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Aleister Crowley Quotes
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Aleister Crowley was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life.

Born to a wealthy family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley rejected his parent's fundamentalist Christian Plymouth Brethren faith to pursue an interest in Western esotericism. He was educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, further suggesting that he remained a spy throughout his life. In 1898 he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. Moving to Boleskine House by Loch Ness in Scotland, he went mountaineering in Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein, before studying Hindu and Buddhist practices in India. He married Rose Edith Kelly and in 1904 they honeymooned in Cairo, Egypt, where Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him with The Book of the Law, a sacred text that served as the basis for Thelema. Announcing the start of the Æon of Horus, The Book declared that its followers should "Do what thou wilt" and seek to align themselves with their True Will through the practice of magick.

After an unsuccessful attempt to climb Kanchenjunga and a visit to India and China, Crowley returned to Britain, where he attracted attention as a prolific author of poetry, novels, and occult literature. In 1907, he and George Cecil Jones co-founded an esoteric order, the A∴A∴, through which they propagated Thelema. After spending time in Algeria, in 1912 he was initiated into another esoteric order, the German-based Ordo Templi Orientis , rising to become the leader of its British branch, which he reformulated in accordance with his Thelemite beliefs. Through the O.T.O., Thelemite groups were established in Britain, Australia, and North America. Crowley spent the First World War in the United States, where he took up painting and campaigned for the German war effort against Britain, later revealing that he had infiltrated the pro-German movement to assist the British intelligence services. In 1920 he established the Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Cefalù, Sicily where he lived with various followers. His libertine lifestyle led to denunciations in the British press, and the Italian government evicted him in 1923. He divided the following two decades between France, Germany, and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death.

Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, being a recreational drug experimenter, bisexual and an individualist social critic. He has been called "the wickedest man in the world" and labeled as a Satanist by the popular press. Crowley has remained a highly influential figure over Western esotericism and the counterculture, and continues to be considered a prophet in Thelema. He is the subject of various biographies and academic studies. Wikipedia  

✵ 12. October 1875 – 1. December 1947   •   Other names Ալիստեր Կրոուլի, Alexander Crowley
Aleister Crowley photo
Aleister Crowley: 142   quotes 60   likes

Aleister Crowley Quotes

“May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!”

Aleister Crowley book Moonchild

Source: Moonchild

New Year , Courage

“Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

Wisdom , Science

“Every man and every woman is a star.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

I:3.
Source: The Book of the Law (1904)

Star

“I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

“The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

Way

“I've written this to keep from crying. But I am crying, only the tears won't come.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Tear , Cry

“I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Thinking

“It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

Men , Truth

“Happiness lies within one's self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Way , Happiness

“It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment.”

Aleister Crowley book Moonchild

Source: Moonchild

World

“Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life….”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

Life

“For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

Source: The Book of the Law

Way , Perfection

“Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them…”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Scented Garden Of Abdullah The Satirist Of Shiraz

Men

“The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 23.
Context: To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The natural laziness of the mind tempts one to eschew authors who demand a continuous effort of intelligence. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
People tell me that they must read the papers so as to know what is going on. In the first place, they could hardly find a worse guide. Most of what is printed turns out to be false, sooner or later. Even when there is no deliberate deception, the account must, from the nature of the case, be presented without adequate reflection and must seem to possess an importance which time shows to be absurdly exaggerated; or vice versa. No event can be fairly judged without background and perspective.

Education

“I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 5.
Context: I resolved passionately to reach the spiritual causes of phenomena, and to dominate the material world which I detested by their means. I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.

Sense , Personality

“He shall fall down into a pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of reason.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

Source: The Book of the Law

Dogs

“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

Mountain , Personality

“Your friends will notice at once that glib vacuities fail to impress, and hate you, and tell lies about you. It's worth it.”

Aleister Crowley book Magick Without Tears

Source: Magick Without Tears

Hate

“… in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgement and practice than in any other branch of physics.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

Art , Error , Science

“Don't talk for five minutes, there's a good chap! I've a strange feeling come over me--almost as if I were going to think!”

Aleister Crowley book Moonchild

Source: Moonchild

Feeling , Thinking

“The key of joy is disobedience.”

Aleister Crowley
Joy

“I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

Source: The Book of the Law (1904)

Daughters , Night

“I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman.”

Aleister Crowley
Death , World , Imagination , Boy

“Since all things are God, in all things thou seest just so much of God as thy capacity affordeth thee.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Vision and the Voice: With Commentary and Other Papers

God

“Their false compassion is called compassion and their false understanding is called understanding, for this is their most potent spell.”

Aleister Crowley
Understanding , Falseness

“How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes.”

Aleister Crowley book Magick Without Tears

Ch LXXIII
Magick Without Tears (1954)

Intelligence

“Our Lord the Devil's their Word, the Word Thelema, spoken of me The Beast.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 242

“Yea! as I loath, I lust; I prostitute myself to thee, perversely prurient - Wilt thou not make this night the nameless nuptial, the Devil thy Lord and mine at Our Black Mass?”

Aleister Crowley

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 296

Night

“I am alone. There is no God where I am.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

II:23.
The Book of the Law (1904)

God

“Sing the rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I love you! I love you!”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

The Book of the Law (1904)

Love , Drink , Singing

“The Manifestation of Nuit is at an end.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

I:63-66.
The Book of the Law (1904)

“Come, Come, Come, Aiwaz! Come, thou Devil Our Lord!”

Aleister Crowley

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 239

“I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?”

Aleister Crowley

Aceldama : A Place To Bury Strangers In (1898) Preface.

Death , God , Soul

“The customer is usually wrong; but statistics indicate that it doesn't pay to tell him so.”

Aleister Crowley book Magick Without Tears

Ch XXI.
Magick Without Tears (1954)

“These are fools that men adore; both their Gods & their men are fools.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

I:11.
The Book of the Law (1904)

Men , God , Fools

“His own infinity becomes zero in relation to that of the least fragment of the solid. He hardly exists at all. Trillions multiplies by trillions of trillions of such as he could not cross the frontier even of breadth, the idea which he came to guess at only because he felt himself bound by some mysterious power.”

Aleister Crowley

Appendix VI : A few principal rituals – Liber Reguli.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)

Idea

“I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.
And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.”

Aleister Crowley

III Of the Ceremony of the Introit, including what is called the "Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church" http://www.hermetic.com/egc/creed.html.
Liber XV : The Gnostic Mass (1913)

Life , Men , Secret , Star

“Intolerance is evidence of impotence.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 69.

“I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

I:13.
The Book of the Law (1904)

Joy

“May Because be accursed for ever!”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

II:28-29.
The Book of the Law (1904)

“I invoked Aiwaz, was shown a phantasm of Baphomet, and suddenly determined to recognize this for Him!”

Aleister Crowley

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 140

“When I was Levi, I drew myself as Ayin or Baphomet, 'The Devil' with Beast's Head. This is the Beast throned, crowned, exalted; the leaper, the erect, the butter-in. Her womb is my city, Babel. This Ayin is then my phallic will, my Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwaz, who was afterwards called Satan.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 198

Angels

“Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.”

Aleister Crowley

This has been attributed to Crowley on the internet, but without citation. No incidents of it in Crowley's works have as yet been located.
This was quoted as an "occult tradition" in Fundamentals of Experimental Psychology (1976) by Charles Lawrence Sheridan, p. 17, but without any reference to Crowley.
Disputed
Variant: Knowledge is power and knowledge shared is power lost.

Knowledge

“The first task of the Magician in every ceremony is therefore to render his Circle absolutely impregnable.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929), Ch. 13 : Of the Banishings and of the Purifications.

“And know that all my joy, perfect, transcending sense, is given of Aiwaz, whom we call the Devil, whose name is Will, loud-uttered by cocaine, is Love.”

Aleister Crowley

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 241

Love , Sense , Joy , Perfection