INSANITY OF CROWLEYANITY, ALEISTER CROWLEY WAS A CRANK

THE BOOK OF THE LAW, THE FIRST CHAPTER

Cairo. 1904. Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast, the Beast 666, claimed that some intelligence from the spirit realm wrote The Book of the Law through him. Crowley regarded it as THE book of his magical philosophy. That he did shows that he was far from being all there.

One has only to read it to see how much paper the entity he said wrote it wasted. Surely when it was so keen to speak it could have had more deep and profound things to say? The Law is for All, The Authorised Popular Commentary to The Book of the Law, by Aleister Crowley and edited by Louis Wilkinson and Hymenaeus Beta (New Falcon, Arizona, 1996) is what is consulted for this chapter and the following two. I am writing one chapter for each of the three chapters of this deranged law.
 
Crowley considered The Book of the Law to be proof that beings greater than human beings existed and were interested in what was best for us. He said it proved the existence of God. Yet there is not one single argument for God’s existence in it. There is only imagination in it. A godlike being would have picked a more reliable and competent prophet.

The commentary was written by Crowley for he was the only person allowed to do that. Crowley wrote, “Some 25 years ago I wrote a Commentary on The Book of the Law – over a quarter of a million words of the most turgid and incomprehensible hogwash ever penned” (page 9). Hymenaeus Beta claims that this was half-joking (page 9). But Crowley said he could not bear to look at what he wrote to correct it and got Wilkinson to try and make it coherent. So he was serious. If Crowley had been divinely inspired or believed himself to have been he would have done it himself. Nobody knows a work better than its writer.
 
Page 10 reveals that the edited commentary was found in Crowley’s papers making it more than likely that he had seen and agreed with the commentary in The Law is for All.
 
The first verse of the book is, “Had! The manifestation of Nuit”. Had is Satan (page 24).
 
On page 26, we read that every number is infinite and this means that every person is infinite and therefore God.
 
The commentary on page 36 says, “The Golden Rule is silly. If Lord Alfred Douglas (for example) did to others what he would like them to do to him, many would resent his action”. Lord Alfred Douglas was the homosexual who had a relationship with Oscar Wilde. But the Golden Rule, treat others as you like them to treat you, does not ask you to force your sexual needs on those who do not want them for you would not like people to do that to you.

The commentary teaches this on page 42, “The sexual act is a sacrament of Will. To profane it is the great offence. All true expression of it is lawful; all suppression or distortion is contrary to the Law of Liberty. To use legal or financial constraint to compel either abstentation or submission, is entirely horrible, unnatural and absurd”. As if harmful sex should not be forbidden. The book says that it is the sacrament of Will. Will is what you truly want considering all the options. If Will wants to have sex regardless of how likely it is to get AIDS then this is permitted. Desire is exalted over reason and that is foolish. The Will is more interested in eternal self-preservation than acts of sex. If it could trigger the brain to be in a state of perpetual orgasm with sex or whatever it would. Crowley misunderstands the true will. Sex is not a sacrament of the Will. The commentary (page 42) gets far worse, “Some of the most passionate and permanent attachments have begun with rape. Rome was actually founded thereon. Similarly, the murder of a faithless partner is ethically excusable, in a certain sense; for there may be some stars whose Nature is extreme violence”. (Stars are independent so star represents the individualists.) this is utter revolting rubbish. Rape and murder are condoned here.
 
Silly attitudes to women appear in the commentary, “Blind asses! Who pretend that women are naturally chaste! The Easterns know better; all the restrictions of the harem, of public opinion, and so on, are based on the recognition of the fact that woman is only chaste when there is nobody around.  She will snatch the baby from its cradle, or drag the dog from its kennel, to prove the old saying: “Natura abhorret a vacuo” (page 44). The saying is that nature abhors a vacuum. So a woman will molest babies and even animals if there are no men. How stupid a doctrine this is.

The commentary says that, “A man who is not doing his will is like a man with cancer, an independent growth in him, yet one from which he cannot get free. The idea of self-sacrifice is a moral cancer in exactly this sense” (page 45). But then page 54 says that you should suffer by admitting and freely practicing your sexual desires no matter how much trouble it lands you in. It demands self-sacrifice after all!
 
Page 50 declares that a person must not invade another’s rights for that implies that one’s own rights should be invaded. It does not matter if it doesn’t to you and if you don’t get caught. And the true will might make you like being abused. So the commentary can give no real reason for not harming others. And it forbids respect for treating a person right is only a sham if you are only doing it for your own benefit.
 
Page 54 advises that babies and young children be shown and taught all about sex of every kind in case mystery makes them stupid! It does not worry the commentator that this will injure the children. Sex is not everything in life.
 
On page 55, incest, adultery and men sleeping with boys are authorised in case forbidding them leads to shame, cowardice and hypocrisy and makes them the conditions for a successful life. Forbidding these things need lead to none of these. Hypocrisy can be avoided by repentance.

The commentary says on page 64, “There are cases when seduction or rape may be emancipation or initiation to another. Such acts can only be judged by their results”. So rape is moral when it has good results! But when nobody knows what the result will be and there is no need for rape then how could it ever be right? Rubbish like this should not be published. When the Bible is as bad and it is published it is no wonder when a publisher would publish the likes of what Crowley wrote.

CROWLEY’S LAW, CHAPTER TWO

Having completed our search for faults in Crowley’s first chapter of the law let us hope we can find plenty to discredit his hateful book in chapter two.
 
Verse 2 is, “Come! All ye, and learn the secret that hath not yet been revealed. I, Hadit, am the complement of Nu, my bride. I am not extended, and Khabs is the name of my House”.
 
The commentary reads, “Khabs – “a star” – is a unit of Nuit, and therefore Nuit Herself. This doctrine is enormously difficult of apprehension, even after these many years of study. Hadit is the “core of every star”, verse 6.  He is thus the Impersonal Identity with the Individuality of “every man and every woman.” He is “not extended”; that is, without condition of any sort in the metaphysical sense. Only in the highest trances can the nature of these truths be revealed” (page 87, 88).
 
This is really Pantheism which claims that we are ultimately one impersonal spirit. And Crowley wants us to believe in spirits which is a mystery to us for we cannot see how a being that is a kind of nothing can exist. This system is as abominable as Christianity with its belief in spirit.
 
Verse 3 goes, “In the sphere I am everywhere the centre, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found.” If the sphere has its centres everywhere inside it then we have a contradiction. Crowley’s God is irrational.
 
The commentary on page 92 says the centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. But if there is a centre then there must be a boundary. Christians used the same language for their mysterious God. It is just nonsense.
 
Page 98 says that Archbishop Cranmer’s excuse for his heretical actions was to burn his hand in the fire that he was to be burned in by the Catholics. Cranmer said that his hand offended but he could still have meant that he was guilty and only have been performing a symbolic action.
 
Verse 19 says, “Is God to live in a dog?” the context and commentary say this is a rhetorical question meant for suggesting that it is preposterous.

But a God living in a dog would still be a God and able to do what he wants so there is no problem. Yet the commentary says, “A god living in a dog would be one who was prevented from fulfilling his function properly” (page 101). This error proves that The Book of the Law was not inspired by a genius spirit at all.
 
Verse 21 is a shocker! “We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world”.
 
This hate-filled crap ignores the fact that we are all weak at times and that the weak can become strong. The compassion denounced is not the emotion but the practice of helping others for if kings were gripped by the emotion they would give away all they had to the wretched.
 
The commentary argues: “There is a good deal of the Nietzschean standpoint in this verse. It is the evolutionary and natural view. Of what use is it to perpetuate the misery of tuberculosis, and such diseases, as we do now? Nature’s way is to weed out the weak. This is the most merciful way, too. At present all the strong are being damaged, and their progress hindered by the dead weight of the weak limbs and the missing limbs, the diseased limbs and the atrophied limbs. The Christians to the Lions!” (page 102).
 
To hell with the laws of nature. Nature was made by chance not a God so we have no need to call upon people to respect its laws even if it hurts us. So nature gets rid of the weak with diseases? The strong have the same problem.
 
So the weak have to die so that the strong will prosper? But the strong should be more interested in people than in material things which can be lost anytime. And evolution does not imply that we should live as if survival of the fittest is a moral law. That lie has led to states in America dropping evolution from the curriculum.
 
Verse 22 includes the words, “To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all” (page 109).
 
The commentary recommends cocaine (page 110).
 
Because it is said earlier that reason is rubbish, page 118 says, “We must not suppose for an instant that The Book of the Law is opposed to reason. On the contrary, its own claim to authority rests upon reason, and nothing else”.
 
Also page 118 says, “Distrust any explanation whatever. Disraeli said, “Never ask anyone to dinner who has to be explained.” All explanations are intended to cover up lies, injustices, or shames. The Truth is radiantly simple”.
 
The verse this is about, verse 29 (page 118), puts it more bluntly, “May Because be accursed forever!” How cynical! Even reason has to be explained to the novice. What are the commentary and The Book of the Law for? Explaining!
 
Verse 32 says, “Reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite & unknown; & all their words are skew-wise” (page 119).
 
The commentary says, “It has been explained at length in a previous note that “reason is a lie” by nature. We may here add certain confirmations suggested by the “factor”. A and a not-A together make up the Universe. As A is evidently “infinite & unknown”, its equal and opposite A must be no less. Again, from any proposition “S is P”, reason deduces S is not p”; thus the apparent finitude and knowability of S is deceptive, since it is in direct relation with p” (page 119, 120).
 
Later, “we may be sure that our apparatus is inherently incapable of discovering the truth about anything, even in part” (page 120).
 
So The Book of the Law is based on lies if it is based on reason. Pity Crowley’s spirit guide did not have the intelligence to realise that if reason comes up against a brick wall then that does not mean it is all wrong.
 
Here is some sexism from page 121, “Reason is like a woman; if you listen, you are lost; with a thick stick, you have some sort of sporting chance”.
 
Page 122 condemns the person who believes in asking the question, “Why?” for “there is no answer to the question.” Then we read, “The greatest thinkers have been sceptics or agnostics”.
 
Page 130, “Compulsory education has aided nobody. It has imposed an unwarrantable constraint on the people it was intended to benefit; it has been asinine presumption on the part of the intellectuals to consider a smattering of mental acquirements of universal benefit. It is a form of sectarian bigotry”.

Who hasn’t looked back on the years of their education and not been grateful even when they were fairly horrible years? Even if we won’t learn we want to and so compulsory education is right.
 
Page 133, “Our Law knows nothing of punishment beyond that imposed by ignorance and awkwardness on their possessor”.
 
Page 137 indirectly tells us that if we want a cleaning job to kill the cleaning lady. “The end justifies the means; if the Jesuits do not assert this, I do.”

The following also, from the same page, does not really alter this for it is without depth and substance: “There is obviously a limit, where “the means” in any case are such that their use blasphemes “the end”: e.g., to murder one’s rich aunt affirms the right of one’s poor nephew to repeat the trick, and so to go against one’s own Will-to-live, which lies deeper in one’s own being than the mere Will-to-inherit”. If that is right then the end never justifies the means for your true will does not want you harmed. The principle means that you do wrongful harm to others to get what you want so it does not agree with itself. You could murder the aunt secretly and that would not be asking for your nephew to do that to you. And even if he does find out you can protect yourself from him.
 
Page 146, “We at Thelema think it vitally aright to let a man take opium. He may destroy his physical vehicle thereby, but he may produce another Kubla Khan”.
 
Page 147 tells us that “we do well to assist one who is weak by accident or misfortune, if he wishes to recover. But it is a crime against the state and against the individuals in question to hinder the gambler, the drunkard, the voluptuary, the congenital defective, from drifting to death, unless they prove by their own determination to master their circumstances, that they are fit to pull their weight in the Noah’s Ark of mankind.”
 
Verse 56 gives a series of letters and numbers that have some hidden meaning that some future prophet will discover. The verse says that even Crowley does not know the meaning.

Anybody could say they know so how could such a ludicrous revelation have come from a spiritual intelligence? It is not worth the ink the full stop at the end of it is written with.



FURTHER READING

The Occult, Colin Wilson, Grafton, London, 1979
The Law is for All, The Authorised Popular Commentary to The Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley, Edited by Louis Wilkinson and Hymenaeus Beta, New Falcon, Arizona, 1996
Magick in Theory and Practice, Aleister Crowley, Castle Books, New Jersey, 1991