Path: shell.portal.com!usenet
From: tyagI@houseofkaos.Abyss.coM (tyagi mordred nagasiva)
Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi
Subject: Re: More fake AC bio (was: Need advice regarding Co-Masonry)
Date: 21 Nov 1994 09:03:00 GMT
Organization: Portal Communications (shell)
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Message-ID: <3apno4$sra@news1.shell>
References: <3ae7fg$mi8@news-4.nss.udel.edu> <3agkva$9ep@uwm.edu> <59042@toad.com>
Reply-To: tim@toad.com (Tim Maroney)
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[from alt.magick: tim@toad.com (Tim Maroney)]

blackhmr@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu (Robert M Van Rens) writes:
>Crowley was a fraud.  His involvement with the Necromonicon, if he was
>actually involoved, should be proof enough...if not, read the idiot thing
>once.  (And yes, I know that there is no proof that he was certainly
>involoved with it, but it seems that he was _probably_ involoved in the
>writing and publishing of it.)

You are talking about subjects about which you appear to know exactly
nothing.  The Simon Necronomicon was published in 1979 or 1980, more
than thirty years after Crowley's death.  Its dedication to Crowley
lists Crowley's date of death, so it is hard to see how you could have
missed this fact.

You call him a fraud?  Look at yourself, sir.  You are making
slanderous accusations which even the slightest acquaintance with the
matters at issue would reveal as such.  Whether this represents
negligence or fraud is not for me to say, but at best I could conclude
that you are a charlatan, presenting yourself as an expert on matters
which you have not actually investigated.

>I do not know as much about the Golden Dawn as you appear to; however,
>Crowley _did_ have some experience with "Satan Worship", if you will, while
>still in England.  Exact details are very fuzzy, but so are almost all of
>the details of Crowley's life (at least the details I can get ahold of; if
>Crowley was a Mason, perhaps there are some records you ahve access to that
>I do not.)

True, there are only two or three biographies in print, and half a
dozen more that are easily obtainable through libraries and used book
stores, so I can well understand why you might find the facts hard to
discover.  Concerning the issues you have raised:

(1) Masonry:  Crowley was a Mason, and was granted degrees in numerous
rites of Masonry.  His groups, the A.'. A.'. and O.T.O., use Masonic
symbolism extensively.  (In fact, the more I dig through musty old
books, the more derivations I find!  I hadn't known that "e.v." as a
synonym for "A.D." or "C.E." had been used by Egyptian Masons in the
mid-19th century until I started reading Burt's history of Egyptian
Masonry last night, for instance.)  He was very much part of the
esotericist movement in Masonry that was in full swing during the
latter half of the 19th century, and his tradition is firmly rooted in
that movement.

(2) Satan Worship:  Still a point of dispute in the Thelemic
community.  There's little doubt that to Crowley, "Satan" was an
entirely positive symbol, and he repeatedly identified himself with
it.  His tradition of Thelema has a great deal to do with the Satanic
symbols of the Beast and the Scarlet Woman, servitors of the Draconic
form of Satan in the Apocalypse of John.  At other times he put down
"Satanism," by which he meant the puerile abominations described by J.
K. Huysmans, and belief in the Devil, by which he meant the Christian
demonization of the symbol.  He did use the name "Satan" as an object
of veneration in an important ritual, and consistently painted the
Tarot Trump of "the Devil" as a positive form of phallic symbol.  There
are numerous other positive references to Satan scattered throughout
his work.

Our own Bill Heidrick denies that any of these symbols are actually
central to Thelema, to which opinion he is of course entitled, just as
I am entitled to the opinion that Crowley did consider them central.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Communications and User Interface Engineer
{apple!sun}!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

FROM THE FOOL FILE:
"In any religion or form of worship, followers should be allowed to think
 for themselves.  In every religion that has a god other than Jesus Christ,
 adherents are not allowed to think for themselves."
    -- Lauren Stratford, "Satan's Underground"