Originally posted by akilles

I criticize Crowley not for the ideas he helped revive, but for living a life that reflects his true philosophy all too clearly.

So? Thelemites do the same thing. The man and the message are not the same thing.

You are right, ML, he did not write for the sake of making money. He wrote because he wanted to be THE AUTHORITY on the subject, and THAT was power to him, to have his deception live on.

OK so I'm a masochist... What do you think Crowley's deception was?

Originally posted by akilles
So it struck a little too close to home, for a fellow student of Crowley, hm?

Actually, I was talking about you. If you weren't able to decipher that, you're even further gone than I thought.

Originally posted by Cug
What do you think Crowley's deception was?

I think that akilles is upset with Crowley because Crowley had a tendency to tear into hypocrites and drones, and showed them no mercy in his writings. He demanded that people think for themselves, and constantly challenged everybody's "normal" way of looking at things.

This sort of challenge poses a problem for people like akilles, who depend upon the ignorance of others in order to make a name for themselves. Akilles represents the "status quo" that Crowley was able to expose so very well as a massive sham and charlatan, by simply showing that the emperor had no clothes.

what was crowleys and others similar views on the masses?.

Originally posted by MysticOfRadiance
what was crowleys and others similar views on the masses?.

Crowley did not have much respect for them. He was a disciple of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and adopted his views here.

Nietzsche (and Crowley) separated humanity into two camps: the individuals and the masses. The individuals are those who are able to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions through the use of logic and reason. These are the minority.

The masses, which are the majority, possess a "herd mentality." In other words, they are a wild herd of animals, always ready to crush the individuals in a mad rush with their hooves.

According to Nietzsche (and Crowley) the herd mentality is a product of conditioning combined with moral weakness. Both Nietzsche and Crowley attacked Christianity as the primary culprit. Christianity, says Freddie and Al, was invented by the wealthy elite 2000 years simply as a means to control people through fear. They took a few myths, rolled them all into a contradictory doctrine, then declared war on everyone who would not accept it as truth.

Most of our ancestors were converted to Christianity by force, not because they really believed in it. Eventually, after several generations, the conquered actually began believing it, which is a form of mind control, i.e., using superstition and a fear of hell.

When people break free of such irrational dogmatism, they become free in the true sense, and therefore become individuals. The problem is that such people question the herd's precious fictions, which makes the herd anxious and uncomfortable, i.e., the individuals tear away at the herd's psychological security blanket.

Crowley and Nietzsche were unique among the "individuals" because they not only challenged the herd mentality, but they constantly and intentionally tried to piss them off by blaspheming against their beliefs. Both of them apparently saw this as sort of Zen-like method to "shock" people into enlightenment. But the shock method made them feared and hated more than rationally considered. This is unfortunate because, if we read Crowley and Nietzsche, we find some very serious challenges to what we consider the right way to live, and these challenges deserve a response. I say "unfortunate" because their challenges are usually ignored; very few of the herd actually bother to read Crowley or Nietzsche, so they are themselves not familiar with such lines of social criticism.

[edit on 2-3-2005 by Masonic Light]

What I find interesting here is that the philosophy that Crowley gained from Nietzsche regarding the masses and the individual was the same one that Adolf Hitler promoted in Mein Kampf.
But whereas Crowley wanted to promote the individual, Hitler wanted to destroy it.

ML. In your opinion, did Crowley have any influence over any of Hitler's philosophy or did the latter gain the majority of his thought from Nietzsche? I see them as polar opposites in relation to attitudes regarding the individual but do you think that there was some cross pollination of theory between the two?

Originally posted by Leveller

ML. In your opinion, did Crowley have any influence over any of Hitler's philosophy or did the latter gain the majority of his thought from Nietzsche?

Hitler was an avowed Nietzschean, but this matter is rather complicated. Hitler kept a bust of Nietzsche on his desk, and, according to Third Reich historian William Shirer, would often "gaze at it in rapture". Furthermore, Nietzsche's sister was a close associate of Hitler's in the early years of the Reich. She was elderly at the time, but as an anti-Semite, she was all too happy to twist her deceased brother's philosophy to suit National Socialism.

Hitler probably first became familiar with Nietzche's writings during WWI, as an army corporal, when German soldiers famously carried copies of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" with them wherever they went.

The problem with all this is that the Nazis' use of Nietzsche was a complete distortion (similar to the distortion of Marx by the Stalinists). To begin with, Nietzsche deplored anti-Semitism, and had called the Jews "the most noble race in Europe". In fact, he ended his friendship with the composer Richard Wagner in part because of the latter's anti-Semitism.

Furthermore, Nietzsche's idea of the Germans was the exact opposite of Hitler's. Hitler considered the Germans the "master race", while Nietzsche considered his countrymen to be decadent idiots. Nietzsche praised the French for their culture, and Hitler despised it.

In essence, the appropriation of Nietzsche by the Nazis was actually based on a straw man. The Nazis made sure Nietzsche's books were readily available, yet they were heavily censored, and in cases completely rewritten. Nietzsche's sister, who had always been rather deranged, gave Hitler her blessings on bastardizing her brother's philosophy.

As for Crowley, I do not know if Hitler was aware of him or his writings, but Crowley certainly was aware of Hitler. Karl Germer, Crowley's right hand man for the O.T.O. in Germany at the time, was arrested by the Gestapo for belonging to "secret societies which oppose National Socialism", and was sent to a concentration camp in Poland, where he eventually escaped, and made it to the USA. Furthermore, General Fuller, the celebrated military genius who helped orchestrate the British resistance to the Luftwaffe attacks, was Crowley's Deputy in London for the A.'.A.'., the Golden Dawn Order he founded.

In the 1938 printing of Crowley's Liber AL vel Legis by the O.T.O. in England, Crowley wrote in the preface:

Ferocious Fascism, cackling Communism, equally frauds, cavort crazily around the globe. They are hemming us in.
They are abortive births of the Child, the New Aeon of Horus.
Liberty stirs once more in the womb of Time.
Evolution makes its changes by anti-Socialistic ways. The 'abnormal' man who forsees the trend of the times and adepts circumstances intelligently, is laughed at, persecuted, often destroyed by the herd; but he and his heirs, when the crisis comes, are survivors.
Above us to-day hangs a danger never yet paralleled in history. We suppress the individual in more and more ways. We think in terms of the herd. War no longer kills soldiers; it kills all indiscriminately. Every new measure of the most democratic and autocratic governments is Communistic in essence. It is always restriction. Dora, the Shops Act, the Motoring Laws, Sunday suffocation, the Censorship - they won't trust us to cross the roads at will.
Fascism is like Communism, and dishonest into the bargain. The dictators suppress all art, literature, theatre, music, news, that does not meet their requirements; yet the world only moves by the light of genius...
In the words of the famous paradox of the Comte de Fenix - The absolute rule of the state shall be a function of the absolute liberty of each individual will.
All men and women are invited to co-operate with the Master Therion in this, the Great Work.

- Liber Al vel Legis by Aleister Crowley, 1938 O.T.O., p. 14

And of course, Hitler was financed into his position of power by American bankers,
"Hitler was invited to a meeting at the Schroder Bank in Berlin on January 4, 1933. The leading industrialists and bankers of Germany tided Hitler over his financial difficulties and enabled him to meet the enormous debt he had incurred in connection with the maintenance of his private army. In return, he promised to break the power of the trade unions.

On May 2, 1933, he fulfilled his promise." Present at the January 4, 1933 meeting were the Dulles brothers, John Foster Dulles and Allen W. Dulles of the New York law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Schroder Bank.

The Dulles brothers often turned up at important meetings. They had represented the United States at the Paris Peace Conference (1919); John Foster Dulles would die in harness as Eisenhower's Secretary of State, while Allen Dulles headed the Central Intelligence Agency for many years. Their apologists have seldom attempted to defend the Dulles brothers appearance at the meeting which installed Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany, preferring to pretend that it never happened."

Now once people's minds are open to realize he received outside funds, maybe they will realize he received orders, and goals from outside also? Naaah, too easy to assume it was just one crazed man.

I mean, to think Hitler was following some sort of occult plan that meant he would end up on the losing side, I've been told is the definition of crazy.

Originally posted by akilles

Now once people's minds are open to realize he received outside funds, maybe they will realize he received orders, and goals from outside also?

It's certainly not a secret that those who funded and helped Hitler, including Hindenburg himself, thought that Hitler would be easily controlled. They were willing to invest in him to help control the radical socialists, and believed that Hitler was not intelligent enough to rule without their help.

The fact of the matter, however, is that Hitler had completely different plans. A master of manipulation, he was extremely successful in harnessing the necessary support in the political status quo, after which he systematically eliminated them as potential rivals. Instead of being naive, he instead played everyone around him like a violin, securing for himself dictatorial powers. The guy wasn't going to take orders from anyone, not even his mentor Benito Mussolini, and he made this very clear very quickly.

Originally posted by Masonic Light

Originally posted by MysticOfRadiance
ML have you come across any human sacrafice rituals?.

Yeah, there's a really good one in the Book of Judges, where Jepthah sacrifices his daughter as a burnt offering in order to keep his promise to God. There's a lot of good stuff in there, just have a look....

1. First of all did that Biblical account actually happen?

2. How did Japeth know that a human sacrifice would do any good whatsoever?

3.When they burned a sacrifice in those days, did they slay the person pryor to burning them or did they burn them alive?

4. Wouldn't he have had to sacrifice her first in a ritual to gain any power or recources available before going into battle?

The story says that he promised God he would sacrifice who ever greets him upon returning from battle if he could just win. The story seems to suggest that it takes that to win. In his case it may have meant that his entire tribe would have been wiped out had he not won.

Did you at one point "disbelieve" that masons existed. That would be quite ignorant given the fact that in almost any town or city there is always a Freemason's Lodge.