I realize that this post is about Crowley’s works in *print*, but I think it’s also worth noting that almost all important Crowley texts can be read in full online. As far as I know, they were made available online by the OTO — and in many cases, the entry of the text is attributed to upper-degree members.

Making all of these texts available online is a tremendous benefit to the Thelemic community, and it gives the writings a wide exposure to anyone who is curious. I myself first started reading Crowley’s works online many years ago before I began to acquire printed copies of the texts, and I imagine that others are in a similar position.

Incidentally…$128.99 for the Holy Books of Thelema? I picked up my copy from a large bookstore for about $25. Granted, that was about six or seven years ago now, but I could have sworn I’ve seen copies on the shelf fairly recently.

An excellent post, Erwin. As a fellow-non-OTO-member, I share your enthusiasm for what Bill Breeze has achieved and for the effort he’s applied to books such as ‘Magick’, ‘Astrology’ and so on.

Here also is my previous effort to refute their ridiculous complaints…

I’d forgotten about the diaries and complete version of Magick Without Tears in the works, so thanks for reminding us about those. I think it also shows how utterly bizarre this suggestion that O.T.O. is somehow trying to suppress publication of works like Magick Without Tears because they don’t sit well with the “middle class bourgeois values” of the leadership really is.

I’m frankly baffled as to why anybody would want O.T.O. to focus on pumping out cheap versions of the likes of The Vision and the Voice and Liber Arcanorum – which few people are going to read, and which even fewer are going to get anything out of reading – at the expense of significant projects like this.

As far as the speed of these projects goes, even the most cursory of glances at a work like Magick should clearly reveal the amount of time and effort that HB had to put into it, and there are only so many hours in a day. To delay these projects even further in order to squeeze out versions of readily available books that these folks seem outraged at having to pay so much as $50 for would seem like madness, to me.

Erwin, I understand why you would not care where you got the Crowley as long as you could get the Crowley but as a dues paying member I do care.

What gripes you wish to raise with an organisation of which you are a dues-paying member is between you and that organisation, and is of neither of any concern nor of any interest to me. That being said:

1. The books OTO publishes are sold and paid for on the open market, and not (usually) distributed free-of-charge to dues-paying members, so playing the “I’m a dues-paying member” card isn’t going to cut any ice on this particular issue. As both someone who parts with hard-earned cash to acquire books issued by OTO, and someone with an interest in the legacy of Aleister Crowley and therefore in the publishing activities of the organisation who holds the copyrights to that legacy, I’ve just as much cause to comment on this issue as you or anybody else does, OTO member or otherwise.

2. In any case, you gave up your privilege of playing the “dues-paying member” card when you opened up a Facebook petition to air your dirty laundry in public, so I’m all out of sympathy on that front.

To me, it’s important for the OTO to be publishing.

The OTO is publishing. Where have you been? Look at the list Joseph Thiebes just linked to. Granted, perhaps not all of the works on there are OTO-issue, but most of them are. If you were to repeat the experiment I made in this post, you’d find out that the primary reason the Crowley books are so easy to get hold of is because OTO has published versions of them in recent years. If OTO hadn’t done that, they’d be much harder to get hold of.

Although it’s true some of these books for sale are listed as ” new” they are still ” out of print.”

So what? Who cares if they are “out of print” as long as people can get them? The issue seems to be a merely symbolic one to you, that OTO is somehow “not serious” by letting some of the books go out of print, regardless of whether there is any compelling reason to keep them in print. If the books were difficult to get hold of, then you’d have a case, but as I’ve demonstrated, they aren’t; they’re easy to get hold of.

You seem to want OTO to go to a lot of time and expense to do something which has practically no tangible benefit beyond purely symbolic value. Now, while I would certainly agree that it would be nice for all the books to be in print, keeping them in print is not a costless exercise. While I’m sure it’s not entirely accurate to state that the publishing arm of OTO is basically HB holding down the fort all by his lonesome, it’s probably not a million miles from the truth either, and he’s got to eat and sleep just like the rest of us do. Every hour he spends pointlessly keeping easy to obtain books in print is another hour he’s not spending doing something far more valuable, like working on the new edition of The Confessions, or that version of Magick Without Tears that you seem to want so much. In addition to the time element, there’s a money element there, too; OTO is not exactly overflowing with wealth, and I seriously doubt that the majority of dues-paying members would want their dues to finance endless editions of books which should be financing themselves, especially when the previous editions haven’t even sold out yet. There are much better things those dues could go towards supporting instead of this pointless and distractionary crusade.

In other words, it’s a question of priorities, and a question of the allocation of scarce resources. If there were important texts that were hard to obtain, then allocating some of those resources to issuing new versions would be welcome, but if there aren’t, then those resources are better allocated to producing the kind of new stuff which has already been released and which is currently being worked on. Keeping easy-to-obtain books unnecessarily in print for the mere and pointless sake of doing so is a distraction from much more important work, and while you may want the OTO to do this, I don’t.

Agreed!