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Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats get into an occult battle (2016)
- DoItToMe81 3y agoCrowley's "followers" are almost indistinguishable from new age types, except for the ether of long worn out hippie nonsense. Occultism is something conveniently both esoteric enough to feel special but also hollow enough that you can wrap it around all your personal narcissism and still have it make sense.
- widderslainte 3y agoExcept the whole "kicking him down the stairs" bit isn't true. Richard Kaczynski, probably the foremost Crowley biography, has to address this about once a month on twitter.
- SkylockeScarred 3y agoIt was by accounts a wizard battle. Crowley, being a master magician, casted a spell. Yeats, also being a master magician, kicked Crowley down a flight of stairs.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoI was heavily into this as a kid. There were some websites back in the early 2000s which would sell infomercial products about the Art of Sorcery and Aleister Crowley (The Wickedest Man In The World!) which were the creme de la creme. Later I learnt about his K2 expedition and other things.
- Loughla 3y agoOh man. Crowley used to be such a good rabbit hole in the geocities days. There were so many weird people obsessed with him.
- jojobas 3y ago[flagged]
- ergonaught 3y ago[flagged]
- jtbayly 3y agoMaybe you just hate the ambiguity inherent in English in this case? I read the comment as a simple note that minors are interested in him because… “sex magick!”
- throwanem 3y agoSurely the man who inspired Colin Batley would have instantly scrupled at any such suggestion.
- jojobas 3y ago[flagged]
- cykros 3y agoIndeed. Unlike the case for some of his opponents from other religions.
- DontchaKnowit 3y agoYeaaahhh except there is an excerpt from one of his books where he suggest thats sacrificing a child produces the most potent magic possible, but you totally shouldnt do it (wink wink)
- MockObject 3y ago[dead]
- quarto 3y ago[dead]
- GloomyBoots 3y agoI remember stumbling across the angelfire site for a defunct occult order (the master, “Sir Faustus” or something like that, had apparently mysteriously disappeared). I understood maybe 1% of what I was looking at, but it felt very momentous. They had hierarchically organized lists of books and films that contained occult knowledge. Fun memories.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoYes occult masters, Kabbalah and sexual transmutation were my bread and butter in search of the truth.
- swayvil 3y agoI dunno man. They both seem kinda intellectually obsessive. All that writing.
- enduser 3y agoSo many concepts!
- sibeliuss 3y agoI would agree
- seanhunter 3y agoI dunno man. That Usain Bolt. Seems kinda obsessed with running really fast. Also that Magnus Carlsen. All he does is play chess. W.B. Yeats was a literal writer by trade. Of course he did “all that writing”. For people who are unfamiliar with his work, W. B. Yeats was an absolutely extraordinary poet. I would encourage you to check out “The Second Coming” for example[1]. It’s amazing for such a short poem how many times it has been referred to/quoted etc in other other works. [1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi...
- swayvil 3y agoA pimp's love is quite a different thing from a square's love
- NovaDudely 3y agoI kind of get it. Make the words count, don't count the words. Or as it was put in Buddhism, a thousand words are pointless compared to a single word that brings peace.
- motohagiography 3y agoHighly recommend W. Sommerset Maughm's "The Magician" for a treatment of Crowley's personality and influence. The occult is full of tedious charlatans, and yet they reappear in history in influential forms like Machiavelli, Rasputin, Crowley, Mesmer, Bernays, Marcuse, and other literal mesmerists, with lesser lights as 20th century cult leaders, and I think Klaus Schwab and his transhumanist hokum is the current equivalent to these prior figures. His cohort has been clever enough to outlaw the mockery they so richly deserve. Oddly, the marjority of Issac Newton's writing was esoterica, and his contributions to physics and maths were almost incidental to his huge body of work on occult topics. What fascinates me about the occult personally is that it's a fundamentally inferior ontology - where it's what you believe when you don't have belief. Its ideas manifest in cults, but also in theory, where Marxism and its consequent gobbledygook(s) are predicated on similar occult and gnostic premises. Before we had ideology, we had superstition, and the priesthood of superstition was these magical thinkers, imo.
- dkarl 3y ago> What fascinates me about the occult personally is that it's a fundamentally inferior ontology - where it's what you believe when you don't have belief These characters are fascinating when they're safely in the past and they can be seen purely as drawing out an unacknowledged need in the zeitgeist. In the present, it's terrifying and infuriating to see people choosing their reality out of sheer self-indulgence.
- hnfong 3y agoI don't understand the quoted sentence from GP, what does that really mean? Also, you seem to think you don't choose your reality because it's "objective". Why do you believe that? From a relativistic point of view, wouldn't those occultists also think that their reality is the "real" one, and that you are choosing your reality out of sheer self-indulgence (or ignorance, or whatever)?
- nprateem 3y ago> it's what you believe when you don't have belief I know it's trendy to dismiss energy, chakras, astral projection out of hand, but there's some weird shit that feels every bit as real as any other experience if you know how to tap into them. Someone entering trance states (like Crowley's wife apparently) and interacting with those levels of consciousness isn't engaged in belief, they're having experiences that are real to them.
- dmbche 3y agoFor anyone insterested in reading Crowley, I was told Liber four is the most straightforward writing of his. His collection of poems "White Stains" is just amazing as well - mostly speaking about human secretions of all kinds and ingesting them. Edit:"White Stains, a collection of Crowley's poetry praised by W.B. Yeats, published in paperback for the first time, has been called 'the filthiest book of verse ever written' and of the first edition of 100 numbered copies, 83 were pulped and burned by Her Majesty's Customs in 1924." https://books.google.ca/books/about/White_Stains.html?id=b4NcAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y https://books.google.ca/books/about/White_Stains.html?id=b4N...
- ed25519FUUU 3y agoUh, no fxcking thanks!
- xupybd 3y agoYour description makes me think it's a little gross. Is there something I'm missing as to why such poetry is worth reading?
- dmbche 3y agoNo, I'm amazed by it's existence at all, I don't find it good - but I'm not a fan of poetry in general. I think his other writing is more interesting to read, but White Stains is special in how foul it is. The fact it was written at all blows my mind. Edit: I will add though, Crowley does have a peculiar and breathless way of writing that is noteworthy, but you'll find it in any of his works. And it's neat that he wrote White Stains both in english and in french and they are considered separate works!
- cykros 3y agoBook 4 isn't a bad place, but Magick in Theory and Practice is more approachable as a first read. It was written as a series of letters to a female student, and Crowley's Victorian attitudes about the intellect of women made it so it was basically an ELI5.
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- kitotik 3y agoThis is a really trash article reverberating/regurgitating “hot takes” from schlock mainstream media narratives that are >100 years old. However, it does prove that click bait isn’t a new phenomenon!
- 8bitchemistry 3y agoIf you want to see the "warring magicians on South Park" scene mentioned in the article (actually they were 'psychic detectives'): https://youtu.be/22Tj_l4PcPs https://youtu.be/22Tj_l4PcPs
- kixiQu 3y agoLearning about the Golden Dawn is a trip. I have yet to encounter a strain of English-language occultism that doesn't have a connection with them somehow... they're Erdős for people real into candles.
- xupybd 3y agoThere seems to be interest on HN when it comes to articles about Crowley and similar figures. Can some one help me understand why it's popular with this audience?
- b800h 3y ago"The method of science, the aim of religion." Crowley appeals to people who have had enough religion to recognise that there's something to it, but can't reconcile it with the scientific materialism in our dominant culture, and are intelligent enough to want to try.
- JoeJonathan 3y agoI think it’s more that he was a provocateur and beloved by prominent figures in the psychedelic subculture.
- layman51 3y agoI’ve wondered the same thing too. I don’t really keep up to date on political stuff, but I get the feeling that there is a history that links libertarianism, the tech sector, transhumanism, and occultism. I had seen stuff about how Peter Thiel has funded a bunch of art-related events that may sometimes utilize this esoteric aesthetic.
- the_other 3y agoCrowley inspired Jack Parsons who helped found the Jet Propulsion Lab. He’s the forerunner of the 60s free-love & drugs movement, which informs Steven Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog and Don Buchla. Crowley’s also the easiest mystic to find in the English speaking world, and maybe “the west”. He cultivated infamy, leaving traces of himself all over the media through the early 20th century. I think he’s the first “influencer”, the first to take power-for-power’s sake out of church and national leadership and to use it to influence the public at large. And he also pretends to teach others how to do that too, through his writings. He’s the model for all TV evangelists. (Actually, he was rubbish at bringing in money so he’s the model of what not to do if you want to be a TV evangelist) He’s also a case study in the moral decay of power. Born rich; squandered it all; cares about no-one whilst professing a system of universal love; retired to relative obscurity, heroin addiction, and obsession with prostitutes. The tarot deck he made with Lady Frida Harris is incredible.
- ebursztein 3y agoFor those interested I did put Crowley original tarot deck on the Etteilla Foundation website https://etteilla.org/en/deck/69/crowley-s-thoth-tarot https://etteilla.org/en/deck/69/crowley-s-thoth-tarot
- b800h 3y agoCrowley, and his forebear Eliphas Levi, are responsible for the stupid air of sulphur which hangs around a lot of modern esoterica. AC has his apologists, and he was obviously clever, but he was unquestionably a complete turd, and created a religious system which was fundamentally Satanic, wrapped in enough layers of obfuscation that it can fascinate intelligent people, especially those who have received a substandard education in theology, which is practically everyone these days. Someone asked why Crowley is perennially popular on HN. It's because his approach appeals to people who have experienced enough religion to understand that there is something there, but are struggling to reconcile it with our culture's dominant scientific materialism, because they're bright enough to want to try to. "The method of science, the aim of religion". A lot of HN matches that demographic. There are better ways of squaring the circle, but they're less sexy.
- colordrops 3y agoI avoided Sam Harris for the longest time due to some interviews of him that I had heard before, but I started listening to his meditation instruction recently, and it's by far the best I've ever heard for bridging the gap between traditional mysticism and modern secularism.
- b800h 3y agoI've not heard of him - I'll have a look. This may not apply to him, but what I'm wary of is anything that makes the practice a personal improvement exercise - it has to reach for the heavens and encourage empathic love for other people, or it'll end up in the wrong place, IMO.
- fsloth 3y agoThat’s quite demanding. If one is in a dark place then one surely must first light one’s own path before reaching out? Augh, sorry about the horrible poetics. What I meant to say there is IMO nothing wrong in utilizing meditative practice for mental self-help and relaxation. Just trying to survive in a bleak world without going insane is not evil, even though the level of - um, “enlightenment” you remain at is “not depressed”.
- Synaesthesia 3y agoMy favourite Crowley essay is on cocaine. So many funny bits. http://www.luminist.org/archives/cocaine.htm http://www.luminist.org/archives/cocaine.htm However, let us concede the prohibitionist claims. Let us admit the police contention that cocaine and the rest are used by criminals who would otherwise lack the nerve to operate; they also contend that the effects of the drugs are so deadly that the cleverest thieves quickly become inefficient. Then for Heaven’s sake establish depots where they can get free cocaine!
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- exabrial 3y ago* yeets
- lynx23 3y agoOh my, Crowley on HN. What is next, Castaneda? von Dreien?
- fnordsensei 3y agoMany people have had experiences that fall into categories that make them difficult to speak about. Because they may not be universally shared experiences, there's not much of a common vocabulary that feels adequate. To me, a large part religion seems to be to provide such a vocabulary, and therefore, purposefully or not, monopolize the description of such experiences. By doing so, they inevitably funnel the rationalization of these experiences into certain paths. The reductive alternatives offered by skeptics are not usually a satisfying substitute, since they are usually not talking about the same thing. Skeptics like to shift the conversation to what they consider the objective which, while not necessarily wrong, is a different conversation, and beside the point. To make an inadequate comparison: it's like discussing the objective nature and accuracy of poetry rather than the experience of it, and the impact on the reader. There are many other ways to look at the development of western occultism, but from the perspective of language, it seems to me that it had a lot to do with establishing a framework that tries to side-step the effective monopoly of religious conversation, as well as the only alternative offered: plain denial of the experience. You could, of course, lump the history of occultism in with religion and say "it's not significantly different"/"it's a mish-mash of borrowed ideas from traditional religion"/etc., if painting with broad brushstrokes, but I think it was a conscious effort to break out of the frameworks set by convention and religion. It's an attempt to take command of the internal and external conversation regarding something deeply personal. I believe this is important, because putting language to something (whether it's words or symbols) is a hugely important way to internalize, process, and develop the results of an experience, whatever it is.
- cykros 3y agoWhat are Yeats?
- swayvil 3y agoIt's a pre-oatmeal breakfast cereal. Invented by the Romans.
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- ElfinTrousers 3y agoAlternate headline: two ostensibly smart people waste time on nonsense.
- swayvil 3y agoLet me explain to you in 20,000 words about how you are spending way too much time in your head.