The student syllabus for Jim Eshelman’s A∴A∴ branch contains the following books:

• The Equinox (Crowley, 1909–1913)
• Raja Yoga (Vivekananda, 1896)
• The Shiva Samhita (trad., English translation Shri Chandra Vasu, 1884), or The Hathayoga Pradipika (Svatmarama)
• Konx Om Pax (Crowley, 1907)
• The Spiritual Guide (Molinos, first English edition 1688)
• 777 (Crowley, 1909)
• Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (Levi, 1861) or Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual (Levi, trans. Waite, 1910)
• The Goetia (Crowley & Mathers, 1904)
• Tannhauser (in the Collected Works, Crowley, 1905–1907)
• The Sword of Song (in the Collected Works, Crowley, 1905–1907)
• Time (in the Collected Works, Crowley, 1905–1907)
• Eleusis (in the Collected Works, Crowley, 1905–1907)
• The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage (von Worms, trans. Mathers, 1897)
• The Tao Teh Ching (Sacred Books of the East edition, 1892)
• The Writings of Kwang Tze (Sacred Books of the East edition, 1892)

For readers lacking excessive familiarity with Crowley’s works, this reading list is lifted verbatim from 1912′s The Equinox Volume I Number VIII, having appeared earlier that year in The Equinox Volume I Number VII minus the last two items. It’s aim was to avoid “the unnecessary strain thrown upon Neophytes by unprepared persons taking the Oath of a Probationer” by creating a three month “student” grade. The student had to pass an examination in these books prior to being admitted to the grade of Probationer, where he was “expected to show a thorough acquaintance with them, but not necessarily to understand them in any deeper sense.”

There are several things to note about this list:

• Given that some of the items effectively require the student to acquire the Collected Works, it contains substantially all of Crowley’s works up to that point in time, minus a few items including some of the “Holy Books”, White Stains, etc.
• It contains some other modern works include Raja Yoga, Levi’s Transcendental Magic, and some modern translations from Mathers, including the Book of Abramelin and the Goetia.
• It contains a small number of traditional Taoist and Hindu texts, as well as some exercises by the founder of the Quietists.
• It is not clear which versions of the Spiritual Guide or the Hathayoga Pradipika Crowley had access to, but it is reasonable to assume that he was using relatively modern translations. With the possible exception of these two, the earliest works on this list date to 1884, a mere twenty-eight years before the list was compiled.

The point of examining this list in depth becomes clear when we note that the A∴A∴ branch previously referred to requires its students to possess printed copies of these works (apparently Regardie’s Gems from the Equinox can be substituted for the Equinox set) and requires an examination in them to be passed.

It is worth noting that Præmonstrance of A∴A∴ in The Equinox Volume III Number I in 1919 said that “the instruction of the A∴A∴ is therefore as precise and definite as a University course.” This brings us to the first peculiarity with this list. As noted, when Crowley issued this list in 1912, he included substantially all of his own works, and – with the possible exception of the two works noted previously – only included items published within the preceding 28 years. Yet, Eshelman’s order continues to prescribe this exact same list for its student grade 98 years later, with no changes. Now, if you were considering enrolling in a “University course”, and discovered that its reading list contained practically no works less than 100 years old, would you think it likely that you were going to obtain some quality instruction? Almost certainly not.

Not even any of Crowley’s later works make it onto Eshelman’s student curriculum, including the commentaries to The Book of the Law, Magick, Liber Aleph, Little Essays Toward Truth, Magick Without Tears, Eight Lectures on Yoga, and the like. It also fails to include later works which Crowley continually made reference to – and which appeared on later curricula that he issued, most notably in Magick in Theory and Practice – including Frazer’s The Golden Bough, James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, various philosophical, Hermetic, Rosicrucian and gnostic works, various scientific treatises, further Buddhist, Hindu and Vedantic texts, and others.

This reading list was prepared relatively close to the beginning of Crowley’s “magical” career, which started in 1898, fourteen years previously, but which continued for a further 35 years until his death in 1947. If Crowley were to have reissued this student list in 1947, it is inconceivable that he would not have modified it substantially.

Furthermore, more than 62 years have passed since Crowley died, and Crowley’s entire magical career lasted just 49 years from 1898 through 1947. Better and more scholarly versions even of Crowley’s own works have appeared since then, not to mention more scholarly versions of some of the other works listed, most notably of some of the hermetic and gnostic works. Philosophy and physical science have advanced immeasurably since 1912, and many accessible and practical introductions to such subjects are available which simply weren’t available at the beginning of the last century.

It should be clear that this “curriculum” is indicative of a purely religious attempt to revive a fossilized version of an order which existed during the golden Equinox age of Crowley’s career. These works are not selected because they are the best works for a student to study, but purely because Crowley listed them in one of his early works. The curricula Eshelman presents for the other grades of his “outer order” also consist of nothing but Crowley’s own early works, again lifted almost verbatim from the curricula in The Equinox Volume III Number I in 1919.

This is clearly an organisation which is not even remotely serious about its stated aims. Remember that when Crowley started the A∴A∴, he was almost doing so from scratch. Although he was drawing from older sources – most notably the Golden Dawn and his own version of yogic practices – the actual system he was creating was new in that form, and largely untested. Any organisation serious about its aims, and any organisation whose leaders had even the slightest aptitude in their subject, would be developing and improving this system continually, incorporating the results and experiences of themselves as well as their own members, just as any other “University course” would continually develop as a result of new research. Yet this organisation does not do so, and prefers instead of advocate nothing but a slavish and dutifully religious reperformance of a largely theoretical system Crowley wrote down in the early twentieth century (there are no records of anyone actually making it step-by-step through all of the grades of even the outer order of Crowley’s A∴A∴, in the same form that he prescribed it.)

Crowley’s A∴A∴ was little more than a tentative experiment, an attempt to create a universal system of attainment. It was also an experiment which largely failed. Even if the underlying idea were sound, to slavishly replicate a failed attempt at it is foolish. Many of the specific instructions (the attempt to “think backwards” in Liber Thisharb, the instruction to “test your endurance with…club-swinging” in Liber E, the admonition to “…wear a rich head-dress. A crown of gold adorned with sapphires and diamonds with a royal blue cap of maintenance” from Liber NV being obvious examples) are just plain ridiculous, and others (including the practice of cutting the arms with razor blades in Liber Jugorum and his advocation of “oaths of obedience”) are mere codifications of Crowley’s own predilections and psychological blocks. Many of the instructions of the A∴A∴ (including memorising chapters of The Book of the Law, and sitting in an asana with a saucer of water on one’s head) were nothing but artificial obstacles serving little other purpose than to demonstrate allegiance to Crowley and his system, and have no connection whatsoever to development or attainment.

Worshipping the system that Crowley created – which is what Eshelman’s order is doing – shows a lack of imagination, a lack of commitment, and a simple lack of seriousness. There is clearly no interest in actual self-development, here, but merely in going through the motions, engaging in a role-playing game of sorts. His own website states:

In this matter we give but one sage piece of advice: “By their fruits shall ye know them!” The Works of the Adept, the fruits of his or her garden, are the signs of his or her attainment.

or, in this case, a lack of such fruits.

This phenomenon is, of course, not limited to Eshelman’s order. We have written in other places, most notably in What’s so great about the Great Work?, about the tendency of many occultists to view the “Great Work” as a religious, rather than an actual, endeavour. But Eshelman’s fossilised and empty approach to running an entire order provides a prime example of what happens when one worships Crowley, “lineages”, and systems, instead of actually focusing on the task at hand in a meaningful and practical way.

Some folks are often criticised for attempting to move “beyond Crowley”, but we’re faced with some simple facts. Firstly, Crowley’s been dead for over 60 years – we’re already “beyond” him, whether we like it or not. Secondly, many of his ideas and his instructions were varying mixtures of “crazy” and “wrong” even at the time he wrote them, and a lot has happened since then; although some elements would apparently like us to believe that knowledge hasn’t advanced since 1912, we fortunately don’t have to listen to them. Thirdly, Crowley did have some good ideas, but he was having a good day if he was able to organise the archetypal piss-up in a brewery, so attempting to replicate his attempts in that arena is a bad idea from the outset.

The moral of the story is that anyone interested in their own self-development should be focused on – surprise, surprise – their own self-development, and not on replicating someone else’s failed system. Anyone who instead attempts to dutifully and religiously engage in a stage performance of a century-old system which never worked in the first place has only got themselves to blame if it doesn’t work out for them.