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Date Posted: 21:39:08 07/23/00 Sun
Author: D.N.M.
Subject: the dead

Throughout its existence mankind has sought truth through ecstasy-the prehistoric shamans, the Hebrew prophets, the earliest Gnostic Christians, the Sufis, the Indian rishis. Terence McKenna has convincingly argued that the inception of human consciousness itself is the direct consequence of the imbibition of certain ecstasy-inducing plants by our prehominid ancestors. Every great civilization without exception, other than our own, traces its lineage back to the divinely-inspired Word of one or more ecstatic visionaries, who acted as a conduit between this world and an ideal reality, through whose paradigmatic experience those who succeeded them were able to maintain the original connexion, and so perpetuate the vitality of society, until at length the connexion became tenuous and finally disappeared altogether, and the civilization suffered the fate of all living things and died, only to be replaced by a new visionary, a new Word, and a new cultus.
Civilization today has discarded all this as superstition. Analytical reason is our godhead, with the result that we worship progress, technology, and material self-satisfaction with an excess of idolatry that would make our "superstitious" ancestors blush. Nonplussed by our "barbarous" past, we worship the future, while restricting our consciousness to a narrow-minded present; the past has no existence for us, save as an academic study-and then only to serve industrial "progress." All works of man have no value at all except insofar as they testify to the technological power by which we dominate ourselves and nature. Dreams and the visions of six thousand years are as dust. Individual human consciousness is a fragile flower, too easily distracted from its only "real" imperative-the rational articulation of experience in the service of material self-aggrandizement-and subject to periodic breakdown. All ecstatic visionaries are psychotics, their successors, deluded fools. Now their successors, the poets and artists, are "borderline personalities."
"Kultur" demands that the modern democratic authoritarian state impose twelve or more years of intensive mandatory education, beginning at an early age, in order to correct any deviations from the socially approved norm, whereas those who exhibit signs of irregularity are brutally shamed and punished in an effort to stifle their self-expression. Except those who submit successfully to such a system, one is labelled a "neurotic" or, if the deviation is intense, "schizophrenic," and is subjected to various penalties, ranging from marginalization and unemployment to mandatory drug treatment programmes or institutionalization. Now when the marginalized turn criminal they are incarcerated or, in extreme cases, killed. Not content with indoctrinating the young, the training in conformism is continued in adult life in the corporation, where the individual is compelled to submit to a complex system of automatized routines, the slightest deviation from which is punished by the threat of loss of employment. Essential individuality is suppressed by means of an hierarchy of authority based on power, in which those who conform most successfully to this mechanization enforce it upon those less successful, so that they too might "become successful." Livelihood being threatened is an effective instrument of control, since all corporate cultures subscribe to the same set of values, and each corporation verifies an applicant's reputation with his previous employer, to identify and eliminate persistent deviations; he is "unhappy" and therefore unemployable (note the psychologism: the relationship between happiness and competence is not quite clear, or is the word being used as a blind for something else?).
Compromised quasi-individuality may only be preserved by a tiny minority who have the courage, or perhaps no other option, than to escape into various ghettos-artistic, academic, welfare, etc.-which are generally despised and whose existence is barely tolerated by the mainstream. Laboriously, the kultur of reason, absolutely convinced of its divinely appointed teleology, hurtles forward blithely like a bullet, building ever more powerful and complex technologies of control to exploit the earth and threaten our enemies-who grow more numerous as our exploitation intensifies. Universal exhaustion of our natural resources; the poisoning of the earth, water, and air; escalating drug abuse by abused and abusers alike; increasing violence, criminality, and mental "illness"; chronic unemployability; increasing illiteracy; the proliferation of nuclear weapons; political chaos, wars, and widespread starvation "at the fringes"; and threats to our fertility and even our sexual identity-these are merely "technical problems," to be analysed and managed out of existence, usually by measures implicitly or explicitly authoritarian. By this time our citizens' sensibilities have become so dulled that they scarcely notice; more insectivorous than human, when the crisis comes they turn on each other like frenzied cockroaches.
The human need for ecstasy, based on a million years of evolution, is insatiable. Even in terms of the narrow schema of Darwinian evolution, such a deep-seated and universal need must have significant adaptive value. All ancient civilizations include prophecies of a time of unparalleled materialism and violence, when the dharma would be forgotten, but out of which a new light would be kindled by a new ecstatic vision of reality. Increasingly, many believe that the time is now, when mankind has finally achieved the power of planetary self-extermination, capping the most violent and destructive war in human history with the first use of atomic weapons on August 6, 1945.
Predictably, such an expectation has generated the expectation of the arising of a new ecstatic genius, while others believe that the new light will be kindled in the collective soul of humanity, not (this time) in an individual prophet. One prophet has combined both visions, disdaining to present himself as a paradigmatic exemplar-indeed, rather the opposite-while at the same time proclaiming the imminent advent of the "Next Step," the universal illumination of human consciousness. One of the most brilliant, and neglected, candidates for World Teacher is Edward Alexander Crowley (1875-1947), who was born in the year of the foundation of the Theosophical Society, and died in the year of the first major UFO "flap." Crowley's life began in the complacency of comfortable Victorian affluence, and ended in the conflagration of the Second World War. Writing under the nom de plume of Aleister Crowley, Crowley quickly earned a reputation in the tabloid press as "the wickedest man in the world," though he was never formally accused or convicted of any crime, but, unlike many contemporary claimants of the title of prophet of the New Age, Crowley was a real genius, a classical scholar and a world traveller who was actually adept in many different systems of initiation, and who suffered a terrible ostracism for his vision of the "New Aeon," which he stated began in 1904, the last year of classical Newtonian physics; in 1905 Einstein's paper on relativity paved the way for quantum physics and the complete revolution of all our ideas concerning the material universe. Widely neglected now by all save a few diehard devotees, Crowley actually succeeded in distilling the diverse esoteric wisdom of the past into a coherent, profound, and practical system, and is the only modern-day prophet-including Baha'u'llah, Krishnamurti, and Da Avabhasa-who passes the crucial test of an authentic Magus: the articulation of a new essential Word, comparable to Lao-tse's "Tao" and Mohammed's "Islam." Crowley's Word, "Thelema" (the Greek for "will") proposes that we embrace our radical freedom within, and that thereby we will realize our own inherent divinity.
Was Aleister Crowley the World Teacher of prophecy? Only time will tell, but there is no doubt that Aleister Crowley was an authentic prophet. Perhaps the acid test of a true prophet is his refusal to play the game by the world's rules. Like Padmasambhava, the "Second Buddha" of the Tibetans, Aleister Crowley followed the way of his True Will with absolute and uncompromising integrity, never yielding for a moment to the demands or expectations of others. In this he is very unlike the modern minor prophets which crowd the scene with their PR photos and "-800" numbers. There is a story that when asked by a wealthy woman of society to demonstrate his "powers," Crowley emptied his bowels on her rug, thus giving her the answer she deserved, though it is doubtful that she got the message. (Had she understood, Crowley would no doubt have accepted her as a disciple.) Many of the stories which surrounded Crowley during his life-so much of which was hostile gossip that it is difficult now to separate the facts from the fiction, and which amused Crowley no end-are capable of this kind of alternative interpretation. Of course, those who do not believe in prophets will not be convinced, but their fate is already sealed.
Such critical writing as exists concerning the life and work of Aleister Crowley is very diverse, ranging from mud-raking tabloid journalism to vilification to uninformative academic twaddle to occult fantasy posing as fact. Most authors get stuck on the sensationalistic details of Crowley's personal life and ignore the philosophy, while those who study the philosophy tend to emphasize Crowley's roots in Tradition while glossing over the particularities which distinguish him as an individual. The present work represents a radical break with all of this. Stele is a development and an interpretation of the specificities of Crowley's work that never loses sight of its origin or debts. Crowley himself never regarded his work as written in stone, with the exception of the Holy Books of Thelema, though even here he never claimed infallibility, only the inability to criticize. Indeed, it is fundamental to the Thelemic "aeonology" that the Law will itself be superseded in a future dispensation. Just as Ankh-af-na-khonsu saw something of the future dispensation of Horus at the dawn of the Aeon of Osiris, so the Thelemite today may be able to sense something of the formula of the future. It is my hope that by focusing in each monograph on very specific aspects of the Law of Thelema I have succeeded in laying the foundation for a critical language which may yet lead to a systematic and comprehensive understanding of the totality of Aleister Crowley's work, free of the prejudice and perversions which have marred previous efforts.
D.N.M.
Toronto, Canada

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Re: the dead -- plasticowl, 09:53:04 07/24/00 Mon