IT IS NOT very easy to find out just what it was that got Aleister Crowley interested in taking up The Path. If we were to believe his autobiography, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, it would seem that he was incarnated specifically to be on The Path. This is usually the case with such men, when they get to writing their autobiographies, they must invoke predestination somehow. Even Wilhelm Reich, towards the end of his life, was convinced that his real father was an extraterrestrial. Be assured, we do not state this out of disrespect. It comes with the job. All the biographies we can consult are silent as to the early events which led Crowley to seek that "Secret Church," which Eckhartshausen portrayed in The Cloud Upon The Sanctuary.
We must examine the facts of the case as we have them. And then we must apply them to what is said of him by Duncan Cameron (or Al Bielek), in reference to events which took place on 12 August 1943 (the Second Test of the U.S.S. Eldridge, commonly known as "The Philadelphia Experiment"....) Of course, that is, if indeed it really happened. But, it is clear to us that something of this nature did in fact happen, the events of the years following would not have taken place in the manner in which they did, had something like this not taken place.
What might have happened in 1943 and what might have been perceived by people involved in that experiment, might not be perceived the same way in other space-time references. In much earlier times, such tears in the fabric of space-time and intrusions upon the consciousnesses of persons in the past would be experienced much like the lucid dreams we speak of today, or at least as visions and prophecies, or apparitions of spirits and demons.
[Was Unkie Al friends with the mysterious Wilson brothers of Thorne? Who knows? DID Parsons and Forman's presence during that fateful summer of '43 mean anything? Was a battleship rendered invisible, but causing a rip in the fabric of space-time? Who knows? SOMETHING happened.]
This is important, because throughout the magical writings of Aleister Crowley and his magical partners, are certain items which stick out as unexplainable by any rational means. These events usually occurred during the course of workings, such as the Cairo Working in 1904, the Scrying of the Aethyrs, in 1909, the Abuldiz Working in 1911, the Paris Working in 1914, the Amalantrah Working in 1917-8, and later events, some of which took place in Cefalu, some much later. And, to a great extent, the events in Jack Parsons' life and Magical career. These, too, play an important role, once the Current is imported into the United States. Also, the relationship between Crowley and Frater Achad (C. S. Jones) on the one hand, and between Frater Achad and Meade Layne, founder of the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation. This latter foundation is the prima materia when it comes to the UFO contactee phenomenon. Even though its importance has been minimized by much lesser men, and its work sabotaged by its competitors, it truly is the first of its kind, and the only one of its kind surviving today. And, it has ancestral roots in the Authentic Tradition.
There is a common thread in all of these, one which is less obvious, because it is not usually written of. There is a story being told, a special mission being given, which was never carried out. And, there is the constant idea that the entities communicating with Crowley and friends are not necessarily communicating to him in present time, but from the future.
Indeed, it would seem that in certain cases, certain entities were communicating information to Leah Hirsig in 1924, about the nature of the war-engine of Chapter III of The Book of the Law, in which the secrets of splitting of the atom are referred to, before this was common knowledge. Remember, in 1924, this was not an everyday topic. Even Niels Bohr himself had not made his important discoveries entirely, by that time. But... we are jumping ahead.
What, then, was the event in Crowley's life which caused him to enter upon "The Path of the Wise?"
IT ALL BEGAN, we are told, by the Beast himself, in Stockholm. It might be worthwhile mentioning that not long before the experience quoted below, Crowley became a member of the Celtic Church. This is not like going and joining the local Baptist Church or Calvary Chapel. The Celtic Church is a very serious body, which claims a direct descent from "pre-Christian" (or Pre-Patrick) times. The Celtic Church is significant in the Grail Tradition, especially as far as the Grail Lineages are concerned. We recommend one go to the official House of Stewart Website, and click on the Celtic Church icon, also, the Royal and Imperial Order of the Dragon homepage, but that is getting beyond the present study. We quote from The Confessions...:
"Two main events were destined to put me on the road towards myself. The first took place in Stockholm about midnight of December 31st, 1896. I was awakened to the knowledge that I possessed a magical means of becoming conscious of and satisfying a part of my nature which had up to that moment concealed itself from me. It was an experience of horror and pain, combined with a certain ghostly terror, yet at the same time it was the key to the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists. At the time, I was not aware of the supreme importance of the matter. It seemed to me little more than a development of certain magical processes with which I was already familiar. It was an isolated experience, not repeated until exactly twelve months later, to the minute. But this second occasion quickened my spirit, always with the result of 'loosening the girders of the soul', so that my animal nature stood rebuked and kept silence in the presence of the immanent divinity of the Holy Ghost; omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, yet blossoming in my soul as if the entire forces of the universe from all eternity were concentrated and made manifest in a single rose. ..."
We aren't going to dwell upon the second experience, since it was more of a mental exercise than a direct experience. We will comment upon the Stockholm experience. First, it seems that Crowley always has to conceal that which would be useful for us to know. I do not think that he is necessarily referring to his ninth degree sex magick in this instant, perhaps it was the cultivation of sexual ecstasy and experiencing expanded consciousness. But...what if the experience was like unto a waking dream, in which persons, places, and things were physically removed, one from the other, and separated by decades (in reference to time) and by hundreds and thousands of miles (in reference to space), and persons unknown to each other, including some not yet born?
We know that as a result of these early experiences, Crowley was determined to find out how to duplicate them. He obtained a copy of Waite's The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, which is probably one of the most useless works on the subject obtainable, now, or in any other time.
One of my earliest experiences once I embarked upon The Path, was very similar to how Crowley described his experience. It was in Brea, California, around midnight on 29 February 1988 c.e. (That is a good date to remember, since it only happens once in four years.) I had been reading some passages in Israel Regardie's book, The Tree of Life, and I fell asleep. I awoke suddenly, feeling an intense rush of energy, throughout my body, from head to foot. I was lying in bed, standing up, peering down at the bed from at least two angles, and levitating, and this all at once. I was in these different POVs all at once. To the left of the bed was a russet-brown cloth, in the air, like a curtain, just hanging there, but really floating, since it wasn't really hanging from anything. Behind the cloth was a bald man, who made sure I didn't see his face. No words were communicated, no visions experienced. It definitely made me want to experience altered states of consciousness. I had had other experiences prior to that point, since at least the age of six, but this one really sticks out. I tried to find what I was reading that night in the book, in order to duplicate it, but I still don't know what it was. As with Crowley, it led me to Magick.We have had numerous experiences which are connected to the types of visions and communications that exist in the corpus of Crowley's workings, and the workings of others.
There is a reference in another of Crowley's writings, this time from 1903, which seems to allude to the event in Stockholm. This is important, since it is perhaps the last thing he wrote (outside of letters and journal entries) before marrying Rose Kelly, on 12 August 1903. The bulk of the work had been written while he was in the Himalayas the previous year. This is Science and Buddhism, Section 7, entitled "The Relative Reality of Certain States of Consciousness." The passage we are quoting is as follows:
"Suppose, however, a dream so vivid that the whole waking man is abased before its memory, that his consciousness of it appears a thousand times more real than that of the things about him; suppose that his whole life is moulded to fit the new facts thus revealed to him; that he would cheerfully renounce years of normal life to obtain minutes of that dream-life; that his time sense is uprooted as never before, and that these influences are permanent. Then, you will say, delirium tremens (and the intoxication of hashish, in respect more particularly of the time sense) afford us a parallel. But the phenomena of delirium tremens do not occur in the healthy. As for the suggestion of auto-hypnosis, the memory of the "dream" is a sufficient reply. However this may be, the simple fact of the superior apparent reality -- a conviction unshakable, inépuisable (for the English has no word), is a sufficient test. And if we condescend to argue, it is for pleasure, and aside from the vital fact; a skirmish, and not a pitched battle."
Crowley called this state Dhyana, and the method for attaining it is Yoga, of course, achieving a state of one-pointedness. We need not elaborate on it here. We have found one reference to this event, but it seems rather strange, perhaps like the event which we experienced, in that it did not really include any communication per-se.
J. F. C. Fuller, in The Temple of Solomon the King, (EQUINOX Vol. I, No. 2, T. S. K., Book II, under the section entitled "The Acolyte", pp. 233-4) has a description of the event:
"Then came the great awakening. Curious to say, it was towards the hour of midnight on the last day of the year when the old slinks away from the new, that he happened to be riding alone, wrapped in the dark cloak of unutterable thoughts. A distant bell chimed the last quarter of the dying year, and the snow which lay fine and crisp on the roadway was being caught up here and there by the puffs of sharp frosty wind that came snake-like through the hedges and the trees, whirling it on spectre-like in the chill and silver moonlight. But dark were his thoughts, for the world had failed him. Freedom had he sought, but not the freedom that he had gained. Blood seemed to ooze from his eyelids and trickle down, drop by drop, upon the white snow, writing on its pure surface the name of Christ. Great bats flitted by {233} him, and vultures whose bald heads were clotted with rotten blood. "Ah! the world, the world ... the failure of the world." And then an amber light surged round him, the fearful tapestry of torturing thought was rent asunder, the voices of many angels sang to him. "Master! Master!" he cried, "I have found Thee ... O silver Christ. ..."
"Then all was Nothingness ... nothing ... nothing ... nothing; and madly his horse carried him into the night.
"Thus he set out on his mystic quest towards that goal which he had seen, and which seemed so near; and yet, as we shall learn, proved to be so far away."
Now, we cannot say that this is the same thing as getting one's photo snapped, along with the Wilson Brothers and the Future Preston Nichols... Was the "Silver Christ" a metaphor, or was it a visitation from a "Grey", like Aiwass, or LAM? These beings were in existence in the United States at this time, during the phenomena known as the "Great Airship Mystery". One died, in fact, and was buried, having features similar to that described by Crowley in his painting of LAM. We shall return to LAM later.
Crowley then set out on his journey, met Julian Baker and George Cecil Jones, and was Initiated in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the Outer on 18 November 1898 c.e. We shall not dwell on this material, since it is dwelt upon plentifully in all the other biographies. It is worth mentioning however, that Crowley's trip to Zermatt in 1898, his meeting the Alchemist Baker, and returning to London to meet others in the Order, and the Golden Dawn / Theosophical Society doings have been paralleled in Charles Bennett's screenplay(and Alfred Hitchcock's Film) "The Man Who Knew Too Much"(the 1934 version, that is) -- which may possibly refer to Crowley as a lifer in the Spook racket, as some writers have urged(see the RShand "Underground Streams" Website)... In this film, there is a secret order called "The Tabernacle of the Sun", which was run along Theosophical Society lines, by a woman who was a spy ... it parallels the Golden Dawn and the T.S. in one story. The TV Series, The Avengers, even, during the Honor Blackman phase, had an episode linking Thelemic themes to the espionage business. But this is for later story-telling...
But, for the students of the Conspiracy, there are interesting links between Switzerland and England, and Vienna is also an important location in the 18th and 19th centuries. We must remember that one of the most important Masonic Lodges in Europe is the Grand Loge Alpina, located in Switzerland, with alleged connections to the Priory of SION. See the footnotes in The Widows' Son, by Robert Anton Wilson, and his useful encyclopaedia of Conspiracy, Everything is Under Control, co-authored with Miriam Joan Hill.
It is for us now to pass the Golden Dawn altogether and go to another part of the world which is of utmost importance to the Story...
FIRST, we shall present the current version of the year 1900 from our work in progress, Timeline of the Authentic Tradition, Volume Six: (NOTE: We have extracted data from many sources and assembled it in one place, we acknowledge all sources, whose names are too numerous to mention here, but who shall be duly acknowledged in the Timeline itself, in the near future.)
1900.
Karl Brandler-Pracht, after attending a seance at Basel, is "informed" by the "spirit" that his mission is to spread the astrological gospel.
AC Gets the asthmatic Bennett off to Ceylon.
16 January. Adeptus Minor Initiation. Motto: Parzival. (Crowley)
February Mathers accuses Westcott of fraud. Crowley applies to the Second Order in London for the documents connected with his Initiation in Paris, but is refused. Allan Bennett leaves for Ceylon to become a Buddhist monk, Bikkhu Ananda Metteya.
June A. C. Leaves England for Mexico.
July to August. Mexico City. Aleister Crowley settles in a house near the Alameda. Meets Don Jesus de Medina-Sidonia, one of the high chiefs of Scottish Rite Freemasonry for Mexico City. Medina applied and got, special dispensation, to Initiate Crowley into all the degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, which would also have to include a special dispensation to receive the Craft degrees, because these High-Caste Mexicans wouldn't just sell Crowley a patent without him being fully worthy to receive it. Crowley, in turn, created an Order, The Order of the Lamp of Invisible Light (L.I.L.), at Guanajato, and made Medina High Priest. See The Invocation of the High Priest of L. I. L., the Book of the Spirit of the Living God, and the Rite of Invisibility. They were all produced at this time. This is perhaps one of Crowley's most important initiations. See earlier entries for more on the importance of the AASR(Escoceses) in Mexico.
Be that as it may, Crowley's Mexican Initiation was not recognized in the UK or in any other part of Europe he travelled to.
Autumn. Rudolph Steiner was contacted by the members of the Berlin Theosophists and was asked to give lectures in their library. He commenced giving lectures in Winter 1900/01 and 1901/02 which led to the constitution of the German Section of the Theosophical Society (Adyar) on 20 October 1902, with approx. 100 members and Rudolph Steiner as its General Secretary.
17 November Visits Aethyrs 30 and 29 for The Vision and the Voice. (Crowley) Eckenstein meets A.C. for mountain climbing. Eckenstein questions A.C.'s ability to concentrate; this starts Raja Yoga.
Berlin. The German Grand Lodge firstly ignored Reuss and his allies. Only when Reuss in 1900 propagated his own "Johannislogen" under his business enterprise "Grosse Freimaurerloge fuer Deutschland" did the "most honorable Grandmasters" become furious against the unfair competitor.
TRUFAX TIMELINE ENTRIES:
By 1900, all PhD's in the United States were trained in Prussia (Germany). The degree is a German invention. These German educated men would become presidents of American Universities, heads of research facilities (both corporate and government).
AMA began to achieve goal of replacing existing medical system with allopathy
Royal Institute of International Affairs policy makers for colonial US Gov't.
Cancer causes 4% of deaths in the United States.
Deaths from measles were 13 per 100,000 (13:100,000)
Tesla reaches New York, which is the time period when he claims to have received off-planet transmissions.
In Germany, Wilhelm Schallmeyer writes "Inheritance and Selection in the Life History of Nationalities: A Sociopolitical Study Based on the Newer Biology", which puts forward the idea of premarital screening by doctors for "undesirable" inheritable traits.
Over 6,000 people fall ill in Britain after beer is contaminated with arsenic from the production of carbonic acid gas from coal in the sugar refining process.
Max Planck formulates quantum theory.
ALEISTER CROWLEY obtained his Adeptus Minor initiation in Paris, in the Ahathoor Temple No. 7, from Mathers, on 16 January 1900 c.e., one day prior to St. Sulpice Day, which is a special feast day for the Prieure de SION. Following this, he tried to receive the documents which form the curriculum for the Adeptus Minor Grade, namely, the Flying Rolls, the Z Documents, and other papers and rituals. He was refused them by the English bodies of the Order.
Fed up and disgusted with all this, he went on a journey to America, eventually ending up in Mexico. Perhaps one could make something of the fact that both Aleister Crowley and Nikola Tesla came to America in 1900. We didn't have airplanes yet. Travel by ship was the main way to get from Europe to America, and so perhaps some of our hack-writers could spin a yarn about it, since Tesla and Crowley figure in the Philadelphia Experiment, at least if Bielek's account is true.
We shall quote Crowley's account of what happened in Mexico City, from The Confessions:
"I hired part of a house overlooking the Alameda, a magnificent park intended for pleasure and protected from the police. I engaged a young Indian girl to look after me and settled down to steady work at Magick. I had an introduction to an old man named Don Jesus de Medina, a descendant of the great duke of Armada fame, and one of the highest chiefs of Scottish rite free-masonry. My Cabbalistic knowledge being already profound by current standards, he thought me worthy of the highest initiation in his power to confer; special powers were obtained in view of my limited sojourn, and I was pushed rapidly through and admitted to the thirty-third and last degree before I left the country.
"I had also a certain amount of latitude granted by Mathers to initiate suitable people in partibus. I, therefore, established an entirely new Order of my own, called L.I.L.: the 'Lamp of the Invisible Light'. Don Jesus became its first High Priest. In the Order L.I.L., the letters L.P.D. are the monograms of the mysteries. An explanation of these letters is given by Dumas in the prologues of his Memoirs of a Physician, and Eliphas Levi discusses them at some length. I, however, remembered them directly from my incarnation as Cagliostro. It would be improper to communicate their significance to the profane, but I may say that the political interpretation given by Dumas is superficial, and the ethical suggestions of Levi puerile and perverse; or, more correctly, intentionally misleading. They conceal a number of magical formulae of minor importance but major practical value, and the curious should conduct such research as they feel impelled to make in the light of the Cabbala. Their numerical values, Yetziratic attributions, and the arcana of the Atus of Tahuti, supply an adequate clue to such intelligences as are enlightened by sympathy and sincerity.
"The general idea was to have an ever-burning lamp in a temple furnished with talismans appropriate to the elemental, planetary and zodiacal forces of nature. Daily invocations were to be performed with the object of making the light itself a consecrated centre or focus of spiritual energy. This light would then radiate and automatically enlighten such minds as were ready to receive it.
"Even today, the experiment seems to me interesting and the conception sublime. I am rather sorry that I lost touch with Don Jesus; I should like very much to know how it turned out." -- pp. 202-203.
It was this 33° Patent more than anything else, which interested Reuss and Yarker the most about him. That is, at least according to P. R. Köenig's take on the matter. The story has it that Yarker's patents for the AASR were irregular, or spurious, and Reuss' also did not possess a regular AASR. Which might, after all, be the case. We choose to keep an open mind. That being said, it does not change our ultimate opinions of Yarker, or of Reuss, for that matter, since their contributions to the Authentic Tradition are immense. Crowley, therefore, possessed a full 33° Patent, conferred upon him by a regular body, under the regular jurisdiction of the Supreme Council of the AASR for the Southern Jurisdiction in Washington D.C. Later, when he tried to activate his Patent in Europe, and England, it was refused recognition, but this was most likely due to personal snobbishness rather than the practice of rule of law and common sense. He later applied for his Blue degrees at the Grand Loge de France, and got them, and the Grand Lodge of England dissolved that body not long after.
It is said by P. R. Köenig that Krumm-Heller (founder of the Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua, and Nazi supporter) knew Don Jesus de Medina.
The role of the Scottish Rite in Mexico was one of supreme importance, at least in those days. In the 1820s, two branches of high grade Freemasonry had developed. One, the Yorkinos, or the York or American Rite as we know it. The other, the Escoceses, or the Scottish Rite. These bodies feuded, or so the story goes, and they were put to sleep in 1823. Forty years later, in 1863, they were revived, and the National Mexican Rite grew out of it. The National Mexican Rite is an important chapter in the development of certain Rites, such as the OTO, for its structure is not very far removed from some of the original grade structures of the OTO. In fact, the National Mexican Rite was chartered in Lodges in Mexico City which were under the jurisdiction of German Lodges. Also, in what we have seen, there is an interesting relationship between the National Mexican Rite and the original Priesthood of the Aztecs. The Aztecs had a very similar hierarchy, grade structure, and so forth. There is a Knight of the Mexican Eagle, in the National Mexican Rite, and there were Eagle Knights in the Aztecan Priesthood. They were warrior-monks, as it were, much like the Knights Templars.
Martin P. Starr, in his introduction to Crowley's collection of essays on Magical Rejuvenation, AMRITA, a brief account is given:
"By the time of his meeting with Reuss, Crowley had already pursued an unorthodox Masonic career. Although he must have been aware that the founders of the Golden Dawn were all regular Freemasons and that their rituals -- including his initiation to the Order -- took place in hired Masonic halls. Crowley was first initiated into Masonry in Mexico in 1900, where he was pushed through to the 33° on the request of one Don Jesus de Medina-Sidonia. Eventually finding to his dismay that his Mexican initiation gave him no standing in England, Crowley in June 1904 applied for membership in the Parisian "Anglo-Saxon Lodge No. 343," working under a charter from the Grande Loge de France; he was raised to Master Mason on December 17, 1904. Crowley's liberal interpretation of Masonic brotherhood was not met by an equal forbearance on the part of the official bodies, as the United Grand Lodge of England, the ruling English authority, considered the Grande Loge de France to be irregular. Despite an appeal in 1913 to the Grand Secretary, Sir Edward Letchworth, Crowley never obtained recognition in England as a regular member of the Craft." -- page xi.
In Mexico City, then, Crowley received this important initiation, developed his Magick in some of its most important areas, including a ritual to produce invisibility, and a superb ritual to invoke the Holy Guardian Angel. He also began his work on Enochian System of John Dee. He was cut short after scrying the 29th Aethyr. This he would pick up again, in late 1909 c.e. The die was cast. By this point Crowley was cast in his role in the drama we have been chronicling. The next three years or so, we refer the interested reader to A. C.'s autobiography, as well as to all the basic biographies...
Next, we turn to the period 1903-1904, still the supreme moment in the Life of Frater Perdurabo.
First we go to 1903 e.v., the year before it all happened...
[This is a work in Progress. We are literally writing this AS we publish it. It should be read in conjunction with the piece, "Crowley's Egg?" and Qadosh: The Johannite Tradition: Egypt, to be found in AntiqIllum v. 1.0, 01 May 2000 c.e.]
SEE ALSO:
Crowley's Egg? Part 2a, additional material.
Crowley's Egg? Part Three: The Lines on the Map.
SURPRISES ABOUND!
Original Material Copyright © 1999 - 2003 e.v., Jonathan Sellers. All Rights Reserved.
