Lynn Picknett - The Secret History of Lucifer - And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code

Crowley was much more than a black magician, although he did once crucify a toad; he was much more than a sexual athlete, although he did on one occasion or another indulge in almost every perversion from sodomy to coprophilia ...81

After a mercurial relationship with various magical and secret societies (including the Freemasons), he chose to pursue sex magic (or his preferred `magick') with the enthusiasm of the Carpocratians or Simon Magus in partnership with either fellow male magi or his serial `Scarlet Women'. Believing himself to be the reincarnation of Eliphas Levi, he strove for the ultimate magical experiences, even seeking to conjure his Holy Guardian Angel, which he managed partly through the mediumship of his wife Rose in Cairo in 1904. As Francis X. King wrote, `... he was much more than a "satanic occultist", although he did identify Aiwass, his "Holy Guardian Angel" with Satan, the Christian Devil.'82

Like all dedicated magicians, Crowley sought to obey the ancient injunction to Know Thyself, to discover and implement his True Will. His encounter with Aiwass can be seen as the climax of that quest, the confrontation of his inner self as an external force. (He wrote in his Magical Record, July 1920: `I want to serve God, or as I put it, Do My Will, continuously: I prefer a year's concentration with death at the end than the same dose diluted in half a century of futility.,)83

The result of this climatic angelic encounter was the Book of the Law, which - without actually terrifying him - disconcerted Crowley so much he kept trying to lose it, but somehow it always returned. In September 1923 he recalled the quintessence of the `Cairo Working', writing: `The Secret was this: the breaking down of my false Will by these dread words of mine Angel freed my True Self from all its bonds, so that I could enjoy at once the rapture of knowing myself to be who I am."'

When writing on the subject of the Tarot card, the Hanged Man, for his Book of Thoth (1944), he quoted Aiwass from the Book of the Law: `I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life: upon death: peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.'85 Always opposed to the concept of the dying-and-rising Christ as redeemer, he writes: `This idea of sacrifice is, in the final analysis, a wrong idea.'R6 He also made the point: `... Judaism is a savage, and Christianity a fiendish superstition.'87 (Indeed, up to the Cairo Working Crowley had been largely Buddhist in spiritual outlook, but then Aiwass' insistence that existence was `pure joy' seriously eroded the concept that life was ultimately nothingness.)

However, the third chapter of the Book of the Law changes gear, predicting - even encouraging - mass brutality, bloodshed and death: `Mercy let be off: damn them who pity! Kill and torture; spare not: be upon them!' Yet, as Tobias Churton points out, it is the alternate voice of a Crowley `contemptuous of the mush and mire of Edwardian sentimentality'," a world that was quickly to be blown to pieces in the carnage of the First World War. `It is the voice of every place where the True Will is silenced; where the individual walks in fear of the mass'.89

Sometimes Crowley could rise to the noblest heights, and when he did, few could match his pure Luciferan sentiments, as in:

... Redemption is a bad word; it implies a debt. For every star [individual] possesses boundless wealth; the only proper way to deal with the ignorant is to bring them to the knowledge of their starry heritage. To do this, it is necessary to behave as must be done in order to get on good terms with animals and children: to treat them with absolute respect; even, in a certain sense, with worship 90

And, music to the ears of the confined and frustrated Edwardian woman, the Book of the Law opens with a clarion call to end false modesty and throw open the gates of womanhood. Aiwass/Crowley writes:

We do not fool and flatter women; we do not despise and abuse them. To us a woman is Herself, as absolute, original, independent, free, self-justified, exactly as a man is ... We do not want Her as a slave; we want Her free and royal, whether her love fight death in our arms by night ... or Her loyalty ride by day beside us in the Charge of the Battle of Life ...

But now the word of Me the Beast is this; not only art thou Woman, sworn to a purpose not thine own; thou art thyself a star, and in thyself a purpose to thyself. Not only mother of me art thou, or whore to men; serf to their need of Life and Love, not sharing in their Light and Liberty; nay, thou art Mother and Whore for thine own pleasure; the Word to Man I say to thee no less: Do what thou wilt. Shall be the whole of the Law!91

At least that was the theory. Crowley's Scarlet Women tended to have grave mental problems - Rose, for example, died of alcoholism - and what a pity that he could bring himself to show so little respect for his fellow human beings in general, displaying a marked infantile exhibitionism by defecating on hostesses' drawing-room carpets, and offering `love' cakes (made of faeces) to his own guests. His desire to shock by cultivating a sensational image often reduced the would-be Master of the new Aeon to the mental age of about three. In that, but only in that, LaVey's sneering dismissal of Crowley as a `poseur par excellence' hits the mark. And another aspect of his sheer nastiness (after all, he had a lot to live up to as the Great Beast) was his fondness for cursing people92 with a real deep-down viciousness mixed with a show-off arrogance, a sort of dark and dirty swagger of the soul. ('Never dull where Crowley is!' he wrote of himself.)93 This is what Tobias Churton, a great admirer of the Gnostic magician Crowley calls `his frequently stupid, frequently selfish and frequently delightful, magical self' .9a

Ever one for assuming the guise of the `laughing master' - like Simon Magus - Crowley declared, tongue in cheek, but still really, really meaning it: `I have been taxed with assaulting what is commonly known as virtue. True, I hate it, but only in the same degree as I hate what is commonly known as vice.'95

Moralists often rub their hands with glee over the story of Crowley's life - from Victorian gentleman to pitiful, povertystricken heroin addict in a boarding house at Hastings in 1947, begging his doctor for just one more fix96 - but he had long recognized that `attainment is insanity'. Despite appearances, this was not the pitiful death of a failed shaman: as real appreciation of his life and works continues to grow exponentially, it becomes ever clearer that there was little that was truly failed about The Great Beast.

His legacy is astounding. He left behind him a corpus of writings that improve with the keeping, and certainly do not become contemptuous with familiarity, indeed quite the reverse. Where this present enquiry is concerned, Crowley had a particular legacy to bequeath to future generations of seekers, although paradoxically he would have hated to think of it in these terms. But it was Aleister Crowley who gave would-be Luciferans the rules.

By its very nature, striking out into the unknown towards the bright light of the Morning Star is as fraught with danger as any pilgrim's progress. Even buoyed by the noblest of ideals, there are dangers aplenty, not the least the temptation of frolicking naughtily in the soft light of black candles to celebrate orgiastic fauxSatanism. The real thing, after all (by any other name) is and always will be a form of outright criminal insanity - the evils of a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein being beyond even the imagination of most people. Ordinary folk are simply not cut out to be true Satanists because like it or not, they possess a conscience and an intense disgust for the disgusting. Satanism in the suburbs may be an interesting diversion, but with its emphasis on dirt and darkness it can never provide the way to the Light. But whereas we all have to find our own path, and to some extent therefore make our own maps, these `rules' of Crowley's provide a sound basis for a well-lived life.