The common warnings about the psychological harm that occultists can cause themselves as a result of their practices are well known. In The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic, for instance, Israel Regardie wrote that: In the practice of Magic or anything which releases unusual amounts of energy from the unconscious the infantile megalomaniacal substructure […]

I came across a page on Facebook the other day called Petition the OTO to publish Crowley’s out of print books and Thoth deck. It appears to be a platform for criticising the OTO for – as the name clearly suggests – not keeping Crowley’s books in print, heavily populated by professional complainer “Keith418”. Other […]

I have today uploaded to the “Writings” section of this web site a PDF version of my new essay, The Holy Guardian Angel. The objective of the essay is to engage in a comprehensive and thorough review of the occasions where Aleister Crowley wrote about the Holy Guardian Angel in his published works of prose […]

A recent thread over on LAShTAL.com has been discussing the highly suspicious account Aleister Crowley gave about the “reception” of The Book of the Law. One part of the thread has morphed into a speculation as to the nature of “Aiwass”, prompting Ian Rons to write this: I myself experienced something akin to this once, […]

On a lighter than usual note, this entry will consist of a review and discussion of John Crow‘s “The Missing Calls to the Great Work”, an interesting and thoughtful essay in an otherwise uniformly disappointingly lacklustre and low-quality second edition of the “Journal of Thelemic Studies” magazine. In the essay, Crow summarises some points relating […]

The vernal equinox marks the time at which the length of the day begins to exceed the length of the night once again (technically, it doesn’t; due to the refraction of light in the atmosphere and because the Sun appears to be a disk rather than a point, the length of the day exceeds the […]

From private correspondence. The correspondent refers to my essay True Will, quotes AL I, 42-44, and asks “Why then, in so many circumstances, did so many people oppose Crowley or come into his way with an unfavourable outcome for him?” I presume you are referring to “no other shall say nay,” here. My essay The […]

Aum418:It is necessary that we stop, once for all, this ignorant meddling with other people’s business. Each individual must be left free to follow his own path…the original brand of American freedom — which really was Freedom — contained the precept to leave other people severely alone, and thus assured the possibility of expansion on […]

Another one. > > “He [the HGA] is not, let me say with emphasis, a mere abstraction from > > yourself; and that is why I have insisted rather heavily that the term > > ‘Higher Self’ implies ‘a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion.’ > > “If it were not so, there would be […]