Aleister Crowley
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
“We shall bring you to Absolute Truth, Absolute Light, Absolute Bliss.
Many adepts throughout the ages have sought to do this; but their words have been perverted by their successors, and again and again the Veil has fallen upon the Holy of Holies.
To you who yet wander in the Court of the Profane we cannot yet reveal all; but you will easily understand that the religions of the world are but symbols and veils of the Absolute Truth. So also are the philosophies. To the adept, seeing all these things from above, there seems nothing to choose between Buddha and Mohammed, between Atheism and Theism.”– Liber Porta Lvcis (The Book of the Gateway of Light)
Aleister Crowley was the founder of the philosophical and religious system known as Thelema.
Born in England in the year 1875, he was a prolific occult writer, who, by the time of his death in 1947, had produced an extremely voluminous body of occult literature. In his own words from his 1914 work The Soul of the Desert:
” I have myself written some million words in order to stop thinking!”
In addition to his extensive writing about all things occult, he was publishing poetry, producing paintings, climbing mountains, setting records as a rock climber, some of which still stand today; and also traveling the world in search of mystical, yogic, and ceremonial systems of spiritual attainment.
In the year 1904, while honeymooning in Cairo, Egypt, a series of events occurred that caused Crowley to have a profound Spiritual experience. During the course of these events, he was instructed to “shut himself up in a certain room of his house for one hour daily for three days (April 8–10, 1904 E.V.) that he might write what should then be given to him.”– Liber DCLXVI. Crowley did as he was instructed, and on each of those days, between the hours of noon and 1pm, Crowley “received” a text. He described the experience as if there was a man standing over his left shoulder dictating the words to him. He was merely writing it down. The writings produced during these experiences culminated into a three-chapter text that we know today as Liber AL vel Legis- The Book of the Law.
Today, as in his own time period, Aleister Crowley is often misunderstood, even by people in the occult community. His reputation has often been wrongly smeared by those who believe the “hype”, rather than actually looking deeper into the man’s work. A wonderful collection of articles debunking popular myths surrounding Crowley can be found here.
Crowley is revered by Thelemites as the Prophet of the Aeon. Although his personal exploits were sometimes extreme, those serious about Thelema make a distinct separation between his personal writings and the system of “Classed Documents” that make up the core of Thelemic Philosophy. This separation is important in order to distinguish between “Crowley the Man” and his writings, and the writings of “Crowley the Prophet”, which are thought to be “Divinely Inspired”, channeled, meaning that they are the result of the interaction between Crowley and his Holy Guardian Angel. It is these writings that Thelemites should look to in their study of Thelema. As Crowley wrote in the Tunis Comment, also simply referred to as “The Comment”, which is appended to the end of The Book of the Law:
“All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself.”
So go read them!
Love is the law, love under will.