BEGINNING in the present, some of the latest news on the Jeffrey Epstein situation includes allegations he was involved in genetic research, with a particular interest in eugenics, also that he may have been a worshiper of the pagan god Baal attempting to recreate the “Babalon Working” as described in Aleister Crowley’s 1929 book, Moonchild, just like Jack Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard and the rest of the gang tried back in 1946, as we’ll see in a coming chapter. Crowley’s title “Frater Perdurabo” meaning “I will endure” is an apt one, considering his ongoing influence on our society—including allegations that he infiltrated the world of Hollywood entertainment and NASA so pervasively that this long-term occult project will inevitably result in the transformation of our species, which seems equally likely to have been the result of conditioning by powerful interests through the media, and you can take your pick. There are always new angles to be uncovered and examined.
Aleister Crowley (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. Like Jeffrey Epstein and Carlos Castaneda before him, Crowley deliberately created such a fog around his doings that known details about him are often contradicted by recorded history.
As the founder of the religion of Thelema in the early 20th century, he identified as its prophet, entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus. A prolific writer, he published widely—composing the “Libri” (Latin for books) of Thelema—over the course of his life. Known everywhere as the self-proclaimed Great Beast 666 (apparently originating from a nanny’s pet name for the child-Crowley) and for his motto, “Do What Thou wilt Shall be the Whole of the Law”.
Aleister Crowley’s is one among the faces in the background on the cover of the Beatles groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, whether because of Horus or because of the recorded 1947 effort of Crowleyite Jack Parsons, who founded NASA, to usher in an era of free love via a reiteration of the Babalon Working profiled in Crowley’s Moonchild (1929). This was performed with the assistance of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, artist (Marjorie) Cameron and others. Crowley is rumored to be Barbara Bush’s true father (and she looks just like him) and the father of Paul McCartnery’s alleged replacement, if there is one.
When I was about 19 years old, I moved into a house in Denver that used to be a Civil War nurses’ dormitory. This house was attached to a former church which had been repurposed as an Art Therapy Center. We called it the Punk Rock Monastery. One of my roommates, an ex-Mormon who was an intern there, introduced me to Crowley through a few of his books, including The Book of the Law. as dictated by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, inaugurating the Æon of Horus and resulting in The Book of Thoth, his commentary on the Egyptian Tarot. The Thoth deck, designed by Crowley, in collaboration with artist Frieda Harris, is still my favorite, though I am given more to self-governance.
During the 1919 Amalantrah Working in New York, Crowley also channeled “an extra-terrestrial or pan-dimensional intelligence . . . associated with the quintessence of the silent, inward path to initiation” calling itself LAM greatly resembling an alien Gray.
I remember being struck by Crowley’s adherence to the Tree of Life from the Hebrew Kabbalah. Even his sincere elucidation to the Tarot and the Zodiac made him seem far more a sincere practitioner of the arts he professed than an evil extremist. More likely, he was a free spirit born into an unduly repressive format who played it up to the extreme in the spirit of proto-punk metaphysics. Crowley was known for his pan-sexual proclivities, from a book of poems called White Stains to a succession of “Scarlet Women” to Sex Magick, a lineage which could quite conceivably have led to various bastards, including Jeffrey Epstein and the Beatles and Timothy Leary and Carlos Castaneda and Jeffrey Epstein and punk metaphysics, at least in part.
Founded in California in 1935 by Wilfred Talbot Smith and later led by rocket scientist Jack Parsons, Crowley’s Agape Lodge was the primary American branch of the occult society Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). The Pasadena-based lodge became his main financial lifeline and the only surviving O.T.O. group after World War II, during which he may have spied for both sides, though this is foggy¹. The Agape Lodge operated without Crowley’s supervision as a communal, bohemiam collective of artists, scientists, and occultists. Members practiced Thelema, conducting rituals like the Gnostic Mass, and engaged in esoteric rites such as “sex magick”. Famous or infamous figures associated with the lodge include the future founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, and artist Marjorie Cameron. Was it all a glorified free love commune? The debate continues.
Crowley decided to climb Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas of Nepal, widely recognised as the world’s most treacherous mountain. The other climbers with him thought he was reckless and eventually mutinied against Crowley’s control, heading back down the mountain as nightfall approached despite Crowley’s warnings that it was too dangerous. Subsequently, Pache and several porters were killed in an accident, something for which Crowley was widely blamed by the mountaineering community. After the unsuccessful 1905 Kanchenjunga expedition and a visit to India and China, Crowley returned to Britain, where he attracted attention as a prolific author of poetry, novels, and occult literature with a notable flair for the sarcastic and pornographic.
Aleister (real name Edward Alexander) Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, being a drug user, a bisexual, and an individualist social critic. Crowley saw Magick as “The Method of Science; the Aim of Religion”.[237] and urged magicians to keep detailed records of their magical experiments: “The more scientific the record is, the better.” [239] He chose to spell it “Magick” to distinguish it from sleight-of-hand and stagecraft and provided various different definitions over his career. In his book Magick in Theory and Practice, he defined it as “the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will”.[235] He told his disciple Karl Germer that “Magick is getting into communication with individuals who exist on a higher plane than ours. Mysticism is the raising of oneself to their level.”
Crowley ultimately adopted an exceptionally broad definition of magick that included almost all forms of technology as magick, adopting an instrumentalist definition of magic, science, and technology., which is close to the aim of this book. He saw Magick as “The Method of Science; the Aim of Religion”.[237], in other words, the subtle chimera impelling and enabling them. He urged magicians to keep detailed records of their magical experiments: “The more scientific the record is, the better.” [239]
I got an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2008 a few years before the closure of its Montpelier campus, which was a hotbed of synchronicity among other outstanding qualities. While there, I had the honor of revising one of my novels under the advisement of Lawrence Sutin, who’s written a number of books, including a biography of Aleister Crowley called Do What Thou Wilt first published in 2002 wherre he noted that Crowley exhibited “courage, skill, dauntless energy, and remarkable focus of will” as a living cultural phenomenon while at the same time showing a “blind arrogance, petty fits of bile, [and] contempt for the abilities of his fellow men” (262)
Besides my time as a Punk Monk receiving daily Thoth deck readings and paging through The Book of the Law, writing a book satirizing religion under the advisement of Larry Sutin is another connection I have with Crowley, who, whatever his views on sexuality, I’ve got to admit was an iconoclastic visionary whose literary and cultural legacies extend far beyond the limits of his reputation and we’ll probably never get the whole truth of the matter of his meaning.
Besides writing about white stains and the Tarot (and developing a brand new system based on the Tree of Life where every single card is a distinct reflection of that essential structure), Crowley wrote/channeled several volumes foundational to Thelema and the practice of Magick, generally speaking. Besides the 60s-era Beatles, he is venerated by Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, and countless others to this day and beyond it, no doubt, in part because of this volume.
Is living invisibly per Gurdjieff really any different from creating a fog around oneself like Castaneda and Crowley did, albeit for different reasons? Can privacy still exist, in the age of social media, or has our consciousness become performative? Probably there will always be new angles to uncover on the things we think we understand, though willful certainty is all the rage for years now.
My Lyft driver yesterday told me she sometimes hosted impromptu karaoke parties in her car. “Is this Led Zeppelin playing now?” Jimmy Page was a Crowleyite for some time, even purchasing and inhabiting Boleskine Manor on the shore of Loch Ness, formerly A.C.’s residence.
“Yeah.”
I told her let’s do it. “What’s your favorite band?” she asked me.
“I have a million. Try something rock and roll.”
“Classic rock?”
“Just rock and roll, punk, new wave, ska, whatever.”
“Do you like the Doors?”
“I was Jim’s brother-in-law’s publicist for about 25 years.”
“What the hell?”
“Yeah, you must be picking up on something.” I’ll always have a psychic association with the Doors now after that, at least in my own mind.
The driver played some Budgie (of Siouxsie Sioux fame) which sounded like a more primitive version of Rush. I didn’t know the lyrics so I couldn’t sing along but it was interesting to hear. Then she told me she thought MK Ultra had used acid to condition the public to create new genres of music along with all the other reasons why, after playing that Budgie, a new angle uncovered, and I wish I’d thought of it first. Music HAS been getting weirder and weirder since the Doors. Somebody must be responsible . . .
¹ Aleister Crowley’s biographers later revealed that he had infiltrated the pro-German movement to assist the British intelligence services. In 1920, he established the Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Cefalù, Sicily, where he lived with various followers. His libertine lifestyle led to denunciations in the British press, and the Italian government evicted him in 1923. He divided the following two decades between France, Germany, and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death.
² I count myself to have worked with a number of extremely talented advisors at VCFA, including, besides Larry Sutin, the late Richard Hathaway, Ricky Gard Diamond, Christopher Noel, Bernice Minnis, Nance Van Winckel, Ken Silvestro, and others. I have it on good authority that the low-residency continues its tradition of excellence currently in partnership with U Cal Arts.
