Aleister Crowley by Colin Wilson

Author:Colin Wilson [Wilson, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 190465827X
Publisher: Aeon Books
Published: 2019-02-20T13:30:00+00:00

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1. Quoted extensively by Jean Overton Fuller in The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg (1965); the episode is also described at length in The Magical World of Aleister Crowley by Francis King (1977)

Six

The Magic Wand

EVER SINCE his vision of the fourteenth aethyr at Bou-Saada, Crowley had been dimly aware that there was some unfathomed connection between the two major interests of his life: sex and magic. The insight that was trying to break through into his awareness was that if sex is to be more than a merely physical activity, it demands precisely the same kind of mental disciplines as magic. At the time Crowley was attempting to form his own magical society to supplant the Golden Dawn, a Russian man of genius was organizing his first groups of followers in Tiflis and Moscow. His name was George Gurdjieff, and his central realization was that the human mind is appallingly feeble and undeveloped compared to the human body. We think that our lives have purpose and continuity, but this is only because the body is relatively durable. The mind that controls it changes from moment to moment. Our only chance of achieving any kind of real continuity is to make tremendous and sustained efforts of will. Gurdjieff's work consisted of various disciplines to make this effort possible.

By comparison, Crowley lacked profound insight into human nature; he wasted far too much time and moral energy fighting a rearguard action against the religion of his parents and grandparents. He never rid himself of the simplistic idea that the real aim of life is to enjoy oneself. Yet Crowley recognized instinctively that magic could offer some of the disciplines that his schooling had failed to instill. The way of the Kabbalah demands a high level of concentration and discipline of the imagination. Yet Crowley freely admits that he was too easily bored, and was always neglecting his magical disciplines. Like most of us, Crowley greatly preferred play to work. Tom Sawyer points out that work is what one is obliged to do and play is what one is not obliged to do. So as soon as Crowley committed himself to a discipline, the law of reverse effort impelled him to abandon it.

Now if there was one thing that Crowley preferred above all others, it was sex. And sex, by definition, was play. Yet that experience on Mount Del'leh Addin offered Crowley a glimpse of an amazing truth. Sex is also a discipline of the imagination. A man who makes love while thinking of something else will not really enjoy it. Conversely, a man who has spent a long time pursuing the girl of his dreams will treat lovemaking as a sacred rite; he will concentrate so as not to lose a single drop of the experience. Sexual pleasure depends upon a certain vital energy, but the mind is the funnel through which this energy is poured. Again, when a man is in bed with a girl in the dark, he has

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