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Aleister Crowley, the Wickedest Climber Ever? (2022)
- dieselgate 4y agoWhat the heck! Had no idea Crowley was a climber that's cool but funny. Am only aware of the guy because of looking up who "Mr. Crowley" is from the Ozzy song like 20 years ago
- damontal 4y agoI’m really jaded towards guitar solos but that solo always makes me stop whatever it is I’m doing. The song plods on and on and is a bit boring but the solo just bursts out of it and wakes you up out of the trance induced by what’s going on around it.
- mythrwy 4y agoThat song is from more then 40 years ago (1980). My how time flies!
- can16358p 4y agoSame here. Love the song, checked what it was about and discovered the guy. He seems like a true weirdo though.
- waiseristy 4y agoYou should google Jack Parsons as well for a fun little wiki hole
- therockspush 4y agoyou'll get a little L. Ron Hubbard in there too.
- crabmusket 4y agoStrange Angel was a great series. Can't comment on its veracity, but it was a wild ride.
- playingalong 4y agoNext you check Andy Kaufman from REM.
- shagie 4y agoI'm gonna go with Bill Williams of Pikes Peak fame. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/73586/guy-who-pushed-peanut-pikes-peak-his-nose https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/73586/guy-who-pushed-pea...
- motohagiography 4y agoI thought he only climbed socially. W. Somerset Maughm's novel, "The Magician" used him as the model for his villain based on their acquaintence.
- tux2bsd 4y agoCount Dankula has a good episode about that freak. In summary Crowley was, via inheritance, a VERY rich kid weirdo that rapidly progressed to being insane. He went up a hill or two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7np4wvfIdbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7np4wvfIdbM
- api 4y agoAlas, he lived before the age of YouTube. Can you imagine…
- tux2bsd 4y ago[flagged]
- 77pt77 4y agoYes I can. He'd be banned and on bitchute, truth social or something like that.
- BirAdam 4y agoI dunno… Teal Swan hasn’t been banned.
- 77pt77 4y agoDoes she eat her own excrement? Crowley did. He'd be banned really quickly. He was also a pedophile BTW.
- api 4y agoNah, he wouldn't be banned. He's too weird and not political enough. He'd be like a cross between a new age guru, Jordan Peterson, and one of those amateur porn people that use YouTube to steer people to their OnlyFans. He would also probably have an OnlyFans, a Tumblr, a Patreon for his cult, a Podcast, and Twitter of course. Big time influencer vibes. We missed all these lulz by only a century.
- verdenti 4y ago[dead]
- yurtugun 4y ago[flagged]
- jojobas 4y agoAs far as behaviours can be wicked at all, fucking around with prostitutes and children is wicked.
- ergonaught 4y agoConsensual sex with prostitutes cannot in any rational sense be termed “wicked”, and there is basically zero reason to think he diddled children, soooo were you just passing the time with free association or what?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jojobas 4y agoHe hired a boy in Tunisia and engaged in "sex magick" with him, according to multiple sources, and it wasn't an isolated accident. Do of that what you will.
- ergonaught 4y agoDecades of studying his life says you’re going to have to do better than “according to multiple sources”, unless you’re just joining the strangely “still ongoing 100 years later” tabloid smear campaign. There’s plenty to question without fabricating nonsense.
- jojobas 4y agoGo argue with Wikipedia.
- DontchaKnowit 4y agoDude his books literally mention that child sacrifice is the most powerful form of sacrifice and thereby the most abundant source of magical power... then he goes on to say "but I dont condone that or anything... wink wink nudge nudge" He had at least 1 child die of straight up neglect because he went out of his way to find the most messed up alcoholic woman he could find to procreate with so that she would be easy to manipulate. When Crowley says he is wicked he is not bullshitting. The guys lifes mission was to transgress every boundary that exists in the western world. Why would you have trouble believing that he harmed children? Beyond that though, he openly brags about raping (though he frames it as consensual) his friend and apprentice victor noidburg. Crowley apologists make no sense to me. The guy went out of his way to be evil in every way imagineable. Why wouldnt you believe that he's evil?
- ilamont 4y agoI first heard about Crowley when I was a serious Led Zeppelin fan (Jimmy Page looked to him for inspiration, according to Hammer of the Gods). Knew the Ozzy song, too. So I was aware of Crowley’s occult writings but had no idea about the mountaineering when he was young. Excellent biography here: https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37329?rskey=08OKdo&result=1 https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/978019861...
- nathell 4y agoMy favourite Crowley song is “Crowleymass” by Current 93. Adequately quirky.
- Turing_Machine 4y agoCrowley was a fine writer, too. I recommend his autobiography (or "autohagiography", as he called it), with the caveat that he's pretty much the Platonic ideal of the "unreliable narrator". Read it for entertainment, not necessarily for factual content.
- tarotuser 4y agoI wouldn't call it 'fine'. He may have had a way with words, but stories like "Starchild" was a 'what if we do the ritual of abramelin the mage, then have sex during the goetic rituals(demon summoning/dismissing) part to put a demon in this prostitute" Yeah. That's the plot of the book. How to have sex and put a demon in the fetus.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoHaving no previous knowledge or awareness of the author or the story of Abramelin the Mage (besides a hasty skim of the Wikipedia page): your summary of the plot does not seem as disuasive (or persuasive fwiw) as you make it out to be. So many fictional plots can be reduced to absurdity by such descriptions.
- ffsoftboiled 4y agoThe problem with Starchild isn't the ridiculous story line. The problem is that in the last ten pages of the novel we find that the whole journey of the main character was not important in the slightest. On to fight WWI instead. I would recommend his short stories and poetry though.
- ben_w 4y agoRaiders of the Lost Ark has the same issue, but spawned a franchise.
- ffsoftboiled 4y agoLucas and Spielberg digging and turning Crowley's bookish lead to cinema gold! The true alchemists.
- tarotuser 4y agoThe reason K2 was his last climbing expedition was because he refused to help those dead and/or dying. It was well known after that, that he was completely untrustworthy as a partner. And naturally, later in the occult, he would leave people shattered after using them up. He had no regard for most humans. In his latter part of his life, he does talk of the thrill and live of life, and what he had missed. I've held those letter in my hands, penned by his own hand. He may have been called the wickedest man alive. I pity him.
- neonate 4y ago> The reason K2 was his last climbing expedition was because he refused to help those dead and/or dying. The article goes into that.
- tux2bsd 4y ago> I pity him. Do you pity Fritzl? Where's your line...
- devmor 4y agoWhy pity him? He lived in pure hedonism, got everything he wanted out of life. You should pity those he took advantage of instead.
- tjr225 4y ago[dead]
- andyjohnson0 4y agoThe way I read the parent comment was that, by living for "pure hedonism", he missed out on other dimensions of life - perhaps only realising that too late towards the end of his life. There's some sadness in that, I think, and perhaps cause for pity.
- tarotuser 4y agoCrowley's letters to a gentleman in England said exactly that: that no amount of hedonism and freedom could buy love lost. There were also allusions that he was gay, referencing Oscar Wilde's very public arrest, and commending his choice. I could be reading into the document a bit, but it felt that he was gay or bisexual, and lamenting the love he turned down earlier in life. All in all, his letter exuded sadness, longing, and regret. That's why I said I pity him. That too, isn't to say that I dont have pity for those he harmed as well... And there's a great deal of those he harmed. But the article is about Aleister.
- runjake 4y agoI really enjoyed the book "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley". Not because of the occult stuff, but more because of the climbing expeditions he was on. Very vivid descriptions. Quite the experiences. He climbed with noted mountaineer Oscar Eckenstein, who amusingly, wasn't impressed with Crowley's infamy. They put my many mountaineering adventures to shame.
- xupybd 4y agoI've always wondered if Image magick was named after Aleister Crowley's book. The spelling of magick is the same.
- mathieuh 4y agoIt’s always come across as nothing more than a “ye olde” spelling to me.
- xupybd 4y agoI think he came up with the spelling. https://pluralism.org/magick https://pluralism.org/magick
- yesenadam 4y agoIt's the old spelling, e.g. Johnson's dictionary (1755) only has the -ck spelling and quotes Shakespeare and Milton spelling it so. https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=magick https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=m...
- xupybd 4y agoTIL, that's good to know. Thanks.
- hetspookjee 4y agoTo me it seems as a rather obvious playful creation that anyone can conjure, and I’d rather attribute it to convergent evolution. Much like calculus by Newton and Leibniz.
- 9dev 4y agoTIL where the name of that Red Hot Chili Peppers album came from.
- Synaesthesia 4y agoMy favourite Aleister Crowley essay is one on cocaine. http://www.luminist.org/archives/cocaine.htm http://www.luminist.org/archives/cocaine.htm >Look at this shining heap of crystals! They are Hydrochloride of Cocaine. The geologist will think of mica; to me, the mountaineer, they are like those gleaming feathery flakes of snow, flowering mostly where rocks jut from the ice of crevassed glaciers that wind and sun have kissed to ghostliness.
- tomcam 4y ago> He made the first attempts on K2 and Kanchenjunga Huh. I guess the locals were just too dim and incompetent. Or maybe history only begins when we in the West say so.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- RogerL 4y agoNeither India or China had named the mountain (hence 'K2'), it is far from any trade route or village, the approach takes a month and you finally end up at a glacier which is still 10 miles from the base of the mountain. Starting in June there are heavy floods that render the rivers impassable until fall. It takes a month of porters and camels transporting 10-15K pounds of equipment and food. There is no recorded or verbal history of anyone making that effort, no recorded or oral history of high altitude mountain climbing as a sport prior to these early attempts, no villages or routes remotely nearby, no evidence of the kind of equipment that would be needed (ice axes & rock climbing gear - it is full on mixed climbing). It's pretty safe to say they were the first for any reasonable definition of "attempt". Not to mention at the top of the article they write > Crowley is notable as the first Westerner to attempt K2 ...
- aliswe 4y agoThis reasoning entices me. You ascribe meaning to climbing high mountains, and as such you assume "they" do too, and that this feat - which is only a feat because of the ascribed meaning - must have been attempted or perhaps even achieved before the whites.
- pessimizer 4y agoThe assumption is that "the first to climb K2" is the same as "the first to discover America" i.e. a racial achievement masquerading as a human achievement.
- poulpy123 4y agoAccording to Wikipedia, the first attempt on climbing the mont blanc was in 1757. So climbing on top on mountains wasn't an universal experience until recently. However I don't know for Asia and the Himalaya specifically
- layman51 4y agoPretty interesting because I have an interest in religious and esoteric topics. I’m just surprised to see this on Hacker News.
- majestic5762 4y agoSame
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoI kind of scoff at the self-applied title of "wickedest man ever", especially in light of some of the stories my social worker friends have about families in the projects.
- abyssin 4y agoWhat are these projects?
- pasttense01 4y ago"Subsidized apartment buildings, often referred to as housing projects (or simply "the projects"),[4] have a complicated and often notorious history in the United States." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidized_housing_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidized_housing_in_the_Unit... Perhaps someone has better suggestions but look for example at "The Wire" TV series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire
- dr_dshiv 4y agoIn case the occult is of interest, this library has become one of my biggest hobbies. The whole esoteric/hermetic tradition is so much bigger and productive than I ever imagined: https://embassyofthefreemind.com/en/library/about-the-library https://embassyofthefreemind.com/en/library/about-the-librar... And then there is SHWEP, which is my favorite podcast: https://shwep.net/ https://shwep.net/
- majestic5762 4y agoIncredible! How didn't i know about it! Pure gold
- chestertn 4y agoGreat!
- DontchaKnowit 4y agoI would strongly argue against the idea that the hermetic tradition has been productive. From everything ive gleaned through my occult studies, secret societies built on the hermetic, gnostic, or kabbalistic traditions have consistantly served to undermine the better nature of humans and society at large. All of these esoteric philosophies ultimately boil down to the worship of ones own will, and provide techniques and avenues for accruing influence in order to exert ones will on the world. The effect of this is almost universally always negative. I'd love to hear if you have strong counterexamples.
- afloyd 4y agoI believe they meant productive as in they have produced more work than expected.
- tarotuser 4y ago> I would strongly argue against the idea that the hermetic tradition has been productive. From everything ive gleaned through my occult studies, secret societies built on the hermetic, gnostic, or kabbalistic traditions have consistantly served to undermine the better nature of humans and society at large. All of these esoteric philosophies ultimately boil down to the worship of ones own will, and provide techniques and avenues for accruing influence in order to exert ones will on the world. The effect of this is almost universally always negative. Do you have proof you'd like to bring here, to back up your assertion?
- ztetranz 4y agoI've been watching "Secrets of the Occult" on Wondrium https://www.wondrium.com/secrets-of-the-occult https://www.wondrium.com/secrets-of-the-occult and Crowley appears numerous times. No mention of climbing yet but there is a whole episode on Crowley that I haven't watched yet. I almost didn't continue after the first episode but I'm pleased I did. Richard Spence has a kind of dry sense of humor.
- helsinki 4y agoI’m surprised nobody as mentioned The Book of Lies, yet. It is arguably the piece of Crowley literature that the secret societies actually read.
- tarotuser 4y agoWell, that's a tricky one. It's arguable whether it was actually produced by Crowley. I sincerely believe that he channeled something that called itself Aiwass. And about channels... basically, for a bad computer analogy, it's like having the hard drive of your consciousness changed out with another hard drive, for a time. Depending on the type of channel, you may or may not remember. Lets just say.... I have experience in this matter. And if this was a channeled work (which I believe it was), then even though it was physically written by Aleister Crowley's body, it really wasn't written by Crowley. It was written by an entity that called itself "Aiwass"... whatever that is.
- vigormortis 4y agoYou might be confusing the "Book of Lies" with the "Book of the Law". The latter was "channeled" and is the keystone of his system, where the former is authored by Crowley in the usual sense of the term.
- phonescreen_man 4y agoAlso worth noting, k2 was attempted by Crowley using breathing techniques instead of bottled oxygen.
- marcodiego 4y agoFor anyone interested in Brazilian culture in late 20th century: Aleister Crowley was a source of inspiration in some of Raul Seixas (early Brazilian rockstar) compositions. Raul became a friend of the now famous writer Paulo Coelho. It is said that the the influence of one another in their lives was crucial for the success of both. For peolpe wanting to have a glimpse of Crowley and Seixas' influence on Paulo Coelho, I strongly recommend listenning to some of the music they composed together.