|
31okiL
Stranger
Registered: 02/08/10
Posts: 61
Last seen: 12 years, 2 months
|
Thelemites and their Prophet
#14117136 - 03/13/11 11:14 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
This is a question for all Thelemites. I have very little trouble accepting the majority of the teaching, ideas, and philosophy of Thelema. It took a while but I believe I can pretty much grasp it. The one thing I cannot grasp is this: how canyou accept someone like Crowley as a prophet or enlightened being? Yes he was extremely brilliant, but he also seemed to be a bit of an ass.
This is not an attack by the way, it's a serious question.
|
g00ru
lit pants tit licker



Registered: 08/09/07
Posts: 21,088
Loc: georgia, us
Last seen: 5 years, 1 month
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: 31okiL]
#14117703 - 03/14/11 01:10 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
I'm not a thelemite. Crowley was probably awakened in some sense but that in no way means you have to follow his teachings. He does seem like an ass. He also had his first spiritual experience after taking it in the butt. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but...ehhh, I'll stick with Mooji and Ramana
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
|
deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: g00ru]
#14117728 - 03/14/11 01:15 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
guruu said: He also had his first spiritual experience after taking it in the butt.
Err, source? I know sodomy was part of some rituals he practiced but I know he also went to India when he was younger and practiced meditation/etcetera; it seems unlikely that his FIRST spiritual experience was due to that.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
|
g00ru
lit pants tit licker



Registered: 08/09/07
Posts: 21,088
Loc: georgia, us
Last seen: 5 years, 1 month
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: deCypher]
#14118545 - 03/14/11 09:15 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
i just read that in his wikipedia bio but i think its true
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
|
Crasher
αἱρετίζω




Registered: 03/13/01
Posts: 6,220
Loc: Tardy to the Party
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: 31okiL]
#14118682 - 03/14/11 10:14 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
31okiL said: This is a question for all Thelemites. I have very little trouble accepting the majority of the teaching, ideas, and philosophy of Thelema. It took a while but I believe I can pretty much grasp it. The one thing I cannot grasp is this: how canyou accept someone like Crowley as a prophet or enlightened being? Yes he was extremely brilliant, but he also seemed to be a bit of an ass.
This is not an attack by the way, it's a serious question.
Christians don't have a problem with John the Baptist being the one who baptized Jesus into his ministry, and he was a crazy Essene living off honey and grasshoppers in the wilderness...
It seems to me that the duties of being a prophet require that you're bat-shit crazy!
What are the requirements for enlightenment? doesn't spiritual awakening resemble madness to most non-believers?
-------------------- Give me silence, water, hope; Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes...
|
JohnnyZampano
Registered: 11/03/10
Posts: 325
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: g00ru]
#14118889 - 03/14/11 11:25 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
guruu said: i just read that in his wikipedia bio but i think its true
Because wikipedia is an undeniably true source of factual information.
|
Crasher
αἱρετίζω




Registered: 03/13/01
Posts: 6,220
Loc: Tardy to the Party
|
|
Quote:
JohnnyZampano said:
Quote:
guruu said: i just read that in his wikipedia bio but i think its true
Because wikipedia is an undeniably true source of factual information.
because people with nothing better to contribute just question the validity of peer-contributed sources.
-------------------- Give me silence, water, hope; Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes...
|
JohnnyZampano
Registered: 11/03/10
Posts: 325
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: Crasher]
#14119358 - 03/14/11 01:09 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Crasher said:
Quote:
JohnnyZampano said:
Quote:
guruu said: i just read that in his wikipedia bio but i think its true
Because wikipedia is an undeniably true source of factual information.
because people with nothing better to contribute just question the validity of peer-contributed sources.
Because more often then not people hear something once and store it away as fact. Just because you read something somewhere hardly makes it truth, yet people often take it as so.
|
Crasher
αἱρετίζω




Registered: 03/13/01
Posts: 6,220
Loc: Tardy to the Party
|
|
Quote:
JohnnyZampano said:
Quote:
Crasher said:
Quote:
JohnnyZampano said:
Quote:
guruu said: i just read that in his wikipedia bio but i think its true
Because wikipedia is an undeniably true source of factual information.
because people with nothing better to contribute just question the validity of peer-contributed sources.
Because more often then not people hear something once and store it away as fact. Just because you read something somewhere hardly makes it truth, yet people often take it as so.
This is true. Unfortunately, those people who take whatever they read once and run with it seldom appeal to reason.
-------------------- Give me silence, water, hope; Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes...
|
g00ru
lit pants tit licker



Registered: 08/09/07
Posts: 21,088
Loc: georgia, us
Last seen: 5 years, 1 month
|
|
Quote:
JohnnyZampano said:
Quote:
Crasher said:
Quote:
JohnnyZampano said:
Quote:
guruu said: i just read that in his wikipedia bio but i think its true
Because wikipedia is an undeniably true source of factual information.
because people with nothing better to contribute just question the validity of peer-contributed sources.
Because more often then not people hear something once and store it away as fact. Just because you read something somewhere hardly makes it truth, yet people often take it as so.
cross reference sources dawg
but sometimes an intelligent eye is all you need
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
|
Shnezbit
Psycho-naught



Registered: 09/30/04
Posts: 1,202
Loc: The Threshold.
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: g00ru]
#14121564 - 03/14/11 08:13 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
i'm not a thelemite, but have read allot of crowley and about crowley. i do respect allot of thelemic philosophy and find much of it applicable to this day and age.
i agree he was an ass. but i think he was a person about breaking down past conceptions and barriers as to what makes someone a spiritual being. i think part of his work was to take morality out of the picture and put the focus purely on what ones purpose was in life.
for him, part of his purpose/will was to break down these conceptions, thus his affinity with calling himself the beast of revelation.
he was taboo in many ways to show that there isn't taboo. he did despicable things to tear down the old victorian hangups and herald in a new age with a new paradigm which focused on individual liberty to fulfill ones purpose in life. that to him was all one should consider in his actions, rather than a moral code of conduct.
|
MarkostheGnostic
Elder


Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 3 days
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: 31okiL]
#14122757 - 03/14/11 11:14 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
31okiL said: This is a question for all Thelemites. I have very little trouble accepting the majority of the teaching, ideas, and philosophy of Thelema. It took a while but I believe I can pretty much grasp it. The one thing I cannot grasp is this: how canyou accept someone like Crowley as a prophet or enlightened being? Yes he was extremely brilliant, but he also seemed to be a bit of an ass.
This is not an attack by the way, it's a serious question.
It's a very good question. I'm not a Thelemite, but I first began to read Crowley in 1972. First of all, you'd do well to apply a tool of understanding in order to give yourself a satisfactory answer. I am a Human Developmentalist by training. My Ph.D. is in Human development with a minor in Clinical Psychology, and, unfortunately, when I was writing my dissertation, I was unaware of The Atman Project by Ken Wilber. Maybe it was a good thing that I didn't read it because I would've been disheartened to write my dissertation. Anyway, although he has a degree in biochemistry, Wilber has done more for the discipline of Human Development than any one theorist I know. He pulled together separate theorists in cognitive, moral, emotional, and affective development, for a metatheory. In my program at the University of Maryland, we had a '6-area framework,' but Wilber enjoins at least a dozen 'areas' in his comprehensive view of Human Development. MOST importantly, Wilber exceeds the range of textbooks in Human Development by going beyond physical-social-cultural-affective-cognitive-moral development into additional ranges of transpersonal development.
Crowley. Please understand Human Development like a bar graph - each bar representing a different aspect of Human development. One can have 'high scores' in some domains and low scores in others. Crowley had a high cognitive development, but the corollary moral development was correspondingly low! He hunted big game, and treated women, Blacks, and Jews with contempt. He evidenced "vision-logic" in Wilber's term, perhaps both high and low, and as such, had tremendous intuitive grasp of Qabalistic, astrological, and magickal understanding, for example. HOWEVER, his physical prowess as lover, mountaineer, and esotericist, greatly inflated his ego, which became pathological to the degree that he claimed to have traversed the Qabalistic 'Abyss,' and entered into The Supernal Triangle, i.e., the Godhead! He made extravagant claims in his own idiosyncratic Western terms (e.g., Ipsissimus), but also in Eastern terms as well. Meanwhile, while manifesting high cultural development, he evidenced poor social skills in the way he insulted critics and enemies.
Crowley was way out of balance as a human being, and although he may have experienced all manner of synchronicities, intuitive insights, Enochian angel magick, and physical conquests, he falls pitifully short of what a truly spiritually enlightened human should be. My point is best made by the words of in the of St. Paul:
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, [1] but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; [2] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
Edited by MarkostheGnostic (03/20/11 08:52 AM)
|
g00ru
lit pants tit licker



Registered: 08/09/07
Posts: 21,088
Loc: georgia, us
Last seen: 5 years, 1 month
|
|
yeah i'd like to *asterisk my post by saying that i highly respect crowley and don't write him off just cause he took it in the butt
markos' well thought out post made me question my opinions as usual 
edit:*
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
Edited by g00ru (03/14/11 11:18 PM)
|
MarkostheGnostic
Elder


Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 3 days
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: g00ru]
#14122940 - 03/14/11 11:49 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
Maybe it's the Mondavi Caberet with the Remy Martin V.S.O.P. chaser! I'm on holiday this week. I'm fascinated by Crowley's intelligence, while at the same time, his imagination overpowers his reason. He spent lots of time and money constructing magickal experiments. The Abramelin working took a certain physical layout, plus six months of celibacy and preparation. At other times he had lots of sex. I hate his bigotry, couldn't care less about mountaineering, and despise his big game hunting and everything else that shouts EGO. I can't stand the personality, but I have always been amazed that a man of means could and would suspend his world-view. That is something that I still continue to do with Spagyrics and alchemical theory in general. It is difficult to separate the scientific mind-set from the magickal mind-set, but different world-views can have effects on the physical plane. Crowley demonstrates the bad and the good in tremendous contrast.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
|
g00ru
lit pants tit licker



Registered: 08/09/07
Posts: 21,088
Loc: georgia, us
Last seen: 5 years, 1 month
|
|
Ya, for me he shows how huge spiritual progress can be mad while still being an egotistical ass. The thing is, you will have to abandon the ego in the moment. But it'll come back, in whatever form you want, and Crowley obviously thought he was awesome. He's true left hand path. Sort of like Tupac
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
|
the bizzle
the joke that no one spoke


Registered: 04/14/09
Posts: 11,870
Loc: :seriousbusiness:
Last seen: 10 years, 11 months
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: g00ru]
#14124734 - 03/15/11 11:39 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
who took it in the butt?
-------------------- MY HAIR IS A BIRD YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID
  
|
MarkostheGnostic
Elder


Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 3 days
|
Re: Thelemites and their Prophet [Re: the bizzle]
#14151302 - 03/19/11 11:04 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
the bizzle said: who took it in the butt? 
Victor Neuberg, Crowley's submissive assistant.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
|
Grapefruit
Freak in the forest


Registered: 05/09/08
Posts: 5,744
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
|
|
All I know is the man's poetry is frighteningly clever.
-------------------- Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. "Chat your fraff Chat your fraff Just chat your fraff Chat your fraff"
|
|