Anyone looking into Crowley sould not look into the book of the law, that is not his greatest work- pushing that down someone throat is antithetical to Thelema in the first place!
Hid magnum opus was Liber ABA, or book 4 in which he tried to explain in beginner terms his system of magic. In my opinion anyone of mediocre intelligence can understand that book.
Eight lectures on yoga is also superb.
Aleister Crowley was nothing without the Golden Dawn who taught him, he was nothing without the occult greats like Allan Bennet, Macgregor Mathers, and George Cecil Jones.
If we are going to talk about occult greats, we should include most of the members of the Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, and not just Crowley.
I love Crowley, but in my opinion he did not entirely help to give magic a good name. He was always making the headlines in infamous ways and did a lot of shady things. A horrible man with a great mind.
Not in an overt sense. The OTO which Crowley took over and headed in Britain and Ireland, then the rest, was an order based on freemasonry and condensed their rites down. Crowley had already gone through the rites of freemasonry.
He rewrote OTO rituals to give them a more Thelemic flavour.
The Golden Dawn was a magical order. The A.'.A.'. is interested in spiritual development. Like freemasonry, the OTO is essentially bothered with fraternity- that is usually getting drunk together- of course some people will be more serious.
Well some people say that Crowley had all the highest degrees in different groups and brotherhood.
There are rumeurs saying that when Crowley went in america he became friend with H.P Lovecraft and after lovecraft started righting his necronomicon storys wicth the mithos was based on ancient texts, what do you think about that.
Crowley claimed the highest degrees in both of his orders- the OTO and A.'.A.'., I forget where he got with freemasonry, but I do believe it was the highest degree.
A for the HP Loecraft thing, I would say those people are morons. They have perhaps read too much Kenneth Grant. In my opinion he was a raving lunatic, obsessed, and never had a good grasp of what Thelema truly is. He was also a liar and a cheat forging documents etc.
Thanks for the clearing things of for me. You're not the first to tel me that about lovecraft. Still I loved Simon's work on the Necronomicon, he dedicated his word to Crowley
Simon was actually not one individual, but a group of people. One name you may have heard of is Peter Levenda and he was one of the people involved- they were all typhonians.
