Path: typhoon.sonic.net!feed.news.sonic.net!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!cyclone.bc.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: paulhume@comcast.net (Paul Hume) Newsgroups: alt.pagan,alt.pagan.magick,alt.religion.wicca Subject: Re: Trad-Snobs Suck (Re: What does Murray have to do with anything?) Date: 22 Oct 2003 09:09:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 34 Message-ID: References: <0xmkb.2244$np1.1556@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.107.93.163 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1066838941 15520 127.0.0.1 (22 Oct 2003 16:09:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 16:09:01 +0000 (UTC) Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.pagan:376396 alt.pagan.magick:39320 alt.religion.wicca:767452 > But Gardner (and through him Crowley (the original Book of Shadows was > mostly written by MR Crowley as Uncle Gerry asked him too) came up > with the term. No way in hell was it an old term! > This is a jump a lot of people like to take (not historians, mind, just people with an axe to grind of some kind). It does not seem to be logical, or likely, however. Crowley was quite ill when he met Gardner, and did not have energy for a lot of projects - and already HAD a lot of projects underway in connection with the work of the Order (ie. OTO). Taking on a job for a new acquaintance, however, friendly, creating a new initiatory system when he had just chartered Gardner to administer "a camp of Minervals" in the OTO system, all this while dealing with his other writing, his failing health, etc. without, mind you, any mention of such a thing in his journals, seems a bit far-fetched. In his salad days, based on the blistering speed with which he wrote a number of his important works, yes, I would bet you that Crowley could have composed the original cycle of Gardnerian initiations, which is what I assume people mean when they say he "wrote" the Gardnerian "Book of Shadows." They can't mean Crowley hand wrote Gardner's Boke of Ye Arte Magical (or whatever), which actually WAS the original Gardnerian BoS. It is undeniable that there are lots of snippets of Crowley in Gardner's rituals...as there are snippets of the Solomonic grimoires, Mathers GD material, etc. But it does not follow from this that Crowley wrote them, anymore than the presence of Shakespearian tags in the novels attributed to Dorothy Sayers implies that the bard actually created Lord Peter Wimsey. Paul