Rethinking Aleister Crowley and Thelema
2020; Brill; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1163/15700593-02101004
ISSN1570-0593
Autores Tópico(s)Psychedelics and Drug Studies
Resumohedenborg white Aries -Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 21 (2021) 1-11against his upbringing at an early age, identifying himself with the Great Beast 666 of Revelation.He joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898 and rose quickly through the grades.Though Crowley's involvement with the Golden Dawn ended in 1900, its degree structure and magical curriculum came to comprise one of two basic components of his system of Magick, the second consisting of yogic techniques he learned while travelling in India, Burma, and Ceylon.31904 marked a turning point in Crowley's occult career.On honeymoon in Cairo, Crowley sought to impress his wife Rose (née Kelly, with some invocations, when she entered a trance state, proclaiming that someone awaited him.This someone was later identified as the god Horus.At Rose's behest, Crowley over the course of April 8-10 penned The Book of the Law, which he claimed was dictated to him by a discarnate entity named Aiwass.4The text announces the advent of a new epoch in the spiritual evolution of humanity, with Crowley, as the Beast, as its prophet.This new age was to be characterised by individual liberation and self-realisation, epitomised by the maxim: 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law' , and the word Thelema (Greek for "will"), which became the title of Crowley's religion.5Crowley's magical teachings were structured within two initiatory orders.The first of these was A⸫A⸫, which Crowley co-founded with George Cecil Jones in 1907, and whose curriculum combined ceremonial magic in the style of the Golden Dawn with yogic techniques and study of the "Holy Books of Thelema".6The second order within which Crowley assumed a formative role was Ordo Templi Orientis (oto), an initiatory fraternity led by the German socialist and singer Theodor Reuss .oto claimed to possess the secret uniting all masonic and Hermetic systems, namely, that of sexual magic.7 Reuss made Crowley the head of oto in Britain in 1912, and from 1914 onward, he began experimenting systematically with sexual magic.Over time, he came to reshape oto's degree structure and rituals in accordance with Thelema, assuming international headship of the order after Reuss's death.8
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