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The Place of Enchantment
Author: Alex Owen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2006-12-15
Total Pages: 384
ISBN-13: 0226642038
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →By the end of the nineteenth century, Victorians were seeking rational explanations for the world in which they lived. The radical ideas of Charles Darwin had shaken traditional religious beliefs. Sigmund Freud was developing his innovative models of the conscious and unconscious mind. And anthropologist James George Frazer was subjecting magic, myth, and ritual to systematic inquiry. Why, then, in this quintessentially modern moment, did late-Victorian and Edwardian men and women become absorbed by metaphysical quests, heterodox spiritual encounters, and occult experimentation? In answering this question for the first time, The Place of Enchantment breaks new ground in its consideration of the role of occultism in British culture prior to World War I. Rescuing occultism from its status as an "irrational indulgence" and situating it at the center of British intellectual life, Owen argues that an involvement with the occult was a leitmotif of the intellectual avant-garde. Carefully placing a serious engagement with esotericism squarely alongside revolutionary understandings of rationality and consciousness, Owen demonstrates how a newly psychologized magic operated in conjunction with the developing patterns of modern life. She details such fascinating examples of occult practice as the sex magic of Aleister Crowley, the pharmacological experimentation of W. B. Yeats, and complex forms of astral clairvoyance as taught in secret and hierarchical magical societies like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Through a remarkable blend of theoretical discussion and intellectual history, Owen has produced a work that moves far beyond a consideration of occultists and their world. Bearing directly on our understanding of modernity, her conclusions will force us to rethink the place of the irrational in modern culture. “An intelligent, well-argued and richly detailed work of cultural history that offers a substantial contribution to our understanding of Britain.”—Nick Freeman, Washington Times
Perdurabo, Revised and Expanded Edition
Author: Richard Kaczynski
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2010-08-10
Total Pages: 724
ISBN-13: 1556438990
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A rigorously researched biography of the founder of modern magick, as well as a study of the occult, sexuality, Eastern religion, and more The name “Aleister Crowley” instantly conjures visions of diabolic ceremonies and orgiastic indulgences—and while the sardonic Crowley would perhaps be the last to challenge such a view, he was also much more than “the Beast,” as this authoritative biography shows. Perdurabo—entitled after the magical name Crowley chose when inducted into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—traces Crowley’s remarkable journey from his birth as the only son of a wealthy lay preacher to his death in a boarding house as the world’s foremost authority on magick. Along the way, he rebels against his conservative religious upbringing; befriends famous artists, writers, and philosophers (and becomes a poet himself); is attacked for his practice of “the black arts”; and teaches that science and magick can work together. While seeking to spread his infamous philosophy of, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” Crowley becomes one of the most notorious figures of his day. Based on Richard Kaczynski’s twenty years of research, and including previously unpublished biographical details, Perdurabo paints a memorable portrait of the man who inspired the counterculture and influenced generations of artists, punks, wiccans, and other denizens of the demimonde.
Seething Cauldron
Author: Payam Nabarz
Publisher: Lulu.com
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 229
ISBN-13: 0955685842
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Sufi ritual meal ceremony of 'Deeg-Jush' translates as the 'Seething Cauldron' or 'Boiling Cauldron', and, like its Celtic equivalent: the Cauldron of Cerridwen, it symbolizes the transformation and change of the initiate as he/she becomes cooked in the cauldron. In this collection of essays covering Persian Magi, Zoroastrianism, Sufism, Freemasonry, Wicca, Druidry, Neo-Paganism, Mithraism, and Thelema; Payam Nabarz takes a down-to-earth look at contemporary spirituality. Contents: The Persian Fool and Trickster: Haji Firouz Anahita: Lady Of Persia Zoroastrian Angels and Demons Mithras and the Right Handed Handshake Of The Gods Influences Of Freemasonry and Sufism On Wicca and Neo-Paganism Sacred Plants (Drugs In Religion) The Right Hand Path Or Left Hand Path; Star Wars, Excalibur and Lord Of The Rings To Genes, Memes, Gods and Beyond (Sex, Chocolate and Religion) Spirit Of Peace
Aleister Crowley And the Practice of the Magical Diary
Author: James Wasserman
Publisher: Weiser Books
Published: 2006-04-01
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 1609252756
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This important collection includes Aleister Crowley's two most important instructional writings on the design and purpose of the magical diary, John St. John and A Master of the Temple. These were the only two works regarding the magical diary published in Crowley's lifetime. Both were first published in Crowley's immense collection of magical instruction, The Equinox. John St. John chronicles Crowley's moment-by-moment progress during a 13-day magical working. Crowley referred to it as "a perfect model of what a magical record should be." A Master of the Temple is taken from the magical diary of Frater Achad at a time when he was Crowley's most valued and successful student. It provides an invaluable example of a student's record, plus direct commentary and instruction added by Crowley. With commentary and introductory material by editor James Wasserman, Aleister Crowley and the Practice of the Magical Diary is the most important and accessible instruction available to students of the occult regarding the practice of keeping a magical diary. This revised edition includes a new introduction by Wasserman, a foreword by noted occult scholar J. Daniel Gunther, revisions throughout the text, a revised reading list for further study, plus Crowley's instructions on banishing from Liber O.
Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism
Author: Henrik Bogdan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-09-05
Total Pages: 432
ISBN-13: 0199996067
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume is the first comprehensive examination of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive iconoclasts. Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was a study in contradictions. Born into a fundamentalist Christian family and educated at Cambridge, he was vilified as a traitor, drug addict, and debaucher, yet revered as perhaps the most influential thinker in contemporary esotericism. Moving beyond the influence of contemporary psychology and the modernist understanding of the occult, Crowley declared himself the revelator of a new age of individualism. Crowley's occult bricolage, Magick, was an eclectic combination of spiritual exercises drawn from Western European magical ceremonies and Indic sources for meditation and yoga. This journey of self-liberation culminated in harnessing sexual power as a magical discipline, a "sacrilization of the self" as practiced in Crowley's mixed masonic group, the Ordo Templi Orientis. The religion Crowley created, Thelema, legitimated his role as a charismatic revelator and herald of a new age of freedom. Aleister Crowley's lasting influence can be seen in the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and in many forms of alternative spirituality and popular culture. The essays in this volume offer crucial insight into Crowley's foundational role in the study of Western esotericism, new religious movements, and sexuality.
Do What Thou Wilt
Author: Lawrence Sutin
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-07-08
Total Pages: 514
ISBN-13: 1466875267
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Do What Thou Wilt: An exploration into the life and works of a modern mystic, occultist, poet, mountaineer, and bisexual adventurer known to his contemporaries as "The Great Beast" Aleister Crowley was a groundbreaking poet and an iconoclastic visionary whose literary and cultural legacy extends far beyond the limits of his notoriety as a practitioner of the occult arts. Born in 1875 to devout Christian parents, young Aleister's devotion scarcely outlived his father, who died when the boy was twelve. He reached maturity in the boarding schools and brothels of Victorian England, trained to become a world-class mountain climber, and seldom persisted with any endeavor in which he could be bested. Like many self-styled illuminati of his class and generation, the hedonistic Crowley gravitated toward the occult. An aspiring poet and a pampered wastrel - obsessed with reconciling his quest for spiritual perfection and his inclination do exactly as he liked in the earthly realm - Crowley developed his own school of mysticism. Magick, as he called it, summoned its users to embrace the imagination and to glorify the will. Crowley often explored his spiritual yearnings through drug-saturated vision quests and rampant sexual adventurism, but at other times he embraced Eastern philosophies and sought enlightenment on ascetic sojourns into the wilderness. This controversial individual, a frightening mixture of egomania and self-loathing, has inspired passionate - but seldom fair - assessments from historians. Lawrence Sutin, by treating Crowley as a cultural phenomenon, and not simply a sorcerer or a charlatan, convinces skeptic readers that the self-styled "Beast" remains a fascinating study in how one man devoted his life to the subversion of the dominant moral and religious values of his time.
The Aleister Crowley Encyclopedia
Author: Harold Everett
Publisher: via tolino media
Published: 2022-03-22
Total Pages: 93
ISBN-13: 3754646761
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Aleister Crowley was an iconoclast and fascinating figure who shocked society with his debauched and occult behaviour. Crowley is famous for his spiritual, magic and occult studies. He was called a dangerous Satanist but there are many layers and nuances to his mystical beliefs and his religious system called Thelema. Crowley was a writer, poet, chess master, painter, spy, journalist, world traveller and mountain climber. He was a big recreational drug user and experimenter, and had a rather liberal attitude to sexual matters. His ideas and personality have inspired many artists, people and movements in modern times - such as the New Age movement, rock musicians and Wicca. Find out more about Aleister Crowley, his colourful life and ideas with this book - The Aleister Crowley Encyclopedia.
The Unknown God
Author: Martin P. Starr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2024
Total Pages: 457
ISBN-13: 0197744516
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Unknown God gives a view into the twentieth-century North American occult underground influenced by the English occultist and prophet Aleister Crowley, as told through the biography of his disciple in the USA, Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885--1957). It draws on accounts from Smith's social network, which encompassed Caltech rocket scientist Jack Parsons, the Rosicrucian leader H. Spencer Lewis, the Hollywood actor John Carradine, and gay liberationist Harry Hay. Students of esoteric Freemasonry, the Golden Dawn, the Theosophical Society, and the Crowley-based occult orders will find The Unknown God a fascinating resource--this is the book that connects them all.
Aleister Crowley: A Visual Study
Author: William Ramsey
Publisher: William Ramsey
Published: 2013-12-01
Total Pages: 307
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The infamous occult practitioner, Edward Alexander "Aleister" Crowley has cast a long shadow over the history and culture of the 20th century. The information included in Aleister Crowley: A Visual Study illustrates this fact. As the foremost accumulator of occult knowledge in the late 19th and early 20th Century, Crowley based his writings upon prior magicians, writers, and philosophers, incorporating their ideas, and his own, into a new religion for a New Age. This book details Crowley’s progression from a self–described childhood in hell, to notorious magician, to drug-addled middle age as the Great Beast, and on to his final years living in an upscale boarding house in southern England. As this visual study confirms, a copious amount of photographic and newspaper evidence still remains concerning the Beast 666-Aleister Crowley.
