabbi to this analysis? No? Then why not be bold enough to proceed to synthesis? Let us pursue the chemical analogy. In a mixture of sodium chloride and sodium nitrate the atoms of nitrogen and chlorine are intimately mingled; but there is no tendency to explosion. The reason is that both elements have already--in the main matter--fulfilled their own natures. Neither is unsatisfied; neither is under stress.

Is there no hint here to guide us to a practical proposal? It is useless to tinker with the environment of chloride of nitrogen; the more we meddle with the explosive, the more likely we are to provoke a crisis. We must prevent the formation of the substance altogether; and so long as either element is unsatisfied, so long is there a risk of conditions occurring in which they will combine disastrously with each other. Just as most human beings contract unsuitable marriages, or experiment with unconsecrated unions, rather than suffer the physiological agony of abstention; just as the only secure social system rests on a basis of sexually satisfied individuals; so countries inhabited by heterogeneous races invite civil collision if the inherited instincts of any race are starved or suppressed.

Now it is the historical fact that from the time of Abraham's discontented departure from his father's pastures, and the dream-drawn journey of Joseph, to the desperate adventure of Moses in search of a "promised land," and the continual craving for a Messiah, the Spirit of the Jew, behind all its expressions, is stamped with the stigma of soul-starvation. The patriotic passion of the Chroniclers, the plaintive cries of the Psalmists, the relentless rage of the Prophets, the acrid agony of Ecclesiastes, each in its own way expresses the fact that the Jew has always wanted Something desperately, has never known precisely what it was, has never fooled himself for very long into fancying that he has found it. When national degradation and religious mummification had reduced the ragged remnant of repatriated refugees to despair, Paul proclaimed his Freudian Phantasm as the Messiah. But in vain did he try to conciliate his people, in vain did he prove that Christ fulfilled the prophecies, in vain did he seek to reconcile circumcision and crucifixion. Israel preferred to die in the dark rather than stumble by the light of corpse-candles into the ditch of self-deception.

The same spirit stamps the Jew to this day. He has endured every possible persecution; without faith, hope, or love to help him. He has not found himself in wealth, power, or anything else. Neither Spinoza in philosophy, Heine in poetry, nor Einstein in science have found any way of escape from the fiend appointed to scourge Israel. From the most sublime complaints of the musician to the grossest grumblings of the Schnorrer, the same phrase recurs: it is the cry from the Abyss, the shriek of the lost soul. The glories of Solomon did not prevent him from seeing the vanity of all things; nor would repatriation in Palestine delude one single Jew into supposing that his soul could be satisfied by so romantically narcotic a remedy.

The solution of the Jewish problem is simply this: "Shiloh shall come." The Messiah must arise, and His name shall be called Anti-Christ. And this shall be the sign of the Messiah, Anti-Christ, He who shall lead at last His people Israel into the Holy Mountain, the True Zion: He shall come to understand the Magical Formula of Israel; He shall interpret the history of Israel; He shall declare unto Israel the nature of the spirit of the people; He shall express the true purpose of His people; He shall demonstrate to them the direction of their destiny; He shall formulate their function in the physiology of mankind.

It may indeed be that this function is such that even its free fulfillment would not satisfy it. He, the Messiah, Anti-Christ, shall know, as others do not, whether it be so. In our own bodies there are principles which never cease to urge us. The secret of the Soul of Israel may be that it is a ferment; the history of humanity shows us this spirit constantly consuming every civilisation with which it has been in contact. Israel has corrupted the world, whether by conquest, by conversion, or by conspiracy. The Jew has eaten his way into everything. The caricature of Semitic thought, Christianity, rotted Roman virtue through introducing the moral subterfuge of vicarious atonement. The Eagles of Caesar degenerated to the draggled buzzards of Constantine. Soon they were no more than hens, dispersed and devoured by the fierce hawks of Mohammed and the savage ravens of the North. Jewish commercial cleverness has created cosmopolitanism. Jewish sympathy with suffering has made the cliffs of caste to crumble. Jewish ethical exclusiveness has created a tyranny of conventional formalities to replace the righteousness of self-respect. The Jew, living so long on sufferance, by subterfuge, servility, and self-effacement, has taught his tricks to the whole world. Civilisation is an organised system of craft, concealment, cunning, camouflage, of cringing cowardice and craven callousness. The world is one great Ghetto. The Jew has failed to realise himself; and, as the learned Rabbi so brilliantly breaks out at the end of the third paragraph of his article, it is in infamy that Gentile and Jew are reconciled at last. Gentile and Jew bend on the same bench of the galley; the same whip drips with blood from the bare backs of the two brothers in bondage. We share the same suffering and shame; we eat the same bitter bread of exile.

Neither of us has known who he is, dared to be himself, or willed to do his Will. Neither has kept the Silence which alone preserved his soul from profanation. It was far better when ignorance and prejudice prevailed; we had at least faith in our own fetiches. It is better to have something that one is willing to die for, though it be but a lie; to have something to live for, though it be but a dream. Today, Jew and Gentile alike are pursuing despicable objects by dishonourable devices; and, having attained them, there is disillusion, disgust, and despair. We have swept away the superstitions which sustained our self-respect. We have discovered that the sun is only one star of many; and, perceiving our infinitesimal importance, we have lost our own respective stars--our self-esteem.

We have still to complete analysis by synthesis. Instead of interpreting Democracy as confusion in a common degradation, we must understand that, although each individual is equally an element of existence with every other, each is sublimely itself. Mankind is a republic of aristocrats; our equality is that of the essential organs of the body. The honour of each is to secure the harmony of all. It is the most fatal error of modern thought to interpret the dependence of each of us upon the rest as confounding us all in a common vileness.

One may appeal to the learned Rabbi then, out of his own mouth, to accept the Law of Thelema² as the foundation of the future of Israel. One may ask him to agree that the salvation of Israel depends upon understanding the spirit of that people in the light of history, ethnology, and psychology. Having understood its function, and formulated its will in a fixed phrase, it is only necessary to keep its unswerving course, each Jew as his own soul shows him for himself, and for the race, as the soul of the race is shown him, by the spirit of Anti-Christ, the Messiah, who shall arise in Israel for this purpose.

One word in reconciliation of an apparent antinomy. One must not think of Anti-Christ as opposed to Christ, any more than one thinks of the pleura as opposed to the lungs which it bounds. Woman is not the opposite of man--the difference between them is necessary to their co-operation. Without it, neither could reproduce their common elements in either component. Every star is necessarily different from every other star. The annihilation of one would disturb the equilibrium of all, and destroy the universe. The Jewish spirit is an essential element of humanity. The pitiable tragedies of the past have been the result of failing to understand, to insist upon, to execute, the eternal office of each existing individual idea. The arising of Anti-Christ will make possible the coming of Christ. If Christ came, he was baulked, as He himself is supposed to have said, because no one was ready to receive Him.

As the first paragraph of "The Cry of the Modern Pharisee" points out, non-resistance defies power. Mechanics presumes opposition. Structuralisation depends upon the co-operation of diverse unities, each of which is stubbornly itself. Evolution is aristocratic. To aim at homogeneity is to revert to nullity. There is then no reason to fear that Anti-Christ, in establishing Israel, will injure Christianity. He will, on the contrary, assist the Christian spirit to cleanse itself from the confused acquiescence in anarchical amiability which it calls "charity," and is really cowardice, really the slave's shame of his own condition, the sense of guilt which he soothes by minimising all misdemeanours.

Let Anti-Christ arise, let Him announce to Israel its integrity. Let Him make clear the past, purged of all tribal jargon; let Him prove plainly how inevitably event came after event. Let Him gather the past to a point; let Him assign its proper position to the present by showing its relation with the axes of Space and Time. Let Him then calculate what forces are focussed at that point, so that its proper course may be thereby determined. Then let Him speak the Word of Israel's Will, so that all Israel with united energy, disciplined and directed, may move as one man irresistibly to fulfil its Destiny.

Such action will induce a complementary current in every other racial and religious section of humanity. The Chinaman who has given up politeness, filial reverence, and philosophy for European ideas; the Russian who has bartered mystic melancholy for Marxism; the Mohammedan who has been taught to despise the faith, virtue, virility, and valour of his forebears, and to appreciate cocktails, cocottes, pork, and profanity; all these are hybrids, all these are self-mutilated cowards, garbage of self-surrender. They are monsters bred of the shame of being different to other people. The modern Italian has discarded the noble and beautiful toga for shoddy city clothes. The Mongol's sweeping silken robes are gone; dignified in them, he prefers to look ridiculous in the frock-coat and stove-pipe hat of a Bermondsey bank clerk. The Hindoo, once clean and comfortable in cotton cloths, sweats and stinks in starched shirts and shabby suits in the hope of looking like a Sahib. Mongrels and monsters, all these! Diverse as they are, they are born of one mother, Conventionality, by one father, Shame.

Let the Jew lead the way! Let the Jew find himself and be sure of himself; let him assert himself without fear of others, or reference to their ideals and standards. They will be forced to respect him. In self-defence, each one will find for himself the formula of his own function. From that moment the friction between the various parts of the human machine will begin to diminish.

"The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." The social and economical crises of today are not due to over-population, to lack of supplies, or to inefficiency. They are due to the suppression of individuality. Instead of each person and each race doing its own will, the whole of humanity is being thrown into a melting-pot; the only ambition is to get to the top. The earth affords infinite scope for each soul, as the sky affords scope for each star. But instead of each soul seeking the satisfaction proper to itself, it is persuaded by the popular Press, by the pressure of public opinion, and by the contagious delusion of Democracy, that nothing is worth having save wealth in its grossest interpretation, "modern conveniences" in the crudest sense of the term, and social success in its silliest and shallowest shape. Pleasure itself is prescribed, like the diet of a diabetic. Respect is inseparable from envy, since the superiority of one is incompatible with the equivalent superiority of others. Formerly, Virgil and Horace could admire each other's qualities. Today, they must be measured by the balances at their banks. There are not enough automobiles and diamonds to go round, any more than there were in the time of Buddha or Villon. But the ascetic Prince and the starving scholar could each be unique and supreme without struggling for shekels.

The Jew has no claim to consideration on account of his success in money- getting. Every race in the world can produce rivals in that art. The True Spirit of Israel shines in the splendour of its literature, and in such moral qualities as that rigorous sense of Reality which made him the torch-bearer of Science through the Dark Ages, in the persistent patience which preserved his racial peculiarities through proscription and persecution, in the fidelity to tradition which kept him true to himself until he was assimilated in the American ant-heap, where no animal can live except the aimlessly active insects that swarm in its mould.

To recapitulate, Israel has not evolved a true consciousness of racial destiny through the ages, for "The word of Sin is Restriction," and the sin of Israel is this, that is has never know itself, or done its will.

Love is the law, love under will.

Anomalous Events That Can Shake One’s Skepticism to the Core by Michael Shermer

I just witnessed an event so mysterious that it shook my skepticism.

Often I am asked if I have ever encountered something that I could not explain. What my interlocutors have in mind are not bewildering enigmas such as consciousness or U.S. foreign policy but anomalous and mystifying events that suggest the existence of the paranormal or supernatural. My answer is: yes, now I have.

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Bornless Ritual - Israel Regardie

Invocation Of Thoth - Israel Regardie

Time For a Rare Glimpse of the Beast

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram

“Those who regard this ritual as a mere device to invoke or banish spirits are unworthy to possess it. Properly understood, it is the Medicine of metals and the Stone of the Wise.”
- Aleister Crowley

Reprinted from the description of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram from Liber O, a publication of the occult order A.'.A.'.


I.    Touching the forehead, say "Ateh (Unto Thee)."
II.   Touching the breast, say Malkuth (The Kingdom)."
III.  Touching the right shoulder, say "ve-Geburah (and the Power)."
IV.   Touching the left shoulder, say "ve-Gedulah (and the Glory),
V.    Clasping the hands upon the breast, say "le-Olahm, Amen (To the Ages, Amen)."
VI.   Turning to the East, make a pentagram (that of Earth) with the proper weapon (usually the Wand). Say (i.e. vibrate) "IHVH" (Ye-ho-wau).
VII.  Turning to the South, the same, but say "ADNI" (Adonai).
VIII. Turning to the West, the same, but say "AHIH" (Eheieh).
IX.   Turning to the North, the same, but say "AGLA" (Agla).
X.    Extending the arms in the form of a cross say:
XI.   "Before me Raphael;
XII.  Behind me Gabriel;
XIII. On my right hand Michael;
XIV.  On my left hand Auriel;
XV.   For about me flames the Pentagram,
XVI.  And in the Column stands the six-rayed Star."
XVII. Repeat steps (i) to (v), the "Qabalistic Cross."

The Symbolist Brotherhood That Believed Art Had Divine Powers by Thackara

In 1892, on the corner of the grand, tree-rimmed avenue of Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, a peculiar new art salon opened to considerable fanfare at the Galerie Durand-Ruel.

Paintings of damsels, sirens, and monstrous femmes fatales, as well as religious visionaries, mythical figures, and fantastical temples hung salon-style from the walls. Wafts of burning incense and the sound of the prelude to Wagner’s Parsifal, which was played on an organ throughout the opening night, filled the space.

The event’s master of ceremonies, the eccentric poet and novelist Joséphin Péladan, greeted the city’s cultural elite (including the French author Émile Zola) in a long robe and pointed beard and, one imagines, with a gravely serious air. A year earlier, in 1891, Péladan had initiated an offshoot of the Rosicrucian order—a religious brotherhood (symbolized by a rose on a cross) that combined elements of Christianity, Jewish mysticism, and occult practices with the belief that its practitioners were the recipients of ancient wisdom.

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Various ‎– Okkulte Stimmen – Mediale Musik: Recordings Of Unseen Intelligences 1905-2007

Collection of audio documents of paranormal phenomena including trance speech, direct voices, clairvoyance, xenoglossy, glossolia including ethnological material, paranormal music, "rappings" and other poltergeist manifestations as well as so-called "Electronic voice phenomena".

For full tracklist click here
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Okkulte-Stimmen-Mediale-Musik-Recordings-Of-Unseen-Intelligences-1905-2007/release/1246626


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Walpurgis Night

Donald Weiser - In Memoriam

Having grown up among the bookshelves of his father’s historic eponymous bookstore “Samuel Weiser Books”, Donald Weiser was distinctly placed at the feet of 20th century occult publishing from his earliest years.

Born in 1928, the year after his father’s bookstore was established in its original location in New York City’s famous “Book Row”, Donald spent the majority of his childhood in the later 4th Avenue location, where for decades the world’s occultists had come to seek his father’s business.

By his mid 20s Donald had become an active part of the operation of Weiser’s bookstore, pushing his father in 1955 to publish the unbound sheets brought to him by Karl Germer of the 1937 edition of Aleister Crowley’s book The Equinox of the Gods.

At the start of the 1960s Donald had expanded the family business into full time publishing. Seeking to bring a wider readership to otherwise long out of print and exceptionally rare occult texts Weiser Publishing was perfectly timed with the 60s esoteric occult revival. Eastern mysticism, kabbalism, and general mystical traditions became all the rage among the youth counter culture. Occultists like Karl Germer, Harry Smith, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Israel Regardie hung about the shop, and with their access to the antiquarian stock of the shop it let them reprint both rare texts and contemporary authors.

Throughout its near half century under Donald’s ownership Weiser was an instrumental publisher and bookstore in the world of the esoteric and occult. From the mid 1980s Donald was also the owner of the venerable Watkin’s Books in London, the “world’s oldest esoteric bookstore”. Even after Donald sold Weiser’s publishing division and then five years later in 2005 ‘retired’ and turned over the bookshop business, which had moved to Maine in the 1980s due to increased rents in NYC, Donald was still active. Starting Ibis Press with his wife Yvonne from his Florida retirement.

The role that Donald Weiser played in exposing occult texts to an audience outside of those who can afford the rarest of manuscripts is immeasurable. Without Weiser publishing many of the 20th century’s occultists would have had little access to the body of knowledge we now take for granted. Grimoires, holy texts, occult and fortean thinking; esoteric thought has been greatly advanced by Donald and his family and to him we are personally greatly indebted.

Donald passed away on 12 April, 2017 in his Florida home. He was 89. A memorial is to occur in New York City in the near future.

Occult Fundamentals and Spiritual Unfoldment. Vol. 1: The Early Writings by Paul Foster Case (PDF)

Shortly after leaving the Alpha et Omega (MacGregor Mather's reformulation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), Paul Foster Case developed a lecture series entitled "The First Year Course". The purpose of the lectures was to provide students with a firm foundation in spiritual science and practice and to prepare them for Paul Case's rendition of the Golden Dawn Order.

When this coursework was expanded in 1924, the contents of the "The First Year Course" became known as Section A, `The Life Power', and Section B,`The Seven Steps of Spiritual Unfoldment'. The `Life Power' provided a firm foundation of Occult Fundamentals and the `The Seven Steps of Spiritual Unfoldment' utilized the Major Arcana of the Tarot to communicate the stages of Spiritual Evolution.

The early writings of Paul Foster Case are exceptionally clear and represent some of his finest work. Anyone approaching these lessons for the first time are encouraged to spend at least two weeks on each before proceeding to the next. This is precisely the manner in which the lectures and lessons were intended to be assimilated. Paul Case utilizes images in addition to words to communicate principles. Proceeding in such a manner will allow the corresponding ideas to take root and mature and thus facilitate understanding of the next lesson in the series.

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http://viid.me/qQCyCe

The Wizard Alan Moore Meets The Sorcerer Aartist, Austin Osman Spare

Israel Regardie - Enochian Calls 1 - 11

William S. Burroughs, June 25,1986 (Paranormal, Synchronicity, Dreams)

Kabbalah: A Neurocognitive Approach to Mystical Experiences by Arzy Shahar and Moshe Idel (PDF)

In this original study, Moshe Idel, an eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism and thought, and the cognitive neuroscientist and neurologist Shahar Arzy combine their considerable expertise to explore the mysteries of the Kabbalah from an entirely new perspective: that of the human brain. In lieu of the theological, sociological, and psychoanalytic approaches that have generally dominated the study of ecstatic mystical experiences, the authors endeavor to decode the brain mechanisms underlying these phenomena. Arzy and Idel analyze first-person descriptions to explore the Kabbalistic techniques employed by most prominent Jewish mystics to effect bodily reduplications, dissociations, and other phenomena, and compare them with recent neurological observations and modern-day laboratory experiments. The resultant study offers readers a scientific, more brain-based understanding of how ecstatic Kabbalists achieved their most precious mystical experiences. The study further demonstrates how these Kabbalists have long functioned as pioneering investigators of the human self.

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http://viid.me/qrRHcA

Aleister & Adolf by Douglas Rushkoff (PDF)

Media theorist and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff weaves a mind-bending tale of iconography and mysticism against the backdrop of a battle-torn Europe. In a story spanning generations, and featuring some of the most notable and notorious idealists of the 20th century, legendary occultist Aleister Crowley develops a powerful and dangerous new weapon to defend the world against Adolf Hitler's own war machine spawning an unconventional new form of warfare that is fought not with steel, but with symbols and ideas. Unfortunately, these intangible arsenals are much more insidious and perhaps much more dangerous than their creators could have ever conceived.

"Rushkoff is a cultural treasure and an eccentric author of big, strange ideas, never less than fascinating and always entertaining." -Warren Ellis, author of Gun Machine, Red, Trees, and Transmetropolitan

"Douglas has been one of my personal heroes, and I've been a most attentive reader of anything he cares to put between covers, knowing that his combination of a cold eye and a warm heart is guaranteed to astonish and embolden my own thinking about what's possible in the world--about what's possible to enact in the space between one human being and another. He occupies the ground of our most immediate perplexities, and his reports of what he finds are breaking news." -Jonathan Lethem, author of The Best American Comics and The Fortress of Solitude

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http://viid.me/q0JqY0

Dancing With The Devil: A History of Satanic Burlesque by Haleigh Schiafo

Many women are drawn to both burlesque and the occult for very similar reasons. Occult practices encourage personal expression, indulgence, and freedom of sexuality. This is so attractive to women in a world that shames them for their bodies and sexual expression. Burlesque praises this expression in very similar ways. People of all shapes, sizes, races, and genders are encouraged to take their clothes off and celebrate themselves. Satanic burlesque is the perfect embodiment of empowerment, unapologetic hedonism, and sexual glorification.

It comes as no surprise then, that there is a long history of occult reference in burlesque. From devil-themed costuming to the dark nature of neo-burlesque, dancers have been referencing the strange and macabre for years.

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Julius Evola on the Virtues of the Grail by Manon Welles

In The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit, Julius Evola examines the Grail Legend from a spiritual perspective, particularly in terms of a pre-Christian initiatory tradition. As such, the Grail is not a physical object, but is seen as a transcendent element or state of spiritual enlightenment.

Evola outlined six main virtues of the Grail that allude to its transcendental nature, as follows:

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Allan Bennett: An Initiated Life

Allan Bennett (1872–1923) was an English occultist and a principal member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He was regarded by his peers as having exceptional magical skill, and he was an early teacher of Aleister Crowley.

Bennett’s father died when he was young, and he was raised in the Catholic faith by his widowed mother. A severe asthmatic, professionally he trained as an analytical chemist and worked as an electrical engineer. Bennett was attracted to occultism and magic and joined the Golden Dawn, rising to the rank of Adeptus Minor by the age of 23.

Charismatic, he was renowned for his skill in ceremonial magic, notably the evocation of the spirit Taphthartharath to visible form, a ritual that involved used of a pickled snake’s head in a “hell broth” of ingredients.

He possessed a blasting rod, a glass rod taken from a chandelier and consecrated with magical power. The rod was mounted in a wooden handle painted with words of power. Bennett changed the words in accordance with the purpose of his magical operations.

A Theosophist acquaintance once ridiculed the idea of a blasting rod and found himself paralyzed for 14 hours - an apparent lesson from Bennett. Bennett helped Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers, one of the founding chiefs, to organize the order’s materials, some of which were published later by Crowley as Liber 777.

In spring 1899, Bennett met Crowley when the latter was brought to a Golden Dawn meeting by C. G. Jones. The friendship with Crowley led to Bennett moving in with Crowley in his London flat on Chancery Lane. While there, Bennett taught Crowley magical skills and shared with him Golden Dawn material — a violation of his initiation oath, for Crowley had not yet reached Adeptus Minor.

Toward the end of 1899, Crowley said that Bennett would die of Asthma unless he moved to a

warmer climate. Crowley had ample funds to pay for such a move, but Bennett declined to do so, believing that magical knowledge should be a gift and not purchased. Instead, Crowley invoked the demon Buer whose powers reputedly included healing “all distempers in man”. Crowley was assisted in the ritual by Jones. Buer made an appearance but was visible only as a helmeted head and a leg.

The ritual failed to aid Bennet’s health so Crowley then persuaded one of his former mistresses to give Bennett the money he needed. Bennett turned to Buddhism and left England for Burma. There he gave up all his possessions and joined a sangha, taking the names of Swami Maitrananda and then Ananda Metlaya.

Years later, he returned to England, founding a Buddhist lodge. Bennett eventually tired of Buddhism and returned to Western occultism. He retired to a small room that was unfurnished save for a table, his blasting rod, a few books, and machinery with which he hoped to establish communication with the astral plane.

Bennett as street beggar in Burma following his vow of poverty

Living again in England proved disastrous to Bennett’s health, and his asthma worsened, aggravated by his austere and poor lifestyle. He traveled to Liverpool and sought passage on a ship bound for a warmer climate, but the captain refused him because of the severity of his poor health. Bennett was sent into a fatal tailspin of asthmatic spasms and convulsions. He died in 1923, leaving the location of his manuscripts and other writings known only to a few close friends and associates.

I believe that Bennett's influence on Crowley cannot be overstated as is evident in A.C.'s respect for the man.

The Equinox

Equinox I (01).pdf
http://sh.st/2OzUU

Equinox I (02).pdf
http://sh.st/2OzWe

Equinox I (03).pdf
http://sh.st/2Ozvd

Equinox I (04).pdf
http://sh.st/2Ozdi

Equinox I (05).pdf
http://sh.st/2OzrT

Equinox I (06).pdf
http://sh.st/2Ol7R

Equinox I (07).pdf
http://sh.st/2Ol2z

Equinox I (08).pdf
http://sh.st/2OlXV

Equinox I (09).pdf
http://sh.st/2OlGm

Equinox I (10).pdf
http://sh.st/2OlUj

Blue Equinox.pdf
http://sh.st/2Oljo

Equinox Vol III Number 4 Eight Lectures on Yoga.pdf
http://sh.st/2Ok2E