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Dear Brenda-here's a few bits from a earlier piece I did which shouldgive some idea of the threads in Crowley's life - he is thevery opposite of an anti-puritan censor. Before writing itfor you, I want to know you think it might havepossibilities -Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) is thiscenturies greatest magical adept and one of the mostprofound and sustaining influences on the currentmagical renaissance. He was a sexual prophet,pornographer decadent and libertine, who taught that themysteries of sexuality were central to humanity's spiritualdevelopment. His blatant bisexuality and extreme radicallifestyle earned him a black reputation with the legal andcultural establishment of his day. It is only almost fiftyyears after his death that his name is recorded in theDictionary of National Bibliography (Missing Persons,Oxford University Press 1992) and in the OxfordDictionary of Quotations, which still calls which whilstlabelling him as a diabolist, records his one precept : Dowhat thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.Perhaps it was the reek of sulphur that prevented theauthorities from clamping down hard on his unorthodoxsexual adventures and he was lucky to escape the fatethat destroyed his contemporary Oscar Wilde.Arguable the most important and creative love inCrowley's life was Victor Neuburg, the English poet andimpresario who discovered Dylan Thomas amongst othernew poets of his day. Crowley walked into Neuburg'srooms at Trinity College, Cambridge. Crowley explainedhis call by saying he had read some of Neuburg's poemsin the Agnostic Journal, and realized that Neuburg hadsome knowledge of magical states of consciousness.Crowley proposed that Neuburg should be his brother-disciple, which Neuburg accepted. Crowley was thirty-oneyears old and rather handsome. He was a practicing bi-sexual and the two men became lovers as well asbrothers. Crowley was Neuburg's first lover of either sex,and their affair was very passionate. Neuburg's Triumphof Pan, goes some way to give the flavour of their
 
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relationship; it abounds in Homo-eroticism of a kind thathas been compared to Verlaine.For instance in 'The Romance of Olivia Vane' the lines:Sweet wizard, in whose footsteps I have trodUnto the shrine of the most obscene god, andLet me once more feel thy strong hand to beMaking the magic signs upon me! Stand,Stand in the light, and let mine eyes drink in The glorious vision of the death of sin!(
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)Crowley's reply is to be found in his awe-inspiring Hymn To Pan, regarded by Crowley as the most powerfulenchantment ever written. It was first published in TheEquinox volume one number four on 21st March 1919, afew months after the break-up of Crowley's relationshipwith Neuburg. However, it was actually written in thesummer of 1913, when Crowley was in Moscow. It was theclimax of the Rites of Eleusis and acted as a preface tothe original edition of Magick, a fact clouded by the RKPedition which kicks off with an poem about Crowley'saustere and often wrongheaded brand of yoga. TimothyD'Arch Smith has demonstrated beyond doubt that theway Crowley published his books was significant evendown to details of paper stock and colour(
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). We aremeant then to take the Hymn to Pan as a paradigm of Magick.My feeling is that many magicians would rather not faceup to fact that some of the most influential magical workof the twentieth century was actually homosexual sex-Magick. I include in this Crowley himself, whose crueltyand spitefulness towards Victor Neuburg, seems inspiredat least in part by his own residual guilt. But in the end,long after Neuburg had given Crowley his marchingorders, Crowley seems to have come to some realizationas to what he had thrown away. In 1927, years after theexpulsion from Cefalu, and the viscous press campaignagainst Crowley, and widespread blacklisting of both
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This book too has been recently reprinted by Skoob2,London, UK.
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Timothy D'Arch Smith, Books of the Beast, 2nd Edition(Mandrake 1990)
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writers, he appeared at Victor Neuburg's Sussex home,and banging his stick on the ground shouted 'I wantVictor'.In November 1909 Victor Neuburg and Crowley went onholiday in Algeria, walking into the desert from Alba. Theytook with them a copy of Calls for the Thirty Aethyrs, thefamous Enochian text of John Dee, with the intention of making the calls in the desert. Israel Regardie in hisintroduction to the magical record of this time, publishedas The Vision And The Voice(
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), implies that Crowley hadthis manuscript with him purely by accident. It seemsmore likely that Crowley had deliberately brought hisEnochian notebook for the purpose of repeating hisearlier experiment. Neuburg and Crowley were picking upthe thread of those two Elizabethan magi Kelly and Dee; Iwonder how many other magicians would have thecourage to have done so. It could be said that it was atthis moment that Crowley and Neuburg rediscoveredsexual Magick, albeit in this Homo-erotic guise. Theyclimbed mount Dal'leh Addin in order to call the 14thAethyr. On their descent Crowley received an instructionto return to the summit and make a circle of small stones,tracing words of power in the sand. In the centre theybuilt an altar and placing themselves "in the sight of thesun" Neuburg made love to Crowley. This was a publicsacrifice to the God Pan. The footnote to this passage of the magical record of these events, says this was by theXI degree OTO. Regardie, who wrote this footnote is verycoy about it, saying that Crowley 'constantly sought toglorify and excuse [it] at the same time. Nonetheless, itmust be reiterated that Crowley's concept of a fullyattained adept was that he was epicene.'(
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) Bisexualwould be a better term than 'epicene', the implicationbeing that the magician pursues the goal of androgyny orfusion of the sex within. It would be wrong to supposethat Crowley was a bisexual because he viewed it as away of achieving an androgynous state, after all he andNeuburg, and other male lovers had been happilyscrewing long before the spiritual possibilities dawned on
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Aleister Crowley, The Vision And The Voice, (Sangreal1972),
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